Chapter I - Sword and Shield

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IamLEAM1983
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Chapter I - Sword and Shield

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December 2024

Thirty years without incident.

Not everyone kept a calendar or a countdown, but some people in Hope thought there was some amusement, or even some level of scientific interest, in keeping track of the length of the periods of slumber the local Nexus exuded. Some did it just for fun. For Mayor Wallace Doherty, this wasn't fun. It was a ritual sacrifice of sorts; another year of peace slain at the altar of mundane existence. Almost without fail, end-of-year celebrations tended to end with the local newscasters and personalities wishing everyone a happy new year, as well as another “good” one.

Implying, of course, that those years that saw new potential arise in previously mundane DNA and that allowed undead to stir and the Fae to cross the city's thresholds in greater numbers were somehow bad.

Generally, the Centennial Tree slept in full bursts. The previous one hadn't been disturbed by little hiccups or burps of power, but the last year had shown minute signs of increase in the city's via coverage. The Tree had been tossing and turning, in essence. The residents of the reservations outside of town, the descendents of the local Wampanoag, tended to think that the Tree was dreaming up new superhumans and singing lullabies to the sleeping vampires. The old shaman of legend, Samoset, had drawn on the region's pool of arcane energies to power the Buck family's curse. With the Tree asleep, the curse had lessened for the time being. Zeb Buck could hold onto more energy without needing to discharge excess levels, while Silas Robertson used peacetime as an occasion to work a pleasing mundane craft and pursue his own research in relative peace. The existing mages fell back onto theory and research, and for these three decades, the world belonged to the industrial and technological pioneers.

Thirty years. An entire lifetime for some, a ripple in the pool of Time to others. A lot had happened, no matter what your perspective was. Doherty had to contend with dragons, now, vampires and theriomorphs. Most of everyone still said Shape-shifter, but biology had shown that there were about forty different ways Nature and Magic had found to go from a humanoid form to an animal one. It was largely inaccurate, so people fell back onto individual labels. Words like selkie, mermaid, finperson, werewolf, werebear and many others.

Elysium and the Vienna Accords had changed everything. Before Matthias d'Aubignier and his shocking televized confession, however, there had been the dissolution of the Romanov line and the twilight of the British Empire. Even before the Strange and the Weird had stopped being weird and strange, there had been aliens and people whose souls were supported by mechanical constructs. No matter if the latest models employed cutting-edge robotics technologies and electronic assistance, people still called them Clanks. Clattering and pinging men and women of steel, iron, wood and copper who'd taken a plunge with the world's first commercially available shot at immortality.

Even in the most tranquil of all mundane years, there were callbacks to the Strange, the Weird. To whatever it was that Wallace's old colleagues couldn't face on their own. For a long while, frenzying vampires of the live persuasion couldn't be reasoned with. They were shot down; killed like rabid dogs. The mundane years did bring about the first few tentative forms of human augmentation, however, with powered suits first being developed. With the urging of the Karthian refugees, implants followed shortly thereafter. Neil Armstrong's year had been quickly shadowed by alien technology being allowed to bolster native progress. From the one small step for man to Armstrong Station, only twenty years had been necessary. Jim Morrisson hadn't even died that the International Space Station was up and running.

An entire lifetime.

Wallace's biggest surprise had been finding people who could relate with his sense of time, even if their age numbered in the thousands of years. Old Faustus, who still insisted on being called Cordatus, had been able to look at the first trip to Gilese with that long, knowing, and yet completely amazed look he himself so often had when considering the world. The old dragon could look at Challenger blowing up and shake his head, the high count of his years seemingly meaning nothing to his poignant sense of humanity. For every immortal that confirmed all the stereotypes about power-players and pathological schemers, he'd found there were dozens who went through their eternities one day at a time. People who would live to maybe see the next phase in continental drift but who still cursed in the morning, when their alarm clock didn't go off on time and left them scrambling to reach their train.

In some ways, Gregory Rendell could be credited for bringing about a rebirth of sorts. Before Elysium, technological and social developments had slowed to a crawl. The Russians had given up everything they had. Every scrap of tech, every technique. In the end, Earth's newest batch of refugees – the Drifters – would end up providing more than last-minute offensive power and defensive capabilities. Their disparate and slap-dash technical know-how quickened Terran industry, nearly calcified hydroponic, engineering and cybernetics knowledge bases plundered for all their worth by hungry – nay, starving – minds who still had so many problems to solve...

Deserts bloomed in these thirty years. Shantytowns turned into corporate campuses for the lifelong employees of the Indian and Taiwanese subsidiaries of the world's largest powers in biotech. Habitats that were considered lost began to see hope once more. Ion seeding and geothermal management had both been used to keep Paradise's forests growing, and on Earth, they turned the blasted wastes of Gobi and Atacama into a faint shade of green. Floating neighbourhoods became moored to the shores of places like San Francisco and the Japanese coast; the Jewel of the Yangtze saw other cities being raised from nothing along the river's streams. The largest holes in the ozone layer were healed.

If you talked to certain people, you had the sense that the world had evolved in a pleasantly slow manner, two hundred years ago. There used to be a time where the strangest thing you could expect to see involved a flotilla of balloon-assisted air carriers or maybe spring-operated machines shaped like men – but now, everything could be changed. The genetic code could he rearranged and rewritten the way a clumsy novelist's botched attempt could be hacked apart, and DNA itself now resided in thumb drivers that could double as heavy-load content servers. From 2015 to 2022, the computing industry had gone past the terabyte mark and released teraflop hard drives. There was so much data to the Web that this non-space had almost turned organic – alive, in a sense. Content was pushed to you even before you'd decide whatever it was you desired. There was a genie in the Web's bottle, so to speak, and many were advocating for the right to research this further. Twenty years ago, the Web had been a space where his cousins' children browsed for memes and cat pictures. Now it was an information-based sludge made up of the absolute best and worst of Humanity's total creative and intellectual endeavours. A protein soup made up of ones and zeroes, quickned into shape with every search query, every added page, every message sent and email received.

Throughout all of this, however, Wallace remembered one of the pillars of the Fae community expressing concern. Sir Percival of Evergloam sensed tension in the night air, some dark undercurrent that ran in the wake of all the enthusiasm, the hopes and dreams, the opportunities of migrant workers turning into native and appreciated taxpayers and idea merchants.

Some said the Fae would one day be freed of the Bane. Others said Humanity would soon be free to exist in an emancipated state, freed of all the needs and wants of the mortal condition. Implants would soon eliminate hunger, banish thirst and death, heal wounds faster than they could be created – or so Raymond Kurzweil's disciples thought.

The concept of the Universal Constructor was partly a Karthian and human one – a man or woman with the power to reshape the entire world according to their unique whims. A man-made god in flesh and blood. Some people saw this technologically prophesized being coming in the near future, others pushed it into the far-flung future of Earth existing as merely one planet across a galaxy-spanning empire.

The One Percent now counted vampires and dragons in its midst, even with the restrictive measures put in place by the Accords. Greedy bankers never quite learning from the past crashes, the industry attempted to feed off these millennial fortunes. The middle and lower classes were left eating crow in the housing department. Retirement packages became worthless. Understandably, people lashed out. Anonymous now routinely tried to bring down places like Tanner and Associates and Wyvern Securities. If you were antediluvian, rich, powerful and influential, people hated you and sometimes went as far as to try and kill you.

The people Wallace had spent his years defending and representing occasionally suffered for it. They also sometimes benefited from it. Not every immortal was a craven bastard out to acquire more for the sake of having more. Hope would come to know of a few cases like this – immortals with a fortune in compassion and millions in acquired gratitude.

Still, for every silver lining, the dark clouds still loomed overhead. Hope's own Viscount looked back to the mainland the way only he could, peering back into Faerie while still being in the mortal plane. Over there, across the Hillard, an inky and cold blackness amassed behind the watchtowers. Mab's forces were on the move, and Lady Eirean could sense that the world's trepidation wasn't just giddy hope for the future given flesh and blood – it was an unconscious act of preparedness. The city's arcane immune system was coaxing the right minds along, Sophia being the only one privy to the surges of gentle urging and concern ebbing and flowing from the Tree's roots. It knew what was coming, and it was sending its silent voice out through via and inspiration. To the mayor, that tension and that sense of urgency were both difficult to ignore.

There was only one question remaining in the minds of most of those who were concerned.

When would the Tree awaken?

* * *

May 3rd, 2025
“Alvarez, six o' clock! SIX O' CLOCK, AL; SIX!”

No answer, except the sound of his own bullets ripping into flesh that was impossibly located right behind him. He'd aimed at the bearded and blind Afghan man, only to find that his bullets went nowhere. Nowhere, it turned out, except right around him and into Carlos Alvarez's vest, pushed into a speed sufficient to treat the suit's Kevlar like cheesecloth.

Heat. Sunlight. The odd, wavering shadows of some of the empty-eyed villagers. The gaping maw of the hillside caverns. Rocks and dust and orange-red soil. Blood. Fluids that were too dark to be blood, too. He faintly recalled one of the villagers bleeding green,
crème de menthe spilling out onto the sand.

Anger and fear seizing him in an iron grasp. His lungs are seized and he sees red. The old man's boulder is stopped and hurled back at him as he screams at the top of his lungs. Blood gushes out of his nostrils and his head pounds like a marching band. Akira. He briefly remembers a Japanese animated movie he'd seen as a kid; Tetsuo's power twisting him, his arm turning monstrous.

In the dream, Aidan reaches for the back of his head as a soft, squishing sound follows the sensation of ripping flesh. A spider made out of brain matter scuttles down onto the back of his hand, tiny human eyes on top of stalks looking out to him. A voice buzzes in his head, but he can't make out what it says. All he knows is he is afraid. Terrified. If he doesn't scream now, if he doesn't breathe now, he'll die.

If he doesn't -


The shrill beeps of the alarm clock put an end to terror and rob him of the chance to scream. He's never gone that far, but it doesn't stop Aidan Drake from drenching his covers in sweat. He feels a dull throb at the base of his neck that spiders out into the crevices at the front of his mind. Dehydrated again.

7:30 AM. There's work to be done. Aidan scuttles downstairs quick as can be, not even sparing a quick hello to his sister and parents. The thirst comes first. A water bottle is snagged as Dawn Drake drops French toast into Sarah's plate, giving her eldest a look of concern.

“You having those dreams again?
- Ugh, yeah. It's probably nothing. Gus dragged me out for a pizza slice after our shift yesterday, and he figured he'd make a malt shake out of it, too. Vanilla and peperroni just don't mix, but it's not like he gives a shit, right? He's a Clank.
- He could still think he's got a stomach ache,” suggested Aidan's mother. “I kinda agree, though; it's not exactly fair. I mean, I have to tough it out at the health club four times a week just to fight back our hamburger nights on Fridays, and you've got folks with brass bellies who just pig out until their ghost of a liver decides it's had enough. When it does.”

Sarah looked up from her tablet and briefly wrinkled her nose. “Don't be too harsh on Aidan's boss, mom. If anything, the only thing his being a Clank means is the city saves on one retirement plan. Gus basically is a walking hedge trimmer, so there's like, zero upkeep needed. It's not like his armature was designed with all the lifelike bells and whistles. Plus, Goliath redoes whatever parts he'd break on the cheap. If he can't pay for that, it isn't like we don't all know someone with a Maker Bot and some molten plastic, right?
- Right. Like that Olsen boy? The one who made you that torus paperweight two years ago?”

Sarah grimaced lightly. “Uh, yeah. I mean, he was kinda nice but – you've got Karthians in your classes, right, mom?
- I do,” agreed Dawn,“but the purebloods aren't really subscribing for the sake of exploring their bodies or natural inclinations towards dance or gymnastics. They're all more interested in the kinetics of it all, how force and inertia are transferred from limb to limb while you're moving. They don't see choreographies as things that have meaning, they're things that have to be maximized, tailored to carry the maximum impact in the smallest time frame.”

Gavin looked up from his newspaper feed. “So, no Grayskin Billy Elliots, I take it?”

That seemed to brighten Aidan's mood a bit, enough for him to laugh aloud. The idea of a dancing Karthian practically didn't make sense. Practically. Three remembered his father talking about a fundraiser from a few years back in which he'd operated as a security consultant. Anastasius Romanov had surprised just about no-one with how he'd monopolized the Greenvale's dance floor during a tango routine, taking the comparatively small Eirean McHale into a surprisingly well executed routine. Maybe being able to feel was somehow a requirement – being able to process beats as something more than measures to be matched with movements from the body.

The son looked to his father after guzzling his bottle of spring water. “What's up for today, dad?
- Nothing much,” replied Gavin, “Tomorrow's going to be the week's motherlode. I'm reviewing plans for the collection's unveiling at the Firebird with Nigel today, going over transportation arrangements with WySec's guys. If I come back looking pissed off, that's because Spearhead's going to be my vis-à-vis.”

Gavin sighed. “I hate that guy.
- Why?
- As much good as he's done for the Chimeras with the Governor, that guy has a stick in his ass something fierce. The Elysium freaks coded him so he'd be all about pride and honor and righteousness and all that crap, when he isn't much more than a security guy for some kind of – militarized financial investment portfolio with claws and scales who goes against any schmoe with two centuries over the statistical average.”

Three shrugged. “Yeah, mister Griffin's talked about him, but he seemed pretty confident.
- Sure, he would,” replied Gavin, a bit of a sarcastic and vaguely fond smile playing on his lips. “I mean, he's been my boss for the last thirteen years, for one. Second, the guy's freaking invisible. Hong Kong's old Spec Ops Aug nutcases could raid Grif's office like it's Elysium all over again that they wouldn't hit the broad side of a barn.
- I thought he couldn't cheat thermoptics,” replied Aidan with a frown, taking his father's joke too literally. That prompted a loving scoff and an eye roll from his father. The point obviously was that there wasn't much Spearhead would be able to do to the Drake family's main source of income, no matter if his high-strung sensibilities took offence at the idea of collaborating with a former thief.

An angel passed. “You sure you don't want me to give Nigel a call, Aid? I could get you to keep an eye on the techs in one of the divisions, you know. The pay's good and you'd give Grif a good impression. Considering how Command shafted you, I think you should try and garnish your resume pretty quickly. You're not that same fresh-faced young twentysomething that left home for some hellhole. A track record like yours looks sketchy once you hit thirty without much in the way of previous job experiences-”

Three rolled his eyes and grunted. “I told you Dad, I'm fed up of being someone else's watch dog. I was for a full tour of duty and that's it. I'm done. I'm back in college starting September, I've got this landscaping thing going on even though yes, the boss hates my fucking ass, and I'm not laying about around the house like back when most of the shit went down in the press. House arrest, this is not.
- Well, you kept talking about finding a chance to prove the world wrong. I'm giving you one. You're being remembered for a tour of duty in Afghanistan, kid. Do you really think burying yourself in seeds and fertilizer and talking sports and literature with the local dryad is really going to change that? You're turtling. You need to pick something solid, son. Something decisive. The city won't forgive you – unlike us – if you don't try and live up to your claims of innocence by doing something right.”

That seemed to light dark little fires in Three's eyes. “So it's about forgiveness, now? I have to crawl on my belly and lick Nigel's feet so the country thinks I'm not some dodgy freak who jumped sideways when the train to Chimera Row came calling?! Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence, Dad! This is exactly why I'd rather plant ferns with a boozy old Clank who spends half his shifts asleep in the minivan. This is exactly why I'd rather survive right past minimum wage and not give Andrew Maley the esteemed honor of pasting my face on another edition by virtue of staying off the social grid. This is exactly why I'd rather fade into your average mass of college kids and baby mages!”

Sarah tensed as she ate her French toast. “Yay, morning funtimes at Swiss Family Drake...” she muttered, deciding she'd better stare at her congealing blobs of maple syrup than risk looking at her brother.

Three shook his head. “Forget it, you never really understood, anyway.”

That made Gavin sputter and look well and truly away from his newspaper, eyes wide. “How the Hell am I supposed to understand my son sprouting TK abilities while on a Kabul tour, huh?! How am I supposed to understand that you lifted a five hundred-pound boulder with your mind and that you crushed some old guy with it because he was driving your entire squad insane? You could have come up with a dozen explanations about those scars on your neck that would have made sense! You could tell the truth-!”

Three's hairs stood up almost literally. His forearms produced little pops of audible static electricity – and everyone's plates, utensils and dispensed foods very gently rose off from the table. Anger and frustration rolled off of him in waves, the metal utensils soon quivering ominously for all of five seconds...

A single pearl of blood peeked out from one of Three's nostrils, only to be sniffed back in. That marked the end of the TK display. Everything clattered back against the table in a noisy and slightly messy manner.

Three's voice was white by now. Tired, emotionally exhausted. “How many times will I need to tell you, Dad? I'm telling the truth. Every day and all damn day, for every second since I've been back here – I'm telling the fucking truth. You've seen the shrink reports and the tests. You've seen it all. I'm sane, Dad. I'm sane, and I'd rather be batshit crazy than have to endure another day like this. But I keep going. How, I don't even fucking know. I just do.”

He transferred his eyes to Dawn. “Don't bother packing breakfast for me, I'll hit some donut spot with Gus.”

He stormed back upstairs, presumably to get changed in the green jumpsuit his job required.

Precinct 24

The buzzing sounds of the recharging module's Jacob's Ladder could be heard in the room located farthest from the cell blocks. Inside, Mike Callahan was plugged in, his head lightly shaking as his consciousness emerged from the night's sleep. As his sleek and slightly scratched metal eyelids parted, the buzzing stopped.

He was a Tesla Clank, assembled in the thirties after Alfonzo Bizzi's last living heist. He'd had the honor of landing the killing blow that had ended the career of the Sicilian capo's reign, with the cost of his own life. Thinking back on his re-emergence and rehab, it was hard for him not to think of Archibald Holden, who'd more or less been the go-to Clank for any and all new armature owners.

He'd been a Mickey, much like everyone else from Renton who'd grown up in Jimmy Winters' shadow. Where his playmates and classmates gyrated around the elderly practitioner, he'd always preferred the safety of having a badge. Winters' boys sometimes landed tough talk about how all Sons of Erin had to stick together, but Michael hadn't been brought up to think of his background's storied famines and historically significant sufferings as an excuse to defy the law. He wasn't dumb, either. The HPD had needed someone with personal connections “on the inside”, but he'd proved to be too much of a cop to be suited for undercover work. If anything, his Irish temperament had made one Hell of a stubborn cop out of him.

After dying, he'd spent weeks heckling Seamus Mac Loch, getting the water dragon to understand that he wasn't ready to stop just yet. He'd fallen in love with the beat, the occasional peals of danger and the pleasant evenings spent slurping coffee with honest folk. In the end, Mertown's captain had needed to hire a Diviner to make sure that Renton's best cop in the midst of the Roaring Twenties and Thirties was really at the other end of the line, and that he was up for what was ahead.

Impatient, Mike had retorted by driving all of the typewriters in Mertown's police station crazy, all of them typing YES over and over. You could say he couldn't have been faulted for being unclear as a ghost.

From the bony and freckled face he'd shown and the arrogant shock of red hair, he found himself looking at an Art Deco cousin to Archie's armature in the mirror. He was all polished steel and chrome now, with Leyendecker-worthy facial features and tighter facial joints that left his expressions flowing faster and with more precision than what the celebrated British Clank could produce. From the browns and greens he'd worn as a member of the living, blacks, charcoals, slate greys, reds and blacks now made up most of his wardrobe, the perfectly sculpted suggestion of parted hair always perfectly peeking out from underneath his carefully angled fedora. He was literally the only cop in town who could still get away with two-tone dress shoes and zoot suits – and he never failed to make the most of it.

He stuck closer to the criminal underworld than most other DTs, to the point where he'd insisted for his recharging station to be set down in the basement, near the pokeys – as he still called them. The useful part of it all was that three nights out of five, he fell asleep to the conspiratorial whispers of the schmoes in Lockup, which sometimes allowed him to pick up a few interesting tidbits. What was troubling, lately, was how the Commission didn't seem to be aware of what its smaller members were doing. Goons and previously laid-back muscle who'd lacked ambition were negotiating the purchase and sale of various Fae and terrestrial artifacts, accumulating impressive power stores little by little.

He wasn't a mage, but he knew that even the smallest amounts of stored via could eventually amount to a lot. A magicked thimble here, taken from Evangeline Buck's former belongings. An old set of Amazo's cufflinks, soaked through with residual arcane power there. Shoes that once had belonged to the Voice, Hope's celebrated gentleman thief.

Individually, these objects amounted to nothing. Move trinkets around in sufficient volumes, however, and a picture starts to form. Someone is requiring power for the express purpose of selling it back. He'd been on the case for three weeks, now, and still had no idea who that might be. With some of the elements from Nigel Griffin's Mirror Gallery being exposed at the Firebird – essentially out in public – for the first time in decades, he was convinced the perps would try and seize this golden opportunity. The Voice had stolen dangerous artifacts from contentious would-be practitioners several times before, already. Some had been entrusted to Amazo's Shadow Gallery, others had been kept with the invisible man's own stash.

He'd gone over half of the collection, last night, before his battery alarm and his own sense of tiredness had driven him back downstairs. All he knew is that Wyvern had been tapped for security and that Griffin had one of his own men he could depend on. Gavin Drake, a former USMC Major, had recycled himself as a security consultant after retiring. The guy looked solid, that much was obvious. Family man, storied ties to the city – the Drakes were maybe one or two marriages short of belonging in with the Winters gang, but their heritage had always been more Norse than Irish.

They were Celts, that much was obvious, but not in the same sense that Mike had Celtic roots. He was Irish; the Drakes had more in common with the Picts that had once existed on the other side of Hadrian's Wall. They'd followed along during the Potato Famine, but alleigiances to the Isle or to Albion meant nothing to them. The Drakes were loyal to wherever their home stood, and their home had been Hope for the last five generations.

Of course, there was one recent blemish in the family tree. Aidan, troubled son of Gavin Drake, who'd come back from a stint in Afghanistan with tall tales that would have made him salivate if he'd still been a teenager reading Weird Tales compulsively. The kid was surviving, not exactly looking to maximize his resume – could he have snapped and figured out that petty theft was a good way to ply the skills he'd learned? If that was an angle Mike intended to pursue, a lot of ground work still had to be done. The locals still liked to tsk whenever the Drake boy was brought up as a conversation piece, but the fact was that no tangible evidence had ever been brought up to suggest homicidal or criminal behavior.

The Clank nodded hello to a few other plainclothes officers and headed for the coffee maker. Nope, this was just another case of the shoe fitting eerily well even if it hadn't ever been worn...
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Re: Chapter I - Sword and Shield

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It was seven-thirty in the morning, in glorious Sandhill of Hope's Silverbrook borough. Tam Zainall stared up at the ceiling of her brand new battered studio, pinched the bridge of her absent nose, and sighed.

The couple upstairs had *finally* called it quits somewhere around one in the morning, the boy next door had been gaming until three, and sunrise came far too soon in a building that had been built before switch-on privacy screens were a Thing. But here she was, all moved in, starting that Grand Journey of Independent Adulthood in the Big City.

And doesn't that sound like the films in Health Class and the guidance counselor's speeches at the end of senior year when it was too late to do anything different.

Tam hauled herself upright, making vague calculations of types and amounts of insulation versus the space it would have to fill as she stretched and moved off the just-barely-long-enough mattress. She could take care of both with either some carefully discreet construction work, or, if it was really necessary, by putting the fear of God into certain persons. You knew it was bad when she could hear them without her earrings in to amplify the ambient soundwaves for her- but it was what had suited her needs. There were better places, better neighborhoods, but until she had a solid job, she was going to play it smart and take the best bargain that didn't have actual bullet holes or mold, and just tough out the rest of it.

I'm not in Bumfuck, Nowhere anymore, and I can make it above-board and without running to Aunty Esk to solve my problems. Look out, world. This little Drifter-girl is on her way...

Bathroom, stretches, the quick set of isometric exercises that kept her form solid when she had nothing else to work with. She moved through the single-room apartment with careful grace, avoiding the few possessions she'd been able to ship to this address or take with on her bike, and which still almost filled the place. At last clad in a set of jeans and a leather jacket, Tam emerged from the apartment she was almost too big for, paused to set the locks, and was out the door and gone.

Down below, her bike was resting against the curb in the open street parking. Unharmed, unspoiled, unmarked- everything in its place.

Despite the inadequate morning, a real smile crept over the young Drifter-woman's face, and her hands went to the controls as she mounted up, pressing certain pads just so, so that the Paradise-salvaged biometrics would recognize the only permitted rider and let her head out to hunt for food and start really exploring.
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Re: Chapter I - Sword and Shield

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It was 7:30 in the morning, and the McConmara twins were finishing up their morning routine. A hearty meal of garlic shrimp and cheesy grits had been shared. They were both now getting dressed.

Ciaran pulled on a cotton t-shirt and a durable pair of jeans, slipping steel-toe boots over white socks. After high school, he had worked a job for his father, Cole, at his salvage shop. He had helped customers pick out the right vintage hardware or the suitable beams they wanted to complete a house project. A couple more jobs followed, but he had spent the past four years working as a dockworker.

Some people would have been unhappy with this sort of occupation, but not him. Yes, it was a hard work, but he was valued for his honesty and work ethic. He earned a decent paycheck; it allowed him to live happily. That was all he wanted.

Packing his lunch quickly, he told his sister goodbye and headed out the door.

As for his sister, she didn't have far to go for her job. Her tattoo and piercing shop was just downstairs, the place she considered her art studio. It wasn't a traditional place of creativity filled with easels, paints or other tools, but it made her more of an income in comparison to other artists who had to wait to be discovered.

Aislinn laced up the sides of her corset tee and slipped on a pair of black jeans. She put on her boots and then walked down to her workplace. The lights went on and the closed sign was turned to open. All she had to was wait for her living canvases to walk through the door.

***

A pair of peep-toe heels clacked lightly against the sidewalk that led up to a fashion boutique. The little bell dinged as Neasa entered her workplace. "Good morning, Skye," she called to her manager.

"Good morning, Neasa. If you'd be a dear, could you please start putting up that display in the front window?" she requested.

"Sure!" she responded, opening the door to the front window. She began arranging the mannequins and placing clothes on them.

The selkie stood out from her two younger siblings, as her career path was quite different from the typical selkie's. Dockworkers were a fairly common profession, and tattoo artists were a respected in their culture. She had taken on a much more urban lifestyle in contrast to the one she had lived on her family's cozy houseboat. The locals of Mertown would shake their heads at the career woman; they thought she was losing touch with her roots. On the contrary, she viewed her job as a natural extension of her people. Selkies had always tried to blend in with the surrounding city; this was just a 21st century version of that.

***

When the Centennial Tree emitted via, it communicated in a faint hum of power that only its dryad could hear. Its current message was one of preparation, preparation against threats on the horizon. The Tree's guardian knew it was giving birth to new superhumans and would wake vampires from their deep, decades-long slumber. It was the calm before the storm, so to speak. The peaceful silence might go on for several weeks, or it could happen tomorrow. That was something Sophia did not know.

Would the city be ready, or would it fall due to being defenseless? She wished the city had its own version of the Knights of the Round Table, but it didn't. Would a group of young, high-powered individuals rise to the occasion?

Within her condo, Sophia both nourished her body and removed the remaining dregs of sleep as she bathed in the simple shower supplied by the rain tanks connected to her home. All of these thoughts ran through her head as she prepared to go outside to catch some rays and trim branches that were becoming a nuisance according to the city. She was given a salary to use for what she would. She used it to purchase clothes or books, go see the occasional movie or put it away for a rainy day.

She pulled the chain to shut the water off. There was no need for a towel as her body soaked the liquid in, leaving her exterior dry. The amber-colored light shone warmly against the brass column that ran up her spine. This was covered by a loose, white tanktop and blue jean shorts. Picking up the shears, she headed outside to start trimming. Perhaps she would see Aidan later on today, but she had other things planned for the day before then. They would be done with the ever-present understanding to be continuously alert to what might happen in the near future.
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Re: Chapter I - Sword and Shield

Post by IamLEAM1983 »

8:45 AM

Gustave McCall had been born in 1875. Native of Pickman's Sound, he'd never taken to Green Island's stronger and faster pace. His life had always been governed by the trees and crops. Back then, you could make a decent living while tending to the Centennial Park, which had begun as a fairly limited patch of greenery in the center of town.

Being laid-back, however, cost him his life. By 1932, his nearly hourly pipes had left cancer to eat away at the roof of his mouth. With chemotherapy being a process that was still highly experimental and poorly understood, even by Karthian standards, “Gus” had no choice but to go gently into that good night. What kept him tethered into the land of the living was the fact that he'd initially been employed by the Buck family, and that the Bucks had donated a small solarium's worth of exotic flowers to the park. Being the only man in town who'd ever had the expertise needed to care for them and with Naughton's factory being ready to graciously donate an armature to the city, it was quickly decided that the city's top gardener would come back from the dead.

They'd modified an armature with a removable set of parts, a slightly pudgy boiler-based model with a customized face, complete with the gardener's pug nose and a ceramic reproduction of the furnished and trimmed mustache he'd always worn. A special jumpsuit was tailored, with holes for those attachment ports that enabled him to control a few extra limbs. These mechanical tentacles ended with trimmers, a small gardener's trencher or a variable-pressure water nozzle, among a few.

What nobody had counted on was the fact that Gus had died an exhausted man. Coupled with his natural laissez-faire, the man who came back seemed more content with snoozing his work shifts away after delegating tasks than actually taking park in whatever work needed to be done. He still worked very well, but he rarely did more than go on his seemingly self-imposed tour of the Buck Family Botanical Collection, along with the occasional courtesy clips and mowed lawns closer to Sophia's residence. Even though armatures couldn't develop wrinkles or change according to shifts in personality, the smallish and stout Clank now tended to sport permanently lowered upper eyelids and a slow, slightly labored gait.

He'd died old and had come back old, in a sense. He'd never had Mike Callahan or Archie's luck, not having the first one's actual youth or the second's maintained youthfulness. He didn't work fast, but he was such a fixture in town that nobody had the heart to fire him. Even Sophia rarely, if ever complained when McCall was too slow to trim her condo's hedges. Abnegation towards the city's oldest gardener seemed to be part of the local culture.

The shifting administration had stuck him with a boss, over the last few decades. Joseph Fieri was a windbag, a white-collar type who'd managed to suck it up to the city's Urban Planning department and who'd made it his mission to agree to whatever unrealistic or insane projects the office-dwelling Feng Shui or Karthian efficiency fanatics required. It was clear as day that while Fieri couldn't fire the team Gus was leading, he could do everything in his power to make their professional life a living Hell out of sheer spite.

Today, the battered green Ford F-150 didn't carry anyone other than Gus and Three. They stopped near one of the bike trails that wound closest to the Tree's inner sanctum, and started unloading tools. To be more precise, however, Aidan started unloading tools, while McCall nursed phantom pains in his lower back with a long groan and a few lazy puffs on his pipe.

Why stop smoking, considering how his new mouth didn't care about carcinogens?

“You know, son? I always figured Sophia was juicing the lawn up without being aware of it. We give it one trim one week, we have to give it another one the next week! The whole of the park grounds, too!
- Yeah, right,” replied Three, rolling his eyes as he did. “So says the guy who's basically paid to go swallow flies in the southwest thicket... This is late spring, Gus, it makes sense. In July, we'll have to trim the whole park down every two days. It'll keep up like this until late September, and then it's off to snow ploughs.
- Really? It's so fast? Damnation, son – I thought I still had the park's cycle in mind! Guess this shows how my mind's starting to go, huh?”

Aidan suppressed a look of vague regret. Nevermind for how long Gus had been a Clank, he treated every new crop of summertime workers as if one of them were to take up his more permanent position. He forced himself to smile, to look like this didn't matter. “Nah, old timer,” he said, you've still got some left in you. I don't know what the fuck I'm supposed to do with half of Zeb Buck's carnivorous thingamajigs, anyway.
- Sugar flies,” he retorted. “Drive a few flies insane with a good little mound of sugar, then catch 'em once they're all nice and fat. You drop these down the pitcher plants, sticking some cellophane on top so they're trapped in the funnel. Once they've dropped and drowned in the sticky goop down there, you're done.”

Gus strapped his extension belt on and proceeded down the bike trail in fairly slow and waddling steps, his steam engine huffing and puffing as he did so. “It's all easy, really. All you need is some energy, and I'm all out of that. I'm some kinda mascot now, see, and the mayor likes to have me around so the tourists can snap pictures. I can't die and I'm not really sure I want to, so what am I gonna do?”

McCall shrugged. “I can't quit and they can't fire me. So I sleep. Some City Hall folks say I'm depressive, but I'm honestly happy, lad. I'm happy doing what I can do and using my immortality like one big extended nap. I've got all the perks of retirement, none of the hassle of pre-arranging my own funeral. I'd say that's pretty darned cushy.”

Silence settled in for a moment, but Three broke it with an annoyed noise, mostly air sucked in between his teeth. “I just figure you'd make a better sensei if you got involved more, is all. I like you – I like you enough to go fuck my liver up with pizza and vanilla malts after our shifts, boss – but I hate it when I come back frorm a four-hour run around Sophia and can't even wake you up.

Sophia's seen you young, Gus. She knows you. I think she'd appreciate it if you put some effort in your part of the job. Just a little, you know? I get that you were made old so you've got a hard time really tapping into your armature's capacity, but she can help you with that. She could always spare some via to keep you topped off.”

The gardener shook his head. “No, boy. You gotta want power for it to do anything. You need a decent plan for it. Just – wanting power for its own sake gets you nowhere fast. Taking more than you're due is even worse. I've lived enough to know that I ain't entitled to anything from Sophia, except basic courtesy. We've always been acquaintances, not friends.”

Three shook his head in frustration, but he didn't add more until the pair approached Sophia's partially buried condo. The front windows emerged from the turf and were lined with hedges and the dryad's own selected floral arrangements. Starting from her place and fanning outwards to the rest of the park was Gus' typical strategy, seeing as it made it easier to divide the park into mental sections and to keep track of what you'd managed to take care of during your shift.

“You, erm, take the West side, boy. I'll take the East,” lightly commanded Gus, a mischeivous twinkle briefly playing in his porcelain eyes. Three didn't reply in kind. The East was where one of the thickets could be found, a gaggle of some six or seven oak trees that provided plenty of shade and several blind sides to anyone who would've wanted to keep an eye on city workers looking to catch a couple Z's on the sly. The West was where the duck pond could be found, along with the more open areas. The park was opened, but no dog owners tended to let their mutts roam free at this hour.

Another boring John Deere weekday, then. For now, however, he chose to focus on those arrangements of the dryad's that he could reach and that he was authorized to tend to. Pulling weeds out of her patio or making sure her pond's water wasn't too scummy would keep his mood in check, while he'd be stuck listening to Gus' departing voice. The Clank muttered some old 1934 radio hit, Three briefly fighting the urge to throw a few pebbles his way.

Wallace Doherty was the first and only mayor to date who'd doubted of McCall's continued relevance and drain on the city's finances, to the point of starting an opinion poll. Unfortunately, the locals loved their “Old Gus”. Ironically, the locals also loved the tourist-friendly and grinning take on Zeb Buck that stood as the Hope Wizards' mascot, but few people were willing to excuse the lich's drunken misadventures.

Talk about skewed priorities...
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Karl the Mad
 

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Re: Chapter I - Sword and Shield

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Meanwhile, over in Sandhill, a used car lot had been awake and at it already for a few hours now. The owner, however, was still in the process of getting up, an ordeal made worse by a long night previous.

Specifically, he was brushing his teeth.

This was not as easy as some folks had it, mainly because he had about five sets and he'd long since gotten into the habit of cleaning them all in the mornings. Never mind if he'd only worn one set the previous day, he was a man of habit, and sometimes a man's habits are all that keeps him together. One set looked like normal teeth, slightly crooked and slightly stained but not nastily so; another set was unnaturally white and straight, shaped like tombstones and about as large; a third looked like they'd come out of a lifelong smoker, being all yellowed and gross and twisted up; of the remaining two sets, one was fanged vampire teeth and the other was gleaming surgical steel fangs, "fer 'Alloween" he was fond of saying.

At the moment he wasn't wearing any of them, or indeed anything but a pair of shorts; his body was a mass of battle scars and old wounds, and his face in particular was quite memorable, if only due to how half his face seemed to not have any bone structure holding it up. He glanced up at himself in the mirror, not for the first time seeing the drooping left eye and flabby, shapeless cheeks; he only grinned at himself, the action revealing the bare gums within.

There was a knock on the door just as he finished up the last set. "Sh'op'n!" he yelled, giving his everyday teeth a last looksee before swallowing them into place with a sucking noise and a wet smack, working his jaws briefly and taking another look; his cheeks had definition now, and his eye didn't droop. "Yer an 'ell of a gent, Charles Jenkins," he told his reflection, grinning madly and standing up to see who was at the door.

It was his 2IC, a swarthy fellow from Israel named Abraham. "We have a customer, boss," he explained in his low, soothing voice. "He is interested in one of our trucks."

"Goo' times," Charles replied as he got dressed and dragged a brush through his hair. "Le's do it."
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Re: Chapter I - Sword and Shield

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8:57 AM

Aldergard Kuhn had never been known for lazy weekday mornings, especially not since emerging into the public consciousness as a legal individual and financial mogul. Faustus could afford his comfy slippers-and-bed robe routine, the Wyrm tended to prefer to reach his breakfast table fully clothed; just in case something unforeseen happened that forced him to leave the penthouse in a funk.

In keeping with his nature, Wyvern Securities' penthouse floor was both spartan and ostentatious, a huge expanse of polished marble making up most of the flooring. The walls were done in a dark treatment that mimicked rough stone bricks, with much of the furniture being similarly minimalist in its details. Considering how many black surfaces he had and how many plates of tempered glass could be found, you might have gotten the impression that the place's first designs had been penned in the eighties. That would have been a fair observation, if not for the fact that the sparse objets d'art that could be found on the walls and floor were decidedly contemporary. His kitchen's equipment was cutting-edge, as well – but everything still had a vaguely retro look to it all.

Considering how much wasted space there was, the isolated markers of obscene wealth were lost in what felt like an artistic and thematic desert, a sort of large non-space that evoked the driest of all artistic sensibilities or an utterly dead sense of humour or general appreciation.

That is, until you considered that most of the exposed trinkets were of a martial nature. If it was chipped out of stone or painstakingly carved, if it had an edge and runes and a distinctly Viking or Celtic tone, it was there to be found. Doubly so if blurry rust-like splotches of antediluvian blood could be found if you peered hard enough. There was passion in this place, and there was plenty of dedication. If anything, Aldergard had simply been unable to express his deepest interests in ways most mortals living today would have found relatable or even personable.

He liked hunting. He liked sensing that his prey was helpless. If the situation allowed or called for it, he also liked to kill things. Especially if his prey had deserved it. Gawp for long enough and you'd maybe spot an old bush rifle here, an assegai there... He'd travelled over the centuries and had obviously exchanged and compared his hunting prowess with those natives he'd crossed.

Today, however, his weapons weren't axes or stone knives or spears. Today, he hunted with checkbooks, stock portfolios, investment reports or security debriefings. His prey were usually just as old as he was, just as crafty, and understandably paranoid. You wouldn't know it if you weren't close to him, but he thought this was just as exhilerating as giving these gormless, ungrateful and abusive ingrates the chase in a personal fashion. On occasion, he'd get to drive or fly out to where his latest catch was being held, and he'd take that opportunity to gloat, to sing the praises of his entreprise in front of his captured foe. Not because it'd be contemptible in its nature, but because he couldn't always stop himself.

He was a Wyrm. Lust for power would always run in his veins, no matter how much he'd control it. Put someone like him in a position of control, he'd realized, and it took everything he had not to puff his chest and look down on others. Humility was essential a concept to his business, but foreign a concept to the Black Dragons. You dominated, or you didn't exist. You conquered, or you were nothing. To stack the mortal virtues of collaboration, consideration, empathy and patience on top of this?

It was a trial that had required thousands of years in the making. It was a test he had to take every single day – especially once his workday was over.

Katherine slept in a little, sometimes, when she'd taken a hit the evening before. After cleaning his dining area, he'd leaned on his cane while making his way back to their shared bed. For a few seconds, he allowed his old instincts to run their course. It was an old trick of his, something he used to stay in control. He had five slow seconds. After that, his hind brain no longer had any say in the day's matters.

These were five exquisite, if agonizing seconds. People like to refer to their better half as being theirs. Vampires, especially, could sometimes claim casual ownership over someone else. For the Wyrm, however, this was anything if casual.

Katherine was his. He'd saved her, educated her, cleaned her, fed her, given her a post and allowed her to reach her true potential. By and large, every single cent she made had to be his by right. Her very life was his, as he'd given it to her. She'd even given her own body to him, eventually.

Katherine Starr was his. Something deep, dark and pleasantly troubled surged in his chest and stomach, love as a violent and yet silent explosion of possessive desire. He wanted to tear her from the bed, to push his ragged lips onto hers. Right here, right now, he wanted her Everything. Those five seconds were agonizing, and they were so long...

Then, just like that, thanks to thousands of years of practice, he shut his instincts away. The craven hunger he'd felt dissipated, the raw and unrestrained need of a few moments prior faded into fondness, the torturous charnel desire shrinking back down into pleasant memories of the prior evening. As much as he wanted to lie down next to her, cradle her and growl “Mine” over and over like a mantra, she needed her last few moments of undisturbed sleep – and he needed to go down one floor, to his office. He wouldn't be able to steel his own ship if he spent the day contemplating the idea of climbing over his assistant the same way other dragons would have a pile of gold coins.

Besides, there was only so much congenital avarice that any mortal woman would find attractive. Which was to say, not a whole damn lot. Katherine had her wicked moments, true enough, but she was reassuringly human in such a capacity as to be able to lay down her law and to get him to back off and let her be, when required.

She was, in essence, the mortal companion he hadn't expected he'd ever find. Ruthless enough to share in the thrill of his hunts, sensitive enough to keep his humanity in check, and passionate enough to love him for the ancient and modern-day warlord he happened to be. Keeping up with his rare emotional rollercoasters was a hard sell, and she generally managed it with flying colors.

Maybe the pot helped. Not that he cared. He'd long since given up on his initial exasperation and disapproval.
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Re: Chapter I - Sword and Shield

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For a few seconds after Aldergard left, Katherine was still asleep, nothing but a bed sheet on and her long hair splayed out over the pillow; and then she was awake, blue eyes wide and blinking, a sharp intake of breath. "Mm," she hummed, arching her back and reaching her arms out in a long, languorous stretch. For a few more seconds she slumped back, enjoying the remnants of the night, but then she shook herself and hauled out of bed, stretching and yawning again as she went for the bathroom.

Thirty minutes later she appeared in the doorway of Kuhn's office, hair pulled up and makeup on (nothing fancy; she preferred a minimalist approach to cosmetics), sleek and fashionable suit on. "Guten Morgen, mein Fuhrer," she said brightly, walking across to give her boss a peck on the forehead. "...I see you already ate. Didn't save me anything, I expect." The reproach in her voice was belied by the twinkling grin in her eyes, though. "So. The Magridge case first thing, or do you have something new already?"

((Katherine's outfit: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/migratio ... s1_4_3.JPG ))
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Re: Chapter I - Sword and Shield

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Aldergard's voice remained low, and he kept his eyes on his computer's screen – largely for the sake of appearances. His office was accessible through a pair of clear glass doors, the occasional top-tier executive strolling past. Considering, he'd never been one to make his romantic ties to his assistant – and one of his best Legal team members – public. At least, not while in the confines of the office floors.

“Meine liebe,” he replied, his tone carefully maintained on a casual level. “Give me Griffin notes, please. The invisible man says Gavin Drake is trustworthy. My... donations are not a concern. This old body was never quite magical. Lost money, yes, but thieves would not know about global positioning trackers. We would get items back within the week.”

He paused, sipping at a little coffee cup that his more traditional of assistants – someone who was essentially paid to sort mail and take brew requests from the top floors – had left on his desk. Coming from anyone else, saying you liked a rich and dark roast would have been cliché. That was PR talk, an image most coffee producers liked to encourage. Coffee drinkers liked to think of themselves as sophisticates, while the reality of brew intakes tended to reveal that most people, mortal and immortal alike, liked their stuff fairly weak. Aldergard wasn't quite most people. He genuinely did drink his coffee entirely black.

The dragon's yellow and grim eyes managed a casual twinkle as he looked at Katherine. She'd had years to spend deciphering his body language to the point where she'd know enough to see he was giving her a look of genuine altruistic concern.

“My Welsh friend is too trusting and serpent magician is careless. Invisible man's company is good security asset – but ach, he never lost arrogance of his. It became charming over years, but is still there. Commission dogs could strike this week.”

The word dogs had been spat out with a good level of contempt. “Investigations say Commission heads are unaware. The rodent never called for thefts, his assets are still healthy. No outstanding expansions or projects to finance. Old Irish wizard has retired to comfort of his trusted men and families. He has no need of arcane capital. Winters has not researched anything in decades.”

He grunted in thought, and then shook his head, chuckling as he did so. “Shen Long would never care. Dear old friend is too peaceful to care for power. Watatsumi still in Tokyo. Nothing planned in America based on Investigation division. The Buck lich has not been visited by his dead wife in weeks. He has no motive. No motivation.”

The black dragon gave a dismissive wrist toss. “The coach guard is harmless. We have known this for two hundred years. He loves this city, this community. Even if he did research, his techniques are personal. Unorthodox, but safe and considerate. Silas Robertson has nothing to gain from thefts. No need for them.”

Aldergard gave Katherine a long look, as though thoughtfully staring at her would bring about new clues or elements to consider. “Rendell? Nein, fool has reach, but not this much reach. Partial via infection could justify his need for artifacts – but only if he is so dumb as to not know how liches feed. We both know, Katherine – Rendell not stupid.”

He gave the Magridge case file an absent-minded once-over, clawed fingers lifting pages and stapled photographs without really looking at them. His mind was still clearly on the exhibition that was being prepared.

“Hrmph. Here is what you do today : speak to Deputy Chiefs if you can, try and obtain audience from Viscount. I want reassurance that sighted troubles over Evergloam's borders are not – bleeding into mortal world. Mab has been silent for generations. Mab is never silent without good reasons. Oberon always too quick to call for peace.”

* * *

Tam had been largely raised on Earth, so she'd know enough to understand that for all of the locals' claims of civility, you could still find concealed daggers if you looked hard enough. The one difference was that most folks didn't so much keep guns and bladed weapons around – American freedoms notwithstanding – as they did disparaging words and general instances of psychological harm. Pulling a gun out required some amount of training, a fair bit of confidence. Belting out insults was something else entirely. Anyone with a few years' worth of basic vocabulary could do it, and it could, in some cases, be more harmful than firearms or knives combined.

That was largely what Sandhill ran on. Those protection enforcers that worked closest to the Biggs family were generally pleasant folks even if they could pull out the brass knuckles or pistols when the going got tough – but you'd always find the more rough-and-tumble types pushing too hard. The Sicilian American idea of the gentleman scoundrel kept the process in check, but the smaller “gangsta” groups the clan generally kept on a leash didn't have the exact same considerations.

Surprisingly, she'd find a sliver of Sandhill-like turf just on the shores facing Mertown, at the very outskirts of Green Island's prosperous and industrious downtown area. The channel that ran between the mainland and the old Mac Loch grounds tended to serve as the city's second commercial and industrial access point, with the city folks' own pleasure wharves being located further down the coast, westward.

Dead fish, gasoline and depleted plasma cells tended to bleed together into an unpleasant mélange you nevertheless learned to tolerate over time. The one spike in Drifterly smells could be attributed to Frank's Discount Parts, an expanded and glorified pawn shop that took in quite a bit more than strictly downtown's stolen Rolexes, and that offered much more than that, as well. The blue-skinned native might notice the Help Wanted sign – as well as the recognizable air of shiftiness the place exuded. It had the exterior of a typical Earth pawn shop, but the goods on display in the baywindow were anything but standard fare. That, in turn, would probably make Tam wonder just how the Hell this Frank dude managed to keep operating in a culture that valued social justice so damn much. Ordinary corruption had to be part of the answer, that much was obvious.

If it wasn't that, then maybe she'd recall stories about some of the least physically imposing species on Paradise securing their survival by virtue of rendering themselves essential to someone else. If you couldn't fight your way to guaranteed existence, then maybe you could still mooch, wheedle and cajole your way into profitability and safety. Maybe that was it, too...
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Re: Chapter I - Sword and Shield

Post by Weirdlet »

Now there is some luck. Theoretically.

It was too-early-in-the-morning on her first day in the big city, and Tam knew better than to think that this was the solution to all her problems in one go. But it was a scent of lubricants and fuel in styles she hadn't seen since she was ten years old, and the script on the window and signs were teasing to the eyes, recalling written languages you just didn't see in common use on Earth. Certainly worth checking out for a little browse, and depending on the kind of help that was wanted...

She paused and parked, setting the security system with a couple taps before stepping up to the door and peering inside.
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Re: Chapter I - Sword and Shield

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Sophia went around the Tree and began snipping off the errant branches on the bushes. She hummed a light tune reminiscent of the old shanties the McLochs sang while fishing, only in Old English. She sang of lush forests in the cold north. The dryad mused it because of influence from her parent tree, Yggdrasil. She believed that while she was an offshoot, being a different person entirely, she was still like that dryad's daughter. There were touches of Scandinavian in her ancestry, but she was an American at heart. She had been wild initially, but had adapted accordingly with the pace of Hope's population. That covered everything to her accent to the clothes she wore. She continued humming and singing in her native accent and continued trimming the bushes and other branches.
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