Author's Note : I put it back in!
Edited (3/21/29) - Minor corrections.
Russian Roulette : Second Chamber
Chapter 28
(Thursday the 8th of October, 1970. A hotel, Abovyan, Kotayk Province, Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic.)
Carefully peeling away the button-down blouse she wore today, Sonya eyed the bullet hole in her chest as it came into view through the tiny bathroom's vanity mirror. At least, she was eyeing the mirrored image of where a bullet hole should've been in her chest. One of two.
Hopefully there were exit wounds on her back, and she thought so because there was a part on her upper back that didn't feel alright… but she couldn't twist herself around enough to see them and be sure. That was where the lower injury not bothering her anymore became just as worrying as the upper one.
What she could see was that there was a coin sized patch of pure untouched skin about two or three centimeters below her collar bone on her left side, pale and almost translucent that stood out rather jarringly against the rest of her tanned skin. Except around the patch of faked skin itself, that was inflamed, angry looking, and a somewhat lopsided lurid purple and yellow ringed bruise. Sore not just to the touch, but whenever her shirt so much as shifted slightly over the site.
She considered her current issue with it, and eventually just peeled off the garment and her bra in hopes of preventing any further discomfort. Or at least as much as she could prevent it for the night.
With her shirt off, she could also see the lower gunshot wound just under her chest but still in her ribcage clearly. It didn't look much better, equally as angry and sore and an ugly bruise punctuated with a spotless patch in the middle as the top one, but strangely it also bothered her less than the other.
"Well… if it gets any worse, I'm giving up and going to see Tats." Glancing to the side, and down a fair bit, the thief blankly stared at her canine companion she had thought was noisily licking himself.
It was a thing, he was male. She didn't greatly care much, but…
He was instead lapping up the water in the toilet bowl, when he had a bowl of perfectly sanitary water available in the other room. Alek eventually realized she was staring at him, glancing up himself while licking the excess water off his chops.
"…and you lick me with that tongue." Sonya sneered, to absolutely no effect as he went back to getting himself a nice long drink of yet more toilet water when she didn't do anything too interesting in his opinion. "Whatever, don't expect to get away with putting that snout anywhere near my face tonight."
On her way to shove the discarded shirt into her luggage, Sonya thought back. Three year ago, when she and Cherep learned to surf. Then further back, and further to when they had been kids… surely… surely not, right?
Her brother didn't really like showing a whole lot of skin in public or tanning himself. Pasty white boy from the frozen north and all, generally happy as a clam in full sleeves and long pants. He would when it would be odd not to, meaning she had seen a bit of his stomach and the outside of his left thigh near his knee… and the nearly invisible tearing scars that went from just above one hip down to almost his knee cap. Then there were dots on his right arm, a lot of them of various sizes, that also didn't tan and looked perfectly healthy otherwise.
She glanced down at the two new splotches of perfectly pale flesh on her own chest worriedly. Ringed by an ugly bruise yes, but if it refused to tan back into her usual skin tone in the coming months…
Cherep had more of those markings she vaguely recalled on both hands, in fact most of the three fingers of his right didn't tan either paired with half of two on his left and a large patch on the back of the same. He generally ended up with a farmer's tan more often than a full body one like she and Tats tended to get, meaning those weren't too hard to spot.
Sonya had thought, with 'purple' not being a natural hair color she had been used to, that it was just something to do with Cherep's genetics to make whole patches of him not tan and gave that equally as blue as it was red tinge to his hair. She knew it happened, Michael Jackson was… would?
Was he still black now?
Would end up almost Caucasian-white due to a rare skin condition that severely and rapidly changed to color of his skin. If a Caucasian man ended up with the same condition… he'd just fail to tan, right?
The redheaded Tatiana had freckles across her shoulders and back and was prone to burning instead of tanning if not enough care was given to protecting herself from the sun, Cherep just didn't tan in splotches and generally refrained from suntanning when given the opportunity.
It hadn't ever been something to ask, the pale patches had just been… part of him. Like how freckles were part of their elder sister or even herself and the small dark moles speckled on her thighs or her biceps and forearms. Like his hair and eye color, or that stupid attachment to the skull and crossbones motif he had, they just were.
She… didn't rightly recall what her brother's back looked like. In fact, she might've never seen his bare back before in all their time together. Which was odd, given they had shared accommodations on and off for years and went to the beach together a couple times when the circus was in range of one.
Cherep was always fully dressed when he left his room or the bathroom… except that one time after Woodstock. He had been shirtless then when they had replaced their clothing with something freshly bought, but she didn't recall seeing his back that morning nor paid much attention to him when she had an entire bed to spread out upon after stealing his shirt. He had gotten dressed last… and kept his back to a wall while de-tagging all the clothes. Because… well, the hotel room had been a little tight on space… right?
She didn't know what his feet looked like either, now she seriously thought about it. From the moment she met him up on through living together as foster siblings, she didn't think she ever saw them or made note of anything off about his toes.
He always wore socks if not boots, even when it would seem uncomfortable to do so. Like napping with them on, or when all their socks were wet like back when they were attending Woodstock's final scheduled day. He had found them both some stupid rubber shoes marketed to protect the feet from sharp coral or shells in the sea while they were learning to surf… which had been protection equipment, so she had never questioned why he got them both a pair when their instructors hadn't bothered with any themselves.
This was all assuming she really hadn't seen his back and feet before, and they weren't just unremarkable enough to stick out in her mind now she suddenly had a couple pressing concerns about them.
She had a lot of questions about a minor and almost invisible feature of his skin she had never thought to question before now.
Why had she never asked?
Hopefully, her suspicions were just that and she was blowing a minor facet of in-progress 'Cloud Voodoo' up into an issue baselessly. That the markings she hazily dismissed as just part of her brother was in fact just weird genetically induced splotches of skin without enough or any melatonin and not stark 'Cloud Voodoo' scars.
Alek suddenly dragged a toilet-water wet tongue over the back of her knee, blinking his mismatched eyes up at her innocently when she wrenched herself away from him.
"Eww… no. No, don't do that." Urg, that was disgusting. "You're aiming for another bath, aren't you?"
He immediately fucked right off to his little bag of doggy toys stacked near the rest of their luggage, hunting through it and finding a bit of rawhide to chew on before shoving himself nearly half under the lone single chair in this room to go with the bed and bedside table. Flatly ignoring her now she said the dreaded 'bath' word, almost trying to snub her really.
"Yeah I thought not." With a shudder, and trying not to hyper focus on the wet patch of skin at the back of her knee, she pulled the rather battered phone closer to the side of the bed while she settled in for a possibly longer than normal conversation.
Punching in the stupidly long-winded series of numbers on a rotary phone was a bit of a pain, but eventually she found her way to the Mafia Land operators and got herself set to an extension in their guildhall's lines to wait on until Bjǫrn was paged about her calling. It didn't really take long, certainly not long enough to suggest a reason why her last contract asked her to get in contact with him this way instead of immediately sending her to another city in another country to do her next job.
"Dama, did you murder the head of the CEDEF before you left?"
"…maybe." Sonya allowed slowly, on a possibly compromised landline. "Why?"
There was a wordless sound, if pressed to identify it she would've pinned it as a mix of aggravation and outrage forced through a whistle. Odd. "Did you?"
"Hey, I warned him. Them. Whatever. They didn't stop bothering Rasputin, so I did what I said I would to Ganauche." Given she was the legal guardian for all those medical brats under any general age of consent in the civilized world, and mafia people were not the most trusting of people when it came to their various brats, none of that should be all that surprising. "Just because he's the head of whatever doesn't mean-"
"Dama, the HEAD OF SECURITY?"
"You could be the Dalai Lama for all I give a fuck, I will not tolerate anyone attempting to take advantage of my responsibilities. Besides, I gave a warning. Frankly, I'm just happy Ganauche wasn't there this time, or Tatiana might've murdered me for beheading her boy toy."
A loud thud made her yank the receiver away from her ear, and several subsequent thumps informed her Bjǫrn was still likely knocking his forehead against something solid without bothering to remove the phone from his.
…brat. Yes, she did it to him… but that didn't mean she wanted it done to her back.
Sonya put down the phone, dragging her purse over the entirely too big bed to dig out her second or third replacement pipe this month. She got most of the way through packing the bowl before her Lackey got his wits back together after trying to bash them out.
"Dama… Dama?"
"I'm still here."
"…please tell me the charge of thirteen hundred pounds in Cyprus wasn't you buying yet more books, and then the subsequent charge on the same account for airport fees wasn't you shipping yet more books with you."
"Excuse you, that's my money. I can buy whatever I want with it."
"…do you even have room for all that?"
"Of course I do, I have a fucking library now." She rolled her eyes at the third aggravated noise her Lackey had made in her direction since the conversation began, getting a bit tired of it. "They're all dog-training manuals or related literature, civilian sources so it'll all go directly to Italy once I've gotten what I need."
…mostly. There was something else in that pile that were not dog training or related material that cost the bulk of that sum. Supposedly, some fragments and most of a scroll of ancient origins that originated from the Alexandria Library through the Imperial Library of Constantinople then somehow ended up in a black market on Stoic Physics.
Sonya had no idea what 'Stoic Physics' were but was looking forward to finding out the next period of 'go here and wait for something' incident in her future. Like Verde's stupid scientist-thing.
Turkish would not be a particularly objectionable language to study next now she could at least read Greek, given there was a few things she wanted to investigate in the lands that spoke it… but she could do Classical Greek and Latin first before learning another modern language. Either or, more puzzles.
Odds were the scroll and related fragments were fakes, but the experience of finding out for herself would not be wasted given her intermittent hunt for the previous Arcobaleno generations through history. When she actually found something new. She got lucky with Carpentier's last words/memoir letter, it had been stored and preserved almost fantastically well for something no one had known was hidden in his childhood home. Odds that another such record in similar or better condition was waiting to be found was astronomically low, but that wouldn't stop her from looking.
"Got it all out of your system yet?"
"…yeah. Just… it's a little awkward when Nono Vongola asked for you by name for something his wife wishes." Bjǫrn grumbled irritably as he sorted himself out back to taking care of business instead of his… whatever the hell that had been. "While I was speaking to his representative, the results from reviewing the security tapes was passed along… just, give me a little warning next time Dama."
…Fiorella convinced her husband to help Aziz?
Or was it a term of her return to the Iron Fort?
Was it entirely divorced from that situation?
…she should call her mom and find out.
Well. Okay. She kind of saw his point now. "Okay. The next time I murder the head of the CEDEF I will ensure to make a point of giving you a little warning ahead of time."
…there was then a suspiciously long pause.
He blew out an aggravated sigh almost directly into her ear. "I suppose that will be the best I can hope for… on to business."
Finally.
"You finished with the-"
"Yes." Sonya confirmed shortly, maybe still a bit irritated at her last contract.
Wherein which a syndicate asked for an independent thief to test their new security arrangement for 'important things', she showed up with dog and they stole the marked coin out of their shiny new vault as asked, and now they were really fucking pissy about it. Like, really fucking mad at her. Either way, she would definitely like to move on now.
She couldn't be arsed to figure out whatever the hell she did wrong, but her paperwork was marked off appropriately and it counted so fuck. Whatever.
Although Alek was getting pretty good with keeping up with her through very odd paths, he was always game to chase her into and through most anything… but they really did have to work on the 'quietly' part a bit more. He was probably going to end up with the fanciest paws of any dog ever, given even now his medium-short claws still clicked on certain flooring. She wasn't comfortable cutting his claws even shorter, so a lot of visits to a dog groomer's loomed in their future.
"You should be in Soviet Armenia, right?"
"Yes." She responded absently as she lit her pipe, watching the embers take before taking a draw.
"Ah, you will be collecting blackmail. On the Yeghvard Wine-Brandy Factory, before moving on."
Sonya considered that as she pulled the stem of the pipe out of her mouth. "What kind of blackmail?"
Bjǫrn hummed thoughtfully, from the sound of it rifling through a set of papers looking for the answer. "…doesn't say. Any kind of blackmail, then."
…that was actually really questionable. What she might find to be a damning or distasteful fact might not be to another of the same social-caste of whomever she was targeting, or those higher or lower. It was mainly by perspectives that something turned from just a fact to blackmail material.
To an American capitalist, the fact the Soviet Union established the factory might just be a damning fact they would be shunned for. To a good communist girl, that it was making booze and not yet more farming supplies should be somewhat dodgy. To an Armenian, maybe they might just find the sexual orientation or personal relationships the factory manager or whatever had to be seriously questionable. It varied a lot through the filter of public opinion, all relied on someone not wanting that information to get out in the first place to be blackmail material, and what she might think would work could be completely useless to whoever put in for this request.
Likely, Mafia Land wouldn't care much if the client got upset at being handed a whole lot of useless gossip. The fact she was hunting after blackmail on a factory in Soviet territory said a whole lot, and mainly that whoever this was they were not a Soviet citizen.
Now, if she was hunting something on the factory dayshift foreman she'd be questioning how the workers managed to get a request through to Mafia Land in the first place.
For fuck's sake, the factory could only be about three or so years old. There wasn't enough time for something to become a hastily hidden skeleton in the entity's closet. By the facts of the situation, she then was limited to hunting through the management team and whoever supplied/transported/sold the product on from here. Which very much might not be what…
"…isn't this an info-broker assignment?" There were way too many variables, and it was a contract for information…
"Oddly enough, no. I thought so too, but the client specifically requested a thief only to take his job."
…sounded like someone knew there was something physical to steal but weren't sure what, and whatever it was could be quite damning to those controlling the factory. Thus they wanted blackmail, but needed a thief to physically steal it instead of just get confirmation that it existed when they were already mostly sure about that.
Interesting.
Odd, really odd, but very interesting.
"Alright."
"You'll take the job?"
Sonya snorted out a cloud of ashy smoke.
"Right, sorry. I'll have the details sent the usual way." Her Lackey muttered, mainly to himself. Surprisingly not really annoyed her strict refusal to accept any contract sight unseen forced him to do these kinds of calls on really sketchy phone lines around the world and working with it rather well.
…did she give him raises, or did he just pay himself?
He hadn't asked her for anything aside his mother's jewelry, not for himself…
"…Bjǫrn, is there anything you want?" Aside her stopping her absent-minded abuse of his nature, because even if she now had more minions she shouldn't keep mistreating her poor Lackey's good intentions. "I mean in the near and far future, now I have you trained up for what I wanted from you."
She had to outright abandon this hotel room anyways, since they had an unsecured conversation about murder on this phone line. As a matter of fact, she might just fuck out a window with Alek and their luggage instead of checking out the proper way.
Leave people to wonder… once she changed her physical appearance a tiny bit.
Fuck. She needed doggy fur dyes, or animal-safe fur dyes. She could change her appearance from tiny and blonde to brunette and tall with just some dye and a pair of pump heels, but Alek was a white signal light from fifty paces away that would give away the illusion she was two different women.
Brilliant thing to realize in the outskirts of the Soviet Bloc and not in a capitalist trade port she had ducked into and out of on her way out here. However, better late than never… especially before her canine's stupidly identifiable fur got her caught red-handed. Her dyes had to work then, and she had to babysit him so he didn't try licking it off his fur.
"…erm." Bjǫrn eventually offered on his behalf, making it very clear the teenager had never actually given thought to what to do with his life once she and her demands were satisfied. "No?"
"Well, think about it." She demanded, hanging up the phone and placing her half-burned pipe on the bedside table next to it. "Come on, Alek. Don't get comfortable."
Her canine companion raised his head curiously, a masticated strip of some previously dehydrated flesh hanging out of his jaws as he peered curiously in her direction. From under the safety of his lone sitting chair shield.
"No, I'm not just getting back at you for licking me with a toilet-tongue." Sonya had no idea why she kept talking to him, especially since half the time he didn't bother to respond appropriately. "We do need to go."
Of course, 'go' meant 'walk' to him so the dumbass immediately jumped to his paws and hunted around his toy bag for the leash they used for scouting out the area or just to walk him to heed the call of nature or tire him out for the night.
She took it, if only to keep him from getting underfoot and in the way trying to get her to hook his collar up.
Besides, he wasn't technically wrong. She would indeed be putting him on that in a few minutes. She just needed to change her clothes and hair color first… and give him some splotches of brown in his pale fur. Like all over his back to make him more 'collie' looking.
Bath time again, and now he was going to escort her to the bathroom under the mistaken impression that she was just doing human things to assemble herself to go outside again and walk him.
Lovely how that worked out.
(Wednesday the 14th of October, 1970. De Mort Castle, Moneglia, Province of Genoa, Liguria, Italian Republic.)
"We might need some naval forces." Shamal observed critically to Verde, eyeing the rising but totally Constructed 'surf' now lapping at their heels. It being at their heels meant it was about waist high for their Constructed forces trying not to get sucked into the equally faked mud underfoot.
Most of their forces right now were land-based with bronze era weaponry, but if the artificial surf created for the night's game rose any more most would then need to either swim with their heavy and mostly bronze equipment or ditch some or all of it.
The youngest Mist in the tri-faceted game considered it more. Well… they either needed to learn to swim or go airborne.
The scientist technically directing the pieces he Constructed into existence grumbled irritably, nothing Shamal could make out but half-mangled words in one or two languages he didn't know. Flicking his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, the older man inspected what he could see of both old man Yaozu and Hawk who was directing the other two sides.
"The initial thrust was wasted upon Hawk's forces, we shall be relatively unscathed." Verde eventually decided, taking stock of where all their units ended up after the Mirror Lady busted the damn she had previously built in an earlier turn.
He had a point, that sudden flood did take out a third of Hawk's and Usov's archers trying to position themselves to fire arrows down into the glade Yaozu had his 'king' piece within. Banishing the archers back with a wall of pure lake water meant there was a full-out mudslide going on over there on the 'lowland marshes', from what he could see through the mist now rising off the water baking off into its old constraints. His and Verde's pieces got pushed around and disordered too… but they only lost three individual pieces when a few of the Constructed trees got uprooted and smashed into their rangers.
Pulling at the air around them, Shamal made a cone of complete silence to keep the other two Mists from eavesdropping on them 'accidentally' rather than specifically if they had the right pieces to do it through. "If we're going to assume Anna doesn't want to add more to this. She could, if she built more damns in other areas. We haven't been able to keep track of her and Master Yaozu's last six turns."
"…regretfully true." The Lightning critically took stock of what they had been left with after the Mirror Lady's artificial 'act of God', and he made their Constructed Roman soldiers mime brushing themselves off and digging out the supply wagons from the muck left behind the water surge instead of stand there like manikins. Against Anna's and Yaozu's Chinese Imperial soldiers, and Usov's and Hawk's Celtic Britons… they were now pretty much on top in terms of manpower strength. "Although, it should not be possible within the bounds of the rules. We only had the 'waterfall' in the mountain range border on her side, and I seemed to have missed studying the period of Chinese history where they learned to harness waterfalls into labyrinths of aqueducts."
"You know, that's just like daring us to find a way."
Verde reached over and lightly swatted Shamal upside the head, probably for being a little smartass.
Snickering, and with half his attention focused on Usov and whatever he was doing under Hawk's direction for their turn to report once something actually happened, he admittedly half-jumped out of his skin when someone with not enough force but more than enough finesse smacked full into the Mirror Lady's precautions laced about just so to miss a lot of the really nasty stuff. The weirdly shattering bell sound had Anna completely abandoning the game, which he couldn't hold up even with Usov's help since she was so much better at natural-looking Constructions like half their damn game board was made up from.
The three armies he was mostly supplying with dictation on how they looked from the others, any sense of force distribution balance and the half-scaled physics that Usov was minding, the Constructed and mostly pint-sized world for them to fight in Anna had been responsible for with the environmental factors already at play all faded into Mist Flames a tiny bit lopsidedly from where the younger two Mists tried to shore up the interwoven Constructions but failed.
"Do not move." Anna advised the newly revealed Mingxia shortly, not even glancing at the young Rain behind her who had taken two steps to the side to put herself in reach of Master Yaozu. "There's another Mist here."
"Who smacked right into your protections face first." Usov remarked dryly, but he also had a hand held out to keep Hawk from advancing forward to meet their interloper since it was difficult to 'face off' with a Mist user in the first place. "Not a very smart one."
Shamal was about to correct that, they couldn't assume stupidity when hasty overreactions could really explain the same thing, but Verde sharply dug a hand into the collar of his shirt and hauled him into the air with a massive pull. It kept him outside the reach of something shadowy and grasping that passed under the tip of his old loafers by a bare smidge of distance, and he couldn't quite help himself from gripping the scientist's wrists with a yelp as he pulled himself even further out of reach.
Anna yanked on both his own and Usov's Flames to fight off whatever attempted to snatch at her and Mingxia, but Hawk utilized a burning pulse of Storm Flames to keep Usov and himself safe so they both could lend her the power to solve her problem. Larion got pulled outside and dumped on the Storm as the best equipped to handle a hostile Mist just to be safe, and tugging politely first to make up for the instant demand she had to do before the Mirror Lady started lacing something together with her Pavuchky and that borrowed power.
Suddenly forced back into the material world to avoid the hunting orb weaver trying to hurt her, the pink haired young woman wearing some kind of mask over her eyes simply wove a sheet of cloth made from rock to protect her from the oversized spider and foul the lunge it made for her face. She attempted to smack the bundled spider back into the earth harshly to crack into Pavuchky's chitin and hurt him, but had to abandon trying to murder the Mirror Lady's pet due to three or five copies of the same spider lunging up from the ground and sinking their fangs into her legs.
It was tricky to count the spiders, they had a lot of legs and wouldn't hold still enough to prevent the wild colored stripes on them from bleeding into an entirely different copy.
"Shamal," Verde spoke lowly, drawing them both slowly away from the ongoing spider-hunt and Anna got more and more outraged at the newcomer's utter gall at not giving up in the face of a pissed off spider and multiplied her pet to match, "is that young woman… really a young woman?"
"…no." He belatedly realized, critically examining the faint after-image thing around the back and elbows of the other Mist.
It was pretty hard to watch how one's own back moved or flexed, it was easier to watch someone else's… but that meant you didn't really know how your own muscles contracted and lifted certain parts of the body. It never matched up right, not when you were wearing a physical form not similar to your own. Especially when you went with a gender you weren't, unless you were like Viper and refused the slightly different builds between male and females for a streamlined one in-between both. A mainly Mist-only issue, but an issue he had gotten caught by before.
The scientist hesitated as he considered that answer, probably not sure what use to put that information to, but Shamal wiggled out of the grip the older man had on him. While he really appreciated the loan of Lightning Flames to make him practically invulnerable as much as a non-Lightning could become comfortably, he had instructions from his godmother to obey.
Usov gave him a helping hand to traverse the mountain range in a blink, giving him a spot to aim at as well since he had been there before and put a marker on the nearby road. Master Tyr was in the middle of distractedly tending to a construction plan laid out neatly on a folding card table, along with a large number of CEDEF construction workers swanning about the very destroyed clearing and several large construction machines.
The master assassin was not happy to see Shamal given the thunderous scowl, but he also didn't throw him out on an ear upon sighting him or otherwise verbally chase him off… which gave him an opening. "There's a weird pink-haired lady attacking us, but she's not herself."
There was only a slight hitch in the man's stride to indicate he heard him at all, as he advanced on his arrival point. Shamal found himself held still from any fidgeting by a strong and firm grip on the back of his neck. "Take me there."
His Flames reached back through the same way he got to a clearing on the other side of the mountain side, caught Usov's helping hand unerringly, and pulled them both through the Constructed instant-path back to the castle's backyard. Just in time for a flaming Pavuchky to go flying past right in front of Tyr's nose.
The assassin pushed him back somewhat roughly, but he forgave that because the man reached up to the back of his own neck and pulled a sword from under his suit jacket to slice off the intruder girl's entire left hand while she was too busy redirecting the Disintegrating clumps of dirt thrown in her direction.
Tyr had to have a Mist Guardian. There was no way he could conceal and whip out a longsword set next to or on his spine without a judicious helping of Mist Flames to prevent accidents or anyone from noticing. That kind of sucked…
Anyways, the removal of a hand had their intruder hesitating and on the verge of panicking. It let three Pavuchky tackle her to the ground and Verde to drop probably more voltage than recommended for human survival on top of everything, popping the Constructed spiders but firmly knocking out the puppeted girl and probably knocking out the Mist-ghost overshadowing her.
An almost physical glass breaking sound heralded the Mirror Lady's full return to physical space with another of her spider copies protectively perched on a shoulder almost like a lopsided pauldron, dark blue eyes already narrow and very suspicious until all three Mists agreed the girl was down and no longer a threat.
Shamal kind of agreed with her, that had been a… tiny bit familiar.
Like he had seen that Mist before…
Anna glanced over and reviewed that information with him for a moment adding what she knew as the one pulled into the aftermath to help Igor regain himself, pursed her lips and turned to the master assassin sliding a cleaning cloth over his sword in preparation to return it to the spinal sheath. "Master Tyr, I see young Shamal has found you in good health."
The assassin's mouth curled upward, and he inclined his head to her in the same motion he sheathed his sword. "In fine form, Mirror Lady. I trust you all are well?"
"Well, now." She observed tartly, sweeping a hand around the yard and putting it all to rights as well as getting everyone not needed out of the yard. "Our thanks for your prompt response, Sword Emperor."
Her actions just left Shamal, Usov, Verde strangely, and Hawk with the slightly borrowed Sky, their attacker, and Adrik who was somewhat painfully staggering out of the castle's kitchen door with the implements to at least physically restrain their prisoner now the excitement he couldn't physically take was over.
A crackle and pop of static electricity tinged with something dark discharging from Verde's fingers kind of explained why Anna's Flames didn't affect the Lightning, but on second thought he was kind of necessary to keep the now one-handed girl restrained so maybe she didn't even try.
…he kind of hoped they could reattach her hand. It wasn't like she had intentionally attacked them, someone used her for it. She shouldn't lose a whole hand because someone else was a butt-head.
"She's dressed as a member of the Cervello Organization." Tyr informed them all in a tone pitched to carry without needing him to raise his volume, folding his arms behind him as Verde and Adrik got her as secured as they were going to. Pavuchky weighed into the issue, affixing Flame-resistant spider silk from the girl to the rope and even going as far as reattaching the invading Mist girl's hand using some of his natural spider-glue. "Directly south of Genoa is a French island Corsica, which is also directly north of the Cavallone's Sardinia, and where she is probably headquartered with her syndicate."
"She was puppeted in a method we recognize. Herself, and her limb, will be returned as promptly as we may once the formalities are handled." Anna accepted on their behalf gracefully, curtsying to the Sword Emperor deeply. "Without further consequences."
His head cocked to the side, refocusing on Shamal instead of their temporary spokeswoman. "Truly?"
He scowled, mainly because of who he was remembering more than who was asking or the topic. "It's kind of like how Igor got 'overshadowed', and I recognize that… uh… Mist-tint."
Kind of like one's handwriting, but a physical feel instead of a visual sight. Viper had one so complex it was very nearly invisible, Anna's was glassy-smooth and elegant, Usov's was kind of like injecting sugar into your bloodstream, and Croquant Bouche's was just spice incarnate. You could mimic another's 'taste-feel', but it never came out right and most Mists could tell at a moment's inspection that was not saying who was supposed to be there.
Master Tyr probably did hear all about the situation after the fact, and that he had something to do with how his godparents caught on to the nasty Mist trying to hide in the Russian Mist's very being. He supposed he was the best familiar with that one, although if this one was the same it wasn't… they couldn't assume that.
It was still just a 'maybe'.
"…very interesting." Decided the Soft Flame Sky, mostly to himself but Shamal heard it with being next to the man's leg and all but he didn't seem to care he caught it when he glanced downward. "You will be informing your mother?"
"Of course." Like mamma would be pleased to hear it from someone else well after the fact. She liked her details prompt and concise, not telling her would make her Stormier than Cloudy when she got back.
Her being Stormier wasn't much fun. She got prickly.
Tyr then turned to Verde, who was not best happy to be involved with someone he had previously opted to avoid from the look on his face. "And you are?"
Anna handled the introductions, using only the scientist's nickname instead of his real one and naming him 'Sonya's scientific pawn' instead of a researcher in his own right. Verde was obviously unsettled, if just from the pink-haired girl attacking him or the return of the master assassin was questionable… but his Flames went jagged and just started screaming 'NOT' all of a sudden.
It was pretty distracting.
Weirdly, it seemed Tyr could hear that in some manner just as well as the Mists could but Adrik couldn't. Before the Mirror Lady could even contemplate frowning at him, the assassin had taken two full steps backwards and shifted his attention to distracting Adrik from realizing anything with asking how he intended on letting the Cervello Organization know what happened to one of their assumed public agents.
Scruffy stepped outside, flinched, went right back inside only to nearly walk into Galina and Larion. He edged around her and the Rain to hide himself inside and probably speak to Yaozu since Mingxia was now in the kitchen behind them all so that meant the old man had to be there too.
Anna sent everyone to their rooms?
They had to have been to pick up the lady Lightning on their way back down. She had claimed to be too busy getting the final edits for his godmother's second civilian-friendly Dying Will Flame handbook finished after dinner to join the game-night event. Two floors higher and some thick castle walls between her room and the backyard meant she couldn't have heard the Mirror Lady's audible warning sounds of a breach. Mingxia and old man Yaozu lived further past her on the third floor and could have run into her… but who got McScruffy out of his room?
That was pretty funny, actually. He kind of hoped she thought to catch everyone's expressions as they realized it…
"I wonder if your boss is going to count this?" McCarthy asked idly from behind Hawk, who either had to have been out on the grounds tonight or heard the glass-themed sounds to investigate from the ground floor. In order to sneak around most everyone else piled up in the back-kitchen entrance and end up behind Hawk as he currently was.
Shamal hadn't noticed him, but Usov had and hadn't stopped pooling information with him and Anna so they had been fully aware he was creeping around still until Verde's flight out tonight.
To be frank, his attention span was wandering all over the place now the exciting bits were done. Realizing that while keeping track of seven different things was kind of both interesting and boring.
Then again, they were Mists. Making the fantastic boring through overexposure in a word, and without something new to focus upon he kept getting snagged by almost random thoughts.
Anna was not a fan of that habit of his but if he was aware of it, she wouldn't nitpick at him to solve that problem before nature did. Usov gave the outsider a creepy grin to keep him mostly silent while Tyr expounded on the aid that was probably going to cost his godmother dearly later, but at least he wouldn't make them look bad and express his glee at the 'more exciting' trouble someone was about to have.
He blinked, and sort of loosely let go of the Russian sync knot between all three of them. Shamal noticed a hell of a lot less when he didn't have access to Pavuchky's multiple eyes for a wider field of vision or either of the others' insights to the non-Mists they lived with… but it was easier to focus on himself without the other two lurking in the back of his head pointing different things out.
As for himself, his neck hurt. Like, a lot.
Both Verde and Tyr grabbed him around there, one shoved him around, and ow it kind of hurt in a small way. Rubbing at his abused throat, he almost wandered off to get something cold and soothing to drink when something frilly-feeling but not real smacked him upside the head yet again.
Anna. Reminding him that since he brought him, he had to take Master Tyr back. Since forcing a change without clearing it with the man they were imposing upon to help them with some small logistical issues would be rude until he was done with the subject he was currently on… and she had opinions on rudeness.
Feeling a bit put out, but not enough to argue with the Mirror Lady about it, Shamal stayed put with a put-upon sigh to express himself.
The 'adults' were going to take forever with discussing things and agreeing his mamma owed Master Tyr a favor or at least payment for this consultation. Their game was ruined, no one thought to keep a record to smooth them all past an interruption like this and the mood to play was well and truly dead now. Furthermore, he couldn't wander off under any pretext until he 'took care of' his own guest.
Great…
(Friday the 16th of October, 1970. La Cour des Consuls, Toulouse, French Republic.)
Verde regarded the speaker somewhat cynically over his appreciatively chilled bottle of local beer. "That is based on several assumptions. Primarily, that there are in fact several worlds we cannot observe nor otherwise interact with. No proof is provided to reason that there are such. They are merely proposed to be."
"Yet." Chipped in one of the others, who he rather ambiguously recalled had been announced to him as a mathematician with a lateral interest in calculating meteorology information nursing the glass of some dark red wine. "Although I agree with the premise you've proposed, there are other worlds. We just call them things like 'Mars' or 'the moon'. Therefore the statement 'the world is covered in mostly water' would only prove true for this world of Earth and not at least one or two others we do know of. However, I would like to point out that the constants of the universe we observe on our own world could not significantly change on another for them to be considered constants in the first place. Therefore, your argument should be provable here and not just a theoretical 'somewhere else'."
"And that's also an assumption." Their original speaker countered dryly with a somewhat wild gesticulation to punctuate his argument. "We have yet to test such things and gained repeatable results in all corners of this galaxy or any others, meaning you cannot say with certainty that there are constants of the universe instead of universal constants of life on Earth or an Earth-like world."
Their astrophysics fellow puzzled that over for a few long seconds but couldn't counter that logic offhand and eventually gave up his tangent to drink from his glass instead.
"Similarly," Verde did it for him, "you cannot assume the constants will alter short of a hypothesis to base such on and give an uncertain quality to earlier conventional proofs. Else it would be the equivalence of stating the dinosaurs will return to life exclusively through the process of evolution… possible, but rather improbable naturally and therefore assumedly false until proven otherwise. Furthermore, similar in such an argument as in Maxwell's demon thought experiment, 'demonic' and 'Godlike' are merely terms. We, or more to the point someone in the near or far future, may use them to label purely terrestrial components or effects of true particles on another substance or under the effects of additional elements… but they would be merely that. Labels. Which then would compromise the thought experiment and malign the foundation of 'Godlike' being a provable quality that would or could prove God truly exists."
"Then, you'd have to quantify what God. There's a number of 'God' or 'God-like' entities in human theology alone, which one would you prove true?"
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle?
He glanced over and blinked, a bit nonplussed by what he found when he finally took his attention away from his fellow scientists towards the side entrance to the hotel's barroom.
Sonya was now a chestnut hued brunette propping a side door open on a shoulder as she jiggled with a leash, but also Alek had the somewhat rough markings of a husky staining his formerly pale white or off-white fur in a similar tone of brown near to her… high heeled feet. As the woman was also unlimbered from any luggage and held a glass of something amber and probably whisky in hand, he could also assume she had been present for longer than just enough to overhear the conversation.
"Also, Maxwell's demon? You couldn't think of anything else?"
"As I am woefully unequipped, and rather disinterested in, theological debates… Maxwell's demon is as close to divine providence or trying to prove divine presences in either direction I wish to encroach." Verde defended his choice of deliberation elements, only a bit embarrassedly as he resolved his idea of Sonya as an educated individual to include 'all but the paper for a master's degree' she had previously informed him she had.
Diplomatic in nature or not, her instructors had been very thorough to include a grounding in scientific theories to include at least the basics of high-level paradoxes in her education.
"You could make a case for Schrödinger's cat to help define what is and what is not something we can reliably observe at one time to make any assumptions of." His smartly attired boss in the dark blue pencil skirt and suit jacket paired with those high heels pointed out before leaving her rather greatly discolored canine companion tethered outside to fully join the group lingering near the hotel's ground level full bar.
"That would be taking the easy way out of the argument, as well as fail to fully address the possibility of the proposed existence of a Godlike variable as something we can or will eventually be able to measure in some real way."
"Schrödinger's cat and the observer's paradox is cheating, but bringing Maxwell's theorem for violating the Second Law of Thermodynamics involving an imagined tiny devil into an argument about proving the nature of Godlike values isn't?" Pausing to take a sip of her drink, the woman shook her head and rather purposely slid closer to him than socially acceptable for a casual setting. "Sure dear, whatever you say."
Very nearly dropping his beer bottle when she slid an arm behind him rather familiarly, he then nearly poured it out onto the carpet underfoot when she rose up to her tiptoes to press a kiss to his cheek. It took a somewhat vicious pinch to his back to keep him from reacting poorly or just outright giving away this falsehood to the men he had been debating with before her arrival, and the woman's very pointed look as she pulled back reminded him not to gape as if he was unused to her antics when that was the truth.
It took him almost embarrassingly long to figure out how to progress the conversation with her inclusion, and eventually ended up dredging up a topic she had already refuted previously even if that excluded the others somewhat. "…are you sure you are not going to be bored?"
"I found a supposed scroll from the Library of Alexandria, proving it as a fake should take some hours of study." Elegantly shrugging that concern off, the formerly blonde thief glanced to the side at the individual he had been debating before he became rather silent in her presence. Turning back to him instead of comment to one of Verde's old school mates, she gave a slightly off smile that spoke volumes to the worsening social silence at her arrival. "I would like to speak with you for a little bit, about what happened at home before you all run off to whatever is today. My godson didn't exactly pay attention to the smaller details at the time, the little brat."
"He is what? Six?"
"Seven."
"He did leave to go fetch our neighbor the moment he realized the severity of the issue." Verde allowed in defense of his game-night partner, aimlessly given the woman did not remotely seem too annoyed at the child's understandably short attention span after an occurrence that could possibly be described as 'exciting'. "Although… I believe you would like to know his opinion, then?"
"Not just that, although I will not say no to a more concise and less 'manners' related report on that."
"Verninac, do you mind introducing us to your lovely companion?" Interjected another who had been observing instead of joining the debate before this, likely sensing something amiss and wishing to smooth it over as a senior attendee might. He was slightly older than the few of them that gathered to take advantage of the hotel's open bar for the gathered scientific experts and got to debating newer thought experiments with contrived limitations but had seemed to enjoy simply listening in instead of participating.
…Verde had to admit, he didn't know his name. He didn't recognize either of the others he had helped in the conversation either, therefore he wasn't the best equipped to do any introductions.
"Sonya de Mort, historian." Claimed the woman nearly welded to his side, a tiny nudge of her hip against his that nearly unbalanced him had him grabbing her opposite one on reflex simply to steady himself instead of fall over her. The action somehow wasn't surprising or noticeable to anyone else, even if he found it acutely awkward and highly irregular. "My apologies for interrupting, but I do need to steal Gilles for a moment or three."
"…any relation to-"
"Skull de Mort is my brother, yes." She cut the one to originally propose the debate topic to the group off a bit tiredly, nodding once to acknowledge the slightly sheepish grin she was given for the response. "He's on tour, they might hit up France before the end of the year but I don't know what route they're taking nor when it might be."
Was her brother famous?
…did he meet the man?
Verde honestly could not muster up any idea of what her brother might look like, nor a name before she announced it, so he somewhat doubted he had been introduced to him. He was rather terrible at recalling individuals he either only just met or had not seen in some significant measure of time, in truth…
With a cough, his belatedly recalled old school mate reached out a hand. "Alaine Dupuis, aspiring physicist and general entomology busybody."
After switching which hand held her glass without allowing him the leeway to move away from her, Sonya obligingly reached out her own but there was a moment of physical cessation before Dupuis could turn it over to mime a kiss on the back of it.
"…strong hands you have there."
"A misspent girlhood in the Russian circus. Acrobatics and tightrope walking require it. Not to mention the knife throwing." With a slightly stiffening smile, she then turned somewhat expectantly to their rather unknown astrophysics inclined mathematician who had contributed to his preceding debate with the others. "And you?"
"Dione Lanthier." He volunteered a touch curtly, but then again she had interrupted the deliberation and he could see how that might annoy someone more interested in it than he was so his refraining from shaking the woman's hand wasn't too astounding. "Nice to meet you."
"Jean-André Bisset." Brightly announced the older man that had been observing instead of participating before she could respond properly to the second greeting, taking advantage of the other man's disinclination to give Sonya's hand a hearty pump or three by doing it himself. "What is a lovely lady like you doing with all us sticks in the mud?"
"Again, stealing Gilles. Do forgive me." Her stiff and polite smile changed into something completely insincere, at least it seemed so in his view, which aligned with her starting to physically if surprisingly gently push Verde away from the small group. "I'll return him completely unmarked in a few minutes."
For reasons best left unspeculated upon, that claim greatly amused their senior fellow. Lanthier merely snorted, which was less galling than Dupuis' rather toothy grin and flippant wave at her announcement.
"…Verde, where are your bodyguards?" Sonya very quietly snarled as she still gently but firmly removed him from the hotel's handsomely appointed barroom and into the more sedately arranged lobby on a general trajectory for the staircases. Worse yet, she discarded her own glass of amber liquid and his beer bottle in a convenient planter containing a heartily growing crassula ovata instead of allow him to down the remainder. "Further fucking more, why aren't you within reach or sight of them?"
"In the public level of a common room, with witnesses about?"
"That's exactly the kind of opening an assassin would like." She rather bitterly spat back, finally releasing him once they had at least one flight of stairs between them and his fellows. "Stabbing someone in the gut with a concealed knife then just walking off or staying to 'help' and ensure someone's dead is a staple of assassination work. Yes, you can be entirely un-stabby if you wish… only if you KNOW it's coming."
He frowned at her back for the conflicting threats he was supposedly under. "I believed your previous claim on the motivations on this event was my kidnapping or forcible recruitment-"
"In the worst case, depriving someone else of an asset you can't get a grip on is entirely a valid tactic for those like me. We're all that fucking petty." She shot him a unexpectedly understanding expression over a smartly attired shoulder, before returning to puzzling out the number attached to a brass key in her hands. "I know it's annoying, and in the way, and entirely an imposition. Let it happen anyways. Worse comes to worse they'll just be totally useless."
…wasn't that his room key and number…?
Verde checked the pocket of one of his better pairs of slacks quickly, coming up with pocket lint and not the hotel room key he had been more than certain he had placed there before leaving his rented room.
She must have pickpocketed him. Brazenly. In a group containing at least four individuals paying her specific attention, any number of others on the outskirts that had not joined in at all with the debate or with getting an introduction, and the staff of the bar itself idly watching to ensure no one got drunk or aggressively out of hand.
How?
Eating up the space that had opened between them with his longer legs, once he realized it was there after he validated his suspicions on what that item in her hands was, Verde caught the woman sliding the key into his hotel room's door and effortlessly opening it without issue.
"Sonya." Even more gallingly, he was pretty sure he had seen that luggage set under a window before when presenting this thief with the glass armor scales she was sliding off with her suit jacket. She likely found his room independently, off-loaded her things without issue, and then went looking for him. All events he had been somewhat sure would not be possible with the level of security and professionalism the hotel's staff had exhibited in the short few hours he had been a guest. "…do you intend to move in here with me for the duration of the summit?"
"Yes." Something close to a grimace crossed her face, kicking off the inch-high heels and taking a few more ginger steps to the hotel room's provided desk containing her purse and some other accoutrements women seemed to prefer over a simple wallet and two-three pockets of necessities. "It's easier to protect you if someone is physically with you, and I can pull it off better than Hawk or what's his face could without possibly damaging your reputation among stuffy and overly opinionated old-timers. Speaking of… where are they?"
"McCarthy? Across the hall with Hawk in what is a double occupancy room with the aim of 'to get sorted', I specifically failed to ask how he managed that arrangement as well as what his intent was in 'sorting'." He was mostly focusing on how to argue her out of the room without issue, and worse yet failing, to realize what he said until after her bark of surprised laughter. "That wasn't what I meant."
"I'm using it anyways. Once he pisses me off." Given she was making herself comfortable on his bed with little apparent interest in moving anywhere else, Verde had the sinking suspicion he wasn't going to go the long-weekend without a rather shapely bed partner. "I still need what Tyr said from you, and I'll get Hawk's opinion on it too here in a bit. However… you probably have reservations and concerns about this. Right?"
Astute of her. "Sonya… I do not think I can reliably sustain the illusion of a relationship-"
"And I'm honestly sorry. I know it's making you uncomfortable." She lifted both shoulders, but annoyingly enough did not remotely seemed deterred from anything she had estimated important enough to construct a false rumor in the protection of. "Specifically, I hate my imposition is making you uncomfortable. If I could get away with standing the appropriate distance from you for casual business acquaintances I would, however… it will not help. You or me. The fact of the matter is that Hawk and whatever his name was can be excluded from your egg-head shindig on the basis of 'classified materials'. So can I, but as a girlfriend I can at least reliably pull you out of situations we find to be too chancy or provide an easily understandable excuse for why you missed whatever meeting or lecture or what have you."
Feeling the slight tinge of his building frustration starting to eat away at him, Verde spent precious seconds in the natural pause of human speech patterns trying to calculate some method or possibility that could be utilized instead of the ruse… "Why could we not make it clear to the organizers the shady background of my invitation?"
"For one, you need that invitation and more in the future. You're brilliant, honestly. That brilliance could be put to phenomenal use, just because I have hired you first doesn't mean I'm disinterested in what else you could come up with given the right connections or specialists in different fields. Secondly, because that will not solve anything." She ran a few short-nailed fingers through her distractingly russet-brown hair, idly scratching at the back of her neck before dropping her arm. "We need to make a statement with your attendance, tipping our hand by admitting we know they're out there by informing anyone is not it. It's not just whoever's trying this you need to warn off, it's anyone else in the future that will think 'why not catch him out and alone when he's mingling with simple civilians?' We need you to be untouchable and too hard to get to even at a last-minute circus like this, which includes preparing for the inevitable lashing out when they're stumped a time too many to be reasonable anymore, so as not to put your fellow scientists at risk too if you ever wish to attend another of these events."
…future-proofing?
If he did not require another close habitation with his boss on such occasions, Verde might be able to endure this once. Gratifying as it was that she was not taking his hesitation in her presence as a slight to her, and that she understood his discomfort was with the falsehood entirely and likely would limit her antics to the bare basics of what was required for her subterfuge only… this remained exceedingly awkward for him. Slightly less so now than earlier, but acutely bothering to a noticeable degree.
"As Shamal once put it, I'm a lady friend. Both a girl and I can be a friend, so technically it shouldn't be that much of a stretch to claim me as a girlfriend." Here she shot a pointed look at his wrists. "As long as you're actually eating, otherwise I might as well become a mother hen."
He instinctively tugged at the cuffs covering in a nervous habit he had not noticed he acquired, specifically stilling his hands he shot her a pointed look back. "I've never shared space with a woman not my girlfriend, Sonya."
"Well I've never shared space with a man that wasn't either five-six and/or seven, family, or a decently long-term friend of mine." A hesitation had him refraining from commenting until she spoke, which didn't remotely help his aims any when she gave voice to the thought that occurred to her. "Or Fong. But Fong's… a weird case. Fong doesn't count."
…Verde knew he would regret asking, but his damnable curiosity surged to the forefront and snuck out of his mouth without adequate approval from his higher functions. "Why does he not count?"
Mingxia's brother, and Yaozu's student… he was a friend of hers as well, correct?
"Hostage situation. There was pretty much no where else to sleep." Pausing before rising off the bedspread for whatever aim she might be interested in next, she slanted a somewhat suspicious look that took him in from head to toe. "…you're… not going to have a weird obsession with my ass, right?"
…he lied. Verde was utterly uncomfortable now. He really, more than simply assuredly should not… nevertheless… "…define 'weird'."
Fuck his insatiable, voracious curiosity.
Sonya stood up, turned around, and rose up to the balls of her feet while craning her neck about to see her own posterior and physically poke at the feature of her anatomy in question. "I mean… it's an ass. Why do some men like to grab hold of it? If you seriously think about it, it should be the last thing anyone would want to grip hold of."
"If one seriously considered human anatomy entirely, all the systems and various methods of waste disposal involved, grasping any part of another's anatomy is always seemingly off to oneself." Why did he do this to himself? "However, as my education suggests, it may have more to do with our earlier ancestors than due to any other environmental or societal influences. One's hips and rear posterior, on a female form such as your own, would suggest if you possessed superior 'childbearing' attributes to any suitors at a glance alone. On a male it would show 'athleticism' and how fit one was to hunt and gather for any family unit."
…and she wasn't even the first woman he had this exact conversation with.
"…so Fong's a butt man. I still find it weird, but I guess I can understand that in this context. China's had a shit-ton of strife and food shortages in recent decades, they're probably still recovering from that so he might not see a whole lot of them." Dropping back to her heels, the thief wandered off to her purse instead of face him again. "Must be still fascinating, even with the Triad women having better nutrition than most. Huh."
He could not find fault with her distraction as he endeavored not to recall the last time he had this conversation, or the first instance. The original situation he got backhanded across the face, the second time the lady in question had just wanted an opening to request his assistance with her calculus homework… the third was now an ex-girlfriend.
…despite fruitlessly willing it otherwise, he was now ruminating on his old college flame again.
"What else do you find strange? I have taken several classes of numerous fields of study, including psychology and anatomy although I focused more seriously elsewhere…"
Verde needed a mouth filter. He should not have said that.
He resignedly took in how gleefully the woman turned around, now he had offered her an avenue of investigation her likely prodigious book collection would not typically cover given it was utilized by some children for their schoolwork and Hawk had personally curated any more recent additions for suitability, then grimly resigned himself to making this even more awkward than it really should've been.
However, as he had opened the topic for discussion he would… somehow undergo both the dialogue and subsequent personal space invasion for several days. It was rather the least he could do in exchange for her understanding of his discomfort and the effort she was going through on his behalf to safeguard his future appearances as an individual of scientific worth.
Verde sometimes felt a bit of disquiet when Adrik, and now this woman, professed so much faith in his intelligence. He was clever, it was impossible to not notice or conceal he was, but then episodes like this happened…
"So… is blue or green hair dominate? Genetically speaking, I mean. I've seen women with pure white hair, two men with pure yellow eyes, my brother is fucking purple, and you're green. But Larion has brown hair when his mother has hair greener than yours. So it could possibly be recessive, right? I thought purple, or at least the reds, had to be dominate, but I don't recall enough of the genetic four-square to figure it out myself. I was taught on 'blonde, brown, and blue eyes' as examples not 'green, white, and purple eyes'. Besides, Larion's an only child right now."
Genetics was a brilliant subject matter.
A spectacular one.
By far his new preferred subject of study, beyond his preoccupation with Ovis aries or Bombyx mori genetic strains on her godson's behalf.
Pressing his glasses to sit higher on the bridge of his nose, Verde swiftly expounded what was and what wasn't dominant or recessive to an appreciatively intent audience of one. Given how quickly she dove for a messily kept pad of memo paper to then take note upon, he somewhat absently wondered if he had somehow found a series of topics to default to when the situation became strange between them due to her ruse.
What parts of her education did Sonya also miss out on, to go with the lacking paper degree for her master's in 'Foreign Affairs'?
