Gak! I forgot the notes last chapter! Sorry, my fault... So, without further ado, the notes from chapter 5: *that being, at a social function of sorts (high-class, anyone worth less than 10 mil. was kindly asked to bugger off) her drunk beau made an ill-placed grope. And that sure sobered him up. **having forgotten their origins over the eons, the Monster and his kymmates have taken to referring to each other by the areas and elements they favor and over which they have the most influence.
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Cañòn de la lagartija*, Republic of Gerudia, 8:30 a.m...
La Hacienda de la Lagartija really wasn't much of a ranch, when one really got down to it. There had been a time when business had been brisk, the ranch turning a tidy profit for its happy, healthy, drop dead gorgeous gerudian horses. Then a nasty hoof-and-jaw epidemic had swept through the country. Such is the fluid nature of agriculture.
The mobile home that sheltered the ranch's two inhabitants started to smell vaguely of sulfur in the heat of the day, so the younger gerudo had gone outside to languish in the shade of a gnarled tree in the front yard. Listening to the music crackling out of a pair of geriatric headphones and watching the ranch's sole remaining horse, an evil-tempered old mare, the little gerudo wondered what it must be like to live in a city. Or even a small town. Any place with actual people in it to interact with would do, actually. Grandmother and Cielo were all right, but their company got a little...tiresome. Especially Grandmother.
Last year, the young gerudo had found out that Grandmother's twin sister was living in Hyrule's capital. Grandmother refused to speak of the woman, and had, of course, denied her young charge permission to visit.
It was hot today, even by gerudian standards. Cielo drooped and sighed in the shade on her side of the fence. Even the hateful little wasps that nested just about everywhere on the ranch were droning along as though they'd drop any second.
The young gerudo felt very restless.
Bipin Tower, top floor, 9:00 a.m...
The same radio station was flowing through the speakers of Reggie's stereo. The hylian was painfully trying to keep her attention on Logivo's quarterly financial report. Being the main shareholder of the company had engendered in Reggie a sensible expertise in the workings of androids, and Link's new acquisition had piqued her curiosity.
She knew how 'bots were programmed; she knew what mechanical bits and gewgaws made them work. Compared with a living person, an android was heavy, inefficient, ponderous, and stupid. The word 'clunky' summed it all up rather well. And the most important difference was: androids can't think. Their tiny computer chip brains consisted of preprogrammed responses to a limited variety of stimuli. About the most complex 'thought' an android was capable of was something along the lines of: "Forward motion obstructed by solid obstacle. Move backward 1.5 seconds. Rotate right/left 1.7 seconds. Resume forward motion."
Reggie knew this. She knew that 'bots weren't supposed to ask you why clear fluid was leaking from your eye sockets, and they weren't supposed to balance trays on one hand, and they weren't supposed to take offence at insults, or run, or ask questions of any kind... 'Hell,' Reggie thought, 'they're not supposed to be able to even speak unless specifically told to...' It was certainly galling.
Abandoning the report until she could concentrate on it, Reggie sighed and languidly flipped through the newspaper. An article five pages back from the front of the business section caught her eye. Its picture featured Dr. Zelda Harkinian, looking very uncomfortable behind a podium, and a huge, armor clad woman that reminded Reggie of a female professional wrestler. Reading the column, a nagging little idea started to itch in the recesses of Reggie's mind.
"So that's what she's been working on..." she muttered aloud, her eyes drifting back to the picture and the impressive-looking android. Confidential as Dr. Harkinian's project had been, nothing is entirely secret to people of Reggie's station. She'd known that Dr. H. was tinkering with a new fuel idea for androids that would make them less expensive to run, but this was a little different. The new fuel source was there, but Zelda had taken the liberty of completely redesigning her two androids around it. With a little grunt of admiring acknowledgment, Reggie clicked the computer screen off and wandered off to do something else with herself for a while. Espying a paperback she hadn't finished yet, she plucked it up off of her coffee table and settled down onto the sofa with it. The young and raven-haired heroine was just becoming aware of a strange tingle in her nether regions at the sight of mysterious and ruggedly handsome Lord Sheffield when a horrifying thought hit Reggie like an expertly wielded two-by-four.
Carefully marking her place in the book and setting it down, Reggie sat up and stared out her living room window for a moment.
"Well, shit."
Apt. 99, 9:30 a.m...
Sheik was beginning to wonder whether he was experiencing a recurring dream. Both nights, it seemed as though he was just on the cusp of remembering something when he would come out of standby. This time, though, there lingered a sort of diffused warmth that wouldn't go away. For some reason, he also kept looking at himself, as though he expected at any moment to see something other than synthetic skin and lycra.
Meanwhile, Link grunted and batted ineffectually at the alarm clock. Giving up, he sighed and reluctantly pulled himself up into a sitting position. Glancing over, Link noted that the 'bot wasn't being his usual bubbly self. Sheik sat still as a statue, eyes unfocused, arms slack. 'Is he frozen? Do I need to reset something? It sure as hell better not be fried out already...' And then, as though the 'bot had heard what Link had been thinking, he moved.
Still staring into the middle distance, Sheik gripped his extension cord and absently jerked it out of the wall outlet, letting it recoil and smoothing down the seams of his clothing. On autopilot, he stood and wandered off down the hallway, leaving Link groggy and confused. 'Weird.'
Hailey Building, 69th floor, 9:45 a.m...
Callaghan was impressed, Monster was delighted to note, though he did a good job of hiding it. Sitting across from him, Callaghan set down his glass (filled with some kind of alcohol, no doubt; Monster really didn't care what), leaving faint copper-colored fingerprints. He leaned back.
"So," Callaghan began matter-of-factly, "you know exactly where he is, or is it just a general idea?"
Monster suppressed a wriggle of sheer revelry at having Callaghan's undivided attention. He wondered how long he could string it out. "It's very strange, isn't it?" he said in his old tongue, rolling his eyes up to the ceiling, "People used to worship us. The four devils..." He cast a quick glance at Callaghan, who looked irritated, as per usual. "I passed a few temples while I was hunting, you know. Covered in triforces, all of them. Nothing to the fourth god, no shrines to us, or anyone else. You were right; no one remembers us."
"Come to the point," Callaghan growled.
As stated before, Monster had an excellent sense of when to back off. This was one of those times. "My counterpart doesn't remember me at all. Not consciously, at any rate. A little depressing, but perhaps it's for the best. We didn't part on the best of terms."
Callaghan sighed. Monster's mind was clearly wandering off on a tangent again. "But you can find him?"
Monster nodded. "Oh, of course. It took a few tries, but I can feel him now. It's only a matter of heading where it's strongest." He crossed his feet on the coffee table, grinning. "As they say here: no sweat."
Standing, Callaghan looked down at Monster, his expression unreadable. "Very good. Now and then you aren't a disappointment, flower**."
Warming to the old pet name, Monster tilted his head to one side and said, "So, perhaps it's time we renegotiated my fee?" He batted his eyelashes unconsciously.
Callaghan's face remained static as he walked to the door. "We agreed that your counterpart would live. Don't be greedy." When he reached the door, he looked back at his pouting associate. "And get your boots off the table."
As soon as the door closed behind Callaghan, Monster scowled and put his feet back up on the glass-topped coffee table. How frustrating! 'He has become such a...a what do they call it? Oh, yes. A jerk!' Dissolving into black mist, Monster left the room through the window in a huff. Hylians made much more congenial company. Monster was going for a walk.
Apt. 99, 11:50, a.m...
In his search for a soup ladle (condensed soup he could manage relatively well), Sheik found a little holograph*** in one of the many junk drawers in the kitchen. It was a wallet size portrait of a redheaded woman with hazel eyes. She looked very cheerful and friendly, with a smile that lit up her face and made her eyes sparkle. A little twitch of curiosity broke through the 'bot's dream-induced funk.
"Who does this represent, Master?" he asked, holding out the picture for Link to examine. Link took it and set it on the table in front of him.
"This? That's Malon Lonson. We dated for a while a couple years ago."
Sheik found the ladle and handed it and the pan of soup to Link. Looking at his bowl, Link noticed that the soup had little black bits floating in it. Scorched. Well, at least it was edible. Sheik sat across from him, looking thoughtfully at the holograph.
"A girlfriend?" he said, proud of his ever-expanding vocabulary.
Link swallowed some soup, burning his tongue. "Ex-girlfriend now, but yes, she was my girlfriend."
"Why?"
Link wasn't sure whether Sheik was asking why Malon had been his girlfriend or why they'd broken up. He took a stab at the latter. "It just didn't work out. For one thing, she wanted to leave New Castletown. Wanted to raise horses, for some reason. I wanted to stay here, so I stayed and she left. There were a lot of little things, too, but..." Noticing Sheik's confused expression, Link decided that further explanation was futile. He was starting to confuse himself, come to think of it. In retrospect, his reasons for breaking up with Malon were pretty petty and stupid. "We didn't keep in touch. I wonder how she's doing," he mused to himself.
Sheik had lapsed back into silence, so Link finished up his soup, put the dishes in the dishwasher, picked up the holograph, and gave it a fond looking over. Then he threw it away. 'Oh well. Burned my bridges.'
Rauru Drive, 1:58 p.m...
Traffic packed the street, 'Nabooru,' the gerudian singer's voice wafted from a record store on the corner, and the sidewalks were filled with people, many of whom were giving Monster some very odd looks.
Monster took in his appearance. The deep violet spider-silk riding outfit had been new a few years before he'd gone to sleep, as were the riding boots, belt, and ear chains that ended in teardrop rubies. Compared to everyone else, even the zoras, who went around nude, Monster was a little incongruous. Reaching into the cuff of his boot, to the disapproving glare of an older hylian woman, Monster took out the little rectangle of plastic that Callaghan had given him in a desperate bid to get Monster out of his hair for a few hours. At the time, Monster had questioned what use he'd have for money. As much as he liked what he was wearing, he'd have to start blending in with everyone else sooner or later.
Bipin Tower, top floor, 8:37 p.m...
Gnawing the end of a pen, Reggie flipped through the pages of a phone book until she came to the number she needed. She set down her masticated pen and dialed, waited, and heard the answering machine pick up.
"Goddesses..." Reggie muttered.
'Hey, this is 939-2168; I can't take your call right now, but leave a message, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can, okay?'
Beep.
"Link?" Reggie began nervously, wondering how exactly she was going to say this. "This is Reggie. I know it's going to be really late when you check this, but could you come over right now? We really need to talk. It's...Well, it's about that inheritance of yours. Leave your 'bot at home." She rattled off her address. "Please, it's important."
Setting the phone back in its cradle, Reggie sighed and stalked to the kitchen. She needed a stiff drink, and she didn't want to go out tonight. She felt sick.
Keaton St. Pub, 10:30 p.m...
The seat next to the tap was empty again. The normally convivial Sheik was silent and pensive, Kaylee and Doru kept themselves busy with idle chatter, and Link felt weird. It wasn't much, just a sort of niggling feeling of unease. The evening was crawling by in a sort of slow blur, Link mixing orders and talking with his two friends halfheartedly. He had the unmistakable feeling that he was missing something. He wondered, irrationally, he knew, if this was how the 'bot had been feeling all day.
"Link!"
"Huh?" Link snapped out of the cloud he was floating in and looked up at Kaylee. She looked concerned.
"What's the matter?"
Link shrugged. "Dunno. Just tired, I guess."
"Well, take some vitamins and wake up, man," Doru said, "because you're trying to make a martini and a screwdriver at the same time."
Looking down at the mess in his hands, Link saw that Doru was right. He sighed, dumped out the wasted liquor, and started over.
Apt. 99, 10:33 p.m...
Deep black mist that made the dark apartment seem glaringly bright by comparison seeped under the locked door. A minute later Callaghan and Monster stood in the living room, the latter dressed in slacks and a silk shirt, the ancient clothing gone except for the ear chains, which he couldn't bear to part with.
Callaghan looked around. The apartment was empty, for the moment. With nothing better to do, he began to casually rifle through the drawers in the kitchen, pulling out and examining a few things only to shrug and replace them. Monster looked on, idly rubbing the growing bruise under his left eye. Callaghan had been less than thrilled when Monster had returned to the Hailey Building an hour ago. It seemed to Monster that any other time Callaghan would have been pleased that he'd spent so much time away without being told to.
After a brief sojourn to the bedroom, for the look of it, Monster walked back to the front rooms, watching Callaghan, who was still poking around. 'What does he expect to find? He knows where my counterpart lives, isn't that all he needed?' Then, his eye was drawn by a movement. A little light was blinking on a machine sitting on the counter.
"Dear?"
"What?" Callaghan barked, with a glare that nearly made Monster take a nervous step back.
Pointing, Monster said, "That thing's blinking."
Ready to chastise his associate for being stupid, Callaghan walked over to investigate the 'thing.' Like a woman who has found her daughter-in-law's house to be spotlessly clean, Callaghan reluctantly acknowledged Monster's finding something useful.
It was an answering machine.
Cañòn de la lagartija, 10:34 p.m...
The young gerudo didn't have a driver's license. This was a problem. Just to get out of the box canyon would take hours on foot. A soft snort was heard, and the gerudo looked back at Cielo, who had heard her owner's steps and had come out to see what was going on.
The gerudo grinned, readjusted a tattered backpack, and walked over to the corral gate. Cielo, puzzled yet intrigued, pricked her ears forward and lumbered to the gate as well. Catching hold of Cielo's halter rope in one hand, the gerudo eased the gate open slowly, praying that it wouldn't creak and wake Grandmother. Making reassuring noises to keep the mare calm, the gerudo led her out and closed the gate again.
After five minutes of soft pleading, the gerudo got the horse to move, and walked her for about half an hour. Certain that they were out of earshot of the house, the gerudo stopped. Stroking Cielo's black hair, the teen cautiously edged around to the horse's side and took hold of her mane. Swinging up onto her back, the gerudo was at once aware that Cielo's muscles were rigid, and her ears were flattened back onto her head tighter than the gerudo had thought possible. Cielo snorted, and the gerudo braced for the worst.
Rearing with an angry snarl, Cielo broke into a gallop.
Apt. 99, 10:35 p.m...
'You have 2 new messages. Message 1.' Beep. 'Is Lupe Vargas. Hot water heater broken. Is no hot water today. I call plumber, he fix, but no hot water now.' Callaghan sighed. That had been useless.
'To delete, press one. To save, press two. To go on to message two, press-' Callaghan pressed three. 'Message two.' Beep.
The message played, and Callaghan's mood lightened considerably. Monster looked perplexed. "Is that a man or a woman?"
Callaghan wrote down the name and address, shaking his head and smiling. "Doesn't matter." After the message ended, Callaghan pressed two to delete it. Then he took out a sheet of lined paper from one of the kitchen drawers, wrote a note, signed it, and folded it. Making sure everything was as they'd found it, he gestured to Monster, and a minute later they were on the other side of the locked door again. Slipping the note half under the door, Callaghan walked down to the elevator, humming cheerfully to himself. Monster wasn't far behind.
Climbing into the backseat of the car, Monster sent Callaghan a sidelong glance as the car's hover generators hummed gently into life.
"What was that about?" Monster asked.
Looking briefly up at the driver, who wasn't listening as far as anyone could tell, Callaghan leaned back and favored Monster with another vaguely unnerving smile. "We're going to have a reunion. I have a phone call to make once we're home; in the meantime, don't disappear, hmm?" With a wink and a short bark of laughter, Callaghan closed his eyes and dozed contentedly. Monster could have sworn that he heard purring.
Hyrtech Labs, 10:45 p.m...
Dr. Harkinian had locked up her labs and was on her way out the door when she was stopped by an intern.
"Yes?" she said, hoping that it was nothing that would make her stay even later than she had already. Trying to help with the police investigation on top of her own work was taking its toll.
The intern bounced excitedly. Zelda felt a sudden strong urge to smack him for his perkiness. "The NCPD called just now." Zelda was ready to fire off a curmudgeonly remark along the lines of 'Oh, no, really?' but the intern wouldn't let her slip a word in. "They said that they think they've found your project. It's a little rough, but it's not totaled, and they said it matches your description of it. They said they just need you to come be for confirmation before they can take it into custody. Here." He handed her a scrap of paper, on which was written, hurriedly, the address for an old packing house on the south side of the city. The neighborhood was fairly affluent; Zelda was thankful that she wouldn't have to drive through one of the seedier parts of town. 'Well, this is good news.'
Thanking the intern, who soaked up the praise like a slightly moist sponge, she said goodnight and continued on her way to the parking garage, her steps regaining a little of their old bounce as she went.
The Hailey Building, 69th floor, 12:03 a.m...
"I'm going hunting."
Callaghan looked up from his newspaper, where he was cheerfully reading through the obituary/arrests page. "Hmm?"
Monster thought he looked unjustifiably sunny. Callaghan's smile made icy shivers skip up his backbone. "I did what you asked of me. Now I'm going hunting."
Instead of a burst of anger, or even a sharp look, Callaghan simply shrugged and went back to his paper. "By all means. Why do you need my permission?"
A black cloud of mist slipped out through the high windows and drifted down to the ground far below. A moment later, a confused and muddled Monster walked along the bright-as-day and perpetually noisy streets. He was hunting, yes, but the hunting would be light tonight. What he needed to find was a garden, a park of some kind.
For only the third or fourth time in his ancient life, Monster needed to have a good, long, serious think.
Bipin Tower, 2:30 a.m...
Dame Vodka was gradually withdrawing her numbing caress from Reggie's brain. With a groan and an interesting face, she cracked open one eye. The first thing that came to view was the ceiling light fixture, which sent nasty little ice picks into the back of Reggie's head. Throwing her arm over her eyes to block out the cursed light, she turned over and fell off the sofa onto the floor.
Now more fully awake, Reggie sat up slowly, holding her head in her hands. Out of tradition, her mind asked the question asked by hung-over drunks throughout the generations. 'Where the hell am I?' Carefully opening her eyes again, Reggie squinted around the room and found that, yes, she was in her living room, and, yes, there was a half empty bottle of vodka on the coffee table. Sighing, she somehow stood up, though it made her headache worse, corked the bottle, and stumbled off to her bedroom to sleep off the hangover. She flicked off the lights and looked back into her living room for a moment, and at the entryway.
'Hell, it's not like he'd show up, anyway.' She considered the fact that Link would undoubtedly think she was loony from here on out. 'It was the booze that did it. Or the hormones; things like her just aren't meant to be.' She also considered that she may have given a felon the chance to skip town, but she didn't care about that so much. Shaking her head, and immediately regretting it, Reggie changed into a set of pajamas and crawled into bed. Now was not the time to think. Her head hurt.
Apt. 99, 2:34 a.m...
Sheik was already in standby, having gone straight to bed without two words to Master. He felt funny; today had not been particularly enjoyable.
Leaving the kitchen on his way to the bedroom, Link caught a spot of white out of the corner of his eye. It turned out to be a folded piece of paper, laying just inside the door. Absently, he picked it up, and was about to throw it away when he saw that it had writing on it. "Huh." Unfolding it, Link found that it was a note, written in measured printing. It looked very familiar.
'Beneficiary,
Being family, you are invited to a small gathering to be held on Tuesday, June 17 at 4:00 p.m. at 753 East Darunia Ave. Bring your Gift, as its builder would like very much to see it in operation.
Your Good Friend'
"The seventeenth is tomorrow," Link mused to himself. He'd have to call in sick, if he was going. Slipping notes in under the door and signing in code was a pretty shifty way of inviting someone to a party. Still, it wasn't like he was going to some desolate warehouse in the dead of night. He recognized the address as that of a snazzy bar and grill in a nice part of town. The building was even on the books as a historic landmark since it was a renovated packing house. That much seemed okay... 'I guess I'll have to sleep on it.'
Seeing the light on the answering machine blinking, he hit 'two' and heard his landlady rant about the busted water heater. "Damn, no shower tomorrow morning, then." There were no other messages.
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*Translated: Canyon of the Tiny Lizard. Regarded by the gerudo to be hilarious, regarded by everyone else to be rather juvenile.
**A very sweet term of endearment. Every time Callaghan crushes a flower, he thinks of his kymmate.
***A three-dimensional photograph. Pretty, but hang too many close together and you'll get nauseous.
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Cañòn de la lagartija*, Republic of Gerudia, 8:30 a.m...
La Hacienda de la Lagartija really wasn't much of a ranch, when one really got down to it. There had been a time when business had been brisk, the ranch turning a tidy profit for its happy, healthy, drop dead gorgeous gerudian horses. Then a nasty hoof-and-jaw epidemic had swept through the country. Such is the fluid nature of agriculture.
The mobile home that sheltered the ranch's two inhabitants started to smell vaguely of sulfur in the heat of the day, so the younger gerudo had gone outside to languish in the shade of a gnarled tree in the front yard. Listening to the music crackling out of a pair of geriatric headphones and watching the ranch's sole remaining horse, an evil-tempered old mare, the little gerudo wondered what it must be like to live in a city. Or even a small town. Any place with actual people in it to interact with would do, actually. Grandmother and Cielo were all right, but their company got a little...tiresome. Especially Grandmother.
Last year, the young gerudo had found out that Grandmother's twin sister was living in Hyrule's capital. Grandmother refused to speak of the woman, and had, of course, denied her young charge permission to visit.
It was hot today, even by gerudian standards. Cielo drooped and sighed in the shade on her side of the fence. Even the hateful little wasps that nested just about everywhere on the ranch were droning along as though they'd drop any second.
The young gerudo felt very restless.
Bipin Tower, top floor, 9:00 a.m...
The same radio station was flowing through the speakers of Reggie's stereo. The hylian was painfully trying to keep her attention on Logivo's quarterly financial report. Being the main shareholder of the company had engendered in Reggie a sensible expertise in the workings of androids, and Link's new acquisition had piqued her curiosity.
She knew how 'bots were programmed; she knew what mechanical bits and gewgaws made them work. Compared with a living person, an android was heavy, inefficient, ponderous, and stupid. The word 'clunky' summed it all up rather well. And the most important difference was: androids can't think. Their tiny computer chip brains consisted of preprogrammed responses to a limited variety of stimuli. About the most complex 'thought' an android was capable of was something along the lines of: "Forward motion obstructed by solid obstacle. Move backward 1.5 seconds. Rotate right/left 1.7 seconds. Resume forward motion."
Reggie knew this. She knew that 'bots weren't supposed to ask you why clear fluid was leaking from your eye sockets, and they weren't supposed to balance trays on one hand, and they weren't supposed to take offence at insults, or run, or ask questions of any kind... 'Hell,' Reggie thought, 'they're not supposed to be able to even speak unless specifically told to...' It was certainly galling.
Abandoning the report until she could concentrate on it, Reggie sighed and languidly flipped through the newspaper. An article five pages back from the front of the business section caught her eye. Its picture featured Dr. Zelda Harkinian, looking very uncomfortable behind a podium, and a huge, armor clad woman that reminded Reggie of a female professional wrestler. Reading the column, a nagging little idea started to itch in the recesses of Reggie's mind.
"So that's what she's been working on..." she muttered aloud, her eyes drifting back to the picture and the impressive-looking android. Confidential as Dr. Harkinian's project had been, nothing is entirely secret to people of Reggie's station. She'd known that Dr. H. was tinkering with a new fuel idea for androids that would make them less expensive to run, but this was a little different. The new fuel source was there, but Zelda had taken the liberty of completely redesigning her two androids around it. With a little grunt of admiring acknowledgment, Reggie clicked the computer screen off and wandered off to do something else with herself for a while. Espying a paperback she hadn't finished yet, she plucked it up off of her coffee table and settled down onto the sofa with it. The young and raven-haired heroine was just becoming aware of a strange tingle in her nether regions at the sight of mysterious and ruggedly handsome Lord Sheffield when a horrifying thought hit Reggie like an expertly wielded two-by-four.
Carefully marking her place in the book and setting it down, Reggie sat up and stared out her living room window for a moment.
"Well, shit."
Apt. 99, 9:30 a.m...
Sheik was beginning to wonder whether he was experiencing a recurring dream. Both nights, it seemed as though he was just on the cusp of remembering something when he would come out of standby. This time, though, there lingered a sort of diffused warmth that wouldn't go away. For some reason, he also kept looking at himself, as though he expected at any moment to see something other than synthetic skin and lycra.
Meanwhile, Link grunted and batted ineffectually at the alarm clock. Giving up, he sighed and reluctantly pulled himself up into a sitting position. Glancing over, Link noted that the 'bot wasn't being his usual bubbly self. Sheik sat still as a statue, eyes unfocused, arms slack. 'Is he frozen? Do I need to reset something? It sure as hell better not be fried out already...' And then, as though the 'bot had heard what Link had been thinking, he moved.
Still staring into the middle distance, Sheik gripped his extension cord and absently jerked it out of the wall outlet, letting it recoil and smoothing down the seams of his clothing. On autopilot, he stood and wandered off down the hallway, leaving Link groggy and confused. 'Weird.'
Hailey Building, 69th floor, 9:45 a.m...
Callaghan was impressed, Monster was delighted to note, though he did a good job of hiding it. Sitting across from him, Callaghan set down his glass (filled with some kind of alcohol, no doubt; Monster really didn't care what), leaving faint copper-colored fingerprints. He leaned back.
"So," Callaghan began matter-of-factly, "you know exactly where he is, or is it just a general idea?"
Monster suppressed a wriggle of sheer revelry at having Callaghan's undivided attention. He wondered how long he could string it out. "It's very strange, isn't it?" he said in his old tongue, rolling his eyes up to the ceiling, "People used to worship us. The four devils..." He cast a quick glance at Callaghan, who looked irritated, as per usual. "I passed a few temples while I was hunting, you know. Covered in triforces, all of them. Nothing to the fourth god, no shrines to us, or anyone else. You were right; no one remembers us."
"Come to the point," Callaghan growled.
As stated before, Monster had an excellent sense of when to back off. This was one of those times. "My counterpart doesn't remember me at all. Not consciously, at any rate. A little depressing, but perhaps it's for the best. We didn't part on the best of terms."
Callaghan sighed. Monster's mind was clearly wandering off on a tangent again. "But you can find him?"
Monster nodded. "Oh, of course. It took a few tries, but I can feel him now. It's only a matter of heading where it's strongest." He crossed his feet on the coffee table, grinning. "As they say here: no sweat."
Standing, Callaghan looked down at Monster, his expression unreadable. "Very good. Now and then you aren't a disappointment, flower**."
Warming to the old pet name, Monster tilted his head to one side and said, "So, perhaps it's time we renegotiated my fee?" He batted his eyelashes unconsciously.
Callaghan's face remained static as he walked to the door. "We agreed that your counterpart would live. Don't be greedy." When he reached the door, he looked back at his pouting associate. "And get your boots off the table."
As soon as the door closed behind Callaghan, Monster scowled and put his feet back up on the glass-topped coffee table. How frustrating! 'He has become such a...a what do they call it? Oh, yes. A jerk!' Dissolving into black mist, Monster left the room through the window in a huff. Hylians made much more congenial company. Monster was going for a walk.
Apt. 99, 11:50, a.m...
In his search for a soup ladle (condensed soup he could manage relatively well), Sheik found a little holograph*** in one of the many junk drawers in the kitchen. It was a wallet size portrait of a redheaded woman with hazel eyes. She looked very cheerful and friendly, with a smile that lit up her face and made her eyes sparkle. A little twitch of curiosity broke through the 'bot's dream-induced funk.
"Who does this represent, Master?" he asked, holding out the picture for Link to examine. Link took it and set it on the table in front of him.
"This? That's Malon Lonson. We dated for a while a couple years ago."
Sheik found the ladle and handed it and the pan of soup to Link. Looking at his bowl, Link noticed that the soup had little black bits floating in it. Scorched. Well, at least it was edible. Sheik sat across from him, looking thoughtfully at the holograph.
"A girlfriend?" he said, proud of his ever-expanding vocabulary.
Link swallowed some soup, burning his tongue. "Ex-girlfriend now, but yes, she was my girlfriend."
"Why?"
Link wasn't sure whether Sheik was asking why Malon had been his girlfriend or why they'd broken up. He took a stab at the latter. "It just didn't work out. For one thing, she wanted to leave New Castletown. Wanted to raise horses, for some reason. I wanted to stay here, so I stayed and she left. There were a lot of little things, too, but..." Noticing Sheik's confused expression, Link decided that further explanation was futile. He was starting to confuse himself, come to think of it. In retrospect, his reasons for breaking up with Malon were pretty petty and stupid. "We didn't keep in touch. I wonder how she's doing," he mused to himself.
Sheik had lapsed back into silence, so Link finished up his soup, put the dishes in the dishwasher, picked up the holograph, and gave it a fond looking over. Then he threw it away. 'Oh well. Burned my bridges.'
Rauru Drive, 1:58 p.m...
Traffic packed the street, 'Nabooru,' the gerudian singer's voice wafted from a record store on the corner, and the sidewalks were filled with people, many of whom were giving Monster some very odd looks.
Monster took in his appearance. The deep violet spider-silk riding outfit had been new a few years before he'd gone to sleep, as were the riding boots, belt, and ear chains that ended in teardrop rubies. Compared to everyone else, even the zoras, who went around nude, Monster was a little incongruous. Reaching into the cuff of his boot, to the disapproving glare of an older hylian woman, Monster took out the little rectangle of plastic that Callaghan had given him in a desperate bid to get Monster out of his hair for a few hours. At the time, Monster had questioned what use he'd have for money. As much as he liked what he was wearing, he'd have to start blending in with everyone else sooner or later.
Bipin Tower, top floor, 8:37 p.m...
Gnawing the end of a pen, Reggie flipped through the pages of a phone book until she came to the number she needed. She set down her masticated pen and dialed, waited, and heard the answering machine pick up.
"Goddesses..." Reggie muttered.
'Hey, this is 939-2168; I can't take your call right now, but leave a message, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can, okay?'
Beep.
"Link?" Reggie began nervously, wondering how exactly she was going to say this. "This is Reggie. I know it's going to be really late when you check this, but could you come over right now? We really need to talk. It's...Well, it's about that inheritance of yours. Leave your 'bot at home." She rattled off her address. "Please, it's important."
Setting the phone back in its cradle, Reggie sighed and stalked to the kitchen. She needed a stiff drink, and she didn't want to go out tonight. She felt sick.
Keaton St. Pub, 10:30 p.m...
The seat next to the tap was empty again. The normally convivial Sheik was silent and pensive, Kaylee and Doru kept themselves busy with idle chatter, and Link felt weird. It wasn't much, just a sort of niggling feeling of unease. The evening was crawling by in a sort of slow blur, Link mixing orders and talking with his two friends halfheartedly. He had the unmistakable feeling that he was missing something. He wondered, irrationally, he knew, if this was how the 'bot had been feeling all day.
"Link!"
"Huh?" Link snapped out of the cloud he was floating in and looked up at Kaylee. She looked concerned.
"What's the matter?"
Link shrugged. "Dunno. Just tired, I guess."
"Well, take some vitamins and wake up, man," Doru said, "because you're trying to make a martini and a screwdriver at the same time."
Looking down at the mess in his hands, Link saw that Doru was right. He sighed, dumped out the wasted liquor, and started over.
Apt. 99, 10:33 p.m...
Deep black mist that made the dark apartment seem glaringly bright by comparison seeped under the locked door. A minute later Callaghan and Monster stood in the living room, the latter dressed in slacks and a silk shirt, the ancient clothing gone except for the ear chains, which he couldn't bear to part with.
Callaghan looked around. The apartment was empty, for the moment. With nothing better to do, he began to casually rifle through the drawers in the kitchen, pulling out and examining a few things only to shrug and replace them. Monster looked on, idly rubbing the growing bruise under his left eye. Callaghan had been less than thrilled when Monster had returned to the Hailey Building an hour ago. It seemed to Monster that any other time Callaghan would have been pleased that he'd spent so much time away without being told to.
After a brief sojourn to the bedroom, for the look of it, Monster walked back to the front rooms, watching Callaghan, who was still poking around. 'What does he expect to find? He knows where my counterpart lives, isn't that all he needed?' Then, his eye was drawn by a movement. A little light was blinking on a machine sitting on the counter.
"Dear?"
"What?" Callaghan barked, with a glare that nearly made Monster take a nervous step back.
Pointing, Monster said, "That thing's blinking."
Ready to chastise his associate for being stupid, Callaghan walked over to investigate the 'thing.' Like a woman who has found her daughter-in-law's house to be spotlessly clean, Callaghan reluctantly acknowledged Monster's finding something useful.
It was an answering machine.
Cañòn de la lagartija, 10:34 p.m...
The young gerudo didn't have a driver's license. This was a problem. Just to get out of the box canyon would take hours on foot. A soft snort was heard, and the gerudo looked back at Cielo, who had heard her owner's steps and had come out to see what was going on.
The gerudo grinned, readjusted a tattered backpack, and walked over to the corral gate. Cielo, puzzled yet intrigued, pricked her ears forward and lumbered to the gate as well. Catching hold of Cielo's halter rope in one hand, the gerudo eased the gate open slowly, praying that it wouldn't creak and wake Grandmother. Making reassuring noises to keep the mare calm, the gerudo led her out and closed the gate again.
After five minutes of soft pleading, the gerudo got the horse to move, and walked her for about half an hour. Certain that they were out of earshot of the house, the gerudo stopped. Stroking Cielo's black hair, the teen cautiously edged around to the horse's side and took hold of her mane. Swinging up onto her back, the gerudo was at once aware that Cielo's muscles were rigid, and her ears were flattened back onto her head tighter than the gerudo had thought possible. Cielo snorted, and the gerudo braced for the worst.
Rearing with an angry snarl, Cielo broke into a gallop.
Apt. 99, 10:35 p.m...
'You have 2 new messages. Message 1.' Beep. 'Is Lupe Vargas. Hot water heater broken. Is no hot water today. I call plumber, he fix, but no hot water now.' Callaghan sighed. That had been useless.
'To delete, press one. To save, press two. To go on to message two, press-' Callaghan pressed three. 'Message two.' Beep.
The message played, and Callaghan's mood lightened considerably. Monster looked perplexed. "Is that a man or a woman?"
Callaghan wrote down the name and address, shaking his head and smiling. "Doesn't matter." After the message ended, Callaghan pressed two to delete it. Then he took out a sheet of lined paper from one of the kitchen drawers, wrote a note, signed it, and folded it. Making sure everything was as they'd found it, he gestured to Monster, and a minute later they were on the other side of the locked door again. Slipping the note half under the door, Callaghan walked down to the elevator, humming cheerfully to himself. Monster wasn't far behind.
Climbing into the backseat of the car, Monster sent Callaghan a sidelong glance as the car's hover generators hummed gently into life.
"What was that about?" Monster asked.
Looking briefly up at the driver, who wasn't listening as far as anyone could tell, Callaghan leaned back and favored Monster with another vaguely unnerving smile. "We're going to have a reunion. I have a phone call to make once we're home; in the meantime, don't disappear, hmm?" With a wink and a short bark of laughter, Callaghan closed his eyes and dozed contentedly. Monster could have sworn that he heard purring.
Hyrtech Labs, 10:45 p.m...
Dr. Harkinian had locked up her labs and was on her way out the door when she was stopped by an intern.
"Yes?" she said, hoping that it was nothing that would make her stay even later than she had already. Trying to help with the police investigation on top of her own work was taking its toll.
The intern bounced excitedly. Zelda felt a sudden strong urge to smack him for his perkiness. "The NCPD called just now." Zelda was ready to fire off a curmudgeonly remark along the lines of 'Oh, no, really?' but the intern wouldn't let her slip a word in. "They said that they think they've found your project. It's a little rough, but it's not totaled, and they said it matches your description of it. They said they just need you to come be for confirmation before they can take it into custody. Here." He handed her a scrap of paper, on which was written, hurriedly, the address for an old packing house on the south side of the city. The neighborhood was fairly affluent; Zelda was thankful that she wouldn't have to drive through one of the seedier parts of town. 'Well, this is good news.'
Thanking the intern, who soaked up the praise like a slightly moist sponge, she said goodnight and continued on her way to the parking garage, her steps regaining a little of their old bounce as she went.
The Hailey Building, 69th floor, 12:03 a.m...
"I'm going hunting."
Callaghan looked up from his newspaper, where he was cheerfully reading through the obituary/arrests page. "Hmm?"
Monster thought he looked unjustifiably sunny. Callaghan's smile made icy shivers skip up his backbone. "I did what you asked of me. Now I'm going hunting."
Instead of a burst of anger, or even a sharp look, Callaghan simply shrugged and went back to his paper. "By all means. Why do you need my permission?"
A black cloud of mist slipped out through the high windows and drifted down to the ground far below. A moment later, a confused and muddled Monster walked along the bright-as-day and perpetually noisy streets. He was hunting, yes, but the hunting would be light tonight. What he needed to find was a garden, a park of some kind.
For only the third or fourth time in his ancient life, Monster needed to have a good, long, serious think.
Bipin Tower, 2:30 a.m...
Dame Vodka was gradually withdrawing her numbing caress from Reggie's brain. With a groan and an interesting face, she cracked open one eye. The first thing that came to view was the ceiling light fixture, which sent nasty little ice picks into the back of Reggie's head. Throwing her arm over her eyes to block out the cursed light, she turned over and fell off the sofa onto the floor.
Now more fully awake, Reggie sat up slowly, holding her head in her hands. Out of tradition, her mind asked the question asked by hung-over drunks throughout the generations. 'Where the hell am I?' Carefully opening her eyes again, Reggie squinted around the room and found that, yes, she was in her living room, and, yes, there was a half empty bottle of vodka on the coffee table. Sighing, she somehow stood up, though it made her headache worse, corked the bottle, and stumbled off to her bedroom to sleep off the hangover. She flicked off the lights and looked back into her living room for a moment, and at the entryway.
'Hell, it's not like he'd show up, anyway.' She considered the fact that Link would undoubtedly think she was loony from here on out. 'It was the booze that did it. Or the hormones; things like her just aren't meant to be.' She also considered that she may have given a felon the chance to skip town, but she didn't care about that so much. Shaking her head, and immediately regretting it, Reggie changed into a set of pajamas and crawled into bed. Now was not the time to think. Her head hurt.
Apt. 99, 2:34 a.m...
Sheik was already in standby, having gone straight to bed without two words to Master. He felt funny; today had not been particularly enjoyable.
Leaving the kitchen on his way to the bedroom, Link caught a spot of white out of the corner of his eye. It turned out to be a folded piece of paper, laying just inside the door. Absently, he picked it up, and was about to throw it away when he saw that it had writing on it. "Huh." Unfolding it, Link found that it was a note, written in measured printing. It looked very familiar.
'Beneficiary,
Being family, you are invited to a small gathering to be held on Tuesday, June 17 at 4:00 p.m. at 753 East Darunia Ave. Bring your Gift, as its builder would like very much to see it in operation.
Your Good Friend'
"The seventeenth is tomorrow," Link mused to himself. He'd have to call in sick, if he was going. Slipping notes in under the door and signing in code was a pretty shifty way of inviting someone to a party. Still, it wasn't like he was going to some desolate warehouse in the dead of night. He recognized the address as that of a snazzy bar and grill in a nice part of town. The building was even on the books as a historic landmark since it was a renovated packing house. That much seemed okay... 'I guess I'll have to sleep on it.'
Seeing the light on the answering machine blinking, he hit 'two' and heard his landlady rant about the busted water heater. "Damn, no shower tomorrow morning, then." There were no other messages.
##
*Translated: Canyon of the Tiny Lizard. Regarded by the gerudo to be hilarious, regarded by everyone else to be rather juvenile.
**A very sweet term of endearment. Every time Callaghan crushes a flower, he thinks of his kymmate.
***A three-dimensional photograph. Pretty, but hang too many close together and you'll get nauseous.