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

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

“Side training. Babies, we’re ready!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Does your arm hurt?”

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

“For them or for us?”

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

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

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

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

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

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

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

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

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

—

In the end, the two did.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Saffron chuffed, then began pawing at the ground.

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

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

SMELLED BLOOD.

Saffron and Puff agreed.

MAN.

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

ON PUPPY.

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

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

DOCTOR DID BAD.

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

NO MORE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What happened?

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

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

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

Her brother?

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

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

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

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

????

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“...well, it was what it was. Is.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-One Day, After Numerous Efforts-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just…that list of options.

—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Password.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Damien.”

“Otiswell.” Christopher said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Esther.”

“Damien.”

“Where’s Social Call?”

“Elsewhere. I’m overseeing things.”

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

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

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

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

“Longcoat, yes.”

“Length?”

“Three feet, four inches.”

“Build?”

“Muscled slight. Female.”

“Layout?”

“Elaborate.”

“Protection Alarming, Overt, or Subtle?”

“...Subtle.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Fire in the hole, girls!”

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

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

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

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

“...I’ll take it.”

“Rush job?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It has been some time.”

“The downside of good product.”

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

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

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

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

“High quality basic first, then?”

“Yes.”

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

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

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

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

“All right, what are they?”

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

Christopher arched an eyebrow at that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

Wishbone went and fetched another box.

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yeah, I think so.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Not a weapon for hunting, then.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Dessert.”

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

“Always will be.”

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

“Light-etched as always.”

“...I’ll take the whole box.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Watching. Fingers interlaced.

And it wasn’t a casual interest.

There was a realization in the shadowy eyes.

And Now For Something Completely Different

“Uh, Dawn?”

“What am I looking at?”

“Electromagnetics are all wonky, image is out. Describe it.”

“Um…it’s a giant…cloud…jellyfish.”

Dawn looked at the two’s location. More or less near what had been Pearblossom, Los Angeles County, before…things. Even with the intense alterations, that didn’t…

…wait.

“Uh…all flared out like a giant sail?” Dawn said.

“Yeah I guess.”

“A waving green mass of what looks like concentrated streamers all intensely held together at the front?” Dawn said.

“Yes…”

“Ah bloody hell.” Dawn didn’t have to ask the follow up question: is it coming right at you? The answer to that was ‘yes’, because if Beckett could accurately assess what he was looking at, that meant he was looking intensely at it.

And it HATED being looked at and saw it as a direct, hostile challenge. Which it only knew one way to react to if the target was the size of Beckett.

“Beckett, jam that new sword of yours into the ground and seal it there, and then hold on.”

“Is that-?”

“NOW!”

Vrock could hear the whole conversation (it was a ‘group call’), but the fact that Dawn had only given BECKETT instructions did briefly confuse her. She looked at her travelling companion as he rammed his thin rainbow blade into the dirt and twisted it, a brilliant light turning the blade into a near immovable rod. Why would she-?

Then the massive vacuum vortex engulfed the two.

Beckett, despite his best efforts, had his feet yanked out from under him, only his mild superhuman strength saving him from losing it and being carried away like Vrock. Vrock instinctively tried to activate wings she no longer had, and when that realization hit her she was already in a spin.

Then she felt the wet crushing close around her, as she was sucked into SOMETHING that sure felt organic, being carried along via muscle…no, not muscle. Vrock was not knowledgeable enough in biology to recognize what would be categorized as “intestinal villus’. She could see, somehow, there was some faint innate internal bio-illumination, she was in some giant orange crushing mass and she was being slimed by some kind of stringy gunk…

“Vrock?” Dawn’s voice in her earpiece. “Yes, sorry about this. I was kind of put on the spot for the best solution. You’re in its stomach. Beckett would have handled it worse. Despite that, it’s fragile.

“Cut your way out.”

“Wh- Oh, for- Aaaagh!” Vrock spluttered, both disgusted and a little horrified at the possibility of being eaten. Even though she was armored as ever and spared some of the more extreme parts due to her nature, being in anything’s gullet wasn’t a place she wanted to stay. Her sword was still in her grip, and she wriggled to put it along her front before pressing down hard on the blade. Something splattered in her face, and she redoubled her efforts, trying to put her back into slicing through what was in front of her.

“No matter what happens next- Dawn, don’t tell Oona about this!” Vrock said, mostly to take her mind off the peril. Even with her great strength, it was a struggle to hold her position, much less stab and then shear. Part of her wondered what would happen if she was further drawn in to be digested and that lent her a little of a frenzy to avoid just that, putting her back into jamming her sword even further beyond her person.

Knowing she wouldn’t be safe until she saw daylight again, her ground in nature intending to take out the beast, Vrock heaved and drew her sword back as much as she could so she could stab forward again.

Which was when just how ‘fragile’ the creature was became apparent, as with that last stab Vrock ended up propelling herself through most of it and essentially popped it like a balloon.

Unfortunately, that meant that the creature’s flesh also semi-collapsed onto her as its flying ability was shut off. Vrock found herself being smacked into the ground, buried under a mess of what felt like a cross between skin and pudding. The weight probably would have been dangerous for Beckett, but it was more ‘incredibly gross and annoying’ to her.

And she still couldn’t see daylight, so she shoved herself as vertical as she could and kept cutting.

Three minutes of hacking later, Beckett met her ‘in the middle’, or more about 1/6th of the way in. One pair of gripped hands and Beckett was able to yank her out of the collapsed corpse mass, albeit utterly covered in blood, fluids, slime, and string.

She never would meet the people who had invented the ‘cleaning charms’ of Weav, but she’d probably be tempted to swear herself to their service when Beckett produced one after they had moved away, all of the mess drawn into a big wad of guck that immediately had the water expelled and collected, purified and fine for drinking, leaving a dry clump that broke on the ground next to her.

“...THAT was Occulonimbus edoequus. I was not expecting that species to be there. But, considering you’re in California, or what WAS California…well, no wonder it went for you two. You probably were the cleanest meal it had seen in years.” Dawn said, back in the ‘group call’.

“Why the hell did Vrock have to get eaten while I stayed behind?”

“Because she was, per my assessment, much more indigestible."

“...don’t do that, Dawn. I don’t want to play ‘I will not listen to the woman who decides on such cold methods.’”

“I am fairly sure Vrock prefers the idea that you weren’t at risk of being crushed and digested. What with Vrock being literally four times stronger than you unless you’re flooding yourself with Stream energy and all.”

“...my point stands.”

“Don’t… Don’t misunderstand me, if someone must be eaten I would rather it be me- I do go down much rougher than most-” Vrock started, not able to keep from checking herself for errant bits of slime or gore. Finding none, she relaxed a little and poked at the dry clump with the toe of her boot. “-but, next time, gods forbid a next time, give me a little warning first. That was an experience I’d rather not have again. Blech!”

“I would prefer to take the risk on myself, but… Well, time was of the essence. Let’s just chalk this one up to the right tool for the job.” She said, able to smile at least. It had been terrifying in it’s own right, but everything turning out alright went a long way to calming her down. “Are you alright, Beckett? I may have gotten a much closer look, but it was still awfully big. What even was that thing? Some sort of irradiated Jellyfish?” She asked, turning to look at the collapsed heap of rubbery, wet skin that was the remains.

“No. It’s actually a natural evolution. One of those animals so very rarely seen and understood. I wasn’t expecting it here. Numerous worlds have sky ecosystems, sometimes that ecosystem just ends up down to one survivor. And consider your feelings, Beckett, I’ll hold off telling you what its name translates to.”

“Why?”

“Because you’ll probably get offended for no reason.”

“Try me.”

“A direct translation is ‘hidden dark cloud stallion-eater’. More simply? Horse-eating eye cloud.”

“...are you calling Vrock a darn horse?!”

“That is exactly what I was talking about.”

“So you ARE calling her a horse!”

“Vrock, smack him upside the head until he sees sense, could you?”

“Neigh, neigh, no need.” Vrock laughed, putting her hands on her hips. “I suppose it got confused, what with me being a norse of a different color. I couldn’t imagine- Well, there are lots of things I hadn’t expected to see here, and that was another example. A cloud beast big enough to snatch horses with its breath, that’s one to remember. Maybe without some of the, er, finer details, but still.” She pointed out, not able to keep from one last once-over to make sure there weren’t any traces of slime or gristle on her.

“Let’s not make this the always-done thing, though. Next time, I’d rather stick in a mouth instead of a throat. Being close to getting eaten is still a little too close for me, even if I had my rathers.” She played up her shudder this time, before smiling again. As with most cases, after any battle she felt free and clear since she was still standing.

“I’d best warn Zyxyx. I think she’d be incredibly confused.”

“I think everything on this world confuses her.”

—

“It’s dead in all ways, but it’s not! It walks about, yet its blood does not pump! How can such a thing still sense, still think? Its hide festers off, yet it is unbothered! It speaks, when its lungs should be shrunken sacks! Radiation destroys cells! It cannot induce such changes! HOW DOES ANY OF THIS WORK?”

“Don’t ask me, I just work here.” The undead irradiated human said, and then offered a cigarette.

Whatever It Takes, Part 4: Yeah, Take Me To The Top That I'm Ready For

 -For once, a non-Ravensky outing-

“Wind was too dry yesterday. We’ll have to see if the overnight seeding took.” Ever dressed in her cowgirl style, Joy nee Merilee Marsello put the telescope-esque looking device up to her eye.

“...looks like more waiting around, girls.” Athena Marsello had the sort of face that many women would envy deeply: even near ten years on and knocking on the door of her 30’s, she still could have passed for a newly turned adult. Maybe it had something to do with her minuscule time manipulating powers, as she looked through her own binoculars, or what looked like binoculars. “Looks like others have decided to mostly set up to the right. Playing it safe.”

“Never a bad thing. Sticking your neck out should be for crises, not for mycies.” Joy said.

“What?” Vimmy furrowed her brow.

“Mycies. Ihmensel’jk word. Basically means laudings. Props. Praise.” Joy said.

“Oh. So taking risks just to impress others is stupid.” Athena said.

“More or less.” Joy said.

“I’m certain there are no hypocrites here in that regard.” Athena said.

“If we judged everyone jus’by the choices in their youth, the world would be a very different and probably more miserable place.” Joy said.

“Ain’t THAT the truth.” Vimmy and Venny only knew the barebones Athena Marsello story. She’d been the first to show up amongst the Kobbers once the strange alternations of how time passed had been discovered (and since stabilized, in a sense), and unfortunately she’d made a mess and caused a lot of unneeded drama, and her name was still kinda dirty in a ‘best to not keep stirring the pot’ sense. “Well, might as well keep showing you what I know about non-risking of necks, Vimmy, Venny.”

“OBSERVATION AND DEDUCTION.” Joy said dramatically.

“It’s essentially always the core of it, Merry.”

“OBSERVATION AND DEE-DUC-TION….!” Joy had apparently heard this refrain a lot, as she wandered over to adjust something in her mechanical horse.

“Oh, we know that thing!” Vimmy said. Celeste had spoken of it during a hunt for a killer ‘slasher’.

“Well, good. But there’s a third, actually. Information. But yes. You get into any sort of investigation business, especially when it comes to bad deeds, and well…observation and deduction. See it, understand it. Even if you’ve gotten a heads up, Aunt Celeste I assume, It’s harder than it looks. ESPECIALLY for you two.”

“Well, what can we say? We’re like ogres and onions, we’ve got layers.” Venny shrugged, holding her hands up. “For us, we kept hearing the same word over and over when we were coming up: Awareness. Awareness, awareness, awareness, until it turned into nonsense syllables. I think it mostly stuck. Mostly. Not quite perfect by any means…”

“Oh, god, I remember that.” Vimmy rolled her eyes, taking them off the spot in the distance to turn around. “...You know, for all that, I’m grateful for it being drummed in. At least we learned to look around once in awhile, even if we do have a bad case of tunnel vision every now and then.”

“Well, who doesn’t?” Venny shrugged again. As they chattered she looked over Athena and Joy again, not quite assessing but moreso because she wasn’t all that familiar with them yet. “...Although admittedly, sticking our necks out is why we’re here now, so I guess it’s good with the bad.”

Vimmy kicked a rock and then stretched, spreading her wingblades behind her. “I’m thinking playing it safe might be a good idea in this case…”

“What, you scared?” Venny grinned, Vimmy immediately turning to her. “No! Just, well, it’s not the wind that’s the danger. It’s what’s in the wind and where it sends you. I don’t have a Radiance that’ll eat a crash like you do.”

“...I can’t argue with that. Neither of our shielding systems are gonna like hitting solid ground.” Venny acknowledged.

“If neither of you were scared, I’d be calling this off right now.” Joy called over.

“And I wasn’t talking about the weather for observation and deduction. I know your father. He wants information given out by EVERYONE. His kids in his mind must do their best to be little sponges.” Well, ATHENA seemed to think Christopher had formally adopted them in every way. It was still more complicated than that, but it was a nice thought nonetheless. “Maybe he can teach you ten million ways to hit stuff-”

“You know he’s more layered than that.” Joy said.

“Like any good ogre. Fine. Two million ways. But well, sometimes it’s hard to see what to hit. Or where it is.” Athena went digging through her pockets, finally pulling out what looked like a needle. “Going to need a light image here…”

A smaller version of what the two girls had seen with the riddle tests. Except this image was more basic: a footprint.

“Like I said. Information is the important third. I just show you this and go ‘Tell me what you see’, you’ll be at a loss because there’s no context. So. This footprint was found at the site of something bad. That’s your information. Now. Observe and deduct.”

As said, neither had corrected Athena, both because it was complicated and because it was a nice thought; Both of them had made acknowledging, comfortable sort of gestures at her instead before turning to the image.

“...Well, it’s a footprint.” Vimmy started.

“From a foot.” Venny supplied. Vimmy poked her and she relented. “Right, obviously the ground was soft enough to have footprints be somewhat clear and present, so there’s that. The heel is a little more there than the rest.”

“...The ball part of it isn’t as there, so they weren’t flat- well, flat footed.” Vimmy pointed out. She’d been about to suggest they were running, but something stopped her, namely the realization people didn’t run on their heels…

“...If the heel is more defined than the rest of the foot, they were pressing on that part more, so they were-” She made the motion to confirm it for herself. “Were they stopping? Or backing up?”

“Must’ve been, if they left a print behind. ‘Cause if they were just going backward they’d turn around first, right? Instead?” It was Venny’s turn to point something out.

“You’re right. Guy tried to trick people by walking backwards. But if I hadn’t said ‘this happened at a bad place’, you might not have figured that out, because you needed that little extra bit to think ‘maybe they walked backwards’ because you’d need a reason WHY they’d do that. And basically, any sort of investigation is based on breaking down everything into singles and then figuring out links. Like this…”

As Weav didn’t really have photography, Athena produced an in-depth sketch of a wrecked room.

“This room was trashed. The trashers were looking for something. What were they looking for?”

Both dragons leaning forward to stare, they eyed the sketch in silence at first; Neither one wanted to be the one to remark that they’d been on the other side of trashing a room and tearing it apart to find something of value. The trouble was, depending on the circumstances there could just be a ton of destruction and a single actual goal, or a lot of sloppy tearing apart until the thing was found…

“What were they looking for… Well, nothing on the surface. Stuff like clothes, the obvious things inside a drawer, you don’t rip through a room without bothering to check the first places people put things just in case to save yourself the time.” Venny pointed out. “And even then, if you’re just breaking things to break things you wouldn’t bother…”

“Closet’s open, clothes are scattered, the bed’s moved, you can see where it was- So it wasn’t petty thief stuff, or they wouldn’t have gone to the trouble. What’s the point of taking small valuables if you’re just gonna get caught in ten minutes?” Vimmy wondered, narrowing her eyes. Both had started to pick out individual pieces and features that were out of place on the sketch, but it was like a forest for the trees. “My first guess is money, because it’s money a lot of the time for this sort of thing, but I don’t think so.”

“Yeah, same principle. You don’t wreck a room just to take a stash unless you know there’s a good enough chance you’re not going to go down for it or it’s entirely personal. Hmm. This is a tough one.” Venny admitted, putting her hands on her hips. “Obviously it’s something they could take with them, whether they could conceal it or not- It’s not like they were going to carry a whole entire safe in their arms and no one would ask a question.”

“I wonder if it’s information related- You see the books? Are any missing? Some are damaged, but some aren’t, like they were just tossed aside.” Vimmy muttered to her. As with a lot of puzzles, together they were puzzling it out, but ultimately…

“I think you’ve got us here. There’s just too many maybes and possibilities. What was it?” Venny asked, looking to Athena.

“How many separate objects can you two make out?”

A brief moment of calculation between the two.

“92. Give or take 1 or 2.”

“My report had 57. That’s what I meant by your observation being trouble. You can pick out and see so many small things and keep track of them that maybe I’d miss, but in this case, it just confused you, didn’t it? Muddied the waters. Now, it wasn’t like I figured it out in two minutes. I had a friend and we had to look over things for an hour before we figured it out. The key was the chairs. See how badly they’re broken? Not just in pieces. Multiple chair legs have been broken. Which we concluded meant that they were looking for something small enough that could be hidden in a chair leg. It was: a vial of a certain kind of dust. But, even with the information we had when he and I were looking it over, we had to get that through deduction.”

“DEEEEEE DUCKKKKK SHIIOONNNNNN!” Joy called.

“I tried to teach Joy. As you can see, she decided the repeating meant it should be mocked. Look, I’m not trying to make you feel dumb. When I got the interest to learn this I was much worse than you two are, or did. I just thought, beyond your father wanting you to be sponges, well, uh, did they do the throw the thing at you out of nowhere thing?”

Oh yes. Celeste and her knife.

“Uncle Christopher…well, however much weight you want to give me, I say, he’s got a lot of strength and talent, but he’s got a bit of a weakness too. His preferences, his ways, his tips and tricks, they’re very heavy on the snap. Reacting ASAP. Catch thrown weapons. Assess threats and move in before there’s been three blinks of the eye. I’m sure you’ve seen it. He’s good at it and good with it. He taught it to my mother after all. But when you were looking at this picture, didn’t you feel like there was a clock ticking and if you didn’t get an answer real fast, you felt like you were failing?”

“I, well- I mean, y’know, we-” Venny started, looking for a way to sidle diplomatically past it before seeing there wasn’t one. “Maybe just a hair. Even in our past lives we sort of relied on that second to second snap decision type way of thinking, especially in the field. Nothing like now, it’s not really comparable, but… Yeah. There’s always a clock ticking somewhere, isn’t there?”

“You should’ve seen us with some of the logic puzzles they’ve shown to us. We’d get them eventually, mostly.” Vimmy admitted sheepishly.

“Don’t worry about us feeling dumb, we’re doing a lot of fish out of water type things but getting used to them piece by piece. It’s fine.” Venny waved her hand. “...I can’t say I don’t see your point, because we’d have read that picture to pieces- probably started deep scanning it with our different vision modes after an hour or so- but it’s just one of those things, I guess. We’re good at the snap stuff, and we’re getting better, but there’s always something else to pick up. ”

“And snap stuff will carry you a lot. But it’s not a key for every lock. Once you’re starting to feel comfortable with instant reactions, just…look into trying things that take time. Because sometimes, well, deciding something on the reaction of an instant is a bad thing.”

“She speaks from personal experience. Ask the Kobbers about the Medusa incident. That all came from…what was it, two small bad experiences?”

“What they WERE. To me they were a lot bigger. Making a snap decision ended up making them actually big.”

“Speaking of big, wind’s shifting. I think we’re about to get a rider.”

“Good. I need to get off heavy stuff.” Athena pulled the tarp off her gear. What appeared to be a surfboard, and twin ‘flight sticks’ that had lengths that could go slack or rigid, that she began snapping into the base. “Okay. We told you all the basic safety stuff for rough-riding, and you two can actually FLY, while we’re faking it and all…but we’ve actually done this before. You think of anything to review, Merry?”

“Worst comes to worst? Like, you’re helplessly caught in the suction? Don’t fight it. Go with it. Use it to slingshot-snap yourself back out before you get fully sucked into the twirl. You’ll probably go real far, but assuming your wings don’t break or whatever, you can probably get control and land safely, or turn around and come back. I’d say that applies more to you, Vimmy. And if you want, I can TRY and lasso you. It MIGHT work in a crisis, but it also might end up a tug of war that we’d all lose. Just keep that stuff in mind.” Joy said, having discarded her hat and put on a sort of jumpsuit over her usual shirt and pants, also putting goggles on as her adopted sister handed them over. “Don’t worry about us if the wind dies, we know how to glide down. Unless we start screaming in fear. THEN you can worry. And help us, saying the obvious. And until you get some experience here, I will say the obvious again. Don’t be trying to impress anyone, yourselves, us, those others, your dad and mom, forget it. Learn first. Show off later.”

Joy’s hair was now snapping around, caught in the incoming wind. Athena had tied her own in tight braids behind her head.

“Now, normally we’d do a running start and jump in and then get on the boards, but you girls can muck with gravity. You mind giving us a toss?”

Taking a deep breath, Venny nodded and put some of the run of thoughts out of her mind. “No problem! Vimmy, you wanna…?”

“I sure do! Get ready for a heave-ho.” She said, forming up alongside her sister. There was no sudden crackle or discharge around their arms, but as they made a hefting and then hurling motion from underhand the forces slaved to their systems activated all at once, letting them lift Joy and Athena up and into the air without quite sending them flying one after the other. Venny probably could have done it by herself, but she’d wanted Vimmy to have a chance practicing her own fine tuned control. They watched them go for a second before she turned to her. “Now, are you ready?”

“As ready as I’m going to be. This is pretty crazy, huh?” Vimmy asked, smiling shakily. She wasn’t going to show real fear in front of anyone else, but in the moment she didn’t begrudge it since she could see the same shine in her sister’s eyes. Venny nodded before laughing a little. “Yeah… But it’s going to be fun as all hell, too.”

“Well, then what are we sitting down here waiting for?” Vimmy asked, before lighting up into the air, Venny following after her a moment later. Their hair whipped around even as they used their tails to adjust their courses, horns splitting the air in their path while they went into the winds.

Air surfing on a tornado’s radius.

You get your fun where you find it.

----

-Oriam, The Main Tech City of Weav. Another Outing, Another Time- 

It was funny. Considering how anti social Christopher was in a lot of ways, he seemed to know a lot of people. Otherwise, it would have taken several days of travel to get here, instead of the six hours via air travel that the three had used. Christopher had told the girls to keep track of the process and direction, so they’d know the way if they ever had to fly here themselves.

Like any good advanced city, Oriam had layers. It had its shiny topside, its more muted middle, and its darker underside; while said underside was less dangerous than some cities carved in the vein of Oriam, there was still a lot of nooks and crannies where you had to be careful if you went there, as well as pockets of rot and danger; no city of this size was perfect. The fact that the girls had been taken into a building that seemed to be selling some kind of bottled product, let in the back, gone down through a ladder into some worn tunnels below (which had been a tight squeeze for the girls and required them to work out how to compress their bodies as much as they could to fit), then finding a second door and entering into what was very clearly a side passageway for a main sewer system, Christopher leading them through a few more twists and turns before they came to what appeared to be a large, rusted metal door. The rust was a cover: Christopher slid aside a hidden panel and entered a code, and the door opened as smoothly as any of the doors located below.

Beyond it was a series of labs and workspaces that could have been in Dawn’s home, though it was not QUITE as high tech. More rustic and natural, a dollop of a witch’s cauldron space, with lots of drawn charts. It was odd to see such items without a lot of obvious plugs and wall outlets: whatever these machines ran on, it seemed to have its power withdrawal methods more concealed.

The woman who greeted them would have had a lot harder time of concealing herself if she operated up in more visible spaces. The two girls had been told she was ‘mostly a doctor’, but she was dressed much more like a mechanic. And was nearly seven feet tall, and that was with her posture hunched over, as she was walking with a pair of medical canes. Her eyes were sunk so far into her skull that it seemed amazing she could see, and her skin was a stark chalk white, her hair a hard coiled mass that seemed less like follicles and more like the wires that made up the nets the dragon girls had recently had experience with. Dr. Lucca Chalice didn’t have the most welcoming expression, though based on what the girls saw, she probably never had a welcoming expression.

“So, the Ravensky has decided to shove some dirt off the grave he stuck me in to make sure my choking’s still going on.”

“Don’t be dramatic, Chalice.” The two had some history, which the girls only knew a few small details of. Chalice had been involved in some worse things when she’d been younger, and it was why she was walking with those canes. Christopher was involved, though whether he’d had a hand in the canes and why she needed them now, he had not said. Christopher clearly didn’t think they were FRIENDS, or even acquaintances, but he seemed to trust her judgment on certain things that he and his wife didn’t have enough knowledge in. “And SHE picked this location, I will note.”

“Because if I didn’t pick something that appealed to his sense of JUSTICE, he’d probably have cut m’legs off at the knees to make sure I couldn’t run away.”

“These are the two girls, if you hadn’t guessed.” Christopher just moved on, not responding to Chalice’s accusations. “Whatever you gleaned from my messages, I think you can learn a lot more from an in-depth examination. I take it I’m not interrupting anything important.”

“Like you would care if you were.”

“...you do have me there. Well, unless something is about to explode, get to it.” Christopher thunked down a small box. The girls knew what that was: a Terrae bundle. He was paying the woman. She seemed a mite surprised that she was getting ANYTHING, before she resumed her innate grumbling and began herding the girls with her canes to go into a side room.

SEVERAL HOURS OF VARIOUS PHYSICALS AND WHATNOT LATER. 

“Well, I have to admit, Ravensky. You have found yourself a pair.”

“That we have. What did you find?”

“Some very interesting things.” The woman walked over to one of the charted walls, removing a few of said charts and laying them aside. “This IS where I…yes.

“This is the biology of a human. And this is the biology of one of its distant evolutionary cousins, the chimpanzee.” It seemed like evolution was still understood and followed to some degree on Weav, as Chalice had pulled down a slide showing off the bodies of both. “Now, it is concealed by their fur, but as you can see…”

Some ‘magic trick’ to strip away the fur, revealing that a chimpanzee was a mass of ripped muscle.

“They are very well formed when it comes to muscle. I don’t suppose either of you know anything about human or primate biology?”

Sitting like mirror images of each other, hands clasped and pert, Venny nodded while Vimmy shook her head. Neither wanted to stare at Chalice since it would’ve been rude. They glanced at one another to decide who would speak first before Venny took the initiative. “Well… Yes and no. We- How to put this… We know about small details, but mostly just to make us better killers. Where the main veins are, aim for center mass, that sort of thing.”

“I’d say we know less about biology than we do know, if that makes any sense. Like, it’s not something we’ve studied, but we know some really basic basics.” Vimmy explained further. “So you can pretty much assume, no, we don’t know much at all.”

Venny nodded to agree.

“...I see why you’re in Ravensky’s company.”

“No editorializing, Chalice.”

“I suppose. Now, chimpanzees are very rare these days, and they cannot tap the Stream like some animals have demonstrated capability for. But there are crude records that in the days before the Stream, chimpanzees could be incredibly dangerous and easily tear the average human limb from limb, or chew off their faces. And they don’t have a mouth of fangs, so that’s saying something. There’s more to it than just the muscles, though. It’s the fine design OF the muscles. And the body it’s attached to.

“The chimpanzee’s body is primarily what is known as ‘fast-twitch’ muscle fibers. Built towards strength. Swinging through trees without issue. Humans, on the other hand, have ‘slow-twitch’ muscle fibers. Geared more towards endurance. Your species, in the ancient days before we separated into further groups, went in the endurance direction. And other non-strength directions. Fine motor control, for one. And your brains. Our brains. They need lots of energy. Energy that gets taken away from the muscles. So, while a chimpanzee could rip a man apart if the man had nothing, man often had sharp pointy sticks. And fire. That’s why you lot won out on the whole take over the world thing.

“Now…you two started as humans, so you have a human structure. But…your artificial muscles…they’re neither slow or fast twitch. They’re basically a fusion. You literally have the best of both worlds. AND your bodies produce so much energy that neither your body or your brains need to prioritize. It’s absolutely amazing…and kind of scary.”

“More advanced than my setup, as well.” Christopher said.

“Christopher’s setup is pure marriage of machine and flesh. You two are ‘how can we take machines and make them as much like flesh as possible’ and emphasize the strengths. Basically…we think you’re stronger in physical terms than even you realize. That you unconsciously are holding back because you think like humans. If I know Christopher, he’s already mentally mapping some way for you to learn to try and adjust your thought process.”

“If just so you don’t make mistakes.” Christopher said.

“You can manipulate gravity? I was thinking along the lines that you could subject both yourself and your enemy to magnified gravity, and you could move more freely and use that to defeat your opponent. You might not have given it much thought because you assumed your strength and the readings your machines tell you say you can’t…but I’ve looked at what you’re made of and I say that yes, you could.”

“Since you can’t lift weights like your mother did.”

“That…” Venny put a hand to her chin and considered the matter. “That does make some sense. For us, our cybernetics and systems were put in early so we wouldn’t need to have them swapped out or upgraded over the years. They wouldn’t quite grow with us, obviously, but it’s more like the longer we have them the more our bodies would acclimate. That’s why we have all our organs and that sort of thing, we’re being artificially assisted instead of outright parts replaced. I’ve actually, well, I’ve used my own gravity to make myself heavier and then struggled through it before, working on punching and moving.”

“We WERE pretty much made to be unstoppable in our objectives and things like that.” Vimmy said slowly. “Do you really think we’re that strong?” She asked, looking between Chalice and Christopher both.

“No, that actually makes some sense. If all our readings and systems were telling us our full bore the whole time, it’d be like a human going full bore all the time. Things tearing and ripping and huge problems down the road. I know I’ve done some things I shouldn’t have been able to do, haven’t you too?” She asked her sister. Vimmy blinked and considered it.

“Well… Yeah, but I thought, I guess I just didn’t notice. Mostly it was always when I was, uh, under a lot of stress or really angry or things like that. I just chalked it up to that, being enraged or something. I used to be angry a lot of the time.”

“Yeah, tell me about it. The mouth you had on you…” Venny looked down at her hands. “I couldn’t tell you the exact mechanics of our enhancements, mostly just model names and the basics, but… Thinking it over, we really don’t know our own top ends. It’s always been enough to do what we did with what we had, it’s only rarely we had to push ourselves to our max.”

“Well, I’ve analyzed what I can manage and collected it in a record. If anyone can figure out how to make you draw more out of yourself, it’s the bastard behind you.”

“No editorials.”

“Oh believe me, Ravensky, it’s a compliment.”

“That is often depending on where you’re standing.”