Disclaimer: I won't be attaching a snarky comment to this one. I apologize in advance if anybody finds Astares' condition to be a little intense.
Chapter 34:
Melinda Griffin frowned at the King's back. She'd been up first, and she'd gotten showered before the other woman had gotten out of bed. She knew that the King of Ooo liked to watch them get dressed, and she'd put on a show, sliding into a sexy garter and stockings combo in purple over transparent purple panties, topping the whole thing off with a bra in purple lace. With her hair teased out just-so, she'd imagined him wanting to go right back to bed. Instead, he was over there.
Finn was standing at the makeup table behind the shapechanger, his hands resting on her narrow shoulders, while he whispered sweet-nothings in her ear. Melinda had been in the King's bed every night this week. They both had been. And that was the trouble. She didn't feel as though she were getting closer to the big man. Oh, he'd had sex with one or the other of them–and often both–but that seemed to be all Melinda got. It was sex without intimacy. That was great for a spy, siphoning information from a mark, but it was very bad if it was what the spy was getting from the mark.
Finn the King nuzzled Jake's neck, and in a voice pitched for her sensitive ears, whispered, "Operation Sideways is a go... Head down to General Ultrich's office outside of town. Take your time coming back... Stop off at Charlie's if you want." To sell the lie that she was out on personal business. In a much louder voice, Jake asked, "are you sure you want me gone? I-I'm ok... Really." She'd had a couple of 'melt-downs' this week, including one very real crying jag when she'd found out just how much financial trouble Charlie was actually having.
She was selling the lie that she was a ridiculous, high-maintenance girlfriend. Which was the disguise for the clandestine trips outside the palace without the King. Most rolled their eyes, including the woman she was sharing with at the moment. The only one in any way suspicious of the whole business was Bonnie.
Finn kissed her sweet lips and announced, "take your time, babe. We're probably headed out today, going to Tongchon. You'll have lots of work when we get there. See your sister and get a little rest and relaxation." Jake acknowledged the orders with a kiss. He did have a way of making her feel all melty inside. As Jake turned back to the makeup table, Finn turned to his problem child. Strolling over, the big man captured the wax-hustler's pretty face. His eyes studied hers, and his face was unreadable.
Bending down, the big man kissed those plush lips. "Please gather your things, Miss Griffin," he said. "We're headed south to Tongchon today after the audiences this afternoon. I'll need you to work with Lord Hyun Ki's informants when we arrive. I'd also like a report on what's going on with the Island of the Truth Kingdom." "Y-you'll have it, sire," Melinda responded.
The big man took her by the hand, twining his fingers with hers, as he headed out the door, leaving Jake behind. She and Bonnie had spent a while chatting with him about that. If you wanted a girl to think you were invested in her, even if you weren't, you had to show her. It said something that they had to tell him that. Finn wasn't the kind of man who toyed with a girl's feelings.
Jake finished putting her face together, before packing up her makeup bag. Like the rest of their things, it would get hauled down to the landship today. Rising, she gathered on a jacket, picked up her purse, and headed out for her part in the business. They were moving the army. Ultrich was going to take the army south to the Great Burn, and they were keeping Reese, or whatever her name really was, from knowing about it.
Finn the King arrived in the meeting chamber with the less troublesome of his mistresses in tow. It almost made Sakura want to howl laughter. The sappy wench stared around her in a fog. Of course, Finn was good in bed. Sakura could attest to that herself. It was just funny seeing the icy spy-woman walking with the big man and holding hands like a teenager. The pair walked up the length of the table, with Reese taking a seat three chairs down the table from the head. Finn sat himself at the head of the table. "Let's begin," he said.
Back in the Candy Kingdom, the wizard, Astartes, woke from an unpleasant, dream-haunted sleep to the insistent ethereal tug of Lady Ivelise, the High Lady's Court Wizard. With a groan, the wizard climbed out of bed and made her way to the parlor. Slipping on her Instrument, the wizard filled a bowl with water and set it down on the kitchen table. Immediately an image appeared before her. It was a message for the High Lady's idiot daughter.
With a sigh, the wizard grabbed pen and paper and began transcribing the message. She worked quickly. Ivelise wasn't talented with sendings like this, and this message was going to wipe her out for the day. Ironically, their hated enemy, the Ice Prince, had tried to sell those backwards bitches on having a phone system put in on their islands, and they'd ignored him. That was one of the things Astartes found herself reflecting on as she acknowledged receiving the message. If she headed back west to snatch her family out of the Confederation, she'd lose access to the phone system.
Much of the west was in a primitive state. There was no Princess Bubblegum there to offer the scattered kingdoms tech to rebuild their shattered world. Roads were often dirt tracks, and travel was measured in weeks instead of days. Peeps fought wars over nothings, and you could find yourself hemmed up just walking to the next town. That would be what she was going back to.
Of course, she had an option.
The unhappy wizard found herself stroking her belly–current home of her option. She'd been afflicted with the madness of desperation. She'd been desperate not to lose her head or to see her mom lose her head. She'd done something supremely stupid. Rumblings around the court were that the Princess of the Lamprey Folk had gotten hemmed up doing the very same thing Astartes had done. The Royal Wives had taken a very dim view of the matter.
Her head was at risk here and her head was at risk over there. It was just a question of which threat was greatest. She was pondering places to hide, and she'd come to the unpleasant realization that even Wizard City was no shield because the King's first wife was none other than the Ice Queen, Grand Master of Wizard City, and a very dangerous person to cross.
Of course, there were other problems. The wizard's stomach chose that moment to remind her of one of those problems. Shooting to her feet, the plush wizard rushed to the toilet and heaved dinner over the side. Sitting on the floor of the toilet and wishing her roommate did a better job of cleaning up after herself, the wizard found herself going three rounds with her unpleasant visitor as a bout of blinding rage swirled up in her heart.
The wizard curled up in a ball, fighting with herself, as thoughts of violence swirled through her mind. She was in lust/hate with the King of Ooo. He'd done this to her. He could have fucked the High Lady's cunty daughter and made those bitches happy. He could have married his son to her. Anything of the sort, so Astartes could be in her cute little flat in Wizard City.
Nor did her hate stay restricted to Finn alone. She wanted to cut Tallulah's throat. She'd had the knife in hand yesterday morning, standing outside the bitch's room. She'd just gotten up in the middle of making herself a breakfast–one that had ended up half in the toilet–and she'd decided to kill the High Lady's kid. Of course, if the council was already talking of sanctioning her, that would maybe have gotten her whole family killed in retribution. Astartes had settled for carving on her own arms before fighting her way back to sanity. The wizard had gone for a long, long walk and then spent an hour on the phone with her therapist chatting about all that was ailing her.
In the middle of that bout of madness, one clear thought emerged. East. She would go east. If she went east, there was the hope of still being able to maybe keep tabs on what was happening with her mom, while still having a decent life. She'd never tell her daughter just who daddy was. Climbing to her feet, the plump woman slipped into Tallulah's room and put the council's note on her makeup table. Returning to her bedroom, she crawled into bed and did her best to sleep.
As the sun was approaching its zenith in the far east, the oblivious father was approaching the moment he'd been worrying at all week. He was about to do something that would potentially damage his friendship with one of his oldest friends in the world. He had gone around and around this topic a number of times, spending a solid hour looking at the business from every angle. He really saw no other way. He had to sell the lie, and he had to use Sakura to do it.
His old friend was sitting back in her chair, listening off and on to the proceedings. There were things she was going to have to do when she was back on the throne. She had to mend fences with a lot of the petty kingdoms on the mainland, and she had to restore the damage to the food-production infrastructure that Nagumo had damaged because there was no spare capacity to be had anywhere in the world right now. These meetings had been as much about her and the problems she faced as Finn's attempts to build his coalition.
Now, as the little princess pondered how to replace the farmers who'd been slaughtered or chased into hiding, the second in command of Finn's army rose to make his report. Colonel Barth declared, "the army is in good shape, Your Majesty. We're ready to move south to the Great Burn to be ready to attack the enemy at your command." The army was operating on rations right now to protect the local food-supply, but they had a good supply of packaged food, and the water-purification machines they'd brought had been working well.
"Uhm, yeah," Finn rumbled. Tugging at his collar in nervous habit, the King of Ooo announced, "I've decided to send the army home." Shock greeted those words, with the people gathered around the table murmuring in surprise and worry. "The tradition here has been peace for centuries," Finn declared, "until Nagumo came along. I've been forced to use violence in a land of peace to restore order, but that doesn't have to be the rule. I'm willing to give peace another try. To that end, I'm sending my army home. I want to give Mr. Nagumo a chance to peaceably surrender."
Sakura Hitachi shot to her feet. She stood there a moment, staring at Finn, and the world stood still, with every lord and functionary watching her. The King had just declared peace. Wasn't that what she'd always espoused? That the world she be at peace without princes and princess making war on each other? Or did that only matter when it didn't affect her? More to the point, was violence by proxy somehow not violence? Without a word, she stormed out, slamming the door behind her.
As Princess Sakura dealt with the shocking betrayal of one of her closest friends in the world, far to the west, the King's wives were dealing with a crisis of their own. Simone and Roselinen had arrived on the train in the wee hours of the morning after spending days getting the refugee village fortified–just in case. While they'd managed to talk Princess Beautiful down off the ledge, the Ice Queen was taking no chances with the safety of thousands of lives. The wizard woman had spent a day crafting walls of glacial ice that would last until summer, and a garrison had been left in charge of the village to secure it in case the undead returned.
As the Ice Queen sat herself at the head of the table, holograms of her absent colleagues began to appear, with Bonnie taking the spot at Simone's right hand. Rosie settled herself a little further down the table to watch, listen, and learn. "The refugee village is secure," Simone announced. "We're in good shape there until spring." That was the pertinent problem as far as Roselinen was concerned. Spring. The ice would melt with the coming of the sun, and they'd be back in the soup if they couldn't figure out where the dead woman's lethal legacy had been taken.
Simone had been worrying at the business almost from the moment the undead marched out of sight. She'd spent hours pacing and muttering to herself until Emeraude forced her to go to bed. It was another significant sign of the weight the Queen of Ooo carried. It wasn't quite as bad as what Finn was holding, but it was pretty severe. Rosie was resolved to take her piece of it. Simone couldn't carry it all, and there were too many normal folk out there who would suffer if they didn't keep the world on track.
The gum woman spoke next, asking, "do we know how many bombs were taken?" Betty muttered curses. "That mophead hasn't any clue what's in her domain," she growled. She'd decided to go look around in the silos one night and killed herself with a fatal dose of radiation. Rosie fought the urge to giggle. The idiot wasn't a mophead anymore. Bonehead was a more fitting appellation. Bonnie rolled her eyes in irritation. "It has to be related to your uncle," Simone murmured. "It would have required technology to lift the cover off the silo and pull the bombs off the missile." "It could have been done by an airship," said Nadia. "An airship would have let them hoist the silo cover without putting too many people on the ground. They could have lifted it aside and then pulled the bombs out of the silo."
Rosie goggled at the machine-woman. Her people were supposedly devoted to peace. Why would they be involved? The informer, Orzsebet, answered that question, announcing, "that would mean Gordon Wells was involved. He has access to his people's airships. They're inferior to yours, but powerful enough to lift many tons." "Why," asked Bonnie? "It's confirmation of a sort," the Lady of Spies burbled. "Information I've received suggests that he and your relations are in collusion, Your Highness. If Gordon is stealing mushroom bombs, it means that your relations now have those bombs." Which was very bad news. "And Gumbald will be conjuring up some kind of terrible weapon," Betty rumbled.
All eyes turned to Bonnie. If anybody knew their foe, it was her. "It won't be fast," she said. "It won't be a bomb. He'd get one use out of that, and then he'd be ducking the retaliatory strike. My guess is that he'll try and power something longer lasting, a gun or a machine or something." It was what she'd do with a pile of plutonium. "We have time," Simone murmured, "but not much time. We need to figure out where he's hiding..." Eventually, Gumbald was going to spring his surprise on them.
Rosie's eyes turned to their Informer. That was her area of expertise. "I have some suspected locations," the spy-girl declared, "but there's at least a dozen. I... don't have the resources to search them all." It was clear she was having trouble admitting that, but Finn had said that a lot of spies had signed on with Gordon Wells. Cherry was a little chagrined to have failed to take care of him. Finn had trusted her with the problem, and she'd failed on the follow-through. "We can fix that," Nadia retorted. "We will fix that," Bonnie agreed.
The conversation moved on, and Rosie cleared her throat, drawing attention to herself. "I'm... guessing that whatever they're doing with these weapons... they're not going to be working if we can even get them back...," said she. Frowning, the plush pillow rumbled, "I'm not sure we would even want them working. But, that said, this dead woman is going to be... She'll be pretty angry if she doesn't get her toys back. We need to figure out what we're going to do with her when that happens."
Shoving her face in front of Bonnie's, Minerva declared, "that part's pretty easy, Rosie. I doubt bonehead can tell if the bombs are actually giving off radiation. All we really need is the shell. We give her the shell back, and she's none the wiser." That had the pack of conniving wenches around the table laughing and sniggering up their sleeves.
As Finn's mom and wives discussed how they could even gin up fake bombs to hand over before they even found the real ones, on the far side of town, knocking at Tallulah's door announced a different facet of the problem had come to her world. The nymph groaned. She didn't want to get up. It had been a late night last night. She'd left the strip-club early and ended up partying much of the night and drinking way too much.
She'd come home, expecting to be going another two or three rounds with her cunty 'roommate', but Astartes had been in bed already. That was starting to be... odd. The wench had gone from hectoring and harassing Tallulah every chance she got–and informing on the lazy princess to her mother and the cunts on the council when she wasn't doing that–to basically ignoring her. Tallulah had been sure they'd have a dust-up last night. The wizard had been leaving an increasingly shrill series of messages from the council on Tallulah's makeup table, and the younger woman had been ignoring them.
In retrospect, that was probably a bad idea. While the council was far away, they had ways of hurting people they wanted to hurt, and neither Tallulah nor Astartes were immune. Thankfully, instead of greeting her with shots, Astartes was in her room with the door shut, much as she'd been for weeks now. It was damned odd, and it was starting to make the younger nymph very nervous.
Still, with the knocking going on and on, and the wizard doing nothing about it, Tallulah was finally forced to get up and go do something herself. Drawing on a dressing gown, she went shuffling across her parlor to the front door. Jerking it open, she greeted her noisy visitor with a shouted, "what?!" Only to be basically bum-rushed back through the door. In short order, Nicia the Purple Person and two of her friends were in the parlor, and a stranger that she didn't know was carefully locking the door.
The young nymph frowned at her guests, her mind going a half-dozen directions at once. These people had been involved in a plot to murder Finn the Human. Her mother's idiot councilors had been all in on the scheme, even lining up Finn's old wife to sign decrees and documents in his name to capitalize on the outcome. Instead, the whole business had gone straight in the ditch, with Finn walking in out of the wilderness in his PJs as if he'd been out on a stroll. More to the point, several necks had gotten stretched in the intervening weeks. The sight of these in her parlor made Tallulah very nervous.
"What are you doing here," she asked? She almost immediately wanted to withdraw that question, suggesting as it did that these were dangerous and wanted, and that she, perhaps, didn't want them around. "Getting back in the game," Nicia replied. "What's been going on?" Tallulah found herself thinking very quickly. As far as she was concerned, there was no game. The game was over. They'd tested Finn and his allies and fallen on their faces. She'd heard rumblings that one of the conspirators had been drawn and quartered for Globsake!
"I... Finn's gone east," she said. She vaguely recalled Astartes telling her that. He'd been briefly in town. Strangely, he'd been briefly in the strip club. Tallulah had told the wench to go deal with it herself if she cared. Thinking back, that probably had been a bad idea too. She'd done a lot of poorly-considered things the last few weeks. "Who's in charge," asked Anwen Mallory?
Tallulah found herself wracking her brain. She hadn't kept track of what was going on at the palace. She hadn't really cared. She'd been sulking and amusing herself and avoiding anything to do with the Royal Family. "Uh... it should be William," she stammered. Nicia moved to the window and peeked out in the fashion of a paranoid person. She should be. She was wanted. "How much do they know," asked Lady Mallory? She was asking the wrong person. Tallulah didn't have a clue.
Pulling up her phone, the nymph started scrolling through messages. She'd gotten into the very bad habit of just deleting them. "Nicia and Othman are wanted," she said. "My mother's councilors are in the clear... I think... I think you're clear." It was obvious looking back that they couldn't have suspected Cenobia and Catalina. That would have blown back at Tallulah, and nobody had been looking for Tallulah. She'd been here in town the whole time. Finn had been at the strip-club. "The Duke of Nuts is wanted," Tallulah announced. "I... His family's in hiding." They were running out of people who could be out in the open.
"You'll have to help us," Nicia declared. The color drained from Tallulah's face. She wanted nothing to do with helping these. She was out! She'd dipped out on the whole business! With Finn's allies literally gutting peeps while they were still alive, she wanted nothing to do with their attacks on Finn. Looking around her, Lady Mallory asked, "is anybody else here with you?" It was a little late to be asking that! Wearing a frown, Tallulah replied, "the council's representative is here." Nodding at Astartes' room, she said, "she sleeps in there."
The wax-hustler relaxed visibly. Moving to one of the chairs at the kitchen table, Nicia said, "we've made contact with Gumbald. He's built some weapons that can stand up to Finn's war-machines. We're looking for information on what Finn's people are doing and where his soldiers are." "Why," Tallulah asked? In airy tones, Lady Mallory said, "we need nuke fuel from Jungle Kingdom, dear." But they didn't want to be fighting an army to get it.
Tallulah moved to the table. She was in survival-mode now. She had to get these people out of her home, and she had to buffalo them into never coming back. She had to do it without resort to calling in the law, because she was implicated in the same treason as the rest. It was a big lift, but the stakes were her life.
As the town's clock chimed for two o'clock in Sonbong, Charlie Rainicorn reported for work, heading straight out to the patio to ready her part of the shop's seating area for the evening rush. The job was a simple one–the sort of thing that freed the mind from troubles. Pull the chairs down off the table. Inspect them for damage and wipe chairs and table down. Shove the chairs under the table and lay out the napkins, spices, and other sundries that the guests would use.
She was halfway through her section when her sister came strolling up. The two hadn't seen each other in a bit. Charlie had honestly been head down, dealing with her own shit. It was a failing, and she knew it. As much as the pups had always sworn to have each other's backs, in practice there had been a lot of 'every pup for herself'. As Jake stood at the edge of the patio, the thicc sister continued to pull chairs off the tables and set them out, but Charlie's eyes took in details that told her something of how her sister was feeling today.
The thin girl was wearing a short mini-skirt in green under a sky-blue top, and she was wearing heels. Her hair was teased out just-so, and she had red lip-gloss on. Jake was showing lots of cleavage today, and hints of perfume teased Charlie's sensitive nose. Something had changed. It was there in front of her face.
Taking a break, the curvy sister walked over to the fence. "Hello, Jake," she greeted her sister. "Charlie," Jake replied, as she approached the fence. Stopping just outside the restaurant, Jake Junior announced, "I... wanted you to know. We're leaving Sonbong today. We're headed south along the coast." Charlie nodded, as her eyes continued to study Jake's appearance. "I... wish you'd let Finn help you," Jake burbled. She would have helped herself, but she had no money. She didn't even own the clothes on her back. Charlie's eyes scanned her up and down, telling Jake that Charlie knew who owned those clothes. Her eyes seemed to ask the question: What changed?
Glancing away, Jake said, "I've decided to embrace fate... It's... not like I can change the future... It's... going to happen, so I've decided to accept that and move on instead of being miserable and frightened." Turning to face her sister, she said, "Finn's not holding a grudge against you... He's worried about you..." It was Charlie's turn to look away. Taking a breath, the plush girl let it go and said, "it's my own failings, Jake. Daddy was a stubborn cuss, who never saw a piece of good advice he couldn't ignore in favor of doing it his way. I've... I got a full measure of that."
Reaching out, the curvy girl hugged her sister. "Be careful, sis," she whispered. Kissing Jake's cheek, the plush girl said, "I'm proud to see you doing better. I'm happy for you. Glob-speed." The two women released each other, and Jake turned to go. It was a bittersweet moment. She wasn't sure she would ever see Charlie again, but there was nothing more she could do. She had her daughters to look after, and if her dream was true, she was about to have more kids to worry over.
Arriving back at the palace, she found the results of Finn's gambit in motion. Sakura was nowhere to be found, and the various palace functionaries were looking very nervous. The King had promised to restore the status quo. He'd promised to put the princess back on her throne. What happened if he didn't do that? What did his promises mean then? Jake knew the score, but these people didn't.
Heading inside, she found the King himself finishing up his business here. He was an island of calm. The few people gathered around him were calm in the face of the bombshell he'd set off earlier in the day. But then, Lord Seo Joon knew the score too. Finn had told him when everybody else had gone to bed. He was laying a trap for Nagoono. With their master calm, the Lord's closest flunkies, the vizier and captain of the guard were both calm. That was what mattered.
Nearer to hand, Bonnie was calm because she was part of the scheme. Finn had laid out exactly how he was going to do this. It was just a question of how much she could do at one go. The person at whom this was all directed was anything but calm. She was sitting there in a corner, staring at Finn. Standing in the shadows of the entry, Jake did her best to read the other woman. She was confused. The confusion was plain on her face. At the same time, there was something underneath the confusion. Dare Jake think it, she saw hope there.
It felt evil what they were doing. Jake knew what they were doing was cruel, even if the bitch mostly deserved it. She was a wax-hustler, and backstabbing was built into the fiber of her very being. At the same time, Jake was a girl. It was cruel to do what they were doing to another girl. But Finn was her man. She was madly in love with him. And before that, he'd been one of her guardians, looking after her when she was growing up. So get fucked, bitch, thought the shapechanger.
Striding into the hall, she sat herself down in the opposite corner to watch and wait. They'd be going soon. The spy-girl watched her. Jake did nothing to even acknowledge her. Instead, she took out her phone, looked at her messages, and waited. Liz was still in the palace, which was a good sign. She was going to therapy, which was even better. More to the point, Simone II was talking about coming back from King's Island to look after her, freeing the rest of the family to get on with business. If Jake and her own siblings were doing little to help each other, it was good to see that Jake's daughters were made of better material than she was.
Finn finished up his conversation with their host. Then, striding across to Reese, the big man took her by the hand, asking, "ready to go, babe?" "Yes, sire," the wax-hustler responded. Her eyes went to Jake's as if to point out just which of them he'd approached first. Jake gave no sign that she even cared. That was what jealous bitches did. It was about posturing. Taking her time, the shapechanger stood up and moved to follow. By the time Finn had reached the corridor, Jake had his other hand twined in hers. Bonnie smiled at her father's back as Reese snuggled in closer in possessive fashion.