#Niko Borozov

[veryangryhedgehog]

“The Part Where Shit Hits the Fan,” An Ede Valley story by Hedgehog.

The crowd outside the gates of St. Adelaide’s was enormous. They clamored to get closer, and muttered amongst themselves. The police tried desperately to maintain order, but this crowd consisted of parents forcefully separated from their children. Nothing was going to contain this crowd.

By the time Cindy, Niko, Lila, and Servus had walked up the hill, the crowd was already so big that they couldn’t even see the gate. Marcell and Aurum had stayed behind to monitor them, and Cowell had fucked off to who-knew-where, but Tommy had insisted on coming, even if he wouldn’t be able to get inside. He stood directly behind Cindy and the others, watching for trouble.

“It’s gonna be okay,” he whispered, clutching her shoulder.

“I’m pretty sure that you’re more scared than I am,” she chuckled. “It will be okay. Whatever happens happens.”

He shook his head. “If you had any perspective you would be scared. So I have to be terrified for both of us.”

“I might not be scared, but I am worried about Mike,” she frowned. “I don’t think he’s dead. I’m pretty sure we would both feel it if that was the case, but something is very strange about this whole situation.”

Tommy nodded, once “I agree.”

Just then, there was movement towards the front of the crowd. People were backing up as the gate slowly opened. Cindy strained, but she was too short to see anything.

“Here, get on my shoulders,” Tommy instructed.

“Can you carry me?” Cindy asked, incredulous.

He raised a single eyebrow. “I’ve carried more than you before.”

Cindy wondered just what he meant by that as, with a little strain, he managed to lift her over the crowd, and as soon as she got her bearings, Cindy gasped.

“What’s going on up there?” Niko turned to her.

“It’s…” Cindy almost couldn’t describe it. “There’s… six kids, the one with the crazy-colored hair seems to be the leader, but… one of them has some kind of remote control. There’s… I guess drones. They’ve… they’ve got guns.”

“Where the hell did they get those from?” Lila cursed, gripping her sword tighter.

“They’re pointing them at… oh god, the students are hostages.” Cindy gasped. All of the others, even Servus, stared up at her in rapt attention. “Okay, it looks like they’re keeping their word, the students are stepping forward. No, wait.”

Just then a loud voice rang over the hillside, scratchy from what sounded like a megaphone. “People of Ede Valley,” the voice was young, female. “We of St. Adelaide’s have come to parlay with you.

The volume of the crowd increased by another notch. There was nothing on the news about that.

“Who will speak for you?” The girl with the multi-colored hair asked. That must have been Jilli Nakajima, the one the news maintained was responsible for this whole mess.

There was hesitation for a moment. “What’s happening…” Niko reminded as Cindy had fallen silent.

“Oh, sorry,” she blinked. “Um… the police chief’s stepping forward.”

He was a large man with an even larger mustache. “I will,” he offered gruffly.

“We mean your children, and you, no harm. And we will give them back to you. All we want is to live here in peace. So our demands are as follows: No adults will attempt to enter St. Adelaide’s or contact us in any way, no other action will be taken against us, and a supply of food and other necessities will be provided for us once a week.”

Only silence met her for a moment as the police chief considered. “I’ll make sure it happens. Now give us the students.”

“Half of them will go now,” she said, “and the other half will follow after our first supply.”

The crowd’s voices rose, half in rage and half in relief, as a group of the students stepped through the gates and into their parents’ arms, while the other half were held back, the drones flying in front of the gate, the massive machine guns glittering menacingly.

“What about my daughter?” A woman towards the front asked. “I don’t even see her!” she seemed near panicked.

“If she’s not here,” Jilli replied, “then she has elected to remain at this school and is under our protection.”

The noise from the crowd was deafening. They clamored forward as the gates began to close.

“It’s time,” Niko nodded, cupping a hand around his mouth, the same hand upon which Cindy had drawn a sigil made from honey and lemon seeds. “What about Mike Miller?”

The crowd quieted as his voice boomed over the hill, amplified even more than Jilli’s had been.

Cindy watched Jilli turn in her direction, vague recognition on her face. She knew Mike. She knew something.

“Who are you?” she asked. “Step forward.”

Tommy let Cindy down and the crowd parted to let the five of them through. Now that they were closer, Cindy could see the other kids around Jilli more clearly. There were three boys: the one with the remote control, tall and broad-shouldered but extremely awkward; a goth kid with pale skin and a long coat; and a guy with inexplicably mussed, white hair. Between them were two more girls, a small, dark-haired girl with glasses and a blonde girl with a slightly absent look on her face.

“My name is Cindy Miller, and this is Tommy. Mike is our brother.”

The white-haired boy’s eyes widened. “You’re Mike’s sister?”

“Yes!” she said. “Do you know him?”

The boy opened his mouth, but Jilli shot him a look. “Later, Doug.” He closed it again. The other kids looked around nervously, all except the blonde girl, who seemed to be staring at Niko.

“And who are the others with you?” Jilli asked.

Cindy hesitated for a second. “These are our friends: Servus, Lila, and Niko.”

The blonde girl’s eyes widened. “Niko?” she asked. “Nikolai Borozov?”

He tilted his head in recognition. “Sonia?”

“You know her?” Cindy blinked.

“She’s my cousin.”

“The truth about Mike is—” Jilli hesitated, looking at the crowd behind them. “You’d better come in.”

All five began to step forward, but Jilli held up her hand.

“Wait,” she pointed at Tommy. “Not you.”

“What?” Tommy asked. “Why?” Even though he already knew the answer.

“Because you’re clearly an adult,” Jilli said simply. “If we let one adult in, then we risk destroying the peace we’ve created. The rest of you are under eighteen, right?”

They nodded hastily.

“But he’s my brother!”

“I’ve never heard him mention you,” Jilli shrugged. “Sorry.”

Tommy slumped, but of course she was right. Mike had been not much older than a baby when he’d run away. There was no way he’d remember him other than what Cindy or their mother had mentioned in passing. He stepped back as the others hurried through the gate, which nearly closed on them.

“Cindy!” he called. “Be careful!”

She waved. “I will.”

Beyond the gate, the grounds of St. Adelaide’s were pure white from snow, and the buildings seemed to loom out of the fog like old monuments. Cindy shuddered. An air of gloom and paranoia seemed to hang over this place, like it was holding its breath, just waiting.

Niko talked quietly with Sonia near the back, while Cindy followed the others, Servus trailing behind her. She knew that Aurum was no doubt watching her through him, and that Lucius was right next to her. That made her feel a little better.

She had to admit now that she was walking directly behind Jilli Nakajima, she’d expected her to be taller. Not that she was short by any means, she stood a little taller than Cindy herself, though her hair could have made up for that discrepancy. But she seemed so commanding, so larger than life that it was a little disconcerting to not be looking up at her.

After a minute, they came to a large, looming building with the word “Bloch” on a plaque besides the door, and Jilli and the others entered. Niko glanced over to Cindy. She nodded, and they followed them inside.

“We’ll go to the cafeteria,” Jilli said, looking around nervously.

Cindy wondered what all the secrecy was about.

The other girl that Cindy didn’t know approached Jilli. “You’ve got this pretty much in hand, right?”

Immediately, Cindy developed a bad taste in her mouth. There was something about this girl that made her skin crawl. She seemed a little too happy for this situation.

After Jilli nodded, the girl skulked off in another direction. “I’ll be heading back to the library then. Pleasure to meet you all.”

Cindy and the others continued onto the cafeteria. But Servus stopped walking suddenly. No one seemed to notice.

~~ o ~~

Less than a mile away, Marcell and Aurum sat in the library, the atmosphere tense, quiet. Aurum spoke in a clipped, melodic manner, informing Marcell of everything that was happening. “They’re going to the cafeteria now. Wait, one of them’s splitting off, to go to the library.”

“And Cind—”

“For the fifth time, yes Lucius, Cindy is perfectly fine.” There was another moment of silence. But then Aurum suddenly froze, and straightened. Her hand shot out and gripped Marcell’s arm. “Lucius—” Her voice came out strained.

“Wha—?”

“It’s here,” she said simply.

Marcell leaned forward. “Where? What’s happening?”

“I don’t know,” she shook her head. “But I can feel it. Servus, follow the girl with the glasses.”

“One of the students?” Marcell asked. “How do you know she has anything to do with this?”

“A hunch…”

Her voice echoed, and she was still. The only movement was Marcell’s leg bouncing with impatience. Until Aurum opened her mouth again.

“I don’t think she’s going to the library.”

“Well, where is she going?”

“She’s in an office, turning off the lightswit—oh my. There’s… an elevator, behind the bookcase. It’s down there, wherever she’s going, Lucius, I know it!”

“Follow her!”

“You heard him, Servus. Take the next elevator after her.”

More waiting, more silence. This time a good few minutes passed before Aurum spoke again. “What is this?”

“I won’t know until you tell me,” Marcell was at the edge of his seat.

“It’s… this is… there’s been suffering here.”

“What?”

“Cells. All in a line down here. On both sides of the hallway. Most of them look empty. There’s… blood in some. A lot of blood.”

“Where’s the girl?”

“I don’t know—wait. She just left a cell. I think it’s bigger than the others, at the end of the hallway. She didn’t even bother locking the door. How odd. Servus, have a look ins—no.”

For a minute, all she did was shake her head back and forth.

“Aurum?” Marcell asked finally.

“I’ve found him,” she replied.

“Who?”

“The younger Miller. But he’s… oh no… I—”

“Aurum…”

“He’s… broken. So, so broken, Lucius. And empty. What has she done to this child? He’s… he’s staring at me. Oh god there’s… there’s nothing there I—wait. He’s looking past Servus, over his shoulder…”

She nearly screamed.

“What’s going on?” Marcell stood. “Aurum?”

Aurum fell out of her chair onto the floor, shaking.  

….

“It’s here.”

~~ o ~~

The cafeteria of St. Adelaide’s was rather looming, to say the least. Metal girders stretched above their heads, and all of the many tables seemed angled towards the stage on the far end of the room.

Lila looked twitchy and nervous in such a large space, and Cindy and Niko couldn’t help feeling the same. They’d been led into the belly of the beast now. If things went south, escape would prove difficult, maybe even deadly.

“Alright, we’re here,” Niko began.

“So where’s Mike?” Cindy added.

Jilli and the white-haired boy glanced at each other. “Mike is…”

“Mike is missing,” he finished for her.

“Doug!” she hissed. “You don’t know who could be watching.”

“Well, clearly whoever took him knows he’s missing,” he scoffed, rolling his eyes. “It’s not like it’s a big fucking secret.”

“Yes, but we don’t want her to know we’re…” she leaned in, “worried.”

Niko raised an eyebrow. “Her?” he asked.

All of the students looked uneasy, but Jilli nearly jumped at the word. “The Director,” she whispered. “She used to run the school, before we took it over. That’s when Mike went missing, the night we took back control. She got him, I know it. We never found her, you know. Her office was empty. She’s still around here somewhere, watching us. Anyone could be working for her.”

Cindy, Niko, and Lila glanced at each other. Jilli seemed to be a little…

“Jilli…” Doug frowned, putting a hand on her shoulder.

“She’s the one who took Mike, I’m sure of it. Well, it’s the only thing that makes sense, right? I was talking to Abby about this, and clearly if Mike isn’t with you and he isn’t with us, then he’s probably still somewhere in the school.”

Everyone was looking at her, and leaning away. She didn’t seem to notice.  

Niko turned to Sonia. “Is she… okay?”

“I don’t know,” she shook her head. “Ever since she had a session with the Director, she’s been becoming more, um…”

“Unstable?” came a voice from behind them, which turned out belonged to the tall boy with the strange eyes. “Paranoid?”

“I maybe wouldn’t say that, Gil,” she cringed.

“It is, however, the truth.”

Meanwhile, Cindy was getting antsy. “Alright,” she said to Jilli. “If you think he’s somewhere in the school, then why don’t we all go look for him? A fresh set of eyes might be just what you need—”

“No!” Jilli said, a little too quickly. “That’s not a good idea.”

Doug shook his head. “Why not, Jil? She’s right, you know.”

“Because, Doug, we don’t want anyone else to go missing. Abby said—”

“Oh, you and Abigail!” He threw up his hands. “You should really stop talking to her, you know. I think she’s starting to fuck with your head.”

“You only say that because you don’t like her! You’ve never liked her!”

“And you can’t see why that might be? How she’s manipulating you?”

“How do I know you’re not manipulating me?”

Cindy, Niko, and Lila were beginning to back away. What kind of situation had they gotten themselves into? But just then, behind them, the doors to the cafeteria burst victoriously open, and Abigail rushed through, followed by a group of curious students. Behind her, she drug Servus in by the hair. He almost seemed a little dazed.

Cindy and Niko stared at each other in horror. Why had neither of them watched Servus? How had he even gone off on his own? Aurum?

“Guess what, Jilli?” Abigail grinned broadly. “It looks like your hunch was right. I found this one snooping around the Director’s office.”

“Spies,” Jilli’s face twisted in anger. “You’re here to take out freedom, aren’t you?”

“What?” Niko frowned. “Why the hell would we wanna do that?”

But already a muttering mob of students were beginning to form around them. These were not the scared, cowed students waiting by the gate. There were the ones that stayed.

“Alright everyone!” Jilli called to the crowd. “What do you think we should do with the spies?” The two drones that had been humming quietly in the background buzzed over their heads.

“Wait!” someone said, and a second later Sonia pushed her way through the crowd. “This doesn’t make any sense. Why would Niko, or Cindy, come to hurt their own families?”

“Sonia…” Gil asked quietly. “What are you doing?” But was ignored.

“Well…” Jilli said, grasping for an answer. “Maybe they’re… not actually who they say they are!”

Sonia looked up at her in disbelief. She almost seemed to have some sort of halo around her in that moment, and she paused, as if listening to something. “That is most ridiculous excuse!” she said finally. “I know what my own cousin looks like, and do not tell me you cannot see resemblance between Cindy and Mike. And boy from outside, for that matter.”

“That’s…” Jilli blinked, the other students following suit.

But then Abigail cut in. “How do we know you’re not working with them? You could say whatever you like but you could just be lying.”

“Of course!” Jilli’s eyes widened. “A man on the inside. An agent of the Director disguised as one of us. Watching me, reporting back to Her. It makes perfect sense!”

“What?” Sonia exclaimed in disbelief. “Jilli, you can hear yourself, da?”

“Jilli, what are you doing?” Doug asked. Yet even as he put his hands on her shoulders, forcing her to look at him, they could see that there would be no consoling her. She was now shaking violently, and pulled away from him. “A-anyone could be working for her!”

“Now hold on a second, we’re jumping to an awful lot of conclusions here.” Niko held up his hands. “Why don’t we all just calm down and talk this—”

“Don’t tell me to be calm!” Jilli shrieked. “You’re just trying to confuse me!” She looked around at all of them, trying to find a face she could trust. Finally, her gaze fell on Abigail. “Abby, do something!”

The next few seconds happened so suddenly that there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. Abigail simply snapped her fingers. “Gil,” she commanded, pointing at the group in the middle, and then, when he hesitated: “Remember our deal. Disable him.”

Lila made to step between them, and Sonia cried out: “Gil, wait!” But before anyone could do anything, Gil seemed to flashstep directly in front of Niko, and put his palm directly against his right eye.

Niko screamed.

He doubled over, clutching his eye. They couldn’t stay here. If they did, they were going to be killed. Or worse. Niko might have been able to plan, but Cindy could react.

Taking care to avoid singeing any of the students, she cast a blast of fire into the air. The students scattered at the sight, and one of the drones that had gotten caught in the flame sparked and fell.

“Run!” Cindy yelled.

With a flash, Lila’s katana was out. “Grab Niko,” she told Sonia, “I’ll cover you.”

The girl did what she was told, hoisting one of Niko’s arms over her shoulders.

“Victor!” Abigail shouted, and with a loud click the air suddenly became filled with buzzing machines of all sorts.

Holding her hands out to threaten another blast, Cindy led the five of them out of the cafeteria. Behind them was the vicious scrape of metal on metal as Lila slashed at the various machines intent on killing them.

They hesitated very briefly in the hallway as it split down three paths . Cindy turned to Sonia, still supporting a groaning Niko. “Is there any way out of here that doesn’t involve us scaling an electric fence?”

“Ahhh…”

“Soon, please.”

“Oh! But is very stinky.”

Lila grunted as a saw blade barely missed her shoulder. “We’re not picky.”

“It’s garbage! This way!” She shot down the hall, nearly dragging Niko behind her, who this whole time had been cursing profusely under his breath. Cindy, Servus, and Lila followed behind.

Every few yards Cindy sent another gout of flame behind them, to prevent the machine army from getting too close. But she knew the amulet, even though made of much better material than the last one, wouldn’t last much longer. The stone was growing hot against her collar.

“Nearly there!” Sonia called, only to turn a corner and be cut off by a converted kitchen mixer, several sharp blades spinning where the mixer part should be with a deafening whirr.

Jumping forward, Lila found the place where the blades had been hastily soldered on and sliced. They flew clean off the base, rendering the contraption useless. They pushed past it, and to a large set of metal doors, barred shut by a metal chain.

Cindy stepped forward, placing her hand against the padlock in the center. She focused all the remaining power from the amulet on the metal and a moment later, the heat melted the metal just enough to disengage the lock. Violently, she kicked the chain away and shoved the doors open.

The five stumbled inside, and slammed the doors shut behind them.

“Servus, hold the door,” Cindy commanded, while Sonia and Lila laid Niko out on a metal table. For a minute, Servus did nothing, just stood there and blinked, almost confused. What was wrong with him? “Servus!” she shouted again, and the automaton blinked and seemed to shake himself before running over to the doors and holding them closed.

The room smelled like rotting food, but they couldn’t be picky. “Garbage shute is there,” Sonia pointed to a small hatch in the wall just barely big enough for a person.

But Lila shook her head. “We won’t get very far with Niko like this.”

He had begun writhing now, nearly off the table, clawing desperately at his eye. The pain seemed to be getting worse.

“Niko…” Lila mumbled, brushing his sweaty hair out of his eyes. “Let me see.” He allowed her to move his hand away, and the three girls gasped. His eye itself was pulsing, bulging out of its socket. Blood poured out of the open veins, dying the whole eye bright red.

“That guy’s gotta have magic of some kind.” Cindy shook her head. “This shouldn’t be possible.”

“I don’t understand why Gil would do this, or how.” Sonia grimaced, her own eyes wet with tears. “It makes no sense.”

“You heard the crazy owl-eye bitch,” Cindy replied immediately. “Clearly she’s got something he wants badly enough to do her dirty work.”

The door rattled then, Servus’ mechanical arms straining. Lila took a deep breath and jumped up on the table, holding Niko in place between her legs. “None of that matters. Cindy, is there any likely cure for this?”

“I don’t even know what it is, let alone a cure.”

Nodding grimly, Lila gripped her katana. Niko glanced up at her, and something silent passed between them. “Do it, Lila,” he coughed out. “Do it or leave me.”

“Wait!” Sonia’s eyes widened. “What are you—?”

But she broke off as, without hesitation, Lila raised the katana above Niko’s head and brought it down directly on his eye with a horrifying squelch. He screamed, and the sound itself nearly caused the sword to slip from Lila’s hand. But she steadied herself and pulled it out again, taking what remained of his eye with it.

“Fuck!” Niko shouted. “Fuuuuccckkk!”

Yet after a second he quieted. The pain seemed to have left with the eye. He gasped and lie back again on the table, face soaked with sweat and blood.

There would be no moment of calm, however, for just then, the door burst off its hinges and an army of cold, shining metal descended upon them with a tremendous buzz.

“Down the chute!” Cindy shouted over the cacophony. She and Sonia grabbed Niko, who was still far too shaky to walk on his own.

Sonia disappeared into the darkness, followed by Servus close behind. But before Cindy could shove Niko down after them, the machines were upon them. Swarming, cutting, Cindy couldn’t see what was in front of her face. And with the remaining power of the amulet gone, she was next to useless. They would never get out like this.

Until with a great sweeping motion Lila momentarily cleared a path with her sword towards them. She screamed, destroying machine limbs and carapaces in a hail of sparks. But there were still too many. They could see where they were trying to go and made to block the entrance. But Lila couldn’t see too well, blood from the gash on her forehead began to trickle into her eyes.

And it was with a sinking feeling, as she saw Cindy attempt to swat the machines away, Niko under one arm, that she realized that there was no way all of them were going to make it out alive. At this rate, none of them were. But if she could draw them away rom the chute, if only for just a moment, then, maybe…

Niko cried out as a saw blade cut through the front of his shirt. “No!” Lila screamed, diving forward. Even if they did somehow get past them, the machines would no doubt just follow them down. “Get him out of here!” she shouted to Cindy over the hum of the machines. “I’ll buy you some time.”

“Lila, no!” Niko’s eye widened.

“Please.”

Cindy hesitated, then nodded solemnly.

Lila ran her hand along Niko’s cheek. “Goodbye young mas—no. Goodbye, Niko.”

“Lila! No, don’t go! Please!”

She turned away. If she looked at him a moment longer it would all be over.

“Lila!!!!!!”

Her sword flashed in the rays of the machines’ blinking lights. Without a word, she jumped into the heart of the swarm, slashing and twisting. The world shrunk to just her and her blade. She needed to last as long as she could. For Niko.

She bit her lip as she mistepped and a drill screwed into her arm. Back and forth, keep moving, keep going. But all the while they were hitting back. Face, arms, legs, the ground ran red. She coughed, and her mouth tasted of iron. Just a little longer, almost there.

She screamed into the mass, a violent, last war cry. And then, finally, she let the swarm consume her.

[penciltipworkshop]

Niko Borozov, son of a Russian mobster, and Lila Finn, his katana-wielding bodyguard. 

Characters from Ede Valley: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=pancakes+and+the+art+of+badassery

[veryangryhedgehog]

“Holy Shit the Climax is so Long I had to Split it into Multiple Parts: Part III,” an Ede Valley story by Hedgehog.

Now that Cindy finally got a good look at him, she could see that yes, Nihil was in fact her brother. His hair was longer and darker, his skin paler and cheeks gaunt. But the eyes didn’t lie. The look in them was different, they were harder, unrecognizing. Yet they were still his. What had the Director done to him?

“I don’t think I’d trust him,” Niko warned. “He’s clearly not your brother anymore. He’s probably lying.”

Cindy hesitated, the flames dancing in the doorway between them. Nihil stared back at her, and Cindy was shocked to realize that the gaze was nearly impenetrable. His mind, it was… hardly human anymore.

Still, there was that small thought at the back of her mind. She hoped he was telling the truth. Cindy took a deep breath and let out the flames. Then she stepped past the threshold and into the classroom. “Tommy,” she called back over her shoulder. “Miller family meeting.”

Tommy seemed nearly surprised to be included, but after a second followed after her.

Marcell frowned. “The moment this goes south—”

“You’re gonna tear his throat out, I know,” Cindy nodded, before she and her brothers disappeared into the classroom.

Cindy had imagined this reunion numerous times, but it had never been like this in her head. She sat at a desk, and Tommy followed suit a second later. Nihil hesitated, as if unsure of what to do, before Cindy grabbed his hand to lead him to the desk next to her. He flinched at the touch, and Cindy’s heart nearly broke.

“So you want to know about Mike?” she asked, mostly to Nihil, but also for Tommy’s benefit as well. “Mike was—is,” she corrected, he wasn’t gone yet. “Mike is…”

But she stopped. How could she tell this complete stranger just who her brother was? How could she verbally explain the essence of a whole person, what made him Mike, in a way that this person would understand?

“The… the mail,” she finally stuttered out. “Mike always got the mail. Our mother works so hard for us, and she’s usually so tired when she gets home that she forgets. So Mike always got the mail for her on his way in from soccer.”

Tommy and Nihil stared at her, the former wondering where she could be going with this but the latter looking thoughtful. She took this as a good sign.

“He was always the thoughtful one, in a way I never could be. I’ve always been a little jealous of that, the way he could just care about people. Like he never had to put any effort into it, he never had to think about it, it just happened.

“Not that he couldn’t be a little shit. He was always forgetting his stuff in the weirdest places and begging me to go get them for him. But in the end, I guess that turned out for the best.

“I doubt he knew, of course, but I think somehow he knew that getting that lunchbox would change everything. He’s smart like that. I’ve been trying to pick up the slack since he’s been gone, but I can’t be there for mom like he could.”

“Carol,” Nihil said suddenly, and Cindy and Tommy nearly jumped. “Her name. It’s Carol, isn’t it?”

Blinking, Cindy had to bite her lip to keep from letting out a sob. “Y-yes,” she said.

“And you’re…” he seemed very confused, shaking his head. “You’re Cindy. Why do I know that? I don’t know anything. I’m nothing.”

“Did she tell you that?” Tommy asked.

Nihil was blinking rapidly. “No. It did.”

“It?” Cindy asked, but Nihil refused to say more. “You’re not nothing,” she continued instead, gazing into his eyes. “You’re my brother. You’ve been singlehandedly keeping our house together for years. You are amazing!”

“I… I don’t…” he looked over to Tommy suddenly. “I don’t know you.”

Cindy looked down. “You would have been too young to remember. Mom and I should have talked about it more.”

“I’m Tommy,” he cut in. “I’m your older brother.”

At this, Nihil’s eyes widened. “We didn’t have a father. Growing up we never had a father, I always wondered why. You and mom never said anything about it. I didn’t even know I had had a brother until I dug up an old newspaper clipping in the attic.”

“You… found that?” Cindy asked.

Nihil shrugged. “Neither of you were going to tell me anything about it. I didn’t want to make you sad… that’s… who is this?” he seemed nearly horrified at the words coming out of his mouth.

“That’s Mike,” Cindy smiled. “That’s you. I don’t know what the Director did to you, but nothing will ever change that fact.”

“No, I… I don’t understand,” he clutched at his head. “All these… these things. My head doesn’t make sense, my chest is tight.”

Tommy patted him on the head, and he suddenly looked more his age. Less edges. Mike had no edges at all. “Those are called feelings, my man. They’re kind of a bitch, but we’ve all gotta deal with ‘em one way or another.”

“I remember this. It’s terrible.”

Laughing, Tommy just shook his head. “That it is.”

“I’m so confused,” Nihil rubbed his temple. “Who am I?”

“I don’t know,” Cindy said. “You were Mike, now maybe you’re not.”

“There’s so much I can’t remember. Some of it’s beginning to come back, but… can you help me?” he looked at Cindy, pleading with his eyes, and she couldn’t help seeing her pudgy-faced little brother asking her to play with him. “Can you help me find Mike again?”

“You don’t need to find him, he’s still in there, I know it. But yes,” she grinned, “I’ll help you as much as you need.” She wrapped her arms around him. Tommy hesitated, not sure if he could join in, but Cindy winked and his arms were in turn around her.

They sat there like that for a long time, just listening to each other breathe. Finally, for the first time in thirteen years, they were all together.

“I hate to break up this touching family reunion,” came Niko’s voice from the doorway, “but it looks like we’ve got problems.”

The three of them broke apart, and looked at each other for a moment, before following Niko from the classroom. Out in the hall, Mike looked around at the assembled crowd, all the familiar and unfamiliar faces. It seemed that Muirne and Gil had joined the group while the three had been having their feelings jam.

Mike blinked at the two of them in recognition, but a second later, his eyes drifted over to Marcell. “Wait,” he said, all edges again. “You’re Mik—uh, my old history teacher. What are you doing here?”

Marcell looked over to Cindy helplessly. “It’s a long story,” she said simply.

“One you can tell later,” Niko interrupted. “You’re not gonna murder us, right?” he turned to Mike.

“Only if you try first.”

“Fair enough,” Niko replied, nodding. “These two just got here,” he gestured to Muirne and Gil. “It looks like it’s your lucky day, Marcell. We might get to find your Truth after all.”

Gil took a step forward. “The army of mechanics have been dealt with, and the angels of battle are helping the last of the children to safety. I’m sorry about your eye, by the way,” he added to Niko.

“You’re not forgiven yet, but give me a little while,” Niko gave him.

“That doesn’t matter now,” Muirne interjected. “The Director got away from us in the heat of battle. I believe she’s in league with the Truth. I can feel it. It is here. It will use her, and then it will destroy her. And who knows what will happen then. We can’t let this stand.”

“First and foremost,” Niko regained the floor, “this is a rescue mission. It looks like we were successful in that regard. Cindy, Tommy, Mike—Nihil, whatever the hell, if you guys wanna go back, feel free. You’ve been through a lot.”

The three of them looked at each other. Then Cindy looked over at Marcell. He’d helped her so much with finding Mike. Now it was time to help him with his mission. “I’m staying,” she said, looking specifically at Marcell. “You’re gonna need all the firepower you can get.”

“She’s right,” Mike said. “I… I think I’ve seen it, the thing down there. That Thing should never see the light of day.”

“Well shit,” Tommy blinked. “If you guys are staying, I guess I will too. I uh, don’t suppose we could talk this thing to death, huh?”

“Probably not,” Marcell grimaced.

“In that case, I hope I don’t drag you all down.”

“So we’re decided,” Niko said, and everyone nodded. “Then down into the depths we go.”

“That room that the Director was having… Nihil guard,” Mike seemed to struggle with the name. “That’s the main entrance. If there’s any place it will be, it’s down there.”

“Lead the way,” Niko said, and as a group, they all followed Mike back down the hallway and to the door that Servus had been previously leading them to. Cindy now saw with a pit growing in her stomach that the plaque on the door was engraved with the words “the Director”. Of course it was. At this point, she shouldn’t even have been surprised.

They all hesitated at the door, and Niko rolled his eyes before twisting the handle, muttering something about having to do everything around here. The door opened near silently, and the eight of them stepped inside.

The office was surprisingly barren, as if it was rarely used. In fact, nothing much was in there at all except an empty desk and a few bookshelves towards the back.

Cindy opened her mouth to speak, but was interrupted by a harsh crackle as unseen speakers came to muffled life. “My, there are a lot of you, aren’t there?” asked a voice, which Cindy vaguely recognized.

“Isn’t that—”

“Abigail Hodge is the Director we’ve already established this yes,” Gil sighed. “Far too many times.”

“Hmm, I see you’ve undone my hard work on Paragon Beta. A shame, but not unexpected,” the voice continued. “A necessary sacrifice. He knows the way down. I’ll be waiting.”

With a click the speaker went dead once more. Cindy glanced back and forth between them all. What did they have to work with? A vampire, a Mafioso in training, her gypsy brother, an automaton, a super-powered human experiment, and two ancient heroes. It seemed like a lot, it’s true, but up against an evil so great that its very nature could only be described by the highly undescriptive words “the Truth”? It may have not been enough. There was, however, only one way to find out.

Mike flipped the switch on the wall on and off in quick succession, and without much fanfare the bookshelves on the far end of the room swung open to reveal an elevator behind.

“Of course,” Niko shook his head. “I don’t know what else I expected.”

Inside, the elevator was large, with enough room for all of them, plus some extra space to spare. It slid downwards, as smooth as water, so much so that it hardly felt like they were moving at all. They were all silent, glancing between each other with worried looks. Gil and Muirne locked eyes, while Marcell grabbed Cindy’s hand. Among them, only Mike looked unaffected by the approaching atmosphere. He simply stared straight ahead, waiting.

After what seemed like a long time, the elevator came to a halt, but in the second before it opened, they all froze. For from the other side of the door, something was banging.

Cindy raised a hand, Muirne gripped Brandubh. Everyone held their breath as slowly, the doors slid open.

“Of course,” slurred a voice from the other side. “Of fucking course. Come on, I don’t wanna die down h—”

It seemed to take the kid a second to realize that the door had opened. His white hair bobbed as he swayed on his feet, and his whole body was affected by what appeared to be spasms. He twitched uncontrollably, except for his hands, which endured a constant shaking.

He blinked once or twice, then grinned stupidly as he caught sight of Mike. “Oh hey, Mike. What’cha doin down here with us sinners… wait, Mike?”

Mike concentrated. It seemed to cause his head a great deal of pain. “You’re… my roommate, right? D… Doug?”

“You’re not all angst-angst-murdery anymore? Jesus she really did a number on you too, huh?” Doug spasmed again and half-slid, half-fell against the wall.

“This kid needs to get to a hospital,” Tommy said. “People aren’t suppose to shake like that.”

Niko glanced up at him, unamused. “Thank you, Captain Obvious. Who can we spare?” He glanced around at the assembled group of witches, heroes, and science experiments. “You’re not gonna go for leaving Cindy, are you, Tommy?”

“Not a chance.”

“Welp,” Niko sighed. “I guess that leaves me. Besides, this ‘Truth’ thing is your guys’ schtick. I’ll head back up with this guy, and you all keep going.”

Cindy blinked gratefully. “We’ll do our best.”

The group trouped out of the elevator, and Niko stepped back inside, Doug’s arm braced against his shoulders. “Just don’t do anything stupid,” he said before the elevator doors closed.

They all paused, as if waiting for something. Niko had been the one who made the decisions. But someone was going to have to step forward. Cindy sighed. “Alright everyone,” she said. “Let’s start looking.”

She placed a foot forward, one in front of the other, and slowly, the others began to follow her, down into the abyss.

~~ o ~~

The elevator ascended in silence, Doug shaking and Niko trying to keep the taller man upright. Niko was worried about the others, it was true. Cindy would step forward to lead them, he knew that, but that lingering doubt about what they would face down there below the earth stuck with him.

Either way, it made sense for him to come back up. His planning was done, he couldn’t possibly prepare for a formless horror from the nameless eons of history. He wasn’t particularly powerful, at least compared to the others. What he had was his mouth, and his head. And his head, right now was telling him to get this kid out of Hodge’s kinky torture dungeon.

So lost in thought was he that he didn’t even realize Doug was staring at him, blinking blearily in confusion.

“Do I… know you?” Doug slurred.

Niko paused. “I was one of the people who broke into St. Adelaide’s the first time.”

“No, no, I remember that,” Doug attempted to wave him off, but only managed a rather pathetic shake. “I mean from somewhere else, I’m sure of it…”

“We’ve never met before. Whatever she did to you fucked up your brain.”

“Hm… I was sur—how did you lose your eye?” Doug’s eyes were wide and unfocused as he stared down at the eyepatch.

Caught off guard by the question, Niko stuttered. “I-I…”

“Did you give it for knowledge and hang from the world tree for nine days?”

“…What? Nine—” That’s how many days he’d been in the hospital.

Doug laughed. “I’m just kidding,” he grinned lopsidedly. “Norse myth, Odin lost his right eye… never mind,” he concluded hastily at Niko’s frown. “I remember. Gil’s handiwork, right?”

“You think you’re a pretty funny guy, huh?” Niko asked.

“Me?” Doug shook his head. “I have to be to cover the crippling self-loathing.”

“I can’t tell if this is the drugs or whatever the hell, or if you’re always like this.”

A sudden spasm almost brought Doug to his knees, and Niko too under his weight. “I may never be the same again. I’m insane. Mercury poisoning right to the brain.”

“Is that what she did to you? Jesus Christ. We’ve gotta get you to the hospital, stat.”

“I’m sure the Bifrost can get us there lickety—” Doug began, before passing out, his head falling downwards like a deflated balloon.

Something didn’t sit right with Niko. The elevator opened, but even as he dragged Doug through the doors, Niko couldn’t help feeling that he’d been here before…

~~ o ~~

This corridor was dark, the metal walls a rusted, corroded something, it was hard to tell, and the air tasted of blood and suffering. The only noise was the hard breathing the seven of them made as they slowly moved forward.

Mike froze a few steps in, clutching his temples.

“What’s wrong?” Cindy asked, placing a hand on his shoulder.

He blinked several times. “She… she took me down here, in the dark, so… cold, pain, only It.”

“It?”

“The cold, hard, objective Truth.”

“I can feel it too,” Muirne nodded. “It’s close.”

“So that is what you’re after.” Abigail’s voice crackled suddenly from the walls, everywhere. “You want my little parasite. You can try, you might even think you’ve succeeded, but you’ll never be able to truly get rid of it for me.”

They ignored her, and kept walking forward.

“Oh? Are you still going to try?” she laughed. “Wonderful. I can see you’re all struck with the very same curiosity that I am. Just keep walking straight ahead. Big old doors, you can’t miss ‘em.”

Her voice echoed in the sudden silence. The seven paused for a second, each suddenly uneasy.

“I don’t think we want to go in there,” Mike said. “You haven’t seen it. You should spare your minds, and your sanity.”

“But we’ve come so far,” Marcell interjected. “Do you know how many years I’ve been searching for this?”

“Why would you look for it?”

“Because I need to know, I—”

Cindy put her hand in his. She understood his drive, what he hoped the Truth could give him.

“You won’t be able to see for very long,” Gil stepped forward. “That thing needs to be destroyed once and for all.”

“As long as I can get my answer first.”

“Hey guys, normally I would say ‘let’s go for it,’” Tommy said suddenly. “But uh, Servus is shaking.”

They all looked down at the automaton, only to see that Tommy was right. Servus’ eyes were wide, darting back and forth wildly as his whole body shook. “No…” he mumbled. “Don’t… go back… don’t want to… go back.”

“Don’t want to go back?” Cindy asked. “What does he mean?”

Marcell sighed, and turned to her. “The first time we were here, when Servus wandered off, he did so because Aurum was having him follow Abigail. He tailed her down here and we think he… saw the Truth. But we don’t know because that’s right when we lost connection.”

“And after that is when he started acting strange…” Cindy concluded. “Do you think something… happened to him?”

“Don’t go!” Servus blurted out, very loudly.

Tommy patted him on the head. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We won’t let anything happen to you. But right now we need your help.”

Servus gulped, but his shaking began to subside.

“Then we’re agreed?” Cindy asked. “We go in there, kick Abigail’s ass, and destroy the son of a bitch?”

The group nodded, and started walking again.

A minute later, they reached the door at the end of the hallway, just like Abigail said, and with only a second’s hesitation, Cindy took a deep breath and pushed it open.

The room inside was large, and round. Instruments of science were set willy-nilly around the exterior, but the thing that drew all eyes was the enormous possibly-tank in the center of the room, its sides shuttered with huge slabs of metal. The seven of them filed in silently, each preparing in their own way. Marcell’s eyes widened, Muirne drew her sword. Cindy could see Mike practically jumping out of his skin.

“So here we are, finally,” said an unmistakable voice, and the party glanced up to a balcony behind the tank to see Abigail Hodge grinning down at them, the harsh lights shining off her glasses. “I can’t say that I didn’t plan for this,” she continued. “The minute I saw you outside of the gates I knew you would be the ones. Oh, but where’s the short one with the insufferable smirk?”

“He’s getting your experiment to a hospital,” Cindy glowered upwards.

Abigail blinked. “Doug? He’s still not dead? Of course he’s not. At this point, I’m pretty sure that skinny, sickly-looking fuck is nigh immortal. But we’re not here to talk about Doug. Would you like to see my parasite?”

She grabbed a button on a cord that dangled from the ceiling, but hesitated in pressing it.

“You know, it feels almost… anticlimactic to end it like this. I mean, without this thing I would never have been able to finish my project, and here I am, feeding it to a bunch of cannon fodder. I mean, to be fair it will probably just kill you all and it won’t be a climax at all, but on the off-chance…”

She shrugged. “Ah, well, that won’t happen. I admit I kind of feel bad, killing you all like this,” she continued, sighing. “You all had such potential, such character. It feels like such a waste to end it here. Some of you have hardly had any time to develop properly.”

“What are you even talking about?” Tommy asked, narrowing his eyes in annoyance.

Mike leaned closer to Cindy. “I’m going to go after her. There’s a corridor behind that balcony. As soon as she hits that button, she’s going to dash.”

She nodded as imperceptively as she could manage.

“Enough monologuing,” Marcell interjected.

“You’re right, I have done plenty of that, haven’t I?” Abigail’s grin widened. “Alright, suit yourselves. A pleasure to meet you all. Goodbye.”

She hit the button, and immediately a cloud of fog obscured her balcony, covering her escape, and slowly, the metal shutters began to open…

~~ o ~~

Abigail ran. She wasn’t used to running, it wasn’t really her style. She was more of the ‘sit in a high-backed chair while stroking a white cat’ sort of person. But sometimes to get what you wanted you had to take the more difficult option. Besides, Paragon Beta was inevitably already behind her.

The fog would slow him down. All of the water molecules would confuse him and make her harder to see. A little trick she’d learned from all those years she’d had Paragon Alpha locked up in the basement. And she needed him to be slow, because in her head was screaming.

Betrayer.

Forsaker.

You disregard the Truth.

That’s right, parasite. You’ve outlived your usefulness. These pawns back there will either die or tear you apart, and now all she’ll have to do is find a way to get rid of this little hanger-on in her head.

Beta was getting closer. Abigail could hear his frustrated breath near her ear as he chased her upwards through the darkened tunnel. Now was the moment of truth, the light was up ahead. She’s be more visible to him now, a shadow against the light reflecting off the mist. A second later she felt a hand brush her shoulder. Too close.

“You don’t want me dead, Nihil,” she called back to him.

“Give me one reason why not.” His voice was different now. Monotone, lacking all the boyish nervousness that it had once possessed. She had broken him. God, it made her horny.

She paused. He wouldn’t kill her until he got an answer. But she couldn’t die, not yet. “Because I’m the only one who can fix that scrambled head of yours.”

Don’t call her bluff, don’t call her bluff. If he couldn’t see her face he couldn’t call her bluff.

“I should kill you anyway.”

“But you won’t,” Abigail began moving away. “I’ll see you again, Paragon Beta.”

She took off, dashing towards the mouth of the tunnel, to the loading dock where Victor had already hot-wired the truck that those idiots had conveniently left behind.

Abigail threw herself into the passenger’s seat, leaned over and wrapped her arms around Victor as she felt his tongue enter her mouth. After just a second, however, she pulled away, grinned at him, and simply said: “Drive.”

~~ o ~~

Meaningless.

Everything is meaningless.

You don’t matter.

The Truth was in front of them, glaring at them from the confines of its glass tank. But they didn’t really see it. They were lost, blind, seeing it but not, seeing the endless abyss, the void of eternity.

Tommy saw Remus dying, he saw Kei diving into a rift, all the people over the years he couldn’t save, that after everything he’d done, all the people he’d helped, there was nothing he could do. Helpless, still that eight-year-old kid at the mercy of the man who was in no way his father.

Gilveidan saw his sister, corrupted, dead, not herself. He had to choke her, strangle the life out of her, the one person he held dear. We all die, nothing matters, nothing lasts. We all end, just like that. Eyes blank, skin cold. Dead.

Muirne saw her mother, lost in delirium, not able to bear the death of her son, denial, abomination, the thing that had his skin, his eyes, but not him. Could not ever be him. This is what happens when you defy the Truth, insanity, horror, pain. Endless suffering.

If Servus saw something, no one could guess what it could be. Perhaps just a flash, of sunlight, of breath, of things that some part of him might have known once, such a very, very long time ago. The flesh was not real, fleeting, pointless.

Marcell saw all these things, and more. He’d had enough pain to last many lifetimes. But he took a deep breath, focused as hard as he could, through the images of Aurelia crushed, Julia coughing... Gaius’ lifeless body, his blood in Marcell’s mouth and on his hands, and asked his question.

And there it was, the knowledge he sought, the humanity he craved. And the Truth simply stared at him. And laughed.

It doesn’t exist, the Truth told him, if it did, what would be the point? You aren’t human, you are so far removed from the humanity you emulate that I’m surprised you’ve hid yourself this long. You’re not human, and you can’t ever be. You are a monster, alone denied the one pleasure that humanity receives: you will never die.

He shook. “No,” he said. “No, nonononononono...” over and over. He fell to his knees. He was falling, back to that deep, dark place he’d found himself in so many times over the centuries. When he gave in to the hunger, and the want. Humans were worthless, their lives short and meaningless, just as the Truth said. All they were good for was to sustain him. All these people around him? He should just put them out of their misery now. He’d start with the one he cared for the most.

Marcell grabbed Cindy’s shoulder. He felt the hunger rising, she would taste the best of all. He could tell. That’s why he’d been attracted to her in the first place, he knew that deep down. The greatest meal. What are you waiting for? Isn’t this what you’ve really wanted all along? It would be a mercy to end her life now, release her from the pain of the living.

But then she looked at him, perfectly calm, perfectly fine.

“Why are you listening to it?” she asked simply.

He froze in place, and at that moment the reality of what he’d just been about to do came crashing down upon him. Letting her go abruptly, he fell back down to the ground. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled to the dirt, “I’m so sorry.”

Cindy put a hand on his head, and turned back towards the Truth. Because she’d seen all of it, the helplessness, the ends, the fighting in vain, the loss, the uselessness, all of it. And yes, it was the Truth, entropy, meaninglessness, that was all true. But so what?

She’d known this Truth for years, her rose-tinted glasses had been removed long ago. Looking back on it now, maybe she’d never really had them in the first place, feigning them so long she’d nearly forgotten how to take them off again.

“You’re right,” she said to it. “That is the Truth, it’s all entropy and void and nothing. Sure, everything is pointless. But it’s not about that. Yeah, everything is going to end, but it’s here right now. You’re here right now.”

The others began to look at her, first as if she was insane, and then more seriously as she kept speaking.

“The point isn’t the Truth. Fuck the Truth. The point is what you make with the time you’ve got, and the people you share it with. It’s... it’s taken me a long time to learn that.”

She paused as suddenly, Servus was beside her, slipping his hand into her own. He nodded.

The Truth merely laughed at them, the sound reverberating around the inside of their skulls. Fools, fools. But then Tommy was there behind her, and Gil, and Muirne. And finally, Cindy reached down and grabbed Marcell’s hand.

“You picked me out of the dirt,” she sighed as he resisted. “Brought me out of the lowest of the low. Now let me do the same for you.”

Slowly, he allowed her to help him to his feet. His eyes were still a bright shade of crimson, his features sharp and pointy. But she wasn’t afraid. She wrapped her arms around him as tightly as she could so that nothing else could hurt him, not even himself, and whispered: “I love you.”

She pulled away as she felt a tap on her shoulder. Muirne smiled at her, and placed the sword Brandubh in her hands. “I believe you’ll need this,” she said.

But Cindy shook her head. “Together,” she insisted.

All six of them grabbed onto the hilt of the sword now clutched in Cindy’s hands.

Do you really think this will change anything? The Truth asked.

“Maybe not,” Cindy said. “But like you’ve been saying: ‘Does it really matter’?”

And there, feeling her friends that were there around her, Tommy, Servus, Gil, Muirne, Marcell, and those that weren’t, Niko, Mike, Aurum, Cowell… Lila, Cindy plunged the glowing sword into the heart of the beast. An ear-shattering scream filled her head, and Cindy promptly blacked out.

[veryangryhedgehog]

“Valkyrie,” an Ede Valley story by Hedgehog.

Someone was singing. It was soft, calm, familiar. And a smell. Something was cooking, sizzling near her ears.

Lila opened her eyes, and immediately knew that she was no longer alive. This couldn’t be real. She was laying on the couch in the living room that she hadn’t seen since her mother had died. It had to be, there was the one piece of thread that she always picked at when she was bored, and when she turned her head to look at the TV, she saw a samurai bowing to an emperor in black and white.

This wasn’t happening, and yet it was. She sat up, looking the other way over the back of the couch, over to the kitchen. Her heart nearly stopped in her chest. Her mother was making pancakes, humming quietly to herself. Lila tried to open her mouth to say something, anything, but she found it glued firmly shut.

After a minute, her mother plopped the pancakes onto two plates and turned. She smiled as she saw Lila staring at her. “Oh, when did you wake up, Lili?”

“You’re not my mother, are you?” It was nearly a statement. The imitation was perfect: the long, tangled orange hair, the bags under her tired, worried eyes, even the nickname she used to call her. But there was something undeniably missing.

The woman dropped the smile, the harried, worried look faded. “No,” she said, a Celtic accent slipping through, “I am not.”

“And I’m dead.”

“Ai.”

“So you’re... death, then?”

The woman shrugged. “If you like. I’ve gone by so many names that it hardly matters anymore. Would you like a pancake? I fear they’ll soon be soggy.”

After a singular blink, Lila reached out to take a plate. Death sat down next to her on the couch, the springs creaking lightly. Not taking her eyes off of her, Lila took a bite, the taste of over-sugared Aunt Marma’s syrup tickling the taste buds on her tongue. Just like the ones her mother used to make before she died, before Lila had met the Borozovs and fallen into their world. Before Niko.

“Is Niko alright?” she asked.

“He’ll live,” Death nodded. “Though whether he’ll be ‘alright’ or not is entirely up to him.”

Lila frowned. “What do you mean by that?”

Smiling, Death looked to her kindly. “This realm, my realm, is outside of time. I could show you, if you like.”

Hesitating, Lila thought for a moment. The curiosity bit down on her, hard. But at the same time, did she really want to see what would happen to Niko? That was silly, of course she did. Not knowing and wondering about it was worse than any truth. “Yes.  I would like that.”

Death placed her plate down on the coffee table and smiled, before Lila blinked and she was gone. In fact, the whole room was gone, and Lila found herself out in the pouring rain. She herself, however, remained completely dry. It was as if she was watching a movie, able to see but unable to interact with anything in any meaningful way.

She glanced around, squinting through the wet. It was dark, maybe past midnight, but from what she could see she seemed to be in some sort of graveyard. Stone slabs of various shapes and sizes jutted out of the darkness like ghosts.

Lila tried to take a few steps forward, but found herself unable to move more than a few feet, as if tethered to something. She turned, and directly behind her was a very old, simple grave. Squinting, she tried to make out the name nearly corroded away and after a few moments she sat back. This was her grave, and it looked as if it had been here for a long time.

There was a thump behind her, and she turned, only to see an old man staring through her at the grave. He was short, and battered, but his one remaining golden eye still shone brightly.

“Niko...” the word was barely even a whisper. His face was wrinkled and scarred, his jaw hard and set, with no trace of its former humor. But it was him. She knew it.

She also knew that he could not see her, that he wasn’t even real, just a shadow of a thing that would be, but she reached out to touch his cheek regardless. He stayed perfectly still, just staring down at her grave, though she could have sworn that he leaned into her gesture.

Then, without a word, he pulled out his gun and shot himself in the head.

Lila stood, frozen, as blood splattered her tombstone as his body fell through her towards the ground. A small noise escaped her throat unbidden, the closest to a scream of anguish that she was capable of.

For the longest time, she couldn’t stop staring at the lifeless body of the old man, unable to even think let alone process what she had just seen.

There was a small cough next to her ear. Death leaned on her grave.

“Why would you show me that?” Lila asked, eyes still fixed on the body.

“Because it’s the truth. Nine times out of ten, in most timelines imaginable, this is what will happen.”

Lila shook her head. “What could possibly lead him to do this?”

“Go back further, maybe you’ll see.” And with those words, Death disappeared.

“Go back?” Lila asked the air. “What does that—?”

But she didn’t finish her sentence, because with nary a sound the world began spinning backwards. The sun shot from west to east, then the moon, faster and faster until they became a blur.

And then it stopped. It was nighttime again, though this one was considerably more cold and less rainy. Lila felt a presence, and turned to see that someone was leaning on her grave. She couldn’t see their face, as it was covered by a large fedora pulled low over the eyes. They seemed to be waiting for something.

A minute later, they got it. He didn’t look quite as old this time, his hair still had a few flecks of blond and his wrinkles weren’t quite as deep. He looked angry.

There were no greetings. He simply opened his mouth and began to speak directly. “How dare you,” he croaked, his voice hoarse from too many cigarettes. “You take my son, and then you make me beg for his soul over her grave?”

“A fitting sort of irony, wouldn’t you say?” the man chuckled. “Considering that they both saved your pathetic life.”

Niko drew his gun and cocked it, but the man just kept talking. “Think about it: what has your life really been worth? When was the last time you were truly happy? Before her death, right?”

“You’re a sick bastard, Bailey.”

“Face it, Nikolai Borozov, you son is the only thing of value you’ve left on this earth, and isn’t it just a cruel twist of fate that you’re going to outlive him?”

“That was the last thing you’re ever going to say, cocksucker. Hope you’re pleased with it.”

He drew back his arm to connect with the man’s face, and Lila caught a split second glimpse of white hair under the hat before the world began to spin again.

It didn’t last long this time. Maybe only a day, maybe two. The sun was setting, casting red fingers over the graveyard. This time it was Nikolai in front of the stone, staring down at it, his hand on the top. She felt a warmth on her shoulder, as if that’s where his hand was, and not on the grave at all.

“Alright!” said a voice. “I’m ready to rumble.”

A boy, he couldn’t have been older than eighteen, was approaching Niko with a spring in his step. He was taller and thinner than him, but he had the same, golden eyes.

“What’s the passphrase?” Nikolai asked without looking up.

The kid rolled his eyes. “Aw, come on, dad. Do you really need me to say that crap?”

“I need to know it’s you, and not some daemon.”

“Lila,” he sighed. “There, I said it. Can we get going now?”

“Alright,” Nikolai nodded, beginning to walk away from the grave. “But promise me you’ll be careful out there tonight. I hear Bailey’s back in town. And when he’s involved, there’s always trouble.”

Lila wanted to step forward, to stop them, but she couldn’t move beyond her grave, much less get them to hear her. There was nothing she could do to stop the inevitable from happening.

And then everything was flying away once again. Backwards, backwards, how many days, how many nights?

It was raining again, the sky a muted shade of grey. Somewhere across the graveyard was a funeral, people in black huddled around an open grave, umbrellas. And yet here came Nikolai, middle-aged, his scars and misery fresher. He stood there, once again staring down at her grave.

“Niko…” she muttered, and to her surprise, he pricked up his ears. But then a second later, a young boy, his son again, Lila assumed, approached him.

“Daddy,” he asked, “when is Mommy coming back?”

Nikolai sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. He glanced once more at Lila’s grave. “She’s not, kid. She’s dead. Once you’re dead you don’t get to come back.”

Eyes widening, Lila understood. This was his wife’s funeral. This was his wife’s funeral and here he was at Lila’s grave instead.

Further, go back further. Now it was a cool spring day, the leaves rustling in the trees. And there was Niko, her Niko, maybe only a few years older than how she remembered him, sitting in front of her, staring at the ground as if unable to look at her.

“I got married today,” he said finally, in such a tone that should never fit with those words. “She’s a Mirelli. Who would’a thunk, right? Finally the family feud has come to an end.”

He shook his head and sighed. “I don’t feel anything for her, and I seriously doubt she could say differently.”

After another minute, he looked up at her. “But the whole time, when she was walkin’ down the aisle, when we were sayin’ our vows, I kept… I kept thinking she was you, like she would lift up her veil and it would be you smiling at me instead. Crazy idea, right?” he laughed. “I couldn’t help being a bit disappointed when it wasn’t.”

Even if she could have said something, Lila’s mouth was frozen shut. All she could do was shake her head and try to hold back the tears. She failed.

And so she cried for him. She cried for the boy she knew who the world had beaten down until he was nearly unrecognizable. She cried for all the pain and hurt that he didn’t know he would have to endure. And she cried for her inability to do anything about it.

When she next looked up, she was someplace else entirely. A hospital room, the beep of the heart monitor. Her sword was against the wall. And again, she found herself unable to move away from it.

Niko was standing, trying to get his torn shirt on, though he was still clearly in pain from the slash across her chest.

“I tried,” he was saying to himself. “I tried, and I failed.”

“What did you try?” she asked him, even though she knew he couldn’t hear her.

He seemed to respond anyway. “I thought I could make it on my own, I thought I was clever.”

“You are.”

“I’m not clever. I never was.”

He sighed.

“So what are you going to do now?”

“It’s time to go home.” He shook his head. “I can’t do this on my own.”

And there it was, the decision that would make all of the things she had seen happen. She didn’t know how she knew, she could simply feel the future diverging right at this moment. “No!” she shouted before she could stop herself. “Don’t go, you idiot! There are people who care for you here! People who will help you!”

But without a second glance, he grabbed her katana and was out the door, into the yawning night beyond.

After that, the world faded, and Lila was left in darkness. She sank to her knees. This was all her fault. If she hadn’t died, if she had found a way to get them all out alive, then Niko might have had a chance. A chance at a different future.

“It’s not fair,” she whispered to the darkness. “He doesn’t deserve this.”

“Is that your judgement?” asked a voice. It took her a minute to realize that there was no one else here. The words had come out of her own mouth.

“What—?” she began.

“Is that your judgement?” the voice asked through her again. “You find his life unjust?”

“Yes. Yes I do.”

“Then why not do something about it?”

“What could I possibly do?”

“Try.”

And she found herself in the hospital room again. Again Niko was pulling his shirt on. Again he was talking to himself. “I tried. I tried and I failed.”

“Then all you can do it try again,” said the voice from her mouth. She had to stop him, she had to do something. But what?

“I thought I could make it on my own.”

“You still can.”

Lila approached the mirror above the sink. Desperately, she breathed on it, and much to her surprise, it clouded. She nearly cried out in joy. But what could she write? What would let him know that she was still here, that she was still watching and he couldn’t give up yet? She smiled and began to write.

A minute later, Niko approached the sink and froze as he saw the word written there. He stumbled backwards and sat back down on the hospital bed. Putting his face in his hands, his shoulders shook. Was he crying? No, for a second later he tilted his head back in laughter.

“Well, I guess you want me to stay, huh Lila?” he looked over at her sword. “Well, alright then. If you insist. You always did prefer the hard road, huh?”

Lila smiled, and nodded. She faded away just as the word “Pancakes” on the mirror faded as well.

She found herself again in the darkness, but this time she wasn’t alone. Death smiled at her.

“What is this place?” Lila asked.

“It is uncertainty,” said Death. “There are many possible futures for that boy now.”

“I helped him,” Lila said. “I want to keep helping him. How can I do that?”

“You can remember.”

“Remember what?”

“That voice that you hear? The one using your mouth to speak. It’s your true voice. Welcome back, Valkyrie.”

[veryangryhedgehog]

“Time to Form the Scooby Gang,” an Ede Valley story by Hedgehog.

As soon as Cindy hung up the phone, Tommy started grabbing his stuff. He knew from experience that he wasn’t going to have to seek out Cowell to get out of work, and sure enough, there he was a split second later, sitting calmly at the bar.

“Going to save your brother already?” he asked nonchalantly.

“Going to try. And not going to ask how you know that.”

“Best not,” he made a funny face, then stood. “Well, it looks like we’re closing up shop early today…”

~~ o ~~

Aurum was studying the runes on the hilt of a thousand-year-old sword when Servus scrambled in, pantomiming a telephone next to his ear.

“Lucius?” she asked after picking up the old rotary phone she kept just outside the office. “You’re calling awfully late.”

“Something big’s happening, Aurum. We’re assembling a posse. Can we meet at the East Branch?”

“Of course,” she blinked. “You’re on your way already, I take it?”

“You know me too well. Thanks, Aurum.”

She hung up the line, and put on a pot of coffee. It was going to be a long night.

~~ o ~~

The air was tense as Marcell and Cindy sped through the darkened streets in the Ford Falcon. Marcell kept stealing glances away from the road to look at Cindy. Her face was hard, nearly angry, but her hands shook.

“You’re planning on breaking him out, aren’t you?” he sighed.

“Of course,” she said simply.

He shook his head. “Well, if we’re going to do this, we’ll need all the help we can get. I don’t suppose you know anyone who’d be helpful in a rescue mission?”

Cindy only had to think for a split second. “Well,” she began. “There is someone…”

~~ o ~~

Lila was failing to fall asleep when she got the call.

The old flip phone on the ground next to her head began vibrating violently, and the small screen lit up the room with a harsh, white light. Who the hell would call her this late at night? Figuring it was some robot telemarketer, she hit the button without looking at the name and held the phone to her ear.

“Hello?” she mumbled, blinking.

“Lila?” It was Cindy. Lila couldn’t help hearing the slight hitch of panic in her voice. “You know that favor you and Niko owe me?”

“What do you need me to do?” She threw the blankets aside and stood, already fully dressed. Even after several months of hiding without incident, she still couldn’t get out of the habit.

On the other end, Cindy sighed. “My brother’s in trouble. We’re assembling a party and meeting at the East Branch of the library.”

“The library?” she asked. “Why there?”

“You’ll… see when you get there,” was the only explanation given.

“Alright,” Lila nodded, before realizing that Cindy couldn’t see her. “Count us in.”

“Thank you,” Cindy whispered, before hanging up.

The room went dark again as the screen flicked off, but Lila didn’t hesitate. She grabbed her katana which she had laid against the wall next to her and placed it carefully in its case.

She remembered seeing this sword hanging on display at the dojo back in the city. She remembered watching it all those years she had trained there, needing to get better faster, needing to be stronger, more. So she could protect Niko. So she could be worthy to do so. Amada-Sensei, the master of the dojo, had known that she was going to put the things he taught her to much more practical use than his other students, even though she had never told him so.

“Take the sword,” he commanded, as she left the dojo for the last time. “I’ve seen you watching it.”

She blinked, taken aback. “But why?” she asked. “You said that sword has been in your family for centuries. I couldn’t possibly.”

“I have a feeling you’ll get more use out of it than I am,” he smiled wryly, wrinkles deepening. “And this way, you’ll have all of my ancestors to watch over you.”

Lila crossed the quiet hallway to Niko’s room, and knocked gently. No answer. Niko was a heavy sleeper. She opened the door a crack merely by pushing on it lightly and peered inside. He was hopelessly tanged in the bedsheets on the futon.

He looked young when he was sleeping, even though he would be eighteen in a matter of days. His face was free from creases, and he lacked the hard look that often characterized his golden eyes. When she saw him like this, she couldn’t help seeing the young boy in the alleyway, betrayed and about to be offed by his bodyguard. That is, until she, a street rat with everything to prove, swooped in and pulled him out of there.

But that had been a long time ago, and so many things had changed. And she couldn’t let him sleep forever. “Niko,” she hissed. “Niko!”

He bolted upwards. “Wha…?”

“It’s Cindy,” she said. “She’s calling in her favor.”

“In the middle of the night?”

“It sounded like an emergency,” she explained. “Something about her brother.”

He sat up, rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “Shit. Alright. Gimme a minute.”

After closing the door, Lila flicked on the bathroom light to pull up her hair. She apologized to the poor, strained hair tie that had the job of keeping the tangled mess of carrottop mane out of her eyes. Taking a deep breath, she glanced at her own face in the mirror. For some reason, she was struck at just that moment by how old she looked. Her face was thinner than she remembered, harder. It had been a long time since she’d really looked at herself.

Niko’s door opened again, and through the mirror Lila saw him slipping his guns under his jacket.

“Alright,” he said, “where are we going?”

“The East Branch of the library.”

“Uh… why?”

“That’s all she said. She was a little panicked so I didn’t press. Apparently we’re meeting a group there.”

“Okay then. Let’s ride.”

That authoritative tone was so reminiscent of Mikhail, the senior Borozov, that she nearly stopped in her tracks.

Of all the crazy, dangerous things that had occurred throughout her life, the one she was sure she would never forget was the day that she was called into the office of Mikhail Borozov, the day she became Niko’s bodyguard.

He had stared at her over the stately desk, his large office chair and the man himself dwarfing her in comparison. But she would not shrink back, regardless of how much she wanted to. To gain his respect she must meet his eye.

“So, you intend to guard the life of my son?” He had a heavy accent, yet his grammar was perfect.

She simply nodded.

“And you understand that you hold the future of the Borozov line, my legacy, in your hands?”

“With all due respect sir,” she closed her heart, made her eyes cold as ice. He could smell fear, she was sure of it. “With all due respect,” she repeated. “I don’t care about preserving your legacy. Sir.”

Mikhail froze. People didn’t talk to him like that, and if they did, they were likely to end up dead in an alleyway in a matter of hours. “What did you say?” He was giving her a chance to redeem herself, to take it back.

But he hadn’t heard everything yet. “But to protect your son, I would lay down my life in an instant.”

He paused, considering this.

“I just thought you should know where my priorities lie.”

For a moment, there was silence. Lila held her breath. And then he started laughing. “I see, little firecracker. Thank you for enlightening me. I believe Nikolai will be safe in your hands.”

She was a lot of him in Niko sometimes, every once in a while when he wasn’t consciously obscuring it behind a layer of bravado. It was this look in his eyes, that hard one that demanded respect.

Williams street was quiet at night. Too quiet. Lila didn’t like it. You couldn’t blend into an empty street. But they persevered, and a half-an-hour later they were staring up at the East Branch, the large, domed building looming over them.

It felt strange to be here, at a library of all places. Most operation meetings Lila had attended had been in smoky back offices, or in a few last minute cases, alleyways. But she knew for a fact that nothing Cindy was involved in was ever normal. So they pushed open the large doors and hurried inside.

The East Branch was more like a collection than a public library, she noticed, as she peaked through the doors. A glass case contained an old, tattered tome while a lot of other books were simply inaccessible due to the height they were placed at on the rounded shelves. It was also rather dark. She assumed that during the day the skylight above would flood the room with natural light, but now there were only a few lamps struggling to hold back the gloom of midnight.

Across the room, huddled around a cluttered desk was Cindy, and three people that Lila didn’t recognize. She hadn’t been sure what state she would find Cindy in, but apart from her wildly tangled hair she looked surprisingly composed.

Niko coughed, and the four looked up. The pale man with his arm around Cindy’s shoulder tensed, but she put her hand on his before running over to them. She wrapped her arms around Lila’s middle and squeezed. Lila looked over at Niko, who shrugged. How did one ‘hug’ again? It took her a moment to remember how to position her arms, but then she hugged back.

“Thank you so much for coming,” Cindy whispered.

Niko smirked, attempting to get a smile out of her. “Hey, I’m a man of my word,” he cut in. “I said I owe you one, so here we are, even if it is the middle of the night.”

“I’m sorry I had to disturb your beauty rest,” the corners of her mouth twitched upwards. She led them over to the rest of the group. “This is Lucius,” she gestured to the thin, pale man. Ah, so this was the Marcell Lila had heard so much about. He was good-looking, she’d give him that, in a tired sort of way, but much too tall for her taste. She nodded at him, attempting to convey that for now he had her approval, but she would not hesitate to hurt him very badly if anything happened to Cindy.

“And this is Aurum,” the middle-aged woman with shockingly sharp fingernails, “And Servus,” the kid with the eccentric fashion sense. “She’s actually a dragon who runs the library, and he’s her automaton assistant.”

“And that was a sentence I never thought I’d hear,” Niko blinked rapidly.

“That’s a sentence I never thought I’d say,” Cindy replied. “And this is Niko Borozov and Lila Finn.”

“Borozov?” Aurum’s eyes somehow managed to grow even wider. “Of the Borozovs?”

Niko sighed. “Yes. Those Borozovs.”

“More than that,” said a new voice from the door behind them. “He’s the heir of the whole operation.”

They turned, only to see Cowell slink through the door, followed sheepishly by Tommy. “What are you doing here?” Cindy asked, pointing at the grinning daemon.

“Sorry, Cindy.” Tommy ducked his head. “He insisted on coming.”

Cindy just shook her head. “Tommy, you useless bisexual.”

But before Tommy could defend himself, Cowell stepped properly into the room. “Aurum!” his grin widened until it was rather Cheshire-like. “It’s been a long time, my dear. How is that knowledge treating you?”

The librarian bristled. “Not so well, considering I can’t really use it. You don’t make fair deals.”

“My deals are perfectly reasonable,” he said. “It’s not my fault that no one asks the right questions.”

“Oh please,” Marcell took a step forward. “’Perspective’ and ‘Permanence’ are bullshit words and you know it.”

Lila knew about Cindy’s deal, of course, but the mention of ‘permanence’ was new to her. It seemed as if Cindy wasn’t the only one here who had dealt with Cowell.

“Irrelevant,” Cowell chuckled. “But I haven’t come here to fight with you all. I simply want to help/”

“How could you help?” Cindy spoke up.

He approached the desk cautiously, and the rest grudgingly let him. “Information,” he grinned. “I know that you lot are going to spend the new few hours planning for every possibility come the morning. What if young Mike comes out of that school? What if he doesn’t? What if those precocious young revolutionaries are hostile, etc, etc. Except that I know exactly what’s going to happen there in front of that school, and since it would be so dreadfully boring to listen to you all squabble back and forth for hours on end I might as well just tell you.”

There was silence for a second.

“But I’ve been rude, haven’t I? Most of you don’t even know what’s happening yet and here I am blabbing off about having all the spoilers. I leave the floor to you, miss.” He bowed to Cindy, and all eyes turned to her.

She took a deep breath, and told them about Mike, and about St. Adelaide’s.

“And you haven’t heard from him in two weeks?” Lila asked. Though she didn’t say, she looked to Niko and could tell that he was thinking the same thing: that kid might be beyond saving.

Cindy just shook her head.

“Don’t worry,” Tommy said, ruffling her hair. “We’re gonna get him back.”

“Alright, Cowell,” Cindy nearly growled at him. “What do you know?”

“And it had better be good,” Marcell added, before Cindy put a hand on his shoulder.

“Now,” Cowell clapped his hands together. “My precognizance is somewhat limited. I can’t give you a plan, nor can I tell you what will happen once you’re inside. That is all up to you, I’m afraid.”

“Whoa whoa,” Marcell interrupted him. “Who said anything about going inside?”

Cowell shook his head, clicking his tongue condescendingly. “Did you really expect any less? That would certainly make for a disappointing climax. So before I continue, does anyone else have any questions, comments? Snide remarks?” He paused, but was met with only silence. “Alright then. In the morning, all the rich parents and press will be gathered outside the gates of the school. Said gates will open, the children will come out, but young Mike, of course, will not be among them.”

‘Do you know why?” Cindy asked, almost afraid of the answer.

“Not a solitary clue.” For the life of her, Lila couldn’t tell if he was lying or not. “All I know is you’ll have to barter your way in.”

“Barter?” Tommy scoffed. “We can’t force our way in? They’re just kids, right?”

Aurum shook her head. “The most brilliant, insane bunch of children in the world.”

“I wouldn’t underestimate them if I were you,” Cowell corroborated. “Unfortunately, they won’t let any adults inside.”

Both Tommy and Marcell bristled at this. “They’re not gonna let me in to see my own brother?”

“It appears that in their eyes, adults are the ones who have caused all their problems.”

“So which of us are still underage?” Aurum glanced back and forth rapidly between them.

“Niko and Lila are both seventeen,” Cindy supplied, “and I could easily pass for that as well.”

“I’m coming too,” Tommy pointed to himself, but Cowell shook his head.

“They’ll never let you in. You look far too old.”

Marcell grimaced. “But there’s no way we can let the three of them go alone without some way of communicating with them…”

Slowly, the group’s eyes all turned to Servus the automaton, who hadn’t said a word this whole time. Lila and Niko turned to each other, confused.

“They’ll never let him take the digital camera in,” Aurum began.

“Sorry,” Niko interrupted. “But I’m sorta lost. How could a camera help? I don’t see any livestreaming equipment around here.”

“I can see through the camera!” Aurum beamed.

“What?” Lila asked, blinking.

Cindy shook her head. “Don’t ask. Even she doesn’t know.”

“Now like a said, a camera won’t work this time around, but he’s a machine as well. It’ll be taxing, but I believe that if I focus hard enough, I should be able to see through him directly.”

“Alright then, so what happens once they get inside?” Tommy leaned down over the desk.

“Well, that depends,” Aurum shrugged. “We have no idea if they’re keeping Michael against his will, or if he has chosen to stay of his own accord, or any other possible scenario.”

Even before he stepped forward, Lila knew he was going to put his hat in the ring. This was Niko’s time to shine. “You leave that to me and Lila,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of experience with uh… variable situations.”

Marcell and Aurum examined the two for a moment, sizing them up. It was Marcell who nodded first.

“Alright,” he said. “We’re putting Cindy and Mike’s lives into your hands.”

“I can take care of myself, you know,” Cindy grumbled.

Marcell grabbed her shoulder and pulled her in for a hug. “I know,” he muttered into her hair, “But I will always worry regardless.”

“Well,” she pulled away after a moment. “The best thing to do is prepare. There’s a couple of charms I can cast in the next few hours.”

“Use the back room,” Aurum instructed. “Servus will help you. He knows where everything is. Servus!” she said, and the automaton immediately faced her with attention. “Follow Cindy, do what she says.”

He nodded once, and the two wandered off to wherever “the back room” was.

The others broke off slowly, to prepare in their own way or sleep for a few hours. Niko and Lila slunk into a corner of the room.

“I think there’s something they’re not telling us,” Lila confessed, after glancing around to see that no one else was watching.

“You think?” Niko’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “There’s definitely something else at play here. Why would they want to keep such a close eye on us just to grab Cindy’s brother?”

Lila took a deep breath, considering. “So, what do we do?” she asked finally.

“For now, we play along. I dunno about Cindy’s boytoy or the dragon lady, but at the very least I trust Cindy. I don’t think they mean us harm.”

Deep down, Lila couldn’t help feeling a twinge of excitement. It had been dull being cooped up in the abandoned house, now maybe Lila could stretch her muscles a little. She could tell that Niko felt the same.

“Are you ready?”

He scoffed. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

[veryangryhedgehog]

“The Priestess, the Emperor, the Empress,” an Ede Valley story by Hedgehog.

“You want me to do what?” Cindy blinked at Niko from across the dining room table. It was December, and finally the first real snow of the year was falling outside the frosted windows.

“Just... you know, back me up,” Niko shrugged. “I’m gonna be goin’ into some pretty dangerous turf, and I need all the firepower I can get.”

Cindy frowned. “Well... what about Lila? She can take down pretty much anything, right? Besides, I got shit of my own to deal with.” Like an ever enigmatic quest for “the Truth”, whatever that meant, and a long-lost brother who hadn’t called her in the last forty-eight hours, she added to herself.

“I’m not worried about getting jumped,” Niko explained. “I’m more concerned about being intimidating. This guy’s not violent, as far as I know, but a hard customer to crack. I just need him to know we mean serious business.”

“You’re the spectacle, and I’m the steel,” Lila added from between them as she took a bite out of an especially crunchy bagel, which sort of temporarily cancelled out her badass persona.

Shaking her head, Cindy folded her arms. “Witchcraft isn’t even remotely ‘spectacular.’ I don’t know what you expect me to do.”

“Not spectacular?” Niko scoffed. “What do you call the fire that comes out of your friggin’ hands then?” He wiggled his fingers dramatically. “5 out of 10? Lacked a certain pizazz?”

“Oh, that? It’s not as great as you think it is,” Cindy shuffled in her chair. “I mean it’s fire, but... look.” She reached for the chain she kept around her neck and showed them the yellow-orange amulet that dangled from it. “It works through one of these, but they don’t have much power. I only had a little to work with, after all. Anything big will expend most of its juice. I mostly keep it for emergencies.”

“Perfect, wonderful. Listen: I don’t care if it only burns at room temperature,” Niko leaned towards her, grinning. “I just need it to look like it’s something.”

“I dunno...”

“Okay how about this: if you use it all up, I’ll get you the shit to make a new one free of charge. Better yet, a better one.”

Frowning, Cindy thought for a moment. She had a bad feeling about this. But at the same time, Niko and Lila had become her friends, and if they needed her help...

“Alright,” she said finally, sighing as she leaned forward on the table. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”

“Yes!” Niko stood, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. “This is the big one, ladies and, uh, ladies. I think some celebration is in order. I’ll go make some pancakes.”

Cindy raised an eyebrow. “Pancakes? Why that of all things?”

“It’s the only thing he knows how to make,” Lila supplied.

“Hey! That’s not true,” Niko pouted. “I’ve learned how to make a lot of stuff in the last couple months.”

“My apologies, young master,” she bowed as much as she could while sitting. “It’s the only thing he knows how to make well.”

Nodding, Niko seemed satisfied. “Much better,” he replied, before disappearing into the kitchen.

Once he was gone, Cindy turned to Lila. “Are you sure you’re okay with this?” she asked. “I feel like I’m kind of taking your job.”

“Oh, no,” Lila smiled, “it was my idea, actually. I’m...” she paused, looking back into the kitchen. “I’m afraid Niko’s getting a little in over his head with this one. People with guns I can, and have, dealt with, but this is... something more along the lines of your expertise. I’d feel much more confident if you were there, for your knowledge if nothing else.”

“And are either of you actually going to tell me what it is we’re walking into?” Cindy asked.

Lila sighed, as if she didn’t quite believe what she was about to say. “We’re going to conduct business. With a daemon.”

Cindy blinked. “Oh shit.”

So it was with great reluctance the following afternoon after school that she met Niko and Lila at the house and together they walked down to the old part of town. Lila had her katana strapped to her shoulder like a backpack, and certainly had several weapons besides on her. Though Niko seemed less armed, there were several suspicious lumps under his trench coat that Cindy suspected were guns. Cindy felt positively naked with only the fire amulet and the hasty protection charm she’d whipped up for the three of them last night.

Meanwhile, Lila was feeling just as nervous, if not more so. She wasn’t used to not being the toughest person in the room, and her every instinct was screaming to bodily grab Niko and run. But she didn’t.

Niko had found himself a real niche here, in this small, unimportant suburb, selling substances of an... occult description, mostly just because this town was so gosh-darn weird. With the exception of that one family down the street from the abandoned house—what was their name? The Jeffersons?—she suspected that there wasn’t a single ordinary person in the whole of Ede Valley.

She knew that he’d been saving the money he’d been making until his eighteenth birthday rolled around and they could get a place that didn’t have more cobwebs than a football player with a concussion. If he could get a daemon in the chain of supply and demand, that would be huge.

But still, it was one of the more dangerous things she’d done in her life, right up there with trying to steal the watch off a rich mob kid with a heavily-armed bodyguard. Daemons, to put it lightly, weren’t human, they didn’t think like humans did, and most could probably tie her up in a knot of words before she’d even drawn her katana. Niko might fare better, he was good at that kind of thing. But Lila was afraid, even for him.

Lila was so lost in thoughts that she didn’t realize they’d reached their destination until the hum of the neon sign cut through the haze. Blinking, she saw with a start that she recognized that image of a scrubby goat. This was the bar right below the safe house, err well, ex-safe house. She glanced over to Niko and briefly caught his eye, trying to convey just how dangerous this was. True, it had been almost four months since the “Vincent Incident” but she was still paranoid that they might be recognized.

Niko nodded, ever so slightly, probably telling her to keep her cool, and then carefully stepped over the threshold, into the Smiling Goat.

Apt name, Lila thought, almost bitterly as she followed suit with Cindy behind her, though she had no idea whether the proprietor had any real associations with the land down under. From the décor, it certainly didn’t seem like it. If anything, the place had a worn-in feeling; Lila would have called it homely if not for the crawling feeling that something dangerous lurked in these walls.

Niko gestured for the two of them to hold back, and Cindy and Lila obliged, glancing around the place while Niko approached the bartender, a tall, dark-haired kid with an exceptional amount of tattoos. He leaned on the counter conspiratorially, a smirk that seemed to say he already owned the place painted on flawlessly. “I’m here to speak to the boss,” he said softly, but firmly. “He knows we’re coming.”

So far, so good as the bartender nodded. But Lila shouldn’t have dared to even think it, because just then Cindy happened to glance over at the bartender, her mouth dropped open, and she almost shouted: “Tommy?”

Annnnd the spell was broken. They had lost the intimidating edge. They had ceased to be dark, mysterious strangers and had become teenagers playing as them. But surprisingly, the bartender didn’t scowl, or scoff, he looked kind of sheepish, and almost a little scared. “Cindy,” he said, “what are you doing here?”

Swiveling back and forth between the two, Niko looked just as confused as Lila felt. “You two know each other?”

“He’s my brother,” Cindy provided before turning back to the bartender, Tommy. “Why didn’t you call?”

“I, uh...” Tommy began.

“Wait, your brother?” Niko interrupted over the top of him. “I thought you only had one of those!”

She shrugged. “I thought I did until two days ago.”

“What does that even mean?”

“It means,” came a new voice, “that dramatic irony is still functioning as it should.”

All eyes turned as the black curtain at the back of the bar was pushed aside and a tall man with round spectacles slunk out. Said curtain was then nearly set on fire a second later out of sheer reflex.

“Oh hell no,” Cindy said, a jet of flame separating her and the newcomer. “Not you too.”

“Cool your jets!” Niko yelled. “Are ya trying to set the place on fire?”

“I would if it would burn this son of a bitch with it.”

The newcomer chuckled. “I’m a little tougher than that, I’m afraid.”

As Cindy hesitantly put out her flames, Lila took a small step forward, her hand twitching near the hilt of the katana. She could see why Cindy had reacted the way she did, there was something about this man that raised the hairs on the back of her neck. At first glance he appeared harmless, even a little foppish with his dishwater blond hair flopping over his round glasses. But there was something about his eyes. They were too sharp, too focused for the persona he was trying to display.

Niko, on the other hand, didn’t appear to be picking up on any of this. “Do you know everyone in this town?” he asked Cindy.

“Apparently so,” she glared at the newcomer.

He shook his head. “And you’re not even going to introduce me? That’s a little bit rude.”

“No offence, but I met you two and a half years ago for two minutes, and that meeting ended with me in a mental ward for three months.”

“Fair point,” he nodded.

Lila paused mid-breath. This man was clearly the daemon they were looking for, and if Cindy had met him two years ago... she nodded to herself, the pieces falling together. A brief glance over to Niko revealed that he had come to the same conclusion.

“The name’s Cowell,” the daemon continued. “And I’m the proprietor of this establishment.” He turned to Niko. “I believe you are...” Lila froze as his tongue closed around the first syllable of Niko’s name. The pub seemed empty, but who knew who could be listening at this very moment. “Looking for me,” he said instead, seeming to enjoy the momentary panic that had sprouted on their faces.

“That’s right.” Niko recovered quickly. “We spoke over the phone. I’m very interested in this place, and all the... things you’ve got inside of it.”

Cowell simply seemed bemused from the many inches of height he had on Niko. “Ah, I see. A connoisseur of the more... obscure trinkets, are you hmm?”

“More of a... business man, I’d say,” Niko matched his tone with ease.

“Mhm,” Cowell nodded. “Then let’s talk in my office, shall we?”

He beckoned Niko to the back curtain, but quickly stepped in front of it as Lila—and Cindy, a little more hesitantly—tried to follow. “Ah, ah, ah,” he intoned. “I don’t let just anyone back here, you know.”

Frowning, Niko stared at Cowell for a moment, trying to read the vague smile. But he quickly gave up. “Cindy?” he asked. “You’re good with doin’ a little catch-up with your bro, yeah?”

She looked a little relieved, and nodded.

“Good. But Lila’s with me.”

It was now Cowell’s turn to eye Niko. He seemed just on the cusp of refusing, but then smirked a little and nodded. “Alright then, the two of you follow me.”

Across the pub, Cindy watched them disappear behind the curtain. With anyone else she would have been worried. But this was Lila, after all, and Niko was no slouch either. After a moment, she turned back to Tommy, who had been polishing the same glass for about ten minutes now.

“Sorry I didn’t call,” he muttered finally, after they sat in silence for a minute.

“I was worried, you know,” she admitted, “that you’d disappeared again, or worse, and that I’d never see you again.”

Tommy looked up from his glass. “It’s just... it sounds like you and mom and Mike have a nice life now, one that I’m not a part of, and I would just bring back memories.”

Though she nodded, Cindy still wasn’t fully convinced. “You saw dad, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re not like him, you know. I know you worry that you are.” She neglected to elaborate why she was certain of this. “There’s someone else you take after, but it’s not mom either. I don’t know who it is.”

“Thanks.” Even if she didn’t, Tommy seemed to know who she was referring to, and he brightened up a little.

“Look,” she sighed, “I see what you mean about coming back from the dead and all, so I’ll make you a deal: I won’t tell mom you’re here, but in return, you need to tell me the whole story, where you’ve been all these years, all of it.”

Tommy paused, staring off into the distance for a moment, before he finally nodded. “Alright. Deal. But I can’t just ‘tell’ you. I kinda have’ta show you. Once Cowell comes back, I’ll see if I can get off early.”

And so they waited. They would be waiting awhile, because back in the office, there were some... complications.

Cowell led Niko and Lila down the black hallway and into the last door on the left. Lila’s hand twitched, ready for anything as the door opened into... a small, cozy office. The only off thing about the whole affair was the shelves upon shelves of jars containing, what else, souls. They were of all colors and consistencies, some adrift peacefully while others almost seemed to be fighting to break free.

“Fascinating, isn’t it?” Cowell said suddenly after he noticed Niko and Lila’s transfixed gazes. “How each one is so unique? I sometimes take them just because I’m curious about what they look like. And taste like,” he added, grinning to himself.

He didn’t seem aware of just how odd that sounded.

“Funny,” he continued. “Most people are a bit scared once they find out what’s in those jars, but not you two, eh?”

Niko scoffed, drawing his gaze away. “After the things we’ve seen, this is downright calming.” He plopped down in the chair in front of the desk without waiting to be invited. “But neither of us are starry-eyed kids you can con out of our essences or whatever the hell. We’re here for business.”

“Yes, yes. Of course.” Cowell grinned, sitting as well. “The young mob heir, striking off on his own, to prove to them all that he too can construct an empire with his own two hands. Thrilling stuff really, though the plotline’s been done before. Though never with this specific ‘occult’ twist.”

Raising an eyebrow, Niko shook his head. “Whatever you say, pal. Now, seems to me that you’ve got a lotta souls, uh, hanging around. I could take some off your hands, cut you a really nice deal...”

Lila remained standing, and listened with half an ear as she continued to glance around the room. She had never had a mind for this business stuff like Niko, so she let him work his magic while she prepared to back his honeyed words with steal if necessary.

The souls were really quite mesmerizing. They seemed to be in a bizarre half-state between liquid and gas, though some leaned more one way than the other, floating in their jars like hair immersed in water. But now something else caught her attention: a small, mahogany cabinet opposite the desk. She narrowed her eyes, attempting to see past the frosted glass. But, to no avail.

When a lull appeared in the negotiations, Lila took her chance. “Forgive me,” she said, “but what’s in there?” she gestured to the offending case.

“Ahhh....” Cowell’s smile grew even wider. “That’s where I keep the more... interesting things I’ve collected over the years.”

“Do you mind?” she asked, reaching with trepidation towards the cabinet.

“Be my guest.”

The doors swung open with a quiet creak, and Lila frowned at the contents beyond. Small, glass bottles glowed in the pale light, each containing... something. They looked a bit like the souls, vapory and translucent, but these things had different textures to them.

Lila picked up one of the vials. On it was a thin, paper label which read in a scratchy hand: “Loyalty, Penelope Blanchett, 2017.” Inside, the loyalty glowed a soft pink, but there seemed to be something darker at the center, almost like a heartbeat.

“Loyalty?” she asked. “What does that mean?”

Cowell rose to join her at the cabinet. “It’s all the little bits of people I’ve collected. Things they can, but probably shouldn’t, live without. Bit of a macabre hobby, but there it is. Courage, knowledge, fear, I’ve taken them all. Oh, this one’s my favorite,” he pointed out one of the taller, thinner vials. “A teenage girl’s perspective. A genius move if I do say so myself.”

Immediately, Lila and Niko caught each other’s eye. A teenage girl missing her perspective? They knew someone who fit that description. Without words, a plan was formed.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this?” Niko interrupted. “I know a lot of people who would pay big bucks for something like that. Come on, let’s get back to business.”

As Cowell turned his attention away from Lila, she took the split second chance and snatched the vial before closing the cabinet, then focused once more on the conversation. All seemed to go well, Cowell didn’t spare even a glance in her direction.

Eventually, Niko and Cowell came to an arrangement. And just like that, Cowell became part of the ever-growing supply chain. Those... acquaintances of Niko’s that were willing to pay for genuine human souls would finally get them. What they were actually going to do with them, Lila didn’t even want to guess.

Niko and Cowell stood and shook hands. “We’ll be in touch,” Niko smirked.

“I await with anticipation.”

Turning to leave, Lila followed Niko to the door. She finally felt herself begin to relax. This had been a highly successful endeavor, after all.

“By the way...” Cowell said, and Lila’s heart sank right back down as she heard the smile in his voice. She had relaxed too soon. “That bottle you’ve got in your pocket isn’t what you think it is.”

“I... what are you...?” Niko tried desperately to say something, but Cowell simply held up a hand, staring intently at Lila, and Niko fell silent.

“Check the label.”

Hesitantly, Lila pulled the vial from her jeans pocket. Inside, the only thing she could see was an almost clear sheet, slightly tinted a rose color, almost the most solid thing in Cowell’s collection. She turned it over in her hand and read the faded paper: “Perspective, Agnes May, 1975?” Niko leaned over and stared at it as well.

“Wait, this isn’t—” he began, before he realized what he was saying and shut his mouth.

“Your friend’s?” Cowell continued for him. “Afraid not.”

Lila took a step towards him, her face set. “Where is Cindy’s vial? We know you have it,” she growled.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His smile said that he knew exactly what they were talking about.

“Bullshit.” Niko stepped in. “We know you’re the daemon she made a deal with, you bastard.”

“I don’t have it.”

Oddly, it seemed as if he was telling the truth. “What?” Niko asked.

“I never had it to begin with,” Cowell shrugged. “You can’t take someone’s perspective if they can already see the Truth. You just need to give them a little push.”

“But... why?” Lila shook her head. “Why would you just ruin her life like that?”

“I wouldn’t say I really ruined it, per say,” Cowell grinned. “I mean, I’d say that you two are probably the closest friends she’s had in years. And believe me, you’ll see someday. Now if you’d kindly hand me back poor Agnes May’s perspective, thank you, then I’ll show you out. I’ve had quite a bit of excitement for one day.”

Grabbing both of their shoulders, he guided Niko and Lila out of the office and back to the pub. And a silent vow was passed between them: don’t tell Cindy. After everything she’d been through, finding out that it had all been a lie, well, they weren’t sure what she would do.

Niko made a mental note to not get the ingredients for too big a fire amulet. He did not want to be witness to that explosion. Better to wait until the time was right.

“We’ll, uh, get out of your hair, then,” Niko said. “A real pleasure.”

“Oh no,” Cowell’s smile grew even broader. “The pleasure’s all mine.”

[veryangryhedgehog]

“Pancakes and the Art of Badassery”, an Ede Valley story by Hedgehog.

(Yes I know this is long overdue please forgive me)

Sept. 3rd, 11:59PM –

“You call this a safe house?” Niko Borozov somehow managed to look down his nose at the dingy apartment from his 5’ 3” of height. Said apartment was dark, and grey, but most of all small, with a tiny kitchen in the back corner and one, singular window opposite it. “Get a look at this, Lila.”

His body guard appeared behind his shoulder, standing a full four inches taller than him. “Beggars can’t be choosers, young master,” she intoned as she walked over to the window and pulled the shade down. At first glance Lila Finn didn’t appear entirely intimidating, her adolescent figure and wild, orange hair making her seem more like an Irish barmaid than bodyguard to the heir of the affluent Borozov family. But anyone who knew Lila knew that she would sooner cut you down with the katana she kept in the case on her back than say hello.

Of the two men that followed them inside, each built like a wall of bricks, Vincent was not familiar with her, while Ivan was. You could tell by the way he maintained a good few feet between them at all times.

“Yeah, keep the guilt train coming.” Niko rolled his eyes, but smiled all the same. “Really though, is this the best the ‘mighty Borozov family’ can do? I mean, come on, the TV’s a box for god’s sake.”

“I’m sorry, sir.” Ivan apologized through his thick Russian accent. “But it was best we could do given circumstances.”

“Ugh, don’t call me sir,” Niko pleaded, looking horrified. “That’s my father.”

Vincent chimed in, taking a step into the apartment. “And until he can make some kind of deal with the Mirelli’s, we have to keep you out of the city. They want your head.”

“Haven’t they always? I’m the family heir of their biggest rival.” Niko let out a puff of air as he plopped down on the faded couch. Its springs creaked even under his slight weight. He ran a hand through his spiky, blond hair and rubbed absently along the pattern shaved out of one side of his head.

Lila approached from behind. “But now they have a reason to take it. You enjoy making my job difficult, don’t you?” She placed her hands on the couch cushions, squeezing hard. Most people wouldn’t have noticed a little thing like that, but Niko had known her for a long time. Something was on her mind.

“You’ve got to report to my father, right?” Niko asked Ivan and Vincent pointedly.

“Yes, of course.” Ivan nodded, and he and Vincent made their way to the door. But Ivan turned back towards the two kids. “You know rules, da? No opening shades, no going outside.”

Niko raised a hand to wave him out. “You act like this is my first rodeo. I got it.”

Still Ivan paused, a worried expression painted on his face. But then he shook his head and closed the door behind him.

Neither Lila nor Niko moved for a minute as they listened to the men’s footsteps fading down the hallway. Then Niko placed his hand on top of Lila’s. “And you’re mad at me, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” She pulled away, moving back towards the window. “You could have gotten yourself killed.” Peeking through the shade, she blinked from the light of the neon sign below. From her angle above she couldn’t quite make out the exact words on the sign, but from the image of the goat holding a cold pint she assumed it must have been pointing out a drinking establishment of some sort.

“That’s what I have you for.” Niko grinned. “To make sure the heir of the Borozov family keeps breathing.” His tone was light, but she could hear the biting undertone all too well.

She sighed. “But what if I wasn’t there? I’m not the... immortal warrior you seem to think I am.”

“What are you talking about? Of course you are,” Niko laughed. “My father would never have trusted you with my sorry ass otherwise.”

“It’s that attitude that’s going to get you in trouble.” Lila shook her head as she stood over him.

Niko glanced up at her, his golden eyes meeting her green ones. “Maybe that’s what I’m looking for.”

 Sept. 4th, 4:00AM –

The couch was hard, and Lila was not asleep. Niko was in the singular bedroom just through the small door beside the refrigerator, and Lila watched it intently. That was her job, after all, to protect her young master at all times. But it was also her job to be able when it counted, and it wouldn’t do if she was running on no sleep. She turned away from the door. Worrying wasn’t going to do her any good.

And yet, she did worry. Niko was headstrong, and reckless. It was like he didn’t care if he lived or died. He’d always been a little like that, but the trait had become especially pronounced now that they were no longer children. He’d have to grow up sooner or later, because Lila wouldn’t always be around to protect him. She was under no false pretenses; she knew that Niko would outlive her. In her line of work, it was a rare soul who lived to see retirement. But she worried about what he would do when she was gone.

It seemed like such a long time ago when Niko’s father had called her into his office and told her to protect his son at all costs. “With your life, if need be.” He’d said. “Can you do that? That boy is future of Borozov line.” He intoned.

Nodding instantly, Lila didn’t even have to consider the question. She didn’t care about ‘preserving the Borozov line,’ or anything like that, though they were her adoptive family. But she would do anything for Niko. He had saved her life, after all. This was the least she could do to repay him.

The floor creaked suddenly, a few feet from her, and in a split second Lila had snatched her sword from its case and pushed it against the intruder’s throat. She had expected the Mirellis to find them, of course, but not this soon.

“You gonna kill me, Lila?” the intruder asked, and Lila immediately lowered the sword as she saw that it was only Niko, empty glass in hand.

“Young master, my apologies.” She bowed slightly, lowering her head.

He smiled blearily, heading over to the sink. “You watch too many samurai movies, you know that?” After filling his glass with water, Niko sat at the small, round table.

“Can’t sleep?” Lila asked, sitting opposite him.

“Nah,” he rubbed his eyes. “You?”

She shook her head. They sat for a long minute, each finally able to process the events of the previous day. Lila blinked, trying not to think about how close they’d been to not sitting here right now.

Apparently, Niko was thinking along the same lines, for he sighed and shook his head. “We are way too young for this PTSD crap.”

“You’re probably right,” Lila replied. “I hadn’t really noticed.”

“Look at it this way,” Niko leaned his elbows on the slightly greasy table. “We’re both only seventeen and between the two of us are more hang-ups than the US government.”

Lila snorted.

“Well?” He chuckled too. “I mean, most kids our age are worried about college or what Michelle said about Becci, and we almost died yesterday.”

“I suppose that’s true.” Lila shrugged.

“Have you ever wondered what it’d be like to be normal? You know, play video games, walk home with friends and not have to worry about hit-squads intercepting you on the way?”

“Occasionally,” she admitted thoughtfully. “But never for long. I’d get bored, being normal.”

Niko laughed out loud, a great sound that almost shook the room. “That is one good thing, I guess. There is never dull moment in Russian Mafiya!” He dropped into an accent and raised his glass like they’d seen his father and uncles do so many times.

In that moment—increasingly so over the last few years, for that matter—Lila was struck by how much Niko resembled his father. It only happened occasionally, when he was stressed or not paying attention, and when he wasn’t actively obscuring it behind a wall of self-deprecation and apathy, but Niko had a darkness about him that scared people, just the same as the senior Borozov.

But Lila would never tell him that.

 Sept. 4th, 9:00AM –

In one hand, Niko held a toothpick, which he idly clenched between his teeth as he flipped pancakes with the other. It made Lila chuckle, though she didn’t quite know why. Perhaps it was his rumpled dress shirt, suspenders hanging from his pants, and intense concentration juxtaposed with the sweet smell drifting over to the table. Pancakes were just about the only thing Niko knew how to make, but that was one more than Lila, so who was she to say anything?

“Dick biscuits.” He swore as he flipped one of the fluffy cakes over, only to discover that he’d burned it black. “Got the stove too hot. Stupid, cheap electric...”

“Dick biscuits? That’s a new one,” Lila said, smiling a little. This was a somewhat rare occurrence for her, and Niko almost looked surprised as he turned towards her.

“Well yeah,” the corner of his mouth twitched upwards. “When one has mastered the art of foul language, one needs to get creative, lest the act of profanity become stale.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Master of Swearing,” Lila replied, “your pancakes are still burning.”

He swore again, and they ended up eating burnt pancakes. Lila didn’t mind, she had learned never to take a meal for granted. Niko, on the other hand, was currently attempting to drown out the burnt flavor with Aunt Marma’s Totally Genuine Maple Syrup™.

Lila chuckled, under her breath, and Niko glanced up. “What’s so funny?” He asked.

“Nothing,” Lila shook her head. “I was just thinking about the first time we had pancakes.”

Leaning back in his chair, Niko looked up at the ceiling, nodding. “Yeah. That was right after we took you in.” He broke into a grin. “The cook brought them out and you just started bawling.”

“I’d been living on the streets for years. I hadn’t seen anything so beautiful since my mother died.” Lila scratched her cheek, embarrassed.

“And I thought that you hated pancakes. But as soon as you pulled yourself together you just started chowing down.”

“The cook even forgot to add sugar, not that it really mattered at that point.” Lila shook her head.

“Do you miss her?” Niko asked suddenly. “Your mother, I mean.”

Lila stared at him for a second. “Do you miss yours?”

“Well yeah.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Sometimes. But I hardly knew her, you know? I can’t really mourn for someone I didn’t know.”

“So, there’s your answer.”

He shook his head. “And somehow you’ve brought it back to me again.”

“That’s my job.” She shrugged. “To be a shadow, not a person. I am merely an extension of you, a reflection.”

“Oh, is that why I like you so much?” He smirked. Covering up his feelings again.

Best for Lila to change the subject. “Shut up and eat your pancakes. They’re getting cold."

 Sept. 6th, 3:00PM –

“But there’s more!” The overenthusiastic spokesman shouted through the tiny box in the corner. “Buy the Super Hydro Pumper™ now and we’ll throw in a toaster for free. Yes, that’s right. Absolutely free!”

“I know!” Niko shouted at the screen. “I heard you the first five times.” He flopped back listlessly on the couch. “I’m pretty sure I know your shtick better than you do at this point!”

Lila, who was only half-pretending to be half-asleep in the little corner of the couch that she had been gradually shoved into, nodded. They had been camping out in this small, dull room for three days now, and the boredom was beginning to wear on them both. Worst of all, there had been no contact from Ivan in that time. But there was really nothing they could do about it now. So they waited.

Meanwhile, the infomercial had continued onto its next segment. “Oh, go on!” Niko raised his arms in the air. “What else could the Super Hydro Pumper™ possibly be able to do? Cure cancer maybe? Solve world hunger? Tell me now, oh gods of consumerism!”

“This whole thing is rather trite,” Lila admitted. “It’s hard to believe that anyone really buys into this thing.”

“And yet they do!” Niko said, exasperated. “Forget the guns and drugs, we need to get into cheap, plastic crap instead!”

“It is utterly fascinating just how much this commercial makes me not care.”

“What is it that you really care about, Lila?” Niko asked, sitting up and turning to her. “I can never tell.”

Lila raised an eyebrow. “What is it that you care about?”

“Oh no,” he shook a finger at her, “we are not doing this again. Answer the question.”

Shrugging, Lila stared straight at him. “You. I thought that was obvious.”

“Well, this is certainly an unexpected time to confess your undying love to me,” Niko grinned. Cheeky bastard.

“You know what I mean.”

“I don’t think I do,” he shook his head, mock surprised. “You’d better kiss me now before you break my heart.” He leaned forward, making a stupid face. “Kiss me, kiss me!”

“Oh my god stop.” She pushed him backwards, chuckling. “I’ve answered your question,” she held him back easily with one hand. “So what is it that you care about? I’m genuinely curious.”

The smile fell off his face, and Niko sat back, thinking. “I don’t really know,” he admitted. “I don’t really care about my family, or what we do. I just kind of do it because that’s what’s expected of me.”

“I understand that feeling, young master.”

“And there you go with the samurai movies again.” Niko broke out into a smile once more.

“I like samurai movies,” she said. “I relate to them a lot more than most people. It makes me... happy, I suppose, to imagine myself as a warrior honorably protecting my master.”

“You know you could just leave if you wanted to, right?” Niko asked. “You’re not a Borozov. You could just walk away.”

Lila shook her head. “I wouldn’t even consider it. Your ‘sorry ass’ would get killed if I wasn’t around.”

“So you do really care about me.” Niko wiggled his eyebrows.

Lila smiled. “I never said I didn’t.”

 Sept. 7th, 1:00AM –

There was a knock at the door. Lila listened, and heard the specific combination that meant it was safe to open it. “Niko,” she hissed, nudging him. He’d fallen asleep on the couch an hour earlier, and Lila had decided not to wake him. “Niko!” Now she lightly punched him on the arm.

“Wha...?” He mumbled.

“The door.”

Immediately, he was awake. The two of them stood and slunk closer, listening. The knock came again, in the same, agreed pattern. Niko glanced at Lila, who nodded, and he opened the door.

A large man stumbled in, looking harried. At first, Lila thought that it must be Ivan, but as she looked again, it couldn’t be. Ivan was large, but most of that was due to his broad, muscular shoulders. This man was large in an entirely different way.

“Vincent?” Niko asked. “What are you doing here?”

“I’ve come to move you to a new safe house,” he said, his tone urgent. “This one’s been compromised. It’s the Mirellis. They know you’re here.”

“Shit,” Niko swore. “Alright then, let’s—”

Lila’s eyes narrowed. “Wait.” She held an arm in front of him. “Where is Ivan? He was supposed to be our contact.”

“He got caught up with the Mirellis so he sent me instead,” Vincent replied calmly, but his eyes darted back and forth between the two nervously. “What’s the holdup? Let’s go.”

“No, she’s right.” Niko shook his head. “That doesn’t sound like Ivan at all. He’s always been a sucker for doing things properly. He’d never send someone else to do his job.”

Vincent seemed to deflate a little as he sighed. “I was hopin’ you two would make this nice and easy, but I guess we have to do it the hard way, huh?” He whipped out a gun with one hand and grappled Niko into a headlock with the other. “I’ve got orders to take you to Don Mirelli, and you’d better come too.” He waved the gun briefly in Lila’s direction before placing it against Niko’s head.

“So you were a Mirelli this whole time?” Niko asked, his lip curling upwards in disgust.

“Born and raised.”

“I should’ve known. You always smelled too much like a filthy mutt to be one of us.”

“Say that again, runt bastard.” Vincent renewed his grip on the gun.

Heart pounding, Lila almost couldn’t look away from the cold metal pressed against her master’s head. No, she had to focus. Where was her sword? In reach, lying on its open case behind the couch. But if she moved, Niko would die. So she waited.

“Both of you come nice and slow now. There’s a car waiting downstairs, and we’re all gonna take a little ride”, Vincent’s voice wavered.

“Young master?” Lila asked, awaiting the order to act.

Niko’s lips tightened as he closed his eyes. “Kill him.”

As Lila nodded, Vincent’s hand began to shake. “Don’t move, or I’ll blow your boyfriend’s brains out.”

But Lila didn’t have to. She grabbed the knife strapped to her thigh and threw it across the room. It cut a deep gash into Vincent’s hand, causing him to drop the gun as he cursed, while Niko, a mere two inches away, didn’t even flinch. In one swift movement, Lila had swiped her katana from its case and pinned the man to the door that was just behind him. Through his chest.

After a minute, Lila withdrew her sword, and the body fell to the ground with a sickening thump as blood smeared down the white door. There was a moment of silence. Niko and Lila stared down at the mess.

She nudged the body, just to make sure he was really dead. A small stream of blood trickled from the man’s lips. No coughing or gagging. Undeniably passed.

But just as Lila opened her mouth to confer with Niko, she heard a noise. A car horn. Lila froze. That’s right. He had a car outside, with backup no doubt. “The car,” she whispered.

Niko nodded, and held up a finger. He reached down for Vincent’s gun, then moved over to the couch as Lila slid on her boots, reaching between the couch cushions to grab a second pistol, which he stuck in his coat. “I’ll back you up. Let’s go.”

Stepping over the body, Lila and Niko crept through the white door, now thoroughly stained with a long red streak down the middle. The hallway seemed clear. Lila held her katana at the ready, its light blade catching the glow of the neon sign through the window ahead of them. Niko motioned the all-clear, and they both tip-toed quietly towards the stairs, Lila cringing as Niko stepped on a creaky spot.

Lila reached the small, grimy window, and glanced down to the street below, past the smiling goat constructed with glowing lines. One story below was a black sedan with tinted windows, though by the light of the sign through the sun roof Lila could see one person sitting in the driver’s seat. A Mirelli clearly; she could tell by the greased-back hair and the cologne so strong that she could smell it all the way up here. She opened the window, and kicked in the bug screen.

Niko shook his head, knowing exactly what she was about to do. “You’re crazy.”

“Maybe,” she shrugged. “But it’s our best chance to take him by surprise.”

“I’ll meet you down there.”

“You’ve got thirty seconds.” Lila began to count under her breath as Niko ran. Ten, she heard Niko reach the bottom of the stairs and get into position. Twenty, Lila planned her trajectory accordingly to the height of the car and the position of the man in it. Twenty-five, the man the man shuffled in the driver’s seat awkwardly, trying to get a glimpse over his shoulder. Twenty-eight, he turned on the radio, twenty-nine, he pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

Thirty. Lila braced herself against the window, and jumped. She stuck her feet out straight below like she was leaping into water, and a second later, crashed directly into the sunroof. It shattered into tiny pieces, most too small to actually hurt her as she fell. She muttered thanks for safety features under her breath as she wrapped her legs around the driver to catch her fall.

“What the—” was all the driver could get out before she held her katana against his throat.

From the left, there came a tapping on the car window. The driver turned. Niko was just outside, smiling as he pointed the gun at his head. The driver rolled down the window. “Hi,” was all Niko said before he placed the gun against his head and fired.

The silencer caught most of the sound, but Lila still winced anyway.

“Damn.” Niko muttered, looking at the remains of the man’s brains splattered all over the passenger’s window. “I was hoping that would go better.”

Lila climbed back through the sunroof. “Start walking. Quickly.”

They did, down the road and didn’t look back. Lila jumped at a dog barking in the distance. She was sure someone must have heard that. But as they waited, the night remained quiet. They didn’t talk for several minutes, not until they were well out of the way.

“What do you think really happened to Ivan?” Lila broke the silence finally.

“Best guess?” Niko looked away. “He’s probably dead.”

Lila glanced down at the pavement, a silent prayer for him, wherever he was. “So what do we do now? No doubt Vincent told the Mirellis our location.”

“Well, we could go back to the city,” Niko suggested, pausing under a street lamp. “Try to get back to my father before they kill us, or...”

“Or what?” Lila raised an eyebrow.

Shrugging, Niko glanced up at her. “Or we could just disappear for a while. What suburb is this?”

“Ede Valley, I think.”

“That’s as good a place as any.” Niko smiled, though his eyes remained dull. “Sounds like fun, right? You and me, fugitives on the run?”

She nodded. “Oddly enough, yes.”

“Better not get too used to it. When all’s said and done, we might not want to go back.”

“Perhaps not, young master,” Lila chuckled. They were silent again for a moment, the weight of the night slowly landing on their shoulders as they thought of what transpired. But they couldn’t just stand there forever, could they. And so they started walking. Just where, they didn’t really know, and Lila really didn’t care. Right now, all she wanted was to just disappear into the cold, quiet night.

[veryangryhedgehog]

“Holy Shit the Climax is so Long I had to Split it into Multiple Parts”

Part II

An Ede Valley story by Hedgehog.

Cindy couldn’t hear much through the walls of the truck. In fact, after coming to a stop and waiting for a minute, presumably by one of the back entrances to St. Adelaide’s, she heard very little at all. There was the slam of the cab door as her Tommy climbed out, a small bit of muttering for a second, and then… nothing.

Niko stared back at her in silent horror as they both feared the worst. Tommy had been shot, or incapacitated, and here they were stuck in the back of a fucking delivery truck. There was a pop as the handle on the back door was opened, and Niko cocked his pistol. Then the door rolled upwards, and they both breathed as Tommy stood there in the white delivery man uniform. It contrasted horribly with his tattoos and near-dreads.

“It’s all clear,” he said. “I… uh, took care of them.”

They all climbed out after Niko, who hopped out first and surveyed the scene. Two students were lying unconscious on the ground. “Ya didn’t have to knock them out,” he commented.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t feel like carrying you all into the building. I mean, you’re one thing.” Niko seemed to take offense at that. “But Cindy on the other hand…”

“Knock it off you big jerk.”

“No.”

“I think we’re just lucky that they were so gullible,” Marcell chimed in.

“Unfortunately, it won’t be so easy from here, because the Director isn’t.” Niko’s hand was still placed firmly on the trigger of his gun. “And there are a couple other pretty smart cookies to look out for. I don’t like that Abigail chick one bit.”

The others followed him into the shadow of the school. Above, it towered far over their heads, daring them to make another assault on its hallowed halls.

Niko led them forward through the service doors, pulling them open with a metallic shriek. They froze, but still, no one was there. Nodding, Niko gave  the signal, and they rushed through the storage rooms, which to Cindy seemed almost dangerously understocked. Either the spoiled, rich kids had just simply been wasteful, or this little “society” wasn’t meant to last as long as had been claimed.

Finally, as they neared the main corridors of the Bloch Building, they began to hear something. It sounded to Cindy an awful lot like panic. She and Niko pushed open the last set of doors and were nearly crushed by a stampede of crazed teenagers.

Niko glanced back at Cindy, grinning. “Looks like the distraction worked wonders. We’ve gotta hurry though. As of right now, we’re got no idea where they’re keeping your brother.”

“Actually,” Marcell had to strain to be heard over the cacophony. “We might. Last time you were here Aurum, ah, found a secret passage with Servus. It’s possible he could be down there.”

Cindy frowned. That was the face Marcell made when he wasn’t telling the whole story. But there wasn’t time to argue now. She looked over to the small automaton. “Servus,” she said, “Or Aurum, if you’re there. Do you remember which way it is?”

He paused for a minute, as if thinking, then visibly frowned. Finally, after around thirty seconds he nodded, and took off down the corridor. That was… strange. Servus had never really made a facial expression before, in all the time that Cindy had known him, at least.

The five of them ran past hoards of students speeding to their dorms, the gates, anywhere but here. At one point Cindy almost got blown away by the crowd, but Marcell grabbed her hand and they kept running.

What would they find in this “secret passage”? Cindy hadn’t really thought that far ahead. Of course, she was hoping that they’d find Mike alive and well, but what if they didn’t? What if he’d been tortured, or experimented on, or worse… what if he was dead?

But Cindy shook herself of that thought. It was just as likely that they wouldn’t find him at all. She didn’t know which was worse.

After a minute they headed up a flight of stairs and out of the main body of chaos. Now as they continued down the halls, they could still hear the calamity below, but muffled and distant. This floor was quiet, almost too much so.

Servus led the way around one final corner and made for the room that appeared to be their destination. But unfortunately, something was standing directly in the middle of their path.

At first, Cindy didn’t even recognize him. He was taller than she remembered, his hair longer and more wild, and from this distance she couldn’t really see his face.

“This… doesn’t look good,” Tommy muttered. The person was just standing there, watching their approach, and it didn’t look like he was going to move anytime soon.

Niko held out a hand, and they all stopped walking, except for Servus, who Tommy had to grab to keep from mechanically continuing forward. “Let me handle this.” Niko stepped forward.

“Hi,” he said conversationally to the figure while cocking his pistol. “How’s it goin’?”

The figure said nothing.

“Not much of a talker, huh?” he shrugged and grinned. “That’s alright, we’ll start off easy: what’s your name?”

“Nihil.”

His voice was hoarse, as if it hadn’t been used in a long time. If it hadn’t been for that, Cindy might have recognized it sooner.

“He’s just toying with us,” Marcell whispered to Cindy. “Nihil is just ‘nothing’ in Latin.”

Cindy frowned. “Maybe…” she said. “but something seems… strange.”

“Okay, Nihil,” Niko continued. “We kind of need to get in that room you’re standing in front of. I uh, don’t suppose there’s any chance you would step aside?”

“None.”

Sighing, Niko slipped to the side. “Alright then, looks like we’ll have to do this the hard way.” He raised his gun, and fired.

But in the millisecond it took the bullet to reach its target, Nihil was gone, and the bullet thumped uselessly into the wood of the door.

“Shit,” Niko muttered, before hearing breath next to his ear, and turning to see Nihil suddenly directly behind him. The latter reached forward, quicker than could be seen, to grab Niko by the throat.

Immediately, Marcell became fuzzy at the edges, half man and half mist. He floated above the two, where he solidified again and came down right on Nihil’s arm, who let go of Niko in surprise.

Niko collapsed, coughing and sputtering. Tommy ran over to help him up, while Cindy and Marcell gave chase, as Nihil had flash-stepped away down the corridor. Marcell went on ahead, moving faster as mist down the hall, and Cindy followed behind. She couldn’t shake the feeling that something about their assailant seemed odd.

Marcell turned a corner after Nihil, and by the time Cindy followed they were already locked in combat. Marcell punched and kicked, but Nihil blocked each as easily as if he could predict them coming. But the sheer swiftness and force of Marcell’s blows was pushing him backwards.

Yet as he did so, Nihil seemed to notice how Marcell stuck to the spaces between the windows. He tilted his head to the side, and then, when the moment was right, he ducked under Marcell’s fist and punched through the glass on the windowpane.

As the sunlight hit him, Marcell covered his face and slunk back, the skin on his arms blistering. Nihil raised a fist, except that at that moment Cindy dashed between then. She blew a plume of fire towards him, but gasped when the light hit his face.

“I—” she managed.

Marcell recovered then, and started forward again.

“Lucius, wait!” Cindy cried.

A bullet zinged past them and missed Nihil by inches. Niko and Tommy were rounding the corner, followed closely by Servus.

“Don’t! Stop!” Cindy screamed. “He’s Mike!”

For a second, everything stopped. No one moved a muscle. Finally, Marcell looked down at Nihil and his eyes widened as well. “My god, you’re right.”

“That’s Mike?” Tommy interjected. “Why didn’t you tell me our little brother was a superpowered badass?”

“This is a new development,” Cindy shook her head.

Nihil simply looked confused. “That is not my name.”

“What are you talking about?” Cindy asked, frowning. “Of course it is. You’re Mike Miller, my brother.”

But there was no recognition in Nihil’s eyes. For a second, Cindy wondered if she was mistaken. But no, there was no doubt about it. The eyes that stared back at her were the very same as the ones she saw in the mirror every day.

“You will not confuse me any longer, witch,” he grimaced, and proceeded to lunge forwards. But his hand was grabbed in midair. Cindy blinked. It was Servus, the metal of his arm groaning under the pressure of Nihil’s strength.

“No,” he said, almost too quiet for anyone to hear over the creaking and the tearing. “Won’t… hurt… my friend.” The words came out slowly, painfully, as if he had to force them from his body. But he spoke.

And just when it seemed as if Nihil would break the arm that Servus was holding him with, the latter delivered a kick to the gut that sent Nihil flying down the corridor and through the door of a classroom. The five of them ran after him, Cindy throwing out her hands to make a wall of fire in the doorway. Even if he could move faster than they could see, he still couldn’t walk through fire. Probably.

By the time they made it to the classroom, Nihil had already recovered and was standing calmly just over the threshold. “You don’t have to bother,” he explained to Cindy. “I could kill you all easily, but you’ve proven that the effort required is simply not worth it.”

Cindy narrowed her eyes.

“Please.” he said. “I want to know about this ‘Mike Miller’.”

~~ o ~~

All the way down to the dark bowels of St. Adelaide’s, down in the deepest depths of the earth where the sun had never shown, the three of them followed him. Cancer came first, of course, the OG, the omnipresent, always there at the back of his mind with her parched, stretched lips and hairless visage. Behind her came Cocaine, her eyes crazed and nearly too big for her face, her dyed blonde hair wild, and bits of glass were imbedded all across her face and chest.

But now a third wraith joined the entourage of suffering. Her eyes were sad, tracks of mascara tears ran down her cheeks. The hole clean through her chest was still moist and bloody. Conscience. If only he’d listened to it sooner.

And here they were, and here was Doug, all locked up together in some sort of cell. Mike, Nihil, whoever he was, had strapped Doug to a table. He didn’t know what he was doing, he didn’t know that the instant he left the room the three of them were on Doug like vultures.

They stared down at him, pitying, more real, more human then they ever had before, and yet they were so still, so silent. They judged him, for the things that were not his fault, and the things that were.

“Wow, he must be really out of it, we’re even able to talk,” Cocaine said. They had never done that before, but it seemed the most natural thing in the world at that moment.

Cancer’s thin lips spread. “I believe this is what they call the ‘Heroic Blue Screen of Death’.”

“Heroic?” Cocaine blew air out of her nose. “As if. Look, if he’s a hero then I’m fucking Zoey Deschanel.”

Conscience didn’t say anything, just stared down at Doug, nearly pleading to him.

“You know why she’s crying?” Cocaine asked, leaning down towards him. He recalled the smell of Elizabeth, the taste of her lips before she had smashed through the windshield. “It’s because you could have saved her. If you’d just said something. You could have saved me too, ya know?”

“No, he couldn’t,” Cancer rolled her sphere-like eyes. “You made your own choices. You’re only here because you remind him of his equally bad ones.”

“Well, what about you, then? Why the hell are you here?”

She simply smiled for a moment. “I’m here to remind him that with this one, there was absolutely nothing he could do.”

“Shut up,” Doug said quietly.

“Oh shit, that’s good. You’re right.”

“I said shut up.”

“Oh! So now after all this time you’re finally gonna speak up?” Cocaine asked. “Afraid it’s too little, too late there, buddy.”

“Shut up! You don’t think I know that? Shut up shut up shut up!”

Doug squeezed his eyes shut. And when he opened them again the three of them were gone, and he was alone. He really was alone now, truly alone. Jilli was dead. She was fucking dead, and if he had just intervened in time… He’d as good as killed her himself.

The darkness around him was deafening. He was stuck here, wherever here was, with the one person he hated most in the world. Doug didn’t want to be here anymore. He didn’t want to be at all.

He almost wished his demons would come back. At least he’d have all his mistakes to keep him company.

It was too quiet.

How did that one song go? The one that always got stuck in his head at the oddest of times? “The scene and herd…” he mumbled to himself. “Block out the sun like a flock of birds and I don’t wanna go…” huh. “I don’t wanna—”

Then the door behind his head opened with a heavy creak, and the room came to life.

He was in some kind of laboratory, that was for sure. As he blinked against the sudden brightness Doug couldn’t help gulping at the amount of beakers, knives, and various other tools of science that glittered from shelves and tables. The room, he now noticed, smelled vaguely like formaldehyde, and the walls were underlit with a sickly-green glow.

“So, at least we’re here, face to face,” said a sickeningly familiar voice from behind him, and suddenly the table he was clamped onto spun upright. Abigail grinned at him, and Doug’s blood boiled. “You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting for this day, to see the look on your face. And I have to say it’s just as wildly entertaining as I’d hoped.”

Doug didn’t say anything. He didn’t trust himself to speak. But he glared back at her with all the anger he could muster.

“No tears from you, of course. I didn’t expect that. But I said to myself, I said: ‘I want to see him angry. He’s always so gloomy.’ And now here we are. And it’s glorious. If all I had to do was murder a pretty girl in cold blood I would have done it ages ago.”

“Why?” Doug asked, before he could stop the word from slipping out.

She blinked innocently. “Why what? Why did I kill her? I already told you: I was done with her. She preformed her part beautifully, set the board of directors in a positive panic. But now, I don’t even need this school anymore, and I certainly don’t need any loose ends. Watching you die inside was just an added bonus.”

“No, not just that,” Doug shook his head. “Everything. This school, the experiments. Why?”

“Hmm…” she squinted, sizing him up. “Well, you’re going to be dead in a few minutes so I suppose it doesn’t matter. You see, Doug,” she leaned on a nearby metal table conversationally. “I’ve always been burdened with mankind’s greatest sin: curiosity. As soon as I don’t know something I simply must have the answer. Or I will die. Some of the more pressing questions in the early days of my career produced what you see before you,” she gestured to herself. “So now with my clock permanently reversed, you could say, I can now sate my unending curiosity on my own time.

“The whole purpose of this school was to find the perfect candidate for Project Paragon. I knew I was going to need a teenager, they’re the only ones with the right brains, you see, so what better cover than a school? Unfortunately I needed a very specific brain, and it took years and years and years to find it. And I got bored of waiting. So that’s where you come in.

“Because sometimes you get frustrated. Something your results aren’t what you want them to be and all you want to do is zap someone senseless for a few hours.”

Doug’s heart dropped somehow further down. “That’s… that it?” he asked. “That’s the only reason?”

“You were simply stress-release. I had to relieve my tension somehow. And you never disappointed.” She smiled almost girlishly, running a hand along his cheek. “Never broken, always prepared to go one more round. Oooo, I still think about it when I touch myself at night.”

“Fuck you.”

“While that would be ever so pleasant, I’m sad to say that I am already previously engaged. And besides, in my long life, there’s one thing I’ve learned. Sex is all fine and well, but only one thing brings true satisfaction. Any guess what it is?”

He just stared at her silently.

“Fear. The oldest, and truest emotion. Because deep down, Doug, we’re all just scared animals. We’re all afraid. And to see all the layers of morals and lies come crashing down to get to the most base part down deep inside. Oh, I nearly cream myself every time I see it. And fear is the only way to get there.

“So tell me, Doug,” and here she grabbed his chin and straightened past her small height so that they were nearly touching noses. “What is it that you’re afraid of?”

“Bees.”

She threw her head back and cackled. “That’s certainly a fear, but it’s not the fear. The one that drives you, the one that keeps you moving at all costs. You’ve gotten so used to running from it that I think you’ve nearly forgotten what it is. But that’s fine, I’ve already figured it out for you. You know you talk an awful lot in your sleep.

“So in order to send you off with a bang, as thanks for all that you’ve done for me, I’m going to give you a very special death.”

At that moment she hit a button and the table pitched back to flatten once again. “Do you know where Louis Carrol got his inspiration for the Mad Hatter, by any chance?” She stared down at him, the lights catching the rims of her glasses.

“Not a clue.”

“According to speculation, it was from the hatters,” she explained. “Back in ye olden days mercury was used to cure the felt with which hats were made, and since that material would then move directly to the hatters with no sanitation, they would constantly breathe in the mercury. Mercury is, of course, highly toxic, so most of them went a bit mad. They were so infamous for it that mercury poisoning was dubbed ‘Mad Hatter’s Disease’ for several years.”

Doug didn’t know where she was going with this, but wherever it was, he didn’t like it one bit.

“Now, those poor hatters had no idea what was happening to them. But I’ve always wondered what it would be like to really feel it, to have the knowledge that you are going crazy. Too bad you’ll be dead, or else I’d have you take notes, though you probably wouldn’t be able to hold a pen anyway.”

She reached somewhere out of sight, and before he knew what was happening, she had placed a breathing mask over his face. “Now, in about, oh, ten seconds I’m going to turn this little valve here, and mercury off-gas will start pouring out of that breathing mask, so you’re going to be able to feel yourself going insane and then dying.”

Eyes widening, Doug unconsciously began to breathe heavily, every sense kicking into over drive. He pulled at his restraints in vain. No. No, any way to die was fine. Anyway but this.

“Now that’s the fear I like to see,” Abigail’s earsplitting caterwauling nearly shook the room. “If only I could see the whole thing. But alas, I have urgent places to be. Oh well, that’s what video cameras are for.”

Without any hesitation she turned a valve on a canister with a squeak and then skipped to the door. “Smile for the camera,” she grinned. “And don’t forget to say ‘fuzzy pickles’!”

The door closed, and she was gone.

It was nearly impossible to keep himself from outright panicking. If he panicked, then the adrenalin would kick in and he would start inhaling the mercury twice as fast. Maybe if he held his breath for long enough someone would find him before it was too late.

But a second later, Doug realized the odds of that were next to zero. And besides, who would come to save him anyway? The only people who had maybe cared about him were dead.

Still, he tried. He held out as long as he could if only to delay the inevitable. He wouldn’t mind dying, it was true, but not like this. Because the more unstable he got, the stronger they became. Cancer, Cocaine, Conscience, they were going to come for him. All of his regrets would stare and laugh at him until his body finally gave out. Doug didn’t want it to end like that.

But as the seconds ticked by, the pressure in his chest became too great, stars began to dance across his vision as his forehead pounded. Instinct took over, and his took his first, poisonous breath.

For a minute, nothing happened. Maybe, he thought, Abigail had been mistaken, and grabbed the wrong canister, or more likely, this was some kind of sick experiment to see how he would react under pressure. Except that then he began to cough. It was just a little at first, but more and more over the next few minutes until his body was wracking with violent convulsions. He couldn’t tell if the metallic taste in his mouth was blood, or just the mercury.

Then he realized that the convulsions were increasingly not from the coughing. Even strapped down as they were, Doug’s hands were shaking.

It was becoming increasingly difficult to focus on anything. He kept hearing things, random noises and laughter. Then he saw it out of the corner of his eye. Cancer, the fucking harbinger. And on the other side of the room, he could smell Cocaine smacking its lips.

The shaking was getting worse, up his arms and legs, and the coughing was so bad that he hardly noticed Conscience straddling him, rubbing against him. Jilli. Jilli why her hands were in his hair, her perfume overwhelming him. Though he couldn’t see very well his vision cutting in and out as if the world was flickering, he saw with increasing panic that the inside of the mask attached to his mouth was red.

He convulsed on the table, nearly dislocating his ankles and Cancer and Cocaine close in their smiles stretched wide and laughing laughter filling his head. Stop it stop it stop it nooooo but they haven’t reached him, why aren’t they coming? Are they waiting for him to do something are they mocking him what? But he can’t see he can’t turn his head his horns are in the way.

And then—

The straps were released from his wrists and ankles, the mask pulled off, and Doug shook himself off the table and onto the floor.

Dimly, from somewhere very far away, he registered the pain from hitting the concrete. And then someone was dragging him to his feet and out of the room. But Doug was half-blind, the world smearing around him like fingerpaints.

He tried limply to help whoever was dragging him, but try as his might his legs were shaking far too much to be of any use. After a minute, his savior paused to catch his breath, and Doug managed to partially find his feet.

“Who—?” he asked, blinking rapidly into the man’s face. Eyelids were just windshield wipers. That’s how they worked, right? The shape of his face slowly came into semifocus: Victor. If he had not just inhaled a near lethal dose of mercury, Doug might have questioned how in the hell Victor even knew about this place, but as it was, the thought didn’t even cross his mind. He just smiled drunkenly.

“Jesus what on earth did she do to you?” Victor asked, mostly for his own benefit, but Doug tried to answer anyway.

“Hatter… juice,” was all that came out.

Victor’s face blurred spectacularly as he shook his head. “I don’t know what that means, but look,” he grabbed Doug’s shoulders to try to get him to focus on him, made difficult by the fact that his whole body was shaking like he was outside in the Antarctic wearing only a wet swimsuit. “You need to get out of here, she’ll be back any minute. There’s people upstairs. They’ll help you. Can you walk?”

“Sure.”

There was a noise, and suddenly, Victor was gone. Or maybe Doug had just momentarily blacked out, he wasn’t sure. But at that moment, he did what he’d always done, and the only thing that he ever could do.

He started moving.

[veryangryhedgehog]

“Holy Shit the Climax is so Huge I had to Split it into Multiple Parts,” an Ede Valley story by Hedgehog.

Part I

Something had to happen. The whole town could feel it. The volatile energy emanating from St. Adelaide’s descended from its hill to the suburb below in waves. Aurum could feel it as she grilled Muirne endlessly on Atlantis and the Truth until she threatened to stab her. Servus, if he could even feel at all, felt it as he watched Muirne and she attempted to communicate with him again.

The students of St. Adelaide’s stalked from hall to hall, looking anxiously over their shoulders. Victor felt it as he became slowly more aware of the situation he found himself in, the idea that Abigail might be more than she seemed. Gil felt it as he began to lose hope of ever seeing Muirne, or even Sonia, again. Doug felt it, dimly, from somewhere deep in the bowels of hell. And Abigail felt it, and began to make plans.

And down in the town below, the people looked to the school and knew that something must be done. Cindy and Tommy knew that their brother was still in there somewhere, and needed their help. Marcell know not only that Cindy needed him, but also that the Truth was somewhere in there as well, and he had been searching for it for so long. Cowell sat in The Smiling Goat and knew that things were going to get very interesting… very quickly.

Niko knew that something needed to be done. For his friends, for the students caught in the crossfire. For Lila. And he was gonna be the one to do it. But for his burgeoning plan to work, he was gonna need some help. And he thought that he knew just where he could get it.

~~ o ~~

They got the text at around three in the morning. All except Aurum, who did not have a cell phone and thus was called the old-fashioned way. But they all got the message one way or another: “Meet at EB. 7AM.”

Tommy was not a morning person, and thus was slightly grumpy. But with a little coaxing from Cowell, who was annoyingly chipper as he knocked on Mathilda’s door at around six, he made it almost on time.

This was not a problem for Marcell, to whom it wasn’t really morning at all, nor Cindy, who besides from a few hours nap on Marcell’s couch hardly slept. They arrived together, several minutes early.

Aurum, Servus, and Muirne were, of course, already there, but none of them emerged from the back rooms before the library was occupied.

Because when all of them opened the door to the central room of the East Branch, Niko was waiting for them. He stood behind a table, a blueprint of St. Adelaide’s laid out on its surface. He’d found a long trench coat and wide-brimmed hat somewhere, and a dark eye-patch now covered that missing device.

He greeted them all with a handshake and a smirk. It was that look that he often adapted when he wanted to look like he had all the answers. But this time, not even Cindy could sense any artifice behind it. It was as if he did, in fact, have all the answers.

Aurum attempted to explain the circumstances surrounding the ancient hero inhabiting the body of his cousin. He seemed troubled, but thoughtful.

“You can use a sword?”

“Aye. Trained with it since I was a wee lass.”

He nodded. “That may make things a little easier. And you think you can get this ‘Gilveidan’ character on our side?”

“I certainly hope so. I’m sorry about your cousin, by the way,” she added, as he began to turn away.

“Just make her sacrifice worth it,” he said simply.

When Tommy and Cowell finally pushed through the door a few minutes late, it looked as if everyone had arrive.

“Well,” Cindy said, eager to see what this was all about. “It looks like we’re all here…”

“Actually, we’re not,” Niko said, all eyes on him. “You see, I’d heard some rumors around the Valley, and I did a little digging, just to see if it was true. Turns out that there’s someone that wants St. Adelaide’s gone just as much as the rest of you. And she brings a lot of firepower with her.”

He snapped his fingers, and the doorway to the library opened for one final time. From the darkness came four figures. Three women who looked like they could kick your ass into the next week just for staring at them funny, and a small girl with blonde pigtails.

“Hey, what’s up fuckers?” asked the redhead.

“These are the Talons,” Niko gestured. “And they’re gonna be what turns the tide in our fight against the school. Because believe me, it will be a fight. And we’re gonna go in guns blazing. So if that doesn’t sound like a good Tuesday night to anyone, now’s your chance to go.”

No one moved.

“Excellent.” Niko grinned, placing a hand on the blueprint in front of him. “Here’s what we’re gonna do…”

~~ o ~~

Victor was up very early that morning, working on his project. His obsession with it had risen to a fever pitch. He was so close, he could feel it. The heart had beat. It had shut down after a minute, but it had beat.

At this point, he didn’t even know why he was doing it. This project had started as a sort of hypothetical ‘what if’. What if he could take something directly out of science fiction and make it a reality? But now that it might actually work, it was all he could think about. That and—

Speaking of the devil, as soon as his thoughts seemed to wander in that direction she appeared. His better half, his muse, Abigail slunk through the door of the shop.

“Good morning,” Victor smiled, even though he didn’t look up.

“Same to you,” she said, suspiciously subdued, and Victor frowned. Usually she would have been much more chipper, and loud. He finally looked up, and noticed that she looked more serious—even slightly nervous—than she usually did. She approached him almost hesitantly.

He blinked. “What’s wrong?”

“Victor,” she said finally, after taking in a deep breath. “There’s something I have to tell you, because things are about to start moving very quickly and if I don’t tell you this now you’re going to find out at a very inopportune time and I need you with me on this.”

It took him a second to get his mind out of project mode and process the massive amount of words that had just emerged from her mouth at a machine-gun pace. “Okay… he said after about a solid minute.

“I’m the Director,” she blurted out immediately.

Victor froze. For a second, the statement didn’t even register. Those two concepts were so fully separated in his head that it was difficult to think about them at the same time. Maybe that’s why he didn’t outright panic, because some part of him couldn’t fully make the connection.

“Oh.” Was all that really came out.

Abigail smiled tensely at the slightly gormless expression alighting his face. It had just crossed his mind that the Director was responsible for so many terrible, awful things. Could she really be the same person as the sweet, caring girl in front of him that even now was looking up at him in worry.

And then a second thought popped into being: he couldn’t really have an opinion on the Director’s actions, because hadn’t he done things that were just as terrible? But that had been different, he justified to himself. The things he had done were for discovery, knowledge. To see if he could really get the designs that danced across his closed eyelids to work in this reality. But maybe…

“Why’d you do all those things?” he asked her. “You know, the psychiatrists and the sessions and… stuff?”

“Why, that’s simple,” she stared up at him, her wide eyes enormous behind her glasses. “To experiment, to discover. For lack of a better word, for science.”

He felt the knot in his stomach loosen. It was as if she had taken the words right out of his mouth.

“Do you hate me?” she frowned.

But Victor shook his head. “No,” he said. “I think I understand you a little too well.”

“Then you’ll help me?” she asked, immediately brightening. “Even if what I have to do might be… horrible?”

He grabbed her arm, and pulled her into him. He didn’t care about good or bad. There was only one god he prayed to. “Let’s burn down the world together. For science.”

“For science…”

~~ o ~~

“This is never going to work,” Cindy grunted as she was bumped along like a sack of potatoes. In fact, she was currently in a sack of potatoes, in the back of a large, unmarked delivery truck.

“Trust me,” Niko said from the barrel next to her. “It is.”

“Aren’t they going to check the cargo? You know, in case someone tried to pull the exact same shit we are currently in the process of pulling?”

“Not if your brother does his job.” Niko looked incredibly confident. Almost too much so, and his calm unnerved Cindy greatly. “Besides, they’re lazy rich kids. Unless someone with brains, like that Doug kid, or Jilli Nakajima herself deems the shipment worthy enough of their attention, we’ll be a-okay.”

“So you’re making a bet,” Marcell chimed in from atop a nearby crate. “Multiple bets actually. You’re betting on laziness, and you’re betting that no one recognizes Tommy.”

Niko just waved the question off. “They shouldn’t. He never got close enough for anyone to get a good look at him. And with that getup we’ve got him in, even less of a problem.”

“Tommy does have a rather distinctive look,” Cindy admitted. “There aren’t many other ‘urban gypsy hobos’ around these parts.”

“Exactly. There’s just one wild card I’m concerned about,” Niko frowned, and everyone’s gaze turned to Servus, who nearly looked annoyed at begin shoved unceremoniously into a huge bag of socks.

“Aurum promised not to have him go wandering off again,” Marcell reminded him.

Raising an eyebrow, Niko didn’t look convinced. “I don’t know, you two seem pretty set on this whole ‘quest for the Truth’ thing. You endangered our lives once before.”

“And so that’s why you split us up.”

“Hey you’re the one who wanted to come with your girlfriend.”

“Made it rather convenient for you, didn’t it?”

Niko stared Marcell down, even while still maintaining his impressive smirk. “Just remember that this is a rescue mission. If we happen to find your ‘Truth’ or whatever then great, but if not, you’re not gonna fuck up my stellar plan, capeesh?”

“Ladies, please. Stop bitching,” Cindy rolled her eyes. “We’re almost there.”

And true enough, some of the boxes had begun to slide towards the back of the truck as it angled increasingly uphill.

“I just hope this ‘stellar plan’ of yours works,” Marcell sighed.

“If the other group does their job, which they will,” Niko leaned back. “Then we’ll be just fine…”

~~ o ~~

Aurum looked rather constipated, if Cowell was one-hundred-percent honest, which he often was, if only in his head. She scrunched up her face, concentrating hard.

“Do I need to get a bucket for you to sit on?” Cowell asked when he couldn’t hold the joke in any longer.

She glared at him. “I don’t need anything else from you, thank you very much.”

“Is it usually this hard to form a connection with the deadpan hunk of metal?”

“His name is Servus,” she corrected.

Cowell just shook his head. “Ah yes, because ‘slave’ in Latin is so much better.”

“But no, it’s not,” Aurum ignored him. “maybe it’d be easier if I didn’t have to stare at your smug gob.”

“I’m sorry, am I just too stunningly attractive that you simply can’t concentrate?” He dramatically flipped a hand to his forehead. “I’ll turn away.”

“Do that.”

He turned on his heel, and looked off towards the far wall of books. There was quiet in the library for a minute as Aurum focused and Cowell played a game with himself to see how long he could draw out the tension.

Finally, after a good, solid effort of about thirty seconds, he started to turn back around. “So, just curious, do you have any books in here with pictures at all, or are they all just as dry and boring as y—?”

“Quiet!” she snapped. “I’m almost there… I…”

And then she fell out of her chair.

“Are you having a stroke?” Cowell asked.

But she didn’t seem to have heard him. She just grabbed her chest and breathed heavily.

“My god you are, aren’t you?”

“No! Just shut up for one. Second and listen. He fought back against me.”

Cowell shrugged. “Maybe he got sick of you mucking around in his head.”

“He isn’t even capable of basic thought on his own. No there’s… there’s something… in there.”

~~ o ~~

The announcement had been made early that morning, and the remaining students, anxious, pale, cowed, gathered in the cafeteria. It was a very different student body than it had been at the beginning of the semester. It was smaller, for one, maybe half the size as it had been, but it was also quieter, furtive. Instead of waving to each other and laughing as they met, the students slunk from hall to hall, always looking over their shoulders. Jilli had rubbed off on them, and they had seen things.

Now as they sat in the high, arched room, Abigail hardly had to wait a second for them to quiet down.

The remnants of their once happy little family, Victor and Gil, stood to the side. Victor gave her an anxious little smile and a thumbs-up, while Gil simply glared daggers at her. Nihil was somewhere upstairs, keeping an eye on her office in case any rodents attempted to sneak in.

Abigail smiled back at Victor, and took the stage.

Gil leaned over to him. “I take it you are not yet aware of her true nature?” he asked.

“Oh no. I am.”

Blinking, Gil turned to him properly. “Then you’re aware that she has no real affection for you. That she only cares about her goals, whatever those may be?”

“I don’t know about that,” Victor replied, with a surprising lack of naivete. “But yes, I know she’s using me. I’m using her too.”

“I—” Gil frowned, stepping an inch away. “I seem to have misjudged you.”

Meanwhile, Abigail stepped forward, and the room became so silent that it seemed the whole world was holding its breath. “Fellow students,” Abigail began. “This morning I’m here to bring you some unfortunate news. Jilli Nakajima is dead.”

Even from the unnaturally quiet crowd of teenagers there was a shifting, an unbelieving rumble.

“But never fear, even if your noble leader is dead, I have come to take back control.”

She paused, grinning as the meaning of her words sunk in.

“Some of you know me as Abigail Hodge, which is, of course, my name. But I also have another name. More of you know me by that title. You see…” she held her voice changing box to her mouth. “I am the Director. And from now on, with no suits, no parents, no society to hold me back, there are going to be some changes around—”

The student body had, by this point of course, already begun to panic. It didn’t help matters when a flying motorcycle came through the window. A cry went up from the crowd as shattered glass fell among them, and then as the dust cleared, there was silence.

A woman and a girl with blonde pigtails sat on the bike. Abigail blinked. “Paragon Alpha? Is that you?” she tittered as the little girl dismounted and faced her. “It is. You know, in a million years I never thought you’d come back after I kept you imprisoned for so long.”

Gil stepped forward, and Victor reached for his remote control, but Abigail raised a hand and held them back.

“I’ve thought about it long and hard, and I’ve decided to tell you the truth,” Buttercup said in a flat voice.

“Oh?” Abigail asked. “The truth? Really. I don’t know what you could possibly mean.”

“You’ve been lied to, for all these years,” Buttercup continued, not breaking her intense stare. “And I’ll tell you, but first you need to let these children go.”

“Why would they want to leave?”

Buttercup sighed. “I know what you’re planning. You’re going to use them for experiments, to make yourself an army.”

The crowd gasped as one, and from there a manic cacophony began to build.

Abigail sighed. “Well, now you’re just causing panic. Fine. They can go. I can always find more subjects.”

As if on command, the doors to the cafeteria blew open and the amalgamate of students rushed through. The two parties waited for the room to clear, and finally, when Abigail grew too impatient: “Alright, I’ve done what you asked. Now what is this about the truth?”

Buttercup sighed. “You’ve been told your whole life that your father died for Project Paragon, died trying to prevent my escape. But that’s not the truth. I lied. I thought it would be easier for you to grow up thinking that. The truth is…” she shook her head. “He died trying to help me escape. The things they did to us, to me, was truly horrible, something your father realized too late to prevent. But it’s not too late for you. You can still—”

Except that Abigail cut her off then, not with words, but with laughter, the harsh sounds biting through the air. “It that what you think this is about? Continuing my father’s legacy? He died when I was a child. I barely knew him. The only interest he held for me was his connection to the Project.”

“Then think of the human cost,” Buttercup pleaded. “Do you really want to create more people like me?”

“I already have.”

There was silence. Abigail stared at Buttercup, Buttercup stared back, horror dawning on her face.

“I was afraid of this.” She turned to her companion, the redhaired woman on the motorbike. “She’s too far gone, Lilith. We have to kill her.”

“I was hoping you’d say that,” Lilith grinned broadly. She put a finger between her teeth and whistled, before revving the bike.

“Ooohh,” Abigail clapped her hands together. “Are we having more company? Gil, Victor, you know what to do.”

Victor clicked a few switches on his remote control and a series of machines seemingly emerged from the walls, humming to life. Gil raised his hands, but only a few bolts of purple electricity passed between his palms before he froze.

Because just then, a voice resounded through the room. “Gilveidan, you All-Knowing piece of garbage!”

And suddenly, for the first time that any of them had seen, Gilveidan grinned from ear to ear. “I am in so much trouble.”

Three women flew through the hole in the window, two that Gil didn’t recognize. But the third, her blonde hair flowing wildly behind her, her face set in an entirely different expression than he had become used to, he knew very well. Her face was still Sonia’s, but the fire in her eyes, that was undeniably…

“Muirne,” he breathed.

The Talons and Buttercup charged the machines, swords and tennis shoes blazing. And in the middle of it all, Gilveidan and Muirne met. He held her in his arms for the first time in so long. And it was odd, but he hadn’t even realized just how much he’d missed her until she was in his arms again.

Then she slapped him.

“I deserved that,” he said.

“Siding with her?” Muirne nearly bared her teeth. “As the new expression goes: ‘what the hell are you on’?”

“In my defense you weren’t coming back and it was sort of my only option.”

Muirne stared him down. “Ooo, if we weren’t in the middle of a fight we would be having some words.”

“Shall we ‘kick some ass’?” he smiled.

“Aye,” she grinned back. “Let’s.”

Across the room, Buttercup turned and saw Abigail and Victor sneak from the room. If she hadn’t been pinned by three different machines, each with a varying set of very sharp edges, she would have gone after them. But the others needed her here.

She’d given the others as much cover as she could. If Abigail was to be believed, she had a sneaking suspicion of who her subject had been. Good luck to them. They were going to need every bit of it they could get.

[veryangryhedgehog]

"An October Picnic", an Ede Valley Story by Hedgehog.

September came and went far too quickly for Cindy. Its end heralded another month closer to graduation, and another month less to figure out what she was going to do with her life. This would have been stressful enough even if she was able to be subjective and didn’t have larger issues of a more unusual variety to worry about.

At first, an uneasy peace had been established at the neighboring house. Niko and Lila stayed upstairs and Cindy down, and for the most part, tried to leave each other alone. True to his word, Niko had managed to get his hands on a few of the ingredients that Cindy had requested, and she had paid him in return, practically drooling thinking about all the things she’d been unable to try due to lack of resources that were now within her grasp. But this in itself made Cindy nervous. Where and how he had gotten his hands on a jar of Mormotomyia hirsute she didn’t quite want to know.

But more than that, what really made her uneasy were Niko and Lila’s eyes. Both of them had this indescribable look about them. They had killed people. The objective truth was that neither of them were malicious, or bloodthirsty, Cindy knew that, of course. They had both only done what they’d needed to to survive. No, what really worried her were the people looking for them. The mafia may have been a business, but it attracted a lot of bad people.

Yet, as September marched away with no sign of detection, she simply couldn’t help getting acquainted with the two of them. Occasionally, she’d run into Niko in the kitchen, and express greater levels of disbelief at the increasingly bizarre things he managed to obtain for her.

“Where the hell did you get this from?” She asked as he pulled a drawstring bag of Komodo dragon claws from his suit pocket.

He smirked, only the one side of his face rising into a smile. “A good dealer never reveals his sources. For all I know, you could just be a very dedicated Narc.”

“Yes, I’m placing you under arrest for all those poor lizards you maimed,” Cindy only half-deadpanned. Usually, she preferred to not think about where her ingredients came from.

“What I want to know is how you get all this money to pay me.” He narrowed an eye, leaning forward.

Cindy nodded slowly, sizing him up. She didn’t see how it could hurt. “ATM machines,” she said finally. “Suggestion spells are a powerful thing, especially when the target doesn’t have any will to fight you with. It’s like magical code. I’ve literally bewitched a machine at the Kwik Trip to spit out eighty bucks every time I punch in a code. Don’t get any ideas, though, it only works for me. And you can’t get that much out of it anyway, or the manager puts up an ‘out of order’ sign.

“That’s... vaguely disappointing.”

“Beats getting a job,” she shrugged. “And it keeps me in eclectic t-shirts, so I’m not complaining.”

Niko was easy to talk to. He had this certain confidence about him that made you feel at ease. It was a carefully cultivated act, of course, put up as a sort of wall after years of practice. Cindy wondered what could have caused him to erect such a barrier, and wished once again that she could turn off the Truth for once; she felt like she was trespassing on people’s private affairs. But regardless, that ease made Niko damned good at his job.

Lila also had a sort of barrier, but her’s was of an entirely different nature. If Niko’s barrier let you through the walls for a brief stroll around the manicured garden before gently pushing you out without you actually having seen anything worthwhile, then Lila’s was a hundred-foot cement mound with barbed wire laid down every few feet. Also with a maze of spikes. She hardly ever talked unless spoken to, and her face seemed permanently etched into this intimidating frown. Of course, she had to be that way if she was ever going to make it as a body guard. Half the job was preventative, after all, but this understanding of Cindy’s still didn’t make her any easier to talk to.

Eventually, however, Cindy learned that you couldn’t get over Lila’s barrier by climbing it. Instead, you just had to start slamming on it with a pickaxe, and eventually, you might be able to break through. It took a long time, more like working with a shovel than a pickaxe, but Cindy made progress nonetheless.

“Where did you get that sword?” Cindy found her practicing with her katana in the backyard one afternoon. Lucky the fence was so high, otherwise someone would have seen her. But Cindy was sure that Lila would have already thought of that, so she didn’t bring it up.

“It was a gift.” Lila replied after a moment, not looking away from the katana, which swung repeatedly through the air with a soft hum.

After waiting, Cindy saw that she wasn’t going to illuminate any farther. “Well, who gave it to you?” she prompted.

Lila paused, her eyes narrowing, and finally looked in Cindy’s direction. “Why so many questions?”

“I don’t know,” Cindy tried not to flinch at her glare. “You’re just this mysterious badass that I can’t get a read on. I kinda wanna know more about you, since we’re gonna be so close for the foreseeable future.”

“Oh,” Lila’s grip relaxed on the sword. “My apologies. I’m afraid I can be a little wary of strangers.”

“I can see why,” Cindy said, plopping down on the lawn and patting the spot next to her. After a moment of hesitation, Lila joined her. “Though to be honest, I’ve never been very good at small talk, so you’ll have to forgive me.”

A hint of a smile began to form on Lila’s face. “I guess we’ll just have to muddle through together, then.”

Cindy nodded. “So, the sword, then. A gift from...?”

“My young master,” Lila confirmed, glancing briefly back towards the house. “It was a present he gave me when I had finally proven myself worthy of protecting him, to the rest of the family, at least. My appointment was... a controversial one,” she expounded when Cindy raised an eyebrow. “I’m clearly not the most outwardly intimidating person you’ll ever meet, and most would argue that a sword shouldn’t stand a chance against firearms.”

“So, why do you use one then?”

Lila stared her straight in the face. “I’m just that good.” She wasn’t bragging, Cindy could tell, just stating a fact.

“Yeesh,” she gulped. “Remind me not to try to rob Niko in an alley.”

Lila frowned.

“That was a joke. I was joking.”

“Oh,” Lila blinked, before she started chuckling. “It was very funny.”

“Thanks.”

After that, they started to talk more often, about many things: Cindy’s witchcraft, Lila’s love of samurai movies. They both tried to stay away from the subject of their pasts, something Cindy was needless to say slightly sensitive about and Lila didn’t seem too keen on either. Still, Cindy did manage to pick up a few facts in passing: Lila had lived on the streets for several years until the Borozovs took her in after she saved Niko’s life. From what, Cindy could only guess.

It made Cindy feel a little strange whenever Lila talked about Niko. Not because it was them in particular, but because the way Lila talked about him, the way she seemed indebted to him, reminded Cindy of the other strange part of her life: Marcell. It sounded stupid, but in a way, Cindy knew how Lila felt. Hearing his stories had pulled her out of a dark place. In his own, unassuming way, he had shown her that she wasn’t alone.

Yet the more time she spent with him, the more it became not the stories that helped her, but the man himself. She liked his slightly curmudgeonly manner, and his dry wit. Most of all, she liked those rare, knowing smiles that he seemed to save just for her. And suddenly, one day the fact made itself known to her: she liked him.

Most people would have shook those feelings off, and shoved them in a box somewhere deep in the back of their minds. She was still a high school student, after all, and he was her teacher. But Cindy, of course, was not ‘most people’. She was eighteen, an adult capable of making her own choices, for good or ill, and physically, Marcell was only twenty. True, he often seemed older, the weight of centuries occasionally shown in his eyes. But at that point, what difference did it really make?

The objective truth was that Cindy liked Marcell, and like Lila, she wanted to do something to repay him for everything he’d done for her. But she couldn’t think of what to do. What could she do for a man who had seen and done almost everything?

“So, if you were going to give Niko a present, like for his birthday or whatever,” Cindy asked Lila one afternoon, “What would you give him?”

Lila merely smiled. “To be clear, we’re not actually talking about Niko, are we?”

“Uh, no,” Cindy glanced down at her feet, embarrassed.

“Hmm....” Lila looked up at the pale, blue sky for a moment, thinking. “In that case, I would give him something that only I know he wants. It would be... special that way.”

Something only she knew. Well, that was easy. Cindy knew a lot of things about Marcell that no one else did. But there didn’t seem to be anything he really wanted. Cindy followed Lila’s gaze up towards the sky. The wispy, white clouds seemed almost to chase each other upon the background of blue. She felt the sun on her face, and thought about how Marcell would often look out of the classroom window with a wistful expression, like he almost couldn’t remember what the sun felt like.

She had it. Cindy knew what she could give him. After thanking Lila for her help—who merely looked confused and blinked: “I did?”—Cindy ran towards the house and skated into the den, where she kept all of her supplies. She didn’t give the shelves packed with jars and insects and drying flowers a second glance, instead going straight to the old, leather bag where she kept the Liberis Decipis.

It had to be in here, she remembered seeing it just the other day, one of the Latin passages. Cindy once again thanked younger her for being wannabe hipster trash and opting to take Latin online instead of the usual French or Spanish. No, no, no... there. Yes. This was it. It would need some modification, and this elixir would be the most complicated, expensive thing she’d ever attempted. But she knew she could do it. She’d probably only be able to make it once, and it wouldn’t last very long, but it would be worth it. Cindy was going to give Marcell the sun.

“Niko...” she called, thumbing over the list of ingredients. “I’ve got a biiig order for you...”

~~ o ~~

It took her the better of two weeks to make the mixture, two long weeks of toiling every night in the den. Once, she even had to pull an all-nighter. Occasionally Niko—“Jesus, all this for some guy?”—or more often Lila, would come to keep her company. Yet most of the time the work required isolation, and so Cindy worked alone. She silently wished many times that she could overthink this. At least it would give her mind something to do.

But Cindy was objectively sure about her own feelings, and without those clouding her judgement, she could make a strong guess as to Marcell’s as well. Of all the people she had met, he was the hardest to read. Without her own perceptions getting in the way, she could often see what others were thinking and feeling, but she was no psychic, and Marcell was just so... ancient as to be almost unfathomable. The more time she spent with him, however, the more she was able to understand.

Finally, as the sun was just beginning to glow past the horizon on a chilly autumn morning, Cindy held up a small vial of orangeish-yellow liquid triumphantly. It glowed even brighter than the garnet she kept around her neck. But Cindy’s smile gleamed brighter that all of these things combined. It was time to give Marcell something that only she knew he wanted.

“What’s this?” He asked as she placed the vial on his desk that afternoon.

“This,” she grinned, “is something I’ve been laboring over for two weeks.”

A little coyly, he returned the smile. “Oh, is that why you’ve been falling asleep over the copier?”

“Very funny,” she said, sticking out her tongue. There was a pause. “Well, don’t you want to know what it does?”

“Sure. I’ll bite.”

Cindy took a deep breath, letting the tension build. “It’s a little something I like to call ‘Supernatural Sunscreen.’” Jazz hands punctuated most of the syllables.

“And that is...?” He looked vaguely amused.

“A concoction invented by yours truly that should allow you to go out in the sun without melting or whatever it is that you do.”

Marcell straightened, as if sure he was dreaming. “What?”

“It’ll only last for about four hours and Mars won’t be at the exact right angle to the sun to do it again for about another two-hundred years, but for the rest of the day, you could go outside.”

“And you spent the last two weeks making this... for me?”

“Yeah,” she shrugged. “I wanted to... thank you, I guess. You’ve done a lot for me this past month. And it’s not like I had anything better to do.

He shook his head. “Everything I’ve done for you? I just told you some stories and made you grade a bunch of quizzes.”

“No, it was more than that,” Cindy insisted. “You helped me realize that I’m not alone, that I’m not the only one who’s k...” but she couldn’t finish that sentence. “Never mind. Do you want it or not?”

“Yes,” he said, as she held it out. “Thank you.”

Cindy didn’t give it to him just yet. “But, if I give you this,” she raised an eyebrow, “I want just one thing.”

Marcell’s eyes narrowed playfully. “What’s that?”

A smile broke out across her face. “Ice cream.”

“Ice cream?”

“Yup. The good stuff from the Ede Creamery. Your treat.”

After pausing for a brief moment, Marcell’s smirk returned. “Alright. You’ve got yourself a deal.” He took the vial from her, and gingerly uncorked the top. The scent of citrus began to fill the classroom. “So I just drink it? And you’re sure this will work?”

Cindy nodded. “99% sure, at least.”

“Well, here’s mud in your eye.” He tipped his head back and downed the vial, then smacked his lips contemplatively. “That tasted... interesting. What was in it?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Fair enough.” Marcell glanced up at the clock: 3:30, school had been out for about a half an hour. Then he turned to the window, where the sun was peeking out from between the blinds.

“Are you ready?” Cindy asked gently.

“I think so.”

She grinned, marching towards the door. “Then onward to ice cream!” she cried, pointing dramatically.

“Ice cream ho...”

They walked towards the school’s large front doors silently, a few feet apart as the crowds of students jabbered away to each other on their way out the door. As the school began to empty around them, Cindy and Marcell stood just behind the glass doorway, out to the paved cement beyond.

Cindy waited patiently as Marcell steeled himself, then grabbed the door, and opened it. He jerked back instinctively, as the sun touched his hand, but much to his amazement—and Cindy’s relief—he did not burn. Slowly, as if he was wading into cold water, Marcell stepped out into the sun, and smiled.

It was the biggest, most genuine smile she’d ever seen him make, and Cindy’s heart expanded in her chest as she watched him tip his head back and close his eyes. She smiled back as she realized that she had made him smile like that, this ancient, unfathomable creature. It made her happier than she could possibly say.

“So, how does it feel?” she asked, joining him outside on that rare, sunny October day.

“Warm,” he replied after a moment. “I haven’t felt warm like this in almost two-thousand years.”

She shook her head. “I... can’t even imagine.”

“But, you wanted ice cream, yes?” He shook himself out of him dazed stupor, and held out an arm in his old-fashioned, gentlemanly sort of way. Smiling, Cindy took it. By now, the school was largely empty, and Cindy didn’t really care if the few stragglers saw them. Her reputation was down the toilet anyway. And regardless, nothing could ruin her mood right now.

The Ede Creamery, a local mom and pop ice cream parlor styled after those fifties pharmacies that still occasionally existed in out of the way spots, was just a short walk from the school, but it still took the two of them almost twenty minutes to get there. Cindy didn’t mind in the least. She was far too amused by the gormless grin which was slowly but surely spreading across Marcell’s face to care.

Cindy almost had to force him out of the sun for the two minutes it would take them to order, and even when they finally entered the small, bright parlor he stayed as close to the window as he could manage at all times.

“Well, hello dears,” the cheery, older woman smiled at them from behind stainless-steel countertop. She nodded as she took their order, then turned to the nearly bald man on the far end of the room. “Scott,” she called, “One bowl of espresso, and a salted caramel cone, please.”

“What’s that, Kate?”

Sighing, she rolled her eyes. “One bowl of espresso and a salted caramel cone,” she said, a bit louder.

The man nodded, and set about his rather slow way of making their ice cream.

“You got a bowl?” Marcell raised an eyebrow. “Where’ your sense of adventure?”

“Not on the floor, like yours’ll probably be,” she replied. “And besides, cones are kinda gross.”

He shrugged. “They have their certain, slightly mushy charm to them.”

Marcell paid for the ice cream and they thanked the old folks, who waved as they walked out the door. “Young couples like that are so sweet,” Cindy heard the old woman say. Neither of them bothered to correct her.

They walked slowly though the nearby park, talking about not much of anything and listening to the birds perched in the thin maples above their heads. Marcell almost lost his cone as he glanced away and the fading sun began to melt it. But he caught it at the last second, and they had a good laugh. “See,” Cindy admonished him gently, “this is why I got a bowl.”

Eventually, as the sun began to dip ever lower in the sky, Cindy and Marcell found a worn, wooden bench and sat to watch it set. Gradually, the space between them became smaller and smaller. After a brief few moments of silence, Cindy tentatively laid her head on his shoulder.

“Cindy,” he mumbled finally, “is this very appropriate?”

“I don’t really care.”

She felt him shrug beside her, and sigh. Then he gently placed his head on top of hers. They sat there like that for a long time, watching the sun sink behind the horizon. Cindy closed her eyes. This was... right. There was no other way to put it. She felt whole for the first time in... well, a great while, sitting here with Marcell, feeling him close to her. It was comforting.

“Are we really going to do this?” Marcell asked.

Cindy glanced up at him. “Why not? I’m eight-teen. And need I remind you that you are physically only twenty, old man.”

“But I’m your teacher.”

“Well yeah, technically,” she replied. “Does TAing really count, though?”

“You know, I’m not sure,” he admitted.

“And besides, I won’t be forever,” Cindy continued, following his gaze back to the last rays of the sun. “Your clock may be broken, but mine is still ticking. I won’t be young and beautiful forever, you know.”

Marcell laughed, but there was a bitter note behind it. “You’ve really thought this through, haven’t you?”

“I have.”

He turned to her then, and stared straight into her eyes. His mouth tightened, and he almost seemed to be fighting with himself, though his gaze was calm. “Can I kiss you then?” he asked finally.

“Please.”

And so, just as the sun slipped fully from view, continuing its ongoing journey to far-off shores and back again, they did.