Marcello jammed a thumbtack into the cork soft board behind her desk and then took the time to wrap red thread around it. The pin held up a picture of the Lo-Tec Co. emblem, which was just stylized text spelling out the name. Connected to it were a number of similar pictures all belonging to various subsidiary companies that fell under the Lo-Tec umbrella, like Ship Express. Along with it were the construction companies involved with Locksmouth’s empty warehouse, and even the cleaning company that had diverted her into an attack on the ring. Spreading out from those, photographs of people littered the board connecting them to a company which they worked for.
Tate was connected with Lo-Tec itself. Kris was attached to Ship Express along with Edna the beetle. Bob, another of the arrested persons detained in Snowden had once been a plumber. A number of other Eos soldiers picked up on facial recognition were linked to numerous other labourer companies. They’d been just about everywhere, to every city on the continent, and somehow they’d ended up under Eos command. How did that happen? And especially without anyone noticing?
Jersey Wild’s picture sat above them all – the last photograph taken of when he was alive. He was an elderly reptile, a cobra, with a head of silver hair and aged wrinkles. He had been the big fish in Lo-Tec for some time, the Chairman of the company until his death three years prior to the investigation. His cause of death was listed as cardiac failure. He had no living relatives – a common problem in society at large in the modern age – and so whatever personal wealth he had obtained during his life was spread out at his request back into the company he worked for. His workers got to keep on working, and they had the funds to hire on more hands. What ventured into the overflow was doled out to Locksmouth where he had once lived.
He was buried there, in the halls below Locksmouth. He had no memory posted, having nothing to say in death that he hadn’t already said in life. He’d lived providing every dome city in the area with the help they needed to build infrastructure. He built midways, commercial buildings, laid pipe for running water – he’d done plenty with what he’d inherited from his father. It was all rather insightful, but what it didn’t explain is how his name ended up on a bill of sale almost three years after he had died.
And he did die – the records were clear as day. No one could have been invoking his name for monetary reasons since he hadn’t withheld a thing after he passed away.
Marcello had started looking into everything Lo-Tec had ever done since its founding in the late 2300’s. Built up around the idea that good hands were hard to come by, they took a supply of workers they already had and organized them into task forces to build the cities. They became widely renowned and were paid rather considerably for their efforts. The company had affiliated itself with a number of other projects, but mostly into things like mechanical engineering, especially around the boon of excavations leading into the 2400’s. They seemed to jump from project to project, funding things incredibly specifically and putting their name on some of the more unlikely places.
The most surprising was how many of Lo-Tec’s employees had gotten into dome politics. It was unlikely that at any point in history you wouldn’t find some old CEO attempting to become an Arbitrator. Naturally they pushed for an increase in labour sector jobs, trying to curb curriculum toward physical education; that was all for the interests of their company. They pushed some fairly controversial topics too, however, with the more notable one being the repeal of a ban on anabolic steroids. Marcello latched on to that after having found what was in the cocktail that had been supplied to Tate by Eos.
It looked more and more likely that Lo-Tec had everything to do with Eos, but Marcello needed to investigate the company itself. She needed to order a full investigation with a full sweep of records and activities, but she was being tied up in the red tape of bureaucracy. Chief Reynolds was having a hard time getting Lo-Tec’s full cooperation, and it was going to take time going through various Arbitrator and police channels to get her in there. She was left on her own, sitting in her apartment in her underwear staring at the web chart she’d made. Some threads of red yarn went well beyond the board, and Marcello had just started sticking notes and pictures to her wall.
She clicked the last part of a puzzle sphere into place. She set the sphere on top of a platform she’d made out of four solved puzzle cubes, which was set in front of a backdrop of meticulously balanced puzzle pyramids stacked like a house of cards. She’d been a busy detective.
Her PET beeped at her and she grabbed it from the desk without taking her eyes off the chart. “Talk to me,” She said.
“Paris, it’s Eddie.” Eddie’s familiar voice came in through the speakers. “Daxton just sent me something you’re gonna want to see.”
The angler managed to tear her eyes away from her chart to look at her screen. Eddie sent over the files and she opened them to find a number of snapped pictures of an Eos came located in the forest somewhere. They had a collection of alien captives held in makeshift pens made from strong-force containment fields. Paris tossed one of her legs over the other, balancing her bare feet on her desk. “They’re rounding up aliens,” She said, “That’s a little strange. Maybe Inklings aren’t their only target.”
“It’s a little suspicious don’t you think?” Eddie asked, “Where did the aliens that got into the dome come from? And how come there hasn’t been any more since, not even nearby?”
Marcello eyed the picture of the broken down blast door from the surveillance footage the day that the aliens had busted in. “I knew something was up with that door,” She snapped her fingers, “And that they don’t have any actual publicly available footage from the cameras. You think they did it?”
Another call came in, stopping the discussion short. It was from Murphy, of all people. Paris blinked in surprise. “Hey, I’ve got another call coming in, give me a sec,” Paris said, switching over to Murphy with the push of a button. “Officer Murphy, this is a surprise!” Marcello cocked a brow, “What’s the occasion?”
Murphy’s face kept stern. “I take it you got the pictures the kid sent?”
“I have them now, yes.” Marcello answered. She was intrigued.
“Good,” Murphy nodded, “I need everything you know about Eos right now.”
Marcello pulled her feet off her desk and sat up straight. If it weren’t for the way her esca glowed, illuminating the almost pitch blackness of her apartment, Murphy may not have been able to see the little smile on her face. “Why Murph! I didn’t know we were working together now,” She said, “Did you want to make sure your boss and my boss are on the same page before we do anything?”
“Paris, this isn’t the time.” Murphy responded angrily, “Eos has taken two hostages, Quincey and Natalie. I need to know where they could have taken them so we can mount a rescue.”
“She better have something!” Came the voice of an angry cat from somewhere out of frame.
Marcello’s smile faded. “They actually grabbed them, huh?” She asked. The detective sighed and looked at her wall again. On Murphy’s end she would have just looked like she was staring off into space somewhere. “I have so many theories but I don’t have anything concrete,” She said.
“Well what do you have?” Murphy asked, “We’ll take anything.”
Marcello gave the officer a sideways glance. “You sure?”
“Do it.”
Marcello stood from her chair and paced around her living room, her esca bobbing around with her movements. “Alright, well, I have them pretty much pegged as being with the Lo-Tec Corporation. They’ve got the resources and a bunch of their affiliates have been making deals all over the place in just such materials as they’d need to mount their little army – combat vests, curon for weapons, things like that. I have no idea where they’re manufacturing or where they’re stationed from though.”
Murphy paced as well, snapping her fingers. “More, I need something else,” She said, “Some kind of location.”
Marcello shook her head. “I have a name, Jersey Wild, but it doesn’t mean much. The guy’s dead, even though he’s signed for buying all the old curon from the hospital here. It went the rounds and dispersed, but it didn’t end up all in one place.”
Murphy let out a frustrated sigh. “This isn’t telling me anything,” She said.
“I don’t know what to tell you until I can get more time,” the detective shrugged, “The only other thing I got is this stupid motto they’ve apparently got tagged to their orders. In multitudine virtutis.”
“…In multitudine virtutis?” Murphy repeated, “That’s gibberish.”
“Huh? Wait.”
Daxton stepped in close to Murphy side, stopping the woman and peering at her screen. “What was that again?” He asked, and the detective repeated the words: In multitudine virtutis. Daxton would have squinted if he could, but he did scrunch up his face as he racked his brain on the words. “Nah, I’ve heard that before,” He explained, “I swear I have.”
He looked up out of frame to the gathering of Inkling super heroes in the room. “Hey does in multitudine virtutis mean anything to you guys?” He asked.
Even the more intelligent among them furrowed their brow trying to find some relevance to the words. They muttered their confusion and denial, while the less learned of them shrugged their shoulders and expressed their inability to help. It was Laila who spoke up, gasping and snapping her fingers. “Oh!” She exclaimed, “Oh that’s Latin!”
Daxton pointed at her. “Right! That’s where I heard that before!”
“What are you going on about?” Marcello asked.
“Quincey and I did a presentation once on post-splice history, you know, after the plague.” He explained, “We picked neo-medieval because I wanted to do something with wars and knights and stuff. That gibberish stuff you said was one of the creeds of one of those six noble houses set up back then!”
“It is?” Shelly blanked from in the kitchen.
Daxton marched away from Murphy and made hand gestures as he searched his thoughts. “God, she did all the work, uhhh…” He hummed as he thought and thought, and all eyes were on him. Everyone just followed him as he walked around, doing a good two laps around in a circle in a panic. “It was the one with the snakes!” He huffed, “Uh, I just… gah, I don’t remember their name!”
“The snakes?” Samantha blinked, “Ooh! Snakes!”
She stood up on the couch to make herself big, since she was so much smaller than everyone else there. She stood on her toes and leaned over Max to try and get Daxton’s attention. “I know which one you’re talking about,” She said, “Miss Hendrix had us staring at it for a good three days when we covered Neo-Medieval history!”
-
--
-
Natalie sat at gunpoint for far too long, crammed into the metal flatbed of a truck. Even her cushy butt wasn’t enough to make the ride comfortable. Sometimes she let her eyes wander, gazing over the edge and down to the ground below where thick forest swallowed the ground. A fog had rolled into the area, wherever she was, and the mists swirled around the trees to make it look all the more daunting by obscuring the ground. Whenever she got too curious, however, Garrison yanked her harshly into the truck again.
The thought crossed her mind that she could ink over and take these guys on. Two gunmen and a couple of Inklings weren’t going to be enough to stop her… but now she was thirty feet in the air and if she did anything it would put Quincey in danger. She was forced to cooperate for the moment… and besides, she was curious. Eos hated Inklings, and that was made all the more clear by the way the soldiers interacted with Polaris and Haze. They didn’t trust them; their alliance seemed forced. So why was it that they were working with someone so vehemently against Inklings? She was dying to know and at that point it seemed that meeting with their leader would be the only way to get answers.
Echelon wanted to try and reason with whomever was heading up the charge, but Natalie doubted such a thing was possible. The Inkling in her was curious, the human in her just wanted to beat them all down and escape. Already Natalie was imagining ways to free herself like she were in some kind of action movie, but if she made any move at all her captors were on her in an instant. She wouldn’t have been able to ink over fast enough to keep Garrison and Yvette from blasting Echelon over the side.
Eventually they came upon a lone manor in the mists. Enshrouded by trees, it had perhaps once been built into a clearing that had since been overgrown. The night air was damp, leading Natalie to think that maybe they were close to some body of water. She couldn’t see one if there was one, or any landmarks even to suggest where she’d been taken. There were no domes in sight – even the manor was devoid of a containment field. That meant it was probably Naturalist. Wherever it was, it was way off the grid.
Kris brought the truck down in front of the manor. The walls were made of wood that had been painted and repainted, but even then the white was peeling away to the dark bark beneath. There were large windows of glass, paned and framed, and the roof had an overstretch that shaded the front steps. Crumbling statues were placed carefully around the premises where they had once been part of garden displays, but now the brush had taken them. The gardens were overgrown, old, and deadened. In hard contrast to the rustic feel were the armed guards at the door – heavily outfitted individuals in power suits of metal and tinted visors. Natalie had seen the suits before; they were the same kind the police and Locksmouth once managed to get.
There were other vehicles too, and they were unloading cargo onto an elevator that looked way out of place on the old manor’s grounds. It was a giant metal construction that had been slapped down seemingly wherever they could find room. It seemed to operate smoothly and was very modern and new. Natalie didn’t get a good look at the crates they were piling onto the lift, the fog was too think and her captors insisted she move. She was walked with Quincey right into the doors where she found herself in a grand foyer.
“The boss knows we got ‘em.” Garrison said, pushing Natalie toward the sitting room just off the entryway. Quincey was forced in too by Yvette, and the two of them were shoved into the room to stumble on the wood floors. Quincey actually fell down, so Natalie helped her up while ignoring the fact that no fewer than four Eos goons had weapons pointed at her.
“Keep a close eye on them, I’ll be right back!” Haze said, seeming to rush off deeper into the manor.
Nobody was going to say anything, so Natalie and Quincey nervously found somewhere to sit. The threat of weapons fire was always on their mind, but they tried to distract themselves from the lack of pleasantries in the meantime.
They sat with their hands cuffed in the rather lavish sitting room. Mahogany wood made up a great deal of the structure and wallpaper had been pasted over the walls between all the supports. The ceiling was high and had a number of rafters tangling for space up above. The sofa they sat on was fairly old, stitched together quite some time ago if one were to guess, and made from cotton. There was no threadlink technology in the cushions to conform to their shapes, instead they had to find their own grooves and keep from sinking into it. Shelves were lined with paper spine books, and decorative armoires made a surface for various little trinkets to sit. Brass carvings of dragons and people were lit by the warm glow of oil lanterns. The room itself would have been much better lit by the large fireplace that lead to a legitimate stone chimney, only the fire wasn’t lit.
The floorboards beneath their shoes would creak in certain areas. There were old, faded paintings on the walls of landscapes and portraits of post-splice humans. Clay vases housed regular house plants: snake plants, weeping figs, nothing exotic. Everything about the place suggested it was old, from the lack of modern trappings, to the silver tea set on the coffee table, to the way the picture frames were carved in a distinct post-splice style that had tried to mimic the craftsmanship of pre-splice times. That would have made things clear to someone with a very keen eye for history, but what made it blatantly apparent was the large shield hanging above the fireplace.
A green caduceus emblem was printed on the shield. A staff with wings spread near its top and encircled by two snakes. It hung with two large spears, one above and one below.
“House Caduceus.” Quincey said.
“Huh?” Natalie sat next to her, hunched forward and staring up at the shield as well.
Quincey pointed up above the fireplace. “That emblem, it belongs to House Caduceus, one of the six prime houses in the Neo-Medieval era.” She explained, “They were the second-largest with hundreds of members, and they followed a simple belief partially touched on by its creed: in multitudine virtutis.”
“What does that mean?” Natalie asked.
“He who has the people, has the power, or so they said.” Quincey said, turning to look at Natalie. “They believed their strong leadership was necessary to rebuild after the Skin Plague. They gathered as many people as possible and tried to use their numbers to strong-arm others into falling under their banner. Dictatorship wasn’t the way that people chose to live however, and House Caduceus was left behind. They burned out as quickly as they grew to power. Many of those who lost to them in conflict and were forced to live by their rules ended up abandoning them. Only the first families remained after the exodus.”
“So where are we then?” Natalie sat back, “Some old noble house?”
“It looks that way.” Quincey responded with a small sense of wonder in her voice.
Polaris clapped his hands slowly from the stairs that lead to the second floor just off to the side of the room. The ink receded into his body revealing a mature calico feline in a tweed suit with swept-over brown hair and blue cat eyes. “Very good,” The Inkling’s host said, “It seems we have a little historian on our hands.”
“So, what, are you just hiding out in ratty old buildings then?” Natalie rose her voice just a little, but the acoustics of the place made it echo enough to be heard, “Because you know you’re doing something wrong?”
“Oh Natalie,” Polaris’ host sighed, “To say whether something is right or wrong is simply a matter of perspective. Why, just because a law is made doesn’t necessarily mean that acting against it is wrong – what if I told you it were against the law to breathe? Would you listen?”
“No, that’d be stupid.” Natalie immediately rebutted.
“Exactly.” The man shrugged, taking a pair of polished metal spheres from his pocket and gently rolling them in his palm, “These weapons are against the law I will readily admit that, but when faced with something like us I’d think they’re quite necessary. You know what we’re capable of, what we’re designed to do.”
Quincey looked back over the fine sofa, turning her body to try and look at the feline man. “What were you designed to do?” She asked.
“A good many of us were designed by Osoth.” The man plainly answered, “Use your imagination. Echelon, you in particular should know just what I mean, you’d been that she-devil’s right hand alongside Arus for so long. That’s exactly why you started your rebellion, is it not?”
“Mm, but then what else would you have done,” The metal balls clacked in the man’s palm, “You knew nothing else.”
Natalie turned on the couch and rose on her knees to hang her cuffed hands over the back. The staircase was right across from her, with rugs making clear paths on the floor for people to walk on to get there. “Are you saying she shouldn’t have fought Osoth? You don’t seem to like her, so why not fight her?” She questioned the man.
The man flicked his wrist and the metal balls rose into the air, swirling around in some impossible manner that defied gravity. They landed back in his palm in a moment and he continued to spin them around using his fingers and wrist. “On one hand, I regret that all that fighting was necessary, but on the other it was fortuitous.” He said, “But I’m not at liberty to tell you why. I fear if I say anymore the boss won’t be a very happy man. So, for the time being, I won’t answer any more of your questions. I’ll leave that up to him should he deem it fit.”
“So you don’t work for Osoth.” Natalie deduced.
“Does anyone anymore?” The man shrugged, “No, I would think that quite impossible thanks to you.”
Natalie sighed and turned back around to drop onto the cushion, thrusting her back against the rest in frustration. Quincey sat forward as well, wiggling to get as comfortable as her nerves would let her. “Um… so… what do you think is going to happen?” Quincey asked.
Natalie shrugged her shoulders. “I’m hoping the others will find us before we have to find out.”
“Oh…” Quincey stared down at her necktie, fiddling it between her fingers. “How are they going to do that?”
“Ehhh, your boyfriend’s a resourceful guy, right?” Natalie nudged the girl.
Quincey blushed. “W-Well, um, I mean yes… sort of. He’s just not usually… you know…”
She didn’t have to finish her thought before Natalie smiled with sympathy. “Yeah, Carrie too,” She said, “But maybe if we’re lucky they can punch their way to us!”
“Oh, then they’ll find us for sure.” Quincey nodded.
Natalie huffed a laugh out her nose. “You doing alright?” She then asked, resting one hand gently on Quincey’s leg. The girl was shaking a little.
Quincey smiled, but it lacked heart. Immediately it faded and she frowned. “I’m scared.” She said.
“Ah, don’t worry,” Natalie breathed a sigh, “The others will figure something out. And hey, if they wanted to kill us they’d’ve done it already!”
“Oh, I feel so much better…” Quincey breathed.
Natalie nodded her head. “See? That’s the spirit.”
-
--
-
“House Caduceus, huh?” Marcello cocked a brow over Murphy’s PET.
“And!” Daxton raised a finger, matter-of-fact, and looked at everyone gathered around Kelvalde’s dining table. “And, they have one remaining house somewhere. Like, an actual house. So if these guys are part of that, then they might’ve taken them there.”
“Great!” Erwin said, “Where?”
“Uh…” Daxton wilted, “I don’t remember. Quincey knows all that stuff.”
“Aw man,” Laila whined.
The front door was kicked open then and everyone was on their feet and ready to be stormed by Eos troops. Instead, they had a very red-faced, teary-eyed lemming boy charge into the house and nearly tumble over the arm of the sofa. He caught himself and stopped, panting for breath, sword sheathed and in hand. “Guys! Quinn! Gone!” He gasped for breath.
Carrie was already marching on him, fist cocked back to slug him in the jaw. Jacent quickly caught up with her and held her back, quite literally needing to wrap his arms around her to keep her from moving. “Carrie…” Jacent put on an authoritative tone, reminding her that it wasn’t the time to be getting worked up.
“No, yeah!” Kenny wheezed, hunching over, “No I get it! It’s my fault! You can punch me later!”
“I might not be pissed at you later!” Carrie growled.
Daxton hurried past Carrie and approached Kenny. “Hey, do you wanna tell us where the heck you’ve been the last twenty-four hours?” He asked.
Kenny put his hand on Daxton’s chest, taking a deep breath and standing up straight. “Later!” He said, “We gotta find Quinn.”
Daxton gave him a stern look, but then palmed his head and shook him a little bit. “For once I agree with you,” He said, “But we don’t know where to look. She might’ve been taken to some old medieval noble house or something, but we don’t even know where to look.”
Kenny blinked at Daxton, then toward the rest of the group at the table, “Why not ask that guy?”
Laila perked her ears as the idea struck her, and she seemed to perk right up as she reached the same wavelength. “Casey!” She said, “That feller lives in Locksmouth, and he’s supposed to be some old-fashioned guide.”
Max stood next to Erwin and Shelly, who had formed a line at the sitting room end of the dining area, just watching the scene unfold. He turned, ran his hand over his head, flattening his spikes and allowing them to spring up again. “Hmmm… mmm… a guide… Oh! Oh you mean Ducibus!” The boy clapped his hands together, “I know that guy! He knows all kinds of things about old stuff like secret passageways and stuff!”
“First sea captains and now tour guides.” Samantha flanked Jacent, “Honestly Max, do you ever make normal friends?”
“Nono, not a tour guide!” Max stepped out into the midst of everyone, arms waving expressively, “This guy’s family was, like, the real deal! They were the ones that lead us to the promised lands! To our new homes! In the land before time! They practically helped build the domes! They know everything about everywhere, they know all the shortcuts!”
“Wait, wait, so let me get this straight.” Murphy raised her PET as if it were her hand, halting the discussion, “So you mean to tell me that Natalie and Quincey got nabbed by some ancient, moldy bunch…”
“… Who have a rather extensive family history I might add,” Marcello cut in over the PET, “Including many high echelons in Low-Tec. I’m thinking there’s a connection there.”
Murphy gave her PET a look, and when Marcello was done interrupting her she continued, “And there’s this guy who might know where it is? Do we know where HE is, or what?”
“Yup!” Max smiled as big as he could and puffed up proudly, “I can get him!”
“Great!” Marcello said, “I’m already leaving Harbington, so you do that and I’ll meet up with you in Locksmouth.”
Murphy turned her PET to look at the screen. “Excuse me, but this is Inkling business, and LDPD business.” She said, “You won’t be any good there.”
“This is my business too, Murph!” Marcello insisted, “If all these clues are correct then these guys are the ones with the weapons presently marching around my dome – weapons that House Caduceus somehow provided for them! You couldn’t keep me away with a whole army of super powered aliens. I’m digging into that whether you like it or not, and besides! It’s not in your jurisdiction.”
Murphy stared at her PET, then abruptly ended the call. “Alright.” She addressed the teens. She first pointed to Max. “You, get us the whereabouts of that house,” She said, “I’m going to gather up all the force I can and we’re going to come down on them as hard as we’re able.” She then addressed Carrie and Jacent, “You two, be ready to crack some heads.”
“We’ll come too, of course,” Samantha said, gesturing toward Erwin, “You’ll likely need our help.”
“Good, then it’s settled.” Murphy said, striding toward the door, “Go as quick as you can.”
“Come on, Max, I’ll let you ride with moi.” Samantha insisted, taking the reptilian boy’s hand and pulling him along. While Max wasn’t at all hesitant to go, he still stumbled after the little bat who moved just that much quicker than he.
“Can I stay here?” Shelly asked, “To, uh… watch the kids! Yeah! Totally!”
Carrie stepped by Shelly, but swiveled to throw an arm around the butterfly’s shoulders, scrunching her up. “That’s a great idea! Then if Eos comes for them, you can take ‘em.” She said.
The cat smacked her back and stepped off. Shelly beamed with pride about having a good idea, but her PET quipped at her. She pulled it off her hip and looked at it, her face immediately souring. “Oh, ha ha.”
Everyone dispersed to get ready, leaving Laila, Kenny, and Daxton by themselves. The group shuffled their way upstairs, seemingly ready to play the waiting game. But no sooner had they reached the top of the stairs did Laila turn to the boys and say, “We ain’t stayin’ behind.”
“No way,” Kenny agreed, “It’s my fault she got caught in the first place. If I wasn’t out there…”
“Yer darn right it’s your fault,” Laila chastised the boy, moving to corner him in the upstairs hallway with her superior size, “Just what were ya’ll thinkin’ runnin’ off like that? You had us worried to all heck!”
Kenny was forced to stop. With Daxton taking up the rear of the group he had nowhere to go, and he felt smaller than normal because of it. He fidgeted nervously, taking slow breaths. “Look, it’s… I’m not ready to talk about it yet.” He explained, “Just… I’m gonna do better from now on, okay? We have to focus on finding Quincey first, and then we can worry about me.”
Daxton gave the boy a long look, which was only readily apparent by the way the corgi was facing. “Do not run off again.” He said, “Understand? From now on if something’s up, you talk.”
Kenny couldn’t even look at Daxton. He lowered his eyes and nodded, sucking in his lips. Only Quincey knew the full extent of what Kenny had done and what it might take to overcome it. He wasn’t prepared to drop that on Daxton and Laila as well, especially in a situation like the one they found themselves in. That could come later, he thought, when everything was calmer and quieter. If he were being honest, it was easier to push it aside and not deal with it right away. He’d had a lot of time to think about where he was and what got him to that place, and he’d have more time later.
The fact remained that Quincey’s disappearance was his fault. He had to take responsibility for that, just like he had to own up to everything else.
“We’ve got that Eos truck,” Daxton said, “The one with the gun on it. Kenny, you think you can get that thing running?”
Kenny broke from his deep thought and answered, “Probably? Are we, uh, cool? About… the thing?”
He’d already passed being upset that Daxton ran his mouth about his mother… besides, it had only been half the story. Nobody else was talking about it, so he wasn’t going to go out of his way to bring it up either.
Daxton shook his head slowly. “We’re not going to smack some sense into you without giving Quincey the first shot,” He said, “So let’s go get her back.”
-
--
-
The food, the clothing, and the bedding were all packed. The tent was all rolled up and attached and ready to go. Casey only needed to get his tools together – the fire needed to be looked after and maybe that time he’d bring the rain catcher and water purifier. It had, after all, been raining a fair bit that autumn. It was only a passing thought though, and his bag was crammed to the gills despite its gargantuan size. He stood looking at the man-sized bag with his hands on his hips and he couldn’t stop fretting.
He looked around his house just thinking about the current events. He was scared, if he were being honest. First the Invasion of Osoth, then some other Inkling disputes, then the entire shopping mall animates like some cartoon fighting robot. That was all terrifying, but after all that he was being faced with the possibility of an open conflict between humans and Inklings? It was just too much. Casey had wanted to stay home for a while after his brief rest in the wilderness, but those plans were dashed. He had prepared for yet another trip, and this one was for two to three weeks. The further he could get from all the Inkling nonsense, the better!
He had stalled on the concern as long as he could, struggling to justify leaving so soon when he really wanted to stay. In the end, however, his fear had won out. He was already dressed in hiking boots and tight, flexible traveling pants – and it would have been a waste to not use those pants for travel. He did up his high-neck blue jacket with two big red and white stripes around the chest and shoulders, and then he turned, hunkered down in a squat, and pulled the straps of the backpack over his shoulders. He lifted with a slight grunt and the skiffs on the back lit up and whirred to life in a quiet hum. The pounds upon pounds of camping equipment became light as could be.
“Alright.” He exhaled, as if to finalize one last time that he was actually going to bail on his home city for as close to a month as possible. He’d mentally argued with himself over it for long enough. He got his legs moving, aiming to make it out of Locksmouth before the sun came back up. He hurried to his door and stopped abruptly. He hadn’t judged the space of the doorway to the size of his pack, which he turned a sidelong glance over his shoulder to judge and deemed his bag too big. He shook his head then. He’d just take it off again and drag it through if he had to, so he stepped forward and threw the door open.
And there he saw Max, fist raised to knock.
“Whoa dude! Are you a psychic cyborg form Turbo-5?” He asked.
Casey blinked his eyes, the snow leopard absolutely blindsided. “I… what? Who? Hold on, wait…”
From behind the boy, a small bat peeked out. “Mr. Ducibus sir? We’ve come to ask for your help.” She said.
“Yeah, you know where House Caduceus is, right?” Max asked, “It’s the super-secret lair of the bad guys I think and we have to find it yesterday before they take over the world of tomorrow!”
Casey just stared at them. “Um… Caduceus? You want to know where… I think you want to know where the last standing manor of the Caduceus clan is…” He parsed the ideas together himself, his ears perking up rather suddenly. “Bad guys?”
“Look, this would take a very long time to explain so answer us this simple question: do you know where it is?” Samantha cut to the chase.
“… I have some old maps,” Casey said, “But why do you need to find it?”
“Because of the B-A-D G-U-Y-S!” Max waved his arms as he spelled out the situation, literally. “They kidnaped Natalie!”
Casey had to piece this new information together himself. He slackened his shoulders and tilted his head back to let out a strained groan. “Unngh.” His expression turned to a silent, almost sob. He’d failed, he didn’t get out fast enough. Hesitant as he was to deal with Inklings, he’d pretty much caught up after he considered the public declarations of the Eos soldiers and the Locksmouth police. The worst-case scenario had come to pass; they’d broken in and stolen away an Inkling. While it was surprising to suggest that they somehow had something to do with House Caduceus, he wasn’t overly inclined to think they would lie… and even if he were, he didn’t think obstructing their super heroism was a good idea.
Still, it was a woeful thought. He really didn’t want to do it. His tail drooped and his ears flattened out as he stood there, eyes closed, sucking in his lips until they popped back out in a frustrated pucker. “… Alright,” He sighed, “Let me just… let me just go get the map…”
He turned somberly and marched back into the house, tail dragging along the floor. He dropped his pack noisily and carelessly onto the floor in surrender. Max and Sam remained at his front door contemplating his defeated reaction.
“… He looks very much like Jacent.” Sam commented.
“Dude I know!” Max made a gesture like his head was exploding, “I thought it was just me!”
It didn’t take Casey long to return, a case for parchment clutched in his hand. He still looked pained to even offer, but offer he did. “I can take you to it,” He droned, “As is my duty.”
“Oh thank you Mr. Ducibus!” Sam praised him, “You’re as kind as you are… intriguing! If you’ll come along right away, we don’t have much time to lose.”
“No, we wouldn’t, would we?” Casey shrugged his shoulders as the teens turned and walked out toward Sam’s fancy car. He sighed, again, and followed along behind them. Somehow, for a bunch of teenagers, it seemed that these Inkling folk could get into a world of trouble. He’d trusted Quincey on a limb, but he did his best to avoid Natalie and her group ever since it became public that they all had Inklings. “So you’re certain you need this information to… save someone?” He asked as they all climbed into the car, with Casey taking the back seat.
“I wouldn’t come bug you if it wasn’t important!” Max insisted.
Odd, Casey remembered very differently all the times Max had hung around him. It was never for anything important. He rolled his eyes and held firm to the leather-bound cylindrical case he placed in his lap. Sam’s car picked up as the engine purred, and in a flash they were off toward Kelvalde’s apartment once more… after buckling up, of course. Sam didn’t tolerate unsafe driving practices, assuming Max wasn’t riding on the trunk again.
-
--
-
Quincey and Natalie were taken out of the rustic comforts of the manor and moved below it. Still cuffed, they’d been ordered into a lift that went far below and opened up into a modern facility with steel walls and hard floors, bright white lights and long corridors. It was cold in there, and noisy. The sounds of working machinery bellowed into every corner, the clangs and bangs thundering through the halls and not having enough space to fade into silence. When they stepped out for the first time, there was no one to be seen – just empty space and steel walls with lines painted on them to direct anyone caught wandering around.
Garrison and Polaris walked them through the halls. The girls took the lead but were harshly directed, pushed around and pulled to turn corners. As they marched on like the prisoners they were, Natalie and Quincey took in whatever sights they could. It was a crudely made place, like some old underground bunker that had been broken up into numerous chambers. Big steel doors separated rooms, but it didn’t seem like there was anyone to fill them. They walked for minutes and didn’t see a single soul until a particularly wide blast door opened quickly and one lone coati man in a clean white lab dressings and tight, protective suit stepped out and passed by without a word.
For the brief few seconds the doors remained open, there was revealed a massive chamber. An automated smelter flared, conveyer belts shipped objects undiscernible from that distance, men and women toiled, and steam escaped through piping leading into the roof. The place was absolutely abuzz with activity. The doors closed quickly however and that small glimpse of other human interaction was gone. From there Quincey and Natalie were forced into one of the various side rooms, one used for storage; although there was little actually stored there. Garrison shoved them in with a strong arm, then closed the door tight behind them.
There were four walls, lights, a hard tile floor, and some boxes of junk to keep them company. A vent in the roof ensured that air got into and out of the room, though it smelled recycled from other rooms that had shared it before. They tried peeking in the boxes, but they were tightly sealed supply crates that wouldn’t open just to bare teenage hands. Trying to push them was of no use as their contents were too heavy to budge. They had nothing in that room but each other, so they sat close for comfort and did their best to keep their wits about them.
It was there they waited, and they weren’t sure how long, until someone came and got them. An Eos soldier, an ox, dressed in the usual black fatigues entered the room.
“You,” He pointed to Natalie with the barrel of his anti-personnel rifle, “Come on.”
Quincey watched Natalie calmly rise. Compared to her being wrought with worry, Natalie seemed to be taking things in stride. She assured Quincey that things would be okay and then moved to leave with the solider. She left the room to find three more soldiers ready and waiting, weapons armed and trained on her. They weren’t going to take any chances with her, and while she thought she may have been able to take four guys at once, she didn’t want to risk it just then. Echelon was still curious about what was going on, and so she opted to wait. They escorted Natalie through the corridors again, which Natalie was beginning to realize were laid out in one big giant square with a few off-shoots every now and then.
She was taken to yet another chamber that looked as nondescript as any of the others. Everything looked so bland, so gray and white, so sterile… it was difficult to know just where she was. Nothing was designated in any way – there were no numbers, no letters, no plates on the doors, nothing. There were speakers, probably for some kind of alarm system or a PA, and she figured the place was somehow organized, but from her outsider perspective it looked aimless. She stepped into the new room with the soldiers staying at the door. They shoved her in and closed the door behind her, and it felt as if she’d stepped into a big warehouse.
The lights were dim near the outside of the room but a bright spotlight shined down at the center from above the steel beams that crossed the room near the ceiling. A lone man sat on a singular bench right there in the middle. Natalie regarded the man with suspicion as he sat there, head bowed, legs apart, like he was waiting for the next train to come and take him out of there. He was a reptile, a desert cobra as evidenced by the hood that framed his features. He had a balding wisp of white hair on his head that practically glowed in the light, and he wore a rather distinguished suit. It was the kind of suit that had cuff links on it, the kind someone would wear to a fancy party. The shirt beneath the unbuttoned black jacket, however, was tight and clingy, a runner’s shirt.
Natalie stepped forward, but stopped when she noticed the seven-foot pylons that stood just out from the four corners of the room. They hummed with energy and LED segments remained constantly lit. They formed a sort of perimeter, and when Natalie came close to their alignment she reached out and touched the invisible barrier he thought may have been there. Eos had created a cell for this man out of a strong-force containment field. The girl looked but didn’t see any clip on him that would let him through… whoever he was, he was being held in there, and all he had was a place to sit.
“Natalie Grayswift,” The man’s voice echoed in the room, “And Echelon.”
“… Who are you?” Natalie asked.
The man adjusted the links on his cuffs and sat up, opening his ruby red eyes to peer out at her. His smile was a little unnerving. “A cursed one, like you.” He said, his voice as old as the rest of him. “I run this little operation.”
It only took moments for Echelon to ink over Natalie’s body. “Then maybe you can explain to me just what’s going on.” She said, “Why are you hunting my people?”
The man’s smile faded. “Well, that much should be obvious,” He said, “Inklings are dangerous creatures, especially after Osoth had her way with you. To put it directly, you’re machines of war – all of you were designed and kept around for the express purpose of conquering planets. Surely you can understand how that can be seen as a bit of a risk to the well-being of the human race.”
Echelon wasn’t going to waste time debating philosophy with the man, and she instead cut into him as quickly as she could to get some answers. “So you know about Osoth as more than just some boogeyman.” She said, “How?”
“Well, the answer to that would be best given like this,” The man said. In moments, orange, ink emerged from his body and surrounded him as a skin, removing all detail even from his clothing and simply making the shape of him. He stood from his spot, an Inkling like any other, an approached the boundary of the barrier while not taking his pitch black eyes off Echelon for even a moment.
What Echelon was looking at was an Inkling, but not one she could recognize. She squinted. “You’re an Inkling? But… why?”
“I am Vor,” The Inkling said, “A former servant of the one we once called our Empress. Believe me when I say that I know all too well the extent of us, Echelon. As I have said, we’re creatures of war, and the things we’ve done…”
He paused and peered at her. “… You wouldn’t even remember them.”
Echelon studied Vor for a few quiet moments before responding. “No, I would not,” She said, “I lost that privilege thanks to your former master.”
Vor laughed a humorless laugh and he shook his head. “It’s no privilege and that monster is no master of mine.” He said, “I’m happy you got rid of her.”
“So then why?” Echelon pressed, “Explain to me why you would hunt down your own kind like this.”
“I’ve already explained it.” Vor rebutted, “Your host lives a dangerous life with you, Echelon, as do all our hosts. I have been around for some time, and I know they are a people of peace. We have no place among them, being as Osoth made us. All we know is battle and conquest. We tear down and destroy cultures, not intermingle with them. But you’ve been quick to settle in, and we can’t simply leave now… not without some corrective action.”
Echelon shook her head. “That’s the most ignorant thing I’ve ever heard. If it wasn’t for Natalie I would never have been able to defeat Osoth and free us from what she made us to be. Have you been outside? Do you know what’s going on in the streets of Locksmouth?”
“Confused masses, bitter resentment, near-death prana absorption, a second uprising by Actima, injured police, child fatalities… the list goes on.” Vor glared at Echelon through the invisible field, shadows and light playing off his shiny orange surface, yet his eyes looked like dark holes born into his skull. “I know very well what’s been going on. We landed there and brought with us all the same destruction and unrest we always do. That is why we must leave. To think we could find a home in a place we so clearly do not belong is foolish – especially if you and Emnas insist on carrying on as you do.”
“That’s only one side of it, and rebuilding ourselves is always going to be an uphill battle. That was never in question.” Echelon argued.
Vor shook his head defiantly. “You do not understand that our nature pits us against the humans. We don’t fit with them by way of our very existence – we awaken in them thoughts and feelings they never would have had if we hadn’t come here. Under our influence humans become vicious, power-drunk… and the ones outside our influence resort to fear and mistrust. They’ve begun turning on each other as inked and non-inked humans collide. We’re doing more harm than good.”
He turned away from her, letting out a frustrated sigh. “We’re not negotiating.” He said, “My terms are thus: in twenty-four hours you and your fellow prisoner will relinquish your hosts, leaving them willingly to live on without you.”
“And if I refuse?” Echelon crossed her arms.
Vor narrowed his eyes at a spot on the floor. “… Then I’ll have to do what I was designed for,” He answered, “And she won’t survive. One life for thousands, however, is a small price to pay to save them from our chaos.”
“… I don’t believe you for a second.” Echelon stared at the other Inkling. “Why should I part from Natalie and give myself over to you? For what? To return to Canvas, hostless, unable to withstand withering away? While you stay here and… what?”
“Oh no, I won’t be staying here either.” Vor shook his head again. “No… I’m just cleaning up Osoth’s mess, as I always have.”
“You have twenty-four hours to think about it.” Vor said, turning back to his little bench and deforming from his host’s body to recede back inside. The man sat once more on the bench and hunkered down into deep contemplation, ignoring Echelon’s continued presence.
Echelon retreated back into Natalie as well. Vor was clearly one of the most closed-minded Inklings she’d ever come across, but she had to think on his words. Everything about being weapons of war was underselling what Natalie and Echelon believed Inklings to be. It was like casual racism – something most post-splice humans didn’t even know existed. To say that all Inklings were bad news because of what Osoth did was generalizing too much, it was completely dismissing everything Echelon was trying to work for. Sufficed to say she wasn’t overly keen on listening to Vor’s demands, but then… what did he mean by having to do “what he was designed for?”
One thing Vor got right was how Osoth designed Inklings to fight in her army. She was the birther of the new generation of Inkling. Before that, they could have been anybody – their abilities could have been more practical, their personalities more passive; but in Osoth’s reign such things didn’t fit. She designed Inklings like Echelon, the ultimate adaptable leader, and Arus, a devastating brute force. Why, the only reason Koralo joined her uprising against Osoth was that he was seen as a mistake, an Inkling whose power didn’t serve a purpose in the campaign. No, of all the things Vor claimed, he was far from incorrect about Osoth’s machinations… so what was he designed to do?
Natalie herself was unnerved. How would he take Echelon away from her if she refused to give her up willingly? She’d already lost her Inkling once before, when Echelon returned to Canvas abruptly after Osoth’s defeat. The way she felt so empty inside without her was something she didn’t want to visit again. She’d already told Echelon that they were family, that she loved her just like she would any other member of her pack. She wasn’t about to go back on that even if Vor threatened her life, and Echelon felt the same way. She wasn’t immune to worry, however. Whatever Vor was capable of doing, he seemed very confident in it. If nothing else, the idea of an Inkling who “cleaned up Osoth’s messes” was an unappealing thought.
Natalie was allowed to step back out into the hall where the soldiers waited for her, along with Polaris. The man was un-inked, and even though Natalie didn’t know who the calico was, she did recognize him at that point.
“So you see now, hm?” He asked, “Vor just wants to gather us all up and bring us back home.”
Natalie stared the man down. “But the Inklings wouldn’t survive there,” She said, “They’d turn into little blobs.”
Polaris’ host breathed a sigh, lowering his gaze. He said, “Maybe that seems like a sweet release to some of them, at this point. You have to understand, some things can’t just be forgotten.”
“To some, but to other’s it’s a death sentence.” Natalie argued.
The man sniffed. “Has Echelon changed you somehow?” He suddenly asked, “Has she ever taken something from you, just by being the way she is?”
Natalie was about to deny the man’s question and claim that Echelon had never changed her in any way. Her Inkling had strove, in fact, to embrace who Natalie was, and that was how they connected: through seeing one another as they were and accepting what was there. She remembered, however, all the hours she spent being good at things. She remembered her uncanny ability to perform in gymnastics, or her excellence in track and field, and the number of other extra-curricular activities she took on and how good she was at all of them. She remembered learning how all of that was, in part, Echelon’s doing… a subtle use of her powers of mimicry to make her better at things than she should have been.
That was a big deal. It was taking days, weeks, months of her life she spent doing something and invalidating her own accomplishments. It became that she didn’t achieve based on her own merits, but by some help from Echelon. Since that revelation she had taken to old activities and discovered that they were more difficult than she remembered when she suppressed Echelon’s abilities. In that way, she couldn’t argue that Echelon had changed something about her, and had in fact taken time from her without her noticing for most of her life. Polaris and Vor made it sound so bad though, yet Natalie just strove to achieve on her own, based on her own abilities.
“… Yes.” Natalie answered after some thought. “Yeah, she has. But it wasn’t her fault. How about you? Has Polaris taken something from you?”
The man raised a brow as if surprised she would ask. He shook his head. “Not from me personally, no; though other hosts of the past haven’t been so lucky…” He explained, “And more Inklings still have had it worse. There’s a whole area to this that we take for granted.”
He leaned forward, thrusting his hand up just in front of Natalie’s face, the metal spheres in the pocket of his jacket zipping out in a flash to hover inches above his palm. “Polaris’ power may have made a spoon stick to my hand once or twice, and struck me ill for a time, but consider others.” He said, “Consider that human nature, the laws of physics, base anatomy… Inklings weren’t designed to accommodate any of this. Some Inklings simply grant an advantage in this regard, like… Arus, for example. But that benefit could be turned rather quickly should it lead her host to find themselves invincible, would it not? To fill their head with grandeur.”
Natalie barely flinched by the man’s approach, and she stared at the hovering metal balls. It became clear that “Polaris” was a play on “polarity,” seeing that everything he could manipulate was made of metal. He was an Inkling in control of magnetism. What he said was questionable, but his use of Arus as an example had her attention. To describe someone who thought they couldn’t be hurt, that they could tackle any obstacle… that definitely sounded like Carrie. She’d always been a rock, a stable force to hold on to, making her the perfect girlfriend and the perfect pack beta. Natalie couldn’t deny though that her girlfriend was headstrong, and it was the first time she wondered if that was mostly due to the fact that she could take a direct hit from a PeTra and shake it off.
Was Erwin’s brilliance and deductive reasoning skills entirely him, or was he conditioned somewhat by Phactys? Did Mhend have anything to do with Sam’s attraction to medicine? Koralo definitely fueled Max’s love of exploration, and Natalie already knew that Lastik was at least partially responsible for Shelly’s… build. At the end of the day, for better or for worse, Polaris and Vor had a point. Inklings changed things. So why was it that they were convinced that it was all for the worse?
“Echelon’s changed me for the better.” Natalie said decisively.
The man studied her for a time, easing up and returning the metal balls to the pocket of his suit. “Are you sure?” He asked, “After everything that’s happened and how your life has been changed, can you honestly say that things have turned out for the better?”
“Hasn’t Polaris done anything good for you?” Natalie countered, “Just by being itself?”
“Polaris and I agree that Inklings aren’t beneficial in the long term.” He quickly rebutted, “Now, let’s escort you back to your accommodations, shall we?”
The soldiers around them closed in to guide Natalie along, but the girl shot forward and shoulder-tackled Polaris’ host to the wall. The man let out a grunt and the soldiers were quick to act, but not so quick that they could stop Natalie from sinking her teeth into the calico cat’s hand, latching on with her jaws as powerfully as she could as she curled her arms up between them and grabbed fistfuls of the man’s fur at his collar and held on tight. The rain of rifle fire came shortly after, and it only took two of the four shots to dislodge Natalie from the man. She was struck in the leg, twice in the hip, and once in the side. She let out a yelp as she fell to the floor, the whole instance lasting only a few seconds.
The calico panted, having been caught so much by surprise that he was short of breath. The Eos soldiers wrested Natalie from the floor and hauled her to her feet, where her struck leg failed to cooperate for a few moments as a developing bruise on her hip shot pain through her lower body. She did stumble to her feet however, roughly pulled along by the soldiers and practically dragged through the halls.
No one asked if the man hosting Polaris was alright. They did in fact leave him behind as they marched Natalie through the corridors back to her holdings. He strained, resting his hand on his collar and kneading the tender area where Natalie’s tightly clenched fists had pulled some fur out from the root. He hissed in pain, shaking his head in bewilderment at Natalie’s sudden, angry outburst.
Once again she was paraded through the halls back to the barren storage room. One of the soldiers opened the large, manual steel door and Natalie stepped inside willingly. Quincey had remained seated in place on the floor, but when Natalie returned she stood quickly approached her. “W-What happened?” The girl asked.
“P’tuh!” Natalie wiped her mouth on her sleeve as her leg wobbled, so she caught herself on one of the few crates in the room. Quincey rushed over to help as Natalie opened her hands and eyed the clumps of fur stuck to her fingers. “It’s a long story.”
Natalie explained that she met with Vor and what their stance seemed to be. She told Quincey what their terms were, and the pig girl seemed to ponder them over, her eyes wandering with her thoughts. She stood there in front of Natalie nervously smoothing out her neck tie over and over again as she considered her options.
“If you still want to get rid of Duplex, I think Echelon could remove them now.” Natalie said, “That way you’re not at risk anymore. Vor said that if we didn’t give up our Inklings he’d… do something. Something bad. He said we wouldn’t survive.”
Quincey took a deep breath and meekly met Natalie’s eyes. “I’ve heard that before…” She said, then she shook her head. “No, I… Duplex needs me. If you took it, it wouldn’t survive very long without a host, right?”
Natalie hadn’t considered this, and she nodded. “I’m not even sure how long it’d last in Castle Blackwolf.”
Quincey nodded. “So, um… are we going to escape?”
“It’s not going to be easy.” Natalie balled up the feline fur in her hands and released her lean on the crate to slump onto her butt on the floor. “Are you sure you could handle it? I don’t want to put you in danger.”
Quincey swallowed. “No, I’m… I’m pretty sure I can’t handle it, but… it’s better than the alternative, right?”
Natalie agreed, pushing on the side of her shoe to cause a compartment to pop out of the side of the sole. She placed the calico fur inside the compartment and pushed again on her shoe to close it up. “It sure is,” She said, “But I have an idea… let’s just hope the others are on their way, or it’s going to be a long trip home.”
-
--
-
Most people said that Harbington was some country bumpkin dome, out in the middle of nowhere, far from the coast, a real “in the sticks” sort of place. But that simply wasn’t true. It had all the modern trappings of any dome city, but the focus on agriculture could throw someone’s perception of it into a particular light. Caduceus Manor was truly in the sticks. Murphy led the charge with five squad cruisers over an expanse of forest that stretched out over the hillside, covering all the land in green foliage. They had long left the clearings of Locksmouth and Harbington several miles back, the prairie area where the land was otherwise relatively flat. From there it was sheer, untamed wilderness, heading inland and away from even Snowden. There were no domes out that way, not for quite some distance at any rate. It was no-man’s land for hundreds and hundreds of miles.
Marcello accompanied the group in her own vehicle, in which she’d taken some of the Inkling kids from Locksmouth. Carrie, Max, and Jacent had decided to accompany her on the grounds that they would likely make up the brunt of the forward force. Erwin, Shelly, and Sam got in with some of the officers and were much more likely to hang back, such was their role as the pack-designated Team Reference. Casey rode with Murphy, as he had the map that would lead them to the exact spot where the manor sat.
“What we need is a plan.” Carrie said over the PET. Murphy kept her eyes forward and nodded in agreement.
“Caduceus Manor is a large structure; it’s a mansion with thirty-one separate rooms.” Casey informed the group, the unrolled map sitting in his lap.
“Casa Grrrande!” Max rolled his R.
“And it’s crawling with Eos goons no doubt.” Marcello added, steering her vehicle with one hand and keeping her ARID glasses straight with the other as she scanned the surrounding area below.
Murphy nodded again, tightening the grip on her wheel. “Any way we could get in unnoticed?”
“That largely depends on the number of goons inside.” Casey said, “There are secret passages leading into and out of the manor, as most noble houses had plenty back in the day. I wouldn’t be able to tell you where they might lead though. There would be a servants’ entrance probably somewhere on the grounds, but I don’t have a layout handy.”
He looked up from his map to peer out over the landscape below as it whipped by at several miles per hour. It was dark down below, but search lights from the cruisers lit up the forest. The thick brush was near impossible to see through. Occasionally the light caught on something that would reflect the shine back up, likely a body of water like a small stream or a river. Caduceus Manor was well-hidden among the overgrowth, though Casey cross-examined his own PET and compared it to the map. He steered the group in the right direction, suggesting when they should turn and veer. To anyone else it would appear as if they were simply randomly sweeping the area. No average person would likely know the location of the manor.
“We’re closing in.” Casey said.
“Cut the lights,” Marcello suggested, “And get in close.”
One by one the lights that beamed down on the woods turned off. Darkness cloaked their approach. Peering out through windshields and windows alike, they stared down into the dark. Only the moon offered light and with clouds covering its face that light was barely any help. Marcello’s esca lit up the cabin of her luxury vehicle, bathing the three kids inside in blue light. It was Max’s keen eye that spotted a soft light in the woods, burning like a smoldering ember amidst the trees. “I think I see it!” He whispered, smudging his finger against the window to point. Jacent leaned aside and peered down to clarify the discovery.
“We should be right on top of it.” Casey said.
“Alright. All units, descend to the treetops and sit tight.” Murphy instructed her team of officers and they complied in short order. Their cruisers lowered until the bottoms of the vehicles nearly skimmed the deciduous trees, and their speed slowed until they came to a hovering stop in a spearhead formation. Murphy was at the tip of it, where she pushed a button on her dash to initiate her cruiser’s “park,” as it were. She turned her attention to her PET where Marcello’s face was shown. “Marcello, do a fly-over and take a look. Confirm the presence of Eos soldiers and any points of entry.”
“Aye-aye Captain,” Marcello saluted. Carrie, Jacent and Max stared out the windows as Marcello veered her vehicle over the trees. With the lights off she couldn’t see the occasional branch that smacked against the metal chassis of her car, but with each tapping she’d ascent just a little to avoid further disturbing the foliage. The small glimmer of light beneath the leaves became clearer and clearer as the manor came into view. Marcello’s fly-by had to be quick, so she didn’t slow down as her car broke the tree line into the smallest clearing imaginable, where the branches of the surrounding forest overstretched to obscure the rustic building and its surrounding grounds. The place really had been overtaken by nature, to the point where anyone not looking for it may not have been able to see it.
“Whoa…” Max marveled for a moment as Marcello passed it by. They only got a few seconds of visibility as they passed over, but they took every second they could get. The light revealed itself at least to be a skylight. A glass dome sat over one of the manor’s various rooms, built as an extension to the first floor that jut out clearly from the rest. It was difficult to see much more – the place was clearly two stories tall and some of the lights were on inside. Jacent noticed bodies, some kind of presence down below that he very nearly missed. Marcello circled back around and on that pass-by Jacent got a better look at the area surrounding the house.
There had very clearly been a garden there once. It had old hedges that had grown out of control and time-worn statues crumbling in the elements. Jacent thought for a moment that there wasn’t much else to see, but the bodies down below weren’t all statues. Some of them moved, pacing around the grounds in a slow and methodical manner. It was the kind of patrolling that he’d grown used to seeing from Nhilus’ robots over the years. He was all but assured that they were posted guards. He sat back next to Marcello and nodded to affirm his own thoughts. “This is the place alright. There are guards posted down below.”
“Think they noticed us?” Max asked.
“Not sure,” Marcello said, “But yeah, ARID picked up biotic signatures. There’s definitely people down there.”
“Was there any way in?” Murphy asked over the PET.
“None that I saw, the place is hard to see through the trees.” Marcello answered.
Carrie leaned over Jacent. “I saw one.” She said, “At least, one for me.”
Marcello furrowed her brow in confusion. Jacent, however, knew what she was thinking and he regarded her cautiously. “That is not a good idea.”
“Sure it is.” Carrie huffed, “Look, I ink over and get the drop on them. That way you guys can come in and do your thing without everyone running out and blasting your faces off.”
“By yourself? Do you have radioactive hamsters in your head?!” Max protested, “There could be five guys in there! Or five hundred!”
Carrie ignored their protests and climbed over Max, shoving him aside in his seat to squish him up against Jacent, and thus squish Jacent into Marcello. She pushed in close to the passenger-side door of the vehicle and grasped the release. “Dude there are barely five hundred people in some cities, I doubt there’s that many people in that little house.” Carrie argued, “Me and Arus can take it. You and Jacent can get the guys at the front and come charging in to back us up. Their little pea shooters aren’t gonna hurt me.”
“Are you crazy?” Marcello asked.
“Lady, you don’t know me.” Carrie rebutted, “Me and Arus can take it. Trust me.”
“This will have to be quick.” Jacent said, turning his attention to Murphy. “Officer Murphy, we’re going to drop Carrie in on them, but when we do we’ll need to get in right away to provide what backup we can.”
“An assault on two fronts,” Erwin’s voice cut in, “How’s Carrie getting in?”
“Bring us around, Marcy!” Carrie commanded. As the vehicle veered back around and neared the manor again, Carrie opened the door up. Rushing air blew into the car, whipping Carrie’s powder blue corkscrew pig tails around, and made her purple skirt flap wildly in the gust. She perched her feet on the edge and held onto the door that opened upward above her head. She waited for just the right moment, just as Marcello’s car passed over the manor again. “Alright, get moving!” She yelled.
Carrie shoved herself forward, leaping from the car and letting gravity take her. “Arus!” She called upon her inkling, and in a few moments her flesh, fur, and clothes inked over with smooth white, her eyes filling in as if with purple marker. The purple bow on her head bounced and jiggled like a gelatin mold as she stared down at the skylight below, her drawn mouth creased into a stoic line. With Arus covering her, Carrie couldn’t even feel the cold sting of the air rushing past her body and didn’t have to squint her eyes to protect them. She stared straight down into the cut glass dome, watching as details of the room within filled in as her distance closed. She took a deep breath and held it, tensing every muscle in her body. Arus’ power kicked in, her muscles feeling like hard steel as they solidly flexed.
Carrie crashed through the glass, shattering the top of the dome into hundreds of little glittering pieces that rained down on the sitting room below. Her impact sounded like a bomb, forcing a shockwave around the room that made the oil lamps flicker and rattled the decorative spears and shield above the fireplace. She crashed through the mahogany table and sent the silver tea set on it flying. The old sofa flipped onto its back end and brass sculptures flew from their resting places to clatter across the hardwood flooring. In the middle of the shower of glass and dust was the inked feline on one knee, her body having smashed cracks and splinters into a crater in the floor. Five Eos soldiers were startled by her entry, shouting in surprise and stumbling from her sheer force. They shielded themselves from the glass raining down and stumbled out of the way.
When the noise stopped, the soldiers regained themselves and stared in surprise at Arus. The inked feline pulled her fist from the hole it had smashed into the floor, wood dust and splinters falling from it. Slowly she rose to her feet, then she looked around the room to the men and women pointing their weapons at her. Her little purple mouth turned up with a smirk as they fearfully aimed down their sights, and she took a firm stance with fists clenched, forearms lifted. Before all hell broke loose, she spoke only two words.
“Sup bitches.”
They opened fire on her in that moment, sending blast after blast of hard-force her way. They whistled through the air in rapid succession, creating an almost deafening sound as the bullets hailed down on her body. They struck with tremendous impact, smacking her inky body loudly, like cracks of a whip. Arus didn’t flinch or move a muscle; she stayed stationary as the invisible balls of force struck and bounced off her body to disperse in the air. The only give her body seemed to have were her fat breasts, which shook, jostled, and bounced wildly as the blasts struck her. The soldiers squeezed their triggers as quickly as they were able, blaring the cores of their weapons into overheat as they let loose like a storm. For several seconds they blasted, until finally the curon casings of their weapons snapped open and hot air hissed out of various vents in the weapons. The storm dropped off until only silence remained, and the dull hums of charging weaponry echoed throughout the room.
Arus took that as her chance and turned to grip the sofa that had fallen onto its back. She hoisted it up, tossing it against her chest and releasing it to quickly grab it by its bottom. She hefted it until she held it straight up over her head, exerting almost no effort in the feat of strength. The soldiers could only stare, marveling at her power as she turned and threw with the momentum. The whole sofa sailed through the air, crashing into one of the soldiers and bowling them over onto the ground, flattening him in his combat gear and pinning him under the piece of furniture. He struggled to free himself, though he was too dazed to do it effectively.
“Where the fuck is my girlfriend?!” Arus shouted. Then the volley of rifle blasts started anew.
More soldiers rushed in, two from upstairs and three from the foyer. They joined in on firing their weapons, unloading everything they had. Arus couldn’t count high enough in the thick of it to know how many projectiles had struck her body. It had to be more than fifty, maybe even more than a hundred. They barely hurt; it felt like she was getting beat on by hundreds of baby hands. At best they were like little bee stings, but it was nothing that was going to shake her. Her hair flapped wildly in the barrage, much like her chest, and all she could hear were deafening whistles and crashes accompanying the muffled shouts of the soldiers. After a few seconds their weapons had to vent the heat again, and so she marched on them.
She approached one, one taller and thicker than she was, a shark by the looks of him. He had a dark, rugged face and sharp teeth, but he looked scared as she menaced him. He smacked his weapon and shook it around, panting in a panic to get the thing working again. He rose it before it had even finished its cooling cycle, and in an instant she smacked it away with such force that the leather strap holding it over his shoulders broke right off and the weapon shattered a china hutch across the room. She gripped him by his arm, twisting it as she turned and pulled the man’s whole body over her shoulder, throwing him to the other side of the room where he broke through the window and out onto the lawn. He screamed as he flew through the air at such a high speed, and he must have landed outside in a satisfying heap. This attracted the attention of several soldiers on patrol, and they barked orders as they rushed to get inside the manor and see what was going on.
“You assholes better give me back my Nat!!” Arus screamed at them, “Or you’re gonna…!!”
The hail of bullets started anew.
A chair flew through the wall, smashing brick and mortar into dust onto the lawn. Marcello, Jacent, and Max stared down at the spectacle, just barely able to see Carrie as she slowly and methodically picked the attacking force apart one by one. What had started as five soldiers became eight, then thirteen, and still she waded her way through their flurry of bullets to beat the tar out of one before going on to the next. She snapped guns in half, broke neurods over helmets, and tore apart electric wire bolas as they wrapped around her wildly swinging arms. She once even deflected a hard force shot with her fist, sending the invisible bullet into a book case that exploded and sent paper scattering all over a corner of the room. All the while she screamed and raged at them, demanding they hand Natalie over to her.
“Murphy, get down there right now!” Marcello said, “I think we’re getting the best distraction we’re ever going to get!”
Marcello put pedal to metal and her engines roared. Her car shot like a bullet with an appropriate bang as the air displaced around it. Murphy and her cruisers had descended past the tree line to land swiftly on the front lawn of the manor, and Marcello’s car roughly swerved down and hit the ground with a bounce to slide to a stop and join them. The Locksmouth police, along with Erwin, Shelly, and Sam, piled out of their vehicles to the surprise of a few remaining soldiers who had stuck around out front. Jacent and Max exited Marcello’s car, with the detective hopping out on their heels. Team Rough set to work immediately, with Jacent, donned in his blue and black Captain Comet costume, rushing forward with a sudden burst of energy that shook the police cars around him. He collided with the frontal force of the Eos soldiers, throwing well-executed palms and acrobatic kicks to take them out.
Max leapt into the battle, calling on Koralo to ink over his body and tie-dye tank top and booty shorts. The lime-green lizard tumbled and flipped into the fray, spitting viscous yellow gunk from his mouth to barrage the soldiers at the gates. There had been perhaps only five, with some stragglers coming from around the sides of the house. A number of them were struck with the yellow inkling loogies, which stuck to their clothes like glue. One lucky shot managed to strike one of the soldiers’ rifles, globbing over the barrel with sappy goop. When the woman holding it attempted to fire it, the force blasted back, shattering the weapon in her hands and destroying it.
“Jacent, look out!” Erwin called out from behind the open door of a police cruiser.
Jacent, in clear view of the flood lights basking the garden, turned just in time to see a man fire his weapon. The boy threw his body aside in a flip that twirled him lengthwise in the air, gracefully spinning to avoid the shot and land in a low crouching position. He quickly reached into a small pack on his hip, grasped a small rubber ball in his hand and whipped it with tremendous force. It raced like a shot, bouncing off an old statue and taking a chunk out of the marble stone, deflecting from its surface and striking the gunner in the side of the head. The man stumbled, and before he could right himself a wire-wound yo-yo smashed into his face. Jacent, on the sending end of the yo-yo, flicked his wrist to return the toy to his palm.
Locksmouth police officers tackled the downed gunner and wrestled him into submission, subduing him with as much force as they could muster. Similar maneuvers were pulled throughout the fight, with the police standing off to the side until an opening presented itself where they could take down and handcuff a member of Eos. Marcello, too, pushed her way in with neurod in hand, taking careful consideration on where and when to strike, taking enemies from behind when they were busy trying to focus on Jacent and Max. A quick jab to their neck and they were putty, where she would swing them around and force them to the ground and leave them for the police to take care of.
It was impressive for the struggle it was, since the enemy had the opportunity of range. The smart ones stood far out of the way, but the smarter of them still retreated into the manor when their numbers were picked off. Max was unpredictable in his movements, as he was at the best of times, and Jacent could dodge a few shots but eventually he had to take cover behind a statue to reassess. The front door was perhaps only twelve feet away but it seemed so far when two gun-toting combatants stood there firing back at them with some competence. There were more still among the hedges and shrubs sneaking around, getting the jump on some of the police and striking them down quick and hard. Eos was a little clumsy, but they had a basic sense of stratagem, doing their best in the engagement to get around and attack from unexpected angles.
Erwin could see it all with Phactys’ help. The red-head ferret inked over, his body looking like a slender, little, boy-shaped blob of dulce de leche with just lightly lighter, creamier eyes and mouth. He stood back, well out of trouble by the police cruisers and kept his eyes peeled, scanning the entire garden and lawn constantly. The Eos soldiers moved in somewhat predictable ways – they weren’t as sneaky as they probably would have liked, but they were blunt enough to be a handful. They pushed forward too quickly, just enough to be overwhelming to the police force as they wore themselves thin trying to take on and subdue multiple resisting targets. Erwin called out positions the best he could – one to Max’s left, one near Jacent at two o’clock – but the most effective use of his words was a little lost on him.
“Omigod, this is crazy!” Shelly forced herself on Phactys from behind, momentarily blocking his vision by bearing her chest down on his head. She grabbed his shoulders and nervously shook him. The inked boy squeaked and fussed, turning to push her off of him.
“Shelly!” He scolded butterfly, but the sight of an approaching soldier who had gotten behind her to flank caught his sight. “Look out!”
Shelly whipped around just as the man’s rifle fired. She screamed and balled her fists up, covering her face with her forearms as she got up on one leg like a flamingo and cringed. She took the shot right in the chest between her elbows, huffing out a gasp for breath as the invisible ball of force compressed her enormous bosom. Her entire body flexed with the impact and then snapped back like a rubber band, ricocheting the shot back at the attacker as she fell to the ground. Its travel time was half a second at best, and it clipped the baboon gunman right in the chin, knocking his combat helmet off and throwing him into the dirt.
Shelly coughed, rubbing her bosom sorely. She turned to Phactys and raised her hand to present a thumbs-up as she wheezed and straightened out her tank top and shouldered again one of the spaghetti straps. Phactys blinked his eyes, observing the unconscious gunman for a moment. “Oh, uh… good work!” He said.
“Hngh.” Shelly winced with a smile.
“Are you… okay?” Phactys asked, carefully reaching out. Just as his fingers brushed against one of Shelly’s heaving boobs, a pitched gunshot snapped it back. Erwin turned to see Mhend standing over Muphy, having freshly fired her air pistol to remove an Eos gunman who had taken the officer by surprise. Murphy was shaken, but quickly pushed to her feet feet to restrain the soldier who had attacked her. Mhend up-ended the nozzle of her weapon and blew on it.
“Keep your mind on the task at hand, would you Erwin?” She requested, flatly.
Marcello dashed from cover and baseball slid to the next, kicking up grass and dirt with her big hiking boots as she slid in behind a marble statue with Jacent. She peered toward the massive wooden doors leading into the manor to see them kick open with authority. Two more Eos soldiers came out, though they were dressed in white metal exoskeleton armor and full helmets with tinted visors. Their footfalls were heavy, clunking over the stone patio leading into the manor, their knees bending under the weight of the large cannons they hauled. The massive, large-barreled weapons were held with both hands and strapped in various ways to the solders’ chests, requiring the full use of their torso just to maneuver and carry them around. They stepped out with purpose, stopped, hoisted the weapons into firing position, and the deep, dark barrels began to burn with orange heat.
“Cannons!” Marcello yelled, gesturing wildly at the door. Murphy snapped around and her ears swiveled to attention, seeing the familiar fusion weaponry and power armor the Eos grunts had been equipped with – though these fusion cannons were much, much larger than the ones she had been acquainted to, looking fit for full-on siege scenarios rather than simple infantry dispersal. The armored grunts were aiming those cannons at the first Inklings they had spotted – one at Koralo, and the other at a very unaware Mhend. In the short time it took to super-heat the core energy in the weapon Murphy abandoned her goal of arresting her assailant and instead jumped to tackle Mhend to the ground.
The bubblegum bat squeaked as she was forced down, just as the super-heated fusion blast rushed past where she had been standing. The shot carried until it blew a smoking, ember-flaked hole into one of the Locksmouth police cruisers, upending the vehicle onto its side by the sheer force of impact. Koralo had latched his tongue onto another statue across from Jacent and Marcello and reeled himself in to hide behind it, and had to roll out of the way when that statue was blown apart and the larger part of the featureless marble depiction of a human body fell and would have crushed him. He carried on to jump into the hedges and hide, where his inky body encountered a bundle of thorns. Erwin and Shelly ducked behind the nearest police cruiser, and the rest of the officers scrambled to find some cover or a hiding spot.
Murphy grabbed a handful of squishy bat, not caring where or what, and hauled the girl to her feet. She practically dragged Mhend behind a thick hedge before dropping her and pushing to keep her moving with her head down. The two of them scrambled on hands and knees as another heated volley of fusion energy burned the deadened leaves and thorns just a foot behind them into ash, and created a smoldering hole the size of a basketball in the dirt where the shot hit the grass.
“Murph, what do we do?!” An officer, a bumblebee, shouted across the garden.
“Heads down, keep moving!!” Murphy barked back.
Jacent peeked out from behind his cover only to be forced back in when a strong force bullet took a chunk out of the marble next to his head. He winced, rubbing the stone dust out of his eye as he hunkered back down. Marcello stayed down, butt on the ground and knees close to her chest, making sure her glowing esca didn’t stick out too far. “Well, this is exciting!” She joked, “Must be a regular day for you!”
“My regular days involve a hearty breakfast…” Jacent flicked open the buckled pack stuck to his beltline and deftly fished a rubber ball out with his fingers. “Struggling in school…” He tossed the ball up and caught it again, then edged out to see the gunman around his cover that had him in their sights. They had circled around the manor and were keeping close to a wall near one of the windows, on the opposite side of where Arus was raising hell. “Then I meditate and get in a few hours of workout and training.” In a quick motion, he pushed out from hiding and threw the ball. It sailed like a bullet, the rubber sphere conforming under the pressure of its trajectory into something more like an oval. The air took it just right, curving the toss so that it struck the gunman in the side of the head perfectly. Their body smacked the wall, spun, and collapsed. Jacent ducked back as rifle shots threw his hair around, tossing it around his face.
Brushing the crimson locks away, he glanced down at Marcello and said, “These days my average is a lot less exciting than this, and I’m happy for it if I’m being honest.”
“Well, don’t look now, but the tin man over there is giving us the eye again!” Marcello scrambled around the statue and pushed up onto her feet to dash away. “Move your butt, super-guy!”
Jacent saw that one of the armored grunts had their fusion cannon pointed their way, though they followed Marcello as she darted for some other cover in the brush. Stepping out himself, he picked up in a run and leapt forward, suddenly rushing at tremendous speeds that forced the very air to go around him. He snatched up Marcello before the heated blast could rip her apart, barely catching it in the back himself. The force at which he moved caused the fusion blast to slide off him, only singing his clothes and burning yet another hole in it he was going to be patching up later. His flesh stung as it was exposed to the open air, quite clearly burned a little… but a glancing blow like that was likely better than getting energy flak right in the chest.
Jacent rolled with Marcello, the two of them tumbling across the ground a ways until the pre-splice super hero had her pinned beneath him. She was stunned for a moment, blinking her eyes rapidly up at him. He didn’t even flinch or miss a beat as he took her hand, helped her up, and hurried her behind a marble depiction of a posing woman in silks whose features had long since crumbled away, as well as most of the silks.
Marcello panted. “Thanks!”
“Those aren’t the usual weapons.” Jacent said, “That’s going to do some real damage. Stay down.”
“Don’t need to tell me twice!” Marcello agreed, “But what are we going to do?”
Nearby, Phactys’ ear gave an alarmed twitch. He looked above just as the roar of a truck’s engine broke through the tree line, the truck it belonged to tearing through the branches and snapping them apart. It bore in a nose dive toward the ground where it righted itself just in time so that when it smashed into the ground right in front of the cruiser the inked boy was hiding behind, it wildly swerved instead of compressing like a crushed carbolate can. The horn blared as the engine roared again, the fish-tailing truck speeding toward the front doors of the manor with no intent to stop. Phactys looked up just in time as Shelly latched on to him to see a weapon mounted on the back of the truck manned by Daxton, the boy and the tripod swinging around wildly in tow.
“Yeehaw!” Laila’s voice crackled through a loudspeaker on the vehicle, underplayed by Kenny’s screaming. The truck drifted over the lawn in a crazy sharp turn that nearly flipped the thing onto its side where Daxton was barely able to hold on without being thrown out of the flatbed. It barely slowed as it got on track to head straight for the front doors, and Daxton ducked down low behind the cabin, his three-quarters coat flapping in the wind as the vehicle picked up tremendous speed straight at the armored grunts. They didn’t move in time, becoming ugly hood ornaments as they were smashed into and folded over the truck’s front, slammed through the massive wooden doors, and thrown into the manor’s foyer as Laila slammed on the brakes. The vehicle’s nose dipped down and dragged, sparks flying everywhere, and its back-end lifted into the air where it hung for a second before slamming into the tile flooring loudly.
The once fine metal chassis of the truck had two massive dents in its front, and the grav skiffs on the bottom had been crushed upon slamming into the ground, rendering them inoperable. The driver’s side door sagged open, and then was kicked open by Laila’s leather boot, the long-legged giraffe following soon after to hop out. The leather strap of an APSR-20 was shouldered over her fleece-lined jacket, and she lifted it quickly to with her finger on the trigger to brace herself over the hood of the vehicle and fire into the room where Carrie was fighting. She took a couple of Eos grunts from behind, with Daxton bowling one right over with a blast from the mounted turret on the back of the truck.
Kenny threw himself out the passenger side and tumbled on the floor and then sprinted toward the stairs in a hurry. He was deterred when he saw a couple of gunmen come running in from above, taking positions to fire down at them. He instead tucked himself in beside the stairs behind a display case that contained a number of old baubles, pressing his back up to it and making himself as small as possible. “Up high!” He yelled.
Laila took aim, but not fast enough. A shot from one of the gunmen shattered the windshield of the truck. She ducked back instead, flinching as she got down low and used the truck for cover. Daxton shoved the mounted turret and grunted as he pushed down on it to angle its barrel skyward. The thing was heavy and hard to maneuver, forcing the boy to put his full weight into angling it. He had to settle for good enough before he squeezed the handle-mounted triggers and fired a blast up high that took out a massive part of the wooden banister above. The one soldier he aimed at threw himself to the ground to avoid the shot, and then Daxton had to duck as the man’s partner opened up on him, smacking heavy dents into the truck’s roof.
One of the Eos soldiers in power armor slowly rose from the floor, surviving the high-speed impact of the truck only by virtue of the armor her wore. He groaned and rubbed his helmeted head, only to look back over his shoulder and see the display Kenny had shoved come crashing down on him, pinning him under a durable glass rectangle attached to a wooden table. A lucky shot form Laila clipped the rightmost gunman above them, causing him to stumble back and fall, and so Kenny climbed up using the tipped-over display as a platform to hop over the stairs railing where he made a dash for the second gunman up above. He flinched as he ducked under incoming shots from the man, pulling his sword out of the scabbard he’d strapped to his back with an old leather belt.
Kenny gripped the banister with one hand at its corner and threw himself around it as quickly as he could to thrust his metal blade into the Eos soldier’s weapon, impaling it when the man attempted to defend himself with it. Sparks sputtered from the core energy within, and Kenny ripped the blade out just before the weapon’s fusion core exploded from the rupture. It wasn’t fatal, the energy of the rifle not being high enough to cause any high-scale explosion, but Kenny still shielded his face from the blast, and the Eos soldier was sent over the gap in the guard rail and fell several feet to the foyer floor.
Daxton peeked out from the flatbed before deciding to remove himself from his post. He hopped down out of the vehicle and landed on the floor, staring right into the room where Arus had just thrown one of the soldiers up where they got caught on the chandelier, dropping their weapon in favour of holding on lest they fall eight or nine feet to the floor below.
“We should help her!” Laila’s voice echoed through the foyer.
“What about the guys outside?!” Kenny called down from above.
Things were moving too fast for Daxton to keep track of, his attention going from Arus, to Laila, to Kenny. Turning his attention back to the chaos in the sitting room, Daxton was face-to-face suddenly with Haze. The off-yellow inkling’s mauve eyes peered at Daxton as he stood between the boy and Arus. His mouth formed a little smile as he booped Daxton’s nose.
“Bad puppy!” Haze said, before exhaling a heavy plume of gaseous smoke into Daxton’s face. The corgi boy got a mouthful and choked as the exhaust filled his lungs, causing him to hack and cough heavily and retreat from the Inkling. Haze kicked the boy back with a strong leg and Daxton crumpled onto the floor. Smog billowed from Haze’s body in geyser blasts like a ruptured steam vent to cloud the foyer, creating a smoke curtain that concealed him. Laila fired into the smokescreen as the rolling clouds of the stuff overtook the truck in a hurry. Unsure if she even hit her mark, she ducked back down behind the vehicle and pulled the turtleneck of her sweater up over her nose and stayed low when the gas surrounded her.
“Shit, not this guy again.” Kenny grimaced from above, unable to see anything going on down below anymore. He frantically searched the thick curtain of rolling smog only for Haze’s form to shoot out from beneath him, gripped to the edge of the mezzanine with one hand and the other grasping Kenny’s jacket. Gross, thick yellow smog puffed up around the Inkling, mostly obscuring him in a mist that matched his colour near entirely, making him appear loosely as part of the cloud.
“Boo!” Haze giggled, yanking Kenny down and throwing him to the floor below. The boy yelled as he fell and roughly hit the tile.
“You kids are naughty!” Haze chastised them from somewhere in the fog. “We’re only trying to help you, you know? You’re humans! You don’t want us hanging around, believe me!”
Daxton covered his nose under his tank top, and Kenny attempted to smother out the noxious fumes with his jacket even while gasping for air after his back roughly hit the floor. The trio of Harbington kids were coughing and hacking as their lungs protested heavily to even the small amounts of it that got under their clothes.
“What’s all this smoke?!” Marcello yelled from behind, somewhere just outside the manor, likely at the door.
Jacent coughed, his voice echoing into the room. “Don’t breathe it in!”
“Naughty naughty!” Haze said. “Well at least you’re all here!”
-
--
-
“NGH!” Arus hooked the last Eos soldier in the room and spun to simply hurl them away, where her tremendous strength sent them somersaulting across the floor and actually into the side of the stairs, smashing a hole into the wood and into whatever lay beneath, be it room, empty space, or just more hardwood.
The billowing smog from Haze caught her attention as it barely seeped into the sitting room. She turned her attention to that, but before she could make a step a spear jammed into the ground in front of her with a metallic, vibrating hum. This stopped her in her tracks, and she quickly turned to the fireplace to see a Polaris’ host standing there, the fine Calico cat with the neatly brushed brown hair wearing the tweed suit. He looked calm, all things considered, but not happy.
“You do that?” Arus asked gruffly.
“I did.” The feline nodded, “I’m going to have to ask you to stop this little crusade, Arus. It’s for your own good.”
“Dentists tell me that all the time,” Arus said, ripping the spear out of the floor with a strong pull, “And then they do something like give me braces. Counter-offer: you give me Natalie. It’s for your own good.”
“I trust you won’t be giving me braces.” The man mused.
“I’m going to break your legs.” Arus answered.
The man winced. “I’m afraid I’m a little too attached to locomotion to allow for that.”
He reached into his pockets and then thrust out his arms. He threw four Baoding balls into the air, a pair able to fill a palm. More flew out from the inside pockets of his jacket, and the balls formed a perfect square in the air in front of him, numbering twelve in all and slightly spaced apart. The man inked over then, his clothes giving way in favour of a red inky skin, with blue eyes and mouth. He pushed his hand out and the metal spear Arus held suddenly jerked skyward, lifting her into the air by her firm grip on the shaft alone. She dangled there for a moment, staring at the floor three feet below her. She looked up just in time to see the twelve metal balls racing through the air toward her. She tensed up, protecting herself from the hard metal balls as they struck her body like a rain of bullets – except they hit too hard for their size, harder than they should have. It didn’t hurt, but Arus knew the difference between a gentle toss and what amounted to several miles per hour.
Arus let go of the spear and landed on the floor again, only to have the metal balls assault her from behind. They struck her on the rebound as they returned to Polaris, thunking her on the head and back and shoulders, making her wince as they smacked meaty and loud. She rubbed her head as the spheres returned to the other feline Inkling and began to orbit him like atoms to a nucleus. With his arms raised, the shield and second spear dislodged from the wall above the fireplace. The weapons floated down into the storm of metal objects for him to grasp them. He poised himself in a fighting stance, the Caduceus crest on his shield on bold display and his spear pointed out, its sharpened tip catching some of the light.
“Really? You’re going to fight me with a sharpened toothpick?” Arus asked.
The marshmallow white Inkling cracked her knuckles and her neck. “Well, that’s perfect. It’s just the right shape for me to shove it up your ass.”
