The Prometheans' world. The high towers of Vr'nigh School.
"You believe this will be enough?"
"With each one containing a three person guest allowance? I think a hundred and fifty is excessive, myself." Dawn said, as she closed the box and placed it on the table in front of their mutual guest: the odd ghost with the most (time), Jumpropeman.
"My thanks for delivering the invitations, Time Spirit. I do not know if there is a boon I could grant you..." Evangelina "Angie" Stavros said.
The small blue ghost
rubbed the back of his head, doing his best to approximate a humble
headscratch with neither the fingers nor scalp to do one, his little hat
bouncing around from the act only making it all the more harder to
parse the meaning of the motion. "Eh... You ever thought about signing
up for a fite? I’m rather simple to please really. Letting me do the
time travel saves me a ton of work, I only have to account for the paper
I brought through time... and well, the confetti and other crap you
didn’t ask me to bring. The art of the singing telegram shall not die
out on my watch!"
"I will see what I can do."
"Also, I think that might embarrass Paul. However, from what I have learned from my interactions with her, I think Laura would go for it." Dawn said. "But we didn't bring you here just to serve as a glorified mailman, Jumpropeman. There is something else."
"What?...Oh. Is it the scattershot arrival last year?" Angie said.
"Yes. Your methods and mother's...did not intersect well. You ended up in our realm weeks before you actually recruited her. And I can only venture what that did to the timeline, showing up before you were even summoned."
"Nothing pretty I can
tell ya, but Tut-Tut and I have swept up most everything but the crumbs.
If we hadn’t, things would look a lot more cracked next time you visit
Vegas. Time travel is about making the world agree with itself, and
sometimes the world gets pissy if a rock in Tacoma a second ago is now
vacationing in Peru. Plus you cats came in from another universe as
well. If any of you kids took Chemistry, you know that despite being
pretty boring, it also recommends you don’t mix volatile things. Like
Time Travel and Universe Travel. The world would be even angrier at that
layabout rock if it dropped in from an entirely different existence to
start with."
"...My apologies. The situation was...urgent." Angie said.
"There is something else. Jumpropeman, do you know anything about DNA?"
Jumpropeman’s normally
goofy grin contorted into something between a confident smirk and an
offended slant, the kind of face one might make if looking at a cute
baby of an unidentified species, "Chemistry was a yawn but I did pay
attention in Biology. Millions of years have made me rusty on all the
details and being a ghost has made me care less, but I still know it
wasn’t normal genetics that made Marina’s hair blue but it did give her
her mother’s eyes...Don’t know if mentioning superhero genetics proves I know more or less about DNA than you expected."
"I have some knowledge myself."
"Right then. Actual DNA isn't important, it's just an allegory. Now, to simplify this..."
Dawn brought out the holograms, manifesting a wide variety of blue orbs.
"These are our 'worlds' for simplification. And this, running between them, nourishing them with the higher essences...is the Bleed, which mother travels through. The Bleed is dangerous, but in a rough seas sense. With a good boat and a good captain, you can still sail. However...within some corners of the Bleed...is this."
Dark lines sprouted from the red lines twining around all the orbs. Not many, but enough.
"This is the Todash Darkness. Here's where my DNA reference comes in. If the Bleed is the lifeblood of the DNA of existence...then the Todash is the sealed off paths that progress didn't go down. It's much more complicated than that, of course, but...well, the Todash Darkness is off the end of every map. Here there be monsters."
"...I see. But your point?"
"Jumpropeman, you're familiar with the grandfather terresect obliteration, correct? What happens if someone alters the past and it doesn't create a new timeline? The old timeline has to go SOMEWHERE...and mother's studies have shown that if it goes anywhere we can measure, it's the Todash Darkness."
The spirit’s mouth was
now twisted into a more definitive frown, as if that undefined baby of
earlier mention proved to be quite lethal. "Ugh, the Bleed. A perfect
name for a place that only causes pain. Another tick against the whole
time/universe travel at the same time idea." Jumpropeman’s face lifted a
tad as he actually took the time to observe the orb, neutrality of
expression restored as curiosity became the dominant emotion. "This
Todash stuff is technically not my domain... and kinda is at the same
time. When I clean the timeline I'm specifically trying to avoid making
timeline splits like that. I connect and cut the old and new timelines
rather than dumping one in a place that will only cause more trouble. So... this is the part where you tell me you want to fuck with it, or it is already fucking with us, right?"
"Language. Sir." Angie said, the teacher coming out.
"My apologies. So who is doing the fricka-fracka-freaking, it or you?"
"Actually, no, Jumpropeman. Well, at least that is the hypothesis. Mother only really figured out the Todash in the last two years; she's suspects it's where that memory devourer came from. And Cocytus, a minor issue you and yours had back in the bar's first year." Dawn said. "There's really no purpose going into it. It's beyond dangerous, and there's no benefit. It's a mess of never should bes and broken discarded hateful wannabes."
"You say creatures came out of it?"
"Yes, but to be fair, that was technically mother's fault, which we will discuss later. I have studied some...incidents where planes like ours has had a spot wear thin and the Todash had started pushing through. An incident in Brighton, Maine...another in a hotel in New York City...but that's another story. Here is my point. The Todash is, among other things, broken possibility. So, if you travel through the Bleed, you're end up in a different place and roughly the same time. But if you brush against the Todash..."
"Then it's a different place AND time."
"We've actually had several incidents in your past that I believe are connected to it, Jumpropeman. Your jobs spiked when Zephyrus was looking for mother, and the next year when that stranger showed up at the bar, that old man remember? That was because mother was fleeing another threat and wasn't watching where she was going, and in her wake was...a mess, no other way to put it. Carol's travel to our plane MIGHT be another...but in any case, it's the same issue. Travel through Bleed, dip or touch the Darkness, and you end up dropping into your exit area in the wrong time, probably hitting the fabric of reality like a car crash. Madame Stavros, you're a magician, you fiddle with reality, and you've worked on your own method of Bleed travel...and yours, I'm afraid, pinpongs against the Darkness far more than mother's."
"So what, are you trying
to blame me for the Todash acting up when I’m one of the few people
trying to hold reality together? If you haven’t noticed Zoofights and
its related stuff made our universe a mess, it’s a marvel it’s held
together at all. If I wasn’t in the background fixing stuff... Nah nah
nah, now ain’t the time for a rant. I figure you have a point or some
suggestion on how we can avoid this or shut the Todash up. The Blame
Game is fun, but you guys rarely pull people aside just to do it · .
You’ve always got something cooking."
"Oh no, Jumpropeman. This is you having to clean up other people's messes."
"So I assume you don't want me and my fellows using our methods to dimension jump." Angie said.
"I would really recommend against it. Not just because it leads to time issues. As said...it's not good for the Todash to leak. I've done some studies, and I'm pretty sure I've identified one plane where it does constantly. It's the Warp."
"Oh yeah... of course!
I’m not a magician, and I’d never try to figure out Bleed travel..."
Jumpropeman laughed nervously, but he made sure his admission was under
the current conversation. These folks loved to talk, and they’d be
listening more to their words until they needed some feedback from him.
By the time the Warp was mentioned, his nervousness switched back to a
more cool and detached expression. "The Warp? I know a few other
hellholes if we’re going to get them all involved. Certainly does
explain a lot though. I suppose nukes won’t clean out the Todash
infection like it did our other problems, huh? What my role gonna be
here · ?"
"Just letting you know the source of a problem and pinching it off where I can, so you can do likewise if more such incidents come your way. I mean, it helps if you know a source, does it not, Fleming?"
Jumpropeman stared.
"...Your name is not Fleming, is it."
"Nope!"
"Springtrap got me again."
"I am a fan of Bond though, after all I hired the guy once upon a time! Although if my real name was Ian
I certainly wouldn’t be grinning all the time. Anyway, proceed. I’ll
stop asking my part in this play and assuming I’m the center of
attention every five seconds now."
"Simple information granting, which I felt would work better if you came along instead of me shuttling back and forth between this realm and ours. Plus you are the best person I know to hand out wedding invitations. So unless you want to raise your own issue and study magic, the heavy stuff is done."
"Unfortunately, its a
bit hard to do magic without any sleeves. Thankee kindly for the
information and the respect." The ghost dips slightly forward, bowing
without a bend of the waist. He could bend forward for a proper bow, but
levitation breeds laziness in most ghosts.
"Of course, sir. I shall endeavor to not complicate your job further." Angie said.
"Now can you get your mom to do that too, Hypotenuse?"
"I don't think even the whole bar could work that miracle, Jumpropeman."
---
"...May I ask you something?"
"Yes." Dawn said. Jumpropeman had gone back to their dimension, Dawn staying behind to track his progress and make sure her data lined up. She didn't want to end up making the issue worse, and the issue with Bleed travel was that new balls were constantly in the air. Dawn suspected that if her mother didn't have her mutated layered brain, she wouldn't have been able to handle it. There but for the grace of any god you wish to invoke...
"I wrote down my process. Can you study it, see if it's understandable and in any way improveable?"
"...It IS good to have emergency options. Mother was inordinately fond of them. Too much so, I think. I was studying her security issues, I think part of them might have been the same programming conflicts that downed me in my first Brawl entry...she overdoes it and the programs contradict each other and leave holes that people purposely or accidentally exploited..." Dawn said, mostly thinking out loud as she took the offered book and began trying to match the language of Thaumaturgy with what she knew about quantum, chronal, and dimensional matters. Not wanting to bother Angie, she began to walk as she read, absorbed in the book.
",..There might be possible modifications, but I am unsure if I can translate it properly into your 'language' unless I stay to learn it, or vice versa. And at the moment I am under something of a time crunch." The Keres will stay away another two months at most. I need to make sure the seal's secure and then deal with whatever comes out through its filter. My children also need tending to, and I have to speak to father and get data on my tornado generator idea...
In her thought, Dawn looked up at the massive painting in front of her. How she hadn't noticed the size of the wall was a mystery. Maybe it was a perspective trick, or a space folding one that worked similarly to the one her mother had on her TARDIS machine. There were more than a few familar faces on it, Angie being one front and center. There was Ash, Christine, Paul, Victoria...all the Prometheans, and numerous other people.
"The 44?"
"More or less. It's not the Sistine Chapel, but it's still lovely."
"It should be on display."
"Unfortunately, there's magic in it. Anywhere else the pictures might break down. Here, it can be modified. Watch." Angie said, swiping her hand across it. The image around Ash and Christine shifted, showing an alternate pose where they were kneeling with Beck.
"Ah yes. Ash invited him into the group."
"He's not the only one who's done that. The 44 is basically an artifact title. No longer literal." Angie said, waving her hand around to show other places where the picture altered. "This way, new faces can be added where they belong..."
Angie waved her hand at the edge of the photo, the tone shifting to dark. Angie frowned and waved it back, replacing the figure with the original pictures, the briefly-revealed form now in shadow.
"Issue with the magic?"
"Unfortunately no." Angie said. Dawn waved her own hand, altering the picture back. Angie did not protest, instead turning away.
"Bad memories?"
"Problem child." Angie said. "The people who went to face Xaxargas, we'd like to call them our best and brightest...but in truth, a more accurate descriptor would be strongest and most likely to get the job done, any other factors be damned. They deserve the same honors that Ash and I and the rest receive, but..."
"You don't exactly want to hang around with them."
"Very much no."
"May I ask what they did?"
So Angie told her.
----
"It’s a long story, but one you’ve never heard before. This story is
about a place that dwells on the mountain; a place where bad things
happen. And you may think you know about the bad things, you may decide
you have it all figured out but you don’t. Because the truth is worse
than monsters or men...."
Dawn turned the recording off. Her computer was doing all the hard work, leaving her to sit and think. Sine had once called the Kobbers the doctors of this plane, the immune system summoned when extraordinary circumstances had fudged it all up...
How did that line from the man who spawned the oath go? First, do no harm. Or more specifically, "Whenever a doctor cannot do good, he must be kept from doing harm."
...But there was something else that man had said.
"Extreme remedies are very appropriate for extreme diseases."
Monday 18 April 2016
Monday 28 March 2016
Lineage, Part 5
It really was quite amazing what you could build underground.
She remembered being in a big city, she forgot just which one, being downtown and being able to cross blocks and blocks of the city without ever going back up, blocks of underground stores tucked away in their little cubes, all of it somehow interacting with an underground transport system and all the sewage, power, and whatever else that was needed to keep a city running. Astonishing. If you could build that under a city, it wasn't much of a surprise what you could build out in the country, provided you had something to provide you with enough power.
Like say, a cold fusion engine. Maddie was going to flip out over that, and probably not in a good way. She loved science, but she didn't like science that could let you turn average items into a gigantic bomb. Sometimes, some knowledge was best left repressed.
Especially considering what this lab had been built to do.
And what the large amount of black-geared and armored men assembling in the room in front of the main door had been hired to protect, as they armed and cocked weapons and some took kneeling stances, all aiming at the door, some covering the ceiling and other angles. Behind them, a door sealed shut, mechanisms clicking within to indicate further locking, the mechanical beats echoing in semi-tune to the arming of the guns.
They probably could have snuck their way in. Security was good, but not THAT good compared to what they could bring to bear. It was a tradeoff. Sneaking in meant potentially avoiding the loss of data, but also meant every corner possibly containing a nasty surprise, the guards and whatnot all scattered around liable to bump into them. Going in the front door and setting off all the alarms meant people might dump and purge data...
If you didn't have a shapeshifter who could just head in and back it all up in advance. And after eighteen months healing from the mess that had happened at the end of the first year on Porphyrion, Melanie was itching to get back into the field. So, front door it was. It clustered the soldiers. Then there was just the problem of them all aiming at the lone entrance into the room.
A problem, if you didn't have a teleporter, Penelope popped in like she was invited, leaning back on the door she had just phased through.
"Sup?"
The bullets tore into the steel wall, the metal picked out to blunt impacts rather than cause ricochets. Penelope made like the bad penny she was named after and warped in behind the guards, and then off to the side, the men panicking and sweeping the room, the projects in the outer lab exploding in a hail of gunfire. Penelope took it all in stride, popping across the room once, twice, three times, always ahead of the shooters, before she returned to the front door and stuck the skeleton key device Maddie had given her into its controls, undoing the locks and sliding the door open.
"Don't you hate me?" Penelope said, and vanished. The roar of a fearsome beast echoed from the open door, the looming shadow of a monstrous....THING seeking to gain egress.
Whatever bullets the men had, they rapidly expended them. It didn't seem to slow the beast. Instead, it stopped on its own.
Aurora bounded into the room instead, an old line from her training echoing into her head.
Why just have knife stuff, pointy stuff? Shouldn't you not bring a knife to a gun fight?
Because guns breed overconfidence. All they have are bullets, and the certanity that once they're all gone, so you will be too. Because if you're not, and you won't be, you will then make sure they are no longer a problem before they have a chance to reload.
No slaughter please, Miss Klenn. The voice broke into her reminiscing. Tormon, giving orders.
"Roger roger SLICE AND DICE!" Aurora yelled back, her arms splitting open, one arm unfolding into a whirring buzzsaw and the other into a pulsing jackhammer blade. She could have carved up the guards like Christmas turkeys with these tools, but she had orders. And skills. And a considerably overhauled cybernetic body ever since Phineas' crap had been removed from the table.
The buzzsaw was great at slicing guns and armor. The jackhammer blade was great for breaking elbows and knees without cutting important blood vessels. Despite that, there was blood, and screaming, and even a few gunshots from sidearms. But the outcome was never in doubt, and by the time Cezary, in full 'war-brute' form (he really didn't like being called a werewolf, though that was more or less what he was when one got down to brass tacks, hence 'war-brute'), got in, he had to move quickly to get one soldier for himself to smack down, trying to avoid slipping in the blood. Surrounded by groans and screams, Aurora stopped, blood flicking through the air as her bladed weapons folded back into arms, the girl pausing to kick a gun away before kicking another man in the face.
"...was this really necessary?" Cezary said.
"They were Mops anyway."
"...What? We need a mop?"
"There's two kinds of mercenaries. Mops and Brooms." Penelope said as she strolled in. armed with a needle gun that anyone who played team based shooters would make a double-take at which she began applying to the downed guards to ensure they wouldn't bleed to death. "Mops are the scum. Good for cleaning 'messes'. By messes, we mean 'great at punching down'."
"The kind of men who wouldn't think twice of shooting up whatever they were told to shoot as long as they were getting paid. Great against unarmed women and children, but often not as good against someone who can actually fight back with superior force."
"And Brooms can?"
"Yep. They have actual skill, actual danger, sometimes severe. They can sweep the field, get it?"
"Guess so."
"Such an unrefined process. Ack, yuck! Wasted work." Came the third female voice, as Madeline Sorren entered the room. "Why would they set up in a place of science! Whoever built this place, they will not be getting my business!"
"Door's locked." Penelope said, pointing at the door the mercenaries had been guarding.
Cezary, wanting to do something, tore it off its frame like it was a cheap tin can and hurled it aside.
"Unlocked."
"Okay then. Time to see if julienne fries are needed." Aurora said, heading through the door.
"I never got that. What the heck are Julie Ann fries?" Cezary said.
"Normal french fries! Long and thin! The phrase is from a machine called the Veg-O-Matic, which was basically a french fry cutter that could have a second blade attached to make slices! Hence, a meme that will long outlive the product..."
"GUYS." Aurora's voice was not frantic, but hardly calm either. "GET YOUR BUTTS IN HERE."
---
It turned out the people that had actually been doing the science stuff in the labs definitely had the brains of the facility: they'd cleared out via a back elevator when it became very clear that their mercenaries might as well have all called in sick that day. Penelope, Cezary, and Aurora had managed to only catch two, which they'd locked up with the lone guard they'd discovered hadn't joined all his peers. Mainly because Melanie had knocked him out so she could contribute to the scientist-catching efforts, which hadn't amounted to much, in the end. Interrogation later. First the centerpiece of the main lab.
"...Is she human?" Cezary said, peering close at the naked young woman floating in the tube. Penelope gave his arm a smack. "Ow! What was that for?"
"Pervert."
"I'm looking! Not staring!"
"Stow it, you two. Cezary's no dog, powers aside." Aurora said, the animal-man giving the cyborg a sour look as she looked at the test subject herself. "He has a fair point. Maddie?"
"Human? Yes and no! Interesting, interesting..." Maddie said, pouring over the computer data she was calling up via her rapid typing.
"Is she one of the new ones? Made like us by morons?" Melanie said. The woman was about five nine, had hair so blonde it was almost white, and had a body rippling with tightly formed muscle, a supreme athelete rather than a bodybuilder. Hair also dotted her underarms and legs, and perhaps most strangely, she did not have a single scar. Her skin was flawless, beautiful skin on a beautiful girl.
"...No! She's like Dominique! She's a natural Augment, awakened by whatever weird brain chemistry chance he got...and what you got, Cezary! And I don't know if I'm reading this right...but I don't think she's from this world."
"So an alien."
"No, this world, but not! Another earth!"
"Oh, right right..." Cezary said, lost. He'd just been a miner before he'd woken up one day able to turn into a giant beast man, and most of the time he was still completely lost.
"She has...ha ha. Wholly beneficial regeneration capabilities!"
"So she heals?" Aurora said. That would explain the skin.
"Yes yes, in every way! She draws energy from the Quintessence to maximize her physical attributes! She seems to have been raised in very harsh circumstances...her powers helped ensure her survival and make her strong! Very, very strong! It would be impossible for a normal human to achieve this, even with the same circumstances...there would be long term damage...oh. Oh those wicked assholes."
"What?"
"They took advantage of her ability to heal...meddled with her arms! Stuck a rig through them...aha, claws. A classic."
"What, so she's Wolverine?" Melanie said.
"...Somewhat, yes! No metal bound to her bones though...just metal in her arms that open up her fingers and made metal claws pop out! Might be useful if she'd given consent, which I don't think she did..."
"Where did they get her from?"
"Looking, looking...blah blah travel in red space, that sounds like Miss Cosine's Bleed...jungle world, most of the planet covered in rainforest...subject retrieved from forest, evidence suggests she was raised there..."
"So she's from Tarzan?" Cezary said.
"In simple terms, yes! It's not simple!"
"So someone went to another world, found a girl who lived in a jungle and got really strong and tough because she can heal, and then dragged her back here and stuck metal claws in her hands." Cezary said.
"Yes, yes, yes!" Maddie said, sounding impatient.
"Cezary, if you're so full of questions, maybe it's time we go back and..."
THUD.
"Huh?"
THUD. THUD. WHAM.
"Oh crap." Aurora said. She knew that sound well. That was the sound of sudden rampaging done by something that could damn well rampage.
"The hell is that?" Cezary said.
"Cezary, where did you lock up our prisoners?" Maddie said.
"Uh, another lab, small one..."
"Did you check what was IN IT?"
"Yeah, a bunch of vials and shit, I smashed them all."
"Did you check and see if there was any more material..."
Another roar. This one even louder than the one Cezary had made, and throatier. Agonized.
"I assume there was." Maddie said. She was right. Uncertain of their fate, the two scientists had tried to use their studies to whip up a brief 'power fix', granting them something to get through the door.
The reasons why you didn't McGuyver a super serum ripped through one of the lab's doors moments later.
She remembered being in a big city, she forgot just which one, being downtown and being able to cross blocks and blocks of the city without ever going back up, blocks of underground stores tucked away in their little cubes, all of it somehow interacting with an underground transport system and all the sewage, power, and whatever else that was needed to keep a city running. Astonishing. If you could build that under a city, it wasn't much of a surprise what you could build out in the country, provided you had something to provide you with enough power.
Like say, a cold fusion engine. Maddie was going to flip out over that, and probably not in a good way. She loved science, but she didn't like science that could let you turn average items into a gigantic bomb. Sometimes, some knowledge was best left repressed.
Especially considering what this lab had been built to do.
And what the large amount of black-geared and armored men assembling in the room in front of the main door had been hired to protect, as they armed and cocked weapons and some took kneeling stances, all aiming at the door, some covering the ceiling and other angles. Behind them, a door sealed shut, mechanisms clicking within to indicate further locking, the mechanical beats echoing in semi-tune to the arming of the guns.
They probably could have snuck their way in. Security was good, but not THAT good compared to what they could bring to bear. It was a tradeoff. Sneaking in meant potentially avoiding the loss of data, but also meant every corner possibly containing a nasty surprise, the guards and whatnot all scattered around liable to bump into them. Going in the front door and setting off all the alarms meant people might dump and purge data...
If you didn't have a shapeshifter who could just head in and back it all up in advance. And after eighteen months healing from the mess that had happened at the end of the first year on Porphyrion, Melanie was itching to get back into the field. So, front door it was. It clustered the soldiers. Then there was just the problem of them all aiming at the lone entrance into the room.
A problem, if you didn't have a teleporter, Penelope popped in like she was invited, leaning back on the door she had just phased through.
"Sup?"
The bullets tore into the steel wall, the metal picked out to blunt impacts rather than cause ricochets. Penelope made like the bad penny she was named after and warped in behind the guards, and then off to the side, the men panicking and sweeping the room, the projects in the outer lab exploding in a hail of gunfire. Penelope took it all in stride, popping across the room once, twice, three times, always ahead of the shooters, before she returned to the front door and stuck the skeleton key device Maddie had given her into its controls, undoing the locks and sliding the door open.
"Don't you hate me?" Penelope said, and vanished. The roar of a fearsome beast echoed from the open door, the looming shadow of a monstrous....THING seeking to gain egress.
Whatever bullets the men had, they rapidly expended them. It didn't seem to slow the beast. Instead, it stopped on its own.
Aurora bounded into the room instead, an old line from her training echoing into her head.
Why just have knife stuff, pointy stuff? Shouldn't you not bring a knife to a gun fight?
Because guns breed overconfidence. All they have are bullets, and the certanity that once they're all gone, so you will be too. Because if you're not, and you won't be, you will then make sure they are no longer a problem before they have a chance to reload.
No slaughter please, Miss Klenn. The voice broke into her reminiscing. Tormon, giving orders.
"Roger roger SLICE AND DICE!" Aurora yelled back, her arms splitting open, one arm unfolding into a whirring buzzsaw and the other into a pulsing jackhammer blade. She could have carved up the guards like Christmas turkeys with these tools, but she had orders. And skills. And a considerably overhauled cybernetic body ever since Phineas' crap had been removed from the table.
The buzzsaw was great at slicing guns and armor. The jackhammer blade was great for breaking elbows and knees without cutting important blood vessels. Despite that, there was blood, and screaming, and even a few gunshots from sidearms. But the outcome was never in doubt, and by the time Cezary, in full 'war-brute' form (he really didn't like being called a werewolf, though that was more or less what he was when one got down to brass tacks, hence 'war-brute'), got in, he had to move quickly to get one soldier for himself to smack down, trying to avoid slipping in the blood. Surrounded by groans and screams, Aurora stopped, blood flicking through the air as her bladed weapons folded back into arms, the girl pausing to kick a gun away before kicking another man in the face.
"...was this really necessary?" Cezary said.
"They were Mops anyway."
"...What? We need a mop?"
"There's two kinds of mercenaries. Mops and Brooms." Penelope said as she strolled in. armed with a needle gun that anyone who played team based shooters would make a double-take at which she began applying to the downed guards to ensure they wouldn't bleed to death. "Mops are the scum. Good for cleaning 'messes'. By messes, we mean 'great at punching down'."
"The kind of men who wouldn't think twice of shooting up whatever they were told to shoot as long as they were getting paid. Great against unarmed women and children, but often not as good against someone who can actually fight back with superior force."
"And Brooms can?"
"Yep. They have actual skill, actual danger, sometimes severe. They can sweep the field, get it?"
"Guess so."
"Such an unrefined process. Ack, yuck! Wasted work." Came the third female voice, as Madeline Sorren entered the room. "Why would they set up in a place of science! Whoever built this place, they will not be getting my business!"
"Door's locked." Penelope said, pointing at the door the mercenaries had been guarding.
Cezary, wanting to do something, tore it off its frame like it was a cheap tin can and hurled it aside.
"Unlocked."
"Okay then. Time to see if julienne fries are needed." Aurora said, heading through the door.
"I never got that. What the heck are Julie Ann fries?" Cezary said.
"Normal french fries! Long and thin! The phrase is from a machine called the Veg-O-Matic, which was basically a french fry cutter that could have a second blade attached to make slices! Hence, a meme that will long outlive the product..."
"GUYS." Aurora's voice was not frantic, but hardly calm either. "GET YOUR BUTTS IN HERE."
---
It turned out the people that had actually been doing the science stuff in the labs definitely had the brains of the facility: they'd cleared out via a back elevator when it became very clear that their mercenaries might as well have all called in sick that day. Penelope, Cezary, and Aurora had managed to only catch two, which they'd locked up with the lone guard they'd discovered hadn't joined all his peers. Mainly because Melanie had knocked him out so she could contribute to the scientist-catching efforts, which hadn't amounted to much, in the end. Interrogation later. First the centerpiece of the main lab.
"...Is she human?" Cezary said, peering close at the naked young woman floating in the tube. Penelope gave his arm a smack. "Ow! What was that for?"
"Pervert."
"I'm looking! Not staring!"
"Stow it, you two. Cezary's no dog, powers aside." Aurora said, the animal-man giving the cyborg a sour look as she looked at the test subject herself. "He has a fair point. Maddie?"
"Human? Yes and no! Interesting, interesting..." Maddie said, pouring over the computer data she was calling up via her rapid typing.
"Is she one of the new ones? Made like us by morons?" Melanie said. The woman was about five nine, had hair so blonde it was almost white, and had a body rippling with tightly formed muscle, a supreme athelete rather than a bodybuilder. Hair also dotted her underarms and legs, and perhaps most strangely, she did not have a single scar. Her skin was flawless, beautiful skin on a beautiful girl.
"...No! She's like Dominique! She's a natural Augment, awakened by whatever weird brain chemistry chance he got...and what you got, Cezary! And I don't know if I'm reading this right...but I don't think she's from this world."
"So an alien."
"No, this world, but not! Another earth!"
"Oh, right right..." Cezary said, lost. He'd just been a miner before he'd woken up one day able to turn into a giant beast man, and most of the time he was still completely lost.
"She has...ha ha. Wholly beneficial regeneration capabilities!"
"So she heals?" Aurora said. That would explain the skin.
"Yes yes, in every way! She draws energy from the Quintessence to maximize her physical attributes! She seems to have been raised in very harsh circumstances...her powers helped ensure her survival and make her strong! Very, very strong! It would be impossible for a normal human to achieve this, even with the same circumstances...there would be long term damage...oh. Oh those wicked assholes."
"What?"
"They took advantage of her ability to heal...meddled with her arms! Stuck a rig through them...aha, claws. A classic."
"What, so she's Wolverine?" Melanie said.
"...Somewhat, yes! No metal bound to her bones though...just metal in her arms that open up her fingers and made metal claws pop out! Might be useful if she'd given consent, which I don't think she did..."
"Where did they get her from?"
"Looking, looking...blah blah travel in red space, that sounds like Miss Cosine's Bleed...jungle world, most of the planet covered in rainforest...subject retrieved from forest, evidence suggests she was raised there..."
"So she's from Tarzan?" Cezary said.
"In simple terms, yes! It's not simple!"
"So someone went to another world, found a girl who lived in a jungle and got really strong and tough because she can heal, and then dragged her back here and stuck metal claws in her hands." Cezary said.
"Yes, yes, yes!" Maddie said, sounding impatient.
"Cezary, if you're so full of questions, maybe it's time we go back and..."
THUD.
"Huh?"
THUD. THUD. WHAM.
"Oh crap." Aurora said. She knew that sound well. That was the sound of sudden rampaging done by something that could damn well rampage.
"The hell is that?" Cezary said.
"Cezary, where did you lock up our prisoners?" Maddie said.
"Uh, another lab, small one..."
"Did you check what was IN IT?"
"Yeah, a bunch of vials and shit, I smashed them all."
"Did you check and see if there was any more material..."
Another roar. This one even louder than the one Cezary had made, and throatier. Agonized.
"I assume there was." Maddie said. She was right. Uncertain of their fate, the two scientists had tried to use their studies to whip up a brief 'power fix', granting them something to get through the door.
The reasons why you didn't McGuyver a super serum ripped through one of the lab's doors moments later.
There would be no interrogation done today. The scientist who had imbibed their makeshift 'escape potion' had freed his two fellows of their lives before ripping free of the room and heading straight for where he knew fresh prey was. Still mutating, in a pain few people could comprehend, he was not long for the world, but he meant to take as many people as he could with him before he kicked the bucket.
"Sigh, where's the ex to snipe when you need him." Aurora said, and her arms erupted into massive, jagged claws. She and her fellows would have to do this the hard way.
---
It was over, several minutes later.
In just about every sense. The room was in ruins. Aurora was soaked with mess. Maddie would have to get into the guts of the computers to retrieve her data, with the main terminal now more resembling an art project done by an angry gorilla on PCP. At least she and her fellow Augments were just banged up and bruised. The mutant thing was...considerably worse off.
...the girl was gone.
Of course the tube had been smashed. That was more or less expected. But Aurora had not expected the girl to wake up and steal away like a damn cat. At least, she'd expected to detect on SOME level the girl was running, but nope. Tube broken, girl gone. And she was in no mood to give chase.
Status report, Aurora?
"It's all gone to crap, sir." Aurora said. The hard way, indeed. And she wasn't even in Vegas.
I'm sending in backup and cleanup.
"There was a girl...some cave woman mutant alien thing....you might run into her...watch out, she has claws."
...Noted.
Aurora leaned back. This had started as a quest to track down her biological father and half-brother. But in doing the research, red flags had come up. Somehow, the problem was linked to another the Foundry had discovered.
I don't know how much you know about this mess, CollinsCorp...but I'll get some answers if I have to cut them out of your hide.
----
"Of the five we've encountered, two
joined us, two preferred a normal life using their abilities quietly..."
So Conall had told Ariel, and there was a reason Raw and co had tracked a lab down to this city. It was in the same vicinity of one of those two turn-downers.
In truth, Walt Rod was starting to regret it a bit. But...what could he do? He could mix chemicals really, really damn well. He had an almost divine ability to get what he wanted out of basic elements, let alone fancy ones. He was pretty sure he could turn lead into gold, if he had access to the right stuff. That didn't fit in with a group of superhumans who could lift cement trucks with their brains and shoot beams out of their eyes. He'd be overshadowed, a load, probably resented. It would be school all over again, and at seventeen, Walt was already pretty tired of being low man on the totem pole there. Maybe better to just get a normal job, be a big fish in a small pond.
Life, however, sometimes had other plans. The same plans that had tweaked his brain to be just a little more than genius within a specific field, the same plans that had made Aurora and co check in on Walt in secret before they went to the lab, the same one that had caused Penelope to knock over a load of long-overdue to be done laundry, leaving a lingering scent Cezary had complained of a few times...
A scent trail followed out of fear and desperation, of someone so terribly lost and afraid.
He was sitting on his house's porch steps fiddling on his smart phone when he heard the thud on the fence. When he looked up, he spotted the motion just before she landed next to him like a monkey.
Where she'd gotten the furs, who knew. Maybe she'd been wearing them when she'd been kidnapped. Not that they really preserved her modesty, but better than nothing.
Walt stared, frozen in surprise.
The girl stared back, eyes wide and a strange tinted light purple.
Life...it was strange.
Monday 21 March 2016
Lineage, Gaiden I
Somewhen.
For a bit, it seemed like the infant was never even going to acknowledge Beck's presence. She was content to be drinking her orange juice. For a moment, Beck wondered where she put it all. In the next moment, he worried he might be called on to handle where she put it: things had gone quiet in the next room where her parents and guests were.
"...wow." Beck blinked several times, a little amazed at how much the baby was knocking back the orange juice. Perhaps Sarah would have an early rival when it came to putting away large amounts of foodstuffs! Then again, did soft drinks even count...?
Uh-oh. Things had gone quiet in the next room - That was were Ash, Christine and their guests were. Had they forgotten about the child? He hoped not - he was only three himself, and despite having a supercomputer for a brain he wasn't confident he could manage babysitting a kid he barely knew. That seemed more like Uncle James's thing...
The girl was finished. She looked at Beck, eyes wide, taking him in. Though Beck didn't know it, if his parents had any regrets about him, it was the fact that by the very nature of his existence, he had never worn that look. An infant's developing brain looked at the world with such magnificent purity that it seemed unlikely that machines would learn to replicate it any time soon. A small sacrifice, but a notable one in the minds of Beck's grandfather and his ilk, a more complicated issue than robot hair.
"...Boo!"
She waved her hands, dropping her empty sip-cup.
"Boo! Boo!"
....She was how old? 11 months? Was that old enough to try and scare him?
Um... Okay? How did this go? Beck covered his face, then waited for the appropriate moment...
"Boo to you, too!"
The girl laughed, smacking her hands on the ground.
"She's actually describing you. I think she's saying 'Blue', or trying, anyway." There was Christine, entering the room, driven by some inner clock that let her know her daughter was done drinking.
"Mamaw!" The baby said. Christine hoisted her up, holding her close and giving her a light tap on the back. Fortunately for Beck's sake of nausea, she didn't spit up.
"Thanks for keeping an eye on her. I wish we could blow these people off, but pint of sweat and blood and all that." Christine said, rocking her daughter, who babbled and waved a hand at Beck.
"Boo!"
"No, no. Beck."
"...Eck!"
"Very good!"
"No problem. Always happy to help!" To be told, Beck wasn't sure how much he had actually helped, but hey, he'd take what he could get.
"...so," he ventured after a moment's thought. "You got any idea of where to school her? Always good to be thinking of that stuff early."
"Depends on a few things. If she's a sporty or a smartie. Or a Sparky."
"Ark! Ark!"
The girl then burped, before fussing. Christine held her close.
"Be glad you never had to go to school, Beck. I did. It mostly sucked." There was Ash, tiredly running his hand through sweaty blonde hair. Blonde hair...
Ash was blonde. Christine was blonde. And their baby...had a full head of brown hair.
Beck nodded. He had friends his age who often talked about going to school, and it did not sound like much fun at all. Even if Doctor Light suddenly decided to give him home tuition, it would have been much more preferable to being stuck in some stuffy classroom while-
...wait a data-crunching second.
"...brown hair?"
"Huh?"
"Her hair." Beck pointed. "She has brown hair. Shouldn't she be blonde?"
"She is blonde. Dark strawberry blonde." Christine said.
"When she was born, her hair was like us, but a gene crossed somewhere and her hair darkened as she got older."
"...oh." Now Beck felt a bit stupid for asking. It seemed so obvious now that- no, no it did not.
"Gene crossed? From where? I thought you said Christine was pregnant! Is there something I'm missing out on here?"
"I'm talking about normal quirks of humans, Beck." Ash said. "Genes quirk one way and you're a boy. Quirk another and you're smart. Quirk another and your hair starts out classic blonde and then darkens to that. I'm not Sine, after all. No experimenting on my kids."
"Oh."
"Don't worry about it, Beck. I don't expect you to know everything." Christine said, holding out her baby. "Say hi, Athena!"
Athena instead appeared to blow a raspberry at Beck. Or the baby equivalent, anyway.
Now Beck felt even sillier. That was just like a Kobber, to jump to conclusions like that. Or even a robot. He'd been built in a basement, he had no idea how genes work - it seemed like half the time, Grandpa had just assumed he would already know these things. What was the use of giving him the most advanced brain ever if he made slip-ups like that...?
Then Athena blew a raspberry at him, and he decided not to think about it too much.
"Pbpbpbpt yourself!" he retorted. Athena laughed and did it again, procuring a raspberry-off. Christine carefully put her daughter down.
"Just keep an eye on her for a few more minutes Beck. Don't stress it. Just be happy for her."
"Oh, and don't transform. No offense, but she might get scared. Just be 'Boo'." Ash said.
"Dah bah di, dah bah die." Sam's voice drifted in from the next room.
Beck nodded. "Got it. I'll look after her, don't you worry." He moved around to where Athena was, then cast his eyes around the room, looking for any toys or books that might amuse her. A shame he wasn't allowed to transform - imagine the fun she'd have, racing around the room on her own personal dune buggy.
"So, how's life been? Trouble here not giving you too much grief?" By 'Trouble' he meant Athena, of course.
"If this is torture, chain me to the wall." Ash said. Christine glanced sidelong at him. "...It sounded better in my head."
"It's been quiet, thankfully. But of course, we can't go back to the Bar for more adventures. We have responsibilities here now."
"For now." Another sidelong glance. "Just saying."
"For that, YOU can start taking the notes."
"Oh joy, recording what scummy noble wants what land pocket."
"And the Drumming."
"And the Drumming."
"...the Drumming?" Oooooh, boy...
"Yeah, it's some fad combat technique. It involves this trick where you think of a song in your head and you use it as fuel for your powers. A sort of roundabout motivational power up." Ash said. He had no idea where it had come from, and would never discover that it had been built on a mental technique possessed by a man known as August Caine. "We call it Drumming because, you know, marching to the beat of your own drummer."
"It's likely to cause more harm than good." Christine said. "The last thing you want to do in a fight is distract yourself. We're trying to decide if we should put some sort of restriction on it before some kids get themselves killed using it."
Oooo-kay." Truth be told, Beck was rather guilty of playing music in his own head when he thought. Scratch that, he had his own private playlist - dramatic entrances, underdog moments, epic power-ups... As much as he had learned from his experiences from last year, he still had a touch of the old glory-hog running deep inside him.
Probably best not to mention that to these two, though. In fact... find playlist... delete...
There we go.
"Is that what you're discussing in the next room?" he asked. "I wondered why it went quiet."
"Pretty much." Ash said. "That's peace for you. Much less exciting talking, more just plain...talking talking."
"MAI BOIIIIIIIIIIIIII...THIS PEACE IS WHAT ALL TRUE WARRIORS STRIVE FOR." Sam said.
"We should get back in there before our other guests think we brought a lunatic to the discussion table." Christine said.
"Probably too late for that..." Ash said, the pair heading out the door.
Beck, having found a classic rattle, shook it for Athena. Athena pouted and then grabbed at the rattle, wanting it for herself.
"Oh, alright!" Beck laughed, and handed the rattle over. "Here, lemme find a xylophone. We might be able to start a band, if you're really good!"
Athena promptly bonked Beck on the nose.
"YEOW!" Beck staggered, clutching his nose. That hurt way more than it should have done, even coming from Ash's kid.
"Jeez, what you been eating for breakfast, kid?" he asked, rubbing the sore spot.
"Meh-beh?" Athena said. Dropping the rattle, she reached up and felt Beck's face, like she was confused what she had done.
"Nah, it's fine..." Beck removed his hands, revealing the soreness of his nose. It felt worse than it looked, that was all.
"...Eck!"
Beck smiled. "Yeah. That's me, kid."
---
(To see a non-Drumming, ie non song lyrics version of this scene, click here)
Somewhen else.
The strangest things survived the end of the world. Chocolate. Bathroom slippers.
Halloween.
Of course, it wasn't called Halloween any more, or Hallow's Eve. The name was Reqinhist, which was Hemel and roughly translated to 'Relinguished Growth', a celebration of final thanks for the harvest and an appeal that the winter not be too cruel, a celebration for those who had died and would yet die. The sweets came from that celebration, the costumes from the concept that those left unmourned could walk the earth, vengeful and cruel and eager to drag others away into the abyss of death. But such spirits were fools and cowards, or so the stories went, and hence could be confused or scared away if those they sought to prey on wore masks of disguise and/or fear. So, in the end, not much had changed save the name and memories.
Oh, and one other thing. Monsters really did exist here.
Especially here, in the Glove. So named because of an odd tint in the soil made it look somewhat like a hand from above, the area was divided into several cities, towns, and territories, but its nickname came both from the shape, and from the fact that outside of the safe areas, it was more dangerous than the average place where fell beasts lurked. This, of course, attracted more than its fair share of thrillseekers and namemakers...and of course, the beasts that preyed on those whose reach exceeded their grasp.
Of course, there were ways of avoiding danger, even in a place like this, some extranormal, and some common sense. If, for example, more people than normal had vanished going along a certain path, and no one had gotten out there to investigate yet, then it seemed smart to just take the long route, and only take the other route in case of emergencies.
She didn't have an emergency.
She took it anyway.
So when you meet your end...
Your journey just began...
Transcend the world of man...
And never wake again...
It's official name was the Sopwith Glades, a few dozen square miles of misty forest. Its more official name was the 'Sopping Wet' Glades, because the trees and swamps of the forest were constantly awash in chill humidity, water beading on anything in seconds and soaking most anything in minutes. It was a rotten place if you didn't have the equipment for it, killing people through exposure if they didn't bring the right equipment to retain body heat, and constantly inflicting people with colds, coughs, and other lung maladies. Between that, and the fact that it was virtually impossible to start a fire, no one came to the Glades for a vacation. They came to hunt, or to take a swift path.
Her hood wasn't red; it was actually a sallow yellow. And she wasn't confronted by wolves. Wolves of several stripes might have been better, as the spear rammed into the ground right in front of her.
She stopped. She glanced up from beneath her hood, shadows hiding most of her features. On her waist were several figures of clay and straw, and as the spear was yanked back on a crude rope, she plucked one off and lifted it to her mouth.
"Smelled me out. Hold back."
The figures were twice her height, scarecrow-like forms that wore rotten furs, if anything. There were six of them, spindly bones and twisting muscles, their skins as pale as a dead fish, their triangular faces crammed with sharp teeth and dark blue eyes lacking pupils, the gaze of menacing turquoise. From long bony fingers extended talons that could tear metal and fillet flesh, greenish tongues flicking over barely there lips.
"Lithefiends."
There was no answer. Not like there would be. It was just a small clay figurine, crafted with care, but being just that.
"I smell...the blood of a womb." One of the lithefiends said. One of the nastier monsters of the land, lithefiends were among the twenty percent of sapient creatures that roamed the land, and would be fully capable of most human traits, if they didn't all seem to just want to hunt and feed on living meat. Even Ihmensel’jk could settle down and live quietly without hurting anyone: lithefiends seemed much more determined to wear a singular hat.
"Rude ones." The girl said, and put her doll back on her waist. That prompted some high-pitched growls, though the spear thrower quieted them with a louder snarl.
"M'kin and I were content to cut quickly, manchild, but for throwing us insult, we be making sure this forest swallows your screams."
So they wanted to eat her. And it seemed like they wanted to now carve her up first. Six of them. The average warrior on this world would have trouble with one. Against six, even random members of the 44 would be in danger. And in this forest...
Sopping Wet. What clever boys. Lithefiends had one last highly annoying trick. They had unnatural regenerative ability, unless subjected to the touch of fire. If you didn't burn the beasts, they could shrug off many wounds that would be mortal, even surviving intense dismemberment, and according to some rumors, decapitation. And here in this dark forest's misty, murky grip, water making its home in beads and drops everywhere, you'd be hard pressed to summon up Stream-summoned flame, let alone anything traditional.
"You the ones making people disappear?"
"There be many fat fools wandering these trees lately, yes!" Spear said, sounding pleased. "I'm afraid though, if you wish to offer some up, m'kin are hungry NOW. You will fill our bellies while we seek them out ourselves."
"Fry'cair!" One of the others said. He was addressing Spear. He was smaller than the rest of the lithefiends, and unlike them, was not advancing.
"What?"
"She shows no fear!"
"Then she is a fool or mad! Or arrogant." Fry'cair said.
"She does not threaten us, or boast! She draws no weapon! She just stands there." Small Fry said.
"Less work for us!"
"Brother, all men seek defense, in fear or not! Maybe we should..."
"Should WHAT?"
The girl opened a small pack, pulling out some kind of baked bun.
"...She EATS! Brothers, chills run through me! She is more than she appears! She is more trouble than she is worth! Let us be wise, and turn away."
"You are a coward, B'utur! You deserve none of her meat!"
"Oh, I'm not that ungenerous." The girl said, taking a bite out of the bun, cheese and potatoes mixed with onions and peppers inside. "Bite?"
The first lithefiend leapt.
Here come the drums.
She tossed the bun into the air, even as she unhooked her cloak, casting it on the ground as she pressed something, a jewel set into the leathers of her outfit. Her hair was black as pitch, cut in a short bob. She had sharp, thin features, ones that could have been much improved with a little makeup that she didn't care to wear. She couldn't have been any older than fourteen.
Her pale skin rippled, and then RIPPED.
Night metal ripped up from beneath the flesh, the sound of grinding teeth and snapping bones echoing through the forest as it locked over the skin, her knees, shoulders, back, and face all sprouting the same ebony sharpness. In less than a second, she had nastier claws than the lithefiends. And a lot more.
I didn't come to drop bars, I'll be setting them high
There ain't no other hunter better than I
Ever been scared? Never have I
Cuz when I arrived you could say I already had died
You'd better catch every line of this manifesto of mine
Some might call me a demon, I just call it divine
You can't show respect, well that sure is a crime
Because I'm taking humanity up a level tonight
Lithefiends could shrug off many wounds.
So many weapons I can never decide
You'd better be try'n to stay a step ahead in the fight
Be light on your feet and keep your fire alight
If you don't want to meet your maker
By the end of the night
They could NOT shrug off, or endure, being deboned like a fish, metal erupting from its roots and passing through wirey muscle and bone like it was akin to the mists of the Sopwith Glades, manipulated lengths in the vein of chains and whips crossed with razors rending the monster apart in the space of two seconds.
The epidemic still spreading, possessing so many minds
I'll never let this endemic infection get into mine
I got monsters to hunt, bring an end to their times
If any devil messes with me, then the devil may cry
The mess splattered around her. Her eyes were a lovely blue with gold flecks. And far colder than the forest could ever be.
I wanna see if your blood is any redder than mine
B'utur had been very, VERY right.
Tell me, what do you see when you look into my eyes
Because what I see first is the demon deep inside
Evil blood in my veins is the reason I'm alive
Now my darkened heart beats
And I know it won't be over when I die
Whether Fry'cair would have pressed the attack or retreated was a question that would never be answered. The girl was as inhuman in speed as in butchery, blurring forward.
When you enter my yard, it will not be long
Before it's your coffin door you're knocking on
Bleak trees and copses stand awful tall
At least try to appreciate the rustic charm
There was an allegory for grappling someone successfully: tying them up in knots.
The literal reality of it was far more unpleasant.
Just take a look at what the blood has done
How could I hate the monsters, I'm becoming one
Pick up the Wondrous and put some ringmail on
Cuz it's the food chain that you at the bottom of
To add insult to fatal injury, the girl kicked the mess she had made, sending it flying forward and crashing through several trees, a little more blunt force trauma to drive the point home.
The Seething is hungry, here's option one:
Drop your tail and hands and start to run!
The third lithefiend got to take a step back. Then she was behind him.
I got the blood of a hunter, I do not give up
I ain't waiting around for when the sun is up
The impaling blades pinned him in place. The leaping elbow to the head send force rippling down through the beast's body, not so much breaking as pulverizing every single bone it passed through.
I got a lot of problems that I gotta solve
I mean, I slaughter monsters and I talk to dolls
When it fell, she stomped on its neck, popping its head off like a cork.
You know blood runs cold out here in the Glove
Welcome to my nightmare, WHAT'S NOT TO LOVE?
She could sense them, the fear spiking through them. Too bad. They'd made their intentions clear, and their location took conventional methods off the table. They probably thought it made them next to invincible. What it really did in this case was force the crossing of lines.
She wouldn't lie: she still kind of liked it.
Tell me, what do you see when you look into my eyes
Because what I see first is the demon deep inside
Evil blood in my veins is the reason I'm alive
Now my darkened heart beats
And I know it won't be over when I die
The fourth one got a chance to run, and did, taking to the trees like a monkey. The girl snapped fingers clad in rage and death, black sparks manifesting into a crackling ball of power. She hurled it after him.
You know, I brought the ruckus if you don't got it, punk
I'm running circles around you as I dodge and duck
Headstones fall before me cuz I'm awful tough
You should raise a drink to me, bottoms up!
She then put her hand to her mouth, folding it into a circle as she inhaled, like she was about to blow a dart.
It was a dart, of the same black power, that flew into the ball and sent it shooting across the forest like lightning. The fourth arguably got mercy. He was blown into a thousand fine chunks before he really knew what had happened.
What kinda goods you got? You'd better cough them up
I'll take a blade to carve and then a saw to cut
Maybe a chain to whip you then I'll chop you up
And then serve what's left of you to the dogs I got
And then there were two. B'utur and the other one.
"Wait, girl, wait! WE SURRENDER! WE WILL NOT FIGHT!" B'utur said, almost prostrating himself. He had had a bad feeling about the girl, but even in his worst fears could he have assumed she would be THIS strong, this merciless. It was like winning the lottery, except in a negative way. She hadn't even been LOOKING for them; she'd just been heading through the forest and they'd smelled meat.
Lithefiends never surrendered, but it was clear they could never run. It seemed like his last lone companion had the same idea, as he was also making gestures of surrender.
"We...merely wanted food! We...did not mean...harm!" B'utur said, trying to find words that indicated that yeah, they wanted to eat her, but it was nothing PERSONAL. That might not have seemed like much...but the gifts of enlightment the girl had been granted by birth had given it a certain weight. There were a lot worse things than killing because you were hungry, even if you were killing something that would beg you not to.
Right?
I'm blinded by the eyes I have
Because they lie to hide the facts
Spending time in winding labyrinths
Try to find the truth that's behind the vast
"...Neither do I." The girl said.
Then she cut the non-named lithefiend in half at the waist, before seizing B'utur by all four limbs and skipping the hanging and drawing.
And there she left them.
I'm just a girl in Violentclad
But with all this insight I have
The midnight metal shifted back beneath the skin. She retrieved her cloak and, with some distaste, her bun. She was good, but she wasn't good enough to toss her food up in the air and deal with the danger in the time it took to came down. She'd instead tried to aim it so the bun landed on her cloak. No dice.
Oh well, that was what Hands were for, as she removing a cleaning charm while walking past the carnage, tidying up her meal. Despite his deep pain, and the pain to come as he tried to get his limbs lined back up and re-attached, B'utur watched her go.
I'll crack these hollow chests open wide and laugh
Enlightenment can drive you mad
---
The tavern Mourning Light, in the town of Cinsmoth, on the other side of the Sopwith Glades.
Enough travel for now. She still had a few days to spare before she got to the school. Especially since she wasn't the one enrolling.
Plus, she had friends to see along the way.
"Hey Julie!"
The speaker was not human, but looked close to it. Another one of the sapient monster species of this world. The name they took was the Cubis'on, though others tended to refer to them with the mouthful of a name: Fortunefavored. This one, Decre, still hadn't quite mastered assuming the fully human glamor the beings could have, leaving it with very squinty eyes, little hair, and alarmingly long canines and incisors. Not that she cared. Those were just details.
It was what was inside that counted.
"You're later than I thought. Run into trouble?"
"...nope." She said, "None at all."
Tell me, what do you see when you look into my eyes
Because what I see first is the demon deep inside
Evil blood in my veins is the reason I'm alive
Now my darkened heart beats
And I know it won't be over when I die
-----
Slang Terms <---- Explained here
For a bit, it seemed like the infant was never even going to acknowledge Beck's presence. She was content to be drinking her orange juice. For a moment, Beck wondered where she put it all. In the next moment, he worried he might be called on to handle where she put it: things had gone quiet in the next room where her parents and guests were.
"...wow." Beck blinked several times, a little amazed at how much the baby was knocking back the orange juice. Perhaps Sarah would have an early rival when it came to putting away large amounts of foodstuffs! Then again, did soft drinks even count...?
Uh-oh. Things had gone quiet in the next room - That was were Ash, Christine and their guests were. Had they forgotten about the child? He hoped not - he was only three himself, and despite having a supercomputer for a brain he wasn't confident he could manage babysitting a kid he barely knew. That seemed more like Uncle James's thing...
The girl was finished. She looked at Beck, eyes wide, taking him in. Though Beck didn't know it, if his parents had any regrets about him, it was the fact that by the very nature of his existence, he had never worn that look. An infant's developing brain looked at the world with such magnificent purity that it seemed unlikely that machines would learn to replicate it any time soon. A small sacrifice, but a notable one in the minds of Beck's grandfather and his ilk, a more complicated issue than robot hair.
"...Boo!"
She waved her hands, dropping her empty sip-cup.
"Boo! Boo!"
....She was how old? 11 months? Was that old enough to try and scare him?
Um... Okay? How did this go? Beck covered his face, then waited for the appropriate moment...
"Boo to you, too!"
The girl laughed, smacking her hands on the ground.
"She's actually describing you. I think she's saying 'Blue', or trying, anyway." There was Christine, entering the room, driven by some inner clock that let her know her daughter was done drinking.
"Mamaw!" The baby said. Christine hoisted her up, holding her close and giving her a light tap on the back. Fortunately for Beck's sake of nausea, she didn't spit up.
"Thanks for keeping an eye on her. I wish we could blow these people off, but pint of sweat and blood and all that." Christine said, rocking her daughter, who babbled and waved a hand at Beck.
"Boo!"
"No, no. Beck."
"...Eck!"
"Very good!"
"No problem. Always happy to help!" To be told, Beck wasn't sure how much he had actually helped, but hey, he'd take what he could get.
"...so," he ventured after a moment's thought. "You got any idea of where to school her? Always good to be thinking of that stuff early."
"Depends on a few things. If she's a sporty or a smartie. Or a Sparky."
"Ark! Ark!"
The girl then burped, before fussing. Christine held her close.
"Be glad you never had to go to school, Beck. I did. It mostly sucked." There was Ash, tiredly running his hand through sweaty blonde hair. Blonde hair...
Ash was blonde. Christine was blonde. And their baby...had a full head of brown hair.
Beck nodded. He had friends his age who often talked about going to school, and it did not sound like much fun at all. Even if Doctor Light suddenly decided to give him home tuition, it would have been much more preferable to being stuck in some stuffy classroom while-
...wait a data-crunching second.
"...brown hair?"
"Huh?"
"Her hair." Beck pointed. "She has brown hair. Shouldn't she be blonde?"
"She is blonde. Dark strawberry blonde." Christine said.
"When she was born, her hair was like us, but a gene crossed somewhere and her hair darkened as she got older."
"...oh." Now Beck felt a bit stupid for asking. It seemed so obvious now that- no, no it did not.
"Gene crossed? From where? I thought you said Christine was pregnant! Is there something I'm missing out on here?"
"I'm talking about normal quirks of humans, Beck." Ash said. "Genes quirk one way and you're a boy. Quirk another and you're smart. Quirk another and your hair starts out classic blonde and then darkens to that. I'm not Sine, after all. No experimenting on my kids."
"Oh."
"Don't worry about it, Beck. I don't expect you to know everything." Christine said, holding out her baby. "Say hi, Athena!"
Athena instead appeared to blow a raspberry at Beck. Or the baby equivalent, anyway.
Now Beck felt even sillier. That was just like a Kobber, to jump to conclusions like that. Or even a robot. He'd been built in a basement, he had no idea how genes work - it seemed like half the time, Grandpa had just assumed he would already know these things. What was the use of giving him the most advanced brain ever if he made slip-ups like that...?
Then Athena blew a raspberry at him, and he decided not to think about it too much.
"Pbpbpbpt yourself!" he retorted. Athena laughed and did it again, procuring a raspberry-off. Christine carefully put her daughter down.
"Just keep an eye on her for a few more minutes Beck. Don't stress it. Just be happy for her."
"Oh, and don't transform. No offense, but she might get scared. Just be 'Boo'." Ash said.
"Dah bah di, dah bah die." Sam's voice drifted in from the next room.
Beck nodded. "Got it. I'll look after her, don't you worry." He moved around to where Athena was, then cast his eyes around the room, looking for any toys or books that might amuse her. A shame he wasn't allowed to transform - imagine the fun she'd have, racing around the room on her own personal dune buggy.
"So, how's life been? Trouble here not giving you too much grief?" By 'Trouble' he meant Athena, of course.
"If this is torture, chain me to the wall." Ash said. Christine glanced sidelong at him. "...It sounded better in my head."
"It's been quiet, thankfully. But of course, we can't go back to the Bar for more adventures. We have responsibilities here now."
"For now." Another sidelong glance. "Just saying."
"For that, YOU can start taking the notes."
"Oh joy, recording what scummy noble wants what land pocket."
"And the Drumming."
"And the Drumming."
"...the Drumming?" Oooooh, boy...
"Yeah, it's some fad combat technique. It involves this trick where you think of a song in your head and you use it as fuel for your powers. A sort of roundabout motivational power up." Ash said. He had no idea where it had come from, and would never discover that it had been built on a mental technique possessed by a man known as August Caine. "We call it Drumming because, you know, marching to the beat of your own drummer."
"It's likely to cause more harm than good." Christine said. "The last thing you want to do in a fight is distract yourself. We're trying to decide if we should put some sort of restriction on it before some kids get themselves killed using it."
Oooo-kay." Truth be told, Beck was rather guilty of playing music in his own head when he thought. Scratch that, he had his own private playlist - dramatic entrances, underdog moments, epic power-ups... As much as he had learned from his experiences from last year, he still had a touch of the old glory-hog running deep inside him.
Probably best not to mention that to these two, though. In fact... find playlist... delete...
There we go.
"Is that what you're discussing in the next room?" he asked. "I wondered why it went quiet."
"Pretty much." Ash said. "That's peace for you. Much less exciting talking, more just plain...talking talking."
"MAI BOIIIIIIIIIIIIII...THIS PEACE IS WHAT ALL TRUE WARRIORS STRIVE FOR." Sam said.
"We should get back in there before our other guests think we brought a lunatic to the discussion table." Christine said.
"Probably too late for that..." Ash said, the pair heading out the door.
Beck, having found a classic rattle, shook it for Athena. Athena pouted and then grabbed at the rattle, wanting it for herself.
"Oh, alright!" Beck laughed, and handed the rattle over. "Here, lemme find a xylophone. We might be able to start a band, if you're really good!"
Athena promptly bonked Beck on the nose.
"YEOW!" Beck staggered, clutching his nose. That hurt way more than it should have done, even coming from Ash's kid.
"Jeez, what you been eating for breakfast, kid?" he asked, rubbing the sore spot.
"Meh-beh?" Athena said. Dropping the rattle, she reached up and felt Beck's face, like she was confused what she had done.
"Nah, it's fine..." Beck removed his hands, revealing the soreness of his nose. It felt worse than it looked, that was all.
"...Eck!"
Beck smiled. "Yeah. That's me, kid."
---
(To see a non-Drumming, ie non song lyrics version of this scene, click here)
Somewhen else.
The strangest things survived the end of the world. Chocolate. Bathroom slippers.
Halloween.
Of course, it wasn't called Halloween any more, or Hallow's Eve. The name was Reqinhist, which was Hemel and roughly translated to 'Relinguished Growth', a celebration of final thanks for the harvest and an appeal that the winter not be too cruel, a celebration for those who had died and would yet die. The sweets came from that celebration, the costumes from the concept that those left unmourned could walk the earth, vengeful and cruel and eager to drag others away into the abyss of death. But such spirits were fools and cowards, or so the stories went, and hence could be confused or scared away if those they sought to prey on wore masks of disguise and/or fear. So, in the end, not much had changed save the name and memories.
Oh, and one other thing. Monsters really did exist here.
Especially here, in the Glove. So named because of an odd tint in the soil made it look somewhat like a hand from above, the area was divided into several cities, towns, and territories, but its nickname came both from the shape, and from the fact that outside of the safe areas, it was more dangerous than the average place where fell beasts lurked. This, of course, attracted more than its fair share of thrillseekers and namemakers...and of course, the beasts that preyed on those whose reach exceeded their grasp.
Of course, there were ways of avoiding danger, even in a place like this, some extranormal, and some common sense. If, for example, more people than normal had vanished going along a certain path, and no one had gotten out there to investigate yet, then it seemed smart to just take the long route, and only take the other route in case of emergencies.
She didn't have an emergency.
She took it anyway.
So when you meet your end...
Your journey just began...
Transcend the world of man...
And never wake again...
It's official name was the Sopwith Glades, a few dozen square miles of misty forest. Its more official name was the 'Sopping Wet' Glades, because the trees and swamps of the forest were constantly awash in chill humidity, water beading on anything in seconds and soaking most anything in minutes. It was a rotten place if you didn't have the equipment for it, killing people through exposure if they didn't bring the right equipment to retain body heat, and constantly inflicting people with colds, coughs, and other lung maladies. Between that, and the fact that it was virtually impossible to start a fire, no one came to the Glades for a vacation. They came to hunt, or to take a swift path.
Her hood wasn't red; it was actually a sallow yellow. And she wasn't confronted by wolves. Wolves of several stripes might have been better, as the spear rammed into the ground right in front of her.
She stopped. She glanced up from beneath her hood, shadows hiding most of her features. On her waist were several figures of clay and straw, and as the spear was yanked back on a crude rope, she plucked one off and lifted it to her mouth.
"Smelled me out. Hold back."
The figures were twice her height, scarecrow-like forms that wore rotten furs, if anything. There were six of them, spindly bones and twisting muscles, their skins as pale as a dead fish, their triangular faces crammed with sharp teeth and dark blue eyes lacking pupils, the gaze of menacing turquoise. From long bony fingers extended talons that could tear metal and fillet flesh, greenish tongues flicking over barely there lips.
"Lithefiends."
There was no answer. Not like there would be. It was just a small clay figurine, crafted with care, but being just that.
"I smell...the blood of a womb." One of the lithefiends said. One of the nastier monsters of the land, lithefiends were among the twenty percent of sapient creatures that roamed the land, and would be fully capable of most human traits, if they didn't all seem to just want to hunt and feed on living meat. Even Ihmensel’jk could settle down and live quietly without hurting anyone: lithefiends seemed much more determined to wear a singular hat.
"Rude ones." The girl said, and put her doll back on her waist. That prompted some high-pitched growls, though the spear thrower quieted them with a louder snarl.
"M'kin and I were content to cut quickly, manchild, but for throwing us insult, we be making sure this forest swallows your screams."
So they wanted to eat her. And it seemed like they wanted to now carve her up first. Six of them. The average warrior on this world would have trouble with one. Against six, even random members of the 44 would be in danger. And in this forest...
Sopping Wet. What clever boys. Lithefiends had one last highly annoying trick. They had unnatural regenerative ability, unless subjected to the touch of fire. If you didn't burn the beasts, they could shrug off many wounds that would be mortal, even surviving intense dismemberment, and according to some rumors, decapitation. And here in this dark forest's misty, murky grip, water making its home in beads and drops everywhere, you'd be hard pressed to summon up Stream-summoned flame, let alone anything traditional.
"You the ones making people disappear?"
"There be many fat fools wandering these trees lately, yes!" Spear said, sounding pleased. "I'm afraid though, if you wish to offer some up, m'kin are hungry NOW. You will fill our bellies while we seek them out ourselves."
"Fry'cair!" One of the others said. He was addressing Spear. He was smaller than the rest of the lithefiends, and unlike them, was not advancing.
"What?"
"She shows no fear!"
"Then she is a fool or mad! Or arrogant." Fry'cair said.
"She does not threaten us, or boast! She draws no weapon! She just stands there." Small Fry said.
"Less work for us!"
"Brother, all men seek defense, in fear or not! Maybe we should..."
"Should WHAT?"
The girl opened a small pack, pulling out some kind of baked bun.
"...She EATS! Brothers, chills run through me! She is more than she appears! She is more trouble than she is worth! Let us be wise, and turn away."
"You are a coward, B'utur! You deserve none of her meat!"
"Oh, I'm not that ungenerous." The girl said, taking a bite out of the bun, cheese and potatoes mixed with onions and peppers inside. "Bite?"
The first lithefiend leapt.
Here come the drums.
She tossed the bun into the air, even as she unhooked her cloak, casting it on the ground as she pressed something, a jewel set into the leathers of her outfit. Her hair was black as pitch, cut in a short bob. She had sharp, thin features, ones that could have been much improved with a little makeup that she didn't care to wear. She couldn't have been any older than fourteen.
Her pale skin rippled, and then RIPPED.
Night metal ripped up from beneath the flesh, the sound of grinding teeth and snapping bones echoing through the forest as it locked over the skin, her knees, shoulders, back, and face all sprouting the same ebony sharpness. In less than a second, she had nastier claws than the lithefiends. And a lot more.
I didn't come to drop bars, I'll be setting them high
There ain't no other hunter better than I
Ever been scared? Never have I
Cuz when I arrived you could say I already had died
You'd better catch every line of this manifesto of mine
Some might call me a demon, I just call it divine
You can't show respect, well that sure is a crime
Because I'm taking humanity up a level tonight
Lithefiends could shrug off many wounds.
So many weapons I can never decide
You'd better be try'n to stay a step ahead in the fight
Be light on your feet and keep your fire alight
If you don't want to meet your maker
By the end of the night
They could NOT shrug off, or endure, being deboned like a fish, metal erupting from its roots and passing through wirey muscle and bone like it was akin to the mists of the Sopwith Glades, manipulated lengths in the vein of chains and whips crossed with razors rending the monster apart in the space of two seconds.
The epidemic still spreading, possessing so many minds
I'll never let this endemic infection get into mine
I got monsters to hunt, bring an end to their times
If any devil messes with me, then the devil may cry
The mess splattered around her. Her eyes were a lovely blue with gold flecks. And far colder than the forest could ever be.
I wanna see if your blood is any redder than mine
B'utur had been very, VERY right.
Tell me, what do you see when you look into my eyes
Because what I see first is the demon deep inside
Evil blood in my veins is the reason I'm alive
Now my darkened heart beats
And I know it won't be over when I die
Whether Fry'cair would have pressed the attack or retreated was a question that would never be answered. The girl was as inhuman in speed as in butchery, blurring forward.
When you enter my yard, it will not be long
Before it's your coffin door you're knocking on
Bleak trees and copses stand awful tall
At least try to appreciate the rustic charm
There was an allegory for grappling someone successfully: tying them up in knots.
The literal reality of it was far more unpleasant.
Just take a look at what the blood has done
How could I hate the monsters, I'm becoming one
Pick up the Wondrous and put some ringmail on
Cuz it's the food chain that you at the bottom of
To add insult to fatal injury, the girl kicked the mess she had made, sending it flying forward and crashing through several trees, a little more blunt force trauma to drive the point home.
The Seething is hungry, here's option one:
Drop your tail and hands and start to run!
The third lithefiend got to take a step back. Then she was behind him.
I got the blood of a hunter, I do not give up
I ain't waiting around for when the sun is up
The impaling blades pinned him in place. The leaping elbow to the head send force rippling down through the beast's body, not so much breaking as pulverizing every single bone it passed through.
I got a lot of problems that I gotta solve
I mean, I slaughter monsters and I talk to dolls
When it fell, she stomped on its neck, popping its head off like a cork.
You know blood runs cold out here in the Glove
Welcome to my nightmare, WHAT'S NOT TO LOVE?
She could sense them, the fear spiking through them. Too bad. They'd made their intentions clear, and their location took conventional methods off the table. They probably thought it made them next to invincible. What it really did in this case was force the crossing of lines.
She wouldn't lie: she still kind of liked it.
Tell me, what do you see when you look into my eyes
Because what I see first is the demon deep inside
Evil blood in my veins is the reason I'm alive
Now my darkened heart beats
And I know it won't be over when I die
The fourth one got a chance to run, and did, taking to the trees like a monkey. The girl snapped fingers clad in rage and death, black sparks manifesting into a crackling ball of power. She hurled it after him.
You know, I brought the ruckus if you don't got it, punk
I'm running circles around you as I dodge and duck
Headstones fall before me cuz I'm awful tough
You should raise a drink to me, bottoms up!
She then put her hand to her mouth, folding it into a circle as she inhaled, like she was about to blow a dart.
It was a dart, of the same black power, that flew into the ball and sent it shooting across the forest like lightning. The fourth arguably got mercy. He was blown into a thousand fine chunks before he really knew what had happened.
What kinda goods you got? You'd better cough them up
I'll take a blade to carve and then a saw to cut
Maybe a chain to whip you then I'll chop you up
And then serve what's left of you to the dogs I got
And then there were two. B'utur and the other one.
"Wait, girl, wait! WE SURRENDER! WE WILL NOT FIGHT!" B'utur said, almost prostrating himself. He had had a bad feeling about the girl, but even in his worst fears could he have assumed she would be THIS strong, this merciless. It was like winning the lottery, except in a negative way. She hadn't even been LOOKING for them; she'd just been heading through the forest and they'd smelled meat.
Lithefiends never surrendered, but it was clear they could never run. It seemed like his last lone companion had the same idea, as he was also making gestures of surrender.
"We...merely wanted food! We...did not mean...harm!" B'utur said, trying to find words that indicated that yeah, they wanted to eat her, but it was nothing PERSONAL. That might not have seemed like much...but the gifts of enlightment the girl had been granted by birth had given it a certain weight. There were a lot worse things than killing because you were hungry, even if you were killing something that would beg you not to.
Right?
I'm blinded by the eyes I have
Because they lie to hide the facts
Spending time in winding labyrinths
Try to find the truth that's behind the vast
"...Neither do I." The girl said.
Then she cut the non-named lithefiend in half at the waist, before seizing B'utur by all four limbs and skipping the hanging and drawing.
And there she left them.
I'm just a girl in Violentclad
But with all this insight I have
The midnight metal shifted back beneath the skin. She retrieved her cloak and, with some distaste, her bun. She was good, but she wasn't good enough to toss her food up in the air and deal with the danger in the time it took to came down. She'd instead tried to aim it so the bun landed on her cloak. No dice.
Oh well, that was what Hands were for, as she removing a cleaning charm while walking past the carnage, tidying up her meal. Despite his deep pain, and the pain to come as he tried to get his limbs lined back up and re-attached, B'utur watched her go.
I'll crack these hollow chests open wide and laugh
Enlightenment can drive you mad
---
The tavern Mourning Light, in the town of Cinsmoth, on the other side of the Sopwith Glades.
Enough travel for now. She still had a few days to spare before she got to the school. Especially since she wasn't the one enrolling.
Plus, she had friends to see along the way.
"Hey Julie!"
The speaker was not human, but looked close to it. Another one of the sapient monster species of this world. The name they took was the Cubis'on, though others tended to refer to them with the mouthful of a name: Fortunefavored. This one, Decre, still hadn't quite mastered assuming the fully human glamor the beings could have, leaving it with very squinty eyes, little hair, and alarmingly long canines and incisors. Not that she cared. Those were just details.
It was what was inside that counted.
"You're later than I thought. Run into trouble?"
"...nope." She said, "None at all."
Tell me, what do you see when you look into my eyes
Because what I see first is the demon deep inside
Evil blood in my veins is the reason I'm alive
Now my darkened heart beats
And I know it won't be over when I die
-----
Slang Terms <---- Explained here
Thursday 3 March 2016
Lineage, Part 4
The Estate of Dr. Light, home of the Light Family.
Dr. Light had a lot of labs, and not much security. Mainly because there was little to steal that anyone could sell or use, Light's specialized, customized creations tending to work solely for his most private and personal efforts. Rock. Blues. Beck.
But considering Dawn "Hypotenuse/Aura" Cosineau's lineage, it made sense that she could at least made sense of some of it.
"Wily certainly liked his rigid patterns." Dawn said. "Always eight, interlocking...I wonder if that was a personal preference or simply how he had to build things without your grandfather."
Beck shrugged. "I dunno. Dad always thought it was because he was going nuts, himself. Got so used to theming his creations he flat-out ignored the obvious weakness square going on. Or some of the more ridiculous stuff. I mean... Sheep Man?!"
"I suspect mental degeneration by that time. There are earlier signs." Dawn said, perusing the 'vault' before her. The 'trophies' of Rock Light, nee Mega Man, the copied weapons of dozens of Robot Masters, kept here JUST IN CASE. "Like here. Clown Man. Okay somewhat strange, but...why is his themed weapon an electrical taser weapon? Why not something like a kinetic or explosive weapon with the circus theme?"
"You ever get zapped by a Joy Buzzer? It was like that, only worse, apparently." Beck shuddered in sympathy pain, recalling the story as told to him by his own father over dinner. "So yeah, I can kinda see how that fits - practical jokes and all that. Except practical jokes don't short-circuit people."
"Not proper ones, anyway." Dawn said, as she began sliding out racks and inspecting the weapons.
"So...why are we here Auntie? How does this help with the Fazzes?"
"Finer points, Beck. About a lot of things. It's why I asked you to come with me. You're still developing as an A.I, and you would be surprised at what's important. Basically, if you're uncertain about a solution, sometimes the best way to handle it is to consult someone else...is this a micro black hole generator? Wily, you are an insane fool. These aren't toys."
Beck stared at the statue, and his eyes goggled. "Oh, yeah... that one. The one that Mom threatens to bring the paddle out for if Dad ever uses it again. Dunno what Wily was thinking, installing this in poor old Galaxy Man. Or Garrett, as we call him," he adds, letting himself idly scan a few of the other weapons Dawn hadn't looked at.
"ACK!" Beck did not know that this would be a thing that would be happening, and he did not like it one bit. Quick, what was the command for that, what did Dad say...?
Dr. Light had a lot of labs, and not much security. Mainly because there was little to steal that anyone could sell or use, Light's specialized, customized creations tending to work solely for his most private and personal efforts. Rock. Blues. Beck.
But considering Dawn "Hypotenuse/Aura" Cosineau's lineage, it made sense that she could at least made sense of some of it.
"Wily certainly liked his rigid patterns." Dawn said. "Always eight, interlocking...I wonder if that was a personal preference or simply how he had to build things without your grandfather."
Beck shrugged. "I dunno. Dad always thought it was because he was going nuts, himself. Got so used to theming his creations he flat-out ignored the obvious weakness square going on. Or some of the more ridiculous stuff. I mean... Sheep Man?!"
"I suspect mental degeneration by that time. There are earlier signs." Dawn said, perusing the 'vault' before her. The 'trophies' of Rock Light, nee Mega Man, the copied weapons of dozens of Robot Masters, kept here JUST IN CASE. "Like here. Clown Man. Okay somewhat strange, but...why is his themed weapon an electrical taser weapon? Why not something like a kinetic or explosive weapon with the circus theme?"
"You ever get zapped by a Joy Buzzer? It was like that, only worse, apparently." Beck shuddered in sympathy pain, recalling the story as told to him by his own father over dinner. "So yeah, I can kinda see how that fits - practical jokes and all that. Except practical jokes don't short-circuit people."
"Not proper ones, anyway." Dawn said, as she began sliding out racks and inspecting the weapons.
"So...why are we here Auntie? How does this help with the Fazzes?"
"Finer points, Beck. About a lot of things. It's why I asked you to come with me. You're still developing as an A.I, and you would be surprised at what's important. Basically, if you're uncertain about a solution, sometimes the best way to handle it is to consult someone else...is this a micro black hole generator? Wily, you are an insane fool. These aren't toys."
Beck stared at the statue, and his eyes goggled. "Oh, yeah... that one. The one that Mom threatens to bring the paddle out for if Dad ever uses it again. Dunno what Wily was thinking, installing this in poor old Galaxy Man. Or Garrett, as we call him," he adds, letting himself idly scan a few of the other weapons Dawn hadn't looked at.
Then he remembered what Dawn had said.
"...finer points about what, exactly?"
"Advancement. Development. Humanity."
"Auntie..."
"Sorry, I'll stop speaking like mother. I want to further develop their AI's. Much like you were. Make them more than just glorified theme park attractions. Make them..."
There was a crunching noise as Dawn opened one of the racks, and a weapon fell out.
"...Metal weakened here. Might be rust." Dawn said, leaning down to pick it up...and blinking as it activated and attached to her arm. "No. Shut down. Disengage. Do not want."
The weapon primed and launched, a bladed fan flying out and sliding to a stop at Beck's feet.
"...This was a Tengu Man's weapon?"
Then it spun, and Beck found himself flying upwards, pushed by a column of air. He found himself rapidly hitting and pressing into the ceiling. Not damaging or painful, but not exactly fun.
"I said disengage! Stop! Do I have to break you?" Dawn said, yanking at the semi-parasitical weapon
"ACK!" Beck did not know that this would be a thing that would be happening, and he did not like it one bit. Quick, what was the command for that, what did Dad say...?
"Tornado Hold: DISENGAGE!"
That did it. Of course, then gravity re-asserted itself. At least Dawn got the launcher out of the way so Beck just faceplanted on the floor.
"Good thing you're made of Xel."
"Ow."
"You'd best get your father, I don't want to accidentally tear this whole place down trying to remove this."
"I think he'd be more cross you took one of the weapons out!" Beck
snapped as he picked himself up. "Like, even I know better than to touch
those! And I still don't know what any of this has to do with the
Fazbear crew!"
"They're my children, Beck." Dawn said. "I owe them more than being crude copies of some odd beasts mother and Carol ran into."
Beck sighed, and flicked on his communicator anyway.
"Yo, grandad. Yeah, I figured you- woah. ...Yeah, we're still alive. ...Tengu Man's. ...okay, give us a few minutes."
He clicked off, and directed the sort of look at Dawn that said 'I am so glad I am not you right now'.
"Just be glad you
didn't pick anything more dangerous. Like the Heat Crash. That would
have earned you a week offline without any television or video games.
When Doctor Light grounds his robots, he don't mess around."
Dawn was only paying the most basic attention.Instead, she had knelt down, looking at the launcher.
"Hmmmm...weapon in stasis, my systems barely match, and yet..."
"Huh?"
"Having some ideas, Beck. For a lot of things. After being connected to a world as it's reborn, you find yourself looking at your old world from an angle of inspiration and improvement. And I think there may be more here than you taking a pratfall...
"Oh by the way, you can put all the blame on me, so your dad will just yell at me instead of you."
"Your idea, not mine...so," ventured Beck, after a moment's pause. "How can I help develop
those guys? Do you, like, need to open up my A.I. Core or something?"
"Hopefully not. I'd hate to lobotomize you by accident. Though your mother might disagree." A smirk.
"Har har har. But really, what do I gotta do? I'm not exactly qualified
to teach anyone their ABC's or anything." As he spoke, Beck knelt down
and started cleaning up the mess made during the accident with the
Tornado Holder. Might as well.
"You'd be surprised." Dawn said. "After all, father just started out as a mindless engine of destruction."
A laugh. "Yeah, I know that story. I think they even wrote a song about that!"
"You mean the same people who are so puzzled your father has hair?"
"And they thought Grandad was crazy. Well, who's crazy now, huh?! ROBOT HAAAAAIR~!"
---
"But the burning in your heart I did not put there." Dawn murmured.
"Beg pardon?" Tormon Barros had grown out his beard some, and between that and his more casual clothes it might have been harder to identify him as one of the Society slash Foundry founders.
Ring ring. Arielphone.
"Ah, well, I may as well start with the good news..." There was small
talk about the Foundry's planet, some Earth sojourns, and general
building efforts. "Now the other news, I would not inherently call it
bad, just...it exists. You told us to destroy our process for creating
Augments, which we have done. However, there are two pressing issues.
One is confirmed, one is merely rumor. The confirmed issue is that we
are still encountering naturally awakened Augments on Earth. We had a
few in our service, Dominique being one...but since we've started our
Earth visits we've encountered five new ones."
"...That's troublesome. It sounds like something is causing an unnatural spike in augmentations. But... didn't Augments require regular treatment, else they would die as a result of their transformation? Or does that not occur in naturally-awakened Augments?"
"It is only needed in our process. I believe you had a woman who accidentally created a few in your second year on Ardea. We've studied their records: their brains are stable."
"Ah, right... Hm. It does sound strange, but unless we find someone intentionally causing this, it's not really a 'problem to solve' unless one of the new Augments decides to abuse their powers. Thanks for bringing this to my attention, though. If I see anyone not part of the Foundry exhibiting signs of being an Augment, I'll let you know and it can be looked into if need be."
"That is the second point, actually..."
"You have a method to acquire the saltwater?"
"Once the grounds have been stabilized, yes. What do you want in exchange?"
Barros started giving a list, Dawn recording it as she watched the sun set over the desert horizon. She knew the person was coming long before Barros did, but said nothing to see if Barros could finish his list of requests. He almost did.
"Sir?"
Dawn hadn't caught the young man's name, though she'd immediately identified his power set. His body had shifted, taking on a form between human and animal, a perfect blend of both. By many technical terms, a lyncanthrope, but the young man didn't like the term: he didn't change on the full moon and he had full control of himself, thank you very much.
"Yes, Cezary?" Cezary, a Polish version of Caeser, which ironically could roughly be translated as 'hairy'. Had his name defined his awakening? Life had been stranger.
"Um...well, uh, I was just wandering around the motel and...found a bad smell sir."
"Bad smell? Of what?"
"Of the five we've encountered, two joined us, two preferred a normal life using their abilities quietly, and one...was hostile. And not as in control of his powers as he thought. The battle resulted in his death. Like you said, natural born Augments are incredibly rare. Encountering two in the past few years would be astonishing. Five...the one who died. His last words were very garbled, hence I cannot confirm anything save our own concern...but they may have included the words "They promised.""
"That..." Ariel paused and swallowed. "That's, um... ominous. Yes. I don't know who promised who what, but it sounds like there's something going on here after all. Unless, of course, he'd simply gone mad, but... well, I don't usually deal in coincidences. Most kobbers don't."
"That is our concern. Someone may have rediscovered our process, or found their own. Perhaps not. We do not have any evidence confirming or disproving it. Yet, anyway. It would be best if you passed the possibility on to those best served by knowing such possibilities."
"After last time? Believe me, I'll spread the word. The last thing any of us need is a repeat of what happened on Ardea."
----
...The recording was right.
...Sometimes, the best solution was to consult someone else.
...But...for this tape...this story...
...who did you possibly consult?
"Beg pardon?" Tormon Barros had grown out his beard some, and between that and his more casual clothes it might have been harder to identify him as one of the Society slash Foundry founders.
Ring ring. Arielphone.
"This is the Sierra residence. May I ask who's calling?"
"Hello Miss Sierra. It's Conall." Conall's tone was still boisterous, but not as intense as it usually was.
"Oh! Hello, sir. What's the occasion?"
"Thinking out loud about something else. Back to business. The radius, is it too large?"
"If we had to have Saundra do it by herself, yes...but it may be more possible with Marvin helping her. Still, for something of this scale..."
"I don't need it tomorrow. Just sometime in the near future."
"Right. So, a massive excavation, a hardening of the ground...and you'd perform the construction from there?"
"Yes."
"I suppose I could ask Daniel to help..."
"I don't need rainwater. Saltwater. I plan to partially run this facility to test some theories on desalination."
"In addition to your primary purpose?"
"Mother always did like it when she could make something do more than one thing."
"...That's troublesome. It sounds like something is causing an unnatural spike in augmentations. But... didn't Augments require regular treatment, else they would die as a result of their transformation? Or does that not occur in naturally-awakened Augments?"
"It is only needed in our process. I believe you had a woman who accidentally created a few in your second year on Ardea. We've studied their records: their brains are stable."
"Ah, right... Hm. It does sound strange, but unless we find someone intentionally causing this, it's not really a 'problem to solve' unless one of the new Augments decides to abuse their powers. Thanks for bringing this to my attention, though. If I see anyone not part of the Foundry exhibiting signs of being an Augment, I'll let you know and it can be looked into if need be."
"That is the second point, actually..."
"You have a method to acquire the saltwater?"
"Once the grounds have been stabilized, yes. What do you want in exchange?"
Barros started giving a list, Dawn recording it as she watched the sun set over the desert horizon. She knew the person was coming long before Barros did, but said nothing to see if Barros could finish his list of requests. He almost did.
"Sir?"
Dawn hadn't caught the young man's name, though she'd immediately identified his power set. His body had shifted, taking on a form between human and animal, a perfect blend of both. By many technical terms, a lyncanthrope, but the young man didn't like the term: he didn't change on the full moon and he had full control of himself, thank you very much.
"Yes, Cezary?" Cezary, a Polish version of Caeser, which ironically could roughly be translated as 'hairy'. Had his name defined his awakening? Life had been stranger.
"Um...well, uh, I was just wandering around the motel and...found a bad smell sir."
"Bad smell? Of what?"
"Of the five we've encountered, two joined us, two preferred a normal life using their abilities quietly, and one...was hostile. And not as in control of his powers as he thought. The battle resulted in his death. Like you said, natural born Augments are incredibly rare. Encountering two in the past few years would be astonishing. Five...the one who died. His last words were very garbled, hence I cannot confirm anything save our own concern...but they may have included the words "They promised.""
"That..." Ariel paused and swallowed. "That's, um... ominous. Yes. I don't know who promised who what, but it sounds like there's something going on here after all. Unless, of course, he'd simply gone mad, but... well, I don't usually deal in coincidences. Most kobbers don't."
"That is our concern. Someone may have rediscovered our process, or found their own. Perhaps not. We do not have any evidence confirming or disproving it. Yet, anyway. It would be best if you passed the possibility on to those best served by knowing such possibilities."
"After last time? Believe me, I'll spread the word. The last thing any of us need is a repeat of what happened on Ardea."
"You and me both."
"Well, I don't know any other way to describe it...death, sir. I smell death."
---
It was a random Motel 6, part of the isolated patches of places people stayed in on the way to or from Vegas. Dawn had used it as a meeting spot, and Cezary, who had stayed behind because the desert heat made him immensely uncomfortable. But not so much that he hadn't gone to find his boss and his boss' client.
He'd been right. It was death.
Springtrap had joked that for some reason, Sine had built in a criminal investigation program into him. Which wasn't wrong, but compared to Dawn's analytical ability, some of it programming, some of it long conversations with Kirigiri, he might as well have been...well, wholly the rotten wrecked electronic he appeared to be. But the curiosity, THAT was her mother's. She'd asked Barros to hold off a moment on calling the police.
She was not human. She would not leave hairs, or fingerprints, or trace evidence. And while she was not an expert in coroner-type medicine, she had access to a lot of databanks, both onboard and in the Cloud. So it quickly became obvious to her what had happened.
Suicide, she was fairly certain. The man she was looking at was probably in his late twenties, but he looked several decades older. His body was ravaged, the signs of addiction and its prices. It was a little unclear if he'd deliberately overdosed or done it semi-accidentally, but based on the lack of signs of a struggle, it seemed like he'd realized on some level what was happening to him and made no effort to fight it. No evidence of this being faked, or any sort of set up.
The body. The drugs. The bare bones of a bare life.
And a recording device. At first, Dawn had thought it was a cell phone; instead, she'd found the next generation of the tape recorder. Digital, with a five hundred hour memory. Which was good, because it would have been a lot harder for her to copy the file if it had been a classic magnetic tape cassette. She put it down with machine precision, and indicated that Barros should now call the police. She'd stand in for Cezary; he might have smelled the corpse from a considerable further distance than she could have, but you could smell it outside the door. Perhaps someone was getting fired soon; the corpse was at most 36 hours old...
While she waited, she began playing back the recording. A suicide note perhaps...
...yes.
But not how she'd expected.
"It’s a long story, but one you’ve never heard before. This story is
about a place that dwells on the mountain; a place where bad things
happen. And you may think you know about the bad things, you may decide
you have it all figured out but you don’t. Because the truth is worse
than monsters or men...."
----
...The recording was right.
...Sometimes, the best solution was to consult someone else.
...But...for this tape...this story...
...who did you possibly consult?
Friday 26 February 2016
Lineage, Part 3
Somewhere the Kobbers have been before...
"Cola!"
The water remained unchanged. Brown eyes narrowed, and ten minutes of redrawing symbols with chalk followed.
"COLA!"
It was still water. This time, the girl said a bad word her parents would have prefered she didn't know and knocked the water glass over.
"That's a third level spell, Ags. You're a first year." Sunika said, the Ihmensel’jk running a hand through her wire-like hair before she turned a page on her homework. She'd long gotten used to her roommate's ambition.
"I should be able to DO this! I can see it in my head!"
"Not clear enough it seems."
That just provoked the young woman, having turned thirteen a mere two months ago, to start all over again. It ended the same way. Water and frustration.
"No one cares, Ags."
"Do you know what people who don't care about don't caring do, Sunny?"
"Is it some crap out of one of those dumb books you always read?"
"They're not crap!"
"Fine. Toilet paper. A step up." Another page completed. "Just do your assigned things."
"They're BORING! I can do BETTER!"
"No, you feel like you HAVE to do better. Because Hope is five years old."
The teenager had no response to that, mainly because Sunika was right. It seemed like the only one who cared that the five year old was doing better than the thirteen year old was her.
"...Just because I'm with the doldrums...."
A glare from the Ihmensel’jk.
"Sorry, no offense. I just...feel like I'm being...coddled? Held back? People don't want me to fail so I get the easiest stuff that a dog could do?"
"Ags...you don't have the Spark. You, me, half this school...we're never going to be able to match the ones who do. We're not gonna be purists. We're gonna learn what we can. That's why we're here, that's why they let us in to begin with. Stop whipping the water. It doesn't care."
Sunika knew, despite herself, her knowledge was falling on deaf ears. Her roommate and friend had a drive that the girl either didn't know or refused to turn off. No wonder. Maybe if this sort of thing that could potentially get you expelled...but you had to do a lot worse to get kicked out of Carnage Hall.
After all, the name was ironic.
---
The Vr'nigh School and Hall of Thaumaturgy. Vr'nigh, pronounced correctly as "Vernighted", was a word that roughly translated to 'Exploration and Great Discovery' from the language of one of the founders. If mispronounced, it sounded like 'Carnage'. The mondegreen had stuck.
Sometimes, she swore they all shopped at the same cloak store.
"Great choice is no gift! It overwhelms! It crushes contentment. drowns you in an endless whirlpool! You pass through life feeling you have accomplished nothing! You die in woe, in pain! We do not take your freedom, we GIVE freedom! Freedom from horrific illusions! Freedom of great burdens!" The man, in about his forties, preached, wearing a dark grey cloak. There were several others near him wearing black cloaks, and a very small crowd of about four students listening to the man preach.
"Who let the Cranks on school grounds?" Ags said.
"They hate that name." Bernard said, adjusting his thrice-round spectacles, as if he wanted to check if they'd somehow overheard.
"Their damn symbol looks like a crank! Their own damn fault!"
"Technically, it's a key. It's like saying a spade and a shovel are the same thing."
"Considering their schtick, it would make more sense if it was a gear." Ags said. The Order Of Understood Life (or Understated Life, Ags was not sure) were a recently formed group that basically perscribed to 'a place for everything and everything in its place'. Understandably, they really didn't like Blackbirds, people who told their nice, ordered life to go jump off a cliff if they felt they needed to get something done in a swifter, more efficient way. Ags supposed she had to give them credit for some balls. Their areas of power were more in Bertrand's town; she didn't know if she could go into someplace where she felt she was rejected with hostility.
"Hey Aggie!"
Especially since she didn't really have that problem here, her friend Renee waving at her. The students were fighting back against the annoying cult-types by starting a game of Calvinball. Angs didn't really understand the name, but the rules were constantly being shifted based on whoever could seize control of the game's direction, usually by the thaumaturgy that the Order/Cranks really didn't care for. What better way to show the audience couldn't care than a grand display of magic?
Not like magic was the only rule of thumb. That was why people almost fought to get Ags on their team, and the one who got her used her as point man (well, woman) half the time. There were other talents in the world besides magic.
Of course, even as she blitzed, danced, and dunked, Ags was the only one, it seemed, who couldn't see that, frustration on her face every time someone got an advantage over her via the thaumaturgical arts.
Though to say it went unnoticed was incorrect as well.
---
"...Permission to speak freely, madam?"
Evangelina Stavros' response was to look down her own glasses. If Bertrand's were called thrice-round, hers could technically be called 'score-round', though they were custom made by her and hence didn't have any shorthand name. Grouchily sitting in her chair, Ags stared back.
"...I didn't do anything wrong!"
"Yes and no." Evangelina said. "Aggie..."
"I haven't cheated! I haven't been sneaking around breaking rules! Why else would I be here in the school master's office, AUNT ANGIE?" Ags, or Aggie, said, turning a term of affection into a semi-curse.
"You're not here because of your father, if that's what you're insinuating."
"And Hope?"
"...Hope is not here because of her father either."
"Are you SURE?"
"Very much so." Angie said, her words containing a deep gravity that made Aggie realize she'd stepped over a line, and she quickly skittered back over it. Watching her sit and sulk, Angie realized she was poking the edge of her own line. It had been some time since she'd had to deal with unruly teenagers, and the fact that it was hard to tell the difference between the best and brightest and the bad seeds at times, if you were going by their attitude.
"...I am happy that you're doing things that aren't putting anyone at risk. But you're not."
"I can do better."
"I know. I know the feeling. You are not getting anything resembling a free or easy ride, I give you my word on that. Once you step out that door, you are any other student. And your learning capacity will be assessed and forged based on that fact. The lone advantage I will give you is that you can be absolutely certain that potential has been weighed and measured with as fine a point as my school can give you. The same with everyone else here. EVERYONE. Are we understood?"
"...yes, ma'am."
"Get to class then. And just in case you think otherwise, the students here are too busy being...well, like you to talk behind your back." Okay, that wasn't WHOLLY true. But it was less than Aggie thought, and that was really all Angie could offer. She hoped it would be enough.
It never was.
---
Teenagers. You could probably run the world's whole power infrastructure on the energy wasted trying to keep them from behaving in self-defeating ways.
"Cola!"
It was a simple task. Induce carbonation in a glass of water. Implant a gas into a liquid. Beyond simple, when higher ranks were based around literally turning reality into clay and re-shaping it before reality got mad and killed you, or drove you mad, or worse.
But her water remained water.
And Hope...
She'd actually made a damn soft drink equivalent. Her whole class had drank it...
Thud. Thud. Thud.
How do you know you're good? When people are more shocked and surprised at how well you're doing than angry. When the opposing team shakes your hand and means it, and other teams hold you on their shoulders as you hoist the trophy.
The Graceful Dragon, Greased Lightning. And she was just really starting to come into her development. And she had so many options to develop it.
"Cola!"
And she couldn't even manage a failure. Sunny had turned the water into sour wine, which at least was INTERESTING. She couldn't even manage a laugh.
She wasn't sure what she liked more. The crossing of the ribbons, or whenever she and hers got to shoot down anyone who claimed she had cheated in some way to get there. What good was winning unless it was wholly under your own power? It's why in that regard she didn't mind the third places, the fifth places, the non-wins. There, people were just better. It made it when she was taste sweeter. Track. Triathalons. Spot-movement, which in other worlds might have been called free running or parkour...
"COLA!"
Water. As dull as dishwater in every way shape or form.
What shapes and forms you? Others. So many others in your life, some good, some bad...and one does one's best to have as much of the former as one can...and she never really had issue there. She'd never needed one of those cliche tales on becoming a functioning human being. She'd just managed it. She had plenty of it. Friends. Circles. The joy of the group...
She had a lot. She didn't want more, assomuch. What she wanted was...
She could do BETTER. She had to. Didn't she? Wasn't that behind all their eyes? Higgghhhhh hopes? They had higghhhhh hopes?
She could, she would...
"COLA!"
Water.
...whatever it took.
"Cola!"
The water remained unchanged. Brown eyes narrowed, and ten minutes of redrawing symbols with chalk followed.
"COLA!"
It was still water. This time, the girl said a bad word her parents would have prefered she didn't know and knocked the water glass over.
"That's a third level spell, Ags. You're a first year." Sunika said, the Ihmensel’jk running a hand through her wire-like hair before she turned a page on her homework. She'd long gotten used to her roommate's ambition.
"I should be able to DO this! I can see it in my head!"
"Not clear enough it seems."
That just provoked the young woman, having turned thirteen a mere two months ago, to start all over again. It ended the same way. Water and frustration.
"No one cares, Ags."
"Do you know what people who don't care about don't caring do, Sunny?"
"Is it some crap out of one of those dumb books you always read?"
"They're not crap!"
"Fine. Toilet paper. A step up." Another page completed. "Just do your assigned things."
"They're BORING! I can do BETTER!"
"No, you feel like you HAVE to do better. Because Hope is five years old."
The teenager had no response to that, mainly because Sunika was right. It seemed like the only one who cared that the five year old was doing better than the thirteen year old was her.
"...Just because I'm with the doldrums...."
A glare from the Ihmensel’jk.
"Sorry, no offense. I just...feel like I'm being...coddled? Held back? People don't want me to fail so I get the easiest stuff that a dog could do?"
"Ags...you don't have the Spark. You, me, half this school...we're never going to be able to match the ones who do. We're not gonna be purists. We're gonna learn what we can. That's why we're here, that's why they let us in to begin with. Stop whipping the water. It doesn't care."
Sunika knew, despite herself, her knowledge was falling on deaf ears. Her roommate and friend had a drive that the girl either didn't know or refused to turn off. No wonder. Maybe if this sort of thing that could potentially get you expelled...but you had to do a lot worse to get kicked out of Carnage Hall.
After all, the name was ironic.
---
The Vr'nigh School and Hall of Thaumaturgy. Vr'nigh, pronounced correctly as "Vernighted", was a word that roughly translated to 'Exploration and Great Discovery' from the language of one of the founders. If mispronounced, it sounded like 'Carnage'. The mondegreen had stuck.
Sometimes, she swore they all shopped at the same cloak store.
"Great choice is no gift! It overwhelms! It crushes contentment. drowns you in an endless whirlpool! You pass through life feeling you have accomplished nothing! You die in woe, in pain! We do not take your freedom, we GIVE freedom! Freedom from horrific illusions! Freedom of great burdens!" The man, in about his forties, preached, wearing a dark grey cloak. There were several others near him wearing black cloaks, and a very small crowd of about four students listening to the man preach.
"Who let the Cranks on school grounds?" Ags said.
"They hate that name." Bernard said, adjusting his thrice-round spectacles, as if he wanted to check if they'd somehow overheard.
"Their damn symbol looks like a crank! Their own damn fault!"
"Technically, it's a key. It's like saying a spade and a shovel are the same thing."
"Considering their schtick, it would make more sense if it was a gear." Ags said. The Order Of Understood Life (or Understated Life, Ags was not sure) were a recently formed group that basically perscribed to 'a place for everything and everything in its place'. Understandably, they really didn't like Blackbirds, people who told their nice, ordered life to go jump off a cliff if they felt they needed to get something done in a swifter, more efficient way. Ags supposed she had to give them credit for some balls. Their areas of power were more in Bertrand's town; she didn't know if she could go into someplace where she felt she was rejected with hostility.
"Hey Aggie!"
Especially since she didn't really have that problem here, her friend Renee waving at her. The students were fighting back against the annoying cult-types by starting a game of Calvinball. Angs didn't really understand the name, but the rules were constantly being shifted based on whoever could seize control of the game's direction, usually by the thaumaturgy that the Order/Cranks really didn't care for. What better way to show the audience couldn't care than a grand display of magic?
Not like magic was the only rule of thumb. That was why people almost fought to get Ags on their team, and the one who got her used her as point man (well, woman) half the time. There were other talents in the world besides magic.
Of course, even as she blitzed, danced, and dunked, Ags was the only one, it seemed, who couldn't see that, frustration on her face every time someone got an advantage over her via the thaumaturgical arts.
Though to say it went unnoticed was incorrect as well.
---
"...Permission to speak freely, madam?"
Evangelina Stavros' response was to look down her own glasses. If Bertrand's were called thrice-round, hers could technically be called 'score-round', though they were custom made by her and hence didn't have any shorthand name. Grouchily sitting in her chair, Ags stared back.
"...I didn't do anything wrong!"
"Yes and no." Evangelina said. "Aggie..."
"I haven't cheated! I haven't been sneaking around breaking rules! Why else would I be here in the school master's office, AUNT ANGIE?" Ags, or Aggie, said, turning a term of affection into a semi-curse.
"You're not here because of your father, if that's what you're insinuating."
"And Hope?"
"...Hope is not here because of her father either."
"Are you SURE?"
"Very much so." Angie said, her words containing a deep gravity that made Aggie realize she'd stepped over a line, and she quickly skittered back over it. Watching her sit and sulk, Angie realized she was poking the edge of her own line. It had been some time since she'd had to deal with unruly teenagers, and the fact that it was hard to tell the difference between the best and brightest and the bad seeds at times, if you were going by their attitude.
"...I am happy that you're doing things that aren't putting anyone at risk. But you're not."
"I can do better."
"I know. I know the feeling. You are not getting anything resembling a free or easy ride, I give you my word on that. Once you step out that door, you are any other student. And your learning capacity will be assessed and forged based on that fact. The lone advantage I will give you is that you can be absolutely certain that potential has been weighed and measured with as fine a point as my school can give you. The same with everyone else here. EVERYONE. Are we understood?"
"...yes, ma'am."
"Get to class then. And just in case you think otherwise, the students here are too busy being...well, like you to talk behind your back." Okay, that wasn't WHOLLY true. But it was less than Aggie thought, and that was really all Angie could offer. She hoped it would be enough.
It never was.
---
Teenagers. You could probably run the world's whole power infrastructure on the energy wasted trying to keep them from behaving in self-defeating ways.
"Cola!"
It was a simple task. Induce carbonation in a glass of water. Implant a gas into a liquid. Beyond simple, when higher ranks were based around literally turning reality into clay and re-shaping it before reality got mad and killed you, or drove you mad, or worse.
But her water remained water.
And Hope...
She'd actually made a damn soft drink equivalent. Her whole class had drank it...
Thud. Thud. Thud.
How do you know you're good? When people are more shocked and surprised at how well you're doing than angry. When the opposing team shakes your hand and means it, and other teams hold you on their shoulders as you hoist the trophy.
The Graceful Dragon, Greased Lightning. And she was just really starting to come into her development. And she had so many options to develop it.
"Cola!"
And she couldn't even manage a failure. Sunny had turned the water into sour wine, which at least was INTERESTING. She couldn't even manage a laugh.
She wasn't sure what she liked more. The crossing of the ribbons, or whenever she and hers got to shoot down anyone who claimed she had cheated in some way to get there. What good was winning unless it was wholly under your own power? It's why in that regard she didn't mind the third places, the fifth places, the non-wins. There, people were just better. It made it when she was taste sweeter. Track. Triathalons. Spot-movement, which in other worlds might have been called free running or parkour...
"COLA!"
Water. As dull as dishwater in every way shape or form.
What shapes and forms you? Others. So many others in your life, some good, some bad...and one does one's best to have as much of the former as one can...and she never really had issue there. She'd never needed one of those cliche tales on becoming a functioning human being. She'd just managed it. She had plenty of it. Friends. Circles. The joy of the group...
She had a lot. She didn't want more, assomuch. What she wanted was...
She could do BETTER. She had to. Didn't she? Wasn't that behind all their eyes? Higgghhhhh hopes? They had higghhhhh hopes?
She could, she would...
"COLA!"
Water.
...whatever it took.
Thursday 25 February 2016
Lineage, Part 2
Ashworld. The semi-city of Parity.
"Hey Sam..." Ash was perusing the clouds. "Do you know where the phrase 'For the birds' comes from?"
Sam shrugged. "Fucked if I know. What do birds got to do with anything, anyway?"
"Horses eat various grains. Like oats. They wouldn't always digest all of them. So they'd poop and then birds would come and eat the undigested oats in the poop. So if you're saying something is for the birds, you're politely saying it's horseshit."
"...geeee eeeeye jooooooe," Sam idly sang. He doubted anyone else would get the reference, and was too weirded out to care otherwise. "...and what makes you bring this up?" he added, after a pause.
"I'm just bringing this up, because here? In Parity? The expression is 'For the rats'." Ash said, as he got ready to open the stable door. "Now, don't be alarmed. Provided you don't make any aggressive moves towards the horses, you'll be fine."
Ash opened the door, casting light into the long aisles of the stables.
...red eyes.
Hundreds of them. Thousands, staring from the shadows. The empty stables. The rafters. The grates. The feeding troughs. Everywhere. Tiny little flickers of embers, speaking of presence, watching, danger...
Though it seemed like Ash didn't think so. He just walked right on it.
Sam did not walk right on in, at first. He hesitated a moment, with the dawning realisation that all the things he'd seen in his world were puppies and kittens compared to this. Dragons, Nagas and living embodiments of creation he could handle. This?
"Erm... Ash? Is this... normal?"
"In other places? No. Here? Yes." Ash said, as he reached into his backpack and produced a brick of what appeared to be hardened peanut brittle. He placed it on the ground, and they swarmed from the shadows. Rats, of all shapes and sizes, pouncing on the brick, some running up Ash's body to get there faster. "This is a sursine. Um, that's Aarde. It basically means 'special growth'. The ground seems to have a sort of...specialness to it. In their history, what changed humans to the Aarde species, gave them a connection to the earth, was being enslaved by an empire that made them mine mountains for generations. The specialness there changed them, and anywhere it rests, unique things might occur. Here, it's a unique symbiotic connection between the horses of this land and the rats. A nice side effect is these horses are prized as mounts, because they're near impossible to spook. There's a story if you want to hear it..."
Ash was feeding one of those horses a carrot now. It indeed had no issue with all the rats hanging out around it, and on it.
"...why not? Got nothing better to do."
Now somewhat reassured, Sam stepped over the threshold, making sure to carefully skirt the rats as he did so. Approaching one of the horses, he also produced a carrot from his pocket and offered it to the animal.
It would be a strange day where horses did not like carrots.
"Technically you have lots of better things to do; you just can't do them because you challenged Valse and his girlfriend and her brothers to that gambling game involving dice and coins and they cleaned you out."
"I still say some motherfucker slipped him a loaded dice," huffed Sam. "Besides," he added, patting the horse on the nose, "you're the one who took me out to a big, scary barn on magical soil guarded by a literal army of rats. If it wasn't to tell me a story, then I would have already left by now."
"In any case, this is waxenworm. It's a grain, though it more resembles a seed. Have a smell, and be warned it doesn't smell good." Ash said, opening a bag and offering Sam a handful. Ash was right; it was like someone had carved a knife out of sour candy and used the point to firmly prick the inside of Sam's nostrils.
"GACK," was Sam's immediate response, clutching his nose as though he'd been punched in it. It took several seconds for him to recover, and there was a scary moment during those seconds where he looked like he was going to throw up.
"...and what do you use THAT for?!" he gasped out after the seconds where over, tears streaming from his eyes.
"Wow. You really don't like it. It doesn't taste much better...though I've heard with goat's milk butter and sea salt, you can get a sort of happy medium that makes it passable...but in any case, it's got a lot of essential nutrients and it's a pretty hardy crop. It's just no fun to eat. Plus more than a few species can't keep it down. Anyway, it was about nine hundred or so years ago...this town was smaller, and I think it was called...Nertl? Nerful? Started with a Ner...got changed to Parity three hundred or so years ago...anyway, the story goes that there was a nasty guy going around who wanted to conquer and enslave and etc etc. He was a necromancer...his name was either Naar or Kaar...I'm going with Naar for obvious reasons based around taking this story seriously." Ash said, putting the grain back into the bag.
"...so Naar is a serious name, whilst Kaar isn't?" Sam was busy checking his nostrils for signs of singe marks
"Mainly because it makes me picture fighting an evil automobile."
Or maybe a vampire.
"What?"
Nothing, nothing.
Privately, Sam understood that reference. He just wasn't going to say so, not wanting to confuse Ash even more - and in any case, his first thought had been of a certain snake. Best not to compound the situation.
"So," he prompted, "this Naar guy... What happened to him, then?"
"Anyway, Naar did all sorts of nasty, wide ranging things. He blighted crops and inflicted diseases and so on and so on, and he was spreading his net so wide that not every area could be protected or helped. The two main issues that arose back in Ner-whatever was his diseases didn't just kill; it tried to raise whatever it killed, and if it failed, it left the whole body toxic. Poison. And by extension, inedible. Even to carrion animals like rats. So death called them and they found there was no food."
"...I think I can see where this is going. Oh, hullo."
A large rat had climbed onto Sam's foot, and was now staring at him intently. Sam's hands automatically went into his pockets, searching for peanut brittle.
"Of course, it wasn't just the rats that were put in danger by this. There were the people, their farm animals, their hunting animals...but the only crop that resisted Naar's necromancy shit was waxenworm. So they had to exclusively grow that, and feed it to their animals. The animals were a little less picky...which brings us to Naar's other nasty little trick. The stupratape parasite. I'll spare you the gory details, but they basically settled onto animals, entered them, and did their best to drive them mad with pain. Didn't work so well with humans who noticed their presence and could remove them, but unless you want to be checking every animal twenty-four seven..."
Sam sucked in a breath from sympathy pain. "Yeouch. That's just... mean. I can't imagine what it must have been like, watching your own animals suffer like that... If my Dad still had his good hip, he'd have found where Naar was and given him a kick in the balls for that."
Peanut brittle was found, and the rat practically yanked it out of Sam's fingers. Then it dashed into the shadows, pursued by at least a score of it's fellows admits a chorus of hungry squeaking.
"Now the last detail. Do you know rats can't vomit?"
"Geeee eeeeye- no, I already did that. No, I did not. Thank you for sharing."
"It's important. It's how rat poisons work. Many animals might expel the poison, but rats can't, and their poisons are based around that. Rats also can't eat raw waxenworm. It's too intense, often kills them. So we have masses of rats drawn by death and no food, nasty parasites, and a food crop rats can't eat but others can. Rats are clever animals, and they ultimately discovered something interesting. Waxenworm that passed through a horse's digestive system but didn't get wholly digested...they could eat THAT. Something about the process rendered it more tolerable. And it was only the horses. Humans were too short a 'cycle', animals like pigs too. Cows were too long with the whole multiple stomachs thing. But horses, it seemed, were just right. And hence the only source of food for the rats."
If Sam had a facial expression at this moment, Ash did not see it.
"...so that's why it's 'for the rats', then," he ventured, at last.
"Yep. But horses don't really want to be around rats, and the rats wanted food, so...the rats puzzled out a deal. They'd lurk around, and if any stupratapes decided to show up and try and infect the horse....gnaw gnaw gnaw. It didn't take the horses long to get the hint."
"...oh, like oxpeckers and ticks. Except the oxpeckers bite first, because the ticks are massive bastards."
"Yes. Now, Naar only plagued the lands for like...four years...but on a sursine, that's long enough. Even when things went back to normal, the bond endured. The horses shared their food, the rats acted as bodyguards. And the longer it went, the more intertwined it became. Now horses and rats born in Parity are basically brothers from different mothers. Only here too; attempts to replicate the circumstances have never worked. Also, I don't know what happened to Naar. He just stopped plaguing and poisoning everything, so I assume someone kicked his head in."
"I should hope so. Bastard."
Another carrot. The horse in question didn't complain - who would, when free carrots were here? Then a thought came to Sam - one he often had around Ash, who tended to not outright state anything due to, as far as the other blond was concerned, some crippling need to be dramatic about everything.
Surely there's more going on here.
"So..." he ventured, as the horse crunched happily away. "This still doesn't explain much about why we're here. Is the story all there is?"
"Well, we're here because I'm debating getting Christine a horse for an anniversary present, and you're with me because...you're broke and you feel most comfortable with me." Ash was checking a horse's teeth, rats swarming around his feet. It was clear if the horse expressed discomfort, Ash would rapidly be in much MORE discomfort. "And this place has an interesting story, and all."
It was a moment before Sam next spoke.
"...alright," he said, suddenly, "time for another story. I grew up on a farm, as you know. And that meant my dad had to teach me some of the ins-and-outs of it - especially checking on horses. The first time I went solo, a stallion the size of a small car kicked me in the ribs and laid me in bed for a day because I got frustrated with him. But dad said 'Try him with kindness' or some shit like that. So on the next time, I gave him some sugar and a pat on the head, and he stood still as stone whilst I filed his hooves down.
"So I can tell you straight off," he added, turning and walking over to where Ash was, "this one's got a bum knee. It's in his posture - I can tell from here he's not putting enough weight on that leg, and that worries me. You want your wife to be jostled about like a courtesan every time she wants to go for a morning trot? No offense," he added, although he wasn't sure if that was directed at Ash or the rats.
Hopefully, the latter. He did not want to exchange stories with Bishop Hatto in the afterlife.
"Well, I would have consulted experts, but I'll defer to your expertise. We'd best get one of the animal doctors then." Ash said. "Though, speaking of past lives, that brings up something else..."
----
The same town. Somewhen.
"One elephant went out to play...upon a spider's web one day..."
Some things have inherent beauty. A setting sun. A fossilized animal. And a mother singing to her child, as she slowly walked the little girl forward, holding hands with her with the little girl streching her arms above her head. She swung her daughter up, and she laughed.
"He has such tremendous fun...that he called for another one to come..."
Swing. The rats watched with wary interest: young ones of this kind did not come into their haunts often. The purpose became clear, as the woman walked her daughter all the way to a young horse and swung her up onto its back.
"Yayyyyyyy!" The mother said, clapping.
The rats came.
Not to harm, or threaten. Just to be there. The centuries and the sursine had taught them some lessons that normal rats would never learn, really could NOT learn. Don't be dirty. Don't climb bare skin. Don't react badly if being picked up unless violence was immediately apparent...
Still, it was surprising when the little girl didn't scream, or panic, or run. Instead, she let the rats climb on her, sit on her shoulders and head, the horse snorting beneath her. Sometimes, children knew things even adults would have a hard time discerning.
"...Two elepants went out to play..." The mother said, taking the horse's reigns and guiding it, the little girl gripping the saddle, the rats remaining on her like she was their general. "Upon a spider's web one day..."
"Fun fun fun!"
"Yes, Aggie. They had such tremendous fun."
"Hey Sam..." Ash was perusing the clouds. "Do you know where the phrase 'For the birds' comes from?"
Sam shrugged. "Fucked if I know. What do birds got to do with anything, anyway?"
"Horses eat various grains. Like oats. They wouldn't always digest all of them. So they'd poop and then birds would come and eat the undigested oats in the poop. So if you're saying something is for the birds, you're politely saying it's horseshit."
"...geeee eeeeye jooooooe," Sam idly sang. He doubted anyone else would get the reference, and was too weirded out to care otherwise. "...and what makes you bring this up?" he added, after a pause.
"I'm just bringing this up, because here? In Parity? The expression is 'For the rats'." Ash said, as he got ready to open the stable door. "Now, don't be alarmed. Provided you don't make any aggressive moves towards the horses, you'll be fine."
Ash opened the door, casting light into the long aisles of the stables.
...red eyes.
Hundreds of them. Thousands, staring from the shadows. The empty stables. The rafters. The grates. The feeding troughs. Everywhere. Tiny little flickers of embers, speaking of presence, watching, danger...
Though it seemed like Ash didn't think so. He just walked right on it.
Sam did not walk right on in, at first. He hesitated a moment, with the dawning realisation that all the things he'd seen in his world were puppies and kittens compared to this. Dragons, Nagas and living embodiments of creation he could handle. This?
"Erm... Ash? Is this... normal?"
"In other places? No. Here? Yes." Ash said, as he reached into his backpack and produced a brick of what appeared to be hardened peanut brittle. He placed it on the ground, and they swarmed from the shadows. Rats, of all shapes and sizes, pouncing on the brick, some running up Ash's body to get there faster. "This is a sursine. Um, that's Aarde. It basically means 'special growth'. The ground seems to have a sort of...specialness to it. In their history, what changed humans to the Aarde species, gave them a connection to the earth, was being enslaved by an empire that made them mine mountains for generations. The specialness there changed them, and anywhere it rests, unique things might occur. Here, it's a unique symbiotic connection between the horses of this land and the rats. A nice side effect is these horses are prized as mounts, because they're near impossible to spook. There's a story if you want to hear it..."
Ash was feeding one of those horses a carrot now. It indeed had no issue with all the rats hanging out around it, and on it.
"...why not? Got nothing better to do."
Now somewhat reassured, Sam stepped over the threshold, making sure to carefully skirt the rats as he did so. Approaching one of the horses, he also produced a carrot from his pocket and offered it to the animal.
It would be a strange day where horses did not like carrots.
"Technically you have lots of better things to do; you just can't do them because you challenged Valse and his girlfriend and her brothers to that gambling game involving dice and coins and they cleaned you out."
"I still say some motherfucker slipped him a loaded dice," huffed Sam. "Besides," he added, patting the horse on the nose, "you're the one who took me out to a big, scary barn on magical soil guarded by a literal army of rats. If it wasn't to tell me a story, then I would have already left by now."
"In any case, this is waxenworm. It's a grain, though it more resembles a seed. Have a smell, and be warned it doesn't smell good." Ash said, opening a bag and offering Sam a handful. Ash was right; it was like someone had carved a knife out of sour candy and used the point to firmly prick the inside of Sam's nostrils.
"GACK," was Sam's immediate response, clutching his nose as though he'd been punched in it. It took several seconds for him to recover, and there was a scary moment during those seconds where he looked like he was going to throw up.
"...and what do you use THAT for?!" he gasped out after the seconds where over, tears streaming from his eyes.
"Wow. You really don't like it. It doesn't taste much better...though I've heard with goat's milk butter and sea salt, you can get a sort of happy medium that makes it passable...but in any case, it's got a lot of essential nutrients and it's a pretty hardy crop. It's just no fun to eat. Plus more than a few species can't keep it down. Anyway, it was about nine hundred or so years ago...this town was smaller, and I think it was called...Nertl? Nerful? Started with a Ner...got changed to Parity three hundred or so years ago...anyway, the story goes that there was a nasty guy going around who wanted to conquer and enslave and etc etc. He was a necromancer...his name was either Naar or Kaar...I'm going with Naar for obvious reasons based around taking this story seriously." Ash said, putting the grain back into the bag.
"...so Naar is a serious name, whilst Kaar isn't?" Sam was busy checking his nostrils for signs of singe marks
"Mainly because it makes me picture fighting an evil automobile."
Or maybe a vampire.
"What?"
Nothing, nothing.
Privately, Sam understood that reference. He just wasn't going to say so, not wanting to confuse Ash even more - and in any case, his first thought had been of a certain snake. Best not to compound the situation.
"So," he prompted, "this Naar guy... What happened to him, then?"
"Anyway, Naar did all sorts of nasty, wide ranging things. He blighted crops and inflicted diseases and so on and so on, and he was spreading his net so wide that not every area could be protected or helped. The two main issues that arose back in Ner-whatever was his diseases didn't just kill; it tried to raise whatever it killed, and if it failed, it left the whole body toxic. Poison. And by extension, inedible. Even to carrion animals like rats. So death called them and they found there was no food."
"...I think I can see where this is going. Oh, hullo."
A large rat had climbed onto Sam's foot, and was now staring at him intently. Sam's hands automatically went into his pockets, searching for peanut brittle.
"Of course, it wasn't just the rats that were put in danger by this. There were the people, their farm animals, their hunting animals...but the only crop that resisted Naar's necromancy shit was waxenworm. So they had to exclusively grow that, and feed it to their animals. The animals were a little less picky...which brings us to Naar's other nasty little trick. The stupratape parasite. I'll spare you the gory details, but they basically settled onto animals, entered them, and did their best to drive them mad with pain. Didn't work so well with humans who noticed their presence and could remove them, but unless you want to be checking every animal twenty-four seven..."
Sam sucked in a breath from sympathy pain. "Yeouch. That's just... mean. I can't imagine what it must have been like, watching your own animals suffer like that... If my Dad still had his good hip, he'd have found where Naar was and given him a kick in the balls for that."
Peanut brittle was found, and the rat practically yanked it out of Sam's fingers. Then it dashed into the shadows, pursued by at least a score of it's fellows admits a chorus of hungry squeaking.
"Now the last detail. Do you know rats can't vomit?"
"Geeee eeeeye- no, I already did that. No, I did not. Thank you for sharing."
"It's important. It's how rat poisons work. Many animals might expel the poison, but rats can't, and their poisons are based around that. Rats also can't eat raw waxenworm. It's too intense, often kills them. So we have masses of rats drawn by death and no food, nasty parasites, and a food crop rats can't eat but others can. Rats are clever animals, and they ultimately discovered something interesting. Waxenworm that passed through a horse's digestive system but didn't get wholly digested...they could eat THAT. Something about the process rendered it more tolerable. And it was only the horses. Humans were too short a 'cycle', animals like pigs too. Cows were too long with the whole multiple stomachs thing. But horses, it seemed, were just right. And hence the only source of food for the rats."
If Sam had a facial expression at this moment, Ash did not see it.
"...so that's why it's 'for the rats', then," he ventured, at last.
"Yep. But horses don't really want to be around rats, and the rats wanted food, so...the rats puzzled out a deal. They'd lurk around, and if any stupratapes decided to show up and try and infect the horse....gnaw gnaw gnaw. It didn't take the horses long to get the hint."
"...oh, like oxpeckers and ticks. Except the oxpeckers bite first, because the ticks are massive bastards."
"Yes. Now, Naar only plagued the lands for like...four years...but on a sursine, that's long enough. Even when things went back to normal, the bond endured. The horses shared their food, the rats acted as bodyguards. And the longer it went, the more intertwined it became. Now horses and rats born in Parity are basically brothers from different mothers. Only here too; attempts to replicate the circumstances have never worked. Also, I don't know what happened to Naar. He just stopped plaguing and poisoning everything, so I assume someone kicked his head in."
"I should hope so. Bastard."
Another carrot. The horse in question didn't complain - who would, when free carrots were here? Then a thought came to Sam - one he often had around Ash, who tended to not outright state anything due to, as far as the other blond was concerned, some crippling need to be dramatic about everything.
Surely there's more going on here.
"So..." he ventured, as the horse crunched happily away. "This still doesn't explain much about why we're here. Is the story all there is?"
"Well, we're here because I'm debating getting Christine a horse for an anniversary present, and you're with me because...you're broke and you feel most comfortable with me." Ash was checking a horse's teeth, rats swarming around his feet. It was clear if the horse expressed discomfort, Ash would rapidly be in much MORE discomfort. "And this place has an interesting story, and all."
It was a moment before Sam next spoke.
"...alright," he said, suddenly, "time for another story. I grew up on a farm, as you know. And that meant my dad had to teach me some of the ins-and-outs of it - especially checking on horses. The first time I went solo, a stallion the size of a small car kicked me in the ribs and laid me in bed for a day because I got frustrated with him. But dad said 'Try him with kindness' or some shit like that. So on the next time, I gave him some sugar and a pat on the head, and he stood still as stone whilst I filed his hooves down.
"So I can tell you straight off," he added, turning and walking over to where Ash was, "this one's got a bum knee. It's in his posture - I can tell from here he's not putting enough weight on that leg, and that worries me. You want your wife to be jostled about like a courtesan every time she wants to go for a morning trot? No offense," he added, although he wasn't sure if that was directed at Ash or the rats.
Hopefully, the latter. He did not want to exchange stories with Bishop Hatto in the afterlife.
"Well, I would have consulted experts, but I'll defer to your expertise. We'd best get one of the animal doctors then." Ash said. "Though, speaking of past lives, that brings up something else..."
----
The same town. Somewhen.
"One elephant went out to play...upon a spider's web one day..."
Some things have inherent beauty. A setting sun. A fossilized animal. And a mother singing to her child, as she slowly walked the little girl forward, holding hands with her with the little girl streching her arms above her head. She swung her daughter up, and she laughed.
"He has such tremendous fun...that he called for another one to come..."
Swing. The rats watched with wary interest: young ones of this kind did not come into their haunts often. The purpose became clear, as the woman walked her daughter all the way to a young horse and swung her up onto its back.
"Yayyyyyyy!" The mother said, clapping.
The rats came.
Not to harm, or threaten. Just to be there. The centuries and the sursine had taught them some lessons that normal rats would never learn, really could NOT learn. Don't be dirty. Don't climb bare skin. Don't react badly if being picked up unless violence was immediately apparent...
Still, it was surprising when the little girl didn't scream, or panic, or run. Instead, she let the rats climb on her, sit on her shoulders and head, the horse snorting beneath her. Sometimes, children knew things even adults would have a hard time discerning.
"...Two elepants went out to play..." The mother said, taking the horse's reigns and guiding it, the little girl gripping the saddle, the rats remaining on her like she was their general. "Upon a spider's web one day..."
"Fun fun fun!"
"Yes, Aggie. They had such tremendous fun."
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