New chapter, not much to say.
Reply to:Lost Guy: ,, wow i was not planing on that at all, the Sugar thing was just suppose to be Janet's verbal when she talking, not to actually mean anything. reading it over she does seem to have a thing for the lone wanderer. eepp, for the record she does not. She pretty much Asexual.
Reply to:bubbajack: only the tesla cannon and Derflinger got messed up. put the two in a fairer fight though and thing might turn out different.
Wheatley was tired, in pain and badly in need of rest.
He was limping toward the hotel, a couple miles out he had made a walking stick and was relying on it.
When he finally got to the hotel building he pushed his way into the building. He scanned around once he was in. There in the main lounge was a familiar tuft of pink hair, odd had she cut it?
Taking a breath he fought another wave of pain off and approached. "Louise." She turned and two pair of jaws dropped to the floor so fast you could hair them clang off the floor.
Louise had a massive black eye and a well healed cut across her forehead. She had had indeed been cut and she looked generally like shad been dragged out into an ally and beat half to death with patch work of bruise across her face.
Wheatley though was much, much worse. What with the laser burns on his left side, glass shards in his face and the blood running down it staining his shirt.
"I take it Wardes got the letter?" Wheatley said.
"No, follow me, quick." Louise stood up and led her familiar out of the hotel.
"The two mages beat you?" Wheatley asked as the two of them made their way through the streets. It was still dark out and was roughly midnight so Wheatley had to place his steps with care.
"Badly. Guiche got a concussion, I got," she rubbed her bruised face. "Kirche unconscious Tabitha unharmed though that may be the fact they left us alone.
"Why?"
"How should I know?" Louise said. "They said they had something they needed to do."
"So where are we going?" Wheatley asked.
"Foquet and Wardes called the watch on us and were hiding.
"And the watch is where?" the marching footsteps of a patrol arrived on cue.
"O joy." Wheatley growled jamming his pipboy into his chin forming his stealth suit around him, he then turned invisible.
Louise though looked around, panicked and spotted, and then leapt into a trash can. The patrol marched by.
Louise stuck her head out of the can, an apple core on in her head. Her face was a mask of calm, baring the blood vessels standing out on her forehead even if on the inside she was full of anger, pain, of the physical kind.
Wheatley turned visible and showed her his pip boy "See the dial, twist it to the middle."
"Why don't you do it?" she asked. He showed her the hole in his hand. She blanched.
"That must, hurt." She understated
"excruciating." Wheatley said dryly. "Do it." She did. "OK, now use the arrow facing down the list until I say to stop." Louise did that cycling though the words till he told her to stop. "Now push that button." She did. The pipboy glowed and a sort of, smaller pip-boy emerged from the screen of it.
"Put it on your wrist." Wheatley ordered, Louise did so "now push that button," he pointed at the button, "to activate it, WAIT!" he said instantly went a thought hit him.
"What?" Louise said worried and confused.
"How far do we have to go?"
"Fairly far." She said wearily.
"OK, now push it." She did, and the stealth boy shimmered and she disappeared before his eyes.
Her voice though did not.
"I'm not sure if should scream." Louise said worn out from her day. Wheatley put his right hand on her head, (wincing as her hair set the nerves on fire around the hole) "Lead on Louise I'll be right behind you." His stealth suit engaged and the Wheatley followed Louise to the other students hiding spot as the picture of stealth.
"CRASH!"
"Louise watch your feet."
"Not my fault a pile of box was there."
Mostly the picture of stealth.
SHIFT
"And there." a doctor pulled the last shard of glass out of Wheatley face. "That's the last of it." He started to wrap bandages around his head.
"Thanks, can you do anything about my hand?" Wheatley asked. The doctor shook his head.
"I'm only a dot class mage." He said sadly. "The most I can do is keep the wound open so a square class mage can actually heal it."
"And that hurts." Wheatley commented.
"Very. I recommend spending the next few days drunk." The docotor start to wrap Wheatley's hand in bandages.
Louise and friends had got very lucky. They had run into the one group in the whole of Albion that would help them.
The Crown Loyalists.
Right now they were taking cover under a bar and the reek of beer was ever were.
Guiche was holding an ice bag to his head nursing a light burn; Kirche had a larger ice bag on her head Tabitha may have been reading but she was watching every thing carefully.
"SO what happened?" Wheatley asked. Guiche counter asked him a question.
"I think we should be asking that. You got torn up more then all of us put together."
Wheatley glared at him. But Guiche did have a point. In all likely hood he would have scars on his face due to the Tesla cannon. He sighed and started to tell what had happened. From the Emping to the fistfight, to Derflinger, to the gunfight and his escape.
"Damn." Kirche said. "This Janet, is tougher then you."
Wheatley sighed. "So it seems. And you four weren't a help." Before they could complain he plowed on. "Your good students, but that's it, compared to trained soldier, you fared as well as I did." Silence stretched. Wheatley interrupted their thoughts. "Does any one have a plan on how to get back to Tristain?
"Yes." Louise said. "The Loyalists are going to get us on a ship."
"And they want?" Louise asked.
"A chance to snub the Rebels."
"Which happens when we escape." Wheatley commented. "I like that. Now if your excuse me. I need some sleep, and a pain killer." He leaned over a candle and blew it out.
The other mages soon followed his example.
But that night Louise could not sleep. Wheatley words and both of there injuries were heavy on her mind. She sat up on her old bed of sacks and thin padding.
"Cap for your thought?" Wheatley said from his own bed only a few over from her.
"I, I'm a failure, I can't do the simplest task. Even my own fiancée hates me. I'm a zero." Louise sighed.
"Zero? Louise, magic is not you strong point but in the end they did not get what they wanted as much as we did not. More so, they needed the letter. We needed it gone." Wheatley had not moved and if his lips had not been moving then he would have looked for the entire world asleep. "We now have the chance to ready are selfves."
"What do you mean?" Louise asked.
Wheatley sat up and turned to face Louise, his bandaged face matching Louise bruised façade.
"Louise, just how hard do you think it would be to make some of my stuff? Weeks? Months? It actually days if you know what you're doing. Janet, possible a high ranking member of the Rebels all but admitted to me her ambitions were global in scope. What do you think that means for the rest of the rebellion? your nation will need that alliance, and soon i think."
SHIFT
The camp for the Reconquista lay in the woods, hidden from the air by trees and slight magic charms.
It was a small camp, only 300 soldiers, and 120 'company men'.
Admittedly, Janet thought to her self as she approached the camp, not many people would get the, subtle distinction. Lest of all the fact the company men could demolish almost 12 times there number in direct battle.
"Halt!" a guard to the camp called a challenge. Janet smiled.
When the Reconquista had started discipline had been lax, after two years of fighting they were a world-class force.
Still not up to the company men, but that was more of a equipment thing.
"Janet." She shouted back the guards waved her in and she entered the camp. She looked up at the moons, had to be midnight by now, the two mages were likely on their way back.
Good.
Janet was not perfect. Her biggest was that she had trouble hiding her emotions. Acade had called her a smiling fool when everything was going smoothly.
She had promptly said she was smiling fooler.
Right now she had a grin like an elephant. Friggen obvious, in a room.
She made her way through the tents. Past soldiers, and mages, the distinction was quite clear by the quality of there uniform.
Finally she got to the central tent. Again two guard challenger her. She answered it and was waved in.
Cromwell looked up from the map of Albion on the table.
The first think Janet did was she tapped a ring on her left finger and a rapid silence spell spread over the tent. No one could hear anything over said within.
"I have bad new my lord." Janet started. "The Gandalfr escaped from the ambush."
Cromwell glared at her. "What! You said you could kill him."
"Could is different from I WILL kill him. I was unsure." She shrugged.
"Unacceptable." Cromwell said pounding his map table lightly. "Is there any good news?"
This was it. The moments were she had to commit to a plan.
Janet shrugged and walked up to the map.
"He's just one man. Even the Gandalfr can only do so much damage."
"Maybe." Cromwell said unconvinced. He put his hands on the table. "Is everything else in order.
"Almost sir." Janet replied. "I have a few thing to double check." She gestured to the map. "Troop position and the like. The planned attack is to start with what unit first?"
"This one." Cromwell pointed to the symbol of a battle ship on the map, with his left hand.
"Indeed. Other ships will be from here, here and here." Janet said intentionally getting it wrong.
"No, from here," he pointed to a cruiser off the west coast with his left hand, "here," a pair of Frigates from the west were signaled out as well, with his left hand. "and here." A second Cruiser on the east coast was pointed out, with his RIGHT hand.
"Anything else." Janet though moved fast.
With one smooth move a knife was jammed down though his right hand severing his ring finger. Before he could cry out her other hand punched him between the eyes. Then drew a pistol pointing it at him.
"Yes." Janet said as if she had not done a thing. "There's more. I will say this now Mr. Cromwell." She quickly removed the finger and then slide the Ring of Andvari over her own right ring-finger. The runes on her forehead lighting up as she instantly forced her will over the ancient artifact.
"In our time of association I have come to the conclusion that you are a insufferable fool who would only succeed in driving this nation to its knees before its enemies and allies alike. Albion, and the world will be better off without you." She pointed at him with her right hand, ring pointing at his forehead.
"Good bye Cromwell." The ring activated.
The rings power was over the mind and body, enabling complete control over some ones.
She simply told his heart to stop beating.
He clenched and grabbed at his chest as the beat of his own heart stopped.
"Wh, wh,," he said as he slumped, to surprised to have tried to attack back at the sudden betrayal.
"Why?" Janet asked smirking. "History beckons." Finally he stopped gasping and was still.
"About time I got to this part." Janet said with a smile, she pointed the ring at Cromwell and he began to lightly glow. "Five years is a long time to wait for a new world."
SHIFT
Foquet and Wardes were outside Cromwell's command tent. It was almost two hours after they had encounter Louise, Guiche and the other students failing to get the letter back.
And right now the guards were refusing them access to Cromwell.
"You know I am Wardes." The guards nodded.
"That does not matter." The guard on the right huffed. "Cromwell gave us explicit instructions not to allow anyone access until he said so." A voice from within the tent spoke up just then.
"Indeed. And right now I say let them in." the two guard's nodded and let them pass with muttered apologies.
Inside they were met by the sight of Cromwell, Janet, three chairs, a now map less table, and Janet smile.
That last one made Wardes uneasy.
The last time he had seen her smile like that she had taught him how to play caravan and tricked him into beating three weeks pay on it. She had the proceeded to win that money, and mind game him into doing it again the same day.
"Greetings Wardes, Foquet." She bowed to each of them she then sat down in the chair. Leavening Cromwell, the leader of the rebellion and since they won that war, the lord of Albion, to stand.
And he did not say a word. Alarms began to go off in their heads and they shot each other glances.
She tapped the ring on her left hand and a slight pressure built on their ears. They were used to her spells of silence though; in fact Wardes had made that ring for her in the first place.
"Gentlemen, I have an awkward fact I need to tell you. Please sit." She gestured to the chair, the two shot each other more glances before sitting.
"And that is?" Wardes said. Foquet caught on first though.
Her eyes went wide when she saw the ring Janet's OTHER hand.
"O you figured it out then." Janet said. At Wardes confused look she smiled and told him the truth. "I killed Cromwell, and now I control him, the Reconquista and all of Albion." Silence stretched, tense and heavy. Janet expelled a lungful of air blowing a bang covering her bullet scar.
"You can clap now." She said simply.
"I, I, I don't have any words." Wardes said shocked. It was not every day that your leader was killed and then brought back to life as a puppet, "What do you want?"
"It's not what I want, it's what I need." Janet said leaning closer. "I need people I can work with who know the truth of the situation to make this easer. And as it stands you two are not only among the most capable, I've also worked with you two before when we cleared out the Albion monarchy."
"And why should we do anything with you?" Wardes asked finding his feet and voice on this new issue.
"Ignoring the fact I've already done it and that if you want anything you originally signed up for you have to follow me there are three reasons." Janet waited a moment for that sentence to sink in before continuing.
"Number one: I can more than double what anything you two were promised. Wardes? You joined for political power and gold?" he nodded skeptically. "How would you like to be the vice-roy of Tristian? And Foquet, I won't say what you want in front of company but rest I assured I will double it." she then plowed on.
"Number two: I'm smarter than Cromwell. It's a fact. I know what I'm doing and I can run this nation better than he ever could." She then launched into a Non Sequitur. "Do you know what ATAE is?"
"What?" Foquet said simply. "No!"
"Albion trade and exports." Janet said with a smile she leaned back and kicked a foot onto the table. "I own it. I started it. I made it. And right now? I am, quite arguably the richest woman in Albion. If I so wanted I could give a breach loading repeater rifle to every man in the Albion army, and more." She smiled then stood up. "I have such BIG DREAMS!
She then sat back down smiling broadly.
"I can take this nation, and in less than a generation into something that will make nobility as you know it obsolete. I will destroy the world by my mere presence, it will be remade not by my strength at arms, but by the weight of my ideas which shall catch like fire among dry timber and burn the castles and the manors to ash!" she had started softly and ended up yelling.
Silence stretched after her pronunciation. Foquet coughed into her hand. "And the third reason?"
"O yes, the third reason, and the one you two won't like." Jaent said off hand. Almost lazily she pointed her right at the two of the, the Ring of Andvari started to glow.
"I don't need your permission." Suddenly the two of them found their bodies taken from them, control forced into Janets hand.
"You will either help me bring about the new world, or I will crush you to make it. Either way I get what I want." She sudden released control and the two slumped from the enforced ridged positions.
"Your choice."
For a moment the two were silent before Wardes growled out. "Damn you."
"So that's a yes?" Janet said with a smile
"Yes, god damn it." Foquet was more subdued though Wardes but she was just as pleased by this situation as he was.
"Good." Janet said. "Now, before we start we need to get some fact straight that I feel you should know."
"Such as?" Wardes said frustrated.
"Cromwell has not been giving you orders over the past week. I have." Wardes shook his head. "I am no longer surprised."
"Get used to that feeling it will happen a lot from now on." Janet said smiling.
"So you're the reason we let those brats go? Why?" Foquet asked suddenly.
"Well for starts I disapprove of killing children in general. But for another killing Louise or any of the others would likely set Wheatley hell bent for leather to kill us."
"Didn't you beat him?" Wardes asked.
"Yes I did." At this Janet leaned back and propped her foot on the table again. "But I got lucky. I surprised and ambushed him in a more straight fight it would be less clear cut. Additionally do either of you KNOW where the 'Staff of Obliteration' came from?"
"The vault?" Foquet ventured.
"Technically correct but not what I was looking for." Janet commented. "It came from my world. So how did it get here, and what else was brought with it? Can the effect be replicated? Wheatley may know these facts. If we kill him or get him mad enough he will never tell us."
"Also." Janet said almost lazily. "I still think their hope for him. Recall that duel with Mott, Wardes?" the former knight captain nodded. "He did it to help a commoner, a maid; I think he has a crush on her or something." Janet shrugged. "In any case I think he was quite receptive to my speech about equality and only the situation kept him from truly joining me."
"And he matters why?" Wardes asked.
"Six guards, six seconds." Janet said citing his combat record. "It less him and more what he knows. Any mechanic from my world could, in the right situation introduce modern technology to your world. Wheatley may know enough to do so. And that would make are job of taking over harder, making him quite an asset to ether remove or preferable, subsume. Which again I think we have a good chance of."
"And he won't join us if we kill Louise." Wardes mused.
"He won't join us if we kill his friends. Period." Janet corrected.
"And Wales? You kept him alive why?" Foquet asked. Janet smiled.
"Well two reasons. One: we can always kill him later. Keeping him alive may bring up opportunities and affect Henrietta judgment in ways we cannot foresee. Reason number two: and a quick lesions in the unexpected consequences are actions cause is this." Janet smirked as she put both feet on the floor and sat normally again.
"He hates Wheatley. Hate him with a passion because he killed his guards, his friends. We can use that. If we can convince him Wheatley killed his family as well as his guards then we have a hunter killer with Wheatley name on it if we can't get him to join us."
"But you killed the Albion royal family." Foquet said. "Shot them dead I believe you said."
"Exactly, shot dead. Who else in this world has a rifle that leaves bullet holes like mine? Wheatley. Who does Wales have a preexisting grudge with?"
"Wheatley." Foquet finished, the intelligence of the women across from her finally beginning to sink in.
"Yes." Janet said. "Give me some time with him. He will not serve the force that killed his family, but if I can tie that exclusively with Cromwell, and paint my self as an unwilling accomplice, then he will if not follow me, then at least allow him self to be pointed at the right target."
Janet stretched. "Come to think of it. I best get started work on that. There more to fill you guys in on but those can wait." She shrugged. "Ok, here are your marching orders for now. Nothing." At there odd looks she shrugged. "We can't do anything just yet as we need the army for that and right now, we need to wait a little bit." Janet stood up tapping her ring the turning the well of silence off.
"Alright you two, I'll get to work on my jobs, you two do the same. For the rebellion." She paused at that comment and smiled. "Or rather, hail the king."
She smirked and left the tent. The two mercenaries looked at each other.
"If she swaggered any more when she walked, she flip over." Wardes commented sourly. He stared at the, undead Cromwell. "And I can't believe she going to get away with it."
Foquet nodded "Do you know what she meant by, a New world?"
Wardes frowned as he spoke. "No idea. But I think, were going to find out."