Author's Note: Okay so I did a thing a couple of days ago and now I got a chapter done that is over twice as long as I would like it to be. Now the question is do I post it all at once at the cost of the couple of weeks after or do I cut it up into smaller chapters and post like normal. I think I know what you lot would prefer but I'd like a second opinion. Read, Review, Favorite and Enjoy!
Chapter 59: Moving Forward
Sparrow wasn't sure of which of the two he was supposed to be the most concerned about, the alien invasion that could come any day now, the oncoming Dragon's Games match, or the suspect manner of his recovery. Looking at his medical chart less than a couple of days ago he was hospitalized with a severe case of severed arm and ruptured organs. Said arm was now in a sling firmly reattached to his body and the rest of him seemed fine if sore.
"So you're the one responsible for this?" Sparrow asked looking at Morgan suspiciously.
"I didn't want Ruby to have to worry about her nephew." Morgan replied as she packed away her equipment, chief among them being the slightly bigger Suu.
"Did you put anything weird into my body?" Sparrow asked as he had a look around at himself.
"The last one seemed to get upset that I put cauldron grown monster organs into his body, even though it sped up his recovery time, so no I didn't." Morgan stated as she threw a needle filled with suspect liquid on the bed, and a what looked suspiciously like a squeak toy.
"Put that one into your mouth first, then inject that one into your arm. When you're ready to get off your rear that is." Morgan explained before she left the infirmary.
Sparrow took the needle of suspect liquid and left for the courtyard. Even if he did rely on Morgan's suspect chemicals he doubted that his recovery time would be as miraculous as Morgan made it sound without some light exercise thrown into the mix seemed to be mighty unlikely. Daring was reading through a letter he received that morning with a displeased look on his face, his overly shiny and highly oblivious dragon laying down beside him chewing at the femur of some kind of large animal.
"Sparrow you remember my cousin Lance correct?" Daring asked cocking a suspicious brow at Sparrow.
"Isn't that the guy whose jaw you broke after he called Apple a Sow?" Sparrow asked as he took the letter from Daring.
"Apparently he's the captain of the Dragon team over at Charming Prep now." Daring replied as he leaned into the wall of the school.
"He got into Charming prep?" Sparrow looked legitimately surprised by Daring's statement.
"Surprised?" Daring replied as he leaned down to give his dragon a scratch along his jawline.
"I thought they had standards." Sparrow replied as he made the letter into a ball and deposited it into a trash can twenty feet away.
"They also have the L's on the board of directors." Daring explained arms crossed. For those who don't know already, there are twenty six charming families each of whom are categorized with a letter, that letter being the first in their name. Daring and his siblings come from the D Family, Ace and Arrow the A family, and Lance was of the L's. "I hope they at least taught him respect for women."
"Maybe we should just shove him into the book of legends when we get the chance." Sparrow replied far more pessimistic about the situation. "Either way why does whatever job they gave the half baked loser matter to us?"
"Because they're gonna be our first match in less than a week." And if the tone of the letter was indication, Lance was looking to pay Daring back for that broken jaw. "I know that we asked this before already but is it really a wise idea to hold a match in the middle of this alien nonsense?" Daring asked looking suspicious.
"'Until such time where the world does finally stop moving we will continue to act as if it intends to to keep spinning.' That is the national policy anyway." Sparrow stated letting out a sigh.
"Which reminds me." Daring pulled over what suspiciously looked like a broom wrapped in a overly long cardboard tube and packaging paper. "The crazy lady dropped this off for you." Suspicious, Sparrow pulled the paper off of the wide end and pulled the rest out via of the tube that Daring was still holding onto.
"Another rifle?" Indeed the broom like thing was yet another rifle. Different from the last it was all black, but not black metal for it was far too light for that, this was some kind of ceramic the type Sparrow knew not, or at least most of it was, the butt of the gun was made from some kind of wood that he didn't recognize. And it twitched in his grasp, like it was alive. "The heck is it made out of?"
"Some kind of super durable combination of material's I guess." Then Sparrow clued in on something else. "Ah so that's what that is for." Sparrow unceremoniously decided to take hold of the gun in his mouth while using his now freed hand to take the needle and inject it into the artery of his arm. "RRRAAAGGGHHH!" Sparrow groaned in pain, his arm rippled and convulsed as worn out muscle tissue was restored and stitched up wounds were sealed up.
"Are you planning on doing what I think you're planning on doing?" Daring asked suspiciously. "Didn't you just get put back together?"
"The mad woman is still in the realm and I'm not passing up on this opportunity."
That said Sparrow did take the opportunity to check through his shirt to see what his wounds looked like, the stitching was done using steel spider silk if he had to guess, and went down all the way to his wrist and across his chest. In fact to ensure that Sparrow would heal through the most reckless of life styles Morgan had built a steel spider silk scaffold around all of his broken bones massively increasing his durability in that arm. Confident and satisfied with his recovery Sparrow took aim at one of the targets that Raven had left behind when she was still there and fired. The latest explosion tore through the lawn leaving scorched earth in it's wake and obliterated it's target in a shower of splinters and ash. The good news was that whatever kind of wood the butt of the gun was made out of it had spectacular recoil absorption properties. The bad news was that the barrel of the gun did not seem to share those properties, having umbrella'd and splintered like the lesser Rail Gun Sparrow was familiar with.
"Well that was..." As Sparrow pulled the gun back in disappointment the end of the barrel glowed with the familiar light of magic and pulled the splintered end of the barrel back together. "...anti-climatic?" Sparrow's tone of voice did not match his words, nor for that matter did it match his face as a down right evil smile soon spread from ear to ear.
"And we lost Sparrow for the day." Daring stated walking away.
It would be convenient if they could acquire some advance information on Charming prep and which of the literally hundreds of dragons that had passed through their door step that their enemy would be using. Which in turn gave Daring an idea.
Blondie's lot in life at the moment was not a enviable one, her news team having been given the thankless task of trying to catalog every singular one of the dragons that Morgan had unceremoniously dumped on them. As the first step in that process, and one of the most important now that they had left, was taking extensive photos of each individual dragon. Now that that part had been completed Blondie and co was now left to compare these suped up monsters to any of the information on pre-existing dragon species.
"Purple dragon, sneezes cotton candy." Blondie stated eyes bagged and blood shot.
"The Cotton Mouth, You already mentioned that one." A witch who regretted offering to fill in for Dexter stated her hand leaving a impression on her face from where it had been used to prop it up in front of a screen.
"No no, this one has two heads." Blondie stated rubbing her eyes.
"Blondie that dragon only has one head." The cupid who was somehow roped into this thankless mess pointed out her finger on the screen Blondie was looking at.
"...I need to get out of this room." Saying that Blondie got up and prepared to leave.
"Hello!?" Only to be interrupted by a meat witted thug barging in. "I need to speak with Blondie for a minuet is she in here?" Wordlessly the Cupid pointed to the door Daring had slammed open. Cocking a curious brow Daring closed the door, and revealed Blondie standing there with a bloodied nose.
"Daring it has been a long day." An apologetic Daring offered Blondie a handkerchief who snatched it out of his hand. "If anything that comes out of your mouth has anything to do with dragons you can just leave now." Blondie warned/growled.
"Um. Maybe I should go." Strike one.
Suddenly a loud bang echoed through the school, not unlike the one the day before that shattered all of it's windows. "What was that?" Blondie asked steadying herself by grabbing hold of the table.
"Sparrow got another Rifle." Daring explained recalling the damage that the weapon had done to the courtyard outside just a few moments ago.
"Isn't that the thing he used to destroy half the school and his right arm?" Blondie asked suspiciously.
"It didn't destroy his arm, merely part it from his torso." Daring countered recalling the details of the incident. "Course as Sparrow's the nephew of her best friend the crazy lady whose tower we invaded was nice enough to reattach it for him and build him a weapon that won't destroy the school if it misfires again."
"Eh." Blondie weighed the new information for all of five seconds. "It beats spending all week in here."
Morgan was continuing her vaccine development efforts, she needed something that would work on both the creatures of the monster realm and those of the other realms too. Of particular concern to her was the unstable biology of the Wonderlanders which necessitated that Morgan conduct some experiments into making sure that the vaccine can take, it would be rather perilous if one of her vaccines ended up transforming the people into some manner of eldritch horror, the good news being that a mutation by riddlish was far easier to correct than these abominations.
"So then why are we testing this here in my realm instead of that suffocating cloud of fog that you call a laboratory?" The Queen of Heart's asked cocking a suspicious brow at Morgan.
"Because we need to know how my vaccine will react to your realm." Morgan stated as she prepared a pig for what would hopefully not be it's final day.
"I am quite aware how the Aliens react to our realm." The Queen of Hearts stated gesturing to the petrified remains of a Lithilid she had posed in the palace that Morgan distinctly recalled was supposed to be sent to Niflheim to either be made a prisoner or dissected by her for more information. "I'm not concerned."
"Alright lets say for instance that one of these things manage to get on land..."
"Wig Wump." The Queen of Hearts replied cutting Morgan off.
"That they fly over the air..."
"Bandersnatch." Again the Queen acted like her statement gave all the argument she needed.
"That dives into the water..." "Mock Turtle." Morgan looked like she was getting annoyed with the Queen shutting down her arguments.
"If in the unlikely event that one of these things manages to get their hands on the Hatter Families fungal spores giving them access to the Narrators information." Morgan finally spat out having gotten to her real point.
"The Narrator's would never help someone to harm our lands." The Queen of Heart's countered.
"No but they also can't pick and choose the information that they give and who they give it too." Morgan countered growing irritated.
Yes I was able to feed all of you information about Ace, and feed him misinformation about the school and Morgan that succeeded in luring him into a trap in which he had brutal amounts of damaged dumped on his head. It cannot be guaranteed though what kind of effect that omniscience would have on the Lithilids, nor the consequences of simply letting them be tossed into the realm wide blender of Wonderland. More to the point I do not appreciate being tied down to brain eating psychopaths. So yes, both a vaccine and making sure it works is ideal.
"Very well." The queen gestured as she sunk into the back of her throne watching Morgan intently.
"So glad I have your permission." Morgan stated with a eye roll. In her own way Morgan was spoiled, use to being treated as the smartest person in the room, her natural intellect augmented by the omniscient narrator made for a genius innovator of the highest order. But she was not a unique specimen. Every single person, without exception, that has riddlish in their veins can hear the voices of Narrators, the Wonderlanders in particular have the additional benefit of generations spent in the hellish environment giving them razor sharp instincts purely out of the need to survive where you can never be sure what's a rock, what's edible and what's alive and trying to eat you. Morgan being regularly outwitted by them is not uncommon. "I know that." Morgan stated as she led one of the pigs into a containment unit and dropped the tadpole parasite onto it before quickly locking the door shut.
Like before the parasite went to work traveling through the body and toward's the brain. At once the Tadpole attached itself to the brain stem in preparation to chow down, but stopped when it heard something, it's every action being recorded, reported to another, why it knew not, but even these very thoughts were being recorded for judgement. Still it had few thoughts to give and it became accustomed to the feeling of being watched and so bit down on the flesh of it's victim processing the tissue into bacteria that would remake it's victim. Yet as bacteria was released into the body of it's victim something strange was happening, the body was fighting back, specialized cells were released through the body to attack the bacteria, tailor made for the purpose of stopping it in it's tracks. It didn't matter to the tadpole though only in completing it's meal, and yet it was given reason to pause once more, twitching and convulsing as it felt the tables turn on it and before it realized it it was being dissolved by the pig's brain instead of it dissolving the pig brain. After all thanks to the effects of riddlish it wasn't a pig any more.
"Well that was disappointing." The Queen of Heart's stated as Morgan flipped a switch on the chamber sucking the riddlish out of the squid faced mutant turning it back into a pig, albeit one that was so deeply confused that it was left screaming. "Have you at least figured out a way to keep them from communicating with each other?"
"Aside from getting them drunk off their rear ends? The brain works off of electrical signals, I theorized that their powers required the same thing to operate so I encased them in a Faraday cage to block their telepathic signals to one another." Then Morgan intently gestured to the 'statue' that The Queen of Hearts had posing off to the side of her throne. "Amazing the things that I can accomplish when people don't hide specimens from me."
"Moving on. I trust you're going to continue to try to riddlish proof your vaccines?" The Queen of Hearts stated looking unconcerned.
"Since you seem so confident that these squid faced losers can't get through your defenses to eat you I'm going to instead focus on finding a way of keep them from eating people's brains." Yes, the squids can't transform them with the benefit of Morgan's vaccine killing off all the bacterial payload in the Tadpole. However short of getting everyone punch dead drunk there's no way to keep the parasite half of the equation from eating everyone's brain.
"We just had the narrator's botched attempt fed to us through the narrator can't you use that?" The Queen of Heart's pointed out suspiciously.
"Well the process seems to start by attaching themselves to the brain stem I suppose I can use that against them." Saying that while scratching the back of her head Morgan prepared to leave.
Having completed her business in Ever After for the time being Raven was currently on her way back to her home realm, with Cthulu in tow it should be noted.
"Do you really have to go back so soon?" Apple asked looking rather lonely.
"If I'm not home by the time Mom gets home she's gonna be upset again." Lately it felt like Morgan was doing nothing but work, so having someone waiting for her when she gets home is a good thing.
"Huu. I understand good luck with your mom." Apple leaned over to give Raven a hug and the witch returned it, Cthulu seemed to take notice and propped up onto it's back legs to try and get in on the action.
"Don't worry Cthulu I'll miss you too!" Apple stated as she leaned down to the Squid Faced dragon's height.
"Mom says that she needs to do some mods on this one to help with the draw backs of it's alien biology." Raven explained giving the alien dragon a scratch behind his neck flab.
"Like what?" Apple asked looking concerned.
"Memory issues mostly, they'll mostly be taken care off thanks to a chip mom found on one of them." Raven mostly waved Apple's concerns off, turning around to get into the carriage pulled by Cthulu's un-mutated kin and take her back to Riordan so that she can take the realm travel room back to her home land.
"In any case, see you later Apple." With that Raven waved off Ever After for another day.
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rmarcano321: I am vaguely aware of the Touhou franchise, I wouldn't call myself a fan.