A/N: If I put an Author's Note at the beginning of a chapter, you know it's important. Just want to let you all know that Alec's name has been changed to Russell or 'Rusty' to his friends. Didn't want there to be any confusion on that. Now, on with the chapter.
Ch. 4: Welcome to the Archive Pt. 2
"This place is… big," said a bewildered Anna. "Really, really, really big."
"Is it just me or is the inside bigger than the outside?" asked Kristoff, equally bewildered.
"That's magic for you," Andrew grinned. We never got tired of the reactions to the Archive. "The interior of the Archive exists in its own pocket dimension. That means it's as big as we need it to be, which is good as we add more and more artifacts to the shelves every week."
"Just how big is the Archive?" Elsa inquired.
"How big is big?" was my helpful answer.
"Well that's enough gawking, let's get a move on. Daniel, Andrew, you're in charge of the tour this time," stated Rusty.
"What?" asked Andrew as he whirled around to face our boss. "I'm not going on this tour, I can sense the tension between Elsa and Daniel."
"Wait a minute," I cut in. "If we have to lead this tour you're coming with us because the only other option I've got is to take Danica."
"I know. Have fun."
"I am going to handcuff you to a door with Elliot Ness's cuffs."
"Elliot Ness?" repeated Anna.
"He was a law enforcement agent most famed for brining Al Capone in. His cuffs are impossible to escape from, in fact, they tighten when you try to get them off and resist all attempts to break them."
"Then how do you get out?"
"Any standard cuff key from the era will render them inert. But Andrew won't have access to one!"
"I'm not going with you, I still have inventory to catalog."
"So do I. How do you want to do this? Rocks Paper Scissors? Flip a coin?"
"No, I have a better idea."
"And what would that be?"
"Not it!" he yelled and immediately bolted from the office.
"Hey! That's cheating!" I yelled after him. "Great, Danica it is."
"Who is Danica?" Elsa asked.
"She's a memory spirit, and she rubs me the wrong way from time to time," I groaned.
Elsa watched as I approached a pale gold crystal set in a stand on top of a counter that ran the length of one side of the room. The crystal itself was roughly the length of her palm and had runes in its surfaces. It pulsed frequently with an internal light.
"Alright, Danica, wake up. You have new recruits to torture."
The crystal pulsed brightly and a mass of energy flowed out that solidified in the form of a young woman with ginger hair wearing a green off the shoulder top, black skinny jeans and knee high brown boots.
"I resent the implications of that statement," she said as she rearranged her hair.
I ignored her comment and introduced the new agents. "Danica, this is Elsa, Anna and Kristoff. They are our new agents and I'd appreciate it if you spared them the horror stories that are the origins to some of the artifacts stored here."
"Well you're no fun, telling those 'horror stories' of yours to rookies is some of the best entertainment I get."
"I'm terribly sorry for the inconvenience, but I'd like to avoid cleaning up any messes this time if it's all the same to you."
"Alright, if you insist, I will not tell any of my so called 'horror stories' to the rookies," she acquiesced.
"Thank you, was that so hard to do?"
"Harder than you know."
"Oh, and spare us the details on the side effects of the more dangerous artifacts."
"Dang it! Now you've taken away all my fun!"
"I try," I grinned.
"I am so going to get you back for this," grumbled Danica as her shoulders sagged in defeat."
"Duly noted, now let's get this show on the road."
"Follow us, please," sighed Danica and motioned to the trio as she trailed after me. This tour was going to be boring.
"Ok, so the Phoenix Division as it is now has been around since the mid eighteenth century but it existed in some way shape or form for centuries before becoming an official agency. Artifacts have been littered throughout human history, you probably know of some of them without even knowing it," I informed as we walked through the aisles of the Archive.
"And he's not just talking about fairytale objects like Aladdin's lamp or the head of Medusa," Danica added.
"Wait, Medusa's head? As in the Medusa from the Greek myth, the Medusa with snakes for hair who can turn a person to stone with a single look?" asked Elsa.
"Ding, ding, ding, give the lovely lady a prize!" I applauded.
"But Medusa is just a… a… a myth!"
"A myth currently locked away in the Vault."
"What's the Vault?" Anna inquired.
"The Vault is the section of the Archive where all the exceptionally dangerous artifacts we collect are stored. You need to wear special coveralls just to go in there," replied Danica.
"Hold on, is that a proton pack from Ghostbusters?" Kristoff asked while pointing at said artifact sitting on a shelf.
"Good eye, Kristoff," I grinned. "That is Bill Murray's hero pack from Ghostbusters 2."
"But what's it doing here? It's just a prop with some lights, right?"
"It's a bit more than that now, actually. It actually works."
"I take it you mean that in that it does more than just light up and make sound effects."
"Correct! That actually fires a stream of protons that is capable of ensnaring a ghost!"
"Really? Are you really serious?"
"Of course I am. I'd love to prove it but it is dangerous and Rusty would have kittens if I did, so you'll just have to take my word for it."
"Why are these items here, exactly?" Elsa asked next. "Most of this stuff seems harmless enough."
"Trust me, if it's in the Archive then it has an evil streak," Danica spoke. "True, this stuff seems harmless but it's not. That's how they all get their victims."
"Danica's right, some of this stuff is relatively harmless, it's just here because for it to be out in the wild would bring up questions that we prefer not to be answered," I continued. "The vast majority of artifacts here, though, are dangerous, like Al Capone's hat. In the wrong hands it can allow someone commit whatever crimes they want and get away with them unless that crime is tax evasion."
"You know, I hear what you're saying but I'm still trying to understand how all of these… artifacts are dangerous," Anna spoke. "I mean, what's so dangerous about this tub here?"
"That bathtub belonged to Archimedes," answered Danica. "And not everything here is dangerous; some of the artifacts' side effects are even quite silly. But at the same time they can be embarrassing."
"Then what does the tub do?"
I decided to answer that particular question. "Anyone who uses the tub will find that they can think up quite extraordinary things. But then they also get the urge to run through the nearest town or city naked yelling 'eureka!'"
Three faces suddenly went varying shades of red and Danica cracked a smile at the sight.
"Moving on…" she said with a Cheshire Cat grin. This tour was turning out to be more entertaining than she had anticipated.
The tour went on with a few more questions until Anna asked one that I was waiting for. Most outsiders asked this one eventually.
"Daniel, why do you hide? Why hide magic? It could help people that science can't."
"Of course it could, I'm not going to deny that. But a world of wild magic, a world where it can easily fall into the wrong hands, we'd be back in medieval times within a day. And trust me, the medieval period is not as rosy as we make it out to be in popular entertainment."
"He's correct; those days were violent and controlled by tyrannical kings," Danica picked up. "Kings like Richard the Lion Hearted were very few."
"True, magic stops being helpful the moment it's used to drown nations in tidal waves of blood and dragons are used to scorch cities."
"Was there a time when magic filled the world or has it always been like this?" Anna questioned.
"Once upon a time magic was very prominent in the world and it traveled the globe in ley lines. But over time science and cities took over and with their rise magic declined and now there's not a whole lot left. Granted, there's still enough to cause some major disturbances now and then, especially in cities that are over or near what's left of the ley line network. And there's also enough left to create more artifacts which keeps the Phoenix Division in business."
Silence reigned for a few moments as the new bits of information were digested. Danica brought us back to reality in her own way.
"Alright people, that's enough time daydreaming, we've got a tour to complete. Chop chop!"
"I'm beginning to see what you meant when you said she rubbed you the wrong way," said Anna.
"Wait, where's Elsa?" Kristoff asked he noticed our party was one short.
Indeed, it seemed that the blonde had wandered from the group and could now be anywhere in the Archive.
"Elsa! Where are you?" Anna called out.
"Elsa!"
"Elsa, can you hear us?"
"I'm over here!"
We all turned in the direction of her voice saw her at the end of the aisle.
"Please don't do that again, you don't know your way around yet and it's easy to get lost in here," I warned.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to panic any of you but I saw something that I had to investigate."
"Oh? And what was it that grabbed your attention so?" Danica asked.
"I saw this," she answered as we were led to the end of the aisle and she pointed.
"Ah, you saw the Enola Gay," I smiled as I recognized the B-29.
"Yes, I thought I recognized it from a picture in my history book."
"What did this plane do?" asked a perplexed Anna.
"This is the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945," I answered, slipping into teacher mode. "Since that day any bomb dropped from that plane will detonate with the same destructive force as the A-bomb. That's why it's here in the Archive."
I let the silence last for a few seconds for what I said to be comprehended. Absolutely any bomb this plane dropped now would go off with the same force as the atomic bomb that was dropped on Japan. That was a lot of destruction and death.
The tour continued for a while longer with more questions being asked and orientating the new recruits on the basic layout of the aisles in the Archive. The one stop we took for a break before turning back almost turned into a fiasco when Anna tried to sit on Andrew Borden's couch. Fortunately Danica and I were able to get her off before the artifact became active and no one was harmed. During our respite Kristoff asked some more questions that I knew would be coming eventually.
"I've been thinking, if magic exists what about creatures we read about such as Vampires and werewolves?"
"That's a good question, Kristoff. The creatures you mentioned do exist along with Elves, Goblins and faeries. Which would you like to hear about first?"
"Vampires!" Anna exclaimed immediately with the energy of a middle school student. "Are they really just blood hungry animals or is there more to them than that?"
"For the majority there is more to them than what you mentioned. Vampires are actually quite civil. They have their own system of government and while some can be a little cold at times, they are mostly pleasant enough company as long as there's a supply of blood nearby. But you do have to be careful all the same because the bloodlust can overpower them sometimes. Fortunately that doesn't happen too often. But then there are the vampires that just don't care about human life. They will attack a human and drink all their blood and spread death wherever they go. That group of Vampires is very fortunately, a splinter movement, they only represent a small percentage of the total Vampire population."
"What about exposure to sunlight? Will they turn to dust or just sparkle?"
"Vampires can stand the sunlight for limited periods of time but the longer they are in it the weaker they get. If they are in the sunlight for too long they will die."
"Do they also really bite their victims in the neck to drink their blood?"
"Yes, they do. Although if the victim is struggling, as in trying to run away, Vampires have been known to bite places other than the neck. But struggling against a Vampire is practically unheard of."
"Why is that?" asked Kristoff.
"Because you can't run from a Vampire; they are as fast as they are depicted in popular entertainment and they also have a secret weapon which is an ability to make their intended victims feel calm and at ease. Once a victim is reeled in that way the Vampire may lick the area of the neck where they intend to bite to induce a sense of euphoria and render the victim completely incapable of offering resistance while they feed. A smart Vampire will only drain enough blood to sate the bloodlust and keep the victim alive for further use.
But the problem with that is that after a while the victim can get addicted to the euphoria the Vampire induces to the point that they demand to be bitten. This gives them a significant amount of control over their human prey and some have been known to take advantage of it. For example, before I was a Phoenix Agent, I worked as a Guardian in the Protectorate. During my time there one of my cases brought me in to contact with a Vampire, Astoria, who runs a brothel in uptown New York. Some of the girls there were addicted to Astoria's bite. She used her abilities to get new girls to come and work at the brothel and exploit them."
"That sounds awful," stated Elsa.
"The girls who were lured in with the bites didn't think so because they were so addicted to the aphrodisiac Astoria provided. And that goes to show that there's a dark side to everything in the world of magic."
"And that concludes the tour, thank you for coming, we hope you enjoyed it," said Danica as we walked back across the threshold of the office.
"How did it go?" Rusty asked as he swiveled around in his chair to face us.
"Well, all things considered it went rather well, especially because Danica behaved."
"You see? I can behave when I want or need to. Just don't get used to it."
"And how about you three? Are you all alright?"
"Yeah, I think we'll be fine, thanks," Kristoff said. He still looked as though he was processing all he had learned.
"Great, and now comes the final part. Do you all want to be Phoenix Agents or not?"
"Any chance we can get back to you on that tomorrow?" asked Elsa.
"I'm afraid not, Ms. Callahan."
"What? How come?"
"Protocol requires that any recruits must choose if they want to be a part of the Phoenix Division before they leave. If they say no and are outsiders, we can't just let them walk around with the knowledge that this operation exists so we have to erase their memories."
"So in other words, we have to decide now and if we decline then our memories of this place and everything we've just learned will be taken from us?" Anna repeated to make sure she got everything.
"Yeah, that's correct."
"Can we take a few minutes?"
"Of course you can. Just try to come to a decision within the hour, please."
A/N: So sorry for the extended wait on this chapter! Life got in the way and then my creative process slowed for a while. As always I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Will Elsa, Anna and Kristoff accept to work at the Phoenix Division or will the turn the offer down? Remember, leave a review get a personal response. Keep on writing.
Knight Writer 95 out.
