Own anything? Hah! I barely even have control over my vital functions!

Chapter One: Embarkation

Birds may swim and fish may fly

There is more here than meets the eye

Carl said "Goodbye!" loudly. He wasn't speaking to anyone in particular, and this was fine, because no one was paying him any attention anyway. Everyone was busy, cleaning up, mostly. Two days ago there had been an unfortunate accident that had occurred (initially at any rate) in Carl's laboratory. The damage spread though most of the cavernous sturcture under the Vatican, and was in no way Carl's fault. Carl had hastened to point that out to everyone.

"You never smoke a pipe around highly inflammable dynamite-infused materials!" he complained to everyone who would listen, and quite a few who wouldn't. "I tried to warn him—"

The man with the pipe was spending a few days in one of the few undamaged hospice beds. Carl had gone to see him once, and didn't dare go again. As he escaped the hospice, ducking the books and other objects being hurled at him, he said, "Sorry, Van Helsing!" A wordless shout of incoherent rage was the only reply.

Now, as he placed a few last minute articles in his knapsack, he heard the loud tread of large feet behind him. Van Helsing stood there, one eye swollen and blackened, his hair shorn off, and one arm in a sling. Carl had a mad desire to laugh, but prevented himself, out of self-preservation. Van Helsing leant against the rock wall, tried to fold his arms and stopped with a wince, and regarded Carl sternly with his one good eye.

"Don't be getting yourself in trouble, friar."

"I won't, Van Helsing. It's only Shropshire, after all."

"Don't give me 'its only Shropshire.' Its bigger than you think, you know. The lat census brought the count up to over eight thousand, with more born every week."

"I can handle it," Carl replied, grateful that Van Helsing wasn't railing at him again about the accident. Or, for that matter, throwing things at him.

"And don't forget your most important matter to attend to—"

"My mother's funeral?" Carl said, though he knew that's not what Van Helsing was going to say.

The monster hunter grinned lopsidedly, about all he could manage at this point. "Well, that, and—"

"I know, I know," interrupted Carl testily. "And the supplies for your precious new way of killing people, lots of people, all at one time. I still contend that the whole situation isn'ta good idea."

"Carl," said Van Helsing, his eyes lighting up at the thought of his proposed waponry, "it's a portable canon capable of destroying an entire building. How could it not be a good idea?"

Carl shook his head. "You get more and more bloodthirsty as time goes on, Van Helsing. And isn't it, isn't it interesting, how my relatively healthy mother in Shropshire dies just when you need me to go to Shropshire? Isn't that interesting?"

"Now, Carl," said Van Helsing, "how could I have killed your mother when you know I've been at the Vatican the past several months? Murderous telepathy?"

Carl grunted. "Its been known to happen. Not, admittedly, by an oversexed brawn who hasn't got two brain cells to rub together, but— I suppose there's a first time for everything isn't there?"

He grabbed his knapsack and rushed out the door before this could sink in.

The blast of Van Helsing's roar of outrage fluttered the edges of Carl's flock-of-seagulls haircut, and the friar grinned to himself as he hurried down the lane.

The world waited for him.