As A Consequence Of Your Action (Jumpchain)

[cliffc999]

Preface

Hey all. It's me, cliffc999, one of SB's more prolific Jumpchain authors. I also do a lot of other things, on SB and also here on QQ, but right now the Jumpchain bit is the most relevant.

Several years ago I dropped this Jumpchain on SB, as an experiment with writing an entirely different style of Jumpchain than I usually do. I have decided now to mirror it on QQ, so that people who don't go to SB can at least see a bit of what this 'Jumpchain' thing is about. Even if I'm not writing the usual Jumpchain. (It's only two jumps long, for one thing, and both jumps will be full-length stories.) Still, hopefully this will expose people to at least one Jumpchain fanfic that hopefully avoids the usual pitfalls of such.

As well as taking a departure from my usual run of Jumpchain stories by using someone just a tad bit more malevolent and mean-spirited than my usual Jump-Chan.

Since this story is a cross-post and is already completed on SB, people who absolutely want to read ahead can go do it there. I'll be dumping several chapters here a day... as there's sixty-plus chapters in all, if I did only 1/day then you'd be waiting at least two months for the finale. I want to give people time to react, but not drag it out excessively.

Oh, and one more mechanical note. I am also SB's most prolific author of Jumpchain houserules and alt-modes, and several are going to be used in this fic. If you want to know the exact details then click through on the link just provided, the bold-texted ones in the list immediately following are all typed up there. Some of the house-rules in this chain are going to be:

* Long-Haul Mode
* Gauntlet and Power-Loss Guidelines
* The Storage Facility (Warehouse Replacer)
* The Warehouse will not be activated until after the completion of the first jump.
* The Benefactor will be taking the liberty of choosing for the Jumper regarding at least some of the choices on the Jumper's build sheet, and such "mandated" choices will be marked in red text like this.
* Likewise, the Benefactor will be choosing the Jumper's destinations.
* Several of the options in the miscellaneous section on the houserules page may also be used and will be referenced if and when they occur.
* By will of the Benefactor, the following Drawback from the Universal Drawbacks Supplement will be in force throughout the entire jumpchain.

Spoiler: All By Yourself (+200cp) - Universal Drawbacks Supplement

All By Yourself (+200cp) - No Companions will accompany you. All Machine Intelligences (be they Virtual, Artificial, Pseudo... or their magical equivalent) you have will act as inhuman and machine-like as possible for the duration.

Introduction

At first I'd thought it was just my computer locking up. How odd, to think that such horror - and such wonder - could all begin by first appearing as something so utterly... commonplace.

"Dammit!" I swore as my spreadsheet suddenly froze in mid-keystroke. Hey, these formulas didn't compose themselves! And I didn't deal well with having my train of thought suddenly interrupted-

I then had my train of thought suddenly interrupted as I realized something weirder than a mere computer lock-up was happening. Because when I'd tried to move the cursor up to hopefully save my work, I realized with a chill down my spine that the mouse wasn't moving. Somehow the peripheral that had been freely sliding around my mouse pad was now locked in place, as if super-glued to the desk. I tried yanking on it with both hands and still nothing happened.

What the motherfucking hell?

My feeling of chills down my spine escalated to full-on panic when I tried to stand up and realized that somehow my office chair was now anchored to the floor. I placed both feet against the crossbar under my desk and shoved as hard as I could, and almost sprained a muscle while still going absolutely nowhere. Frantically I tried things such as sliding my keyboard, or turning my monitor, or trying to open my desk drawer... nothing, nothing, nothing! It's like everything around me was suddenly frozen in place! It's like-

-I suddenly realized that I hadn't heard anything since the 'freeze' began either. Not the murmur of the ventilation, not the muted sounds of traffic outside the windows, not the chatter and the ringing phones of all my fellow cubicle workers in their adjacent cubicles. None of the common workplace sounds of the office where I did my 9-to-5. No sounds at all. No motion at all. Nothing.

"Holy shit. Everything's frozen in-"

"-time, Mister Andrews? Yes. That... is precisely what has been... frozen. Time." a smooth, passionless voice cut off my own vocalization.

I almost fell out of my chair as it suddenly became 'unstuck' when I frantically twisted to try and look over my shoulder and instead the whole thing came spinning around. I sprawled out of it, caught myself with a palm on the wall of the cubicle before I could fall completely over, and stood up to find myself face-to-face with...

... with a humanoid-shaped figure in a dark blue suit and a white shirt, carrying a black briefcase. Taken as a still image he would look like a relatively handsome middle-aged Caucasian man, a bit sharp-featured perhaps, but nothing out of place in an everyday corporate environment. But to watch him move, to hear him speak... I got goosebumps all over my skin as his every mannerism, the strange erratic rhythm and toneless accenting of his speech, the sheer gestalt formed by his every subliminal impression screamed This is not a human being. This is Something that Should Not Be Here, making only the most token effort to imitate one.

"Oh no," I heard my own voice babbling. "Fuck this shit I'm out! Whatever you've come to offer, the answer is-"

"-irrelevant, Mister Andrews. I am not asking you... to choose. I have already taken the... liberty of choosing for you."

I despaired inwardly as I heard the motherfucking G-Man from Half-Life pronounce that I was already a part of whatever scheme he had going whether I wanted to be or not. And I didn't even work at Black Mesa! I didn't work anywhere! This was an insurance agency for God's sake, and in the real world, and the Half-Life series was just a videogame, and hell, Half-Life Alyx had only just come out and now I'd never live long enough to see what Half-Life 3 would-

"Your assumption is... mistaken. I am not the one... you imagine me, to be. I have merely... appeared as him. That... charming little tale, is perhaps only a useful analogue to... the truth of your situation? If you wish, you may... address me as, your Benefactor."

Oh like that's any fucking better!

A little dot of white opened up behind the "Benefactor" and instantly swept out to encompass our entire three-dimensional volume, and I screamed silently on the inside as the entire world fell away to be replaced by a dimensionless void. I'd just left behind the only reality I'd known, girlfriend and friends and family alike, and I would never be seeing them again. Given how insanely lethal the G-Man's little games in Half-Life had been for anyone who didn't have quicksave and quickload bound to hotkeys, I doubted I'd be seeing anything again. I might have joined the National Guard out of high school but passing Basic and AIT and then doing the weekend warrior routine for a couple years after that was hardly going to qualify me to be Gordon Freeman, or Adrian Shepherd, or even Barney Calhoun. It's not as if we'd ever been called up to actually deploy, except for flood control.

Wait, maybe I can use that.

"I don't know what you've been told," I told him urgently, "but with an entire multiverse to recruit from you have got to have better prospects than me. I'm barely trained by most standards, I have no field experience, I was marginal on my last PT exam for God's sake! Put me back and I'll tell you what base to go looking for the Tier One guys at, I'm sure they've got someone, probably some guy with no family, who'd leap at this chance-"

"Mister Andrews. You are not being recruited, for your ability but instead, your... potential? Do not, worry. Before you are expected to perform any serious tasks you will be given... opportunity for, mmmm, enhancement."

I felt my bladder involuntarily empty at the thought of being borged up like some Combine zombie. The dampness was then instantaneously whisked away as the white space around us shifted instead to a floating black void with stars streaking by, and a commonplace desk with a chair on either side. The 'Benefactor' waved for me to sit down in one as he calmly took his own seat behind the desk.

"Here are... the, mmm, policy documents for you, to read? As you can see. In each new world, you will be expected to... nudge... there you will be granted an allowance with which to purchase new... capabilities. And as you, will keep all your purchases, as you go along. Then soon enough you should be entirely capable of... fulfilling our expectations."

"Expectations of what?"

"That information is... restricted. But do not feel... excessively constrained? We intend that you will be inserted into various... environments... with or without certain mandated... preconditions. After insertion, though, you will be allowed... full discretion... as to your chosen courses of action. We expect it will all... make sense in the fullness of... time. But for now, you have been provided with... all necessary information. Do familiarize yourself with the contents of these documents... Mister Andrews. When you feel you have, sufficiently assimilated them... then we will begin."

I carefully read the material he provided me, which was written in the format of several kinds of Internet CYOAs I'd seen while browsing around. 'Putting things into a format I could comprehend' again, I imagined.

I took a deep breath. I really didn't want to do this, but honestly? Given the sort of cosmic eldritch horror shit that the G-Man, let alone something even more unfathomable that thought that merely appearing as the G-Man would be more reassuring than the truth of his situation, could get me caught up in? There came a point at which you had to cut your losses.

"Look, I know you probably think you're giving me a wondrous opportunity, but-"

"Death will not release you from your... obligation, Mister Andrews. As you can see, in the material provided, dying would merely require you to... try again? No. I am afraid that, your only way out... is through."

I thumped my head on the desk. Fuck, I swore inwardly as I resigned myself to the inevitable.

"We shall take that... as a yes."

And then the entire universe faded to nothingness around me, leaving me a bodiless awareness floating in a black void, save for three lines of text floating directly in 'front' of me:

SUBJECT: Jonathan Andrews
STATUS: Recruited
AWAITING ASSIGNMENT

 

[cliffc999]

Jump-Document: Girl Genius (SB)

Spoiler: Girl Genius (SB) Build

1200cp

This and all further builds will assume 1200 base cp because of the +200cp from the All By Yourself UDS Drawback.

Drawbacks:

The More They Stay The Same (+0cp) - The history of this world is full of interesting things, if you don't like the present plot. You can set your arrival point to any time in history, all the way to the dawn of civilization.

Guest of the Castle (Sparks only) (+200cp) (1400) - Your age is now set to young adulthood, and you are one of the young Sparks living onboard Castle Wulfenbach as a combination student/hostage in the Baron's flying university. On the plus side the quarters are quite luxurious, the teachers and the resources provided for a young scientist are some of the best in the world, Von Pinn makes (literal) mincemeat of anyone who'd harm you, and there's lots of interesting young minds to collaborate with. Plus, unless you took an earlier start time you're guaranteed to soon meet an interesting young lady named Agatha...

On the minus side the Baron is carefully watching everything you and your compatriots do, and 'adopting' any of your work he finds useful and shutting down any experiments he disapproves of. If you have The Right Name you are also a hostage against your family's good behavior, although the Baron is at least reluctant to kill useful Sparks without great need. If you have Embarrassingly Familiar... well, 'walking on eggshells' might be an understatement.

Embarassingly Familiar (+200cp) (1600) - There are families in this world that are just... unbelievable. Not in a good way. Your family history is now just as bad as the Heterodynes, Valois or others like them, full of either treacherous and murderous assholes or rampaging lunatics most of the world rightly hates, or just as bad in some other way.

While this is pretty unlikely to cause you significant danger, expect old enmities and feuds to cause more than one sticky situation. If you're a Drop-in, this might just be rumors, but man are they persistent.

Locket (+400cp) (2000) - Any time you try to use any super-intelligence, or superpowers, or anything out of the ordinary that is not from this jump, this gives you horrific migraines, that feel like burning spikes being hammered into your skull.

Cannot be removed. May not actually be a tangible locket in the first place.

Origin:

Fighter - No matter how great the Madboys' latest ideas about what they want to get done might be, they're likely to remain ideas unless people like you are around. You're a fighter, a real, proper expert on fisticuffs, the right way to point a death ray, and all other such details Sparky minds aren't very suited to focus on.

Age: 13

Race: Human

Perks:

Professionally Drawn (free) - You look good, Jumper. Nothing all that extraordinary by itself, but you'd be surprised how often it turns out to be of use. You look like someone drawn and coloured properly by some very skilled cartoonists.

Mind Control Immunity (200cp) (1800) - Between slaver wasps, dictator spiders and more direct possessions, this world certainly is rife with mind control possibilities. Many people find themselves robbed of their agency, captured in some kind of slavery or another.

They don't have this perk, after all. You are now entirely, completely and absolutely immune to any and all attempts at subverting your control of yourself. From mind control to body control of various kinds, attempts simply fail to work on you regardless of what the perpetrators may try. Slaver wasps or other insects die, would-be possessing intelligences find themselves corralled and stripped of their knowledge and skills... it's impossible.

This perk is free for this jump, but costs 200 CP to take to future jumps.

Halfwit Child (free Fighter) - It can be annoying, yes. It can also be incomparably useful from time to time. Whenever faced with a a new antagonist, you always seem to slide right down to the bottom of the priority pole. That is, while people tend to remember anything you did against them, reports from others are almost always blown off as exaggerations or misreporting.

So if facing the same enemy again expect them to be on guard for you, but any new ones would prioritise pretty much anyone and anything else over you.

Well-Seasoned (100cp, discount Fighter) (1700) - It is a very rare fight that is lost because one of the combatants simply didn't measure up. No, far more common are simple accidents. Maybe someone was ill, or feeling tired, or annoyed, or any of a thousand and one other things that prevent them from performing at the top of their skills. Such things lose fights and kill fighters, even experienced ones.

Well, they won't kill you, ever. This doesn't do anything to enhance your skill in any way, but what it does is to ensure that you perform right at the top of them, all the time, every time.

Whenever doing anything, you do it as the absolute, complete best you can do at the time. This doesn't replenish your energy or stamina, but you use what remains with perfect efficiency. Every punch you throw, every stab, every plan made and every word spoken is done as utterly, absolutely best as it is possible for you to do, no matter what.

Best of the Best (200cp, discount Fighter) (1500) - You are a combat beast now, Jumper. A thoroughly, unspeakably skilled fighter in at least one major style, possibly more. You know several martial arts, and how to combine them for best effect. You have the equivalent of decades of experience at fighting, and an incredible tolerance for pain, exhaustion and injury, anything that would naturally put you down.

What you get from this perk depends on your preferences alone. You could be a Smoke Knight, in which case you would be one of the best alive, someone with skills rivaling Madwa Korel or a Night Master Jaron. Or you could be a Skiffandrian fighter better than Zeetha, an Eastern Martial artist as good as Dr Sun, or even a freestyle combatant capable of going punch for stab with Bangladesh Dupree, Von Pinn, Ol' Man Death and most Jägers.

In essence, this perk makes you a peer to any of the deadliest, fightiest people seen in the comic. The Best of the Best, as it were. Carrying hundreds of knives, capable of breaking off robotic heads with a punch, cracking walls with your kicks, sneaking and stabby and all the rest of the goodness.

Grindstone (300cp, discount Fighter) (1200) - Knowing how to fight yourself? Great. Being able to teach others? Better. You have a preternatural talent for teaching others, whether through slow, steady education or acting like... well, a grindstone for them. 'Percussive education', as it were.

This works best for combat or similar skills, but you can teach basically anything to anyone, at least if they have the innate potential for it. Put simply, this perk allows you to share any and all of your skills at a mind-boggling speed with anyone you would like. The actual speed depends on how many people you're teaching at the same time, but someone you're training exclusively would learn in days what it would take others months and months to learn, and it scales down proportionately.

A Spark of Genius (600cp) (600) - Or you might be an absolute, incomparable genius in general, I guess. While anyone who takes the Scientist Origin may be a weak spark if they wish to, this is where you go for the good stuff. You now have, and thus are, one of the strongest Sparks on the planet now, an absolute, blazing genius like Agatha Heterodyne,either of the Wulfenbachs, Dr Vapnoople, or others at the same tier. The Spark, that s omething that makes the wonders of this world possible, is plugged into your mind and soul, inflaming it, filling it with a fire that boosts your mental facilities to unbelievable extents such that many things that should be impossible... suddenly aren't.

While you specialise in some field to extraordinary degrees, like being able to create artificial sparks if you choose 'Von Neumann Clanks', your genius is unbound by the petty concerns lesser sparks suffer from, allowing you to shine equally bright in every field from Microbiology to Trans-Dimensional Aeronautics.

You have an instinctive grasp for scientific principles, can reverse engineer technology more or less just from seeing it, and have a head for calculation and numbers that defies belief. You can decrypt data in your head, have a completely flawless memory, and are in general the quintessential Mad Scientist. Complete with a gift for cackling and rants that can terrify anyone who isn't , by the way.

When in the Madness Place, especially, you have an outright effect that allows you to warp time and space in a small area around you, letting you do weeks' worth of work in hours, and outright warp, twist, spindle the mutilate the very laws of physics as you craft your wonders... and horrors.

Apart from the SCIENCE!, you have a charisma that borders on mind control, as anyone without a spark, or an exceptionally strong willpower is drawn into your orbit by your sheer force of will, ready to help and serve wherever they can. Your body is also somewhat better than most, allowing you to go all those all-nighters without food and fight off highly trained fighters while barely paying attention.

Loyalty Goes Both Ways (100cp) (500) - And with you it truly does! When you do anyone a service, either as their minion or just as a favor, your efforts never go unrewarded. People learn to value your contributions, see you in the light you want to be seen in, and always shower rewards upon you.

Put simply, as a direct minion the loyalty displayed by one side is equally reflected by the other. The better your efforts towards maintaining any relationship, the better your counterpart's.

As a more distant associate, you can have a 'favor for a favor' deal. Any bargains you make tend to be remembered and honoured, and people always at least try to deal fairly with you. This isn't an assurance that any deals you make will always be honoured, just to be clear. People can still betray you or renege on deals. This just makes it very unlikely.

Clear Understandings (100cp) (400) - When it comes to opposition between Sparks, you'd be surprised how often it is that grave enmities and terrible wars erupt out of petty misunderstandings. If only any of them had this perk.

What this does is to provide you a simple but undeniable advantage. Whenever trying to communicate with someone, people will always understand the meaning of your words in full, unquestionably and unequivocally.

No sudden interruptions drop out of the sky to confuse or mislead things, no one makes sudden movements that make things go wrong, none of that! When you're telling the truth, people k now that you're telling the truth, no questions asked.

Grandma's Scheming (300cp) (100) - Between Sparks, the people trying to handle or even just survive them and the people related to both, you can find half a dozen schemes, conspiracies and plots just by wandering in any given direction. Someone who didn't have the chops to hold their own might find themselves as helpless as anyone under direct mind control, if not more.

It's a good thing that you have this, then. You're now an extraordinarily skilled and talented schemer and plotter, a weaver of webs and puller of strings as good as the absolute best in any world. You can predict people's responses, know what to do to provoke the ones you need, and in general can play entire crowds and nations like a fiddle, while remaining just as good at jerking around individuals.

Your plans are things of beauty, gemlike things of perfection while remaining extraordinarily flexible and adaptive, allowing you to combine the beauty of elaborate intricacy with the certainty that barring something truly extraordinary, they'll almost certainly work.

Items:

Personal Death Ray (free Fighter) - Not quite the masterpiece Agatha made that could vaporize stone, this is nonetheless an excellent weapon of great killing potential. The specific nature, from a laser to a lightning discharger to a hyper-focused flamethrower is up to you.

Traveling Toolkit (100cp) (0) - And an excellent set, too! This is a full set of incredibly high quality, very much portable tools suited for just about any purposes you may need them for, especially for repurposing existing or enemy works! Just the thing any scientist would need for Sparking on the go!

After a minute or so the Half-Life 2 recruitment screen homage faded away to be replaced by a floating touch-screen on which the first 'jump-document' scrolled up.

Girl Genius. Great. So much for hoping for a first jump that would give me a chance to get my bearings. No, I was being dropped straight into the land of mad science and madder scientists...

... and as I took in several of the red-texted "locked in" options on the build sheet, apparently I was going to be a mad scientist. I had no choice. The Guest of the Castle Drawback had been "chosen... for me", as my 'Benefactor' would have put it, and that Drawback had a requirement of 'must be a Spark'. I couldn't not take the Drawback, and I couldn't complete my build sheet until I'd fulfilled all the prereqs. So whether it be a minor Spark or a major one, there would be no way I'd leave this jump without having already had the very way I think twisted at least a little bit from the original. To forever be touched by at least a trace of eldritch madness and otherworldliness.

Reaaaaal smooth there, 'Benefactor'. Subtle as a monster truck rally.

I did idly wonder at why he considered my taking an absolute mind control immunity out of this jump to be such a requirement. Was it just that he didn't want anyone else along the way playing with "his" toys? Or was there a darker purpose?

At any rate I pushed that aside for now and concentrated on coming up with a build that would hopefully prepare me better for all the shit I was about to jump into. So, I carefully read the entire Girl Genius jump-document, concentrating hard to avoid being distracted by several of the shiny temptations, and finally narrowed it down to what I thought were the core essentials.

First off, if I had to be a Spark, then I'd be a major Spark. The minor Sparks had all the disadvantages of the Madness Place with none of the advantages. But that didn't necessarily mean I had to take the Scientist origin, because nothing in the Scientist capstone required you to have a minor Spark in order to get its major one. Which was good, because I saw a whole cluster of perks in another perk line that I needed.

I had no idea where the 'Benefactor' would be sending me ahead of time, and I certainly wasn't being asked where I wanted to go. And that meant I needed to use this opportunity to prepare myself for the maximum range of possible future needs that I could practicably manage in addition to getting what it took to get through this jump. So I mournfully waved goodbye to such luxuries as having a noble title or vast wealth and instead ruthlessly triaged things down to the most versatile core competencies I could think of.

The Benefactor-mandated Drawbacks glowed red at me, and after reading the rest of the Drawback list I decided that most of it was trouble I didn't already need or want on top of what I already had. However, the Drawback for losing access to all prior Jumpchain purchases was an easy 'Yes' for me... because this was my first jump, I had no prior purchases, and so the +400cp was basically just a starting bonus at that point. Yes please, thank you!

As to perks and abilities... first and above all else, I needed to not fuck up. No matter where I'd be going or what I'd be doing on this 'Jumpchain', I'd already have enough of the odds against me even before factoring in my own contributions. Which meant I needed to do what it took to not make shit any harder on myself, and that meant when I saw there was a perk in the Fighter line for never making an unforced error I locked that in first thing. As I read it I could still make poor decisions through not having sufficient or accurate information or acting on incorrect conclusions, but I would no longer be able to do less than my 100% best performance because of fatigue, distraction, emotional compromise, or any other internal or most external factors.

Hell, that implied immunity to emotional compromise was itself a necessity given that as a Spark I'd have to worry about the Madness Place... and I was not buying the capstone boosted version because while the immunities and new powers would be nice, it would also mean vastly accelerating my evolution towards eventual Eldritch Abomination and since I was convinced that was my 'Benefactor's' reason for forcing me to be a Spark in the first place... well, fuck him, I was going to slow-march that as much as possible. I'd have bought Common Sense in addition if doing so wouldn't have required me to go much further into the Drawbacks then I'd felt worth risking.

And for a man whose MOS in the National Guard had been "12-B: Combat Engineer", which meant among other things that I'd trained for minefield clearing and demolitions... well, there's nothing like spending your summer training inserting detonators into blocks of C-4 to make a man appreciate the value of buying an immunity to ever sneezing at the wrong moment.

As my second priority, I needed to be able to survive. Since I was doing this jump in 'no Companions' mode I could not be assured of having allies in future jumps. Maybe I'd "insert" into a situation where they were readily available and maybe I wouldn't, and I'd have no clue which was which before I dropped in. So I had to be able to take care of myself no matter what kind of mess I dropped into, and that meant buying the asskicking perk. And given how ridiculously the top-end fighters in Girl Genius could kick ass, that would qualify me to stomp a mudhole in the ass of pretty much any universe without superpowers or anime martial arts. As well as all the noncombat survival skills implied by things like 'Skifandrian style training'.

As a bonus, investing in the Fighter line and origin meant that I could buy Grindstone for cheap. Which definitely had an eventual use. Without the ability to take Companions from jump to jump, any local allies I recruited in the future would have to be trained from scratch in every new jump. So, a perk that would let me train them far faster? I maybe wouldn't go that far out of my way to get it but since it was already right there, then yoink!

Third up, Grandma's Scheming. Wherever I went, whatever I did, I would 99.9+% likely be doing it with and against other people. And that meant a perk for being among the very best of the best at not only predicting but then gaming the human element would have true multiversal utility. Especially considering that I'd basically been a techie geek beforehand and so relying on my own native intrigue skills would have been ahahahahahahahaha, are you kidding?

And then there was my 'Benefactor' to consider... and yes, the idea of being able to so much as inconvenience him using only the powers and abilities he'd chosen to let me have would be laughable.

Then again, that's what Zion had thought when he'd originally given Taylor Hebert access to Queen Administrator. And just look at how that one turned out.

Loyalty Goes Both Ways and Clear Understandings were both highly attractive buys for someone who expected to be dealing with first contact situations, intrigue, and lethally-edged politics... and those last two were guaranteed just from my Benefactor-mandated Drawbacks in this jump alone. I mean, Guest of the Castle and Embarassingly Familiar? That was a combination specifically noted in the jump-doc as being synergistically awful, and yet my 'Benefactor' throws me right into it on my first day. Prick.

And while I might not be able to count on altruism and good will in whatever foreign worlds I'd keep getting thrown into, rational self-interest is rational self-interest pretty much anywhere. Likewise for clearly communicating and being able to have people take my word for things I was truthfully swearing to. So having both those perks should hopefully be bread cast upon the waters.

As for the Traveling Toolkit... well, when your primary superpower required tools, then passing up a chance to buy an ideal set of portable tools was just a tad foolish.

So I finished making my selections, double-checked them, and clicked on "Confirm Build", and waited to see what would happen next.

* * * * *
​

I woke up in a luxuriously soft-yet-firm bed lying on the highest-thread-count sheets I'd ever even heard of, let alone actually slept on. Castle Wulfenbach student quarters, as expected.

My now-perfect memory and my ideal mental focus had me effortlessly reviewing the past life of my identity in this jump before I'd even opened my eyes. In this life I was the 13-year-old Jonathan Teufel, although my name on the Castle's student records was Jonathan Fairchild-

-wait, Teufel? As in Petrus Teufel, leader of the Black Mist Raiders, the second-most reviled spark in Europa behind only the Other herself? A Spark reaver lord of the old school that even the Baron had sweated blood to bring down? The fucking what? That's not Embarassingly Familiar, that's straight-up Hunted level as far as Drawbacks are concerned! Most of the Spark rulers in Europa should want me dead if it ever became public who my father was!

I groaned inwardly. 'Benefactor', my ass!

At any rate I was a thirteen-year-old son of a psychotic pirate king, raised to follow in Daddy's reaving wandering mad science warlord tradition. Which probably explained why my education up until now had focused so much on combat and not on science. Although my major Spark gave me a solid grounding in the fundamentals I still had a lot to learn, as did all the other students in the Baron's floating 'School For Gifted Sparks' and hostage collection. So at least I was in a position to get an absolute top-quality education. Assuming I had time after navigating in-between the Scylla of the Baron's problematic regard and the Charybdis of the sheer amount of assassins I'd be ducking if anyone so much as spoke my real last name aloud... fuck, could this get any worse?

"John! Wake up! It's time for breakfast!" said a cheery choice. I opened my eyes to see my roommate, the annoyingly young and chirpy Gilgamesh Holzfaller...

... more commonly known to the readers of the comic as Gilgamesh Wulfenbach, the Baron's own son. Apparently I'd been inserted back into the period of Gil's youth where he had been receiving his own early Spark education while forced to interact with the student body onboard Castle Wulfenbach under a false identity as the obscure son of an obscure minor Spark.

Yup. That's worse.

Note to self: do not ask that question again.

"Okay, Gil," I sighed, as I rolled out of bed and got dressed.

As me and Gil scrubbed up sufficiently to pass Von Pinn's exacting standards re: personal grooming and headed down to the refectory, I started mentally reviewing everything I already knew about toxicology and antidotes. At the rate this day was going, I'd probably be ducking a poisoning attempt before lunch.

* * * * *​

Author's Notes: Just the opener so far, but at least getting the first jump and first build out lets readers start knowing what to expect.

Also, I very annoyingly had a power failure right after I posted the intro, and lost Internet access for almost 40 minutes.

 

[cliffc999]

Sparks are pretty much defined by obsessive trains of thought and being easily distracted.

So the fact that I was paying minimal attention to my surroundings and visibly in deep thought over a conundrum all throughout breakfast was so unremarkable that it faded right into the background noise around here. I had of course entered this state of mind deliberately, as it was a way to make one course of action to serve multiple goals.

In this case, goal number one was to get through breakfast without a new plot complication turning up thanks to the trickiness of social interaction with a group of young immature Sparks who obsessively played high school mean girl "pecking order" games when thanks to your total lack of any family background you could dare to admit to you were at the absolute bottom of that pecking order.

And goal number two was to figure out why I wasn't dead yet.

As I mentally reviewed the details yet again over my pancakes, I noted that my jump-identity's curriculum vitae started at being born as the child of Europa's most infamous pirate king. I'd spent my early childhood being obsessively trained by reavers from early childhood in all the arts of single combat and practical survival - old Teufel operated on the theory that the first thing his children should learn how to do is fight and kill, and there'd be time for learning subtlety and science later after the early training had gotten the physical condtiioning and the practical skills started early. That training had been scheduled to start... well, right about now, actually. If I hadn't been captured by the Baron last year by the Baron as part of Teufel's final downfall, that is.

Hm.m. Apparently I'd had two older siblings, even if I'd never really met them, but they'd both died fighting against Wulfenbach's forces along with pretty much everyone else in the Black Mist Raiders. And to the best of my knowledge I had no younger ones. So when the Baron finally finished his war against old Black Teufel himself he'd been confronted with the problem of what to do with a twelve-year-old Spark who'd spent the vast majority of his time to date learning how to dismantle human bodies with bare hands or all sorts of tools and whose formative figures in early childhood had largely been Chaotic Evil pirates.

Why the hell was I still alive? The only remotely sane thing to do with me under those circumstances would be two in the head, make sure I'm dead! It's not as if the Baron didn't have enough pet monsters available to do the job without blinking!

... ah. Of course, that had to be it. Teufel Sr. wasn't an idiot, and had made damn sure that while his children were raised to be heartlessly efficient killers they were also raised with discipline. To be able to remain mentally focused and rational despite being raised for slaughter, plunder, and mad sciencing in the name of more powerful slaughtering and plundering, a career path normally guaranteed to produce the worst sort of chaotic Spark lunatics.

And my two older half-siblings had apparently not fully taken to this discipline which is why they'd been sent out to the front lines where at least they'd be relatively useful madmen and slaughter engines, and why they'd died there. But I had apparently been a successful product of Teufel's attempted mental discipline regimen, and such a mental discipline for Sparks was the same thing the Baron was hoping to achieve with his little School For Gifted Sparks here. If by somewhat different methods and for entirely different reasons.

So in addition to what value I might hypothetically provide later as a military or scientific asset, presumably I grew up to be at least reasonably loyal to the Baron, there was also the value that Klaus thought he could extract from me by carefully studying my behavior and deducing from it at least something of the psychological techniques used in my upbringing and applying those to his own ongoing educational experiments.

Great. I'm primarily alive because the local ruling Spark I'm a useful reverse engineering specimen. Welcome to Europa, John!

Right. So, that's the immediate situation. And my goal is...

... wait, what the hell is my goal here?

Riiiiight. That. And I'd been totally overlooking it ever since I woke up.

Damn. I'd gotten so caught up in Sparky bullshit that I'd almost let myself get sidetracked. Well, we can certainly fix that.

* * * * *​

"Mister Andrews. How disappointing."

"I'm a Spark now. You made me one. Sparks test things."

"Testing... my patience... would be very unwise, Mister Andrews."

"That's not what I was testing."

"Then what purpose... was your suicide, intended for?"

"Why does a Spark do anything, o 'Benefactor'? To see what happens."

"A valid enough... line of reasoning, I suppose. But do not think to test it... too often. Death is, accepted... as a normal risk... of your position... but our resources, are not unlimited."

"Could you at least reinsert me into some other embarassing family next time?"

The void faded away, and I opened my eyes to see the same bedroom ceiling I'd awoken to once before.

* * * * *​

Ouch.

Admittedly, death by self-inflicted 'lab accident' is painless and quick if you pick the right laboratory, which I certainly had. And of course I'd also made sure to take no one with me. But my 'Benefactor's' assurance that dying would merely have to make me "try again" had just been experimentally verified.

Because that was my real goal, of course. To figure out what the hell his game was, and then to get myself out from under it.

Sadly, it seemed that I was expecting far too much to re: having my death end the Jumpchain and send me back home, or on to my next reward, or to anywhere other than here. But I before I wasted years and years struggling through Europa on the basis of uncritically accepting everything I'd been told, it did make sense to find out if my 'Benefactor' been lying or not about dying not being an escape from his maze. Even if normally the idea of deliberately vaporizing yourself with a 'malfunctioning' death ray would be considered anything but sensible.

Sadly, it seems that he wasn't lying.

And he hadn't even answered my request to use even a slightly different backstory. Would it really have killed him that much to just make me a Valois? Smoke Knight training would probably come in much handier on down the jumpchain than the eclectic mish-mash raider style I'd been given. And then I could just run away and let Martellus and Tarvek beat each other's brains in. Hell, maybe I could lend Tarvek a sledgehammer-

-and there I go getting sidetracked again. Damn stupid Sparky brain.

Apparently Well-Seasoned wasn't going to do the entire job for me. Well, we were all in this flying university to learn how to better control and discipline ourselves and our Sparks. Not via perks or fiat, but just via good old-fashioned skull sweat.

So I might as well get down to learning.

"So, what do you think today's surprise lesson is going to be?" Theo DuMedd, our class's Head Boy asked me over breakfast.

"With luck, something less explosive than the last one," I replied. "I'm still wondering if that 'malfunctioning clank boiler' was someone's idea of a surprise exam, or an assassination attempt."

"You are such a paranoid!" Sleipnir cheerfully snarked.

"I'm from the Germanic Wastelands, remember?" I shot back. "Things were really tense there before the Baron finally pacified the region."

"Wait, you're German?" asked Tarvek curiously. "Then why is your name 'Jonathan Fairchild'?"

"Two questions, one answer," I replied matter-of-factly. "British mother."

The rest of the table nodded matter-of-factly at that explanation as if it made sense, but I was taking especial care to watch Tarvek and Gil for their reactions. And... all right, Gilgamesh only looked mildly confused at that, so presumably his father hasn't told him about his roommate's true parentage. If he had, Gil would be sweating more because I'd basically just outright confessed that at least one of my parents was in the Black Mist Raiders...

... there we go, Tarvek is trying his best to hide a start of realization. Not that he's figured out everything - it would take telepathy for him to have done that. But he's the only one sitting at this table already worldly enough to know that it was ninety-nine out of a hundred that the only reason a British woman would have travelled far enough to be living that far into Europa at all, let alone been living in the Germanic Wastelands, is if they'd been a pirate. And if you were pirating and pillaging in that region at any time in the past twenty years then you'd been been at least affiliated with the Black Mist Raiders. Or else you'd have been dead.

Now, given that this is Tarvek Sturmvoraus we're talking about here it wouldn't matter if he didn't have the faintest idea what this piece of information could possibly be useful for. Tarvek would still try to find a way to use it, because he'd use anything to get a step ahead. And, of course, if you're busy trying to manipulate someone then you've put yourself within range to be manipulated.

And there we go, Grandma's Scheming is already hard at work. It's really eerie to catch yourself thinking in a particular manner without any effort, as if you'd been doing it all your life, when you knew perfectly well that a day before you hadn't had the slightest clue about manipulating people like this.

Not that I had more than the vaguest idea what goal I was scheming towards either, given that I'd barely been here two hours. Still, given the truly gargantuan amount of madness and disaster lurking in this world and just waiting for a chance to break loose, I might as well get started as early as I can.

* * * * *​

The problem with using meta-knowledge is that when you're almost a decade before the main plot starts and dealing with the main characters when they're still children is that you overestimate them. Because sure enough, Tarvek figured out part of my secret...

... and used it for nothing more ambitious than the purpose of blackmailing me to not report when him and Gil snuck off into other parts of the Castle to go have adventures. As if I'd ever done that before!

Great. A simple child-like plan that simply puts me back on the sidelines instead of setting up something significant enough to require prolonged and subtle interaction with Tarvek by which I could manipulate him.

Which means they're still on track to go poking into Gil's alleged family records, actually the fakes the Baron set up, and for Tarvek to get his ass tossed out of the Castle because he's just smart enough to sense that the records are fakes and just stupid enough to actually say this out loud in front of the Baron. Which sends him back to Sturmhalten, estranges him from his best friend Gil for years, and helps set up much of the shit that goes wrong with the rest of the series.

But it's still not a disaster. Well-Seasoned plus Grandma's Scheming meant that I'd already known back when I started this scheme that people were never entirely predictable, which is why I'd had a plan B. Plan B wasn't plan A because its a little unsubtle in parts, but it still works because now that Gilgamesh is aware via Tarvek that I've got something piratical about my background I don't want publicly known then that opens up a possible line of dialogue via which I can get the objective done anyway.

As any student of Half-Life lore knows, the G-Man's favorite way to manipulate situations was not to work on making specific people do specific actions. It was to take people and put them where the situation at hand was such that a person's own natural reactions and inclinations would lead straight towards where the G-Man wanted them to go. He manipulated Alyx by first setting up a situation where she'd think she was releasing the legendary Gordon Freeman, and then by putting here where and when she could watch her father die and then hint that she had the power to save him which of course she would. He manipulated Gordon Freeman simply by pulling him out of time dropping him into the middle of the conquered Earth in City 17 and making sure that one of the first Combine Metrocops he'd run into was Barney, who'd take Gordon to the Resistance, who he'd help because the Combine was already trying to kill him by then.

And yes my 'Benefactor' had said that he'd only chosen to appear as the G-Man and wasn't actually him, so extrapolating from Half-Life lore to the reality of my situation was speculative at best. Of course, this entire thing was speculative at best. The range of possibilities for my situation ranged from 'Matrix simulation' to 'reverse double quadruple bluff' to 'exactly as things appear and no more'. So for right now I was going to start from the working assumption that my 'Benefactor' had chosen that guise to appear in because it was a huge hint, and go from there.

So what had he put me here to do? And assuming that I could even figure it out, then did I actually want to do it?

Of course, I knew I could be over-analyzing it. Unlike Half-Life this Jumpchain scenario was one where I'd be going to a lot of new places, and getting new powers and skills grafted on all the time. It's entirely possible that the whole 'What is he setting me up to do here?' was just a giant magician's hand waving to distract me from the possibility that this jump wasn't so much about what I'd be doing as what I'd start becoming.

After all, I already knew he'd mandated that I get The Spark. This is in fact why I'd passed up a clear shot at being a Second Breakthrough Spark, because while going from zero to eldritch demigod with vaguely defined abilities and no clear upper limit might have been a viable shot at starting a path towards escaping the chain... it might also have been exactly what my 'Benefactor' might have been hoping for, as 'trick me into evolving into an Eldritch Abomination' might also have been on the menu. There were so many possible 'what ifs'... but the simple fact is, I didn't know. I'd have to have more contact with this 'Benefactor', note his reaction to different stimuli, before I could even start working out a possible model.

But I did already know some things. His form and mannerisms alone told me that. Either he knew enough about Earth culture to know how unsettling he was, which meant that he was choosing a deliberately sub-optimal path to motivate me when a simple appearance of benevolence or whimsy would have been far more likely to get me to play along with whatever games he proposed without my suspicions being up. Or else he didn't know enough to know how creepily he was coming across. Or else he knew, but still wasn't able to portray human-like enough behavior to be reassuring. Several different possibilities but they all eventually led to the same result; however powerful my 'Benefactor' was, he was neither omnipotent nor omniscient.

Which was about the only thing giving me any hope at all.

Now as to my more immediate tactical problem, my attempt to manipulate young Tarvek and Gilgamesh into learning something about the meaning of the word "discretion" had fallen through on lap one. So I moved into the next layer of subtlety-

"Your father is the Baron, isn't he?" I asked Gil point-blank one day, as we stood isolated on one of the observation decks looking out over the cloud layer.

"Hah!" he laughed. "Did you hear that silly rumor going around too?"

I turned from where I'd been leaning on the railing and smiled slightly at him. "Okay, ten out of ten for keeping your poker face under fire. You even got the 'casually laughing as if you'd just heard something utterly absurd' down pat, and it is hard to fake one of those. Do you know where you screwed up?"

"Nowhere," Gil insisted seriously, "because my father isn't the Baron."

"You didn't rehearse your cover story beforehand," I continued as if he hadn't said anything. "Honestly, 'silly rumor'? You know perfectly well no such rumor's been 'going around'. If any of the status-obsessed in our class even suspected you were the young Wulfenbach they'd be hedging their bets, instead of snubbing you all the time. So not bad for off-the-cuff, but you really should have composed and memorized a plausible set of answers for various contingencies beforehand. Didn't your father drill you on this, or is he running a test and part of it is seeing if you can figure this much out for yourself?"

"What makes you think the Baron even has a secret son?" Gilgamesh continued with nary a quiver in his voice, still bravely trying to put me off the scent. Damn. His early training must have been even harsher than mine, given that the kid's only twelve right now.

"Because he's not an idiot?" I replied. "The man's got gray hair, but he's not even trying for an heir? You know perfectly well that the Fifty Families only just stopped sending him marriage offers in the past few years, and that only because he'd made it absolutely plain he was going to remain a bachelor to his grave. Which, given that he has all this-" I swept my hand dramatically around to take in the entire flying Castle and all the lands it surveyed from its 15,000 feet of altitude. "-to take care of means that either he wants the Pax Wulfenbach to fall apart the instant he dies, or else he's already got it taken care of. Honestly, if it wasn't for the problem most Sparks have with the more boring forms of logic I'd be amazed that nobody else has figured it out by now."

"But-" Gil desperately continued.

"Also you don't remotely act possessive about 'your' tools in the common laboratories or when people poke around your projects without permission, which means either your real laboratory is somewhere else on this airship or else you have a level of self-control achievable only by getting the Baron's mental-focus training at an earlier age anybody else in this school started receiving it - and either one of those 'ors' leads to the same place."

"Dammit!" Gilgamesh swore, finally dropping the act. "Do you have any idea how much trouble I'm going to be in? I wasn't supposed to let anyone figure it out!"

"Why else do you think I just let you know that I had figured it out?" I said. "Your father's probably not going to freak out that I clued in, given how much he's already got on me. But until after you know that I already know, I can't help you head off another upcoming threat to your cover."

"Wait, what does my father have on you?" Gilgamesh asked.

"And this is the part where I trade a secret for a secret. I think your father put us together because I'm the other student whose lineage records are completely falsified. My father is-"

"No, wait, let me guess!" Gil said eagerly. "Master Voltaire? No, he's openly raising his heir in his own city and there's nothing available in the Castle that couldn't already be done at least as well in Paris. One of the Heterodyne brothers? No, he'd have already used you to help tame the Castle. Maybe-"

"Petrus Teufel," I said flatly.

"-what?" Gilgamesh jawdropped.

"Exactly," I said. "I showed up shortly after your father had finally reduced the Black Mist redoubt in the Germanic Wastelands, remember? My cover story used the Purloined Letter tactic of hiding in plain sight when he passed me off as the son of an obscure minor Spark who'd had an early Breakthrough, only available now due to his army's sweep through the former Wastelands territory. But the truth is? The Baron could have me killed simply by tossing me out of the castle and speaking one sentence where any of the Fifty Families could hear it. If that ever happened, I'd be ducking half the assassins in Europa before the end of the week."

"Precisely," said the Baron's cold voice from directly behind us both, startling Gilgamesh. "So why were you foolish enough to provoke me so, Master 'Fairchild'?"

"So you did have him tagged with a listening device," I nodded, not having been surprised in the slightest. "Or you've got a good lip-reader among the people you've got following him around." I finished, as we both turned to face the formidable glower of Baron Klaus Wulfenbach, accompanied by half a dozen man-sized combat klanks. At his father's hand signal Gilgamesh immediately broke free from my side and jogged hurriedly to get behind the line of troops.

Hrm. The klanks are still at port arms, if he had heavy weapons in reserve outside the door he'd already have told Gil to leave the blast radius, and the Baron knows what my close-quarters combat training was. So it's a show of force and not an actual execution party. Not that I can't still get myself killed if I say the wrong thing, but the important part is that he hasn't already made up his mind.

"And it wasn't a provocation, it was a demonstration." I finished.

"You believe this arrogant display demonstrated usefulness?" the Baron said.

"My lord Baron, we both know I continue to breathe only on your sufferance," I said. "And we also know you didn't kill me as soon as you found me-"

"I do not murder children solely for the crimes of their forebears," he hissed at me, looking wicked pissed off and legitimately insulted.

"-for both that reason and at least one other," I finished. "Because while what you just said explains my survival, it doesn't explain why put me in the same room as your son. What you were expecting to have happen? And what led you to trust me to sleep only a few feet away from his neck before, but would change now that he knows more about the potential risk I might pose?"

"Valid points," the Baron acknowledged with a nod. "So, you deliberately revealed yourself to him so that you could draw me out and make a proposal to me?"

"Yes. And what I propose is, you let me train him."

"Indeed?" he said. "What could you train him in that I could not already find better instructors for?"

"You wouldn't make him join the student body disguised as someone at the absolute bottom of the social pecking order unless you wanted him to learn from the school of hard knocks," I said. "Been there, graduated that. And now that he knows my real past, I can share my lessons from it."

"Assuming I agreed, what were you thinking your first lesson to him would be?"

"Learning to hear when opportunity knocks and knowing how to take advantage of that. Because he's on the verge of missing a big one right now, and with respect, it looks like you are as well."

Gilgamesh finally couldn't take it anymore and burst out. "Missing what?" His father turned to glance at him disapprovingly, then turned back to face me.

"Tarvek Sturmvoraus" I said at his wordless inquiry. "Gil did good to spot him as the most important contact to cultivate in his class, but that whole thing is about to collapse. Sooner or later Tarvek's going to put together the same clues that led me to suspect Gil's true parentage-"

"That difficulty could be readily solved without you," the Baron cut me off.

"And where would you send him, back to Sturmhalten? Tarvek's one of the only students in our class that actually wants to be here, because he's figured out that this is where the next generation of Europe's destiny is intended to be forged. The rest of the noble scions on this boat are using the class one-upsmanship system to make enemies, not future friends. And with all that potential you'd just toss out the only one of the two claimants that the Storm King Conspiracy can use in this generation that's actually within your span of control-"

"The what conspiracy?" the Baron cut me off urgently.

I looked at him with affected puzzlement. "The... Storm King Conspiracy? The whole supposed prophecy about how a descendant of Andronicus Valois will one day marry a descendant of the Heterodynes and thus return true peace to Europa? If either Tarvek or his cousin Martellus finds a girl to marry after they grow up that could even be plausibly sold as the lost Heterodyne, genuine or not, then how much of Europa falls at their feet for the asking right there? Enough to give you a lot of trouble."

"And you know of this alleged conspiracy how, when I don't?"

"You don't?" I said in a nigh-perfect imitation of honest puzzlement. "I know about it because my father knew about it, of course. Not that he'd ever cared much, but what political education I'd managed to get before you smashed the Black Mist Raiders had brought it up once as an example of one of the many plots circulating around the Fifty Families. The sort of plots that sometimes provided Father with 'business opportunities' when they needed to rent deniable muscle in larger groups."

Baron Wulfenbach looked down at me expressionlessly for what seemed to be a very long time.

"Come with me."

* * * * *​

Author's Notes: Yes, he tested some of the limits of Long-Haul Mode by straight up killing himself. Part of that's his own overall desperation, part of that's the Sparkiness.

BTW, for those who were curious, John's backup plans for if this went to shit and the Baron went stupid was 'Jump over the railing and ride the mini-parachute in his pocket down in a HALO jump, then head for the Corbetite Railway with an eventual endpoint in either Paris or England.' But he plotted a <1% chance the Baron would go stupid.

Also, writing someone with his planning perks and Spacebattles Competence is an exercise. An exercise I willingly attempted, but it still got complicated after a while!

 

[cliffc999]

It was a couple months later that I was left staring down in horror at the sheer blasphemy of engineering that covered my workbench.

"STUPID MISERABLE PARTS! THE TENSILE COEFFICIENT IS ALL WRONG- NO I DON'T WANT TO AUGMENT THE RESONANCE CORE YOU IDIOTIC SUBCONSCIOUS, I WANT TO MAKE IT SO THAT THE DAMN SIGHTS DON'T SHAKE THEMSELVES LOOSE FROM THE RECOIL EVERY DOZEN SHOTS BECAUSE YOU CAN'T GET A DECENT SET OF-"

Sleipnir vigorously slapped me on the back of the head from the adjacent bench in the common lab area. "Hey, focus!" she said. "You're headed straight for another 'The countertop kept burning for three hours.' moment!"

"-thank you." I sighed heavily, yanking myself away from the bench with an effort and forcing my hands behind my back while I concentrated on my breathing exercises. "Dammit, it's getting worse recently. I used to have a better handle on it!"

"You've been a lot more frustrated recently," she pointed out. "But you're being too hard on yourself. Your new gauss rifle project is actually going really well!"

"It's crap!" I vented heatedly. "Oh sure, it puts out a nice kick but any two-bit madboy can do that. This weapon should be able to be marched a thousand miles through rain and snow, have a rucksack full of bricks fall on top of it, get dropped on sharp rocks, dunked underwater, used as a club, used as a prybar, and still be able to rapid-fire all 100 shots in the drum without jamming and without the sights coming loose and giving that damned 'pulling to the left' problem everybody uses as an excuse-"

"Um, you think you might be asking a little much there from a death ray?" Theo put in diffidently.

"-and be made entirely out of interchangeable parts and field-repairable by a half-trained monkey using only two rocks and the top of a tin can-"

"FOCUS!" Sleipnir screamed directly into my ear at point-blank range.

"... right." I said, shaking my head to try and get rid of the ringing. "And no, Theo, I'm not. Because that's the actual conditions the Baron's soldiers face in the field. Which means common enginering practice be damned, this thing needs to be rugged enough to be soldier-proof!"

"What, not Jager-proof?" he wisecracked.

"I'm a Spark, not a demigod," I joshed back. "Although to be fair the Jagers are actually a lot more careful with 'special' equipment than the line grunts."

"Well they've had a lot more practice with that kind of thing, given how long they worked for the Heterodynes," Gilgamesh broke in distractedly as he entered the room.

"Hey Gil!" everybody chorused. "Whoa, you look down," Sleipnir continued. "What's wrong?"

"It's Sturmhalten," he grumped, flinging himself down onto the corner of a lab bench.

"I thought the Baron had that all wrapped up," I asked, worried. "Did something go wrong?"

"What DIDN'T go wrong?" he yelled. "Because it turned out that Prince Aaronev had been working for the Other!"

"THE OTHER?!?" Sleipnir and Theo chorused in horror.

"Yeah," Gilgamesh said. "Apparently he'd been one of her servants the whole time but hadn't been exposed, so he just kept his head down after the war. So when the Baron went investigating that other conspiracy Jon's relatives had told him about they turned up the Prince had a Hive Engine in his basement and Geisterdamen hiding in the caves and everything. It was really bad. The Baron had to take an army up to Balan's Gap and occupy the entire town."

"But Tarvek's all right, isn't he?" I asked. "I know he left with the Baron when they went up to Sturmhalten, but I thought he'd be back by now."

"He... he has to be Prince of Sturmhalten now." Gil said depressedly.

"Ouch," Theo said. "So, was his father was one of those 'You'll-never-take-me-alive' types or-?"

"What about Princess Anevka?" I interrupted, sitting down next to Gil on the bench before flinching at the expression on his face. "Oh, damn. Didn't the Baron send in anyone to try and get her out before the assault?"

"It didn't work," Gil said, staring glumly down. "Prince Aaronev dragged her off and killed her, right before the Baron's troops caught up and killed him."

"Tarvek's dad was- and then he- even after he'd already lost- what the heck was wrong with that guy?" Sleipnir gasped out.

"My first guess would be, a lot," I said angrily, kicking the corner of the bench. "So when is Tarvek coming back here? I mean, God, his entire immediate family just murdered each other, he needs his friends-"

"You'd THINK, but no!" Gilgamesh shouted. "With his father dead now his grandmother gets to decide where he lives, and she's already written to say she wants Tarvek back with her in Paris right away. The Baron didn't have much choice. Tarvek doesn't even have time to come back to the Castle to get his things, we've got to make sure they're all boxed up and sent to him."

"Well, shit," I said. "I'm sorry, Gil. I didn't want this to happen."

"Hey, I'm plenty upset but it's not your fault Tarvek's dad was crazy evil," he answered back. "I mean, imagine how much trouble there'd have been later if nobody had found out about what he was doing!"

"Yeah," I said, softly. "Just imagine."

* * * * *​

And so the next several years passed. The revelation in Sturmhalten that revenants could look and act entirely human sent Baron Wulfenbach on a (very quiet and very carefully kept secret) rampage throughout the Empire, with the Vespiary Squad being expanded as much as possible and new wasp weasels being bred on an almost industrial scale. In cases like Sturmhalten where the entire town was lost the town was just placed under a military occupation cordon. Wasped people in other locales were resettled to isolated colonies under a cover story of an asymptomatic plague that was only intermittently contagious but that nobody still wanted to catch. Passholdt and several other 'shambler' revenant hives still got burned when and as where found. The Baron had burned the Summoning Engine and then invented a machine for burning things that had already been burned just so he could throw the ashes into it.

And the Storm King Conspiracy was still a major problem. When 'Grandmother' yanked Tarvek back to Paris right away the Baron was almost ready to openly defy her, but with the revelation of the Other dropping he felt he couldn't afford to fight a two-front war. And his entire 'School For Gifted Sparks' program would have fallen apart if it was too blatantly presented as a straightforward hostage kidnap. So since the Baron felt he couldn't afford the fallout of openly defying the most entrenched political manipulator among the Fifty Families on this issue while simultaneously trying to root out anything else The Other might have left buried in Europa, she'd managed to politically finesse things so that the Order of Jove got their hands back on their number one candidate for Storm King. Oh, 'Grandmother' had sent Tarvek back to the Castle later the following year... but only after having kept him long enough to have indoctrinated him with who-knows-what. He had of course been weasel-tested on his return to the Castle because that was SOP for anyone who came and went, up to the Baron himself, but there were more ways than just slaver wasps to get your hooks in someone.

I was interested to note that accompanying Tarvek as his 'servant' was a young Violetta, who'd apparently either not in been in Sturmhalten at the time or had somehow escaped it unwasped. And while he was more closed-mouth and uncommunicative with me and the rest of the students, him and Gil seemed to be reconnecting in private. So I could at least pray that Tarvek and Gil would end up as Politics Bros like they'd eventually become in the original timeline, because while they still potentially had Martellus in reserve and he wasn't that incompetent, he certainly wasn't as potentially threatening as the thoroughly patient, cunning, and utterly deceptive weasel that was his cousin.

But honestly? That wasn't my problem. I'd already done quite a bit to derail the upcoming literally apocalyptic Gambit Pileup that Europa would have experienced in canon by at least heading off the Lucrezia-in-Agatha's-head problem, the didn't-know-revenants-aren't-all-shamblers problem, and the Klaus-had-no-idea-what-the-Valois-families-were-up-to problem. The rest of it was going to be up to him to fix. He was the Baron, I just lived here.

Well, I'd ended up as an officer in the Baron's military because Klaus loved to put people where they were useful, and I'd made the mistake of showing enough talent to be seen as a viable alternative alongside Bangladesh DuPree. Not that she hadn't shown up and also gotten a job, because she had. And not that I could claim to be her equal as a fighter, because I couldn't... at least, not without notably more seasoning. But I was still good enough at fighting to be very very useful. In addition to being a military-oriented Spark, and one self-disciplined enough that the Baron didn't have any 'Only burn the villages I TELL you to burn, dammit!' problem with me. So, the man who always liked to pick the right monster for the job thrilled to the opportunity to employ a saner, less indiscriminate Teufel Jr. as one of his troubleshooting monsters. To be honest, I really should have seen that one coming sooner than I had.

Still, it's not as if I was bad at it or anything. Even if I didn't have any perks for military leadership the fact remained that I had the brilliance expected of a high-level Spark, a lot of useful individual and squad-level training to work from, a perfect memory, a 'always operate at peak performance' perk making me effectively a single-repetition learner, and some of the best instructors anywhere to learn tactics and command from, not least among them the Baron himself. So I settled on with the business of getting through the rest of the jump doing my job, being a valued contributor and a friend of Gil and the gang, and not assuming personal responsibility for any more plot lynchpins.

... well, that had been the plan at least.

"What's keeping the Aetheric Vapor Squad?" I shouted as I stood at the hastily-set-up command table in the war-torn wreck that was currently Beetleburg's market square. The airborne units had just finished bombing Dr. Beetle's tower-sized war klank into a flaming ruin, but I needed the firefighters to drop some cryogenic gas condensers on that mess right away before the prevailing winds set the eastern quarter ablaze. It was perhaps two or three years before canon would have otherwise started, and seven years into the jump, and my military duties had brought me to one of the last places in Europa I'd wanted to come.

"They are sailink into de vind," Jorgi, the seniormost of the contingent of Jagermonsters assigned to me for this mission, reminded me. "Hit's gon to be a coople more minutes."

"Of course it will." I said, turning to my next immediate problem. "Runner, what's the status of the blocking force at the northern gates?"

"The refugees are rushing the barricades and crowding the line of fire, sir," the uniformed soldier told me. "And somebody's throwing catalyst canisters to neutralize the C-gas. Captain asks if he has permission to fire-"

"That's what Beetle wants!" I cut him off firmly. "A propaganda atrocity he and whatever allies he had in this can milk with us cast as the brutal monsters! No, tell the captain to cut and run back out the gates. We'll let the refugees scatter into the outside and stop them at the secondary line. Jorgi! Two squads of your reserve to the north gate, for a standard 'rabbits-and-sack' sweep!"

"Yes zhir!" he snapped out, and a detachment of his Jagers peeled off and ran.

I turned to my first sergeant to handle my latest immediate problem. "Any word on the-"

"TAKE YOUR HANDS OFF ME!" a young woman's voice screeched out as she was dragged in by her elbows, and my first sergeant and I exchanged an eyeroll. I turned to face my latest latest immediate problem.

I turned to see a squad of foot soldiers approaching us dragging a wildly struggling woman along with them. She had her feet on the ground as she was only being half-dragged, half-walked, but I noted that their two largest men were both holding her by the elbows. One of them had a rather impressive black eye. I recognized her immediately. I'd known this meeting was inevitable the instant my job had led me to Beetleburg, even if I really hadn't been looking forward to it.

"Miss Agatha Clay?"

"YOU!" she screeched while levelling an outright death glare at me. "You're one of the Baron's officers. Why is he attacking the town? WHY DID YOU BLOW UP MR. TOCK AND SET EVERYTHING ON FIRE?!?"

I reached down on the table in front of me and quickly riffled through the papers on it until I came up with the photographs I wanted. Holding them up in front of her, I asked "Have you seen either of these people?" I said flatly.

"What- no! Now answer my ques-"

I sighed. "You have seen them. You're Dr. Beetle's personal assistant. You see all his visitors go in and out. Three days ago at least one of these two arrived-"

"I don't know what you think you're-"

"They were tired and disheveled. They'd obviously had a long journey. They needed to see Dr. Beetle immediately and were very insistent. They may or may not have left a name, but as soon as they got Dr. Beetle to come out and see them, he dropped everything to immediately rush them off to his private lab for a conversation. And you never saw them again and Dr. Beetle told you to forget everything and tell no one."

She stuck her lip out determinedly and said nothing. I debated approaching closer to loom over her intimidatingly, then looked again at the steel-toed safety boots she was wearing and decided against it.

"And both of them were fugitives, Miss Clay, wanted for knowing collaboration with the forces of the Other."

"The Other-?" Agatha answered me, shocked. "But- no! They're gone! And Dr. Beetle is a good man! He'd never work with anybody who'd do that! You have to be wrong! It has to be some kind of mistake!"

I sighed. "The man is Dr. Heinrich Zelnast, a Spark noted for his work in biological miniaturization. The woman is his chief assistant, Gilda Kotenberg. They were two of the people in a hidden facility in the mountains that had secretly been working on the construction of Hive Engines. My unit was sent to reduce the facility. Several people escaped our perimeter. I pursued the fugitives to here."

"Hive Engines-?" she asked me, shocked.

"Yes." I agreed. "We saw them. We captured them."

"But- Dr. Beetle can't have known they-"

"Miss Clay, Dr. Beetle and Baron Wulfenbach were old friends. Do you really think his first response would be to order the town assaulted? When I reported that the fugitives had been traced to Beetleburg, the first thing the Baron did was order me to tell Dr. Beetle the situation and seek his assistance." I pulled up another photograph from the papers on my improvised field desk and handed it to her, this one a simple mug shot off of a personnel file. "This was Corporal Albescu, the man I sent with that message. You would remember him visiting Dr. Beetle yesterday afternoon, dressed in a brown suit?"

"Yes, I do... wait, was?"

"He never returned." I said, closing my eyes briefly. "He was a knowing volunteer. He knew the risks. But we still didn't really expect-" I looked at her. "Dr. Beetle was knowingly harboring servants of the Other. And he was willing to kill the Baron's troops to preserve that secret. We found what was left of Corporal Albescu in one of the sump tanks at the University less than an hour ago."

"But he can't have-" Agatha looked at me, her eyes tearing up.

"Sir, Vapor Squad reports the fire's out!" my signalman called out from his nearby setup.

"Thank God," both Agatha and I sighed simultaneously. "Miss Clay," I continued gently. "I'm sorry, I truly am. I know the Doctor was like a father to you, and I really don't believe you had anything to do with what he's doing. If nothing else, very few people our age are that good at acting."

"Then why did your soldiers drag me here?" she said, flashing back to anger again.

"First off, because you're a witness," I pointed out. "Anybody who wants to claim Dr. Beetle never actually met those fugitives has to get rid of anybody who did see them enter, and that includes you. And even if you truly believe that Dr. Beetle would never harm you, remember that he's only one half of that equation. So yes, all my troops had a protective custody order out for you and had been shown your photograph!" I finished, raising my voice.

And also because the last thing I wanted was the universe's greatest chaos magnet wandering through here without my having at least some idea of where she was. In addition to the simple fact that if I'd suddenly neglected an obvious precaution like this I might as well have drawn a neon sign for the Baron leading directly to her.

"Okay, that makes sense," she said, starting to calm down. I took the opportunity to surreptitiously check that she was still wearing her locket and that it hadn't been already knocked off in all the street fighting and confusion. "And also because I am his assistant and so I might be in on it, so I get detained for questioning anyway?"

"Yes, and yes," I said. "And third, because I need you."

"For what?"

"Right now we've got Dr. Beetle in a barricaded stand-off in one of the laboratories," I said. "And you're perhaps the only person in town who can convince him that we're not going to kill him."

"You're not?" she said hopefully.

"He is one of the finest minds in Europe, and one of the Baron's oldest friends. Even if there has to be some type of punishment for what he's done, the Baron would much rather it not be the death penalty. But Beetle is panicking, and stubborn, and absolutely convinced we'll murder him on the spot if he surrenders."

"I'm not sure I'm convinced," she said.

"Miss Clay, Dr. Beetle is a powerful Spark who is currently desperate and panicking in the middle of a laboratory." I emphasized. "You haven't worked at TPU for this long without knowing what that combination means! So please explain to me why, if I'm not genuinely trying to take him alive, why I haven't just air-dropped ten tons of liquid nitrogen on the site already?!?"

"... that's a very good point," she conceded softly. "All right, take me to him."

"Ah, no no no, the negotiations will be conducted solely by speaker-phone and with you well out of rifle range," I said. "Beetle's not the only desperate and panicking person barricaded in there." I waved for my men to let go of her arms.

"Then take me to your-"

A tremendous roar punctuated with the sound of a crashing cart at the west entrance to the market square snapped everyone's head around, and I swore at my latest latest latest prob- a huge cloud of smoke suddenly engulfed that end of the street as the headquarters troops raced to deploy against the attack, and I faintly spotted a large silouhette in the smo- damn!

"GET DOWN!" I shouted, immediately tackling Agatha to the side. I got her on the deck and rolled off her to my feet just in time to avoid the person who'd damn near caved my skull in with a leaping sidekick. I mean, yes I knew perfectly well Judy had been aiming at me and not Agatha but I had a cover to keep here!

"Lilith?" Agatha shrieked in confusion from where she lay on the ground, as my attacker landed on the balls of her feet and turned to face me. "No, wait, stop!" she called to me as I drew my sword and pistol. "It's my mother!"

"Agatha, RUN!" Judy, aka 'Lilith Clay', shouted while staring at me in suicidal determination. "It's not safe here-"

"Hyu gots dot right, sveethot!" Jorgi said, moving in to flank her with several of his compatriots. "Hyu tink ve're dot easy to fool vit de old diversionary explosion trick? Und now ve- Miss Judy?" he said confusedly, finally realizing who he was talking to. "Vot der dumboozle are hyu doink here?"

... and so much for that cover!

"Judy?" I said, pretending to be surprised. "And the Jagers know you? Do you mean Punch and-"

"You didn't know?" Judy said, staring at me in shock. "Then why did you-"

"Know WHAT?!?" Agatha screeched, as she painfully got back to her feet. "Why are you all fighting? Why is there a whole damn war going on? What is-" she stopped and swayed on her feet, clutching her head painfully. "Oh, not now-" she moaned and almost fell. Both Judy and I reached Agatha simultaneously and each grabbed one of her forearms to help steady her, while staring daggers at each other at nose-to-nose distance.

"Thiz iz gon to be vun avkvard conversation, hy am thinking." one of the other Jagers muttered behind us.

* * * * *​

Author's Note: Yes, he invented the spark-clank version of the AK-47, in magnetic coil-gun format. It's called the 'Fairchild Rifle' now, and its standard military issue throughout the Wulfenbach Empire and being adopted elsewhere.

I would yet again like to thank the Jagerspeech Translator for its invaluable services.

 

[cliffc999]

Agatha POV:

I threw myself back onto the giant feather bed in my guest suite on Castle Wulfenbach, stuck my head under the pillows, and groaned. After the whirlwind of everything that had happened recently I desperately needed to take some time to try and process. Because how did you even begin to describe the day I'd just had?

Adam and Lilith had been impossibly difficult about allowing Captain Fairchild to take us to the Castle. It's like they'd thought he was going to murder me or something! But their pleas that Dr. Beetle had told them the Baron was secretly the Other weren't very convincing. Not after it had been revealed that Dr. Beetle had been had actually been cooperating with servants of the Other and yet was obviously an enemy of the Baron. I'd seen the miniaturized Hive Engine he'd had stashed in his labcoat pocket with my own two eyes when we finally captured him. If Dr. Beetle was working with the Other's organization and the Baron was the Other, then the Baron wouldn't have needed to attack Beetleburg. Ergo, Dr. Beetle was lying.

I felt the tears starting to leak from my eyes as it begin to sink in just how much of my life had been a lie. The kindly old man who'd taken in a useless girl with a brain problem had actually been a scheming old man who'd only been keeping me around for some kind of sinister plan. And it obviously must have been a very sinister plan, because the Jagermonsters were all absolutely insistent that I was the lost Heterodyne!

Me! Agatha the klutzy lab assistant? The lost Heterodyne heir? It sounded so absurd!

... except it didn't.

Dr. Beetle had put up with a lot from me from without any complaint at all, and had put an equally great effort into keeping me concealed and yet always within his immediate reach. No one exercised that sort of forbearance and expense for so long without ether great affection or great need. And the instant that Hive Engine came out of his pocket and showed Dr. Beetle's true character that entirely voided the 'affection' hypothesis, meaning there had to have been some much greater significance to me than I'd known.

So between that and the Jagermonsters identification of me, and more importantly of Adam and Lilith, it had to be true. I could maybe write off the whole 'it's her scent!' thing as wishful thinking or mistaken identity but everyone knew that the Jagers lived for centuries. They would have all been there in Mechanicsburg when Punch and Judy were originally constructed. If a Jager officer identified my foster parents as people he'd personally known twenty years ago then Q.E.D., they were incontrovertibly the real Punch and Judy. Which meant that 'Uncle Barry' must have indeed been Barry Heterodyne, and my real parents had indeed been Bill Heterodyne and Lucrezia Mongfish.

Augh!

My teeth gritted in rage as I reminded myself of yet another betrayal that had come from those I'd trusted. That damnable, damnable locket! As soon as I'd mentioned that it contained a photograph of my real parents, Captain Fairchild had made the entirely sensible suggestion that I give the locket to one of the Jagers and see if they could identify the people in it. Sure enough, as soon as I'd handed it to them Jorgi had unhesitatingly confirmed that it was a photograph of the real Bill and Lucrezia.

But then a cornerstone of the world had dropped out from under me when Captain Fairchild had made the observation while handing it back to me that my locket was suspiciously heavy to just be a photo keepsake. So we'd taken a closer look at it and found an almost impossibly-fine seam running down the back, and when we'd pried it open and had a look at the secret mechanisms we'd found inside... well, my own studies at Transylvania Polygnostic had let me identify what was some kind of ultra short-range etheric transmitter. Captain Fairchild had been able to go further - I hadn't even imagined that he was such a strong Spark in addition to being one of the Baron's most trusted military officers at his age! - and work out that it must almost certainly have been some kind of brainwave interference engine. And after he pointed it out, I'd seen for myself that he was right.

Brainwave interference engine. And ever since I'd put that locket on as a little girl, I'd always been having those headaches. And I'd always get those seizures whenever I'd been thinking too hard-

AND THEY MUST HAVE KNOWN! THEY MUST HAVE KNOWN THE ENTIRE TIME!

My own Uncle Barry had built that torture device and locked me into it, and Adam and Lilith had always been so insistent that I should never take it off- I'd never have even taken it off to show the Jagers if I hadn't been feeling just a little rebellious over how they had never told me who my real parents were! How could they do this to me? They were my family! But now I was glad I'd let Captain Fairchild keep the locket after we'd figured out during the ride up to Castle Wulfenbach that it was doing something to me and take it away for the Baron to examine. I'd kept the photograph to re-mount into a different locket later when I had the time, but I never wanted to see that accursed thing again!

No, at this point I was more than willing to take my chances with Baron Wulfenbach. Even if he threw me out of this airship to my death as soon as he met me, that would still be more honesty than I'd gotten from my own foster parents for the past twelve years. At least the Baron would be stabbing me in the front.

There was a knock on the door. "May I come in?" I heard an unfamiliar man's voice ask.

"I'm decent!" I said, rolling out of bed and to my feet. I had both hands in my hair frantically trying to smooth out my cowlick when the door opened and eep!

None of the stories or plays had ever really mentioned how large he was. Baron Klaus Wulfenbach, tyrant of Europa, the most powerful and feared Spark on the continent, stood looming in the doorway at me and he was enormous! I'd admittedly seen larger - Adam was at least as tall and even wider - but Adam was a construct. I'd never have imagined that a normal man could be seven feet tall and built like a brick wall, but- goodness, it was certainly much more obvious to me now how this man had conquered a continent-

"You look so much like your mother," he said, his low rumbling voice coming out as surprisingly gentle. I got the distinct impression that normally his mouth was a perpetual frown but that right now it was trying and failing to not-frown.

"Uh, thank you, Herr Baron?" I said hesitantly.

"Welcome to Castle Wulfenbach," he said formally. "Allow me to make my intentions clear from the outset - you are my honored guest, and the daughter of one of my oldest friends, and you will be shown every courtesy. But it would be very unsafe for you to leave my protection."

"With all due respect, sir, that still presents far too much like 'You're actually a prisoner but I'm too urbane to say so'," I heard Captain Fairchild's voice from out in the hallway with a surge of relief. "What he means, Agatha, is 'You're the Heterodyne Heir and there's a whole lot of nasty intrigue from the great noble families of Europe that will come flocking to that very soon, so this is about the only place your real last name wouldn't make you a prisoner.'"

"Thank you, Captain," the Baron said with a long-suffering sigh similar to one I remembered Dr. Beetle making at so many faculty meetings, before turning back to me. "But he is correct. My greatest wish is to keep you safe. The wishes of quite a few others that would involve themselves as soon as your existence became known would be much less respectful of your dignity."

"Are my parents- my foster parents all right?" I asked him, to see him give another weary sigh and clench the bridge of his nose.

"They had to be placed under sedation," the Baron said disappointedly. "Apparently they had only surrendered in the first place in the hopes of breaking out and 'rescuing' you from here the instant that we lowered our guard."

"Oh no, I thought they'd calmed down!" I said distressedly, as the Baron stepped aside slightly to allow Captain Fairchild to enter the room. "Captain, did you have to-?"

"Knockout gas," Captain Fairchild reassured me. "Right now they're just sleeping it off. But I'm not looking forward to when they wake back up."

"You used the reinforced prisoner quarters?" the Baron questioned him.

"I used the Othar suite, sir." he replied. "And the reinforced electro-point inhibitors."

"That should suffice," the Baron nodded. "I will be down to speak with them as soon as Miss Heterodyne and I have finished our conversation. I want to know where my friends have been all these years, and who has poisoned their minds against me and why."

"Errr... none of that you mentioned actually hurts, does it?" I asked them.

"No," they both replied in chorus, and I sighed in relief.

At the Baron's wave I accompanied them out into the hall, and was pleased to see that Jorgi and several of his Jagers were also in the party. One of them tried to speak to me only to have Jorgi cuff him and loudly whisper "Shot op! De Baron is talkink! Ve greet de Lady later!"

"So... what happens now?" I asked the Baron as we walked towards, well, wherever we going.

"I maintain a school for younger Sparks onboard the Castle," the Baron explained. "Many of the finest young minds in Europe all live and work here. I anticipate that you will fit in well among them while we wait to see what effects your emergence has on the political landscape of Europa."

"It's a very nice place," Captain Fairchild reassured me. "I got my start with the Baron studying there."

"Um... sir, I'm not a Spark." I told him worriedly.

The Baron shook his head as he paced steadily along ahead of us. "I am certain that you are. My own examination of the device that Barry had given you told me that not only is its intended function is to suppress a Spark's breakthrough, but that a non-Spark could not wear it for any length of time without catastrophic side effects. Think back to the day your uncle first gave it to you. Were you feeling particularly exhilirated? Had you been having an inspiration, or attempting to build anything?"

"I can barely even remember that far back, but-" I felt my eyes widen so far that I imagined I looked like a squirrel in spectacles.

"That looks like a 'yes' to me," the Captain said. "And at age five? That's the earliest Breakthrough anyone's ever heard of. I'm one of the strongest Sparks in Europa and I didn't pop until I was almost eleven. The Baron's own son only broke through at age eight."

"Really?" I asked him, suddenly fascinated. "What age did the Baron break through at?"

"Hrmph!" a very impressive throat-clearing interrupted us.

"He never tells anyone," Captain Fairchild said to me in a deliberately hammy prison-whisper, and the Baron harrumphed again. I tried not to giggle.

"I can only imagine your feelings of betrayal," the Baron broke in, speaking evenly, "but in Barry's defense, many young Sparks die during their first breakthrough. Either from their own creations that they do not yet have the knowledge to build in a safe manner, or simply from not being old enough to withstand the strain of such concentrated thought."

"Not to mention that you don't have to be a Heterodyne to be a target for a lot of nasty people when you're a young Spark with no protectors," the Captain said. "After having had a while to think it over I can figure out why your uncle put that amulet on you when you were young. What I can't figure is why they never took it off."

"Maybe he would have... if he'd ever come back," I said sadly.

"Almost certainly," the Baron said in what was attempting to be reassurance. "Barry was never a cruel man, especially not to children. But Punch and Judy...?" he trailed off with puzzlement.

"I can't figure it either, sir. Obviously I never knew them personally as you did, but even I know they were built as free-willed constructs. They don't have to obey orders, and they have as much intelligence and judgment as any other person." I felt a warm little glow of respect as I heard those words leave the Captain's mouth. "So why didn't they take it off when Agatha was old enough to understand and control herself, and when it was so obviously hurting her?"

"One of the very many questions I have as yet unanswered," the Baron agreed. He then paused and turned back to look at me as if suddenly struck by a new thought. "Ah- would you wish to be present when I speak to them?" he asked.

"I- I don't think I can face them right now," I said. "This is all still such a rush to me."

"I can only imagine," the Baron said, turning to resume our progress. "Now, to business. As of yet your identity should not be public knowledge. Captain?"

"Only us present, 'Adam and Lilith', and Jorgi and his Jagers know the whole story," Captain Fairchild confirmed. "But several of the individual puzzle pieces are unavoidably out. For one, we can't conceal that I personally ran her back to the Castle at top speed and left all the mop-up to the under-officers."

"Our cover story for that will be that she was Dr. Beetle's secret protege, and you felt that her combination of a strong Spark talent and her possible complicity in Dr. Beetle's plot required my personal attention. Having rapidly cleared her of any complicity, I then gave her a position in the Castle's school. Any tales from Beetleburg about her alleged lack of talent will almost certainly be written off as a deception of Beetle's."

"So she'll be enrolled in school as 'Agatha Clay', not 'Agatha Heterodyne'?" the Captain asked. I was beginning to realize that much of this conversation was being... could I call it staged for my benefit if they were still saying true things? Arranged, perhaps.

"Yes. We will of course plan for the worst-case eventuality that her true identity is leaked soon, as so many other things around here regretfully do. But we will not make the announcement ourselves until we absolutely have to. In that light, 'Miss Clay', I request that you do not share your true identity with anyone save myself, the Jagers, Captain Fairchild, or my principal assistant Boris who will be introduced to you in the fullness of time. Everyone else is only to be allowed your cover story."

"And Gilgamesh, sir?" the Captain asked.

"Valid point, he needs to know as well," the Baron agreed. "But impress upon him that he is not to share that knowledge with Prince Sturmvoraus without my permission. Nor are any of you."

"Yes sir," the Captain and I chorused. "Who's Gilgamesh?" I asked him quietly in an aside.

"The Baron's son," the Captain replied equally quietly. "He's coming back from the university in Paris- wait, isn't that today?" he said more loudly.

"It is," the Baron agreed. "Barring a shift in the winds he should be here in slightly over an hour."

"Just enough time for Agatha to meet everybody else and get freshened up," Captain Fairchild said reassuringly as we approached another hatch. "And, here we are!" he said, stepping forward to turn the wheel and pull the hatch cover open.

A red-headed woman about my age in a pair of greasy overalls and holding a wrench poked her head out. "Hey, Jonathan!" she greeted Captain Fairchild enthusiastically. "Where have you been? And- oh! Herr Baron!" she said, suddenly spotting all the rest of us.

"Miss O'Hara," he returned her greeting with a nod. "This is Agatha Clay. She will be our latest student."

"Hello Agatha!" she said cheerfully, sticking our her hand for me to shake. "Sleipnir O'Hara. I'm the official greeter for this little madhouse in the sky. Welcome aboard!"

"Hello!" I said politely, shaking her hand back.

"Captain, if you wish to get re-acquainted with your friends you may stay here with them until after my son returns. We will resume our business later this afternoon."

"Sir!" Captain Fairchild acknowledged him, and the Baron left with most of the Jagers. Sleipnir let me and Jonathan inside and my eyes opened as I saw a large common room absolutely bustling with people. People my age, people barely old enough for secondary education, even small childr-

The most terrifying construct I had ever seen suddenly confronted me. She was a blond woman with fangs and a mechanical eye, dressed in a black leather uniform and claw-like fingernails poking out from black gloves.

"Who are you?" her voice rasped at me, as my hair stood on end with fright.

"Von Pinn, this is Miss Agatha Clay," Captain Fairchild said formally. "She is the Baron's honored guest and to be enrolled as a student with all due privileges."

"I see. Very well, Agatha Clay. You are a student, and so are under my protection." At her words I began to wish that I had slightly fewer terrifying people so interested in protecting me. "But that does not permit you to flout the rules. You will be expected to behave properly."

'Welcome to the Baron's School For Gifted Sparks,' I heard Jonathan drawl ironically. "Student discipline is enforced on a carrot-and-stick system. We have entire labs full of carrots, but only one stick."

"That is because I am all the "stick" that is necessary, Mister Fairchild. And I am disappointed to see that you still think you are funny."

"I love you too, fright night," Jonathan snarked. My eyebrows raised at this sudden shift in his demeanor. Where was the formal military man or the measured, intelligent advisor to the Baron?

"Hrmph." Von Pinn sniffed at him. "I must go supervise the preparations for Master Gilgamesh's return. We will speak later, Miss Clay." The room quietly held their breath until she'd left.

"Errrr... who was that?" I asked no one in particular.

"The Baron's nanny construct," a handsome young dark-skinned man in glasses answered me. "Now she's the supervisor of the student dorms. Oh, I'm Theo DuMedd."

"Theo's our Head Boy," Sleipnir broke in.

"Wait, the Baron was raised by her?" I asked him. "Wow. Suddenly everything makes so much more sense!"

"Oh no, she didn't raise him... I think." Theo replied, as if suddenly struck by a thought. "But now that you mention it, none of us know exactly when the Wulfenbachs made her..."

"Oooh! New theory! New theory!" the younger children chorused eagerly.

"Put it on the blackboard!" Theo agreed with them. "We'll discuss the feasibility of the hypothesis and do a systematic review later tomorrow!"

"So, introductions!" Sleipnir said. "Now this is-"

Jonathan POV:

I stepped quietly back and let Agatha get sucked into the whirl of new student socializing while I took a deep breath and tried to relax. I'd been improvising desperately ever since 'Lilith Clay's' foot had gone past my head in Beetleburg, trying to moderate the detonation of this incoming nuclear drama bomb to a slow fizzle. It had mostly gone as I'd hoped...

Because I had not wanted this to happen. I'd groaned inwardly the instant that I'd noticed my fugitives were heading for Beetleburg. I'd honestly debated 'failing' to catch them except that I couldn't possibly allow Dr. Zelnast to run free with a miniaturized Hive Engine in his pocket of all things. But taking the troops to Beetleburg meant far too high a risk of dragging 'Agatha Clay' into the plot.

My first hope, that Beetle wasn't actually cooperating with the servants of the Other and his whole thing with that other Hive Engine in canon had just been an excess of stupid Spark curiosity, was dashed when my courier didn't return alive. At this point Plan 'Let Beetle Catch The Fugitives And We Never Have To Enter Beetleburg In Force At All' flopped.

As soon as I'd committed to taking down Dr. Beetle and occupying a rebellious town, I had to at least meet Agatha. Mysteriously failing to think that Beetle's own personal assistant shouldn't even be questioned officially would have drawn a giant neon sign in the sky saying "PEOPLE ARE UP TO SOMETHING CLANDESTINE HERE AND SHE'S AT THE CENTER OF IT". And the Baron's attention was the exact thing I was trying to avoid drawing to her. Left to my own devices I'd have 'arrested' her, 'questioned' her, and released her to be nothing more than one of the many people that your standard follow-up to this sort of operation had to question. Oh, I'd have tried to tag the radiations from Agatha's amulet so I could track her down later if it turned out I needed to, but I'd certainly have never willingly dumped her headlong into the plot now. Especially not since we...

... well, I wasn't sure if we had the Other's cultists in Europe on the run, but we at least had them running differently. It was anybody's guess how many of them had been waiting and lurking like Aaronev Sturmvoraus in canon, but we seemed to be turning up a bumper crop of them under every new rock we flipped. I'd been wondering for a while if I'd derailed canon in a worse direction than a better one, but its not like I had any way of knowing at this point.

As for the Agatha matter, plan 'Fail To Notice She's The Lost Heterodyne' failed the instant Punch and Judy's attempted rescue blew the whole thing wide open for the Jagers. At this point I couldn't pretend any longer; the Baron was too impressed with my competence and intelligence for me to get away with making any obvious "mistakes".

So now I was reduced to triage mode of the triage mode of the triage mode, and simply trying to stage-manage things so that Baron Wulfenbach and Agatha Heterodyne actually cooperated some instead of being the chemical mixture that created nothing but chaos in canon. The lack of a special slaver wasp for Sparks around here should hopefully go a long way to that end, ditto the destruction of the Summoning Engine in Sturmhalten so that Agatha doesn't end up with a copy of her mother jammed in her head. Managing to Littlefinger the whole locket sequence into being on the airship ride back here had taken some of the best split-second timing of my career but it had worked; it left Agatha feeling temporarily alienated from and betrayed by her foster family and so allowing her to approach her first meeting with the Baron with an open mind, instead of locked into an 'us vs. him' mindset.

Likewise, the locket's revelation before they'd actually first met let the Baron's first impression of Agatha be as the daughter of an old friend who had been ill-treated by the world and was in need of protecting, as opposed to a dangerous and charismatic potential threat to his Empire. Klaus Wulfenbach might be horrible at knowing how to person sometimes but his protective instincts were a thing out of legend. If you were somebody he saw it as his duty to shelter, he'd burn down Hell to keep you safe. So...

... that would probably still strike sparks later when Agatha started shedding the early meekness that spending her entire childhood believing herself to be nothing more than a pity case with a learning disability had left her with and started getting into "I am the Lady Heterodyne!" mode and thus would start stifling at being protected. But at least I'd still be inside her circle of trust then-

I looked up to notice that Agatha and Sleipnir were sitting together with heads bowed toward each other whispering and giggling. Good, she was making friends here. And... wait, is Sleipnir pointing at me-?

Oh, no.

No, no, no, no, oh God damn it, oh hell to the fucking NO!

I'd shown up in Agatha's life at a tumultuous time. I'd originally been seen as one of the people keeping her prisoner, but then I was polite and treated her more respectfully as a person than anyone outside her own family had done. I then asked for her help with an important task, and then I'd protectively tackled her as apparent danger threatened, and then we got caught up in a whirl of action and misunderstanding-

Gods fucking dammit, I'd somehow managed to exactly restage her first meeting with Gilgamesh in the canon and without even TRYING to! Now I'm turning into the love interest!

My last desperate denial of this possibility evaporated when as I determinedly pretended to be catching up on old times with Theo, I wandered near enough to eavesdrop on what they were saying-

"Oh, and then he came up with the automated folding bridge-layer, after all his work with ultra-efficient diesel engines and his revolutionary new method of calculating tread pressure and armored vehicle profile! Really, his inventions have improved the Empire's military equipment everywhere from airships to communications to land tanks. His work is all very martial and practical, no flashy Sparkiness for him, but he's still very talented-"

Nope. They're definitely talking girl talk about me. And Sleipnir's deliberately talking me up.

Right. Now I had to get Agatha and Gilgamesh introduced to each other as soon as was humanly possible. And then I needed to get them together in his private lab and weld the doors. And then I needed to get myself assigned to a new mission on the far side of Albania for the next several years.

Because I was not going to end up dragged into the full-scale whackiness that was the main plot of 'Girl Genius!' I might have repeatedly blown my 'Stay as low profile as possible!' strategy by consistently failing upward until I'd reached a position in the Baron's forces as senior as Bangladesh DuPree's had been in canon, but as God was my witness I would fail upward no further!

... oh, who was I kidding? Unless I jumped out of this airship to my death right now, I was doomed.

Fuck. Now I really regretted having wasted my Benefactor's patience on that earlier suicide attempt.

* * * * *​

Author's Note: Will our hero manage to escape the designing clutches of the sinister Heterodyne Heir? Will he manage to avoid gaining yet another promotion he doesn't really want? Will poor Gilgamesh get any real protagonist time in this farce at all? And will the author actually manage to deliver a satisfying conclusion eventually to all this build-up? Tune in to find out on the next installment of Agatha Heterodyne, Girl Genius!

 

[cliffc999]

Jonathan POV:

My plan to get Agatha and Gil introduced to each as soon as possible ran into the slight snag that introductions to the student body and settling in had ran slightly overlong, meaning that we got left behind as all the other older students ran out to the docking bay to welcome Gil back from Paris while Agatha had to stay behind for a quick scrub and comb. As the Baron's 'permission' for me to 'stay behind and reconnect' with my friends had actually been more of an order not to let Agatha out of my sight until further notice, that meant I had to stay behind too.

So we were about ten minutes behind everyone else as we rushed down the hallways to where Gil's airship would be arriving. Still, we'd at least had the serendipitous effect of missing most of the unofficial welcoming ceremony and arriving just as everybody else had started to disperse back to lessons. Gil and Tarvek were trailing along cheerfully behind the crowd, accompanied by their respective bodyguards Bangladesh DuPree and Violetta Mondarev.

"Gil! Tarvek! Over here!" I said, waving to them as Agatha and I jogged forward.

"There you are!" Gilgamesh said, his party stopping and letting everyone else keep heading on in as our two groups met a little ways away from the tail end of the passenger airship he'd arrived on. "I'd have thought you'd be first one to greet us off the ship! Father's still got you running around nonstop?"

"You don't know the half of it," I agreed, greeting two of my oldest friends aboard this airship. "Oh, introductions! Gil, Tarvek, this is Agatha Clay, our latest student. Agatha, this is the Baron's son Gilgamesh Wulfenbach and our best friend, Prince Tarvek Sturmvoraus."

"Charmed, Miss Clay," Tarvek said, smiling and slightly bowing in the Parisian fashion. "Jonathan, I'd thought you'd said you were going to come visit us again in Paris?" Tarvek asked. "You made it out there far too seldom-"

"Above us!" Violetta yelled, as Bang cursed under her breath at having missed first spot by being caught looking the other way at the time. Gil, Tarvek, and I instantly fell into position surrounding Agatha in a protective triangle formation with Bang and Violetta as flankers as we all reacted to the sudden movement she'd spotted coming down from off the tail boom of the airship. I'd just finished drawing my one-shot pneumatic driver tube when Tarvek, who'd been standing closest to the assailant's landing point, landed a beautiful haymaker directly into the gut of the leaping man and sent him flying off the end of the landing ramp and out into the open air.

"FOUL!" boomed Othar Tryggvassen's stentorian voice as he dopplered off into the distance and began his latest high-altitude skydive.

"Oh my God, you killed him!" Agatha shouted, raising her hands to her face in horror as we all looked out at Othar's departure vector.

"Nah, he's fine!" Bang said cheerfully. "That guy falls thousands of feet all the time!"

"He's got some kind of Spark anti-fall technology we've never been able to reverse-engineer," I reassured Agatha. "This must be the fifth time we've thrown him off the Castle."

"Speaking of that, isn't there still a capture order out on Othar?" Gil asked. "And we just launched him instead? I wouldn't want either of you guys to get in any trouble-"

"No worries," I said as I reholstered my knockdown launcher. "I'd have had to throw Othar off the Castle if nobody else had. We'd just rented out his room."

"Is this... how things normally are around here?" Agatha asked us as we turned and started walking back into the main airship body.

"No, usually things are more fun!" Gil said outrageously, and Agatha tried to stifle a chuckle as she rolled her eyes. Good! Yes! Meet-cute! Bonding! Keep doing that!

"Have you and Agatha been friends for very long?" Tarvek probed as we kept walking along.

"Actually we only met this morning," I said, before continuing more seriously. "And it was a very stressful morning."

"That's an understatement," Agatha gushed, nodding vigorously as everything began to sink in on her again. "I wouldn't even begin to know how to put it-"

"She was Dr. Beetle's unknowing ward/hostage who I brought here after we had to occupy Beetleburg due to the Doctor having turned up as working with the Other's conspiracy," I laid out. "Agatha's entirely innocent, but there's still some security issues because we don't know exactly what Beetle was setting her up for later or who else might still be trying."

"-but that sums it up." she finished, deadpan.

"I see that the Fairchild gift for summarizing complex situations into pithy phrases has only improved with time." Gil twitted me. "Like an old stinky cheese!" he finished, poking my shoulder.

"I really have missed you guys," I poked him back, indulging in a rare moment of relaxation.

"Well of course you have," Tarvek joshed back, preening like a cat. "Who could possibly live without such refined perfection in their lives?" He deliberately paused for a beat-

"And my court jester, of course!" Gil and I chorused smugly an instant before he could.

"It's not fun if you step on my punchline!" Tarvek groused, and Agatha finally broke loose from her escalating series of gogglements to start laughing. Behind her I could hear the Littlest Smoke Knight That Could doing the same thing only far more subtly, and Bang outright guffawing in the absolute opposite of subtlety.

"I'm sorry-" she choked out. "But you guys are-" She bent over clutching her sides. "-just too much!" she finished, almost snorting. "But-" She trailed off and continued in a sadder tone of voice. "You're all such old friends, and you've known each other for such a long time, and here I am-"

"-being perfectly welcome among us," Gilgamesh said, taking her arm reassuringly and helping her back up to her feet. "Because you must be a good person, Agatha-"

Okay, I don't know what kind of cosmic planets had aligned such that Gilgamesh Wulfenbach was, in defiance of all that was known about the universe, actually being smooth with women but at this point I'd entirely take it!

"After all, Jonathan clearly likes you, and he hardly ever likes anyone." Gil finished with total sincerity.

... that's it. He dies.

"Hrm. I'm not surprised the Baron ducked the crowd, but why hasn't he-?" Tarvek began, trying to diplomatically get the topic of 'Why the hell is Gil's own father not here to see him?' on the table.

"Ugh, I think that's my fault," Agatha groaned. "The Baron's busy dealing with- um, well, all the trouble I brought here-"

I desperately tried to signal Reassure her, you idiot! to Gilgamesh with my facial expression behind and above her back, and he clearly signaled back Why me? in honest befuddlement. Agh! Two years in the most sophisticated city on the continent, one of the slickest operators alive as his wingman throughout, and he still can't talk to women!

"It's all right, Agatha," Gil said. Whew! "Keeping the Empire going barely allows my father any time to rest. I'll be fine if I can just get a moment with him before dinner toni-"

The deck beneath us rocked as a massive explosion some ways down the corridor we were on blew out an entire wall. We could see a fire and hear shouting in the distance.

"That was my lab!" Gil cried as we all broke into a dead run towards the trouble. "What the hell is going on in my lab? I haven't even had a chance to do anything yet!"

I cursed vehemently. "Best guess? Some of the students decided to help 'get your lab ready' as a welcome-back present, and they kicked the wrong thing!"

"DuPree, go muster the damage control parties!" Gil called out, and she immediately peeled off to run the message. "Violetta-"

"Breathing gear!" Agatha shouted, dragging Gil and Tarvek to a halt by their elbows as she ran over to a nearby marked emergency cabinet and tore it open to start handing out masks. "You can't just run into a lab fire holding your breath, there's caustic and toxins and- do you people not even HAVE schismatic interference detectors in your emergency kits? How are we supposed to find life signs in a smoked-out zero-visibility compartment, by the Braille method?" she ranted, tearing through the gear locker as all of us frantically threw on our protective gear preparatory to entering.

"I-" Gilgamesh began.

"And how can this place have 'the finest facilities in Europa' when you don't even have aetheric particle neutralizing hydro-atmospheric drenches in the labs? Which you clearly don't or else we'd have heard them go off already!"

"They do but clearly the blast knocked out the triggering mechanism!" Tarvek said flatly as we threw on the gear. "No, Violetta, stay back! We'll need you to stabilize the casualties after we drag them out of there!" he called to her.

"Augh, bring the spare masks!" Agatha ranted at Gil, halfway to the Madness Place in her stress. "We need them to put them on the people before we drag them out so they can breathe-"

"I actually have seen an exploding lab before, thank you!" Gil said as they argued.

"Well I've actually BEEN in exploding labs before BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT YOU DO WHEN YOU'RE A LAB ASSISTANT AT TRANSYLVANIA POLYGNOSTIC!" Agatha ranted back, nose to nose with Gil as they compared old school pride. I groaned and slapped a handful of spare breathing masks each into their chests.

"Rescuing people. Now." I verbally slapped them, and we all got back to the business at hand. As we reached the breach in the wall we stopped and stared at the raging chemical fire within in horror.

"What did you store in here?" Agatha gaped in horror.

"Nothing that could have done this!" Gil said, leaping ahead with the rest of us at his heels. "They must have brought their own solvents to help 'clean' and it touched off a catalytic- DOWN!" A fresh blast cooked off from one of the chemical storage tanks at the far end of the room, and the shrapnel whizzed over our heads.

"Good thing they were already on the floor!" I said, reaching the first unconscious student and checking their airway before slapping the oxygen mask on their face and hoisting them over one arm.

"Tarvek, with me! We'll find and mask them, Gil and Jonathan will do the heavy lifting!" Agatha called, and we all leapt into action.

"Found one!" Tarvek called as we charged into the toxic fumes, kneeling down to mask a twelve-year old girl lying limp at the corner of one of the cutting lathes. "Gil, here!"

"Another one!" Agatha cried, and we leapt to pick them up. I met Gil dragging his ones back to an improvised casualty-collection point we'd set up at the far side of the room. I pointed at one of the oxygen tanks that had been set up for the cutting torch and at the small pile of fallen people we were starting to accumulate, and Gil nodded and dragged it over to start setting up an emergency O2 flood for the various gas victims. We couldn't start moving them out of the room until we were as sure as could be that we had everyone, given that we'd need all four of us to carry everyone, but we also had to start immediate stabilization right now.

"Ugh, they breathed burning plastic," Violetta said from next to me, her voice muffled by her mask. "Yeah, you rig up that oxygen tank to help overpressurize these masks as improvised respirators!" our resident toxins specialist said to Gil as she knelt down and started poking the fallen with mini-injectors from her Smoke Knight kit. "These antidotes are supposed to be for the Leniscus venom series but they'll also mitigate industrial solvent exposure-"

"I thought I'd told you to stay outside!" Tarvek screamed distantly from across the compartment.

"Well you'd ALSO told me to STABILIZE THE CASUALTIES who are still INSIDE!" Violetta yelled back at him without missing a beat as our field medic simultaneously stabilized three casualties at once. "SO MAKE UP YOUR MIND!"

"Isn't family wonderful?" Gil reflexively wisecracked to me as we headed out to drag back another load of wounded from where Agatha and Tarvek were busy crawling across the compartment floor to locate and mask them.

"I know I'd love having a trained assassin cousin or two hanging around!" I agreed as we finished another run and then joined Agatha and Tarvek into doing a re-sweep of the entire impact zone. I noted out of a corner of my mind that the raging chemical fire along the entire back wall of the compartment was slowly and steadily drawing nearer and prayed that if anybody had been in the zone we couldn't reach to search, that it had at least been quick.

"That's everyone!" Tarvek said.

Agatha nodded. "All right! You two biggest boys grab two each, we'll grab one each, and-"

The latest explosion tore loose one of a row of condenser tanks and skidded it across the deck as we all watched in horror, to land with absolutely perverse precision exactly across the gaping rent in the inner wall we'd used to enter the lab in the first place.

"OH, WHAT WAS I EVEN EXPECTING?!?" Agatha ranted for us all.

"I'm assuming there's a reason we're not just using the hatch?" Tarvek said acidly.

"Because the emergency sealing systems triggered to, uh, seal it?" Gilgamesh said embarassedly.

"With us on the INSIDE?!?" Violetta yelled. "What happened to the OCCUPANCY sensors?"

"Gone to the same place the sensors that were supposed to turn on the emergency fire suppression went, I imagine!" Tarvek facepalmed.

"Damn, I just realized we're going to have to redesign all the safety systems on the Castle if they're vulnerable to this kind of chemical exposure and shock in synergy-" Gilgamesh began to muse.

"WE NEED AN EXIT RIGHT NOW OR WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE!" Agatha shouted. "This is your lab! Where do you keep the death ray?"

"Um, I don't have-" Gil began.

"You're the Baron's son. You have all the wealth of Europa to draw on. This is your private lab. And you don't even have one. single. death ray." Agatha said quietly in what was either shock, awe, or tranquil fury, and I didn't want to know which.

"I kept telling you-" Tarvek poked at Gil flatly, only to wince in pain as Violetta elbowed him in the shin from where she was still kneeling over the casualties.

"Jonathan!" Agatha continued in sudden inspiration. "Your pistol-"

"It's just a gauss coilgun," I said. "Wouldn't even scratch the paint on these bulkheads!"

"-a gauss coilgun?" Agatha said, her eyes opening wide. "Give it to me NOW!" she demanded, holding out her hand, and we all gaped at her in confusion before a simultaneous moment of realization struck all three remaining Sparks in the room.

"I'll break it down for-" I said, hauling my weapon out and tearing the casing open with my bare hands.
"The micro-tools are in-" Gil said, rushing to open a drawer.
"The frequency range band they use is-" Tarvek broke in and we all went frantically to work.
"-heterodyne the signal-"
"-no no, we should use a resonance-"
"Yes, that will give enough of a charge-"
"The junction box should be-"

"I'm thrilled that you're all having such Sparky fun, really, but is anybody going to do anything PRACTICAL right now?" Violetta shouted at us as the fire kept advancing towards us across the lab floor. Us three resident madboys (and our madgirl!) mostly ignored her as we all eagerly bent over the device flowing together underneath our skilled fingers in the middle of the floor.

"YES!" Agatha cried in triumph, snatching up our gizmo in both hands and aiming at the place on the wall that Gilgamesh was pointing at. The magnetic oscillation generator we'd bashed together reached out through the bulkhead, into the switch cabinet with the jammed circuit breaker, and shocked its inner workings with an electromagnetically induced resonance charge at exactly the right frequency-

-finally activating the jammed aetheric particle neutralizing hydro-atmospheric drench system and dousing the entire lab in advanced fire suppression chemicals, not only snuffing the blaze but entirely cleansing the air of toxins.

"... okay, that works." Violetta agreed meekly, staring up at the results in awe, and the four of us all high-fived each other.

* * * * *​

"Agatha, your jury-rigging that magnetic coil inducer saved all our lives. Thank you," Gil said as we slumped, tired and filthy, onto chairs and couches in Gil's private quarters. The servants had left us some trays full of food, but most of us weren't making any move towards them.

"I couldn't have done it in time without all your help and the parts from Jonathan's gauss pistol," she credited us.

"But it was your idea." Tarvek complimented her.

"Your friend Violetta did the most to keep them all alive until the rescue crews could get to us," Agatha told him. "Where did she learn so much about medicine?"

"M' a Smoke Knight," Violetta said, her mouth full as she munched on a sandwich. "Best toxicology program in Europa."

"Latest word on the casualties is five moderately severe vapor inhalation cases, two serious hospital cases, incidental first-degree burns all around. But no one dead or permanently maimed, thank God." I sighed wearily.

"All those poor people-" Agatha trailed off. "How did it happen?"

"Apparently, a group of the middle school students decided to 'get Master Gil's lab ready for him' using their own homebrewed 'dirt-removal formula', and it turns out that what they brewed ignites like hypergolic rocket fuel as soon as exposed to the vapors from one of the industrial solvents that was in the lab's long-term storage." Tarvek said bemusingly. "If we hadn't already been heading to Gil's lab anyway we'd never have gotten there in time. As is, I've never seen a fire go that out of control that fast."

"Yeah. I haven't personally been in a lab accident remotely that serious since... ever." I said, realizing. "And you two-"

"Had the best of early training and lots of qualified supervision," Gilgamesh said. "Which most young Sparks don't have. I know Father set up his school on the basis of trying to prevent things like this, but you don't really realize the need for it until it- Agatha?"

Gil and Tarvek looked over to note that Agatha had quietly pulled away and was sitting slumped in depression by herself, staring down at her chest. "Maybe they were right." she muttered.

I waved Gil and Tarvek over and muttered to them sotto voce. "She had one of the earliest Breakthroughs on record, but had been given a portable brainwave inhibitor in her locket when a child to suppress it. She didn't even know she was a Spark until today."

"Beetle did WHAT?" Tarvek said in outrage, and Agatha looked up. "To a small child? There could have been any number of possible side effects-"

Agatha looked at me meaningfully and then turned to them. "He was telling you about the locket?" and they nodded in confirmation.

"Jonathan, by any chance is Dr. Beetle in a cell on the Castle?" Gilgamesh raged. "Because I'm volunteering to help with his interrogation- no, I'm volunteering DuPree to help with his interrogation-"

"It wasn't Dr. Beetle," Agatha said softly. "It was my uncle. He was- he was afraid I'd hurt myself if I sparked too early. But he- he'd died before-"

"That's- I'm so sorry," Gil said, with Tarvek nodding along with him. "Did it... hurt very much?"

"It was torture!" Agatha cried out. "I had migraines every day! And every time I started really concentrating on anything I'd have seizures- I'd thought Dr. Beetle just kept me around out of pity- I'd thought I was just a silly girl with a brain problem-"

"Agatha, you are not a silly girl and your brain works just fine," Gil reassured her. "The way you took charge in that chemical fire was awesome! You really were the most experienced of us at dealing with that kind of emergency if you'd been in student labs at TPU for years."

"And you Sparked out and built that remote activator like a champion!" Tarvek chimed in. "You did it so well that I didn't even have any room to nitpick!"

"Not that that would have stopped you anyway if you weren't in the middle of a flaming catastrophe," I came in on counterpoint, to his pleased harrumph.

"But-" Agatha began.

"Ugh, I just realized that we all look like messes," I said. "We need to shower and get changed. Tarvek, I'm presuming that two years in Paris didn't leave you any less of a fashion diva-"

"Hrmph. You are entirely correct that only I can dress milady here in the fashion that she truly deserves!" Tarvek agreed, hamming it up on cue.

"Ooh, I can help!" Violetta said eagerly. "Let me help!"

"You don't need to-" Agatha began.

"No, we can really help!" Violetta said, giving Agatha the puppy dog eyes. "Tarvek lives for this stuff!"

"Agatha can show you to her rooms and you can help reassemble what she brought into a dinner ensemble even the snobbiest snobs on the Castle couldn't criticize," I agreed. "You never get a second chance to make a first impression!"

"Well, I suppose-" Agatha agreed as Tarvek and Violetta eagerly hustled her out to go back to her own room and change. As soon as they'd left, Gilgamesh grabbed me by the collar and hauled me up face to face.

"What are you up to?" he said, narrowing his eyes at me suspiciously. "Because that was pretty blatant even for you."

I nodded at the door and gave the handsign for Check for eavesdroppers, and he let me go to do that.

"What's wrong with you?" he said, returning. "She's clearly into you, but you're doing that same thing with her that I have to do with Seffie!" Gil questioned me, referring to his own unrequited mad crush. "I mean, that thing where it's not that you don't like her because she's not a bad person, and you always feel like you kicked a puppy whenever you hurt her feelings, but you still don't like-like her and have to keep ducking back every time things get anywhere near where she can think you're sending actual signals-"

"Gil-" I tried to interrupt him.

"-but there's a whole ton of politics and scheming why I couldn't try for anything with Seffie even if I wanted to. But Agatha? What's wrong with you and a nice girl from Transvylvania? If that was her first real day of Sparking then she's really brilliant-"

"Gil!" I tried to cut in.

"And she's gorgeous and can really take charge-"

"Look, you want her? Please take her!" I begged him.

"Not until you tell me why you don't want to." he demanded. "Because I have not begun to tell you my Paris stories about girls that look nice at first but-"

"It's not that," I said. "It's more tied up with that other thing that would make your father cut my head off and drop-kick it from the flag bridge."

"Are you still knotted up over that?" Gil looked at me incredulously. "My father hasn't had the slightest doubts about you for years! Good God, man, the only person still afraid of your real family is you!"

"Your father has doubts about his own shadow," I shot back.

"Well, yeah." Gil agreed. "But only in a professional capacity. On a personal level, he actually likes you." Gil said. "And what does Agatha Clay have to do with-"

"Agatha Heterodyne," I corrected him, and Gil's jaw dropped.

"Oh." he said after a long moment.

"Uh-huh," I agreed.

"Ohhhhhh..." he said again.

"Eeee-yup." I nodded.

"Oh." Gil finished.

"Yeah." I agreed.

"AND YOU'RE PASSING HER UP? ARE YOU CRAZY?!?" he yelled at me.

"Yes I am!" I cried at him. "You, Tarvek, Boris, a random stoker from the engine room, anyone but me!" I said. "You preferably because I think you'd be the two best for each other, but at this point I'm not really picky! Because any attempt of mine to set up an independent power base from the Empire triggers your dad's paranoia scenario about me, let alone Mechanicsb-."

We both stopped and mutually agreed to check the door for eavesdroppers again. And the ceiling vents. And the secret passage.

"Can I point out a failure in your logic?" Gil said.

"I doubt you can-"

"You said independent power base. As a troublesome hostage-student of several years ago, you making ties to the Heterodyne dynasty would have been a dangerous amount of independence, yes. But as Captain Fairchild, one of the Baron's most trusted troubleshooters and my future chief military commander when I'm Baron? You and Agatha wouldn't be an independent power base threatening the Empire. You'd be a marriage alliance for the Empire."

I stood and digested that for a long moment.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!" I screamed.

"Not the response I was expecting." Gil deadpanned.

"Because you just made me realize that your father is going to be sh- trying to arrange us!" I said in horrified realization.

"And?" Gil said insistently. "That's an 'I don't want to' objection, not a 'I can't!' objection. So again, what's so wrong with her?"

"I don't like chaos," I said insistently. "Your dad and I really understand each other there. Sure, I'm good at fighting- no, I'm great at it. I'm one of the best beatsticks the Empire has. And it's a job I'm proud to do because-"

"There's a lot of bad things out there that need to be fought," Gil agreed. "But- oh, I get it. Your work is chaos. So when you come home, you just want-"

"A quiet, happy place to rest." I agreed. "And then... Agatha's the heir to that dynasty. And that place."

"Okay. Now I get it." Gil nodded. "And you also know that I'm the guy who wants a little more adventure, so...?"

"You once told me that your dream girl was one who had the brain and moxie to keep up with you," I said. "And there she is. So you go get her, with all my blessings." I paused. "And for the love of God, do it quickly enough that I don't end up in an arranged marriage!"

Gil blinked. "Wait, are you telling me that you just let the Heterodyne Girl leave here with the heir to the Storm King because you wanted a moment alone to talk to me? Um-"

"-shit, you reminded me. Your father's orders are that we do not tell Tarvek about this or even hint at it until he says we can. I'm just hoping my double-bluff of 'I don't care if you leave with her! She's couldn't possibly have anything to do with that!' means Tarvek's curiosity doesn't twig there's more layers to her than we told up front. Or at least not what layers."

"I suppose that was your best move given the situation," he agreed, before we were interrupted by a knock at the door.

A British voice drawled out. "My lord? Your... lady guest has arrived at your quarters and wishes to speak to you. She is waiting for you in your drawing room."

"Wait, you brought someone back from Paris?" I said as we hurriedly finished washing and began to navigate our way to that part of Gilgamesh's suite of quarters. "Why?"

"Oh, I didn't want to but it would have been ungentlemanly to just leave her at the dock given the circumstances," Gil said. "I figured that we could just let her wander around the castle as a tourist for a couple of days before sending her back."

"Seffie actually got insistent enough to follow you to the Castle?" I asked him as Wooster led us to the drawing room.

"Oh no, not Seffie," Gilgamesh said as the door opened. Wait, what girl from Paris that wasn't Princess Xersephnia von Blitzengaard would possibly follow Gilgamesh back to here-?

And it was at that point that I heard the rhetorical landmine go click.

Oh-

As the door swung open I saw a beautiful blonde in a lovely opera gown, with pink ribbons in her hair and a wide-eyed innocent expression smiling at us over her blushing cheeks.

"Madame Zola la Sirene Doree, may I present one of Master Gilgamesh's closest friends, Captain Jonathan Fairchild," Ardsley Wooster introduced us as he waved us in.

"Oh, hello there!" one of the deadliest assassins and intriguers in all of Europa gushed at me vapidly. "I'm so very pleased to meet you!"

-SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!

* * * * *​

Author's Note: And enter Princess Pinkie Psycho Pants, stage left!

This segment is largely Establishing Character Moments for our main cast, as while you know most of them from canon you also have to get know their AU versions here. So, Agatha gets a chance to start showing her natural leadership chops, we get lots of banter to show whose friends with who, and Othar gets a cameo to get launched because its always funny when Othar gets launched. ("FOUL!")

But yeah, now things get a little tense. Because as readers of the comic know, Zola only lost the 'Most Evil Sentient Being Alive' championship in Europa by the existence of the Other and maybe Dr. Vapnoople. And she is that dangerous... and worse yet, has such a Loki-tier Bluff check that Gilgamesh and Tarvek both spent years believing she was a harmless fluff-brain. Good God, this woman legitimately dunked on The Other in a bullshit contest. Twice.

Our good Jumper is the only person on Castle Heterodyne who has any idea of who he's really dealing with, and has no logical way to explain how he knows what he knows.

So how will he solve this horrible dilemma?

 

[cliffc999]

Jonathan POV:

"They were Slaver Wasped?" I asked the Baron incredulously, as Gilgamesh and I stood alongside him watching Agatha's foster parents being emplaced in the cryogenic suspension tanks.

"Yes," the Baron said. "In addition to the weasels, it was confirmed by a detailed biological analysis."

"Damn," I swore. "If they've got wasps that work on constructs now, then do they have one that works on Sparks?"

"There at least we are fortunate," the Baron replied. "Punch and Judy were close enough to human biochemistry that the standard slaver wasp also worked on them. And we have seen little evidence of variant wasps being successfully researched, save for their recent breakthrough in hive miniaturization."

"Whew," we both sighed in relief, before Gil continued in horror. "Oh, no. If they were commanded to keep Agatha away from you however possible, then-"

"Who commanded them?" the Baron agreed with grimmest foreboding. "There is only one person whose voice can command a revenant."

"The Other is loose?" I cried incredulously. "But how? You BURNED that damn Summoning Engine! We saw you do it!"

"What has been built once can always be built again," the Baron stated with cold logic. "Somewhere there must have been another machine. And at some point in the past several years they must have found a host to use it upon."

"You said once that the one you took apart in Sturmhalten would only work on someone with a close genetic correspondence to Lucrezia Mongfish," Gilgamesh replied to him. "But it can't be Agatha! She-"

"-rushed into danger to save innocent lives at great risk to her own." the Baron shocked me to my core by agreeing. "The Other would never have done that, not even as part of a grand deception or for great gains. But Agatha was not only entirely cooperative in the rescue efforts, she charged into the vanguard and led you in them."

"Right. Plus, I heard her asking her foster parents to stop... and if she were the Other, then they would have stopped. Right." I pushed past my initial panic and continued. "Lucrezia Mongfish had only two children, only one of whom is still alive," I stated. "But she had two sisters-"

"Mister DuMedd is clearly not the host, given that we can account for every day of his movements for the past eight years and that his behavior is utterly incompatible with the hypothesis," the Baron agreed. "And Serpentina Mongfish bore only one child before her death. That leaves Demonica. And while I have no knowledge of however many children she may have borne or who they were, I will find out."

Yes, I'm sure he would, eventually. And that would have reassured me a lot more if I hadn't already known exactly who the only child of Demonica Mongfish was and had absolutely no way of explaining how I knew. Or of explaining how I knew that they - Zola - were already on board this airship.

"Right," I began. "Logic check - the Other divides the entire population of the planet into only two categories, Assets and Threats. She had Agatha where she could easily reach her for years and Agatha's still alive. So, if not Threat-"

"-then Asset." the Baron agreed, watching me and Gilgamesh as we worked through the logic ourselves.

"It's not just Agatha's genetic compatibility because we're already presuming they overcame that issue to get this far," Gil said. "So presumably they want her to gain control of Castle Heterodyne. But in that case why not just download the Other into her mind as soon as they could, instead of the whole Beetleburg charade?"

"They don't have reliable access to their other Summoning Engine?" I speculated out loud. "They lost it or destroyed it during the last attempt?"

"If she came back only recently she'd have had to either reclaim a network of cultists Father was already pursuing to destruction and who were desperately scrambling for survival, or rebuild from scratch-" Gil said.

"She'd have needed to make allies. Work with other Sparks, not just dictate to them. She betrayed them too soon? They betrayed her?" I thought.

"Your reasoning is sound, but you are both overlooking immediate necessity," the Baron cut in. "The essential question is not what is to be done next, but what should be done first?"

"Agatha." we both chorused.

"We have to keep her as safe as possible!" Gil cried.

"We have to tell her what is going on," I put in. "Or she won't accept being protected so closely."

A fist thumped twice on the hatch. "Herr Baron? You're needed in the command center right away." a messenger called out.

The Baron nodded to Gilgamesh and me. "Go to her and warn her of what she needs to know. Captain, warn the Jager Generals as well. We will all meet in the secure conference room at 2030 to discuss this further, events permitting."

"Yes sir," I chorused along with Gilgamesh's "Yes, Father." We all turned to leave, the Baron accompanied by the airman who'd brought the message from the bridge and Gilgamesh and I to go to find Agatha. As they walked away I looked in shock at the distinctive silouhette of the blond man in the anonymous set of utilities that paced steadily along behind the Baron and then smiled slightly to myself.

So someone had already summoned their own deep-cover agent to Castle Wulfenbach upon first receiving the news of our finding the lost Heterodyne this morning, had they? I wonder how much that agent had overheard, discreetly listening at the hatch like that?

God willing, it was everything.

* * * * *​

Agatha POV:

Dinner was rather an odd experience, and I'd attended TPU faculty suppers.

For one, I'd thought they were referring to a simple dinner with all the students in the dormitory, but instead it was apparently a welcome-home formal reception for Gilgamesh to be held in the dining hall in the Baron's quarters. And while that would explain the older students who'd known him personally all being invited, but me? Well, apparently Gil had been entirely sincere about my having a place now among his innermost circle of friends despite our having just met.

And I very much doubted he'd done that because of my real last name, because Gil couldn't have known that until after he'd issued the invitation. I'd already known Prince Tarvek wasn't to be told my true identity and so there wouldn't have been any opportunity to signal Gil before we met him at the dock, and I'd been present to overhear the entire conversation after that. No, the Baron's own son hadn't hesitated to offer anonymous little "Agatha Clay" a place among his closest friends as soon as he'd met me, and it hadn't merely been a 'friend of a friend' situation via Jonathan because Jonathan had just told him that we'd only just met, so-

Oh. Did Gilgamesh actually like me? Like that? And did Jonathan or Tarvek agree so readily because they-

I had a sudden mental image of one beautiful young female Spark with three powerful, intelligent, handsome young male Sparks all vieing for her attention and her being caught hopelessly between the competing affections and agendas of such influential and/or wealthy scions. It was all very intrigueing. Eep! Appalling! I'd meant very appalling! Not that other thing!

... still, it was certainly nice for a girl to finally be noticed, I admitted to myself with a tiny grin.

And this outfit I was wearing certainly was very... noticeable. Prince Tarvek had taken apart my best dress and subtly re-stitched it into a beautiful creation that somehow looked as elegant as a Paris original on me despite making absolutely no attempt to be one. To all appearances 'Agatha Clay' was dressed entirely as a blacksmith's daughter from Beetleburg who'd earned a slightly higher salary as University staff should be expected to be, both in material and cut. And yet my dress still subliminally spoke to the viewer This is a woman of distinction. Pay attention to her! as much as the five thousand gold-piece Paris original that blonde flouncy opera singer who'd somehow invited herself to this affair was wearing. I'd never before imagined a Spark applying his talents for fashion designing but Prince Tarvek seemed not only willing but entirely thrilled to get a chance to show off for me with needle and thread. And his friend? servant? relative? Violetta was equally as thrilled to help me put it on.

"Who is she, anyway?" I asked Violetta softly as she sat at my right hand in her own more modest party dress. 'Circle of trust' or not, the servants setting up the place cards for this dinner had apparently applied seniority rules so we'd both been seated a ways down the table from the guests of honor at the head, but that mystery blonde had somehow snagged a place up there for herself.

"Zola?" Violetta replied disgustedly as she stabbed another piece of roast beef with her fork. "Eugh. She's useless is what she is. Paris is full of girls like that angling for cushy 'jobs' as 'companions' of wealthy young men." she sarcastically air-quoted.

"Gilgamesh was with that?" I asked incredulously. Clearly I'd misjudged-

"Hah!" Violetta snorted. "Neither Gil or Tarvek would have had her if she'd stripped naked and dipped herself in cheese. They just couldn't get rid of her and believe you me, they tried! The only reason she got on the airship at all is because some disturbance of some kind had broken out on the street outside the airship dock just as we were boarding, and so Gil took pity on her and gave her a ride because if an unescorted woman had tried to walk home through that riot-"

"So, she'll be going back to Paris soon?" I fished.

"She'll be going back as soon as possible if the boys have anything to say about it," Violetta agreed with me. "Unfortunately, the one thing that pink leech is legitimately talented at is party crashing. Three guesses who's already gushed and fluttered and fluffed around enough that there's actually a lot of people on this airship who really want 'The Golden Siren', one of Paris' most famous divas, to sing at least one recital before she goes back?"

"Wow," I said. "That's... really fast work for word-of-mouth advertising given that she's only been on the Castle for a few hours," I mused. "Did she bring along her manager or promoter too?"

"No she didn't," Violetta said. "Huh."

"Anyway, I certainly don't have any interest in hearing her sing. She gives me the creeps." I finished.

"I knew there was a reason I liked you," Violetta grinned at me. "Relax. Between those three you've got the keys to this entire Castle, and they're all very nice guys. You don't have to worry the slightest bit about competing with the likes of that."

"Competing for what?" I said with the sort of transparent innocence that every girl knew exactly what it really meant. "And... oh, dear. Is there any boy you're competing for? Because I'm certainly not going to intrude-"

"I- no," Violetta said, looking downcast all of a sudden. "I mean, there is someone I might like to... but I can't."

"Can't?" I objected. "There is no 'can't', there's only 'not yet'." I continued firmly. "And if I'm really starting out so well-connected here according to you, then maybe I can help you extend your reach a little?"

"Agatha, it's really nice you'd want to do that for me," Violetta said. "Especially that we've just met-"

"Don't be silly," I said, waving her off. "If I'm going to start making friends here, there's absolutely no reason you shouldn't be one of the first."

"Thanks," Violetta smiled sadly back at me. "But this is something even the guys couldn't help me with, and they're already trying. So, don't feel it like has to be your trouble too."

"Life would be so much easier if it really was just like the Heterodyne Boys stories, wouldn't it?" I commiserated with her.

"What, no 'Trelawney Thorpe, Spark of the Realm'?" Violetta joshed back, clearly putting the prior topic to rest.

"Oh, you can get those here?" I asked her interestedly. "They hardly ever made it out as far as the Beetleburg bookstores."

"THERE you are!" we heard Sleipnir's voice burst out frustratedly from slightly down the table. "WHERE do you think you've BEEN? You're almost an hour late to your own party!"

"Half an hour at most!" I heard Gilgamesh reply with a slight tinge of desperation as we all turned to see both him and Jonathan entering the room. Wherever Gil had been he'd had time to change into a very nice suit, while Captain Fairchild was now in a dress uniform rather than his field combat kit.

"Sorry, everyone," Jonathan said. "The Baron had a lot to discuss with Gilgamesh before we could get free. And since he is regrettably too busy to attend-"

Even I got the distinct impression the Baron never "attended" and this was just the usual polite formula to explain why.

"-our guest of honor will now take his rightful place at the head of the table," he finished, and Gil and Jonathan went there to sit adjacent to Tarvek and the other most notables. Darn, we wouldn't get any chance to talk until after dinner-

"May I take your plate, my lady?" a voice broke in at my elbow, and I turned to see a white-uniformed steward standing there all blonde sideburns and polite attentiveness.

"Oh! Yes you may," I said, and leaned slightly aside to let him reach over and help himself to my now-mostly-demolished meal. Apparently it was time for the dessert course, a suspicion I had readily confirmed when chocolate-covered scoops of the richest, most delightful-smelling custard I'd ever imagined began to be laid out before us. I was definitely going to have to start exercising more if I lived here for any length of time.

"Oh Gil!" I heard Princess Pinkie gush as she, eugh, leaned over from where she was sitting only two places away from him to vamp on him.

"Don't grit your teeth so obviously," Violetta whispered. "She'll notice and then really tease you with it. Remember - not even stripped naked and dipped in cheese."

"Got it," I agreed, as I took a deep breath and Zola turned to apply a similar level of flirting to Jonathan, who ignored it with a similar air of discreet formality. With the guest of honor finally at his own welcome-home dinner, things began to relax from their mild awkwardness and become what it was supposed to be, an actual celebration of friends and family.

And well-connected party crashers, but I suppose that was just something I was going to have to get used to if I was going to be socializing in these circles from now on.

* * * * *​

Tarvek POV:

​

I'd thought that returning to the Castle would be like returning home - certainly more "home" than Sturmhalten or Paris had ever been - and at first things had lived up to expectations. Even the fire had felt a bit like old home week for all its seriousness, like the fun we'd had dodging our own lab explosions and hacking the Castle subsystems as teenagers. And we had managed to save everyone without permanent injury, which was definitely all to the good.

But there was a subliminal sense of something wrong in the air, and the further along the evening went the worse it got. Jonathan had been acting oddly manipulative this afternoon for a man normally so painfully straightforward. Gilgamesh looked considerably more tense now having returned from a business meeting with his father than he had been when first departing for it, a distinct reversal from the usual pattern. I kept noting Jagers discreetly lurking occasionally out of the corner of my eye and not noting the usual Lackya or Air Corps patrols where they normally would have been, bespeaking a higher level of internal readiness than the Baron was admitting to.

What the devil was going on?

I took a moment to check on my cousin and saw Violetta eagerly chatting away with Agatha down towards the foot of the table about... damn it, quit holding your head where I can't see either yours or Agatha's lips! Spoilsport!

But clearly she wasn't picking up on anything. Which would normally mean there wasn't anything, because for all of her self-deprecation about her talents my cousin was actually a very good Smoke Knight. And yet her instincts seemed entirely unaware of any danger here while mine were positively shouting sirens at me. Making that dress for Agatha this afternoon had been the only moment I'd actually relaxed since the suspicions started, even if I'd seen it plain as day that Jonathan was just getting me and Violetta out of the room to give Gil some classified information about something.

"Oh, Tarvek was so scandalous with the Master's daughter at that reception, weren't you now?" Zola twittered from her adjacent seat. Sigh. Why hadn't Gil simply called her a cab home from the airship docks? Now I estimated having to put up with at least 48 more hours of this pink-wrapped ballast nattering at us all before we could finally shed her this time. She didn't even have the minimal decency to wear a shade of pink that actually went with her skin tone!

I gave a noncommital response and pretended to be a wine connoisseur having a miniature rapture about the bouquet of my drink as an excuse for not talking further. Which wasn't entirely a lie, because say whatever else you could say about Klaus Wulfenbach that man really knew how to lay in a wine cellar.

The more I brooded about an intangible sense of foreboding that I simply couldn't pin down no matter how hard I tried, the more I began to realize that that was a sad metaphor for this entire phase of my life.

I'd been away for the last two years in Paris as part of the next delicate step in the ongoing pavanne of detente and Austrian stand-off between the Empire and the Fifty Families, because ever since Sturmhalten had been reduced we'd known that the Baron had known about the Storm King Conspiracy and he'd known that we'd known that he'd known. Only the distraction that the Other's cultists had obviously infiltrated at least part of our family's network for their own purposes had distracted both sides from getting very creatively upset with each other right then and there, because say whatever else you could about Grandmother she legitimately hated the Other and all her works with at least an equal intensity to the Baron.

But that didn't change the fact that once that particular set of rocks had been flipped over everyone knew perfectly well I'd been raised by the Sturmvoraus as the intended claimant to the defunct throne of Andronicus Valois, the first Storm King. A myth and a legend so deeply embedded into the heart and soul of Europa that it was perhaps the one thing that could have inspired massive popular sentiment against even the Pax Transylvania that the Baron had devoted almost half his life to enforcing. And you certainly wouldn't have any trouble inspiring the old nobility's sentiments vs. the Baron, because the Fifty Families would have gladly revolted against him for a copper penny and given back change.

It didn't matter that in their hands Europa had been suffering through the Long War and in his hands there'd been the return of a peace rivaling that of the one produced by the Heterodyne Boys or even Andronicus Valois. They weren't the ones doing it, merely the "jumped-up usurper" Wulfenbach. But no, they'd be entirely willing to throw that all away for a single scrap of greater influence. And given the right myth, they could convince far too many of the common folk, one of the two key bedrocks that Wulfenbach's rule rested upon, to throw away the Baron's Peace in return naught more but dreams.

Specifically, the dream that one day the ancient pact would be fulfilled and the Storm King would wed the Heterodyne Girl as the signal for the revival of the ancient Shining Compact, the mythical golden age of two centuries ago that only true ancients such as Master Voltaire and Her Undying Majesty of England kept in living memory... that dream, if it ever looked to be genuinely be coming true, would unite most of Europa against the forces of the Empire like nothing else could ever hope to.

So it was a true cosmic irony of life that Baron Klaus, the one man above all others who should have drawn a knife across my throat at the earliest opportunity as the greatest potential threat to his rule, was the man who seemed most dedicated to keeping me alive! Certainly more dedicated than most of my relatives had ever been, except for Violetta! And to be fair, also Grandmother and cousin Seffie... if definitely not her brother Martellus.

Finding out about the secrets surrounding Gil and Jonathan's backgrounds the way I had before I'd gone snooping into them on my own and likely gotten chucked off the Castle for my pains had almost certainly saved my life at the time. The fact that I was the primary claimant to the Storm King's legacy was most certainly not the same as being the only one. Right behind me there was the all-too-eager Martellus, and behind him there was any number of ambitious minority candidates entirely willing to make themselves the majority one via poison and knives. If I'd had nowhere to go then but back to my loving relatives' embrace, and with the Baron's sponsorship entirely withdrawn? I'd been twelve. I couldn't possibly have tread water in a sea full of that many sharks. As is, that was still the most nervous year I'd ever spent in my life despite knowing that the Baron had made it unambiguously plain that he expected to see me back onboard the Castle to 'complete my education' after my 'mourning year'.

But for all of the Valois' pretentions to a 'united front' vs. Wulfenbach, the fact remained that my being the single most unambiguous blood-claim via my mother's line and Grandmother's support for me was basically the only thing keeping our family from falling apart into an impotent snarl of warring petty factions. Well, I suppose that given a great deal of luck Martellus had sufficient brutality and strength to eventually unify the survivors underneath him... but that wouldn't be very many survivors, really. And he certainly couldn't hope to do all that with the full might of the Empire ready to drop directly onto the small of his back the instant the Valois dynasties blinked first and left themselves open to an attack that could be politically justified to the neutral players.

So why not just have me killed and render his most dangerous opposition entirely impotent for at least another generation? By then whatever was left of the Storm King Conspiracy would be Gil's problem, and he'd have the added strength of a second generation of legitimacy and a Europa much of whose living memory knew nothing but the Baron's Peace. While we'd be weaker and more scattered and having killed off at least a tithe of our best blood. It wouldn't even be a contest.

I knew full well that Gil was more my brother than Anevka had ever been my sister, and Jonathan likewise. I knew that they'd die rather than abandon me. And I also knew exactly how little either of them could aid me the day Klaus Wulfenbach calculated that the situation would be better with me dead than alive, even though they'd try their best. He wouldn't even have to hurt them to just brush them aside and render them powerless to aid me. That man was absolutely unstoppable. He'd broken more armies in his lifetime than most Night Masters had assassinated single targets. He'd consistently remained one step ahead of every plotter and schemer in Europa. He had the largest and most well-trained armies, the greatest number of Sparks assigned to military research and development, the most loyal people. I had always marveled at what possible quirk of human nature would leave so many people willing to fight and die for the mere legend of a 'Storm King' when they already had a living legend leading and protecting them right now.

And I had never been able to figure out why he allowed me to live. More than allowed me to, but encouraged me to. It was a wonderful thought to know that your greatest potential enemy did not want to fight you... but a terrifying one when you were never entirely sure why, and thus didn't know what to do to ensure that state of affairs continued.

I smiled and laughed and talked with all those around me, playing my role as I'd always done and sharing what genuine moments I could with the people who truly cared for me. And, as always, I watched and waited. Waited and prayed that this wouldn't be the turn of the seasons that saw the end of it all for me, and that one day I would see an opening as to how I could escape this dilemna without having to hurt the people I cared for in the process.

But barring a miracle, I had no idea what that could possibly be.

* * * * *​

Author's Note: You wanted to know what the heck was up between Klaus and the Valois? Now you know!

... well, now you know more. You still don't know everything.

And yes, I find it hilarious that in this AU Tarvek is actually one of the Baron's admirers, when he certainly wasn't in canon. But think about it. Tarvek's own family has always been the greatest source of threats to his life. Growing up Valois is basically life among the drow. And unlike canon, Tarvek wasn't living full-time with his family since getting kicked out of school early so his indoctrination hasn't been full-time Valois. He's actually gotten to study how the Baron runs his Empire, from up close.

 

[cliffc999]

Jonathan POV:

Baron Wulfenbach, Gilgamesh, Agatha, Boris Dolokhov, Jagergeneral Khrizhan, Bangladesh DuPree, and I stood around the map table in the Baron's private strategy room.

"We have several grave crises coming to a head simultaneously," the Baron opened. "First and foremost among them, it is virtually certain that The Other has returned to Europa."

"Hoy!" General Khrizhan said. "Dot is verra not good."

Boris, the Baron's private secretary and adjutant, pinched the bridge of his nose in pain. "This means that every single sleeper revenant we have left in place is now a grave threat. They were relatively harmless without the Other to command them, but-"

"Yeah. Concentrate 'em in resettlement camps, they're just a potential army for her to muster. Leave 'em where they originally live and just watch 'em, they're a bunch of potential town rebellions just waiting for her to light the fuse. So, are we finally gonna-" Bang mimed drawing her finger across her neck as Agatha looked on appalled.

"No," the Baron replied. "But what we are going to do is no less disturbing, even if far less visceral. To avoid anarchy and rebellion, we have concealed the full scope of the potential danger from the nobility of Europa ever since the taking of Sturmhalten. Events have now forced the necessity of warning them."

"Oh damn," I swore vehemently. "Sir, should I go fetch Prince Sturmvoraus?"

"Presently," the Baron agreed. "After we discuss your part in these affairs," he continued, turning to face Agatha.

"My part?" she asked, shocked. "But I-"

The Baron raised a hand for peace. "Lady Heterodyne-"

General Khrizhan startled at the Baron's open acknowledgement of what we already knew, then started grinning viciously even for a Jager.

"-as we can see," the Baron continued, cocking his head slightly towards the Jagergeneral, "your discovery presents us with a case of divided loyalties. The Jagers' service to me has always been in the nature of a-"

"Hit vas a bargain ve made," Khrizhan cut in. "De Baron needed de muscle. And vitout de Heterodynes, ve needed de protection. But ve haff never abandoned your House, even ven ve all thot de Heterodynes were gone forever. And now hyu are here, and ve-"

"You can't all just leave right away!" Agatha said. "We're about to start a war with the Other, and if I just take you all and run - and what would I even do with a Jager army-?"

"Hoy!" Khrizhan laughed. "Dere are zo many answers hy could give to dot queshtion!"

The Baron, Gilgamesh, and I all cleared our throats simultaneously, then nodded to Agatha to continue. Khrizhan gave us a bit of a side-eye, then smiled thinly.

"Look," Agatha said in a frazzled tone of voice, putting her hands up as if to try and push away the world for a moment. "This morning my biggest worry was being late for work and wondering if Dr. Beetle's latest imported coffee shipment had finally arrived so he'd stop complaining about the taste! And then I went through a battle, got told I was the lost Heterodyne, led a search-and-rescue team through a hazardous materials fire, attended a formal affair worthy of a fairy-tale princess, and now I'm standing right next to the ruler of Europa in a strategy room while we're talking about war with the Other and that was just. one. day!" she finished, panting for breath.

"Felt like almost a week," I muttered to myself.

Agatha turned to the General. "I am so out of my depth here right now that I wish I had a bathysphere!" she ranted. "But even I can figure out that however many different agendas might be circling around this room, it would be stupid for us to all start fighting each other instead of The Other. So, you say that I'm supposed to be your Lady Heterodyne? You say that you're supposed to be one of my generals? All right then!" she declaimed coldly. "Then do your duty, General. Advise me about this war."

"Hyu vant my advice, do you?" the canny old Jager said, rubbing his chin and grinning. "Den I say dat hyu is already doing vot you should be doing, my lady. Hyu is learning."

"Why isn't Father interrupting?" Gil prison-whispered to me while this drama was playing out in front of us. "This is always the part where he's interrupting!"

"I'm pretty sure the General and him had a private conversation before we even got here," I whispered back. "You know how he was always testing us? Now it's her turn."

"Good point," Gil whispered back. "And I think she's passing!" he finished with a grin.

"Most everybody in diz room is a schmott guy," Khrizhan continued. "Und hyu hy tink are a very schmott lady. Hyu are right, all de schmott people would be verra shtupid to start fightingk each odder right now."

"Yeah, yeah," DuPree said disinterestedly, leaning over the table. "Seriously, though, this entire map is going to catch fire when we put the word out. Is it too much to hope for that we have some idea of where The Other is hiding so we can just, you know, kill her?"

"It is," I agreed. "Right now we need some intel just to get the intel to know where to begin looking."

"Part of our strategy regarding releasing the information to the Dowager Princess of Sturmhalten is to see who reacts," the Baron agreed. "We already know that the Other's forces have infiltrated the Order of Jove and suborned a splinter faction of the Smoke Knights. When they know that we know, they will respond. And we will do our best to make those responses visible."

"Oh!" Bang said eagerly as she stared down at the map board. "So, it's like that one where you've got people hiding in the house somewhere but its too full of nooks and crannies to search 'em all, so you just light a big fire in the atrium and see who jumps out and runs as soon as they smell the-"

"Who is this crazy person and why does the Baron even keep her around?" Agatha whispered to me urgently, eyes wide with shock as she got her first taste of Bang in her element.

"Captain Bangladesh DuPree, 'rehabilitated' pirate queen and one-woman Indiscriminate Violence Department." I replied equally as softly. "She gets most of the 'tricky' jobs that I don't."

A coded knock on the door announced the visitors I'd been expecting. I went over and opened it to reveal two masked members of the Vespiary Squad with their wasp weasels.

"We have placed the internal revenant checks back up to the highest degree of readiness," the Baron explained as they went all around the room and gave us the weasel test for Slaver Wasp infection. Fortunately, nobody registered positive, and the weasel handlers departed and I resealed the hatch.

"First tings first. Op until now hyu hef been tryink for de best," General Khrizhan said firmly. "But de Other is here, unt now hyu hef to plan for de vorst. No matter vot ve do, zo many towns are still goink to burn. Hyu vill need a place dot vill stand shtrong no matter vot else falls down around it. Hyu vill need Castle Heterodyne."

"But your Lady is not ready," the Baron insisted. "She just told you so."

"Father, you taught me yourself that you go to war with the strategic situation you have, not the one you'd want," Gil broke in. "I know it's a tremendous lot to ask of Agatha, but I think the General is right. The revenant checks have never found any infected in Mechanicsburg, except for tourists-"

"Sometink in de vater, ve haff been tinking," General Khrizhan said. "Nasty bogs dunt like it."

"If the Castle defenses are restored to full power, the combined might of Europa would hit that place and bounce. And the population is entirely loyal to the Heterodynes, and infiltrating strangers are incredibly easy for the townsfolk to spot. The masterwork of fifty generations of one of the strongest Spark dynasties in history continuously building and augmenting and training the most impregnable defenses in the world," I agreed. "But-"

"You don't trust me," Agatha said sadly. "Not entirely."

"Agatha, if you were just plain 'Agatha Clay' and the Baron had appointed you the new ruler of Beetleburg after deposing Dr. Beetle because 'you were his assistant and you were right there', would that make any sense?" I reasoned with her.

"What- no!" she said, aghast. "What kind of ridiculous idea would that be? It wouldn't make sense even as the plot of a penny-sparkly! I wouldn't have any experience at running the city, and suddenly having so much responsibility-"

"It's not the responsibility that worries me," Gil reassured her. "The lab fire already told me- told us how well you do with responsibility. It's the experience."

"I have been educating Gilgamesh for almost his entire life in how to rule my Empire after me," the Baron said softly. "I have driven his training hard enough that I am very fortunate it has not provoked... excessive resentment. And yet while I have full confidence that he would do well if forced to take my place even today-"

I saw Gilgamesh stare at his father in awe for having heard those words leave his mouth. Not that they'd been the first time the Baron had ever said them - well, maybe only the third or fourth - but it was still always a tremendous jolt to his spirits.

"-I still pray that he will not have to succeed me for many, many years. Not out of fear for my own mortality but because I know full well that rulership is a burden, not a privilege." the Baron nodded. "My Empire has never given me any pleasure. I maintain it out of necessity. Gilgamesh will rule it one day out of duty. But to have the lives of entire populations hanging on your word- that is a thing no one should ever enjoy. Even if quite a few of the 'noble' families of Europa do."

"The minute I knew who you were I knew you'd have to go and rule Mechanicsburg someday," I encouraged Agatha. "Your people need their Heterodyne. But when you're about to dump a big new job on someone-"

"-they should get an adjustment period. And the proper training. And I haven't had any of that." Agatha agreed.

"So, veech of you is teenking to take de Lady hunder your ving? Make her head go all in the directions hyu vant?" General Khrizhan asked with deliberate mildness.

"Gilgamesh," I said without hesitation.

"Hrm?" the Baron said, momentarily startled until he followed my reasoning. "Yes. Yes, that would work."

"Um, what would work?" Gil asked.

"Someone senior has to stay with Lady Heterodyne after she reclaims her family seat - because as of now we have essentially concluded that it is necessary she restore Castle Heterodyne as soon as possible - to train her in large-scale administration and statecraft, Master Gilgamesh." Boris replied. "Out of us present that would require either your father, myself, or you. And neither your father nor I can leave here for any extended period of time."

"You've certainly had more training in all the relevant skills than any of the rest of us have, Gil." I agreed. "More than enough to be a qualified instructor."

"Hyu would geef us your own son has a hostage?" the General asked meaningfully.

"No I would not," the Baron glowered at him across the table, as the two most physically formidable people in the room looked like the barroom brawl was about to start and the rest of us took a discreet step or two back towards the walls. "I would send him to you as an ally."

"Allies is goot," the General agreed reassuringly, and the Baron eased back to a standing posture. So did we.

"Hostage?" Gil asked nervously.

"How do you think Prince Squealy's felt this entire time?" Bang cut in. "Sure, he's your best friend and all, that part wasn't fake. But your dad also kept dragging him back here because of that other thing. Looks like the boot's on the other foot now."

"You have a point," Gil said. "Wait, Father, would it be better if Tarvek stayed in Mechanicsburg to teach Agatha? He's definitely better at intrigue than I am-"

"We are not putting the Heterodyne Girl and the Storm King's Heir in Castle Heterodyne and then leaving them alone for an extended period," the Baron insisted. "If we did that we might as well beg the Valois to poison us all and get it over with!"

"We can trust him!" Gil insisted.

"Him, yes. His family? Not only no but hell no." I insisted.

"But you still have to tell him who I really am," Agatha said. "You're about to tell the entire world anyway as soon as you send me to Mechanicsburg. And you need to do it as soon as possible or else he really won't think you trust him."

"Yes," the Baron agreed. "Captain? Go fetch him at once."

"Sir!" I acknowledged, and immediately turned to leave.

* * * * *​

Agatha POV:

I woke up the next morning still feeling like I was dreaming. If I'd thought my life had been a whirlwind yesterday, now it was turning into a hurricane. That strategy meeting- yikes! So many grand and terrible things being discussed, wars and armies and burning cities and the Other and yet all those powerful people had still kept looking at me. Forget stressed, I'd felt like I was having an out-of-body experience the entire time!

Still, I'd done my absolute best to pay attention to everything that was going on, and I had been able to figure some of it out for myself. If the noble families were about to go into desperate panic mode at the news they were about to receive, then even the Baron's military forces would be stretched thin trying to handle all the potential trouble spots simultaneously. The real might of the Empire had been that no single rebellion could possibly have hoped to survive for any length of time, allowing the Baron to swiftly quell one crisis after another. He simply didn't have enough armies to simultaneously occupy everywhere in force. No government could afford enough military in proportion to its size to patrol all the metaphorical streetcorners at once, anymore than Dr. Beetle could have afforded to build any more of the Clockwork Army for the Beetleburg Watch than he already had.

Which meant that the Empire's usual strategy for avoiding direct strikes at the heart of its power - the Castle's mobility - was not a guarantee of safety any longer. Castle Wulfenbach was a technological marvel of engineering and ideally constructed for its job as a mobile military command center for the Empire, but like any other airship it relied on outside supplies for everything. The food, the water, the everything had to be continually brought up by the Castle's auxiliary fleet of support ships and escorts.

The wealth that paid for the raw materials and the machines and the men that all made up the support structure that kept the Castle flying and the remainder of the Baron's armies and airship fleets likewise was collected as tribute from all the vassal rulers of Europa, not generated by the Baron's own resources. Baron Wulfenbach had no lands of his own save his original family seat, a modest holding not even considered impressive by the standards of medieval barons. The ruling machinery of the Wulfenbach Empire was akin to a human nervous system. You had the brain up top, the skeleton extending down from and supporting it, and the nerves and sinews communicating the brain's will to all the various corners of the body and receiving feedback likewise. But if the "body" ever came apart at the structural level and couldn't be revived quickly enough? Then that brain and spine, however magnificent, would still collapse and die.

I'd asked Boris about my first impressions as soon as the meeting had broken up, and he'd explained to me how the Baron had assembled his empire as a reaction to the widespread anarchy he'd returned to following the Other War. It hadn't been so much designed as grown in response to events, a piece at a time. Boris doubted if the Baron had even intended to conquer Europa at the outset. Baron Wulfenbach had at first simply reclaimed his own lost territory, drawn a circle on the map around it, and stated that any warlord who dared attack what was his would be crushed and their own lands assimilated under his rule. They'd laughed at him at first, and attacked, and the Baron had done exactly what he'd promised. And every year that circle grew wider, and wider, until one day Europa looked up at a new Empire that stretched from the Bosporus to the Baltic and wondered how it had gotten there.

And now we'd learned that the Other had returned, and apparently had been returned for several years before we'd even known, and had slowly rotted away chunks of the Empire from the inside without anyone noticing. And that in addition to the tension caused by these 'Knights of Jove' and their 'Storm King Conspiracy' that the Baron had already been engaged in a delicate balance of power with. For years the Baron had tried to find and destroy the 'remnants' of the Other's conspiracy, not knowing that his persistent failure to do so had been because she'd actually come back and these weren't remnants at all but resurgents. So despite everyone's best efforts the fuse had still been slowly and painstakingly laid, the charges had been set, and they were about to hit the detonator.

Even if it was only the worst-case scenario, it was still too likely a horrible prospect that it could all come tumbling down in the next year or two. That things could fall apart like the Pax Transylvania had never been. Adam and Lilith had been built by my father and uncle when they were still children, before they'd gone out and become the famous Heterodyne Boys. They'd seen the ending days of the Long War with their own eyes, even if I hadn't known as a little girl that the historical tales they told me were eyewitness testimony and not just oral history from their previous generation. Growing up in Beetleburg, "Baron Wulfenbach" had been a name of dread, the far-off tyrant that was simultaneously mocked as a brutal, constantly failing schemer in dozens of Heterodyne stories and plays and feared in real life as a brutal usurper.

Except now I'd gotten here and I'd seen that while he was a frightening man, and desperately needed a wife to come take him in hand and teach him how to actually communicate his feelings to people like a sensible person, he was certainly not any kind of unfeeling brute. Even a relative stranger like me could see in his unguarded moments that he clearly loved his son, was amused by the foibles of his advisors and confidants, deeply missed his old friends, and was patient with... well, good-intentioned trouble magnets like me. Even though I hadn't missed the significance of his keeping around someone as creepy as that DuPree person, or some of Jonathan's more meaningful silences...

... but goodness, I'd spent the best years of my life so far as the personal assistant of a man who punished pickpockets by stuffing them in bell jars to die of dehydration. It certainly said something about the adaptability of the human mind that we'd accepted that as a normal thing in Beetleburg. I couldn't imagine the Baron punishing anyone via death by slow torture for even the most serious of crimes, let alone for petty theft. I could certainly imagine him executing people, with his own two hands if need be, but there wouldn't be any sadism in it.

No, I wasn't naive enough any longer to believe that a person could rise to become the ruler of a city-state, let alone a continent, without having had to do some ruthless things. Which I suppose was my greatest worry, because soon enough I'd be the ruler of a city-state. I certainly wasn't looking forward to the first set of hard choices I'd be confronted with making. Or the second. Or the third...

God, I wish Adam and Lilith hadn't been wasped and had to be put in suspended animation. I wish Uncle Barry hadn't gone missing. I wish my parents could be here!

... well, not that parent. At least not unless the Baron and his troops were all in the room. With death rays. Very large death rays.

'You deal with the situation you have, not the one you'd want,' I muttered to myself as I shook off that mental image, and concentrated on psyching myself up.

All right, Agatha. It doesn't matter that you're barely seventeen and a half. The Empire needs you to help get them a secure resource base that they can still potentially hold out from even if the rest of the Empire falls apart, and so you're going to get up out of this bed, you're going to put on your big girl trousers, and you're going to go get it. But you'll make sure to go get it as their ally, not their pawn... even though everybody's being very nice about not trying to pawn you so far. You're the Lady Heterodyne, not the Baron. You're going to claim the Castle, not Gil or Jonathan or anyone. You can let them help, and if you're at all smart you should, but even so-

Your town. Your people. Your responsibility. I chanted inwardly to myself.

OK, I think I've got my head in the right place. I can do this. I can!

But at least I wasn't going to be doing it alone.

* * * * *​

The Baron had moved me out of the student quarters before I'd even really finished moving into them, because once the timeline on my becoming 'The Lady Heterodyne' had been advanced so far from everyone's original plans there was nothing for it but to put me in one of the visiting dignitary suites. In addition to the much greater comforts there was also much greater security. Von Pinn was by all reputation an exceptionally formidable construct, but there was only one of her and a great deal of mischievous children for her to look after. No, in the VIP section there were far fewer people to notice that my quarters had a 24-hour honor guard of Jagers outside of it, or that people like Seneschal Dolokhov or General Khrizhan would be paying me visits to help brief me on the upcoming operations. I'd even had a personal cabin steward assigned to me, as it happened the same man who'd been helping serve at dinner the night before.

"Good morning, Mr. Higgs!" I greeted him as I came out of my bedroom.

"Milady," he greeted me back in his stolid fashion. "Your breakfast is laid out in the dining room. Captain Fairchild and Prince Sturmvoraus are asking if they can join you."

"Of course they can!" I said, and went to go greet my visitors of the morning as Mr. Higgs went off to fetch two more servings.

"Look, I'm still thinking you're overreacting," I overheard Tarvek say as I came up to the door of the room.

"We already know she's a designing conniving woman," I heard Jonathan reply. "We should ignore her because she's allegedly an inept one? Tarvek, the more you tell me about her the more suspicious I get!"

"Words that would move me much more greatly if you weren't already famous for being second only in suspicion to the Baron himself- ah, good morning Agatha!" Tarvek greeted me.

"How's the new room?" Jonathan asked me.

"Like everything else has been. Lovely, but a little overwhelming," I answered honestly. "Are you two arguing about Zola?"

"I don't like her," Jonathan said. "I really don't. Unfortunately, His Highness here had the bright idea right after the strategy session that her upcoming recital would be a useful distraction for all the students, as well as much of the crew, from several other things we'll be doing around here in the immediate future. So Boris vetoed my 'Throw her the hell off the airship immediately for security reasons!' plan and I don't have any hard evidence to take to the Baron to get that reversed."

"I'm sorry to hear that," I agreed with him, to Tarvek's surprise. "She's one of those people you look at and you just instinctively know they're creepy. Brrrrrrr." I shivered dramatically.

"Honestly, she's an idiot who needs a blueprint to tie her own shoes!" Tarvek fumed helplessly. "If you'd ever visited us in Paris you'd know that! No one who's ever listened to that woman babble away endlessly about the most inane nonsense could possibly take her seriously! One hour of being trapped in an opera box with her drains enough IQ points you don't start feeling like yourself again until after the weekend!"

"You know who else babbles away a lot about inane nonsense?" Jonathan retorted meaningfully. "Bangladesh DuPree. And that's how she distracts people from noticing she's one of the deadliest fighters in Europa until it's too late. I've been in the field with her, you've only seen her bodyguarding in a mostly-safe zone like Paris. Trust me."

"Look, ask Violetta about her if you don't believe me," Tarvek said. "Incidentally, is she in the water closet or something? I'd have expected her to join us before now."

"I'm sorry?" I asked him, confused.

"Violetta," Tarvek answered in equal confusion. "She volunteered to go fetch some things that you'd left in the student quarters and bring them here before we arrived this morning... wait, are you saying she hasn't arrived here yet?"

"I only just got up a little while ago," I answered.

"No visitors arrived before you did, Your Highness," Mr. Higgs contributed almost simultaneously to me.

"SHIT!" Jonathan shouted angrily, leaping up to his feet. "Jagers!" he shouted, running over to the outer hatch and hauling it open.

"Vot's de trouble?" one of the door guards replied.

"Lady Mondarev apparently went missing somewhere between the student quarters and this compartment sometime within the past half hour," Jonathan rapped out concisely. "Sound the alert, turn out the guard, and find her. Tarvek, do you have anything with her scent-?"

"Ve know it," the Jager nodded. "Small lady smellz nice, vit many interestink things in her pockets."

"Then let's go!" Jonathan shouted as we all rushed to the door behind him.

"VE HUNT!" the Jager cried, echoed by all his fellows in the hallway as we ran out after them. After all, their duty was to guard me so most of them had to stay with me. And I certainly wasn't going to just ignore that one of my newest friends onboard this airship had gone missing!

"Mr. Higgs, certainly you don't have to follow us!" I said to him, having noticed that my cabin steward was unaccountably tagging along.

"Reckon I'd rather be here, milady," he replied to me flatly. "Search-and-rescue is an 'all hands on deck' operation, after all."

"I suppose-"

"FIRE FIRE FIRE! CLASS DELTA FIRE IN COMPARTMENT 14-723-D!" the annunciator suddenly blared. "HAZMAT DETECTED IN 14-723-D! HAZMAT SEALS ENGAGED! FIRE FIRE FIRE!" the announcement repeated several times before cutting off.

"There isn't any hazmat stored in that compartment," Jonathan said. "There isn't any on that entire deck. That's bulk storage and HVAC plant... and a Class Delta fire should be burning a hole in the hull!"

"So first a missing person, and now an impossible alarm?" Tarvek said viciously. "Care to wager that our two anomalies aren't related?"

"Not a bent copper farthing," Jonathan replied grimly. "Come on! We'll leave the rest up here to the search parties!"

It took us about ten minutes to arrive at the compartment in question, and the damage control crews were just about ready to unseal the door. Jonathan impatiently ordered them aside and him and Tarvek finished unlocking the same sort of automatic sealing system that had trapped us in the laboratory fire yesterday, only this time from the side of the door it was supposed to be operated from.

And my heart fell through the bottom of my shoes as the hatch swung open to reveal an ordinary storeroom, except with shelves knocked over and boxes scattered from what looked like the aftermath of a vicious fight... and two people lying bloodied and limp. One of them was a strange airman slumped over against the corner, and one of them was all too familiar and lying in the middle of the floor.

"Violetta!" I cried, as I heard Jonathan and Tarvek both gasp like they'd been shot. "Oh no!" I said, as we all desperately scrambled forward to reach her. "She's been hurt-!"

I was the first to reach her by half a step, and my body turned to ice as soon as soon as I grasped her wrist. Jonathan's hand just beat mine to touching her neck.

No pulse. No breath. And all that blood-

"... she's dead." I whispered in shock, and Tarvek slumped to his knees.

"Oh, you're goddamn RIGHT she's dead!" Jonathan screamed in rage, and I looked at up in shock to notice that he wasn't even looking at Violetta any longer but up at the corner of the ceiling where an air vent had been hastily pried free. Tarvek followed his gaze, then cursed and looked at Violetta's body again, then started frantically looking around the room.

I looked again at her, trying to push aside my shock and grief and approach the problem analytically. What had Jonathan and Tarvek seen that I hadn't-?

"This one's dead too, sir." I distantly heard Mr. Higgs reply from where he'd apparently been examining the other man in the corner.

Now, there'd been no blood trail outside so whatever fight had occurred in here had started in here. This room was off the direct route from the student quarters to my suite so Violetta must have seen something or someone suspicious on her way over, and had followed whoever or whatever it was down here. But it couldn't have been immediately suspicious or else Violetta would have simply sounded the alarm-

- the alarm. I looked across the room at where sparks were still flying from a panel that had several metal darts sticking out of where the glass-fronted casing had shattered when struck by them. My brain began to race as I'd put together the pieces.

Yesterday we'd found out that the emergency compartment sealing systems onboard the Castle had a design flaw that set off the hazmat containment seals when exposed to certain chemicals. Violetta was a Smoke Knight, and had all sorts of chemical experience and... and poison darts.

So she'd followed someone in here, been ambushed, and immediately been in a fight for her very life. She'd fought back as best as she could, she must have, but apparently she'd known she was losing. So she used her poison darts to deliberately trigger a false alarm on the toxin sensors... to trap her killer in here. Even battered and dying, Violetta had done her absolute best to fulfill her duty to the very end.

But it hadn't quite been enough. Her killer had apparently been small enough and limber enough to wriggle out through the air vents, even though a grown man wouldn't have fit-

And then I noticed what was lying on the floor under one of the shelves, where it had been knocked off during the fight.

"Guys!" I pointed at it, and Tarvek and Jonathan looked down. Jonathan's face was set in a stone mask of rage, but Tarvek jawdropped incredulously at the sight of it and then broke down weeping.

"NO!" he screamed. "Violetta, I didn't mean it- I didn't know-". He broke down in hysterics, and I stepped up and reached over to take him in my arms before he fell over.

"No you didn't!" I reassured him. "It's not your fault! Tarvek! This is not. your. fault!" I tried desperately to reach him.

"Tarvek, she's right." Jonathan agreed icily. "It's not your fault."

"But we know whose it is," I agreed angrily, as we all stared down at the pink hair ribbon lying innocently on the floor.

* * * * *​

Author's Note: Poor Tarvek! And poor Jonathan! I'm a bastard, I know.

And yes, Agatha should quite logically be overwhelmed by all this given how fast it's coming, and kinda is. Even so, she's gonna fake it until she makes it because she's a very strong-minded young woman.

The 'That's as silly as making me the Tyrant of Beetleburg!' reference is a deliberate josh at "Keep Calm And Heterodyne On" by Samarkand on AO3, which is actually a very nice comedy fic that you all should read.

 

[Asmodyne]

I mean, for a sec I was ridiculously psyched because there isn't a single @cliffc999 Jumpchain story that I haven't read multiple times, and I thought this might be a new one, but a mirror of an old classic is equally awesome and certainly worth a re-read. Thanks again for all the great work!

 

[Erebos_03_]

and believe you me, they tried!

Click to shrink...

believe me

We have several grave crises coming to a head simultaneously,"

Click to shrink...

serious crises

 

[Aleh]

believe me

serious crises

Click to shrink...

Neither of those is in error.

 

[Yeetboi]

"Tarvek, she's right." Jonathan agreed icily. "It's not your fault."

"But we know whose it is," I agreed angrily, as we all stared down at the pink hair ribbon lying innocently on the floor.

Click to shrink...

Johnny boy's about to hunt a pink bitch down.

 

[Frankfawn43]

I really should try to get into Girl Genius. Your work with it is always really good but I just never have the spare time to bite that bullet.

 

[cliffc999]

Well, in the other thread I had several readers say that they were able to follow the Girl Genius section without knowing much about the property, for what that's worth.

 

[cliffc999]

Jonathan POV:

I wanted to scream. I wanted to curse. I wanted to vomit. I was the Jumper, I'd already read the story, I'd known from the minute I'd seen her that Zola was bad news. But I'd considered my cover more important than my friends and because of that Violetta was dead-

Focus.

I leapt across the room to kneel down alongside Higgs and examine the dead crewman. He'd apparently been killed via a single stiletto thrust up under his chin and into his brain. No revivication for this poor bastard, then.

"This wound was delivered immediately from the front but his uniform is barely wrinkled. He died first, and from ambush." I said mechanically. "Then Lady Mondarev must have entered."

"Prettiest girl he's ever seen flatters and charms him and leads him off to a quiet corner, then out comes the knife." Higgs agreed. "Very old story."

"But why this man?" I asked. "There are dozens of high-value targets onboard the Castle, and she went to all this work to take out an anonymous ranker?"

"You missed the puncture wound on his forearm," Tarvek's rage-choked voice came from over my shoulder, as he knelt down to point at the man's elbow. "He was drugged before he came in here."

"So she zapped him with something capable of leaving him walking and talking, but with no visible symp- she wouldn't need to drug a man just to lead him in here. She could have led almost any red-blooded male anywhere!" I shook my head, trying to spot the missing puzzle piece.

"The lividity on the puncture suggests one of the milder interrogation serums," Tarvek replied. "Which aren't much use on people who've been conditioned against it like us, but this man wouldn't possibly have been. All the while Zola was leading him down the hall to this room he'd already have been happily babbling answers to whatever questions she asked him. And anyone who saw them would have simply seen a young man and woman walking together, cheerfully chatting away. Nothing suspicious at all."

"Except to Violetta," Agatha agreed. "So Zola interrogated this man for his secrets, then got caught by Violetta while disposing of his body because she'd seen just enough to think something odd was happening without actually being certain and so was following along." Agatha contributed.

"But what secrets? He was a junior enlisted man! You!" I said, turning to the leader of the damage control party who'd been tentatively creeping into the room after us. "Who was this man and where was he assigned?"

"He was Able Deckhand Mikhail Zytsev, sir." the chief petty officer replied. "He was in my section, and his normal duty was air duct maintenance."

For some reason my blood started to chill as I looked up at the air duct that Zola had crawled into. "She'd originally intended to leave this room by the door, so she didn't target him in advance for that. Which means she'd already wanted an expert on the air ducts near this section because-?"

The pieces horribly dropped into place for me, and I was only dimly aware of Agatha and Tarvek staring at me in confusion as I rushed outside the room, yanked the sound-powered phone headset off the damage control party's 'talker', and slapped it on myself.

"Bridge, Captain Fairchild! I must speak to the Baron immediately!" I shouted.

"The Baron's left for Paris half an hour ago sir," the voice of the Officer of the Deck replied to me. Dammit, that's right, he'd intended to go bring the latest revelations to and do the negotiations with 'Grandmother' in person. "I can-" and then I heard the handset being yanked away at the other end.

"Jonathan? What's wrong?" Gilgamesh's voice came over my headset.

"Violetta's dead," I answered him, hearing Gil's gasp of shock. "Zola killed her. She's actually a Smoke Knight infiiltration specialist and she's loose onboard this ship."

The sound of the alert sirens calling the entire Castle to General Quarters blared as Gil punched the switch on the flag bridge. "Keep going!"

"She's got a twelve minute lead on us from 14-723-D, and she's got the current layout of the air ducts. She-"

"Damn!" Gil cried alarmedly, knowing the layout of the Castle at least as well as I did. "From deck fourteen?"

"Which means that she's already got half of the puzzle pieces she needs. If she already had the other half before she came aboard, then the most likely place she's going is-"

"We'll have to assume that she did have it! Boris, you direct the lockdown and search from here! Is Violetta in any condition to-"

"Hopefully yes," I replied. "I'll have the stretcher bearers take her to your father's lab-"

"I'll see to her there and then meet you-" Gilgamesh began, before I cut him off.

"Me and Tarvek will be there." I agreed, yanking the headset off and handing it back to the stupefied crewman I'd taken it from in the first place.

"And me!" I turned to face an angry Agatha at point-blank range.

"No. You have no combat training, no experience, and this is going to be a close-quarters fight with a-"

"You can't make me leave!" she insisted heatedly. "Not without dragging me!"

"Airman Higgs-" I began.

"Sir, if Zola's headed for where you think she's headed then you'll need a Spark with you who isn't too busy fightin' to defuse trouble." Higgs rebutted me calmly.

"You're not going to drag her off even if I order you to, are you?" I asked him resignedly.

"Drag her to where, sir?" Higgs shrugged.

... okay, that's a valid point. If Agatha can't reliably get clear of the probable blast radius in time then dead is dead anyway, so she might as well stay where she could possibly help-

"Excuse me, but where are we going?" Tarvek asked. "I haven't memorized all the schematics for this great flying gasbag!"

"Medical team!" I shouted at the stretcher bearers who were arriving behind the damage control crews. "Secure Lady Mondarev's corpse and get her to the Baron's revivification lab immediately! The rest of you, get to your action stations!" I ordered the crewmen around us and as they scattered, I started running down the corridor to our ultimate destination with everyone else following. As soon as the crew were far enough away I continued. "How do you maintain air ducts to a given volume you absolutely don't want anyone to actually know about or enter?"

"You compartmentalize the work between different parties and don't mark the relevant sections as anything important on the schematics," Tarvek said. "So. You're assuming whoever Zola's working for did enough preliminary investigating-"

"The place she's almost certainly headed towards needs constant ventilation because of some of what's stored in it. Otherwise we'd hermetically seal the entire damn room and be done with it. But it has to be kept free of infiltrators at all costs, so we continually 'update' some sections of the ductwork and make sure it includes lots of blind alleys. But the ducts have to be a minimum size to move the volume of air-"

"So if you were a small woman and very flexible, and very highly trained, and had Spark-built infiltration gear, then you could just make it through the narrow sections and all the booby traps and anti-intrusion measures you'd have set up," Tarvek said. "But not if you didn't know the current, up-to-the-day layout of the 'updated' air duct sections and which ones were the blind alleys-"

"-which sections run through this deck." I agreed. "Not that the deck crewmen here know the real significance of what they're working on. But yes, all the other intel necessary for this infiltration could have been gathered painstakingly over time and elsewhere, but this part requires up-to-date knowledge you can only get from directly questioning one of the hands-on people. So whoever set this up sent or repurposed their best infiltrator, who'd already been getting close to you guys in Paris for some other reason, to this job instead-"

"Because she's the only one already in position to get herself invited to the Castle and had all the skill-sets necessary to get the job done solo after she got here." Tarvek replied. "Yes, yes, masterful deduction! Now could you answer my original question, please?" he said, as we reached a ladderway and started frantically climbing down it.

"Right, right." I said. "The place Zola's almost certainly heading? The Central Vault. Where the Baron keeps the Black level items."

"And she could do a lot of damage with those?" Agatha asked nervously.

"She could blow up the entire damned Castle with those." I replied.

"I think we should be talking slower and moving faster, sir." Higgs pointed out sensibly, and we all set to it.

* * * * *​

Agatha POV:

Yesterday I'd been caught up in a whirlwind of events and felt overwhelmed and out of my depth. Today had started off with the death of one of my newest friends and was now a desperate scramble to stop a killer before she destroyed the entire capital of the Empire...

... and I didn't feel overwhelmed at all.

Oh, I certainly felt shocked, but I also felt galvanized. I felt myself hyper-focusing in a way I wasn't at all familiar with. A distant far-off corner of my brain that I wasn't paying much attention to noted that I was apparently well towards slipping into what I'd heard other Sparks refer to as "The Madness Place". And that was certainly an entirely fitting description of the experience, because right now I was very, very mad indeed.

Jonathan had been correct in that I had no real training in how to fight and had no business trying to go up against a woman capable of beating Violetta, who had been a very skilled fighter, to death with her bare hands. And I certainly didn't want to slow down any of the people with me by forcing them to look after me when they should be concentrating on making sure Zola didn't get away. These were all very rational, very logical thoughts that the rational and logical parts of my mind entirely agreed with but it didn't matter because that damnable pink FAKE had TAKEN AWAY SOMEONE WHO'D BEEN KIND TO ME and I was going to MAKE THEM SUFFER-

I bit my lip hard enough to draw blood and tried to remember what was most important right now. The last thing everyone needed right now was to be dragged down by the dead weight of a uselessly ranting madgirl.

All right, so we're headed to a vault full of Very Dangerous Things. Mr. Higgs had suggested that I'd be necessary to "defuse"- well, I wasn't at all experienced at being a Spark but I had had years of technical education at one of the finest universities in Europa, and the Heterodynes were purportedly some of the strongest Sparks at all, so since Jonathan and Tarvek would be too busy fighting it would be up to me to defuse Zola's bomb or whatever else she was working on in there or at least delay the reaction long enough for Gilgamesh to get here. Good. I had something useful to do. Useful was good. Useful meant contributing and contributing meant helping and helping meant not feeling so damn helpless that-

I bumped into Jonathan's back as he suddenly stopped. Ah. We'd arrived and goodness that was a very impressive looking vault door.

"Get it open!" Tarvek shouted.

"And if she's waiting for us to open it?" Jonathan asked him. "On either this side or that one?"

"Fine," Tarvek said coldly. "Two minutes. Then we open it, reinforcements or not."

"I don't have the key anyway," Jonathan replied. "I'll need-"

"Jonathan? Tarvek? Are you there?" Gil's voice came from a nearby intercom.

"We're here," Jonathan replied. "Is Violetta-?"

"I'll need a few minutes here to finish getting her in the tank, and then I can leave things to come down-" Gilgamesh replied.

"We need the entry code now," Jonathan replied.

"Four-Four-Zeta-Three-One-Seven-Star-Star-Blue" Gilgamesh replied. "Enter that twice on the keypad, waiting at least four but no more than nine seconds between repeats. Then turn the left knob clockwise two and a half times. Touch nothing else."

"Acknowledged," Jonathan said flatly. Before our two minutes were up several dozen reinforcements, including two squads of Jagermonsters, had arrived to back us up. Jonathan entered the door code, and he drew his sword as Tarvek produced a pair of knives from somewhere within his jacket-

-and the vault door swung open to reveal a vaulting two-story room full of armored steel hatches on both sides and the far wall, with an elevated walkway around the edges of the room and more armored hatches set all along the walls on the second-story. At first glance several of the armored hatches had already been opened and left. I immediately started to charge forward, which made Mr. Higgs curse under his breath and run to keep up with me and Jonathan and Tarvek likewise rush ahead to try and stay between me and the trouble-

And with a resounding *CLONG* the vault doors immediately swung shut behind us as we'd barely crossed the threshold. A dimly heard set of blaring sirens outside was wailing the now-familiar hazmat alarm.

"Damn it!" Zola's voice echoed to us from around the room, even though I couldn't see anything or anyone.

"Had you been hoping to catch us all still outside the room?" Jonathan asked icily. "Slowing down a little, are we?"

"I will admit I was hoping that trick Tarvek's little failure of a bodyguard had taught me had caught you all still outside the door," Zola replied. "Still, better it's just the few of you than all those Jagermonsters too, don't you think?"

"We have got to fix that damn design defect on the toxin sensors," Jonathan muttered under his breath.

"Violetta is the entire reason you won't get away with this," Tarvek said in a voice so scary it momentarily shocked me through even my own Madness Place-fueled rage. "You didn't know she was following you until it was too late, did you? Otherwise you'd have just left that drugged fool to sleep it off and counter-ambushed her with your opening move. I don't know who trained you but they must be weeping in shame right now that your 'great infiltration' was blown so early."

"Give it up," Jonathan said, "and we might let you live. You have no way out, not even the way you came. The entire airship is on alert now and we know the duct layouts better than you do."

"Oh please," Zola said. "I made it in past all your defenses, didn't I? Even those lovely little screw pumps you had filling the air ducts on the final leg that were supposed to make it impossible for anyone man-sized to enter through there while still moving the air. And yet here I am anyway. Why shouldn't I be able to leave the same way?"

"Everyone move to the left, stay in formation. Higgs, cover our specialist," Jonathan said, and we began moving as he directed. "I want to see if any clocks are ticking in any of those open rooms."

"Your 'specialist', hmm? And who is this brilliant young woman, I won-"

I eeked! as a knife came literally out of nowhere, a pink-sleeved hand attached to it, and swung directly for my face, only to blink and notice the knife vanish as soon as it had arrived. Zola had somehow snuck up into the middle of us and leapt right out at me, and Mr. Higgs was suddenly in front of me and his fist was smashing Zola in the jaw. Her head snapped sideways so hard I heard her teeth go click but her entire body went strangely limp around his hand as if to absorb some of the impact and then she rolled away and vanished in another eye-blink. Jonathan's sword tip slashed directly through the empty volume of space her head been occupying only a split-second before, and then him and Tarvek spun back around to cover their sectors again.

"Not happy about you using the lady as bait, sir." Mr. Higgs said dangerously, also looking carefully around.

"Zola would already see soon enough that she was our non-combatant just from how she moved, Higgs," Jonathan replied matter-of-factly. "All I did was make her timing more predictable."

"Hrmph." Higgs grunted in unhappy acknowledgment.

"She's good," Tarvek said distractedly. "Very good. Why don't I already know her, if she's that good...?"

"Oh, if only I had a gold castlemark for every time a boy asked me that question." Zola replied mockingly.

"And here I thought boys and gold castlemarks had a different association for you, Pinkie!" I cried out. If Jonathan thought using me as bait was a good idea, then I'd help make it juicy bait.

"You're funny," Zola's voice echoed. "And weak. I think maybe I'll kill you last."

... damn it.

By this point we'd crept around a quarter of the room's circuit, and were able to see in the first room she'd opened.

"Deactivated phlogiston generator," Jonathan said. "Keep moving."

"Wait!" Tarvek said. "Violetta's gear was missing. How many traps are we about to circle into?"

I reached out and tugged free the six-inch thick metal tube that was part of the kit Jonathan carried on his web belt, and fired what I'd recognized at first glance during the Othar Trygvassen attack yesterday as a one-shot device for launching a highly concentrated slug of compressed air. Normally used for stunning and knocking down single targets, it should also-

The pulse of compressed air swept out ahead of us and it's impact set off three nasty micro-bombs that would have blown off our feet, one little squeeze bladder and mechanical detonator clipped to the bottom of the walkway we'd been sidling under that puffed out some kind of poison gas, and something unidentifiable but probably very nasty at ankle height that looked like it been made out of string.

"And now we have a safe space to put our feet on and wait for her to come to us." I said.

"Good thinking," Jonathan acknowledged. "Your move, bitch."

Mr. Higgs looked down disinterestedly at several darts that had suddenly appeared in the back of his right shoulder blade.

"You have the requisite toxin immunities, Tarvek. So does the Captain, presumably. But your brave airman here-" Zola broke off in confusion. "How is he still standing?"

I saw Mr. Higgs grin for the first time I'd known him, even if not very widely. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

"I should certainly think so!" I heard Tarvek whisper to himself, apparently as shocked as Zola. "Where did you train-?" he began to ask Mr. Higgs.

"You're asking the wrong person," Jonathan said, still scanning the room.

"You're right, I am," Tarvek agreed. "Zola! The Other has returned to Europa! Baron Wulfenbach is in negotiations with Grandmother even now to finalize an alliance against her, and you're trying to destroy the Castle and cripple the upcoming war effort? I don't care who sanctioned your assignment or what rivalry you're pursuing here, you know the standing orders about critical necessity against the ultimate enemy! All Shadows Are To Come Into The Light! Now stand down!"

"Oh goodness, I do believe you're actually serious!" Zola giggled. "Wait, let me laugh even harder!"

"So you are one of Madwa Korel's renegades," Jonathan said. "Well, that certainly clarifies our objective."

"Indeed it does," Tarvek agreed, before he used the tail of his jacket to catch another handful of thrown darts before they could penetrate his skin.

"Well, she clearly doesn't want to die for the cause," Tarvek said. "Or else whatever ticking clock is ticking would already have run out. She's just cutting things as close as possible before she crawls back into that air vent and starts heading for the exit."

"But this is still too static. We need to force the pace." Jonathan agreed. "Higgs, put Agatha in that open room and bottleneck the door. Tarvek?" Jonathan stopped talking and gave a vague series of hand signals. Tarvek acknowledged with a signal of his own, and then they both left safety of what little cover we had and each rolled out in a separate direction. I did what I could, peering around Mr. Higgs as I covered the opposite balcony with my pistol- I noted with surprise that I'd apparently taken Jonathan's pistol from his holster at some point during this entire excursion without even consciously noting it. I was certainly going to have to watch out for this Spark fugue thing-

-no, what kind of talk is that? I need to use it.

"I'll need a few minutes," I whispered to Mr. Higgs, who didn't take his eyes off the doorway as he nodded in acknowledgement to me. I then looked at the pistol I was holding, looked at the 'Phlogiston Engine' that had apparently been a 'Black Level Item' stored in this vault, and looked in my handbag for the lovely set of pocket tools I'd had provided for me yesterday by the Castle's workshops. Maybe I couldn't fight, but I could still Spark.

I began humming tonelessly in my throat as the half-formed vision I had in my mind blossomed into a full-blown revelation, and the Phlogiston Generator came apart underneath my fingers like all I'd had to do was touch it and started reassembling it into something new. It had apparently been placed in here as some kind of self-sustaining alchemical process that not only turned things into liquid fire but then had anything that fire burned become more liquid fire. Which was, of course, absolutely useless unless I wanted to destroy the Castle myself-

-I carefully checked the device in question to see if I'd missed a timer. Nope. So, apparently she wasn't a Spark so she wouldn't have known how to repair the circuits that had been taken out of this particular weapon of mass destruction to deactivate it-

"Guys?" I called out over my shoulder. "You're looking for something in here that's a push-button solution!" I called out. "And something that the Other's forces would already know had been captured! She's not Spark enough to build it herself out of the devices in here that could be defused!"

"They're a little busy right now, milady." Mr. Higgs broke in, and I realized that in my last couple minutes of distraction I'd apparently missed more than a bit of the brawl. Jonathan and Tarvek were both quite bloody, and apparently having trouble keeping up with Zola even though she was fighting both of them by herself.

"She's that good?" I asked incredulously.

"She's taken some kind of stimulant," Mr. Higgs replied. "Smoke Knights use that kind of stuff in emergencies. Right now she's not feeling any pain and has hysterical strength and speed. So if she's able to win then she can still get away before they can unseal that door from the outside and find someplace off this airship to collapse later."

"And if she loses, she was going to die anyway from her own bomb," I agreed. "But they're getting hurt out there, so go help them!"

"My job is to guard you," Mr. Higgs replied.

"You're a Wulfenbach airman!" I replied. "You should be helping the Captain! You should be saving the ship!"

"You'll save the ship. You'll defuse whatever that woman did, and I'll keep you alive long enough to do it. 'Cause if you don't, we all die anyway."

"But they're getting hurt!" I cried. "I'm not going to stay alive at the cost of my-"

"You're the Heterodyne," Mr. Higgs told me with more urgency than I'd ever imagined him capable of and somehow snapping me out of my incipient madgirl rage like a bucket of ice water. "This is why you have Jagers! And minions! And clanks, and everything else! They fight the battles. You stay alive long enough to do what only you can!"

I glowered at him suspiciously. "Who are you, really?"

"... I'll tell you everything if we survive this." Mr. Higgs replied to me. "But we won't if you don't-"

"I'm going, I'm going-" I said, turning back to what I was doing. "But don't think this conversation is over!"

"Wouldn't dream of it, milady." I heard him mutter.

* * * * *​

Jonathan POV:

Zola Anya Talinka Venia Zeblinkya Malfeazium. She had been one of the most loathed characters in the Girl Genius fandom. And right now, I could entirely understand why!

She'd only had a few minutes to prepare for our arrival and she'd still laid enough traps to make fighting in this room like trying to dance in a minefield. We'd been lucky to be able to get Agatha to a defensible position before we got our feet blown off, and even that had required her inspiration with the gas launcher. And Tarvek was if anything a better fighter than he'd been in canon, and I had Best of the Best and we were still sweating blood to get this far! I made a mental vow to get Tarvek to tell me whoever the hell had originally designed the Movit line of combat stimulants and, if they were still alive, to make them eat their own products until they spontaneously combusted. At least we'd managed to keep the traps from being more than a distraction, but we still couldn't afford any distraction right now.

Because that damn shit really did turn Zola into a beautiful, chemical killing machine. She was still riding the initial rush of having dosed up and that had made her fast and strong enough to have given Higgs a rough time in canon. My Best of the Best along with the veteran Smoke Knight moving in seamless partnership with me, as well as Zola being restricted only to what small knives and darts she could smuggle in on her person instead of the sword collection she'd had in the famous Castle Heterodyne fight, was what had kept us both in the game so far. But I was smarting at least as hard as I did after a full-contact workout with DuPree and Tarvek was starting to close in on the limit of how many poison doses he could absorb before he reached "I'm the prettiest frog in the pond!" levels of overdose.

"Among its other delightful effects... Movit-11 puts the blood pressure... into the stratosphere," Tarvek gasped out as he frantically dodged between her flurry of blows where we were frantically going around and around on the upper walkway. "She's bleeding us, but we're bleeding her out several times as fast."

"Which would be a consolation if she wasn't on so many drugs- OOF!" I grunted as her sidekick caught me in the ribs again. "-that she probably won't even notice when she's left all five quarts on the floor-" I put her in an armbar that would have snapped her elbow like a twig if she hadn't been double-jointed, then had to let go as she swung both feet up and around over her head like a pivot and almost caught my neck in a leg strangle.

"Hyaaah!" Tarvek cried as he caught her still in mid-air from where I'd left her when I'd disengaged, with no leverage to tumble away, and tried to ram two of his knives into her lungs. She did a fast side-roll while still in mid-air, taking one knife to the meaty part of her upper arm and watching the other one swish by and miss her by a hair, then landed on one palm like an upside-down ballerina and snap-kicked Tarvek in the forehead, sending him almost tumbling over the railing.

"AIEEEE!" Zola shrieked as I played a dirty trick on her, deliberately aiming my front-kick a few inches to one side so that her optimal evasion-dodge would have her sway to the side just far enough for me to miss her arm... but not the handle of the knife that Tarvek had left sticking out of her bicep, as her reflexes wouldn't have been calibrated for 'If the target zone on my upper arm is six inches wider than it normally was'. My foot slammed into the base of the knife and tore it sideways with the full force of my boot heel, ripping it free from her bicep the hard way and leaving her right arm hanging limp from the muscle tissue I'd just shredded and increasing her rate of blood loss by a factor of 'Damn, that's one big vein'.

"Got you, bitch!" I cried in triumph, as Zola looked down at the ruin of her arm. Now we had her trapped for sure! Even if she somehow evaded us both, even if she got a tourniquet on that wound, she couldn't possibly crawl back down as many air vents as she'd crawled up to get in here with only one working arm. And she certainly couldn't go through the entire platoon of Jagers still locked outside the main vault door... and I suddenly realized that putting Zola into a situation where she knew she had no hope of escape any longer might have been a mixed blessing.

Because a woman without hope was a woman without fear.

"It's not fair it's not fair IT'S NOT FAIR!" she shrieked as I got knocked straight back into and over the railing by approximately 120 lbs. of pure elemental rage and she followed me all the way down, clamping onto one of my legs with one of her own and using that leverage to keep beating me over the skull with her other forearm. Things went distinctly blurry as I landed flat on my back on the steel deckplates below and my torso compressed as Zola landed right on top of me with both knees. "This stupid mission that I had to do because none of the other fumble-fingered cows small enough for the vents could get themselves invited here has ruined everything! I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE LADY HETERODYNE! I WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE THE CASTLE! I WAS SUPPOSED TO MARRY THE STORM KING-"

I confusedly began to feel like someone had tossed me into a high-pressure turbine, as even with one arm Zola just kept rattling my skull by alternating forearm, hammerfist, and elbow strikes over and over and so damn fast-

"-AND EVERYONE WAS SUPPOSED TO LOVE ME-OOF!" she cried as Tarvek landed on top of her and I blacked out for a moment, to regain consciousness to Tarvek's shrieks as Zola was apparently chewing through his wrist while her one remaining free hand grappled with his off-hand over who exactly was going to stab Tarvek's knife into who- okay, I'm going to get up and walk over there and club her right in the head as soon as I can find my arms and legs- I dimly heard Agatha screaming in frustration something about why did the bomb defusing job require more than two pairs of hands- okay, so that's why Higgs hasn't jumped in yet- pity, I was really counting on-

"-and the worst part?" Zola continued ranting, as I noted that at some point in the last few moments they'd apparently lost the knife and he'd gotten his wrist free but she'd managed to get Tarvek on the ground and in a triangle choke. "It all went wrong because of that stupid little failure Vi-"

"YOU-" I screamed, as I thrust my fist out from a kneeling position and knocked her loose from Tarvek.

"DON'T-" I came to my feet and delivered the hardest kick I possibly could into her gut as she curled up on the floor.

"EVEN-" Tarvek cut in seamlessly as he slammed her back down to the ground by her shoulders as she feebly tried to rise from the prone position.

"SAY-" He held her up for me like a boxing target and I haymakered her in the jaw so hard several of her teeth went flying.

"HER-" Tarvek snarled as he solidifed his grip on her into a full nelson and began to dislocate both of her shoulders.

"NAME!" I finished, as I slammed her in the solar plexus again and again.

"... all right... I give up..." Zola mumbled so faintly it was barely a whisper.

"Oh, nonono no, you do not 'give up!'" I said, panting desperately for breath before grabbing her in a front choke and starting to bear down with all my remaining strength. "YOU DIE!"

-and then I took an impact in the small of the back hard enough it felt like I'd been hit with a clank cannon, knocking me, Zola, and Tarvek all sprawling on the floor.

"No!" I heard Gilgamesh shout as I desperately tried to get back to my feet and get a kill shot into Zola before he could interfere again. "She stays alive!"

"You miserable fool-" I heard Tarvek begin to gasp painfully.

"For a very, very long time," Gil finished as the reinforcements moved in, his face and voice at that moment fully as intimidating as Klaus' own.

"... oh," I said, going limp and letting myself fall back to the deck. "Okay. That's okay."

"I can... work with that." Tarvek agreed, and then we both just lay there like limp and beaten dishrags.

The last thing I heard as I drifted off into unconsciousness was Gil and Agatha's raised voices as they discussed... oh, how she'd defused whatever WMD Zola had armed before we'd gotten here by repurposing the Phlogiston Generator... yes, I suppose it was good somebody had taken care of that while we'd been busy-

And then I was out.

* * * * *​

Author's Note: Man, scripting this fight was a pain. I had to skip over a couple minutes by using the limitations of Agatha's POV and mostly keep Higgs a threat-in-waiting/why-Agatha-isn't-dead-yet instead of having him join the beatdown parade in full. Still, I got useful character development for both him and Agatha out of it, so not entirely wasted.

And yes, I used the dialogue from the 'Choke The Bitch!' scene from canon word for word. I mean, there's something things you just can't improve on.

But yes, this is why Zola was here. For nothing less epic than taking out the entire Castle.

And it had to be her because only she had the combination of 'enough social infiltration' to get onboard the airship, find out which crewman to interrogate for the last piece of intel on the ductwork, and do so under everyone else's nose... and the physical infiltration to crawl down several hundred feet of narrow ductwork full of the nastiest counter-intrusion technology known to Spark-kind. They had other Smoke Knights who could do one or the other, but her faction only had one person as good as her at both... and also was the right size to fit down those narrow tubes.

As for who Zola was working for? Well, our guys made an assumption based on what they knew. Whether or not they were correct...? Spoilers!

 

[cliffc999]

Agatha POV:

How did you mourn for someone who was dead, but who might be alive again later? Someone for whom the memory, the sense impressions, of cradling their cooling corpse in your arms was indelibly engraved on your subconscious but who you hoped to be hugging the perfectly alive corpus of in the near future? Our human instincts and expectations weren't really geared to live in a world where "resurrectionist" was an actual profession. Then again, the same could be said about humanity and quite a few other things Sparks had created.

The more I tried to untangle my messy knot of feelings about that situation, the more they only led to more tangles. Because looked at one way Violetta was someone that I'd just met. But that same criterion applied to everyone else onboard Castle Wulfenbach and I clearly wasn't indifferent to them. They were all such strong, intelligent, purposeful people, top experts in their fields even though they weren't much older than I am. It was like all the brilliant minds that had come and gone and eddied around me at Transylvania Polygnostic, only now I was invited to be with them, to be one of them, instead of sitting on the sidelines unable to participate. The ghosts of all the mocking children from my early life wandering around with Uncle Barry, the ones who ostracized and bullied the 'different' girl with the damnable locket-enforced learning disabilities and seizures, faintly called from the back of my mind as I thought of those days.

No, being called upon to walk among such powerful Sparks as an equal was a seductive, siren thrill and I couldn't pretend otherwise. But while I might still be inexperienced, growing up as the butt of every joke and experiencing human cruelty from the bottom had made quite certain that I didn't grow up naive. Even if the initial rush of coming here had been quite heady, once it had started to wear off I wasn't unaware of the possibility that perhaps the reason everyone was making such an effort to be accomodating to me was because I had something valuable that they wanted.

And if I hadn't reached that conclusion on my own, Higgs would certainly have educated me otherwise. My mind flashed back to the conversation I'd had with him as soon as I'd gotten him alone and in a compartment even he was sure wasn't being eavesdropped upon:

"You said you'd finish telling me who you were. So tell."

"Milady, how much do you know about the Jagermonsters?"

"Largely just the common knowledge. Fast, strong, almost unkillable warriors augmented by Spark technology no one else has ever recreated. Loyal servants of House Heterodyne from almost the beginning. The nightmare scourges of Europa under the Old Heterodynes who just faded away from view when my father and uncle were adventuring, to reappear later as part of the 'bargain' with the Baron that General Khrizhan told me about."

"All correct. But in addition to what you said, the key fact here is that the Jagers used to be men. Sometimes even they forget that."

"You're saying you're... related to the Jagermonsters?"

"I'm sayin' I am one, My Lady. Jager General Axel Higgs, Spymaster of the Jagerkin, at your service."

"... I'd say that sounded ridiculous except I've already seen you just ignore poison darts that made even Prince Tarvek a little dizzy and punch faster and harder than one of the Baron's best soldiers. So there are Jagers that look- I'm sorry, that kept their human appearance? Stealth Jagers? How many?"

"Just me. I was given the Jagerbrau by Vlad the Blasphemous himself, back at the very beginning. I got the strength, the speed, the resiliency, the senses... everything the rest got. But out of them all I'm the only one whose appearance never changed. Generations of your family tried to figure out why it had happened, but never did. After a while everybody just got used to it. And since I wasn't possible to spot as a Jager just by looking, it made more and more sense to put me on infiltration missions."

"By Vlad the Blasphem- but that would make you over nine hundred years old!"

"Some of the other generals are pretty much as old as me, My Lady. The rest aren't much younger."

"And you were sneaking around me why?"

"Actually, I was sneakin' around the Castle. The way things were gettin' tenser and tenser the past few years, the other Generals wanted a closer eye kept on things. Now they could know what was going on with their own troops and in the War Room, but they wanted someone like me to keep an eye on the Baron and his officers in their unguarded moments... and in other places, too. So 'Mess Steward Higgs' transfers into the VIP section onboard fetchin' plates and runnin' messages, and there you go."

"And then I came along, and as soon as the other Jagers told you who I was you switched to bodyguarding me... but I already had Jagers guarding me. What was the other reason?"

"You're a suspicious one, My Lady. That's good. You'll need that quality in the days to come."

"Do you think the Baron is going to betray me? Is that what you're so wary of?"

"The Baron cannot be allowed to know who I am, My Lady. Nor anyone else who serves him. Because if he does betray you, then I need to still be where I can help you."

"What makes you so sure that he will? The strategic situation-"

"-is currently where he'd be stupid to try and backstab you, and he's one of the least stupid men in Europa. That's entirely true. But the key word is currently. After you've helped the Baron win his war you'll be much less necessary than you are now. So if I were him, now is when I'd start putting the pieces in position to be able to work against you later."

"On the one hand, you sound like a paranoid lunatic. On the other hand, your story of being 'the secret Jager' could, if false, be debunked with trivial ease simply by my asking any other Jager about you. You'd be a far more foolish man than you present as if you were trying to sell me a bill of goods under those circumstances. So since you presumably sincerely believe what you're saying, then please explain to me why you believe it."

"Captain Fairchild, and how he's made himself the primary face of the Baron and his Empire to you. He's one of the ones I've kept my eye on since I came aboard the flagship, and short of the Baron himself I'd say he was the most dangerous of 'em all."

"You can't be serious. Jonath- Captain Fairchild? He hasn't even been trying to manipulate me."

"And yet in the space of maybe two days he's been point man of the charm offensive that convinced you that your previous protector was actually a villain-"

"Dr. Beetle was helping make Hive Engines."

"That your foster parents couldn't be trusted-"

"They'd been secretly turned into revenants! I double-checked those lab results myself!"

"And that you should be grateful to just accept all the pretty gifts and flattery the Baron can throw at you."

"Now your argument is becoming entirely self-referential!"

"My point is that yes, every single step of it, every individual piece, all look not only well-reasoned but entirely truthful. But overall it all adds up to-?"

"General, have you considered the possibility that maybe, just maybe, the reason all the available evidence leads to a certain conclusion is because that's actually what's going on?"

"I'm your spymaster, My Lady. It's my job to consider the hidden alternatives as well as the obvious ones. But I've watched Fairchild for several years, and with the benefit of centuries of experience. You've known him for days, and with... less. So will you trust my overall impression of him, even if its made up of a thousand little bits and pieces and gut feelings and can't be precisely flowcharted with a why?"

"And that impression is?"

"Captain Fairchild is one of the most talented men I've ever seen at making honest feelings do dishonest work. So even if you think he's being entirely truthful and from the heart - even if he is being like that - you should never stop wondering what's behind his words. Because believe you me, My Lady, something is... and it worries me that I can't imagine what."​

I shook off my reverie and came back to myself. It was late in the afternoon after we'd stopped Zola's attack, and after scattered to deal with everything else that had needed immediately dealing with, most of us had ended up spontaneously meeting in one of the Baron's private laboratories as we'd all had a similar impulse at roughly the same time. I'd arrived shortly after Gil and Jonathan, so I came in on the middle of their conversation.

"-still in his room?" Gil was asking, as they both studied the readouts of the equipment attached to the near-opaque tank of fluid that Violetta was immersed in.

"Yeah," Jonathan sighed. "I tried to talk to him, but he wasn't in the mood to listen to me. Maybe he'll listen to you."

"I'll go speak to him after we're finished here." Gil said.

"How is everything going?" I asked, as I came up behind them. "I'm... not very experienced with revivication."

"Oh!" Gil started. "Hello, Agatha. And it's going..." he sighed slightly. "What do you know about resurrection procedures?"

"That resurrectionists have the strictest 'no refunds' policy in Europa because even for the good ones, the odds of success are still barely one in fifty?" I said, cursing how faint the hope was that we were all still clinging to.

"That's under much worse conditions than here," Jonathan said matter-of-factly. "The average storefront resurrectionist is dealing with someone who's been dead for several hours if not several days, and who's been dragged in from God knows where and already been torn up all to hell or debilitated by a fatal disease. Violetta was in the tank less than twenty minutes after time of death, none of the wounds even touched the cranial cavity, and the rest is all entirely repairable. Between that and the quality of facilities here and Gil being one of the best biological Sparks we know-"

"Call it a minimum of eighty-five percent odds of success if I do it," Gil finished. "My father could bring that up to at least ninety."

"Ninety is good," I echoed, my voice full of mixed feelings at how ninety percent of yes still meant one-in-ten chances of no.

"I agree," Jonathan understood, "which is why we're not doing it here. All Gil and I have been doing is getting her into a suspension tank so that the delay and travel time doesn't make anything any worse. We were leaving soon for Mechanicsburg anyway, so that means we can use the Great Hospital to do the procedure."

"And with Dr. Sun handling the case, that means the odds are as close to one hundred percent as makes no difference," Gil told me. "He's literally the best man in Europa for the job. He helped train both myself and my father."

"I'm so very glad to hear that," I said with relief. "I know I haven't known her nearly as long as you have, but she was- is, dammit! clearly a wonderful person. And she saved all of our lives."

"That she did," Jonathan said softly, still looking down at the tank. "That she did."

"Oh, I forgot to ask. Are we reviving that poor crewman too?" I finished, looking around for a second tank and not seeing it.

"We can't, unfortunately," Gil replied. "In his case there was penetrating trauma to the cranial cavity - direct to the forebrain, no less. No chance."

"Ah," I said sadly. "Is your father returning to the Castle?" I continued, feeling a distinct need for a subject change.

"No, he's still heading to Paris," Gil said. "There's nobody else he wants to risk going head to head with the Dowager Princess of Sturmhalten at a negotiating table over something this important. And when you ask the Master of Paris to please personally mediate at your very tense peace conference and he takes time out of his busy schedule to actually do it, you don't call back less than a day later and say 'Sorry, I have to break that appointment because something came up.'"

"The Baron did thank us for the full reports we helio'ed to him, however," Jonathan cut in from his position over by the tank. "Said at least some aspects of this affair would be useful negotiating leverage with the Valois."

"Actually, he said 'I'm not off the Castle for even an hour and you already managed to almost destroy it utterly. I only wish I were more surprised.'" Gil replied. "Or at least that's the part that stuck most in my memory."

"What, not the part where he said 'Well done'?" Jonathan shot back with at least a trace of his normal wit.

"You mean that wasn't a hallucination?" Gil riposted with what was at least a valiant attempt at humor.

"Hey!" I heard DuPree's voice call from the doorway behind us. "You're needed in the War Room, your temporary almost-Baronship. The Deep Thinkers are squirrelling something about troop movements up north and say they need a 'high-level strategic decision'." she air-quoted.

"Do you need me for-?" Jonathan began to ask.

"I've got this. You stay here and make sure things settle in," Gil told him, and then exchanged goodbyes with me before leaving with that crazy pirate person.

I stood at Jonathan's side as we both looked down at Violetta's tank, and he made a show of checking and rechecking the readings. I studied his expression, the way he stood, and thought back to how he'd been acting earlier today, and came to a conclusion.

"It's you, isn't it?" I asked him.

"Beg pardon?" he replied, turning to me.

"Last night at dinner, we'd been talking about this and that and the conversation eventually turned to... eligible young men," I said delicately. "And I'd asked her if there was anyone she liked that way, and she told me that 'there was someone she might like to, but she couldn't', and that was nothing any of you three could help her with. So I'd thought perhaps that it was one of you... well obviously not Prince Tarvek, as she's his cousin. And at first I imagined it was Gilgamesh being out of her reach because he was the Baron's son, but then-"

"You spotted me completely losing my sh- composure over what Zola had done to her," Jonathan confirmed.

"But then why aren't you two together?" I asked. "Yes, she's a noblewoman herself but not a high-ranking one, apparently-"

"The Mondarev family are hereditary retainers to the Sturmvoraus," Jonathan explained. "So your guess was entirely correct."

"But that just makes her equal to you as you're basically the Baron's foster son but not formally-"

"I'm sorry, what?" Jonathan asked me in honest confusion.

"The... Baron's foster son in all but name?" I replied to him. "Errrr, you have noticed that people socially defer to you onboard almost as much as they do Gil, right?"

"Well, I'm one of the most senior-" he began to explain.

"Socially. I said socially. The difference is- do you even socialize with people at all outside your military duties or close friends?" I asked him, and the answer was written all over his face before I even finished asking.

"... not very much." he reluctantly admitted.

"Eugh!" I eyerolled. "How can a man be so brilliant at everything except emotions? If we did a blind test with strangers from far-off lands I'd be surprised if as many as thirty percent could identify Gilgamesh as the Baron's son in a line-up instead of you! Because you certainly do... act like him..." I trailed off wonderingly.

"Ahahahaha, no." Jonathan laughed sardonically. "Let me just step on that one right now. I am not Gilgamesh's brother. Or half-brother, or cousin, or any of the other rumors I actually have heard going around. I was just... surprised that you thought the Baron saw me as anything other than one of his senior officers, or perhaps one of his heir's boon companions. Because he doesn't."

"Well, I could be wrong," I graciously conceded while still not being convinced. "But before we go further off-topic my point was that you and Violetta are not of wildly differing social ranks. And you're clearly attracted to and admire her, and I'm fairly certain that she-"

"She is." Jonathan agreed matter-of-factly, and I felt my jaw drop.

"Wait, you knew about-? But if it's not unrequited and if you're mutually aware then WHY ALL THE PINING?" I almost ranted, to feel ashamed when Jonathan's face fell into a mask of... anger? regret? before he took a deep breath. I paused and allowed him time to compose his thoughts.

"Because this could have been me," he said, tapping one finger on the tank.

"You mean that you could have been the one who died? Well, you're in a hazardous career as a soldier, yes, but they still fall in love and get married all the time-"

"No. I meant this- Violetta dying- could have been me. As in, I could have been the one who killed her." he replied flatly.

"... what?" I asked him in absolute astonishment, that rapidly turned to anger. "That- as a joke, that was appalling! And as a true remark, it would be monstrous!" I yelled.

"War often is," Jonathan said sadly, and sighed. "Agatha, think. Zola is a Smoke Knight. Violetta is a Smoke Knight. What does this suggest?"

"But they fought each other literally to the death earlier!" I said. "Clearly they're on opposite sides!"

"'Sides' is precisely the problem," Jonathan continued grimly. "The Smoke Knights were the traditional shadow guards of the Storm King, and to this day are the sworn martial order that serves the Knights of Jove. We believe that Zola was a member of the renegade faction that broke away to serve the Other, but we won't know for sure until she's conscious enough to be interrogated. But the relevant point here is that the Valois... some of them are at present the Empires uneasy and half-trustworthy allies. Some of them are out-and-out servants of The Other. The rest are all intrigueing for God only knows what and are split up into God only knows how many cabals, alliances of conveniences, factions, and whatnot. The Fifty Families personify everything the Baron hates about elaborately murderous 'noble' intrigue and the Valois clans exemplify everything wrong with the Fifty Families. And Violetta's family is sworn to serve Tarvek's family, and Tarvek's family is right in the middle of all the intrigue. That's why he's been a hostage of the Baron for most of his life. Tarvek's... situation... is most of what's kept the stand-off a stand-off instead of letting things slide into a shadow war. But while we all tried the best we could to keep the peace, it could have ended at any time. It could still end at any time. Hell, the Baron isn't heading to Paris right now because things were staying stable." Jonathan finished angrily.

"And if things had fallen apart...?" I asked worriedly, having begun to realize the true scope of the dilemma here.

"Violetta and I would have been soldiers on opposite sides of a war. And not even the civilized battlefield kind with flags and surrenders. The 'it doesn't matter who's right, just who's left' kind." Jonathan said.

"But couldn't either of you have-?"

"What, changed sides?" Jonathan asked. "Disobeyed? Held back? Those are the traditional solutions for this old tragedy... but for Violetta? Not happening. She's one of the most loyal people you could imagine. She'd keep to her sacred vows even for people she hates, or even if she was stuck doing a job she never wanted to do. That's just who she is."

"And that's who you are, too," I realized with insight. "You're as loyal to the Baron as she is to the Sturmvoraus."

"And neither of us would ever be less than loyal, no matter the cost. That... that quality is one of the biggest things we admire about each other," Jonathan agreed. "And- look, we're not being fake friends with Tarvek, Gil and I. The part where we all knew it might end someday is part of why we clung together so much, even from the time we were kids. The thought of it coming apart and us ending up on opposite sides anyway-" He shook his head as if trying to ward off a horrible vision. "Even just the idea of killing a former friend, even in an honest battle? That's already a nightmare. So if that's a nightmare then try to find a word for killing someone- someone more than a friend-" he ground to a halt, visibly trying to hold back tears.

"I'm so sorry," I said, gently patting him on the arm. "I didn't mean to bring up such a disturbing- I shouldn't have pried into what was clearly none of my business. I hope you can forgive me."

"No. I think... I think that Violetta would be happy to know that she had an advocate like you," Jonathan said slowly. "There's nothing to forgive."

"I only wish there was anything I could say," I reassured him. "Or do."

"How's about lasting peace in Europa?" he replied with at least somewhat less bitterness than could be expected. "That would clear up all those pesky romantic obstacles right quick!"

"Isn't that what we're fighting for already?" I confronted him.

"That doesn't mean we're getting it any time soon," he came back. "But... yes. That is what we're doing." He exhaled heavily. "Sometimes I need to remember that."

"Would it help if I stayed? Or would you like some time alone?"

"... alone, please." he replied softly.

"All right," I said, as I turned to leave. "But- we might still be new friends, but we are friends. If there's anything I can do to help, please don't hesitate to ask."

Jonathan nodded to me, and I turned to leave. I sighed at the tragedy of it all. That two such fine people could be kept apart by fear and politics- it was ridiculous that someone I'd seen caught in such naked grief and longing could possibly be harboring any hidden designs.

""Captain Fairchild is one of the most talented men I've ever seen at making honest feelings do dishonest work." General Higgs' words echoed in my ears once again, and a thread of doubt kindled in my mind. Even if Jonathan had actually meant and felt every word he said, had he still been using them only to distract me from anything else...?

I shook my head. Nonsense. 900-plus year old general or not, Higgs had to be wrong.

I certainly hoped he was wrong.

* * * * *​

Author's Note: Have you ever considered just how much a Jumper, or an SI of almost any kind, has to lie to people? Even most Jumpchain stories skip over it.

Well, this one... is skipping over it at least somewhat less. Because yes, what Higgs is vaguely smelling with the benefit of centuries of experience is 'This guy is just... something.'

And not that I was intending to write a tragic romance subplot when I started this jump, but sometime during the prep for the dinner party it just leapt out of my subconscious and went 'Hey! Listen!' But, I promised earlier that I'd explain who the boy Violetta was crushing on was and you know - and vice versa.

"The Dowager Princess of Sturmhalten" is Grandmother's actual title, just as her name is Terebithia (presumably) Sturmvoraus.

And yes, this first jump is turning into a full-length epic. Seriously, about two chapters ago I was cursing 'This could have been a stand-alone Girl Genius fic if I'd thought of that first!'

As is, the entire start of the plot - and I mean just for this section alone - relies on the Jumpchain concept, so that's just an idle wondering and nothing more. But good God, after I finally finish this multi-part monstrosity, the rest of the chain is going to feel like an appendix unless I can think of something even more clever.

Well, that's the thing about writing - it can be fifteen different flavors of frustrating sometimes, but at least it's exciting.

Oh, and the 'one in fifty' about the resurrection procedures in Europa is from the footnotes of the Agatha Heterodyne and the Siege of Mechanicsburg novelisation, so, canon. We got spoiled in the comic with all the revivificiations being done by the very best people with the very best tools available; the actual reality of death in Europa is that dead is still dead at least 98% of the time.

 

[cliffc999]

Jonathan POV:

The Baron's negotiations in Paris had left no one getting all that they'd asked for and everyone feeling dissatisfied. Which is to say, it had been a successful political compromise.

Baron Wulfenbach had used the summit meeting in Paris to alert both Dowager Princess Teribithia Sturmvoraus and Master Voltaire as to the full extent of the danger facing us, up to the limits of our current knowledge. The Master of Paris had in turn contributed several key pieces of intelligence that our revelations had highlighted the significance of for him in hindsight, and had in addition promised a full investigation into Zola's history and activities in Paris in the hopes that doing so would turn up more clues for us. He'd also gratefully accepted a Vespiary Squad detachment of weasel breeders and the full information on the process of creating wasp weasels, both to help secure Paris against further infection and for the purpose of distributing to the Library and as far and wide as Paris' neutrality could spread it. We'd also arranged to leak similar knowledge to British intelligence, and trusted Albia to look to her own borders and get in contact with us if she felt she had anything to contribute.

One particular piece of intelligence Master Voltaire had provided had held significance only for me - the revelation that several years ago an expedition of Geisterdamen had forced their way into the Incorruptible Library and looted Van Rijn's secret workshop there. Apparently my presence in the jump had/would have affected the course of events to the point that Agatha would never be put in a position to free 'the Muse of Time' from its imprisonment - that sequence of events would have required her to be mentally possessed by Lucrezia, for one thing - which lack of said freeing would have created a time paradox. So events had instead reworked themselves to where Lucrezia's time-jumping clank body that Master Van Rijn had trapped centuries ago would be freed some other way. And so apparently several of her remaining loyalist servants had apparently managed to obtain Van Rijn's Key from whatever faction of the Valois had held it, even if his Notebook remained safely in the keeping of Master Payne's Circus., and used it to do the job.

Not that I could explain this to anyone, mind you.

'Grandmother' had had her arm successfully twisted more than a bit by the embarrassment of our having caught one of the Order of Jove's Smoke Knights red-handed in an attempt to destroy Castle Wulfenbach and all aboard, even if we couldn't actually prove she'd done it on the orders of any of the not-actually-openly-opposing-us (the term "loyalist" would have been nothing more than a sick joke in this context) factions of the Valois as opposed to Lucrezia's renegades or the more fractious family members. However, given all that we'd found it necessary to ask her for, we still didn't get away at all cheaply. A package deal including things like allegedly full disclosure (not that everybody didn't expect them to hold things back anyway) from the Order of Jove regarding their own intel on the Other's servants and the Order's shadow war against them, Grandmother's best politicking among the Fifty Families to try and keep things from going pear-shaped, and the von Blitzengaards' active cooperation in the campaign against the Other and helping crack down as best they could on all the Valois factions that got squirrelly... oh, none of that came cheaply at all.

It had been the first time in the history of the Empire that the Baron had actually asked the Fifty Families for anything. The first time the strategic situation had been desperate enough that the Empire had actually needed their cooperation as opposed to being able to dictate ultimatums. And so even despite us having had them on the back foot at the outset of negotiations 'Grandmother' had still worked that edge for all that she possibly could. The Baron had only just avoided having to betroth Gil to Princess Xersephnia von Blitzengaard on the spot. But even he hadn't managed to escape their second demand.

"He's not coming back?" Gilgamesh shouted at his father as we all gasped. It had been bad enough that Tarvek had immediately packed his things and departed on the return airship to Paris as soon as the Baron's messages had been brought and worse that he'd left without saying goodbye to us, but this was the final pronouncement of doom.

The Baron shook his head. "Such were the terms. Prince Sturmvoraus' period as a hostage is officially and permanently ended. The Empire has found it necessary to yield all claim on him."

"Maybe marrying Seffie wouldn't be all that bad-" Gil started to mumble to himself.

"Don't be a fool," Klaus said forbiddingly. "That betrothal would have soon enough yielded my entire Empire into the hands of the Fifty Families. As is, we have yielded only one person."

"To the last people on Earth he ever wanted to live with!" Gilgamesh screamed back at his father, as Agatha and I stood silent witness.

"I will remind you that the terms were such that I yielded any claim of custody. Not that I must refuse him all hospitality," the Baron replied firmly, before lowering his voice to a more gentle tone. "I am disappointed by this as well, Gilgamesh. I had thought your friendship - and our sponsorship - had successfully won his loyalty to us. But by all appearances, it has not."

"This has to be a mistake!" Gil cried in anguish. "I know he was upset over Violetta being killed, but Zola came from his-"

"Grief is not rational, my son." Klaus said softly. "And if it is grief, then hopefully he will reach acceptance in time."

"And if it's not?" Agatha asked nervously.

"Then perhaps we are all the more fortunate that he chose to leave," the Baron replied tonelessly. "Now, are you ready?" he continued, turning to Agatha.

"To claim Mechanicsburg?" she replied, taking a deep breath. "You've all explained to me why I have to, so... ready or not, here I go!" she finished gamely.

"Are we both still going with her, Herr Baron?" I asked him depressedly. "Given the current situation?"

"You are," he agreed. "Now, as for the Jagers?"

"We're doing a double-shuffle on the troop movements to hopefully keep any outside observers from noticing that they're all being pulled back to Mechanicsburg," I reported matter-of-factly. "None of them were going to miss being there when the Heterodyne came home. But Generals Zog, Goomblast, and Khrizhan have already accepted the future deployments putting at least three-fourths of the Jagers immediately back on the line with Imperial troops as part of the new alliance. They only insisted that once the Doom Bell has rung, it all be done openly under Heterodyne colors and with Lady Heterodyne having the right to recall them at any time she wishes."

"As I expected, and acceptable." the Baron replied. "A strong and visible alliance between the Empire and Mechanicsburg should be a useful deterrent to our less trustworthy allies." he recapped again for Agatha's benefit, while part of me sadly marveled at how ironically the entire game board had been flipped around from canon. In the original timeline the resurgence of Mechanicsburg as a powerful independent state had been the catalyst helping topple Europa into chaos. In this one, the Baron hoped that it could be key to helping hold the Empire together.

So we made our goodbyes and packed our things and all boarded the airship, as the Baron mustered the full force of the Empire to war and we headed out to help Agatha come into her own. The political shift that the return of the Heterodynes would do to Europa could barely be estimated, and a strong and visible alliance with the Empire would only compound that. Add on Mechanicsburg's impregnable defensive position, ample natural resources, and large and extremely skilled labor force, and with suitable retooling it could replace the armament plant and logistical capacity that we anticipated the Empire would lose from the upcoming outbreaks of revenant-caused "spontaneous rebellions". It was a single bold move that would help strike to the heart of the matter on multiple levels both strategic and economic. The Baron's mind had conceived it, the Deep Thinkers and the General Staff and Gilgamesh and I had helped refine it, and Agatha had devoted her full cooperation to it.

And I alone, out of everyone present, knew how useless all that effort would really be.

Which is why, as I supervised the loading of Violetta's tank in the cargo hold, I took the moment alone that the others had politely given me to lay my hand on the glass and weep. To all appearances I was crying over the fate of the young woman I loved, and indeed I was. But I was also mourning far, far more.

Because earlier that morning I had been approached by a lone Dreen, one I hadn't even known was on the flagship - not that anyone could see a Dreen going anywhere it wanted to if it didn't want to be seen - and it had whispered two sentences to me that had filled my heart with despair.

"You are the one with whom it all changed. Now we can see nothing ahead but the end."

Apparently my insertion into this timeline, my choices so far, had already shunted things onto a time track where the eventual victory of canon was impossible. I'd picked what I thought to be an easier, less needlessly drama-filled route, and I'd... left things a worse mess than if I'd never interfered.

Was this what my 'Benefactor' had wanted? For me to doom this timeline, all the while deluding myself that I was saving it? Was this what I had to look forward to from now on, being arbitrarily inserted into places and times where I'd be an unwitting harbinger of the apocalypse? To be the wrong man in the wrong place making all the difference in the world? Was this all just some sick cosmic joke?

"I'm sorry, Vi," I whispered brokenly. "I was only trying to help."

And then I squared my shoulders, wiped my eyes, and headed back towards the others. If we were all doomed anyway then I might as well go out playing my little role and saying my little lines. A futile gesture of defiance against the inevitable, standing at attention as the ship went down and all. Would the Benefactor extract me when things finally fell apart and "the end" came? Or would I be reset again and have to do this all a third time?

I suppose it didn't matter, really. It's not like it was going to kill me.

Even if I wished it could.

* * * * *​

Lady Vrin POV:

The endgame had finally begun.

When Baron Wulfenbach had originally come to Sturmhalten seeking some pathetic human plot or other, we Geisterdamen had thought it was the ruin of all our hopes. Prince Aaronev had been one of the more loyal worms crawling around our Lady's feet and so after the we'd accepted his offer of shelter in the deep caverns below his city. He'd frantically tried to find the Holy Child so we could place her in the Summoning Engine and recall our Lady to glorious flesh, and we'd thought ourselves secure and secret with him while we waited.

But then his blood kin had somehow angered the Baron in other ways, and the Baron's rage shook Sturmhalten to the foundations. We had lost the copy of the Summoning Engine I and Aaronev had built before we even had a chance to use it, we had lost the Prince and his family, and we had lost many of my sisters covering my retreat. For with all else we had lost it had been vital that I survive, as I was perhaps the last entity in Europa other than the accursed "Loremistress" Milvistle that knew the secrets of building the holy device to call our Lady home.

As disgusting and treacherous as the various human families that made up the Order of Jove were, they were necessary. We Geisterdamen could not move freely in towns and cities, and so we needed corruptible humans to work through. The Baron had been so thorough in hunting down and destroying our Lady's Hive Engines that we couldn't even create new revenants to serve us!

And we had been betrayed! Milvistle and her lickspittle cowards would all die screaming for this affront! It was her treachery that had destroyed the gate that brought us here to the Shadow World! Her that had stolen the Summoning Engine our Lady had provided us with and destroyed the plans, forcing me to work from memory! Her that had ruined most of the devices and schemes that our Lady had provided us with to work her will, leaving us with naught but scraps! And for what? Milvistle's vile heresy that our Lady was supposedly no goddess at all?

How dare any of the Geisterdamen suggest that our Lady had been nothing more than another one of these pathetic human worms, that her status as our Goddess was merely a trick and a cheat of the mortal Lucrezia Mongfish instead of Lucrezia being the one mortal who had proven worthy of Ascension?

Could a mere human have appeared to us so many times all down the ages, in all her wondrous guises?

Could a mere human create all the wonders that our Lady had used in her campaigns of conquest, wonders that even the greatest Sparks of this shadow world could not understand?

Could a mere human have returned from the Void itself to guide and aid her unworthy servants, never failing us even though we had all failed her?

No!

And even though she had been trapped beyond the veils of time, even though we were beyond the time of the Final Prophecy beyond which even our Lady could not see, even though we wandered lost and despairing in the End of History... the Lady who we had failed still did not fail us!

The Lady's visitation to us in her aspect as 'The Muse of Time' had been a miracle unlooked-for, a trick of possibility that none had anticipated. And although she could not stay among us for long, even though she did not have time to give us more than the merest scraps of knowledge, she had given us the most important piece of knowledge above all else. She had found the Holy Child!

We would have taken her at once to raise ourselves but by the time our Lady had come to guide us the Holy Child was already too old to begin the training. She would have been unable to learn to worship and accept her role as our Lady's vessel. Her human instinct for self-preservation would have made her rebel or run away, and there would have been far too high a risk of her being slain or ruined. Until we had the Summoning Engine ready for her we could not take her, and so we allowed her to remain cocooned within her illusion of a human family.

Of course, the constructs that her father's family had built were suborned by us and commanded to keep her safe for our purposes, and then commanded to consciously forget that they had ever been enslaved. The ruler of the town in which she lived was approached by several of our human co-conspirators and tempted, flattered, and eventually drawn into our net to weave more layers of protection around the Holy Child. Even her uncle's foolishness worked to our favor, his "gift" to his niece keeping her mind clouded and easily befuddled while we waited and searched for the Engine that Milvistle had stolen, or succeeded in constructing a new one with the help of our tame Sparks. Several of them had even been set to the task of improving our Lady's Hive Engines, with mixed degrees of success. And one of the other important pieces of knowledge that our Lady's visitation had been able to give us was the key to constructing more.

The utmost need for discretion and the sheer amount of resources needed to build each Engine meant that we could not hope to infect all of the Empire without being discovered. But we did not need to. We Geisterdamen could still command our Lady's lesser servants in our own right and a sufficient scattering of revenants in key places would allow us to produce the appearance of a spontaneous outbreak of chaos and disorder vs. the Baron's empire. The various jackals of the Valois families wedded to the Order of Jove would of course attempt to exploit this themselves for their plan involving the marriage of a false Holy Child to a descendant of their lost king, and we welcomed that chaos as well as sufficient cover for our own activities. The more the Empire fell apart, the more territory we Geisterdamen could take and secretly hold, and with sufficient resources devoted to the task we would eventually succeed in finding or rebuilding a Summoning Engine. And with that and the Holy Child, our Lady would return to us for all time!

Oh, the terror that had struck when we thought we had been undone! Foolish, selfish humans! They should have never run to Beetleburg as they had, even though they had not known the significance of their actions! And so the Baron's forces followed them, and oh how we had despaired when we realized that our precautions had failed and he had at long last found and seized the Holy Child!

But then came the most wondrous news of all! The Baron had not slain the Holy Child! Instead he had clasped her to his bosom and was working to restore her to her place in Mechanicsburg! He did not know the full scope of his peril! Even he, the most clever and deadly of all our Lady's foes, had finally erred!

The situation was still not ideal. We had never been able to create servants out of the natives of Mechanicsburg, and the Baron had at least some knowledge of our plans - sufficient to distribute those hated "wasp weasels" across his Empire and further. Sufficient to contain and resettle many of our more obvious attempts at creating swarms of servants against future need.

But even now we had already begun stirring rebellion and crisis across the Empire in order to distract and draw thin the forces of the Baron. Even now the greedy humans, both those who knew of us and those who did not, would leap to take advantage of the chaos we had started and exponentially multiply the distractions for Wulfenbach and his alies. And the further we reached, and grew, and conquered, the more Sparks chose to ally with us out of greed or fear or desire, the closer we came to our already so-close goal of being able to perform the Summoning.

And on that day the Holy Child would be lured or taken from Mechanicsburg no matter what stood in our way and no matter how many of us we had to sacrifice, and used to at long last bring our Lady home.

And then no one would be able to stop us. No one at all.

* * * * *​

Author's Note: And... PLOT TWIST!

Also, we finally get a behind-the-scenes glimpse at what the villains have been doing. Really, cutscenes are such a useful tool for the author.

Brief recap for those not familiar with GG - Lady Vrin is the High Priestess of the Geisterdamen, the creepy extra-dimensional(?) servants who worship The Other as a goddess. Loremistress Milvistle is canonical as well, as was her heresy and rebellion, although obviously both things worked a little differently in this AU.

BTW, yes, that's right - the Baron had indeed jumped the gun a little in assuming The Other had already returned in full, from the evidence of Punch and Judy not only having been wasped but also placed under recent orders. Remember, it wasn't known at this point that the Geisterdamen can also command common revenants.

 

[Erebos_03_]

Because believe you me, My Lady,

Click to shrink...

Believe me.

Why do you post three separate chapters at once and not one 'big' one?
Other than that I never read anything about girl genius so for this jump to draw my interest was kinda surprising. IS there a hard update schedule?

 

[cliffc999]

Believe me.

Click to shrink...

The world he's in is 19th-century gaslamp fantasy, so you will get occasional uses of archaic grammar. They are not errors, they are dialect.

Why do you post three separate chapters at once and not one 'big' one?

Click to shrink...

Because this is a cross-post of a completed fic from another forum.

Is there a hard update schedule?

Click to shrink...

You will get several chapters a day.

 

[Gindjurra]

You never get a second chance to make a first impression!"

Click to shrink...

Weeeeeelll… technically, with the right combination of drugs and brainwashing, you can get a second chance at that…

 

[cliffc999]

Agatha POV:

"... and the City Council yet again petitions you for a reversal of your decision on the refugee problem, My Lady," Seneschal Vanamonde von Mekkhan concluded his report evenly as he stood in front of the elaborate desk in my private study.

I pinched the bridge of my nose in renewed frustration. "They're not refugees, Vanamonde." I said reprovingly. "They're stranded tourists. It's not their fault that the second phase of the Other War started while they were away from home! What we are supposed to do, just push them down the road and let them get killed before they're halfway back?"

"My Lady, the tensions that are building up won't go away just because we want them to," old Carson von Mekkhan, who'd been the Seneschal under my grandfather and father, cut in. While getting a bit past being able to handle all the full-time duties he'd gratefully passed off to his grandson, he'd still joined my personal staff as an advisor for the "transition period".

"General Higgs?" I temporized, hoping that the oldest member of my ad hoc command staff would have a contribution that would let me see a way out of this deadlock.

"It all runs back to the one big worry underlyin' everything - that the Empire is finally going to annex Mechanicsburg once and for all," he told me. Augh! Always the same old fear!

"The Empire already had annexed Mechanicsburg after the Castle was attacked, however polite the fiction that everyone drew over it! Politically, militarily, and economically! My return is what is restoring Mechanicsburg's independence! So why are they only afraid now?" I vented.

"Because no matter what the reality was, for the past twenty years they could still pretend nothin' had changed," Carson said, sharing a knowing glance with Higgs. "And now nobody can pretend anything."

"And our economy is actually becoming less independent than ever," Vanamonde broke in, looking down at his notebook. "Even the smugglers are being drawn into the Baron's war effort."

"I thought the creation of a 'Heterodyne Dark Fleet' was one of the better ideas I'd been presented with, actually," I said in an affronted huff that I hoped covered up my slowly growing nervousness.

"They're havin' fun with it for now," Higgs agreed. "Runnin' disaster relief supplies, helpin' refugees, and dodgin' everyone's blockades all the while? As long as they don't do it at a loss, it's still close enough to smuggling that they're happy. But whose idea was it in the first place? Who leaked 'em the codes to allow them through the Baron's patrols?"

And with that, the roiling in my gut intensified as I was yet again reminded that my loyal advisors of Mechanicsburg were indeed loyal and helpful, just as Gil and Jonathan were friendly and helpful... but neither group of my advisors ever agreed with each other! They didn't even really like each other! Some days I felt like the rope in a game of tug-of-war-

"My Lady, the surveillance you ordered reports that there is a situation brewing on the Street of Chandlers," the Castle's voice rasped out.

"Could you be just a little more specific than "situation", you senile old pile of blocks?" Carson said abrasively.

"An informal gathering of citizens has assembled to, ah, aggressively petition against 'tourist' employment?" the Castle said with transparently false obsequiousness.

"You mean a riot," I said distressedly. "A riot against the 'out-of-towners'-!" I began to wail.

"Oh, it hardly deserves being dignified with the term 'riot', My Lady. Why, I remember when-"

"But they- I'd told them- they're not supposed to-" I babbled, and then something in me snapped.

"DAMN IT! IF I'M SUPPOSED TO BE THEIR 'LADY HETERODYNE', THEN WHY WON'T THEY JUST DO WHAT I TELL THEM?" I screamed at the top of my lungs, and the junior and senior von Mekkhans nervously looked at each other and remained silent.

"They're not hearing you clearly?" General Higgs, the only calm person in the room, shrugged.

"WELL THEN, I'LL JUST HAVE TO SHOUT LOUDER, WON'T I?" I raged, before doing the breathing exercise that I'd learned from Jonathan to help focus the Sparky rage more precisely. "Castle! I want two Torchmen outside my office window as soon as possible, and fetch my smaller death ray! If these idiots aren't hearing me clearly, then I suppose I'll just have to go down there and really get their attention!"

"Gladly, My Lady! Would you prefer the one with the blue focusing coil or-"

"No, no, this should only need the one with the red handle," I replied while hurriedly shrugging into my greatcoat, and I stuck my hand out just in time for the weapon I'd ordered to fall right into my grip out of a pneumatic chute in the ceiling. Say whatever else you might about my new home's bizarre architecture and homicidal quirks, it certainly was handy for fetching things.

A blaze of orange outside the window informed me that my ride had arrived, and without a backward glance I threw open the glass and stepped up and across the sill into the open air. The Torchmen each delicately grasped me around the waist and by the armpit and hoisted me between them, and I flew down from the battlements of the castle towards the city below.

Why couldn't people just be reasonable? I sighed, as I calibrated the sights on my death ray.

* * * * *​

Restoring the Castle had taken several days of nerve-wracking effort, deadly danger, dealing with a plot to hijack the Castle that had been masterminded by the man supposed to be supervising the prisoners, figuring out what my insane mother had done to make the Castle even crazier, reuniting multiple fragments of the Castle's shattered personality, finding and repairing the Great Movement Chamber, re-energizing the lightning collectors (Gil's atmospheric collector solution had come very much in handy there!) and surviving all the highly dangerous and unstable things that my highly dangerous and unstable ancestors had apparently thought were perfectly reasonable knicknacks and souvenirs to keep around the home.

And the entire thing with my mother having somehow mutilated one of Van Rijn's Muses as part of her design, to the point we'd had to ask for Von Pinn to be forwarded to us from Castle Wulfenbach so that we could restore Otilia to her proper body? Even if that body was so mangled that we were still trying to work out how to fully repair her... oh, that had been a Sparky puzzle and a half!

But then the fun part ended, and I had to confront what being 'the Lady Heterodyne' actually meant.

Back on Castle Wulfenbach, everyone from the Baron on down had expected it to be very difficult. That it would be requiring highly responsible decisions from me at every turn and need me to learn advanced administration, diplomacy, and statecraft as soon as possible.

The reality was far different. In hindsight it was obvious how we'd all jumped to a mistaken conclusion, but the fact remained that all the Heterodynes before my father and uncle were most famous for being blasphemous madmen even by Spark standards. So of course the civil administration of Mechanicsburg would have evolved to do the best possible job it could without direct Heterodyne input. I still couldn't shake the memory of the one councilman telling me how my grandfather had magnetized all the children of the town "so they wouldn't get lost". Preposterous! How could magnetism be used for navigation without any proper calibration? Now if he'd simply had each child provided with a miniature clank assistant, perhaps-

At any rate, during my first several weeks here I'd honestly wondered why this town felt it needed a Heterodyne in residence so desperately given that everyone was being so helpful and full of sage advice that I didn't actually need to do anything. And it was very ironic that General Higgs' advice warning me against trusting Jonathan or the Baron too deeply was what had alerted me to the trap I was falling into with my own townspeople. Their devotion to the House of Heterodyne was sincere. Utterly sincere. Downright fanatical, in fact. I not only could but had gotten my name praised as a legendary saint of benevolence simply for not killing anyone or anything within the first several minutes of my reign! Eventually the poor dears had gotten so anxious waiting for the ax to fall that I'd taken several of the Jagers on a monster-hunting expedition in the sewers to just finally get it out of everyone's system. As is, no one anticipated my record time of "three hours eleven minutes" between first ringing the Doom Bell and finally hauling out the old death ray to incinerate something to be ever be beaten, or even remotely approached.

However, 'using honest feelings to do dishonest work' was not a potential danger only from dashing if dour young Imperial officers. The more I felt encouraged to just be a smiling figurehead or to divert myself in my (admittedly fabulous!) laboratories and workshops and not bother myself with the boring and unpleasant details, the more I began to grasp that devoted followers could in their own way be a trap.

"Oh yes," Gilgamesh had agreed with me knowingly when I'd finally broached this subject with him almost a month into my reign. "My father's been struggling with that one for decades. I remember this one time shortly before I left for Paris where he spent two entire weeks setting up this elaborate project that I was supposed to evaluate for him, and the real test was whether or not I'd have the courage to tell him that he'd made a stupid assumption buried in the root of the whole setup that would have made the entire thing a waste or just try to quietly fix it myself behind the scenes."

"Did you pass?" I asked him curiously.

"Well, actually, I yelled at him about what kind of nasty joke he thought he was trying to pull on me because I simply couldn't believe he'd really make a mistake like that," Gil replied embarassedly. "But apparently that was still a passing grade because even if I'd come to the right conclusion for the wrong reason, the important point was whether I'd openly bring my concerns to him, even at the risk of angering him, instead of trying to help keep him in the... 'maze of mirrors' is his term for it. The illusion that some loyal servants like to keep holding up around their ruler so that everything stays content and happy and nothing has to change, instead of bringing unpleasant reality to them."

"A happy little illusion of normality, done to you by your own family for your own good," I said, rubbing the base of my neck where a certain locket had once sat. "Augh! I hate that!"

"Good," Gil agreed. "It's important that a ruler never stop hating the comfortable lies instead of the harsh truth. But it's equally important not to hate your people for trying it."

"Not even a little bit?" I replied, only half-seriously.

"Agatha," Gil sighed. "If I wasn't able to still like people even when I thought they were being idiots, I'd barely be able to like anyone."

"And speaking of Jonathan, is he still...?" I segued.

"Wanting to make me beat him over the head until he pulls it out of his exhaust port?" Gil replied frustratedly. "Not that percussive maintenance has ever worked on him before, but oh yes."

"What is wrong with him?" I wailed as we both stood looking down from the balcony at the new airship repair dock being constructed, with Jonathan just barely visible as a dot supervising the other dots that were the construction crew. "I'd thought he'd be better after Violetta was revived but he barely even talks to her now! Or us, except for business! Have you ever seen be this, this-" I broke off, language temporarily failing me.

"Only once before," Gil said with knowing sadness instead of frustration, and my head snapped over to look at him. "It was the year right after we'd first really become friends, and my father had come back from the whole Sturmhalten affair-"

"Jonathan would have been thirteen then, yes?" I interrupted. "What could he have had to do with that?"

"He was the one who provided the tip to my father that led him to Prince Aaronev's crimes in the first place," Gil answered distractedly before swearing under his breath and continuing "-and I shouldn't have said even that much. Please don't ask me how he knew."

"I won't," I promised. "But- oh. Even the public information on the Sturmhalten Rebellion was pretty bad-"

"And that was the public version," Gil nodded. "It was worse. Much worse. Anyhow, that's what made Jonathan so closed-off and machine-like the only other time I ever really saw him shut down like this. Guilt. But even that time wasn't this bad."

"No, that doesn't fit," I said analytically. "The timing's all wrong for Violetta. He was reacting to that like all the rest of us were, then and for the several days afterward. It wasn't until the day the Baron returned from Paris and we left for Mechanicsburg that he suddenly closed off like this."

"Guilt about Tarvek's leaving, then?" Gil said, wonderingly. "I know that the reason Jonathan tipped off my father the way he did in the first place was because he was afraid Tarvek would get kicked off the Castle soon if nothing was done about his family-"

"So maybe he felt responsible- agh!" I shook my head, somehow knowing that wasn't the answer no matter how logical it sounded. "Men! If you can't figure each other out, how are us girls supposed to?"

"I- um- er-" Gil stammered, before pausing for a bit and awkwardly continuing "-do you think it would help if you talked to him, Agatha? Because I've already tried."

"How did he come out of his guilt spiral the last time he was stuck in one?" I asked.

"Time, mostly." Gil sighed.

"Time." I huffed frustratedly.

* * * * *​

"Okay, explain!" I ranted, after having melted a nearby fountain just to get everyone's attention. "YOU!" I pointed at the apparent ringleader, going on the 'Ven all else fails, aim at de man in de fanciest het' theory that the Jagers had taught me.

"My Lady?" he said, fearfully looking up at me as I cradled my #2 anti-personnel death ray at port arms and stood perched on a nearby outdoor restaurant table flanked by the menacing floating shapes of the Torchmen.

"'My Lady' is not an explanation," I said, trying to channel Lilith's best 'I'm not angry, just terribly terribly disappointed' tone of voice. "'My Lady' is an evasion. Answer my question! Why are you all disobeying my direct proclamation about not harassing out-of-town people?!?"

Fifty pairs of frightened eyes stared up at me.

"You don't even know yourselves why you did this, do you?" I vented, before reminding myself firmly of the Gilgamesh Wulfenbach Principle of Idiocy Tolerance.

Everyone's head shook rapidly from side to side. Ugh. A flash mob. Absolutely nothing to reason with, because reason didn't get them into this in the first place. I sighed inwardly as I realized that I had absolutely no idea how to punish these people. I certainly wasn't going to drop them into a spiked pit full of starving weasels (old Theophilus Heterodyne's penalty for traffic violations my memory whispered to me distractedly) or anything like that, but- ooooo, that could work!

"I want one "volunteer" to write a 2000-word essay on 'Why Mob Hysteria Is Just A Fancy Excuse For Stupidity'," I said, doing my best to channel the worst professor I'd ever known back at Transylvania Polygnostic. "And I want every single one of the rest of you to sign it, and then after I grade it it's being published in the town newspaper so everyone knows who messed up here and why!"

"Please, My Lady, not that!" one of the ladies begged me, throwing herself to her knees. "Anything but that! ANYTHING!" she shrieked hysterically, sobbing and curling up in the fetal position.

"I'm sorry, my lady, but she gets these flashbacks whenever someone mentions essays," her husband rushed to apologize. "She was a graduate student at Transylvania Polygnostic."

"-with one medical exemption allowed." I continued onwards as if I'd meant it all along. "Because I am being nice about this. Today."

I looked out of the corner of my eye to see several of the Mechanicsburg Militia quietly staying out of the line of fire and making sure the tourist/refugees that had been the intended targets of the flash mob were being taken to safety. Good. I'd told the Castle to make sure someone was summoned to handle that, as I couldn't succor the fallen myself due to my need to be the immediate and visible distraction that stopped the impending violence before it impended.

At any rate, the crisis had been defused for the moment and I loomed menacingly at people until they went away... but not until after they'd all put their names on the sign-up sheet for our little disciplinary study group so I wouldn't have any shirkers later, save for one medical exemption.

"Not bad, keedoh," General Gkika's voice came from behind me. "Hyu is really learnink how to bang de rocks together."

"You mean the contents of their heads?" I replied, turning to face her as she leaned casually in the shadow of a nearby alleyway.

"Vot else vould I mean?" she laughed. "Still, hyu is just bandaging de surface wounds here. De internal bleedingk is still goingk on untreated."

"Do you mean in Mechanicsburg, or all of Europa?" I said, hopping down off the table and starting to walk with her as the Torchmen took off to return to their stations.

"De vun is causingk de odder," the commander of my "home guard" contingent of Jagers agreed. "De more dat Europa gets messed op, de more tension ve gets here."

"I don't know how to fix a continent," I said. "Maybe not even the Baron does, at least not when it's this sick."

"Ho, hyu is not just vhistling in de voods on dot vun," Gkika agreed. "Zhtill, ve keep de home fires burnink and all until hyu beeg brains up in de Castle ken figure it out."

"I wish I had your confidence," I said quietly.

"Hoy!" Gkika laughed. "Hyu teenk you are de first Heterodyne to haff to hunker up behind de vallz vile de vurld goes even crazier den hyu do? Hyu remember all de legends about de Storm King, right? I vas dere for dot brawl! Your great-great-however-grandpappa, he dun send his own sister out to be a big mean schneeky pants and stab de Storm King vit der psychological warfare because ve vere vinning dot fight straight op! Hoo," she exhaled meaningfully. "Dey vere maybe dot close to finally breaking de defensive lines before ol' Blutharst and Euphrosynia come up vit de clever idea. Dis is vun tuff town, yah, none tuffer. Maybe not tuff enough to fight evryvun all at vun time... but even dot schtill never stopped us before. Unt dot's because of hyu family."

"It might be the whole world coming at us eventually if we can't figure out how to get ahead of the Other," I said. "The Vespiary Squads are now estimating that maybe seven to ten percent of the entire population has been infected. One in ten of everyone outside of Mechanicsburg as a sleeper agent? And we don't even know yet how the Other is getting around to command them, and all it takes is one sentence to produce an instant uprising! All the Baron is seeing is rebellion after outburst after anarchy after riot, here there and everywhere. Things are still mostly under control for now, but if anything else happens to give the strategic situation another good hard shove then-!"

"Oh, eet ees not goot at all," Gkika agreed. "Dis is vy I zay dot howeffer fast you is tinkink up dere, mebbe hyu should all try to tink a little faster. De Baron, all de odder nobles, dey is buying time vit de soldiers. Dot's vot ve are here for, to buy time. You are de Heterodyne unt you are de one vit all de Sparky allies. Hyu haff to make de miracles hoppen."

But we're already trying, I whined inwardly to myself, only to come to a guilty realization that no. We weren't really trying hard enough.

Well. At least I knew what to do about that.

* * * * *​

Author's Note: Yes, that's right. The reactivation of Castle Heterodyne, the single longest, most sidequest-filled, most frustratingly-paced arc by far for the readers of the original webcomic? The arc that got nicknamed "The Swamp of Mechanicsburg" for how interminably long it dragged on? The GG fandom's equivalent of the Meerenese Knot?

MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! At last, I have had my revenge! I have exiled it to the land of Off-Stage Timeskip where it must languish forever! ... or at least until the next story comes along.

But really. We knew Agatha was going to repair the Castle. Given all that's in her corner this time, how could she fail? There's no real dramatic tension and this thing is already becoming a full-length novel, so let's just skip ahead to the important stuff.

The 'Heterodyne Dark Fleet' is a reference to the 'Wulfenbach Dark Fleet' footnote from the fourth Girl Genius novelisation.

Spoiler: Agatha Heterodyne and the Siege of Mechanicsburg - Footnotes

64 - The Wulfenbach Dark Fleet was supposedly a band of smugglers that operated from within the admittedly already-extensive airship fleet of the Empire. They were legendary for being able to cirumvent blockades, because they already had all the Empires' codes and passwords. They were, according to the numerous stories, ballads, and epic poems told about them, good-hearted philanthropists and crusaders for the justice that occasionally fell within the Empire's cracks. They were also completely fictitious and, at this point in our story, the Baron was getting rather impatient waiting for someone to fill this obvious ecological and sociological niche. He was beginning to think that, like so many other seemingly obvious things, he would have to do it himself.

And yes, Agatha accidentally pulled a Buffy-esque 'You're totally one of the girls!' on Gilgamesh. She meant herself and Violetta, of course, but that's not what poor Gil heard.

The 'seven to ten percent infection rate' figure is (correction) better than canon; in canon the actual infection rate of stealth revenants immediately pre-timeskip was ten to twenty percent. That's how bad things had gotten in Europa. There's a reason beyond just Gil struggling with the mental overlay that post-timeskip Europa is that messed up.

 

[cliffc999]

Jonathan POV:

I finished methodically going through the message traffic and noting which items needed further action by which officers, which ones only needed simple acknowledgements, and which few should be routed to Gilgamesh for his personal attention, and handed the sheaf of papers back to the heliograph technician. She nodded and left to return to the message center and I walked over to the nearby coffeepot, poured myself a cup of strong and black, and chugged it. Then I rinsed out my mug, left it on my desk, and left my office in the Imperial military garrison headquarters we'd set up near the Great Hospital and started pacing down the hallway towards the exit.

Ever since the Dreen had told me that "Now we can see nothing ahead but the end." I'd... well, to be honest, I'd spent the first several days in shock. Then I'd started to shake off the shock, to replace it with a protective armor of ice. If I was too late to salvage this timeline then the very least I could do was use my remaining hours in it as productively as I could, in the hopes of figuring out what I had done wrong, and in gathering more information about the Other, so I could at least do better next time.

And so I'd pulled away from the others and apparently buried myself in the work at hand as a cover for my real activities, which was an obsessive analysis of as many intelligence reports as I could possibly pull from the communications net. Castle Wulfenbach was running secure couriers to and from Mechanicsburg on a semi-regular basis with the extracts from the overall strategic appraisals that we had "Need To Know" for so that the integration of Mechanicsburg's resources into the Empire's war economy and logistical engine could be done on an optimal basis, and beyond that there was a tremendous amount of routine information you could pull from the network if you had enough heliograph engineers and crypto techs saluting you and obeying your orders.

I hadn't spent seven years living under Klaus Wulfenbach to not have learned a fine appreciation for the miracles of subtle pattern recognition that a suitably motivated Spark could pull off - that particular trick was one of the Baron's most useful ones for keeping control of his Empire. I'd even spent time with that crazy Dr. Mittelmind who was one of the former Castle prisoners deemed useful enough to impress into service, picking up what I could of his theories of mad social science in the hopes it would help me find a new way to solve this old puzzle. But so far, all I'd amassed was a tremendous mass of data points as to exactly how Europa was being slowly rotted apart at the joints from within, with all the Empire's efforts to date being merely a delay of the inevitable and with no insights as to where this pattern could be broken, either now or in the past-

A flicker of movement that wasn't even seen so much as sensed snapped me out of my thoughts and a surge of adrenaline brought me to full combat readiness. My hand went to my sword hilt as I ran back to the intersection I'd just passed through and looked both ways down the empty, darkened corridors. This particular section of the officers were only manned by the daytime duty section- nothing highly classified here an intruder would want-

I closed my eyes and focused on the subliminal sense impressions that sh- that I'd been taught at least the basics of using, and followed my intuition down the hallway. I mentally debated sounding the intruder alert but with nobody in easy earshot I would have had to either start firing my pistol indoors or leave here and go find an alarm box to pull to do so and either one would keep me from actually finding our suspected intruder, who'd clearly had advanced stealth traini-

I suddenly stopped outside one office door at a muffled sniff my ears barely caught coming from inside. Was our intruder crying-?

... oh.

Of course my instincts had reacted like a Smoke Knight in stealth mode had just crossed the hallway behind me. It had been Violetta who'd done that. I had no idea what would have brought her to the headquarters post this late in the evening but not come anywhere near my or Gil's office, or why she'd be so upset at something-

Walk away, I told myself as my hands automatically resheathed my sword. Just walk away. Yes, she was in grief or in pain and yes that still tugged at me through all my efforts to distance myself, to detach from the upcoming crash and salvage what I could for the next attempt- I had no idea how soon the end would come or how devastating- I couldn't do this. I couldn't afford to- I had to spend what time was left only on what was necessary to-

I opened the door.

"I'm certain that I'm the last person you want to talk to right now," I said quietly while turning on the lamp to announce my presence, as Violetta's head snapped up and around from where she'd been sitting in one of the visitor chairs in this unused office weeping into her hands. "But-" and then I ran out of words as she was suddenly at arms' length distance and her boot heel was slamming me solidly in the shin. I hadn't even tried to duck.

"Oh, NOW you show up!" she shouted at me, waving both hands angrily over her head while she kept kicking. "Of COURSE it would only be now! That's just the perfect stupid capstone to this perfect- miserable-" and then my arms were clasped solidly around her shoulders as I felt the tears she was still struggling to hold back dampen my chest.

"What's wrong?" I asked after a pause.

"Oh nonono no!" Violetta said, pulling me further into the office and kicking the door shut before basically throwing me into the other visitor's chair. "You first! What the hell's been wrong with you?"

Grandma's Scheming suggested multiple things I could try. I could deflect. I could reverse things into convincing her to share her grief first, as whatever had her so upset was something she was only barely holding back at the moment with her anger at and concern for me.

Or I could just tell as much of the truth as I could without admitting the existence of the Jumpchain. Because there was far too great a chance that sadistic asshole of a Benefactor would leap in to enact "unforeseen consequences", as he'd almost certainly phrase it.

"I fucked up." I answered matter-of-factly. "And I ruined everything."

Violetta's tear-streaked and angry face looked at me nose-to-nose as if I was a particularly confusing booby trap she was trying to disarm. "You don't mean 'fucked up' with how you've been for the past month, you mean about why you've been for the past month. But- Okay, keep talking."

"If you've been following the strategic situation, then you know that at the current rate of decline we're looking at maybe six months, maybe less, before Europa has collapsed to where it'll be like the Long War never stopped. Only with the Other in position to pick up all the pieces. And that's assuming nothing new goes wrong."

"'Bleak as hell' is an understatement for the long-range outlook, yeah," Violetta said to me. "But how is this supposedly your fault?"

"Slaver wasps," I said. "It all comes back to the wasps. Once someone is wasped they have to essentially be written off. Even if they aren't one of the percentage of failures that becomes a mindless shambler, they're still a lethal threat with The Other to wind them up." I shook my head in anguish. "Do you know that the Baron is literally not telling the line officers whether a given battle is being fought vs. opportunists trying to take advantage of the chaos or against mind-controlled puppets who have no choice about taking to the battlefield? That's a burden he keeps for himself, the knowledge of how many people dying out there have no responsibility for their own actions but have to be put down anyway because now that they're in active combat operations against not only us but any other population they're aimed at-" I stopped.

"It's horrible," Violetta agreed wistfully. "So horrible. I only know what I pick up eavesdropping and it's still enough for nightmares. And you and Gil both have to know all the details- but he's still able to block it out enough to keep on working without having to block out everything emotional. So why do you feel so extra guilty over it?"

"Because in hindsight I'm almost entirely certain I'm the reason there's no inoculation and no cure for slaver wasp infection." I said. After all, in canon the slaver wasp vaccine was created by Tarvek - but only after having been forced to aid his father's experiments for years in Sturmhalten, and only after having had a chance to observe the work of the Other when she'd been in possession of Agatha's body during that arc. Both of which sequences which I had utterly derailed.

"How many of the Other's followers working on wasp research was I unable to take alive during my search-and-destroy campaigns?" I continued on as best I could. "How much opportunity to learn at least some of the Other's secrets did we lose when Prince Aaronev couldn't be taken alive during the Sturmhalten incident? All of that's on me, Violetta! I did what I thought was best, but all I did was ruin everything for everyone!" I hung my head in shame.

"Oh," she said, softly, with- wait, that wasn't disgust, or anger, or- I was snapped out of my confusion by her gently poking me on the forehead with her finger, one of her gestures of affection-? "Now I get it." she exhaled heavily.

"Get what?" I asked.

"You're good at what you do, you know that?" Violetta said. "Really, really good. In all the time I've known you you've been... well, awesome. I'm not saying you're perfect because ahahahahaha, no. But you're brilliant, you're determined, you're talented, and unlike a whole lot of other determined, talented, and brilliant people you are never sloppy. Even Gil or Tarvek gets distracted sometimes but you've always had that... that supreme focus thing you do. I really envied you for that, did you know?"

"I don't think you should have envied me it," I said. "Given the results."

"Well, yeah, that's kinda my point," Violetta said tolerantly. "You've never really fucked up before. Even when you were wrong about something you were never that wrong, never hugely and totally wrong. You've never fallen flat on your butt in front of God and everyone over and over, never been not one of the first in your class, and never spent years wondering why you even had to do what you do for a living at all. So of course you got lost inside your own head for weeks the first time you thought that you'd really crashed and burned. You've never gotten any practice at having to deal with epic failure! I should have figured this out earlier!"

I bluescreened at the sheer amount of Wait, it's that simple? shouting metaphorically in my ears at that moment. "I-" I started to say, before deciding that just gaping like an idiot would be the most eloquent response I could give right now.

"And I don't think you're responsible for the entire situation right now, even if you do," Violetta said heatedly. "And even if you were right, just because some of these things were your decisions doesn't mean its still all your fault. YOU didn't set up and build this whole nightmare situation that the whole world's caught in! You just got it dropped on top of you without asking and had to deal with it the best you knew how!"

My armor of ice was now metaphorically cracked and melting in little puddles all over the floor. Even if this timeline was still doomed... Violetta's honest regard and caring - and concise analysis of a major personal shortcoming I'd been unaware of - had punched right through me. Win, lose, or die, I was back to living in these moments and not just existing through them and I'd have to deal with the consequences of that when it came.

"You know, I had a really good detachment going until you just vaporized it," I said bemusedly to her.

"Hey, smoke is what I'm supposed to do, not who I'm supposed to be," Violetta came back. "And there's a reason for that! You detach yourself too far for too long and you'll find out one day that you've got... nothing left." she trailed off sadly, as her anger at and concern for me visibly leaked out of her to be replaced by what she'd been originally feeling.

"You were crying before I came in here," I said. "And you said me first, not me only. You- you did a lot for me with what you said there," I said compassionately, taking her fingers in mine. "Can I help?"

"I got a heliograph from Seffie tonight," Violetta said quietly. "You know that I'd been messaging Tarvek in Paris for the past couple of weeks as to how I was available again and did he want me to resume my assignment with him, right? And how I never got an answer back from him?"

"Yes," I said, still wondering what the hell was up with Prince Incommunicado. "What did Seffie have to say?"

Violetta reached out to the nearby desk where a folded-up piece of paper had been dropped and handed it to me. I unfolded and read it - it was in one of the Sturmvoraus family ciphers, of course, but I already knew the key to this one - and Seffie had been breaking the news as gently as possible that Violetta had been-?

"Disowned?!?" I shouted at the top of my lungs.

"Yes," Violetta said, her eyes growing moist. "They'd found out that I'd been killed and revivified. And you know how the noble families of Europa react to that."

"Once legitimately dead, then considered dead forever even if immediately recuscitated," I acknowledged. "But I thought that was only for places in succession order!"

"So did I," Violetta said, slumping. "But apparently not. It's still in some kind of legal limbo if you read through all the mumbo-jumbo that Seffie appended, but until and unless the decision's ever finalized and then reversed then I'm not 'Lady Mondarev' anymore. I'm- I'm not anyone-" she said, trailing off as I pulled her into another hug.

"Bullshit," I said heatedly. "You're still Violetta. Our Violetta. I don't give a damn what Tarvek or 'Grandmother' or anyone else thinks. Me, Gil, Agatha, we'll always want you here with us."

"I know," she said. "But- God, what's wrong with me that that's not enough?" she wailed. "You know how much I hate my family! All their stupid plots and poisons and everything! I should be happy I'm free of all that now, but I'm not! What does it say about me that- what kind of horrible woman would actually miss-?" she trailed off, and I felt a calm and a self-assurance come over me that I hadn't felt since before this all began.

"Violetta, I understand," I said with absolute conviction.

"You empathize," Violetta said. "That's not the same thing."

"I understand." I cut her off. "Entirely." I held up a hand. "Are we being eavesdropped on right now?"

"No," Violetta said professionally, after taking a moment out to concentrate and look-and-listen around. "Unless we've got senior Smoke Knights in Mechanicsburg, no one's near this office."

"Petrus Teufel was my father," I said matter-of-factly.

"WHAT?" she cried in amazement.

"So yes. Being born into a horrible family? I understand." I nodded, and she involuntarily nodded along.

"I suppose you would-" she began dazedly. "But it's not the same! You're not all torn up about having gotten shut of it, and you didn't have an exit route! You were just a kid when you got picked up and you jumped into serving the Baron!"

I shook my head. "Violetta, what sort of training do you imagine Teufel gave his warrior-sons? You know how devastating a fighter I was already even as a young teenager. Sure, I was only twelve when the Baron smashed the Black Mist Raiders and scooped me up but remember, I had my Breakthrough when I was like ten. By age eleven I'd already learned enough I could have hoped to build what it would take to get me across the Wastelands with at least reasonable odds of success, especially since all I'd have to do is reach any settlement to get enough help to make it the rest of the way. Even the more hardened Wastelands travelers don't abandon stray kids to die very often. And as soon as I reached the nearest Corbetite station-" I shrugged. "My mother really was a British privateer. That part of the cover story the Baron wrote for me is entirely true. So once I hit any rail terminal I could have been in Calais in under a week and be in England maybe a day after that. And I could have claimed birthright citizenship in a nation where even Teufel himself couldn't hope to touch me. Hell, any privateer ship would have given me a job as a midshipman on the spot- I wouldn't have even had to leave 'the lifestyle!'" I sighed heavily. "I had all these little escape plans all drawn up on mental maps. I had lists of supplies and where I could steal them, I'd even memorized the train schedules. At any time in the past year before the Baron finally brought down my father I would have had at least two out of three odds of making it away free and clear, and it's not like I liked my psychopath of a parent that I barely even saw or all the training and tutors and testing and-" I waved my hand.

"... yeah that is eeriely like my own childhood." Violetta said meaningfully. "Right down to all the bloody training. But-"

"But I still didn't leave on my own," I said. "I stayed there until I was dragged out of it metaphorically kicking and screaming, just like you were. Because as horrible as it was, as horrible a bunch of people as I knew they all were- it was still me. It was still my last name, my bloodline, my everything that made me someone who wasn't... wasn't alone in the world."

"It was everything that defined you," Violetta said knowingly. "Even if the definition sucked."

"Yeah," I agreed. "And then I was stripped of all that by events entirely beyond my control, and cast adrift into a new life I'd never planned to make. And now I have a new name, and something as good as a new family." I finished. "And so can you," I finished, poking her affectionately in the forehead just like she'd done me. "All you have to do is ask."

Violetta took a deep breath. "So the part where if freakin' Tweedle appeared in this office right now and offered me a place in my old family again if I swore to serve him, a whole big part of me would still want to take the offer-?"

"Oh, that would make me insist you get a blood test first," I told her matter-of-factly, and she struggled to hold back a laugh. "But no. There's nothing wrong with you that you feel kinda lost right now without your place in the Valois clan structure. Because If I'm way out of practice at dealing with being a chump, then how out of practice are you at not having that framework to hang your emotions on?"

"That out of practice," Violetta agreed, and we hugged again. And this time it felt-

"Jonathan, why the heck are you hiding in- oh, you two were talking," Gil's voice trailed off in embarassment from the suddenly-opening doorway as we both struggled with the momentary urge to stab him. "I... am really sorry to interrupt you, but we just got word from the Castle. Agatha's asked us all up there for a strategy conference as soon as possible."

"What about?" I asked, as we both untangled and came to our feet.

"According to her messenger, about getting off our duffs and trying to find a way to make a real difference in this damn war," he replied, and Violetta gently elbowed me meaningfully in the ribs.

"Well..." I smiled crookedly, taking Gil slightly aback at my first show of honest emotion in far too long. "That's not the worst idea I've heard today."

* * * * *​

Author's Note: Yup! It's 3.5k words of nothing but personal drama character development! Enjoy!

But yes, apparently doomed by oracular pronouncement or not, our hapless protagonist has at least decided to stop angsting about it so much. Even if it took the love of a beating over the head both metaphorical and literal by a good woman to get him to do it, but that's also traditional.

 

[cliffc999]

Gilgamesh POV:

I was still blushing a little when I crossed the threshold of Castle Heterodyne. They hadn't even been kissing and yet the sheer naked emotion on both their faces had left me feeling like I'd suddenly walked into a live-action version of Trelawney Thorpe in the Seraglio of the Iron Sheik. The first edition, the one that had contained the uncensored version of the scene where- let's just say that a revised printing had been issued after Albia's government had made certain diplomatic protests to the publisher and leave it at that.

I still had no clue why Jonathan had been in such a funk for the past month or why it was only now that Violetta had been able to pull him out of it, or why the mysterious agreement they'd had for so long to never take things beyond being 'just friends' now seemed to be in abeyance, but I certainly wasn't going to be looking any gift clanks in the gearbox. With everything that was going wrong right now, if two of my best friends could grab a little moment of something right for themselves then I wished them all the luck in the world.

Still, that didn't mean I wasn't going to gossip about it a little. Which is why I'd used the excuse of letting Jonathan go fetch the latest intelligence reports first so I could beat them to the Castle and have a few minutes before they arrived to break the news to Agatha.

"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" she squealed adorably behind her cupped hands "Oh that is so cute!"

"I know!" I nodded vigorously to her. "I guess the dam finally burst or something. I mean, they've known each for years, there's always been something there, but they've never actually-"

"Jonathan didn't tell you?" Agatha turned to me confusedly. "Because he was entirely forthcoming with-" She exhaled with realization. "I must have caught him in a very vulnerable moment. Now I'm not sure I wouldn't be breaching a confidence."

"You know, when I saw you and Jonathan standing together when I first boarded the Castle I'd thought for a moment you were his new girlfriend," I said with an odd confusion I didn't entirely understand. "Him and Violetta had barely seen each other for two years, after all, and hadn't really been dating-dating before then. I was surprised to find out you'd only first met Jonathan a few hours ago."

"Ah," Agatha said. "No, that was just me being a little clingy with the most reassuring person around after being tossed head-first into a confusing new environment," she said. "Your father is very good at being protective, but not at all good at being reassuring."

"Protective but not reassuring," I nodded in agreement. "That's certainly a description of Father, all right. So, there's nothing-?" I felt mysteriously compelled to ask.

"Oh no," Agatha waved her hand. "Not that there's anything wrong with Jonathan, even if he's been a bit more moody than my first impression of him was. But I'm not the sort of girl who ignores another girl's prior claim, especially not when she's my friend."

"Ah," I said with great relief. Yes, it would have been complicated if the ruler that the Empire needed to keep as an ally got in a messy love triangle with an officer of the Empire and a Smoke Knight of the Order of Jove, my logical brain told me. No wonder I was so glad to hear that wasn't happening. Of course, that must be it-

"Well, if absence only made the heart grow fonder between them that explains why when I asked Jonathan if he was interested in you he backed off so hastily." I mused. "It didn't seem like him."

"A 'vigorous social life' then?" Agatha asked me with visible disapproval.

"Oh, entirely the opposite," I said. "Jonathan can do a 'polite disengagement' from unwanted attention better than almost anyone. It was the panic he denied any attraction with that was entirely unlike him."

"Hrmph!" Agatha huffed disapprovedly, and I only then clued in that I'd just put the skids under one of my unofficial brothers.

"Oh he was entirely complimentary of all your good qualities," I hurried to reassure her. "And had entirely logical and well-intentioned reasons why he wasn't going to be pursuing any interest in you at all and suggested- I mean, would respect you as a free agent." I bumbled.

"Did any of those reasons mention Violetta at all?" Agatha asked me curiously.

"No," I said, thinking back. "Not even by implication. Oh, they were all still entirely true-"

"Ah," Agatha said with realization, as if something I'd said had solved a mystery for her. Only now she seemed worried-

"Agatha, is something wrong?" I asked bluntly. Painful experience in Paris had taught me that I'd more than inherited my father's natural ability to infuriate women, so I charged forward on the theory that if I was going to upset her either way I should at least pick the route with a nonzero chance of giving me an actual answer.

"One of my Mechanicsburg advisors warned me about people who could 'make honest feelings do dishonest work', as they put it," Agatha said after a reluctant pause. "What you're describing sounds like that."

"Ugh," I couldn't stop myself from eyerolling. "That's the textbook definition of an unfalsifiable hypothesis! 'If they act honestly, it shows they're untrustworthy!' 'If they act dishonestly, it obviously shows they're untrustworthy!' What kind of advice is that?"

"I know," she sighed with visibly mixed feelings. "The most reassuring hypothesis is that I've inherited rulership of a city full of professional paranoids. You've separated the Imperial presence in the valley as much as possible from the governance of the town - you and Jonathan don't even stay in the Castle to avoid the impression of puppeting me, which is why you all have to make such a long walk every time we have a conference- but nothing I do reassures them. I actually had to threaten indiscriminate violence and then assign essays to defuse an anti-Imperial flash mob earlier tonight!"

"'Assign essays?'" I asked her in confusion.

"Dr. Merlot's most sadistic technique for student discipline back at TPU," she said amusedly. "You'd not only have to write an essay on exactly how foolish you'd been and why and then suffer through it being publicly posted for everyone to read, but he'd nitpick you forever through draft after draft before he'd finally approve one. I've already got my red inkpot out and drooling in anticipation." she finished with an evil grin.

"Ouch! I'm thinking they'd have preferred the spiked pit full of ravenous weasels," I laughed. "And as for the threatening- don't feel bad about yourself," I reassured. "'Don't Make Me Come Over There' has been the Imperial charter since my father founded it. Being reasonable is great when it works, but-" I sighed. "It usually doesn't." I shrugged and shook my head. "And I wish I knew why, so I could stop that." I finished heatedly.

I turned to see Agatha regarding me with an awed approval that made me struggle not to blush harder than when I'd walked in on Jonathan and Violetta. "That's because you're a good man, Gil," she said. "And with you ready to become Baron after your father, I don't anticipate Mechanicsburg ever being an enemy of the Empire."

"I- um- thank you?" I stammered, my tongue suddenly feeling thicker than a drive belt for no reason I could figure out-

"So!" Agatha said hurriedly, turning back to the holographic map display of Europa that the the Castle had created for us in the castle library. "Strategy meeting! Yes!"

"I hope someone has a strategy," Jonathan said as him and Violetta walked into the library. General Gkika, who'd been with Agatha when I'd arrived but had stepped outside to wait for the others and let me and Agatha have a moment alone, followed them in.

"So, vat hyu keeds got for us?" she asked as we all leaned over the table.

"A renewed determination!" Agatha said. "We have a lot of Spark brainpower in this town that's been spinning it's wheels so far. Mechanicsburg's integration into the Empire's war economy isn't done at this point, but it is established to where it shouldn't need Gil's and Jonathan's full-time attention any longer. So if you two were able to turn the routine staff work over to other officers, then we could-?"

"So, this is one of those 'We don't have a plan, just a goal' type meetings?" Jonathan said, then stepped back to allow Airman Higgs to place a tray of light refreshments on the worktable. Agatha had insisted on keeping him on as her attendant for familiarity's sake even after we'd departed the Castle, and I'd allowed it as a method of getting a useful pair of eyes inside Castle Heterodyne to make sure she was doing all right. It was quite obvious in hindsight that the man was some type of Heterodyne loyalist trying to play both ends against, of course - the recheck of his personnel file that I'd done had even turned up that he'd been born in Mechanicsburg - but as he was vastly unlikely to be any threat to the Lady Heterodyne and certainly not while within the Castle, and that putting him in the Castle would mean he had less opportunity to eavesdrop on things elsewhere in the Empire, I was entirely willing to play along as if I'd been completely fooled.

"I'm afraid so," Agatha said. "But we haven't been trying to find a goal yet, so-"

"Slaver wasps," I chorused in unison with Jonathan, as we turned to look at each other in mild surprise and then mutually nod.

"We need a cure," Violetta put in quietly. "Or at the absolute least, a vaccine."

"We need one as soon as possible," Jonathan agreed.

"People, my father not least among them, have been trying to reverse-engineer the Other's work for over twenty years and gotten nowhere," I said. "I don't think we'd get much further either, not just with lab work. We'll need to get our hands on some of the Other's research to do that, and we've had very poor success with capturing any Sparks that the Other had working on such projects alive. But we have successfully taken two other high-value prisoners recently- Jonathan, you've been the one collating the raw intelligence reports. What's the latest word on Dr. Beetle and Zola?"

"Despite vigorous interrogation Zola is so far on her fifth version of events, all mutually exclusive and all equally plausible and equally borne out by what few supporting details are available." Jonathan put in. "That woman really is the champion liar of all Europa. Dr. Beetle, on the other hand, had less anti-interrogation training and pretty much started spilling everything straight once he finally cracked. Unfortunately, he was also a relatively untrusted part of the Other's network no matter how much he'd deluded himself otherwise. If he hadn't been needed as part of their attempts to contain and control Agatha they'd never have brought him in at all - he's a terrible subordinate. He'd never let anyone be in charge of him without plotting how to break free."

"My father would certainly agree with you there," I said knowingly. "Did he contribute anything useful?"

"As it happens, yes," Jonathan said. "It turns out that our fundamental underlying assumption about the war was wrong. The Other hasn't returned to Europa, not yet. They are trying to return to Europa, and their servants have kicked off this war as preparatory to that."

"De Odder isn't here yet? Den who de hell is vinding op de revenants unt making dem all march?" Gkika shouted.

"The Geisterdamen." Jonathan said.

"De spider-ridink ghosht ladies from de Vastelands? Vot do dey have to do vit the Odder?" Gkika asked confusedly.

"She's their 'goddess'," Jonathan stated, hauling the relevant summaries out of a leather-bound satchel for us all to speed-read. "Or at least they worship her as one. They've been her servants all along, even if we're not clear if they're just deluded constructs or really are a lost race from some hidden valley that Lucrezia had conned. But from what they demonstrated to Beetle they have the power to command revenants too, at least the more common varieties. One of them was the person who ordered Agatha's foster parents to do what they did."

"No wonder there's so many outbreaks and no wonder the Empire couldn't get ahead of the pattern," Agatha said angrily. "We've been thinking one instigator, not many of them."

"And if Beetle hadn't held out this information for so long we've had more time to adjust!" Jonathan said. "As is, the Baron's playing catch-up but-"

"Wishing for more time in hindsight is pointless," Violetta poked him. "What do we do now?"

"The Odder is trying to return, yah?" Gkika said. "Do ve know vere she is returningk from? Vat de intended route is? So ve can ambush de hell out of dot bitch?"

"It's not a route," I said reluctantly. "It's..." I took a deep breath. "Almost seven years ago, during the Sturmhalten Rebellion, my father found something that Prince Aaronev and what we now know in hindsight to have been some of the Geisterdamen had been working on for over a decade. They called it the 'Summoning Engine', and it was intended to bring the Other back to Europa from... somewhere else. Someplace that isn't really a place. We barely understood that part."

"But hyu captured dis machine, right? Tell me hu veren't eediots and kept it to play around vith!" Gkika said.

"The Baron took it apart to its component pieces, then burned the pieces to ashes, then invented a way to burn ash," Jonathan said.

"Goot!" Gkika nodded. "But hyu are sayink dat de Odder's people tink dey can still pull it off, hey? So dey is gettink another machine somehow. Any idea vere dey are buildingk dere new vun?" Gkika asked practically.

"Not a clue," I said. "But the relevant part is that the Summoning Engine isn't intended to bring back Lucrezia Mongfish as she was, but- as near as my father could determine from his studies of the copy of the Engine we captured before he destroyed it, Lucrezia's mind is trapped somewhere. Elsewhere. Her physical body is long dead, but her brain was somehow recorded before that happens. So it's intended to be a revivification."

"Well, we know that's hardly impossible," Violetta murmured, hugging herself nervously. "But without her body, they'd need a new one-" and then her eyes opened in horror.

"Good guess," Jonathan said. "And we know that it has to be a body with a very close genetic correspondence to Lucrezia's original body. Which means that at present there's only one person they can use." he concluded, and Agatha gasped in horrified realization.

"LIKE HELL DOT EES GOINGK TO HAPPEN!" Gkika shouted so loud the windows rattled. "Dot settles it, My Lady! From dis moment on you are stayink inside de Castle evry minute!"

"I rather think that's my decision, don't you?" Agatha rounded on the General heatedly.

"Your decision, but everyone's consequences," I just barely heard Higgs whisper to her as he refilled her drink. Hrm.

"And there's a more practical concern," Jonathan pointed out. "We have no idea where in Europa the new Summoning Engine they're building is, much less whoever they have that's capable of building one. And as impregnable as Castle Heterodyne is-"

"Hoy, chust let dem try! Dey are not goink to get thru dese defenses!" Gkika said proudly.

"They did once before, General," I said firmly, and Gkika turned to me in shock as I referenced the fall of the Castle eighteen years ago. "Remember, Lucrezia Mongfish lived here for years. She knew the weak points to strike at. And she broke the Castle's mind once before and killed how many people who were supposed to be perfectly safe within these walls?"

"Sixty-tree," Gkika acknowledged mournfully. "Includink de young master and de Seneschal's father."

"So even the Castle won't keep me safe forever," Agatha agreed. "First the Empire, then Mechanicsburg. And that's if Lucrezia didn't leave behind some notes on a secret backdoor into the Castle or something worse. If we only stay purely on the defensive-" her voice hitched. "Then we lose."

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Higgs' face firm up like a storm cloud as the unspoken realization fell over the room. Nobody wanted to be the first to say it.

"Agatha," I finally took it upon myself. "Would you be willing to volunteer to-?"

"-be the bait?" she said. "I-" she swallowed heavily. "Yes."

"Hyu can't chust shove her out dere to be vacked on like a pinata!" Gkika shouted. "De Lady, she needs to- she needz..." Gkika broke off.

"Training, for one thing." Violetta put in matter-of-factly. "However much we all bodyguard her, this kind of behind-the-lines op only works if everybody can keep up."

"Jonathan and I can do that for you," I nodded to Agatha. "He's one of the best instructors for this sort of thing in the entire Empire."

"And we'll need a tracking method." I continued. "Something that we can tag Agatha with and follow anywhere, something the Other's forces won't pick up. Because plan A is of course just to lure in a kidnap team and sweat them for where their drop-off point is, but-"

"Plan A alvays crashes unt burns as soon as de enemy shows op," Gkika agreed. "Dot's vy dey is called de enemy."

"Vibrational resonance," Agatha said. "An object takes on characteristics of where it was made, and the vibrations can be studied with certain specialized instruments to give you clues to where it was made. A variant of that approach could-"

"A vibrational resonance tracker incorporating something that was once part of your body, that would always give a directional bearing towards you?" I said. "Hrm. We could preserve a blood sample in a vita-tube-"

"Beats pulling teeth," Jonathan said sardonically, and Agatha threw him a brief disapproving glare.

"Unt hyu vill needs an army to hit dis place like de Storm King's mace vunce dey is stupid enuff to show us vere," Gkika said. "My boyz ees more den op for dot, but I vuld be much happier vit more."

"We'd need to tell the Baron about this plan anyway," Jonathan agreed.

"We can't!" I said to him. "Father would never let us risk ourselves like this!"

"Like that ever stopped you guys before?" Violetta cut in. "Just do what you always do and leave the message for him to find after you've already left."

"I'll still need to go back to Castle Wulfenbach and fetch a couple key pieces of intel," Jonathan said. "Without your father figuring out that we're up to something. Gil, can you think up a suitable excuse for me to make a run back there and cut the orders?"

"Sure," I said. "It's going to take at least a month or two longer to finish training Agatha for this kind of commando mission anyway, even if we work her double time."

"Eeep!" Agatha said as it began to sink in just what she'd volunteered for. Oh, if only she knew... but she soon would! I inwardly chuckled to myself at memories of my own early combat training.

"Begging your pardon, sir, but something's still missing," Higgs interjected. "Some way to make the bait convincing."

"Then we'll start out by working on what we can," I said commandingly. "And work on finding that missing piece while we do."

* * * * *​

Tarvek POV:

"Tea?" Uncle Selnikov offered me graciously, and I took the cup from him. A bit of sleight of hand let me discreetly insert the tip of my littlest fingernail in the fluid so I could observe the test patch's result of 'Negative' before I actually dared to drink it. Simply sniffing the cup would have been pointless given the excellent variety of odorless toxins available. Besides, it was rude.

"Thank you," I said politely, leaning slightly further back in the lavish armchair tucked away on a corner of one of the gazebos littering the grounds of Grandmother's sprawling Parisian estate. You didn't conduct these kinds of business discussions in small cramped little rooms, not with how the acoustics of this house had been constructed. Not unless Grandmother already knew and approved of the discussion content, at any rate.

Of course, being out in the open like this left you vulnerable to eavesdroppers in the bushes and lip-readers, but unless a Night Master was personally pulling surveillance detail today no one was close enough to audibly eavesdrop and there weren't any lip-reading Smoke Knights in my field of view. I had to trust that Uncle Selnikov hadn't so neglected his own training that he'd miss anything that obvious in his own sector. He'd chosen this meeting place, after all.

"We won't have long to talk before your accounting to Grandmother for your time will become implausible, so I will skip most of the fencing," he replied. "Why should we believe you?"

"Because you're going to win," I said to him, no longer trying to hide frustrated despair. "We were too late catching on to what your real plan was. All this fighting is simply denying the inevitable. With as much of the population subverted as you already have, Europa is yours."

"Well, we always knew you were smarter than Martellus," Uncle smiled cruelly. "He's still deluding himself that this is a war he can heroically win from the saddle, just like he's always fantasized about doing. But seeing as how we'd all thought you were the Baron's lapdog for so long, you can understand our suspicion."

"Suspicion is precisely why you all thought that," I said icily, fully communicating my impatience with this stupidity. "Have you forgotten just exactly how hard Baron Wulfenbach is to fool? If any of you had been able to see through me, then he would have as well. And then we wouldn't be here."

"Wrong answer, nephew," Uncle Selnikov said, starting to rise up from his seat. "Well, it was a pleasure doing-"

"Wait!" I said desperately. "All right, I admit it!" I trailed off depressedly, and Uncle sat back down with a smug expression on his face.

"You were willing to settle for taking the Baron's coin," Uncle Selnikov said disgustedly. "And only now, at the end, are you willing to change sides."

"I was playing the long game," I said angrily. "At the time, it broke down to a simple either-or! Either a lost Heterodyne heir would turn up in my generation or that family line would be lost forever. If the latter, then the Baron thinking he had one of us as his loyal vassal was how we'd preserve ourselves."

"That particular contingency was Xersephnia's responsibility to cover," Uncle Selnikov pointed out coldly.

"With all due respects to cousin Seffie's talents, even she's not good enough to penetrate the junior Wulfenbach's impenetrable aura of denseness regarding the fairer sex," I said. "He wasn't in Paris six months before I could already see it was never going to work."

"Oh, how disappointed she'll be to hear that," Uncle said with faux-affability. "But what if the Baron had found a lost Heterodyne? As indeed he so cleverly has, and just in time to be very frustrating for us all?"

"If it was a boy, then the grand plan is postponed for another generation, meaning again that we need either me or Martellus trusted by the Baron long enough for our children to be in prime position for the next generation. And if it was a girl..."

"He'd never have let you anywhere near her," Uncle Selnikov cut me off.

"Oh really? I'd be "near her" right now if the family hadn't, in all its great wisdom, 'rescued' me from the Baron's grasp at the exact wrong moment!" I retorted angrily. "And now both Gilgamesh and Fairchild are all being her 'loyal advisors' while she plays princess in the castle, while you lot have so cleverly connived to stick me here! You could have had ink on Seffie's betrothal right now if you hadn't given the Baron an out by extracting me instead, and now here I sit, a Storm King in waiting for nothing without the Heterodyne girl!"

"Valid point," Uncle Selnikov conceded. "All right, I can see how your sucking up to our usurping overlord could be you merely playing the hand you were dealt at the time. But you're so willing to switch now because-?"

"It's a new game, and with entirely new cards," I conceded. "The Other is going to win. Your faction of the Order of Jove is going to win with her. Grandmother's still as sharp as ever, but her old hatreds against Lucrezia will force her and her supporters to ride the airship down in flames. I'm not going to ride down with it."

"Oh, is that why you personally helped destroy any chance we had to insert our fake Heterodyne girl?" Uncle Selnikov smugly sprung what he thought was his conversational trap.

"The one who'd already written me off as collateral damage after you repurposed her to that other mission?" I shrugged. "I'm so sorry, Uncle," I apologized with transparent insincerity, "I'm not going to pretend that I'm not looking after myself first."

"Zola was supposed to have warned you to evacuate the airship before starting her run," Uncle Selnikov said, and I could believe that or not as I chose. "I have no idea why she didn't."

"Irrelevant now, she's a lost cause," I handwaved. "And superfluous to needs now that Agatha's acclaimed by the castle and all. But to cut to the chase-?"

"Yes, yes," Uncle Selnikov nodded. "I'll take your offer to them. You play your part and you'll be our Storm King, and we'll get you the Heterodyne girl."

"You know my price," I said. "And it's not negotiable."

"Things happen in combat," Uncle remonstrated. "And it's not as if they aren't all deadly and dedicated fighters."

"If it legitimately happens, and don't think any of you lot can set up a deception I can't penetrate, then that's the fortunes of war." I said coldly. "But if a single one of you writes off Gilgamesh, Jonathan, or Violetta simply to make it more convenient for yourselves, then why..." I spread my hands elegantly. "I'll entirely let it slide, of course!" I said with faux affabilty. "And gladly go along with all your schemes, and eagerly wait for the Lightning Crown to descend upon my noble brow." And then I let the idiot fop pose fall away and finished with a voice of ice. "Right before I start writing off a few people for convenience's sake. Do we understand each other, Uncle?"

"We do," he agreed. "And I wouldn't have believed you for a minute if you hadn't drawn a line in the sand somewhere. Everyone wants something in this world, and if you want to waste your line of credit on 'friends', then..." He shrugged. "I'm not a man to judge another man's tastes, however strange I find them." He rose and began to depart, turning back at the steps of the gazebo to deliver one parting message. "But don't forget. If you try to play us false on this then not even Obsidian will be able to stop Madwa Korel from reaching you. And then you'll wish you could die."

"Oh, trust me Uncle, I won't forget that," I said, shaking hands with him, and then he departed. I exhaled heavily to release the tension, finished my tea, and after a suitable pause walked back towards one of the side entrances to the mansion-

-only to have a sack thrown over my head and drawn tight as soon as I entered, and my hands tied behind my back before I could even begin to resist. Smoke Knights, and clearly two of the more experienced ones- my heart froze as I realized that Grandmother must have grown suspicious-

"Don't move," a muffled voice said as they hauled me a short ways down the hallway, opened the door, and threw me onto a chair. Wait, was I going to be interrogated in a utility closet? "Wait here."

A short minute later the door opened and closed again, and the hood was yanked off my head to reveal- my jaw dropped as I confronted the impossible sight of cousin Seffie, the always-impeccable Princess Xersephnia von Blitzengaard herself, with her hair looking like a rat's nest and dressed in muddy overalls-?

"What did you people poison me with?" I said dazedly. "I didn't even feel the dart-"

A resounding slap to my face brought me to the realization that no, I wasn't hallucinating.

"What do you think you're doing?!?" Seffie hissed at me in rage as she grabbed me by the collar with both hands. "And don't try weaseling on me, cousin. I heard everything you and Lord Selnikov were saying!"

"You'd... crawled underneath the gazebo?" I said, my jaw dropping.

"Seffie never gets dirty," she smirked at me. "Seffie never exerts herself. Oh that Seffie, she's so clever but she's not physical at all." she finished mocking the common gossip. "You'd never have conceived that I'd willingly dress like a gardener and crawl in the mud to lie underneath a wooden floor and eavesdrop, now would you? It was so impossible a thought that neither of you saw me crawl right into your blind spot." She shrugged. "In addition to the fact that I was already under the gazebo before either of you arrived." she finished smugly.

"You aren't physical!" I replied. "And you weren't just holding back in all those lessons, you really did score last on the infiltration courses! I know what just holding back looks like!"

"Of course you do, you were so good at it yourself," she agreed. "But they also taught us that you don't have to be the best to be the winner, you just have to be the one who isn't seen coming. Now talk, and don't you try holding back on me now. You can overpower me, certainly, but Varpa and Obsidian are each at one end of this hallway and you can imagine what their orders are if you're seen leaving this closet ahead of me."

"Damn it, I thought I'd successfully ditched him this afternoon," I said disgustedly. "If I'm slipping like that than I really am dead... wait. Why aren't I in front of Grandmother already? Why did you send both of them out of earshot before starting the interrogation?"

"Because I'm trying to save your life, you idiot!" she cried as loudly as one can when trying to conduct a discreet conversation without being overheard in a house full of Smoke Knights. "Grandmother only allows Lord Selnikov in the house as a double-bluff! If she had the slightest idea you were dealing with the Jovian heretics for real then she'd-" She shook her head at the visions of horror that thought conjured up. "I haven't the faintest notion what you think you're doing, but you have to stop and get yourself out before it's too late. Maybe if we-"

"You overheard Uncle's farewell remarks, Seffie. It is too late for me to extract now." I told her.

"No," she moaned. "Tarvek, why did you have to-"

"You heard why. We can't win this the way we're going, Seffie. We just can't!"

"And your solution is to betray everything we've got left to that woman?" Seffie said. "Cousin, you know you'll never be more than a puppet to her. It's not just a grudge that's making Grandmother fight this to the end! The Other isn't even human any longer. She can't be bargained with, and she can't be reasoned with!"

"Seffie, you heard me bargaining for the lives of what few people I could. I can still include you in that bargain."

"And Martellus?" she insisted.

"... well, it's not anything that personal with me against him, you know that." I reluctantly conceded. "On my end it's just self-defense. He's your brother so you tell me. Once I'm secure as the Storm King, will he stop?"

"Maybe for long enough," she agreed.

"... no." I said, peering at her suspiciously, "You're only pretending to agree with me long enough to get to Grandmother," I said to her. "You've just made up your mind that I'm beyond salvage."

"You and I always were the cleverest two," she sighed. "And not very good at fooling each other. I'm sorry, Tarvek. If you're going to be all spiteful and take me with you then I suppose you can start now. It's not as if I could stop you." she finished with a proud lift of her chin, and I wondered just how true that statement might actually be given that I'd already underestimated her once today.

"No, cousin, I don't think I will. But I am going to tell you all the things that are at stake here. And then we'll see exactly who goes to Grandmother with what."

* * * * *​

Author's Note: The plot thickens!

For non-comics readers who need a brief 'who the hell are these people?' recap, Seffie is the aforementioned Princess Xersephnia von Blitzengaard, Tarvek's cousin and the Valois family candidate primed for a dynastic marriage with Gilgamesh that he's been avoiding. The offstage-but-mentioned Martellus von Blitzengaard is Seffie's older brother, and the complicated Valois family genealogy makes him Tarvek's #1 rival candidate for Storm King.

Mr. Obsidian is one of the most personally formidable Smoke Knights and the guy she had baby-sitting Tarvek in canon when he'd been temporarily shanghaied by his family in Paris, and who in this fic is Violetta's replacement as Tarvek's bodyguard/minder. Varpa is Seffie's canon Smoke Knight bodyguard.

And Gilgamesh, there's a reason you're having funny feelings around Agatha. If you weren't in the middle of the bleakest part of a wartime story arc you'd even be aware of what they were.

As to the rate of posting, I've decided that I want the cross-posting project to be over fairly soon so I'll just be dumping blocks of chapters over as te mood hits me. Maybe a few a day, maybe more, depending on what's a good stopping point.

 

[chicozapote]

You know the archetype he chose of survivor helps him and hurts him at the same time. It helped him in difficult situations, but it's a crutch since it's based on a story he believed was fixed. Realizing that every action has consequences.

 

[OrkKaptin]

The 'one in fifty' about the resurrection procedures in Europa is from the footnotes of the Agatha Heterodyne and the Siege of Mechanicsburg novelisation, so, canon. We got spoiled in the comic with all the revivificiations being

Click to shrink...

Cuts off early.

Loved this the first time, looking forward to the excuse to give you more Likes.

 

[rooster]

Writing the DA/BG3 fic bought you enough good will that I decided to read this thing in it's entirety. Frankly you're the only author that knows how to turn Jumpchain into a story and not a description of someone doing grocery shopping which is usually the case in jumpchain fics. The one with Buffy being the jumper was also very good if I recall.

 

[cliffc999]

Agatha POV:

"Unt dot is vat ve found, Mistress," Dimo finished his report.

Dimo, Maxim, and Oggie were "wild" Jagers, ones who had never taken service under the Baron after the loss of my father and uncle but instead had been detached by the Jagergenerals to search Europa for a Heterodyne heir. Even though all the Jagers had believed their task to be hopeless and that no heir existed to be found, even despite their mission being an eternal exile, they'd still accepted it for the honor of the Jager corps. For as long as they were searching, they and all their fellows could truthfully swear that the Jagers had never given up on serving the Heterodynes. Their tearful apologies to me when we'd first been introduced for having failed to find me in Beetleburg (a town that they'd actually passed through several times) were positively heartrending, and their awestruck gratitude at having finally been able to return home did more to stir forgiveness in my heart for my sometimes frustratingly over-protective townspeople than almost anything else had since I'd claimed my inheritance. Seeing the naked emotion on their faces helped really helped bring home to me that all of Mechanicsburg really was lost without a Heterodyne to serve; almost one thousand years of harsh natural selection for being loyal minions of my family had done a very thorough job indeed.

But their years of independent action away from the support and structure of the rest of the Jager corps, and their wandering and searching all over a great deal of Europa, had given them a breadth of viewpoint and a degree of initiative not common among Jagers. And even if Maxim and Oggie weren't any great intellectual specimens they were still full of much practical experience, while their team leader Dimo was excellent officer material. So when they'd finally heard the news that the Heterodyne had come home and they could return to Mechanicsburg, the first thing Generals Gkika and Higgs did after debriefing them was bring them to me as candidates for my personal honor guard and "special squad". It had turned out to be one of the better recommendations I'd ever gotten from any of my advisors.

"Thank you," I replied. "Damn," I then sighed in frustration.

"Would've been convenient if they really were usin' the old caverns under Sturmhalten for a base again," General Higgs said. "Or at least had anybody there we could take and interrogate. But they're not."

"Zo ve is still shtuck vit plan A den," Gkika said.

"I can't believe you actually agree with using Her Ladyship as bait," Higgs said frustratedly. "Do you seriously not see how convenient it will be for the Baron if she dies 'heroically' fighting the Other?"

"Ugggh," I rolled my eyes. "General, I am about ready to order you to go infiltrate somewhere very far away if you keep obsessing on this!"

"My Lady," he replied in rare anxiety. "I- please don't do that. I can't help you if I'm not here!"

"Look, hy am not zaying you don't hef a point," Gkika firmly said to Higgs. "Hy am saying you should heff realized ven it vas time to shot op about eet. Keed, hyu haff been detached for zo long dat I tink hyu have started forgetting ven it is time to stop de spyink and zhtart de marching!"

"Do you think they're setting me up too, Gkika?" I asked wearily.

"Not really," she shook her head. "If dis idea had come from de Baron himself? Den maybe. Ol' Klaus, he kin be vun ruthless guy ven he tinks he haz to be. But dis idea iz vun dot de Baron dun even know about yet. His boyz are de vuns who thot it up all by demselves, and dey are goot boyz. Not de kind that set up nice young lady dat dey already like to die."

"Fairchild is more than ruthless and devious enough for this kind of plot, even if young Wulfenbach isn't." Higgs insisted.

"Ah, but he ees also loyal," Gkika pointed out. "De baron's son is like a brudder to him. Gilgamesh, he ees too nice a boy for dis kind of ting. And Jonathan, he vouldn't ever do anything this beeg behind Gilgamesh's beck. Not vitout a direct order from de Baron himself, vhich ve alreddy know he dunt got."

"What makes you so sure?" Higgs said. "I'm the one who's spent years observing them on Castle Wulfenbach. You've known him maybe a month."

"Because hy am de one dot actually talks to other Jagers all de time," Gkika replied smugly. "Vat, hyu not even tink to debrief de Jagers that Jonathan vas leading around for de Baron for years? I haff. Unt dey haff known him for years, unt you know vot dey tell me?"

"Oh, this I have to hear," I said, breaking in eagerly.

"Jorgi and his boyz, dey tell me dot de only reason dey not already put Jonathan's name op for honorary Jager is because he vas svorn to de Baron and not de Heterodyne, unt he ees too loyal a man to effer change his oaths," Gkika replied smugly. "Becuz he is goot boy, and alvays played straight vit dem. Sure, de man ees a ruthless killer ven eet's hees job to be. But vat are ve, hrm?"

"Jorgi and his boys aren't exactly the most subtle observers we have," Higgs countered stubbornly. "They're not trained for this kind of thing!"

"Hyu are de spymaster," Gkika conceded. "If hyu still tink dey are up to something, even after all dot's alreddy been said, den eet's hyu job to go find out for sure. But eet's not hyu job to make de policy decisions. Dot ees de Lady's job, and she has already made op her mind. And I don't think she ees goink to change her mind vitout a verra good reason to."

"You're right," I said firmly. "I won't. The Other has to be stopped, and using me to draw out her innermost servants - the ones who actually know her secrets, who actually know how to stop this plague - looks to be the only way that we can stop her in time!"

Dimo and his squad had mostly remained silent because when two Jager Generals are arguing, most other Jagers tend to find excuses to inconspiciously fade into the background. But Oggie of all people chose that moment to break in. "Vy dunt hyu chust go ask heem?" he asked innocently, before Dimo hit him over the head with his fist. "Ouch!"

"And how do I do that without violating my cover, genius?" Higgs said, angrily rounding on the trio.

"Errr... vich vun is more important?" Dimo asked Higgs nervously, as the trio backed away slowly.

"HOY!" Gkika laughed, slapping the table with her palm hard enough to shake it. "Maybe ve should make hyu a general if hyu can alvays ask de schmott qvestions like dot. Vot you tink, keedoh?"

Dimo gulped in wordless panic as Higgs turned to glare at Gkika, then sighed and shrugged his shoulders. "Be damned if he's not wrong, though."

"You asked me to keep your cover on Castle Wulfenbach because you were afraid if the Baron knew about you, he'd assign you away from me." I pointed out logically. "But now we're in Mechanicsburg. I control where you're assigned. And it's not as if we could plausibly sneak you back into the Baron's forces under a new cover in the future - too many senior officers now know your face. So, it's now a moot point."

"Do I have your permission to tell them who I am, then?" Higgs asked me.

"You do," I said. "But when you ask them... you be nice. Because if your suspicions are unfounded, then I certainly don't want you to have already burned any bridges that didn't need burning."

"You know, brudder, hy alvays thought dot de generals vere sopposed to be more schmott den ve vere, but-" Maxim whispered a bit too loudly to Oggie, right before a frustrated Higgs turned and punched him into the nearest wall on his way out of the conference room.

"More schmott den at least vun of hyu," Gkika shrugged amusedly.

"Hy am okey!" Maxim said weakly from where he was slumped against the wall, and his two squadmates went over to help him up. "Hy am chust fine!"

"Is this sort of thing normal?" I asked General Gkika with a touch of worry.

"Oh, hyu heff no idea," she said tolerantly.

* * * * *​

Klaus POV:

"... and... that's why... they ordered me to do it." Zola Malfeazium finished weakly, and then fell unconscious. I checked the meters, then cursed and rechecked them.

"Damn," I swore evenly. "We were just beginning to make progress, but she's at the limits of her endurance. We won't be able to resume questioning for at least a day, unless-?" I probed.

"Thirty hours at minimum," Prince Martellus von Blitzengaard replied to me while staring intently at his own readout panel. "Zola was given much more extensive anti-interrogation conditioning and preparation than even most Smoke Knights typically were, given the extreme delicacy of the mission she was originally intended for. The measures we've needed to use-" he shrugged. "Their toll on the body is equally extensive."

"Ah yes, that false Heterodyne plot," I said with dangerous mildness. "I'm surprised your family has admitted its existence to me even now."

"Herr Baron, do you think you're the most discomfited by these revelations?" the large red-headed young man replied to me. "I would have had to marry this woman if that scheme had actually come to pass!" he finished disgustedly.

"My condolences," I replied with a great deal more sincerity than I had expected to be feeling at this moment. My own folly in ever trusting Lucrezia Mongfish certainly left me able to feel at least some empathy for how appalling it would have been to have political expedience force one to become life partners with Demonica Mongfish's daughter, especially given that she appeared to be as horribly deficient a personality as her aunt Lucrezia had been. "But surely they had told you-?"

"That a candidate was being prepared?" he shrugged. "Of course. But nothing about who it was, or what kind of woman she would have been." He gave a reflective pause. "To be frank, I'm thinking you did me a very good turn when you discovered the real Heterodyne. And your holding her back right up until the family was willing to grant you all those concessions in return for regaining control of my cousin of all people, then deploying her at just the right moment to make all that effort moot-" he nodded to me in respect. "Well played, Herr Baron. And thus our cooperation in helping you dismantle that plot's remnants. With the real Heterodyne heir firmly under your control, this fake has no more use to anyone." He shrugged. "Save as an information source, of course."

I nodded back silently. I certainly had no intention of confessing to one of the two main possible principals of the Storm King plot that the timing of my discovery of Agatha Heterodyne had been purest coincidence, or that my ready willingness to allow her to be restored to her seat in Mechanicsburg was driven largely by desperation. Not that I had anything against her as a person - she was from all available data a thoroughly decent and quite impressive young woman - but not even Bill and Barry had been immune to the Heterodyne nature of being chaos magnets, and deploying chaos of that magnitude within my Empire would have been something I'd have been pleased to delay as long as possible.

However, the current situation was anything but orderly. Hence my new decisions. And several of my unflattering new alliances.

"Your aid has been welcome, Your Highness," I thanked him purely for the sake of diplomacy. "Without your biological expertise and inside knowledge of the particular pharmacoepia and rigors that the Smoke Knights use for resistance against interrogation chemicals, we would not have made as much progress as we have."

"That is why Grandmother sent me here," he conceded. "It's as much in our interest as yours to get her cracked open and genuinely talking as soon as possible, and I'm certainly up for the challenge. But for now-?"

"Back to working on the war plans," I agreed. As little as I trusted this man or any of his family, Prince Martellus was a competent field commander for the Fifty Families' military forces in addition to his particular scientific expertise. I could make use of that.

"We do work well together, Herr Baron," he continued affably as we walked back towards the command deck of the Castle. "And we could continue to do so as more than a mere alliance of convenience."

"With all due respect to your sister, I still intend to allow my son to make his own decisions of the heart at this juncture," I brushed him off curtly.

"Do you honestly believe you can afford to do so at this juncture, Herr Baron?" he pressed me, and I stopped to stare him directly in the eye. Prince Martellus was a large and powerfully-built man, accustomed to towering over most people, but he was still at least six inches shorter than I was and was not at all comfortable with being stared down at.

"Yes," I replied flatly. "I do."

"... so I see," he murmured after a long awkward pause. "The strategy room?" he recovered.

"The strategy room," I replied with a brief quirk of my lips, and we turned and continued onward.

* * * * *​

Jonathan POV:

"I can't imagine Agatha not ordering you to ask me politely," I said, as I did a two-handed pull-up on Higgs' wrist so as to get enough slack in my collar to breathe and talk. Seeing as how he was at present holding me over the edge of Castle Heterodyne's battlements at arm's length. "This is politely?"

I looked down. Ninety feet and change to the moat. Theoretically survivable, if the Heterodynes kept nothing except water in their moats- no, I probably wouldn't be that lucky.

"Haven't actually let go of you yet, have I?" Higgs said with a thin little smile. "How much more polite do you want?"

"I'm curious as to what you think this will accomplish," I asked him. "Either I'm brave enough to not change my answers even under threat of death, or cowardly enough to tell you whatever you want to hear. Neither option means that the muscle routine is actually going to change my truthfulness quotient any."

"Oh, I know that," he shrugged. "But even the really good liars tend to slip a little more when they're under more stress. And I've gotten lots of practice at reading people."

"Ask," I did my best to shrug, given the circumstances.

"Wouldn't it be so very convenient for the Baron if the last Heterodyne died heroically fighting his worst enemy without having an heir?" Higgs asked. "Nothing he can be blamed for. No one for Mechanicsburg to get revenge on for her death, except someone he already wants dead. No possibility of any future Heterodyne ever threatening the stability he wants for Europa. He'd accomplish what even the Shining Coalition never had, and solidify his rule forever."

I waited silently. Higgs started to bear down on my windpipe more, and then at my obstinate silence did so more, and more...

I regained consciousness - still dangling in mid-air -at his slap to the face, even if he'd stopped cutting off my wind. "You're startin' to piss me off, Captain." he growled.

"That makes us a matched set, because I'm already pissed off," I replied. "What the hell kind of question was that bullshit? I say 'Yes', you kill me. I say 'No', you scoff at my 'obvious lie' and kill me. If I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't, then damned if I'll play along."

"So you admit it?" he said coldly.

"Neither the Baron nor anyone who serves him has any intention of betraying Lady Agatha," I said. "There's your answer. I can't put it any plainer."

"I don't believe you," he said, and I cursed at his stupid stubborn blind refusal to pull his head out-

And with a sudden burst of insight, it struck me who else I knew that had been stupidly refusing to pull their head out of their sphincter recently.

"You're scared, aren't you?" I asked him much more gently.

Higgs hauled me so close to his face that our noses were practically touching and snarled. "Don't patronize me, boy."

"I had a lesson recently in how even those of us who have spent our entire careers never really losing - especially those of us who haven't - can not even know that we're floundering the first time we fall on our asses," I said. "When you've been a brilliant success story for a long time, you don't have any practice dealing with how failure tastes."

"I haven't failed anyone," Higgs said.

I waved my hand at the Castle. "General, you and everyone else who serves the Heterodynes have felt like nothing but failures for almost twenty years. It was terrifying, wasn't it? After all those centuries of tradition, of generation after generation of Heterodynes succeeding each other one by one, all that reliability- even Bill and Barry were only a worrisome change in style, not an actual disaster."

"Keep talking," Higgs hissed at me. "Finish your insulting little monologue. So I know exactly how many pieces of you I should tear off how slowly before I throw what's left of you to the moat kraken!"

"I was there when Dimo and his team reported in," I said. "I saw how hard they cried when they realized that House Heterodyne wasn't lost after all. I saw Gkika hiding her own sniffles when she first met Agatha. Hell, I remember the drinking party that Jorgi and his team made me endure the night before we left Castle Wulfenbach. There wasn't a dry eye in the house! But when did you weep for the fallen, General? Or weep in gratitude when Agatha miraculously returned? Did you ever let yourself cry? Even once?"

"I-" Higgs said, looking uncertain for the first time.

"You didn't." I said. "You shut down. You compartmentalized everything. You went on with your job like a machine. Perfectly efficient, perfectly detached, and perfectly empty. Just like I did for the first month after we got here, and for much the same reason."

"Shut up!" he said, giving me a shake.

"You've had to work alone for a very very long time, I imagine." I kept going. "But it was all right, because you knew your home was still here to return to in-between assignments. And then one day it all vanishes, and it looks like it's never coming back. Nothing to look forward to but endless centuries of being alone and nameless. The only family you knew, taken from you. And you spend twenty years with that loss, but you never let yourself actually feel it. You just buried it all. I suppose you would have been strong enough to bury it forever."

"But she came back!" Higgs said angrily. "She came back, and now you want to take her away-"

"She came back," I agreed. "And now you're terrified she might leave you alone again. You've gotten a second chance you never thought you would, and so you're desperate to make sure you don't waste it. But you've always been the lone Jager out in the cold. Mamma Gkika, Jorgi and the regulars, even the wild Jagers... they haven't been alone. They've all buried the townsfolk they were friends and family with, generation after generation. They've buried each other when they fell on the battlefield, and made sure the fallen always had their hat. They've had practice at dealing with loss."

For the first time in what was probably centuries, Axel Higgs' face reflected nothing but gape-jawed astonishment. I nodded and continued.

"But you? You've always been the Secret General. The one who couldn't get close to anyone, the one who always walked away to a new name and place when the old job was done. You never stuck around, you never had to deal with the messes that had been left behind. And you hardly ever even visited home, much less remained long enough to bond to anyone save your fellow Jagers. So the fall of the Heterodyne Boys was the first time in a long, long while that you actually had to confront things like loss, and grief, and death." I shrugged. "And you've been so out of practice at doing that that it wound you all up in a knot."

Higgs looked at me as if I were the more dangerous madman in this conversation. "You don't even give off the slightest whiff of fear," he said. "And all along you were provokin' me greatly, and I could've snapped your neck with a flick of my wrist. You're not insane, so what are you?"

"General," I said softly. "The kingdom I serve is falling. The world is maybe less than a year away from ending. Perhaps the most terrifying enemy the human race has ever known is poised for final victory, and I can see only the longest of long shots having any chance of changing that - and that's a step up from what I've been thinking most of last month." I continued, my voice rising father and farther, "Hell, the woman I love and I still aren't fully together because her future with her family is still uncertain and I'm not going to use a relationship to corner her into where she loses the choice of still pursuing her former loyalty if she wants to and I haven't even gotten to kiss her yet!" I screamed in frustration. "So why the fuck should my biggest worry right now be you? You want me to be all terrified at your impending violence? Then take a goddamn number and get in line! I'll get around to panicking about you after the rest of the universe gives me a clear moment to worry about that shit!" I raged.

I landed stumbling on my feet from where Higgs had pulled me up and tossed me back onto solid ground. He turned away from me and sighed painfully, leaning with both palms on the edge of the battlement.

"You're a bastard, Fairchild." he growled out.

"Look who's talking," I shot back, standing and leaning next to him.

"But you're right, though," he said, his shoulders lumping. "The idea of House Heterodyne falling-" he shook his head. "Ever since the Castle fell, we were mostly just- pretending it wasn't real. That Masters Bill and Barry had just stepped out for an errand and gotten lost, that they'd all come back someday. Even if we knew they never would. And then the Lady Agatha shows up, and its actually real, the family is actually back... it was a miracle. But it still all seemed so fragile, like a dream you're terrified of waking up from-" he swallowed heavily. "The thought that we could lose her again- it was unthinkable." he shook his head. "And I panicked. I thought I could stop all that, that I could make sure she never left us again. If I could just convince her to stay safe, stay away from any risks at all-" he sighed. "To stay away from all of you people."

"General," I said. "If you could have actually stopped her from doing anything she thought needed doing... then would she even be a Heterodyne?"

Higgs started laughing- painfully and hoarsely, and mostly at himself, but still genuinely laughing. "No," he agreed. "No, she wouldn't."

"So, you still thinking that I'm making honest feelings do dishonest work?" I probed after we stood together in companionable silence for a while.

"I don't think that you even know how not to do that," Higgs replied. "But do I think you're actually being dishonest?" He shook his head. "No. Not with us, not about this. That was just my- well, mostly just my own fears talking."

"No apology needed," I said. "It's not as if I haven't done the same kind of stupid. Very, very recently."

"Love is hard, isn't it?" he agreed. "Not that it's romantic in my case, but-"

"It's always hard," I nodded. "Seems to be part of the definition."

"Captain," Higgs said formally, turning to face me. "Ultimately, you were the one who found our Lady for us. We- all of us, everyone who serves the Heterodynes- owe you a debt for that. I shouldn't ever have let myself forget that, no matter what else I believed."

I had no words, so I simply stuck out my hand.

He shook it.

* * * * *​

Author's Note: Da Boyz are back in town! And yes, they are now Agatha's personal bodyguards so they'll be regulars from now on.

As for Higgs - when the fic started I hadn't quite expected things to evolve in this direction. But Higgs does deserve a little more character depth than he got in canon. I mean, I'm trying to imagine how devastated the guy must have been during the interregnum where it looked like all was lost. Even the rest of the Jagers had each other to lean on. But, he's over it now.

And somehow Tweedle of all people talked himself into a guest spot. OTOH, it does make sense - Grandmother would want Zola cracked open as much as the Baron did, and Martellus is legitimately one of the family's best experts at their particular bio-medical secrets as well as one of their better military field commanders. With him there to help work on her blood chemistry, they could actually make truth serums start working when normally trying to inject anything into a Smoke Knight is 'LOL get stuffed'.

As for why torture wasn't working - remember that one of the downsides of torture is that you don't necessarily get the truth, you just get whatever the victim thinks will make the pain stop. Or in Zola's case you get at least half a dozen different stories, all of them blending truth and lies so elaborately that you have no hope in hell of figuring out what's bullshit and what ain't any time remotely soon. Hence the new approach.

 

[cliffc999]

Jonathan POV:

Infiltrating Castle Wulfenbach was not what you'd call an easy task, even if you had full command staff authorization to come and go as you pleased. However, Agatha still had several loyal agents-in-place aboard in the position of the several Jager Generals who had remained behind to coordinate troop movements. While approximately a quarter of the Jager Corps had stayed behind as the Mechanicsburg home guard, both their value as troops and as a symbol of the open and visible alliance with Mechanicsburg resurgent that the Baron was using as one of the ongoing discouragements against excessive own-goaling by the noble families of Europa had the majority of them still deployed with Wulfenbach forces for the duration, as per the original agreement with Agatha. Which meant their commanders would still be on the Castle as part of the General Staff, meaning that secret orders from Agatha to cooperate with my mission could get me all the inside knowledge I needed.

Especially since the only knowledge I needed was enough advance notice of when the Baron would be off the Castle and personally attending to something elsewhere to be able to slip in and out during his absence. It would appear to be a mere coincidence that my return to Castle Wulfenbach to share dispatches and consult with the Deep Thinkers had 'missed' the Baron himself... which was certainly a prerequisite to the trip because while fooling Boris was hard enough, lying to the Baron's face was a definite "I would prefer not to".

Not that I was intending treachery. I was merely exercising the Miles Vorkosigan school of discretion and not bringing the Baron's attention to our plan to use Agatha and the Other's forces desire for her as a host body for Lucrezia as bait to draw out someone or someplace important enough where we could obtain the secrets we needed on how to stop and/or reverse slaver wasp infection. Because we all gravely doubted he'd be willing to risk Agatha's life by itself for something this audacious, let alone Gil's or mine - and there was no way either of us would let her go without us.

Physically infiltrating the sealed interrogation lab where they were keeping Zola without risking detection by any security measures the Baron would have left behind was... well, it was a pipe dream. So I simply took advantage of my rank to order the guards to admit me. If I couldn't hide the fact that I'd been here, then I wouldn't even try to. I'd just conceal why I'd come here. An attack of curiosity at how the woman who'd almost killed me was being treated would hardly raise more than an eyebrow, and it would make good cover for-

"You..." she called weakly from where she hung suspended from an entire array of machinery and tubing, and under enough restraints to keep Othar Tryggvasen from going anywhere.

"Me," I said coldly, as I let the last of several nested security doors close behind me.

"Please... kill me..." she whimpered softly, and I felt a twinge of pity I hadn't expected to feel- damn, she was good.

I started methodically going through the medical charts, notes, and accumulated readout logs that she'd been hooked up to. I was surprised to note that the Baron's own efforts had been done in conjunction with Martellus von Blitzengaard of all people, although I eagerly noted down all the various proprietary Fifty Families biomedical technologies he'd had to use to help counteract Zola's Smoke Knight precautions.

"Nice try, Zola, but they haven't even used pain for several weeks," I said. "And it's not as if you're averse to taking a few drugs," I continued, wincing inwardly at the memories of fighting her berserker rush.

"You want... to trade places, Captain?" she panted angrily. "My mind... they're taking it apart, piece by piece..." she said despairingly.

"Don't exaggerate," I said. "I know exactly what they're doing to you." I said, waving a sheaf of notes. "It's far more humane than what you were going to do to us. Or that you haven't already done to who knows how many others."

"Oh," she replied, her voice shading over with... amusement? "You're sneaking."

"Excuse me?" I said, turning to face her.

"Somebody's not supposed to beeeeee heeeeere," she sing-songed, the prospect of maybe being able to work an angle against me giving her a second wind. "That's why you had to read all the notes nooooow," she giggled. "If you were really part of the team, you'd have been allowed to do your homework before coming in."

"I'd forgotten how very clever you are, Zola." I nodded in acknowledgement. "How's that working out for you - being clever?" I continued icily.

"You're going to either help me, or kill me," she said softly. "Or I'll tell your father all that you've done when he gets back."

"He's not my father," I said matter-of-factly, as I opened my valise and checked to make sure I had all the instruments I'd need.

"He's been more of a father for you than I ever had for a mother," she sighed wistfully.

"Zola, after your first few atrocities nobody cares how awful your childhood was," I said. "Trust me. I know."

"Don't you want to be on the winning team?" she replied coldly, abandoning her earlier line of attack entirely. "Because I can tell just from the questions they keep asking me that you guys are not winning."

"I'll take my hat off to you this much, Zola." I said with more respect than I ever imagined I'd be feeling. "You simply do not quit. I'd genuinely admire your guts- if you weren't such a poisonous snake."

"I'd genuinely respect your talent- if you weren't such an overly sentimental fool," she spat back. "So, no deal?"

"No deal," I said. "Tell the Baron everything you saw or thought you saw. I haven't done anything yet that I don't have an explanation for."

"You said yet," Zola sneered. "So you've still got something else left to finish here that you don't want the Baron knowing about, and that means you can't let me see you do it. But you can't even knock me unconscious without throwing their whole careful bio-medical program off-kilter, and you certainly can't move me out of this room. So make me an offer, smart guy."

"Well," I smirked as I withdrew a scarf from my jacket pocket. "How's about a complimentary blindfold?"

"OH YOU MISERABLE SON OF A-!"

* * * * *​

Agatha POV:

I lay panting with exhaustion on the floor of one of the workout rooms in the Castle. I felt like a ball bearing that had been run through a set of dreadnought-scale reduction gears, after having been first been flight-tested in a gale-force wind tunnel.

"So... this 'death' thing that training is supposed to prevent... why is it bad?" I gasped weakly. The sadistic taskmaster that I had thought was one of my best friends had resumed our workouts upon his recent return from Castle Wulfenbach, and I'd gone back to praying for the sweet release of oblivion.

"Hey, you got a lot further than you did last week!" Violetta said cheerfully, darting in to help me up to my feet. "How much manual labor did you do back in Beetleburg? Because I've hardly ever seen civilians with that much endurance."

"Blacksmith's... foster daughter, remember?" I panted, as Violetta helped me limp around the mats for a cooldown walk. "I always loved... helping Adam in the forge. It kept the... headaches away." I finished, slightly downcast at the memories.

"Ouch," she commiserated. "Yeah, chronic migraines are not fun."

"You get migraines?" I asked her confusedly. Violetta had always seemed the picture of health to me-

"A whole lot of Smoke Knight training involves going about your regular routine while the instructor hides and waits to see how soon you notice you got poisoned," she answered as if that kind of thing was perfectly normal. I clenched up in horrified realization- "Muscle cramp?" she asked me innocently.

"What kind of monsters- to children- how many of you died?" I said, clutching both hands to my mouth in horror.

"None of us!" she rushed to reassure me, finally realizing what had set me off. "If you took too long to catch on then the instructor would just step out and stab you in the butt with the antidote, then mark you down as a failure for that day's lesson. The Smoke Knights were tough, not crazy. My point was, I know what having chronic headaches is like. I'm a little oversensitive to the more common of the venom series that they use in training." She shrugged. "It actually helped me ace those tests, to be honest."

"Still, it sounds like a-" I tried to find a diplomatic way to phrase it as we both sat down on a bench to continue talking.

"Rough experience?" Violetta shrugged matter-of-factly. "It was what it was. It wasn't very fun sometimes but hey, I survived. And smoke is what I do, not who I am," she trailed off sadly. "Or did, I suppose."

"Still no further word about your status with your family?" I asked her.

"Just my formal notice of disownment coming in shortly after cousin Seffie's heads-up," she sighed. "And then that other letter from her, the one warning us about Tarvek-" she trailed off.

"I didn't even recognize the person she was describing," I said, thinking back to that awful, awful letter. "Exactly how... reliable is your cousin, if that's not rude to ask?"

"About my family?" Violetta retorted incredulously. "Not asking would be idiotic. All of the Fifty Families are a bunch of intrigueing snakepits, but the two single biggest and most venomously infested serpent warrens on all of Snake Mountain are the Sturmvoraus and the von Blitzengaards. In theory Tarvek and Martellus are the two family heads of the two most prominent family dynasties among the Fifty ever since their fathers died, but while Martellus has had mostly a clear field to build his powerbase Tarvek's been basically helpless to exert himself. Prince Aaronev's rebellion meant that the Baron could take direct control of his demesne and claim Tarvek as his 'ward'. Not that Tarvek wasn't grateful as heck at the time because having the Baron do it was way preferable to any of our ambitious relatives getting a chance to dip their hands in- at least Tarvek could be sure that Baron Wulfenbach wouldn't actually try to kill him so they could inherit Sturmhalten themselves-" she trailed off sadly.

"But Dowager Princess Sturmvoraus finally managed to get the Baron to yield his 'guardianship', and that plus having already reached his majority makes Tarvek the reigning Prince of Sturmhalten in his own right at long last," I said. "So it's not... completely impossible that Princess Xersephnia's warning to you might actually be true."

"I mean, she could still be lying to us," Violetta said in desperate denial. "Seffie plays her own games for some things but she'd never actually go against her brother's side. She genuinely loves the big jerk. And Tarvek and Martellus are the two big rallying points for the extended family's main political split, so if she could put the skids under Tarvek by rumormongering to us-"

"But is that her usual style?" I probed.

"No," Violetta slumped. "I mean, it's not as if you can just trust her. She's one of my relatives." Violetta snorted. "But can we trust Seffie to not be dumb enough to tell a lie that would lead to us resenting the heck out of her later when we found out it was a lie? ... probably, yeah." she sighed reluctantly. "Seffie always preferred both sides of the family to be talking instead of fighting whenever possible, and she never burns any bridges with anyone unless she absolutely has to. It's how she's stayed one step ahead for as long as she has."

"So, since slandering Tarvek to us like that would fall apart the next time we actually saw him again, it's just horribly possible that he actually has started changing now that he-" I trailed off sadly.

"Has other choices now," Violetta said, torn in an agony of doubt. "But-" she slumped. "I spent practically my whole life with him! The first couple years he spent on Castle Wulfenbach before his father died were about the only time we were ever apart! How could I not know him? It has to be-" she sniffled, and I put my arm around her reassuringly.

"Have you talked about this with Jonathan?" I asked her. "Or Gil? They're certainly more experienced with complicated politics than I am."

"Gil's as torn up about it as I am," she said sadly. "His heart still wants to believe that his brother from another mother is the same guy he always believed he was. His head is all Wulfenbach Jr. and so he keeps having to remind himself to that he doesn't have the luxury of too-wishful thinking. He is the heir to an empire, after all." Violetta shrugged. "Whether they want to be nice guys or not, rulers still have to learn the rules. Or they don't rule for long."

"I really don't like some of those rules," I said firmly, as I was reminded yet again that I was now a ruler too.

"You're different," Violetta reassured me. "Your internal security problems are basically zero point zero, and you're the only head of state in Europa except for maybe Queen Albia who can actually say that. And for all the old tales talk about the old Heterodynes being, you know, what they were, they never talk about any of them actually trying to kill each other to move up in line."

"I would imagine that was because the Castle would have a very firm veto to anyone who tried," I agreed. "But speaking of inheritance, I never asked how you and Tarvek were cousins," it occurred to me. "Were you in line to rule anything yourself one day?"

"No," Violetta said. "The Mondarevs are hereditary retainers to the Sturmvoraus. It's basically the same as how the Von Mekkhans are to your family, except with actual intermarriage. We're cadet branch to the main branch but cadet is all we are. Usually Mondarevs become Smoke Knights, because while in theory all Smoke Knights are equally sworn to the Order of Jove and stand ready to defend the major descendants of Andronicus Valois against the day the Storm King will come once again, in practice every major player wants at least one of their personal Smoke Knights to actually be a close family member. Not that family's always more trustworthy, especially in our extended family, but-" she shrugged. "They still like to do it. I'm more closely related to Tarvek than most Mondarevs were to their particular Prince Sturmvoraus - we're actually first cousins, not just distant ones - because his father had a couple of sisters that needed marrying off, and one of them was to us."

"Wait, Tarvek has no siblings-" I began.

"None still living," Violetta corrected me. Oh, right.

"And he certainly has no children yet. If you're his only first cousin-"

"Martellus and Seffie both are as well, but on his mother's side." Violetta said.

"Still, wouldn't that mean you would have become Princess of Sturmhalten if he'd died?" I continued.

"Not all places are Mechanicsburg," Violetta corrected me. "Most of the Fifty Families - and that includes the Sturmvoraus and the von Blitzengaards - use male primogeniture only. Even before being disowned I could still never inherit Sturmhalten because I'm a girl, any more than Anevka could have. The title can pass through the female line to male children in the absence of more direct heirs, but that's all."

"It does seem to be simpler for the Heterodynes," I conceded.

"Oh is it ever!" Violetta agreed. "Open primogeniture inheritance, no disaffected political factions at home, no scheming courtiers trying to be Advisor Number One with a knife-"

"Some of the things Vanamonde has said to me about the Court of Gears begs to differ." I pointed out.

"Oh that's just organized crime," Violetta said matter-of-factly. "You go into any village with more than fifty people and somebody's going to be smuggling something or looting something else. That's more inevitable than Sparks and their death rays. I meant no inside the main political administration type knifing. Really, if you had to turn out to be the lost heir of a Great House there were so many worse places you could have landed in." she said, waving her hands to metaphorically encompass all of Mechanicsburg. "Way up among them being where I was born." she finished.

"True, here I only have inheriting my family's one thousand years' worth of history at alternately terrifying and enraging every other dynasty in Europa and all the future diplomatic fallout of that to deal with," I said with mixed amusement.

"Oh, you're definitely going to need to need to learn foreign diplomacy once this war is over," Violetta replied. "But by that point you'll either have been instrumental in helping save Europa from the Other or none of us will need to do any diplomacy with anyone at all, so look on the bright side!"

I sighed. "We really don't want to talk about it, do we?" I said glumly, as I noticed that we'd let ourselves drift off-topic for at least the second time in five minutes.

"No we don't," Violetta sighed. "At any rate, to answer your earlier question Jonathan believes that Tarvek is just trying some desperate infiltration gambit. What parts of the overall strategic picture that would be communicated back to Paris would still be enough for him to figure out that we desperately need to break the deadlock, and so if he thought he was helping he just might-" she trailed off wordlessly, waving her hands in a tangle as if trying to communicate a very convoluted thought process with simple gestures. "But the big giant hole in that theory is Seffie's whole letter warning us about how... cold-blooded Tarvek has been recently. It can't be a scam because if it was a scam then writing that letter would mean she was actively trying to sell it. Which would mean she'd be a part of the scam, except Tarvek wouldn't trust her to be a part of something this risky - the temptation to sell him out to Martellus would be just too huge."

"What if she meant that letter entirely honestly, but he's simply fooled her along with everyone else?" I asked.

Violetta shook her head. "I wish I could believe that, but- no." she slumped. "I spent two years in Paris watching Tarvek and Seffie play 'Who's the cleverest?' and it was like two years of watching a pair of grandmasters play speed chess to a series of draws. They really are the two most brilliant minds of the family's current generation. He's not at all likely to fool her for long, and he'd never have invited her into any scheme of his like this, so what does that leave?"

"That your cousin is truthfully reporting what she's seen, and has almost certainly interpreted it correctly," I said despairingly. "I'm so sorry, Violetta," I continued. "Even-" I rubbed my neck. "I've been betrayed by family, yes, but only the once. And even then they thought they were doing the right thing, however tragic. They may well have even been doing the right thing. To be betrayed by someone you've devoted yourself to so much solely for the sake of power or greed? I can't remotely imagine."

"Well, I suppose he's not my cousin anymore," she said dully. "And that it's not my family either, not really."

"So, you and Jonathan-?" I probed, desperately trying to find a silver lining for her as well as a subject change.

"Still not yet," she said. "He says he refuses to 'trap' me like that, the big noble lug. For as long as there's an actual chance my disownment could be appealed, for as long as I have hope-"

"Having a relationship founded on a starting prerequisite of 'one of the two partners first abandoned all hope' would seem to be a recipe for long-term failure," I agreed. "So I applaud your mutual wisdom even if I sympathize with your frustration."

"Oh tell me about it," Violetta said with a knowing wink. "I am so lucky we're both trained warriors and used to harsh discipline, or else we'd probably have already let our hormones- but you know what I mean." she finished.

"Actually I don't," I said. "Penny sparklies are about the closest I've ever gotten to romance, I'm afraid."

"Were the boys in Beetleburg blind?" VIoletta said. "You're gorgeous!"

"Odd girl with brain problems, remember?" I said. "Nobody wanted to bother with someone who had problems focusing for long periods of time or had seizures. Not with a campus full of much more 'outgoing' young lady students to chase after."

"And nobody here?" Violetta asked lightly.

"Jonathan's yours, even if you've both agreed not to-" I began hurriedly.

"Oh nonono I didn't mean that," Violetta said reassuringly. "You would never poach and he would never stray. Even in bodyguard mode I still don't have enough paranoia to make either of those scenarios believable for a second. No, I meant Gilgamesh."

"Why would you ask that?" I said, my face heating.

"Yes, I can clearly see that there's nothing there at all," she smirked. "I'm sure you'd blush like that for anyone."

"I don't know!" I burst out. "Sometimes I feel like we're so close we're talking without words, and other times I just want to hit him over the head with a wrench!"

"Oh yeah, you've got it bad," she nodded.

"The question is, does he?" I sighed. "I honestly can't tell with him. He's a perfect gentleman and a good friend, but is he attracted?"

"Well, he's not not attracted," Violetta said analytically. "I had a ringside seat for pretty much every girl in Paris short of Colette Voltaire making a play for him at one point or another, including Seffie. Once the word got out that he was the Baron's heir you can just imagine all the attention that brought down on him. So I know what he looks like when he's trying to duck pursuit - and I mean when it was from nice girls, not psycho witches like Zola - and he's not ducking you."

"Yes, but I'm not actually pursuing," I said. "So is he being just friends only because I'm being just friends, or is he being just friends, or-?" I trailed off confusedly.

"That, I don't know," Violetta shrugged. "I suppose he's the only person who does."

"Well, I certainly don't have time to deal with it now," I sighed. "Not with everything we're training and preparing for. I can certainly understand why you and Jonathan are exercising strategic patience too."

"The next month or two will be critical," Violetta sighed. "Wow, do I ever miss when we were just sitting and talking about dresses and parties and boys-" and at that point my brain lit up like I'd just drank unfiltered Dyne water.

"That's it!" I cried with a triumphant shriek of realization. "Oh, thank goodness!"

"Um, what's it?" Violetta asked me in total bemusement.

"The dress!" I said. "You remember our first afternoon together on Castle Wulfenbach, don't you?"

"Of course I do!" Violetta said. "Tarvek and I were in your student quarters helping... do your wardrobe for the party..." she trailed off wonderingly.

"Exactly!" I hugged her joyously. "Prince Tarvek Sturmvoraus, scion of one of the most important of the Fifty Families, was sitting there and happily doing tailoring. He was enjoying himself doing manual labor for a young woman he'd just met and still thought was only a blacksmith's daughter! And he was doing it just because-"

"-he enjoys fashion designing... and wanted to be nice to a new friend!" Violetta gushed, hugging me back joyously. "And there's no way that fits with a mental model of him being all secretly resentful as the Baron's hostage and just scheming to get his power back when he had the chance! Even if he'd been just being a perfect fake friend that whole time on the Castle he still wouldn't have bothered to curry favor with 'Agatha Clay'! You weren't important enough to bother with as far as a power-hungry jerk would know-" she trailed off, outright crying happy tears into my shoulder.

"I guess your cousin is still your cousin after all," I said eagerly. "And it looks like he actually has managed to fool his cousin Seffie for once."

"Thank you, Agatha." she sniffled. "Thank you so much! Oh, we have got to go tell the guys right away!" she said, eagerly pulling away. "This changes everything!"

"Errr, isn't Tarvek still in Paris?" I asked confusedly.

"Agatha, think!" she told me. "What's one of the biggest stumbling blocks to the plan so far? That we still need a way to actually sell the bait convincingly to the Other's people, right?"

"Well, yes-" and then suddenly it hit me. "And what could be more convincing-"

"-than if you were betrayed into their trap by one of our closest friends, but one who they already thought was their pet traitor?" Violetta grinned. "Oh, Jonathan's going to love this one!" she squealed.

"We're not going to do this right away, are we?" I inquired.

"Oh no, you still have training to finish. And we need to work out a way of getting secure communications with Tarvek, and he has to start slowly working up the right long con- oh, there'll be so many things we'll need the whole brain trust to figure out. But we actually have a chance now." she finished with a grin that I more than matched.

"We do," I agreed. "And that's all we've ever asked for."

* * * * *​

Author's Note: Yes, Agatha's line re: praying for death during training is a nod to canon. As is the bit about Smoke Knight training and the poison detection lessons (its from the novelisation footnotes).

The bit about antidotes is my headcanon but really, the Smoke Knights actually are one of the better League of Assassins/ninja clan expies in fiction - they're one of the very few that actually make an institutional effort towards, and one of the very very few that actually succeed at, producing mentally stable and relatively well-adjusted operatives despite the whole ninja poison murder child soldier experience.

The bit about Violetta's genealogy is a mishmash of canon and 'canon said nothing about this so I have to make shit up'.

At the time I wrote it the dress scene was just a cute reference to Tarvek Sturmvoraus, Frustrated Fashion Designer Born A Prince, but I realized later 'Wait, that's actually an Establishing Character Moment'. So, I used it.

And yes, the girl talk is the girl talk. The thing to remember about this AU is that a lot of Gil's upbringing was changed by Jonathan's intervention. Klaus didn't as badly mishandle the whole 'keeping Gil so secret it chafed' thing, for one. And Gil's actually had a chance to be courted by female Sparks before at the university in Paris, given that the early takedown of Prince Aaronev in Sturmhalten would mean there'd still be some alive.

Hence his being somewhat slower off the romantic mark re: Agatha. She's still a wonderful person who pushes all his buttons, but the whole desperation of 'This is the first intelligent conversation I've ever gotten from a woman in my life!' that made him so quick to propose in canon isn't here. As well as him being much more romantically hard to read, because he's had to learn to not show any signals so as to avoid giving the fortune hunters any more encouragement. They were already bad enough as is. I mean, let's just say Seffie, who is canonically yandere for Gil, was still one of the politest and lowest-pressure experiences he had and leave it at that. Plus, of course, the whole 'Nobody has any time for romance, there's a whole war going on!' factor. So, Gil isn't doing his usual "I turn into a total idiot whenever romance enters!" because the hardening that Gil got only gradually as canon progressed, this one already did a lot of in his backstory. Teufel training, y'know.

So different timeline, different circumstances, different pressures.

 

[cliffc999]

Jonathan POV:

With one or two exceptions I hadn't really been using Grandma's Scheming in this jump except in a small-scale 'tactical' mode, as part of the ongoing deception that any self-insert character - which all Jumpers in essence were - found necessary to keep the people around them from ever cluing in 'Hey, I'm actually someone from another dimension who only knew this universe as a fictional narrative'.

Oh, I'd also used it early on to change Gilgamesh's and Tarvek's stories by inserting myself into them. It had worked largely as planned - Klaus had been motivated to change Gilgamesh's early training to be one more befitting that of a ruler and start revealing his existence earlier. This had allowed Gil to start his character development earlier, letting him be more self-assured and willing to assume positions of leadership than he had been at the start of canon.

Likewise, Tarvek had been given a chance to be only partially instead of fully immersed in the Valois family atmosphere as he'd grown up, as well as being freed of the pressures of growing up in Sturmhalten with his homicidal father and sister, resulting in someone with largely the same talents and inclinations but with a healthier ability to form bonds to and be trusted by those around him.

I was mostly certain, at any rate. With Tarvek, you were never 100% sure.

Even so, the indirect effects alone had been very significant. Why, Violetta had never gone beyond 'bickering basically like siblings' in this timeline, as compared to their much rockier earlier start in canon! No, one of the main things that had both directly and indirectly driven a lot of the needless drama in the pre-timeskip era had been the internal divisions and breaking up of the Agatha-Gil-Tarvek power trio before it really had a chance to get started, so of course I'd made that the very first thing I'd averted.

And, of course, once events had conspired to bring me to Beetleburg I'd made sure to stage-manage Agatha's introduction to both the Baron and Gilgamesh so that the faulty drama valve that had so complicated things there in canon had been jammed shut, even if I hadn't remotely anticipated the lab fire or the fight with Zola giving Agatha opportunities to make an even better impression than I'd ever hoped for.

But I hadn't remotely anticipated the revelation that Adam and Lilith Clay had been secretly wasped, or that the timeline had diverged years go to the point that we were facing such a current crisis that instead of having months onboard the Castle to gradually settle in and get acquainted with everyone as 'Agatha Clay' we'd instead have to immediately rush her on down to Mechanicsburg and toss her headfirst into her role as 'Lady Heterodyne' well before she could properly prepare. But yet again I'd been pleasantly surprised, as she'd exercised the same "sink or swim" talents that had let her survive the whirlwind that had been her life in canon to rise to the challenge.

I hadn't anticipated a lot of things, come to think of it. Life in Europa was often chaos to begin with, and I'd been learning that even the best of perks didn't do anything to actually stop that.

And then of course there was the enigmatic warning from the Dreen that I'd somehow doomed the timeline. A warning that made me decide to give up, to withdraw from trying to save this timeline and instead concentrate my efforts on mining as much data as I could to refine my next attempt in another timeline.

A decision that I could no longer hold myself to. Doomed or not, these people were my friends. The Wulfenbach Empire was the nation I'd chosen to swear myself into the service of, just as Corporal Jonathan Andrews had once sworn himself to defend the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. And Violetta...

... Violetta was the woman I loved.

I'd never planned on allowing myself to do such a thing. I'd known the potential heartbreak I'd be setting myself up for when the jump finally ended, because All By Yourself would make me incapable of inviting her along. My only hope was that at the end of the jump I would be allowed the option of staying - because I would choose to stay now, without hesitation - but there was still the horrible possibility that my "Benefactor" would 'Take the... liberty of choosing for me', as he would put it.

But it didn't matter. She'd just been there, and been her, and our hearts had wanted what they wanted. For all her attractiveness, savvy, and wit she still wasn't the single most beautiful woman I'd met here, or the most intelligent, or even the most fun to be around - but for a dozen reasons I could clearly articulate and a hundred more I couldn't she was still the only one for me, and vice versa. Ensuring her happiness and well-being were an essential prerequisite to my own happiness, and vice versa. We'd both known this about each other for years without even having to say it out loud, and we'd both known the main reasons why we couldn't allow ourselves to act on it, and we'd both maturely chosen not to- and we'd both known all along that still wouldn't stop the yearning.

And now, one by one, the barriers between us were coming down. Even though we'd still chosen not to take the final step, it was essentially only a matter of time. That's why we could still wait for each other now, even though we'd finally taken the last step towards admitting it. We knew that we wouldn't have to wait for much longer. One way or another, the potential conflict of loyalties that we'd feared would cease to be an issue soon; either Violetta would fail to be re-admitted to her family, or else the end of the Other War would see the Wulfenbach Empire and the Fifty Families with a solid alliance.

... or we'd lose the war against the Other and all be dead, except for the poor bastard who'd have to live-die-repeat once more. But as much as I reminded myself of the Dreen's pronouncement of doom, I could only maintain an intellectual awareness of it. My heart, once re-awakened, had yet again returned to wanting what it wanted. And what it wanted was to believe, regardless of the Dreen or anything else. To believe that we hadn't yet lost, to believe that if we fought on despite the hopelessness of it all then that hope would be rewarded with a miracle.

Which is why I stood staring down at the map table in Castle Heterodyne and concentrating my will as I'd never concentrated it before. The wording of Grandma's Scheming promised that I could possibly "play entire crowds and nations like a fiddle" and even though I'd never dared to attempt such a feat before, even though I had no rational hope of victory, by God I would still give the Fates a fucking fight for it. If they wanted to come and take my hat, then they could step up to get knocked down and damn well earn it.

So. We had to ensure that Agatha was brought to the enemy's new Summoning Engine under such circumstances that our immediate group would be there to aid her in the clutch, and the Baron to be able to arrive and extract us before the small army of Geisterdamen and other sorts we'd be surrounded with could kill us and escape. With absolutely none of the parties involved, save ourselves, being aware of what we truly intended until it was too late for anyone. A goal complicated by the fact that we couldn't coordinate our actions with the Baron ahead of time, as the one place his rationality consistently failed him was when it came to Gilgamesh being in potential danger. A phenomenon that had also transferred recently to Agatha, as Klaus in this timeline had initially formed his relationship with her on the basis of 'this is the daughter of my dearly departed best friend', thus causing him to see her as a ward. So if I told him what I really intended to do here, the odds were at least ten-to-one against that he'd forbid it.

"The problem with the plan is that even with Tarvek to 'betray' Agatha to them, they'll still be too cautious to actually put her in the position we want without extensively checking first," Gilgamesh said. "They won't want to dawdle, but they certainly won't rush."

"Well, if the Baron is following closely behind us then they'd have to rush, won't they?" Agatha said.

"Two problems. First off, we want to delay his entrance until you're already inside their innermost defenses, because if they know he's coming the entire time then they'll be far too much on alert. Either that, or they'll move." I pointed out.

"Dere's also de fact that ol' Klaus is just too dem good at dis sort of ting," Gkika agreed. "Hyu dun vant him to actually rescue hyu before dey gets hyu to de Summoning Engine."

"So we need a threat-in-being to make them rush, that isn't our actual reinforcements," Higgs said. "What's available in that category?"

"Themselves," I said, grinning. "Violetta, without Tarvek here you're our expert on the Valois. Can you think of any individual players who wouldn't want Tarvek to have the credit for bringing Agatha into their grasp, but would still be willing to betray her to the Other?"

"Pfft!" she snorted. "The hard part would be narrowing it down!" She rubbed her chin and mused. "Hmm... we'd need to gather some intelligence first to make sure he actually is willing to work with Lucrezia's people, but I'd recommend we start with Martellus' uncle Julius. That guy has been nothing but a lifelong pile of frustration at how he never had quite the right genealogy to try for the Lightning Crown... but if Tarvek and Martellus both went down, he'd actually be one of the lead candidates after them."

"And your cousin Martellus is currently the main liason of the Fifty Families to the Baron, meaning in an 'Other wins!' scenario he's already destined to be a battlefield casualty. So, if Lord Julius thinks that by cutting Tarvek out he can become Lucrezia's favorite when she's re-instanced in Agatha's body-"

"-then he'll go for it so he can be the Storm King he's always wanted to be," Gil said. "And an intramural power struggle over who gets the credit wouldn't alarm Lucrezia's people at whatever base we're trying to infiltrate, but would provide cover for us because they'd be too busy fighting each other to closely examine everyth-"

"WE ARE UNDER ATTACK!" the Castle's voice cut in urgently, and the map display shifted to a long-range overhead view of Mechanicsburg and the surrounding 150 miles. But the red icons of incoming enemy forces were visible nowhere on the map-

"Oh crap," I said, as I pointed at where the red icons were visible. Specifically, they were well above the map, at an altitude of almost ninety thousand feet. Eight objects had just become visible over the lip of the mountains ringing Mechanicsburg's valley and were angling in and downward at approximately 5 miles per second. I hadn't the faintest idea how the Castle had even seen them, save possibly by optical telescope.

"What on Earth are-?" Agatha began asking.

"Castle, activate the lightning field!" I snapped out. "Crank up every single atmospheric charger we put on the walls of Mechanicsburg! We need an electrostatic repulsion dome over the entire city immediately!"

"Do what he said!" Agatha snapped decisively on the heels of my command. "Jonathan, what's going on?"

"It's the Other," Gilgamesh said. "Those are orbital bombardment capsules. She used them during the original war-"

The floor dropped out from beneath us all and we fell into a bottomless pit.

"My Lady, I cannot guarantee your safety where you are," the Castle told us. "I am re-locating you to the deepest sub-levels now."

We landed directly in one of the sub-basement cisterns at the bottom of the shaft less than a minute later, and before we could even climb out we felt the Castle faintly shudder at an impact and the water ripple around us.

"Report!" Agatha shouted.

"Six projectiles successfully destroyed. Two hits directly on the castle. I am sorry for the damage, My Lady, but I chose to prioritize firepower on the Hive Engines and kinetic kill projectiles aimed at the city."

"Casualties?" I asked, as Higgs and Gkika finished climbing out of the cistern and turned to help the rest of us up.

"Moderate structural damage to the north wing and attic. No deaths or serious injuries."

"Good job!" Agatha congratulated the castle. "How long until we can finish repairs?"

"My Lady, it required almost fifteen percent of the total energy stored in the Baghdad salamanders to deflect that one attack. If I devote full power to repairs, I risk destruction against any follow-up waves. And we cannot re-energize the salamanders via the lightning accumulators for at least another day, as we already used the accumulated atmospheric charge as part of the improvised shock dome."

"Our anti-air defenses are almost entirely reliant on the Torchmen, and they're no good against this sort of thing." Agatha mused analytically. "And Jonathan's improvisation with the lightning accumulators was effective, but too inefficient for regular use."

"The armament plants outside of town were just finishing construction on two siege-class shock cannons intended for the war effort," Gilgamesh said, wiping himself off. "On my own authority I'm going to divert them to here. If we retune them for long-range tight-beam bombardment and hook them into the Castle's targeting systems and power grid-"

"They can vaporize anything they have line-of-sight to over the mountaintops." Agatha nodded. "Good idea. Castle, use whatever energy necessary for repairs after reserving enough to preserve us against one attack like that every night for the next four days."

"I recommend you triple that for safety's sake," I put in as we walked down one of the sub-basement corridors.

"Three per night," Agatha agreed.

"As you wish, My Lady."

"She's escalatin'," Higgs said grimly, as we entered the elevator back up to the surface levels.

"But she also revealed herself," I said. "Gil, we need to report this to your father at once... and correlate details of any and all similar attacks against other forces. Because I'm almost certain that attack was ballistic."

"Wait, I thought the Other's old wartime base was in orbit?" Agatha said. "Or at least that was the theory as to how she was able to launch those kinetic kill and Hive Engine attacks against so many towns."

"No," I said. "If you're shooting down, you're also looking down. And they're not."

"Dot is a good thought, but vat makes hyu so sure?" Gkika said.

"Zola's attack on Castle Wulfenbach," I said. "They risked losing - and did in fact lose - an agent on that mission that was already mission-critical elsewhere. She'd been prepared for years to be their False Heterodyne as part of the Storm King gambit, as that far back the Valois had had zero expectation a genuine one would ever turn up. But they'd retasked her to destroy the Castle before they could possibly have known about Agatha."

"But why would-" Agatha began, only for Gil to cut her off.

"Of course!" he said. "If they were shooting down from an orbital base, they could have simply destroyed Castle Wulfenbach with a kinetic-kill projectile! All it would take is a minimal ability to steer the projectile in flight-"

"Any of us Sparks here could knock something that basic out in our sleep," I agreed. "All you'd need is an initial firing solution that put Castle Wulfenbach inside a narrow cone and your onboard terminal guidance could do the rest. The problem is obtaining that initial firing solution, because the Castle flies."

"Ah!" Agatha said brightly. "If you're looking down, then that's not a problem because you can see where the Castle is right up to the minute you launch. So the fact that it's a moving target doesn't actually stop you if you use even a minimally guided missile-"

"But if you're usin' indirect-fire artillery, you can only aim at arbitrary coordinates on maps," Higgs said. "Which means you can't use it against Castle Wulfenbach, because even so much as having a single hours' lag in your position data means you're aiming at an at least twenty-mile wide circle it could potentially be in. But Mechanicsburg doesn't move-"

"And neither do most other places," I agreed. "Which is why we need to back-track those projectile paths and correlate them with the incoming attack vectors of anywhere else they've hit. If she's using a ground-based suborbital launch cannon, all those paths will intersect at one place."

"How does this new setback affect our own plan?" Gilgamesh said.

"We almost certainly won't be lucky enough to have their Summoning Engine be based at the same place their launch facility is, especially since they know that your father is intelligent enough to figure out the same thing we just did." I said. "But... as awful as the casualties from this might be elsewhere, this might just be a hideous, disgusting stroke of luck."

"How?" Agatha said.

"We needed something to make the Baron amass a powerful enough force to reach and crush any arbitrarily defended point anywhere on the map to come extract us after they got Agatha to the Summoning Engine, but without his knowing ahead of time what we were planning, remember? Well, he's certainly going to be putting together the largest death fleet possible to deal with this, and be busy for the near future in actually finding and reducing that strongpoint. That's our window of opportunity." I said.

"And the rest of it?" Violetta asked.

"That we're going to have to force the pace on," I mused. "Higgs, you're going to have to be our secure courier to Tarvek. We need to absolutely know which page he's on and get him read in on the entire plan."

"Get into Paris, then secretly get in touch with a guy bein' held in a small palace full of high-end Smoke Knights all bein' supervised by the sharpest operator in all the Fifty Families, and coordinate a complex piece of intrigue with him despite not knowin' his real status?" Higgs shrugged. "All right."

"Violetta, I think you'll need to be detached as well. We need to know if Uncle Julius is our pigeon." I said.

"I can't," she replied. "We've actually met before. He knows who I am."

"Jenka," Gkika suggested.

"She'd work," Higgs agreed.

"And this 'Jenka' person is...?" Agatha said archly.

"Officially, head of the Mechanicsburg Diplomatic Corps," Higgs said. "Unofficially? One of the very few Jagers other than me who can do spy missions."

"The head of my Diplomatic Corps is a Jager?" Agatha asked, astonished.

"Well, it's not as if we did that much diplomacy back in the old days," Higgs said amusedly.

"She's not qvite like de keed here," Gkika said while nodding at Higgs, "but she dun have de fangs like de rest of us. And she don speak vit de accent unless she vants to. So she chust looks like exotic pale-skinned mystery lady, and dot's enough to get by most of de time. Especially in Europa vere you haff lots of funny-lookink people."

"So we have Jenka get close to Lord Julius and see if he's our pigeon, and get ready to drop the brick if he is." I said.

"Works," Violetta agreed, and then blinked. "You know, I think we're missing a bet here. We've been planning to keep the Baron out of the loop on this, and necessarily so, but do we have to do the same with Grandmother? She certainly understands this kind of shadow-play."

"I hadn't thought of that," I said. "But can we trust her? Not just to oppose the Other, but to also not consider Agatha or Gil or any of the rest of us as expendable in the process? Because while Higgs was wrong about the Baron wanting a post-war scenario where the Heterodyne line had heroically ended under circumstances where Mechanicsburg had no one except the Other to blame, that doesn't mean it's an idea nobody would want."

"Ugh. You're right, we can't." Violetta agreed, and Higgs nodded respectfully to me behind her.

"But you are right on the basic idea. If us few get taken out before the endgame, then somebody external to us has to already know what we're really planning with this triple agent scam so that they can tell the Baron before it's too late. Or else Agatha and Tarvek will be left hanging waaaaaay out in the cold." I said.

"If not Father and not the Dowager Princess, then who?" Gil said. "Martellus? That would be an even worse idea than telling his grandmother! And they're basically all the major players involved."

"So we use a major player who's not involved," I said with a smirk. "Higgs, when you're in Paris you'll have one additional stop to make."

"Oh?" he said inquiringly.

"At the British Embassy," I replied.

* * * * *​

Klaus POV:

When the news that the Other had resumed her orbital bombardment attacks from the original war first came in, the intervening twenty-one minutes before we received the priority heliograph from Mechanicsburg had been the longest in my life. I had stayed in the strategy room automatically reacting to arriving reports, coordinating response efforts, and leading the Deep Thinkers in re-evaluating what the Other's rebuilding of her most terrible weaponry would mean to the overall strategic picture, but that had been myself essentially operating on autopilot. My innermost thoughts had been consumed wholly by one terrible belief.

That my children were dead.

Master Voltaire had been able to deflect the attack made to probe Paris' defenses, but that had been Paris. Even as heavily defended a location as the Corbetite Fortress-Depot servicing northern France had taken critical damage. And the several towns and cities along the northern border with the Polar Lords that had been targeted had been almost destroyed.

And Mechanicsburg? There was no way that the Other or her servants would have neglected as strategic a location as Mechanicsburg. And I was as familiar with the defenses of the town as any outsider could possibly be and knew their weaknesses. All of the anti-air defenses, such as the Torchmen, were built and calibrated to engage airships and flying creatures. Relatively soft-skinned, slow, and low-flying targets that didn't require siege-class firepower to critically damage. Versus the Other's spaceborne kinetic-kill attacks the defenses would be nigh-useless; the Castle could possibly see them coming but would have nothing that could damage or deflect them in time. They would be too fast and too heavily armored. I'd seen the wreckage of dozens of hardened fortresses that had been torn apart by similar attacks in the Other War, and with Bill and Barry dead and the Castle damaged there would have been no one to upgrade Mechanicsburg's defenses to compensate- and of course I hadn't had the wit to consider it myself once Agatha had restored the Castle-

I couldn't actually reveal my grief upon the flag bridge during a crisis, but I had still mourned them all. Brilliant and good-hearted Gilgamesh, who'd been a better son to me than I'd ever been a father. Loyal and brave Jonathan, who I hadn't even realized when he'd become as valued in my heart as Gil even though he'd never seen or presented himself as more than a subordinate. Young Agatha, who'd I'd known so briefly but who had already shown me that she fully rivaled Bill and Barry as being among the finest of people her family had ever produced. Unless the Other was far more inept and clumsy than she'd ever been, even now all those fine young men and women had been taken by the terrible fire from the sky-

-and then Boris had brought me the message from Mechanicsburg, detailing how they'd brilliantly improvised a solution to repel the attack. With zero casualties. Not only had they survived, they'd succeeded beyond my wildest expectations. And had already begun to deduce the true nature of the attacks, and possible countermeasures, and with a proposed solution for ballistically back-tracking them to their source. I had already finished giving the orders to be transmitted all across the Empire, preparing everyone for the next wave of attacks and ordering that the most precise possible trajectory data be recorded. One or two more waves of this, and we would have a definite location, have a definite strongpoint against which we could concentrate our full force and hopefully break them.

I'd known all the while as I'd sent both Gilgamesh and Jonathan to Mechanicsburg that I was being selfish. As two of my most talented commanders there was certainly no shortage of other places they could have been of great use, even despite all the valid reasons they'd been sent with Agatha. I knew even at the time that my real motivations for having done it were because I wanted to keep them away from the war front in what I had thought was - in what yet again been proven to be - one of the safest locations possible. And I'd been very fortunate in that my selfishness had actually been rewarded with the opportunity they had just given me.

I smiled to myself as I folded up the heliograph and placed it in my pocket, and turned to head back to the map table. Yes, my children had gone above and beyond the call of duty indeed. By giving me a way to find and hopefully reduce a main strategic military base of the Other, they had given me a potential opportunity to end this damned war. And I would do so, and as expeditiously as I could, before the press of service could call them to fight again.

Let them continue to stay safe in Mechanicsburg, I prayed. And give me what strength I need to see this done.

Lucrezia had made the gravest error of her life when she had failed to kill me while she had the chance. And I so very much looked forward to the opportunity to finally explain that to her in person.

* * * * *​

Author's Note: Silly Klaus. Expecting those kids to stay where it's safe?

And yes, I'm having fun with the fact that without everything that went wrong with their first meeting in canon, and everything that went right here, Klaus is in full 'Basically my goddaughter! Must protect!' mode with Agatha.

The Corbetite depot that got smashed is not the one visited in canon, so no rampaging DoomTrain. Look, the Corbetites have to have more than one.

The 'Baghdad salamanders' are the batteries where Castle Heterodyne stores energy against future need. The Dyne waterwheel in the Great Movement Chamber requires about three years to refill them all from empty. Deliberately using Gil's lightning accumulator network to zap the Castle with a huge storm can (and in canon did) refill them much faster, but you can only do that every couple of days because it takes time for atmospheric charge to accumulate. And the orbital bombardment attacks are also canon.

 

[cliffc999]

Gilgamesh POV:

"It's good to see you again," I said, hugging Tarvek like a brother.

"And you," he replied, briefly hugging me back before we separated.

It had been ten days since we'd originally sent Higgs to Paris to get in touch with Tarvek, and it had taken him this long to convince his co-conspirators to find an apparently valid surface reason to get him sent here. Officially, Tarvek was an attempt by the Fifty Families to evaluate if Father was attempting to steal a march on them for the post-war endgame by having me court Agatha and to insert himself into her circle as a rival suitor, that being the grounds on which Lucrezia's double agents in the Order of Jove had persuaded the Dowager Princess to allow Tarvek to travel to Mechanicsburg.

To be honest, part of me was wondering if Father did actually want me to court Agatha. He'd certainly never hinted at anything either way and his refusals of the betrothal offers Seffie's familiy had kept making had always been couched in terms of 'allowing me to make my own decisions', but on the other hand his training had always emphasized the risks of casual dalliances and the importance of keeping a firm awareness of the political consequences of any union before attempting one. And while I'd certainly had the reputation of being a rake in Paris, that was more a function of all the women who'd kept fluttering around me and making attempts and a general sense of "Where there's smoke, there's fire." I hadn't actually done anything, and while I was certainly aware of Agatha as a beautiful and intelligent woman, I wasn't certain why I felt so conflicted at the thought of her and Tarvek, or her and anyone-

"Welcome back," Jonathan said to Tarvek, his voice breaking into my thoughts as he stepped around me to shake Tarvek's hand, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Agatha smiling and waving at him over my shoulder.

"Jeez, it's about time you got here," Violetta broke in sarcastically, stepping forward to look Tarvek up and down with a critical eye. "So, exile any more family members recently?" she continued with more than a touch of actual hurt.

"Ah, now there's the little rain cloud of doom I know and love," Tarvek replied with equal snark but no bitterness, before Violetta not-so-lightly punched him in the upper arm. "And no, just the one. In full knowledge that at the end of this I'd either have enough credit banked with the family to get Grandmother to reinstate you on the spot, or we'd both be dead."

"Thanks," she replied, relaxing some. "But I'm still going to beat the hell out of you in our next sparring session for not telling me. You seriously couldn't sneak out one encrypted message?"

"Traffic analysis," Jonathan defended him. "Sending you any message at all would have told the wrong observers that something was up." he finished, reaching over to take Violetta's hand in his and give it a reassuring squeeze.

"Exactly," Tarvek said regretfully. "And I am sorry, but none of this was going to work if we weren't already prepared to pretend to do horrible things to each other." Violetta absorbed that with a nod.

"So, are you ready for your sudden yet inevitable betrayal?" Agatha asked, as we all settled into our chairs in one of Castle Heterodyne's lavish sitting rooms and one of the servants brought in a tray of refreshments.

"Sadly, my evil and twisted machinations will require several more days to prepare," Tarvek replied. "It wouldn't look very believable if I somehow suborned you into idiotically leaving the defenses of Mechanicsburg on the very first day, now did it?"

"I'm assuming that they tried to script a scenario for you?" Jonathan said.

"They did," he nodded. "Rather an obvious one, in fact. You wouldn't have believed it for a moment if this had been a genuine betrayal. Still, it's not as if we want this to actually work, so, hopefully they'll believe that I believed that you'll believe it."

"Exactly why did I miss this again?" Violetta sarcastically asked no one in particular.

"Let me guess," I said. "You're intended to decoy us up to Sturmhalten."

"Wrong," Tarvek said surprisingly. "It turns out that there's a significant security hole in Mechanicsburg after all."

"Impossible!" Castle Heterodyne broke in angrily. "Now that I am fully operational again-"

"It's located in the Red Cathedral," Tarvek cut the Castle off. "The one place in Mechanicsburg that you have no sensors."

"... I knew it!" the Castle swore vehemently. "I'd told Master Dante that erecting that idiotic pile of bricks was a horrible idea!"

"Wait, it was built that way?" Agatha asked. "Why would any of my ancestors deliberately create a place in Mechanicsburg where the security systems didn't reach? Were they asking to get infiltrated?"

"Apparently old Dante Heterodyne had trust issues about the family guardian," Tarvek replied delicately. "And so he wanted to create a sanctum he could retreat into in the event of-"

"Don't remind me." the Castle sulked childishly.

"So instead of luring Agatha out of town, all they want you to do is get her into the Cathedral?" Jonathan asked.

"But how do they get her out of there?" I said. "Unless- they're not going to do the summoning here, are they?" I finished, shocked.

"No," Tarvek said. "I'm supposed to help abduct Agatha to the Fortress of Storms. I doubt that's where they're going to do it either, but it would be easy to transport her to the true ritual site from there."

"But the Castle can sense tunnelling," Agatha said. "Unless this backdoor was built far larger than you're describing, getting me into the Cathedral doesn't get me out of Mechanicsburg. It's not even against one of the city walls!"

"They have an ancient artifact of some kind," Tarvek said. "A pair of linked mirrors. If you energize them the right way then stepping into one of them lets you immediately come out the other end, even if it's hundreds of miles away. One of them's been in the Red Cathedral since the day it was built"

"Unbelievable!" Agatha said in awe. "Actual honest-to-God teleportation? How does that work?"

"Repeatedly, I hope." Jonathan cut in. "Because unless we can think of a valid reason for them to want to take us all, we'd have to follow you through it."

"Ah," Tarvek said pensively. "That brings me to one of the most disturbing pieces of intelligence I picked up while pretending to join the Other's co-conspirators. What is the one known limitation of slaver wasps?"

"They have wasps that can work on Sparks?!?" Agatha shrieked, and Jonathan and Violetta both turned as pale as a bedsheet. I didn't blame them.

"No," Tarvek said reassuringly. "They had one attempt at a prototype, that Snarlantz had been working on in Passholdt-"

"I burned that lab to the ground last year!" Jonathan interjected.

"You did," Tarvek said. "And they lost the research project there. But Snarlantz had been reporting that he was close to success before Jonathan hit the place as part of his search-and-destroy sweeps, and its still a goal of theirs. It's one of the primary reasons the Geisterdamen want Lucrezia back in a body as soon as possible."

"Of course," Jonathan said. "She invented the damn things in the first place, and was one of the most potent biological Sparks of the century. If somebody like Snarlantz could even approach success at hacking the damn things, she could do it in a snap. You honestly wonder why she didn't do it before."

"Because originally she couldn't get any allies from the Order of Jove without working very hard on reassuring them that only the common people would be in thrall, not them." Tarvek replied disgustedly.

"Ugh. Family." Violetta said with infinite disgust. "And let me guess. The Geisters want Lucrezia back at least partly so they can move up to Spark Slaver Wasps, and they're not telling their human allies about the upcoming betrayal they're planning. You had to find this all out by sneaking."

"Actually, I tagged the Geisters' outpost in Paris and then acted as a distraction while Varpa did the sneaking," Tarvek said. "The Geisterdamen are nowhere near as skilled at detecting Smoke Knights as they think they are, not when they're operating without our family's assistance."

"Varpa?" Violetta asked dazedly. "Wait, are you saying you were running this scam in tandem with Seffie? Okay, I'd never have expected that!"

"Aheh," Tarvek muttered while mildly blushing in embarassment. "It was more that she'd invited herself along for the ride, but yes."

"You're saying that Seffie caught you trying to run a triple agent scam on the Order of Jove... and helped you?" I asked Tarvek, still not quite believing what I'd heard. "Did her grandmother tell her to do it?"

"No," Tarvek said, shocking me even more. "Keeping this all secret from Grandmother was the hardest part. The Geisters are dangerous, but they're clumsy. Grandmother..." he trailed off.

"Yeah," Violetta said meaningfully. "Well done, both of you."

"Circling back to the matter at hand, as horrifying as the thought of Spark Slaver Wasps are they are certainly a reason for them to take us all alive," Jonathan mused. "If they think Lucrezia can make us all her thralls shortly after being summoned, of course they'll want Gil and myself. And you as well."

"Oh, I'm already looking forward to their attempt to give me the traditional traitors' reward," Tarvek agreed. "Just to see the expressions on their faces."

"How long can you stall setting Agatha up?" Jonathan asked. "Because if their intended kidnap route runs through the Fortress of Storms, I'd like enough time to check in with the agent we had monitoring Julius von Blitzengaard."

"You'd gotten that far on your own?" Tarvek said, raising an eyebrow. "Because he's my primary contact for the kidnap."

"We wanted as much rush as possible in-between their grabbing Agatha and getting her to the Summoning Engine," I explained.

"Ah! Internal competition!" Tarvek followed our line of reasoning. "Oh yes, he'd certainly love to grab as much credit from me as he could. I can work with that."

"And since we were fortunate enough to already be monitoring the first leg in their extraction route, we can hopefully steal a march on them as regards figuring out the second leg. Because if they're going to use teleporters, our only hope of getting the Jagers to where we're going in time is to have them already pre-positioned."

"The Fortress of Storms is itself a viable position for doing the Summoning," Tarvek analyzed. "It's heavily defensible, its solidly under the control of Lucrezia's loyalists through Julius, and it's close enough to Mechanicsburg for them to get Lucrezia back here expeditiously after she's solidly ensconced in Agatha's body."

"Oh, I think that really wouldn't have worked out well for them." the Castle huffed proudly.

"Only after we specifically warned you of the danger," Agatha pointed out. "It's not like you're programmed to stop obeying the ruling Heterodyne simply because you think they've got another personality in their head, given how crazy some of my ancestors were."

"That's entirely beside the point!" the Castle replied plaintively.

"I don't think they'll do it there, though." Jonathan said. "They have to know the location of their new Summoning Engine is the single most hotly desired piece of intel in this war. If they gave it to you ahead of time- well, its not as if they trust you that much, is it?"

"Of course they don't trust me, they're some of my relatives," Tarvek agreed matter-of-factly.

"Now, as to the other part of this multi-part extravaganza," I said, taking command of the meeting. "The ballistic tracing for the Other's sub-orbital cannon has finally been completed, but there's a slight complication - it's directly in the middle of the Low Countries."

"Wonderful," Jonathan groused. "One of the most contentious, clannish, outright intransigent regions in the entire Empire. Lucrezia wouldn't have to wasp most of the local potentates to have them make the process of moving an airship fleet across their region to reduce that base as complicated as it could get. Weren't they halfway to open rebellion anyway as soon as the crisis made the Empire's grip started looking shaky?"

"So we're waiting both on the intelligence from the Fortress of Storms, the travel time to pre-position Jager war parties along the probable kidnap route, and the Baron having to fight a campaign to subdue the Low Countries before he can take Lucrezia's continental siege weapon?" Agatha aptly laid out.

"Yes," Jonathan agreed. "What do you think, Gil, two weeks?"

"The loyalists among the Fifty Families have extensive holdings in northern France," I pointed out. "If Father does a pincer attack with their strategic reserve in addition to ours, he can get it done in maybe half that time."

"One week, then." Agatha said. "Tarvek, inform your contacts that's how long you think it'll take before you can get me into the Cathedral. I'm being stubborn and intransigent and all Sparky in my laboratory and don't want to come out for any ceremonies."

"All right," Tarvek said. "Now, as to other problems-"

"Your escorts," Violetta agreed. "I'm assuming that both the Smoke Knights they sent with you are actually Lucrezia's people?"

"Oh yes," Tarvek said. "Agatha can put her foot down as the unreasonable, autocratic Lady Heterodyne and keep them out of her Castle, but they're going to be breathing down my neck every other minute of the day here. Keeping them from being suspicious while we wait is going to be a challenge. Not all of you are trained actors."

"That depends," Jonathan said with foreboding. "On just how ruthless we're going to be about this."

"You mean kill them?" Agatha asked. "I... suppose the Castle has the capability, but-"

"Oh, I'd be delighted to, Mistress!" the Castle said gleefully. "I can see where they're both waiting outside the Castle right now! Crushing them would be so easy!"

"No crushing!" Agatha said immediately.

"As you wish, Mistress." the Castle agreed readily.

"And no other flavors of deliberately or accidentally killing them without permission either!" Agatha followed up. "Not unless they're actually attacking someone!"

"... you're getting too good at this." the Castle sulked.

"We can't imprison them either, there's no way they don't have regular check-in signals." I said.

"And they aren't revenants either," Tarvek replied. "The weasels picked up nothing."

"So, how do we-" Jonathan began.

"I am delighted to report that the problem has solved itself, Mistress!" the Castle suddenly broke in gleefully.

"I'd just told you not to!" Agatha said.

"Unless they attacked someone. Which they did just now, when I caught them trying to sneak up the exterior wall and eavesdrop at the window!" the Castle chuckled evilly.

"Who the heck was on the outer battlement wall to be attacked?" Violetta asked.

"-they were 'attacking' the Castle itself by trying to infiltrate." Jonathan facepalmed. "Agatha's order said 'someone', which means 'any person in Mechanicsburg'. And the Castle is sentient, therefore, it counts as a person."

"It's like parenting a homicidal six-year-old with the firepower of an army, I swear." Agatha muttered under her breath.

"Are you sure you wouldn't like to keep the small one as a concubine and formally pay court to my Mistress instead?" the Castle asked Jonathan. "You're very cunning."

"I am going to sneak down into your main power chamber with a satchel full of grenades and blow that waterwheel right off its axle!" Violetta hissed.

"My girlfriend says 'No'." Jonathan deadpanned. "And has a hundred ways of painfully killing me if I disagree. You know how it is."

"She is a fierce one, isn't she?" the Castle snickered. "Ah, young love! Very well, it was only a suggestion."

"Well, at least that solves that problem," I sighed. "Tarvek, write back home that your bodyguards were idiots enough to provoke the Castle's security systems and are now corpses, and that the Castle has taken enogh offense that it's threatened to pre-emptively crush any other Smoke Knight who dares to even look at it funny-"

"Ahem!" Violetta cleared her throat.

"-except for the one it's already accepted as a houseguest." I finished. "And so operational necessity requires her to be re-assigned to you."

"That will reassure Grandmother, but worry Lucrezia's people," Tarvek shrugged. "Then again, what can they do at this juncture? Not have me try to kidnap Agatha?"

"So, we have call it a week to finish the final preparations, and work out the last few details of our shell game," I said. "Agatha? This is your last chance to back out, if you want to pin all our hopes on Father finding what we need when he reduces the Other's base in the Low Countries instead."

"No," she said. "As scary I know as this is going to be... we still have to do it. Our lands. Our people."

"Our responsibility," we chorused.

* * * * *​

Klaus POV:

"Klaus?" Lucrezia's voice came to me, distorted yet still unmistakeably hers.

I frowned and curled up more tightly in my bedsheets. It had been a while since I'd had this particular nightmare-

-this was not a nightmare!

I instantly leapt to my feet and threw the hardest punch I possibly could at where her voice was coming from. My fist passed directly through where her larynx would have been and left a massive dent in the steel bulkhead. Off-balance from the lack of expected resistance I staggered forward, directly through the ghostly apparition that was facing me in my own bedchamber, and recovered and turned around.

"Oh, and after I came all this way," Lucrezia cooed at me. Although the mechanical apparition facing me looked virtually nothing like her, the voice was undeniably Lucrezia Mongfish's. And the gestures, the posture, the way she moved-

My mind raced as I attempted to simultaneously gather every sensory impression about this phenomenon and evaluate my possible responses. Both her intangibility and the fact that she hadn't incapacitated or killed me in my sleep argued that she had no effective offensive capacity in this form. The fact that she'd chosen to reveal her capacity to somehow infiltrate even the depths of Castle Wulfenbach bespoke to either a taunt given in the inevitability of victory or else a compelling need. If the former event, nothing I said would make any difference, but in the latter-

Without bothering to throw on a nightgown I strode over to the nearby end table and poured myself a glass of wine. I raised it to her, taunting her with this reminder of the pleasures of the flesh that she was apparently no longer able to enjoy, and unconcernedly sipped it. "At least I don't have to worry about you drugging this one." I stated coolly.

"Oh Klaus," the 'Muse of Time' replied to me. "I knew that that had been a horrible mistake shortly after I'd done it. You wouldn't believe the fools and backstabbers I've been encumbered with ever since, especially now! If only I'd had the wit to ask you to join me, why... we'd have been unstoppable."

"Join you? In what, your marriage bed?" I said, baring my teeth in a gentlemanly not-smile.

"You were right there, too." she nodded. "It really did get so very boring with Bill. And I did indeed just have to try something after it did."

I exerted all my willpower to avoid crushing the wineglass to dust in my fist, and keeping a similar degree of rage out of my voice. "I suppose 'trying' is one word to describe murdering your husband and your own son." I said coolly.

"And now you remind me why I sent you away," she sulked. "Such excess sentimentality. Even so, one can't help dwelling on might-have-beens."

Ah. The particular micro-emphasis she'd put on those words-

"How long do you have before the accumulated paradox forces you back into inactivity, time ghost?" I said, taking a shot in the dark.

"How did you know that?" she shrieked.

"That you were in some way manipulating time? That it backfired on you, leaving you a ghost with no past and no future, only intermittently able to manifest?" I continued smugly. "It's not as if it wasn't obvious-"

"You can't win!" she hissed, before regaining her calm. "As you said, I am divorced from possibility, an impossibility that shouldn't exist now that the threads of fate have unravelled somehow- but I am still here! I am eternal!"

"I've heard that before," I smirked at her.

"You can't kill me, Klaus." she said. "Not in my current state of existence. But I can kill you."

"You mean you can order your servants to kill me," I said. "You are powerless, except for the power you can exert through others. And you only have so many followers- and every day, you have less and less."

"I'll have all of Europe as revenants soon enough!" Lucrezia raged.

"But can your voice reach them, trapped outside of time as you are?" I replied. "No. You control your slaves through your priestesses. Your very mortal priestesses." I finished calmly, and then languidly drew a single finger across my neck to underline the point.

"Then I'll just find more!" Lucrezia said. "How many wars has mankind waged over naught but visions and dreams? How many ambitious madmen out there bear the Spark, and how many more will rise? Do you really think that winning this war means you can win every one? Only one of us is immortal, Klaus." she trailed off, before reverting to a more cajoling tone of voice. "But both of us could be."

"By stealing the bodies of our own children?" I snarled at her, my composure finally breaking. "Is that how you intend to return from the void? Would you have me join you in regaining my youth by consuming my own flesh and blood?"

"It sounds so awful when you put it that way," Lucrezia said. "Klaus, we were both raised as heirs to Spark dynasties. They taught us that the purpose of our existence was to serve our family's legacies. I'm simply taking that belief to heights they never dreamed of!"

"I can see you starting to fade even now. Stop mincing words." I said icily.

"Abandon your attack, Klaus" she said. "Betray the Valois, before they inevitably betray you anyway. And when next I return I promise- I will show you everything."

"I SHOULD HAVE KILLED YOU ON THE DAY WE FIRST MET!" I shouted at her as she faded from existence, allowing my emotions full reign for the first time since this conversation began. Wherever Lucrezia Mongfish's nonexistent soul dwelt now, if this was to be our last conversation then I wanted her to know exactly where she stood with me.

Not that I believed myself fortunate enough to have this be our last conversation. Not if she really did exist outside of time as some type of paradox entity. I'd have to consult the Dreen and hope that they, for once, would actually have useful knowledge to contribute.

My thoughts continued to race furiously as I began to get dressed in preparation for heading for the flag bridge. If Lucrezia wanted me to stop this attack, then that only underlined how urgently I had to continue to press it forward-

-no, I realized. She couldn't have possibly imagined I'd ever actually accept that offer. She wanted me to redouble my efforts here. Which meant that her reconstruction of the sub-orbital cannon was intended primarily as a loud and obvious diversion from-

My blood turned to ice as I realized what this almost certainly was a diversion from.

Damn! I could not simply turn away and allow the sub-orbital cannon to remain in place to bombard Europa, but if I concentrated all effort on the attack then I would be out of position at what intuition told me would be the critical moment. Lucrezia had done her best to impale me on the horns of a dilemna.

But she hadn't known everything.

I reached out and rang the bell-pull. My son's valet, who I'd taken into my own service when he'd left for Mechanicsburg, presently arrived at my bedroom door.

"Milord Baron?" he asked me urbanely.

"Commander Wooster," I addressed him by his British Secret Service rank, causing him to go rigid with shock at the realization I'd known who he really was all along. "I need you to deliver a message for me."

* * * * *​

Author's Note: Lucrezia is a really really horrible person, isn't she?

And yes, the change to the timeline caused by Benefactor shenanigans has basically turned the Muse of Time into a sort of time-ghost. Lucrezia's trying to close the loop and make her existence real again.

And writing Der Kastle is fun.