A New Solution

Artificial limbs. Crop modification. Computer-aided design. Alternative energy sources.

Garrick has done all this, and so much more.

Founded in the post-Seanet world of the past, we've never stopped trying to solve the issues that are always arising in our modern world. We've helped carry Australia from the radiation-blasted hellscape of the Zoofights days and into a new, better and prosperous world. From biotech and artificial intelligence to networking and new energy sources, we've delivered time and again on innovative solutions to the latest problems facing society and our planet.

As Australia's premier technology solutions firm, we pride ourselves not only on our quality, but on our forward-thinking attitude and our outside-the-box approach to problems. We look at the issues facing our planet today as symptoms, not the disease, and work backwards to find the ways we can cure the ills of our valued clients and customers. Wherever it's providing longer-lasting, better-tasting food for the hungry, the latest technology solutions for the workplace or more environmental-friendly sources of power for your city, we strike at the heart of the problems facing modern man, ensuring a better tomorrow for everyone and anyone.

And Garrick doesn't just settle for meeting expectations - we surpass them, every time. That's why we specialise in so many fields. Expectations have never been higher, and our portfolio shows off not only our versatility as a company, but our excellence in quality in those fields. It doesn't matter what your issue is, Garrick can provide a wide variety of solutions to suit your needs, and then some.

And now, our products and services are making their way to Argo for the first time! Within the next month, you can expect to see our logo on items you use every day. Your tram to work might boast that our zero-emission, carbon free electricity keeps it going. You might use our specialised artificial intelligence to make those simple tasks at the office so much easier. Your news broadcasts or livestreams might come to you over our super-fast wireless connection. And businesses can look forward to using our tried and tested solutions for conference calls, meeting logs and so much more.

As our beloved founder, Nathan Garrick would say, "every problem has a solution". We are that solution.

 ---

"Good stuff, huh?"

"Yep. Talks us up, but not pretentious. The board sure loved it."

"And it's working already, too! We got our first clients only last week!"

"Really? I didn't hear about that in the SLT. Who is it?"

"Hard to describe them. Call themselves... Mantra PLC? Some kind of spiritual thing. They wanted our help with some sort of biotech project they were working on. It's weird, though... I've looked on the stock market and can't find any reference to a company by that name..."

"Hey, as long as they pay, I don't care what they're doing. And if they start trouble, well... there's the Kobbers. There's the police. There's the Kobber Police. Worst comes to it, there's the Ravenskies or the Cosineaus. They breathe wrong, we come down on 'em like a fuckin' meteorite."

"...I guess you're right. Wanna hit up the pub after work?"

"As long as you're paying."

~TO BE CONTINUED~

Threads Unbroken, Stave II

Christopher hadn't really needed to come to London at all. But he'd wanted to. He'd been an Oxford lad for as long as he could remember, having been practically raised within the Royal Academy, and as grand as Oxford as a city could be, it never held a candle to the capital city. He'd been there once or twice on field trips, but it had all been to the big tourist spots - Oxford Circus, Hyde Park, Windsor Castle, the London Eye. There was so much of the place that he hadn't seen until now.

And the place where he lived... it wasn't that it was bad. Far from it - it was the most idyllic, picturesque boathouse on the edge of a river that one could possibly imagine. The sort of thing that might have been a set for some children's variety show on television. Sam had deliberately moved there to avoid the attention and press that came with being the "Threadbreaker", and while it was still furnished with all the modern conveniences it was still half an hour's walk and back to the nearest village for groceries. And not much else.

So when Miss Thorne announced she has business in London and had offered to take him along, he'd jumped at the chance. His dad had simply shrugged and said "eh, why not". The man had wanted the excuse to get out of the house, and this one seemed as good as any.

There's no need to go into detail about all they did during their weekend there. It was as about as interesting as any trip to a big city can be, and if you have been to one yourself then you'll already have an idea of what it can be like. And their particular trip went about as pleasantly as one can expect such a thing to go. The weather held out, the crowds weren't overwhelming and the Underground ran on time, so it was as smooth and inoffensive as an experience could be.

Portobello Road was where it all went wrong. 

Threads Unbroken, Stave I

 ~The Royal Alchemists' Guild, London~

Victoria Thorne did not want to be here. She hated being here.

The phrase "familiarity breeds contempt", as old and tired as it was, continued to ring true even in the modern day. Places and names and faces that you see too much of lose their mystique very quickly and soon any and all respect or wonder you had for them dies away. And if you were Victoria Thorne, who had lived far longer than any person in the world had any right to live, you could become so familiar with a place that, in the end, contempt was all you had.

She was far too familiar with the council chamber in which the Royal Guild of Alchemists convened. Not that it made a good showing for itself besides - three hundred years of time had deteriorated the room beyond the wit of any duster, cleaning solution or stonemason to rescue. The marble stonework of the high, arched roof had lost its lustre and was worn in many places. A line of scuff marks crossed the dulled, cracked floor to the central podium, smearing out the faces of many once-worthy historical alchemists of Britain. And the high desks that surrounded the central podium, once a dark mahogany, had long lost their lustre.

What annoyed Victoria the most, however, was not the room itself. Her contempt came from the fact that, every time she came here, she had to deal with the five faces looking down upon her from over the lip of the desks. Each one belonged to a member of the High Council of Alchemists, the ostensible leaders of the Royal Guild - aside from herself. Blue-blooded to a man, woman and intermediate, and practically raised in the halls of the five great universities - Oxford, Cambridge, Dublin, Edinburgh and Cardiff.

They were also bunch of officious, bureaucratic idiots. As they were once again proving.

Black Hole Sum

Faust. Pandora's Box. Nebula Gas. Kamen Riders. House Arak. Miu. 

The names, in huge block capitals, swirled around him as he stood in the middle of a vast horizon of black sand. It stretched to infinite on either side of him, seeming to merge with the starless void that hung above in lieu of a sky. A white fog swirled around his heels, amongst which the words danced and twisted like swallows. Each one silently shouted themselves at him, their size alone conveying wild and accusatory tones without sound or voice.

He looked up. Mars hung in the sky, and he only knew it was Mars because he recognized the continents upon it. But it was dead - not the vibrant red of its youth and prime, but dark and ashen grey. Not even a single glimmer of the once-proud towers, no light from the once-bustling cities. Somewhere in the distance, a disembodied voice was singing - an old Martian lullaby, he knew, to which the words had long been lost to him.

There as an awful glooping noise.

He looked down. 

The fog parted, and faces came up at him from out of the sand. Each one of them was screaming in hate and agony amidst a miasma of purple smoke that belched forth from between the bubbling sand grains. He didn't recognise a single one of them, disgust and fear bubbling in his chest as he watched them twist and merge with each other like a kaleidoscope in a John Carpenter film, flesh flowing like modelling clay.

YOUR FAULT! they screamed, voices mingling with each other. YOUR FAULT! MURDERER! YOU DID THIS! ALL YOUR FAULT!

"What the fuck?!" he asked, before he could stop himself.

A shadow loomed over him. He made the mistake of turning around.

"They're your children," hissed the impassive, emotionless, bat-shaped visor that hung in the air above him. "Are you proud of them yet?"

And then it was joined by more. The leering, snake-shaped helmet of Blood Stalk. The gilded, imperious eyes of Evol. Build's helm, cracked and broken and worn. Kamen Rider Clear, now covered in so much scratches and dirt that the name was ironic. Slavering, fang-filled mouths appeared on each one, sliding into reality in the same way that, in a badly-generated AI video, details morph and change without rhyme or reason.

The faces beneath him screamed and roar louder. Only snatches of individual words could be heard now - MURDERER! KILLER! - as they rose up around him. He felt as though he was on the stand and the jury had finally lost it's shit with him, screaming for him to be hung.

"I... I couldn't!" he cried, ice in his stomach. "I had no choice! I-"

But the helmets closed in, looming, twisting. Horrible, cackling, mocking laughter spilled from their maws. And at the same time as he cowered from them, he felt twisted appendages and digits clawing at his shins as the things writhing in the quicksand beneath assaulted his ears in the screaming denouncement that echoed off of the nothingness around him.

ALL YOUR FAULT! ALL YOUR FAULT! ALL YOUR FAULT!

--------

Evolto Naja opened his eyes and realised he didn't know where he was.

This was nothing new to him. He'd developed a habit of doing this ever since he'd arrived on Earth and began to mingle with the culture. Accidentally jettisoned from his home planet by Pandora's Box, which was a whole story in and of itself, his awakening in the middle of Manhattan with a screaming headache and a dry throat was the first in a storied history of waking up in odd places. Even when he'd been roped into working for Faust, he'd still had his fair share of amnesiac mornings, although in that case that was mostly to try and forget what he saw writhing in the tanks.

It was only now, as he opened his eyes and saw himself surrounded by a huge expanse of grassland, that he began to wonder if it was becoming a problem.

He didn't know what time it was exactly, but the morning sun was already hot on his skin. His body ached as though he'd been running a marathon. His head felt like a swarm of bees was trying to escape from inside his skull. And as he pushed himself upright, groaning from the effort, his stomach churned in protest at being forced into a vertical position. None of these are insurmountable problems if you are at home in your own bed, or even in somebody else's bed. They're quite another matter when you're inthe middle of an unidentifiable grassland in God knows what corner of the world.

He blinked several times, trying to clear the fuzz from his vision and get a better look at his surroundings. But no matter how much he tried, it refused to be anything other than rolling grassland dotted with rocks and strange bushes he didn't know the name of. So he brought his secret weapon into play - a forked tongue flickering out from between his teeth before snapping back inside, and his jaw clenched as he pressed it up to the roof of his mouth.

Dusty. Dry. Primarily cheap beer, barbecue smoke, sweat and motor oil, all fighting for space. Hints of gum tree and eucalyptus. And a strong aftertaste of...

He turned his head, and saw a kangaroo grazing nearby.

Australia.

He gave a groan. Of all the places to wake up. Not that he wouldn't have minded going to Australia in any other circumstances, but... What even happened last night? How did he end up here?! Granted, that was a question he asked himself most mornings, but on this occasion it felt... more urgent. Like it was actually a conundrum this time, and not a comical happenstance. And he didn't know why that was, unless it had something to do with how he got here at all.

A nearby rock caught his eye. As if by instinct, he pushed himself to his feet and wobbled over to it. The action made every one of his senses howl, all of them refusing to come to work and demanding that he go back to the comforting blackness of sleep. He ignored them and sat himself down, adjusting and grimacing until he couldn't feel any sharp edges digging into his thighs. His brow furrowed as he tried to extricate some form of memory from the black soup that had swallowed up the previous night. 

Well... he'd been drunk. Obviously. But there was more to it than that, or else he wouldn't have this nagging doubt in the pit of his stomach, the lingering worry that he might have actually fucked up somehow. All he could dredge up, though, was the idea that he'd gotten in trouble - for what, he didn't know. Had he been drunk when he'd done it? That sounded like him.

His ears picked up the sound of the kangaroo bounding across the grass in his direction.

He vaguely remembered being... angry. Like, actually angry. And that was significant, because he spent so much time in a fog of weed, booze and dangerous experiments that it was rare for him to get angry. At worst, he got whiny, like a little kid. The last time he'd been angry, it had been when Gentoku - that warmongering bastard - had infected one of the Lupinrangers under his care with Nebula Gas, despite knowing she wasn't compatible with it. It had been the most genuinely angry he'd ever been.

But he remembered being blindly angry. He remembered shouting. Somebody had said something back, he didn't know what, but it had only made him angrier. And then... he was here. Because he'd gotten angry, and most likely had come here just to spite whoever or whatever it was that had made him angry.

Not that it made much difference. Because, in truth, Evolto Naja hadn't been very happy for a while. A long while. And it wasn't anything specific that had started it off. Nothing Dawn or a Ravensky or even any other Kobber had done. It hadn't even really started when Shouma, his cousin, had turned up. That hadn't helped though - not that he hated the kid, he was just a handful. Like a big, stupid dog on a sugar high. Except dogs didn't usually try to become heroes in spite of their simplistic, black-and-white view of the world around him.

The kangaroo had pulled up alongside him. He could see that it was glancing at him as it ambled forwards, sniffing in search of the tastiest  morsels.

No, Evolto'd been in a bad mood even before then. And as he sat there on the rock, the hot Australian sun beating down on him, the Martian was starting to put a name to the sense of worry and discontent in his stomach. It was...

And then he remembered the nightmare that he'd had, just before he woke up. The dead black sand. The dead grey Mars. The faces, screaming, accusing, condemning. The laughing masks of those he had, indirectly, created-

"Lovely mornin', cobber!

Evolto shook his head, and it was all gone. He turned his head to see only the kangaroo standing there.

He was less surprised than he should have been. And when he looked back on this moment later on, that would also trouble him. Because the fact that the kangaroo had spoken and had the pleasant and cheery lilt of a preschool teacher in her voice, should have at least made him do a double-take, if not shriek in horror. But he didn't do either of those things. Instead, he chose to glance back at the talking marsupial with the distracted look of somebody who was recovering from a night they didn't remember.

And maybe that wasn't the right reaction, he would later come to think. Maybe being desensitised to the strangeness of the universe was actually a bad thing.

"Is it?" he asked, still unsure as to wherever to take the word "cobber" as an insult or not.

"Somewhere in the world, it is!" The kangaroo did not seem to be bothered by his attitude, and instead dipped her head down to nibble at the short, coarse grass beneath. There was a moment of silence - inasmuch as the silence of the wild, with the deep rush of wind and rustling of grass always present in the ear, could be described as such.

Evolto wasn't sure what possessed him to say what he said next. Maybe he just needed to break the silence. Maybe everything that had been weighing on his mind like a blockage in a water pipe had finally reached maximum pressure and needed to be let out. Or perhaps he was hallucinating the entire thing due to crumbs of edibles still in his guts. But he said it, regardless.

"...do you think I'm beyond redemption?"

The kangaroo lifter her head from the grass and, still chewing, fixed him with the half-lidded stare that is the default expression of all kangaroos. Without much effort, it gave the impression of unimpressed boredom, that she was waiting for him to do something exciting and he wasn't currently living up to the hype. Evolto stared back, feeling deep down that he shouldn't take that kind of insult from something that kept her babies in a horrible skin bag on her stomach.

"I dunno," she said, at last. "D'you think you are?"

Evolto's eyes narrowed. "If I had any idea, I wouldn't be asking you."

"Fair dinkum, mate," said the kangaroo in that same upbeat manner. "But it's an odd question to be askin' me, right? I mean, I don't even know anythin' about you!"

Evolto blew out between his lips and leaned back slightly. Oh, boy. Might as well keep it brief - no kangaroo, talking or otherwise, would be able to comprehend his life story in detail.

"Well," he said, "I come from a noble family on a distant planet. In another dimension, too. I'm a genius and was very good at manipulating space gas. We used it to do things that shouldn't even be possible, but we did it anyway because reality is more of a suggestion to us than a hard rule."

"Uh-huh," interjected the kangaroo.

"There was a civil war, and my family took part in it. I stopped it, but that meant my entire race got trapped in a space-time pocket and I got thrown to that dimension's version of this planet. Then I ended up getting involved with a paramilitary terrorist organisation that wanted to exterminate all superhumans and instigate a global dictatorship." Evolto winced as those words came out of his mouth.

"Wow," said the kangaroo. He bristled to hear that one - it sounded vaguely condescending.

"I... turned a lot of people into monsters. I also might have killed a few people. Some of them were heroes who protected that world. We staged an invasion of another dimension - this one. Turns out, all the heroes we killed on our world were still alive here. But I stopped them from killing the big bad evil guy right off the bat. He'd taken the device that I used to stop the war and was holding it hostage to ensure I gave him what he wanted."

"Crickey." Okay, that was unnecessary, in Evolto's opinion. You're Australian, we get it, lady.

"But then he made somebody I cared about very sick, and that's when I'd had enough. He was going insane. I left him and joined up with the heroes, and I helped them win in the end, but... it was a very close thing. I ended up making a lot of people mad, and most of them... still don't trust me. Especially that Dawn Cosineau." Evolto snorted. "She can go fuck herself. Judgemental bitch."

There was an even longer, far more protracted silence. In the distance, a kookaburra let out its signature chattering cry and then abruptly fell silent.

"Well," said the kangaroo, at last, "sounds like you've had a pretty wild life, mate."

"Yep." Evolto smiled mirthlessly. "I'm a real wild card, me. Never know what I'm gonna do next."

"Proper larrikin." The kangaroo turned her head and nibbled at something vaguely bushy. "And what 'ave ya done to make up for it?"

The question was like a hammer blow to the skull. Evolto's expression betrayed nothing, but his mind screamed in panic as it reeled, knocked off balance by the words and their implication.

Because he'd never been asked that question. As far as he could remember, not a single person had directly asked him, to his face, what he'd done as penance for his acts under Faust. Not even the Kobbers. Oh, sure, Dawn held it against him, but she'd treated him more like a nuisance than anything, so it obviously wasn't that huge on her priority list. And there hadn't even been a grieving mother in a shawl, or a vengeance-seeking youth with a huge sword and stupid hair, to confront him about it, either of which was the usual cliché in such situations.

His mind continued to scream as it sought a handhold on the jagged rocks of memory to stop itself falling into an ocean of shit.

"...I helped them fight a bunch of villains," he tried, lamely. "And I got an organisation back home that's trying to undo the damage. Fighting old remnants of the bad guys, rebuilding, offering aid..."

He trailed off as he realised the kangaroo was staring intently at him. The unimpressed expression suddenly seemed more cutting than it had been.

"...I don't think that's gonna cut it, mate," she said, shortly.

Evolto bristled, anger rising in his chest. "The fuck do you mean?!"

"Look," said the kangaroo, "far be it from me to rock up to a bloke and tell 'im where to get off. But you ain't doing much good getting full off your head and joyridin' around the multiverse like a bored swaggie. Sounds to me like you're just ignoring all the crook stuff and hopin' it'll fix itself. And you know stuff like that doesn't heal that easy."

"And what if I can't heal it?" retorted the Martian? "What if, instead, I get condemned and judged by the people I pissed off? Or even by people I didn't even do anything to, just because the fact that I'm alive is offensive to them?"

"Now, that's a trickier problem," said the kangaroo, scratching herself. "You've got me there. But I reckon that what you're doing's worse, if not just as crook. You're acting like you didn't even do anything wrong, or that what you did back then doesn't bother you. And that doesn't look good from the outside, especially when your hands are as mucky as you say they are."

"So what?!" Evolto shocked himself with how quickly his voice rose. "Why should I care about what other people think of me at this point?! They can sit there and judge me all they want, but they haven't a goddamn clue what it was like! I'm not a cartoon villain over here! It's not that cut-and-dried!"

"Never said it was, mate!" said the kangaroo in the same infuriatingly level and upbeat manner. "Seems a bit odd, though, that you ask me about redemption, then go on about how you don't care about what others think. You need a word with yourself or something? Because last I checked, caring about what others think is a big part of redemption. Or d'you think you can go on lyin' about that?"

That was too much. Evolto stood up so quickly that something in the  nearby grass scurried away. His forked tongue flickered and his fangs stood out against his gums.

"Listen, you lean and tasty alternative to beef," he hissed, "I was in a fucked-up situation and I had to do fucked-up stuff to survive! Of course it bothers me! Why do you think I switched sides?! But I'm not gonna fucking sit on my ass and weep about how dark and troubled my past was! I've got a life to live, and I'm not going to live it by moping about it! And I'm certainly not going to spend the rest of it handing out apology cards to people who don't even want to hear it!"

The kangaroo stared at him, unfazed by his outburst, for an uncomfortably long time. Then she shrugged - an impressive feat when your shoulders are as broad as a kangaroo's.

"No need to split the dummy at me, mate," she said. "Go ahead and keep doing what you're doing, if that's what makes you happy. All I'm sayin' is, you can't run from your past. You ever watch The Lion King sober? And you can't find peace if you're not prepared to do right by the blokes and sheilas you've hurt. Runnin' away might seem easier, but it ain't helping anyone, least of all yourself."

The fact that she was so calm about it was only half of what was annoying the Martian. The other half was the sneaking suspicion was that she was correct. And he didn't fancy that idea for two very good reasons. Firstly, he'd be damned if a talking kangaroo, of all things, was going to talk anything resembling sense into him. And secondly, because if she was, then it meant he would actually have to do something about it, which... 

The image of the screaming faces came back to him.

...no. Just no.

"Whatever," he snarled. "You're not even really talking. You're just the crumbs of edibles in my stomach from two nights ago. I don't have to think about this ever again, if I don't want."

And he got up off the rock and, not even particularly knowing or caring which way he was going, set off across the Australian bush. The kangaroo watched him leave, ears twitching.

"Seems a decent bloke," she said to herself.

Then she went back to eating. So she didn't notice the drone swooping overhead, following Evolto as he stubbornly marched off in a direction that, unbeknownst to him, would lead him right to where he didn't want to be.

 Evolto Naja will continue to bother the Kobbers
in 2025

Kaydence's Vacation

WARNING: The following post is, like, really long. Maybe make a cup of coffee or geta snack while you read this.

 

-Day 3-

“‘Sup, choomies.”

Kaydence was no stranger to vlogging. She didn’t do it often - streaming was more of her thing - but she’d dabbled a few times. They’d been nothing fancy, merely a few trips to a holiday park or two, but it had been the current trend at the time and the technopath was nothing if not eager to jump on a trend if it meant more views and a bigger payout.

This, though… was the strangest vlog she’d ever done.

Mostly because it wasn’t some mathematically-curated holiday village. It was a large raft floating just off the shores of somewhere in the Kuwahawi island chain.

And it was already late morning. With Kuwahawi being as tropical as it was, not to mention it being mid-late springtime, it hadn’t taken long for the temperature to start climbing up. The air was as humid as the inside of a washing machine and the sun was glaring down on what felt like a full blast already. In the distance, dark, rumbling clouds threatened the chance of a storm - which was not ideal when one was on a piece of floating wood anchored miles from shore. Kaydence was extremely grateful she’d dressed light for this one - thin bikini top, short shorts, flip-flops… if she’d been wearing her usual outfits, she’d have baked by now.

“So, uh…” She flicked some of her bangs out of her eyes - although, with how sweaty she already was, it didn’t stop them sticking to her forehead - and grinned. “Long story short on this one. My coach asked me ‘hey, you wanna go on vacation’? And I was like ‘sure, where you wanna go?’ and then she said something about a tropical island and to meet her, like… three days after she’d left? And I honestly thought it was gonna be, like… some preem cabin overlookin’ the ocean? I didn’t think it was gonna be, well…”

She turned and swung the phone around slowly, giving the potential viewer a good, long look at her surroundings. Although there wasn’t much to look at aside from the great expanse of flat, still sea that glistened in the sunlight. A small boat - the one that had brought Kaydence here - was already a speck in the distance and growing smaller by the second, and the dark clouds had shifted, looking dangerously as though they would sideswipe the raft with whatever winds and rain they would bring.

There was, however, one very large consolation. And that came in the form of Julia Ravensky, who was tugging on the ropes that lowered the sails on the raft.

Oh, yes. This raft had sails. Among… other things. Kaydence took pains to pan the camera around, highlighting all the additions to what had presumably once been no more than a flat lump of wood. An enclosed fire pit and cooking station, a makeshift shelter, a washroom, a fishing chair platform - all of these encircled the raft, their distribution ensuring it didn’t

“As you can see,” said Kaydence as she panned the camera around, “my coach already got everythin’ ready. Shelter, fire pit, cooking stuff… the works. Yeah, she’s hardcore. And if y’all know who she is - and if you don’t, get the frag out from under that rock - then you’ll know I ain’t bullshitting. She’s done survival stuff since she was a chiddler, and she knows her shit back to front. Me? I’m, uh…”

“Could you not call me that, please, Kaydence? Chiddler. I know it’s just some slang term, I’m sure, but it sounds…off to me.” Julia poked her head in from the right side of the camera frame, adjusting a dully colored sweatband with one hand. “Mind if I hold this for a moment?”

“Uh, sure coach.” Kaydence handed the camera over. Julia was a bit more awkward in holding the camera to film herself, though that was more out of lack of practice. Kaydence could definitely see the changes from years past. When they’d met, she’d have actively avoided the camera, let alone made herself part of the Vlog.

“Now, as I’m sure some people would say, how is this a VACATION? Shouldn’t you be doing things in an easier way, instead of making your life harder? Well, yes, that can be a vacation. But if you just wanted to relax and indulge, well, you don’t have to change much. Especially in our lives. ESPECIALLY in our lives. We could probably have a dozen types of relaxing vacations just in our shared employer’s backyard. To me, a vacation is also about going out and doing something you don’t normally do. Moreso Kaydence than myself, but I’ve never done this sort of thing on an open salt water space. A lot of stuff sort of like it on land, and on some lakes, and I read some books, and have some more tucked aside to consult if need be…but to me, stretching your legs, learning some new things, keeping active, that’s a vacation. If you just want to lie somewhere and drink sweet things, well, that’s you. And yes, since I sort of sprang this on Kaydence, I went ahead and did the initial ground work. I like that sort of stuff. I suspect she wouldn’t. Hopefully what I can teach her she’ll never have to use in a bad crisis situation, but I don’t like predicting the possible future. Okay, handing it back Kaydence. I feel the wind, and I suspect you might get a trial by fire soon. Or water, rather.”

Julia vanished from the frame, the camera buffering around before Kaydence was holding it again, panning back to her own face. She suddenly looked a lot less sure of herself. And, if one peered closely, a little pale.

“...like she said. I never did any shit like this. Never roughed it in my life. Miaj panjo kaj paĉjo never even so much as took me on a camping trip. Not that there was much chance of that on Spero, the zen garden of rich assholes. So, uh… this is my first time doing anything like this. And I think coach knew that, which is why she asked me to wait until day three to come on over. It’s… gonna be rough for me, not gonna lie.

“But… it’s a challenge. And you should all know what I’m like with those.”

She made another valiant effort to brush her sweat-slickened hair out of her eyes, seemed to realise the futility of it and gave up with a sigh.

“Anyway, I gotta go. Coach wants to help me get my sea legs. Wherever the fuck those are.”

Of course, she kept it on recording. Just so she could record the time lapse montage of all the times she nearly fell over. And when the rainstorm hit and Kaydence got to test the shelter.

It wasn’t bad. It didn’t completely stop the wind, and some water did drip inside, but Julia mostly didn’t stay in the shelter with her, going out into the mild storm (SURE DIDN’T SEEM MILD TO HER) and making adjustments. Ardent WAS on board, but he was essentially napping in a box. Julia had said that, worst came to worst, he’d basically wrap Kaydence up like a cocoon so she could sleep undisturbed from moisture, cold, and motion.

Julia HAD also brought chocolate. There was roughing it and then there was outright suffering, after all.

Heir to the Throne (2/2)

WARNING: As before, the following contains themes not suited for younger audiences or those of more sensitive dispotion. Viewer discretion is advised.

"An Unhallowed Cradle..."

Samuel Baker had never seen Victoria Thorne act the way she was acting now. Granted, he hadn't known anything about her until last year, and he hadn't learned very much about her even then. He Still only really knew three things, even now - that she was headmistress of an Alchemist school in London, that she was a skilled swordswoman and that she stood no nonsense from anyone. She was like Mary Poppins, if Mary Poppins flashed a piece everywhere she went and would skewer anyone who looked at her funny.

She was not a woman who flinched at anything, in short. So to see her now, looking suddenly and starkly haunted, was a shock to both the former Destined Hero and to Horace Irving, who was still bound and kneeling on the floor.

"It is... not something Alchemists like to acknowledge." The words came out of Victoria Thorne's mouth slowly, haltingly and unwillingly, as though she were trying to free a stubborn toffee from the back teeth. "It is one of the worst crimes of the Decadence, when they tried to do something far worse with homunculi than just making slaves or experimental fodder. It... it allows complete and total manipulation of genetic material. An Alchemist isn't limited to just sperm and eggs, or raw flesh, if they can throw it into an Unhallowed Cradle. Whatever you want, within reason, you can grow it."

She directed a piercing look at Sam. "Do you remember me telling you about the Stalingrad Incident?"

Sam blinked. "Um... no. Because you didn't. You just said 'let's not repeat the Stalingrad Incident' and then didn't elaborate no matter how many times I asked you."

"Correct. Because we don't talk about the Stalingrad Incident."

"...then why-?"

"But," Victoria carried on smoothly, as if the blonde hadn't spoken, "the Unhallowed Cradle was a major factor. The things it made possible, as well as what it could potentially make Thus, part of the global ban on homunculi included the destruction of every Cradle that could be found. But, thanks to a little... shoddy record-keeping on the Soviet's part, not all of them were accounted for."

And it was at this moment that Horace Irving, never the brightest bulb in the box to begin with, thought this was a prime opportinity to chip in once more.

 "That's right," he said, out loud with his entire mouth. "And do you have any idea how much a single one of them costs on the black market? Never mind making an entire new one from scratch. Which I'm pretty sure isn't possible anyway, because the original blueprints-"

There was a noise like ice being cut in half, and the tip of Blue Ben was suddenly much closer to the sweating Horace's face.

"Consider yourself lucky that, right now, we're not considering you fully culpable," Victoria hissed. "But the possession of an Unhallowed Cradle cannot be excused. It's the key to creating far worse things than abominations in mason jars. If we can prove you actually possess one, and no doubt we'll try our best, then you can expect us to leverage the full extent of the law and Alchemical Lore against you. Understood?"

Horace didn't even try to speak this time. A sword blade in your face was generally a good warning that you'd already put your foot in it.

Sam huffed. "Still, it's not much to go on, is it? A high-school dropout, paid by some mystery woman to make monsters in a warehouse? If you even believe even half of what this loser's saying."

"I wouldn't be so dismissive, Mr. Baker," said Victoria, still keeping her sword pointed at the trembling Horace. "It tracks with what we know about him and why he moved to this area of London to begin with. And who better to commit your crimes for you than somebody completely beneath notice? Nobody would ever suspect a man so average the eye slides right off of him."

"You don't have to be so hurtful," Horace murmured. But nobody listened to him.

"This is not a man of initiative," Victoria went on. "He's very obviously acting on behalf of somebody else, even if it is of his own choice. He'll be punished, no doubt, but until we have the full facts of the case, pinning the entire blame on him will be like throwing tomatoes at the puppet and not the man with his hand up it's arse. And we can only sort that out once the main business is taken care of."

"Speaking of which," said Sam, "I wonder how he's getting on with that."

There was a brief silence. Turning his head, Horace noted that the woman - Victoria - had suddenly gone silent and stony-faced. This seemed to surprise Sam yet again, who looked at her as though he thought she might have wandered off with the fairies. The silence dragged out a little longer.

"...maybe I was asking too much," she muttered. "I know it has to be done, and we couldn't wait for the Kingsguard to arrive, but... is he even up to it? Would it not have been better to have him report back and then...?

"Oh, he's fine," said Sam. "He's twenty now. He can handle himself."

"Unless he meets the Big One," said Horace, without even thinking about it.

"The what?" 

"Oh, that's the one that got too big for the-"

And it was only upon looking up and seeing the faces of Victoria Thorne and Samuel Baker that Horace Irving realised the full scale of how unbelivably fucked he was. He thought he still was only waist deep in the metaphorical quicksand. But the incredulous anger radiating from both of his captors was like a splash of ice-cold water to the face. He now fully understood that he was, in fact, neck deep in it, and there were no amount of stray jungle vines to pull him free this time.

"...I should really learn to keep my mouth shut," he lamented.

Heir to the Throne (1/2)

WARNING: The following contains themes not suited for younger audiences or those of more sensitive disposition. Viewer discretion is advised.

Scientists are actually preoccupied with accomplishment. So they are focused on whether they can do something. They never stop to ask if they should do something.
- Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park

~Coastal London, England, Mantraverse~

Horace Irving's day had not been off to a good start, because he'd cut himself shaving.

And that was saying a lot. Because Horace Irving was the kind of person whom, if they stood still for long enough, would fade into the background noise of the universe at large. He was unmemorable in the same way that empty space is - nobody paid much mind to him or, even if pushed, remembered him at all. Friends would have called him a quiet sort and keenly interested in Alchemy, except that would require him to have any quality remarkable enough to obtain even one friend.

The disinfectant stung like a red-hot needle as he rubbed it over the gash on his neck. He clenched his teeth and tried to focus on the shape of his own nose instead.

He wasn't even a real Alchemist - and he would fully admit it if you asked him. He'd dropped out of St. Jerome's Alchemical Academy because the very mundanity of his being had translated to his own schoolwork. It wasn't that he was stupid - far from it. But it wasn't that he was smart, either, which was the problem. He'd sat so painfully in the middle when it came to grades that, in a rare moment of self-reflection, he'd realized that it held no career prospects whatsoever. 

And for several years, he'd aimlessly drifted down the current of the great river of life, not particularly caring if he touched shore or not. Until this job had come along, that is.

The sticking-plaster was layered carefully over the wound.

It still baffled him, even now, that he'd been paid so much to do what he was doing right now. Of all the people in all the world to find to do it, why on earth would you ever pick a failed Alchemist who nobody ever remembered? Surely, there were people actually much more qualified to do it than him? And why...?

He looked at himself in the mirror and heaved a sigh. Mostly because his eyes kept wanting to slide off what it saw and look at the wall behind him instead. Not even his own eyes wanted to remember him.

Oh, well. The money was good. It had bought half-decent equipment - not the professional stuff, but close enough that it didn't matter. The flat he was in was roomy enough and out of the way of anyone who might ask awkward questions. No landladies to come knocking for rent, no neighbours peering. It was close enough to the warehouse district that he didn't need to waste money on a taxi, so no paper trail there.

And the results were promising. Give it a few more months...

He stepped out of the bathroom, his cut still twinging. There was a lot to do today. Check on the cultures, top up the blood - he'd have to buy more chickens soon - get some milk, keep the Unhallowed Cradle ready for-

And then the front door burst open, and Horace Irving's day became significantly worse.