Shadows and Bones

One hundred Skulduggery Pleasant drabbles.

Nothing is owned by me.

Chapter twenty-four-Foreign

...

Anthony Undertow and Stephanie Shadow lived on the top floor of a rickety building that was squeezed into the very back of a narrow alleyway and crushed between several other buildings. Their building was pretty much hidden among the other ones, and although there were quite a few residents other than Anthony and Stephanie, visitors still had a hard time finding it. Not that that was really a problem for the two of them-they had far too many creepy friends and friendly enemies, and it was probably a good thing that they lived in a hard-to-find area.

Stephanie was a magician who was currently searching for her parents, whom she'd lost. They weren't dead, no, but she'd lost them. It was quite an easy thing to lose family members in this city, whether they be parents, siblings, children, third cousins, whatever. They could be lost when one's house collapsed in on itself from some idiot scientist's experiment, you could lose them in the Glass Mazes at the edge of the city limits, they could walk away with beautiful golden-eyed strangers or they could just get plain old lost.

Stephanie was a muscular, black-haired young lady who did the most unladylike things. That was alright, though, because nobody in the city was all that ladylike, including the Empress, the mayor's wife, and Pope Sharon. She'd pretty much broken into Anthony's place of residence (it couldn't be called an apartment, he'd actually bought the entire top floor) and permanently affixed herself to his guest room. Anthony had apparently been recommended to her by her dead journalist of an uncle.

A friend of said uncle, Anthony was a Finder who was a former magician. When his wife, Rebecca Undertow, had died in a truly nasty fashion, he'd stopped doing magic. Not because her death had anything to do with magic, no, but for other reasons that Anthony did not feel like imparting onto anyone else. So now he was a professional Finder. He found things for people, or lost things found him. It was a far more lucrative profession than one might imagine.

He was tall, and thin, with prominent cheekbones and long gray hair. When Stephanie had broken into his house he hadn't thrown her out only because that would involve more effort than he'd wanted to put intoanything at that moment. In his defense, it had been a very long day. Stephanie thought he was just lazy, but he maintained that the events of the day (which he had long since forgotten) were so exhausting it was simply not worth it to kick her out.

So the pair of them lived in Anthony's overlarge apartment, while Stephanie looked for her parents, Anthony helped, and Stephanie occasionally helped Anthony with his own jobs. They were slow to gain any information about her parents, and in fact had been looking for almost four years. However, any time Anthony suggested possibly reporting this to the actual authorities (he happened to know an organization or two who were actually helpful), Stephanie declined fiercely. She was convinced that any adult who was more responsible than Anthony and his various seedy friends would send her to live with her closest living relatives, a loathsome aunt and uncle with only slightly less loathsome daughters.

They spent their days looking for things and their nights bothering Mathias and Cecelia Low, Anthony's tailor friend and his sword-wielding wife. There was a far more subtle sense of urgency to the pair's life than one would expect of them, and time passed in a haze of acid autumn days and pitch black nights. They avoided the police and the mad scientists, and just about everyone did their best to keep out of prison. The world was occasionally on the brink of destruction, and Stephanie and Anthony found it in their hearts to save it. The days went by.

That is, until a Stephanie lookalike and a skeletal Anthony soundalike kicked the door of the house in.

It was a Wednesday afternoon, but it looked like dusk from all the smog outside. Stephanie and Anthony were going over a bizarre set of clues that might lead to her parents when the front door opened with a slam, and there was the sound of voices in the front hall.

Stephanie whispered to her hands and conjured a magic symbol, whereas Anthony went straight for his sword. He had a pistol on him too, but he didn't want to shoot up his own home and in any case the sword was electric, so it was all fine. The charged into the front hall, fully expecting an army of bandits or zombettes or any number of enemies.

They stopped dead when they realized that it was only two people, one of whom lacked a face and the other could be Stephanie's twin. The pair of them were extremely battered, Stephanie's twin's hair looking windswept and the skeleton's suit tattered. They both were missing any kind of coat and the skeleton was missing shoes.

"...what?" said Anthony intelligently.

"Are you Anthony Undertow?" asked the skeleton. At the sound of his voice, Stephanie jumped and yanked on Anthony's arm. He sounded exactly like Anthony. Anthony, having no idea what he sounded like outside his own head, ignored her and said "Yes. I'm afraid if you're one of my many, many mortal enemies, I'm afraid you'll have to wait to kill me."

Stephanie smirked at this. "Yes, there's a line. Anthony, are you not at all curious about a double of me and you appearing at the front door?"

"What on earth are you talking about? I'm certainly not missing my face." he retorted. "And I do believe I'm much handsomer than any skeleton."

The Stephanie twin laughed, and the skeleton glared at her. Well, he might have been glaring. It was impossible to tell.

"In any case, why have you kicked my door down?" asked Anthony in as much of a casual fashion as he could manage.

"We were recommended by someone who apparently recognized Valkyrie," said the skeleton, gesturing towards Stephanie's double. "A Mathias Low? Large man, bald, owns a clothes shop?"

Stephanie and Anthony shared a look, and put their weapons down.

"Mathias sent you? Well, that's all right then," said Stephanie. "So...um...would you mind shutting the door? Mr. Custer and Miss O'Hare downstairs will be coming up to see what all the fuss is about otherwise, and we don't want that." she and Anthony rolled their eyes at each other. Most of their neighbors ignored all the loud noises-Mr. Custer and Miss O'Hare did not. It was good in a fight, bad if they had noisy visitors.

The skeleton delicately closed the door. Valkyrie did not move.

"Alright, come in." said Anthony in a resigned sort of way, waving them forward, towards the sitting room. Valkyrie and the skeleton followed their doubles closely, the skeleton looking forcibly relaxed and Valkyrie's eyes darting about in a suspicious way.

Anthony invited them to sit down, and asked "Do either of you want tea?"

"No thank you," said the skeleton.

"Yes please," said Valkyrie. "It's been weeks since I've had any decent tea."

"Oh good. Stephanie?"

"No. You make it, Anthony." retorted Stephanie.

"I made it last time, and I never drink it."

"No, you just drink coffee. It's your kitchen, as you are so keen on reminding me."

Anthony sighed to himself and turned towards the kitchen door. "Fine, fine. I keep you here out of the goodness of my shriveled heart..."

"No. You keep me here because you're too lazy to throw me out." Stephanie said, sitting down herself. While Anthony was gone, she said "I'm sorry. We never got around to introductions. I'm Stephanie Shadow, and I'm here to do all of Anthony's magical work. And yourselves?"

"Skulduggery Pleasant." said the skeleton.

"Valkyrie Cain." said she.

Stephanie's only response was to raise an eyebrow. "Indeed."

Anthony soon returned, bearing a cup of tea and a cup of coffee, and giving the tea to Miss Cain. He hadn't bothered to get anything for Stephanie. She glared at him, he said "So, Mathias recommended you to me? Whatever for?"

"We ran into him, thought he was a friend of ours," shrugged Valkyrie. "He's got another double we know."

"Oh yes, there's also that 'double' business." Anthony and Stephanie shared a look. "Miss Cain, Mister Pleasant, first we have to establish this; are you part of a scientist's experiment gone horribly wrong?"

"Because if you are, we have a problem." said Stephanie.

Skulduggery and Valkyrie stared at them and shook their heads. "No," said Skulduggery. "Unless the scientist in question happened to implant us with false memories about another universe."

"Ah. That probably is not the case. Most scientists, or magicians, are not that subtle." said Anthony in relief.

Valkyrie snorted. "No kidding." Skulduggery tilted his head in an amused fashion.

"So there's that solved. Now, what is this about...other universes?"

Skulduggery and Valkyrie looked at each other. "To make a very long, exceedingly stupid story short, we have mages who can open holes into other universes, it turns out." started Skulduggery.

"Yes, they exist." added Valkyrie.

"Well, we got thrown through one of these magical holes in the fabric of reality." finished Skulduggery.

"We've been here for months," exclaimed Valkyrie, taking a furious sip of her tea. "Dodging cops and escaping from mental asylums..."

"Would that be why you appear to be missing articles of clothing?" asked Stephanie, looking pointedly to Skulduggery's bare feet.

"Yes. Yes it is." Valkyrie did not elaborate, nor did Skulduggery.

"Well..." Anthony said ponderously. "Are either of you any good at Finding things?"

"I suppose..." said Valkyrie.

"It is in our job description..." Skulduggery commented thoughtfully.

"Good. Then you can help us look for things." declared Stephanie, having anticipated what Anthony was going to ask.

"I'm sorry?"

"Well, we should probably let you stay here, being our doubles and all." Anthony said. "We can't exactly have random strangers think they recognize one of you and ask you to do one of our jobs. You'd steal all of our business."

"Ah." the doubles were silent for a moment, Valkyrie elbowing Skulduggery and Skulduggery elbowing her back for reasons that were not completely understood. "Well, if it meant not having to sleep on this city's utterly disgusting streets anymore..." decided Skulduggery.

"Oh god yes." said Valkyrie, shuddering. "Or getting arrested. And having tea."

"...then yes, we can probably help you on your insane quests."

"I do believe I should resent that, but given the types of things we've Found recently, you're not entirely wrong." admitted Anthony.

"Well then I suppose it's a good thing you bought the whole top of the building, Anthony," said Stephanie. "Because without visitors from another universe that much extra space would have just been silly."

"It's my house, as you have pointed out to me on numerous occasions. I feel I should have a say in how large it is." sniffed Anthony haughtily. "Mister Pleasant, Miss Cain, I do believe we have an extra room or two that you can use..."

...

This, as you can probably tell, takes place in the same universe as Tower. However, instead of using original flavor Skul and Val, I invented this pair. Regular readers will recognize human Skulduggery here. Yes, Rebecca is Machination Undertow's given name.

Yes. Pope Sharon is in fact Sharon, Finbar Wrong's wife/girlfriend/whatever. They are Pope Sharon and Mr. Most Holy and now I have a bizarre urge to write about them, too. Mathias and Cecelia are Ghastly and Tanith.

I'm basing the area that Steph and Anthony live in a little on the Black Velvet level of Psychonauts. Crowded, cramped, rife with platformability and secret spots. Not, however, nearly as brightly colored. Anthony's apartment corresponds roughly to the dimensions of Skulduggery's house.

As I love this whole universe, expect to see more of it in the future.

Feedback is appreciated.