Justice for Lucas

by Pascal in Quebec

His Life was pain, loneliness, a struggle against peoples and organizations that wanted to either exploit or kill him. But he survived, he thrived and found himself a group of young people in the same situation; highly intelligent and functional but abandoned by their families. He made them his own. Rated 'M' - Multiple cross-overs, time-travel, aliens, psionics, magic and horrors

10. The many histories of Lucas

The author wishes to express thanks to anyone who may read his story and encourages them to leave reviews, comments or even flame it hard. As with any who try their hand at publicly expressing an idea or story concept, all feedback is important and welcome.

Disclaimer: I do not own SeaQuest, Star Wars, nor any other sci-fi or fantasy series, movies, comics, cartoons or news items used in this fiction as they belong to the creators or broadcasters or publishers who put them out for consumption by the public.

This is a truly long chapter with two distinct parts: the statistics and then the personal anecdotes.

I give you warning that many of the stories spoken of by the characters will involve various degrees of corporal punishments, legal and criminal, from mild to torture having caused injuries, scars and handicaps. There are stories of imprisonment with psychological abuse and torment leading to the suicide of teens. There is murder, infanticide, fratricide and parenticide. Various types of emotional and sexual relationships including hetero, gay, bi-curious, underage (willing). There are multiple cases of physical & psychological & sexual rape.

This story was, is and always will be rated a strong 'M' for clear reasons. Be advised.

Tenth chapter: The many histories of Lucas and his families

Brotherly concern

(SeaQuest - season 1 opening theme)

Saturday February 9th of 2301 – early morning, around 06:30am

NCQ, Florida (USA)

Bayou de la Grosse Tronche;

Military sanitarium for handicapped & comatose soldiers

UEO Veterans' Support Services (VSS)

Administration tower – guest accommodations

Younger Lucas #18 stretched and wiggled under the sheets, taking a moment to luxuriate in the feel of contentment that so rarely filled him in the last three years of his life. He had spent an incredible night; dreamless and uninterrupted bliss for 11 long hours of oblivion. It had been a much needed rest but not impossible since their Oldest sibling was finally free from the Aberration and on his way to recovery. The child yawned out loud and scratched a few itches, glaring malevolently at the clock on the nightstand to his right: it couldn't be this early, could it? Grrr! He was supposed to sleep in, not wake up with the chickens! Oh well, old habits and all...

The eleven year old got out of bed and pulled a rolled mat from the closet, then he dropped face down onto it for the start of his morning routine: 30 minutes of exercise and at least one basic kata for self-defense. After that he went for a long, soothing hot shower and some fresh civilian clothes. After he had dried himself and dressed up, he paused in reflection. Looking at the ominous black armor on its wooden valet stand, he thought back to how good it felt to be in charge, having competent people to execute his orders.

(Elephant Music – Dawn of Time)

He knew for a fact that power was addictive, the stories from his three mentors had shown him that and his mother's own incapacity to let go of the little bit of mostly illusionary power she had confirmed it. He would need to be careful not to walk down the path of insanity and rabidness like the generals of World War II, or the ideological fanatics of the Viet-Nam and Korea wars. The complete systematic military clusterfucks in the arabic nations since the 1990's were even worse and still had no end in sight.

Placing a hand on the breastplate of the armor, Lucas wondered if his reaction to his mother and her soon to be husband had not been too extreme. Then again, when your own mother looks you in the face and says you should be imprisoned without Law or Justice in a private jail to suffer beatings, rapes and maybe even become handicapped for life from the injuries received, how do you have a relationship with such a person?

Rapping his knuckles on the dull silver faceplate of the helmet, Lucas let out a breath and centered himself. He had acted with some harshness yes, but not rashly; his decision had not been precipitous. He had full control of his actions and the people in the hotel had obeyed his orders because they could see that his methods matched the end goals and guaranteed collective success at the end. His parents were lucky to be alive, and so were their children. Others like the Delanosa Famiglia had not been so lucky when confronting him to test his hold on his people and territory.

(Ori and the Blind Forest - The Spirit Tree)

Walking out of his room, Lucas adjusted his brand new work satchel on his shoulder and took the slow way down the glass-walled stairs at the front of the administration tower. He checked on the night's reports with the 'Alan' that was holding a shift at the principal reception counter as he walked by. He made his way back through the full length of the entry level to the rear and the restaurant on the ground floor of the main medical wing. He wanted a good sized breakfast and time to eat it slowly before his many relatives took up the lead in pursuing his education.

(Audiomachine – When It All Falls Down)

He could easily admit that there were many glaring deficiencies in his education because quite frankly he never knew for certain there were any things missing. In his original timeline he had just begun to perceive the unnatural and the bizarre as hiding realities, deeper truths that the masses were kept ignorant of. At least, he hadn't operated under the constraints of a paternal authority ward or prisoner's block or any other such enchantments to keep him docile and pliable like some of his siblings had endured for years.

The stuff that had been found in the last week as people went through the flushing drought and cleansing ritual had sent shivers of anticipatory dread down his spine. Thankfully, his own results had been almost clean and even the marrow graft in his back had been deemed harmless except it was synthetic and based on DNA that nobody saw before. The CIRPA team thought it was alien but the Labarre crowd differed that it might instead be from a magical species proper to his own reality but unknown to theirs. In either case, they wanted to do some neurotronic connection tests and some biomantic analysis before clearing him completely. Since this crap was from the same unmitigated bastard that had created the womb-tuber plant and vegetal-interposed cloning of people, the little boy had a tendency to agree with their cautious approach.

Most of the lacking elements in his education could be rectified by the simple method of a good book. With coffee, he thought in a playful mood; lots and lots of coffee and some cookies too. Reading was a hard thing to do for a child, after all! And as a growing boy he needed a lot of energy, hence the coffee and cookies being a necessity. Yup! That was a convincing argument if he ever heard one in his life!

Wearing a smile and seeming genuinely happy, a rare occasion in the recent years, the young boy entered his domain of predilection: the feast-hall. Going straight to the kitchen, he toured the installations and gave a few tips to the relatives going about the business of keeping 247 kin fed and satisfied. As they found out quickly, feeding the horde was easy but keeping them from bitching about anything was hopeless.

Younger Lucas #18 took a tray and crawled through the buffet line with an expert eye as he chose to confect another monstrous three-course brunch. He took an appetizer in the form of a muffin with marmalade, slice of cheese and small bowl of baked beans. His main dish was a huge omelet with several meats and vegetables, folded and draped over a bed of mixed potatoes, onions, peppers and hollandaise sauce accompanied by a stack of buttered toasted bread. His dessert, which he would eat first as always, was a small bowl of fruit salad topped with vanilla ice cream and caramel sauce. The members of the Assembly at the neighboring tables were snorting in laughter at the sight of the mountain of food and the small body that soon consumed his way through it all.

(Nightcall – Stuck In Dreams)

As the youngster was finishing his omelet plate, the Tactical Chief that usually ran the Combat Information Center's operations sat himself in front of the child with a large coffee mug in one hand and a half-eaten breakfast sandwich in the other. His cold, keen eyes took in the little man's clothes and demeanor, so different from two weeks ago when everything was on the edge of the pit and he took over the CIC for the changeling scare. The 20 year old had a good feeling about the tetchy little gremlin, even though several others were actually a bit scared of him and his attitude. In reality, he understood it wasn't fear they felt so much as a deep sorrow that their little brother had to get so closed-souled and cold-minded so early in life.

"How's it shakin' mate?" the young adult asked while contemplating the mysterious mysteries at the bottom of his mug. What the hell had the 'Martin' serving at the beverage counter put in the coffee pot this morning to make it taste like this? Hmmm...

Younger Lucas #18 chewed slowly, at ease in the pleasant atmosphere of the restaurant. The sun was bright and a cool breeze flowed freely through the wide open patio doors leading to the terrace outside. Sighing in peace between bites of egg and sips of coffee, the child watched the others that were on their meal breaks or ending their shifts. He wasn't surprised in the least when the second oldest 'Lucas' in the Assembly joined him. Following the events of the first NCQ expedition two weeks ago, they had spent a lot of time working together in the CIC as they organized reconnaissance and foraging expeditions. After several friendly conversations they found they shared matching outlooks on life, politics, policy, management of assets and the use of violence.

"Hey to you, old guy." the boy answered kindly with a nod and a salute by raising his own mug before tipping it for a sip. "How's life these days? You must find it boring up in the fishbowl when nothing's burning or shooting around us."

The older Lucas grunted in amusement; he had become so inured to warfare and constant battles for the freedom of his family and kin that moments of peace were like candy. They were sweet but not healthy for the long run and you couldn't rely on them to endure for long. No; by necessity and the events of a short unforgiving existence this older brother had become a cold, callous bastard who didn't give a damn about anything that didn't directly keep his people alive and free. The rest could pray to their gods (real or not) and get some help that way; he had his own problems and wouldn't take on more.

After chewing a large bite of his remaining sandwich, the adult asked "Have you thought about the training that you need before going back to your reality? There's a lot of people to help you available. You should take advantage of them while they are present. We could start sending people back as soon as five weeks from now when our oldest sibling gets his head screwed back on the right way so he can manage the blasted D-T-IR Portal."

The child was now wiping the last dregs of hollandaise sauce from his plate with his remaining toast, unconcerned but attentive. His attitude showed how at ease he had become with the older man, and how much trust he had for his opinion. You knew fast and hard when the little boy didn't trust you, didn't respect your opinion or thought his life would be better without you in it. He was amongst the few who could give the 20 year old a run for his money in terms of cynical sarcastic rudeness, and it was just as natural. Everyone had realized quickly it was politeness and good manners that the child struggled with and made an effort to maintain.

Younger Lucas #18 piled up his tray and pushed it aside then held his lukewarm mug of coffee with both hands in front of his face, deeply inhaling the aroma of the life-giving liquid. The question asked by his older sibling wasn't wasted on him as he had been thinking about it since he set foot in this timeline. The first week of his presence here, he had thought almost only in terms of technology and had trawled the Internex to pile up a list of goodies he needed to get home physically, or at least the blueprints and the underlying tech like formulas and molecular models. Then his relatives awoke and with them came the reality of Psionics, the Traditions of the Old Ways of Magick and demonstrations of what True Faith in real Divinities could produce; it all combined to upend his world. All the carefully laid plans were scuppered and now he needed not just a new sheet of paper for a new blueprint but a whole new drawing table with specialty tools to redo all the plans with the details and levels of information that had to be included.

"Yeah, I thought about it a lot actually. It's a migraine-worthy endeavor trying to organize all that I don't know but need to wrap my head around before I go back. There's also the question of what physical items I will bring back with me, like this little beauty when it's completed and approved for deployment." He pulled out a brand new laptop from his satchel, the thermoplastic casing finished in tones of turquoise with gold and silver details giving it a rich upper-class look.

The 11 year old explained his new machine in abbreviated terms: "It's a combination CPU & satellite-phone with solid keyboard, drawing pad, touchscreen and it also has a very good voice command app. There's a movement detection 'airpad' that allows to control the thing without actually touching any part of it. That means you can use it as an interpreter for sign language to speak with someone who doesn't understand that form of speech. Or you could play air-guitar or some VR game without the big gloves or special controller. There's a built-in text recognition app that you can program to recognize, read, write and print for any alphabet including Braille; you just need the appropriate printer to do the solid output. It also has a couple dozen full programs and small apps that I am testing out to see if they're worth lugging back home with me."

After giving the young adult a few minutes to play with the shiny new toy - Ahem! Important accomplishment of technology! - The child took back his tool ("not a game console, I swear!") and laid it flat on the table to activate the conference mode. The electronic machine generated a sphere of light three feet in diameter above itself and barely a second later images, graphs and calculations filled the luminous ball. The program in the device was interactive and grew the imaging sphere to have enough surface to project as many images as it detected viewers while keeping it readable. Soon the other members seated in the restaurant were attracted to the discussion and began contributing opinions.

The concepts of unity

(SeaQuest - season 1 opening theme)

Saturday February 9th of 2301 – early morning, around 08:30am

NCQ, Florida (USA)

Bayou de la Grosse Tronche;

Military sanitarium for handicapped & comatose soldiers

UEO Veterans' Support Services (VSS)

Main wing - restaurant

"Here is what I had planned up to date in the mundane technological side of things. For the psionics and magic, I have been talking to people all over the place for the last week but I'm still lost in a fog bank."

On the imaging sphere was now displayed a barebones structural schematic of an ocean faring ship, a massive mammoth of steel with 20 storey in the main body and another ten in the command tower; some 1,500 feet long by 400 feet wide thus putting it above the leagues of the Maersk Line's cargo container haulers. The design was truly stupendous in that it had a 300 feet wide body with 50 foot wide full-length 'shoulders' at the top on each side. These 5 storey thick overhangs were the emplacements for the graviton generators that allowed the ship to lift off and reach the cruising altitude of 100,000 feet.

"Behold my brainchild: the Omnibian Industrial ship Grendel. Omnibian means than it can reach and maneuver in all environments as demonstrated by the airtight & watertight hull design as well as the retractable tread blocks and the gravity-field engines. This thing will swim, crawl and fly anywhere I want to go. I plan on having electrical power delivered by an integrated pipeworks of plasma conduits linking the hot-fusion generator, the two exothermic chemical reactors and the many banks of liquefied sodium batteries. For ultra clean electricity the outer hull will be covered in seamlessly layered omni-voltaic panels. On top of that, the entire system is designed to be operated manually without any electronics or electrical power at all by having a series of boilers and steam generators to drive the screws and treads, heating, venting and waterworks. The system is completely hybrid so that it can keep sailing or crawling despite solar flares, ion clouds or magnetic discharge weapons like neutron bombs."

There were some appreciative whistles and nods from the Assembly as the child explained his view on why he planned to take so much data and machinery back to the past and how he would do it. The ship was planned specifically not just to carry but also to built and replicate all the goodies to keep his family and friends alive and free. Younger Lucas wasn't holding back and would not underestimate the adaptation or espionage capacities of his enemies. He continued his expose of his thoughts.

"As you can see, this has some of the best shipbuilding tech and know-how that I could find and assemble but I only had a week to make the design up to now, and the WMG's modules on ships and navigation were rather basic. I could produce the most basal outline of what I want but I still haven't figured out how to finish the design to full completion, let alone how to build it. Although, the level of automation in some of the shipyards in the USA suggests that in the end, as people died off, the US government still put massive efforts into constructing sailing and flying behemoths to patrol the continental limits in case of foreign aggression. That leads me to believe that at least one facility capable of automatically crafting the parts and assembling the whole ship exists somewhere inside US borders, or maybe Canada."

As the Assembly members were getting carried away debating the pros and cons of the design's technical aspects and what it was missing, the Tac-Chief asked the boy a poignant question: "What do you want to do with this metal beast kid? What is your end goal in all this?"

The child's answer stunned them all: "I want to make a design big enough and universal enough that all my family, relatives, kin and kith, vassals and assigns with the livestock and agriculture to keep them alive can be together and endure anything from weather to war and move when they can't. I want a design that does so much of so many things that each and every one of us here can build it, take it back home with them and ensure that the fuckshit we all had to endure to get here doesn't happen again. But I'm not stupid; it will happen again if only because of the fear and envy at what we have built. So my goal is that when it does happen we won't lose people or get enslaved ever again. I want this to be my lasting gift and legacy to my family because I'm not sure that I will ever do any real good in my life ever again, so this is it. Does that make sense to you?" the child finished with an interrogative mien as he gazed in the eyes of the older, wiser and much more worn out sibling.

Neither of them paid any mind to the rest of their relatives and friends as they simply shared a long emotional look and understood each other better than anyone else ever had before. They would never again find such community of thoughts and reasoning in their lives, no matter how intimate their lovers and siblings would get.

"I think this project is something too big for just little old you by your lonesome and I think it's too good to just let the opportunity pass us by without seizing it on the go. The fact that you thought about a polyvalent layout with adaptable mechanics for all our situations and defense means that it would be a good long term investment for each of our groups to built and bring back. I will recommend that we turn this into a communal project and build as many as there are realities to send people back to."

As Younger Lucas looked around the restaurant with wide disbelieving eyes, the people began anew to think and comment on the specific knack the kid had for taking charge and caring for the entire group. He had a long, bright future ahead of him, especially if he opened up a bit to the friends and family that waited for him back home.

Magical-Utilities workshop

(SeaQuest - season 1 opening theme)

Saturday February 9th of 2301 – mid-morning, around 10:00am

NCQ, Florida (USA)

Bayou de la Grosse Tronche;

Military sanitarium for handicapped & comatose soldiers

UEO Veterans' Support Services (VSS)

Motorpool garage building

The 11 year old boy and his 20 year old tag-along were now in the workshops in the levels above the hospital's massive motorpool garage. It was here they had built the metal magical relay-plates they deployed outside to scan and control the zone all the way to NCQ. It was here that the CIWS menhirs, the rune covered defensive manatites, were conceived and built before putting them all around the complex to insure their collective safety. Both Lucases stood there for a minute, admiring the products of their siblings' ingenious efforts.

Younger Lucas #18 wanted more; he had to bring back from this place more than just emotions, memories and ceaseless nightmares that weren't of any usefulness to anybody. He needed more manual know-how, more applied technologies, more higher sciences and the theories underlying all those things. Eventually he wanted to have solid equipment in hand at the moment of transiting back to his reality, thus he started designing the Grendel. But it wasn't enough because there were things that he saw and experienced here that flew in the face of reality and he needed some explanations before he conked skulls together to get some insights.

So he brought along his older and calmer counterpart to serve as moderator when he finally decided that some of his relatives needed a resplendent walloping to wake them up to the potential of what they held. He was such a reasonable child, bringing an adult to mediate. - Snort! – The older guy was liable to just hang back and laugh at the show as the runty little kid laid into his kin and kith with a vengeance.

"Whistle! – Oy! Plebes! Get yer lazy carcasses over here, ye knaves!" Younger Lucas #18 yelled out loud as his adult companion burst out laughing at his methods. And they thought that he had rough manners when handling the CIC shifts and giving orders! Ah! Get a load of this one!

(FullMetal Alchemist - Amestris)

One of the 'Martine Mystere' teenaged girls present went into full sarcasm at once; "Yes, Oh me laird! What ever you desire, me master! Command me, I beg of thee!" She exclaimed breathily like a courtesan while wearing a bratty shit-eating grin for all to see. The other relatives and friends piling around them had similar jokes and comments until the tetchy little gremlin puffed out his chest and bellowed "Atten'hut! There be a high lord in them halls! Bow and prosternate before his most munificent allmight!" while attempting to strike a pose of momentous display with a foot on a stool, arm up in the air like a conquering hero of yore. The following five seconds of stunned absolute silence broke under a tidal wave of laughter so hard that several were crying or kneeling down, leaning against furniture to keep from rolling in mirth on the floor. The child rubbed his neck in embarrassment as he looked up at his loudly guffawing older sibling and commented in low voice "I honestly didn't think it was that funny… These people ain't normal is all I'm sayi'n…"

It took over ten minutes to let the people calm down and reacquire a more stable and – humph! – Professional demeanor to have the lengthy conversation needed.

The young boy began giving orders to gather everyone present in the workshop at the conference room next door on the same level. He had seen to it in the past week that there were edible provisions and cleaning supplies in all working areas with heavy traffic. His reflexion was that they should be able to eat at their stations without interrupting production work or surveillance during tactical emergencies. This meant that several conference rooms and cafeterias had been provisioned and cleaned thoroughly under his guidance and were now in full service as planning hubs and watch-rooms. The garage building's facilities had been the second highest priority after the main medical wing.

"Okay dear colleagues of mine; this is planning meeting #1 of however many it takes to get things done right before we all go back to our timelines and realities. I know that under normal circumstances you prefer to sit grouped with the people who came from the same reality. In this case, the focus is tech, not society; I need all of you to rearrange by clusters of technological and, I can't believe it's coming out of my mouth, magical traditions and practices. Thank you." He glared at the assembled folks, daring them to laugh at his incredulity of some things he saw and lived with recently.

After the people had moved around and repositioned by technological or magical group, they began writing and placing holographic textboards to indicate what they specialized in at first thought. Other items were added as they worked so the master-list of what he wanted to conglomerate and send back to all of their realities would evolve until it was complete.

After two hours of fast paced preliminary discussions, both Younger Lucas #18 and the Tac-Chief went around the room to see how things stood. The 11 year old also wanted the history and sociology of the important people from each group to add to his notes so he could plan his calendar of events and contacts once he got back to his epoch. 'You plan to win or you fail to plan and then experience a planned failure spectacularly' the saying goes… He lived through that often enough that he wasn't going to spit on an encyclopaedia's worth of history and society just because it took an effort to get it and then memorize the stuff.

SeaQuest (and UEO Government per extension)

(SeaQuest - season 1 opening theme)

Saturday February 9th of 2301 – late-morning, around 11:00am

NCQ, Florida (USA)

Bayou de la Grosse Tronche;

Military sanitarium for handicapped & comatose soldiers

UEO Veterans' Support Services (VSS)

Motorpool garage building

- DSV 6000 Submarine (1,000 feet long by 100 feet wide by 5 storeys high)

-) Bio-hull armor (N.H. Bridger variant)

-) Aquatubes & Deep Submergence Technology (N.H. Bridger)

-) Neuronal server & dependencies

-) Cold-fusion reactor (1st generation prototype)

-) PAL network (Personal Access / Locator)

- MR Class shuttles

- SeaCrab construction vehicles

- HyperReality Probe (UEO Probotics Lab / Katherine Hitchcock)

- WSKRS sentry probes (UEO Probotics Lab / Katherine Hitchcock)

- DSV human support dive suit

- UEO pulse weaponry

- UEO plasma-based laser array

- UEO cryo-pod containment cell

- UEO Atmospheric recycling tower

- UEO orbital defense satellite

In terms of technology and social advances, the UEO governance was not a resplendent beacon of hope. Historical records show clearly a hard-right leaning with strong fascistic and dictatorial tendencies at all levels of the decisional structure. There was an inbred concept that power must be held by force and used brutally in order to be validated in the eyes of the population. This view of society and politics was actually a mixed-bag of shite from both Nazi-era brown shirts' propaganda and Mao-era communist revolution dogma. The people at the top of the UEO's service branches were just as happy quoting Clausewitz as Lao Tzu and didn't give a shake of a flying rat's ass where it came from as long as the plebes swallowed the swill and submitted to them.

When analyzing the raw technology and industry potential, the UEO era comes up short in many areas. They did produce bio-hull armoring for several classes of ships but then stopped completely any production, classified the research and shut it all down. They managed to put large space stations in orbit but kept them unmanned so they could arm them without fear of a human stopping the triggering of the weapons. They built large atmospheric recycling towers to fight climate changes and de-pollute the air but promptly limited construction to only the founding UEO members. Then they connected stores of poison gas and weaponized diseases to use the towers as evaporators in a scheme to employ those towers as presence-denial arrays to keep their borders safe from reprisals while they attempted invasions in neighboring countries to bring them under the redeeming light of the White Painted Cross.

Several medical advances crucial to humanity were given military classification out of the blue or outright barred from research & development because several key manufacturers were friends of the people in power inside the government. They made several fortunes per year selling weak ineffective medicines to the population but could lose their businesses if the ailments were cured for real. Thus, the UEO government willingly and knowingly chose to let several harsh crippling diseases run amok amongst their population basin in order to keep up the levels of medicinal consumption and expenditures.

At the same time, they also put out alarming reports of disease, criminality, economical failures and other catastrophes specifically to raise the levels of insecurity and hopelessness in the people's minds. Here the goal was simple: they wanted to silently push the desperate, the impoverished and the sick to the doors of the churches and into the control of the Ecclesiastes. The huddled masses got some illusionary hope to keep up their spirits in the trying times while the government got them to quiet down as they endured being culled out.

The more one analyzed the UEO's governing methods and legal proclamations, the more one came to understand that they were a temporary precursor period; just the first step before a fully empowered tyranny deployed and crushed the people under an iron heel. The lists of laws and decrees limiting or abrogating personal rights and liberties were staggering. The legally enacted permissions to the service branches to press-gang people into the armed services by force or by taking family members hostage were mind-boggling. These were the tactics of dictature and tyranny, plain and simple. The publicly acknowledged enslavement of the 'Lucas' onboard SeaQuest was just the first clarion call of that rabid power mongering.

The "held child" system

Lucas was the testing subject for a concept they wanted to put in place permanently in their recruitment system called "the held child" to insure a constant flow of weak-willed, docile bright minds. He was the first super-intelligent teenager that the UEO tried to co-opt / enslave by bartering with his parents for money and social status. The concept of their planned method was to take an incredibly gifted child when they were young and vulnerable due to familial abandonment or violence so as to groom them for easier manipulation and exploitation.

The grooming was to be done by putting the child directly under the personal control of a military officer who would "hold the child" and serve as their new parent-figure while receiving supreme authority over the child, to the point of bypassing the Law and Family Court. This person's actions towards the child would be monitored to ensure the child stayed alive and productive to work as the UEO wanted but all treatment, feeding, education and punishments would be the sole purview of the soldier chosen to control the child. This officer could starve, beat, rape or disfigure the child as long as the desired job was done and the end result produced was a permanently pliable, obedient worker with great technical skills but absolutely no personality of their own.

As Younger Lucas #18 read the sectorial briefs and the final compiled report about the UEO, he could see that the chances of survival for himself and his family were slim to none. The people behind this scheme were not operating pragmatically under the normal constraints of Law and Custom. They were acting by the tenets of Power Penultimate coupled with the mentally depraved justifications of Prosperity Gospel. The fact that there was religious dogma mixed into the basic underpinnings of their methodology meant that speaking with these people would be a waste of breath.

Talking with sectarian worshippers never produces anything because they always leave the meeting believing even more than before that you were the devil's minion and needed to die. Then that fuckshit Prosperity Gospel gave them the immoral stance that they could steal your businesses and enslave your family members as their God-given spoils for all their work in His Name. After all, they would not have won the war if was not God's Will so it is obviously His Will that they be rewarded by pillaging and raping freely the fallen opponents. If God had not wanted them to kill, maim, rape and pillage you, he would not have allowed you to become opposed to his Great Plan for His Children because, obviously, He would NEVER allow his Chosen Children to be defeated in any manner by heathens and satanic followers.

What a bunch of personal responsibility denying defective retards! You wage war because you chose to or because you're pushed to in order to survive! It has nothing to do with God unless a mongrel dog needs an excuse to go burning and pillaging towns all around the country!

Younger Lucas #18 then started reading through the reports for his own incarnations all around the multiple realities and the statistics produced left a cold chill oozing down his spine.

- Lucas Wolenczak(research & accomplishments)

-) Born 24 December 2004

-) Caucasian/white, wheat-blond hair, flint-blue eyes

-) Obtained Grade school diploma by age 7

-) Obtained high school diploma by age 8

-) Obtained Bachelor degree in mathematics & physics by age 10

-) Obtained Bachelor degree in chemical molecular engineering by age 12

-) Obtained Bachelor degree in "generalized" engineering by age 14

-) Obtained Master degree in applied artificial intelligence at age 15

-) Self-trained as a full paramedic up to grade-2 but never got the license to make it official

-) Self-trained as general mechanic between ages 13/15 but never got the diploma to make it official

-) Trained martial arts; (from age 12) karate, beginner level; (from age 16) boxing, amateur level

-) Trained weapons; (from age 16) box cutter, broom handle, crowbar, tire iron, shovel, monkey wrench

-) Trained firearms; (none before age 16) he learned basic arms security from friendly SQ crew

*-) Never truly trained or used a firearm in his life and Bridger didn't want him to

-) Mid-level at urban survival, foraging, scrounging and camouflage (but he is useless in the wild)

-) Mid-level at spying and surveillance

-) Ultra-High Expert at cybernetic espionage, electronic warfare and anti-spying measures

-) Gaseous isomorphic display technology (was never mass produced)

-) Owned and operated a small company to make and sell the GS Displays for about 8 months

*-) Company was forced closed by Lawrence when he "gave" his son to the UEO navy

-) Vocoder for dolphin speech & translation program (secret classified / never made public)

-) Biogenic map for 'Liberté' synthetic virus (secret classified / never made public)

-) Several hundred cybernetic viruses, defenses and virtual guard dogs

-) 2 upgrades to PAL network

-) 3 upgrades to WSKRS piloting and comm suite (secret classified / never made public)

-) 7 upgrades to World Bank servers and cybernetics

-) Created Wollon 8th generation programming language

-) Psychotronic CPU (cybernetic machine that emulates or connects with organic thought)

-) Hard-wired socketed invasive neural interface

-) Neuroplexic programming (organic to cybernetic connection & dataflow)

-) Upgrade of Wollon as a 10th generation language for psychotronic / neuroplexic programming

This was the first and most important group with which to discuss tech and history since it was his own life at stake; what he learned here today would determine whether it was worth it to return at all. During the conversation with the grouped Lucases of all ages and genders, it came to light that 'Lucas / Lucille Wolenczak' had some 100 patents publicly recorded directly to their name before the age of 18 when they stopped officially logging research. They went dark and dropped out of public view when it was discovered that their gaseous-medium isomorphic display manufacture had been stolen from them. It was also proven that several private companies close to a few admirals in the US Navy were stealing their ideas and research to make fortunes while never paying them or even just crediting their name for the innovations.

The same admirals used their military badges and government positions to have his incarnations hunted by UEO Covert Section #7 and forced back into the SeaQuest program to help finish building the SQ II against their will by using several illegal and downright criminal methods. The cruel truth is that after they turned 15 years old, the Lucases were not their own person anymore. They were exploited and imprisoned in one way or another in pretty much every dimension or reality that the Assembly looked at. The other depravity was that in more than 97% of the cases investigated by the Assembly, one or both parents went along with his enslavement as they received power, access to important people and contracts worth a lot of money like WPP.

It was confirmed that all of the Lucases in the Assembly had magical ancestors but several generations in the past; the last active spell-user lived in the early 1800's. The Wolenczak Family was actually very minor nobility that begun in the 1500's in Prague, then capital city of the Kingdom of Bohemia. They were the last surviving descendants of the Baron Haantonynus Wollen (subjunct line of The Imperial House of Habsburg) who died in 1805 at the age of 138 just before the Kingdom was annexed to the newly-made Austro-Hungarian Empire.

He was spoken Von Wollen Der Chezezkia (The Wollen of the Czech Lands) in respect for his prowess at defending by magick, arms & money the lands of Bohemia and the old Czech cultural ways. He was the last fully magical Head of his Clan which then became defunct since all his Heirs had died before him from various plagues, murders and ill advised Oathed Duels which dissolved the Family's Magic and fortunes. The survivors having neither magic nor money, nor even a title to fight over, eventually took the last asset they had: the man's surname. It was firstly contracted and redone to create the new Family Wolen-Czech around 1809 and then changed again to Wolenczak in 1918 when the First World War redrew the borders of Europe and created the Czechoslovak Republic.

The move to that last version was born of cowardice as the Head of the family wanted to avoid being thought of as allied with a political faction or Crown in Europe's continuous 'bowling alley' of succession wars where everything was a target for intimidation or eradication. It was that man's instinct that made him begin the transfer of money and assets to institutions in the USA in early 1930 as the Hitlerian movance was gaining a large following amongst the germanophone populations. Since their family had been Juden for over four centuries, they would never be tolerated in the Nazis' backyard, which is what they saw the Czech Republic as. Even their old historical links to nobility and der Kaiserlich Haus Habsburg-Lothringen would not be enough to save their lives as practically a quarter of Aryan Europa could make the same claim truthfully.

So they sent overseas the artworks, money and research papers as well as the few precious magical artifacts they had managed to keep from when the Clan dissolved. There was a minute chance that the contents of the vault at the magical bank hadn't been sold. But truthfully speaking, in half of their realities the death of his great-grandparents terminated any claim to the contents of that vault allowing the bank to keep all books or documents and sell the artworks. The Wolenczak Family had indeed become as dirt poor as his grandparents had told him as a child when they raised him. – Snort! - Oh well! It's not like he was hurting for money and creature comforts anymore…

Younger Lucas #18 grunted in scorn at the data about his mother's side; they had already been reduced to a single person per generation long before accidentally surviving World War II which led to his maternal grandfather and then his mother. The Holt side of the family had been practically defunct for six generations already and legally disappeared as of his mother's birth. That particular family had contributed nothing worthy of notice in its past epochs and left nothing behind in terms of heirlooms or culture.

The detailed UEO era analysis and multi-varied reports about Nathan Bridger, Kristen Westphalen, William Noyce, Andrea Dre and hundreds of other key political, military and business figures were dry reading but a necessary evil. The global conclusion was that almost all of humanity exploited the incarnation of 'Lucas' they had access to shamelessly. The young child now had a pile of personnel service records, medical records, police investigations and privately commissioned investigations on thousands of high profile targets to compile. He needed to establish a complete societal portrait before deciding if he went back to his own timeline or chose the strategy of living in a different timeline / reality.

International Rescue & Tracy Heavy Industries

(Thunderbirds Are Go! - opening theme)

Saturday February 9th of 2301 – early afternoon, around 13:15pm

NCQ, Florida (USA)

Bayou de la Grosse Tronche;

Military sanitarium for handicapped & comatose soldiers

UEO Veterans' Support Services (VSS)

Motorpool garage building

The next batch of reports to read and process were about an organization that had not yet become active in his own timeline yet. In fact, the only guarantee that it would come to activate was that the diviners had made the appropriate spells and rituals to commit Visions of the Past and Scrying to find pieces of the system's agents and machines. The existence of Tracy Heavy Industries and its many divisions was already known to him, but the confirmation of International Rescue being in the works was obtained only via the seers having taken the appropriate steps. Now that he knew for certain that they were about 3 years away from launching, he could plan for that event in peace.

The item of genuine importance was, after all, his newly found spiritual brother Alan along with his own spiritual siblings Tanusha and Fermat. If either of the elder Tracy's thought they could harm Alan or Tanusha unpunished, they would then learn from Lucas himself that the Krachen does not let go any of its kin from its many arms. Speaking of which, it was now time to turn his baleful gaze to the technologies and histories behind IR and the Tracy / Hardale / Evans bloodlines.

- Cloaking device (all ships & pods)

- Holonet server & relays

- Communications jammer & ECM countermeasure suite

- Autopilot program with Back-to-home recovery flight program

- Thunderbird Operative bodysuit

-) Holonet Communications

-) Self-contained life-support pack

-) Remote piloting & control gauntlets giving access to each TB and homebase

-) jetpack (usable air, water & space)

-) Personal rechargeable rocket anchor & wire (pistol grip with single shot clips)

-) magnetic boots & gloves

-) Helmet with HUD & polarized faceplate, local air supply, emergency comm & beacon

- WorkPods

-) Standard setup is 2 person cockpit; adjustable seats; full climatic control

-) multi-adaptable mobility (ground, water, air, space)

-) Several hundred tools (from mini to super large)

-) UniKonnekt universal hydraulics / powered sockets for all movable tools & parts

- Thunderbird 1advanced command post

-) Vertical flight & hover engines

-) hypersonic scramjets going to mach 8

- Thunderbird 2heavy-hauler

-) Superlift vertical mobility thrusters

-) Rocket anchors & magnetic grapples

-) Droppable cargo-hauler pod (2 vehicles carrying capacity)

- Thunderbird 3space rocket

-) Cockpit for four persons; no sleeping cabins, limited sanitation

-) Limited gravity control by rotation around the long axis

-) 3 grappling arms (deploy from wing struts)

-) Drill for mining asteroids (hidden inside the ship's nose cone)

-) Fusion / ion engine (1st generation prototype)

-) Capable of going to sun and back on one tank of fuel

-) Carries 1 WorkPod & tools specialized for space

- Thunderbird 5orbital station

-) Orbits around Earth; cannot go into atmosphere, is not built to land on anything

-) Magnetic artificial gravity generator (VERY energy intensive, rarely used)

-) Rotating section to create gravity and manage orbital position

-) Military grade communications array

-) Space exploration grade sensors and optics

-) Living quarters for up to six persons (or 12 if you use a hot-bunk schedule)

-) Full sanitation facilities but very limited food preparation systems

-) Massive rocket anchor with grappling claw

-) Space elevator (the anchor contains a life-supporting cabin for two persons)

There were discussions about Thunderbird-4's technologies and capacities but in comparison to some of the submersible technology from the SeaQuest or Quest Enterprises, it was discounted from further talks.

It is important to note that none of the International Rescue vehicles were armed with weapons. They are armored to resist fire, explosions and shrapnel; they have anti-theft and anti-spy devices but nothing harmful or damaging to either persons or material. Jefferson Tracy did not want anybody mistaking his outfit for a militia of extremists so he banned anything bigger than a personal pistol. Operatives are not required to carry guns or grenades but are very much obliged to carry several utility knives, a hatchet and a crowbar.

The two most important people in the Tracy Heavy Industries / International Rescue ecology were doubtless the good professor Hackenbacker and their friend Alan. Their other friend Tanusha Bellegant (Kayo) was important on her own terms but she never went into research or industry so her contribution is mostly as a soldier, bodyguard, infiltrator and in the domain of traditional psionics which are discussed by a different group.

- Professor Hiram Jeremiah Hackenbacker (research & accomplishments)

-) Born 1985

-) Caucasian/white, mud-brown hair, watery-blue eyes, glasses, slight stutter

-) Velocion particle (new particle related to speed and movement; connex to Graviton)

-) Velocium alloy (new metallic alloy exclusive to Thunderbird ships)

-) 'Superon' liquid fuel for space exploration & industrial ultra-heavy machinery

-) Artificial Intelligence programming (sentient robot 'Max' is the preferred test bench for this)

-) Industrial & domestic robotics (like the WorkPods and Mobile Engineering Lab)

-) Nanite development & programming

-) Creation of the Earth-version of nano-construction technique & management software

-) Some 400 patents officially recorded; in actuality it is some 1,100+ discoveries

-) Officially works exclusively for THI but has participated in 900 outside projects to date

Professor Hackenbacker is an orphan who went through foster care in a public orphanage in the USA in New York State. Despite the very few monetary means available, the director of the overcrowded institution saw the potential and early accomplishments of young Hiram as a child so he pushed for scholarships and bursaries to send him to better schools or have access to remote classes. Hiram entered university at age 10 and got a master's degree by age 12, another at 13 and a first PhD at 14 followed by three more until age 17. H.J. Hackenbacker and Lucas Wolenczak comfortably fit in the same bracket of intellect, competency and character as they both prefer to use their inventions for peaceful community-building efforts. The difference is that Hiram got recruited very young by Tracy Heavy Industries when he was 24 years old, when his son Fermat was 2 years old, just after his wife disappeared without a trace in an uninhabited part of Mexico's southern provinces.

While the contributions of H.J. Hackenbacker to the IR projects are so fundamental that Jeff Tracy often said he couldn't have made it real without 'Brains' at his side, it was his personal efforts that were the least acknowledged but the most important. Hiram was listed as the Tracy boys' secondary legal guardian since his second year of work for Jefferson when he was made aware of the International Rescue project, about four years before Scott was told.

He was THE adult of reference in the Tracy Household once the Tracy Island systems were online and the family was moved there permanently. Unlike the explosive tantrums of Jeff, the perpetually angry disposition of Ruth or the subservient attitudes of Kyrano and Onaha Bellegant, Hiram always spoke up and defended the children from the harm the two violent grown-ups were wont to spread around. When it became clear that the four eldest Tracy siblings had been corrupted by their father to distrust and hurt Alan, it had been Hiram who sheltered him with Fermat and Tanusha in his laboratory during their brief sojourns on the Island when vacationing from their boarding schools. It was Hiram who went to school meetings and signed paperwork or arranged travel for Alan since he had turned 8 years old after the blow-out with Ruth that caused Jeff's hate to blossom unchecked.

Prof. Hackenbacker made several attempts at teaching the truth to the four oldest Tracy boys but to no avail. It wasn't until Alan died or ran away to never be heard from again that the young men woke up from the sectarian atmosphere maintained by their father to finally see the harm they did. By that time it was of course far too late.

- Brother & friend Alan Shepard Evans Tracy(research & accomplishments)

-) Born July 2006

-) Caucasian/white, straw-blond hair, sky-blue eyes

-) Youngest professional astronaut on record at the age of 13 when he finished the IR training sims

-) Youngest full-time member of IR (in several realities but not all)

-) Has latent talents for both traditional & virtual psionics

-) Founder of ASET safety & homesteading products when he was 8 years old

-) Created the ASET 'Sweet Home' electronic locks series at age 8

-) Created the ASET 'Luxury Estate' hybrid electro-mechanical locks series at age 9

-) Has 28 patents recorded directly to his name to date; his company has some 200 copyrights

-) As of age 12 he is richer than all his four brothers put together, but nobody knows

Since Alan had learned from his family's inbred violence and his father's reach with his companies, government contacts and British MI-6 through Penelope Creighton-Ward (Jeff's paramour) he knew that any disappearance had to be permanent and irreversible. When 'Alan' lived passed the age of 15 with enough health and mobility, he usually managed to draft Brains and Fermat into helping him and Tanusha to escape and change their identities thus cutting contacts with their two best friends for ever as it wasn't safe to still communicate.

In the very few realities where Alan and Tanusha fail their attempt to escape incognito and get captured, or Alan botches his suicide, the violence from Ruth, Jeff and the four older brothers escalates to such level that it becomes torture overnight and kills Alan inside of a week. This means without fail that the 'Tanusha' who helped him dies as well if she was captured along her version of 'Alan' since Jefferson sees her acts as treason and a danger to his sect if she told police of his activities.

In more than 2/3 of the realities the Assembly plumb, Alan is blamed by his father for the death of his mother during an avalanche that happened during a ski trip in the mountains in Colorado; he was only 3 years old at the time. Since she died immediately but he survived after a month-long coma, Jefferson blames him for murdering his wife and orphaning his four good sons. Alan has suffered much along the years because of the violent temperament bred into and across the Tracy lines for about ten generations as his brothers bullied and hurt him with their father's and grandmother's silent approval.

His grandfather Grant Tracy was sober as a rock but like his parents and grandparents; mean spirited and prone to explosive violence that his wife, children and grandchildren alike suffered until he died when Alan was 5 years old. Grandma Ruth Tracy (nee Hardale) was herself a violent angry woman from a family of protestant fundamentalists who beat her children with a large heavy wooden spoon until they bruised and bled, keeping them unable to sit or even walk straight without help for days. If they resisted or tried to help the child she attacked, she would hit all of them all over their bodies, heads, and even in their faces or eyes. She treated her grandsons the same way when their mother died and wasn't present to hold her at bay anymore.

Jefferson Tracy having been raised with a violent family setting as his normality, didn't see anything wrong to corporal punishment that leaves welts, bruises, cuts, deep bleeding injuries or even the odd black-eye or broken bone. He remembered his grandparents from both sides being angry, domineering people; the uncles and aunts were just as much heavy-handed with their kids and the nephews or nieces when they visited over there.

Jeff's three older brothers had all been in the US Navy and fully into heavy criminal activities as a sideline to get rich quick. Because of this they all died violently in depraved circumstances with many dead and mutilated people strewn around the point of conflagration. All three men had lived their lives like their parents, uncles, aunts, grandparents and ancestors had shown them to do: dominate by pain or take them down with you. Since this mentality was prevalent in all branches of the Tracy family and those they married with, it's no big surprise that Ruth, her son Jefferson, and his five sons were the last living members of the lineage. All the others died from violence at the hands of criminals, police or like Grant Tracy; an incurable disease as cancer took nearly one third of all their relatives.

That means that Jefferson was for his five boys an absentee parent who let his angry aggressive mother Ruth and oldest son Scott handle the brood most of the time until Hiram Hackenbacker came along. Poor Scott tried to be brother, keeper, father and healer to his four siblings but he had inherited the uneven, swiftly shifting temperament of his father and granddad so in the end he did more harm than good. When Jefferson was present, which was one weekend out of the month until the move to the island, all five boys anxiously awaited what would set him off next. He never hit or threatened Ruth but she certainly wasn't shy at swearing, cursing and hitting him with her damned wooden spoon whenever he was in reach of her, despite the fact he was in his fifties at the time. If he dodged or ran off (as he now always did) she just picked on the closest child to pass her rage until she was too tired to keep on hitting.

Most of the 'Alan' were almost killed by Ruth at the age of 8 in a truly depraved event. That is why Ruth helped Alan start his company at the age of 8 as payment to keep him quiet about the event so that even her son doesn't know what truly happened that day. The only things known were that it involved an ambulance, the hospital in Kansas City where they lived at the time, and then being flown by medevac to Los Angeles to another hospital for specialty treatments to his larynx, vocal chords and severe neck / spine traumatism. It was there that doctors notified police who came in, and then the FBI got involved because he was the son of Jefferson Tracy, NASA's darling and All American Hero.

It was at that time that the government's child advocate came in to take over the case and help Alan determine his best course for what he needed to happen. He wanted independence from the adults urgently and money since he already knew his father would cut him off at 18 years or even kick him out before that. Independence would never happen by the age of 15 unless he could find a sympathetic judge; the average age was 16 to obtain emancipation, and that was with a high school diploma and money in hand. It was the DCFS lawyer that suggested strong-arming Ruth into creating the company and giving some seed money to do what he wanted with to repay him for the injuries she had inflicted. The fact that Alan already had a pair of programs to sell and the design of his magnificent electronic locks in hand just made it easier to start operations. He managed to get stability and profitability straight in the first year of production.

Just after being made aware of the gross lines of that event, Jefferson's hate exponentialised so he sent him away to the first of many boarding schools he would attend in his short life. His father was rabidly angry that he had resisted the beating his grandmother was administering and wanted blood and misery in payment for his rebelliousness. He made Alan change schools every year to keep him from making friends amongst the adult staff so he could not get help against the two rabid dogs that kept hurting him: Jeff and Ruth. Jefferson even went so far as to pay adults to write false reports of misdemeanor and delinquency to show his other sons to convince them to let him handle Alan any way he wanted. They not only let him, they joined in on the hatemongering and punishments while exclaiming how ashamed of having him in the family they all were.

In most realities observed by the Assembly, the incarnation of Alan runs away from his family before turning 15 years old or dies from their violence in the last month leading up to his 15th birthday. There are only a few realities were the 'Alan' runs off with 'Tanusha', changes their identities and marries to live a long and happy life away from the cult-like sectarian atmosphere of Tracy Island and International Rescue. There is less than 1% of realities where the Tracy Family manages to exist in harmony in such a way that all five brothers live together without violence and actively harming each other, but that usually happens because Jefferson, Grant and Ruth die together in a car crash after Alan turns 5 years old and Brains takes in all of the siblings as his own.

Alan's psychological profile between the ages of 14 and 18 is that he is actually intellectually just as smart, intelligent and competent as Lucas, Martin or Hiram and would have reached further into research and development if he had been loved, nurtured and supported properly like Hiram was. The way he mentally stalled then regressed to the point he became an almost purely physical being with an infantile attitude halfway younger than his actual age with border-ADHD was a direct adaptation to his hostile environment. At the age of 11 the constant assaults from his relatives created a preponderant need for better perceptual speed and dodging reflexes to stay alive and limit his injuries so all energies, training and personality development was directed to this. On the other hand, running his company activities, his piloting licenses in multiple vehicles from age 10 onwards and completing his astronautics qualifications at age 13 all attest that his capacity to learn and intellectualize instruction was still present and going strong. He just demonstrated his full mental potential when Ruth, Jeff or his siblings weren't around to go crazy at his performance and hurt him for 'acting out of his proper place in life' similar to what Martin had learned to do.

Younger Lucas #18 turned off the digital display of the statistics and societal dossier of IR, THI and their bloodlines with a disgusted grunt that made the others around shiver in dread. That his look was mirrored on the face of the Tactical Chief who was reading the other copy meant somebody was in for a world of hurt real soon.

The child looked deeply into the angry eyes of his older sibling and said in low measured tones "Those besotted curs will regret laying hands on our family. Alan, Tanusha, and even Fermat if he wants in, are MINE and the Krachen does not EVER let go of what it holds in trust. Maybe the other Tracy brothers could be redeemed or kept from depravity, but I doubt it. The statistics about my birth timeline are not in favor of any of our kin. This will demand both finesse of thought and finality in execution." There was no denying it anymore; he had to bring Paul Vanasse to active status much sooner than he thought healthy or feasible for the 9 year old child but needs must.

The 20 year old contemplated his much younger and much more violent sibling, thinking back to his own life, wondering if he could have been happier, or just less injured, if he had developed his killer instincts that early in his life. He probably would have been; the proof was staring him in the eyes as he sat there.

Quest Enterprises International

(Real Adventures of Jonny Quest - opening theme)

Saturday February 9th of 2301 – mid-afternoon, around 14:30pm

NCQ, Florida (USA)

Bayou de la Grosse Tronche;

Military sanitarium for handicapped & comatose soldiers

UEO Veterans' Support Services (VSS)

Motorpool garage building

After a quarter hour pause to use the bathrooms, refill coffee and plate up an actual meal of club sandwiches, mashed potatoes and coleslaw, the child and adult who were fast becoming the de facto leaders of the Assembly along their 33 year old Uber-Brunder stretched their backs and limbs before sitting down to a working supper. Eating with one hand while typing, writing or turning book pages with the other was an old habit and with the fully digitized reports, they didn't even need their hands to work as the display could be programmed with a timer or told when to turn the pages.

Given the generally upbeat and happy demeanor of the 'Jonny' incarnations zooming around the compound, the two chief strategists didn't expect many bad parts. A lot of technobabble and dry-cut stats for sure, but no horror stories like the Wolenczak and Tracy dossiers had revealed or the haunted looks in the 'Martin's eyes warned them of. Given their orphan status, the Labarre and Jenkins wouldn't be any cakewalk either.

"Weeelll, back to the cart said the horse; my back won't break itself all on its own, now will it?" the Tac-Chief quipped glibly about the amount of digitalized administrative work waiting for them.

His little brother snorted and responded forlornly "If the governments fell, there's no lawman anymore, and therefore no deadlines or obligations anymore, then why do I still have bloody homework to do? This is child abuse, I'm tellin' yous'… I'm gonna tell my lawyers, see if I don't!"

The muffled laughter and giggles from around the conference hall left the two leaders well aware of just how their plight – Yes! They said plight! – was perceived by their family. Such a lovable bunch, the lot of them…

- 'QuestWorld' cybernetic virtual environment (Private project; was never mass produced)

- 'HoloWarp' full-body-experience interface

- Neural interface (non-invasive; headset)

- Neural interface (invasive; cryo-pod 'Ars Morpheum') (Secret project; was never mass produced)

- Avionics controls & support consoles (Firefly, Catalina Rebuild, Dragonfly)

- Fixed metallic sails & tri-mast (Questor I) (available for sale but never mass produced)

- Naval controls & support consoles (Questor I & II)

- Chryo-Blast chemical explosive (instantaneous freezing of water and air in the zone)

- Chryo-pulse beam weapon (energy freezes & covers in ice anything it touches)

- 'IRIS' Secure Domotics Server & Sentry

- 'Rachel' Time-Travel Portal; hardware & Programs (secret private project)

- Vocoder for whale speech & translation program (was never mass produced)

The Quest International Enterprises (QEI) was a world renowned, multi-billion dollar capital and assets corporation that spanned the globe. However, unlike Tracy HI which was lead heavy-handedly by a ham-fisted Jefferson, the QEI was an even keeled affair. The Board and Company Direction were in the hands of professional business people that were chosen jointly by Benton and Rachel before Jonny was even born. Almost all of these old timers still worked actively at the time Jonny turns 19 and the family's troubles vanish.

As a corporation, QEI has many domains of activity, mostly centered around very high tech, bleeding edge research & development, computer programming and cybernetics of all sorts. Some truly marvelous experimental chemicals and bio-agents were either discovered or produced by experimentation in the HAZMAT laboratories of QEI. One of the four precursor solutions needed to assemble and energize Synthium (Blue Moon variant) was created by Rachel Jenkins Quest at their labs in Florida. Benton himself discovered and developed an anti-radiation antibiotic called "Adrivair; AR#001-bolus" that was now a staple of the first aid kits of every army in the world thus insuring by itself the profitability and viability of QEI for generations.

While Benton and Rachel always tried to take their research ventures away from weaponry and militarized usages, some things just naturally have an implementation amongst police or military forces. As such, they tried to limit these undesired projects to non-lethal or at least non-mutilating devices and concepts. The very few projects that could not be made or constricted to these non-armament standards were usually pure chemicals like new space rocket fuel, acids for biomass reactors, fire suppression gases, etc… All in all, as of Jonny's birth, the company was trying and succeeding quite well in obtaining and fulfilling many profitable, often classified, government projects for all the members of the NATO Alliance, without ever actually developing a gun, bullet or bomb.

This was displeasing for many neo-con worshippers of the White Painted Cross in Washington DC. They thought the many Wars of the Worthies they had started up around the arabic countries could have been won with a much more superb panache if Quest had gotten off his high horse and supplied them with applied dominance and murder technology they knew him capable of producing. In fact, they had wanted him to create and supply nerve gas and DNA-targeting inert chemicals that could be used over a crowd to only kill or sicken the wanted group. In reality, they wanted QEI to identify the gene that controls/marks the skin color of a person and then create toxins that would attack only those not caucasian/white. Benton received credible informations about the projected tactics along with a list of military personnel, politicians and companies to avoid if he didn't want his family sullied for eternity by getting caught in this web of depravity.

Many in the intelligence community, the CIA in particular, have long suspected that the murder by sniper fire of Rachel J. Quest at the Florida Quest Compound was retaliation by the neo-cons and their apostolates of the White Painted Cross against the Quests for refusing to submit to their fanatical God Given Plan for America.

- Doctor Benton Harald Quest(research & accomplishments)

-) Born 1962

-) Caucasian/white, rust-brown hair & beard, deep-blue eyes

-) Founder and principal researcher for Quest Enterprises International

-) Human & veterinary medicine, biochemistry, genetics, mechanics, cybernetics, phenomenology

-) Has more than 600 discoveries patented directly to his name

-) Has participated in the vetting or validation of over 2,000 other projects for QEI

-) Has been validation consultant for the US Government on more than 600 projects to date

-) Has received honorarium, medals and diplomatic credentials from 27 Nations to date

Benton Harald Quest would need a hard-cover book to properly enunciate his many achievements and the vast experiences of his life. He was formed as a Florida National Guard field medic who then learned chemistry and advanced biology to work on the Human Genome Project. He was right in the front pack during the budding Age of Silicon when Microsoft and Apple began spreading their user-friendly systems as he was developing new thinner silicon wafers and conductive alloys for CPU and circuit boards. He then opened his mind to the wonders of the world with phenomenology when he began traveling extensively with his son Jonny, after Rachel's death sent them both into a depressive spiral that they needed external help to recover from.

For most of Jonny's life, Benton was an amiable, calm, even-tempered person who cherished every moment with his Little Angel as his wife had dubbed him. She was still calling 8 year old Jonny by that nickname the day she died. Benton kept doing it intermittently until he was 14 and then the 'Troubles' happened.

Benton has a phlegmatic, almost british/germanic approach to life with an unflappable demeanor and this weird character trait that most of his fear, anxiety or anger are converted to curiosity about why a person or event happens that particular way. While he does have very strong, deeply rooted principles, Dr Quest is by no means a fanatic nor is he a tree-hugger or a left-leaning bleeding-heart liberal, despite the depictions that many ecclesiastes of the WPC have tried to publish about him. It's just that very few events or personalities can manage to get him roused enough for violence to become the solution he will employ to resolve a situation. Threats against his children and extended family are amongst the few sure-fire ways to get him to pick up his trusty old Lee-Enfield .303 to put some lead in the offender's career perspectives (and health).

Because of this almost inbred tempered reaction to reality and the many multi-varied accidents caused by human existence, Benton is what most would consider a liberal, even lenient parent in that he never allowed corporal punishment or confinement terms for any child under his care and would routinely interfere when he witnessed it. Despite this overtly lenient attitude, he was in fact quite demanding and firm, with a strong work ethic and impeccably clean life. Because of that role model, Jonny and Hadji could never in their lives be called spoiled or bratty, no matter how many material objects they had or how much freedom they enjoyed at home and on the road during their family expeditions.

When it was Benton that gave punishments, Jonny and Hadji, with Jessica Bannon later on, were always given extra chores over their usual daily allotment of household work. For more serious offences, or those mistakes borne of bad judgment and moral ambiguity, they had to write lengthy research reports on topics related to the error they did to help them understand why they should not repeat the mistake. Since Benton was a celebrated academic with many books and articles published, his criteria for a successful report were quite high and helped all his children develop very critical, analytical minds. It also took a crapton of time and neither wanted to be on the receiving end of the dreaded 'reading list' the man would give them to base their text on, with the obligation to include pertinent quotations, notes and references, etc…, in the report or else start over again.

The truly good thing about the type of discipline Benton maintained was that he never "grounded" one of the children nor did he ever use isolation or confinement based types of punishment. Any child that disobeyed or made mistakes was instead given less leeway in their decisions and kept closer to have more constant direct parental input into their activities. And since the report could take two or three weeks to get done right, Benton understood that the child would need some breathing room and time to de-stress and clear their mind to use it properly so adding restrictions and "grounding" into a closed room on top of the assignment was never contemplated nor seen as beneficial for either child or adult. This meant that Jonny and Hadji never once in their lives saw their father as a jail guard or someone who thought them too idiotic to be let out of the house as many parents act towards their kids.

However, given the amount of actual real thought-process and work-product that Benton expected to be put in these reports, the children would have gladly preferred a good spanking instead. Jessica, who was in fact spanked by both of her parents until she was 19 because of her hot-headed, volatile temper, often preferred her own father's much more direct but quite shorter method of punishment to the interminable yet supposedly kind and gentle method of the good doctor.

Benton and Race argued and actually quarreled quite a few times about the effectiveness, morality and legality of corporal punishment applied to children and especially teenagers. Benton was disgusted that Race and Estella would treat their only child that way but never interfered out of respect for Jessie who had asked him to leave her family dynamics alone. In counterpart, Race never hit or spanked the boys, even when Benton was away for work or illness and it was him alone that watched the three teens for several weeks. Even when they were on expedition, trekking on foot in desolate icy plains or climbing up forested mountains, Benton never relented on his pain-free approach and Race never stopped sighing in exasperation, along with the boys in fact.

The kids still thought well into adulthood that a red ass would have been a lesser pain than the damned report but Benton never wanted to hear their opinions. It was one of the few things in their lives for which he would always pull out the old "You're just kids! What do you know about life and parenting? Do what you're told as you're told or I'll add a report on respecting the authority of your elders as well!"

The whole family never did resolve this difference of opinions in Benton's lifetime but it is noteworthy that it was the only enduring and recurring subject of contention in the entire family.

- Brother & friend Jonathan Benton Quest

-) Born June 2005

-) Caucasian/white, straw-blond hair, sea-blue eyes

-) Trained martial arts; judo, karate, kung fu

-) Trained calisthenics & acrobatics to olympic level by age 13

-) Trained weapons; staff, sticks, knife, hatchet, ropes and hooks, slingshot, bow, crossbow

-) Trained firearms; pistol, bolt-action rifle, lever-action rifle, 12 gauge shotgun

-) Trained paramedic grade-1 license

-) Expert survivalist, camper, forager, hunter and fisher

-) Expert Explorer, surveyor & mapper

-) Expert urban escapist; could hide in city indefinitely despite hostile pursuit in progress

-) Expert pilot of many types of boards, moped, cars, boats, planes and helicopters

-) Expert computer analyst & hacker

-) Has conceived several video games for QEI that were put on public sale

-) Has conceived several video games for QuestWorld system (never sold)

-) Has conceived several types of surveillance firmware to spot CPU & BIOS hacking (never sold)

-) Has conceived 3 applications to improve efficiency of IRIS domotics server (private usage only)

In all the realities plumbed by the Assembly, the 'Jonathan' incarnations are good hearted people who were lucky enough to live in a good home with kind adults and then they were blessed with Hadji and Jessie as siblings. The only real depravity was the murder of Rachel Quest (nee Jenkins) his mother right in front of his eyes at the age of 7 when a sniper took aim at the Quest compound in Florida. They never found the man responsible or why but that is what began the intensive relationship between the Quest Household and US Central Intelligence Agency / section I-1 who began to supply them with bodyguards all year long. This led to meeting Race Bannon and three years later his daughter Jessica Velasquez Bannon.

Besides nightmares and some anxiety attacks, Jonny developed a long lasting despise of guns and firearms that impeded his survival training quite a lot until the age of 17 when some mental blockage came apart and he took to pistols with a vengeance. He did however perform incredibly in all athletics, sports and physical endurance tests. He could swim, run, climb or ride several types of animals and bikes. He learned by age 10 to drive several larger vehicles in case of emergencies and got licenses as soon as he reached the lowest age recognized by International Law to do so.

Unfortunately that meant that the 'Jonny' were not pushed into developing personal survival strategies like the 'Lucas' or 'Alan' had to. Despite having faced violence, death, depravity and insanity at the hands of Zin, Surd, Rage and several other terrorist madmen, it was never the family that hurt them so they recovered quickly and with little traumatism to their soul. That eventually would come back to haunt them in the worst way.

The 'Jonny' were well loved and supported until the age of 14 when their father and supposed body-guard cum secondary legal guardian started leaving them behind at the Rockport (Maine) Quest Compound while taking Hadji and Jessie with them on their explorations and adventures. Neither adult could tell you why this started to happen; there was never a conscious decision to leave Jonny behind. They were well used to traveling with all three children together, had the money and equipment to manage a five person excursion easily, so there was no reason for this to happen. How or why Benton started leaving his birth son behind while focusing on the adoptive son, or even on the daughter of his employee, more than on his own blood-child was never resolved; it just came to be and then passed.

It was following almost a year of abandonment that Jonny, now 15, was fed up and started moving around, meeting people and making himself a life. That lasted peacefully for a full year before the adults noticed something and started to blame him, calling him undisciplined, rebellious, untrustworthy, and so on. His father wanted him at home like a goldfish in a bowl; immobile and silent while he traveled the world with Race Bannon and the other two teens.

Jonny instead threatened to get DCFS involved if his father didn't shut up and let him live; he was 16 years old now and could legally have a full time job since he had just obtained his high school diploma by going to the Rockport Private Academy's testing center to get qualified. Their extensive testing proved that he was being held back academically some three levels behind where he could be just because the adults wanted him under control to decide about his life! He was short-changed on his education just so the two older men could constantly speak about how intelligent and advanced Hadji and Jessie were while Jonny was just ordinary. Due to his physical prowess and athletics in community events in Rockport, they made him believe that he was just a grunt, a meat-tank unable to think straight or develop anything of scientific value. In short, they tried to convince him that he would never be a great man like Benton or even just an okay man like Race.

That entire family dynamic means that at this time in the many realities observed, 'Jonny' never created big technology or science like Lucas, Alan and Martin did. He never logged any patents or copyrights despite being an incredibly competent hacker and programmer who had developed several sub-games and applications to be run specifically inside the QuestWorld game while using their proprietary neural interface and whole-body display / control system. Jonny had become a professional-level sportsman who could have gone to the Olympics by the time he was 13 years old. He could scuba-dive, use nitrox systems and a diving bell. He could ride a bicycle, dirt bike or moped as well as his hoverboard built by Benton when he was 9 years old. He could pilot their boat Questor I, the seaplane, the helicopter or even the hypersonic jet by himself safely and efficiently. He was an incredible martial arts combatant with a staff, knife or hatchet but warmed up to firearms only late in adolescence past the age of 17.

Younger Lucas #18 munched thoughtfully on some fresh-picked sliced apples, dipped in english cream of course, as he sipped his cappuccino with distinguished (snobbish) manners. The sniggers of his siblings were promptly dismissed as the brayings of uncouth peons unworthy of his attention. Still, the statistics about QEI were actually quite promising, not something he could say about the UEO era. Pursing his lips in thought, he studiously ignored the interrogative looks from the 20 year old sitting in front of him, and most certainly did not find amusing the illusory donkey ears someone (child Alan # 3) had spelled behind his head. Ah, the freedom of childhood's carefree age… Humph! Where was he, now?

The QEI tech was nice but the family profile and societal report was very interesting since it meant that there may be at least a pair of mature, stable and reliable adults out there to get help from. It was already too late for everybody else or they had been born wrong to begin with. There was something though, that niggled at the back of his mind as he reviewed key parts of the 19 year old Jonny's accounts and descriptive of their lives, habits and patterns of activity for years 14 to 18.

The few adult-aged 'Jonny' and 'Joanne' described a rather difficult passage to adulthood because of that weird period of passive – aggressive detachment on the part of all their family but by age 18 it had all come back together. But they remembered the broken trust, the insults, the accusations, the abandonment and crying themselves to sleep alone in the huge house in the Florida compound because even the paid housekeepers, the Evans, were ignoring them for weeks at a time. It all smelt of manipulation and outside interference of some sort to the more experienced people in the room so they decided that an in depth investigation was needed when they returned to their home timelines. They adults could not change anything, but for those in the younger years there was still time to get tactical information and mount a defense against what tried to split them apart.

CIRPA: The Center for the Investigation and Research of Paranormal Activities

(Martin Mystery - opening theme)

Saturday February 9th of 2301 – late afternoon, around 17:00pm

NCQ, Florida (USA)

Bayou de la Grosse Tronche;

Military sanitarium for handicapped & comatose soldiers

UEO Veterans' Support Services (VSS)

Motorpool garage building

After the downright ordinary (Yeah, right!) adventures of one J.B. Quest, the complete fuckshit that was Martin Mystere's life and on-the-side job came as a shock to the mind and soul. There were some damned zingers in this report and the tech stats were complicated by magic and aliens galore. As if the animated cursed Malenque Mummies or the ancient Alien-Summoning Nazca ruins the Quest family had explored were just plain everyday amusement park tricks and lightshows!

Younger Lucas #18 shared a look with his older brother who quite helpfully shrugged, silently mouthing "Hey, what can you do about it?" Damn the lazy twink! He would have to do all the heavy mental work by himself again, just like always! Meh! Adults, these days!

The child traded his sugary cappuccino for a black espresso and some dry sable cookies to keep him on track for the evening and most of the night. They would take a full stop around 11:00pm for a real meal and then continue until the last report was read. Man, what a fun night in perspective!

The Center (CIRPA) has never logged or recorded ANY patents or copyrights of ANY know-how, technology, science or theory; be they mundane or mystical, earthly or alien. No one knows why that is the established policy and the M.O.M. does not tolerate questions about the subject. The result is that the institution has never made any effort to disseminate its trove of science to the Earth to improve the minds and quality of life of the planet's inhabitants. Most governments of most planets would consider this to be SEDITION and TREASON.

The official policy of CIRPA is to help local law enforcement with the magick / alien situation and then wipe memories all around regardless of badge, rank, social position or even diplomatic privileges. The Center operates completely out of the legal bounds of the mundane governments, the Wizerias and even the alien law agencies they partner with. Given this lawless mentality, it is pretty much certain that not all is clean and legal within the command structure and procedures of CIRPA. Then again; nobody remembers long enough to keep the investigation going otherwise that would be SEDITION and TREASON as well.

- U-Watch (Utilities Wrist-mounted Device)

-) Some 300 mundane, alien or mystical devices programmed into replication / storage

-) Energy-to-matter replication matrix

-) Dematerialization storage matrix

-) Communications for telephone (analogic, cellular, satellite)

-) Communications for radio (short wave, analogic, CB)

-) Communications for Infra-red & optical laser port

-) Powered by environmental radiation, bio-electricity from user, ionic crystal battery (5 day charge)

- Alpha goggles (meta-glasses with variable lights, scanning lenses & other functions)

- X-Rod (metallic collapsible electrified staff; shoots stun net from one end)

- X-Knife (light saber; variable frequency, coloration and length / width)

- X-gripper (rocket anchor with wire and hydraulic winch)

- Shield Handle (Metallic handlebar that emits a barrier shield; 12 feet diameter for 30 seconds)

- Ectoscan (portable scanner for samples with integrated linkup to Legendex)

- Vertical flight / hovering Aircraft (cloaking device, comms suite, scanners)

- All terrain wheeled vehicles (cloaking device, comms suite, scanners)

- Small & medium naval boats (cloaking device, comms suite, scanners)

- Memory Management device (wipe & rewrite memories of 200+ species)

- Holomatrix cloaking device for vehicles

- Humanumorphic cloaking device for alien collaborators

- Artificial gravity grid for vehicles

- Sublight engines (slow obsolete models; max capacity is 55% of sublight speed)

- Warp engine (slow obsolete models; max capacity is Warp 3,25)

- Portal Generator

-) Same temporal referent only (no time displacement feasible with this equipment)

-) Same dimension and synthetic pocket dimensions

-) Free-float entry / exit points

-) Range 25,000Km through solid matter or energy fields

- LEGENDEX

-) Cybernetic encyclopedia

-) Holographic interactive display

-) Contains all mundane, alien & mystical knowledge / protocols of CIRPA

-) Access managed by security clearance levels coded biometrically

- Aliens species

-) Partnered = 40 species / 100 races / 300+ cultures

-) Extra-terrestrial governmental contacts = 250+

-) Alien personnel that work for CIRPA on Earth = 2,000+

There is nothing known about the woman called M.O.M. and she actively keeps it that way. Any being that came close to unraveling her identity or secrets was mind-wiped and then killed. She has a frigid demeanor covered by an artificial smile that fools people for a few weeks and then they realize what monster they work for. You would receive more sympathy from the virus killing you than from her even after you did her a favor.

- Director of the Center: M.O.M.(Identity never revealed)

-) Woman of questionable origins and genetics; part-human suspected

-) Looks caucasian/white, hair black with purple highlights, purple eyes, slight fangs on upper canine teeth

-) Is rumored to have founded CIRPA; never confirmed

-) Controls 'The Center' like a fiefdom or an abbey; her Rule is ultimate and unyielding

-) Aggressive and domineering; even when she is patently wrong, people are afraid to call her on it

-) She has NO regards for the governments / populations whose territories she violates daily

-) In her eyes everyone is an enemy; she does not differentiate between aliens, humans, undead, etc…

-) While she smiles and plays nice with her agents, it's always just skin deep; everybody knows better

-) She NEVER gives her agents any assistance in their personal lives, even when sick or injured

-) Under aged agents victims of family violence are commanded to tough it out silently or lose their job

M.O.M. might look like she hates Martin and lets Diana smack him around on mission-time as payback but it isn't so. She just could not give a damn about his health, welfare or emotional wellbeing; as long as he functioned enough to get the job done, she kept him as an agent. The few adult 'Martin' in the group all shuddered at the memories of the fight that exploded when they told her they were leaving CIRPA to work full-time for the projects they had developed with the Lucases and Alan's of their realities. It had been open warfare in the streets and sewers, in the air and on waterways; she wanted the whole group mind-wiped and deader than roadkill Right-Fucking-Now and was willing to wade into the fray to do the deed herself.

On that note, M.O.M. has several psionic skills and a repertoire of combat magic to back up the tools from her one-and-only Director-level U-Watch. During the fight she let loose extra-dimensional abominations, poison gas, a pair of lava rivers and shot at everything around with a beam pistol that disintegrated anything it touched.

- Assistant Director of the Center: Billy (Ganthar)

-) Alien from another planet where he was supposedly a great warrior

-) Reptilian; green; medium height with spiky crest on head and back, clawed hands and feet

-) Prefers to look like the stereotypical martian: 2 foot tall & green

-) Usually a friendly person but truly submissive to M.O.M.

Billy (Ganthar) is a lot older than his appearance suggests and his humanumorphic disguise as a human teenaged boy around 17 years old does not help in tracing his age. It is proven he came to Earth in 1947 during the Roswell incident but little of his personal past and species' culture are known. For some reason he is very dedicated and profoundly submissive towards the M.O.M. something that the 'Martin' and 'Diana' have never figured out why. Billy helps Martin's team as much as he can during their missions for The Center but is kept on a tight leash by M.O.M. She systematically and rabidly forbids him from helping anybody with their home life, even if they should step in to regularize the situations of their juvenile agents who have violent families.

- Martin Mystèrethe best agent CIRPA has ever had in service

-) Born November 2003

-) Caucasian/white, gold-blond hair, amber/copper colored eyes

-) Begun working for CIRPA at age 11 by doing research using Torrington Academy's workshops

-) Everybody but M.O.M. thinks he started at age 15 along Diana when Java was discovered

-) Trained in several martial arts: Karate, Kung-Fu, Judo and is part of the school wrestling team

-) Trained with weapons: staff, knife, hatchet, dart, rope, chain & hook, fencing & kendo

-) Has trained with several firearms since age 11 by attending a secret gun-club run just by kids

-) Good enough with computers and software to hack into several classified sites, including CIRPA

-) Trained to be certified as paramedic level-2 for the school's volunteer firefighter & rescue brigade

-) Profoundly gifted with ecology, zoology, biochemistry, genomics, biotech engineering

-) Specialties in fluid analysis, oozology, mycology, xenobiology, crypto zoology, phenomenology

*-) Mystical specializations after adolescence: herbology, alchemy, healing arts, necromancy, dark arts

-) Has actually patented several bio-sciences innovations under an anonymous numbered company

Martin was always a good child with a wondrous kindness inside of him that all the hurt and misery inflicted by his father and step-sister has never managed to kill off. He just did what all the other kids in his situation learn: hide your true self until you move out and leave the crud behind. He was playing the endurance game and was in the process of winning it on his own terms. Learning first aid and rescue techniques in preparation to join the school's volunteer rescuers saved his life both in the field and at home. His superior performances in gymnastics and extra-curricular self-defense classes taught him to tumble and fake injuries to appease his rabid father's rage when he was beaten. The multiple biology-themed classes helped him develop the skills needed to find ingredients to prepare his own remedies for when Gerard really put an effort into hurting him so he was scarred or maimed. The very secretive weapons training was for the inevitable moment when, upon leaving secondary school, he would join the Canada Coast Guard training program and ditch his blasted family; they would react violently but he would be ready and able to fight them off.

Martin has always had public service and community at heart; all his prodigious intellect and competencies were geared along the "Rescuer's Principle" to keep himself alive and conscious so he could keep others safe until the rescue effort reaches them. This was what gave him the drive to study hard, perform very well in homework and assignments but then willfully tank out his exams to maintain the charade of an idiotic lazy bum that made his father feel less threatened. Martin had found out very young that coming home with the truly magnificent grades and commendations he should really be getting would only anger his father and step-sister thus resulting in a two-on-one beating that injured him for three to five weeks.

The many incarnations of 'Martin' all learned at an early age to keep quiet, do things silently and invisibly, especially when the attack-bitch 'Diana' was nearby as she always hit, abused and injured him on the orders of their common father. It would take many years and several near-death experiences on missions for The Center before the 'Diana Lombard' figured out that they had a great sibling and should cherish his presence in their lives. Usually, that happened around Martin's 17th year of life, in their last year of high school as Martin had skipped a grade to be in Diana's year. It was Gerard who insisted that they be in the same year and groups because he wanted his little mercenary to keep tabs on Martin when he wasn't present. In reality, Gerard loathed both children equally but never got violent with Diana to maintain the illusion that it was "all the boy's fault".

Gerard Mystery & Diana Lombard

In most realities plumbed by the Assembly, the 'Martin' only learn of magic and the heritage of the Maison des Mystères when they have reached 17 years of age during a mission for The Center in Paris (France) where they accidentally fight a group of vampires in an old mansion of the family's ancestors. From that point forward Martin will do all that he can to find magic-users with the goal to meet people and befriend them instead of neutralizing them on orders of M.O.M as he had been limited to doing. His change in attitude brought him into contact with a county sheriff of the Wizeria Hammerrika's continental governance and thus allowed him to establish an inroad into the magical communities of North America and Europe.

He learned the ancient lores of the House of Mysteries, founded in the year 502, right after the fall of the Western Roman Empire; how they moved from Rome to France until the 1300's and then fled to England before fleeing those religious wars and witch hunts in the 1500's. Their last destination was Canada, the Sherbrooke area in Quebec, under the jurisdiction of the Laanderstadt of the Hassmmerrisskath where their numbers slowly dwindled out until only his magickless father remained.

And that was the basic reason for all the hatred that Gerard Mystery spent on both of his children: they were fully magical and he was not. Gerard's father Gilbert was a semi-user of magic like his father and grand-father had been but Gerard was a squib. Squibs are a genetic mutation that happens for many reasons, natural, accidental and malevolent. Squibs are non-users of magick, specifically Essence, who do not have a magical core so they can't use any type of direct sorcery but they can still use the lesser realms of channeling (Faith) and mentalism (psyche) with a lot of effort and remedial training. In basic facts, squibs are sensible to magic and can perceive things or events but not affect them like their wizardly counterparts would. They can brew and use some potions but not all of them since those requiring an active core during the ritual of imbedding will always fail and be toxic. They can read, write and empower runic arrays but rarely as efficiently or powerfully as their fully magical relatives would. Because of these limitations, squibs are often reduced to manual labor in farms, restaurants and of course, the banks, accountant offices and law firms as these require no magic unless Oaths and Blood Tithes are needed, which even squibs can perform properly.

What is important to understand here is the social and legal stigma attached to this condition when you live in a completely magical community, which is a lot of bigotry and contempt all day long. When you are the Heir Presumptive to an Ancient and Noble House like Gerard was as the only male of his generation, then there is really no explanation for it other than living through hell every day of your life. The moment he was confirmed a squib instead of just a late bloomer, he saw his title of Heir and the rights associated to it stripped from him by his father with approval of the Wizeria Hammerrika and he was no longer able to access or control the family's remaining fortune. Even his name was forcibly changed by the Family Magic from the ennobled french version 'Mystère' of the central title-bearing line to the menial english 'Mystery' reserved for squibs, mundane members of the house and paupers taken into fostering. By the Family Charter and House Magic, it would be his first-born son who would be the new Heir of Mystère and eventually the new Magistrat de la Maison Mysterieuse.

So Gerard did what a lot of men in his situation do: he got his act together and found a woman he respected, not 'loved' as it would interfere with the plan. He wooed her, bedded her and made sure to get her pregnant as with her magical background, education and social status, both their parents would forgive them if this produced a son and they married to legitimize the union of both houses. Unfortunately, at the first signs of the baby's gender it was proven to be a girl and this stuck Gerard in a bind as he had actually fallen in love with Sophia Alesianne (her mother was born Lombard) and wanted to marry her. Sophia understood his situation and since they truly loved each other, she helped to negotiate with her parents to let them name their illegitimate daughter Diana Lombard to be the Heir of her maternal lineage thus giving both females a good position in society.

This done, Gerard rapidly took up his list of prospects and went hunting for the next fully magical woman of pedigree to give him his bloody thrice-cursed son so he could put this shite behind him and live his life not in poverty or shame like the magical community wanted to impose on him. After all, he had produced a girl-child who even now at the end of the first trimester of gestation was showing the precursor signs of a magical core forming. If he produced a son and was made the lawful Regent of House until the kid passed his 'legal' magical maturity (age 7, awakening; age 13, puberty; age 17, maturity and age 21, ascendo magisterium) then he would be respected by society again. So he chose a woman of good stock and standing but since he respected her for her mind and accomplishments in both magic and mundane science, he actually explained the whole situation and let her decide if she wanted in on it.

Now you have to understand that much of the magical communities, humans, humanoids and non-humanoids alike, are somewhat stuck in the past in terms of social morality and customs because of the longevity of the peoples and the multiple binding-oaths inscribed in the Charters of the Wizerias, the Banks, and the Family Magicks. That means that even the most active morally progressive social reformers are greatly limited in what they can change before they are stopped cold by these Oaths, Charters and the Sovereignty Magic of the Laanderstadt. Because of this, everyone in these communities is educated and prepared to the eventuality that they may have to live with a paper wedding on one side and a love-match never legalized on the other.

Because of this crushing imperative to produce an Heir for the title-bearing line of the Family, Clan or Dynasty, it is not uncommon to see a titled Lord (or Lady) having several wives, several concubines and several 'intimate assistants' to make certain that procreation and heredity are insured. Now there are several ways to accomplish this like just asking and getting permission from the women / men involved. There are old marriage contracts set up between allied families or between businesses where a debt can't be paid in money or land so a marriage is offered. There is still the practice of paying concubines under set-terms contracts which is legal, just as taking the person under contract for the time needed to produce the Heir and then she is set off with a small pension for the rest of her life in a secondary house somewhere out of sight.

What Gerard did at that point in his life was neither illegal, immoral, abnormal or even unexpected given that the title of a Most Ancient & Most Noble House was at stake here. He could even have gone to one of several conclaves of witches who serve as midwifes and match-makers or just asked any magical hospital to put down his name for assistance in finding a woman in procreation age and for a few gold coins would also have had the health reports of each candidate submitting their names. It was just simply a way of living and doing business like any other because the alternative was allowing Chartered Families to die out and society would then lose those family magicks and eldritch secrets forever.

Gerard found a second woman quickly and lucked out for once in his life; she understood and was in a bind of her own so this would work out well for both of them. The woman was called Kerenza Basset, from a respected old Cornish family that traded magical minerals in nine countries. Unfortunately, her family was patriarchal like 80% of the Chartered Families were and she had only one sister called Tamsyn, no brothers. As the eldest, marrying well to continue the line fell unto her as the much younger Tamsyn was born functionnal but not quite right (read: wild magic that could not be controlled) and would probably never settle down or even get into a relationship that mattered to the family.

Now Kerenza looked at Gerard who was from noble blood, was athletic, educated and a recognized scientist who didn't think that her studies in crystallurgy and alchemy were weird for a woman. He told her right off the bat that he expected and demanded that she continue her life and dreams, no matter how their relation progressed. This blasted heredity mess had spoiled his life, it would not damage Sophia's, hers or anyone else's if he could manage it. They agreed to date and try for a relationship rather than go for a hospital and potions right away. It worked well for them and soon they produced the much desired male heir the old fashioned way. Lo and behold, he was fully magical as the first trimester scans indicated. So, keeping with traditions and polite conventions amongst people of their rank, they married but kept an open door / closed eyes policy.

This meant that Gerard would live with Kerenza & Martin two weeks and then spent the other two weeks with Sophia and Diana. This went well until Gerard's envy and jealousy against his son manifested just before the child's first birthday. He silently brought into the house a priest: a charlatan who apostolized the White Painted Cross of the Truly Christian American Christ while actually being a secret member of the Catholicu Vaticanese, the criminal wizards who perform fake miracles to maintain the people's faith in their sham religion. He paid the con-man to place an unlawful Paternal Authority Ward on his son and Bind his magic with a block reserved for juvenile delinquents sentenced to prison until they reach maturity at age 17.

Now, Gerard could have lived with a son who was fully magical but not displaying any magical outbursts just fine except his wife Kerenza got suspicious that he no longer had accidental magic so she took Martin to a hospital to get him checked out. Outraged and afraid by what she found, she contacted Sophia to have her examine Diana post haste. Having found similar criminal acts on her daughter, the other mother agreed to a meeting in secret to decide what to do. Unfortunately, Kerenza had not checked the house for magical or mundane spying devices so her conversation was recorded and heard by Gerard who flew into a rage and discretely followed her to the meeting.

Since Kerenza came by car with Martin but Sophia teleported alone after leaving Diana with her servant, he hatched a two-way crime to solve his problem. He attacked the women with a sedative spray can and put the sleeping mothers in his wife's car in the front seats while placing the drugged Martin in the child carrier in the backseat behind his mother. Making sure there was no trace of physical violence from his part to be detected, he manipulated the remains of the Paternal Authority Ward that the healers had not finished removing and simulated Martin having a strong bout of accidental magic that propelled a hard wooden toy at his mother's head hard enough to crack the skull and render her unconscious if she wasn't already asleep.

After that he placed the car and called his con-man priest to help with a few spelled adjustments to make it look like the car was driving fast, the accident inside happened and the car swerved off the small causeway right into the bog underneath where the stunned women drowned to death. The two accomplices made sure that Martin's emergency portkey and healer-alert bracelet were functionnal or else the Family Charter would kill Gerard before the car's engine started up. Besides, no living son meant that he would lose access to the money and resources of the Family so he had to keep the little error of nature alive until he was old enough that Gerard kicked him out for good.

When the accident was discovered upon Martin's arrival at the family's usual hospital, it created an outpouring of sympathy for Gerard because he had lost his two women at the same time and he was now without support from either side. His parents had died in the last decade at quite young ages from a rare disease caught during their yearly vacation cruise in the Caribbean Isles. His wife's relatives were all passed away from accidents or disease and it was just her and Tamsyn since she was 22 years old. Sophia's parents were alive but both in a nursing home due to her father having had an accident while brewing a potion in their home laboratory.

Gerard now had two magical and very vulnerable children in his hands and nobody to keep him in check. He quickly had the unlawful wards and blocks reapplied to both children while also having their memories adjusted to match his version of events. This was critical with Diana since she was also programmed to be his spy and attack bitch to keep her half-brother in a state of emotional weakness and physical ill-health when he wasn't present to do it himself. He told Diana about the accident and the 19 month-old baby looked upon the 11 month-old that had murdered her mother and knew a hate that was her own but multiplied by 12 because of the spells and loyalty potions she was fed. From that point onwards until he turned 17, Martin was hurt and put down by his sister at every chance she got. It was only after going through severe cleansing and healing rituals that the damages to their minds and personalities were undone and they became the siblings that they should have been all along.

Younger Lucas #18 looked in thoughtful yet detached consideration at his bleeding hand's torn palm as an adult 'Jenna' cast cleaning and healing spells on his damaged appendage. He had unconsciously crushed and then ground the coffee cup in his hand at some point while reading the Mystère bloodline's biography. She saw the title on the report's default cover page and exhaled a shallow sigh of sadness. "He never talks about what happened in that house before leaving for Torrington Academy. Please brother, we have to find a way to help the youngest ones." She asked, begging one of the few people she knew who would actually care about Martin's health and happiness.

"We will annotate the reports and make recommendations towards a concerted strategic plan for everyone in all realities before anybody goes back. I promise it." The young child answered, unwavering in his faith and decision. Seeing the Tac-Chief lock eyes with her and nod his head seriously, she believed and had hope again that somehow, the pain that gnawed away at the heart of her fiancé could at some point be relieved and healed. These two would certainly not take lightly any threats against any member of the Assembly, regardless of what they looked like or where they lived. She finished her healing routine on the child's hand and helped him to flex the fingers to test the skin and nerves to detect leftover damage. Since all was well, she stunned the unprepared boy by kissing him on the forehead along a soft-spoken "I love you, little brother" that nobody had ever said to him. She then repeated the gesture with the 20 year old who was barely less surprised, even though she was from his reality and he knew her rather well. Just like the other incarnations of Lucas, experimenting and receiving affections freely was a rare occurrence that was made worse by his paranoid, standoffish attitude. Not that either of his spiritual siblings were ever deterred; it's just that it always surprised him when someone showed him affection physically like they all did. Some old, bad habits were rooted in such deep pains that even years of friendship and family could not yet erase or change them.

The two young leaders recovered their emotions and balance, locking eyes and restarting the local mental communion they used to exchange their more determined and violent ideas in private. They both agreed: Gerard Mystery had just earned the undivided attention of a certain young family leader, just as soon as each group returned home from their vacations amongst the Void and Stars. No, it would not be a short nor humane way to go for the good doctor Mystery.

Jenkins Scientific & Archaeological Investigations Inc

(Kong: the animated series - opening theme)

Saturday February 9th of 2301 – early evening, around 19:15pm

NCQ, Florida (USA)

Bayou de la Grosse Tronche;

Military sanitarium for handicapped & comatose soldiers

UEO Veterans' Support Services (VSS)

Motorpool garage building

The company has existed since the university days of Dr Lorna Labarre as it was created by her newly married husband Rudolph Jenkins to help with her paperwork and legitimizing her funding schemes. It has never done much other than manage finances and taxes, justify the movements of equipments and personnel and get a few travel permits. It became more active when the UEO came into existence as then Kong Island became part of UEO territory since the alternative was to fall under Micronesian control. Since her only husband's death many decades ago all business and communications are handled by Dr Jenkins herself and she rarely answered questions, even from legal authorities, by citing that her laboratory was located in International Waters despite being well inside UEO jurisdiction.

It is interesting to note that Kong Island is less than 100 miles from Tracy Island yet despite the close proximity, in the 30 years she was established on the Isle, Lorna never contacted them for anything, including rescue or just some friendly chatter between neighbors.

- Psychotronic earset Animus Unificat #01beta tester

-) Also referred to as the Cyber-Link

-) It was never mass produced since it's a secret private project that is also illegal and unethical

-) Research done in the fields of: biogenics, psychotronic interface, neuroplexic programming

-) Connex research in the fields of: cryptozoology, xenobiology, phenomenology, metaphysics

-) Non-invasive free-wave neural interface

-) Crystalline structure computing CPU

-) Neural-fiber structure computing CPU

-) Energy-based free-wave fusion / fission of organic bodies and minds under 3 seconds

-) Can merge the user with any animal programmed into the database of the system

*-) Could be used as an emergency backup of the user's mind to heal mental illness & memories

*-) Could be used to rebuild the user's body following physical damages or injuries

While Jason's grandmother Doctor Lorna Jenkins (nee Labarre) is an accomplished biologist, geneticist, neurologist and medical engineer, she never patented or officially logged any of her discoveries and research as most of it was either illegal or unethical. She DID use the DNA from her grandson to merge with the gorilla DNA of the just-killed-dead King Kong to produce the presently living synthetic super-ape residing on Kong Island without ever asking Jason for his permission. This is physical and spiritual RAPE of her grandson.

There is also material evidence supporting the suspicions that on top of violating the human DNA testing laws and procedures, the animal hybridation laws and the New-Entity genetic engineering laws, she used alien tools and mystical methods during her work to produce the Cyber-Link and its quasi-magical effect of merging two bodies and souls into one completely balanced, functionnal and sentient being. Biology is never this quick, clean or error-free when it does something naturally. Even the most powerful true-blood lycanthropes have problems with active enchantments or clothing when changing form.

Her research on the newly revealed Power Stones of the Ancient Empire of Mu trudge painfully through myths, little known legends that few credit with any validity and occult phenomenology of the most bizarre. However; since the confirmed existence of CIRPA with its partners amongst several hundred alien species out there, it becomes a fundamental necessity to reexamine to theories and legends while understanding that magic, Divinity and aliens are in fact real and do influence humanity and the Earth. Thusly, the Empire of Mu could have been humans influenced by magic or aliens or both, or even actually be aliens from another world / dimension / reality. Another pivotal conclusion is that the accounts of war between Mu and Atlantis could in fact be true since they coexisted in the same period. Further research by reliable independent parties is needed.

- Jason Randall Jenkins

-) Born 27 April 1999

-) Caucasian/white, ink-black hair, forest-green eyes

-) Grandson to Lorna Labarre Jenkins & Rudolph Jenkins

-) Son of Mitchell Jenkins and Anita Briggs, explorers and archaeologists (both deceased)

-) Student at Cambridge, in Massachusetts; major in archaeology, second major in ancient legends and lores

-) Average student, not rated as exceptional in any one domain or activity at school

-) Exceptional sportsman, hunter and survivalist

-) Trained in martial arts: Wing-Chun kung fu at championship level; won several tournaments USA & Asia

-) Trained in weapons: staff, stick, spear, javelin, mace, axe, hatchet, knives and rope & weights

-) Trained in firearms: learned to hunt with a bolt-action rifle and a crossbow

-) Driving licenses: moped at age 14, car at age 16 and heavy trucks at age 19

-) Aircraft piloting license at age 15 for propeller planes

-) Boat piloting license at age 14

-) Qualified paramedic level-2; was training for level-3 when events of Kong Island happened

Jason Randall Jenkins was orphaned at the age of five when both parents died in a laboratory fire the causes of which were never found until he confronted his very own archaeology professor, Doctor Ramone De La Porta, on Kong Island at the age of 21 and the evil man confirmed he had caused the fire when stealing research and materials from the place and was caught in the act by Jason's parents which he then had to dispose of.

Following the deaths and funerals of his parents, Jason's grandmother Lorna promptly placed him in boarding school and kept him there all his life. He rarely had any contact at all with her, even in summer vacations which were spent mostly in specialty summer camps or, as of age 14, with his friend Eric Tannenbaum at his house. The moment Lorna learned that Jason had struck up a friendship with someone who had money, a well known family name and several corporate connections, she invited them for the summer holidays. Thus came the series of events and adventures that Jason lived when he was 21 which saw him lose his grandmother and his friend Eric but gain the presence of Lua in his life from then on.

At the point when the Assembly divined the timelines, Jason had never been a prodigy, never wrote or published any academia, never patented or logged any technology since they would instead have used the Tannenbaum Industry brand name and credibility to do so when Eric was alive. This state of things is because while he was never bullied, attacked, violated or otherwise abused, Jason was not loved, supported or encouraged to excel either. Given the very distant relationship with his grandmother, he was essentially in charge of his own life since he was 5 years old. This created a fiercely independent personality but not one bent on proving anything to anybody, especially not in terms of scholarliness.

Jason's grandmother is the sister-in-law of Hoss Jenkins, father of Rachel Jenkins Quest; thus he his cousin to Jonathan Quest through his mother. The woman was born Lorna Thelma Labarre as the sister of Thomas and Jenna's late grandfather Jeddiah Ruey Labarre; thus he is cousin to them also. Because Doctor Lorna was so estranged from her family and reclusive on her island domain, Jason had never in his life heard about his cousins until they dropped into his life by accident because Lorna would never have introduced them if she could have kept them apart, especially the Quests. She knew full well the mental capacities of Benton Quest and his fabled intolerance for what society called unethical experimentation on living beings like animals or humans. What she had done to her grandson would certainly trigger every alarm and disgust the man had.

Except for the championships in Kung Fu which he won at a rather young age, all before 18 years old, Jason is really just an ordinary college kid from New England in the US. It's when he starts using the Animus Unificat that his real potential for mystical arts specializing in magical beasts, ecology, zoology, totemism, shamanism, animism and skin-walking become apparent.

URGENT:

The medical potential of the Cyber-Link to heal body and mind was never delved into. Dr Jenkins was dead-set on proving something to herself at the expense of everything else, including the welfare, health and sanity of her last living relative; her grandson Jason. The capacity of the Animus Unificat to deconstruct and then rebuilt under 3 seconds any living being up to the size of a fully mature super-ape means that it could be used as the penultimate regeneration system to repair physical injuries. That it can include the clothes and equipments of the humans in the merge process was never investigated but leads to believe that it could be used to remove parasites or foreign bodies from a victim of a traumatic accident involving explosions and shrapnel. The potential to store the memories and personality of a human as a failsafe against dementia, mental illness or brain injuries was even less researched and begs for attention given the urgency of these problems across the Earth and all societies.

Younger Lucas #18 and the Tac-Chief looked into each others' eyes and silently agreed that this bitch needed taken down hard and fast. She committed the physical and spiritual RAPE of her grandson without any sorts of remorse. She exploited the death of her son and daughter-in-law as if she had planned it all along, like it was no more than disposing of obsolete equipments she needed replaced on a five-year plan like a truck or backhoe. Her end would be slow and painful, they agreed. "Only after a thorough scan of her mind and memories, both mundane by neural interface and mystical by every potion and spell or psion in our arsenals." The child specified in low tones through the localized mental communion he shared with the 20 year old. "We need to know why she did this, what she was after, what could be worth Blood Treason against the Heir of the Line and damning her soul to Hell everburning for it."

The Tactical Chief was in agreement; every Family of every reality would get fully briefed on this and they would make certain that those who were younger would contact the Jason and Lua of their timelines as soon as they could manage it and warn them of the impending troubles; then arrange shelter for them. Let Lorna clean up her mess by her worthless self. As for Ramone De La Porta, he could be killed off rather easily by hiring out a contractor; no need for any family member to get their hands dirty with that particular bit of mopping. Once the Mu Power Stones were secured, the Earth would be as stable and immuable as any other astral body and no longer a concern beyond the usual environmental problems caused by human over-exploitation. If it was such a problem, then the planetary governments and Wizerias could assemble some terraformers and ecomancers to handle it. Their family would not carry that burden any further than the boundaries of their Sovereign Laand.

Both young leaders took a (un)healthy dose of Tylenol with codeine to dampen their sympathetic migraines so they could plough through the last technical specs report for the night. All the magical history and Traditions could wait a few days while they amalgamated all this data and produced a basal outline for what they needed to standardize into a common learning course to spread to all teams.

After preparing yet another espresso with some nice spongy cake generously frosted and topped by candied fruits and ice-cream, they set back to work accompanied only by the nightshift's short crew. The coming news were just as bad as they had thought, thought the familial setting of the Labarre gave them some hope for establishing a close-knit family like they had wanted all their lives but never got. Well, they now had plenty of time to spare and share around, so to speak. No reason to be stingy with it, humm?

Labarre Venison's & edibles

(Arrow - opening theme)

Saturday February 9th of 2301 – mid-evening, around 20:30pm

NCQ, Florida (USA)

Bayou de la Grosse Tronche;

Military sanitarium for handicapped & comatose soldiers

UEO Veterans' Support Services (VSS)

Motorpool garage building

-) Labarre Farming & Hunting Guild in existence for almost 2,300 years non-stop

-) They perfected the arrows and spears now most commonly used across Arabia, Europa and America

-) They perfected several types of fishing nets for both trawling and in-flow river installations

-) They created the first underwater spear gun from a crossbow stock but using different wires

-) They popularized the use of cleated shoes for forest and mountain exploration

-) They created over 700 different farms, plantations and natural preserves in 43 countries

-) The Labarre territory holdings agglomerate almost 6,000,000 acres across the world

-) At its greatest time in history, the Labarre Clan counted almost 1,947 living members

-) At its peak, the guild had over 30,000 full-time (non-family) employees across the world

-) Food industries still active: plantations, natural preserves, canneries, distilleries, tallow mills

-) Non-food industries still active: lumber & paper mills, textile mills, iron & copper mines

The name "Labarre" refers to the wood-rod based instruments found in the heraldic crest of the clan as they were the primal tools for survival and earning revenue in antiquity: the arrow, the spear, the 'U' headed catch-staff to hold animals and the yoke to harness an ox or mule. For all of their 2,300 years of recorded history, the Labarre have toiled the land, tended crops, gathered from forests, fished, trapped, hunted and herded many beasts and fowls. They are now as they always have been, faithful in Yggdrasil, stewards of the Laand and dutiful children of Gaea.

The Labarre family is classed as Most Venerable and Most Noble by the Wizerias of Europe and America since they first appeared in the depths of Antiquity in the sands of Judea and dwelt there humbly from the epoch of Salomon until several of their daughters, many of them witches and shamans, married several minor nobles from Italy in the beginning years of the Roman Empire, around 300BC. They had come by boat over the Mediterranean Sea, escorting their fathers who were rich noblemen from the northern provinces of Italy in the region that would become Venice. Since these events happened before the Romans annexed the kingdom in 6AD, neither side had a bad reputation or anger towards the other so intermarriages were an accepted way of sealing alliances and trade deals; it also extended mutual citizenship by wedlock which was desirable when negotiating passage fees and boat mooring taxes with the port authorities.

The women were young, beautiful and surprisingly well educated in literacy and philosophy for the epoch at large and for farm-women in particular; they knew several potions and runes to heal injuries or calm bad humors. The men were strapping young lads, muscular, handsome, of good breeding and well connected, each being the second or third son of an important man. Each youth was accounted as minor nobility themselves with very good prospects, and especially, each had a plot of arable or forested land in their name already.

The two groups were united in that they were farmers and hunters, traders of meat, furs and bones, good raw wood or finished wooden wares. They saw in the other family a mirror of their own, just wearing different clothing and a different skin complexion. The union of these several lesser bloodlines into the strong vibrant tree of the Labarre would create the root foundations of a familial trading empire that lasted nigh on two millennia before it collapsed due to the two World Wars destroying most of their ships and polluting their lands.

The family initiated a strategic repartition of its membership to better control its interests around 197BC. They moved the main seat of control and business, along with more than half of the living members, to southern Italy where they stayed in fishing and shipping activities centered in the port city of Taranto for several centuries. The other large part of the family, those with marital connections to the northerners, moved to that area where modern Venice would one day be built. They established fishing, farming and hunting guilds as was the family's central plan but also land-based ox-cart expeditions to the Germanic tribes around Eastern Europe. They rapidly made the family a name as expert scouts, rangers and trackers of runaway criminals.

All seemed right until the Romans became even less stable than was customary for their bellicose society. The year 235AD began the great crisis which ended in 285AD after 50 years of bloodshed and led to the split of the Empire between Eastern and Western roman governments. This was the first toll of the bell announcing that Roman Rule was coming to an end, the continuingly dictatorial, fascistic and criminally insane fools they named as emperors from then on simply confirmed that the process was irrevocable.

Upon seeing around 290AD that the Roman Peace was no longer stable or able to maintain Law, Right and Rule under the Law of Venerable Antiquity, the Labarre again held a Clan Conclave and decided than another tactical movement of their members was needed. They packed the majority of their people in Taranto to move them by boat along the Mediterranean coastline to the southern regions of France. They chose to settle in a series of important towns that each had a harbor and shipping activities to maintain the links with their relatives in Italy and Judea-Palestine. They spread almost 600 relatives across Monaco, Nice, Cannes, Hyeres, Toulon and Marseilles and quickly set to finding local merchants and craftsmen to marry with and set down permanent roots into their new communities.

Meanwhile, following the Clan conclave, some 300 of the 500 members that lived in the Venetian area were packed and moved northwards into Germanic lands that would one day become the Bohemian Kingdom and then the Czech Republic. They hoped by that move to get out of the zone of conflict between roman armies and barbarian client-kings but it was only a limited success as the Gothic tribes had as much warring between themselves as they did against the Romans. Around the year 670AD this secondary branch of the Clan is so dissolved and intermarried to others that the name of Labarre disappears from the legal records and history.

Unfortunately, it was only a few short decades after the Clan Conclave and move of 290AD that the Roman Empire turned to monotheist Christianity as of 312AD under Emperor Constantine I as their primary source of law and morality, thus beginning a series of wars to conquer the barbarians and the neighboring nations to bring them all under Roman rule and faith. The Labarre managed to amass enough goods and money to built their own ships to sail to Judea-Palestine to fetch their last living members there and after folding that part of the clan into the french holdings, they went to Italy to do the same with their last living family on Roman soil to move them westwards to France and beyond.

The Labarre merged with the Frankish peoples for several generations until the eleventh century whence Dutch wizards managed to establish a colony of sorcerers, druids and witches in the area that would become Maine or New England in the 1500's and 1600's when mundane explorers reached those shores. Being of strong druidic faith and being pressured to convert by christian fanatics who were more numerous as the years passed, the Labarre used their Blood Law to convoke another Clan Conclave and set forth a path that led the majority of the family to the New World in northern America. At this point, the family splits into many subjunct branches and twigs, laying out seeds of fertility and vitality in whichever other bloodline they marry.

While the splits of the 11th century were harsh upon the Labarre, they managed gradually to recover and reunite their living members by using the Blood Law as a homing signal to divinize and then scry the people until they could contact them physically by more mundane means. It took almost three hundred years for the Clan to reorganize and agglomerate its members again but they managed and from the years 1400's onwards they acted as a singularly well managed familial system. They methodically explored, mapped and claimed tens of thousands of acres of pristine virgin Laand which they set aside as natural preserves for their basic hunting, trapping, scavenging and wild harvesting but never allowed anyone to built or develop despite several lucrative offers.

The 1500's and the arrival of mundane french trading companies in the upper part of North America was a boon to the Labarre's export businesses and allowed them to formally reestablish contact with those that stayed behind in Europe, oftentimes under different family names. The arrival of british, dutch and german traders in the 1600's and the fierce competition to claim control of the New England zone forced the Labarre to move their operations westwards and northwards around or above the Great Lakes to avoid the wars they knew would happen since the monarchs of Europe were again at each others' throats.

The Labarre managed to maintain their landholdings and industries until the 1800's when the advent of railways and steam engines made the world so much smaller. The mundane were now boring through the lands of the eastern seaboard of America and Canada like worms in the wood pilings of a dock. Many magical beings moved west and north to the vast unexplored wilderness but a large tract of population chose instead to open the Gates to the connective planes and sail the flows of the Styx River, the pink gaseous miasma of the Phlogiston or even tread by ox-cart the Border Ethereal plane's paved walkways to… somewhere?

At that period, between 1800 and 1900, almost half of all the magical higher sentients left Earth and most magical animals retreated to the few inaccessible places left to hold out against extermination. For the Labarre, this was their death knell as the population was now rushing to the cities to live the urban dream, eating canned meats and pickled vegetables, eschewing the natural fresh produce of the land due to the higher costs and longer provisioning delays.

It also became clear as of the late 1800's that a group of fanatics had begun hunting and killing the members of the Clan as the number of deaths each year kept going up while births were declining. It was then discovered in the period around 1980 that someone was scouring the public records in the mundane archives to correlate births, marriages and deaths to find out where the Labarre had landholdings and businesses and then they went out to hunt and kill them.

Many industries and business offices of the Clan were burned down in criminal acts against their livelihood and their lives. In several of the arson cases, the criminals had first gone inside to steal the paper records of employees, partners, clients, suppliers and money movements to expand the targeting of their nefarious deeds. After that, the criminals attacked not only the Labarre family but also their extended relatives, in-laws, the employees' families in their homes and so on. It was a veritable vendetta to end the Bloodline of Labarre and even the Wizeria Hammerrika's warlocks couldn't make sense of it nor find trace of the culprits.

In early 2000, the once massive network of family and businesses was reduced to a handful of people who lived in remote, inaccessible tracts of heavily warded land, away from all civilization be it mundane or magical. By the time that 2015 arrived, Thomas was 10 years old, Jenna was 12 years old, and both had just survived barely a deadly firefight with felonious Catholicu Vaticanese sorcerers backed by mundane mercenaries. They were now orphans, living isolated in the northern part of British Columbia in Canada, near Atlin Village, right next to the Alaska border. At that point of history, there is only 7 living Labarre on the entire planet and 5 will die quickly in the following year to leave only Thomas and Jenna safely hidden in their hermitage. The moment they leave their shelter they are killed within a week unless they have somehow made contact with the 'Lucas' incarnation of that reality so that his group can shelter them and give them the time and resources to survive and prosper anew.

In all the realities that the Assembly's diviners plumb, the situation for the Labarre is beyond critical and can't be recovered without extraordinary assistance from outside sources. Younger Lucas #18 took the time and effort to contemplate and memorize the depravities contained in the analysis results and vowed to find a way to save his spiritual siblings' family from oblivion. He also swore Blood Feud against the individuals and groups that hired the mercenaries that relentlessly attacked and killed off all of Thomas and Jenna's relatives over the passing of the 1900's. Someone masterminded this and would pay for it.