Whatever It Takes, Part 7: Everybody Circling, It's Vulturous, Negative, Nepotist

The Leowolves seemed to have decided that the tension was somewhat defused, though numerous ones were still prowling around, as if they thought trouble would attract more trouble. Not sure what else to do, Vimmy and Venny sat with them, and once night had fully come and the temperature was starting to drop, along with the first traces of fresh snowfall, they headed inside into their own rooms.

Celeste was downstairs, doing some kind of paperwork. Christopher was nowhere to be seen, probably down in the depths beneath the house. Patty, likewise, was completely AWOL, likely in her room, based on the closed door. Left with nothing else they could think to do, the two girls headed to their own room.

It took them some time to wind down, both of them talking a little until they’d fallen to silence; Vimmy had busied herself with a wooden puzzle she’d picked up on their journey back home from the Aazar shopping, while Venny had lain down and read. Sooner or later they’d turned out the lights and gone to bed, thinking tomorrow would be a new day and a fresh start.

Except sleep hadn't come. Even after cycling through manually powering down their metal parts, tossing and turning for awhile, they’d eventually given it up as a bad job. Venny wasn’t at all surprised that when she sat back up and got out of bed Vimmy had followed suit, both knowing the other likewise couldn’t drift off.

They’d stayed in their room since they hadn’t wanted to wake anyone else up too, trying to divert themselves while waiting to get tired enough they could snatch some sleep, but neither could quite manage it. Going through whatever motions they could find quietly, they had fallen to once again communicating through silence and body language. Venny glanced at a sketchpad and Vimmy handed it to her while she tinkered with one of her drones, a hatch on it’s underside open. Nothing was wrong with it, but it was keeping her occupied.

Vimmy heard it first. A faint echoing ring. Not a bell esque sound, it didn’t have a perfect reverb, like a bell did when its clapper was swung back and forth. But it was definitely metallic.

Whang. Whang. Whang.

…it came to Venny first, once she could make it out. It sounded like someone hitting something metal with a hammer. Actually…

It sounded like blacksmith work.

…the Ravensky ‘estate’ didn’t just consist of the house and the many buried chambers beneath it. There were a few secondary buildings; one was for storage and backups for the defenses, another was a stable of sorts that the Leowolves could shelter in if the weather became truly appalling (it hadn’t happened YET, and had mainly been used for sleepouts with the animals when the kids were growing up), and the third was…

A workshop. That the girls had been shown, but at the time had been closed up. Not being used. But they knew where it was. And with their special eyes, they were able to, once they found the right window, to look out and see the light dimly out in the forest, flickering both from use and the sheets of snow coming down. Someone had trekked over there and was using it.

The fact that zero alarms had gone off made it fairly clear that it was almost certainly someone in the family. That, or the leowolves were even more talented than believed and could do metallurgy. Still, to reach the main house, over the wind, indicated that someone was REALLY hammering at the metal.

Vimmy and Venny put their heads together and used some of the mental training they’d been getting. If the noise was purely from the work, they PROBABLY would have been given SOME kind of alert. And it probably wouldn’t be done at two in the morning. That suggested some form of exaggerated effort that wasn’t bothered being concealed. Neither Christopher or Celeste seemed to be of the current mindset where they’d be acting like that. Julia was not around. That left, by basic observation and deduction, Patty. Off in the blacksmith shop, hammering away, in the middle of the night, with a decently heavy snowstorm blowing down.

“...What’s she doing, do you think?” Vimmy asked, squinting at the light from the structure through the trees.

“Probably a mix of work and taking out some frustrations. I’d guess, anyway.” Venny replied, standing next to her and likewise staring at the workshop. After they’d quietly talked it through they’d gotten quiet again before Vimmy had spoken up; The both of them had liked Patty from the first, but even after becoming a part of the family, they weren’t quite sure about whether they should’ve talked to her or left her alone in the aftermath of what had just happened. They’d thought to let her come to them, if she wanted, but it was awfully cold outside… If Patty hadn’t felt she needed to be out there, she wouldn’t have been.

They watched quietly for a little while longer before Vimmy gathered herself up and started toward their door, Venny not moving until she asked “What are you doing?” Even though she already knew.

“I’m gonna go check on her and see if she wants a hand with whatever it is.” Vimmy said. Venny shook her head. “I don’t think she’s out there right now because she wants company.”

“Well, then after she tells me to go away I’ll go away. But she’s- She’s our sister too, we should at least try and see if we can help, or even just talk to her. You wouldn’t ignore it if it were me out there, right?” Vimmy pressed, raising her eyebrows.

Venny sighed after a second or so, walking over to her. “...No, I wouldn’t. I’d be thinking and doing the exact same thing.”

“Let’s just try and be as sneaky as possible, I really don’t want to make more trouble for her by waking everyone up.” Vimmy said, Venny nodding and putting a finger to her mouth in a shushing gesture. Opening their door by degrees, the pair very quietly crept out and down the stairs, Venny reminding herself to watch her tail when they passed the repaired chunk she’d knocked out of the wall. It didn’t take that long, but felt like it did since they were tense.

Being out in blowing snow at night remained not exactly a fun task, but at least the journey was short. Smoke was pumping from the chimneys that extended from the ‘workshop’, and the hammering had cut off just before they had exited the main house, but had resumed when they were almost at the door.

The door…did not open.

Not locked. Stuck. Venny had to put her shoulder into it to get it open, a semi wet sucking/cracking sound indicating that some moisture had gotten in and frozen, semi-locking the door in place. A flurry of snowflakes was blown inside and instantly melted from the far higher temperatures: it was akin to being in a sauna. Actually, no: saunas were meant to be comfortable, while this was a step beyond ‘comfortable’.

“Shut the darn door, were you two born in a barn?”

At first, the two girls swore that Patty was wearing what appeared to be a diving wetsuit. But, from the way it rippled when she swung her arm down, smashing the hammer onto the glowing green mass of…something that was glowing green, despite the fire being the normal reds and whites, her clothing wasn’t…solid enough. Like she was wearing some kind of…oil outfit. That stuck to her and moved a bit. Like a very, very crude Ardent. Apparently it was special, because she wasn’t wearing shoes: the outfit was one piece and covered her feet.

“THIS STUFF IS TRICKY! DOOR! CLOSE!”

Patty kept hammering at the green…whatever it was, as the two dragon girls frantically tried to get the door closed flush. Which was…a bit of unexpected trouble. SOMETHING had been warped, and the two girls had to struggle to close the door without breaking it. But they managed, eventually.

When they finally thought it was settled, they turned around to see that Patty was…drinking from a flask of some sort. She held up her other hand, with one finger up. Just wait.

She swallowed. Coughed a few times.

“D’isgros” She managed to say. “This is gross.”, most likely. Then she leaned forward and with a loud burping gurgle, semi-vomited over the green…material, a giant hissing mass of steam erupting from the action as whatever she had drank immediately came back up. Having put down the hammer, she had what appeared to be a glorified, heavy duty spatula, that she used to hook one end of the material and fold it over onto itself, more hissing steam erupting from the action, as she quickly grabbed up the hammer again and began smashing away at it.

“Girls, pump the…blowy thing. Need to heat this up to pure liquid.”

Well, that was simple enough. Just go to the bellows and apply effort to it. The heat in the chamber rose even more, Patty hammering away at the mass before she took the partially solid lump and held it inside the blazing forge, the green material (it certainly ACTED like some kind of metal) melting into a sludge that dripped down into a small brick mold. Patty indicated when they could stop, and once they did, she used tongs to remove the mold and the green material inside it.

“This is gonna smell terrible. Hold your noses.” Into a water trough the mold went, with a hiss of cooldown that almost sounded like a scream. Withdrawing the mold, Patricia gestured with her hand, using basic stream telekinesis to pop the green brick out. It shimmered in the dull light. And yes, it DID smell terrible, a thick plant-like scent mixed with bile and bad breath, though at least it wasn’t a lingering smell.

“...yeah, good stuff.” Patty put the brick down next to two other, cruder shaped bricks. It was easier to get some kind of aesthetics with more than one person, it seemed. “I thought I’d forgotten how to do this, but guess not.”

Vimmy had drifted from the bellows while Venny had remained, the younger dragon not quite approaching the bricks but getting close enough to crane up and look them over. She glanced from the material to Patty and then back, still not quite sure what she was wearing but moving on for the more immediate thing. “What is it?”

“Bubblebutt.”

“...WHAT?” Vimmy and Venny said, almost at the same time.

“...Bubblebutt?”

“This is called Bubblebutt?” Vimmy said.

“It’s a mix of steel, wax, a certain kind of sap, and a few…special ingredients. You can get them a few ways, but the best at hand is…well, you saw. Drink the sap and then UN-drink it. It’s mainly used for hammers and stuff. Like, weapon hammers. Mauls. You give them a coating of this, or make the end of it out of it, and the impact creates a sort of bubble of force between the weapon and what it hits which ‘pops’ for extra impact. People like to use it for battering rams, so, bubblebutt metal. Why…?”

They looked between each other, Vimmy questioning but Venny shaking her head. “Uh… You know what, nothing. It, let’s just say it means something else where we’re from. Best way to put it.”

“I’ve never seen a metal you work by drinking part of it, but there’s a lot around Weav I’ve never seen. I guess that’s fair enough.” Vimmy allowed, shrugging. “It looks like you’re doing fine, but we heard you working from the house. Do you want some help? We’re better at following directions than we are at closing doors.” She tried to joke.

“No. I got this. This is…scutwork. The real trick is working the bubblebutt…”

Vimmy had to suppress a mad giggle. Patty apparently noticed.

“...The impact metal from this state. Basically, once you heat it up again, you have to apply it right, because once it cools a second time, it’s set. You try and reheat it, you’ll just ruin it. And it’s not like we need any of this. But I do. Need. This. The making, not the bubble-metal.” Patricia sighed, and the girls were struck at how different she sounded from her mother. Celeste sighed with the voice of a woman who was basically breathing through a mouthful of allegorical scar tissue. Patty’s sound was more ‘I really wish this would go away, but it won’t, it doesn’t, and I hate it.’ “But I don’t think we have enough sap left to make any more of the bubble metal. Might as well work on some trinmnium. Need to fold it like 1200 times to get it just right. Maybe knock off some of that.”

Patty yanked open a trap door, vanishing down into the depths below.

It was quiet for a minute, save for a few faint sounds of movement below, before a box filled with black lumps of what looked like slag was shoved up.

It sat on the edge of the trapdoor, Patty not following it up.

“Vimmy, Venny, you two were criminals and stuff…you know what I mean.” Her voice came from below. “You got forced into it. But I bet you met a bunch of criminals too, while you were there.”

Well, yeah.

“...why did they become criminals? Like, why were they…doing what THEY did?”

“...Well… Some people, a real, real small number- I’m talking a handful- were bad from the start. They were criminals in the same way mud settles on the bottom of water. By and large, it’s a process. They needed something, and whatever it was, they found it under the organization we served. If it was money, or something like a family, or just structure, whatever. Mostly little things built up into bigger and bigger things until they were in so deep that nothing was off the table anymore.” Venny said, having to glance away since she was describing herself. “Why? A bunch of small reasons that turn into big reasons over time. Eventually, I think most of them looked around and rationalized that it was better to be a dog on a chain than a stray starving in the street.”

“It’s not right, but it makes a little sense from the outside looking in. Most of the ones around my level, it was those rationalizations all the way down. “I need this, and no one’s going to stop me from taking it.” That sort of thing. You ever heard of the idea behind broken windows in an area leading to more crime, and worse crimes over time? It’s like that but in reverse. Maybe that small handful I mentioned dove in headfirst, but most of the ones I knew, it was a matter of sinking into that world by degrees. Until they started drowning in it and never noticed.”

“...A lot of other operatives I knew were suckers. I know how that sounds to say, but they never thought about things like consequences or how killing and stealing affected other people. They couldn’t, after awhile.” Vimmy supplied, clasping her hands together. “Being self centered was like a shield for them, that way they’d never get hit by what they’re doing but be able to justify it like Venny said. Sure, maybe they were ordered to take someone out and burn down their house afterward, but so what? They weren’t related, it didn’t affect them. I do agree it’s a process, but… The road to hell isn’t just paved with good intentions, delusion is part of the bricks.”

“I’d agree with that. It’s a mix of giving reasons that only make sense in the moment and sinking into it all, the WHY is pretty varied most of the time. Mostly no one starts out as murdering scum, but after people had done so much and been a part of so many things, they’d get to the point where heading into an abyss was just another step instead of something unthinkable.” Venny said, briefly thinking of some of the people she’d worked with. They hadn’t all been monsters, but by the time she’d known them none of them had been good for much else anymore.

Patty, while they had spoken, had come out from beneath the workshop, carrying a new hammer and putting pieces of the ‘trinmnium’ in the forge to be smelted. Unfortunately, through no fault of their own, the look on her face indicated they hadn’t been able to provide her with any answers.

“...I know my mom and dad did bad things. I know that…sometimes they did them because they liked them. But…the stories, the records...you heard them. Like, I mean…even if he’s leaving out stories where he did bad stuff because he liked it, I…doesn’t it weigh more of the times he didn’t do that? And, like…they got forced into it too. I only have like…a few vague ideas, what happened when they were my age, younger than me, but…bad people came into their lives and broke everything, and they decided that they were not going to let that happen any more, and they were also mad and did bad things back because of how mad they were, but that was just part of it, while the bad people who broke everything did it because…they were just so bad and…I mean, Julia was just like them and yet as soon as the Kobbers finally got rid of that curse on her soul she just…backed away from being like that, and I get pickups on how they made all their ‘mistakes’ with my older siblings and Hope and I got the ‘best’ parenting and…”

Patty stopped talking slash rambling, beginning to hammer and fold the new metal, which was now a burning yellow-white, no longer resembling slag.

“...What did Mom tell you?”

Patty hammered away at the metal as they recounted what Celeste had spoken of.

“...I’m sort of aware that Oriam has problems. Lots of snakepit behavior, my dad would say. Being on top is as much staying on a moving carpet that also wouldn’t mind if you fell down. Did you hear the stories of why Bernard, my cousin, is basically in jail now? The whole incident with poachers and who they were and what happened and…” Only a very vague idea. “That wasn’t the only barrel of rotten fruit in Oriam. I kind of knew that, but…

“...Desiree pissed me off, but I get where she’s coming from. She doesn’t know things, she thinks things…and she cares about Blade. Her anger comes from the idea of him being hurt more. How can I be mad at that? Besides, you know, what I feel, because that’s what feelings do. But daddy and I were going home, and…

“Daddy doesn’t like using the big roads. He likes the more hidden, smaller ones. Less chance of trouble, and less risk of cold rat damage.”

What?

“Oh. I couldn’t say ‘collateral’ when I was a kid. So I called it cold rat damage. I never talk about it with anyone outside the family so I forget…so, we were taking a back road out of Oriam, to our air transport. The back way had a bridge. And on that bridge were a bunch of young people. Part of the upper…parts of Oriam. A bunch of mes. Except they were nothing like me. And they were being led around by Greenmore Ravidras. I don’t expect you to know that name, I didn’t. But he’s part of a family in among the snake pit of Oriam. The third son of one of those families, I think. So, access to lots of power and no responsibility, especially since unlike my parents, a lot of parents don’t try real hard to make sure you understand that everything you have, you should appreciate and ‘get’. Greenmore and his gang of friends, they were acting as a makeshift toll service. You want to cross this bridge? Pay the toll. There is no darn toll. They didn’t need money, they all came from it. Normally daddy would have just given them a look and they’d have all run away, but I was still ticked off about Desiree so I asked to handle it.

“...I know I’m not…that smart. Not like Hope. Or Dawn, who can talk birds down from trees. But…it was just…why were they doing this? I walked up and they tried to make me pay a toll and I basically went, I am all alone and I am not paying a toll, stop this nonsense and go away, if I am doing this you should really understand that I feel I can do it…and they just…they just didn’t understand.

“They didn’t get my view. They didn’t see me as a danger. They saw me as…entertainment. A bunch of stripes of it, some…foul. Just, foul. And they were doing it for…NOTHING! They were…BORED! They had so much and it just made them…bored! And they thought, yeah, this is great, this is how we should act, this is what was best in life. Because they all got around me while I was TRYING to get them to stop it, and then they all tried to mind-zap me.”

---

“A certain specialized form of the Glorious technique. You basically surround someone and, you need to be in considerable sync, basically all of the people mix together their weaker wills and combine them all on a central point. It’s called the pinnacle, or pinnacling.” Christopher said. “It’s not something you can just break out, because the person being centered on has to be standing still for the different mental wills to properly join up and strike as one. So as you might have guessed, it often gets used by scumfucks to make an already scared or unaware victim helpless, and then…

“Those idiot kids, well, I suppose I don’t blame them for following math. You do this 20 times, 13, 14 of those times, you’ll render the person being Pinnacled helpless. 2-3 of those times? They’ll be mentally bludgeoned, reel a bit, be weakened. 2 more of those times? They’ll get pushed but have too much innate strength or will to be affected.

“And with my children? My daughter, Patty?

“Well, she’s the 20th. Water off a duck’s ass is the best way to describe it.”

---

“...And when I realized they were basically trying to knock me out so they could…I didn’t Read deep but their intentions were just so DIRTY and so POINTLESS and it wasn’t NEEDED but they WANTED it and I felt their damn fingers jabbing at my brain and…

“I got angry.”

Had the girls been there, it would have been exactly like the practice they’d seen in the ash waste segment of the Ravensky forest. Right eye igniting, hair turning white on that half, except instead of being a smaller bubble pushing away the crushing force of a larger one, this one completely shattered the opposing ‘bubble’ like it wasn’t there. That had been enough to mind-whammy four of the ten of Greenmore’s group and knock them clean out, and the rest, well…

Even if all of them had been able to ignore it, it wouldn’t have helped them.

“So I made my point without words. It was easy. They were nothing. Less than insects. And even though I was mad, I kept my head. Broke out Tempest, tossed them around, bumped them on the head, like I said, easy…but Greenmore was a LITTLE better than I thought and…

“Well, I’m guessing it was some kind of acid. I don’t know if he did it because he was scared or mad himself, but he tossed it in my face to try and take care of me.

“Didn’t work. My AEGIS is too potent for just some basic acid to do more than hurt. But it DID hurt, and…

“I just knocked him down, got down on him, knees on his shoulders, and I started punching. You want to do all this and hurt my face? Fine, I’ll hurt YOUR face. I was just going to punch him three or four times, bloody his nose, give him a black eye, but…didn’t feel right to stop. So I just kept punching. Couldn’t really hear him, heck, I didn’t really see him. It was just…here is a punch I must execute. Done. I must do it again. Done. Do it again. Done.”

“Then I sort of just pushed my way through the fog and instead of throwing another punch into his face, I threw it into the stone bridge next to his head. Broke down through it several inches. I stopped, I was just looking at how I’d wrecked up his face more than I intended, and then dad finally spoke.”

---

“What you’ve decided…maybe one day you might feel it has to be put aside. I don’t think this is the day for it. Or the reason.” Christopher said, repeating what he’d said then. “So she got up…and I’ll admit, I was almost in awe of how she managed to get herself under control. At her age, myself, her mother, we would have kept punching until there was nothing left. The rage would have completely consumed us. She had that same anger, and while it briefly took the reins…she snapped it back. She had enough principle that it came out even when it would ruin ‘the fun’. She was calming down. I handed her a waterskin to wash her hands, she’d made a mess of them…

“And I was looking down at this Ravidras kid, who wanted such disgusting things, thought it was fun, didn’t understand them at all, almost COULDN’T, that he’d made my baby upset…

“I saw myself lifting my foot and bringing it down. Right on his face. Put what was left of it through the bridge into the river below. Or maybe on his chest, stomp a hole right through, so he could FEEL it, feel just a TOUCH of the callousness he’d come to define himself by doing it to others, grinding them under my heel, glaring daggers down at him as the bill he thought he was above came due, with interest…

“It was a moment of weakness. But for that moment, oh, how I wanted it. Like a hit from a drug. But I put it away.

“...but, well…Patty’s not like us. Her Reading is often much more low key, basic. She doesn’t peer deep, because she doesn’t like to see what lies there. If you’re good, it’s an intrusion. If it’s bad, it’s…something most would want to not see. After all, peering so deep so often into people, well…look what that did for her mother and I. Her sister. Her older brother Justice, to a degree. But she’d snapped into alert battle mode, so her senses and her ‘eyes’ were keyed up, and she hadn’t calmed them down before she got a look at what I wanted. No trace of her father there. Or the hero she saw in things I did. Just what made it so she had to be raised in isolation, trained from birth, behind a score of walls and defenses. What both terrified so many rotten sorts…and made them hate. And, well…just how alike he, Ravidras and I, were, at one core, at that moment.”

---

“...I knew it was there. But…never really…saw it, before, like that. It was a mild slap to my face. But the worst part was, once it had all calmed down, once we were back on the way home…I realized two things. The first was…I’ve taught myself to not hurt people. My whole style uses a personal ‘wave’ that puts numbness and weakness in place of pain, even in the place of damage. I’ve worked real hard on it, tried to make it my basic way of being. But after, I realized…I’d turned it off without being aware of it. I didn’t want to be merciful. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted…just what daddy wanted, it seemed. From what I saw.

And I also sort of realized that I was seeing what made Blade leave. What made Justice kind of leave. Why…maybe Desiree was more right than she knew, or that I’d ever wanted. Why NOT adopt some new sisters for me? They can come in fresh. All the mistakes are made. So grateful for a family that they’d accept it. And whatever flaws come along with it. Because a house with a leaky roof is better than no house at all, right? You can plug leaks. Or put buckets under them.

“And even though I know that’s wrong, that it’s all a complicated mess…the damn thing, all the damn things just, will, not, GO AWAY. And I really, really, DON’T WANT IT AROUND.”

Patty finally thrust the molten length of metal into the water trough, having hammered at the material all throughout. She barely seemed winded, despite speaking and exerting herself to a degree.

“...I’ll get over it. I guess. But it just feels so…raw. And…there. Just…there. Don’t want it, but it’s THERE. Just….

“...there.”

The two had drifted while Patty talked into their ground in formation; One on either side, like bookends. They’d watched her and hadn’t interrupted, Vimmy and Venny just taking her in.

“..Aw, Patty. I’m sorry.” Vimmy said quietly.

“...People are complicated. I know that’s a big, blithe thing to say, but it’s true. Maybe some are entirely one thing or the other, but that isn’t the huge majority. Everyone’s made up of hundreds of little thoughts, you know? I’m not saying what happened was right or wrong, not at all- but think about this; One or two of those guys who were there, maybe even just one, they’ll learn from it. You were probably the very first person who didn’t just push back but pushed hard, and… Even if it’s just one, in the years to come it’ll be there. People like that don’t just switch up on a dime, but they fuc- messed around and they found out. As rotten as they sound, one or two of them probably needed the wake up call. It might’ve been the only way they’d have changed for the better.” Venny said, also quiet. She glanced from the metal to the trough and then back.

“You stopped. Even if you could have kept going, or even if you wanted to, even IF you stopped being ‘kind’, you stopped when you did. It never should have shook out that way in the first place, but it did, and you… You did what you had to do and then you stopped from going too far. That’s gotta be worth something.”

“You’re partly right about us, we did come in fresh.” Vimmy spoke up when she paused. “But I think it wasn’t so much us or you all doing all the work, but meeting in the middle. We wanted a real family, badly, and you all… made the space for us, because we needed you. It just worked out the way it did. We didn’t expect perfection, and neither did any of you out of us. Which is good, because it never would have happened if that was all any of us were looking for. But… We’re our own people, too. We’ll never stand in for or replace your brothers, it’s never going to happen. It would never happen. We’re… Nobody planned for us, or expected us to be here now. We’re here because we love all of you, and because we love you. That means everything to us.”

“Nothing that happened was good, or anything you’d want to happen, but… You’re not your parents, Patty. You’re you. Your own person.” Venny once again took up the reins as though the dragons had planned the order of them talking. “I know it’s got to be a shock to see something like that. To Read the way only you all can, but they’re people. Maybe not people quite like anybody else, but they’re human beings too. We know a little bit of what they’re capable of, but it’s not about that. I think it’s more important about who they choose to be and what they choose to do than the parts of themselves they’ve caged. If people were only judged at their worst, then there’s no hope at all for Vimmy and I.”

“...All the things you love about your dad, all the things that make him your hero, they’re all still true. He’s still the same person, that part of him was there the whole time. You are going to get past this, and over it, and not because you have to. But because you’re going to be able to. There is a difference.”

“This is a complicated mess… We weren’t sure what to do with ourselves. Even with everything we just said, we didn’t want to, you know. Overstep ourselves. But we’re here for you, Patty. You couldn’t chase us off if you tried. Not because we’re grateful- though we are- but because you’re our sister, too. It’s not an obligation, it’s what we wanted and what we chose.” Vimmy swallowed before at least trying to smile. “Even if that Desiree lady had a point, she was still way more wrong than she was right.”

Patty had been listening, staring at the embers of the forge for the last sentences. When the two finally ran out of words, she kept doing it for several more seconds, before she sighed again. More of a release, that sigh, than the sound of a burden unwanted and yet unyielding.

“...you got THAT right.” Patty said. Well, she seemed less tense. “All right dad, you can come out now.”

Silence.

“...I KNOW YOU’RE THERE.”

More silence, save the forge. Patty looked around.

“...well, darn. He isn’t listening in. I am actually surprised. How’s the weather looking out there?”

The only way to check was to get the door open again.

The howling snowfall was a good answer, Venny getting the door closed again as swiftly as possible.

“...well, guess we can fold the trinmnium some more.”

---

“No, I wasn’t there. Going out in that weather? Are you insane?”

—


“...sir, I just realized something.” Venny said.

“And what is that, Venny?”

“Weav was once like the Earth we know. Only a few remember, the rest believe its false history, and you’re basically letting ‘the truth’ die out because well, it really has no point, because you can’t go back.”

“Yes…”

“...so you probably had to stand there and keep a stone face whenever anyone you worked with with that green metal called it ‘Bubblebutt’.”

“...the trials and tribulations of my life come in all stripes.” Christopher said, his tone sour and bemused. “Julia and I, when she was fifteen, cleared out a bird fighting operation. Lots of roosters. It’s something hearing your daughter blithely, repeatedly, talk about how it was good to get rid of the cock ring.”

“..PFFFT-” Venny at least tried to hold in the laughter but was unable to, she and Vimmy giggling between each other. It struck them awfully funny, enough that they had to cover their faces to get themselves to neutral again. Despite that they’d go back to it every few minutes.

Whatever It Takes, Part 6:...And Yet I'm Half-Diseased

-Yet Another Normal-By-The-Unusual-Standards-Here afternoon at the Ravensky estate-

“Side training. Babies, we’re ready!”

Some time had passed since the girls had resumed ‘normal arm one inch training’, which, at the moment, was overseen solely by Celeste. Her husband and daughter had set off to go…somewhere and do…something, they hadn’t said what it was. Visiting some old friend of Christopher’s, the girls believed. But, after the most recent session, their mother had indicated they needed to stay put.

A moment later, a romping horde of leowolf pups (who were often the size of normal sized dogs) eagerly bumbled over, feet crunching through the icey, crusty snow remnants, the fresh powder having long been walked into the dirty, semi hard and pitted ice that was defined in some places as “névé’. It had been warm the last few days, and a lot of said snow had melted, but Celeste had indicated that, based on readings their house was getting, a fresh storm was due very soon.

“This training is simple. Just pick up one of the pups, carry it to the marked tree in the forest, and go around it and come back.

“Yes, now. With your hand sore and weakened. The pups will be doing their best to squirm loose to play. Let’s see how well you can handle this with a semi-uncooperative moving bundle and a sore arm with weak fingers. And how well you can match it with your normal, fresh arm. No using your tails. Though any other part of your body is allowed.”

“Understood! Hi there, little fellas.” Venny said, her serious nod vanishing when she looked back down to the pups. “Now, who wants to- Okay, okay!” She bit back her giggle.

“Oh… oh, let’s see here… Who’s gonna…” Vimmy considered, caught between trying to give them all her attention and assessing which one wanted to be carried the most. She was spoiled for choices. It didn’t take them long to pick a pair or hoist them to themselves, but it was immediately an effort just to hold on. The pups were taking to their job well, and with the normal amount of strength both girls had to bring to bear, it wasn’t quite easy or cut and dried. It didn’t bother them, but they meant to succeed.

Setting off across the yard, their own metal feet crunching the latest footsteps in the névé, both the dragons knew this would be the easiest part; They didn’t have to watch their steps much, and could just focus on keeping the Leowolves in the crooks of their arms instead. Even squirming and moving about, Vimmy and Venny were able to respond to their movements and mostly hold their furry burdens. It was still sort of a shock at the difference between a normal arm’s strength and their full boosted capabilities, but even sore and weakened limbs were at least capable enough. Venny tutted and had to wriggle a little herself before bracing her pup with her hips to get it back in position before they broke the treeline and headed into the forest.

“Aw… Who’s a good boy? I know, I know, you want to have fun on the ground, but this is important, so you just-” Vimmy said, grunting from effort. The Leowolf in her embrace was giving it a good effort at getting free, and she had to bring it closer by shifting her shoulder to reset her grip. “Now you- Oh, sure, I’m happy I picked you too-”

“Feel around with your foot before you step, you don’t want to trip. I have a feeling if they get loose once that’s it, they’re not just going to let us catch them all easily. Isn’t that right?” Venny said to her and then to the pup she was carrying.

“I hear you. Is that right? You’re not getting caught again?” She asked hers, fixing her grip again as a pair of paws braced on her to help the pup twist around. “Well, that’s fair. We’ve got our part and you’ve got yours, I can’t blame you for that.”

It was slower going than they could have done, but even knowing it was pretty unlikely they were going to get a perfect grip they tried to keep the pups close to themselves to give them a little less room to wriggle out of their arm’s crook. Occasionally one would pull ahead of the other, but they’d end up stopping to reset their hold while the other caught up whether they wanted to or not. Even though their arms ached a little from supporting the pups they didn’t begrudge them or the effort to hold onto their squirming, having grown awfully attached to the pack over time. Vimmy’s turned to look at her and she smiled at it even as it went back to trying to free itself from her.

Focussed on getting to the tree but talking to each other or including the pups in their conversations since they knew they could understand them, Venny occasionally winced, feeling more stiffness in her arm than she’d have admitted but not willing to give up or shift the Leowolf to her other one. Even if this was fun, it was still training, and she was going to do her best to follow the rules she’d been given. Her tail occasionally dragged on the ground as she’d reset the hold she had, the Leowolf giving her some trouble but nothing she couldn’t handle…

“Whooo! Feels like you got heavier while we’ve been walking.” Vimmy confided to hers, straightening her back and then bending a little once she realized she’d inadvertently given the pup more space to maneuver. “When you tell your packmates all about this, make me sound really cool, okay?”

Finding the marked tree and then starting back, the hard part truly began. Their arms weren’t exhausted but they were certainly tired and a little achy, and their hand’s grip strength had withered and winnowed away; More than a few times the pups almost succeeded in escaping only for the girl to get them slotted back in at the last moment, right before they’d gotten free. Vimmy was surprised by how tired she actually was, while Venny had noticed and filed it away. They could take a break when they were done, not before and not during, because it just would have made the task harder to finish.

“...Are you having fun? Well, I’m glad for that. You’ve got a lot of spirit, I have to say!” She admitted to her pup, taking a deep breath as they kept going. She stepped over a stick and then had to shift her arm, caught off guard by the Leowolf’s sudden maneuver. “Were you waiting for that? You almost slipped out! Don’t worry, we’re gonna play our hearts out when this is done- but not a second before! You’re not going anywhere.”

“Aw, don’t listen to her. You almost had her that time!” Vimmy teased, Venny giving her a look before it broke and she laughed a little. “Okay, I can admit it. You did almost have me there.”

“She’s just not as good at this as me. Don’t you get any ideas.” Vimmy said to her pup, who turned to look at her again. She gave it a surprised double take.

Continuing to pick their way through the forest back the way they’d come, Vimmy moved some branches aside with her back for Venny as she lifted her pup to her shoulder and shook her arm out a little before resetting the Leowolf, Vimmy following and then letting out a sound as her Leowolf took the opportunity to quickly shift around from side to side, Vimmy almost losing her hold.

“Okay! Point proven! You’re not gonna- You just-” She spluttered, moving around to seize hold of the pup again while Venny smirked. “Not so easy, is it? I thought you were good at this.”

“Well, I am- but I think he’s better.” She admitted, her leowolf seeming satisfied by this pronouncement.

“We’re getting close, we just have to keep going… It’s crunch time. Imagine if we lost them now.” Venny cautioned, Vimmy giving her a distraught look. “Don’t say that! Don’t listen to her, you two, she’s just giving out some doom and gloom.”

Venny snickered and held her pup up again, keeping a hold of it with her bicep and elbow even as it tried to shimmy free. “Nope! No, you’re staying right here with me.”

“Does your arm hurt?”

“It didn’t until you mentioned it. What’ve you been eating, little guy? Bricks?” She joked to the Leowolf, Vimmy shaking her head. “It’s not their fault, it’s on us. I’ll take this over lifting weights most days, this is pretty fun.”

“For them or for us?”

“For all of us, I’d say. They seem pretty happy.”

“Yeah, fair point. I’m glad I picked you out of the pack even if you didn’t make this a walk in the park.” Vimmy said, smiling at her Leowolf even as it wriggled, she almost losing her grip again. “That wasn’t an invitation!”

The yapping greeted them as they re-emerged from the forest, the carried puppies barking back. Were they being teased for not escaping?

“...I will admit, I expected you to lose your grip at least once.” Celeste said, once the girls finally put the pups down; they promptly began bounding with endless energy, unable to have expressed it while being held, at least in a way that wouldn’t have potentially hurt their ‘partners’. Their ‘play bites’ could be a bit too firm. “You two did TRY, didn’t you?”

She was talking to the puppies. They responded by headbutting her knee.

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

Lots of annoyed sounding yapping barks. One of the non-carried leowolf pups had procured a stick and poked Celeste with it.

“Ow. All right Vimmy, Venny, take off your shoulder pads. Let’s go get some meat out of the freeze room and practice our cooking over an open fire. You lot, go get your parents and you can have first crack at the results.”

That task was considerably easier. The Leowolves eagerly ate whatever the girls cooked even if it was a bit overdone. Celeste kept testing the wind as they did so; she seemed a mite concerned. She thought her husband and daughter should have been home by then, and she wanted them to beat the storm.
 

—

In the end, the two did.

And didn’t. The girls didn’t need to be able to Read to be able to sense something was wrong when the two returned. The storm, in a way, had come with them, Patty seeming much more withdrawn than she normally was when she and her father turned up in the evening, just saying hello to her sisters and then going inside.

“...Girls, stay out here for now.” Celeste immediately pulled aside her husband, or rather he met her halfway, the two going inside the house and closing the door.

Silence descended on the yard. The Leowolves prowled around, some pawing at the ground where the snow had melted enough to expose the usual grass and dirt. The ones who had become closest to the dragon girls, one young female and two male puppies, named Saffron (the girl), Puff, and Mister Twister (the puppies, and those were their ‘human granted’ names: they had their own names within their culture that tended along the lines of ‘Caught The Scent Of Flowers Early One Spring’ when translated), stayed near them. Normally, dogs would have a look of confusion or concern, not knowing what was going on. It was the reverse in this case; the leowolves seemed to know more than the girls, and seemed to think they’d be asked.

As they cleaned up the fire, finishing the last bits of meat yet to be cooked, neither one had initially broached the subject. It was there, present amongst their other chatting, but until they didn’t have a real distraction they were busying themselves.

Vimmy was the first to finally break it. “What, uh… What happened? Is everything okay?”

“Here, we saved some odds and ends until now.” Venny offered the bits of fat and cooked miscellanea to the Leowolves, trying to be fair with who got what portion. “Saffron? I don’t suppose you could tell us what’s going on?”

“It’s probably nothing, right?” Vimmy said aside to her. Venny considered this for a second and then shook her head. “If it was nothing, they’d tell us it was nothing from the get go.”

Saffron chuffed, then began pawing at the ground.

It took her some time: canine paws were not exactly made for writing, and the dirt was cold and compact, making it harder. But the girls were fairly sure that Saffron wrote FAMILY. Then again, it was such a mess that it could have been FAULTY, or FEALTY. But that didn’t really sound like an answer.

Twister had gotten a stick. His writing was slower, but much more legible.

SMELLED BLOOD.

Saffron and Puff agreed.

MAN.

Saffron agreed. Puff wasn’t sure. They meant human blood, is what they had smelled, the girls puzzled out.

ON PUPPY.

That would mean…Patty? They smelled blood on her? Well, from how they were talking, it didn’t sound like HER blood, like she’d been injured, or was menstruating (which COULD be an answer: the process could make women feel out of sorts). More like she’d drawn blood. Considering she was the equivalent of a pacifist by Ravensky standards, that WAS odd.

There was the faint sound of raised voices. Well, that was a first. If they weren’t mishearing it, the girls were vaguely aware that they were hearing their ‘parents’ first argument, as in, the first they had ever heard. The Leowolves seemed to agree, their heads cocked, ears twitching.

DOCTOR DID BAD.

More written words. The ‘doctor’ was Christopher: he’d first bonded himself to the Leowolf pack that had shared the space with him back when they’d first settled by providing medical treatment for a newborn litter that came down with a disease the Leowolves themselves couldn’t treat. Hence, their general term for him was ‘doctor’. (Celeste’s was ‘Windcutter’, due to her throwing daggers)

NO MORE.

Saffron had written that with her own stick. She seemed to be saying “We won’t say any more, it’s akin to eavesdropping.”

Watching over the process, Vimmy and Venny hadn’t interrupted or chipped in with more questions as the Leowolves had explained since it would’ve confused the matter further; When they’d heard what sounded like an argument they’d both looked up and over at the house, a little shocked. They didn’t think of Celeste and Christopher as being in perfect lockstep, but they’d never heard them be at odds before now. It hadn’t entered their minds as a thing that could happen, and although they were both adults it dismayed them a little. Hoping they were just wrong since they didn’t know for sure, the two had turned back to the messages in the dirt taking shape once again at the same time.

“Man, blood, on Pupp- on Patty? Doctor did bad… Patty wasn’t her normal self just now, she went right inside and didn’t have anything to say either. Did you see blood on her?” Venny asked, eyebrows drawn. Vimmy shook her head. “No, but to be fair, I wasn’t exactly looking for it. Even if it had been there she’d have probably washed it off first before coming back.”

“I hope she’s okay. I don’t want her to have to struggle with something… Well, not to press you, but what did the docto- what did Christopher do? Can you tell us that, at least?” She asked with a shrug. “If not, that’s okay.”

“...I think I can guess, but you know what they say about assumptions.” Vimmy said hesitantly. Venny made an acknowledging gesture at her. “Well, I hate to say it, but no matter what’s going on we might have to just shut up and keep our noses out of it. It’s our business but it’s not OUR business, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah, but… Patty is so nice, and she tries really hard. I just don’t like the thought of her- you know. Being pressed.” Vimmy said uncomfortably. She looked back over the house and traced it with her eyes. “Puff, Saffron, Mister Twister- Were you with them? Or was it some of your other packmates?”

The girls then realized that was the wrong question: they’d been right there. The Leowolves also shook their heads on ‘what did he do’: either they didn’t know or wouldn’t say.

FAINT SCENT. They managed to write, running out of room in the exposed dirt and making the word ‘scent’ look more like ‘snt’.That suggested that there would have been no obvious blood to see and/or miss. They did seem to ask around their fellows to be sure, communicating in the language and method the unique animals had, but no new information was gathered.

Finally, the door opened again, Celeste coming back out and sitting on the porch steps with a sigh.

“May as well come over here, girls, won’t keep you completely out of the loop.” Celeste had one of her daggers out, spinning it around in her hand. A nervous twitch of sorts.

What happened?

“Family stuff.” Celeste sighed deeply again, before she tossed her blade across the front yard, impaling it in a tree. “You recall our tracking training?”

Yes: go in the forest, see if Christopher or Celeste or Julia or Patty could find you. They always had, usually fairly quickly. But it was a learning experience, and besides, those four knew the woods a lot better, as well as having had practice doing it.

“Well, Chris and Patricia went to Oriam as their last stop to check on some orders. While there, Patricia asked if he wanted to practice tracking her through a city. He agreed, she got a ten minute head start. A game of tag, basically. But…Patricia got into her head that she could do something else. Because Oriam is where her brother is stationed.”

Her brother?

Of course. Blade. The prodigal son, and supposed ‘black sheep’, though every family member would swear up and down that that was the wrong descriptor…except Blade himself. The dragon girls didn’t know much: just that Blade and his father had had a bad falling out, and Blade had run off and joined the Oriam military, where he was serving with distinction (per perhaps biased sources, ie, his own family, but the Ravenskys rarely puffed up accomplishments). He hadn’t had ZERO contact with his family since then, but it had mostly been his mother and Justice, his younger brother, whom he’d always been closest to.

“But when she tried to sneak into the camps and whatnot where he’s at the moment, she got intercepted. By HER.” Celeste’s voice had a mild sour note. “Oh. Ignore my tone. Just a mother being overprotective. ESPECIALLY since what happened that caused all this. By her, I mean Miss Guillory. Desiree. A top notch mercenary, works for one of the best, and cleanest, companies on the planet. We know because Christopher and I thoroughly scouted it. That’s my son’s curse, sort of. He’s the only one of us who can’t Read. In any way: Julia had a different pair of talents now, but she still has something. Blade had, has, nothing in that vein. So if she was out to get Blade, he’d have nothing but his intuition. She wasn’t…which makes her a damn rarity.

“While he can’t Read, Blade does have a certain…talent. Won’t give details, but he’s basically an army in and of himself. Even moreso than us, or you. And unfortunately, the world is full of people who have no faith in supposed clear intentions. Blade’s got numerous enemies, inside the military and out, who either want him under their thumb, directly under their control, or to be neutralized because it’s too likely in their minds he’ll go rogue. If it wasn’t for Paul and well, us, he’d be in an even harder situation…Desiree came into his life because she was basically told ‘Go see if we’re gonna have to assassinate this guy because he might ruffle the wrong feathers’. She concluded no, but well, between our family issues and the military brass more often than not being a problem, alongside a part of the troops Blade serves with, well…she’s managed to worm her way into a connection with my son. Is it a pure one? We looked, it seems so, she has no ill intentions. However, she REALLY doesn’t like us, based on why Blade is where he is. And while she might not be completely in the wrong there, she isn’t so good at holding her damn tongue and speaking her damn mind as she sees it.

“Basically, she told Patricia that she should leave, that Blade didn’t want to see her, he didn’t want to see ANY family drop in out of nowhere, he’d always want a heads up. And when Patricia insisted, and unfortunately, this is where you two come in…”

????

“Desiree basically sourly asked why Patty felt the obligation, because after all, she had two new siblings, didn’t she? Wasn’t Blade properly replaced? She was a bitch about it, but…well, I see where she was coming from. I also want to know how the hell she found out; she works in information fields, but that’s still something you’d have to go out of your way to discover. Then because they had been standing around at the edge of the camps so long, they got spotted by sentries and had to bail. And well…as you might have guessed, the damn woman hurt Patty’s feelings with her assumptions. I get her mindset. She’s protecting Blade. Who knows if he knows about you two himself? And if he does, well…

“I honestly can’t say it’s impossible that he might think along the same lines. That you’re replacements. It’s nonsense, but you know full well that emotions don’t listen to your brain a lot of the time. So that was part of it. The part that sort of involved you two.”

“...Aaaaaw.” Venny sighed, running her hand over her face and putting it over her mouth. It was like taking a blow she hadn’t seen coming. “Yeah, that’s… damn it...” That seemed to sum things up pretty well. Vimmy had tensed and looked down at the ground, not speaking yet. Both of them had picked up broad strokes of the dynamic between Blade and the rest of the family, but hadn’t pried; It truly wasn’t their business, or something they’d wanted to blunder their way in the midst of. Still, even with an overview, the two had known it was at least a slight possibility there would be feelings toward the way of them taking his place from at least one source or another…

“...We… We know that’s not how things are, we’ve never had the idea that we were taking anyone’s spot. Besides, it’d be impossible. There’s no chance we could replace him no matter what’s happened or what’s come between him and all of you. He’s your son and their brother, we’re just a pair that fell in- That’s never been something we wanted or something we’ve even- We’re our own thing entirely, we just found our way to you, we’ve got nothing to do with-” Venny trailed off, trying to explain themselves but faltering. Vimmy shook her head.

“I wish she hadn’t found us out, however she did…Patty didn’t need us thrown in her face. That had to hurt worse than a slap.” Vimmy said quietly, looking over to the house again. In the moment she was more concerned over her than with themselves. She’d had ideas of heading something like this off that were more or less just vagaries instead of anything real, but it made her feel a little like an intruder again. “I was sort of hoping it would never come up, but I guess that was dumb of me.”

“...We really didn’t mean to make these things worse. I’m sorry.” Venny scratched her head, behind her horns. “I guess we should’ve picked up this could have happened, but I thought there’d be, I don’t know, some way we could spring out and smooth things over before- Well, before anyone else knew we were here. I can’t blame Blade for seeing it that way, if he does, but I was hoping we’d be able to explain ourselves first instead of just being painted with a bad brush. It isn’t the long and short of things at all, even if it looks that way.”

“...Did something else happen on top of that?” Vimmy asked, squirming slightly. She felt guilty and knew perfectly well why. “I mean, that’s plenty to start, but…”

“The other part isn’t really my place to tell you. Neither is it Christopher’s, really. But you know how Patricia feels about her father. We’ve tried to let her in on the fouler details, to a degree, as she’s gotten close to being an adult, but she still thinks her father was primarily a great champion of striking down evil and injustice. And he WAS, but…and she’s thought, I can just follow that example, but not his methods. But the one thing we never could find a way to tell her…sigh. Is that the world might not cooperate.

“Basically, after that, on their way home, they ran into trouble. Patricia asked to handle it. She did, but…due to the situation, her senses were keyed up. So I think she picked up more than she normally would about certain intentions and likely meanings…and it…wound her up. She got more aggressive than she normally does. That’s not the key issue though. She stopped, Christopher checked on her, she stepped away…and well, my husband looked down at her work, saw the ‘man’ for what he was, what he wanted, how he’d upset his little girl, and well…his other half briefly came out. The kind that lived for eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, and all that. Just a deep, momentary urge to violently kill the man, but he kept himself under control…but that desire, an almost NEED, filled him up briefly…

“...Normally, Patricia wouldn’t have really noticed. But her senses were keyed up, so this time…well. She got an inkling of the parts of our lives we did our best to keep away from our children. I think between Desiree and seeing that, whatever else, that darn woman was on some level RIGHT…

“...well, it was what it was. Is.

“...I think she’ll process it. It’s hard for anyone to get a realization that their parents are people. But she hero-worshipped her father most of her life; Hope might have been his ‘girl’, but she had, has her own life, wants. Julia followed in his footsteps more because of her curse than her really wanting to. But Patricia wanted to be him, albeit with less…intense methods, since she could read, as in, read and write read, and read the first base accounts of what he and I did back before any of the children were born. Just what she has decided to NOT be…well, there’s no way avoiding her learning what that is. But she probably didn’t expect to learn it like that.

“That’s all I can tell you. Or feel I should be allowed to. If she doesn’t say anything, well…that will be that. I got mad at Christopher for having a moment, but I know myself. If our positions were reversed…probably nothing would have changed. It might have been even worse. You’ve only seen me at my best, at my most composed, but back in the day, I had a worse temper than both my daughter and my husband. And it’s still there. Just down in a box, no longer needed. Unless it feels it is.

“I’d ask how she’s feeling and just leave it there.” Celeste said as her final assessment.

“That’s probably the best approach. I don’t think us jumping on her and doing a bunch of prying and wheedling would be a good idea.” Venny nodded, seizing on that. Even from their own perspectives they had an inkling of the fact that Christopher and Celeste were multifaceted, but they’d also come in at a much later time… and besides, it wasn’t hard to have some empathy. In some ways they’d had the same view of their own dead parents, and finding out something that challenged those ideals would have shocked them pretty hard.

“You have a worse temper?” Vimmy asked, blinking. She genuinely wouldn’t have believed it, but after a few seconds she realized in itself that proved the point awfully well. They really hadn’t seen Celeste at anything but her best, it was certainly a part of why they’d been drawn to her the way they had… She shrugged to mentally shrug it off as well, knowing she was probably feeling a hundredth of what Patty was.

“Well, understood. We’ll be there for her, if she wants us there, but we- You’re all our family now, but that doesn’t mean we’re just going to shove ourselves into the throat of things that don’t concern us if we shouldn’t.” Venny said, looking to Vimmy, who nodded to her. They weren’t outsiders anymore, but they could still have some tact… “What a mess.”

“That’s life. If it wasn’t a mess, especially for the likes of us…well, I doubt we’d be sitting here. But yes. I had a worse temper. You recall these, I’m sure, Vimmy?” Celeste held up her personal blade (well, one of them) by the blade. Ruination, Vimmy believed. “You remember what I told you about them?”

“Um…they’re called an…Engine…Emotion Engine. They’re basically super special and complicated Intrickys…Intricacies that need emotion to get made.”

“You might have seen Paul’s weapon, Skyfall, in our files. The multi-gun weapon. Ian’s is a ‘second rate copy’, for lack of a better term. Paul’s weapon is a literal portable anything-you-need arsenal. Any type of firearm you want, you can make it into. Beyond even what Ian’s Incarnate can do. His wife, well, his girlfriend at the time, Laura, made it. Her emotion was love. She loved him, she wanted him to come back alive from the final battle with Xaxargas…it took her five weeks to fully make it. And it drained her so bad that she was basically bedridden for three days afterwards. And she declined to go to the Blacklands with him as a result, for the final battle. It maybe saved her life, or else the 44 might have been the 45, who knows…when I was just a bit older than you, and was fully under Christopher’s wing…he taught me the process, because my rage was so great that in some ways, it scared him. It would, he believed, lessen it.

“It took me one night to make these. Ramification and Ruination. And I barely felt tired afterwards. Now, he wasn’t wrong about it helping…but I would say it still speaks for itself.

“So yes, my sweet girls. I do have a temper. I once had a much worse temper. And I’m not proud of some of the things I did while it ran roughshod over me. And even now, well…last year showed I can still fail by it.” Coral, she meant. “All this training, well…I have seen the echoes of the rage YOU had once, Vimmy. I will do my very best to ensure that anger, if it comes back out, serves you, and not the reverse. You as well, Venny, though yours is a different color. Julia gets her own temper from both of us, her father and I, but I really do think she mainly gets it from me. That whole incident where she rampaged through a criminal lair at that alien location and was so out of control that the Kobbers arrested her for it? That’s exactly what I was, once. Hopefully my change from that is complete and irreversible. Slip ups like with that Coral girl aside.”

“Yeah, I used to… Well, I’m just glad I met you when I did, and not before. Even when I was at my best I was just such a brat all the time, biting people’s heads off for looking at me wrong and destroying everything that got in my way. I’m kind of glad none of you had to see that.” Vimmy admitted, embarrassed over it now. A lot of her memories of the last few years before coming to Glasetera were colored by at best a low, simmering rage at the world and everyone in it. She’d been so close she hadn’t really understood herself, but outside of it now… “We heard some of how Julia had been, but I don’t think we ever really saw it ourselves.”

“No, even when she beat the both of us it didn’t really come out. Otherwise I’m pretty sure we’d be dead. Or the other fights we were all involved in, she always had control.” Venny pointed out. “Ours was… We’ve got different temperaments, but the anger is the same. Just being mad at everything and how it all worked. Where we were in it, and our rage built until it spilled out like pressure venting. That was the big first step for both of us, learning how to swallow those chips on our shoulders and get over ourselves. Everything else sort of came from that.”

“I think I get a little more how Patty feels, I couldn’t imagine you snapping. At all.” It was Vimmy’s turn to scratch her head behind her horns. “We didn’t come to Weav blind, or thinking you and your family were perfect, but we’ve only ever seen the best. Even Christopher, you all told us some of the good and the bad about him, but it’s not something we’ve… I guess not something we thought of as shades of pure black and white. If our former lives taught us anything it’s that most things have at least a little grey.”

“...We don’t need you all to be perfect anyway, just yourselves. That’s all we could hope for.” Venny said, able to smile at least a little. She meant it.

Celeste, in the end, didn’t say what came to her mind in regards to that final sentence of the discussion.

“Our selves might sometimes be the worst thing we could be.”

Whatever It Takes, Part 5: I'm Just A Product Of The System, I'm A Catastrophe, And Yet A Masterpiece

-One Day, After Numerous Efforts-

“...yeah, that’s about it. I suppose we could go find some expert Hemel, or maybe Miss Cosineau, to be absolutely sure, but I’m going by my own analysis, and it’s got its own merit. You can’t tap the Stream, girls.”

The Stream, a dimension of malleable and seemingly infinite energy that powered everyone in Weav, at least in terms of their superhuman efforts…and also was, or had been, accessed by the Foundry on the Kobber ‘planes’ to make their metahumans, and technically by the Einherjar, as they had been empowered by that method of access purely by accident. Kaydence, taught by Julia, could do it a bit, but she disliked doing so, feeling like it was akin to her snorting water up her nose to drink, and Isabelle, having fought Julia so often, had reverse-engineered the process…once. Oh, and the Space Pirates had come up with a messy, half-baked, and unstable as heck way to tap it, after Ash had given out some information he assumed would never leave the room he was in, and even if it had, that the process would be abandoned because it was immediately lethal, not understanding that the Space Pirates were quite willing to kill hundreds and hundreds of their number until they figured out a way that it was LESS lethal.

But it seemed that Vimmy and Venny would not be joining any of those clubs.

“As far as I can guess…it’s your bodies. It’s like trying to conduct electricity through wood. There’s too much artificial material in your makeup.” Celeste said. It seemed a bit arbitrary: after all, Christopher had numerous cybernetic parts and HE could tap the Stream, at incredibly high degrees at that. But upon discovering that the girls seemingly could not, they’d done some studies, and discovered that the man had basically been working around a minor handicap the whole time. He could channel the Stream entirely through his organic arm, but with his mechanical one, it technically stopped at the shoulder area and then emerged to get shaped AROUND the machine arm. Not much of a difference, but it existed. And it was far more prevalent in the much-more altered dragon girls. Christopher was still around 75 percent flesh and blood; with the girls it was more like 25 percent.

Sitting on the ground and worn out, Vimmy and Venny had halfheartedly nodded before looking at each other. As with everything they’d done their best and tried their hardest, but even then they hadn’t been able to get to so much as the first step of the process.

“...That does make sense.” Venny said, before she sighed, a little disappointed. “We’re altered pretty heavily from a baseline human, and there’s a lot of hard tech in us from top to bottom. I sort of suspected since we’ve had a couple of times of not being affected by some of the things in this world.”

“Well… I guess we can’t have everything. I was sort of looking forward to it, but it’s just not going to happen.” Vimmy said to them both. She’d folded her hands. “Besides, we’ve got plenty of other things going for us. Even if we can’t tap the stream, I think it’d be a little like looking a gift horse in the mouth.”

“Yeah… Yeah, that’s true. There’s just too many blocks in our bodies for the energy to even travel, I’d guess.” Venny admitted, scratching behind her horns.

“...then again, their innards are still mostly organic…” Celeste said, partly to herself, partly to her husband.

“...technically yes, but…ho boy. Okay.” Christopher took his chin, thinking. “Girls, you know what hysterical strength is, right?”

“Might not, by that term.” Celeste said.

“Women lifting incredibly heavy things that strong men couldn’t lift because their children are trapped and in danger under them. THAT’S hysterical strength.”

“Oh, yeah! There’s all these stories back on earth about, like, women lifting cars because their kids are underneath them, or in some of them it’s four wheelers, things like that. I don’t know of any examples, but that’s the general sort of theme.” Venny nodded. “Something about adrenaline and emotion overriding their normal levels. I’m pretty sure there’s a lot of urban legends about those circumstances, but I think it’s happened at least once or twice for real.”

“I’d guess so, otherwise there wouldn’t be those stories in the first place.” Vimmy pointed out.

“Hysterical strength doesn’t work unless you have situations like that for a reason. It’s your body protecting itself. You need to really get into a certain irrational headspace, so to speak, to override it. People who have gotten that desperate, maybe they succeed in what they had to do, but there’s a cost. Muscles get torn off bones, joints get permanently cocked, and so on. Now, I’m sure plenty thought, worth it as a cost. And not as bad if you have a healing factor, or some super-normal healing ability from somewhere else, like my sister, or the high cleric types in Embrace…but you’re a tricky mix of what was changed and what still is, and all things considered…

“All right. You still have some parts of your selves from before the alterations. What we were teaching is to channel the Stream safely. In THEORY, since you still have some natural flesh inside you, and you grasp the concept, you just literally can’t perform the execution in any way…or any SAFE way…but…

“...it’s POSSIBLE you might be able to tap it. In a hysterical strength sense. But the consequences would be dire. You’d probably run a strong risk of frying yourself like an egg on a griddle. Damage so bad that even the Kobbers could have trouble repairing it. Or repairing it fully. But…well, if things have gotten as bad as they can possibly get, and your only options are that or no option at all…

“...it’s possible. Please don’t make me repeat just how dangerous this option is to you. I think it’s better that you know you have it instead of not, but…please make sure it’s at the very bottom of the list of choices. No joke. Hell, I would honestly want Dawn to put in some mental blocks to be on the safe side, but that’s a violation, so I won’t ask you or her to do that. Just…look into my eyes, girl. This would be the absolute, utter last resort. The kind of desperation no one deserves to feel. ONLY THEN. NEVER. ANY. OTHER. TIME.”

Perhaps what really drove it home was the man’s tone. Celeste, their mother, was naturally warmer, more connected, while Christopher was a bit more distant, hands off; he was even that way a bit with his own flesh and blood daughters. But the way he was speaking was exactly how Celeste would have if she’d been giving the warning. Whatever else, he cared enough that he wanted them to know how very badly he never wanted them to ever have to use such a technique.

“...Understood.” Venny nodded seriously, before swallowing from his stare. More than just knowing the reality of what would happen if they tried it flippantly, or in a pure broken situation, Christopher emphasizing what it would mean was enough for her to accept what it was. Even for a dragon there were things better left off the table. “Hopefully, there won’t ever be a time it’ll factor in.”

“Hopefully… But I can’t imagine something staying standing after we hit it with everything else we’ve got.” Vimmy said, likewise swallowing.

“Yeah, and that’s the point. Even then, there’s a limit and a line. We’ll keep that in mind, we promise.” Venny swore, before looking over to Vimmy, who put her hand up immediately like she was taking an oath.

“...that’s all I can ask. All right then. Normal Stream use, it can’t be done with you. We’ll work around it. Still a list of options to make you be all that you can be.” Christopher said.

Though when the two girls had begun focusing on the next task they were given, the married couple shared a long look, that seemed to be part of an unspoken conversation. Not in a bad way, though.

Just…that list of options.

—

-Another time, after other medical assessments, away from home-

“...while we’re here in Oriam…girls, there is some other product I could investigate. For you and I. However, if you come with me, you’ll have to be blindfolded and deafened. The people involved are very, VERY paranoid and since they don’t know you beyond my word, which I’d be giving for the first time they won’t let me bring you any other way. Now I could just tell you to wait here, but this might also be to your interest. So, interested enough to accept that sort of caution?”

Perking up, Vimmy and Venny had raised their eyebrows. “Well, definitely! If that’s the lead up to it, it’s probably worth seeing. Right?” Venny asked Vimmy, who nodded curiously.

“Just, please don’t let me trip and fall on the way.” She added hastily.

“That is actually something I might have to consider. All right, follow me.”

The trio ended up spending nearly an hour wandering around, or so it seemed. Christopher was looking for some sort of markings only he recognized, and then when he found them, there was another trip (they were apparently some sort of coded directions) that ended in a small unit that seemed to be storing paint. Only the fact that the security guard was GIGANTIC, nearly the size of Zalafren Sigmund, though he was more naturally shaped, indicated otherwise. Christopher showed him something the girls didn’t see, and he waved them to a door at the back.

“Now, when I knock, we’ll be asked for a password. Say nothing and don’t move. Stare straight ahead. Doing that for five minutes IS the password. I don’t know who thought it up, but that’s their rules.”

Christopher hammered on the door. Ten seconds later, the slot on it opened.

“Password.”

Christopher just did what he’d said to do. The girls followed, having to make sure their tails didn’t move at all as they tended to when they were mildly anxious. Unable to look at any clocks, time seemed to lose all meaning, Venny wondered if they could have done this on their own, even with the appropriate information. Just standing there, like a statue…it reeked of being manipulated, or set up. Considering what their teacher had said, these people probably didn’t deal much in trust. And combine it with that…

There was the sound of multiple locks being undone, and the door opened into pitch blackness. Well, a watched pot did technically boil, whatever the saying said.

“Okay ladies. No alternate vision types, please. I’ll let you in and bind up your eyes and ears myself, then take your hands and take you along.”

The two girls swiftly discovered that standing still for five minutes was much more preferable than having one’s eyes and ears shut down: their sight was completely gone, and the earbuds so muffled sound that the only thing the girls could hear was if Christopher spoke loudly to them while next to them. It spoiled a bit of the niceness of him actually taking them by the hands when he was done and guiding them along, like a father walking with his daughters. But, he’d said those were the rules.

An almost ratlike run of paranoia threading through her brain, even knowing the particulars of the situation, Venny had needed to bite her tongue and trust in Christopher while she’d been blinded and deafened. It was uncomfortable for her, but she’d done as he’d asked, purposefully not trying to peek or cheat with any subsystems or differing modes of vision. Even though she didn’t know if it would have been detected or not, she meant to keep her word on the matter. Still, she kept her head up and obediently followed along, the curiosity of where they were going just about burning.

Likewise, Vimmy hadn’t enjoyed it when silent darkness descended on her from the earbuds and eyes being bound, but after taking Christopher’s hand her misgivings had pretty much immediately subsided. She’d liked that he was leading them somewhere to their interests, and if she had to jump through a few hoops first, that was fine. Almost nothing in life was free, you took the good with the bad. She thought she could feel where Venny was next to her, or maybe she was just imagining that, but it came to the same thing ultimately.

Both in their own worlds of themselves without any other input, their thoughts felt very loud; It wasn’t until Christopher would turn them to a different direction or stop for a moment that the rest of them would catch up again. They didn’t mind being led if he was doing the leading, but in their own ways they were both doubling and tripling down on what awaited them after it was said and done. Venny had almost tripped the once, but after she was stabilized she hadn’t again, just concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other and reaching their goal. Even cut off from the world by being blind and deaf, it felt like it lasted much longer than it really did, but neither one made an attempt to remove the earbuds or the wrappings of their eyes. In this matter as with all matters, Christopher had asked it of them and they weren’t going to shirk what he’d said or try to cheat. Until then, they’d just put up with it as gamely as they could, neither talking since they’d have only heard themselves in the first place.

Finally, they stopped. The girls could make out some muffled noise, Christopher speaking something. And despite their muffled hearing, they could only not hear, but SENSE the vastness of the door that swung open before them, Christopher leading them through, the girls sensing it even more when it closed behind them. At that point, they got the signal that they could remove their blinders and ‘deafeners’, which they did with considerable relief and speed.

The first thing that struck them was the lighting. It was intense, and yet muted at the same time. Not the harsh glare of a spotlight, but a light that lit up all the nooks and crannies of the room, allowing nowhere to hide. Beyond that, the room was…

Full of boots and shoes. Neatly organized, not quite in a sales-like matter, but well enough that they could be perused. There were three people, one human, two Hemel, at the end of the room, all aiming guns at them.

“Ignore them. They basically keep beads on everyone who comes in. They’ve got good trigger discipline. And there’s also the fact that if they DO decide to shoot, they won’t be able to kill us before we kill them.” The last sentence was said personally and quietly to the girls. As Christopher spoke, the door that the men were guarding opened.

While the ‘front man’ had been gigantic in a big, muscled sense, the man who came out was giant in a more rotund sense, dressed in pants and a shirt that seemed to be made of some kind of chainmail, or more like some weird chainmail/cloth hybrid, as it didn’t move like something solely made of overlapping scales of metal. He had a beard that had clearly been growing for a few years, perhaps to compensate for his thinning hair on his head, and wore very thick glasses that turned his eyes into smudges of brown.

“Damien.”

“Otiswell.” Christopher said.

“You know full well your social credit is exceeded bringing two unknowns down here.”

“And I think you know well just how deep my ‘social credit’ goes, considering how long and well you’ve had this operation in motion.”

Otiswell sighed like an annoyed grandparent, before he turned and headed back inside.

“My middle name. One of them. Part of the code, his first name is not Otiswell. I doubt you’ll learn his actual first name any time soon. Just call him Mr. Otiswell, he’ll respond to that if you have to speak to him. Come with me.”

The three guards kept their eyes and weapons firmly on the three at they headed through the armored door Otiswell had gone through. The next room was a bit more comfortable, a sort of waiting room/semi-lounge. There were two other people there, both women, but while they noted the unusual forms of Christopher and ESPECIALLY the dragon girls, they swiftly swallowed their interest in the unusual sights and returned to the books they were looking over.

“This is the Aazar.” Christopher said. “Oriam has the most consistent advanced ‘tech’ and machinery on this planet, out of an isolated Hemel lab or two, but there ARE other places that make items in that vein. Tech-esque items, instead of magic and smithing and other more old-school craftwork professions. It’s prohibitively expensive, and a lot of it is considered illegal and will get you sentenced to prison if you’re caught with it in the wrong places, and there’s a fair number of wrong places. If you want ‘the best toys’ in Oriam, you need ridiculous connections, and it’s often slow as hell unless it’s a crisis situation. So, the Aazar provides another option. And as long as they follow certain rules, I don’t raise issues with it. And so, they also sell to me. And you, perhaps. Follow me. We’re going to Riggings first. You should probably pull in your wings and tails again, some of these hallways can be very narrow.”

The three took a side passageway, walking past a few doors that wouldn’t be out of place in a traditional office building from back home. One door opened as the three walked past, an older looking man glancing out, seeing the three, and swiftly closing his door again.

“We’re not who he was expecting. Not everyone here is very social.”

When they finally arrived at ‘Riggings’, the girls finally found out that not every room was as nice and neat as the first ones. All around were piles of materials: metal interweaves, plastic–looking lengths hung on racks like drying towels, buckets full of clasps, buckles, and shoelaces, and all sorts of other semi-organized ‘piles and collections’. One part of the room was cleared off, however, save for full length mirrors and what appeared to be classic ‘attire dummies’, headless and armless model torsos you could put clothing on.

Vimmy, when the head of the department stepped out from behind her desk, thought it was a mistake. She looked no older than fifteen, at most.

Then she got a closer look, and saw the signs of greater age. Slightly worn lines on her face, the form of a mature woman, just alarmingly…shrunken, like she’d literally gone into some kind of ‘reality dryer’ and come out smaller than she should have.

“Esther.”

“Damien.”

“Where’s Social Call?”

“Elsewhere. I’m overseeing things.”

“Esther, Vimmy, Venny. My two newest wards, so to speak. Vimmy, Venny, Esther, just Esther for now. Esther is a metallurgist and armorer, she does excellent fine work. She’s whom I’m here to see, so feel free to look around her ‘shop’. All this is based around armor, all sorts, all parts of the body.”

“Because unlike Cheaters, we don’t run the risk of burning out or getting jammed up by whoever’s made the latest Switcharoo.”

“...she means Intricacies. Some people feel they cheat as being armor. That proper armor requires more design than just putting a ‘magic gem’ in a few ‘slots’ and turning them on. Plus, like she said. They can be affected by outside means. Switcharoos is one of them. I’ve always believed there’s merit in both opinions.”

“But you can only get real good work done here. Girls, if you knock anything over, you’d best restack it. Watch those tails. So. What your memo discussed, Damien?”

“Longcoat, yes.”

“Length?”

“Three feet, four inches.”

“Build?”

“Muscled slight. Female.”

“Layout?”

“Elaborate.”

“Protection Alarming, Overt, or Subtle?”

“...Subtle.”

The girls knew this product wasn’t for them. Based on what they could puzzle out, it was probably for Patty. Something to replace her shorter hooded jacket?

A lot of the pair’s boisterous, confident nature had been subdued on the path here, and after they’d both curtsied politely to Esther at their introduction they’d drifted apart while she and Christopher talked. Venny’s tail was longer and stronger, so while she kept it firmly behind her Vimmy focussed more on her wingblades staying against her back like a metal cloak. They weren’t going to blow in like a couple of bumpkins and knock things over and around if they could help it…

In some ways the Aazar was a little familiar to them from their experience with similar places, but at the same time it dwarfed those as a matter of course. Hideaways and safehouses were one thing, but the scale of it all put those right to shame. It had certainly piqued their interest, and they’d both made their way around the Riggings room to investigate further. They didn’t need much in the way of armor, what with subdermal implants and the capability to generate shielding, but that didn’t mean they weren’t still able to appreciate it. Arguably, being partly made of steel themselves just added to the whole picture.

Vimmy had stared at the metal interweaves curiously, not picking any up because she knew well enough to look with her eyes and not her hands, but still taking a few seconds to realize what they were and what they were for. They looked light but strong, obviously worth the difficulty it’d be to get here and acquire them… Briefly her thoughts turned to her friend Hannah, who’d made her own armor not so very long ago. The difference in her finished product and all the pieces and bits in collections laying around were pretty obvious, but it gave her a basis for comparison.

Likewise on her best behaviour, Venny had wandered over to some of the mirrors and dummies, raising her eyebrows at her own reflection and wondering briefly how people on Weav actually saw them. They’d had plenty of reactions to go on from their long trip back to home, but it struck her that maybe the two were a rarer sight than she’d actually realized… There couldn’t have been that many metal dragon girls running around, after all. Eyeing her own bodysuit and the layers of material over most of her vitals to go with her capelet, she had to admit she saw the appeal of things like chainmail or plating. It must have taken years for Esther to not only get to her place here but to be good enough with metallurgy to earn it, and she glanced over her shoulder at her and Christopher as they talked.

If it was for Patty, she’d probably like what she’d be getting… Venny briefly smiled a little as she went back to examining things, putting her hands on her hips.

Vimmy eyed a helmet while she put a hand to her curling horns, taken by wondering how things would have shook out for the pair if they’d been born here instead of Earth. There was no chance they’d have followed the same destiny, but it was interesting to her that things had sort of split off this way… Instead of horns she’d probably be looking for something just like the piece of armor in front of her for her head. If she’d have been able to afford it, or been a fighting sort to begin with.

…If Intricacies counted as cheating, what about all their upgrades? She briefly considered this and then shook her head, realizing it was a little late for that. Still, she was taken by all the metal and doodads around, wondering how they differed from the earth metals she was used to in form and in function. Maybe one day she’d find out, but for now she was content to window shop.

“Fire in the hole, girls!”

Two seconds later, booming explosions ripped through the room. Gunshots tended to not be as loud as they were presented in fiction, but whether due to the room’s acoustics or the type of firearm, that didn’t seem to apply here, Esther firing what appeared to be a handgun into a long coat that had been hung on one of the dummies.

“...That was a little TOO fast, Esther.” Christopher said, ie, I barely got a chance to warn them of the noise before you made it.

“Write a complaint card.” Esther walked over to the dummy, removing the long dark blue, leathery coat, fishing inside it and removing a pitch black piece of material, several bullets flattened against it. “A new mixture for the contraction material. Reinforced by interlaced paper metals, cooked just right, you can sew it right into the lining. Stops anything basic cold. Even some advanced strikes with some luck. The downside; no negation of substantial impact. Quite painful, especially if they catch your broadsides.”

Christopher took the material piece from her hands, looking it over, extracting one of the flattened bullets and looking at it as well.

“...I’ll take it.”

“Rush job?”

“No. Take your time. I want the most complete interweave possible.” After a few more sentences of negotiation and another given box of what the girls assumed was Terrae or sufficient payment, the two girls left the Riggings ‘department’.

“In case you were wondering, yes, she’s an adult. She got caught up in a Waste-based toxin that didn’t kill her like some, but it altered her body. Completely negated any more growth she’d normally do. She’s in her 40’s, but if she wants to, she can throw on some makeup to hide the age and pass for a child. Whether she does that for any reason, I don’t know. I just know she did it at least twice.” Christopher said. “Also, I was considering asking one of you to test the jacket, but I figured asking you to literally get shot for me was a bridge too far, no matter how obligated you might feel. I know you don’t register pain quite like us, but she did say it was very painful. I guess I’ll test it on myself once I get it home in a few weeks.”

A little jumpy still- she hadn’t expected the field test, although maybe she should have- Vimmy had nodded. “Well, neither of us was going to ask- but we were wondering about that. I figured her genetics were just that way, or something.” She’d admitted with a shrug. Poking around about people’s appearances was a great way to get under their skin quick without meaning to, she knew that much. “It really seems like she knew her stuff…”

“I’ll say. Kevlar doesn’t do that to bullets, and it’s the closest thing I can think of, what was in that coat, I mean.” Venny chipped in. Privately she was glad he hadn’t asked for them to stand in as test dummies, even though she also knew they would have without question. “I don’t think there’s really any way to get shot and just shake it off like water on a duck’s back, but the nearer you can get to that the better.”

“Was that a gift for Patty? Er- I’ll, I mean, we’ll keep our mouths shut about it, if it was.” Vimmy said, blushing a little since she’d realized too late she was being nosy.

“It is, yes. Keep it secret.” Christopher said in a “I know I don’t have to ask this sort of thing, but I never leave any variables if I can prevent it’. “But the Repertory…that’s more open for what we might acquire.”

The Repertory, as it turned out, was considerably neater than the Riggings, mainly because you really couldn’t put guns on tables or in boxes as well as clothing/armor materials. The two girls immediately got Matrix flashbacks: the large room wasn’t QUITE as big as the racks of the ‘guns, lots of guns’ scene, but it made up for it by having more exotic and interesting looking options. One small subset of guns looked like a clamshell that opened to reveal a barrel, the exact method of holding and firing the weapon unclear to the girls. Another gun seemed to be made of varnished wood, and considering there was only one of them with ammo boxes around it, it suggested it was a highly specialized weapon. Others looked much like guns they’d seen back home, black and grey compact metal handguns and larger rifles. Others sort of looked that way but had more interesting colors, greens and whites and blues and purples. A centerpiece item appeared at first glance to be some kind of small, compact suitcase, not the rectangle shaped ones but more like a shape of a gumdrop; obviously, it probably had some secret, but the girls didn’t know it.

Esther had been dressed like a casual work person, much like Chalice had been. The guy who seemed to be the overseer of the Repository…was dressed like a circus ringmaster.

Well, not quite. He didn’t have a large top hat, but his suit swung more towards out of the ordinary than business casual, featuring a prominent ruffle, a jacket with tails, and riding boots instead of shoes. He also had a ridiculously large mustache; the girls swore it extended a foot from either side of his face. Despite his appearance, he seemed pretty serious and professional, though when he saw who had entered, his eyes had lit up a bit.

“Christopher.” No use of a middle name here; he was apparently on a first name basis.

“Wishbone.” Christopher nodded back. Either ‘Wishbone’ preferred a handle, or his parents had been odd ducks.

“It has been some time.”

“The downside of good product.”

“How true, true.” Wishbone said. “And who might these be?”

“This is Vimmy and Venny Castle. New…students of mine. Vimmy, Venny, this is Wishbone. You’re new, so called him Mr. Wishbone, or just mister. His actual name is only shared with long time acquaintances. Wishbone is a former armory master for several Hemel bases, and is probably one of the most knowledgeable people on this world about TANGLE based combat. That is, guns.”

“They are something of an acquired taste. Many prefer the ease of a sword that just needs to be sharpened and an arm that needs to be muscled.” Wishbone said. The two girls did have a LITTLE knowledge of Weav firearms and the Weav ‘T.A.N.G.L.E’ system, which had been developed by the Hemel in ‘generations past’. As their story supposedly went, much like how certain Asian cultures had their biology affected by lack of access to certain food groups until the world fully opened up, the Hemel had spent a long long while completely isolated from Weav society, and between that and the unique nature of the ground they lived on, had ended up with their own biological quirks, namely, they tended towards being frail. Which meant they much preferred to engage in combat at range: bows, slings, guns, catapults, and so on. While rejoining the wider world had lessened this supposed universal frailness, old habits died hard. The T.A.N.G.L.E system, as it had been dubbed in a more universal sense (the Hemel called it something else in their language), stood for Target Acquisition (and) Neutralization: Gage, Loose, Eliminate, and was essentially a combat system that merged traditional firearms training, Stream enhancement, and fancier aspects that had shown up in other realms with names like ‘gun-kata’.

“They really don’t know anything about the product here, so I thought I would ask in general.”

“High quality basic first, then?”

“Yes.”

Wishbone went over to a cupboard that was locked, opening it and extracting a large crate that he moved over to the ‘counter’ he was standing behind.

“I know your family’s preference for the White Lightning range of firearms, you are close to Oriam’s people and it’s what you know best. However, I can fully recommend the newest range of the Mad Bull series. P&L MB-34.”

“Mad Bull line’s a bit heavy and prone to gimmicks. They’ve improved?”

“The weight is still a tad non-optimal, but the recoil has been reduced even further.” Christopher took one of the handguns out of the case, holding it up, sighting it, checking how the slide worked and how sensitive the hammer and trigger were. “The reason I recommend it is that its wide range of ammo adoption has more than doubled. The weapon can accept up to 19 different forms of ammo, whether they be singular or in packets. Parting and Lance have also recently developed two new forms of gimmick ammunition, it only works for this weapon, but they are more versatile and less situation specific than some of the past.”

“All right, what are they?”

“Type one is called Grain. Think of it as micro shots. If used poorly, you might as well be spitting seeds at an enemy, but if you can hold your target, you can send several hundred shots to one place that serve up a combined effort that more traditional shots are negated by. Type two is called Passage. The downside is that they come in units of one. You will need to reload after each shot. In exchange, the Passage uses a multi-layered detonation system to fire a shot that has been tested as being capable of going through a Four-Out. Lengthwise. Through the skull.”

Christopher arched an eyebrow at that.

“Assuming that’s accurate, such a projectile could easily blow a hole through either of you half the size of your chest. Four-Out’s skulls are no joke when it comes to natural armor. Well girls, you heard the assessment. Give it a feel, if you wish.”

It was an effective mark of the changes they’d been through that after they’d been introduced Vimmy and Venny had politely gathered closer rather than holding themselves apart and being standoffish; At some point that tendency had faded from them to instead try and make a good first impression when they met new people instead, openly. While they knew enough about guns to be comfortable around them, that had been an extremely shallow understanding compared to their surroundings now. Watching the gun being taken out of the case, Venny had politely nodded along while Vimmy had kept her eyes on it.

“Oh, thank you.” Venny had said, taking the handgun and cradling it to examine it closer. Even though its look didn’t have much to do with its function she did like it, the white of its plating and the firing mechanism itself interesting her… It was certainly a step up from the pistols and revolvers she’d recalled. A lot of things couldn’t hold a candle to her gravity blasts, but she suspected the compact power of the gun could certainly come close. Maybe awfully close, if it really could potentially make holes that were almost a fourth of her size in targets.

“19 types of ammo, huh?” Vimmy asked from her shoulder, Venny passing the gun over to her to look over at her own pace. She treated it much the same in her hand, keeping her fingers well away from the trigger. “We are the sort of people that keep to muscled arms and otherwise, but I have to admit, it’s pretty nice. We know enough about guns to tell you which end the bullets come out of and how to mostly hit a target, and that’s about it.” She shared since it was probably especially obvious at this point.

“I didn’t notice much weight either way, but it’s probably a little different feeling actually in action.” Venny said, Vimmy smiling faintly at the handgun and how it felt in her grip. Unlike Venny, weaponry outside of herself hadn’t quite lost its lustre for her.

“It’s pretty nice… Probably took awhile to get their standard to something like this, but it seems that it was worth the effort.” She said, raising her eyebrows and then carefully handing it back off. “It feels good, I like the fit of it in my hand.”

“Then you are more refined than many who cross through my doors. Though, if you prefera simple strength of arms in terms of product, the best for you is likely this.” Wishbone went under his ‘counter’. “I’ll note this is a custom paint job that hasn’t been claimed yet. Otherwise, they are much less garish.”

 

“The BY-51K. Only gun I know that has never baffled anyone. Six base parts, easy to assemble and clean, extraordinarily resilient. Leave it be for years, leave it buried under mud, sand, in water, you can pull it back out and it will almost certainly still fire with minimal loss. I wouldn’t take one to kill something exceptionally fearsome, but as a general firearm, there’s nothing else that compares for unknown, wide ranging dangers.”

 

“I do have a few of these, down in the depths.” Christopher took it, racked the bolt, and checked the sighting. “Hmmm. Magnification’s improved a touch. But what if I wanted something more necessary for high degree danger, something with a greater…message.”

 

Wishbone went and fetched another box.

 

 

“The GARM-9. Incredibly stable, high degree self-adjusting magnification, can function as a base sniper rifle without a spotter. Can be loaded via packages or via single shot mechanism.” Ie, loaded like a magazined gun or a weapon like a single shot rifle, Christopher testing both out, adjusting the scope on top repeatedly as he did so, sighting each time. “But the truly special factor is this. Remove the ammo barrel, if you could, please.”

Christopher did so, and was presented with an even larger ‘drum’ of ammo that consisted of two large circles that stuck out on either side of the weapon. It looked like you could probably carry several hundred bullets in such a magazine. But based on how Christopher held it, it seemed considerably lighter than such a large amount of bullets would be.

“This is a Makeshift. The tops on either side can be opened…at which point you can pour in almost anything. Damaged bullets, general debris, broken items of any sort of material, wood, glass, metal, bone, anything. Slot the access ports closed, and twist the barrel around…” The man did so horizontally, meaning each round segment switched places. “The Makeshift will process whatever you place inside it into improvised bullets and load them to fire nearly immediately. Provided you do not load explosives or items like Intricacies in the Makeshift, it can produce several dozen sets of improvised, forged on the spot ammunition before it requires cleaning and repair. The downside being the added weight, but for the strong who also like to improvise, it can be a godsend to be able to make bullets out of whatever is broken around you.”

“...That is actually quite interesting. You may have a sale.“ Christopher sighted again with the gun, before he passed it to the girls. “Test the weight, girls. You can probably fire this with one arm where most couldn’t. Maybe that will never happen, but Wishbone is giving it a recommendation, so at least honor him with a touch test again.”

“I must clarify that the Makeshift only works with solids. Placing liquids inside it will not work. Gels work a LITTLE, but the results are very subpar. You can probably get away with inserting some wet or moist material, but pure liquid will not work.”

The BY-51K had made them smile, both because of the paint job and because of the utility of it. In the same way a man with a sword would hopefully never need to use a knife but still carried one just in case, it pretty perfectly echoed their sentiment on guns in general. If they had to, then dependability was a big plus.

“...Huh. Just about anything into bullets, right?” Venny whistled, finding the spot where the stock would sit on her shoulder and likewise sighting despite continuing to keep her fingers away from the trigger. “There’s plenty of times I’ve been in that would have come awful handy. If I was picking apart something at range, this would probably be ideal… Like I said, we’ve been trained to hit targets either on the ground or in the air, so I can see the potential.”

Venny held the GARM-9 out in one arm, testing the weight once again to see if she could support it; While she noticed the heft this time, it wasn’t enough to get her grip to shake noticeably, far stronger than she looked. Closing one eye to check out the ironsight too, she nodded in satisfaction before passing it to Vimmy. “What do you think?”

“Honestly, I like it a lot. I was always partial to walnut inlays back home, I preferred that sort of design because it was classy. You remember, what’s her name, she had those golden pistols?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Those were ugly as sin. Now this pupp- I mean, now this gun, this is nice. Probably fires like a dream.” Vimmy said approvingly, also going from checking the feel of it braced against her shoulder to holding it outward to see if she could support it with one hand. She wasn’t going to let Venny show her up, even if it was a little more work for her. Once she was satisfied she checked the scope for herself, realizing the gun certainly could work at longer ranges pretty well. Her only real capability for that was missiles, and those weren’t exactly accurate enough to brag about… “I’m impressed, it’s a big step up from what we were used to. AR-15’s aren’t nearly the same.”

“Psh, you’ve got that right. All the work you have to do just to get them up to snuff, this sort of gun makes them look like peashooters with an attitude problem.” Venny giggled.

“I am afraid you have me at a loss; what is this AR-15 line?” Wishbone said.

“Local product. Not something you would have encountered. Related to their exceptionally altered bodies.” Christopher said.

“Ah. I see. A closed circle. Alas, but some do not share. Anything else?”

“Something…if things are dire. In one’s face. You want them gone.”

This time, Wishbone took one of the guns off the wall.

“For this, we’ll return to the White Lightning line. A newly developed doubled concept. WL-WHM-19. Ambidextrous, with both a lever and pump-slide reloading system. Workable as a one handed weapon for those with some strength and skill, unlike the Garm, which I would not recommend as a one handed weapon unless you possess truly exceptional arm strength as you have demonstrated, and of course, a stock for the more stable proper two handed grip. Textured surface, should you shoot at target at close range and your hands get…wet. And, while this can throw the balance off if used incorrectly, the weapon has a non-lethal setup option that utilizes units of compressed air loaded at the back of the firearm.” Said thin cans make it look like the shotgun had horns. “Fires blasts of blunted force that have been demonstrated to be capable of moving 300 pound targets back 5 to 7 feet. Simple switch system to alter between fire modes. The high factories have recently been attempting to develop certain specialized ammunition that would be effective against certain highly resistant targets, certain fiends and Elite crafted creatures. The more…intangible. Such a material is proving very hard to fully realize, and only this particular weapon can fire the prototype shells that have been made so far. In case that factor ever comes along.”

Christopher had attached the stock, rapidly sliding the loading port to see how smooth it worked, before he removed it and aimed it with one arm, using both arms.

“Not a weapon for hunting, then.”

“Not unless you want your meat very shredded and burned. This is designed to punch through armor and bone. I suppose you could use it to hunt Goars, though getting that close to a Goar’s skull is not recommended no matter what gun you have.”

“Agreed.” Christopher flicked the lever reload a few times, then tested the slide. “Huh. That is smooth. Like butter. Have a feel, girls. You could probably fire a good nine shots in ten seconds with this gun with a few days training.”

Venny had reached for it first once more before Vimmy plucked the gun into her hands instead, her sister giving her A Look that she pretended not to notice. “Oh, wow. This is a little familiar- I mean, not that we’ve seen this particular line before, but most people back where we come from had something like this somewhere in their house. Even just for home defense. It’s pretty hard to miss up close, when your misses can be deadly in their own right.”

“Psh- this here ain’t your grandpa’s shotgun.” Venny said, briefly dipping into a deeper version of her accent that Vimmy snickered at. “No, you’re right about that. Nonlethal options are probably nice to have, actually, on top of everything else… I didn’t think much of guns for close up work because of all our other tools, but I think I’ve changed my mind a little.” Vimmy admitted, turning it in her grip before passing it to Venny.

“I do like this texture, it’d be a hell of a thing to mess up from sweaty palms or wet hands. What sort of ammunition? I’m guessing it isn’t silver ball bearings and holy water…” Venny shrugged to herself before testing the weight again in one hand. It was nice to be able to heft guns like this with one arm, but she kept herself mindful of what they were doing and didn’t preen too much over it. “Can’t imagine much not stopping dead in its tracks after taking a blast from this.”

“Me and you would even have a hard time.” Vimmy pointed out, Venny nodding in agreement. “I don’t know who has a thicker skull sometimes, us or Goars in particular, but I think it’d just about come to the same.”

“Have you come to a decision then?” Wishbone said.

“I’ll take a GARM. I think by your look, you’d also like one of those, Venny?”

“Yes sir, if that’s alright.” Venny nodded eagerly.

“And Vimmy, from how I saw you look and hold it, I think one MB-34 would be appropriate. You are not one for dual wielding, and Wishbone would heavily advise against doing that unless you have a very specialized setup.”

“Though in emergencies, even I cannot deny that perhaps the best immediate option would be ‘spray and pray’.” Wishbone removed one of the elaborate handguns from the main box, as there were three in the crate he’d hauled out and he needed to place it in a smaller packing crate. “Anything else, Christopher?”

“Dessert.”

“...I take it, you are still fond of cutlery?”

“Always will be.”

Wishbone produced one last box, that folded open like a jewel box. It did not have jewelry, but various forms of knives.

“Light-etched as always.”

“...I’ll take the whole box.”

“Excellent. Do tell your wife hello, it has been a very long time since we’ve seen her.”

“I will. Pack it up. Girls, you’re carrying all this. I’m getting old and after finding out those details about your muscles, I am subcontracting such necessities.”

“Absolutely!” Venny said happily, Vimmy adding in a cheerful noise as they did just that. One would put a box to the others back, get it in place, and then switch roles until they were packed up, neither showing signs of strain or stress even with the weight. It was important to both to play that off. “Thank you very much, Mr. Wishbone, it was nice meeting you!”

Vimmy curtsied before saying goodbye; She’d gotten pretty good at them after being rusty for so long.

They then discovered the downside of having to go back the way they had come…once again blindfolded and deafened. And now with a tower of boxes on each of their backs.

Even when he didn’t mean for it to be, it always turned out to be training when it came to Christopher and his choices.

And in between the concealing, and Christopher helping them with their laden forms out the door, not even he noticed that the two women who had been speaking in the entry room before was down to one. In the shadows.

Watching. Fingers interlaced.

And it wasn’t a casual interest.

There was a realization in the shadowy eyes.