Chapter Twelve
Meanwhile in Iqaluit...
Iqaluit. Formerly known as Frobisher Bay. The capital of Nunavut, the youngest and largest of the three territories. In the summertime the hills were a riot of colour from the myriads of arctic flowers, desperate to grow before the winter again robbed them of their light.
The territory of Nunavut was represented by a young Inuit boy, with big brown eyes and straight black hair, a bit chubby under his parka but adorable all the same.
Nunavut sat back on the sofa, looking at his TV with great concern.
The story showed lots of people in Calgary screaming and ranting at the camera, and the same happening all across the province- and Nunavut was worried.
Alberta was his big sister, and everyone said she was mean and greedy, but he knew that wasn't true. On top of spoiling him rotten whenever he visited her house (then again, all the southerners spoiled him rotten), Nunavut knew better than anyone of Alberta's generous side.
He barely got enough money from Canada to get by as it was; the only reason he wasn't starving was because of his talent for carving and painting, selling his pieces for extra income and hunting to fill his freezer. But Alberta...
His home was forbiddingly cold, and gas to heat his house should have been enormously expensive owing to how remote Iqaluit was. But one day, Alberta had walked up to him and made him an offer.
"Listen, Nunavut," She'd said, "I heard that you tried asking Canada about getting a bigger allowance to afford gas, and I also heard he shut you down. I think there's something I can do about that so you won't freeze. See, all the refineries up north are switching their production from winter-grade gas to summer-grade gas, and we've got a fuckload of surplus. And we will have a fuckload of surplus every year for the foreseeable future. So here's what we're gonna do about heating your house, kid: I can't give it to you for free, because the barge is going to be pricey, but I can absolutely get all the surplus to you for a fraction of the price anyone else would be charging you. How does that sound?"
Nunavut thought that sounded like a very good deal.
But now his sister was in trouble. Her people were angry, her people hated them all...that wasn't right.
He needed to help her.
Nunavut thought about it, and then he got an idea. Everyone liked getting letters, right? Why not get everyone to write up a letter to the Albertans, asking if they would please stop being so angry, and then give the whole crate to his sister?
Nunavut grinned. Yeah, there was a plan!
He was going to need help, though. Mailing the crate probably wouldn't work, because it would be ludicrously expensive and wouldn't arrive in time...but airdropping the crate might. The problem was, Nunavut knew how to fly small bush planes and repurposed bombers from the 1950's but that was about it. With so few roads in his territory, bush planes were the only way to really get around. To save himself the trouble of having to charter a flight whenever he needed to visit his people in another part of the territory, Nunavut had learned to fly.
He picked up his phone and dialed a well-used number. All the northern territories were pretty well-connected with phones and emails, seeing as they couldn't really count on the provinces for help.
Several thousand kilometres away, Labrador's phone rang.
Labrador was a stocky Innu fellow, a heavyset muscular frame with pitch-dark eyes and hair to match. Newfoundland's counterpart, he worked at the Canadian Airforce base in his adopted hometown of Happy Valley-Goose Bay.
And at the moment Nunavut decided to call, the Army pilot was on the receiving end of a lapdance at a local strip club. And the woman was not being quiet about it.
"Labrador speaking." Oh god, that was good, that was good, she was amazing-
"Heya Labsy!"
Labrador's boner wilted so fast it wasn't even funny. He instantly clapped a hand over his cellphone's mic and thundered,
"EVERYONE SHUT THE FUCK UP!"
The woman gyrating against him instantly stopped, as did all other activity in the extremely tiny strip club. All eyes were scowling at him, until Labrador coughed and replied in a much louder voice than was really necessary:
"Hi, little bro. What d'ya need, kid?" A deep sigh could be heard from the club's patrons as everyone patiently waited for the call to be over. It was a small enough club that such an interruption could be tolerated.
"Labsy, I need you to help me. I need you to fly with me."
Labrador raised an eyebrow, for three reasons. One, Nunavut had started jabbering at him in Inuit, which always took him an extra second to process, two, the kid was from Baffin Island, and he had a wonky accent because of it, and three, because, well...
"Don't you have your full license? You don't need me in the pilot's seat anymore, Nunavut-"
"No! I mean I need you to fly with me. And, um, I need...a bomber. With, um, propellers. And a working cargo drop system. All the planes we have got the cargo-drop feature taken out."
Labrador blinked a few times, and the woman crouching over him batted her lashes a few times, which really wasn't helping his concentration, and he was tenting his jumpsuit again.
"I-Uh-why?"
"Because, haven't you seen the news? Alberta's in trouble and all her people are angry! I have a plan, but I need to do a supply drop, and all my planes can't drop anymore. So...will you fly with me?"
Labrador wasn't thinking with the correct head at the moment Nunavut asked him. He didn't even bother to ask what the kid's plan even was.
He just said, "Yeah, sure thing. Gotta go. Bye!" and hung up, looking up at one of the two strippers in the club.
"Now then, gorgeous, where were we?"
Meanwhile in Calgary...
Afternoon in Ontario was morning in the West, and Calgary rose from the pile of filthy ginch he'd fallen asleep in the previous night, feeling both groggy and relieved. And more than a little grossed out. He REALLY needed to do his laundry.
Or perhaps "fallen asleep' was too dignified. In truth, the man had come screaming into his driveway the night before, slamming on the brakes and ran inside his house, barricaded all the doors and windows with furniture, boxes, plates, whatever he could find, and then had collapsed in his basement in a pile of his own crusty ginch.
Gross.
To add insult to injury, not two feet away was another pile of dress shirts that would have also been a perfectly serviceable sleeping place, and it smelled like cologne as opposed to ass.
Calgary sighed and pulled himself out of the laundry pile and stumbled into the bathroom for a shower. God knew he needed one after all of yesterday's bullshit.
There was still the lingering sense that Corvus was watching him, that Corvus knew where he was and would be coming to get him soon, but Calgary was fairly certain he had at least enough time to scrub the sweat off his body.
Ten minutes later, he strode out of the shower and into his bedroom to get dressed, rooting around for clean underwear and a t-shirt and whatnot. All that really mattered was that he was relatively safe for now.
About a half hour later, homebrew coffee from his rather underused coffee maker in hand, Calgary fired up his old alienware laptop. He really didn't need a computer this powerful, but Edmonton had bragged about his machine incessantly, and how it was soooooo much better than Calgary's old clunker of a mac, so.
He'd asked the tech guy for the best thing they had, and this was it, apparently.
All that mattered was that it fired up quickly, and more importantly, it zipped the contents of Corvus's USB into a neat little folder for email just as quickly.
Calgary sorted through his contacts, adding names to the monster mailing list he was sending this file to. This and the sound file off his phone- he gave it another listen to be sure it wasn't his own terrified panting, and nope, that was some incriminating shit right there.
What to put as the subject line?
SEND HELP CORVUS IS FUCKING EVIL I'M GONNA DIE –CALGARY
Perfect. He flagged it as triple priority highest importance, wrote a little blurb to explain what had happened, and...wait.
One more person.
He scrolled through his contacts, finally adding Canada's name to the mailing list.
Okay.
Calgary clicked send, and drummed his fingers against the laptop's handrests nervously as it slooooooowly sent itself.
Once the file was on its way, Calgary decided to actually take a look at the contents of Corvus's USB himself. He figured it was more important to at least get the sound file sent off than spend an hour noodling around the 8 gigs of evil on the little flash drive, so he'd held off on it.
Calgary clicked on the jump drive and raised an eyebrow at the smattering of folders.
One item stood out to him though
It was marked 4.
The video file wasn't in a folder, and Calgary was a bit curious. Still, the MP4 extension meant a video, and the last thing he needed to see was Corvus's hairy balls or whatever it was.
One thing that became immediately clear was that Corvus had apparently fallen hopelessly in love with the "Create new folder" option.
After about twenty minutes of opening the labyrinth of folders and finding only dead ends and innumerable documents written in legalese that Calgary couldn't read, he found something...strange.
GalleryofSuffering
Calgary raised an eyebrow. What the everloving hell could that be?
He clicked it.
The folder was full of saved pictures, most of which appeared to be diagrams of the human body, but some were...videos.
Judging by the thumbnails...he didn't want to know.
Calgary sighed and clicked over to his email client, mashing F5 like that would somehow will a reply email into existence.
Fifteen minutes later, in Havana, Cuba...
Canada blew out a ring of smoke from the cigar in his hand, grinning ear-to-ear. Cuba was a great guy, and honestly, hanging out with him was the best. Well, when he wasn't being mistaken for America and then getting his face punched off.
The Cuban man next to him chuckled, taking another drag of his own cigar and putting a friendly arm around Canada's shoulder. Fun in the sun on a beautiful beach in the Caribbean with a good friend- the picture of paradise.
Netherlands was nice and all, but the problem with him was that...well, he was kind of stoic. He was quiet, which Canada appreciated, but he wasn't the sort of guy you invited round to your house to get stoned and watch shitty shows from the seventies, or indeed, to get stoned and play beach volleyball with.
Canada's phone started to buzz in his pocket, and he sighed.
"Sorry, Cuba...can't catch a break, can I?"
Cuba patted him on the shoulder with an expression of understanding.
"Not a problem, Canada. You got all them crazy provinces to take care of, doesn't surprise me. I saw something on TV about it this mornin', actually...the province...with like, the cows? Berta something? Yeah."
Canada sighed. "Probably just some oil spill or something..."
He unlocked his phone and checked his messages, taking another puff of his cigar.
His eyes went wide.
Manitoba: GET YOUR ASS BACK HERE NOW YOU FUCKING DICKHEAD
Nova Scotia: ABERTAS LOST IT FCUCKING EHLP
Ontario: We really need you to come home immediately. Like, IMMEDIATELY.
And the messages just kept coming.
BC: sis tried 2 stab quebec where teh fck are u
Saskatchewan: pkls cvoimned hjolmkew
New Brunswick COME HOME NOW ALBERTA A PERDU SON ESPIRIT
Newfoundland: were th fkc r u mainlnder
PEI: shes gone crazy you gotta come home
And that wasn't all.
At the top of his emails was a triple-flagged message from Calgary of all people. The subject line just read, "SEND HELP CORVUS IS FUCKING EVIL I'M GONNA DIE –CALGARY' and the main body of the message was even more incomprehensible.
"CALL THE ARMY PLEAES CORVUS IS CRAZY AND HE'D COMING FOR NE HELP SOMEONE
THI IS FROM A USB I STOLE OFF HIS DESK
TEH RECORDING IS MIND THOUGH
FUCKINJG HELP ME
-CALGARY
Canada sighed.
"I'm sorry Cuba. There's something going on at home and I need to take care of it. I'll be back another time."
A/N:
I figured we could all use a little breather from all the heavy stuff, so here's your obligatory fluff chapter where Gondor calls for aid. Still using the opportunity to sneak in a little plot though. Turns out I lied about being unable to update again today. Fluff is easy to write. Who knew?
Also, WHAT'S THIS?! CANON CHARACTERS?! IN MY FANFIC?! IT'S MORE LIKELY THAN YOU THINK, AND I SUCK AT WRITING CUBA!
And now for your daily dose of facts!
-The thing with Nunavut's gas? That's actually true. Really, Alberta actually does that and it's adorable.
-Labrador's largest town really is called Happy Valley-Goose Bay. Though it doesn't actually have a strip club, it does have a huge airforce base.
-Nunavut's road situation is more trufax. Last time I checked, they only had 281 km of roads in the whole territory, most in Iqaluit. The number gets even smaller if we're talking ones that are paved.
As always, reviews, follows and favourites are greatly appreciated!