Finally decided to start a thread for the various story pieces I've accumulated over the years...
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Christmas Tree Worm p1
Nugar
Not too sore, are you?
- Joined
- Aug 20, 2015
- Messages
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- 10,032
Finally decided to start a thread for the various story pieces I've accumulated over the years. Stuff I started but decided not to continue, small one offs, things like that.
This was going to be a christmas fic set in the worm universe. There's a modest chance I'll get around to actually continuing this at some point.
I'm not currently actively writing anything, though my main project is still No Promises, I haven't put more than about two thousand words into it since the last time I posted a chapter. Trying to get my personal shit back together, I'm just cleaning up and posting these bits.
The terrible working title for this was Christmas Tree Worm.
December 22nd, 2013
Two years after Golden Day.
Somewhere in New England along Hwy 101
Weld suddenly felt his legs bind together mid step, and was unable to catch himself as he tripped, falling face first into the weeds poking defiantly through the broken asphalt and concrete. Fortunately, the metal man was durable enough to come through unharmed, though there were a few specks of metal, left behind by the cars that used to travel the road, which had fused to his face. The rest of him wore heavy clothing to stop such problems.
Sveta managed to pull her head back so she didn't smack her own face into the ground, but the sudden movement startled her, making her lose even more of her hard earned but still tenuous control over her many black, hairlike tendrils. Their immense strength wrapped around Weld's metal body to the point it groaned and deformed where her unbreakable flesh pressed in.
"Sorry, Weld!" she apologized, her inhumanly pale face blushing just slightly with embarrassment. It'd been days since she'd accidentally tripped her partner.
"It's okay," he replied, patiently waiting for her to unclench her tendrils.
After a few moments where Sveta went through a mental exercise to regain control, her grip loosened and he was able to stand back up.
"You were right that we shouldn't bring the bike this close," Sveta offered. "I had no idea that roads could get this bad in just a few years. They're still fine near New York."
They'd come north, avoiding the Boston crater, up interstate 95, which was far enough inland to mostly survive the big waves and storms that Golden Day had caused, then had to make a half circle angling east the whole time, eventually coming back around to hit Brockton Bay from the north along the old 101. Weld had given up and parked the bike inside of an abandoned store in Seabrook.
There wasn't any worry about it being stolen. There was nobody left to steal. According to tinkertech scanners on overflights, outside of the few remaining salvage operators in New York, there were no humans left on the entire north American continent, and damned few in the rest of the world.
"Everyone was still maintaining the main roads there until earlier this year, remember. But Brockton Bay hasn't seen visitors since 2012." He adjusted the straps of his heavy, dense backpack and Sveta perched her head on his right shoulder. "Even back before Golden Day, when they were still dropping off relief supplies, they brought it in by flying drone."
Further to the north, even before Golden Day, most of the cities were abandoned except by squatters and transients. When Nilbog made his march to Brockton Bay, his army had eaten everyone they caught along the way. Mass evacuation had cleared out as much as possible in front of him, and even after, panic from the Goblin War had cleared out much of northern New England.
The roads were terrible, broken, littered with fallen trees, storm debris, and even craters from impacts, bombs, or powers. Even the slow pace they'd made on I95 was better than this, and they'd spent almost a full day trying to walk fifteen miles. In the wake of Golden Morning, the world felt so much bigger than it used to be. The one saving grace was the lack of snow and ice. Instead of cooling the planet, or, at least, not cooling the planet yet, the heavy cloud cover, dust, and smoke from the volcanic eruptions the tortured earth had suffered actually insulated the planet, keeping it unseasonably warm, though still chilly.
Most depressing, however, was the lack of life. No birds chirped, no squirrels chittered. Winter was supposed to be bleak, with leafless trees waiting the spring, but even the conifers had died. Pine needles turned brown, many largely stripped from the dead trees by the rain and wind. Dead grass, dead shrubs, dead world.
"I wonder what they thought of that?" Sveta mused as Weld resumed his tireless walk. "Once a week supplies, then once a month, then Golden Day and nothing after."
"I don't know, but the surviving monitor posts say no one has left yet. That's what I don't get."
"They did promise," she reminded.
He nodded. "That's why we have to do this. We have to go and see, and talk to them. I think, if no one told them, they'd stay in there forever."
Sveta nodded. "You're a hero for doing this. The last Hero on Earth."
"This earth, maybe," he mused. "Outside those walls. But never forget, it was the Heroes who stayed inside to fight Nilbog that is why there's not a giant crater there. Why there's still people inside and not just a bunch of monsters."
Sveta nodded sadly. "It's too bad not enough people still see them as people, just what they look like. That's why you're my hero, for seeing what's inside that matters." She kissed the side of his cheek.
He caressed the side of her face in return, still focused on his footsteps.
He had walked all night, his partner dozing on top of the backpack, lighting his way with a flashlight. It was even slower going than during the day, but he didn't really sleep so he figured he might as well. It was late afternoon before they emerged from the final trees and entered the exclusion zone, scorched bare years ago by flamethrowers and bulldozers. There, on the edge of the ocean, loomed the tall walls and monowire fences of the City Who Fought.
Robotic guard towers and tinkertech mine fields guarded the exclusion zone, but the big warning signs that once declared lethal danger had all flipped to giant green 'SAFE' signs mostly aimed at the city. Less than a year after Golden Day, Dragon had turned off the equipment.
And yet still, no one emerged. No one, and nothing.
The tinkertech walls of the city were tough, and still stood without cracks despite the waves and storms. That was especially good, given how ocean levels had risen. No doubt much of the city would have flooded if not for those walls.
"It's not fair," Sveta whispered.
"Hmm?"
"It's not fair. I mean, they won. They killed Nilbog and all his monsters. Even if they ended up looking kinda scary, they shouldn't have been treated any worse than us Case 53s. Most of them still looked more human than I do!"
"Biotinkers were almost always the scariest thing people could imagine," Weld replied. "Even if she was a Hero, once she started making creatures to fight Nilbog, and especially once she started changing people… It didn't matter that she was a hero. She was an 'other'. An enemy. It took Dragon to stop them from just dropping nukes on the place, people were so scared."
"They were humans," she whispered.
"They still are. Let's go meet them."
Getting into the city was a problem. Weld was tough, and Sveta was tougher, so even tinkertech monowire wasn't enough to stop them. Sveta's tentacles not only ripped the wire loose from its moorings, she even broke sections out, clearing a path for Weld. But the walls were tall, built by automated machines that pulled supplies from the earth around the city, digging deep and replacing the ground with a lower density but extremely tough matrix. When they had finally stopped, the walls were thirty meters tall and four meters thick, with nearly frictionless surfaces.
Fortunately, they had planned for that. Weld had brought coils of very tough rope, and a segmented, twenty foot pole. Using his own immense strength, he used the pole as a lever, an extension of his arms that allowed him to fling Sveta and trailing rope to the top of the wall.
Her tentacles draped over both sides of the wall, holding on partially on the monowire and one of its stanchions. Monowire was ripped out and tossed away so it wouldn't cut the rope, and her tentacles dug into the wall to enhance her grip.
It was up there that she got her first look at what had become of Brockton Bay.
The snapped off, jagged stubs of the tallest buildings in the city. Piles of rubble here and there, burnt out or collapsed houses, entire blocks that were simply razed to the ground. It was as bad as any of the abandoned cities they had passed. For a moment, she feared that the reason none of the remaining inhabitants had emerged was because there weren't any- but then her eyes started picking out signs of effort. Many of the rubble piles were neater than they should be, indicating cleanup efforts. And some of the buildings were patchworked with repairs, materials sourced from debris and unsalvageable buildings. There weren't any fires or signs of power, but the hard, angular edges of inky black solar panels topped several buildings, drinking in the weak light that filtered through the clouds.
However… there wasn't any movement that she could see. No one in the streets, no one on the roofs.
Shaking her head, Sveta anchored herself as best she could, then waved a tendril at her partner. Her limb control, or lack thereof, made pulling him up difficult, but she could hold the rope secure. And Weld, strong as he was, had no problem climbing the rope to join her at the top.
Together, with Sveta balancing them, they took in the view. Sveta quietly pointed out the signs of habitation she'd noticed. Weld pointed at a few more.
"Should we yell?" she asked. "See if anyone hears us and comes to investigate?"
Weld was silent for a bit, considering the question.
"I mean, the heroes won, right? They shouldn't attack us," she pressed.
Slowly, Weld shook his head. "No, I don't think that's a good idea. It's been three years since the wall went up. We don't know what's happened since. And I don't like how there's nobody visible. No, let's just get down. We'll see if we can find someone to talk to."
"Won't that scare them?"
Weld just shrugged.
Weld pulled the rope up from the outside, then let it down on the inside. Again, Sveta held the rope while he slid down. She followed through the simple expedient of dropping into his arms.
Although there was a brief delay where her tendrils, acting on instinct, wrapped him in a cocoon as she tried to break her fall, it didn't take long for her to regain control.
Together, they began slowly exploring the north edge of Brockton Bay.
Old railways formed a network in the north, centralized around several shipping centers, a train yard, and dotted with numerous old, rusted shipping containers. From the wall, it showed the least amount of indicators of life. Many of the rails had been torn up, and some of the containers had been cut up into sections, but for the most part, it was empty save for hundreds of thousands of tons of rusting scrap metal.
Weld was especially cautious as he picked his way through the place. One incautious movement could have his face stuck to the side of an abandoned railcar, and that would be inconvenient and embarrassing.
By silent, mutual understanding, they kept quiet as they traveled. The ruins were oppressive and intimidating in their silence. Blocked by the walls, not even the wind blew hard enough to whistle through the gaps in windows and between immobile boxcars. No weeds grew here, either, nor, unlike the outside, were there any wilted signs they had been.
Several times, both of them thought about calling out, feeling a near desperate urge to find someone, anyone, so that they didn't feel so alone. It had been depressing while they traveled, but they had a goal at the end of it. Now, at their destination, they were finally losing hope.
It was therefore, a massive relief when they finally rounded a corner and came face to face with a denizen of Brockton Bay.
It didn't stop them from screaming in terror, though.
Nor did it stop the thing from screaming in terror right back, turning, and bolting away in a panicked form of locomotion that might well be unique in the world.
Screaming, Weld tried to stumble backwards, only for Sveta, equally panicked, to lose control over her many tendrils and, once again, send him crashing to the ground, tied up and immobile. This made him scream harder. It also made Sveta scream louder.
For some reason, this made the unfortunate, surprised Brocktonite to also scream louder and harder, dopplering away to the east.
First, they screamed. Then, it tapered off into an awkward, embarrassed silence. Suddenly, spontaneous laughter erupted from them both.
They laughed helplessly far longer than they had screamed, days of travel and tension draining from them in a rush.
The person had been weird looking, true. Even scary, if you saw them as a monster. A wide nosed but still humanoid head on a barrel-chested body not unlike a gorilla, short black hair and all. One of its arms, and it had more than two, though the exact number was hard to tell in their brief encounter, ended in an oversized claw, not unlike that of a fiddler crab, which partially hid the being from view. Down below, instead of legs, it had two tails like that of a lobster, segmented and spiny, but capable of flinging it forward in great leaps.
Inhuman in appearance, perhaps. But the scream of terror had been as natural as could be. Weld looked human, at least until you noticed he was made of metal, but Sveta was a conglomerate of tendrils and blobs. The poor brocktonian wasn't even the most deformed person present.
Notes: Meant as a modest one shot, self contained fic, there's some ideas in this I like. In this, at about the time Taylor was getting used to being an Undersider, something stirred up Nilbog, who wandered around with his army, eating towns, and ended up in Brockton Bay. The weakest bit is, of course, why he would go to Brockton Bay. The more interesting bit is Brockton Bay going full Cronenberg to fight back. The most interesting bit is Emily Piggot and Thomas Calvert freaking the fuck out.
This was going to be a christmas fic set in the worm universe. There's a modest chance I'll get around to actually continuing this at some point.
I'm not currently actively writing anything, though my main project is still No Promises, I haven't put more than about two thousand words into it since the last time I posted a chapter. Trying to get my personal shit back together, I'm just cleaning up and posting these bits.
The terrible working title for this was Christmas Tree Worm.
December 22nd, 2013
Two years after Golden Day.
Somewhere in New England along Hwy 101
Weld suddenly felt his legs bind together mid step, and was unable to catch himself as he tripped, falling face first into the weeds poking defiantly through the broken asphalt and concrete. Fortunately, the metal man was durable enough to come through unharmed, though there were a few specks of metal, left behind by the cars that used to travel the road, which had fused to his face. The rest of him wore heavy clothing to stop such problems.
Sveta managed to pull her head back so she didn't smack her own face into the ground, but the sudden movement startled her, making her lose even more of her hard earned but still tenuous control over her many black, hairlike tendrils. Their immense strength wrapped around Weld's metal body to the point it groaned and deformed where her unbreakable flesh pressed in.
"Sorry, Weld!" she apologized, her inhumanly pale face blushing just slightly with embarrassment. It'd been days since she'd accidentally tripped her partner.
"It's okay," he replied, patiently waiting for her to unclench her tendrils.
After a few moments where Sveta went through a mental exercise to regain control, her grip loosened and he was able to stand back up.
"You were right that we shouldn't bring the bike this close," Sveta offered. "I had no idea that roads could get this bad in just a few years. They're still fine near New York."
They'd come north, avoiding the Boston crater, up interstate 95, which was far enough inland to mostly survive the big waves and storms that Golden Day had caused, then had to make a half circle angling east the whole time, eventually coming back around to hit Brockton Bay from the north along the old 101. Weld had given up and parked the bike inside of an abandoned store in Seabrook.
There wasn't any worry about it being stolen. There was nobody left to steal. According to tinkertech scanners on overflights, outside of the few remaining salvage operators in New York, there were no humans left on the entire north American continent, and damned few in the rest of the world.
"Everyone was still maintaining the main roads there until earlier this year, remember. But Brockton Bay hasn't seen visitors since 2012." He adjusted the straps of his heavy, dense backpack and Sveta perched her head on his right shoulder. "Even back before Golden Day, when they were still dropping off relief supplies, they brought it in by flying drone."
Further to the north, even before Golden Day, most of the cities were abandoned except by squatters and transients. When Nilbog made his march to Brockton Bay, his army had eaten everyone they caught along the way. Mass evacuation had cleared out as much as possible in front of him, and even after, panic from the Goblin War had cleared out much of northern New England.
The roads were terrible, broken, littered with fallen trees, storm debris, and even craters from impacts, bombs, or powers. Even the slow pace they'd made on I95 was better than this, and they'd spent almost a full day trying to walk fifteen miles. In the wake of Golden Morning, the world felt so much bigger than it used to be. The one saving grace was the lack of snow and ice. Instead of cooling the planet, or, at least, not cooling the planet yet, the heavy cloud cover, dust, and smoke from the volcanic eruptions the tortured earth had suffered actually insulated the planet, keeping it unseasonably warm, though still chilly.
Most depressing, however, was the lack of life. No birds chirped, no squirrels chittered. Winter was supposed to be bleak, with leafless trees waiting the spring, but even the conifers had died. Pine needles turned brown, many largely stripped from the dead trees by the rain and wind. Dead grass, dead shrubs, dead world.
"I wonder what they thought of that?" Sveta mused as Weld resumed his tireless walk. "Once a week supplies, then once a month, then Golden Day and nothing after."
"I don't know, but the surviving monitor posts say no one has left yet. That's what I don't get."
"They did promise," she reminded.
He nodded. "That's why we have to do this. We have to go and see, and talk to them. I think, if no one told them, they'd stay in there forever."
Sveta nodded. "You're a hero for doing this. The last Hero on Earth."
"This earth, maybe," he mused. "Outside those walls. But never forget, it was the Heroes who stayed inside to fight Nilbog that is why there's not a giant crater there. Why there's still people inside and not just a bunch of monsters."
Sveta nodded sadly. "It's too bad not enough people still see them as people, just what they look like. That's why you're my hero, for seeing what's inside that matters." She kissed the side of his cheek.
He caressed the side of her face in return, still focused on his footsteps.
He had walked all night, his partner dozing on top of the backpack, lighting his way with a flashlight. It was even slower going than during the day, but he didn't really sleep so he figured he might as well. It was late afternoon before they emerged from the final trees and entered the exclusion zone, scorched bare years ago by flamethrowers and bulldozers. There, on the edge of the ocean, loomed the tall walls and monowire fences of the City Who Fought.
Robotic guard towers and tinkertech mine fields guarded the exclusion zone, but the big warning signs that once declared lethal danger had all flipped to giant green 'SAFE' signs mostly aimed at the city. Less than a year after Golden Day, Dragon had turned off the equipment.
And yet still, no one emerged. No one, and nothing.
The tinkertech walls of the city were tough, and still stood without cracks despite the waves and storms. That was especially good, given how ocean levels had risen. No doubt much of the city would have flooded if not for those walls.
"It's not fair," Sveta whispered.
"Hmm?"
"It's not fair. I mean, they won. They killed Nilbog and all his monsters. Even if they ended up looking kinda scary, they shouldn't have been treated any worse than us Case 53s. Most of them still looked more human than I do!"
"Biotinkers were almost always the scariest thing people could imagine," Weld replied. "Even if she was a Hero, once she started making creatures to fight Nilbog, and especially once she started changing people… It didn't matter that she was a hero. She was an 'other'. An enemy. It took Dragon to stop them from just dropping nukes on the place, people were so scared."
"They were humans," she whispered.
"They still are. Let's go meet them."
Getting into the city was a problem. Weld was tough, and Sveta was tougher, so even tinkertech monowire wasn't enough to stop them. Sveta's tentacles not only ripped the wire loose from its moorings, she even broke sections out, clearing a path for Weld. But the walls were tall, built by automated machines that pulled supplies from the earth around the city, digging deep and replacing the ground with a lower density but extremely tough matrix. When they had finally stopped, the walls were thirty meters tall and four meters thick, with nearly frictionless surfaces.
Fortunately, they had planned for that. Weld had brought coils of very tough rope, and a segmented, twenty foot pole. Using his own immense strength, he used the pole as a lever, an extension of his arms that allowed him to fling Sveta and trailing rope to the top of the wall.
Her tentacles draped over both sides of the wall, holding on partially on the monowire and one of its stanchions. Monowire was ripped out and tossed away so it wouldn't cut the rope, and her tentacles dug into the wall to enhance her grip.
It was up there that she got her first look at what had become of Brockton Bay.
The snapped off, jagged stubs of the tallest buildings in the city. Piles of rubble here and there, burnt out or collapsed houses, entire blocks that were simply razed to the ground. It was as bad as any of the abandoned cities they had passed. For a moment, she feared that the reason none of the remaining inhabitants had emerged was because there weren't any- but then her eyes started picking out signs of effort. Many of the rubble piles were neater than they should be, indicating cleanup efforts. And some of the buildings were patchworked with repairs, materials sourced from debris and unsalvageable buildings. There weren't any fires or signs of power, but the hard, angular edges of inky black solar panels topped several buildings, drinking in the weak light that filtered through the clouds.
However… there wasn't any movement that she could see. No one in the streets, no one on the roofs.
Shaking her head, Sveta anchored herself as best she could, then waved a tendril at her partner. Her limb control, or lack thereof, made pulling him up difficult, but she could hold the rope secure. And Weld, strong as he was, had no problem climbing the rope to join her at the top.
Together, with Sveta balancing them, they took in the view. Sveta quietly pointed out the signs of habitation she'd noticed. Weld pointed at a few more.
"Should we yell?" she asked. "See if anyone hears us and comes to investigate?"
Weld was silent for a bit, considering the question.
"I mean, the heroes won, right? They shouldn't attack us," she pressed.
Slowly, Weld shook his head. "No, I don't think that's a good idea. It's been three years since the wall went up. We don't know what's happened since. And I don't like how there's nobody visible. No, let's just get down. We'll see if we can find someone to talk to."
"Won't that scare them?"
Weld just shrugged.
Weld pulled the rope up from the outside, then let it down on the inside. Again, Sveta held the rope while he slid down. She followed through the simple expedient of dropping into his arms.
Although there was a brief delay where her tendrils, acting on instinct, wrapped him in a cocoon as she tried to break her fall, it didn't take long for her to regain control.
Together, they began slowly exploring the north edge of Brockton Bay.
Old railways formed a network in the north, centralized around several shipping centers, a train yard, and dotted with numerous old, rusted shipping containers. From the wall, it showed the least amount of indicators of life. Many of the rails had been torn up, and some of the containers had been cut up into sections, but for the most part, it was empty save for hundreds of thousands of tons of rusting scrap metal.
Weld was especially cautious as he picked his way through the place. One incautious movement could have his face stuck to the side of an abandoned railcar, and that would be inconvenient and embarrassing.
By silent, mutual understanding, they kept quiet as they traveled. The ruins were oppressive and intimidating in their silence. Blocked by the walls, not even the wind blew hard enough to whistle through the gaps in windows and between immobile boxcars. No weeds grew here, either, nor, unlike the outside, were there any wilted signs they had been.
Several times, both of them thought about calling out, feeling a near desperate urge to find someone, anyone, so that they didn't feel so alone. It had been depressing while they traveled, but they had a goal at the end of it. Now, at their destination, they were finally losing hope.
It was therefore, a massive relief when they finally rounded a corner and came face to face with a denizen of Brockton Bay.
It didn't stop them from screaming in terror, though.
Nor did it stop the thing from screaming in terror right back, turning, and bolting away in a panicked form of locomotion that might well be unique in the world.
Screaming, Weld tried to stumble backwards, only for Sveta, equally panicked, to lose control over her many tendrils and, once again, send him crashing to the ground, tied up and immobile. This made him scream harder. It also made Sveta scream louder.
For some reason, this made the unfortunate, surprised Brocktonite to also scream louder and harder, dopplering away to the east.
First, they screamed. Then, it tapered off into an awkward, embarrassed silence. Suddenly, spontaneous laughter erupted from them both.
They laughed helplessly far longer than they had screamed, days of travel and tension draining from them in a rush.
The person had been weird looking, true. Even scary, if you saw them as a monster. A wide nosed but still humanoid head on a barrel-chested body not unlike a gorilla, short black hair and all. One of its arms, and it had more than two, though the exact number was hard to tell in their brief encounter, ended in an oversized claw, not unlike that of a fiddler crab, which partially hid the being from view. Down below, instead of legs, it had two tails like that of a lobster, segmented and spiny, but capable of flinging it forward in great leaps.
Inhuman in appearance, perhaps. But the scream of terror had been as natural as could be. Weld looked human, at least until you noticed he was made of metal, but Sveta was a conglomerate of tendrils and blobs. The poor brocktonian wasn't even the most deformed person present.
Notes: Meant as a modest one shot, self contained fic, there's some ideas in this I like. In this, at about the time Taylor was getting used to being an Undersider, something stirred up Nilbog, who wandered around with his army, eating towns, and ended up in Brockton Bay. The weakest bit is, of course, why he would go to Brockton Bay. The more interesting bit is Brockton Bay going full Cronenberg to fight back. The most interesting bit is Emily Piggot and Thomas Calvert freaking the fuck out.
IAaDaIaNA
Nugar
Not too sore, are you?
- Joined
- Aug 20, 2015
- Messages
- 386
- Likes received
- 10,032
Another idea I had, also worm. This one was less an actual fic idea and more an idle thought that amused me that I banged out. Not nearly as much effort put in as Christmas Tree Worm has. Kinda SIish, in the same vein as A Prison of Glass, where the SI isn't the viewpoint. The only reason I actually went ahead and wrote this out is for a couple of jokes I thought of and so I could lay claim to the title.
It was getting late in the evening when I retreated to my room under the pretense of doing homework. Really, I was turning on the radio to listen as my spiders, literally hundreds of black widows, continued their task of spinning my costume. I don't know if Dad still listened, but back before mom died we'd listen together. The language was often… coarse… but it was the best source for cape news in Brockton Bay.
If I was going to be a hero, I needed to study. I had to know what was going on.
Brockton radio WCPE 86.3fm, Thursday night, 8PM.
An inane and mildly offensive jingle finally tapered off, being replaced with boisterous yet smooth tones, only mildly colored by a japanese accent.
"Welcome to our show, Brocktonians and Brocktonites, and all you listeners tuning in to our podcast on PHO. Lung the Rage Dragon here, bringing you this weeks Capes in the Bay, our report on every cape in Brockton Bay. All the news that's fit to print, and a lot more I only get away with because I'm an unstoppable rage dragon. Together with my co-host, Valefor of the Fallen!"
The sound of crickets chirping filled the air, before being replaced by Lung again.
Dad kind of hated Lung, so I didn't like him either. Although he'd sent plenty of jobs to the Dockworker's union, and even helped clean up the ship graveyard enough that the port was reopened, there still wasn't enough trade coming through to restore the glory days of the Bay. Also, he'd very carefully listened to Dad's proposal to reopen the ferry, but ultimately declined. Dad could forgive his gang activities, but not his short sightedness. I couldn't stand how he'd brought hope back, then crushed it again.
Still. At least he wasn't a Nazi.
"First up, the Protectorate. Director Calvert continues to push policies aimed more towards curbing independents than doing something about real villians. Admittedly, it's a lot easier trying to blackmail Parian into joining the Protectorate than it is to try and keep the Empire from breaking Hookwolf out of prison for the seventh time this year, but he still managed to fuck it up thanks to a small team of plucky teenagers and three giant dog lizards. Turns out the so called 'murder of a nazi' the lovely Parian is supposed to have committed was actually an out of context cellphone video of rehearsal for the upcoming stage play based on the Sound of Music, which I'm now allowed to admit exists. Turns out Hookwolf has a surprisingly good baritone, but I digress. Director Calvert is trying desperately to get the egg off his face with that one, and there's a report- this report, that I'm doing right now- that Governor Andrews and Senator Lewis are demanding an investigation as to why a sitting director unmasked a nonvillainous minority cape to the local nazis. I bet Calvert wishes he had a do-over on that one. "
Lung hated the Protectorate, at least after they fired the former director. Truth be told, he had a point. At this point, I wasn't even considering the Wards, especially not after what happened to Vista.
"Miss Militia is still fighting the good fight with grit and determination, trying to shield her team from the shit raining down from an increasingly unhinged Calvert but only occasionally getting to shoot a nazi with a beanbag round. Come on, guys, you have one job. Nazis are the best generic thugs to beat up in the world. Get out there and mug a hobo in front of Miss Militia, willya? Jaywalk, something.
"Dauntless, the undaunted. He who has never even seen a daunt. The man in the longest Rocky montage in history."
A brief clip of the Rocky theme song Gonna Fly Now played.
o/~ Won't be long nooooow…. Gettting strong nooooow…o/~
"Well, he's still under orders to prepare his Arc Lance to go all Saint George on my ass. Everybody cheer him on, okay? In fact, if you drop by our webpage you can get a free download of the Rocky theme song to play when you see him in public. Set it as a ring tone. Sing along. Encourage him to run up steps."
For a self described unstoppable rage dragon, Lung could be pretty silly when he wanted to be.
"Next up, Assault and Battery. Where one goes, the other soon follows. The two of them were seen on patrol as recently as yesterday, so it looks like their request to finally use some vacation days was denied. Only two more months and by regulations, it has to be granted. Stay hard, guys! Word is, Assault bought sixty dollars of roses on Tuesday. An apology, or was it an anniversary? Did Calvert really deny an anniversary vacation to two people who are going to have to take it in two months anyway? Man, what a snake.
"Now for some surprising news! Velocity didn't get the Adidas contract, since apparently theres not enough Russians in New Hamshire for brand awareness, but he got picked up by Reebok instead! Congratulations, Velocity!
"Lastly, Triumph. He yelled at some people in the streets. He hasn't yelled at anyone in the PRT. More on this situation as it develops."
I shook my head as my spiders carefully climbed over each other in a repeating pattern.
"And even though he's since moved on, chasing his own Dragon, Armsmaster was such a fixture here in the Bay, we're still keeping up with him. Now, it's been a bit since we had anything to report, ever since he blocked my number and threatened to make a tinkerdrug to make me allergic to msg the last time I called him on air, but thanks to local thinker as smart as she is beautiful, I've got his new unlisted number!" Lung's voice practically danced with glee. "Let's call him right now!"
There was a brief pause, then the digital sounds of buttons being pressed. Soon, the phone was ringing.
"Director Wilkins," Armsmaster greeted. "I was not expecting a call. How can I help you?"
"Halbeard!" Lung greeted enthusiastically. "How you been, buddy?"
"Lung."
I snorted in amusement. Armsmaster and Lung's friendship/hated rivalry thing was legendary. I can't quite express the level of emotionally deadened resigned annoyance in Armsmaster's tone. The only time I think I've heard him hate Lung more was the time Lung called him and read bits of sappy capefics shipping the two of them. On air.
"The one and only. Missed you, pal. Fighting the Protectorate's just not the same without you. Holding up well? I figure being closer to Dragon means you're getting fed more often."
"I told you to stop calling me."
"Pft, if I listened every time someone told me to stop doing something, I'd never get anything done. I am calling to check up on a friend. Come on, give me something here."
"How did you… How did you spoof your caller ID on this system?"
"…I'll tell you if you tell me if you've gotten to second base with Dragon."
Lung thought being shipped with Armsmaster was funny. But he actually shipped Armsmaster and Dragon. He shipped them hard.
Click.
"Armsmaster? Is that a yes or a no? Armsmaster?" Lung sighed. "Well, he sounds healthy at least. On with the show!"
The sounds of papers shuffling filled the air.
"Ah, yes. The Brockton Bay wards. Still limited to just four members since every outside member of the Wards who gets shipped in keeps quitting. Weld is back in Boston, Flechette disappeared, Stand Out quit, and Flipflop flipped out and threatened to choke Calvert to death with his own severed cock before being shipped back to Austin. Just like the situation with the adult heros, Brockton Bay continues to be denied the manpower and resources to let the Protectorate be anything more than a sham. The exact same situation that led to former Director Emily Piggot being shitcanned and Calvert promoted seems to be continuing with no sign of abateing. One wonders if Brockton Bay is actually some kind of amoral experiment in seeing what happens when the heroes just give up. That or the powers that be just fucking hate this city. Honestly, I'm not sure how to tell the difference.
"However, the leader of the Wards, Gallant, is stuck here for reasons unknown. Is it blackmail, like what almost happened with Parian? Is it patriotism, desperately fighting the odds to bring law and order to this desolate land? Is it sweet, sweet loving with a local sweetheart? Is it some political deal completely outside his control? Who gives a shit!
"Browbeat, the young man of many muscles! We didn't forget you this time, buddy! Sorry about that!"
Heh. Browbeat being boring and forgettable is a running joke. Even when he mentions him, there's no actual news.
"Kid Win! He's still winning! Ever since he discovered his amazingly useful speciality, and Armsmaster left, he's the only tinker the ENE Protectorate has left! They can't tell him shit! He's literally too valuable to discipline! Word is, Calvert had to be physically restrained from attacking him last weekend when he didn't show up to five scheduled meetings in a row, and when questioned, answered 'He didn't feel like it.' That's some big dick energy right there, people. That is a Man who Deserves your Respect. Starting a petition now to convince him to rebrand as Man Awesome. Sign it on our website!"
I might have to sign that.
Abruptly, all of the life and energy went out of Lung's voice.
"And lastly, Shadowstalker. Still a bitch."
In Wards related news, Vista's sexual harrassment case against Director Calvert is still ongoing. Our hearts go out to the longest serving Ward in Brockton Bay history, and we wish her luck in getting justice against the sick and disrespectful way she was treated during her last months here. Good luck, Vista."
Yeah, not joining the Wards. If even half of what was coming out in that case was true, it was a miracle Calvert hadn't been forced to resign yet. Or been put in jail. He seemed to have the devil's own luck.
"Next up, the villians. First and most important- Me and my crew, the Hong Kong Cavaliers. I ate at that new mexican restaurant over on Cedar avenue on Wednesday. Let me just tell you. Wow. Those were some great tacos. I must have eaten two dozen at least. Also, later on tonight, I'm going to go for a relaxing stroll. Hit me up if you want a fight.
My subordinates are all doing well. Oni Lee is back from assignment and putting some time in teaching knife fighting. Uber and Leet's streaming has hit one million subs, and they recently assisted the Haunted in forcibly deporting some random stranger snooping around last weekend. More on that later. Recent recruits Bakuda and Tattletale are both still in training, but doing well. They're the sharpest, smartest girls you've ever seen. Together, they let me trick Armsmaster into thinking I was actually calling him on a PRT phone from New York. Now that's synergy, folks."
I bit my lip. Lung's generosity to new capes was well known. He offered training, protection, information, even gear in some cases, and would happily let you quit if you decided it wasn't the place for you. He talked quite a bit about the casualty rate of new capes, especially tinkers, so he made himself an attractive alternative to the risks of going solo. He didn't even care if you joined one of the other groups in the Bay after the training.
I was tempted. Training and help, with very few strings attached. But… despite how nice he could be, Lung was still just another gang leader. Just a more charismatic one.
"The Empire 88 has finally agreed to give up the disputed territory of Townsen Hill to Brockton Bay Community Outreach, taking a small hit to their size but almost nothing to their bottom line and gaining a great deal of peace of mind. Thanks to that deal with BBCom, I suppose I'll have to find somewhere else for my evening walks. The nazis remain the largest single gang in Brockton Bay, of course. Don't like it? Tell Director Calvert! It's his job to fix it, and he's fucking it all up.
However, now that the news is out, I'm pleased to announce that E88 is going to honor the results of the bet I had with Kaiser last month. Hookwolf, Victor, and Rune are going to be participating in a production of The Sound of Music, put on by Lord's Hill Theater Group, in cooperation with both Parian and the Haunted crew. Tickets will be a bit pricey, at twenty dollars for a single, thirty five for couples, and ten dollars for children, but its sure to be the event of the season. Look out, you may even see some of Brockton's upper crust in the crowd. Plays are classy, right? You can preorder tickets on their website."
There was a brief advertisement interlude for the theater group. Briefly, I wondered if I should try to go see that. Mom loved plays.
Soon, though, Lung was back.
"E88 splinter vigilante group, The Pure, lead by Purity, has just signed on another white, anglo-saxon protestant dominated neighborhood for their neighborhood protection services, bringing their total up to four city blocks and three gated communities. Congratulations, Purity! That woman's got some business sense, let me tell you. I mean, capes don't give a shit about white collar crime, and that's the main kind of crime in those neighborhoods, so all they have to do is keep muggings and break-ins low and they're holding up their end of the contract. I was telling Kaiser just the other day, he'd do a lot better if they dropped the whole Heil Hitler slash ubermenschen thing, and here The Pure are, proving me right. There's a lot of demand for 'pretty racist but not actually nazi' services in white neighborhoods. Just look at Congress. Yooooooo!"
A pair of weird tonal taps followed, like someone hitting tupperware.
"In lighter news, City Hall sponsored hero group Brockton Bay Community Outreach continues its policies of safe, sane, and responsible, remaining the single strangest cape organization in the United States. Together with BBPD's finest, not only keep the crime rate down, they've been branching out into non-violent forms of serving the public. Clockblocker's time stop powers have proven to be surprisingly well suited for assisting in construction, and newcomer Tagger may prove to be rookie of the year with the Street Department."
BBCom was a city sponsored cape team that had largely absorbed the fleeing members of the Protectorate and Wards, and was actually ran by ex-director Piggot. Word was, however, that they were rather strict in their rules, and tied down by a lot of regulations. They didn't often fight capes and actually worked with the police on regular crimes, but mainly served as a place for nervous parents to put their recently triggered children that didn't involve the massive shitstorm of the current Wards and Protectorate. I will admit they had a growing reputation for actually getting useful things done, as opposed to the endless stalemate of cape gang violence, which served more to maintain a status quo than any sort of actual progress.
I still didn't want to join them, though.
"The biggest event this week comes courtesy of our fallen angels in the Haunted, which I remind you is still a legally recognized independent hero organization."
The Haunted were probably my biggest temptation. Formed from the rebranded survivors of New Wave, plus a number of new recruits, they were the most active force in trying to get Brockton Bay to be more of a city and less of a citywide gladitorial arena. They fought every criminal gang in the city, but they'd had to work with them sometimes against nastier threats. It wasn't local capes that killed the leadership of New Wave, it was members of the Fallen.
"Armed with Leet's patented fuckery detector, Grue, Regent, and guest star Leet of the HKC spent the weekend chasing rumors that there was an out of town stranger in Brockton Bay. Coordinating with Bad Medicine, Phoenix, and Foil, who at the time were involved in their own mission of helping Parian beat Director Calvert's blackmail, they found a cape going by the name Eventbrite. Now, this guy was a striker/stranger with some pretty clever abilities and had apparently been in the city for at least a month, and has at least five murders attributed to him during that time.
"His luck finally ran out, however, when he discovered the hard way that his ability to mess with memories doesn't work on dogs, and that local heroine Bitch does not put up with intruders in her territory. And then: there were giant dog lizards. And Phoenix is gonna Phoenix. Bad Medicine put him back together, buuuuut… it was outside capes with master and stranger powers that killed their parents. Right now he's regretting being prescribed a little of the old bad medicine. We'll see if there's any more on this next week."
More papers were shuffled. "That's basically it, folks. The loose group of druggies formerly known as the Merchants continues to fail to get their shit together since the death of Trainwreck, Faultline's crew didn't have a mission this week, and none of the rogues have done anything particularly interesting outside of Parian's bit of trouble with the still astonishingly corrupt PRT.
"But! Before I go for a stroll, for the seventy third week in a row, here's Valefor with the state of Fallen activities in the Bay. Valefor? Lean into the mic- yeah. That's it. Is there anything you'd like to tell our listeners?"
"…please. Kill me."
"And that's it for our show this week! Till next time, Lung and Valefor wishing you the best, and reminding all outside capes: Whether you're a member of a nationally powerful cape gang like the Fallen, or just some fucking schmuck like Eventbrite, if you come here, and you fuck with us…
"We will fuck you back."
As my costume neared completion, I wondered a lot about Lung. There's not a lot about him before his legendary fight with Leviathan, and there's a big blank period immediately following that before he came to america, but there's quite a lot about his arrival in Brockton Bay. He tried to be a hero at first, working with the Protectorate and PRT, showing up at every Endbringer fight. He took over a gang, and tried to clean it up from the inside. He pushed for a reduction in violence, organizing deals with other gangs so that regular people were safer. He worked with both City Hall and the Union to restore Lord's Port to operating status. He set up options for new parahumans that didn't involve being forcably recruited into a gang or signing your life away with the Protectorate.
But then, his new gang started dealing drugs and prostitution. He didn't deny it, he even admitted he tried to keep it as humane as possible, but he couldn't stop the dealing. Or the prostitution. And then there were fights with other gangs over turf. Fights with the PRT and Protectorate. He still tried to avoid killing, even hurting people, but the shine was off. Outside gangs came in, and had to be pushed back out. The Fallen, the Teeth, the Saints. Was it just the constant series of setbacks that made him give up on making the city better, and instead just try and keep it from getting worse?
And if so, what did that say for my own chances?
Note: You can almost see the point where I lost enthusiasm and just mechanically threw out the rest. Terrible stuff. Had fun with some of the stuff though, especially the Kid Win stuff.
The title for this is 'I am a Dragon and I am now Asian'. That seemed funnier at like 3am. I will not be continuing or adding onto this in any way.
It was getting late in the evening when I retreated to my room under the pretense of doing homework. Really, I was turning on the radio to listen as my spiders, literally hundreds of black widows, continued their task of spinning my costume. I don't know if Dad still listened, but back before mom died we'd listen together. The language was often… coarse… but it was the best source for cape news in Brockton Bay.
If I was going to be a hero, I needed to study. I had to know what was going on.
Brockton radio WCPE 86.3fm, Thursday night, 8PM.
An inane and mildly offensive jingle finally tapered off, being replaced with boisterous yet smooth tones, only mildly colored by a japanese accent.
"Welcome to our show, Brocktonians and Brocktonites, and all you listeners tuning in to our podcast on PHO. Lung the Rage Dragon here, bringing you this weeks Capes in the Bay, our report on every cape in Brockton Bay. All the news that's fit to print, and a lot more I only get away with because I'm an unstoppable rage dragon. Together with my co-host, Valefor of the Fallen!"
The sound of crickets chirping filled the air, before being replaced by Lung again.
Dad kind of hated Lung, so I didn't like him either. Although he'd sent plenty of jobs to the Dockworker's union, and even helped clean up the ship graveyard enough that the port was reopened, there still wasn't enough trade coming through to restore the glory days of the Bay. Also, he'd very carefully listened to Dad's proposal to reopen the ferry, but ultimately declined. Dad could forgive his gang activities, but not his short sightedness. I couldn't stand how he'd brought hope back, then crushed it again.
Still. At least he wasn't a Nazi.
"First up, the Protectorate. Director Calvert continues to push policies aimed more towards curbing independents than doing something about real villians. Admittedly, it's a lot easier trying to blackmail Parian into joining the Protectorate than it is to try and keep the Empire from breaking Hookwolf out of prison for the seventh time this year, but he still managed to fuck it up thanks to a small team of plucky teenagers and three giant dog lizards. Turns out the so called 'murder of a nazi' the lovely Parian is supposed to have committed was actually an out of context cellphone video of rehearsal for the upcoming stage play based on the Sound of Music, which I'm now allowed to admit exists. Turns out Hookwolf has a surprisingly good baritone, but I digress. Director Calvert is trying desperately to get the egg off his face with that one, and there's a report- this report, that I'm doing right now- that Governor Andrews and Senator Lewis are demanding an investigation as to why a sitting director unmasked a nonvillainous minority cape to the local nazis. I bet Calvert wishes he had a do-over on that one. "
Lung hated the Protectorate, at least after they fired the former director. Truth be told, he had a point. At this point, I wasn't even considering the Wards, especially not after what happened to Vista.
"Miss Militia is still fighting the good fight with grit and determination, trying to shield her team from the shit raining down from an increasingly unhinged Calvert but only occasionally getting to shoot a nazi with a beanbag round. Come on, guys, you have one job. Nazis are the best generic thugs to beat up in the world. Get out there and mug a hobo in front of Miss Militia, willya? Jaywalk, something.
"Dauntless, the undaunted. He who has never even seen a daunt. The man in the longest Rocky montage in history."
A brief clip of the Rocky theme song Gonna Fly Now played.
o/~ Won't be long nooooow…. Gettting strong nooooow…o/~
"Well, he's still under orders to prepare his Arc Lance to go all Saint George on my ass. Everybody cheer him on, okay? In fact, if you drop by our webpage you can get a free download of the Rocky theme song to play when you see him in public. Set it as a ring tone. Sing along. Encourage him to run up steps."
For a self described unstoppable rage dragon, Lung could be pretty silly when he wanted to be.
"Next up, Assault and Battery. Where one goes, the other soon follows. The two of them were seen on patrol as recently as yesterday, so it looks like their request to finally use some vacation days was denied. Only two more months and by regulations, it has to be granted. Stay hard, guys! Word is, Assault bought sixty dollars of roses on Tuesday. An apology, or was it an anniversary? Did Calvert really deny an anniversary vacation to two people who are going to have to take it in two months anyway? Man, what a snake.
"Now for some surprising news! Velocity didn't get the Adidas contract, since apparently theres not enough Russians in New Hamshire for brand awareness, but he got picked up by Reebok instead! Congratulations, Velocity!
"Lastly, Triumph. He yelled at some people in the streets. He hasn't yelled at anyone in the PRT. More on this situation as it develops."
I shook my head as my spiders carefully climbed over each other in a repeating pattern.
"And even though he's since moved on, chasing his own Dragon, Armsmaster was such a fixture here in the Bay, we're still keeping up with him. Now, it's been a bit since we had anything to report, ever since he blocked my number and threatened to make a tinkerdrug to make me allergic to msg the last time I called him on air, but thanks to local thinker as smart as she is beautiful, I've got his new unlisted number!" Lung's voice practically danced with glee. "Let's call him right now!"
There was a brief pause, then the digital sounds of buttons being pressed. Soon, the phone was ringing.
"Director Wilkins," Armsmaster greeted. "I was not expecting a call. How can I help you?"
"Halbeard!" Lung greeted enthusiastically. "How you been, buddy?"
"Lung."
I snorted in amusement. Armsmaster and Lung's friendship/hated rivalry thing was legendary. I can't quite express the level of emotionally deadened resigned annoyance in Armsmaster's tone. The only time I think I've heard him hate Lung more was the time Lung called him and read bits of sappy capefics shipping the two of them. On air.
"The one and only. Missed you, pal. Fighting the Protectorate's just not the same without you. Holding up well? I figure being closer to Dragon means you're getting fed more often."
"I told you to stop calling me."
"Pft, if I listened every time someone told me to stop doing something, I'd never get anything done. I am calling to check up on a friend. Come on, give me something here."
"How did you… How did you spoof your caller ID on this system?"
"…I'll tell you if you tell me if you've gotten to second base with Dragon."
Lung thought being shipped with Armsmaster was funny. But he actually shipped Armsmaster and Dragon. He shipped them hard.
Click.
"Armsmaster? Is that a yes or a no? Armsmaster?" Lung sighed. "Well, he sounds healthy at least. On with the show!"
The sounds of papers shuffling filled the air.
"Ah, yes. The Brockton Bay wards. Still limited to just four members since every outside member of the Wards who gets shipped in keeps quitting. Weld is back in Boston, Flechette disappeared, Stand Out quit, and Flipflop flipped out and threatened to choke Calvert to death with his own severed cock before being shipped back to Austin. Just like the situation with the adult heros, Brockton Bay continues to be denied the manpower and resources to let the Protectorate be anything more than a sham. The exact same situation that led to former Director Emily Piggot being shitcanned and Calvert promoted seems to be continuing with no sign of abateing. One wonders if Brockton Bay is actually some kind of amoral experiment in seeing what happens when the heroes just give up. That or the powers that be just fucking hate this city. Honestly, I'm not sure how to tell the difference.
"However, the leader of the Wards, Gallant, is stuck here for reasons unknown. Is it blackmail, like what almost happened with Parian? Is it patriotism, desperately fighting the odds to bring law and order to this desolate land? Is it sweet, sweet loving with a local sweetheart? Is it some political deal completely outside his control? Who gives a shit!
"Browbeat, the young man of many muscles! We didn't forget you this time, buddy! Sorry about that!"
Heh. Browbeat being boring and forgettable is a running joke. Even when he mentions him, there's no actual news.
"Kid Win! He's still winning! Ever since he discovered his amazingly useful speciality, and Armsmaster left, he's the only tinker the ENE Protectorate has left! They can't tell him shit! He's literally too valuable to discipline! Word is, Calvert had to be physically restrained from attacking him last weekend when he didn't show up to five scheduled meetings in a row, and when questioned, answered 'He didn't feel like it.' That's some big dick energy right there, people. That is a Man who Deserves your Respect. Starting a petition now to convince him to rebrand as Man Awesome. Sign it on our website!"
I might have to sign that.
Abruptly, all of the life and energy went out of Lung's voice.
"And lastly, Shadowstalker. Still a bitch."
In Wards related news, Vista's sexual harrassment case against Director Calvert is still ongoing. Our hearts go out to the longest serving Ward in Brockton Bay history, and we wish her luck in getting justice against the sick and disrespectful way she was treated during her last months here. Good luck, Vista."
Yeah, not joining the Wards. If even half of what was coming out in that case was true, it was a miracle Calvert hadn't been forced to resign yet. Or been put in jail. He seemed to have the devil's own luck.
"Next up, the villians. First and most important- Me and my crew, the Hong Kong Cavaliers. I ate at that new mexican restaurant over on Cedar avenue on Wednesday. Let me just tell you. Wow. Those were some great tacos. I must have eaten two dozen at least. Also, later on tonight, I'm going to go for a relaxing stroll. Hit me up if you want a fight.
My subordinates are all doing well. Oni Lee is back from assignment and putting some time in teaching knife fighting. Uber and Leet's streaming has hit one million subs, and they recently assisted the Haunted in forcibly deporting some random stranger snooping around last weekend. More on that later. Recent recruits Bakuda and Tattletale are both still in training, but doing well. They're the sharpest, smartest girls you've ever seen. Together, they let me trick Armsmaster into thinking I was actually calling him on a PRT phone from New York. Now that's synergy, folks."
I bit my lip. Lung's generosity to new capes was well known. He offered training, protection, information, even gear in some cases, and would happily let you quit if you decided it wasn't the place for you. He talked quite a bit about the casualty rate of new capes, especially tinkers, so he made himself an attractive alternative to the risks of going solo. He didn't even care if you joined one of the other groups in the Bay after the training.
I was tempted. Training and help, with very few strings attached. But… despite how nice he could be, Lung was still just another gang leader. Just a more charismatic one.
"The Empire 88 has finally agreed to give up the disputed territory of Townsen Hill to Brockton Bay Community Outreach, taking a small hit to their size but almost nothing to their bottom line and gaining a great deal of peace of mind. Thanks to that deal with BBCom, I suppose I'll have to find somewhere else for my evening walks. The nazis remain the largest single gang in Brockton Bay, of course. Don't like it? Tell Director Calvert! It's his job to fix it, and he's fucking it all up.
However, now that the news is out, I'm pleased to announce that E88 is going to honor the results of the bet I had with Kaiser last month. Hookwolf, Victor, and Rune are going to be participating in a production of The Sound of Music, put on by Lord's Hill Theater Group, in cooperation with both Parian and the Haunted crew. Tickets will be a bit pricey, at twenty dollars for a single, thirty five for couples, and ten dollars for children, but its sure to be the event of the season. Look out, you may even see some of Brockton's upper crust in the crowd. Plays are classy, right? You can preorder tickets on their website."
There was a brief advertisement interlude for the theater group. Briefly, I wondered if I should try to go see that. Mom loved plays.
Soon, though, Lung was back.
"E88 splinter vigilante group, The Pure, lead by Purity, has just signed on another white, anglo-saxon protestant dominated neighborhood for their neighborhood protection services, bringing their total up to four city blocks and three gated communities. Congratulations, Purity! That woman's got some business sense, let me tell you. I mean, capes don't give a shit about white collar crime, and that's the main kind of crime in those neighborhoods, so all they have to do is keep muggings and break-ins low and they're holding up their end of the contract. I was telling Kaiser just the other day, he'd do a lot better if they dropped the whole Heil Hitler slash ubermenschen thing, and here The Pure are, proving me right. There's a lot of demand for 'pretty racist but not actually nazi' services in white neighborhoods. Just look at Congress. Yooooooo!"
A pair of weird tonal taps followed, like someone hitting tupperware.
"In lighter news, City Hall sponsored hero group Brockton Bay Community Outreach continues its policies of safe, sane, and responsible, remaining the single strangest cape organization in the United States. Together with BBPD's finest, not only keep the crime rate down, they've been branching out into non-violent forms of serving the public. Clockblocker's time stop powers have proven to be surprisingly well suited for assisting in construction, and newcomer Tagger may prove to be rookie of the year with the Street Department."
BBCom was a city sponsored cape team that had largely absorbed the fleeing members of the Protectorate and Wards, and was actually ran by ex-director Piggot. Word was, however, that they were rather strict in their rules, and tied down by a lot of regulations. They didn't often fight capes and actually worked with the police on regular crimes, but mainly served as a place for nervous parents to put their recently triggered children that didn't involve the massive shitstorm of the current Wards and Protectorate. I will admit they had a growing reputation for actually getting useful things done, as opposed to the endless stalemate of cape gang violence, which served more to maintain a status quo than any sort of actual progress.
I still didn't want to join them, though.
"The biggest event this week comes courtesy of our fallen angels in the Haunted, which I remind you is still a legally recognized independent hero organization."
The Haunted were probably my biggest temptation. Formed from the rebranded survivors of New Wave, plus a number of new recruits, they were the most active force in trying to get Brockton Bay to be more of a city and less of a citywide gladitorial arena. They fought every criminal gang in the city, but they'd had to work with them sometimes against nastier threats. It wasn't local capes that killed the leadership of New Wave, it was members of the Fallen.
"Armed with Leet's patented fuckery detector, Grue, Regent, and guest star Leet of the HKC spent the weekend chasing rumors that there was an out of town stranger in Brockton Bay. Coordinating with Bad Medicine, Phoenix, and Foil, who at the time were involved in their own mission of helping Parian beat Director Calvert's blackmail, they found a cape going by the name Eventbrite. Now, this guy was a striker/stranger with some pretty clever abilities and had apparently been in the city for at least a month, and has at least five murders attributed to him during that time.
"His luck finally ran out, however, when he discovered the hard way that his ability to mess with memories doesn't work on dogs, and that local heroine Bitch does not put up with intruders in her territory. And then: there were giant dog lizards. And Phoenix is gonna Phoenix. Bad Medicine put him back together, buuuuut… it was outside capes with master and stranger powers that killed their parents. Right now he's regretting being prescribed a little of the old bad medicine. We'll see if there's any more on this next week."
More papers were shuffled. "That's basically it, folks. The loose group of druggies formerly known as the Merchants continues to fail to get their shit together since the death of Trainwreck, Faultline's crew didn't have a mission this week, and none of the rogues have done anything particularly interesting outside of Parian's bit of trouble with the still astonishingly corrupt PRT.
"But! Before I go for a stroll, for the seventy third week in a row, here's Valefor with the state of Fallen activities in the Bay. Valefor? Lean into the mic- yeah. That's it. Is there anything you'd like to tell our listeners?"
"…please. Kill me."
"And that's it for our show this week! Till next time, Lung and Valefor wishing you the best, and reminding all outside capes: Whether you're a member of a nationally powerful cape gang like the Fallen, or just some fucking schmuck like Eventbrite, if you come here, and you fuck with us…
"We will fuck you back."
As my costume neared completion, I wondered a lot about Lung. There's not a lot about him before his legendary fight with Leviathan, and there's a big blank period immediately following that before he came to america, but there's quite a lot about his arrival in Brockton Bay. He tried to be a hero at first, working with the Protectorate and PRT, showing up at every Endbringer fight. He took over a gang, and tried to clean it up from the inside. He pushed for a reduction in violence, organizing deals with other gangs so that regular people were safer. He worked with both City Hall and the Union to restore Lord's Port to operating status. He set up options for new parahumans that didn't involve being forcably recruited into a gang or signing your life away with the Protectorate.
But then, his new gang started dealing drugs and prostitution. He didn't deny it, he even admitted he tried to keep it as humane as possible, but he couldn't stop the dealing. Or the prostitution. And then there were fights with other gangs over turf. Fights with the PRT and Protectorate. He still tried to avoid killing, even hurting people, but the shine was off. Outside gangs came in, and had to be pushed back out. The Fallen, the Teeth, the Saints. Was it just the constant series of setbacks that made him give up on making the city better, and instead just try and keep it from getting worse?
And if so, what did that say for my own chances?
Note: You can almost see the point where I lost enthusiasm and just mechanically threw out the rest. Terrible stuff. Had fun with some of the stuff though, especially the Kid Win stuff.
The title for this is 'I am a Dragon and I am now Asian'. That seemed funnier at like 3am. I will not be continuing or adding onto this in any way.
Research can be a Dredge.
Nugar
Not too sore, are you?
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Research Can Be A Dredge, a Dredge crossover.
Île Destot, October 14, 1985
Deep in the southwest Pacific, on a tiny island known as Île Destot, a young woman finally stopped puttering around a prefab shack and flopped down on a narrow cot. She had a thin, skinny really, body, and a thin angular face, with pale skin peppered with freckles. Her cheekbones were getting more and more prominent as her cheeks hollowed from weight loss, and her frizzy red hair, bound into the most casual of ponytails, was turning into a mass of split ends. Her attire was a simple, badly stained grey t-shirt and a pair of tan shorts.
Her name was Fiona Dwyer, and she was lonely, depressed, and very, very, very bored.
"I could masturbate," she announced to the world at large. "But am I horny, or just want the dopamine?"
She sighed.
Thought about it.
Realized that she smelled remarkably like fish slime from her most recent dissection project, which had of course evolved into a bland and unsatisfying lunch of a boiled potato, a grilled, unseasoned fish fillet, and ennui.
Decided that she felt pretty unsexy, and that maybe it'd be better if she put it off after her next shower.
You know, tomorrow, or the next day.
Maybe the next.
It wasn't like there was anyone out there to keep up appearances for.
"No, you don't need a partner, you're an introvert," she bitched to herself more quietly. "You'll be fine on your own in the middle of fucking nowhere." Her voice got even more bitter. "Maybe I am an introvert, but the reason I stopped going out drinking with you, Charles, is because I got tired of being the butt of every joke because I dared to not have a tallywhacker and still go into oceanography."
And now here she was. She volunteered for the project to research the colossal creature that had moved into the deep blue hole of the Stellar Basin three years ago, causing the entire population of the island cluster to flee in understandable panic, given that the leviathan had also sank a few dozen yachts and killed several hundred people from the resort on Île Verdier. Even the native islanders had abandoned their ancestral homes and fled the monster.
Understandable, but also sort of cowardly, she felt. It was just some sort of giant invertebrate, formerly unknown to science. Its appearance did line up well with the stories of kraken and other sea monsters, but assigning malicious agency to the thing felt a little premature. It hadn't attacked anyone actually on the islands, just boats that got too close. Territorial creatures were hardly rare.
And while she certainly understood having a nightmarish fear of the thing, having woken up in a cold sweat many times since the damned thing had smashed the floating research base she'd spent most of her budget on, having had towed in and parked in the shallows at great expense, actually abandoning the entire region seemed a bit much.
It was arguably her fault for ignoring that the creature had clearly crawled through some relatively shallow areas when it first arrived to the atoll, not just the startlingly deep trench that breached the circle of raised coral that made the atoll islands. She'd also assumed that just because it ignored small boats around the edges of the lagoon that it would always ignore the ceaseless drone of the base generator. Her mistake, and a costly and inconvenient one, but she'd been so eager to prove that it was just a giant animal and not some sort of horrible aquatic demon god that she'd gotten a little incautious with the fact that animals can be dangerous, too.
So now here she was, at site two, an actual rocky island nearly 50 kilometers away from the atoll, having fled in a small boat with what she could carry.
Mostly her notes and food.
Île Destot was a former French bastion with large stone fortifications, built away from the larger, more populated atoll. Reportedly, the French admiral that had spearheaded the project back in the early 1800s believed the natives had unsavory practices and didn't trust them, so they kicked a small community off the neighboring island and used it as a regional base, before abandoning it to ruin during WW2. A small archeology team from her university, the University of Sydney, had a long term camp there, studying the fragments of the existing culture the French had stamped out when they arrived, though when the Stellar Basin creature had arrived, they had immediately fled with the rest.
50 kilometers of distance wasn't enough for them, though so far it had been fine for Fiona, so she'd moved in. Their forgotten research notes had provided interesting reading, and their abandoned supplies had been welcome, especially because the university supply run was about three months late.
It was fine. The archeologists had revived the garrison gardens, and while she'd beat a dolphin to death with an oar for a loaf of bread and some beer, she had plenty of food. Not that she was exactly enthusiastic about eating it anymore, but it was there.
Also, she was still working on her thesis.
The twenty six foot launch she'd fled the atoll in was fine for going out and setting lines and traps, though she was somewhat worried about having to eventually use it to cross the six hundred odd kilometers back to the nearest inhabited island, if the resupply never came.
She even regularly ran back over to the atoll to get samples closer to the creature, though admittedly she hadn't dared the lagoon again, collecting samples from the ocean side of the reef, and keeping an island between her and the enormous hazard.
The biggest change in her research was that, now, after documenting and sketching the caught samples, she ate them.
Some of them, at any rate.
An increasing number of them were coming up…
Wrong.
No, that was unscientific.
Nature does not care about human aesthetics.
Still, some were clearly diseased, either by parasites or other, unknown vectors. Some were more deformed, likely from cancers, possibly caused by viruses. Some seemed almost to thrive, mutants finding advantage.
Two headed fish and other mutants were hardly unknown to science, or even the area. One of the reasons such a formerly successful resort had been set up on the atoll was the world class fishing in the area, and the resort bar had a large mounted hammerhead with exceptionally long eye stalks, which had given it the name the Stargazer Bar. At least, along with the fact that whitemargin stargazers had been the most common hazard for the tourists, before the freaking kraken arrived.
But the incident had been nearly unique. A scientific expedition to the area would have been mounted much sooner if people had been regularly pulling in the bizarre, misshapen things she occasionally caught.
Unfortunately, so much of her gear had been lost on the original base. And she'd quickly used up most of her film and all of her formaldehyde on the first unusual specimens she'd caught. Specimens whose uniqueness now seemed like mere peccadillos compared to the things she'd seen since.
Like comparing a man with vitiligo to a yeti with two heads.
Soon, she was going to run out of film and be reduced to sketches.
Damn it all.
Where was the supply boat? When she got back to Sydney, she was going to raise hell. It had been three months.
THREE MONTHS.
She could have starved to death by now.
She'd radio them and ask, but the archeologists had carried theirs with them, and hers hadn't survived the attack, so she'd left it behind. There was maybe a way of doing something about that, but she hadn't been desperate enough to try it yet.
She shouldn't have had to. Supply missions had been scheduled before she even left Sydney.
By god, when she got her hands on those old bastards, she was going to shake until a PhD fell out. And then she was going to shake until she got funding for another expedition. Then she was going to shake some more.
And maybe squeeze a bit, too, you know, because it had been three fucking months. That's the kind of thing that could be brought before a magistrate.
The ringing foghorn bellow of a ship startled her so bad she nearly leaked, her heart skipping several beats while her right hand grabbed at the necklace that lay on her chest.
"A ship?!" she gasped. "The ship!"
…
"Supplies!"
She almost tore out the door, only to pause long enough to cram her feet in untied boots and throw on her cleanest lab coat, slipping on her black rimmed BCD glasses as she ran.
She was a scientist, after all, not some castaway!
And out the door she went.
xxxxxxxxx
From an outside perspective, it might have seemed oddly coincidental for a ship to show up right as she was thinking about it.
This would be incorrect, as there was no coincidence about it.
Fiona had been hoping, then anticipating, then waiting, then dwelling, and finally obsessing about finally getting a supply run, starting more or less from the first moment she woke up on Destot.
Unless it had shown up while she was asleep, it was going to show up when she was thinking about it.
And even in the middle of the night, it might well have been the subject of a dream.
xxxxxxxxx
That… wasn't what she'd thought the supply boat would look like.
Honestly, she was expecting either a large, ocean going fishing boat, picking up an easy profit by carrying goods out and dropping them off before it loaded up on fish and headed back, or one of the many types of cargo vessels that made runs to more populated places, like Fiji, the Cook Islands, The Marrow Islands, or even Tahiti to the northeast.
Instead, it looked more like one of the Attack class costal patrol boats Australia used: 100 ton, 30 meter military vessels. Sleek and fast looking, and possibly armed, because there was some sort of mount in the center of the foredeck, though she didn't see any guns or cannons actually installed on it.
But the cabin was too far forward compared to the Attack-class, with a correspondingly smaller foredeck. The rear of the boat seemed to have something almost like engines protruding from the stern, rather than propellers under the water. Also, it had a deck extension over the engine like protrusions, shielding them from the top, but not the sides or bottom. The purely military ships also didn't have a large articulated crane sticking up from the rear deck behind the cabin, directly in the center of the ship, and she'd also never seen one with a large zodiac inflatable mounted at an angle behind the cabin. The cheerful, bright yellow of the inflated ring stood out like a flag against the somber off-white of the boat's paint.
Oddly, she also saw a smallish crab pot on the rear deck, under the crane, with a man messing with it, apparently baiting it.
"Hey!" she called, her voice nearly breaking with emotion as she hustled down the path to the dock. "Heeeey! Ahoy the ship!"
The boat had 'crossed the t' of the dock, which wasn't the most secure way of docking, but had also dropped anchor, which was also a bit odd. At her call, the man on the boat had abandoned his task and turned fully in her direction.
"Hey the ship! Oh thank God!" she called, then cursed as she nearly tripped in her untied boots. "Are you with the University? Do you have my supplies?!"
'Can you fucking take me home?' she definitely did not voice.
"The university?" he called back as she boogied down the dock, with a strange but definitely American accent. Though the Marrow Islands area was dominated by largely English descendants from Australia and New Zealand, French Polynesia was literally next door, and she thought she detected a bit of French in his vowels. He was tall and broad, though not giant, and despite the ocean breeze and sun was only in cargo pants and a white t-shirt. As she got closer, she saw he was clean shaven with short, sandy brown hair, with his eyes hidden by wraparound sunglasses. The sunglass arms were tucked under the band of a red bandanna, and he also seemed to be favoring his left arm, which had a bandage wrapped around his forearm.
"University of Sydney?" she prompted. "Are you not my supply run?" Her heart sank a bit. Asking for transportation might end up being the plan after all.
But she genuinely didn't want to go home in failure. She wanted supplies, and help, and to finish documenting the Stellar Basin kraken, get her PhD, and maybe some awards for a nice documentary.
"No, I'm not with the university, he admitted slowly, then snapped his finger. "Are you the oceanographer? Fiona something-"
"Dwyer, Fiona Dwyer," she prompted, both disappointed but also pleased that he'd heard of her. "I'm researching the Stellar Basin creature for my doctoral thesis."
"Holy shit, you're the dauntless researcher!"
She preened, but also blushed. She'd never had a compliment quite like that before.
Unfortunately, his next words weren't so nice.
"Everyone thinks you're dead."
xxxxxxxxx
Four months ago:
Sam Bogut, skipper of the Dogan's Run, stared down at the smashed but still floating remains of the research pontoon he'd personally towed into place at the beginning of the year.
He'd been concerned when he'd not gotten a reply on the radio.
Fearing the worst, he'd docked on the other side of the island and hiked across to see what was up.
"Told the girl it was suicide," he mumbled to himself. "No good comes from poking a kraken."
And he fucking left.
xxxxxxxxx
"That's it?! That's the story?" she complained loudly. "He comes a month early, because he's worried about me, but he sees a few smashed pontoons and decides I'm definitely dead?"
She began to pace back and forth on the dock, ignoring how the young man, and she could see he was a young man, was eyeing her warily.
"He didn't check the nearby islands, or look inside, or anything?!? How are you just going to write off someone like that and not even look? I could have been inside the hut with a broken leg, or, or," she spluttered. "Or anything! He could at least have looked at the surrounding islands! That's what I expected to happen! It's perfectly logical that if one research base is untenable, you check the next research base! Oh, when I get my hands on those cowardly cunts at the university, I'll show them who's the real fucking man! Since obviously I'm the only one around here with any fucking balls!"
"To be fair," the young man replied slowly, "more than 99% of people have a deep, instinctual fear of supernatural horrors, especially supernatural horrors of the deep. And I mean fear to the point that if they get close to them, or even think about them too much, they will literally have a psychotic break and go bugfuck insane. More than three quarters of the tourists evacuated from the resort have either committed suicide or are in institutions. The fact that that old captain agreed to tow your barge into the actual lagoon in the first place means that he's already at risk of sinking his boat with his giant brass cojones." He hadn't retreated from the railing of his ship, close to the dock, but instead of leaning over it, he'd straightened up.
"He still could have at least looked around a bit!"
"He thought it killed you. And if it was getting aggressive enough to start attacking people in the shallows, which it hadn't been doing, it might be aggressive enough to attack people all the way outside the lagoon in the ocean, which is where it came from in the first place. Besides, you weren't answering radio calls."
She hated that he sounded reasonable. "My radio got a little wet when I was leaving," she admitted. "I didn't have the parts to fix it, so I started a project to use it to drive away the creature. I'm still working on it, but I'm getting close." She just needed some parts from the old base, and hadn't gotten the gumption to go get them yet.
"Really?" he asked incredulously. "That's amazing. You found frequencies or something that it doesn't like?"
"Mm hmm!" she agreed. "I was testing out a number of stimuli to see if it reacted, and there were some it definitely shied away from."
"Did you think that maybe that's why it attacked your research base?"
Fiona paused. "…well I do now," she admitted. "I'd really just assumed it was the constant drone of the generator that did it."
"Also a potential," he agreed, then suddenly cursed. "Shit! Where are my manners. Ryan Moore." He gave her a little salute, since they were too far away to touch.
"Captain Moore?" she asked.
Ryan shrugged. "I guess? I mean, I do other things, but yeah, right now I'm the captain of the Old Man Henderson." He gestured at the sleek looking boat. "Also the Quartermaster, Coxswain, Cabin Boy, and all the other roles."
"You're alone? On a boat that size? Are you mad?" Fiona demanded.
"I have a First mate, of a sort. But you've got no place to throw stones, Miss. We're all mad, or we wouldn't be poking around a kraken. And as a professional eldritch poking trouble shooter, I'd love to hear your story. Would you like to come aboard?" he offered.
"I," she said seriously, "would love to."
She waited while he extended an actual gangplank to the dock, which bridged the three meters of distance or so he'd left between them. And although she did accept his hand making the crossing, and kept her other hand on the chain railing, she noted that the ship wasn't bobbing and rolling the way it probably should have in the light chop.
"Your boat, the 'Old Man Henderson', you say? It seems oddly stable," the doctoral student noted.
He smiled proudly. "Yep! Glad you noticed. It's got an advanced stabilization system, well, two of them actually. And while they're not actually as effective as the really cutting edge stuff being worked on by a few government organizations I know, they're both rugged and the most compact for their effect there is."
Fiona paused once onboard, looking around curiously. She didn't miss the obvious pride in his voice, and came to a conclusion.
"Designed it yourself?" she hazarded.
"I'm one of the designers, yes," he admitted, suddenly bashful, and seeming painfully young.
Fiona was 27, nearly 28, and while she hadn't pinned his age down yet, she was sure he was younger than her. Maybe 22 to 25.
"Care for a nickel tour?" he offered.
"I'm afraid I've left my wallet back at the camp," she noted. "And I didn't exactly bring a pocketful of shrapnel anyway."
"A what?"
She couldn't help herself and snorted laughter. "A shrapnel. Coins, in American terms."
"Shrapnel, huh…" She watched him file the term away in his head. "Yes, well, it'd be my honor to welcome you aboard, anyway."
Fiona had been close in her guess as to the boat's dimensions. The Australian Attack-class coastal patrol boat was about 30 meters, and the Henderson had started out at exactly 30, before a three meter deck extension had been added to the stern. It was a 'test-type' of a new class called the Mandjet, which he was proud to say, already had several countries signing promissory notes to buy once the final configuration sets were available. It used advanced, lightweight materials and, with a 'standard' load of crew and fuel, only massed 89 tons, with up to forty tons of cargo weight available.
He waxed poetic, proud of being the lead designer for the hull geometry and structure, as well as the materials that made them. Although aluminum hulled, it boasted two layers with a thick honeycomb of light but tough plastic between them, which was itself filled with a liquid which, upon a breach, expanded into a sticky, self-healing foam.
"Basically, any hole or gash less than about four inches wide will seal itself," he bragged. "And the stuff is really sticky, so even if it's a bigger hole, if you can get someone on the outside to slap a plastic patch-plate over it, you can seal even bigger ones. Has to be someone hanging over the rail, or diving. Obviously, the outside water pressure trying to get in will keep you from doing it from the inside."
The inner walls were made similarly, but without the foam.
"My family's company has pioneered a new kind of super strong, super lightweight fiber board. Like fiberglass, but better in every way." He paused and, very quietly, admitted, "But price. But we're working on it." He shrugged and continued. "So the actual bulkheads are made like the hull. Standard sealable compartments. Don't want the boat to sink if it does get a leak you can't immediately patch. But the other walls are made of fiber weave. Same two layers with internal honeycomb, but instead of being filled with foam liquid, it's actually got a bit of a vacuum pulled on it. Unless there's a fire, in which case the whole cabin structure is hooked up to tanks of fire suppression foam, which can be triggered to fill up the vacuum, and will spray out of sprinklers and out of any holes in the walls. Super lightweight, and with the advantages of vacuum insulation. Like a dewar. It's great insulation against temperature and sound. You can hear yourself think even at full speed."
"It's actually quiet?"
He winced. "I wouldn't say 'quiet'. More… not loud."
The boat also had an unusual propulsion system.
Water jets.
"Water jets aren't unusual," he protested her categorization. "Lots of boats, even ships have them. The US Navy had a water jet propelled hydrofoil three times the size of the Henderson back in the late 60s. It's just no one has fully switched over. But propellers are kind of unreliable in certain situations. You can scrag them on rocks, get them tangled up in lines and nets, and mangle them in all kinds of ways. Hell, the goddamn Roukin mangled the shit out of the lower unit on a boat I was in on the Mississippi. My grandfather actually had a whole ass outboard engine fall off the back of his boat when he and the family were in it. Fuck props. Jet propulsion is the way to go."
It had three steerable water jets sticking out from the stern, which was what she'd seen breaking the water's surface. It also had reverse and lateral thrusters at several locations around the hull, and they were integrated with the deployable fin 'water wings' that kept the boat stable underway. The way the rear jet units were positioned, coupled with intake placement, meant that, so long as there was enough water to keep the hull afloat, nothing would catch and mangle the prop. It could drive right over nets, catch lines, or seaweed.
Provided they had the stabilizer fins retracted.
"Pretty much every boat with stabilizers has them be retractable," he explained. "They'll snap off in a heartbeat if you get too close to a dock."
"Is that why you dropped anchor instead of tying up?" she asked.
"No, like I said, these are retractable. That's something else. But dock related accidents are why we added a three meter deck extension over the water jets."
Some idiot had literally driven their car off a dock in New York directly onto the stern propulsion units. One had been sheared off entirely; another was just badly damaged.
"The bulkheads worked!" he said cheerfully. "So at least it didn't sink. And the extra deck space is nice. It's enough room for a small float plane or helicopter. In tests we successfully landed a Kiowa on it in calm seas, though everyone agreed that if you want to use it in that role, the chopper needs to land on float pontoons and be lifted onto the deck by the crane. It has exactly eighteen meters of deck space from the base of the crane back, and that's not much room for error with a twelve and a half meter helicopter trying to land on something underway. It's fine for something smaller though, like a Hughes 500."
The boat had three engines, for reliability, but also a mixture of fuel economy and top speed.
"The way it's set up, all the engines power goes through transmissions to the water pumps, for both the lateral thrusters and the main thrusters, but you can split or combine the output. The middle, cruising engine is a lightweight 14 cylinder multifuel. Using just it, at an admittedly fairly slow cruise speed of 11 knots, it's got nearly a 1700 nautical mile range with the standard fuel loadout. Fire up the two big turbines, though, and it cruises at 30 knots with a 900 mile range. Top speed is-" he cut himself off. "Uh. I probably shouldn't tell you." He hesitated. "Fuck it. Who are you gonna tell. I've had it up to 46 in flat seas."
Fiona made sure to make appropriately impressed noises, for all that some of it went over her head. She had no idea what a Kiowa or a Hughes were, other than, apparently, different sizes of helicopters. She was also increasingly certain that the young man's bragging had revealed American military secrets, or at least, family company secrets. If she was in the right place, she might be able to make money through investing in the company, or selling the info to others to exploit.
But he was right. Who was she gonna tell, the fucking kraken?
Fiona was also increasingly certain that she'd accurately pegged the man as young and fairly inexperienced, possibly in a bit over his head, and making up for it with bravado. He also probably had some elements of being socially awkward.
Which was great, because she knew she could be socially awkward as fuck, and having the young captain slowly but steadily embarrass himself into a social morass in an effort to impress her was a nice alternative to her own tendency to natter on about issues only she and her scientific colleagues cared about.
And even they tended to ignore her in favor of their own take on those issues.
Also, was he flirting with her, or just bragging?
Hastening on, he pointed at the articulated crane, which was bent into an angular question mark shape, with a hydraulic claw at the end holding a line running from the crab pot. "Even the crane is advanced. You don't want something top heavy on a boat, what with the capsizing risk, so it's actually made of aluminum and titanium. Even the hydraulic cylinders, which almost no one messes with, despite the big rods accounting for a huge percentage of the overall weight. And two of the sections are extendable. It can reach over the flying bridge and grab stuff off the foredeck, even in front of the bow." He grinned. "My idea. What's the point in having a crane if it can't reach stuff, right?"
She nodded but had gotten side tracked as she really noticed the crab pot.
"Why do you have a single crab pot?" she asked.
"Oh," Ryan paused, his thoughts derailed. "I love crab and lobster. Literally my favorite foods. So wherever I go, I carry a single trap to set out wherever I dock." He picked at the bandage on his left forearm absently. "That's not a problem here, is it?" he asked warily.
"Not a legal problem, no, but I'm sorry to inform you, the funnels in that trap are too small for the adult crabs around here. You'll catch juveniles, but nothing big." She walked over and poked at the wire mesh for emphasis.
Crab pots, or crab traps, are large boxes with sides made out of mesh, either wire or fiber. With bait hanging inside, one or more funnels, leading from the outside in, guide hungry creatures into the cage where they can nibble at the bag of bait. However, when they try to leave, the tapered funnels tend to guide them away from the floating hole, and instead along the side into the corners of the cage, where they remain trapped.
"Miss Dwyer, I bought that pot in Maine, where it's the standard size for lobsters. They can get up to over 20 pounds, and they don't have any trouble getting inside."
"I caught a blue crab last week that was fifty five centimeters across."
His mouth opened, then closed. He eyed the crab trap. The funnel, at most, was about half that.
"That's a big crab," he admitted. "A blue crab? I'm not familiar with an Australian blue crab."
"They're also called swimmer crabs. Blue tinge, kind of flattened, oar like rear legs, good at swimming," Fiona explained.
Ryan frowned. "That sounds like an Atlantic Blue. Callinectes sapidus."
"You know it?" she exclaimed, actually impressed for the first time. "They're an invasive species, but they grow huge here. Brought over in ballast tanks. I've got some traps out of my own, for samples. We can check them tomorrow," she offered.
He brightened. "Sounds great, I'd love to see your work." He looked back at the sadly inadequate trap, then at her.
The researcher shrugged. "It's up to you. There are plenty of juveniles running around."
He sighed, then reached in and removed the bait. "I'll just throw this back in the freezer. Come on, I'll show you the inside, and introduce you to the first mate, Joseph."
The base of the crane was right behind and to the side of the bulkhead door leading inside. The entryway was partially sheltered by the fully inflated zodiac boat tied up at an angle to the side, so it took minimum deck space, but wasn't totally vertical either.
The smell of fruit hit her as soon as the door opened. The walls had mesh sacks, onion sacks, hanging from them, and each sack had a small bunch of some kind of fruit in it.
"Oh my god fruit I haven't had an orange in a year." She caressed the hanging fruit, all but drooling.
Apples. Oranges. Pineapples. Mangos. Lemons. Guava.
"Bananas?" she asked, a little incredulous. "You even have bananas?"
"I like fruit. I like bananas," he defended. "And I don't believe in superstition. I only believe in the supernatural horrors that are provably trying to kill us."
A widely held mariner belief was that it was bad luck to have bananas on board a ship or boat, possibly owing to back when the banana trade from south America got really big, and there were thousands and thousands of ships loaded with bananas sailing all over the place, with a correspondingly higher level of accidents. It was unproven that it was a statistically higher level of accidents, however, but that never stopped sailors.
"Please, have one," he offered.
The lonely researcher wasted no time in opening up a sack with four oranges in it and taking one in each fist. For a moment she just held them to her nose and inhaled, drinking in the orange citrusy scent. How she had missed it.
"Low on supplies, huh?" he asked.
"It's been three months since he was supposed to show up," she agreed. "And I had already lost some stuff when I moved bases."
"What have you been eating?"
Fiona tucked one orange into a lab coat pocket and tore the other in half with her bare fingers. "Fish, mostly," she said, inverting an orange half and biting into the pulpy flesh. After some chewing, she added, "and other sea life. I've still got sampling equipment, so after I record my catch, I eat it. Also, the archaeology camp here had some gardens I took over. Potatoes, peppers, and tomatoes were all that survived without gardeners, but they were doing fine. I'm not starving," she said, a trace defensively.
Although her prideful protest was slightly hurt by the way she tore into the second half of the orange.
A harsh squawk interrupted them.
"What doing? What?! What doing!?" called out the newcomer.
A large, brightly colored parrot hopped over the lip of another bulkhead doorway and strutted into the hall.
"What you doing?" the macaw insisted, turning its head sideways to look at her.
"Miss Fiona Dwyer, I'd like you to meet my first mate and only help on this mission. Joseph, of the coat of many colors." He nodded at the remains of the orange. "Offer him a scrap, he'll like you."
Enchanted with the beautiful bird, she did just that, crouching and offering a bit of an orange segment that had remained stuck to the peel when she was biting.
Joseph took it from her gently, his pupils growing big as he looked at her.
The parrot wasn't of a breed she was familiar with. His feathers were a riot of colors, with the whole rainbow present, though he was slightly dominated by red, at least on his breast. She also eyed his beak warily. It was enormous, even given that the overall size of the bird was impressively large as well. Forget taking a finger, he could probably take a hand.
"Joseph, this is Miss Dwyer. Be nice. She's a friend."
"Nice, rrrrrrrrt! Be nice!" he called, his volume rising.
"Oh, hush you," Ryan replied, moving past her and offering his hand to the bird, which reached up and hooked its beak in his palm without biting down. He lifted the bird into his arms and carried it like a baby as he lead the way further into the boat.
The very next room seemed to take up about half that floor of the cabin, a combination mess and galley, with bench seats that could no doubt be used as additional beds.
"Well, I favor seafood, but I know how things get, so I did bring other stuff. Since you've been without proper supplies, is there something I could cook for you that you've been wanting?" he asked, sitting the large macaw, Joseph, in a hanging perch of wood and rope.
Including the long tail, which was actually a little ragged at the end, the parrot was well over a meter in length.
Fiona looked around, then eyed the young sea captain with eyes filled with a certain mania.
"You're an American, right? Hamburger. I want hamburger."
He chuckled. "With fries? Soup? Salad?"
"You have salad?!"
"Hamburger and salad it is." He paused again. "You uh. Want a milkshake with that? Beer?"
Fiona ended up blushing in embarrassment, having all but moaned at the thought of a milkshake.
"Alright. So, maybe you can tell me about your research into the kraken while I get stuff cooking."
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Actually, he ended up rushing the end of the tour first. And there was a major derail when he showed her the bathroom.
The boat had two heads, one near the bow, which was just a toilet and sink in a tiny closet. But the main head was nearly a proper bathroom, with a shower, soap, shampoo, toothpaste, and a small but reasonable amount of elbow room. There was also a washer and dryer on board.
Having not had a properly hot shower with soap and shampoo in something like six months, she begged his pardon and commandeered the space while making a note to come back with all her clothes and do laundry. Rather than dress in her old nasty stuff, she stuffed it in a bag and rooted through the extra clothes onboard.
He apologized for the oversight of not having women's clothing in stores, but there were plenty of shirts, shorts, pants, and sandals, and honestly she wasn't big enough to require a bra at all times.
Apparently, clothes made decent trade goods in various places, especially the ones with pictures on them.
That was how she ended up wearing a bugs bunny t-shirt and shorts while sitting at a table, talking to him as he grilled hamburger patties.
"Propane grill only, sorry. I could have brought charcoal and wood chips, but I didn't think to. Hope that's okay," he said sheepishly.
Americans take their hamburgers seriously, apparently.
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So, up until approximately three years ago, the Stellar Basin Resort was a fairly popular place for tourists. The fishing in the area was world class, and the atoll ring surrounded an impressively deep hole much larger and deeper than the famous Blue Hole off the coast of Belize, though not as picturesque.
It was generally agreed by geologists and oceanographers alike that the area was a former volcano, and the hole was its caldera, with coral building up an atoll around the rim and becoming proper islands after the land rose a bit. Of particular importance was a large cleft in the caldera ring, which created a deep trench that lead from the abyssal depths around the atoll into the basin itself.
The basin was considered to be about 900 meters deep, which was pretty unusual for a caldera, but it was known that it also had a network of lava tubes at the bottom, so its true depth was unknown.
A tribe of native Polynesians lived in the area, though they had been driven off Destot Island back in the 1800s, and only lived on the atoll. Curiously enough, they hadn't really recolonized Destot after the French had given up and abandoned the fort. They'd cut a deal with the resort investors and were pulling in money hand over fist by catering to the tourists with cultural events and 'authentic, hand carved artifacts'.
And then, one day, with zero apparent warning, a tentacled creature of at least one entire fucking kilometer in length showed up in the trench, smashing every ship or boat it saw, from native outriggers to a two hundred thirty meter yacht, if they were over the deep water, but ignoring everything in the shallows.
It promptly swam into the basin, and apparently moved into a large lava tunnel in the bottom, where it's spent the last three years with most of its body out of sight, but its tentacles extending up from the bottom and floating aimlessly in the water column, occasionally snatching large fish and presumably eating them.
"Cheese?" he asked.
"Pbth-what?" Fiona sputtered, thrown out of her story.
"Cheese? On your hamburger?" Ryan prompted. "I don't like cheese on mine, despite it being 'the thing'. Just raised that way, for some reason. But do you want cheese on yours? I have cheddar, swiss, gouda, and colby-jack."
She hesitated.
"I need to know now if you want it melted on during the grilling process, but you can put it on after I pull off the patties and it'll just get a little melted," he explained.
"Oh. Uh. I'll do it myself?"
"Gotcha. Sorry to interrupt, go on?"
All of the tourists packed onto the remaining boats and fled. Interestingly, so did the natives.
"But fascinatingly, the archaeological evidence and some oral folktales said they used to occasionally mass migrate to this island when 'the great Stargazer' came. So, apparently, either this kraken thing is hundreds of years old, or there's a breeding population of them," she said excitedly, happy to share the information she'd put together, herself, from the archaeologists notes and what literature there was on the tribal practices of the area. She paused and took a big draw on her vanilla milkshake.
"A common problem with weird supernatural sea monsters," he agreed. "The Roukin isn't even a particularly large sea creature, and it lives in the Gulf of Mexico, and brackish water around the edges, hardly some great deep trench, and we're still not sure if it's just the one or if it's like, some transformation really old bull sharks can do. But I digress."
"I want you to tell me more about the Roukin later," she said, pointing at him. "But back to the story." He used the term 'supernatural' a lot, which she had some concerns about, because she didn't like superstition, though she acknowledged that a lot of folk tales and mythology had turned out to have elements of truth.
It was not, in fact, back to the story, because she was soon invited to come over to the galley area and start assembling her cheeseburger and salad. He had more than just iceberg lettuce, too, with various other greens in plastic tubs, including cucumber, radish, and carrots.
It was all great. The only real disappointment was that he didn't have her preferred salad dressing, which was a local Australian thing, and he'd sailed over, Panama to San Diego to Hawaii to Kiribati to Marrow, so he hadn't actually been to Sydney on this trip. He, or more particularly, the organization he worked for, had merely exchanged correspondence.
Full to the point she was a little uncomfortable, she ended up sipping slowly on a mediocre American beer, poured into a glass from an actual keg, instead of bottled, and continuing her tale.
Fiona briefly touched on the problems of being a woman in male dominated academia, but thought she'd found her niche when absolutely none of the professors, or even her fellow doctoral candidates, would entertain the idea of going and studying this titanic sea creature.
She had to stop and wave him off when he wanted to talk about that, promising to come back.
However, while the tenured old cowards wouldn't do it themselves, they did admit that it would be the scientific find of a lifetime to accurately document the first kraken ever caught on film. Certainly enough of a project for a thesis, which she'd been having trouble getting accepted by her official mentor.
A surprisingly decent budget had been prepared, and with all of the local structures abandoned, they had hit upon a towable barge and pontoon docks that could be reused in future expeditions. So it was an investment, really. The tricky part had indeed been finding someone with a boat who could, and would, tow her into the Stellar Basin. Fortunately, she had some momentum behind her at that point, and one was found.
"I was cocky," the researcher admitted. "It had only ever attacked things that were directly over it. The yachts and boats on the way in, in the trench, and a few small unmanned motor dinghies I rigged to drive across the basin. I even had a pretty good map of its reach, and I got some glimpses of its actual body. Then one day about seven months ago…"
"Smash."
She shuddered, feeling a chill despite the entirely comfortable environment in the boat.
However, the dauntless researcher, and didn't that title bring a smile to her, quickly shook it off.
"It stopped flailing after I killed the genny, so I gathered what I could into my boat and headed here, to the old archaeology base." Fiona smiled ruefully. "I'm glad I did, I mean, no one from the archaeology teams mentioned anything about the legends of the Stargazer, even when I tried to interview them."
"Probably didn't want to talk about it. Thalassophobia. I mentioned that most people have a serious, atavistic fear of shit like that. You did pretty damned good, to be honest," Ryan said bluntly. "Most people would probably have jumped in their little boat, opened up the throttle to get away, then ran out of fuel and drifted till they died."
"My launch doesn't have the kind of range to reach Marrow by itself, but I was thinking of rigging up some sails," she admitted. "If I never got supplies, I mean. And… Don't get me wrong, I'm glad you showed up, but honestly, I wish you'd brought the stuff I need to finish my research, rather than food. This is one of the most important events in oceanic history, here! It needs to be documented," she stressed. "Did you know that, since the kraken has arrived, the local sea life has been mutating? Disease runs rampant through many fish species? Even ignoring the incalculable scientific value of the largest sea creature yet discovered, this may well be critically important ecological information. Even if you only care about it from a human perspective, it could be killing off fishery stocks and cause a collapse in the local industries."
Ryan bobbed his head amiably, though he'd had a curious, and concerning, wince when she said 'largest sea creature'. "Well, you might not be as disappointed as you think. Maybe. Or you may hate me for what I'm going to do."
Fiona gave him a gimlet eye.
If he said he was going to evacuate her for her own good, she was going to go down swinging.
Ryan drained his beer, but instead of getting another one, rinsed the glass and filled it up with ice water from one of the refrigerators. He puttered around for a bit, cleaning up some of the stuff from their supper, though mostly just stacking their utensils in the sink for the moment.
After composing himself for a bit, he sat down.
Fiona eyed him warily.
"Remember how I said most people can't handle sea monsters?"
"…Yes?"
"That's a real interesting necklace you've got there," he said neutrally, suddenly derailing the subject. "You've got the star with the flame AND the branch, flanking what looks like… the Seal of Solomon?"
"H-huh?" she replied, not expecting that. Fiona reached up and grabbed her necklace, pulling it away from her chest, where it had rested on top of her shirt. "This? It's an heirloom. I inherited it from my father."
Ryan nodded. "Same here." He pulled a necklace from within his shirt.
Hers had three charms starting from her left: a silver, slightly warped star with a copper flame coming from the middle, another which was what he'd accurately identified as the biblical Seal of Solomon in gold and silver, and another silver piece like a five branched tree limb, all roughly the same size.
His had five charms with the center being the largest, some sort of stylized sun emblem, flanked by the same star-and-flame and five branching limb symbol of equal size to each other, and then two more outside charms that were too small and complicated to really identify.
"Tell me, Miss Dauntless Researcher Fiona Dwyer, what do you know about the nonhuman forces at work in the world?" the man asked.
Now, instead of seeming like a cheerfully awkward, painfully intelligent young man on his first solo mission, who may or may not have been trying to flirt with the first girl he ran into-
He seemed older, or at least more grizzled.
Just a bit haunted.
"Well," she replied, taken aback. "Paranormal research remains a controversial, but not entirely disproven, academic discipline. Various small extrasensory abilities have been documented enough to get labeled as fact, but I don't know how much of that would really be considered nonhuman. Ghosts were widely considered a known fact a hundred years ago, but for some reason the research on them has dried up, so it may have been some… collective academic mania. If they are real, they at least came from humans in the first place, so…"
"I'm pretty sure you've got a bit of Fey blood to you," he stated. "Well, I only say 'Fey' because you've got pretty red hair and features that indicate you probably have some Irish ancestry, and they were most active over there. But it takes some sort of innate magic to actually power things like an elder sign, or other symbols of faith."
He thought her hair was pretty? But wait.
"Fey? You mean like elves and such? I'm pretty sure those were, if anything other than tall tales, just exaggerations based on people with some sort of unusual ability," she protested. Acknowledging there were still many things for science to discover and classify was one thing, but outright saying that he believed in magic was something else.
"The category of beings we label 'Fey' is significantly broader than just 'elves' Miss Dwyer," he said seriously. "But again. I'm sure you have some nonhuman blood, though that's not really that uncommon. But, while the average person may well have a drop or two, you've got some sort of heritage strong enough that you can actually empower the Elder Sign you wear, and resist the call of madness to boot."
"Call of madness?" She hated that she was so thrown off by his statements she was just repeating phrases.
"Only the bravest or most insane people would willingly get near an eldritch monstrosity such as the kraken. Those corrupted fish you found? Almost certainly the result of the miasma, the alien energies such beings radiate. It is a corruption, Miss Dwyer. A taint. A perfectly healthy, sane man would be driven insane by just glimpsing it once. I was not kidding about the casualties suffered by the evacuated population, Miss. Most are dead… or wishing for it."
Fiona stopped herself from shaking her head. On one hand, it all sounded terribly… wooly minded. Myth and superstition.
On the other hand, well.
Her head snapped up and her eyes bore into his. Green met green.
"Who are you?" she demanded.
"Captain Ryan Moore," he said. "One of the heirs to Moore Industries. But also an agent for a multinational organization originally started as a joint program between the United States and the United Kingdom. We're not really secret, but not exactly known because we deal with the things people don't like to acknowledge, or even think about."
"Exactly who is that, then?" she demanded again.
"The BPRD," he answered. "The Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense." He paused, patted his leg, stopped and looked rueful, then added, "I've got a badge in my cabin if you want to see it."
She raised an eyebrow, looking at him with a new light. Fiona thought about what she knew of America, and how they did things, and yeah, a strapping young man, intelligent, brave, with connections to powerful industrial concerns-
That's exactly who she would imagine the US government would send to quietly deal with 'problems'.
"The Professor likes to say, 'When things go bump in the night, we are the ones that bump back.'" He chuckled. "That's a great org motto. But I favor the claim that 'I am a troubleshooter. I shoot trouble.'"
Americans.
At least they made good hamburgers.
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They spent some more time discussing the supernatural and paranatural.
Paranatural, as described by the young captain, generally referred to unusual but ultimately human phenomenon. Wizardry and witchery, typically focused on either natural expressions, like influencing plants and animals, or human specific necromancy. Ghosts, ectoplasm, spiritual mediums and such.
"You act like ghosts are a proven fact," she protested. "I know it was a widespread belief, even among academia, back in the 1700s and early 1800s, modern standards of rigor when performing experiments have failed to provide any sort of conclusive evidence."
"That's was largely because scientists failed to take all the variables into consideration when performing their experiments," he counted easily. "There are worldwide energies that promote, or retard, necromantic events such as ghosts, to the point that consistent results could only be found at certain locales. But the stars move in the heavens, Miss Dwyer. While you've been out of contact, a mass paranormal event happened in New York just last year. Tens of thousands of ghosts, visible to everyone. We're still managing the repercussions, which is why so few agents were sent with me."
He had video.
A lot of video.
"Paradoxically, while the events were highly disruptive to the lives of those who lived in and near New York, it did bring the BPRD's attention to this small team of scientific wunderkinds. It is quite literally not at all false to say that these four heroes may have saved much of western civilization from a terrifyingly dangerous supernatural event."
She had been shown clips from several different videos, ranging from random ghost sightings, to news reports, footage of an enormous marshmallow monster, and the damage aftermath.
"So how does supernatural differ from paranatural?" she asked.
"Supernatural involves nonhuman, unearthly forces, primarily involving energies from the stars and other planets, but also including certain alien things currently present on earth, but whose origins are otherworldly. We also attribute this term to local things, such as giant squids, who have been unduly influenced and tainted by eldritch forces, apparently turning them into giant sea monsters."
He gave her several books he had in the onboard library before she left for the evening, returning to her camp.
She promised to return for breakfast, with her dirty clothes, and so they could go and check her sample traps.
Sleep did not come quickly for her that night.
…
…Because she was reading.
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AN: Been a while since I posted. Things have been rough, I've definitely ended up with some memory issues. Forgot some words, and have trouble concentrating/following thoughtlines. This is something I sent to my patrons last year, but definitely belongs here in the snippets. It's the start of a story I don't know if I'll ever actually continue, since I've got other, more important projects. I did like Dredge, though. The crossovers are Ghostbusters and Hellboy, for sure, with some other similar bits of 'paranatural investigators'. Really, the big thing is, I want to shoot one of those giant rocky hermit crabs with a recoilless. The researcher was kinda cute, too.
Special thanks to those who still support me on patreon. Lets not pretend otherwise, it's basically charity at this point. I am writing, but it's so sloooow. Your day is not my day. I only have a few hours of productivity before I am wiped out, and most of that is spent on daily life or doctor visits or therapy.
I have given up. I am in the process of filing for disability, and the doctors thing I have an excellent chance of getting it. Stroke damage (Oh, and I had a mini stroke last month that fucked me up for a while.) is one of those things they usually do give disability for. Unfortunately, I live in Arkansas, with our lovely Maga governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, one of the worst of the Trump hangers on. They're so afraid someone who doesn't need disability might get some of their hard earned tax dollars that it's basically just a straight denial on every one, and then begrudgingly grant it when the lawyer sues. There's also quite a lot of hoops. But yeah, I'll probably get it. Eventually. Until then, I'm relying on patreon:
Nugar | creating Original Fantasy and/or Scifi, and occasional fan proje | Patreon
Seriously, thanks to my remaining patrons, and everyone who supported me as long as they could.
But, as you might have guessed, I'm in a bind. I'm hurting for money, and got some bills to pay. This e-panhandling embarrasses and shames me, but I gotta do it. If you liked any of this, or just have a few dollars to spare, I would really appreciate it.
For ease of use, and avoiding Patreon's enshittification, Ko-fi is probably the best platform to use.
https://ko-fi.com/nugar
Don't put yourself out on my account, but if you can help me pay a few upcoming bills, I would seriously appreciate it. Medicare doesn't cover everything. Spread it around, tell your friends. I know not everyone is watching this particular thread so I need it out there. I wouldn't ask if I didn't have to.
I've got another story start that would be good in this thread, so I'm going to post it tomorrow as a bump.
Thanks for everything guys.
And, don't worry, I've not stopped working. As the saying was for a few minutes there, let me cook! It's a simmer so low it might as well be 'warm' on an electric hob, but I'm still writing, even if I don't have anything ready for a new patreon post yet. Seriously, I haven't posted to patreon in a while. I'm trying, but it's hard. Things were looking real good for a while, until the ministroke. Kinda a derail.
Edit: Went back and included the masturbation reference that I'd cut out of SB and SV. There's nothing actually happening, this should be fine for SFW, but you know how some forums are.
Île Destot, October 14, 1985
Deep in the southwest Pacific, on a tiny island known as Île Destot, a young woman finally stopped puttering around a prefab shack and flopped down on a narrow cot. She had a thin, skinny really, body, and a thin angular face, with pale skin peppered with freckles. Her cheekbones were getting more and more prominent as her cheeks hollowed from weight loss, and her frizzy red hair, bound into the most casual of ponytails, was turning into a mass of split ends. Her attire was a simple, badly stained grey t-shirt and a pair of tan shorts.
Her name was Fiona Dwyer, and she was lonely, depressed, and very, very, very bored.
"I could masturbate," she announced to the world at large. "But am I horny, or just want the dopamine?"
She sighed.
Thought about it.
Realized that she smelled remarkably like fish slime from her most recent dissection project, which had of course evolved into a bland and unsatisfying lunch of a boiled potato, a grilled, unseasoned fish fillet, and ennui.
Decided that she felt pretty unsexy, and that maybe it'd be better if she put it off after her next shower.
You know, tomorrow, or the next day.
Maybe the next.
It wasn't like there was anyone out there to keep up appearances for.
"No, you don't need a partner, you're an introvert," she bitched to herself more quietly. "You'll be fine on your own in the middle of fucking nowhere." Her voice got even more bitter. "Maybe I am an introvert, but the reason I stopped going out drinking with you, Charles, is because I got tired of being the butt of every joke because I dared to not have a tallywhacker and still go into oceanography."
And now here she was. She volunteered for the project to research the colossal creature that had moved into the deep blue hole of the Stellar Basin three years ago, causing the entire population of the island cluster to flee in understandable panic, given that the leviathan had also sank a few dozen yachts and killed several hundred people from the resort on Île Verdier. Even the native islanders had abandoned their ancestral homes and fled the monster.
Understandable, but also sort of cowardly, she felt. It was just some sort of giant invertebrate, formerly unknown to science. Its appearance did line up well with the stories of kraken and other sea monsters, but assigning malicious agency to the thing felt a little premature. It hadn't attacked anyone actually on the islands, just boats that got too close. Territorial creatures were hardly rare.
And while she certainly understood having a nightmarish fear of the thing, having woken up in a cold sweat many times since the damned thing had smashed the floating research base she'd spent most of her budget on, having had towed in and parked in the shallows at great expense, actually abandoning the entire region seemed a bit much.
It was arguably her fault for ignoring that the creature had clearly crawled through some relatively shallow areas when it first arrived to the atoll, not just the startlingly deep trench that breached the circle of raised coral that made the atoll islands. She'd also assumed that just because it ignored small boats around the edges of the lagoon that it would always ignore the ceaseless drone of the base generator. Her mistake, and a costly and inconvenient one, but she'd been so eager to prove that it was just a giant animal and not some sort of horrible aquatic demon god that she'd gotten a little incautious with the fact that animals can be dangerous, too.
So now here she was, at site two, an actual rocky island nearly 50 kilometers away from the atoll, having fled in a small boat with what she could carry.
Mostly her notes and food.
Île Destot was a former French bastion with large stone fortifications, built away from the larger, more populated atoll. Reportedly, the French admiral that had spearheaded the project back in the early 1800s believed the natives had unsavory practices and didn't trust them, so they kicked a small community off the neighboring island and used it as a regional base, before abandoning it to ruin during WW2. A small archeology team from her university, the University of Sydney, had a long term camp there, studying the fragments of the existing culture the French had stamped out when they arrived, though when the Stellar Basin creature had arrived, they had immediately fled with the rest.
50 kilometers of distance wasn't enough for them, though so far it had been fine for Fiona, so she'd moved in. Their forgotten research notes had provided interesting reading, and their abandoned supplies had been welcome, especially because the university supply run was about three months late.
It was fine. The archeologists had revived the garrison gardens, and while she'd beat a dolphin to death with an oar for a loaf of bread and some beer, she had plenty of food. Not that she was exactly enthusiastic about eating it anymore, but it was there.
Also, she was still working on her thesis.
The twenty six foot launch she'd fled the atoll in was fine for going out and setting lines and traps, though she was somewhat worried about having to eventually use it to cross the six hundred odd kilometers back to the nearest inhabited island, if the resupply never came.
She even regularly ran back over to the atoll to get samples closer to the creature, though admittedly she hadn't dared the lagoon again, collecting samples from the ocean side of the reef, and keeping an island between her and the enormous hazard.
The biggest change in her research was that, now, after documenting and sketching the caught samples, she ate them.
Some of them, at any rate.
An increasing number of them were coming up…
Wrong.
No, that was unscientific.
Nature does not care about human aesthetics.
Still, some were clearly diseased, either by parasites or other, unknown vectors. Some were more deformed, likely from cancers, possibly caused by viruses. Some seemed almost to thrive, mutants finding advantage.
Two headed fish and other mutants were hardly unknown to science, or even the area. One of the reasons such a formerly successful resort had been set up on the atoll was the world class fishing in the area, and the resort bar had a large mounted hammerhead with exceptionally long eye stalks, which had given it the name the Stargazer Bar. At least, along with the fact that whitemargin stargazers had been the most common hazard for the tourists, before the freaking kraken arrived.
But the incident had been nearly unique. A scientific expedition to the area would have been mounted much sooner if people had been regularly pulling in the bizarre, misshapen things she occasionally caught.
Unfortunately, so much of her gear had been lost on the original base. And she'd quickly used up most of her film and all of her formaldehyde on the first unusual specimens she'd caught. Specimens whose uniqueness now seemed like mere peccadillos compared to the things she'd seen since.
Like comparing a man with vitiligo to a yeti with two heads.
Soon, she was going to run out of film and be reduced to sketches.
Damn it all.
Where was the supply boat? When she got back to Sydney, she was going to raise hell. It had been three months.
THREE MONTHS.
She could have starved to death by now.
She'd radio them and ask, but the archeologists had carried theirs with them, and hers hadn't survived the attack, so she'd left it behind. There was maybe a way of doing something about that, but she hadn't been desperate enough to try it yet.
She shouldn't have had to. Supply missions had been scheduled before she even left Sydney.
By god, when she got her hands on those old bastards, she was going to shake until a PhD fell out. And then she was going to shake until she got funding for another expedition. Then she was going to shake some more.
And maybe squeeze a bit, too, you know, because it had been three fucking months. That's the kind of thing that could be brought before a magistrate.
The ringing foghorn bellow of a ship startled her so bad she nearly leaked, her heart skipping several beats while her right hand grabbed at the necklace that lay on her chest.
"A ship?!" she gasped. "The ship!"
…
"Supplies!"
She almost tore out the door, only to pause long enough to cram her feet in untied boots and throw on her cleanest lab coat, slipping on her black rimmed BCD glasses as she ran.
She was a scientist, after all, not some castaway!
And out the door she went.
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From an outside perspective, it might have seemed oddly coincidental for a ship to show up right as she was thinking about it.
This would be incorrect, as there was no coincidence about it.
Fiona had been hoping, then anticipating, then waiting, then dwelling, and finally obsessing about finally getting a supply run, starting more or less from the first moment she woke up on Destot.
Unless it had shown up while she was asleep, it was going to show up when she was thinking about it.
And even in the middle of the night, it might well have been the subject of a dream.
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That… wasn't what she'd thought the supply boat would look like.
Honestly, she was expecting either a large, ocean going fishing boat, picking up an easy profit by carrying goods out and dropping them off before it loaded up on fish and headed back, or one of the many types of cargo vessels that made runs to more populated places, like Fiji, the Cook Islands, The Marrow Islands, or even Tahiti to the northeast.
Instead, it looked more like one of the Attack class costal patrol boats Australia used: 100 ton, 30 meter military vessels. Sleek and fast looking, and possibly armed, because there was some sort of mount in the center of the foredeck, though she didn't see any guns or cannons actually installed on it.
But the cabin was too far forward compared to the Attack-class, with a correspondingly smaller foredeck. The rear of the boat seemed to have something almost like engines protruding from the stern, rather than propellers under the water. Also, it had a deck extension over the engine like protrusions, shielding them from the top, but not the sides or bottom. The purely military ships also didn't have a large articulated crane sticking up from the rear deck behind the cabin, directly in the center of the ship, and she'd also never seen one with a large zodiac inflatable mounted at an angle behind the cabin. The cheerful, bright yellow of the inflated ring stood out like a flag against the somber off-white of the boat's paint.
Oddly, she also saw a smallish crab pot on the rear deck, under the crane, with a man messing with it, apparently baiting it.
"Hey!" she called, her voice nearly breaking with emotion as she hustled down the path to the dock. "Heeeey! Ahoy the ship!"
The boat had 'crossed the t' of the dock, which wasn't the most secure way of docking, but had also dropped anchor, which was also a bit odd. At her call, the man on the boat had abandoned his task and turned fully in her direction.
"Hey the ship! Oh thank God!" she called, then cursed as she nearly tripped in her untied boots. "Are you with the University? Do you have my supplies?!"
'Can you fucking take me home?' she definitely did not voice.
"The university?" he called back as she boogied down the dock, with a strange but definitely American accent. Though the Marrow Islands area was dominated by largely English descendants from Australia and New Zealand, French Polynesia was literally next door, and she thought she detected a bit of French in his vowels. He was tall and broad, though not giant, and despite the ocean breeze and sun was only in cargo pants and a white t-shirt. As she got closer, she saw he was clean shaven with short, sandy brown hair, with his eyes hidden by wraparound sunglasses. The sunglass arms were tucked under the band of a red bandanna, and he also seemed to be favoring his left arm, which had a bandage wrapped around his forearm.
"University of Sydney?" she prompted. "Are you not my supply run?" Her heart sank a bit. Asking for transportation might end up being the plan after all.
But she genuinely didn't want to go home in failure. She wanted supplies, and help, and to finish documenting the Stellar Basin kraken, get her PhD, and maybe some awards for a nice documentary.
"No, I'm not with the university, he admitted slowly, then snapped his finger. "Are you the oceanographer? Fiona something-"
"Dwyer, Fiona Dwyer," she prompted, both disappointed but also pleased that he'd heard of her. "I'm researching the Stellar Basin creature for my doctoral thesis."
"Holy shit, you're the dauntless researcher!"
She preened, but also blushed. She'd never had a compliment quite like that before.
Unfortunately, his next words weren't so nice.
"Everyone thinks you're dead."
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Four months ago:
Sam Bogut, skipper of the Dogan's Run, stared down at the smashed but still floating remains of the research pontoon he'd personally towed into place at the beginning of the year.
He'd been concerned when he'd not gotten a reply on the radio.
Fearing the worst, he'd docked on the other side of the island and hiked across to see what was up.
"Told the girl it was suicide," he mumbled to himself. "No good comes from poking a kraken."
And he fucking left.
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"That's it?! That's the story?" she complained loudly. "He comes a month early, because he's worried about me, but he sees a few smashed pontoons and decides I'm definitely dead?"
She began to pace back and forth on the dock, ignoring how the young man, and she could see he was a young man, was eyeing her warily.
"He didn't check the nearby islands, or look inside, or anything?!? How are you just going to write off someone like that and not even look? I could have been inside the hut with a broken leg, or, or," she spluttered. "Or anything! He could at least have looked at the surrounding islands! That's what I expected to happen! It's perfectly logical that if one research base is untenable, you check the next research base! Oh, when I get my hands on those cowardly cunts at the university, I'll show them who's the real fucking man! Since obviously I'm the only one around here with any fucking balls!"
"To be fair," the young man replied slowly, "more than 99% of people have a deep, instinctual fear of supernatural horrors, especially supernatural horrors of the deep. And I mean fear to the point that if they get close to them, or even think about them too much, they will literally have a psychotic break and go bugfuck insane. More than three quarters of the tourists evacuated from the resort have either committed suicide or are in institutions. The fact that that old captain agreed to tow your barge into the actual lagoon in the first place means that he's already at risk of sinking his boat with his giant brass cojones." He hadn't retreated from the railing of his ship, close to the dock, but instead of leaning over it, he'd straightened up.
"He still could have at least looked around a bit!"
"He thought it killed you. And if it was getting aggressive enough to start attacking people in the shallows, which it hadn't been doing, it might be aggressive enough to attack people all the way outside the lagoon in the ocean, which is where it came from in the first place. Besides, you weren't answering radio calls."
She hated that he sounded reasonable. "My radio got a little wet when I was leaving," she admitted. "I didn't have the parts to fix it, so I started a project to use it to drive away the creature. I'm still working on it, but I'm getting close." She just needed some parts from the old base, and hadn't gotten the gumption to go get them yet.
"Really?" he asked incredulously. "That's amazing. You found frequencies or something that it doesn't like?"
"Mm hmm!" she agreed. "I was testing out a number of stimuli to see if it reacted, and there were some it definitely shied away from."
"Did you think that maybe that's why it attacked your research base?"
Fiona paused. "…well I do now," she admitted. "I'd really just assumed it was the constant drone of the generator that did it."
"Also a potential," he agreed, then suddenly cursed. "Shit! Where are my manners. Ryan Moore." He gave her a little salute, since they were too far away to touch.
"Captain Moore?" she asked.
Ryan shrugged. "I guess? I mean, I do other things, but yeah, right now I'm the captain of the Old Man Henderson." He gestured at the sleek looking boat. "Also the Quartermaster, Coxswain, Cabin Boy, and all the other roles."
"You're alone? On a boat that size? Are you mad?" Fiona demanded.
"I have a First mate, of a sort. But you've got no place to throw stones, Miss. We're all mad, or we wouldn't be poking around a kraken. And as a professional eldritch poking trouble shooter, I'd love to hear your story. Would you like to come aboard?" he offered.
"I," she said seriously, "would love to."
She waited while he extended an actual gangplank to the dock, which bridged the three meters of distance or so he'd left between them. And although she did accept his hand making the crossing, and kept her other hand on the chain railing, she noted that the ship wasn't bobbing and rolling the way it probably should have in the light chop.
"Your boat, the 'Old Man Henderson', you say? It seems oddly stable," the doctoral student noted.
He smiled proudly. "Yep! Glad you noticed. It's got an advanced stabilization system, well, two of them actually. And while they're not actually as effective as the really cutting edge stuff being worked on by a few government organizations I know, they're both rugged and the most compact for their effect there is."
Fiona paused once onboard, looking around curiously. She didn't miss the obvious pride in his voice, and came to a conclusion.
"Designed it yourself?" she hazarded.
"I'm one of the designers, yes," he admitted, suddenly bashful, and seeming painfully young.
Fiona was 27, nearly 28, and while she hadn't pinned his age down yet, she was sure he was younger than her. Maybe 22 to 25.
"Care for a nickel tour?" he offered.
"I'm afraid I've left my wallet back at the camp," she noted. "And I didn't exactly bring a pocketful of shrapnel anyway."
"A what?"
She couldn't help herself and snorted laughter. "A shrapnel. Coins, in American terms."
"Shrapnel, huh…" She watched him file the term away in his head. "Yes, well, it'd be my honor to welcome you aboard, anyway."
Fiona had been close in her guess as to the boat's dimensions. The Australian Attack-class coastal patrol boat was about 30 meters, and the Henderson had started out at exactly 30, before a three meter deck extension had been added to the stern. It was a 'test-type' of a new class called the Mandjet, which he was proud to say, already had several countries signing promissory notes to buy once the final configuration sets were available. It used advanced, lightweight materials and, with a 'standard' load of crew and fuel, only massed 89 tons, with up to forty tons of cargo weight available.
He waxed poetic, proud of being the lead designer for the hull geometry and structure, as well as the materials that made them. Although aluminum hulled, it boasted two layers with a thick honeycomb of light but tough plastic between them, which was itself filled with a liquid which, upon a breach, expanded into a sticky, self-healing foam.
"Basically, any hole or gash less than about four inches wide will seal itself," he bragged. "And the stuff is really sticky, so even if it's a bigger hole, if you can get someone on the outside to slap a plastic patch-plate over it, you can seal even bigger ones. Has to be someone hanging over the rail, or diving. Obviously, the outside water pressure trying to get in will keep you from doing it from the inside."
The inner walls were made similarly, but without the foam.
"My family's company has pioneered a new kind of super strong, super lightweight fiber board. Like fiberglass, but better in every way." He paused and, very quietly, admitted, "But price. But we're working on it." He shrugged and continued. "So the actual bulkheads are made like the hull. Standard sealable compartments. Don't want the boat to sink if it does get a leak you can't immediately patch. But the other walls are made of fiber weave. Same two layers with internal honeycomb, but instead of being filled with foam liquid, it's actually got a bit of a vacuum pulled on it. Unless there's a fire, in which case the whole cabin structure is hooked up to tanks of fire suppression foam, which can be triggered to fill up the vacuum, and will spray out of sprinklers and out of any holes in the walls. Super lightweight, and with the advantages of vacuum insulation. Like a dewar. It's great insulation against temperature and sound. You can hear yourself think even at full speed."
"It's actually quiet?"
He winced. "I wouldn't say 'quiet'. More… not loud."
The boat also had an unusual propulsion system.
Water jets.
"Water jets aren't unusual," he protested her categorization. "Lots of boats, even ships have them. The US Navy had a water jet propelled hydrofoil three times the size of the Henderson back in the late 60s. It's just no one has fully switched over. But propellers are kind of unreliable in certain situations. You can scrag them on rocks, get them tangled up in lines and nets, and mangle them in all kinds of ways. Hell, the goddamn Roukin mangled the shit out of the lower unit on a boat I was in on the Mississippi. My grandfather actually had a whole ass outboard engine fall off the back of his boat when he and the family were in it. Fuck props. Jet propulsion is the way to go."
It had three steerable water jets sticking out from the stern, which was what she'd seen breaking the water's surface. It also had reverse and lateral thrusters at several locations around the hull, and they were integrated with the deployable fin 'water wings' that kept the boat stable underway. The way the rear jet units were positioned, coupled with intake placement, meant that, so long as there was enough water to keep the hull afloat, nothing would catch and mangle the prop. It could drive right over nets, catch lines, or seaweed.
Provided they had the stabilizer fins retracted.
"Pretty much every boat with stabilizers has them be retractable," he explained. "They'll snap off in a heartbeat if you get too close to a dock."
"Is that why you dropped anchor instead of tying up?" she asked.
"No, like I said, these are retractable. That's something else. But dock related accidents are why we added a three meter deck extension over the water jets."
Some idiot had literally driven their car off a dock in New York directly onto the stern propulsion units. One had been sheared off entirely; another was just badly damaged.
"The bulkheads worked!" he said cheerfully. "So at least it didn't sink. And the extra deck space is nice. It's enough room for a small float plane or helicopter. In tests we successfully landed a Kiowa on it in calm seas, though everyone agreed that if you want to use it in that role, the chopper needs to land on float pontoons and be lifted onto the deck by the crane. It has exactly eighteen meters of deck space from the base of the crane back, and that's not much room for error with a twelve and a half meter helicopter trying to land on something underway. It's fine for something smaller though, like a Hughes 500."
The boat had three engines, for reliability, but also a mixture of fuel economy and top speed.
"The way it's set up, all the engines power goes through transmissions to the water pumps, for both the lateral thrusters and the main thrusters, but you can split or combine the output. The middle, cruising engine is a lightweight 14 cylinder multifuel. Using just it, at an admittedly fairly slow cruise speed of 11 knots, it's got nearly a 1700 nautical mile range with the standard fuel loadout. Fire up the two big turbines, though, and it cruises at 30 knots with a 900 mile range. Top speed is-" he cut himself off. "Uh. I probably shouldn't tell you." He hesitated. "Fuck it. Who are you gonna tell. I've had it up to 46 in flat seas."
Fiona made sure to make appropriately impressed noises, for all that some of it went over her head. She had no idea what a Kiowa or a Hughes were, other than, apparently, different sizes of helicopters. She was also increasingly certain that the young man's bragging had revealed American military secrets, or at least, family company secrets. If she was in the right place, she might be able to make money through investing in the company, or selling the info to others to exploit.
But he was right. Who was she gonna tell, the fucking kraken?
Fiona was also increasingly certain that she'd accurately pegged the man as young and fairly inexperienced, possibly in a bit over his head, and making up for it with bravado. He also probably had some elements of being socially awkward.
Which was great, because she knew she could be socially awkward as fuck, and having the young captain slowly but steadily embarrass himself into a social morass in an effort to impress her was a nice alternative to her own tendency to natter on about issues only she and her scientific colleagues cared about.
And even they tended to ignore her in favor of their own take on those issues.
Also, was he flirting with her, or just bragging?
Hastening on, he pointed at the articulated crane, which was bent into an angular question mark shape, with a hydraulic claw at the end holding a line running from the crab pot. "Even the crane is advanced. You don't want something top heavy on a boat, what with the capsizing risk, so it's actually made of aluminum and titanium. Even the hydraulic cylinders, which almost no one messes with, despite the big rods accounting for a huge percentage of the overall weight. And two of the sections are extendable. It can reach over the flying bridge and grab stuff off the foredeck, even in front of the bow." He grinned. "My idea. What's the point in having a crane if it can't reach stuff, right?"
She nodded but had gotten side tracked as she really noticed the crab pot.
"Why do you have a single crab pot?" she asked.
"Oh," Ryan paused, his thoughts derailed. "I love crab and lobster. Literally my favorite foods. So wherever I go, I carry a single trap to set out wherever I dock." He picked at the bandage on his left forearm absently. "That's not a problem here, is it?" he asked warily.
"Not a legal problem, no, but I'm sorry to inform you, the funnels in that trap are too small for the adult crabs around here. You'll catch juveniles, but nothing big." She walked over and poked at the wire mesh for emphasis.
Crab pots, or crab traps, are large boxes with sides made out of mesh, either wire or fiber. With bait hanging inside, one or more funnels, leading from the outside in, guide hungry creatures into the cage where they can nibble at the bag of bait. However, when they try to leave, the tapered funnels tend to guide them away from the floating hole, and instead along the side into the corners of the cage, where they remain trapped.
"Miss Dwyer, I bought that pot in Maine, where it's the standard size for lobsters. They can get up to over 20 pounds, and they don't have any trouble getting inside."
"I caught a blue crab last week that was fifty five centimeters across."
His mouth opened, then closed. He eyed the crab trap. The funnel, at most, was about half that.
"That's a big crab," he admitted. "A blue crab? I'm not familiar with an Australian blue crab."
"They're also called swimmer crabs. Blue tinge, kind of flattened, oar like rear legs, good at swimming," Fiona explained.
Ryan frowned. "That sounds like an Atlantic Blue. Callinectes sapidus."
"You know it?" she exclaimed, actually impressed for the first time. "They're an invasive species, but they grow huge here. Brought over in ballast tanks. I've got some traps out of my own, for samples. We can check them tomorrow," she offered.
He brightened. "Sounds great, I'd love to see your work." He looked back at the sadly inadequate trap, then at her.
The researcher shrugged. "It's up to you. There are plenty of juveniles running around."
He sighed, then reached in and removed the bait. "I'll just throw this back in the freezer. Come on, I'll show you the inside, and introduce you to the first mate, Joseph."
The base of the crane was right behind and to the side of the bulkhead door leading inside. The entryway was partially sheltered by the fully inflated zodiac boat tied up at an angle to the side, so it took minimum deck space, but wasn't totally vertical either.
The smell of fruit hit her as soon as the door opened. The walls had mesh sacks, onion sacks, hanging from them, and each sack had a small bunch of some kind of fruit in it.
"Oh my god fruit I haven't had an orange in a year." She caressed the hanging fruit, all but drooling.
Apples. Oranges. Pineapples. Mangos. Lemons. Guava.
"Bananas?" she asked, a little incredulous. "You even have bananas?"
"I like fruit. I like bananas," he defended. "And I don't believe in superstition. I only believe in the supernatural horrors that are provably trying to kill us."
A widely held mariner belief was that it was bad luck to have bananas on board a ship or boat, possibly owing to back when the banana trade from south America got really big, and there were thousands and thousands of ships loaded with bananas sailing all over the place, with a correspondingly higher level of accidents. It was unproven that it was a statistically higher level of accidents, however, but that never stopped sailors.
"Please, have one," he offered.
The lonely researcher wasted no time in opening up a sack with four oranges in it and taking one in each fist. For a moment she just held them to her nose and inhaled, drinking in the orange citrusy scent. How she had missed it.
"Low on supplies, huh?" he asked.
"It's been three months since he was supposed to show up," she agreed. "And I had already lost some stuff when I moved bases."
"What have you been eating?"
Fiona tucked one orange into a lab coat pocket and tore the other in half with her bare fingers. "Fish, mostly," she said, inverting an orange half and biting into the pulpy flesh. After some chewing, she added, "and other sea life. I've still got sampling equipment, so after I record my catch, I eat it. Also, the archaeology camp here had some gardens I took over. Potatoes, peppers, and tomatoes were all that survived without gardeners, but they were doing fine. I'm not starving," she said, a trace defensively.
Although her prideful protest was slightly hurt by the way she tore into the second half of the orange.
A harsh squawk interrupted them.
"What doing? What?! What doing!?" called out the newcomer.
A large, brightly colored parrot hopped over the lip of another bulkhead doorway and strutted into the hall.
"What you doing?" the macaw insisted, turning its head sideways to look at her.
"Miss Fiona Dwyer, I'd like you to meet my first mate and only help on this mission. Joseph, of the coat of many colors." He nodded at the remains of the orange. "Offer him a scrap, he'll like you."
Enchanted with the beautiful bird, she did just that, crouching and offering a bit of an orange segment that had remained stuck to the peel when she was biting.
Joseph took it from her gently, his pupils growing big as he looked at her.
The parrot wasn't of a breed she was familiar with. His feathers were a riot of colors, with the whole rainbow present, though he was slightly dominated by red, at least on his breast. She also eyed his beak warily. It was enormous, even given that the overall size of the bird was impressively large as well. Forget taking a finger, he could probably take a hand.
"Joseph, this is Miss Dwyer. Be nice. She's a friend."
"Nice, rrrrrrrrt! Be nice!" he called, his volume rising.
"Oh, hush you," Ryan replied, moving past her and offering his hand to the bird, which reached up and hooked its beak in his palm without biting down. He lifted the bird into his arms and carried it like a baby as he lead the way further into the boat.
The very next room seemed to take up about half that floor of the cabin, a combination mess and galley, with bench seats that could no doubt be used as additional beds.
"Well, I favor seafood, but I know how things get, so I did bring other stuff. Since you've been without proper supplies, is there something I could cook for you that you've been wanting?" he asked, sitting the large macaw, Joseph, in a hanging perch of wood and rope.
Including the long tail, which was actually a little ragged at the end, the parrot was well over a meter in length.
Fiona looked around, then eyed the young sea captain with eyes filled with a certain mania.
"You're an American, right? Hamburger. I want hamburger."
He chuckled. "With fries? Soup? Salad?"
"You have salad?!"
"Hamburger and salad it is." He paused again. "You uh. Want a milkshake with that? Beer?"
Fiona ended up blushing in embarrassment, having all but moaned at the thought of a milkshake.
"Alright. So, maybe you can tell me about your research into the kraken while I get stuff cooking."
xxxxxxxxx
Actually, he ended up rushing the end of the tour first. And there was a major derail when he showed her the bathroom.
The boat had two heads, one near the bow, which was just a toilet and sink in a tiny closet. But the main head was nearly a proper bathroom, with a shower, soap, shampoo, toothpaste, and a small but reasonable amount of elbow room. There was also a washer and dryer on board.
Having not had a properly hot shower with soap and shampoo in something like six months, she begged his pardon and commandeered the space while making a note to come back with all her clothes and do laundry. Rather than dress in her old nasty stuff, she stuffed it in a bag and rooted through the extra clothes onboard.
He apologized for the oversight of not having women's clothing in stores, but there were plenty of shirts, shorts, pants, and sandals, and honestly she wasn't big enough to require a bra at all times.
Apparently, clothes made decent trade goods in various places, especially the ones with pictures on them.
That was how she ended up wearing a bugs bunny t-shirt and shorts while sitting at a table, talking to him as he grilled hamburger patties.
"Propane grill only, sorry. I could have brought charcoal and wood chips, but I didn't think to. Hope that's okay," he said sheepishly.
Americans take their hamburgers seriously, apparently.
xxxxxxxxx
So, up until approximately three years ago, the Stellar Basin Resort was a fairly popular place for tourists. The fishing in the area was world class, and the atoll ring surrounded an impressively deep hole much larger and deeper than the famous Blue Hole off the coast of Belize, though not as picturesque.
It was generally agreed by geologists and oceanographers alike that the area was a former volcano, and the hole was its caldera, with coral building up an atoll around the rim and becoming proper islands after the land rose a bit. Of particular importance was a large cleft in the caldera ring, which created a deep trench that lead from the abyssal depths around the atoll into the basin itself.
The basin was considered to be about 900 meters deep, which was pretty unusual for a caldera, but it was known that it also had a network of lava tubes at the bottom, so its true depth was unknown.
A tribe of native Polynesians lived in the area, though they had been driven off Destot Island back in the 1800s, and only lived on the atoll. Curiously enough, they hadn't really recolonized Destot after the French had given up and abandoned the fort. They'd cut a deal with the resort investors and were pulling in money hand over fist by catering to the tourists with cultural events and 'authentic, hand carved artifacts'.
And then, one day, with zero apparent warning, a tentacled creature of at least one entire fucking kilometer in length showed up in the trench, smashing every ship or boat it saw, from native outriggers to a two hundred thirty meter yacht, if they were over the deep water, but ignoring everything in the shallows.
It promptly swam into the basin, and apparently moved into a large lava tunnel in the bottom, where it's spent the last three years with most of its body out of sight, but its tentacles extending up from the bottom and floating aimlessly in the water column, occasionally snatching large fish and presumably eating them.
"Cheese?" he asked.
"Pbth-what?" Fiona sputtered, thrown out of her story.
"Cheese? On your hamburger?" Ryan prompted. "I don't like cheese on mine, despite it being 'the thing'. Just raised that way, for some reason. But do you want cheese on yours? I have cheddar, swiss, gouda, and colby-jack."
She hesitated.
"I need to know now if you want it melted on during the grilling process, but you can put it on after I pull off the patties and it'll just get a little melted," he explained.
"Oh. Uh. I'll do it myself?"
"Gotcha. Sorry to interrupt, go on?"
All of the tourists packed onto the remaining boats and fled. Interestingly, so did the natives.
"But fascinatingly, the archaeological evidence and some oral folktales said they used to occasionally mass migrate to this island when 'the great Stargazer' came. So, apparently, either this kraken thing is hundreds of years old, or there's a breeding population of them," she said excitedly, happy to share the information she'd put together, herself, from the archaeologists notes and what literature there was on the tribal practices of the area. She paused and took a big draw on her vanilla milkshake.
"A common problem with weird supernatural sea monsters," he agreed. "The Roukin isn't even a particularly large sea creature, and it lives in the Gulf of Mexico, and brackish water around the edges, hardly some great deep trench, and we're still not sure if it's just the one or if it's like, some transformation really old bull sharks can do. But I digress."
"I want you to tell me more about the Roukin later," she said, pointing at him. "But back to the story." He used the term 'supernatural' a lot, which she had some concerns about, because she didn't like superstition, though she acknowledged that a lot of folk tales and mythology had turned out to have elements of truth.
It was not, in fact, back to the story, because she was soon invited to come over to the galley area and start assembling her cheeseburger and salad. He had more than just iceberg lettuce, too, with various other greens in plastic tubs, including cucumber, radish, and carrots.
It was all great. The only real disappointment was that he didn't have her preferred salad dressing, which was a local Australian thing, and he'd sailed over, Panama to San Diego to Hawaii to Kiribati to Marrow, so he hadn't actually been to Sydney on this trip. He, or more particularly, the organization he worked for, had merely exchanged correspondence.
Full to the point she was a little uncomfortable, she ended up sipping slowly on a mediocre American beer, poured into a glass from an actual keg, instead of bottled, and continuing her tale.
Fiona briefly touched on the problems of being a woman in male dominated academia, but thought she'd found her niche when absolutely none of the professors, or even her fellow doctoral candidates, would entertain the idea of going and studying this titanic sea creature.
She had to stop and wave him off when he wanted to talk about that, promising to come back.
However, while the tenured old cowards wouldn't do it themselves, they did admit that it would be the scientific find of a lifetime to accurately document the first kraken ever caught on film. Certainly enough of a project for a thesis, which she'd been having trouble getting accepted by her official mentor.
A surprisingly decent budget had been prepared, and with all of the local structures abandoned, they had hit upon a towable barge and pontoon docks that could be reused in future expeditions. So it was an investment, really. The tricky part had indeed been finding someone with a boat who could, and would, tow her into the Stellar Basin. Fortunately, she had some momentum behind her at that point, and one was found.
"I was cocky," the researcher admitted. "It had only ever attacked things that were directly over it. The yachts and boats on the way in, in the trench, and a few small unmanned motor dinghies I rigged to drive across the basin. I even had a pretty good map of its reach, and I got some glimpses of its actual body. Then one day about seven months ago…"
"Smash."
She shuddered, feeling a chill despite the entirely comfortable environment in the boat.
However, the dauntless researcher, and didn't that title bring a smile to her, quickly shook it off.
"It stopped flailing after I killed the genny, so I gathered what I could into my boat and headed here, to the old archaeology base." Fiona smiled ruefully. "I'm glad I did, I mean, no one from the archaeology teams mentioned anything about the legends of the Stargazer, even when I tried to interview them."
"Probably didn't want to talk about it. Thalassophobia. I mentioned that most people have a serious, atavistic fear of shit like that. You did pretty damned good, to be honest," Ryan said bluntly. "Most people would probably have jumped in their little boat, opened up the throttle to get away, then ran out of fuel and drifted till they died."
"My launch doesn't have the kind of range to reach Marrow by itself, but I was thinking of rigging up some sails," she admitted. "If I never got supplies, I mean. And… Don't get me wrong, I'm glad you showed up, but honestly, I wish you'd brought the stuff I need to finish my research, rather than food. This is one of the most important events in oceanic history, here! It needs to be documented," she stressed. "Did you know that, since the kraken has arrived, the local sea life has been mutating? Disease runs rampant through many fish species? Even ignoring the incalculable scientific value of the largest sea creature yet discovered, this may well be critically important ecological information. Even if you only care about it from a human perspective, it could be killing off fishery stocks and cause a collapse in the local industries."
Ryan bobbed his head amiably, though he'd had a curious, and concerning, wince when she said 'largest sea creature'. "Well, you might not be as disappointed as you think. Maybe. Or you may hate me for what I'm going to do."
Fiona gave him a gimlet eye.
If he said he was going to evacuate her for her own good, she was going to go down swinging.
Ryan drained his beer, but instead of getting another one, rinsed the glass and filled it up with ice water from one of the refrigerators. He puttered around for a bit, cleaning up some of the stuff from their supper, though mostly just stacking their utensils in the sink for the moment.
After composing himself for a bit, he sat down.
Fiona eyed him warily.
"Remember how I said most people can't handle sea monsters?"
"…Yes?"
"That's a real interesting necklace you've got there," he said neutrally, suddenly derailing the subject. "You've got the star with the flame AND the branch, flanking what looks like… the Seal of Solomon?"
"H-huh?" she replied, not expecting that. Fiona reached up and grabbed her necklace, pulling it away from her chest, where it had rested on top of her shirt. "This? It's an heirloom. I inherited it from my father."
Ryan nodded. "Same here." He pulled a necklace from within his shirt.
Hers had three charms starting from her left: a silver, slightly warped star with a copper flame coming from the middle, another which was what he'd accurately identified as the biblical Seal of Solomon in gold and silver, and another silver piece like a five branched tree limb, all roughly the same size.
His had five charms with the center being the largest, some sort of stylized sun emblem, flanked by the same star-and-flame and five branching limb symbol of equal size to each other, and then two more outside charms that were too small and complicated to really identify.
"Tell me, Miss Dauntless Researcher Fiona Dwyer, what do you know about the nonhuman forces at work in the world?" the man asked.
Now, instead of seeming like a cheerfully awkward, painfully intelligent young man on his first solo mission, who may or may not have been trying to flirt with the first girl he ran into-
He seemed older, or at least more grizzled.
Just a bit haunted.
"Well," she replied, taken aback. "Paranormal research remains a controversial, but not entirely disproven, academic discipline. Various small extrasensory abilities have been documented enough to get labeled as fact, but I don't know how much of that would really be considered nonhuman. Ghosts were widely considered a known fact a hundred years ago, but for some reason the research on them has dried up, so it may have been some… collective academic mania. If they are real, they at least came from humans in the first place, so…"
"I'm pretty sure you've got a bit of Fey blood to you," he stated. "Well, I only say 'Fey' because you've got pretty red hair and features that indicate you probably have some Irish ancestry, and they were most active over there. But it takes some sort of innate magic to actually power things like an elder sign, or other symbols of faith."
He thought her hair was pretty? But wait.
"Fey? You mean like elves and such? I'm pretty sure those were, if anything other than tall tales, just exaggerations based on people with some sort of unusual ability," she protested. Acknowledging there were still many things for science to discover and classify was one thing, but outright saying that he believed in magic was something else.
"The category of beings we label 'Fey' is significantly broader than just 'elves' Miss Dwyer," he said seriously. "But again. I'm sure you have some nonhuman blood, though that's not really that uncommon. But, while the average person may well have a drop or two, you've got some sort of heritage strong enough that you can actually empower the Elder Sign you wear, and resist the call of madness to boot."
"Call of madness?" She hated that she was so thrown off by his statements she was just repeating phrases.
"Only the bravest or most insane people would willingly get near an eldritch monstrosity such as the kraken. Those corrupted fish you found? Almost certainly the result of the miasma, the alien energies such beings radiate. It is a corruption, Miss Dwyer. A taint. A perfectly healthy, sane man would be driven insane by just glimpsing it once. I was not kidding about the casualties suffered by the evacuated population, Miss. Most are dead… or wishing for it."
Fiona stopped herself from shaking her head. On one hand, it all sounded terribly… wooly minded. Myth and superstition.
On the other hand, well.
Her head snapped up and her eyes bore into his. Green met green.
"Who are you?" she demanded.
"Captain Ryan Moore," he said. "One of the heirs to Moore Industries. But also an agent for a multinational organization originally started as a joint program between the United States and the United Kingdom. We're not really secret, but not exactly known because we deal with the things people don't like to acknowledge, or even think about."
"Exactly who is that, then?" she demanded again.
"The BPRD," he answered. "The Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense." He paused, patted his leg, stopped and looked rueful, then added, "I've got a badge in my cabin if you want to see it."
She raised an eyebrow, looking at him with a new light. Fiona thought about what she knew of America, and how they did things, and yeah, a strapping young man, intelligent, brave, with connections to powerful industrial concerns-
That's exactly who she would imagine the US government would send to quietly deal with 'problems'.
"The Professor likes to say, 'When things go bump in the night, we are the ones that bump back.'" He chuckled. "That's a great org motto. But I favor the claim that 'I am a troubleshooter. I shoot trouble.'"
Americans.
At least they made good hamburgers.
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They spent some more time discussing the supernatural and paranatural.
Paranatural, as described by the young captain, generally referred to unusual but ultimately human phenomenon. Wizardry and witchery, typically focused on either natural expressions, like influencing plants and animals, or human specific necromancy. Ghosts, ectoplasm, spiritual mediums and such.
"You act like ghosts are a proven fact," she protested. "I know it was a widespread belief, even among academia, back in the 1700s and early 1800s, modern standards of rigor when performing experiments have failed to provide any sort of conclusive evidence."
"That's was largely because scientists failed to take all the variables into consideration when performing their experiments," he counted easily. "There are worldwide energies that promote, or retard, necromantic events such as ghosts, to the point that consistent results could only be found at certain locales. But the stars move in the heavens, Miss Dwyer. While you've been out of contact, a mass paranormal event happened in New York just last year. Tens of thousands of ghosts, visible to everyone. We're still managing the repercussions, which is why so few agents were sent with me."
He had video.
A lot of video.
"Paradoxically, while the events were highly disruptive to the lives of those who lived in and near New York, it did bring the BPRD's attention to this small team of scientific wunderkinds. It is quite literally not at all false to say that these four heroes may have saved much of western civilization from a terrifyingly dangerous supernatural event."
She had been shown clips from several different videos, ranging from random ghost sightings, to news reports, footage of an enormous marshmallow monster, and the damage aftermath.
"So how does supernatural differ from paranatural?" she asked.
"Supernatural involves nonhuman, unearthly forces, primarily involving energies from the stars and other planets, but also including certain alien things currently present on earth, but whose origins are otherworldly. We also attribute this term to local things, such as giant squids, who have been unduly influenced and tainted by eldritch forces, apparently turning them into giant sea monsters."
He gave her several books he had in the onboard library before she left for the evening, returning to her camp.
She promised to return for breakfast, with her dirty clothes, and so they could go and check her sample traps.
Sleep did not come quickly for her that night.
…
…Because she was reading.
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AN: Been a while since I posted. Things have been rough, I've definitely ended up with some memory issues. Forgot some words, and have trouble concentrating/following thoughtlines. This is something I sent to my patrons last year, but definitely belongs here in the snippets. It's the start of a story I don't know if I'll ever actually continue, since I've got other, more important projects. I did like Dredge, though. The crossovers are Ghostbusters and Hellboy, for sure, with some other similar bits of 'paranatural investigators'. Really, the big thing is, I want to shoot one of those giant rocky hermit crabs with a recoilless. The researcher was kinda cute, too.
Special thanks to those who still support me on patreon. Lets not pretend otherwise, it's basically charity at this point. I am writing, but it's so sloooow. Your day is not my day. I only have a few hours of productivity before I am wiped out, and most of that is spent on daily life or doctor visits or therapy.
I have given up. I am in the process of filing for disability, and the doctors thing I have an excellent chance of getting it. Stroke damage (Oh, and I had a mini stroke last month that fucked me up for a while.) is one of those things they usually do give disability for. Unfortunately, I live in Arkansas, with our lovely Maga governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, one of the worst of the Trump hangers on. They're so afraid someone who doesn't need disability might get some of their hard earned tax dollars that it's basically just a straight denial on every one, and then begrudgingly grant it when the lawyer sues. There's also quite a lot of hoops. But yeah, I'll probably get it. Eventually. Until then, I'm relying on patreon:
Nugar | creating Original Fantasy and/or Scifi, and occasional fan proje | Patreon
Seriously, thanks to my remaining patrons, and everyone who supported me as long as they could.
But, as you might have guessed, I'm in a bind. I'm hurting for money, and got some bills to pay. This e-panhandling embarrasses and shames me, but I gotta do it. If you liked any of this, or just have a few dollars to spare, I would really appreciate it.
For ease of use, and avoiding Patreon's enshittification, Ko-fi is probably the best platform to use.
https://ko-fi.com/nugar
Don't put yourself out on my account, but if you can help me pay a few upcoming bills, I would seriously appreciate it. Medicare doesn't cover everything. Spread it around, tell your friends. I know not everyone is watching this particular thread so I need it out there. I wouldn't ask if I didn't have to.
I've got another story start that would be good in this thread, so I'm going to post it tomorrow as a bump.
Thanks for everything guys.
And, don't worry, I've not stopped working. As the saying was for a few minutes there, let me cook! It's a simmer so low it might as well be 'warm' on an electric hob, but I'm still writing, even if I don't have anything ready for a new patreon post yet. Seriously, I haven't posted to patreon in a while. I'm trying, but it's hard. Things were looking real good for a while, until the ministroke. Kinda a derail.
Edit: Went back and included the masturbation reference that I'd cut out of SB and SV. There's nothing actually happening, this should be fine for SFW, but you know how some forums are.
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Turn Up The Volume, a Full Metal Panic fic
Nugar
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Full Metal Panic, Turn Up the Volume
Epilogue: Mission Creep
Chofu, Tokyo
August 18th, 2024
Sousuke Sagara waved off Lieutenant Mao's offer of a 'tour' of the small apartment they were going to share on their mission in favor of requesting a sitrep. Well, small by American standards, he supposed it was pretty generous by Japanese standards. It was better than most places he'd lived in his life, and about equal to the nicer accommodations Mithril provided. They'd managed to get a three bedroom, one bath family apartment on the second floor of an apartment building that looked across a small courtyard/park at the apartment where their mission target lived.
Sergeant Kurtz Weber and the Lieutenant had shown up and settled in first, due to an administrative issue, and had already been there six days.
"That eager to see the cute girlie, huh," Kurtz, a blond haired man in his early twenties, teased ineffectually as he sat back down in a spinny office chair in front of their computer setup.
Their commander for the mission, and designated 'mom', Lieutenant Melissa Mao, leaned against a counter to one side. She was chinese-american but had been in the military long enough at this point that it basically became her ethnicity. Kurtz could be professional, and kept his sexist comments to a minimum… for a soldier, when he had to. Which means almost puritan when it was just him and an officer, but throw another solider in the mix, especially a younger one who seemed to have no sex drive of his own, and he became largely insufferable as he tried to get a rise out of the emotionally deadened child soldier.
Ah, well. It wasn't like she was above the occasional comment herself. No one stayed in the military unless they were willing to put up with people being shitheads, and be shitheaded right back. Also, something about Sousuke's deadpan attitude made you want to fuck with him.
Typical of the younger man, once Sousuke had thrown his kit into his new room, he wasn't concerned with anything but the mission. "You've had eyes on target now, right?" he asked.
"Hoh, yeah. She goes jogging every morning before she runs to school. On Sunday, she jogged twice, and also went to a fancy gym a few miles from here. The girl stays in shape," Kurtz explained, dropping most of his act.
A monitoring station had been set up in the family room of the apartment. A big corner desk and multiple monitors all linked to a server in the corner. Kurtz obliged his friend and partner and brought up some of the video they'd taken of target 'Angel', who they were there to guard in secret.
Kagome Higurashi, very much not your everyday average high school girl.
The video shifted from several viewpoints, hidden cameras mounted high and low, and also handheld and looking out the apartment window. In the video, a beautiful, athletic teenage girl of seventeen emerged from the building across the courtyard, accompanied by a large german shephard dog on a leash. The girl, or perhaps young woman, had very long hair, down to just below her waist, but the color was a cheery blue, likely a result of either dye or gene editing, which wasn't unique but was highly uncommon. She wore a tight, white crop-top over a sports bra which did its best to minimize movement from her fairly generous breasts, and blue shorts with the English word 'JUICY' written across the butt in orange print. The black and tan GSD was likewise striking. Its fur was clean and richly fluffy, with the black an intense, very dark black, and the brown had an almost golden hint to it, clearly unnatural and also likely the result of gene editing. It wore a bright harness and vest, which looked thick and heavy.
"I'd just like to note that I was absolutely correct," he joked. "She did grow up to be a beauty. Look at how bouncy she is!"
"Agreed. She runs as if she's training more for gymnastics than cross country," Sousuke added, leaning in slightly as he watched her run with professional detachment. "She's training her hamstrings in particular here."
They watched the girl make a couple of loops around the small park, many of her strides having the kind of bounding gait to them as if she was about to suddenly make a long jump, or perhaps leap hurdles. Her sports bra actually kept mammary motion minimal. The dog kept pace beside her, its attention never wavering as it maintained its position, though occasionally it followed commands. She ran the dog through a long series of commands, ranging from the basics of sit, stay, come, and follow, to circling the park in different directions.
"Also, she seems… happy," Sousuke added.
"Yeah, when we first got here, she seemed normal, maybe even kind of down. But starting Monday morning, you'd think she just won liberty, the lottery, and got laid too. Just massively perked up and smiling. I haven't been that happy since… Actually, I don't think I've ever been that happy. Something cheered her up. Something important," Melissa Mao added.
Indeed, the girl had a bright smile on her face. The spring in her step was more than just training, she genuinely seemed delighted to be there on a morning run. Everyone she passed couldn't help but smile back and return cheerful greetings.
"Heh, a pretty young rich girl? Why wouldn't she be happy?" Melissa said, only slightly sourly.
"I see why we've been assigned to guard her. Forget being a whispered. A pretty thing like that? She'd be worth a fortune to the right buyer. I guess that's why she's got a guard dog. Smart."
"She is also armed," Sousuke noted again, his experience letting him pick out details about how she moved and what she carried, where a more casual observer might be more focused on her outfit's lettering.
Juicy. Was it a brand? A statement of allegiance? A declaration? Was there such a thing as a 'juicy' lifestyle, the way Floridians slapped 'Salt Life' stickers on everything? Sousuke did not wonder about any of these things. He was much more intrigued by the way she kept a wary lookout around her.
"Yeah, look," Kurtz said, pausing the video. "She's carrying a large purse, despite being out for exercise. Stun guns and pepper spray are legal, with a permit, and she could probably get one. But notice, she's also carrying an umbrella. The sky was clear, and there was no chance of rain forecast that day. However, there's no clear indication of what the umbrella can do. A sword? A stun gun? We're not sure. Also, check this out."
The blond sergeant zoomed in on the girl's long, muscular legs, then down, adding a rather comically exaggerated leer to his commentary. She wore fairly typical white running shoes and socks, but she had on fluffy, sweat absorbing wrist and ankle bands. Her right ankle band bulged slightly, and the edges of something squarish could be seen.
"Yeah, we're pretty sure she's got a stun gun, as well as potentially pepper spray. Nothing seems to be gun shaped, so no taser, or holdout pistol. Pretty heavily armed for a Japanese schoolgirl, though."
"She did partially grow up in the US," Melissa countered. "Her Daddy is still over there. But no, we're not one hundred percent sure what she's carrying, but she's definitely carrying some personal defense items."
"The umbrella is a gun," Sousuke said confidently.
They both glanced at him, then back at the image on screen.
"See the strap? Going from the handle, but also clipped on the ring at the tip of the umbrella? She's holding it slung over her shoulder the exact same way you would sling a carbine or PDW while on duty. Where you might not get a chance to bring it to your shoulder, so you're going to shoot from the hip. She's prepared for an ambush at any time," he said confidently.
"Huh, well, that's a complication. I don't want to set off little miss paranoid and get a line of holes in me just for trying to guard her," Kurtz said. He squinted at the video. "Are you sure that's a gun…" He trailed off.
Although he couldn't see any evidence of a magazine of ammo, or a trigger, or even a hole in the end of the umbrella tip for bullets to come out of, which had made the two of them think it the umbrella was more likely to be a stun gun or sword or something, he couldn't deny that it was exactly as Sousuke said. She carried it like a PDW.
Ah well. He already knew to be wary of her.
"Also, do not underestimate the dog," he said, changing to a different video. He used the computer to show a good image of the dog grabbing a treat out of the air, which revealed that some of the teeth were metal. "It's clearly trained in police and guard work. When they do bite training, they replace the teeth with titanium implants. That vest also looks bullet resistant, and may hold tools or weapons. In the audio we got, its name is Frau, or Fraulein. It would be a significant deterrent to casual assault, and a major complication to a potential snatch team."
Kurtz gave Sousuke time to process that, then brought up another clip.
"This was from Sunday morning. She had another pet which she took for a walk along with the dog."
The second pet was a large housecat, not abnormally huge, but solid. It had absolutely beautiful fur, like some sort of striped leopard, which was probably gene editing rather than an actual breed, because it's shape was that of a normal cat.
"We don't think it's a guard animal, but cats can be viciously territorial. Its name was Fumoffu."
"Fumoffu?" Sousuke repeated, puzzled. He got shrugs in return.
"Lastly, she has at least one more pet, which she brought out Sunday afternoon, along with the dog, but not the cat. A big parrot."
"That's a lot of pets," Sousuke admitted.
"Yeah, being that paranoid, always on guard? She might be a lonely girl," Melissa replied. "But there's more to be concerned about there. Watch this." Melissa turned to her blond subordinate. "Kurtz? Show him the clip that worries me."
In another video called up, Kagome emerged with the dog, but also with a bright green parrot on her shoulder. It, likewise, wore a little harness, which had tech gadgets strapped to it. It probably had a camera on the front as well. Although it started off with a leash attached, she quickly unclipped it and let it free.
It promptly flew away, up and out of the camera's field of vision… then returned with a gadget, which it delivered to her waiting hands. She did something to the camera, possibly switching out a memory card, then handed it back to the bird, which flew back out of sight with it.
She did that eight times in total.
"Those are cameras," Sousuke noted.
The others agreed.
"Non-broadcasting, stealth cameras," Melissa agreed. "They use local storage, and are shielded, so there's nothing for our bug-detection gear to detect. This place is already covered in cameras, typically Japanese, but they're all either hard wired or broadcast wirelessly. A tech spook from home has suborned most of them, we've done the rest since we've been here."
"The rest of the ones we found were fairly normal, though some of them were definitely privately placed rather than government," Kurtz added. "It wasn't until we saw this video that we knew to even look for these, they're in places that are hard to reach… unless you're a bird. We haven't dared to mess with them yet."
"It might, and I stress might, just be the reasonable precautions of a pretty girl," Melissa began, "but I think she's prepared for a lot more than just a subway groper."
"Well, she's smart, correct?" Sousuke noted, a bit impressed. "She's a Whispered, and doesn't she own a couple of companies? She may have made her gear herself. We might be looking at black technology defense items and surveillance gear, in which case, her umbrella could do anything."
"Yeah, she was actually the first Whispered ever identified, under her original name, Kaname Chidori," Melissa began rehashing their original lecture on the target. "She was one of the subjects of that horrible Saint John's program, and was the one who managed to get word out to her parents about what was really happening there, and got the whole place shut down and people thrown in jail, so it's not like she's not aware of all the dangers for Whispered out there, and even more for her personally.
"Since then she changed her name and was living mostly in seclusion, building several technology companies through intermediaries and shell companies that were a tremendous pain in the ass for our people to sort through. Most Whispered seem to have pretty clear focuses, but she's made strides in both robotics, materials, software, and medicine. But about two years ago, right after the so called Sword Art Online incident started, she went public with her development of the 'safe' neural induction technology, the Elysium Rig, which got her about thirty minutes of fame.
"Since then, instead of living in seclusion and surrounded by all the guards her money can buy, she decided to come out here to go to high school at some random place in Japan. And while she's clearly put a lot of personal effort into security, you'd think she'd put a lot more in by hiring people.
"There's also the fact that she went out of her way to become famous under her new name. It's not likely that many other organizations know that she's really Kaname Chidori, but the way she talked in interviews, it's clear that she's a Whispered. That's why she showed up on our radar. We thought she was just unwisely getting in over her head, until we really looked into her."
"Bait," Kurtz said confidently, scratching his chin. "She's using herself as bait. But for who?"
"I know it's a bit outside your specialization, but you can't just guard her from a distance, Sergeant Sagara," Melissa said, her tone becoming formal. "Our original plan was just to keep an eye on her for a while, but with as many defenses as she has set up, we might accidentally start a conflict we don't want. No, Sergeant, I think we've just fell victim to mission creep. You need to make contact with the target, and, ideally, establish friendly relations."
Sousuke Sagara, teenage veteran of the horrors of war since early childhood, gave her a look of pure terror.
"Yeah, man! I'm so envious! Get to know her, take her out on a few dates, maybe get to second or third base-" Kurtz was cut off by the loud 'BAP' of a magazine hitting him over the top of the head.
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Sousuke's expression was cute! Just too cute! How many times had I seen him with that exact expression?
Of 'Many of a soldier's duties suck, so I won't complain because I am a perfect soldier… but oh noooo'.
Oh my God I'm so glad he's finally here. A fucking entire YEAR late, what the fuck Mithril? But here. He's finally here. My chance to do it all over again. To do it right this time. I'll give you better gear, better training, and better intelligence.
This time, Sousuke, we're gonna kill Leonard's evil ass with a vengeance, and get the ending we should have gotten.
Hah… I want to just go knock on their door and introduce myself again for the first time. Too bad Mithril is as paranoid as I am, and has too many leaks. I need Sousuke, Kurtz, and Melissa to trust me enough to put me directly into contact with Tessa.
I leaned back in the captain's chair of my flagship, the Vingilot, as it hung in space over the dusty, deep red planet of Barsoom. Frau was chasing flying steak-frisbees in another instance, but Fumoffu was asleep on the console, and Daemon, my male eclectus parrot, was on the other side of the 'room' being walked through various training exercises by a bright red female eclectus, the digital avatar of my AI, Eclecta-chan.
Eclecta was my reward, my price sort of, for helping out Kirigaya Kazuto and Yuuki Asuna during the Sword Art Online event. She was a fork-copy of Cardinal, the AI those asshole madmen made as a part of their MMOVRPG. She was wonderfully useful for other things, but was exceptionally good at just managing the virtual environments I spent much of my time in, like right now. Daemon was her pet more than he was mine, set up in his nest box with his own tiny fulldive rig, just like Frau had a larger version.
I confess, there was some truth to the accusation that I'd gotten lonely. Even with all of my real life and virtual friends, it had been a heartbreaking blow to realize last year that Mithril wasn't coming. The depression had been real. This Sousuke might not know me yet, but he'd been my everything once, and I hoped he would be again.
Fucking Leonard. Damn him to Hell, as many times as it takes.
I had to be careful, though. Sousuke's team not showing up when I expected them to is an important reminder that, while I got a good look at the events likely to happen in this timeline, things had changed, and I had changed things. We were much further forward in time than my original life, where I'd been born in 1984. Here, I'd been born in 2007. Computers were a much bigger deal, including black technology offshoots that made fully immersive virtual reality a thing for the consumer level, with all the potential for misuse you'd expect of giving corporations control of your reality.
And with a higher base level of technology, I'd found it easier to delve into black technology I'd never have been able to develop my first time.
Sigh. I'm still not used to being called Kagome, though. Unfortunately, given all the horrors that happened in my past lives shackled to that fucking monster, when I got born here, I had some psychological issues that unfortunately outed me as someone special. There had been trouble, and I know I'm on Amalgam's, and Leonard's, radar early.
But you know what? It's going to be okay.
Sousuke is here. We're gonna get together again, and crush our enemies.
Calling up a window, I sent out a brief text to my closest friends.
He's here!
I can go back to being who I really am. Please call me Kaname Chidori, even in public, from now on. No more hiding.
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A Full Metal Panic Peggy Sue, fairly straightforward in concept but a lot of changes. After the events of the first FMP, Leonard won, and had Kaname as a wife in his ideal of a perfect world with no Whispered tech, though of course he was still in charge, and still fucking stuff up. She defeated him and reset the world yet again and is now dealing with the changes, which include more generally advanced tech, and the Sword Art Online incident, which she narrowly avoided because she took her helmet apart to see how it worked before she logged in. She wasn't a Beta, so she missed the early signs. I would actually like to continue this one, because FMP is a fun setting and I like mechs, but realistically the Dredge fic would be easier, as it's fairly straightforward action and this one has intrigue.
Also:
Thanks for the support I got last night!
Unfortunately, I do have to keep asking. Y'all, it's rough. I got hit with a big nasty, thousand+ dollar bill that medicare denied, to a specialist I have to keep seeing. Yes, I've set up payments and all, but I'm living on (poor) relatives help and what people still give me on Patreon, given my production has dropped to effectively nil, so I'm basically on a fixed income and don't have any wiggle room. If you can help me out, I desperately need it. I've filed for disability, and will probably get it, but it's gonna be a while. See the details at the bottom of the Dredge fic in this thread.
For ease of use, and avoiding Patreon's enshittification, Ko-fi is probably the best platform to use.
https://ko-fi.com/nugar
But my patreon is still up if you want to do smaller amounts over time. Everything helps. I hate begging, but I'm down to begging.
Nugar | creating Original Fantasy and/or Scifi, and occasional fan proje | Patreon
Seriously, thanks to my remaining patrons, and everyone who supported me as long as they could.
Epilogue: Mission Creep
Chofu, Tokyo
August 18th, 2024
Sousuke Sagara waved off Lieutenant Mao's offer of a 'tour' of the small apartment they were going to share on their mission in favor of requesting a sitrep. Well, small by American standards, he supposed it was pretty generous by Japanese standards. It was better than most places he'd lived in his life, and about equal to the nicer accommodations Mithril provided. They'd managed to get a three bedroom, one bath family apartment on the second floor of an apartment building that looked across a small courtyard/park at the apartment where their mission target lived.
Sergeant Kurtz Weber and the Lieutenant had shown up and settled in first, due to an administrative issue, and had already been there six days.
"That eager to see the cute girlie, huh," Kurtz, a blond haired man in his early twenties, teased ineffectually as he sat back down in a spinny office chair in front of their computer setup.
Their commander for the mission, and designated 'mom', Lieutenant Melissa Mao, leaned against a counter to one side. She was chinese-american but had been in the military long enough at this point that it basically became her ethnicity. Kurtz could be professional, and kept his sexist comments to a minimum… for a soldier, when he had to. Which means almost puritan when it was just him and an officer, but throw another solider in the mix, especially a younger one who seemed to have no sex drive of his own, and he became largely insufferable as he tried to get a rise out of the emotionally deadened child soldier.
Ah, well. It wasn't like she was above the occasional comment herself. No one stayed in the military unless they were willing to put up with people being shitheads, and be shitheaded right back. Also, something about Sousuke's deadpan attitude made you want to fuck with him.
Typical of the younger man, once Sousuke had thrown his kit into his new room, he wasn't concerned with anything but the mission. "You've had eyes on target now, right?" he asked.
"Hoh, yeah. She goes jogging every morning before she runs to school. On Sunday, she jogged twice, and also went to a fancy gym a few miles from here. The girl stays in shape," Kurtz explained, dropping most of his act.
A monitoring station had been set up in the family room of the apartment. A big corner desk and multiple monitors all linked to a server in the corner. Kurtz obliged his friend and partner and brought up some of the video they'd taken of target 'Angel', who they were there to guard in secret.
Kagome Higurashi, very much not your everyday average high school girl.
The video shifted from several viewpoints, hidden cameras mounted high and low, and also handheld and looking out the apartment window. In the video, a beautiful, athletic teenage girl of seventeen emerged from the building across the courtyard, accompanied by a large german shephard dog on a leash. The girl, or perhaps young woman, had very long hair, down to just below her waist, but the color was a cheery blue, likely a result of either dye or gene editing, which wasn't unique but was highly uncommon. She wore a tight, white crop-top over a sports bra which did its best to minimize movement from her fairly generous breasts, and blue shorts with the English word 'JUICY' written across the butt in orange print. The black and tan GSD was likewise striking. Its fur was clean and richly fluffy, with the black an intense, very dark black, and the brown had an almost golden hint to it, clearly unnatural and also likely the result of gene editing. It wore a bright harness and vest, which looked thick and heavy.
"I'd just like to note that I was absolutely correct," he joked. "She did grow up to be a beauty. Look at how bouncy she is!"
"Agreed. She runs as if she's training more for gymnastics than cross country," Sousuke added, leaning in slightly as he watched her run with professional detachment. "She's training her hamstrings in particular here."
They watched the girl make a couple of loops around the small park, many of her strides having the kind of bounding gait to them as if she was about to suddenly make a long jump, or perhaps leap hurdles. Her sports bra actually kept mammary motion minimal. The dog kept pace beside her, its attention never wavering as it maintained its position, though occasionally it followed commands. She ran the dog through a long series of commands, ranging from the basics of sit, stay, come, and follow, to circling the park in different directions.
"Also, she seems… happy," Sousuke added.
"Yeah, when we first got here, she seemed normal, maybe even kind of down. But starting Monday morning, you'd think she just won liberty, the lottery, and got laid too. Just massively perked up and smiling. I haven't been that happy since… Actually, I don't think I've ever been that happy. Something cheered her up. Something important," Melissa Mao added.
Indeed, the girl had a bright smile on her face. The spring in her step was more than just training, she genuinely seemed delighted to be there on a morning run. Everyone she passed couldn't help but smile back and return cheerful greetings.
"Heh, a pretty young rich girl? Why wouldn't she be happy?" Melissa said, only slightly sourly.
"I see why we've been assigned to guard her. Forget being a whispered. A pretty thing like that? She'd be worth a fortune to the right buyer. I guess that's why she's got a guard dog. Smart."
"She is also armed," Sousuke noted again, his experience letting him pick out details about how she moved and what she carried, where a more casual observer might be more focused on her outfit's lettering.
Juicy. Was it a brand? A statement of allegiance? A declaration? Was there such a thing as a 'juicy' lifestyle, the way Floridians slapped 'Salt Life' stickers on everything? Sousuke did not wonder about any of these things. He was much more intrigued by the way she kept a wary lookout around her.
"Yeah, look," Kurtz said, pausing the video. "She's carrying a large purse, despite being out for exercise. Stun guns and pepper spray are legal, with a permit, and she could probably get one. But notice, she's also carrying an umbrella. The sky was clear, and there was no chance of rain forecast that day. However, there's no clear indication of what the umbrella can do. A sword? A stun gun? We're not sure. Also, check this out."
The blond sergeant zoomed in on the girl's long, muscular legs, then down, adding a rather comically exaggerated leer to his commentary. She wore fairly typical white running shoes and socks, but she had on fluffy, sweat absorbing wrist and ankle bands. Her right ankle band bulged slightly, and the edges of something squarish could be seen.
"Yeah, we're pretty sure she's got a stun gun, as well as potentially pepper spray. Nothing seems to be gun shaped, so no taser, or holdout pistol. Pretty heavily armed for a Japanese schoolgirl, though."
"She did partially grow up in the US," Melissa countered. "Her Daddy is still over there. But no, we're not one hundred percent sure what she's carrying, but she's definitely carrying some personal defense items."
"The umbrella is a gun," Sousuke said confidently.
They both glanced at him, then back at the image on screen.
"See the strap? Going from the handle, but also clipped on the ring at the tip of the umbrella? She's holding it slung over her shoulder the exact same way you would sling a carbine or PDW while on duty. Where you might not get a chance to bring it to your shoulder, so you're going to shoot from the hip. She's prepared for an ambush at any time," he said confidently.
"Huh, well, that's a complication. I don't want to set off little miss paranoid and get a line of holes in me just for trying to guard her," Kurtz said. He squinted at the video. "Are you sure that's a gun…" He trailed off.
Although he couldn't see any evidence of a magazine of ammo, or a trigger, or even a hole in the end of the umbrella tip for bullets to come out of, which had made the two of them think it the umbrella was more likely to be a stun gun or sword or something, he couldn't deny that it was exactly as Sousuke said. She carried it like a PDW.
Ah well. He already knew to be wary of her.
"Also, do not underestimate the dog," he said, changing to a different video. He used the computer to show a good image of the dog grabbing a treat out of the air, which revealed that some of the teeth were metal. "It's clearly trained in police and guard work. When they do bite training, they replace the teeth with titanium implants. That vest also looks bullet resistant, and may hold tools or weapons. In the audio we got, its name is Frau, or Fraulein. It would be a significant deterrent to casual assault, and a major complication to a potential snatch team."
Kurtz gave Sousuke time to process that, then brought up another clip.
"This was from Sunday morning. She had another pet which she took for a walk along with the dog."
The second pet was a large housecat, not abnormally huge, but solid. It had absolutely beautiful fur, like some sort of striped leopard, which was probably gene editing rather than an actual breed, because it's shape was that of a normal cat.
"We don't think it's a guard animal, but cats can be viciously territorial. Its name was Fumoffu."
"Fumoffu?" Sousuke repeated, puzzled. He got shrugs in return.
"Lastly, she has at least one more pet, which she brought out Sunday afternoon, along with the dog, but not the cat. A big parrot."
"That's a lot of pets," Sousuke admitted.
"Yeah, being that paranoid, always on guard? She might be a lonely girl," Melissa replied. "But there's more to be concerned about there. Watch this." Melissa turned to her blond subordinate. "Kurtz? Show him the clip that worries me."
In another video called up, Kagome emerged with the dog, but also with a bright green parrot on her shoulder. It, likewise, wore a little harness, which had tech gadgets strapped to it. It probably had a camera on the front as well. Although it started off with a leash attached, she quickly unclipped it and let it free.
It promptly flew away, up and out of the camera's field of vision… then returned with a gadget, which it delivered to her waiting hands. She did something to the camera, possibly switching out a memory card, then handed it back to the bird, which flew back out of sight with it.
She did that eight times in total.
"Those are cameras," Sousuke noted.
The others agreed.
"Non-broadcasting, stealth cameras," Melissa agreed. "They use local storage, and are shielded, so there's nothing for our bug-detection gear to detect. This place is already covered in cameras, typically Japanese, but they're all either hard wired or broadcast wirelessly. A tech spook from home has suborned most of them, we've done the rest since we've been here."
"The rest of the ones we found were fairly normal, though some of them were definitely privately placed rather than government," Kurtz added. "It wasn't until we saw this video that we knew to even look for these, they're in places that are hard to reach… unless you're a bird. We haven't dared to mess with them yet."
"It might, and I stress might, just be the reasonable precautions of a pretty girl," Melissa began, "but I think she's prepared for a lot more than just a subway groper."
"Well, she's smart, correct?" Sousuke noted, a bit impressed. "She's a Whispered, and doesn't she own a couple of companies? She may have made her gear herself. We might be looking at black technology defense items and surveillance gear, in which case, her umbrella could do anything."
"Yeah, she was actually the first Whispered ever identified, under her original name, Kaname Chidori," Melissa began rehashing their original lecture on the target. "She was one of the subjects of that horrible Saint John's program, and was the one who managed to get word out to her parents about what was really happening there, and got the whole place shut down and people thrown in jail, so it's not like she's not aware of all the dangers for Whispered out there, and even more for her personally.
"Since then she changed her name and was living mostly in seclusion, building several technology companies through intermediaries and shell companies that were a tremendous pain in the ass for our people to sort through. Most Whispered seem to have pretty clear focuses, but she's made strides in both robotics, materials, software, and medicine. But about two years ago, right after the so called Sword Art Online incident started, she went public with her development of the 'safe' neural induction technology, the Elysium Rig, which got her about thirty minutes of fame.
"Since then, instead of living in seclusion and surrounded by all the guards her money can buy, she decided to come out here to go to high school at some random place in Japan. And while she's clearly put a lot of personal effort into security, you'd think she'd put a lot more in by hiring people.
"There's also the fact that she went out of her way to become famous under her new name. It's not likely that many other organizations know that she's really Kaname Chidori, but the way she talked in interviews, it's clear that she's a Whispered. That's why she showed up on our radar. We thought she was just unwisely getting in over her head, until we really looked into her."
"Bait," Kurtz said confidently, scratching his chin. "She's using herself as bait. But for who?"
"I know it's a bit outside your specialization, but you can't just guard her from a distance, Sergeant Sagara," Melissa said, her tone becoming formal. "Our original plan was just to keep an eye on her for a while, but with as many defenses as she has set up, we might accidentally start a conflict we don't want. No, Sergeant, I think we've just fell victim to mission creep. You need to make contact with the target, and, ideally, establish friendly relations."
Sousuke Sagara, teenage veteran of the horrors of war since early childhood, gave her a look of pure terror.
"Yeah, man! I'm so envious! Get to know her, take her out on a few dates, maybe get to second or third base-" Kurtz was cut off by the loud 'BAP' of a magazine hitting him over the top of the head.
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Sousuke's expression was cute! Just too cute! How many times had I seen him with that exact expression?
Of 'Many of a soldier's duties suck, so I won't complain because I am a perfect soldier… but oh noooo'.
Oh my God I'm so glad he's finally here. A fucking entire YEAR late, what the fuck Mithril? But here. He's finally here. My chance to do it all over again. To do it right this time. I'll give you better gear, better training, and better intelligence.
This time, Sousuke, we're gonna kill Leonard's evil ass with a vengeance, and get the ending we should have gotten.
Hah… I want to just go knock on their door and introduce myself again for the first time. Too bad Mithril is as paranoid as I am, and has too many leaks. I need Sousuke, Kurtz, and Melissa to trust me enough to put me directly into contact with Tessa.
I leaned back in the captain's chair of my flagship, the Vingilot, as it hung in space over the dusty, deep red planet of Barsoom. Frau was chasing flying steak-frisbees in another instance, but Fumoffu was asleep on the console, and Daemon, my male eclectus parrot, was on the other side of the 'room' being walked through various training exercises by a bright red female eclectus, the digital avatar of my AI, Eclecta-chan.
Eclecta was my reward, my price sort of, for helping out Kirigaya Kazuto and Yuuki Asuna during the Sword Art Online event. She was a fork-copy of Cardinal, the AI those asshole madmen made as a part of their MMOVRPG. She was wonderfully useful for other things, but was exceptionally good at just managing the virtual environments I spent much of my time in, like right now. Daemon was her pet more than he was mine, set up in his nest box with his own tiny fulldive rig, just like Frau had a larger version.
I confess, there was some truth to the accusation that I'd gotten lonely. Even with all of my real life and virtual friends, it had been a heartbreaking blow to realize last year that Mithril wasn't coming. The depression had been real. This Sousuke might not know me yet, but he'd been my everything once, and I hoped he would be again.
Fucking Leonard. Damn him to Hell, as many times as it takes.
I had to be careful, though. Sousuke's team not showing up when I expected them to is an important reminder that, while I got a good look at the events likely to happen in this timeline, things had changed, and I had changed things. We were much further forward in time than my original life, where I'd been born in 1984. Here, I'd been born in 2007. Computers were a much bigger deal, including black technology offshoots that made fully immersive virtual reality a thing for the consumer level, with all the potential for misuse you'd expect of giving corporations control of your reality.
And with a higher base level of technology, I'd found it easier to delve into black technology I'd never have been able to develop my first time.
Sigh. I'm still not used to being called Kagome, though. Unfortunately, given all the horrors that happened in my past lives shackled to that fucking monster, when I got born here, I had some psychological issues that unfortunately outed me as someone special. There had been trouble, and I know I'm on Amalgam's, and Leonard's, radar early.
But you know what? It's going to be okay.
Sousuke is here. We're gonna get together again, and crush our enemies.
Calling up a window, I sent out a brief text to my closest friends.
He's here!
I can go back to being who I really am. Please call me Kaname Chidori, even in public, from now on. No more hiding.x
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A Full Metal Panic Peggy Sue, fairly straightforward in concept but a lot of changes. After the events of the first FMP, Leonard won, and had Kaname as a wife in his ideal of a perfect world with no Whispered tech, though of course he was still in charge, and still fucking stuff up. She defeated him and reset the world yet again and is now dealing with the changes, which include more generally advanced tech, and the Sword Art Online incident, which she narrowly avoided because she took her helmet apart to see how it worked before she logged in. She wasn't a Beta, so she missed the early signs. I would actually like to continue this one, because FMP is a fun setting and I like mechs, but realistically the Dredge fic would be easier, as it's fairly straightforward action and this one has intrigue.
Also:
Thanks for the support I got last night!
Unfortunately, I do have to keep asking. Y'all, it's rough. I got hit with a big nasty, thousand+ dollar bill that medicare denied, to a specialist I have to keep seeing. Yes, I've set up payments and all, but I'm living on (poor) relatives help and what people still give me on Patreon, given my production has dropped to effectively nil, so I'm basically on a fixed income and don't have any wiggle room. If you can help me out, I desperately need it. I've filed for disability, and will probably get it, but it's gonna be a while. See the details at the bottom of the Dredge fic in this thread.
For ease of use, and avoiding Patreon's enshittification, Ko-fi is probably the best platform to use.
https://ko-fi.com/nugar
But my patreon is still up if you want to do smaller amounts over time. Everything helps. I hate begging, but I'm down to begging.
Nugar | creating Original Fantasy and/or Scifi, and occasional fan proje | Patreon
Seriously, thanks to my remaining patrons, and everyone who supported me as long as they could.