#medium:fic

[anoddreindeer]

Vector Raynes Attends a Wake

Vector sat quietly in his cabin, the only light coming from his desk lamp. Beside the lamp sat a bottle of clear amber liquid and a small glass, glinting softly in the low light. The glass was empty, for now.

It had started innocently enough. Vector had asked Paul a question about how time worked between different metaverses - not that he'd really expected the answer, he'd just been trying to make conversation and the question had been an idle one - and had received a thorough answer. So thorough, in fact, that Paul had offered to calculate what the date would have been in Vector's metaverse simply by observing the current velocity and momentum of his component atoms.

Vector hadn't thought anything of agreeing. Hadn't thought anything of knowing a number. It was just a "relatively simple" calculation, one that Paul said they'd worked out to determine when the Masters were likely to receive the reports John Stone sent after every mission. All it took was a couple minutes and a sample from Vector's femur - something which Paul apparently already had, as concerning as that was. It hadn't even taken Paul ten minutes to do the work.

The answer they gave Vector was the real kick in the teeth.

Vector had thanked Paul and wandered back to his cabin in a daze, stopping by one of the caches of booze he'd found around the ship on the way.

Brown liquor was wrong. Vector had favored a royal purple liquid that sparkled even without light, the suspended nanites winking and flashing as they recongfigured the booze for the species which held the glass. Vector Raynes Rum, patented as a collaboration between Johnny and Addams and marketed through Sunfist Productions, had revolutionized how the galaxy partied and a million imitations had sprung up within a year. Vector always kept a good quantity onboard his ship for impromptu celebrations or memorials, and it was the hallmark of Vector Raynes Day.

He'd started the tradition as a team building exercise. Sure, he'd carefully hand-picked his team but things had been a bit rocky in the beginning as egos collided and personalities tried to find ways to deal with other people. They'd been a group but not a crew, and at a loss for what else to do Vector had posted up the announcement one day that would have been a fine spring one on his home planet. He'd called it something else on that first notice, something like Happy Team Building Day, but when it became a yearly tradition Vector Raynes Day had simply stuck.

The actual exercise itself was pretty simple; play as many pranks as you could, safely. Winner would get a bottle of booze, and anyone who got caught would have to give their target a token of friendship instead of a prank. Winning was pretty subjective; some years, the person who pranked the most people won while other years had the best or most challenging prank take the bottle. That first year, Addams had taken the prize by somehow dyeing Charming's fur orange and sending him into conniptions. She had never really explained how, and had declined the replicate the feat in later years.

Vector Raynes Day had been the one time of year when the crew could really cut loose. It had been a day of tiny victories, of little challenges and tokens of friendship. It was a day for clearing out dirty laundry and going on to the rest of the year with a clean slate and some merry camaraderie.

It had been today, in point of fact.

Vector reached out and poured a generous splash of the whiskey - probably one of the bottles Jonomox had stolen when they'd landed to get Reese aboard, by the smell - into the glass. Setting the bottle back precisely where it had been on the table, he picked up the glass and looked at it for several long minutes.

Most days, he could put it behind him. He had a new team now, and a new mission - one that was just as important, if not more so, than any he'd undertaken with his previous crew. His days were filled with trying to make the Metaverse a better place, whether that was kicking the Galvanic Collective away from whatever they were targeting this time or trying to stop a madman from the future. It was important work with a good crew, and most days that was enough.

He took a small sip of the whiskey, and didn't grimace at the taste. His entire metaverse was gone, so completely it was as if it had never been. There were no graves for his crew, no memorials. Nobody else left who would remember the shine of Peluccia “Addams” McFarlan's hair, or how the way she tied it back during missions would let a thousand flyaway threads gather around her head like a halo. How Sergio would stand like a mountain against all comers, reciting the rules and regulations in his gravelly voice as he put evildoers away according to justice and the law.

Sasrael's iridescent chitin. "Charming" Kosres ki Capisten’s - six thousand three hundred and thirty-fourth in line for the Seat of Capisten - soft fur. Chtik "Quick" Pik's predilection for trashy romance novels. Facien "Sneaks" Ytem III lazing on top of the engine housing because it liked the heat and vibration. Sir Edmund "Hotpot" Lagrosse’s delicious meals. The way Johnny's eyes got misty when Addams held his hand. Mellifluous Ringing Of Bells "Maven’s" poetry. Mobius "The Blind Man’s" lightshows.

Cpl. Charles "Buddy" Buddell's sacrifice.

Vector felt a catch in his throat that had nothing to do with the whiskey and exhaled a long, slow breath. He missed them, one and all, like a phantom limb. Orders in the field to move and flank, requests for reinforcement - funny jokes about whatever Paul had cooked up this time, commentary on the latest villainous monologue; it all sprang readily to his lips, and died there as the people with whom he'd've shared it were no longer a communicator away.

Vector reached out and picked up the bottle one more time, refilling the glass. He held the cup up, saluting the ghosts crowded into every corner of the room and kept there by his memories.

"Absent friends," he said.

He drained the glass.

[anoddreindeer]

On Polysilicate Mourning Rituals

In the space between one second and the next, Paul watched as the caustic fluid they'd been using to analyze spore samples dripped from a newly-eaten hole in the pipette towards the surface of their arm.

It would do damage, certainly, but nothing beyond surface-level. All sodians knew, from a very early point in their lifespans, not to store data in the cruft of their bodies. The outer portions that broke off and wore away, leaving them to smooth as they aged, were extremely poor choices for long-term data storage.

Though it wasn't always external forces that wore away at their cruft. While Paul had never indulged in the practice, they were aware that a number of other sodians had, in times long past, used tools to reshape themselves in ways they felt were more beneficial to their tasks. Younger ones would smooth away rough edges to appear older, thereby gaining more credence with alien scholars. Others would carve their heads into shapes more useful for the research technologies invented by species whose heads were shaped differently. Still others would hollow storage spaces within themselves, to store items against times of need that they could not otherwise carry.

Paul had never felt the need for any of that, but they had considered - were still considering - the one form of carving that all sodians agreed upon. While sodians encoded data into the very material they were made up of, they also carved commemorations into their cruft. The form it took varied from sodian to sodian; the sizes, the shapes, the locations, all of it extremely personal. And yet no sodian would mistake such a carving for anything other than what it was; a sign of mourning.

Paul had considered it. The loss of every other sodian, all the knowledge that they had poured into the homeworld - the place that would have been theirs, when the time came to rest and return to the planet.

All gone.

They were the only sodian left, and while they could theoretically re-establish sodians in another metaverse, that would be the work of millennia. It would never truly replace what was lost, of course. Whatever form the sodians took would be in the image of times past, but it would not be the same. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but it was a truth Paul did not often like to think about.

And, in truth, that loss was so all-encompassing that there were no symbols to adequately express it. Not room enough on Paul's current form to express the loss of untold worlds and pools of knowledge vast enough to encompass entire universes. They could carve that regret into every facet of every silica particle that made up their stony cruft, and it still would not be enough to express it all.

So they did not waste the time to try. Not yet. Not while it wouldn't do any good. Better to work on the foundations of something new; they were not the only ones to have lost everything, and more would do so if their current team failed in their mission.

The drop of fluid hissed as it made impact with their arm. Paul moved carefully to let it slide off and into the designated disposal container before inspecting the area carefully. A micro-fine layer of the fluid remained, and while the main silicate of their arm did not react to it, there appeared to be a reaction with some trace elements that was causing it to continue to hiss faintly and eat an exothermic trail in their arm.

"Fascinating."

Paul reached over and use a sampling swab to remove some of the caustic fluid from their arm, another to swab an uncontaminated area, and set the pipette down on a non-reactive surface. The fluid should not have reacted that way to Paul's cruft; this demanded closer study.

They got to work.

[anoddreindeer]

Deep Freeze

It was cold.

It was a stupid thing to notice, among the giant walking skeletons and the doorway to Nowhere, but that's what struck Burroughs first. He didn't know what the kid had done, but they'd somehow crossed the distance to the widening portal in the blink of an eye, and as he staggered a little from the motion, he could feel the waves of cold emanating from it. It'd been chilly enough at the top of the stairs, but as they faced the horrible nothing in the door, it felt like the dead of winter.

And it was only getting colder.

Burroughs wasn't the smartest of men - a lifetime of taking blow after blow that should have knocked him down, and pushing through it anyway had seen to that - but even he could tell this gap in reality had to be stopped. It's why he'd told the kid he was going for it, after all, and the kid had just jumped them to it like it was nothing. Burroughs couldn't make heads or tails of the symbols around the door, nor did he have even the slightest drop of magic like the idiots who'd set the door opening in the first place.

But he was strong as hell.

Mouth set in a grim line, Burroughs took the last few steps to the rightmost leaf of the door and set his shoulder to it. The door was even colder than the air around it, cold enough to burn where his shoulder touched it. He could feel the unseen force that was slowly levering the door open shoving him back, his feet sliding along the floor. Gritting his teeth he dug in his heels and slowly felt the door grind to a stop.

Taking the first step hurt. He could hear Rollo's gun going off behind him, the loud boom curiously deadened in the cold air. He could hear the kid's teeth start chattering beside him when another wave of cold blasted into the air as whatever was beyond the door reached out with its inky tentacles to do something Burroughs couldn't turn his head to see. Charlie wasn't talking, so he was either dead or had retreated down the stairs - Burroughs couldn't look. His entire focus was narrowing to just him and the door.

Another step, and he could feel the sweat starting to freeze on his body. Every breath felt like knives in his chest, the cold reaching deep into his bones to try and settle there even as Burroughs sweated through the most monumental effort of his life. He couldn't feel his arm anymore, or the half his face closest the door. He knew, deep in his chest, that that wasn't a good sign, but he couldn't stop. Archie had said the door would be the doom of them all, and if Burroughs died to do it it would be worth it. One washed-up bare-knuckle fighter who'd sworn off killing, and then ended up leaving an even wider trail of bodies behind here? Maybe he hadn't killed them directly, pulled his punches, but he'd seen the bloody knives in his friends' hands and he may as well have.

One murderer, for the lives of everyone in the world. Square deal.

He took another step -

He felt the meat of his arm tear, when the kid grabbed him. He couldn't feel anything in the arm anymore, but he felt the tug on all the places it was still attached when suddenly neither he nor the kid were near the doors. Burroughs staggered at the loss of resistance, and groaned as the warm air around him felt like a sauna to the parts he could still feel. He sucked in a breath of air, and coughed as the cold air he'd been ignoring made a place in his chest right next to his heart, making it feel like hot lead was running through his veins and every limb weighed a thousand pounds.

He glared down at the kid as best he could. "I coulda closed it!"

The kid dodged the swing of an undead priest's hammer. "You'd have died!"

"So?"

The kid had to dodge another swing of the hammer, and didn't answer. Behind them, the doorway to Nothing began grinding slowly open once again.

[anoddreindeer]

Tunnel Work

He stumbled a little, as he made his way across the uneven flooring of the cavern. One hand rested on the wall, the other one pressed against his side. He could feel the wet, sticky warmth under his fingers and he gritted his teeth as he took a few more steps.

"-ilton. Hamilton!"

Bruno winced at the sudden noise in his earpiece - the damn things only worked sporadically through the stone walls around him, and never when it was convenient - and reached up to flip the channel open.

"Hamilton here."

There was a fractional pause, like whoever had been yelling hadn't actually expected an answer. Still, they didn't keep him waiting long.

"Status report."

Bruno grimaced and shifted; more blood welled from between his fingers to soak his undershirt.

"Not good. Squad's down, IED in the north fork tunnel. Three dead, two critical, three walking wounded." Bruno sucked in a breath as an injudicious motion sent another jab of pain into his gut. "Assets long gone. Request extraction ASAP."

Bruno missed what the next few words were as the world suddenly wobbled under his feet. Or maybe he wobbled on his feet, it was hard to tell.

"-s out, hold position until they arrive."

Bruno blinked, and repeated back what he'd heard.

"Hold position until arrival, acknowledged."

To reach up and turn his earpiece off - had to conserve the battery - he had to take his hand away from the wall. The wall responded by coming up to meet him, dark spots playing around the edges of his vision.

"Sergeant Hamilton!"

Bruno hadn't been a sergeant in nearly a decade, but the voice held enough authority that he tried to snap to attention. Tried being the operative word; as he straightened, the dark spots joined together to form a well that sucked him beyond the reach of any radio.

With a muffled thump, Bruno fell to the stone of the floor beneath him, and knew no more.

[anoddreindeer]

Vector Raynes Finds a Crime

Vector Raynes cursed nearly silently as a small squad of security guards trooped by - their fourth pass since Vector and Quick had taken up residence behind the sheltering fronds of a large potted fern. The broad, faintly iridescent green-blue leaves and the clear boredom of the guards had been all that had kept them from being discovered thus far, but their luck couldn't hold out forever.

He glanced down the hall at the backs of the security squad, then put his heavily-encrypted communicator close to his mouth. "Team two, this is team one. Addams, Buddy, where in the depths of space are you? We haven't got that much time before these Securitas guys wise up and then we're all in for it."

Static was all that met his ears for several long moments and his heart clenched - had they been discovered? Had something happened? - before the white noise lessened as the channel opened with a click. "Vector, we need to abort stat. Tell Sergio I need his help at entry point B - now." Addams' voice was strained, the tight, tense syllables so at odds with her normal bubbly demeanor that Vector almost flinched away from his comm.

"What happened?" he hissed back, already signalling Quick with his other hand to start extraction.

The smaller Scrik nodded an acknowledgement and darted up the corridor opposite where the security guards had disappeared around a corner. They had two minutes before the next squad swept this hall, and one minute before they swept the next one. While the summer compound of a billionaire pharmaceutical magnate wouldn't normally have rotating security patrols that ensured every hall was checked at least once every five minutes by a person in addition to the security cameras, they also didn't normally house illegal off-books medical experimentation either.

Vector had gotten wind of what was going on through Sneaks, of all people. The Sheemol had been kind of shifty about where they'd heard about it, which probably meant it had something to do with their old school. Still, it hadn't taken long before Vector's team had found independently verifiable sources about what was going on, and he'd made the decision to go in and break it up. The plan had been to get three teams inside the compound and infiltrate the lab hidden beneath the main house, then have Hotpot, Charming, and Sergio hit the furthest side of the compound with everything they had to open a path for their escape.

Vector and Quick were team one, Addams and Buddy had been team two. Sasrael and Sneaks were team three, with Maven, Mobius, and Johnny staying onboard the ship to work their magic where they did it best. At the last check-in, Sasrael and Sneaks had managed to penetrate the furthest into the compound - a quick glance at his HUD showed their lifesigns still green across the board, and a silent pop-up from Maven let him know that the Ettix had passed the word for them to fall back. Addams and the extraction team also showed green, but - Vector frowned at the display. Buddy was showing yellow in his display, edging towards an angry orange-red.

A crackle from his comm had him hunkering back down closer to the fern for a moment, before it resolved into Addams' voice. "-s blasted stuff, it's wrapped too tight. I need Sergio!"

Vector nodded, a gesture wasted on everyone but his trusty camera-drone. "Affirmed. Sending him your way now."

With a click, Vector flipped his communicator to the extraction team channel. "Sergio, Addams needs help with Buddy at point B - not sure what's up, but we're aborting. Do not go loud unless I give the word."

"Affirmed. On my way." Sergio's voice was deep, clear, and concise - one of the few things he had kept with him since his days as a lawman. Perfect diction, a somewhat battered trenchcoat made of armorweave, and an unflinching moral code; they had served him well enough during his time with Galactic Enforcement, but the last had also driven him out of it when he found corruption in his department. Vector liked to think he was happier away from all the red tape and political bullshit, but it was hard to tell with his perpetually dour expression. Still, he was the longest-standing member of Vector's crew and Vector had every faith that whatever had happened to Buddy, Sergio would do his best to help.

But that didn't mean Vector couldn't as well.

Darting from behind the large fern, Vector managed to slip through the door to the next hall just as footsteps began to sound in the one he'd been lurking in. Quick was already there, crouched behind a large Zukaets singing vase that probably cost more than the GDP of a small moon. Vector could almost hear Charming's diatribe about the market behind them, and he had to spare a moment to smirk at his reflection in the mirror-polished surface. Charming had left most of his prejudices behind when he'd left Zukat, but some residual bitterness would come out when he found high-caste luxuries out in the worlds beyond. He could be remarkably poetic about it, and it was hilarious to see him ranting about something while Maven took studious notes behind him.

Quick gestured at the door they'd come in, further up the corridor. It stood ajar, and Vector dove for cover behind the same vase as Quick even as his camera-drone went for the ceiling - just in time, as a human in a very old-fashioned butler's uniform walked through it tray-first. From the mirror-polished black shoes to the crisp white of the tie at his throat, the man looked like he'd just stepped out of a historical vid. He closed the door firmly behind him with one white-gloved hand, then proceeded at a brisk pace despite the heavy silver tray with a cut crystal decanter and several glasses he balanced in the other hand.

Vector felt Quick freeze solid, even the normal twitch of his tail-tip stilled, and quickly copied the smaller being. Quick could be a bit distractible at times, but he had a fine nose for when to hold position and when to run for it and Vector trusted his instincts. Sure enough, the shadow of the vase was large enough to keep the man from noticing the both of them, and he was soon out of sight around the corner of the hall.

Vector barely had time to breathe a sigh of relief before Quick was up and off, darting for the recently-closed door. He paused right beside it, dish-shaped ears swiveling for a moment before gesturing at Vector to follow. Vector wasted no time, and the two of them slipped through the door silently. The hallway beyond was far less cluttered with ostentatious decorations, but it was by no means drab; tasteful art screens hung at even intervals on the walls, and the carpet was the kind of deep plush that concealed the cleaning nanobots imbued in every fiber while simultaneously silencing footsteps.

Fortunately, the decrease in decoration meant a decrease in wandering security teams and it didn't take Vector very long to wind through the twists and turns of the back halls to the door they'd come in through. This late at night, with ostensibly no guests or family in residence, there were very few servants out and about - mostly in the kitchen. Still, it only took a modicum of luck to sneak past them when their backs were turned and Vector soon found himself standing beside Quick in the cool night air as his camera drone whirred quietly overhead. Maven was keeping them from being noticed by the security cameras, so they had a moment to breathe.

Vector tapped his communicator and brought it up to his mouth again. "Sergio, what's your status?"

There was a long moment before Sergio replied, an unaccustomed note of strain in his voice. "Addams and I are well. Buddy will need immediate medical treatment as soon as I can free him." Sergio cut the connection, and Vector was left staring at his communicator with a growing sense of dread in his stomach. Looking around at the green, wide-open grounds around them lit by starlight and search beams, he made an executive decision.

"Quick, find the extraction team and fall back to the Ram. I'll send team three that way as well. I'm going to see what's wrong."

Quick chattered for a moment with his front teeth, indecision sketched with every lash of his tail, but finally nodded before darting off. Vector watched him go for a moment before activating his communicator once more.

"Team three, this is team one."

The response was immediate, Sasrael's shivery two-tone voice loud enough to indicate that however far inside team three had gotten, they'd already managed to extricate themselves. "Team three. What in the shining chitinous chunks is going on, V?"

"Team two's in trouble; I'm on my way to rendezvous with them now. Fall back and meet us at the Ram." Vector's tone was grim, and Sasrael didn't waste any time arguing.

"We'll meet you there."

The channel clicked closed, and Vector took off into the dark green of the grounds. He and Quick had chosen to hitch a lift into the compound on the back of some of the service trucks, so he hadn't actually seen much of the spaces around the main manor. According to the schematics and registered security plans Maven had gotten them for the whole compound, Buddy and Addams should have had to climb a reasonably high wall and abseil down the other side to get in; arduous, but nothing they hadn't done before. Vector could only imagine what had happened as he sped through the darkness, keeping out of range of the roving searchlights and patrols with his customary aplomb, and he didn't like the visions his brain conjured up.

The wall rose before him like a monolith as he got closer to the boundary of the compound, and he sped up a little as he frowned. Something was reflecting the starlight at the top of the wall - just a glimmer here, a glimmer there, but as he drew closer it was clear that something stretched along the entire length of the wall. Something that hadn't been present in the plans they'd used to plot the assault.

As he got closer to entry point B, he could see three figures at the top of the wall. Whatever was shimmering at the top was doing so more frequently around them - like whatever they were doing was moving it, somehow. There were no ropes on this side - apparently they hadn't even gotten that far in the plan. Still, Vector had spent enough time with people who regularly climbed sheer cliff faces for fun to have picked up a thing or two, and he managed to work his way close enough to resolve the two figures at the top of the wall.

The biggest one was Sergio, dour as ever with several new tears in his coat and suspiciously pale lines on his craggy plating. Krasqueds weren't living rocks through and through, but their outer skin was made of an exceeding tough polysilicate plating that let them pass safely through the sharp and jagged plants of their homeworld without taking damage. Vector had seen Sergio shrug off carbon-blade knife strikes without a scratch; to see the pale gouges in that plating now...

Vector focused on the still figure beside the Krasqued and scowled. Buddy was pale in the starlight, the grayish tinge to his face a stark contrast to his dark hair. Vector was close enough for the glimmering he’d been seeing to finally resolve itself into long coils of wire that stretched up and down the wall. The shimmering he'd noticed had been starlight reflecting off the jagged half-inch barbs that were spaced evenly every two inches along its length - and especially where it was wrapped around Buddy. Three strands had wrapped themselves around his torso, with two more snaking up his left leg. Vector could see the drips of blood from where the spikes were digging in, but that didn't explain Buddy's deathly stillness or Sergio clipping the wire instead of removing it.

Addams stood behind Sergio, in a spot where the wire had clearly been cleared away, with her satchel clenched in both hands and a desperate expression on her face. She slipped over as Vector pulled himself up onto the clear space on the wall and spoke quietly, her eyes never leaving Buddy.

"It's Kaquestrion Coiling Wire," she murmured, barely moving her lips.

Understanding flooded Vector's mind, followed by hot rage. Kaquestrion Coiling Wire was a basic security device derived from the barbed wire of ages past. While still barbed, Coiling Wire incorporated motion-based nanoservos designed to wrap it tighter and tighter around a struggling target. Everyone had heard stories about how, if you struggled too hard, it would tighten to the point of cutting you into chunks of meat. The Galactic Council had unanimously voted to make its use anywhere a war crime, and the possession or manufacture of it were high-class felonies - the kind not even a lot of money could buy you out of the consequences of.

Silence reigned for a long few moments, broken only by the chunk of wire snips and the steady tick-tick-tick of ruby red blood that glistened almost black in the starlight.

"We need to come back," he said at last - quietly enough to not startle Sergio, but loud enough to be heard by all three of them. "Whatever this slimeball is hiding just took priority; he's not going to get away with this."

Addams bit her lip. "If he was wire out here, where people might see, what do you think he's got in the lab?" she whispered.

Vector's lips thinned. "Whatever he has, we can handle it. As a team."

[anoddreindeer]

Very Very Frightening Me

Tag bounced a little as he walked quickly through the familiar corridors of the Parallel Monastery.

It'd been his home for as long as he could remember, and he knew every nook and cranny like the back of his hand - much to the Old Guards' displeasure when he decided he didn't want them to find him. It didn't happen often, but it always exasperated Toman when he hid and the faces he made while he lectured Tag about not doing it again were almost worth the trouble of doing it again - but only almost. Tag didn't like to cause too much trouble, not when the Order Parallel had been so good to him.

Today, though, hiding was the last thing on Tag's mind. Normally he wasn't allowed to watch the parallels-to-be train with their elements, but Secundus had promised to show him the newest trick the older almost-parallel had picked up from one of the vids from the Lightning planet - Secundus' home planet. Apparently, if you were clever enough, you could modulate the heat-frequency of lightning and make it play music! The thought made Tag wish, for just a moment, that he could control the lightning too - but he pushed the thought away. Toman always said he had more growing up to do when he asked about what magic he could do, even though Stephano always told him he didn't have magic at all, and it was all very confusing.

Still, watching other people use magic was almost as cool as using magic himself, and he was very excited to see Secundus' new trick. Tag picked up a little more speed into a sort of half-jog - there was no running in the corridors, they weren't wide enough to accommodate more than two people across as if he ran that wouldn't leave space for other people. According to Toman, anyway, and he always seemed to have the best answers to whatever questions popped into Tag's head. Still, half-jogging wasn't running and it got him to the Lightning practice room that much quicker.

Each element had their own specialized practice room in the monastery, designed specifically to contain any kind of magical accidents that happened inside of it. The Lightning room had a little bucket outside for people to leave anything metal they might be carrying, and a big copper rod stuck firmly into the solid stone of the floor. Tag hurriedly rifled his pockets, nearly hopping from foot to foot in his impatience as he made absolutely certain he hadn't accidentally left a fork or something in one of his pockets. But the only things in there were a cool stone he'd found on the grounds and a small, equally interesting flower he'd found near it - he wanted to show them to Toman later, but they shouldn't mess up any Lightning magic so he hurriedly shoved them back where he'd pulled them from and pushed the door open.

Secundus looked up from his lotus position on the floor and smiled when he saw Tag. "Tag! I'm glad you made it. Much longer, and I'd've had to start without you - I could only get the room to myself for so long on account of Blayze and Accalia wanting to practice their lightning spears today too."

With a spry wiggle, Secundus unfolded himself from the floor and gestured to a corner of the room most notable for the heavy woven mat that rested on it. "You'll have to stay in the observer's corner - the bolts can get a little unpredictable when I modulate them."

He looked very apologetic and Tag shook his head vigorously enough to flap his ears a little. "No, no! I'm so happy you're letting me watch today, I don't mind standing somewhere safe."

To prove his point he ran over and jumped onto the mat - though the one inch of extra height it offered above the floor didn't warrant such an exaggerated motion. Still, it was worth it to see the worry clear off of Secundus' face and the parallel-in-training threw back his head to laugh.

"Well! With an attitude like that, I guess there isn't much point in waiting any more! Just remember, stay on the mat. No matter what, okay?"

Tag nodded energetically, and Secundus laughed again. Without another word, the older boy turned to face the copper lightning rod and raised both his hands in front of him. Cyan sparks flickered between his fingers, and the stench of ozone filled the air as all the hairs on Tag's head stood on end. He giggled at the feeling, and Secundus glanced at him inquiringly - and did a double take at whatever he saw, fear in his eyes.

"No-!"

Tag blinked, Secundus' terrified face swimming into view not four inches from his own.

"I'm thirsty," he said, and Secundus burst into tears.

Tag only had a dazed moment to think I can't drink that before the door behind Secundus burst open and Toman sprinted inside, followed by a worried-looking Accalia and Blayze. He looked weird like Secundus looked weird, swimming in and out of focus in front of Tag even as the older man rushed over and pulled Secundus off of him. Blayze grabbed the sobbing boy and pulled him in close, patting his back awkwardly as Secundus soaked his tunic shoulder with tears.

Tag blinked. That, that wasn't right, Secundus shouldn't be crying, he'd only been- he was only going to-

"How many fingers am I holding up?" Toman demanded, blocking Tag's view of Secundus with his hand.

Tag squinted. "Three. No, four. Two? Stop putting them up and down," he complained, and watched Toman's face darken with worry.

"Go tell the infirmary to prep for serious electrocution," he said, half-turning to address Accalia, and the girl paled and gulped before vanishing out the door. Toman turned back to Tag and put a gentle hand under his shoulders.

"I'm going to pick you up, and I'm going to take you to the infirmary, okay?" he said seriously, looking Tag straight in the eye.

Tag nodded. "Okay." Then a thought occurred to him. "Don't be mad at Secundus, okay? He was just going to show me how they make music on the Lightning planet, it's not his fault, I begged him to show me."

Toman shook his head. "He should have known better - rules are in place for a reason." He held up a hand to forestall Tag as the boy opened his mouth to retort. "We can discuss Secundus later. Right now, you need to get to the infirmary. I'm going to lift you on the count of three. One, two-"

Tag passed out.

[anoddreindeer]

Burns Much Brighter

"Millie's a good goat, and would never do such a thing! How dare you slander..."

Amelia Cosaint suppressed a sigh as Millie's owner, Maegan, went off on a vitriol-filled rant about the long-suffering plaintiff standing across from her - a tall man named Ivor. They'd been summoned to court today so that Amelia could hear both sides of a complaint filed by Ivor that Millie had gotten out of her pen and eaten two of his best moonberry bushes. The charge was a serious one; the Fire planet boasted very few species of plants that could live on its surface, and fewer still that bore fruit, and moonberries were by far the most sought-after. Ivor was among the best growers of the fruit, and he could only maintain fifteen smallish bushes. If the goat had indeed eaten the bushes, it would be cause to award serious damages.

"...And so there! Millie didn't eat those bushes, your own incompetence caused them to die!"

Ivor's expression didn't change, but he looked like he'd rather be literally anywhere else. Amelia took a deep breath and drew on the grounding coolness of the Water planet, so recently rejoined to the Continuum. Without the stabilizing presence of Variq - no matter that the man himself had become so unstable in recent months - it was that much harder to hold on to her temper, and Maegan was a trying person at the best of times. The return of the Water planet had ben an unlooked-for boon, one Amelia took advantage of shamelessly. Water banked the heat of a Firey temper, and the flow of cool blue allowed her to ground the rising red of her ire at these petty squabbles. She really missed Variq at times like this, for all she didn't regret his final fate.

It wasn't until he was gone that Amelia had really appreciated exactly how much Variq used to take care of in day-to-day administrative tasks. Suddenly, instead of the neat summaries of current affairs she used to receive every morning, her desk was covered in handwritten notes and complaints, bills of lading, births, deaths, marriage licenses - all the things Variq had used to intercept and organize for her, she now had to do herself. In addition to that she had to hold court for the more serious issues such as the one she was hearing now, and organize the dismantling of whatever the hell Variq had been building, and re-establish diplomatic communication with all the Tine on the planet, and a thousand and one other little things that went with running a planet.

She was exhausted in more ways than one, yet she couldn't let her people continue to suffer from what Variq had done. It was up to her, as their Summoner, to find the strength to deal with the problems at hand, and if that meant missing a little sleep and drinking coffee made from Variq's personal stash of the stuff, well. She buckled down and did it. Besides, it wasn't like this state of affairs could last forever; she'd already sent a notice to the Order of Parallels to inform them of Variq's death, and while they hadn't responded yet Amelia was certain they would see about sending some possible parallel candidates in reasonably short order. It wasn't like them to leave a Summoner without one for long, though what with everything going on she wasn't sure if they'd be able to get off planet or not; the little moon they lived on may have suffered the same fate as the rest of the planets and she would never know.

But for now all she could do was draw on her reserves of patience and the cooling influence of the water planet - and a brief brush the bond with Bryn, who was coincidentally on the water planet currently - she smiled and spoke diplomatically.

"Thank you, Maegan, I'm sure Millie's a perfectly lovely goat. Ivor, if you would please give us your part of the story?"

Ivor set his jaw but nodded, drawing himself up to his full height before he began. "I been keepin' care o' my moonberry bushes for more'n forty year, and I inherited 'em from my mother before me, and I knows how t' take care of 'em. Now, I know a goat's a goat, but if you've a goat the way I figure it is that you've a responsibility to make sure the goat don't get out to do what goats do where they hadn't ought to be doing it. I'm askin' for water enough to get a few new bushes started, comin' out o' her allotment, and no more 'n that."

The only thing dearer on the Fire planet than food was water, and it wasn't a small demand Ivor was making - but it was a fair one, and less than she might have awarded him if she'd had to come up with damages herself. Amelia leaned over to make a note on her now-ever-present tablet and nodded to Ivor. "That seems fair, given all the facts submitted in evidence. Additionally -"

Something tugged at the back of her mind, and she stopped abruptly. Something had changed, somewhere far away, something important. Maegan said something but Amelia ignored her; this was too important. Something was wrong...with Bryn?

Her heart turned to ice and she turned her full attention to her bond with Bryn - or rather, where her bond with Bryn should have been. All that was there now were some fading embers and an impassable gulf.

"No."

No, this couldn't be happening, not here, not now. Her daughter, her kind, beautiful, willful daughter couldn't be - couldn't be dead. It was as unthinkable as the Continuum going out or the moons rising in the North; it was wrong. It couldn't be, she wouldn't let it be. Bryn was just a little bit out of reach, was all, Amelia would just have to reach a bit further. She grabbed power from the Continuum and stretched and felt...nothing, there was nothing to feel her daughter was dead. 

Amelia rejected that notion a second time, and threw open her connection to the Fire planet with a grim determination; Bryn had to be alive, it would just take more power to reach her.

Amelia was dimly aware of the screams echoing in the throne room as the Fire of the planet surged through her and across the room - some of those screams may have been her own for all she knew - but she couldn't spare the attention for that now, not with all her will bent on finding Bryn, on reaching Bryn, getting closer to Bryn. She could feel the Fire of the planet begin to consume her, as it would consume all Fire Summoners, but she didn't care; she was getting nearer to Bryn she could almost feel it. The closer she got, the hotter the Fire burned. Closer, she was nearly there -

And then light bloomed across the connection and Bryn was back, back where Amelia could reach her without assistance, back where she belonged, and Amelia released the Fire in her hands without a second thought - and never mind how it had blistered and burned them, and the throne room around her. Her daughter, her Bryn, was alive.

And that, in the end, was what mattered.

[anoddreindeer]

Corporate Espionage

He really, really should have seen this coming.

Professor Baxter Brautigan suppressed a wince as the robotic pilot C-NACK88 threw them into a hard turn, narrowly avoiding the spray of Void bolts one of the pursuing ships had just fired at them. The turn had been hard enough that the gyrostabilizers had lagged and jarred his bad knee against the bulkhead, and even through the brace it was letting him know in no uncertain terms that it did not appreciate the treatment. Fortunately, their pursuers hadn't expected the move and overshot, allowing C-NACK88 to finally begin an approach to the Void relay they'd been intending to use the entire time.

Baxter leaned back and rubbed his sore knee. He wasn't the best at reading people; even on a planet with fifteen trillion inhabitants, he'd been able to count his friends on one hand as a kid and he'd just never picked up the knack. When he'd been offered a position at the Company, he'd thought it was a dream come true - a chance to travel to other planets and continue the experiments that lit up his brain like fireworks. He should've known better; sure, that's what it had been in the beginning - but then he'd caught a lab assistant copying files. He'd reprimanded them and sent a report off to the Company, and had never seen that assistant again.

He'd played it a little closer to the chest after that, keeping his files encrypted. Encoding his notebooks. It was still a grand adventure of science that made his heart race with excitement, of course, but some of the shine had worn off. Then, too, there had been the Company's insistence that he try live subjects - he'd tried to keep those experiments to a minimum, but he'd had to know if the first one was a fluke or not. His process worked perfectly every time, and the Company had been very impressed - impressed enough to give him a special assignment.

And that was really the kicker, wasn't it. He'd been told to retrieve critical research from the Bloom planet; what he hadn't been told was that it was his research. Baxter wasn't an arrogant man, he just knew with a stone-cold certainty that his research was the only such research to have successfully crystallized magic. He'd heard tell of some rituals that could do it too, but he'd dismissed those stories as the unfounded rumors that they clearly were. So the only natural conclusion to finding an enormous Bloom aeryx on the Bloom planet was that someone was using his research without his knowledge or consent.

Baxter was careful with his creations, and the aeryxes he made. He'd made sure to keep them for defensive or utilitarian uses as much as possible, no matter how much the Company had pushed him to make weapons. In addition, he was very careful about the sources he used to make them; aside from the living subjects, he tried to take only from things that occurred naturally or in abundance. He'd sunk years, decades of his life into this research, and he rubbed his hand over the heavy metal gauntlet that represented the culmination of those decades as the thought weighed on him. He had done his damndest to make sure that his research and experiments were conducted responsibly and ethically as much as was possible.

Whoever had taken his research to Bloom had had no such compunctions.

The gauntlet creaked as Baxter involuntarily clenched his fist at the memories, and he absently made a note to check the integrity of the joints and oil them later. The death of Summoner Langorium had only been the tip of the iceberg; he hadn't known the man - or any other Summoner, before that trip - personally, but he'd seemed well-liked in the town by his people. Choking to death on his own blood in the middle of a laboratory seemed like an ignominious way to go, an insult to the work he'd done for his people. More even than that, the Company would want to reclaim as much as possible from the laboratory - the pleasant little meadow that Langorium had released into the world with his death would like be trampled underfoot if it wasn't meticulously collected for analyzing in some other cold lab later.

The real sore spot there had been the missing workers. Even the memory of that room made Baxter gag slightly; he'd certainly never forget the way the corpses had been carelessly butchered to make room inside of them for the scorpion’s spawn. He'd heard, vaguely, of some species of insects that laid their eggs in corpses so their young could take full advantage of an abundant food supply - life sciences hadn't really been his thing, except where they intersected with magic - but he'd never really considered what that meant. Especially when said insects were the size of small shuttles and equipped with toxic stingers. The thing had hunted down, killed, and slaughtered hundreds of people - in a facility where the Company had apparently trapped and caged it to bring about an enormous Bloom aeryx.

Baxter may not have been the best at figuring out other people, but even he could connect those dots. His research, his technology, his contributions to the Company - his fault.

So he'd cut his ties to the Company in more ways than one, and run for it. He'd gotten away from Haven clean, with most of his equipment and the samples he'd managed to acquire of that strange black stuff that had infested the insect life on Bloom, but he'd made a mistake not too long ago that had lead to the most recent predicament of two Company ships on their ass and gunning for them.

In his defense, he hadn't had much of a plan when he'd fled Haven. It mostly involved not being incarcerated on a tiny moon and forced to go through the motions of lab work for the rest of his life, however long that actually ended up being. He'd managed to take out the Problem Solvers in his way and grab C-NACK before the robot had been decommissioned for parts, but once they were out of the system his well of ideas had run somewhat dry. By sheer force of habit, he'd grabbed his tablet and pulled up his email and calendar; unfortunately, it was his work email and work calendar, which had given away his position immediately.

It had paid unexpected dividends, though; in addition to the expected 56 mB message from his father and 47 increasingly hysterical messages from his mother, there'd also been one from the cousin he hadn't heard from in years. It had contained nothing but a picture of some kind of grassland at night, with the caption "Your eyes are open and you are not alone." He'd only begun to decipher what it could possibly mean when the Company ships had started shooting; he'd ended up downloading the thing to a quarantine tablet and jettisoning the tablet he had been using out the waste disposal airlock; C-NACK had managed to connect to the Void relay to prep it for a random jump, and now all they had to do was get there.

Warnings blared as they approached the relay; missile lock. Baxter cursed under his breath and leaned forward to tinker with the console. If he could just coax a little bit more speed out of the countdown to jump, he could -

With a sound like a million angry bees, the Void relay activated and both Baxter and C-NACK were suddenly someplace far, far away.

[anoddreindeer]

MSDS Is Not Optional

Baxter Brautigan woke with a start.

He didn't remember falling asleep, which honestly wasn't that unusual. When he got an idea he simply had to pursue it to its logical conclusion and sometimes that precluded a set sleep schedule; he'd work until he fell asleep at his desk, then wake up a few hours later and continue working. His knee always complained when he did that, but some light stretching was usually sufficient to bring the pain down to manageable levels so that was fine. Some of his best prototypes had come out of extended engineering sessions like that, and it was always exciting to see something working.

This particular wake-up call was kind of unusual in that Baxter was lying mostly prone for once; normally when he fell asleep, he did so slumped over his desk. He was still in his laboratory, however, with its somewhat speckled ceiling beaming down at him, and had apparently had to foresight to dim the lights before he conked out - which was also unusual but very welcome in this instance as even the diminished lights exacerbated his headache. That, and the timer that was going off somewhere - about 1700 Hz, not one of his usual alarms but definitely not one of the alarming alarms that meant something was on fire or anything serious like that.

Baxter let out a gusty sigh that he felt more than heard - damn, that timer was louder than he thought - and began the arduous process of sitting up. Arduous, because he seemed to be in\under some of the boxes he'd left sitting in the back of his lab after unpacking the latest exotic chemicals shipment from the Company. He'd gotten a special grant to buy sulfur hexafluoride and diatomeceous silicate gel to enhance his current experiments in stabilizing magical energies in a definitive crystallite form, and he hadn't quite gotten around to cleaning up after he'd finished taking inventory and storing those and the other assorted chemicals he'd gotten against future need. For some reason, he seemed to have chosen said boxes as the place to rest his head and while there were probably worse places to sleep in the lab, that didn't stop a sharp cardboard corner from poking him in the kidneys.

And the timer was still going off, which was...concerning. Especially since he seemed to be waking to atypical resting circumstances. It was just so hard to think; it felt like his brains were trying to leak slowly from his ears. Still, a niggling suspicion began to worm its way into his conscious mind as he struggled to get upright in the sea of cardboard cubes. If he hadn't chosen this place to sleep, then -

"Oh, Void."

His lab was on fire.

Baxter blinked at the dancing orange flames stupidly for a moment before lunging for the first extinguisher on the nearby wall. His desk was a shambles, with blackened pieces of metal strewn all over - and in some cases, embedded in - the surface and char marks reaching to the ceiling. The lights weren't dimmed so much as half of them were destroyed, hanging limply from the ceiling by frayed cables or staring up like empty, accusatory eyes from the floor where they'd fallen. His note-taking tablets were, for the most part, intact save for a crack or two, but he'd have to check them all thoroughly for data loss or hardware faults before he even considered using them again.

The lab recorder had char marks over the casing and several small pieces of metal embedded in the front, but it had been designed specifically to withstand explosions in case an accident needed more thorough review later, so he'd at least be able to piece together the sequence of events leading up to whatever had happened here. He couldn't quite remember, which was somewhere between irritating and worrying; on the one hand, he needed to record the results for the testing and append them to the correct test and on the other hand brain damage wasn't that easy to fix.

Baxter grimaced as the ringing in his ears continued unabated. Tinnitus was a frequent side effect of concussions if he was remembering his brief skims of medical texts correctly, but that didn't mean it was any less annoying. On the positive side, if he called his father while he still couldn't hear anything maybe he wouldn't have to listen to the inevitable forty five minute lecture on lab safety. Simply because he couldn't remember what he'd been doing to cause his lab to explode didn't mean he hadn't taken all necessary safety precautions - just maybe not the ones that would have prevented the explosion in the first place.

Fortunately, the fire wasn't large - there wasn't that much in the lab that was flammable, full stop. Baxter was an engineer, not a chemist, and the only thing that'd been available to burn had been the shipping manifests that had come with the chemicals. Which, of course, had been the things that caught fire in the first place and burned for a suspiciously long time for mere paper products; he resolved to sweep the lab for toxic chemicals after his ears had stopped ringing to make sure the burning papers hadn't given off anything unsavory. And also wear gloves when handling any more manifests from the Company in the future - anything that burned that long and that brightly had to be some kind of health hazard.

Fire out, he turned and surveyed the blackened mess spread out all over his lab. Blackened hunks of metal that gave no hint to their origins were literally everywhere, and char marks sprawled across every surface in a two-meter radius of the distinctly bowed worktable. Heaving a sigh, he turned to the inter-office call panel near the door and poked the button marked Maintenance.

"Hello? Yes?" He said, perhaps a bit louder than he needed to - he still couldn't hear anything over the tinnitus - and waited a few seconds for a possible reply before ploughing forward. "Yes, I'm afraid there's been an accident in 4C; if I could please have a mop cart and data recovery unit sent up, I would definitely appreciate that."

A thought occurred to him, suddenly. "I don't need a staff member, just the tools; I want to catalogue everything that went wrong and I can't do that if the evidence gets tossed around higgeldy-piggeldy." That was a good phrase, higgeldy-piggeldy. His mother had used it to describe his room if he hadn't cleaned it recently. "Thank you for your time and have a good day."

Without waiting for a reply - he wouldn't be able to hear it if they gave one anyway, the tinnitus of approximately 1700 Hz was still going strong - he switched the panel off and turned to survey his lab one more time.

"Higgeldy-piggeldy," he said, and nodded decisively.

Time to start cleaning up.

[anoddreindeer]

Not FDA Approved

Snarti gave a little whimper of agony as another spasm of pain wracked her gut.

She knew she shouldn't have done it, there was a reason bug carcasses were left where they'd fallen instead of being butchered for meat, but she'd been so hungry! It had been several days before the latest scavenging run since she'd managed to steal more than a few bites of food, and the fresh meat - ish, kind of, close enough - had been too enticing to resist. So when Sam had managed to down the lone bug they'd found while picking through what looked like old storage rooms, Snarti had helped herself to a good chunk with a quick slice of her knife.

It had tasted awful, but being full for the first time in weeks had been worth it. It wasn't until they'd made it all the way back inside the Colony bounds that she'd felt the first twinges. She'd only climbed up here to stash her bag of loot - four sets of clothes that were only a little torn up, some metal odds and ends, and another knife - but then a white-hot pain had stuck into her guts and she'd curled up against the warmth of the heating duct to try and relieve it. It hadn't really helped, but Snarti hurt too much to even think about moving. It felt like someone had jammed a smelter-hot fork in her guts and was twisting it, all the while alternating with hot and cold needles.

It wasn't fair. The bugs killed and ate them whenever they got the chance, and turnabout wasn't fair play? Though Snarti had to admit that if they could eat the bugs, the whole colony would be a lot better-fed. The carefully cultivated fungi and occasional dropped-dead livestock made for a kind of thin paste most days, supplemented by whatever salt the recyclers managed to pull out of the wastewater that week. Sometimes someone would get lucky and find something while scavenging; Snarti herself had managed to find a whole plastic-wrapped packet of some kind of grain once, and spent half a week nibbling off it until it was all gone.

Still, everyone knew you shouldn't eat the bugs. The slime they put off was corrosive, and their blood was toxic, and they tasted terrible to boot. But Snarti had been hungry, and desperate, and had remembered to at least squeeze most of the blood out first. The meat wasn't so bad, if you could get the blood out before it dried, but it took so much effort to make it even marginally edible that no-one bothered. The paste was much easier and much safer - if you were on the allocation rolls. Snarti hadn't been for years, not since one of the minders for the orphans in the colony had gotten tired of her filching extra and declared that if she was just going to take it anyway they might as well not bother working out an allotment for her. Her name had never showed up on the food lists after that, though she somehow still managed to end up on nearly every scavenging team sent out to search for supplies the bugs hadn't ruined yet.

Snarti didn't care. She liked getting out of the colony and seeing new places she'd never explored before on the outside, and she still managed to steal enough food to keep going on with. Most of the time. Just not recently.

Snarti's stomach churned again and she moaned piteously. If she was going to die, she'd prefer to get it over with quickly and not any of this drawn-out nonsense. She couldn't curl up any further into a ball, though, so she elected to start shivering instead. At least the pain wasn't the kind you threw up from; she would hate to have gone through all this trouble and hurt just to lose out on the full stomach. Of all the miserable things she was right this second, hungry wasn't one of them.

"Snarti?"

The voice was warm with concern, and surprisingly familiar; Dale was one of the farmers Snarti saw sometimes going from the living quarters out to the farming section, and one of the few who greeted her with something other than suspicion. True, he didn't actually have anything shiny enough to be worth stealing and so hadn't been annoyed by Snarti before, but she couldn't figure out why he was so welcoming when he saw her. Sure, his daughter was near Snarti's age, but the two had never been particularly close - especially not with Terrin's propensity to be an equal-opportunity scrapper.

Snarti twisted herself just enough so that she could see Dale's concerned face at the opening to the duct maintenance area that she'd tucked herself into. Normally she just cached miscellaneous tools and such up here, but the warmth had drawn her like a magnet when the pain set in.

She whimpered something like an affirmative, and his face softened. "Come on, I can't reach you all the way back there," he said gently.

Snarti considered ignoring him, but...well, if she was actively dying then staying here wouldn't help anything. Especially not when she had a cache to keep safe. Uncurling even a fraction was agony and she couldn't help the sniveling as her gut twisted tighter, but she managed to push her bag in front of her as she half-rolled half-eeled closer to the hatch. Her shivers got worse the further she got away from the warmth of the duct, and by the time she was in arm's reach of Dale she was shaking hard enough to set the metal rattling.

"Easy, easy, there, I got you," murmured Dale as he gently caught Snarti by the shoulder. Snarti was vaguely grateful he hadn't grabbed her wrist instead, but she was in too much pain to focus properly. Dale seemed to pick up on that she he pulled her out of the hatch, and his brow wrinkled as he took in her appearance.

"What happened? Are you sick?" The concern thickened on the last word, and Snarti shook her head. Whenever anyone got sick - not that it happened often, these days - they were always confined to medical until one of the doctors there said they could leave. To Snarti, that sounded like a special kind of torture and she avoided getting sick religiously.

"Hungry," she gritted out from between clenched teeth as Dale pulled her into his arms. She curled up against the warm expanse of his chest, shivers easing off slightly. "Bug meat."

"Ah." His expression eased to one of understanding. Snarti wasn't the first to try the disgusting food, but stupidity wasn't technically contagious and there really wasn't a treatment.

Snarti made an inquiring noise as he started walking down the corridors, carrying her as easily as she'd seen him carry a sack of chemicals for the growth vats. "My quarters," he said in a tone that brooked no argument. "Terrin can look after you while Fiona and I work at the farm. You shouldn't be alone like this," he said, and Snarti settled with a sigh. Terrin was alright, she didn't seem to mind Snarti like some other kids did, but Snarti could only hope she'd hold off on the punching until the gut aches stopped.

It was going to be a long few days.

[anoddreindeer]

Field Medicine

Weber cursed roundly as Bruno dropped into cover beside him.

Twenty minutes from mission completion and exfiltration, and one of the spooks they'd been sent in to support had managed to trip some sort of alarm and everything had gone straight to hell. The fact that the people who were shooting at them were also yelling orders in Russian was a good sign - given that their mission had been to assist the CIA in expelling one of the more entrenched Soviet "advisors" from Egypt - but didn't change the fact that they were being shot at.

Or, in Weber's case, shot.

Weber bit out another curse and Bruno felt his attention sharpen as red bloomed under the hand Weber had clamped to his side. Blood, but not too much of it and not spurting; fortunately Weber carried pressure bandages in one of the numerous pouches he habitually stocked and carried everywhere. They festooned him like a particularly prolific type of fungus and carried a frankly astonishing number of odds and ends, even for a Marine. He kept meticulous track of his stock, though, and was already scrabbling at the button on a particularly bulky pouch with his left hand.

Bruno fired four more shots in quick succession over their current choice in cover - a (hopefully) ornamental column that had gotten knocked over by some grenade-happy idiot in the first volley. It wasn't covered in too much ceiling, which spoke to it probably being more ornamental than structural, but Bruno'd had one too many rooves come down on his head to trust that the ceiling would stay up for long enough. Fortunately, a yell of pain greeted his last shot, and the rate of fire slacked in their immediate vicinity. Bruno stowed his gun within easy grabbing distance as Weber shoved a roll of gauze and a brown glass bottle into his hands.

Bruno himself was privately impressed that Weber had managed to keep a bottle of iodine intact through several firefights, but didn't pause to consider it. "This is going to sting," he told Weber seriously, and the smaller man shrugged.

"Can't feel any worse, just do it," he retorted, and Bruno wasted no more time. The sharp sting of iodine cut through the air as soon as he opened the bottle, managing to briefly override even the heavy sulphur stink of the four shots he'd just taken at the Russians down the hall. He moved without pause, and poured half the bottle over the surprisingly small hole in Weber's side.

Weber arched up off the floor convulsively. "Christ!" he half-shouted, and Bruno shoved him back against the column; now wasn't the time to be out of cover even the smallest bit. Weber settled, and Bruno grabbed the roll of gauze and folded cloth pad Weber had magically produced from another pouch. Pad first, then he wrapped several lengths of gauze all the way around Weber's middle, the smaller man maintaining a brutal grip on his arm as he worked.

As he tied the last knot on the bandage, Bruno settled back against the column to inspect his handiwork. "You good?" he asked Weber after finding no signs of more blood coming through the cloth and no slippage in the gauze or knot.

Weber exhaled explosively through his nose. "Let's get this shit done," he responded, and with one well-practiced move both men scooped up their guns and renewed their assault on the Soviets.

[anoddreindeer]

Doomsday Clock

"Bryn, if you can hear me-!"

A red flash of light, and the message cut out again and Bryn bit her lip, glancing over at the chronometer. Once Rex had replaced Shavanaugh as the Company representative on the ship, they'd gotten underway towards home as fast as they could. Unfortunately, that didn't feel very fast, not with her mother - her mother-

Bryn restarted the message and watched it play again.

"Bryn, honey, I'm sorry I missed you..."

Bryn watched the message play out again - the same as it had the last four times she'd watched it. Her mother wished her well, hoped she was having a good meeting with Summoner Langourium, some trouble with Variq, seismic activity and power troubles, Variq-

"Bryn, if you can hear me-!"

Red flash. The message cut out once again and Bryn tapped the desk. She wasn't usually one given much to nervous fidgeting, but right now, she couldn't keep her hands still if she tried. The message had been waiting a month - a whole month! Who knows what could have happened to her mother in that time.

Plus, it'd said something about Variq. Bryn didn't remember her real father very well, but throughout her childhood Variq had always been there for her. He'd answered her silly questions with a patience only surpassed by her mother, he'd come and fetched her when she tried to run away again, had as a general rule been a sort of substitute father slash confidant when she needed it. She couldn't imagine something being wrong with him; was he sick? Had he been poisoned?

She reached out and played the message again.

"Bryn, honey, I'm sorry I missed you..."

Bryn watched the message play out again, eyes straining for any clue she might've missed. She could hear Tag shifting uneasily from where he'd stood himself by the door, but he didn't interrupt her and that was all that mattered right now; it was the fifth time she'd watched the recording all the way through in the last half an hour. Again it played out in exactly the same fashion, with no new details jumping out at her as she watched her mother - Light above, she looked tired - talk about her troubles, the picture wobbled -

"Bryn, if you can hear me -!"

Red flash. Nothing. Bryn glanced at the chronometer again, and found the hands hadn't moved at all. She gave the direct line to the Captain a considering glance, and there was a soft rustle of fabric as Tag moved up to stand beside her.

"Bryn -"

"What is it Tag?" She snapped, and he flinched away a little before drawing himself up again.

"Calling the Captain won't help. We're traveling as fast as we can."

Bryn glared at him and his stupid, apologetic face. "Well, as fast as we can's not fast enough! My mother is in trouble, and this message has been waiting almost a whole month! There's no time, we should've been on the Fire planet a month ago!"

Tag put a hand cautiously on her shoulder, and she allowed it even as she glared at him mulishly. "Bryn, you and I both know there's only so fast the ship can go, and Captain Matt Vancil is pushing it already. We will get there soon."

Bryn twitched her shoulder out from under his hand and turned back to the screen, flicking it back to the start of the message again.

"Bryn, honey, I'm sorry I missed you..."

As fast as they could wasn't fast enough. Her mother, pillar of her young life and bulwark in troubled times, was in very real danger.

And she was running out of time.

[anoddreindeer]

Torture

"Why did you murder Jessamine?"

"I didn't."

Corvo looked wearily up into the face of Hiram Burrows, Spymaster to Empress Jessamine Kaldwin and Lord Regent to Empress Emily Drexel Lela Kaldwin, First of Her Name. Four months, he'd been in Coldridge Prison, and four months he'd denied any hand in the Empress' death. Her blood was on his hands, but he hadn't killed her. He'd done something so much worse; he'd failed her. And he'd failed her daughter. Seven years old and not ready to take the throne, yet it was hers now anyway.

Burrows' lip curled in disgust, and Corvo felt a flash of satisfaction. As much as Burrows blamed him, as much as the man twisted desperately in the wind, trying to force a confession out of him to appease the masses, it didn't change a very simple fact; Burrows had failed the Empress too. Even if Corvo had been the one to murder the Empress - which he would have never been, not in a million years - it would have been Burrows' job to figure that out and stop him before he managed it. Whoever had hired the man in the red jacket - he had clearly been as professional as he was supernatural - had done so without alerting Burrows.

If Burrows couldn't shift the blame onto Corvo, people might actually begin to remember that fact. Burrows was a noble, but not one particularly close to the line of succession and unless he managed to capture the hearts of the people then one of the closer Houses would move to unseat him and place their own choice as Lord Regent - or, depending on how daring they were, place their own scion as the new ruler of the Isles altogether. It was how Euhorn Kaldwin had taken the throne, after all, and that had been less than a hundred years ago.

If someone noble enough wanted to, they could very easily leverage the fact that Burrows had also been meant to protect the Empress into an exposed weakness for Burrows, and the man would topple off his wooden throne. When Jessamine had been alive, the man had been untouchable - his spies had been everywhere, and while his priorities hadn't matched hers there had been enough points of mutual agreement that he could usually force at least part of his will into law. The greater nobles had cordially despised him and the lesser nobles had courted him, and the man had eaten it up. Corvo had watched him bask in the benefits of the Spymaster position for years - and, as long as the man had kept up with his duties, he hadn't cared about it much.

Now all he could do was devoutly pray that someone would come along and take everything away from Burrows as everything had been taken away from Corvo. It would only be justice.

"You were alone in that gazebo with the Empress and her daughter, and now the Empress is dead and her daughter missing! Where is Emily Kaldwin?"

The question was punctuated by the venomous hiss of burning flesh as a brand was applied to the side of his neck and Corvo bit down on a scream of agony until his lips bled. When Burrows had first brought the torturer he hadn't bothered - until he saw the sickening look on Burrows' face when he did. Now he muffled all his screams, and saved his tears for when he was bereft of human company in his cell. It was the only thing he could do, and the spiteful satisfaction caused by the disappointment on Burrows' face was the only thing keeping him going at this point.

He hadn't killed the Empress four months ago, and he still hadn't killed her now. He hadn't cause Emily's disappearance four months ago, and he hadn't caused it now. He wasn't guilty of what Burrows was accusing him of four months ago, and he wasn't guilty of it now. Day after day, the same questions gained the same answers. Corvo refused to insult Jessamine's memory by admitting to things he hadn't done, and he'd continue to deny all of Burrows' claims until he died.

Which, given the carelessness of the current torturer Burrows was employing, wouldn't be long now.

The brand was pulled away, and Corvo glared steadily at Burrows as it was applied twice more before being switched out for some sort of flensing knife. The knife slid into the damage caused by the brands and gently lifted the skin away. Corvo's answer didn't change. The knife was switched out for thumbscrews; still Corvo's answer did not change.

Twenty more minutes, and Burrows raised a hand. "Enough for now. We'll try this again once he's got some of his strength back. Guards!"

Corvo closed his eyes as two prison guards came to begin undoing the straps that held him in the chair, and devoutly prayed he'd die in his sleep.

[anoddreindeer]

Consequences

"Ar, she whacked ya a good one there, son."

Grover Doone blinked in confusion at the rolling voice. Since when did his da come out to the back pasture? He'd been confined to the inner Pack holdings since the third child of the dozen he'd fathered had Changed - the wolf ran strong in his blood for all he wasn't a wolf himself, and the Pack elders had deemed him slightly more valuable than the average wolf-blood. Which was, in fact, precisely the reason Grover and the rest of the tweens had chosen that spot to enact a ritual that Grover's recently Changed sister, Elsie, had assured them would definitely help them to Change.

Well, ritual was a strong word. There'd been some ceremony to it, but at the base of it was just a series of bare-knuckled fights against each other, with the winners getting to fight Elsie herself. Grover had gone in with a will and thrashed Macsen and Liam before facing Elsie. After that, things got a little fuzzy - though he was pretty sure she'd tapped into her wolf at some point, he couldn't be sure. His head really did hurt quite a bit.

A sudden burn of pain at his temple had him flinching away, hissing, and his da grabbed him by the chin. "None of that, now, or this'll never come clean and like to rot half your face off when the gangrene sets in."

Grover sat still and tried to focus. He couldn't remember how, but at some point he seemed to have ended up in the big kitchen that served the whole farm during harvest season. Most of the rest of the year they used the smaller kitchen nearer the side of the house because it was just that much more convenient to the dining room; from the smell of things, it was nearly suppertime but the thought of food made Grover's stomach roil.

His da sighed and set down a small towel streaked with blood and a slight fuzz of brown hairs. "Well, that's the last of it. You've a bit of luck, son - you've the liar's skin, and that kept your head from splitting clean open on whatever you bashed it against. So," here he shifted, shoulders squarer and multicolored gaze more direct, and Grover squirmed on the stool he'd been propped up on. "What were you and the rest of those damn fool children doin' in th' back pasture when you been knowin' th' other packs've been raiding in th' area these past few weeks?"

Grover hung his head. "Elsie said she knew how t' make th' First Change happen for us," he muttered, painfully aware of how stupid it sounded when he said that out loud. No one save the Moon herself knew what would push a body into becoming an Uratha, and She wasn't telling no matter who was doing the asking. It didn't stop all the children on the farms from trying something whenever someone Changed; a few months ago, when Rowan had Changed, all the younglings thirteen and up had spent a wild week hunting prey with their bare hands and eating it raw. Before that, Skyla's Change had precipitated a rush for the swimming hole at midnight on a quarter-moon so's everyone willing could bathe in the waters of the Moon of Change.

Sure enough, his da's eyes softened a little and he sighed like a tire someone'd let the air out of. "You damn fools. You damn, damn fools." He reached over and pulled up another stool before slumping onto it and resting his head on his hands. Grover stayed quiet; normally his da would lecture him for a few minutes about doin' somethin' stupid at the talk of a newly-Changed and they'd go back to work. This seemed, different, somehow, and Grover wasn't sure he liked it.

"They took Lewys." Grover blinked in shock, and searched his memories frantically - but all he could find was a blank.

"What?"

"They took Lewys, and Michael, and Eira, and Evie, and Ceri. Red Talons, from the Broken Tree pack, took 'em while they were looking for you pack of Moon-damned hooligans."

Lewys was Grover's eldest brother, some seven years older than Grover himself, and while he was a wolfblood of the evil eye he hadn't Changed by his twentieth year. Still, he hadn't let it make him bitter and had simply set about managing the farm with a will. If there was work to be done, whether it be fixin' fences or feedin' chickens, Lewys was either already doing it or knew about it and had it on his list of things to do. More than that, he was a bright spark in the evenings and knew how to tell a good tale for all he was only four and twenty years old. Of all his siblings, Lewys was Grover's favorite - a sentiment Lewys had returned the one time Grover'd been brave enough to ask him.

Grover stood abruptly and wobbled as his head pulsed with a sudden pain. Still, he pushed through it doggedly. "Well, what about it! Can the Elders do anythin'? Have ye asked them?" he demanded of his father and the older man sighed again.

"Aye. The fact that he's of my blood weighs in his favor, but - he's a wolfblood, Grover. One not likely to Change." His shoulders slumped, and Grover had never seen his da look so defeated. "They'll do what they deem fit, no more no less." Grover closed his eyes and slumped back onto his stool beside his da, ignoring the wobble as his brain sloshed in his skull.

The old man put his arm around Grover, and they both sat without speaking, silently mourning the family they'd never see again.

[anoddreindeer]

A Grand Day Out

It was an absolutely gorgeous day.

Andi leaned back and smiled as she felt the sun on her face. It felt so good to just take a load off and relax; no responsibilities waiting for her, no world-shattering consequences if she failed or made the wrong choice. Just her, the sunshine, and her favorite people in the world.

Opening her eyes, she looked out over the assembled group. The first person her eyes landed on was her grandfather, looking more relaxed than she'd ever seen him in a dove-grey sweater vest, button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up over his elbows, and grey slacks. He caught her glance and smiled back at her for a moment, warmth suffusing his face before he turned his attention back to assembling sandwiches from the ingredients in the picnic basket. It was a large wicker basket lined with a gingham cloth, and with the lid open she could almost make out the various sandwich fixings and treats she knew had been packed inside.

The other two members of their group were already chowing down on sandwiches, sat on the opposite side of the large picnic quilt they'd tossed over the soft green grass. Butch was sat up straight with his legs splayed out in front of him, eating roast beef on sourdough rye with a single-minded intensity, while Abbi had sat herself in his lap and leaned back against him to eat a ham and swiss on ciabatta, only pausing every now and again to remind her husband to make sure his crumbs fell off to the side and not down her back. Andi could feel the easy warmth between the two - a lasting gift from Abbi herself - and knew the complaints weren't serious.

Her thoughts were interrupted by her grandfather - ex-Marine Bruno Hamilton, career soldier, and badass - leaning over and holding out a sandwich in a napkin. "Here you go, Andi, your favorite," he said with a twinkle in his eye and she smiled back gratefully as she took it.

One glance was enough to let her know that he hadn't quite gotten her sandwich right. "Grandpa, I asked for ham and swiss on white, not on rye!" She had to laugh a little as his brow furrowed - it wasn't the end of the world, she'd still eat it, but it wasn't her favorite sandwich by any stretch of the imagination.

"Isn't that what I gave you?" he asked, the puzzled look on his face somehow not darkening his features like she thought it would.

"No, see-" she looked down at the sandwich she held in her hand, and found a perfectly acceptable ham and swiss on white bread. "Huh, guess you did. My eyes must be playing tricks on me."

"It's probably the Lunch Lady exercising her sandwich-manipulation powers," Butch managed to say with a perfectly straight face - an effect somewhat impaired by the immediate fit of giggles that overtook his wife.

"Th-that's not a real thing and you know it," she managed between laughs, and the other three had to join in.

For several long moments, laughter rang across the pleasant meadow and drowned out the softly chirping birds and buzzing insects, but eventually the quiet returned. Andi took a considering bite of her sandwich as her grandfather made his own. It was a pretty good sandwich; the ham was smoked to perfection, the cheese still cool and an excellent counterpoint to the saltiness of the ham, and the bread was soft as a cloud. She had to smile as a memory popped into her head.

"Sure beats the hell out of canned bread, right grandpa?" she asked, and he laughed loud and long. 

It was a little weird actually; before now, she'd only ever heard him chuckle with a rusty little laugh that sounded like he didn't get to use it much - or else with a bitter, sharp laugh that didn't happen because whatever he'd heard was goddamn funny. To hear him belly laugh was definitely weird, but...she could get used to it. The smile when he finally wound down was weird, too. Most of the smiles she'd seen on his face were small, barely there things that looked a bit like he'd forgotten how to do it. Or like his face didn't move that way, but he was trying to make it work for her.

"What the hell is canned bread? Sounds awful," said Butch, drawing Andi's attention away from her grandfather as she nodded forcefully.

"It really, really is. We had to basically eat nothing but for months. Canned bread is just the worst kind of carbs." Of course, the canned bread had only been the tip of the iceberg when it came to awful things about the time spent in ARENA, and she shivered at the memory of the hollow, empty ache of the severed bond to Abbi.

Something nudged her foot, and she looked up to see Abbi smiling at her gently. "Hey, we're back now, remember? And we're never going to leave you again." Her words had the comforting weight of finality in them, but Andi didn't feel the rush of warmth she'd expected. It was a little strange to hear Abbi talk about forever, when she came from a world where every day could be your last, where there was always a new villain, where there was always the next threat to beat. Even more than that, their bond had already been severed once, and there was no telling if it would happen again.

Andi was distracted from her growing thoughts by a tap on the arm. "Strawberry?" her grandfather asked as he held out a particularly juicy-looking specimen.

Andi shook her head. "No, strawberries were grandma's favorite - I was never very fond of them," she said distractedly, trying to regain her previous chain of thought. "My favorite fruit is-" She looked back over at her grandfather, and the fruit he had in his hand - a clementine.

A thread of suspicion wound its way out of her subconscious.

"Weren't you just holding a strawberry?"

"Your favorite fruit is a clementine."

"That's not what I asked. What happened to the strawberry?"

"You don't like strawberries, why would we have packed strawberries in the picnic basket?" asked Butch, sounding eminently reasonable.

Andi bit her lip. "But I thought -"

A heavy arm settled around her shoulders. Her grandfather had never been the most physically expressive of men; the only other time he'd touched her like this had been when they were at TOM. He was nearly a foot and some change taller than she was, and when he'd put his arm around her then he'd done it almost gingerly, almost like he was afraid to hurt her - but it had also felt like a bulwark against the world, supporting her, creating a place for just the two of them in a metaverse fraught with danger and strife. It had been too fleeting to really enjoy, but she'd loved every second of it.

This time it felt like a great weight, like his arm around her shoulder was an anchor holding her down, holding her back. This time his grip wasn't safe, it was suffocating - and the easy way he'd simply grabbed her was almost careless.

"C'mon Andi, aren't you having fun? What's one clementine among friends?" he asked, Butch and Abbi nodding sympathetically behind him.

Ice shot through her veins. This wasn't her grandfather, and those weren't her friends.

She had to get out of here.

[anoddreindeer]

In Ludus Veritas

Verity looked out over the town as she held her playing card high.

Normally, she hated making such a spectacle of herself. The little book she carried around - the one she'd won off a piss-poor loser of a cardshark in Boston almost a decade ago now - had warnings about what folk would do if they caught you sharpin' the edges of reality. Dealin' with the devil for power was more intoxicating than any whiskey, but overindulging meant worse than a headache in the morning.

Still, it was late, and dark, and the monsters flittering about the place had driven the townsfolk into their homes if they were wise. For the few citizens of Varney's Landing who weren't wise, the monsters had already made a meal of them. Of course, the monsters looked a little less impressive in the daylight that shone from the card she held. Their pale faces, nasty teeth, and clawed fingers looked ridiculous in the light of day, like some cheap fella with too much time on his hands and less art than sense had simply tacked on whatever he thought sounded scary.

Still, they'd done a good job tearing through the townsfolk they'd gotten hold of, no matter how silly they looked without the dark to hid them. And, from the sounds of things going on in the hotel nearby, the "responsible" party members who'd chosen to turn in early had their hands full with even more of the things.

Battle was decidedly joined, and it was going on decidedly longer than Verity cared for. She had one more ace up her sleeve, one more little trick the Devil'd taught her. Granted, she'd never tried it before but she'd been listenin' to the Devil all night, and it seemed like a great idea right this second. And she might not even regret it in the morning.

She shuffled the cards she habitually kept in her left hand and took a deep breath. While normally she'd give a little side glance into that other place where the Devil lived, only take a few instants to gather her hand, this was something bigger. Something that would blow up in her face if she messed it up. She released her breath slowly and Looked directly into that Other Place.

The Devil was standin' there and grinnin', a deck of cards held in their hand. Just a standard poker deck on the faces, but the backs had real flames that flickered and danced under the Devil's fingers. Her own deck in the real world was a static imitation, but she wasn't about to try and gamble for the real thing. That kind of stupidity is what got inveterate gamblers like herself caught and lynched.

"What're you reachin' for this time, Verity?" the Devil asked, polite as you could want through the leer that twisted their face up into something mad.

Verity flashed her own polite smile. "I do declare, an end to this-here conflict. It's quite givin' me the vapors."

She fluttered her eyelashes and the Devil laughed.

"I have no doubt, Miss Langridge, that you could end this battle even without my particular brand of assistance. Still," they held out the deck in a silent invitation, guile dripping from their lips with every word, "I was never one to waste a conversation, and neither are you."

Verity laughed, the sound a little more mad than usual as it fell from her lips, and drew five cards. She spread them, smiled, and rearranged them just so between her fingers before showing them to the Devil.

"Straight flush."

The Devil laughed and laughed and laughed. That laugh followed Verity as she returned to the battlefield, straight flush still held in her hand. She grinned, expression reckless and power-drunk beneath the empty of the new moon.

This would be fun.

She looked down at her cards, and felt her sunlit card drop to the ground as her form changed and expanded. It was painless, and yet fully the strangest thing she'd ever felt - like going to a taffy pull, only for the taffy to pull back. She stretched and stretched and stretched until she towered over the battlefield. Armor thicker than railroad ties formed up along her flanks, and dozens of tentacles sprang from her newly-formed maw.

She stretched her new bulk up and up and up. 150 feet from maw to tail-tip, a mojave rattler was exactly what they needed to end the fight right here and now.

"Oh boys," she called, not thinking too hard on how a 150-foot-worm with tentacles instead of a tongue managed to speak English, "I think I've had just about enough of y'all."

She dove.