Lineage, Part 3

Somewhere the Kobbers have been before...

"Cola!"

The water remained unchanged. Brown eyes narrowed, and ten minutes of redrawing symbols with chalk followed.

"COLA!"

It was still water. This time, the girl said a bad word her parents would have prefered she didn't know and knocked the water glass over.

"That's a third level spell, Ags. You're a first year." Sunika said, the Ihmensel’jk running a hand through her wire-like hair before she turned a page on her homework. She'd long gotten used to her roommate's ambition.

"I should be able to DO this! I can see it in my head!"

"Not clear enough it seems."

That just provoked the young woman, having turned thirteen a mere two months ago, to start all over again. It ended the same way. Water and frustration.

"No one cares, Ags."

"Do you know what people who don't care about don't caring do, Sunny?"

"Is it some crap out of one of those dumb books you always read?"

"They're not crap!"

"Fine. Toilet paper. A step up." Another page completed. "Just do your assigned things."

"They're BORING! I can do BETTER!"

"No, you feel like you HAVE to do better. Because Hope is five years old."

The teenager had no response to that, mainly because Sunika was right. It seemed like the only one who cared that the five year old was doing better than the thirteen year old was her.

"...Just because I'm with the doldrums...."

A glare from the Ihmensel’jk.

"Sorry, no offense. I just...feel like I'm being...coddled? Held back? People don't want me to fail so I get the easiest stuff that a dog could do?"

"Ags...you don't have the Spark. You, me, half this school...we're never going to be able to match the ones who do. We're not gonna be purists. We're gonna learn what we can. That's why we're here, that's why they let us in to begin with. Stop whipping the water. It doesn't care."

Sunika knew, despite herself, her knowledge was falling on deaf ears. Her roommate and friend had a drive that the girl either didn't know or refused to turn off. No wonder. Maybe if this sort of thing that could potentially get you expelled...but you had to do a lot worse to get kicked out of Carnage Hall.

After all, the name was ironic.

---

The Vr'nigh School and Hall of Thaumaturgy. Vr'nigh, pronounced correctly as "Vernighted", was a word that roughly translated to 'Exploration and Great Discovery' from the language of one of the founders. If mispronounced, it sounded like 'Carnage'. The mondegreen had stuck.

Sometimes, she swore they all shopped at the same cloak store.

"Great choice is no gift! It overwhelms! It crushes contentment. drowns you in an endless whirlpool! You pass through life feeling you have accomplished nothing! You die in woe, in pain! We do not take your freedom, we GIVE freedom! Freedom from horrific illusions! Freedom of great burdens!" The man, in about his forties, preached, wearing a dark grey cloak. There were several others near him wearing black cloaks, and a very small crowd of about four students listening to the man preach.

"Who let the Cranks on school grounds?" Ags said.

"They hate that name." Bernard said, adjusting his thrice-round spectacles, as if he wanted to check if they'd somehow overheard.

"Their damn symbol looks like a crank! Their own damn fault!"

"Technically, it's a key. It's like saying a spade and a shovel are the same thing."

"Considering their schtick, it would make more sense if it was a gear." Ags said. The Order Of Understood Life (or Understated Life, Ags was not sure) were a recently formed group that basically perscribed to 'a place for everything and everything in its place'. Understandably, they really didn't like Blackbirds, people who told their nice, ordered life to go jump off a cliff if they felt they needed to get something done in a swifter, more efficient way. Ags supposed she had to give them credit for some balls. Their areas of power were more in Bertrand's town; she didn't know if she could go into someplace where she felt she was rejected with hostility.

"Hey Aggie!"

Especially since she didn't really have that problem here, her friend Renee waving at her. The students were fighting back against the annoying cult-types by starting a game of Calvinball. Angs didn't really understand the name, but the rules were constantly being shifted based on whoever could seize control of the game's direction, usually by the thaumaturgy that the Order/Cranks really didn't care for. What better way to show the audience couldn't care than a grand display of magic?

Not like magic was the only rule of thumb. That was why people almost fought to get Ags on their team, and the one who got her used her as point man (well, woman) half the time. There were other talents in the world besides magic.

Of course, even as she blitzed, danced, and dunked, Ags was the only one, it seemed, who couldn't see that, frustration on her face every time someone got an advantage over her via the thaumaturgical arts.

Though to say it went unnoticed was incorrect as well.

---

"...Permission to speak freely, madam?"

Evangelina Stavros' response was to look down her own glasses. If Bertrand's were called thrice-round, hers could technically be called 'score-round', though they were custom made by her and hence didn't have any shorthand name. Grouchily sitting in her chair, Ags stared back.

"...I didn't do anything wrong!"

"Yes and no." Evangelina said. "Aggie..."

"I haven't cheated! I haven't been sneaking around breaking rules! Why else would I be here in the school master's office, AUNT ANGIE?" Ags, or Aggie, said, turning a term of affection into a semi-curse.

"You're not here because of your father, if that's what you're insinuating."

"And Hope?"

"...Hope is not here because of her father either."

"Are you SURE?"

"Very much so." Angie said, her words containing a deep gravity that made Aggie realize she'd stepped over a line, and she quickly skittered back over it. Watching her sit and sulk, Angie realized she was poking the edge of her own line. It had been some time since she'd had to deal with unruly teenagers, and the fact that it was hard to tell the difference between the best and brightest and the bad seeds at times, if you were going by their attitude.

"...I am happy that you're doing things that aren't putting anyone at risk. But you're not."

"I can do better."

"I know. I know the feeling. You are not getting anything resembling a free or easy ride, I give you my word on that. Once you step out that door, you are any other student. And your learning capacity will be assessed and forged based on that fact. The lone advantage I will give you is that you can be absolutely certain that potential has been weighed and measured with as fine a point as my school can give you. The same with everyone else here. EVERYONE. Are we understood?"

"...yes, ma'am."

"Get to class then. And just in case you think otherwise, the students here are too busy being...well, like you to talk behind your back." Okay, that wasn't WHOLLY true. But it was less than Aggie thought, and that was really all Angie could offer. She hoped it would be enough.

It never was.

---

Teenagers. You could probably run the world's whole power infrastructure on the energy wasted trying to keep them from behaving in self-defeating ways.

"Cola!"

It was a simple task. Induce carbonation in a glass of water. Implant a gas into a liquid. Beyond simple, when higher ranks were based around literally turning reality into clay and re-shaping it before reality got mad and killed you, or drove you mad, or worse.

But her water remained water.

And Hope...

She'd actually made a damn soft drink equivalent. Her whole class had drank it...

Thud. Thud. Thud.

How do you know you're good? When people are more shocked and surprised at how well you're doing than angry. When the opposing team shakes your hand and means it, and other teams hold you on their shoulders as you hoist the trophy.

The Graceful Dragon, Greased Lightning. And she was just really starting to come into her development. And she had so many options to develop it.

"Cola!"

And she couldn't even manage a failure. Sunny had turned the water into sour wine, which at least was INTERESTING. She couldn't even manage a laugh.

She wasn't sure what she liked more. The crossing of the ribbons, or whenever she and hers got to shoot down anyone who claimed she had cheated in some way to get there. What good was winning unless it was wholly under your own power? It's why in that regard she didn't mind the third places, the fifth places, the non-wins. There, people were just better. It made it when she was taste sweeter. Track. Triathalons. Spot-movement, which in other worlds might have been called free running or parkour...

"COLA!"

Water. As dull as dishwater in every way shape or form.

What shapes and forms you? Others. So many others in your life, some good, some bad...and one does one's best to have as much of the former as one can...and she never really had issue there. She'd never needed one of those cliche tales on becoming a functioning human being. She'd just managed it. She had plenty of it. Friends. Circles. The joy of the group...

She had a lot. She didn't want more, assomuch. What she wanted was...

She could do BETTER. She had to. Didn't she? Wasn't that behind all their eyes? Higgghhhhh hopes? They had higghhhhh hopes?

She could, she would...

"COLA!"

Water.

 ...whatever it took.

Lineage, Part 2

Ashworld. The semi-city of Parity.

"Hey Sam..." Ash was perusing the clouds. "Do you know where the phrase 'For the birds' comes from?"

Sam shrugged. "Fucked if I know. What do birds got to do with anything, anyway?"

"Horses eat various grains. Like oats. They wouldn't always digest all of them. So they'd poop and then birds would come and eat the undigested oats in the poop. So if you're saying something is for the birds, you're politely saying it's horseshit."

"...geeee eeeeye jooooooe," Sam idly sang. He doubted anyone else would get the reference, and was too weirded out to care otherwise. "...and what makes you bring this up?" he added, after a pause.

"I'm just bringing this up, because here? In Parity? The expression is 'For the rats'." Ash said, as he got ready to open the stable door. "Now, don't be alarmed. Provided you don't make any aggressive moves towards the horses, you'll be fine."

Ash opened the door, casting light into the long aisles of the stables.

...red eyes.

Hundreds of them. Thousands, staring from the shadows. The empty stables. The rafters. The grates. The feeding troughs. Everywhere. Tiny little flickers of embers, speaking of presence, watching, danger...

Though it seemed like Ash didn't think so. He just walked right on it.

Sam did not walk right on in, at first. He hesitated a moment, with the dawning realisation that all the things he'd seen in his world were puppies and kittens compared to this. Dragons, Nagas and living embodiments of creation he could handle. This?

"Erm... Ash? Is this... normal?"

"In other places? No. Here? Yes." Ash said, as he reached into his backpack and produced a brick of what appeared to be hardened peanut brittle. He placed it on the ground, and they swarmed from the shadows. Rats, of all shapes and sizes, pouncing on the brick, some running up Ash's body to get there faster. "This is a sursine. Um, that's Aarde. It basically means 'special growth'. The ground seems to have a sort of...specialness to it. In their history, what changed humans to the Aarde species, gave them a connection to the earth, was being enslaved by an empire that made them mine mountains for generations. The specialness there changed them, and anywhere it rests, unique things might occur. Here, it's a unique symbiotic connection between the horses of this land and the rats. A nice side effect is these horses are prized as mounts, because they're near impossible to spook. There's a story if you want to hear it..."

Ash was feeding one of those horses a carrot now. It indeed had no issue with all the rats hanging out around it, and on it.

"...why not? Got nothing better to do."

Now somewhat reassured, Sam stepped over the threshold, making sure to carefully skirt the rats as he did so. Approaching one of the horses, he also produced a carrot from his pocket and offered it to the animal.

It would be a strange day where horses did not like carrots.

"Technically you have lots of better things to do; you just can't do them because you challenged Valse and his girlfriend and her brothers to that gambling game involving dice and coins and they cleaned you out."

"I still say some motherfucker slipped him a loaded dice," huffed Sam. "Besides," he added, patting the horse on the nose, "you're the one who took me out to a big, scary barn on magical soil guarded by a literal army of rats. If it wasn't to tell me a story, then I would have already left by now."

"In any case, this is waxenworm. It's a grain, though it more resembles a seed. Have a smell, and be warned it doesn't smell good." Ash said, opening a bag and offering Sam a handful. Ash was right; it was like someone had carved a knife out of sour candy and used the point to firmly prick the inside of Sam's nostrils.

"GACK," was Sam's immediate response, clutching his nose as though he'd been punched in it. It took several seconds for him to recover, and there was a scary moment during those seconds where he looked like he was going to throw up.

"...and what do you use THAT for?!" he gasped out after the seconds where over, tears streaming from his eyes.

"Wow. You really don't like it. It doesn't taste much better...though I've heard with goat's milk butter and sea salt, you can get a sort of happy medium that makes it passable...but in any case, it's got a lot of essential nutrients and it's a pretty hardy crop. It's just no fun to eat. Plus more than a few species can't keep it down. Anyway, it was about nine hundred or so years ago...this town was smaller, and I think it was called...Nertl? Nerful? Started with a Ner...got changed to Parity three hundred or so years ago...anyway, the story goes that there was a nasty guy going around who wanted to conquer and enslave and etc etc. He was a necromancer...his name was either Naar or Kaar...I'm going with Naar for obvious reasons based around taking this story seriously." Ash said, putting the grain back into the bag.

"...so Naar is a serious name, whilst Kaar isn't?" Sam was busy checking his nostrils for signs of singe marks

"Mainly because it makes me picture fighting an evil automobile."

Or maybe a vampire.

"What?"

Nothing, nothing.

Privately, Sam understood that reference. He just wasn't going to say so, not wanting to confuse Ash even more - and in any case, his first thought had been of a certain snake. Best not to compound the situation.

"So," he prompted, "this Naar guy... What happened to him, then?"

"Anyway, Naar did all sorts of nasty, wide ranging things. He blighted crops and inflicted diseases and so on and so on, and he was spreading his net so wide that not every area could be protected or helped. The two main issues that arose back in Ner-whatever was his diseases didn't just kill; it tried to raise whatever it killed, and if it failed, it left the whole body toxic. Poison. And by extension, inedible. Even to carrion animals like rats. So death called them and they found there was no food."

"...I think I can see where this is going. Oh, hullo."

A large rat had climbed onto Sam's foot, and was now staring at him intently. Sam's hands automatically went into his pockets, searching for peanut brittle.

"Of course, it wasn't just the rats that were put in danger by this. There were the people, their farm animals, their hunting animals...but the only crop that resisted Naar's necromancy shit was waxenworm. So they had to exclusively grow that, and feed it to their animals. The animals were a little less picky...which brings us to Naar's other nasty little trick. The stupratape parasite. I'll spare you the gory details, but they basically settled onto animals, entered them, and did their best to drive them mad with pain. Didn't work so well with humans who noticed their presence and could remove them, but unless you want to be checking every animal twenty-four seven..."

Sam sucked in a breath from sympathy pain. "Yeouch. That's just... mean. I can't imagine what it must have been like, watching your own animals suffer like that... If my Dad still had his good hip, he'd have found where Naar was and given him a kick in the balls for that."

Peanut brittle was found, and the rat practically yanked it out of Sam's fingers. Then it dashed into the shadows, pursued by at least a score of it's fellows admits a chorus of hungry squeaking.

"Now the last detail. Do you know rats can't vomit?"

"Geeee eeeeye- no, I already did that. No, I did not. Thank you for sharing."

"It's important. It's how rat poisons work. Many animals might expel the poison, but rats can't, and their poisons are based around that. Rats also can't eat raw waxenworm. It's too intense, often kills them. So we have masses of rats drawn by death and no food, nasty parasites, and a food crop rats can't eat but others can. Rats are clever animals, and they ultimately discovered something interesting. Waxenworm that passed through a horse's digestive system but didn't get wholly digested...they could eat THAT. Something about the process rendered it more tolerable. And it was only the horses. Humans were too short a 'cycle', animals like pigs too. Cows were too long with the whole multiple stomachs thing. But horses, it seemed, were just right. And hence the only source of food for the rats."

If Sam had a facial expression at this moment, Ash did not see it.

"...so that's why it's 'for the rats', then," he ventured, at last.

"Yep. But horses don't really want to be around rats, and the rats wanted food, so...the rats puzzled out a deal. They'd lurk around, and if any stupratapes decided to show up and try and infect the horse....gnaw gnaw gnaw. It didn't take the horses long to get the hint."

"...oh, like oxpeckers and ticks. Except the oxpeckers bite first, because the ticks are massive bastards."

"Yes. Now, Naar only plagued the lands for like...four years...but on a sursine, that's long enough. Even when things went back to normal, the bond endured. The horses shared their food, the rats acted as bodyguards. And the longer it went, the more intertwined it became. Now horses and rats born in Parity are basically brothers from different mothers. Only here too; attempts to replicate the circumstances have never worked. Also, I don't know what happened to Naar. He just stopped plaguing and poisoning everything, so I assume someone kicked his head in."

"I should hope so. Bastard."

Another carrot. The horse in question didn't complain - who would, when free carrots were here? Then a thought came to Sam - one he often had around Ash, who tended to not outright state anything due to, as far as the other blond was concerned, some crippling need to be dramatic about everything.

Surely there's more going on here.

"So..." he ventured, as the horse crunched happily away. "This still doesn't explain much about why we're here. Is the story all there is?"

"Well, we're here because I'm debating getting Christine a horse for an anniversary present, and you're with me because...you're broke and you feel most comfortable with me." Ash was checking a horse's teeth, rats swarming around his feet. It was clear if the horse expressed discomfort, Ash would rapidly be in much MORE discomfort. "And this place has an interesting story, and all."

It was a moment before Sam next spoke.

"...alright," he said, suddenly, "time for another story. I grew up on a farm, as you know. And that meant my dad had to teach me some of the ins-and-outs of it - especially checking on horses. The first time I went solo, a stallion the size of a small car kicked me in the ribs and laid me in bed for a day because I got frustrated with him. But dad said 'Try him with kindness' or some shit like that. So on the next time, I gave him some sugar and a pat on the head, and he stood still as stone whilst I filed his hooves down.

"So I can tell you straight off," he added, turning and walking over to where Ash was, "this one's got a bum knee. It's in his posture - I can tell from here he's not putting enough weight on that leg, and that worries me. You want your wife to be jostled about like a courtesan every time she wants to go for a morning trot? No offense," he added, although he wasn't sure if that was directed at Ash or the rats.

Hopefully, the latter. He did not want to exchange stories with Bishop Hatto in the afterlife.

"Well, I would have consulted experts, but I'll defer to your expertise. We'd best get one of the animal doctors then." Ash said. "Though, speaking of past lives, that brings up something else..."

----

The same town. Somewhen.

"One elephant went out to play...upon a spider's web one day..."

Some things have inherent beauty. A setting sun. A fossilized animal. And a mother singing to her child, as she slowly walked the little girl forward, holding hands with her with the little girl streching her arms above her head. She swung her daughter up, and she laughed.

"He has such tremendous fun...that he called for another one to come..."

Swing. The rats watched with wary interest: young ones of this kind did not come into their haunts often. The purpose became clear, as the woman walked her daughter all the way to a young horse and swung her up onto its back.

"Yayyyyyyy!" The mother said, clapping.

The rats came.

Not to harm, or threaten. Just to be there. The centuries and the sursine had taught them some lessons that normal rats would never learn, really could NOT learn. Don't be dirty. Don't climb bare skin. Don't react badly if being picked up unless violence was immediately apparent...

Still, it was surprising when the little girl didn't scream, or panic, or run. Instead, she let the rats climb on her, sit on her shoulders and head, the horse snorting beneath her. Sometimes, children knew things even adults would have a hard time discerning.

"...Two elepants went out to play..." The mother said, taking the horse's reigns and guiding it, the little girl gripping the saddle, the rats remaining on her like she was their general. "Upon a spider's web one day..."

"Fun fun fun!"

"Yes, Aggie. They had such tremendous fun."

Lineage, Part 1

The Unrelinquished December, cloaked above Central Park, New York, Earth.

"You're going to get written up again."

"Let them write me up. This is the sole amount of fucks I give, Jo Jo." Aurora said, holding out her left hand to show a tiny space between her thumb and forefinger before she returned to her smartphone. "When they get internet set up on Terra, then I'll be more productive on Earth trips."

"Or less." Josephine "Jo Jo" Kirkling said, as she worked on a painting of gold bars. Nothing like a good lure for criminal elements.

"You try living most of your adult life with terrible robot arms, you'll learn well the simple joys of doing stuff like this." Aurora said, lying on her bed as she rapidly tapped at her phone's screen with her artificial thumbs. "You know what one of my shining moments while I dated Pit was? Holding a hot dog well. That's how damn much a pain in the fucking ass it was."

"How's he doing?"

"Married stuff. I friended him on Facebook."

"Careful, he'll think you're stalking him."

"If I was stalking him it would have ended with a blade through the back of his head by now. I ended it, remember? I blew it. I have my issues but I know when to admit my mistakes." Aurora said. "Besides, if I went and did that I suspect there would be a lot of fire heading my way."

DING!

"Updates?" Jo Jo said, in regards to the loud noise Aurora's phone had made.

"Updates. Lessee boring boring dull fuck if I care..."

"What about that weird pillar we found on Terra?"

"Robots are still poking and prodding at it. Table's not letting any living thing within a hundred miles of it after Barros went to check it and flipped out. Something about toxic memetic overwriting huggamugga...Maddie also thinks it has some relation to necrotic tissue but hell if I know how or what...let's see Undertaker Squad has a few more small concert dates...Gem and Stan are STILL off honeymooning somewhere...most of the supplies we're here to gather have been gathered but we need more fusion fuel, something about looking into finding one of the garbage masses in the oceans and using that..."

"Pretty much." Jo Jo said, looking at a tablet.

"...Wait are you following along?"

"You skip stuff."

"Then just read it yourself! There's no orders for me so..." Phonephonephone. Jo Jo let the cyborg woman do her thing. And speaking of data...

"...huh." Jo Jo said, as she looked at her emails and discovered she had finally gotten one back. "Hey, Raw?"

"Yeah?"

"You were adopted, right?"

"Fuck no, I was abandoned and foster cared and fuck the rest I don't wanna talk about it. Why the fuck did you bring that up?"

"Well you know those ancestry TV ads?"

"No."

"Uh, well, they can try and trace your family tree."

"Who cares?"

"Well I was kinda curious, but suspicious, so...I kind of sent them a DNA sample. Of yours."

"...they're not gonna use it to make a legion of evil clones of me, are they?"

"Doubt it."

"So? Fucking point? Am I related to Jean of Polo or Hitlertrump or one of the Kobbers or something?"

"Well, no, but, uh, if I'm reading this right..."

---

ONE REVELATION AND HEADING TO THEIR MAIN SCIENTIST TO DOUBLE CHECK LATER.

"Crude and unrefined, but still fairly accurate, this test! It COULD be wrong but it's about a 1 in 50 chance from what I can read. You have a half-brother, Aurora."

Aurora was quiet for a bit.

"...How? I mean like...from who?"

"According to this test, it's on your father's side. So this boy's father is your father."

"...And who is he?"

"His DNA was in the system due to some medical issues, give me a moment to sneak around some privacy firewalls and..."

Revelation. Once more.

"...well." Aurora Klenn said, looking at her half-sibling. "Fuck me running."