And here we are once again with the weekly update! Thank you all for the reviews, they're very encouraging! I welcome constructive criticism: I'd like to know what I'm doing right and what I could be doing better.
Mondays don't have to be terrible! Here, have a chapter of bizarre story. Like before, bold print= Cybertronian words
(chapter soundtrack: "Captain Shakespeare" from Stardust)
Chapter 4
The boy rose before dawn and slung an old rifle over his back. Five days had passed and still the natural timeline had not reasserted itself. Within the palisade at the edge of the woods, life went on as it "always" had.
That is to say, the People of the Lion worked together to survive through a very unusual mixture of agriculture, futuristic technology, and hunting/gathering.
At sixteen, Jack was considered old enough to work with the adults, and found that in this temporary universe, he was evidently apprenticed to a rough, unpleasant man aptly named Granite, who was supposed to repair weapons.
What he actually did was drink, curse, and sleep. He told the boy (often, and loudly) that he didn't particularly care whether Jack showed up to work or not, so long as he didn't disturb him. While this presented a perfect opportunity to search for a way out with Miko and Raf, Jack's conscience would not allow him to leave without taking something along to repair on the way.
It hadn't been until the third day that Jack had found his friends. Rafael's family lived in the poorer, agricultural part of town where his brothers worked the fields. Miko still lived with her host parents, only they acted as if she were actually their daughter. Being considerably more affluent, they lived in a house that had not been made of salvaged materials.
The third day had also been Jack's first experience with "Tulle". She was a thin, pinched woman possessed of a magpie's shrill, warbling voice and a penchant for condescension. When Jack encountered her, she was standing in the marketplace with a clipboard and pen, brown curls piled outrageously into a hairstyle that should have gone out with the 1970s. Like some miniature female Starscream, Tulle raged because a shopkeeper would not refer to her by her preferred title.
"That's your third demerit this week, Frederica. You're already on the watch list for improper disposal of leftover goods. With a baby to feed, can you really afford another?"
With an amiable smile and a steely eye, the woman answered her tormentor, "Well as long as we're on first name terms, Adelaide, I would remind you that - by the standard of the Jasper Charter - what you are doing is called illegal harassment, and I have the right to report you if I wish."
Jack grinned at the woman's boldness. Miko would like her, he was sure.
"Report me to whom?" Tulle cooed, "Even if there were anyone over me, why should they believe someone of your...socioeconomic standing?"
The barely-veiled insults flew and were calmly deflected with dizzying speed until at last Tulle withdrew. With an ugly smile, she marked Frederica's ration card with six demerits, "accidentally" kicked over a display, and flounced into a tiny, waiting car. Jack shook his head and made his way over to help clean up.
"That was impressive," he said by way of greeting. The round woman chuckled dryly and easily lifted the shelf.
"Me, or Addie's temper tantrum?"
"Both, I guess," he smiled back. "How does she still hold any power at all?"
Frederica rolled dark eyes expressively. "God only knows, hon, and I just pray He knocks some sense into that woman before I do."
With the display set to rights again, Jack stood and brushed himself off. "Aren't you worried about the demerits?"
The shopkeeper snorted and waved a hand as if shooing the thought away. "The council of magistrates will overturn her decision. They almost always do! And even if they don't, The Lord will provide." She thanked Jack for helping her and slipped something into his hand. "For having such a kind heart," she beamed.
Three amber beads lay in his palm like the heart of a tree. When he looked up at Frederica, the woman leaned forward and whispered, "If ever you get in trouble with Addie - which probably means you were doing the right thing - take these to the meat market and look for the sign of the Fish. They'll help you." Surprised, Jack had thanked Frederica and continued on to find his friends.
The fourth day had passed without incident, save for Miko showing up at the weapons forge, fuming about overbearing politicians. She'd woken Granite, who had loudly cursed her out...only to be cowed into silence by an equally blistering tirade. Jack had waited outside until the shrieking stopped, dismayed that his translator chip was cheerfully explaining every insult Miko was hurling.
Evidently, the girl had been climbing a tree, trying to see over the palisade, and Tulle not only gave her a demerit, but made her stay up in the tree for two hours with her guards beneath it to keep her from coming down. It had crossed Jack's mind at the time that Adelaide Tulle was remarkably lucky that they hadn't found Bullhead yet.
They'd met Raf in the fields afterwards, and as they helped him pull up weeds, Jack had told them of his foray into the Forest. They'd heard a few more rumors than he had regarding the place with the circle of stumps, which was surmised to be a kind of meeting-place for the Raa Anta.
Now, on the fifth day, he found Raf in their designated meeting place: a ruined statue of some poet or other, surrounded by the wild remains of a hedge maze.
"Any word from the 'Bots?" Jack whispered, dropping down into a small hollow beside the younger boy.
Raf shook his head despondently. He waved his hand gently over a bulky leather gauntlet strapped to his left arm, activating a tiny computer display. "Pilar smuggled this to me from the Echelon building," he muttered conspiratorially.
He referred to the old skyscraper that had been modified into a partial castle on the western edge of town, where some of the elder Esquivels worked. It was the dwelling place of the magistrates, most of whom were good, honest people. Their supervisor, unfortunately, was a different story. As they had already learned, Adelaide Tulle was a petty, vicious woman who would have been more at home with the Raptor packs of the Falcon People than with the quiet, honorable governors of the Lion People. The tyrannical and oft times simply silly laws Jack had seen had been instituted by Tulle against the wishes of her subordinates.
Jack tore his gaze from the Echelon building where Magistrate Tulle lurked as a cascade of pebbles on the hillside warned them of someone's approach.
"Contact at two o'clock," he murmured, pointing with two fingers.
Raf squinted at his tiny screen and relaxed a fraction. "It's Miko's signal," he replied.
His fingers traced the patch behind his ear where the translator chip had once been. According to Rafael's analysis, in adaption to the altered timeline, the hardware was now beneath the skin, marked by scars in the shape of Cybertronian glyphs. Upon receiving his piece of stolen technology, it had been the work of a moment for Raf to synchronize the gauntlet to the chips' individual frequencies.
Black boots suddenly dangled above their heads as Miko slid down to join them.
"Stupid old-fashioned rules. Stupid semi-dark ages!" she snarled without preamble.
Miko yanked a knit cap off of her head, shaking her wild hair free. "My "adopted" mother doesn't hold with "unnaturally colored hair", and made me cover it again," she explained, tying the pink and black mess into her customary style.
"I swear, if I hear about "the way proper ladies behave" one more time, I'm gonna pull a Predaking."
Raf and Jack grimaced. "Ah je, K'anis, please don't!" Jack laughed, "You'd blow our cover!"
Miko lightly punched his shoulder and huddled down between the boys. "Almost a week in this Warcraft wannabe and the timestream hasn't fixed itself yet," she huffed, leaning her head back against the hedge.
She sighed deeply and pulled her knees to her chest. She could live with the weird clothes, survive the ridiculously strict magistrates, tolerate the bizarre superstitions about the Autobots. What she found she could not live with was the aching emptiness she felt in the pit of her stomach every time she saw the Autobot symbol. Since the day she had spotted Jack and Arcee in the alleyway, this was the longest she'd ever been separate from them.
Slender fingers twisted into the fabric of her dark kirtle and tightened.
"I want to go home." she whispered fiercely, laying her head upon her knees.
Raf curled up against her side in sympathy and Jack wrapped his arms as far as he could around the pair of them.
"It's going to be okay, guys," he soothed, "It hasn't even been a week yet. I've been getting stories out of Sierra and my mom, and I think our best course of action is to go looking for these Raa Anta, and see whether they're our 'Bots. We'll have to find a way out to the woods without the watchmen noticing. It's doable, but difficult." He blew out a breath and released his hold on the others to run a hand over his face. All was quiet for several minutes, until the silence was broken by the sound of a gong being struck in the square.
"Ah, what is that racket? I don't know what all their signals mean!" For such a young boy, Rafael sounded very like an old man as he sat up and stretched. He scrunched up his nose as the gong resounded again.
Miko grasped hold of Jack's shoulder and used it to hoist herself to her feet. "It sounds like a General Assembly call," she grumbled, jamming her hair back under the coif in jerking, angry gestures. "Madame Umbridge must have thought of another rule."
Jack smirked at the very accurate comparison to Magistrate Tulle and struggled to his feet. In only four days, Miko had managed to run completely and totally afoul of Tulle. Not that anyone was surprised: the woman was obsessed with control and order and Miko was life and chaos itself! Her hair color, her loudness, and her complete refusal to be intimidated made her a force to be reckoned with in Tulle's books.
Reluctantly, the three left their hiding place and hiked into the town square to join the throng. Surprisingly, it was Magistrate Xiaojian, not Magistrate Tulle, who stood at the podium. The gentle old man held up his hands for silence, smiling benignly at the crowd.
"Good afternoon, my friends! I know you're all very busy, but this is quite important!" Xiaojian motioned to the sky. "Tonight, as I'm sure you all know, is a full moon. Now we're all aware of what happens when the moon is full, aren't we? That's right, the shields fail."
With an apologetic sigh, the magistrate shuffled across the platform and began handing sheafs of papers into the masses to be passed along. "Magistrate Supervisor Tulle has demanded an earlier curfew on full-moon-nights, as well as a doubled guard. In light of recent and coming events, the others and I have reluctantly agreed."
Amidst angry mutterings, Frederica shouted out from the back of the crowd, "What "recent and coming events" do you mean, Magistrate Xiaojian?"
The wrinkled brow puckered. "I'm not going to lie to you all," he said firmly, "Nomadic groups of Falcon People have been spotted making their way towards the Forest. They may well reach us, because tonight of all nights is the one time the Raa Anta may be too busy to busy to stop them."
Miko and Jack exchanged glances. "Could these people be any more vague?" the girl mused sourly.
A tugging at their hands brought their eyes down to meet Raf's.
"I know what he means," the small boy whispered, "I heard Mama talking about it earlier!"
For the last two years in the city, during every full moon when the barrier fell, two or three of the Raa Anta would stalk the streets. They rarely ever spoke more than two words to those who saw them, and only came at night. They acted as though they were searching for something or someone, but the People of the Lion were afraid to ask who or what. They would hunt until they had made their way through the entire city, then vanish into the Forest once more. The mournful howling of some vast wolf could sometimes be heard after this.
"Oh yes, and one more thing," Magistrate Xiaojian looked supremely apologetic as he wrung his hands, "As it would seem that certain people have been treating curfew as a suggestion rather than a law, Tulle would like all public meetings to end with a review of what we can and cannot do here in Jasper. Good neighbors make strong defenses, so we must all rely upon each other: if you see someone breaking a rule, talk to them about it before you go to the security forces!" The old man would have preferred that Tulle had nothing to fuel her increasingly more despotic reasoning.
"Curfew is two minutes after the gong, not ten, and entering the Forest is forbidden. Due to whichever practical jokers thought it would be funny to draw Magistrate Tulle's head on a Thoron Anta's body, we are no longer allowed to use the art hall until the perpetrators confess. So thank you for that, whoever you are." He beetled his brow and glared comically into the eyes of the younger crowd members. "And remember, anyone with a mark behind their ear is to be brought to the magistrates at once!"
Self-consciously, Jack, Miko, and Raf tugged their hair and hats down to cover the glyphs that marked the position of their translator chips. Somehow, they knew that boded ill for them!
After the halfhearted repetition of Magistrate Tulle's laws, Xiaojian dismissed the assembly and hobbled back to his waiting van. Slowly, the streets cleared, leaving the trio of children in the square.
"With the shield down, Jasper is vulnerable," Miko observed, "And these guys seem pretty predictable. I'm betting everybody for miles knows about the moon-thing!"
Jack flopped onto a bench to work on the rifle he still had from the forge. "If the Raa Anta actually come to the city, that makes our lives easier. It shouldn't take long to figure out if they're our Autobots or not."
He turned to Raf, tapping his chin. "Raf, once they're past the borders, they'd pick up our comm signals, right?"
The young genius held up his gauntlet and typed several commands into it. "If we're operating on the assumption that the walls interfere with the signal, then yes. This should work."
Jack nodded decisively. "Alright, do you want to meet in the usual place tonight?"
Miko ducked behind Jack for a moment as the people who had apparently adopted her in this timeline approached.
"Scrap." she muttered.
The Leander family made their way towards the trio, making it quite clear that they'd spotted Miko. Raf adjusted his glasses and hid his stolen gauntlet behind his back.
"I should go," he gulped awkwardly, "I'm supposed to help my brothers in the fields later."
Taking one last look at the dignified shock on Mrs. Leander's face at her adopted daughter's chosen company, Raf tiptoed to teasingly whisper, "Courage, Nene'," into Miko's ear. With that, the boy scampered off. Whether or not he actually knew where he was going was debatable at best.
Seeing that her hiding place was futile, the girl heaved a gusty sigh and stood, brushing off her skirt.
"Catch ya later,Y'ats'a," she grumbled, "That is, if I live to tonight."
Jack winced and patted her arm. "You know where to find me if you need me?"
"Healer's house: only one on your street with electricity. Yeah, I know where to go," Miko punched his shoulder and allowed herself to be dragged away by the Leanders.