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bigasswritingmagnet · 20 days ago

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Blood Will Out - Ch 7: The Spark

Summary: When Agatha Sannikova learns she is, in fact, Agatha Heterodyne, she inadvertently kicks off a series of events that reopens old wounds, drags secrets into the light, and brings war to the doorstep of the all but defenseless Mechanicsburg. Saturnus struggles to crush his enemies with a town almost as broken as his body; Agatha, determined to undo the chaos she's unleashed, plunges into the depths of Castle Heterodyne.

Raised by a literal saint and the devil incarnate, Agatha - with an unleashed mind, a burning spark, and a band of very unexpected allies - will fight to do the unthinkable: be a good Heterodyne and a good person.

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“Agatha.”

Crystalline structures whirled around her, colors shining and spinning, gears unfolding like flower petals.

“Agatha.”

The music had come back into the world, thrumming in her heart and her blood. Something that had been just out of reach was now nestled in the palm of her hand, and she could do anything—

“Agatha.”

Agatha snorted awake, head popping up off of her arms. She looked around blearily – her glasses were all smeared – to see Saturnus’ amused smile. Her brow furrowed.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. She looked around again and, yes, she was still in her bedroom. “How did you get up the stairs?”

“You tell me,” he said cheerfully. “You’re the one who built it.”

Agatha sat up, took off her glasses, rubbed her eyes and shook her head hard, forcing herself to wake up fully. Scrubbing her glasses quickly on her shirt, she pushed them back onto her nose.

She had fallen asleep at her desk because there was no room for her anywhere else. Her room was a catastrophe of clockwork and tools, scattered in drifts on her desk and bed and floor. Saturnus was sitting on the floor, propped up against her chest of drawers. His wheelchair was in front of him, tipped over on its side.

And it wasn’t a wheelchair anymore.

It had legs.

Eight spidery, bronze legs, sharp-tipped and each half as thick as Agatha’s forearm. Four on each side, connecting to the base of the chair on either side of a small glass dome that flickered with blue-white light. The dawn sunlight skated back and forth across the sturdy metal panels as the legs twitched, curling and uncurling.

“It was the funniest thing,” Saturnus said cheerfully. “There I am, fast asleep, when something hops onto my bed and starts jabbing me in the face. I open my eyes, and I see these little fellows driving the most interesting device.”

Agatha leaned over to see past the chair contraption, and her mouth fell open. A team of six pocket-watch clanks scurried around like ants, gathering up discarded scraps, laying out spools of wire beside Saturnus, hustling tools in and out of reach.

“You built my dingbots!” she gasped.

Saturnus burst out laughing.

“I didn’t build a damn thing!” he exclaimed. He gestured around himself. “I was just tidying up, to make sure it won’t dump me in the river if a wire comes loose. Not to say you didn’t do a good job. It’s marvelously well done for your first big project – and in your sleep, too!”

He wagged the screwdriver at her playfully.

“And you saying you don’t think you’re a proper Heterodyne.”

It had been almost a week since Agatha had worn the locket. Never had her mind felt so clear. It was as if she could finally open her eyes all the way. Is this what it could have been like, all her life? Without even the slightest twinge of pain, she could look at the chair legs and see places it could be improved.

Now that it was laid out before her as a real creation, she knew eight legs would not be nearly enough for the kind of stability she wanted it to have. It needed more, lots more, perhaps arranged in a circle. She wasn’t at all sure it would be able to manage a hill as steep as the one leading up to the castle – no, it was far too easy to imagine those pointed tips skidding on the paving stones…

Agatha met Saturnus’ eyes, and his smile slipped away. He reached up to her, and Agatha rose from her desk to sit beside him. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and kissed her forehead.

“You think I should wear it, don’t you?”

“I do,” he admitted. “I’ve spent the last week trying to find a way around it, and I can’t come up with anything that doesn’t risk attracting Klaus’ attention. And if we have Klaus’ attention, we have everyone else’s attention.”

Agatha’s throat went tight.

“But I don’t want to,” she whispered. “I don’t want to be an idiot again.”

“I know,” he said, pulling her into a tight hug. “I know, I know. But never fear, my little hellion,” he said. “We’ll get through it. Heterodynes always do.”

A gasp from the doorway jerked her back, and she looked up to see Teodora standing there, pale and open-mouthed. Agatha felt the anger and betrayal and resentment flare in her chest...but the hatred was not quite so white-hot now.

“Look at this!” Saturnus exclaimed to his wife. “In her sleep! It walked me right up the stairs!”

Teodora said nothing, but her mouth closed. Her eyes flicked around the room, taking it all in.

“Don’t worry,” Saturnus said reassuringly. “I’ve got it all worked out. We’ll just tell people I did it.”

“I—” Agatha began. Teodora left the room without a word. Agatha flinched and curled in on herself.

“She’s not mad at you,” Saturnus said reassuringly. “She’s afraid.”

“I am not afraid,” Teodora said, striding back into the room. She had the locket in her hand, but she did not hold it out to Agatha. Instead, Teodora stepped carefully through the debris, tossed the locket onto the desk, picked up a discarded hammer, and brought it up over her head and down onto the locket as hard as she could.

It shattered, the case stoving inwards to pierce through the delicate internal mechanisms, sending shards flying.

No one spoke. Even the dingbots had gone still. The only sound in the room was Teodora’s heavy breathing and the zzt zzt of sparking, severed wires.

“I,” she said, “have been dreaming of that for the last seven years.” She turned and offered the hammer to Agatha, smiling brightly. “Would you like a go? It’s very cathartic.”

“What the hell are you doing?” Saturnus exclaimed.

“The locket was to stop Agatha from breaking through,” Teodora said. Agatha tried to determine if there was some thread of mania in her cheerful tone, but couldn’t find anything but genuine pleasure. “Agatha has broken through. Taking it off hasn't done any harm. Therefore, the locket is no longer a viable option.”

“You don’t know that!” Saturnus said. “We don’t know that! For all we know it could have been designed to tamp the spark back down!”

“Mm, shame there’s no way to find out now,” Teodora said breezily, tossing the hammer onto the desk. “You said yourself you’d need to fix the castle if she won’t wear the locket. You can get some of the local monsters to help you fend off the security features the castle has no control over—”

“I said that before I knew she was going to break through!” Saturnus interrupted. “There is no hiding a Spark! We can say I built the chair, but how are we going to blame it on me when she starts building a death ray in chemistry class?”

Agatha frowned. “I wouldn’t have the necessary parts to build a death ray in the chemistry labs—”

“You know what I mean!”

“Agatha will be taking a little sabbatical after what happened.”

“I am?”

“Of course. A little rest, and there’s always the workshop out back.”

Agatha could see, despite himself, Saturnus was beginning to waver.

“Well…” he said, rubbing his chin. “I suppose if we're careful there might not be too much harm in it…"

Agatha hesitated. “I’m still mad,” she said to Teodora, whose smile turned sad.

“You have every right to be. I—”

Someone began to bang on the front door, a loud and insistent pounding that intended, perhaps demanded, to be heard.

“Ah, that’ll be Herr Müller, I expect,” Saturnus said dryly. “He’ll probably want payment. These things were still coming in and out through the letter flap with supplies when I came up here.”

“What!” Agatha yelped, shooting to her feet. “I never told them to steal anything!” She recalled that she did not actually remember doing any of this, and amended, “I’m sure I wouldn’t do that.”

“If I had to guess,” Saturnus said with a grin, “you told them to go get you this and that, and did not specify from whence such items should be obtained.”

Agatha hid her face in her hands. “Oh…” she groaned.

“You’ll learn,” Saturnus said, cheerfully patting her on the knee. “Now!” he said, excitedly. “Watch this.”

Saturnus pulled the chair upright. The legs clattered and shifted as they reset themselves, then bent down low until the seat itself was almost touching the ground. Saturnus turned himself around so his back was to it. He gripped the arms of the chair and with a grunt, pushed himself up and back, into the seat.

Agatha could see now that the arms of the chair were much thicker than they had been before, no doubt to make room for the various mechanisms within. On the left side, a single dial marked up and down; on the right, what looked like the very top of a small bronze globe, deeply inset in the arm.

It was far too simple – it needed more settings, things that could be changed to adjust to different environments and obstacles. Sharper tips for ice in winter, more deliberate movements for navigating cobblestones...

Twisting the little dial, Saturnus brought the chair up off the ground. It stood a little taller than the wheelchair had, bringing his head level with Agatha’s shoulder.

“It works,” Agatha whispered.

“It does!” Saturnus said, beaming. Sliding his fingers over the inset globe, he guided the chair to circle Agatha, the pointed ends of the legs tapping against the wooden floor. No smoke, no sparks, no juddering, no exploding. The pistons were a little loud, and the movements could stand to be smoother, and there were so many ways it could be improved but...but it worked. It functioned.

Agatha felt dizzy, almost detached from her own body. She’d built something that worked! She’d had an idea and she’d built it and it did exactly what she wanted it to do. What about all the other ideas she’d had that hadn’t worked? All the clocks and clanks and—and the schoolwork, too! She would finally be able to show them, and she would! She’d show them all—!

The pounding on the door came again, louder. Teodora sighed and headed down the stairs.

“Oh dear. He does sound very upset.”

“Heh. Can’t be worse than Barry’s breakthrough,” Saturnus said, following her.

“Lord, yes. It took days to put the cathedral’s clock back together.”

“We still haven’t found all the pieces. Wait, wait!” he said suddenly. “Go to the bottom of the stairs, both of you.”

Obediently, Agatha and Teodora did so, then turned back up to watch Saturnus, who brought the chair up to the very first step, and stopped.

“Are you sure it’s safe?” Agatha asked warily. They were long past the point where things normally went wrong, but from experience, Agatha knew the longer it took whatever she’d built to explode, the worse it would be.

“I got up here, didn’t I?”

Saturnus swiveled the chair to face right and began to descend the stairs sideways, crablike. The legs on the higher stairs bent low, the legs on the low stairs stretched higher, and Saturnus was barely off balance as the chair carried him carefully, though not particularly gracefully, to the ground floor.

“It really does work,” Agatha breathed. Saturnus took Agatha’s face in his hands.

“You, my dear, are a gift. And a better present I could not ask for.”

Agatha’s heart swelled and her eyes burned. She’d helped. She loved him and she’d wanted to build him something and she had and it was wonderful.

“I—”

This time, the pounding at the door continued, unceasing, one long steady bam bam bam bam bam that made the door shudder on its hinges.

“I’m coming, Herr Müller!” Teodora called.

She had barely turned the latch and the doorknob before the door was shoved hard towards her, and Tarvek Sturmvoraus shoved his head and one arm through the gap in the door.

“Tarvek?”

“Agatha!” he cried. “We have to get you out of here!”

#agatha heterodyne #saturnus heterodyne #teodora vodenicharova #girl genius #grandfather saturnus au

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