Winnowwill, Part 3

Unknown unknowns were a real bear sometimes.

Vesper would never know exactly how she’d been caught, nor what she could have done to avoid it. The thing that had screwed her over was that Mannifred had paid enough for his security that the floor sensors didn’t just detect if something directly stepped on them. THAT would set off alarms, but the sensors had the secondary function of being able to detect if weight in the room shifted. Like say, if a person climbed on or stood on things to cross the floor. THAT set off secondary alarms, which had been noted by a security team, which had promptly started paying attention to see if it was a computer error. When said ‘weight alterations’ had gone from one room to the next, horizontally, where there was no door that would allow that passage, that was when they’d called in the security that they’d been told to alert under such circumstances, because that surely meant it wasn't some kind of error. And not just 'base' security. Mannifred had some favorites, and he made sure they got the important details. Especially since he felt they could handle them.

Considering the one who’d hidden, seen Vesper open the door, and then quick-dashed in her blind spot and whacked her upside the head before she could react, it wasn’t nepotism. Vesper herself, in amongst her fog, was probably wondering if the idea that she could do this by ‘cheating’ years of training and skill learning into her head via a magic key was another form of nepotism. And if it was going to get her killed. She had tricks, but she didn’t have an emergency Sifter escape token. THAT would have been a big flashing sign as to who was employing her, and she clearly had gotten ahead of herself in thinking she could protect that information without issue.

Odd, really. The pain was mostly in the crux of her jaw. The left crux, to be specific, the hinge the mouth used to open and close. It helped clear away the fog, Vesper aware that she was being dragged down a hallway, one of the besuited men rapping hard on the door.

“...sir, I think this is important enough!” Vesper hadn’t heard the initial response, and only heard vague noises in response to that. One of the female ‘minions’ who was dragging her along apparently decided that said response was enough, as she semi-pushed the man who’d just tried knocking aside and forced the door open.

“Now hold it, at least let-!” The man had said. Behind it, Hudson instinctively began priming up her defenses. You never knew…

Mannifred Guesclin was another example of nepotism trying to work around a person’s flaws. He had more gut that he liked, so he had suits tailored to try and lessen it. His hair was a bit thin, so he had expensive stylists try and work with that. His neatly trimmed beard likely cost more than some people’s monthly rent payments, because he needed such expensive hands to make it work. He had very short fingers, almost like he was literally ‘all thumbs’, but he generally didn’t do anything to try and ‘fix’ THAT. And admittedly, he did have a nice smile…when he smiled genuinely. When he was trying to do intimidation, it came off like a kid playing with their grandparent’s dentures. Still, he was good at organization and making sure there was no skimming or interruption in the criminal processes he oversaw, and he didn’t cheap out in general, believing in spending money to make money, which put him a bit ahead of some of the sorts Hudson had to interact with. Those sorts usually ended up on the wrong end of Benedictine's ‘corrections’, sooner than later.

“That woman you mentioned, Madame Hudson?” Vesper was dragged in and shoved down onto her knees, nearly flopping onto her face from an intense sense of vertigo, before one of the people behind her grabbed her by the hair to keep her up. “Think we nailed her to our wall.”

“Wuzgoingon…I wanted th’washroom…” Vesper slurred, trying to put on an act of an ‘innocent’ who’d gotten mistaken for something she wasn’t.

“She was in the secondary office. Not the first one, ie the honey trap. With the incorrect information. She knew where to look.”

“Bathroom-!” Vesper whined, like she was trying to say “I was looking for the bathroom!” The woman responded by tossing her flash drive onto the ground. “...that’s no’mine!” Damn, she’d thought that was pretty well hidden.

“Oh yeah? Explain this then.” The woman kicked at Vesper’s right shoe. Which appeared on the surface to be a high heel, but on impact, collapsed into a more traditional flat piece of footwear. Damn. She hadn’t thought the LT would fold like that.

“...comfort…?” Vesper said, before she spared a glance at Hudson. She could immediately tell by her serious, analytical look that she wasn’t buying any of it. Not quitting yet, though. “I’msorry, have we met?” She said, now wholly faking being dazed.

After bending down to pick up the flash drive and then handing it off, Hudson had turned and held up a finger. “One second, Mannifred. This is important.

“...No, we haven’t met before. But I’ve been looking for you.” She started, squatting down to get a better look at Vesper. Her eyes narrowed as she did. “See, I don’t think anyone here knows who you are, and that’s the first part. This little event is invite only. Second thing is, I don’t think you’re even a little drunk. But I DO think we’ve got an acquaintance in common. I could be wrong, but I doubt it. Too many coincidences in too short of a time.”

“...y’feet are wheels.”

Hudson ignored the comment as she stood again, done assessing her, crossing her arms. “So… Where we go from here is roughly up to you. I did say roughly, by the by. You want to play dumb a little while longer, or you want to start talking? What were you planning on doing with whatever information you found in that office, Winnow?” She slipped the name in at the end to gauge her reaction.

To her credit, Vesper kept a poker face…mostly. If Hudson was good enough to spot even her minor ‘tell’, then there was likely nothing Vesper could have done to hide.

“...just so you know, it ain’t you. Being scary.” Winnow said, dropping the act. “But I can tell if I keep doing this, that damn woman will hit me again, and I don’t want that.” Vesper said, indicating the woman who had been speaking with her head. Said woman smirked at that fact, as did Mannifred.

“Yeah. That’s my Heidi, as I was telling you, Hudson. Heidi the Hammer, I call-” Mannifred said.

“Shut up already. I don’t care.” Hudson said. “Who are you working for?”

“The damn good of society. Why don’t you just turn 3T back over to the school that was making it? Aren’t you rich enough? Are you getting worse at criming? Or do you want fresh new ways to make monsters?”

“Yeah, the good of society outfitted you and gave you the skills you’d need to get this far. I’ll bet.” Hudson rolled her eyes. “You want to know why? Because it fell into our hands like an apple falling from a tree. I don’t have some grand vision for 3T, and I don’t care about it beyond what it can do for us. It’s an opportunity and that’s all it is. There’s no such thing as rich enough, don’t you know that? If it’s developed further and turned into a miracle drug we can unload, or if someone ponies up the cash to bury it so deep it never sees the light of day, either one works for me as long as we benefit.

“Now, I’m rational and reasonable, but unless you want to meet some of those monsters we’ve made face to face eventually, you’re going to give me some answers before I decide Mannifred and his hired help can just start beating them out of you easier than I can ask. Who are you working for and what do they want?” Hudson asked, lowering her voice and briefly glancing around to see if anyone was going to try and jump in again. “What were you planning to do with whatever information you scrounged up?

“You get the position you’re in, right? How bad this could go? I like to think I’m fair, but you’re not giving me much wiggle room at all. So start talking, Winnow, or things are going to take a turn for the gruesome.” Hudson growled, watching her closely again.

“...it ain’t worth what you’re paying me, boss.” Winnow said, looking at Mannifred. The man stared in dull confusion for a moment, before he blanched near white.

“What…NO! NO! SHE’S LYING! I HAVE NOT HIRED HER!” Mannifred said, frantically waving his hands in a near panic. Later, Hudson would think of what that meant. She was here, at this party and location, more or less by herself, two aides, only one who could fight, and they were a minor force compared to some of the people in Benedictine’s group she could have tapped, and they weren’t even in the room with her. All the people there for Mannifred’s. And yet he was still utterly terrified of her, or rather, the woman behind her that she represented.

Hudson crossed her arms and slowly nodded. “Credit where credit is due, if this were a little more typical I’d maybe buy that. Maybe. I know she’s lying, Mannifred, don’t worry. Even if you were smart enough or treacherous enough to try some nasty double blind like that… Well, your predecessors were on that level, and you remember what happened to them. I don’t think there were enough parts left over to even bother with graves.

“No, the more I think it over, the more holes in that story I see. I get you’re pretty good at this, or at least pretty darn competent, but time is running out. Last chance before I throw you to these goons, who’s your employer and what do they want? Other than the obvious.” Hudson asked, tilting her head. “We can keep this civil or not, but you’re running me out of civility pretty quick.”

“I’ve looked at your files. You don’t have an ounce of civility in you. You AND yours. NEVER assume otherwise.” Winnow said, her tone cold. “And if you’re going to make threats, you should be the on-”

Vesper’s face became a mask of confusion.

“...is he with you?”

“Who’s that?” Hudson started, not turning around. The mention of files had put her wind up, even if they were right on the money about her.

“What the FUCK?!” Heidi said. THAT was enough to get Hudson to turn around.

…a shadow man.

Well, maybe just a shadow in general. A twisting form emerging from behind a curtain, lacking a face, its fingers too long, stretching out. It would have been normal to start at this, this unexpected third or fourth party…

…but Hudson wasn’t normal any more. She saw things people didn’t. Yes, there was a shadowy form coming off the wall…and she could see where it was being projected from. The way she’d just been looking.

A trick.

But Winnow had gotten her eyes off her for nearly two seconds. Hudson was damn alert…but not so alert that she’d caught the small motions as Winnow had made as she activated Facade via the miracle mechanisms hidden in her fingernails. The fact that she had to conceal said motions was why the shape was so damn basic and would be easily seen through…but all she needed was to get everyone very briefly distracted.

Later, Hudson realized that the accusation put towards Mannifred had been for the same purpose; to make her look at him while she spun the ring on her right hand 180 degrees so the gem was now facing the floor. She’d either not been searched or not searched well enough. Probably the latter.

Hudson turned her head back around to see the last of the movement in Vesper’s hand as she popped the gem out of the ring she was wearing with her thumb and middle finger (ring on the pointer finger, another oversight) and made SURE it would immediately work as she crushed it between two fingers.

The black-gray smoke/gas immediately engulfed her and her holders. Within a second it had consumed the whole room.

Not just a smokescreen. An irritant, as the people began yelling and hacking with wretched coughs. Flesh and blood, Hudson mused later. Always faltering at the worst times.

Not that she was wholly immune to it. But she was affected a fair bit less, and as it turned out, the downside of having such an option was that to hyper-concentrate such a gas, it had to be very thin. Which meant it was clearing almost as soon as it had covered the room, but based on the sounds of impact Hudson had heard, that was enough, Hudson seeing the women as she vanished around the corner, having fled back out the door after attacking her ‘holders’ to get free and mobile.

“SHE’S RUNNING! AFTER HER! MANNIFRED, GET YOUR PEOPLE TO CATCH HER!”

Mannifred’s response was just another wretching cough that sounded like he was on the verge of vomiting. His people were a bit better off, as they managed to semi-fumble out the door per her order, vanishing from Hudson’s sight before she went with them, exiting the room to see Winnow fleeing down the hallway.

She wouldn’t have agreed with Mannifred’s men drawing their guns and opening fire, but to be fair, this WAS his house, and his party, he could wreck it if he wanted to, as she glanced back into the room-

If she’d been human, she wouldn’t have seen it. The shimmer, moving. But seeing it made her see the faint line of light that she’d seen scant seconds before.

A projection. Again.

“...SHE’S GOT A HOLOGRAM!”

Hudson’s warning came too late, as ‘Winnow’ seemed to leap off a balcony, her form fritzing a bit before vanishing…and the real Winnow, cloaked, took a running dive out through the large window at the back of the room, shattering glass and a blast of cold air fully dispelling the gas.

“FAKE! WINDOW! WINDOW!” Hudson yelled.

The lone guard who managed to turn around and get to the window promptly caught a bullet and went down with a yell: Vesper hadn’t just broken free, she’d swiped one of the goons’ holding her’s weapon, and she had immediately laid out covering fire in case anyone immediately tried to follow her out said window, the bullets ripping up the windowside and making Mannifred dive for the ground, while Hudson swiftly got out of the open doorway to avoid catching any stray shots, or at least, putting one more barricade between her and them. The shots cut off, leaving a bunch of very confused men and women, and distant screams as the partygoers freaked out at the sudden roar of gunfire.

“...Mannifred, you’d better have outside security.” Hudson growled.

“Gah, guh…red alert, we got a runner, outside, STOP HER!” Mannifred managed to say into his phone. Well, he was competent enough to be able to do THAT, at least.

—

Facade had shorted out the moment Winnow had hit the snowy ground outside, the battery dead. Well, you couldn’t have everything. She let loose her spray of cover fire and then turned around; her LT was still operational, switching back to dark pants and outdoor footwear and a long sleeved shirt as she scrambled over the pile of heaped snow and ice she’d used as padding for her fall. She could feel the numerous bleeding wounds under her 'new clothes' on her legs, arms, and face from jumping through the window, as she’d been in ‘her dress state’ when she did it, but it was a faint sense of distant pain as training, both life learned and gifted, kicked in.

First things first. In the back of her head, she gave herself a small pat on the back as she remembered to slide her tongue to one of her upper molars and press hard, feeling the click. Okay, done.

Second, check the gun she had while running. Not easy, but doable, as she snapped out the clip and then slid it back in. Four shots left.

It was around then that the spotlight was directed at her. Damn. They had towers.

And men with guns in them, the snow erupting in a multitude of puffs as bullets slammed into the ground all around her. Running while under fire, Vesper DID had training for, before the decision. And the ‘cheats’. Doing it while running through snow, however, was new.

So was the guard who came out of the shadows caused by the spotlights, the snowmobile he was on sending more snow spraying as he aimed at Winnow with his sub-machine gun.

If Winnow was a normal person, she probably would have been dead.

She wasn’t normal. She was faster than normal. And hence she reached the man before he could sight her and pull the trigger, diving into him and knocking him off his snowmobile. Now THIS, ramming into someone who had a firearm? THIS she had extensive training in, as she easily slipped on top during the ram/spear/tumble and brought her fist down into the man’s helmeted face, shattering the plastic (lucky guess: it could have been aluminum) and firing three more quick punches into the person’s face to knock them cold, before she helped herself to the man’s main firearm and sidearm, field stripping an opponent also something she was extensively trained in.

She turned her head to check pursuit, and heard the sounds of barking. Cripes. Dogs. In theory, not an issue: she had a machine gun. In reality, a big issue: she didn’t want to shoot the dogs. They didn’t know what they were involved in.Hence, she resumed fleeing. Maybe she could outrun the dogs-

No, not happening. The snow was too deep, her feet crunching in, slowing her down. They’d run her down if she didn’t do something, and she suspected the people who were likely also zeroing in on her wouldn’t be as reluctant to shoot the dogs, even if they were theirs, because it meant they’d get her as well.

…in for a penny-!

“Oh yes. One more useful thing about the Log Togs. The fact they can shift their material means they can also carry small objects from your pockets to your hands. Not something as large as a gun, or the JUC…but it’s an option.”

Winnow seized the summoned glue capsule and threw it behind her.

It hit the ground, the hyper concentrated adhesive spraying everywhere.

The dogs…were not close enough to be caught in it. And they proceeded to just run around the smoking spot that Winnow had made instead of through it, avoiding the glue entirely. DAMN IT!

Should have seen that coming…wait.

She still had the Stream.

“I’d rather you avoid doing anything with the Stream unless you absolutely have to, Vesper. Part of this is masking your source. Tech and training can cover a lot, but if you start using overt superpowers, some people are going to start asking questions.”

…but all she had to do was use a Stream power in a way that could easily be mistaken for something more ‘normal’.

So she did, turning back around, the dogs a few seconds from her, and miming throwing something at the ground again.

One nice thing about the ‘flashbang effect’ she could simulate with the explosion of light and sound she did as her actual ‘attack’; due to how it was basically her own mental effort, it had a muted effect on her, and hence the brilliant blaze of light and incredibly loud explosion of noise sent the dogs into a tumble and rolling around, the poor pups briefly blind and deaf, while she just had an earache and, since she’d closed her eyes, a few flashing white spots in her eyes. Hopefully that would have looked like she had some sort of micro-device that had worked like her gas bomb and failed glue bomb.

“Sorry boys.” Winnow said, turning back around and resuming running. Well, she’d been so focused on the dogs that she hadn’t realized she’d almost reached the trees at the edge of the estate. The fact that she heard more loud pops and saw more snow erupting around her indicated that the guards knew that as well and were trying hail mary fire to stop her.

In the end, it was just fail mary, Winnow plunging into the trees, trying to both move quickly and not step in a way so that she tripped or got her foot caught in a buried root or something like that and went down with a twisted ankle or something. This was made harder by the fact that the ground began to slope down.

In the brief period of pseudo-peace she had, Winnow realized that her luck was balanced. She’d managed to get here without catching a bullet or a dog catching her, but this type of location was very poor for what she was aiming to do. But she didn’t have much of a choice except ‘keep moving forward’.

Especially when more bullets began slamming into the trees and ground around her. Winnow turned her head to take a look, wondering how they’d caught up so fast…

…because they were on skis.

Mannifred had hired guards with enough ski clinic training so that when the wide alert had gone out, they’d strapped on their skis, grabbed guns, and gone across the snow that had slowed down Winnow with her less practical footwear at speed, catching up to her and resuming their attempt to shoot her. Yes, they could ski in a forest while firing guns. It was almost admirable, that level of skill. Some people couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time, after all.

Winnow couldn’t play copycat here; the LT was not so advanced that it would make skis for her. Plus, all of her ‘book training’ hadn’t included advanced skiing lessons anyway.

But once again, part of her actual training, as part of her upbringing…well, she could definitely twin that with something the LT COULD do. Which she realized as she came to a more severe, and more importantly, CLEAR, downward slope in the general arc ‘down’.

The most recent flail of bullets ripped through the snow, splintering pieces of wood as they hit trees, and Winnow jumped and gave the order via three quick presses on her left thumb. The same trick she’d used to get through the JUC hole she’d made with some greater ease, sending a base command to her special clothes: GO SMOOTH AND SLICK.

Winnow landed, on her backside, going into a backwards lean as she slid backwards like she was now a well-greased sled, and she finally brought up her borrowed sub-machine gun and opened fire on her pursuers. The downside of their choice of chase; they couldn’t take cover, they had to be in constant motion to keep giving chase, especially since their hands were now needed for their own guns. Normally, their movement would somewhat compensate…

Except the most high end T.A.N.G.L.E training was allowing a person to semi guide projectiles they emitted via whatever method, but primarily firearms, with their mind. Oh, she couldn’t do it as well as her older brothers…but that was like saying an F5 tornado was more destructive than an F2. Technically true…but context mattered.

The people went down with yells and cries, her bullets striking home as she shot down one, two, three, four, five, and she was out of ammo, drawing the gun she’d stolen from the minion back when she was still inside the house and using the last four bullets in it to take out her last attacker. She then ‘turned off’ the ‘extra slick’ mode so she could twist and get back to her feet, resuming her run. One gun left, the other one she’d stolen from snowmobile man.

The trees were parting. Yes…this was…

…a lake.

A big frozen lake. Winnow considered, for two seconds, running alongside it, before more gunshots alerted her that she was still being pursued. She’d taken out the ski guards, but more had arrived on their own snowmobiles, having traversed the woods she’d fled through without much issue. She had no choice; she took off onto the lake.

No sound of cracking ice. At least there was that. Winnow turned around and fired with her last remaining gun, not really having time to aim. She was a complete sitting duck out here, exposed with no trees or varied terrain to soak up shots…

And that wasn’t counting the drones, as Winnow stopped and ducked before one nearly crashed into her head. It was just a light camera carrying machine, but she wasn’t her cousin, able to shrug off punches to her skull like someone was poking her. She made sure the drone couldn’t make a second pass via a bullet to it, sending it falling down to the iced-over lake erupting in flame,, but then more bullets were heading her way, slamming into the ice around her, as she kept moving forward. It was all she could do. She could bob and weave, but that would delay her in the sense she’d spend more time on the open ice…

And while her running across the frozen lake was ‘tolerated’, being shot a bunch with high calibre weaponry was not, loud cracks sounding as Winnow kept running in a tight straight line, keeping her profile as small as possible…

She wasn’t quite sure what DID hit her. It wasn’t a bullet, that probably would have gone through her. Unbeknownst to her, it had been a large chunk of ice violently dislodged by a bullet impact, thrown with enough force and the right angle into Winnow’s back to actually throw her off balance. With that, she slipped, nearly falling on her face before she spun and got back up. She sighted and shot down one of the distant men, none of them following her onto the ice, before she recoiled as another spray of shots missed her by a mere foot, and more cracks sounded in her ears…

…as did a loud engine whine. Talk about great timing. She hadn’t just been running blindly away. She’d needed to get clear and open so this could reach her.

The drone that came in was considerably larger than the camera one Winnow had shot, part flying surfboard, part ‘heraldry crest shield’. Winnow emptied the last of her clip as cover fire as the vehicle, Immiserate, came in, finally able to reach her after being summoned via the ‘tooth touch’, Winnow now in an open area that was much easier for extraction than being in a forest. Winnow tossed the empty gun aside and leapt up, grabbing onto either side of Immiserate and holding on as the ‘board’ listed to the side a bit, then fully compensated for the new weight.

Winnow swung herself up on top just before some bullets flew through the empty space she’d left a heartbeat ago, keeping low in a crouch to both minimize her profile and wind resistance as Immiserate kicked into high gear, carrying her away from the frozen lake, Mannifred’s guards, and the close calls she’d had. Still, she realized she was holding her breath after twenty seconds of escape distance and exhaled, getting into a more controlled stance as she continued her escape. She was safe now, there had been no assessed forces at “The Monastery" that could give pursuit like this.

As for the mission, well…

—

Anyone uneducated would have sworn that Hudson had spent the last eight minutes staring at the wall.

This was, of course, nonsense. Hudson didn’t stare at walls. She observed…not the walls, but things other people couldn’t see. Her crown allowed her a high degree of wireless tech invasion and control, and as soon as the mystery woman had stopped shooting at the window, she’d immediately reached out and broken into Mannifred’s security system. Mounted cameras, body cameras on the guards, even the drone that had nearly bashed Vesper and the brothers it had that Vesper hadn’t noticed had been her eyes, as she’d watched the woman do a controlled retreat while springing solutions for every problem as it emerged, and doing several of them in a much more creative way than the average person would bother. The dog thing especially struck Hudson: she could have easily gunned them down, and Hudson didn’t think she hadn’t done so to preserve ammo.

It would have been one thing to have an enemy operative running around, pulling tricks and delineating an escape through territory that was well buttoned up- but this was something else entirely. Sure, someone with enough hard tech and otherwise could pull off the same, but the woman hadn’t had hard tech integrated into her that Hudson had been able to spot. It pointed to an outside source with plenty of funding and plans of their own, even more than a rival or a conquered vassal getting too big for themselves. The consistent identification of a problem, a solution, and then another dash to the next problem had made her narrow her eyes as she’d watched along with the security forces. Would’ve, should’ve, and could’ves danced around her mind while she’d seen the escape, but they were all equally worthless.

What did matter was the gear and the tactics, all things she neatly committed to remembering for the next time. Because there would be a next time, and the fact was, her current hosts weren’t in a position to do anything about it. Holograms, backup tools in the teeth, and what she assumed to be either magic or some sort of mental power drawn on meant their enemy had come prepared for this eventuality. Even if the eventuality hadn’t been the sort of thing you could really prepare for, she’d covered enough of her bases up to being extracted from the area itself.

Which meant the path forward was clear. And Vesper would probably be annoyed her attempts to hide her more exotic tricks hadn’t worked on the one person she’d want them to work on most.

“-reconsider the degrees of-” Mannifred was saying, in regards to something Hudson had no care to recollect or even comprehend.

“No.”

“What?”

“No, Mannifred. You’re not reconsidering ANYTHING. As of now, 3T is sold. To you.”

“...Um, Miss Hudson, while we did express interest-”

“See, you’re not listening. All that was before you let in an outsider who explicitly knew what she was looking for. There’s no more time for any sort of bidding or negotiation. You WILL be purchasing it, and it’ll be at 10 percent more than the initially debated price.”

“What?”

“Once you have it, I don’t care what you do with it. It’s your problem and your loss. You invited me down here, you presented the idea it was safe, and you have completely failed on that front. This is your own personal idiot tax. Maybe it will teach you how to properly do business. First things first, your people are going to need to brush up on security protocols.”

“...what if I say no?”

“You want me to go into it all? That question is such a waste of time, the penalty is now 15 percent. You wish to make it 20?”

Mannifred was silent. There was a touch of anger in his gaze, but it was overwhelmed by the cold fear.

“...it might take me some time to assemble the necessary liquid…”

“You’ve got five days. Don’t call us. We’ll call you.” Hudson turned and left the room. Well, if anything, this mess meant she could leave the party early.

—

“I mean…I lost the data. They took it from me. We don’t know anything new, and we’ve lost the element of surprise.” Forgotten among all the chaos had been the fact that Hudson had taken her ‘crack drive’ with the actual information on the 3T, and stuff like its location and likely plans for it.

“Not entirely.

“If you’d gotten in and out, completely undetected, great. But if it was that simple, I wouldn’t have sent in a specialist. Which is what you are now, Vesper, lack of long term experience aside. Once you got uncovered, however it happened, any data you got was useless. They’d change it all. This action was twofold, based on what occurred. It didn’t go perfectly, so it defaults to the backup. You’ve kicked the hornet’s nest and done it in a way that people don’t know who you’re playing for. There’s two ways to respond to that that work best. Withdraw and wait, or move forward at high speed. And Hudson has too many irons in the fire to do the former, and she’s committed too much per her thought process to just abandon it. Even someone like her…she’ll make a snap decision. Most likely. Hopefully. The math is in our favor. I have my own eyes in place. They’ll follow, because the path will be clearer because of this. It’s unavoidable.

“The problem is going to be what we find when we follow the path. And in THAT regard…I’m not sending you in alone for the rest of this. You’re going to need a better emergency extraction than your sword’s new tricked out sheath.

“But don’t worry. I’ve already got options lined up. So just rest for the moment and get prepared. Because next time, Hudson Crete is going to be expecting you.

“And I think…we should give her exactly what she thinks she wants.”

Winnowwill, Part 2

-Tennessee. Somewhere In The Great Smoky Mountains. Relatively Close to Gaitlinburg-

Technically, Der Stift should not have been allowed. A national park and private property (being on said national park, that is) was rather incongruous. Money, of course, was always the factor. Currently owned by Mannifred Guesclin, who had inherited it from his uncle, one Lincoln Guesclin, who had once been one of the two major drug smugglers in the area. Benedictine had taken care of him, and the other one, and his nephew Mannifred had decided that being a noble was better than trying to be a king. It had been Mannifred who had named the snowy mountain mansion and living quarters around it, likening it to an isolated monastery.

No one had ever bothered to inform him that he’d used German wrong. If the location had been properly called “The Monastery" in German, it would have been “DAS Stift”. Much like how English and other languages had its grammar quirks, calling it DER Stift meant the location’s name was technically “The Crayon”.

Hudson certainly felt like she was working with crayons, if anything.

She understood being a majordomo meant a bunch of varied duties. But assessing things, putting them all together, giving instructions and orders, that she was fine with. That she was good at. But interacting with others, under more vague intentions? She didn’t care for that much. Oh, she knew networking was always important. Who you knew was often just as important as what you knew, if not more so.

And so she was here, for some post New Year’s Eve party, some sort of ‘party coda’ for those who hadn’t deemed Mannifred’s organization important enough to show up at during actual holidays. If Mannifred knew he was considered third rate, if not fourth, he didn’t let it get to him. He’d laid out all the classics: fine dining, live music, fancy dress, waiters in suits with various accouterments on trays. Hudson was torn whether he had managed to capture that certain je ne sais quoi, or if he was trying too hard. Effort was appreciated, but understanding of its limits and where to direct, much moreso. She did appreciate that he’d had his roads and parking lot well plowed and shoveled, though. When a location was out this far and the snowfall was heavy, it was amazing how much work that was.

“All right. I told you once you leave this location, all you’ll have is your safe house. But we haven’t worked out just what can be in the safehouse. Beyond the basics. Funds. False IDs. Sorry, we were not able to get the one that adapts to the vision of the species. Those lot are…closed, even their wandering champion.”

“Can’t have it all.”

“We do have some good stuff though. First, we have the Land Lark.”

To Vesper, it looked like one of the sensory deprivation tanks her cousins swore by, but she’d never felt comfortable to use.

“We got the idea from a cartoon where the villains were always arriving and escaping in these underground drill vehicles. This isn’t quite that. But what it does do, once ‘fired’ into an entry point, is travel through the ground, using ultrasonics to pulverize whatever gets in their way, rock, soil, whatever, to a virtually liquid state. They’ve got an average range of seven miles. Good for certain forms of insertion. However, there’s a downside. The insertion is where the effort goes. Once you emerge, and the machine enters retrieval mode, it has to literally crawl back the way it came on emergency power. Takes hours, and it can’t carry anything back, that’s how low the power is. So it will get you in, but getting out will require other efforts.”

The hole it made also collapsed on itself as the insertion vehicle retreated back the way it came. Not exactly ‘without a trace’, but it was more confusing than an obvious hole that led to a tunnel.

“How are we planning on getting in, Vesper?”

“I’m going to walk right in through the front door.”

“These two items are meant to work with each other, primarily. They can be used separately, of course, but they’re designed to be synchronized.

“The body is called LT. Which stands for, sigh…Log Togs. It’s a one piece body suit based on the unstable molecules framework mother took from that set of universes with all the metahumans. Unstable molecules allows for outfits that stretch with a person if they can stretch, or not catch fire if they can set themselves on fire, or turn invisible with them…in this case, the outfit can flow and alter itself into different outfits. Downside, no armor. Upside: you don’t have to sneak in wearing appropriate clothing under cover garments. It can do dresses, pants and shirts, skirts, various kinds of footwear, even basic jewelry or glasses. With different colors, of course.”

“And the other?”

“Facade. It’s a more overt disguise. Battery power is short though, so be careful how you use it. However, it’s more than just a disguise. It has other potential uses that I’d recommend familiarizing yourself with.”

“Ma’am, can I see your invitation?”

“What?”

 

 

“Do you KNOW WHO I AM, you little shit? Who the hell do you think you are, asking me-”

“He’s right, madam. No exceptions.” The second security guard said, popping up from behind the door. You’d swear they grew them in tubes. Basic black suits, short ties, sunglasses, short crewcut style haircuts (or very short cuts for female security); if you looked close, you’d likely also spot near identical bulges that indicated where they were keeping their weapons.

“There will be HELL for this, you little…invitation…fuck, come on…” The woman produced a small purse that looked like it could barely hold a phone and ID, let alone an invitation. “...my name is Quina Allory! I’ve been the name on everyone’s mouth the last three months! Even if they insisted on mashing it together to make Quarry!”

“You’re Quarry?” Said the second besuited guard, looking over the top of his shades.

“That’s what they call me, my NAME is MISS ALLORY to YOU LOT!”

“We still need an invitation.”

“Get me to a phone right now and I will show you a PROPER INVITATION-!”

“Sir, we’ve got someone making a fuss at the front.” A third man said, having shown up as well, even as a few more besuited guards, male and female, popped out of seemingly nowhere, drawn by the noise. The third man had been speaking into his wrist, via some kind of cuff link style communicator, before he pressed a hand to his ear. “...Miss Allory? If you’ll come in with us…”

“JUST LET ME IN! A phone call is all that will be needed-!” Quina Allory snarled as the guards, unmoved, closed ranks around her and began escorting her into the house and down a side hallway, the woman complaining all the way.

It was a great distraction that kept any of the guards from noticing one of their peers breaking off into a side room, closing the door behind her.

A minute later, Winnow opened the door, the simple black suit and shades she’d had the LT mimic to pretend to be one of the guards having changed to be the garb of someone invited to this party. She had a feeling that all her luck had been used up; Miss ‘Quarry’, because she was who she said she was, had provided a near perfect distraction. One of the greatest tricks to getting into places was simply acting like you belonged there. With a gathering like this, there were guards all over the place, and it was likely that at least SOME of them weren’t from ‘in house’. All she had to do was pick her spot and make sure no one looked too close before she switched appearances.

The same applied here. Look good, but not SO good that she drew extra attention. It also meant that communication between her and her ‘watcher’ was now completely cut off. She had to get the rest of the way in, and then out, on her own.

“All right. Possible useful gimmicks. These little ‘pills’? Contain a hyper-concentrated and very potent adhesive. Don’t squeeze them, they might pop and then you’re going to have that glue all over you. Which won’t be helpful, unless you feel like serving as a makeshift piece of flypaper.”

Winnow took one of the glasses on the tray being carried around by the waitress, sipping at it before wrinkling her nose.

“Ma’am? I think this might be off.” Winnow said, after she caught up to the carrying waitress, before she put the glass back. “Might want to open another bottle. No no, it’s okay.” Winnow waved off the waitress’ apologies, before slipping around her, her hand brushing against the waitress’ back. “Sorry, I see someone I know over there.”

“A pen. Works as a pen. This is also a class four grenade. Three clicks of the end, arms the six second fuse, three clicks, disarms it. You need to do the three clicks all together. If you click twice, pause, even for a second, and then click again, it won’t work. And there’s no indication that it’s armed, so you’d best pay close attention.”

Winnow was watching the string quintet play when she felt the hand on a part of her that she didn’t want a hand on, nor had she invited such a motion. She turned around to the man who had done it, smelling of alcohol, as he tried to chat her up, Winnow having to resist belting the man the whole time as she sought an escape. She spied someone walking towards them, heading somewhere unrelated to the two’s ‘conversation’, and she moved so the man walked between them, and once contact was broken, Winnow swiftly retreated, hiding behind a group of people and getting out of the drunk pervert’s line of vision. She shuddered inwardly. These were the parts of the mission that you didn’t like considering and couldn’t prepare for.

“These ‘gems’ will fit in a ring, which at the same time pierces them. When the gems are set, that is. As long as the gem stays in the ring, you’re fine. Remove it, and you’ll get a near instant eruption. Different colors of the false gems mean different gasses. Red is corrosive. Green is blinding and choking. Blue is just basic smokescreen. Yellow is a vomit-inducing agent, make sure you’re holding your breath if you use that. Lastly, purple is a nerve agent, you’ll need to inject yourself beforehand with a counter-agent or else it will take you down as quickly as anyone else around you. And it will still affect you, somewhat. You’ll need to use your Stream hardening to deal with that.”

Winnow noted the woman talking with the three men and other woman; she could tell from her body language she also wished she could be elsewhere. Winnow could also tell no one would dare to intrude on HER personal space, even if a gun had been held to their head. Picking up a small, self-serve plate of meatballs, Winnow used the ‘toothpick’ provided to eat them (good stuff), before she mimed looking around for a place to put the empty, sauce-covered plate, and then had a man rapidly heading somewhere ‘bump into her’; he moved on without noticing her, and she got what she wanted: the plate being knocked up and the sauce smeared on her dress’ shoulder. Okay…now just a LITTLE negative reaction, don’t draw too much attention…

“Hey, you…ugghhh!” Winnow walked to the nearest waiter. “Hey, sir, where’s the nearest washroom?”

Hudson, as she was the one who Winnow had saw, didn’t notice any of this. She was trying to get Mannifred alone to get her prime business done; he was one of the potential buyers of of 3T and she wanted the offers all lined up as swiftly as possible so she could pick one out, especially since there were mystery hands in play based on what had happened to Creed…

“This cloth, I wouldn’t use this unless a certain very nasty need comes along, but if you slap it onto someone’s face, the material will immediately adhere to the skin. Cutting off the mouth and nose completely. It resists tearing, but it can be pierced. The adhering process only lasts a few minutes, it’s based on sweat absorption, but it really can’t be removed otherwise without removing the person’s face with it.”

Her dress shifted to pants, the colors darker, Winnow slipped out of the washroom and into the adjacent office across from it, making sure no one was in the hallway to see her.

“Finally, this. We call it the JUC. Jumped Up Corkscrew. Corkscrews remove…well, corks. There are small mechanisms that can cut through and remove glass for entrance…this goes a step further. It will make a small passageway through a wall. Two, at most. Then the battery will burn out and ruin the mechanism…while also making it unable to be traced. The downside of having to micro-size such a machine. So make sure you look at the blueprints and pick your spot well.”

It was amazing the tricks you could pull with visual space. Many a magician worked their magic by making it appear that whatever they were interacting with was far smaller than it actually was. So was the same process used to hide the small ‘fanny pack’ that she’d used to carry in the JUC: the rest of her gear could be hidden on her person in small, concealed pockets. Rather than a corkscrew, the JUC looked more like an enlarged taser, the energies springing off the progs and quickly sweeping in a circle, cutting a hole through the wall and then extracting the material outward.

“These aren’t just normal shades. They’re also X-Ray glasses, and a few other tricks. Short range, but it will tell you if anyone is in a room next to you if you use the x-ray function.”

Which was why Winnow had immediately cut her hole, squeezing through, the LT smoothing itself to allow quicker passage. The adjacent office had nothing or no one in it that she needed; where she actually wanted to be was the office next to IT.

But this office was still locked and alarmed, unlike the one she’d broken into. Which meant Winnow had to play ‘the floor was lava’: the ground had weight sensors that would be set off if she touched it. Thankfully, there was enough furniture for her to hop across to the adjacent wall. All right. Just one more cut, and then she’d have access…

“And of course…Immiserate. And the new setup you have for it. But honestly. If that’s being activated…then things have gone wrong and you’re probably scrapping the mission. But we’ll still keep it in range and with the necessary backup trigger hidden in your jaw.”

The second cut wall piece took longer to discard, as Winnow had to place it on a nearby chair, and do it before her JUC fully broke down. She cut it close, the device in her hand becoming painfully hot as she squeezed through the second passageway into Mannifred Gueslin’s office. She left it on the edge of the hole.

As said, her sunglasses had other vision modes. Which she used to be able to see the trigger lasers that criss-crossed the third room. You would think such a setup would not be designed to allow people potential passage through available gaps, but the problem with floor sensors like the ones in the floor here was that if you had too many lasers too concentrated in certain spots, there could be a gradual gathering of heat that would set the floor sensors off. Unfortunate, though the lasers also came with the benefit that any sort of alteration of their passage would set them off, so no re-directing them with mirrors. Winnow would have to again play ‘the floor is lava’ while avoiding the beams, reach Mannifred’s desk, put the cracking device into his computer, and then get back out the same way.

…it was easier than she expected. Oh, she’d had to make one tight small jump, but the other three had been simple enough that she probably could have made them before she’d gotten all her extra information crammed into her head to help speed-run her to this new way of doing things. No need to try and guess any passwords: Winnow removed the ‘drive’ from where it was hidden in her right earring and, kneeling on the desk, carefully making sure she didn’t knock anything off, inserted the small machine into one of the available slots on the horizontal computer case the monitor rested on, watching the end of it flash colors and keeping her eye on the window behind her for movement.

It was a very tense ninety seconds, but no one came along, outside the door or outside the Monastery/Crayon window the office looked out of. Winnow watched the end of the drive turn white to indicate it was done, and then removed it, slipping the small machine back into the earring holder.

Going back the way she came was admittedly harder. But she made it. Squirming through her second makeshift door, having to again take the now-fried JUC with her, she carefully moved out onto the chair beyond it, slowly adjusting her weight so she didn’t make the chair fall over as she slid into it, or that she knocked the piece of wall she’d removed out of it. Back across the first room, easier due to no lasers, and back through her first door. She settled down on the floor, placing the destroyed JUC in the nearest garbage can, before she adjusted herself, the LT on her form returning to her party dress. All right then.

One quick check outside via her glasses to make sure there was no one immediately outside, and then she opened the door, putting on a confused face as she exited. No one there. She turned to close the door.

She was vaguely aware of the light footsteps. Vesper had half a moment to recognize them as someone moving rapidly yet quietly, and turned her head right into the swinging fist.

She’d expected some sort of verbal cue. A ‘hey what are you doing’, some sort of surprise. Not someone running up and punching her lights out without saying anything.

Everyone had a plan until they got punched in the mouth.

Whatever It Takes, Part 8: Everybody Waiting For The Fall Of Man

 -Afterward. Kobber season starting fairly soon. After What ward? Read On-

The last real test, as time started to creep back up on a new ‘season’, had taken nearly three weeks. Nothing like accomplishing something difficult to provide a sense of accomplishment.

And it hadn’t exactly been easy. Especially when they’d been asked to handicap themselves by avoiding flying as much as possible. It was still an option, and they’d been told if things somehow went bad to discard that instruction and make their way back ‘home’ via that method as fast as possible. Not to mention two emergency ‘ABORT MISSION’ options if even THAT wasn’t viable. And they’d been told to try and select every item they thought they might need for such a test, so it wasn’t like they’d been sent out with just the clothes on their back.

(And when asked, Christopher HAD grimly commented that yes, he’d done that before, and he really should have known better, even if nothing seriously wrong had happened, and hence he wouldn’t ever be doing THAT again)

And so they’d caught another airship after heading to the closest town to the Ravensky abode, and been deposited at a Hemel outpost named Nobelos, roughly 700 or so miles away from home. They’d been given maps (and shown how to use them beyond the basics) and been given simple instructions: make it home.

They had. And debriefing had begun once they had rested up from their arrival: it was nice to get familiar meals and beds after a few weeks of semi roughing it and unfamiliar locals.

“You stayed five days in Nobelos? The Hemel wanted to dissect you, didn’t they?” The Hemel, as the girls had learned over the last several months, were a demi-human species who were very thin and very intellectual, with many of their brains having a building or technological bent. Tech like the kind the Dragon Girls had was a gold mine, and they had indeed poked and prodded and probably tried to swipe a piece or two (which the girls had growled them off against doing) before the girls decided they had been gracious enough guests and given them enough notes and data to look over.

“Just about, really. They were pretty interested in our systems, but then we realized they were REALLY interested, sort of fascinated, and we gave them some of our specifications and stuff to tide them over. It wasn’t bad or anything, just a little weird.” Venny said, thinking over the experience.

“We figured, well, they probably hadn’t seen a whole lot just like us- what would the odds of that be?” Vimmy said, briefly smiling. She’d sort of liked the attention.

First day while travelling: 20 miles covered. Mostly dusty scrubland.

“Yeah, the Raze went through the Nobelos Plains. Consumed it down to the dirt. Still recovering. There’s also buried ‘weapons’ out there not yet found, so that’s why the path was so back and forth and all over the place. Has to weave around…sinkholes, more or less.”

What was the Raze?

“Long story. Another time. Don’t blame yourself for not finding water, there’s little to nothing there.”

Day 4: 12 miles. Five miles inside the ‘Dotegen Length’, a massive underground tunnel. Not massive enough, in terms of width though; most of their time had been jammed inside it with people, carts, and other methods of transport coming and going, the tunnel being narrower than it seemed like it should be.

“The Tegen Mountain Range that the Length travels under would have been worse for you to cross. Even for you two. Weather’s appalling, and Fiends have been spotted repeatedly. Wouldn’t surprise us if there was more than what was seen. If Fiends are living in such hostile terrain, they must know something we don’t. The tunnel’s narrow because the size it is is already tempting fate. You dig a bit more, you might find something that has decided it doesn’t want to tolerate your presence any more. Did you get any sense of claustrophobia?”

“Just a little, not a lot. Well, maybe more than a little. I thought having other people be around and moving through it too would keep that off of us, but a little before the middle it started feeling like the walls were closing in. I think it was just us being unfamiliar with underground places, I’ve never had a problem with it before.”

“I am glad we didn’t try to go over the mountains themselves, even with fiends for company. It looked rough from a distance and then rougher the closer we got.” Vimmy said. “I don’t think we’d be back by now if we’d tried, it would’ve taken a pretty long time just to pick our way up and then down.”

“You got that right. It was pretty quick, all things considered. Those carts they had, they helped speed through it a lot.” Venny added.

“Not going to try and be Hannibals any time soon then.” Christopher was also taking ‘notes’ from their recount.

“Who’s Hannibal?”

“Person from ancient history. Took an army with elephants over a mountain. Somehow made it over with something still approaching an army. Amazing military feat, if you ignore all the cost of such a venture.”

Day 6: The “Bayvista Bowels”. A swamp filled with excess humidity, lots of insects, and natural rock bridges that could be slippery, along with lots of red ‘scum algae’ on the excess amount of lakes, bogs, and so on. One experience with quicksand, easily escaped.

“Because going around it would take a week or so, and you figured you’d endure it, I assume? How’d it go?”

“Well, better than we thought it would. It wasn’t all that pleasant or nice, but we’d planned for the worst and hoped for the best and that helped us to make it through. We sort of kept our eyes on the horizon and tromped our way in. Those bugs were the worst part, just when we’d think we were safe we’d start hearing them again.” Venny said, absently scratching her arm.

“I kind of liked it at first, but when we were out I was glad to leave. I couldn’t believe how hot it was! We were sweating before the sun had even risen.” Vimmy said, wide eyed.

“The scenery was pretty nice, but it was definitely a place to visit, not to live. Even when we realized we had to go through it instead of skirt the edges, we took a few hours to make sure everything we had was loaded down and prepared just in case we fell into the water or something like that.”

“Used to be worse. It was infested with Lithefiends and a unique kind of bipedal reptilian Inimical. A literal alligator man creature. The latter’s cleaned out the last few years though. The Lithefiends kind of got caught in the crossfire, so they’re mostly gone too, and they probably would have avoided you anyway. Too much trouble, not enough meat. I take it you were warned not to camp there overnight?”

Yeah, but they didn’t say WHY.

“If you don’t light a campfire? Probably nothing. If you DO? Well…there’s been reports of Splitter Wings. Not very nice insects. And they like the heat and warmth of a fire, and their eggs are…well, they lay them in a cloud of dust. If you get any of the dust in your nose or ears and don’t get it cleaned out, well…let’s just say a nasty headache is the least you can suffer. There’s a REASON they’re called Splitters.”

“Oh! Oh, my god, really? Blech, gross!” Venny shuddered. “That’s a pretty darn good reason, I’d say. It started to get dark, and we actually thought about settling down for the night- but we took the warnings seriously and just kept on going anyway. We were so close that we didn’t have to push too hard, but I mostly just didn’t want to spend the night there.”

“Yeah, me either. That’s horrible! I guess the bugs really were the worst part, hands down then. We didn’t, uh-”

“No, we’d know by now. Why, does your nose itch?”

“No!” Vimmy said, before scratching it anyway.

“It would have shown worse symptoms by now if you’d gotten anything of the sort up it. The Splitters mainly find prey in idiots who try and ignore pain because they’re tough.”

“Speaking of…”

Day 12: Cross’See.

“You two got invited to a Row. Oh dear.” Celeste looked incredibly bemused. “So, how badly did it go?” Ie, for THEM.

“NINETEEN!” Vimmy tossed her ‘attacker’ into a wall. “TWENTY!” A palm strike and a touch of gravity sending the next one flying. “TWENTY-TWO!” Her tail bonked one on the head.

“I saw that Vimmy, that was just one!”

“Dang it! Now I lost count! SEVENTY-SIX!”

“Stop that!”

“I doubt the Rowing groups will ever make THAT mistake again.” Christopher commented. “Did any of them manage to at least scratch you?”

“...It went pretty good for us. For everyone else, not so much.” Venny snickered. “That was one of the biggest scrabbles we’ve been in, everybody going all at once, but it, well, when we got down to business I think it was a pretty big surprise. I kind of think they were banking on us fighting one another, or something, but… it didn’t quite go down like that.”

“At first everybody was just to and fro, getting everyone they could within reach, but we thought that as long as we weren’t going full bore we might as well still have a little fun. I know I got hit once or twice, but I think some of those were either lucky shots or people not realizing who was on the other end of their fists or weapons. At least, until it was too late.” Vimmy considered.

“Did you see me pick that guy up?” Venny asked, grinning.

“And throw him into those other guys? I did! I couldn’t help but laugh, that was something.” Vimmy nodded. “At first we were all sorts of nervous, but we thought, if worse came to worse we could just escape really quick and get out of there, but we ended up being the tigers they had by the tails.”

“Neither of us expected to find ourselves in a big ol’ fight like that, but in hindsight it was a lot of fun. Well, fun for us. I’m pretty sure we’re not getting invited back any time soon!”

Day 16: Sudden terrible weather. Hail the size of baseballs. An abandoned barn for attempted shelter had proven too fragile, so they tried to judge the storm’s path and move away from it. Didn’t work. Ended up deep in a forest, per their maps, called the Munestead Glades…

Celeste’s face made them stop. She’d paled a bit.

“What?” Venny said.

“...continue.”

The weather got worse. Like it was following them. They attempted to reach a mountain range, and find a cave for cover as taught. Only to discover what appeared to be a giant sphere built into the base of the mountain, a part of which seemed to have been peeled off like the skin on a fruit…

“What did you do?” Christopher had abruptly pulled up next to his wife. Both their faces indicated that this was not considered by them to be a ‘good detour’.

“Well, it was basically that or the forest, and the wind was so high, trees were falling down. We thought, it didn’t look natural so maybe something was there but we didn’t see any guards or…”

“You went into the Porcine?!” Christopher said.

“Dear. Drain the tone. Though the question stands. You went in through the gap?” Celeste said.

“Well, just a bit…”

“You didn’t have any sort of bad feeling?” Christopher said.

“Well, a little-”

“JUST a little?” Christopher said.

“...yes?” Venny looked nervous.

“...just a little. Did you feel any sort of compulsion? Like, come on in here, it’s safe, and interesting, anything like that?” Celeste said.

“No. We just wanted out of the weather. We didn’t go in far.”

The two Weav residents looked at each other.

“What’d you find?” Celeste said.

“...a city, but…the place was abandoned. No people. No nothing. Animals, birds…nothing. I mean, the weather was bad, but once we got past where the ‘split’ in the ‘orb’ happened the insulation was amazing. But…it was just a dark city full of dust and silence. Maybe there were some paths in the dust? We didn’t really pay that much attention, because we didn’t like it.”

“We got as close to the edge as we could…wasn’t all that much better than being right out in the storm, but we figured, this ain’t right. We slept in shifts. When the sun started coming up the next day we cleared out. We didn’t know what it was, but we didn’t want to find out. Which I kind of guessed when I tried to find it on our maps two days later and couldn’t. We did get a bit lost, but…”

“No, you’re right in that regard. The Porcine has been removed from maps. As many maps as possible. We assumed that you either wouldn’t end up near it, or in the off chance you did, well, the fact that ‘nothing happened’ is a damn happening. People who go near the Porcine if they have ANY sense get screaming, primal ‘NOT GOOD’ hollering if they get within five miles of the place. The ones who don’t, or ignore it, well…” Christopher said.

“It’s a bad place. Not as bad as Megan’s Woe, but…nothing happened? Nothing bothered you, you didn’t feel mortal terror or a desire to go into the city, that…I think that’s a first.” Celeste said.

“Like the Glorious ignoring. Their bodies…maybe it couldn’t make a connection. Or sense them at all. Maybe it read them as a bunch of stones moving in the wind, instead of…victims.”

Vimmy and Venny looked at each other before turning back, Venny slowly shaking her head. “No, that- It was creepy, and I think we both felt like it didn’t belong, but it was more like seeing an abandoned building where there aren’t any other buildings, like an old house in deep woods. Just sorta, trepidation, I guess. We weren’t going to poke around any deeper or go exploring because we just didn’t know what we’d found ourselves in.”

“There weren’t any animals or anything, it was dead quiet and totally empty. That’s what I kept going back to. I think we both thought whatever the reason for that was, it was a reason that could’ve gotten us too. Like radiation or sickness, or something like that.” Vimmy said, her eyes wide.

“...What happened there to make it like that? Was it ruined somehow? From the sound of things we’re awfully lucky, because we were right there at the entrance. Whatever passed us over, it seems like a spider in a web.” Venny swallowed. At the time she’d had some thoughts and speculation over the city in a sphere, but now she felt a little like she’d passed by a ledge in darkness and come a few inches from falling off it.

“...What normally happens to people who go in?” Vimmy asked slowly, not sure she actually wanted to know.

“..we’ll tell you in a bit. We should wrap up this debriefing.”

Day 20: Town of Atelp’et. They were having a festival based around their town culture of painting and design. The dragon girls helped crush a lot of nuts for various dyes and had the town’s children paint their wings various colors. Then when they were off the next day it rained and the designs washed off.

“Sorry. It makes sense that they’d have the children use the water soluble materials.” Christopher said. He did not comment on the fact that ‘pictures’ as Kobbers might know them were considerably harder to do in Weav, and hence there were no phones or cameras to at least snap more permanent memories of the designs.

“It’s just one of those things, I suppose. We were happy enough to let them paint us up, and it looked pretty impressive when they were done, but we should’ve guessed it wouldn’t last all that long.” Venny said wistfully. “Besides, at least they let us be part of the fun.”

“We weren’t quite dragons afterward, more like very pretty birds. I wish you both could’ve seen us, all the description in the world doesn’t do it justice.” Vimmy said, her turn to shrug. “I like our flat, sort of metal and white coloring, but… Well, it was a nice change of pace.”

“We do still have our stealth modes.” Venny pointed out, Vimmy shaking her head. “Yeah, but that’s just, like, black and grey. It’s more of a palette swap than anything.”

Day 23: Last day before familiar terrain and home two days later. The Vinwin Fields. The two girls had been told that they should stay on the path. The fields were mainly a circular ecosystem between the large burrowing worm-snake creatures called Biques and giant, very nasty pig beasts called Goars. The two species’ primarily fed on each other, resulting in exceptional growth for both: Goars and Biques lived elsewhere, but rarely were any samples found that were larger than the ones that populated those fields. Biques were generally harmless unless provoked with very loud noise, but Goars were nasty, aggressive animals that could pack several tons of mass and a series of razor sharp tusks that could tear normal people in half, pierce armor, and rend metal if it got it at the right angle with enough force. Like pigs, though, they were made of all sorts of delicious meat, so hunting them could be a beneficial process, for either food or making money.

“So, see any Goars?”

“Yeah, one.” Venny said. A shockingly pale pink with white bristle hair stained with who knew what. It had popped out from behind a hill and made for the two girls. The two thought Leowolves seemed supersized; Goars took it a step further, being sized the same as rhinoceri, hippopotamuses, and in this case, a decent sized elephant, to compare it to Earth species.

Until they’d used a little gravity to pick it up and toss it some distance. It didn’t seem harmed by the landing, and it seemed to conclude that they were far more trouble than they were worth. Though it had actually followed them for several miles afterward: Venny swore it was glowering at them and wanted them to know how cross it was.

“It probably thought you’d throw food at it to make it leave. That’s generally what a charge means. Either panic the small things into giving them free food, or, well, maybe the small things can BE the food. Especially if they’re injured, the Goar, that is. But that one following you was probably just an alpha boar who was indeed mad you tossed him away like a ball. If you ever go back there and see a Goar with a black tusk, try and immobilize it and remove it. Some Goars can do some…INTERESTING things with unconventional stuff they have eaten and it gets laced into the tusks, and those tusks can be used as the base for some very useful materials.”

“Even with its size, we figured, well, animals don’t really know what a throw is, you know? They normally don’t have a concept of that motion. We thought that would scare it off even with it being humongous, but then we turned around after a minute or two and see it walking along after us, and it put our hackles up a little. I’m pretty sure it wanted us to see that it didn’t care all that much.” Venny explained, demonstrating with her hands being followed menacingly.

“Yeah, at first I thought the Goars were gonna be cute, from the picture in my head- Not that I was gonna do something stupid and get close, or anything, but sort of like how hippos and big animals have that sort of energy. Only, if we hadn’t been who and what we are, it could’ve gone sideways pretty quick.” Vimmy added, eyebrows up. “What’s a black tusk mean, metal?”

“Better. You’d need to know your magic crafting to really understand, though. Ask Hope, she could explain it.”

“Funny thing is, we’d probably have thrown it some food afterward if it hadn’t started barreling at us. But once it was coming, all that mass and size, we weren’t going to sit around and wait to find out what it wanted one way or the other.”

“Such is life. Not every giant sized animal gets a bigger brain to go with it.”

The Leowolf South, lying nearby on her stomach, looked offended at the concept. How dare any other embiggened animal be smart.

That had been it, in terms of unusual events. From there, they’d entered the outskirts of Ravensky territory, and after another day of woods trekking, had recognized just where they were and how to get home. Though at the time, neither Christopher or Celeste were home themselves: Patty was, and so she and the girls had gorged on junk food for two days until her parents returned, which was a nice coda. Though, alas, no peanut brittle. The girls knew how darn rare it was, though, so they weren’t disappointed.

And now, the debriefing of their trip. With that done…time to fill in the gaps of their knowledge about the wrong turn they’d taken.

---

“The Porcine…well, it was once called Ioscince. Their ‘history’...well, they were a mining town that, over the generations, grew into a giant trading city that literally became part of the mountain that initially made it possible. But…it was insular. I guess you could say, paranoid. Not exactly welcoming to outsiders: it did trade and it liked just doing that, thank you very much. When Xaxargas woke up, per their assessment, Ioscince took it…badly.” Ie, before the dark god woke up, Ioscince didn’t exist. It and its history had been created out of full cloth, and all the people put there had had the fake memories imprinted as their history, culture, and all that, so thoroughly it might as well have been real. After all, it wasn’t like one could travel back in time to check one’s past. “The ruling class built that giant dome around the city so that if the Raze came by, they could just seal up and maybe pay them some danegeld to go away…which, ironically, never happened. But the Twilight did-” That being the period where Xaxargas had said he was tired of playing with the world so he was going to give them some more time and then he was going to destroy it, which ended in the final attack where he was based, the Blacklands, and Ash killing him. “And well, the movers and shakers went insane with fear, and basically put another layer on their protective dome and then literally sealed themselves in. Like they could survive the world being destroyed as long as they stayed inside their perfect little shield…

“...well, they weren’t so insane that they all devolved into sticking fingers in their ears and making noise while pretending nothing was happening. Unfortunately, I think they were a different kind of insane. If you’re locked up behind thick walls and have all you need to survive, like some kind of city-sized safehouse, and yet you STILL feel like you have to run and hide, where do you go? That’s what the theory is. That the magicians and those who wielded the power inside Ioscince wanted to find a way to hide even better. So they looked. And they, capital L, Looked. And whatever they found…

“Well, when the Twilight was over, people eventually went and tried to get in contact with the people of Ioscince behind their dome. No answer. So eventually enough people managed to carve open part of the dome, peel it back like a flower petal. After all, if it was a city of the dead, there was stuff that could be stolen. And if not, well…I’ll admit, the idea was probably a tomb robbery. They were half right, it seemed. Because the city was empty. No people, no living beings at all. But no destruction, no sign of mass death like disease, no blood, nothing at all. It was like every living thing vanished into the proverbial ether. And those that went in to look…

“They vanished too. Some of them. No trace. Over the years, others have tried to claim the city’s treasures, or find out what happened. Some of the 44 included. Some of those who did, disappeared as well. Some came out half-insane rambling nonsense, about ‘the other city’, but we never were able to figure out what it meant, and those that recovered mentally ended up with blank memories, like nightmares that faded away. And yes, Celeste and I went inside it. Twice. We never found anything, and the whole time there there was this awful sense of danger, that there was going to be something JUST AROUND THE CORNER…so, in the end, the world basically went “Seal it off, anyone who goes looking is on their own, remove it from maps so it can’t easily be found, and stay away. That way is shut.” At least, unlike Megan’s Woe, the area isn’t so warped that it can literally poison things with ‘wrongness’ like that video I showed you…”

“Or the Kobber’s encounter with that echo of Agony that spawned completely out of the Woe and infected Samuel, leading the Kobbers to have to get rid of it, thank them all, especially when they did it AGAIN years later.”

“But the area’s still wrong. Anyone who has basic caution gets more and more paranoid and aware of SOME kind of danger the closer they get, but there have been stories of the less cautious and more…flawed, instead feeling COMPELLED to find and enter what was Ioscnine. Those are the ones who vanished just like the original occupants. The bad weather around the area? It’s not normal. Whether it’s just an area of distorted space or…some kind of literal herding mechanism by SOMETHING to try and make them head towards the Porcine…

“...well. Those Goars on Vinwin? They used to be more in the area around Ioscine. But when it got cracked open, every animal eventually moved elsewhere. Goars are VERY hard to dislodge from what they consider good territory, and that was ‘good territory’ in their eyes. Yet they fled. But the fact that giant pig beasts used to be around there, and that so many people vanished, someone stuck the two together. See, wild pigs and such animals, the suidae family, in many cases they will eat anything. Literally anything, if they can and it can’t get away. Even if it’s just a little at a time. Until there’s nothing left. Gone completely, not even bones left. Victims of a relentless appetite. Hence, its new name. The Porcine.”

“We assumed that while yes, it was sort of in the direction home you’d be going, you two would get the terrible bad feeling and even if you ended up close to it, you’d give it a wide berth. But instead…it just barely seemed to register to you. And you to it. Very strange. Maybe something to explore, in the future. Not that we mean you should go back. No. The way is SHUT.”

“...Good lord. We, we just literally stumbled across it out of sheer dumb luck. Either good luck or bad luck, but if we’d been a half mile in either direction instead we probably would’ve missed the rent where we went in. But that’s the thing I keep sticking to, for us, it was just creepy and felt sort of lost. Our nerves were pretty jumpy, and I don’t know about Vimmy but I kept imaging we weren’t alone-”

“No, I did too. I knew we were, we’ve got scans and all sorts of detection that we could do, and I ran through all of mine. Nothing showed up, not even a ghost.” Vimmy said quietly.

“-Exactly. It was just our imaginations playing tricks on us. The whole place was dead as could be, just frozen without any life at all. We weren’t even tempted to explore or poke around, mostly because we could just imagine how you both would react if we fell and twisted an ankle or something, being dumb in a place we should have known better at.” Venny admitted, folding her hands. “That, and we thought maybe whatever had cleared it out was still there, like a gas leak or something from deep in the earth.”

“No wonder it’s been taken off maps and scrubbed off. It sounds horrible! I’m just glad nothing really happened to us. I wish I knew why, we’re not- Well, I guess we are kind of special, what with all our cybernetics, but we’re not special-special, if that makes sense. Under all the metal and horns and tails we’re just baseline humans.” Vimmy said, a little mystified.

“...Someone is going to have to reseal the city. If we could get in, other people are going to be able to. Plus, I hate to say it, but I’m sure there’s still a few people that would want to, and damn the consequences. It’s just not safe enough yet.”

“We’re never going back if we have a choice. Especially not now, when we know better.” Venny promised, Vimmy enthusiastically nodding in agreement. She still felt a little like they’d escaped disaster without knowing the disaster was there, and didn’t like relying on what amounted to maybe just being lucky enough.

“You’re not the first to suggest that. It’s stalled out repeatedly. Based on the effort needed to get that degree of effort to the area when it’s not actively emitting ‘bad’ that spreads. And a deep unspoken fear that maybe that will seal it back up…or it will stop it up. And it will result in some kind of pressure build and, well…you can see why a lot of people just went “Erase the paths, anyone who goes there is taking their chances, we wash our hands.” Celeste said.

“When some place baffles even us, and it stays in one small area that’s out of the way, well…let sleeping dogs lie. Things that spread, they DO get dealt with. The Vinwin Fields are generally peaceful, but elsewhere on this world there’s the Mulcahy Barrens. Goars also live there. And one REAL big one once caused some big trouble. But that’s a story for another time.”

That story, when they learned it, involved a Goar the size of a train engine, an appetite for human flesh, someone building a processing ‘factory’ in the heart of its territory, which made it range further afield, and a fight with Weav heroes that were not in the Ravensky circle that only ended when the Goar, known as the Deathless in local slang (“Rezara Zaspara”), was lured into a giant ‘fan’.

“So named because it ignored most anything else that tried to make it dead. Some studies of the meat mess that was left suggested the animal had an extremely undeveloped nerve system so that it really didn’t register pain. Some stories said the animal had NO nervous system, but that’s impossible. Or at least, incredibly unlikely.”

“...That’s true. I guess the only thing worse than leaving a slit open would be letting all that wrongness build up. I think we’re just still not used to the idea of something like that being open and there, worse than any haunted house or spooky graveyard. At least we made it out alive and not marked by it.” Venny had nodded thoughtfully. It made sense to her… It was better to remove the location from maps than post warnings that weren’t necessary anyway, especially since those warnings would’ve been signs for the people who were crazy enough to explore the Porcine to follow.

“I’m a little glad to have seen the Goars in the first place, even if that one was trouble for us. Back on Earth they’d have probably already hunted them to extinction. Besides-”

“Don’t say it was kind of cute.” Venny interrupted, Vimmy shaking her head. “Yeah, right! Most things with mouths that can eat me whole aren’t all that cute. It was just, cool to see. I know what we were doing and why we were doing it, it was important, but it was a nice trip too. They were just a part of the highlights, is all.”

“...It was a lot of fun, honestly. We took it seriously, we really did, and we didn’t have to fly or skip a single step, but we didn’t want to. Those guidebooks you had made for us, they let us get kind of a picture of Weav- so did this!” Venny said happily, briefly reminiscing. It hadn’t felt like they’d gone a long way until it was all lain out….

“Still. Good for you to be back home. Place was feeling empty again.” Christopher said, though he was also writing in a journal as he spoke.

Home.

Winnowwill, Part 1

-North Carolina. Somewhere Along The Northern Route Of the I-40, but still some distance before it enters into the next state, which was Tennessee-

They say you became blind to your own smells, good or bad, if you spent enough time in them. Usually, this meant that you could make a bad first impression by introducing someone to a location which, to them, stank.

It also meant that if a new scent entered your familiar abode, you might be more likely to notice it. Creed did.

His people weren’t one for antiperspirants, partly because of the nose thing, and partly because a lot of them didn’t much care anyway. The general smell of the Raghorn bar was B.O, stale beer, cigarette smoke, and an undercurrent of blood, though only Creed really smelled the last one. The faint scent of artificial flowers, the ever-faint smell of a subtle perfume…well, the fact that all his people were unconscious on the ground said plenty, but the smell gave him the clue that he wasn’t alone with them.

Well, all but one were unconscious.

The pole cue shattered on the edge of the table, splinters of wood hitting her as she dodged to the side, the backhand glancing her despite that and briefly making her see stars, before she ducked and rolled to escape an attempted stab with the newly made crude stake.

Greasy fingers tangled in her hair even as she rose; this bastard was quick, her scalp screaming as he yanked her back, pulling a switchblade from somewhere, her reflexes kicking in as she went with the pull instead of against it, flipping herself backwards up and over his shoulder, the new angle causing him to lose his grip before she kneed him in the back, He stumbled forward, and she went for her firearm.

It got knocked from her hand from the swung stool, the tough having grabbed it up by its base: good thing, if he’d used the base to hit her, ie swung it by its legs, she suspected the impact would have fractured something in her hand instead of just knocking her gun free. The fact that he immediately flipped the pseudochair over and DID swing its base at her next quickly eliminated that advantage, as she beat a stumbling retreat.

---

-Tennessee Proper-

The thing about concepts like ‘hand of the king’ and ‘strong right arm’ that tended to be misunderstood was that people who excelled in such positions had no agency of their own. They served as an extension of someone else, and that was all they did.

Hudson knew plenty assumed that of her. That she was a jumped up lap dog, who only moved when Benedictine snapped her fingers. And well…she DID devote a lot of her life to the woman. And she was happy ‘to serve’, if you insisted on phrasing it like that.

But Hudson hadn’t been extracted from Benedictine as a rib and made to be her task-doer. She’d found that position, and earned it. You don’t do a job like that WELL if you don’t exist in some way outside of it; people like that got blinders on, eventually, or, even if they were immensely hard to compromise, if you COULD compromise them, it was an utter disaster.

So yes, Benedictine ruled Tennessee with a velvet glove and an iron fist. There were 49 other states. And the state of North Carolina was right next door. And the Duke Collective School Of Medicine, which performed, among other tasks, cutting edge biomedical research.

Any good majordomo knew that their boss would always like an alternate, safe revenue stream. If that meant that one also got to occasionally work their own deals and setups, so much the better.

But never assume anything. And so Hudson had come to Benedictine to make the presentation.

---

Considering the lock on his little ‘office’ was forced, it wasn’t much of a stretch that Creed made that whoever was still hanging around was in there. Considering the lack of concealment of evidence, he just opened and stepped through the door.

His office was dim by design; he preferred it that way. He also had excellent night vision, which let him see the woman sitting in the chair, facing the door. Leg crossed, one arm over her leg, like she was waiting for a bus.

“You Creed?” A calm, neutral, clipped tone.

“...last I checked.” Creed walked over to his desk, sitting behind it, his old chair squealing as he did so. He really needed to get that oiled. “The couch is more comfortable.”

“I’ll sit.”

“Might be a bit of work done first.”

“...I am not meat for you.” The clipped tone became colder.

“Suspect my boys thought that.”

The beer bottle didn’t break,instead thunking on the side of the man’s head with a painful, wet-sounding smack. She didn’t get to make a second swing, as his part-shove and part punch knocked her backwards over the bar, crashing down onto the sticky, badly-in-need-of-a-mopping-or-seven floor. Her eyes flicked around; sometimes these sorts kept guns behind the counter for trouble…

No time; he had jumped over the bar after her, forcing her to shove herself down the floor before he stomped on her. She scrambled up, grabbing the nearest bottle of booze and throwing it at him. It bounced off, just producing a grunt, shattering on the floor, the glass crunching under his boots as he came for her. She threw another bottle, and another, all futile as he closed in and went for her throat, his crushing hands wrapping around it.

She went for his eyes, her thumbs plunging deep, the shock and pain of it loosening his grip and making him recoil, and the most recent bottle that she slammed upside his head FINALLY shattered, foul-smelling liquor spraying all over him and her as she broke free and retreated back over the bar.

She heard the click. She knew that sound. There WAS a gun under the bar; she just hadn’t seen it. He, on the other hand, had a better idea of where it might be, and had promptly grabbed it up. She ran and dove as the metal slug fired from the sawed off shotgun impacted the floor next to her, more splinters spewing up as she leapt, got next to a table, overturned it, and curled up as the man fired at said table: it was completely useless as a shield, but it obscured where she was, and that was what was going to save her, if anything…

---

“Ampronodoco Cetagrastim. Codename Tic-Tac-Toe.”

The white-silvery liquid in the helix-shaped container looked to her like it belonged more in a thermometer than a vein.

“3T for short. Grew out of an attempt to make a drug for obsessive-compulsive disorder. This is Dr. Gordon Danzizen was running out the clock to retirement being an aid on it, when he had a flash of brilliance. Saw something no one else did. The changes to the drug, well, it’s still at least a decade away from any sort of wide use. But, if you want to hope high…it could be used to treat addiction in and of itself. Drugs, alcohol, cigarettes maybe even more nebulous ones like hoarding, or sex. Or at least act as a universal help in such matters. No more need to use nicotine patches and methadone. A one stop shop…stop, more or less.”

“So what went wrong?”

“People, as usual. Dr. Danzizen suffered a stroke. He didn’t write down his whole process in notes, because the possibility and the discovery got away from him. He’s currently in a coma in the very hospital he worked at. He might never wake up. He might have brain damage. Or he could wake up tomorrow. Which would be great, because there was only one completed sample of 3T per Danzizen’s final work before his stroke.”

“And someone stole it.”

“Yes. But not in and of itself. This is Sean Hoagland, until recently a facilities maintenance technician for the same medical collective. A janitor, if you want to be dismissive. And a gambling addict. He was in too deep with some bad sorts. He stole 3T not knowing what it was, among a few other drugs and samples, likely to sell or try and offer as collateral. As you can see, it didn’t work out. Or he presented it badly.” A crime scene photo of a corpse with several bullet wounds, found in the back of a car. “Investigation has not turned up 3T or any evidence it has been discarded or disposed of. It’s in the wind. The problem is where that wind is blowing. It’s believed Hoagland was in deep with the Bitters, a motorcycle ‘club’ slash gang. Work in more traditional drugs. Meth, mostly. But the Bitters, as part of their doing of business, answer to the Inland Family. The Inland Family is a front, the actual ‘Family’ was wiped out years ago. Go past the front, and you end up at her doorstep.”

A photo of Benedictine Keele.

“But, this is too…small for her. Too uncertain. But…it has the possibility of blowing into her backyard. Which means it might land in the lap of one of her subordinates. She has a few. If they find 3T, if they realize what they have, well…the drug could be worth absolutely gigantic amounts of money. You’d have a bidding war over the ones who want to reclaim it or steal it and sell it, or take it and destroy it to prevent it from affecting their business. If the Bitters took 3T, then it WILL end up in the hands of Benedictine’s organization. Not the woman herself, but one of the seconds. Thorpe. Hudson. There’s a new face called Quarry that’s making some waves, but she might be too unestablished to properly handle something like this. But it’s not impossible. At which point, maybe Keele orders it back to where it came from, too much trouble. Or she sees the dollar signs and makes a risk assessment and decides otherwise.”

---

“So. You came looking for trouble?”

“Just information.”

“Can I get a name?”

“Winnow will do.” She had skill and talent, but she was not the sort that felt that she could fight a whole gang of bikers and come out on top. Her cousin, she was not. Instead, she’d just come in, made a few challenges of pool, worn a tight set of pants and a low cut shirt, all daring and flirty, amazed at her acting ability as she shot pool and got pawed. And as she did, the canister she’d attached to the AC pumped in the odorless tranquilizer she’d taken the antidote for. It wasn’t complete protection, but the fact that she KNEW she was inhaling an intoxicant and no one else in the Bitters did helped. She’d still had to press her toe against a tack hidden in her shoe once or twice, to keep herself sharp, and the large men, many used to indulging in their own intoxicants (and the tolerance that came with them), had not done her the courtesy of all passing out more or less at once; she’d had to walk around and spray some of them in the face with a higher dose of the tranquilizer to make them fully nod off.

“Never heard of you. That’s not good…for you.”

“So you say.”

“Came in here, dealt with my boys…but they’re all breathing still. If that was an art of sneaking thing, you’d have cleared out. But you were sitting here. Waiting. You don’t care for it. Don’t want to get blood on your hands.

“I bet it was a real nice surprise when Furnace came for you.”

Shots stopped. Reloading. She couldn’t close the distance in time, she’d fled too far out. And she didn’t have enough table to endure another barrage without getting hit,

Another bottle of liquor. A nearby unconscious Bitter, with a ragged shirt.

She amazed herself with her own speed, grabbing at the shirt and tearing a piece of it off, breaking the neck of the bottle, its contents slopping on her hands as she inhaled with her nose. Once, she’d have been clueless. Now…

It would work. She thrust the end of the shirt into the bottle, twisted it, and then yanked it out, flipping it around and shoving the other, ‘dry’ end into the bottle, her hand finding her pocket and her lighter.

The sound of a shotgun racking twinned with her lighting her makeshift wic, as she tossed the Molotov over the wrecked table and across the bar. She didn’t have to hit Furnace, not directly; all the broken bottles of liquor that had been sprayed around the bar, well…

Bikers drank heavy proof stuff. It wasn’t gasoline, but it served, the bar, and ironically, Furnace, going up in flames.

---

“...Ultimately, it came a hair’s breadth from being tossed aside as a curiosity and nothing more. What matters is the chain of command was able to stop, run a few prelims, and then pass it up that same chain.” Hudson continued.

In the office of her large home, Benedictine steepled her fingers and watched Hudson from the other side of her desk as she talked. She was considering not only her and her words, but the entailments and all that came along with them. She hadn’t risen to her lofty heights by acting with haste, and there were always angles to consider.

“If it is that same compound and not just a ghost in the wind, then it’s on its way to us by design. Now, what I’d like to do is take the chance and seize it before anyone else can get ahold of it, because then, we can pretty easily try to put it into production once we’ve fully analyzed it. Or, keep it as is and let it be someone else’s problem for the right price. Either way, our bottom line stays stable. As far as I can tell this is a low risk opportunity with a whole lot of potential.” Hudson said, clasping her hands behind herself. “What would you have me do?”

“I’m deciding that right now.” Benedictine replied, narrowing her eyes. Going through the different ways the situation could play out, ultimately, she was looking for where the vulnerabilities and weak points were in the plans themselves. The criminal underworld was shaky as a matter of its very existence, and just because a golden opportunity waltzed in didn’t mean it wasn’t wrapped in its own complications.

“Of course, there would be multiple parties interested in this sort of thing. Who would be most likely to interfere?”

“Off the top of my head, private security forces for the medical industry or mercs. This is big business and they play pretty close to our own rules when it comes to shadow work. State and local authorities aren’t a real factor, but it’s possible they could get involved. Outside of that, as far as I can tell the player count is low. There just weren’t that many people in the loop, and the ones that are, there are only a few that could bring any of your pull to the matter.” Hudson replied. “It really depends on who the Bitters ran their mouths to, if anyone. Even if there are other forces in the mix, they won’t be mobilized fast enough to do much good.”

“I see. Very well then, follow up on this matter, but be careful. There are stakes here beyond the benefits to our organization, and they won’t be taken lightly if things go wrong.” Benedictine said, before looking to her again. “Can I trust you to handle this?”

“Leave it to me, boss. It won’t be a problem.” Hudson said, bowing her head and then popping her metal knuckles.

---

“He was always like that. Some people need to cheat it, but Furnace? He could always hold his beer. Still be snorting stuff when everyone else was down and out. Like it was all just going into a fire.” His name was actually Furnas, with his first name being Mitch, or Mitchel, or something along those lines, but his ability to just process outside narcotics had made his handle much more appropriate. “...how did he die?”

He came for her anyway.

On fire. Screaming. He’d had to discard the shotgun, lest it blow up in his hands, somehow he still had the mental wherewithal to know to do that, but his hands might be enough…

It was pure coincidence that she sprayed him with a fire extinguisher. She needed a blinding agent, and the fact that it was one that would extinguish the flames was just a matter of lack of choice. He WAS blinded, and still somewhat on fire, and she had no time to hunt around for her gun or another gun. The wire she yanked from her shirt’s sleeve would have to do, as she climbed on his back.

“...not quietly.”

And wrapped the wire-cord around his neck, yanking back hard. Not a razor wire, this garrote. No cutting would be done. She'd have to keep his windpipe shut and hang on, even as he thrashed, tried to punch her off, slam her into something, grab her, and she just yanked back as hard as she could, literally pulling the strength from him by degrees.

He hadn't gone to sleep. So she’d had to put him down.

Somehow, she’d kept the contents of her stomach down as well, once it was done.

---

“There’s a nasty heads I win, tails you lose going on here. Anyone who is competent enough to try and get back the 3T, well, they’re either already under Miss Keele’s employ, or they know her well enough that they don’t want to mess with her. OR they, as in, competent outside parties, know THEM, as in, the Keele organization, well enough that them getting close before whoever is handling this just destroys the 3T sample is darn unlikely. So what we need is someone who’s competent…and more or less, an unknown. So they hesitiate.

“So. Winnow. Your mission. If you choose to accept it. That’s your name for now. We want the 3T retrieved. If you fail…well, either it will be destroyed or sold off. The latter is BETTER, as it still exists in the world, but having it back in its original hands might be best. AFTER it’s studied and a copy has been made. By us. Just in case. Once you leave this house, all you’ll have is what we’ve placed in the bolthole. You fail and die…well, no guarantee that we can come and get your body and wake it back up like we did twice with your brother with his Brawls. Especially if you run afoul of some of the sorts in that area.

“While we are fairly certain Benedictine will not be involved, you are NOT to engage with her. For multiple reasons. The woman’s not just powerful and intelligent, she’s deadly. I’d want at LEAST a four person team if we decided she needed to be…cleaned up, and I’d want one of them to be your cousin. She sniffs you out, you break off and flee. Anything else…we’ll leave to your discretion."

“And if it’s one of her seconds?”

“...again. Your discretion. Look. All the stuff we crammed into your head…it’s not a full compensation. Don’t think it will beat experience. But you’re stuck in a bad middle of knowing too much and not experiencing enough, and only certain experience will likely help. Like the limits of muscle growth with one set of weights. But at the same time…I wouldn’t have pulled you out here if I didn’t think you were a good choice. We don’t have much time, so if you say yes, you’ll need to move fast.

“So. What then, Winnow?”

“...I’m in the cut.”

---

And how deep the cut had been.

Yeah. She’d hated it. He could see it. But even hate could have its use. It could steel. And chill.

“...well, don’t worry.” Creed said. “It…comes easier the second time.”

Then he went for the gun in his desk.

She snapped up her Walter PPK and promptly put two in the man’s head, sending him flying backwards as he knocked over his chair.

“Yes.”

“Considerably.” Vesper said.

Agent Winnow had been blooded.

---

And the point of all this?

She’d found a tablet in Creed’s desk. Password protected. She knew there was information there, information the man probably wouldn’t have given up willingly, or at all. But part of that ‘password’ was a fingerprint scanner.

A dead man’s hand kept a print as well as a living one.

Vesper understood beyond-Weav tech better than some of her peers, and she swiftly got into the device’s emails and texts. Downside; not much information. Upside, it was a start, and she didn’t have to deal with encryption, which other members of the extended Benedictine family might have invested in.

She was going to keep the tablet, but she could be forgiven for dropping it when she heard the movement, turning around and seeing Creed pulling himself up, blood running down his face from the two still-obvious holes in his head, and his mouth full of unnatural fangs.

As said. He wasn’t quite normal. Maybe the likes of the dragons and other Benedictine underlings went for tech…but there was more than one way to skin a cat. Or change yourself to be stronger. Harder. More. Furnace, as said, got it naturally. Creed had to become something most UNNATURAL. He considered it a fair price.

“Soooooo sorrrryyy…but you…kinnddddd offfff…came alonggg at your BEGINNING…BAD CHOICE…!” The bullets were forced out of his head, even as his head elongated, along with his body, the fangs becoming knives, then swords, swords equally growing on his hands, his upper body stretching to accommodate all the blades. Some people told him he looked like a tryhard vampire when he…well, tried hard. But considering he was just as hard to put down as one, who cared? "BAD BEGINNING!"

Vesper had been slowly backing up, but she knew she was out of room.

And out of time.

…yet for all Creed’s enhanced senses, he didn’t hear the hard whine as something approached at great speed…

---

-The Raghorn. Later-

Hudson had NOT gone ‘nose-blind’ as one commercial put it, and hence when she entered the ruined office through the shattered wall, she immediately drew up a handkerchief and put it to her mouth.

How bad the smell was before events had happened here, and how bad it was now, she couldn’t tell. But it didn’t much matter what precise mix of ‘OG foulness, new foulness, and wind sweeping some of it away’ it was, it was horrific. Honestly, she would have preferred a bigger physical mess if it meant the smell was less pungent.

“This is how we found him, Miss Hudson.” Vici said.

Creed’s extended jaw looked even more ludicrously over the top with it flopping off to the side, blood having soaked into the ripped up old couch his head had ended up on, blood pooled on the floor in front of it, his shades broken, dull black eyes staring dumbly towards him. Hudson managed to keep from being startled when they flicked at her. The broken lights and setting sun had hid the slight muscle twitches of the…’man’. Or whatever Creed had turned himself into with…whatever. Benedictine was about Radiances and tech, but others went their own ways. It seemed like whatever Creed had done to change himself made him damn hard to kill. But not hard enough, it seemed, as his body was scattered all over what had been his office, as well as his blood.

“Gah, gah, gah, gah…” He was mutter-slurring, like it was some mantra.

“From a quick look, it seems like he’ll heal, but I do not know how long it will take. Days, weeks, months maybe. Normally I wouldn’t have asked you to come out here, but he managed to spit out ‘trouble’ when I was summoned by what’s left of his group. And THEY are all suffering memory loss, so whatever happened, only Creed here knows. And since he’s on your list involving the ‘Cross-O Project’ and it said contact you if anyone on it was…troubled…”

“You did right, calling me. Good god… What happened here? What do we know?” Hudson asked, looking over at her after tearing her eyes off the head. “Get me up to speed.”

“I don’t know. Some attack. But from what Creed’s rambling only he knows and it’s all nonsense to me.” Vici said.

“Gah, gah, gah, gah…”

“So…maybe he’ll listen to you?”

“Well, let’s hope so.” Hudson sighed. “You see how hard it is to put this guy down, and they still beheaded him. Doesn’t bode well.”

Kneeling down in front of the couch, Hudson drummed the tips of her clawed hands on the side of one of her wheels before she snapped her fingers, more for effect than to get Creed’s attention. He was already looking right at her anyway. All those sharp teeth hadn’t done much good for him after all… Hudson removed the remnants of his sunglasses before she said anything.

“Hey, pal. It’s ol’ Hudson. You’re in a bad way, if you hadn’t picked up on that already. Looks like a meat tornado flew through here, just about. We’ll get you back in one piece soon as we can, we’re good for that much.” She growled, not looking away or dropping her gaze this time. “Who did this? You get a name, a face, anything?”

The violence didn’t really bother her, but the circumstances did. Nobody random would end up tangling with Creed unless they had a deathwish, much less him and the group he was in charge of. Unless they found a body, she’d have to assume they’d managed to walk away afterward, and that spelled trouble. “Gah, what? Got? God? You gotta give me something.” She pressed. “Don’t try to tell me the whole story, just something I can go off of and I’ll take it from there.”

“Gah, gahe…gihhhh…” Turned out it was kind of hard to make words with a distended jaw, but considering he was doing it with no lungs or a larynx, Hudson wasn’t going to complain. Seemed like he was trying.

“HEEEEEEEEEEEEE…”

The tongue slopped to the side.

“...bitch.”

One would be forgiven for thinking Creed had decided to use his ‘second chance’ to insult Hudson. Heck, Vici thought that, and was about to pull her gun out of its holster to respond.

Hudson held up a hand without looking behind her. She was made of different mental stuff. And she’d picked up the subtleties. There was anger there, but…not directed at her. The eyes were almost rolled back. Perhaps a sign of recollection, or just pain. So if he wasn’t insulting THEM…

Female. His attacker had been female.

“....wiiiinnnnnnnnnoooowwww…”

It seemed like getting it out was a physical effort, as Creed’s head flopped onto its side, his tongue slapping around with a futile wetness.

“Gah, gah, gah, gah, gah…” Yeah. That was all she was going to get, Hudson knew.

“That’ll do, Creed. That’ll do.” Hudson said, before getting back to her feet. Only then did she turn back to Vici, putting her hands on her hips. “Did you loop anyone else into this?”

“No, ma’am. So far only you.”

“Alright. First things first, get a crew in here to shovel him and his pieces together. I’m not too sure he can come back from being torn apart like he swallowed a grenade, but we’ll do what we can for him on that front. Use my or Forvale’s authorization if you have to pull operatives together, and if any of Creed’s people give you problems with that, tell them to take it up with me.”

“Yes, ma’am. Consider it done.”

“I already do. Secondly…actually, wait. Is there anything else that wasn’t mentioned because the head sucked up all the air in the room?”

“Yes ma’am. Two things. The wall being broken, the way the debris is laid out, it happened inward. Something hit the building from outside. The other is you described Creed’s state as swallowing a grenade, but from what I think and saw, it looks more like it was done with a blade. He got cut to pieces.”

“...well, you heard him. There’s a lady calling herself Winnow that pulled this stunt, and there isn’t a chance in hell it was just happenstance. I want any and all of our forces and allied groups to learn that and be on the lookout for further action. Right now that’s all we know, but I’m going to dig into this and see if we can’t learn a little more.” Hudson declared, Vici nodding and then pausing. “...Do you think-”

“No, it wasn’t an inside job. I’m going to make sure of that, but off the cuff, it doesn’t feel right or make much sense for that to be the case. Someone Creed knew and trusted enough to bring here wouldn’t have had to go to all this trouble to do whatever they came here to do, much less come in through the wall. We’ve got an enemy out there, somewhere, and that means getting our guard up and putting a face to that name. We’ve had a development of our own that fits a little too well for some lone wolf, and this is just the beginning on that front.” Hudson said darkly, before looking around again and sighing. “She’s dangerous, I’ll say that much. Creed was a beast, there’s no chance some lady without hard tech or otherwise comes off on top in a fight.”

“And you, Miss Hudson?”

“I got a report of my own to make.” She sighed again. Maybe she could hold off a bit…?

No.

Too much of a gamble.

—

Her firearm lay where it had been knocked, Vesper leaning down to pick it up.

Furnace lunged up, not dead, having gotten his switchblade back, screaming…

Vesper snapped around, her gun aimed in a heartbeat.

And in his last heartbeat, all Furnace knew was the roar, And the red.