A/N: So, taking everything that still needs to be written into account, and despite some setbacks this year, I'm actually further along with the completion of this arc than I was expecting to be. I'm almost completely certain that ATE will be finished next year. Hopefully those of you still reading this will be there for it. Sadly, I'm not so sure there are many of you left. I recently checked the Volume II view count on FF Net and there are still a bunch of chapters from even years ago that haven't broken 100 views yet. The view count for everything post-Volume I has always been abysmal on AO3 too. It's disheartening to have something I've put so much time and effort into continue to stagnate in readership, but it is what it is and I'll just keep on keeping on, like always. It's already the height of absurdity that I'm still updating this story eleven years later and I can't expect readers to keep interest in it for that long either. I'm just grateful to those of you who are still here. This Big Dumb Epic Courage Novel will be finished. You guys will get a conclusion unlike so many abandoned fan fics out there.
Something that I've been reflecting on more and more is that I originally started all of this trying to make something as close to feel to the show as I possibly could, and I think I've ultimately failed at that, but that is fine. I'm not the creator of the show nor any of the people who helped make Courage 'Courage' and thus I was always chasing after something I could never achieve. In the end though, I've taken these characters and molded them and the story around them into something unique to me. Nobody else would have been crazy enough or dedicated enough to write this madness for as long as I have, and that is wonderful. It's the beauty of fan made content, free of corporate restrictions and the need for constant profit growth. Even if there's not a single person left reading this by the end, I still will have succeeded in creating something that is uniquely me and acts as the ultimate tribute I could make toward a show and the characters that have meant a lot to me throughout my life. I don't know what it is about CTCD that stuck itself so thoroughly in my brain to such an extent that I'm still thinking about it well into my adult years, much less still writing fan freaking fiction about it. Maybe it's just a produce of my brain being a poorly wired mess, but that's fine, because all of this is an expression of myself and few others would have kept going with a story like this for as long as I have. It will always have value to me, flaws and all. I'm grateful to those of you who have made it this far and am forever glad that something I wrote has managed to resonate with a surprising amount of people throughout the years.
Chapter 13: The Final Piece Of The Puzzle
As much as Atticus would have loved to allow himself a chance to rest after how thoroughly he had wiped himself out pulling Courage back together again, he knew that there wasn't time for it, and idling for too long was undeniably dangerous in this place. The darkness that pressed in all around him would have made it all too easy for him to just give in and allow himself to float aimlessly without a care in the world. There was a peacefulness to the sheer nothing surrounding him that one could all too easily begin to lose all sense of self and purpose, and without any cohesion to hold oneself together, your data was likely to fragment until it became nothing as well.
Atticus simply had too many things on his mind to allow himself to surrender to the void. There was Thirty-Two to think about, and he somehow needed to devise a way to get the two of them out of here once she was fixed. He had to get back to Courage too, no matter what it took, and his siblings were still active and very much a danger.
The funny thing about all of this was that he had already found Thirty-Two. It was perfectly easy to find something within nothing. Her fragments were shining like a distant galaxy, perfectly visible within the blackness, but it was the distance that was the problem. Atticus could not tell if he was moving, much less if he was getting any closer to her. Any data he received about his own movements read as overflow errors, but relying upon visual input alone wasn't exactly getting him anywhere either.
First, he put together a program meant to move him back to the last coherent coordinates archived. Even finding that information was becoming hard as the automatic logging of all the ongoing processes within his system filled up with bad data generated from all the unknowns it could not interpret.
Once he was finished cobbling together the program on what little data he had to go off of, he decided to test it out now rather than wait until later. He figured that he would not lose much time or distance if attempted it now, if by some miracle it actually worked and put him back within the regular operating limits of his system.
Executing the program, his processor was hit with enough errors to halt his ability to think. Even terminating the program was difficult, as everything slowed to a crawl and useless, error data filled his mind to the brink.
"I don't know why I thought that would work." He muttered to himself once the errors the program generated eased up upon its termination. Checking through the logs of incomprehensible data, he managed to piece together a reason for the failure. "The program doesn't know where I am. It tried to search this infinite nothing and obviously doing something impossible like that would throw back enough errors to nearly crash me. Of course it wouldn't be able to decipher the junk data this place generates any better than I can."
He considered a few more possibilities, and while he thought, he put together and proceeded to scrap several more outlines for programs he could attempt to execute. He knew he needed to be more careful though. That first attempt had nearly crashed him, and if that happened to him in this place, it would be game over. There was nobody around to reboot him, after all.
"I figured it wasn't going to be as easy as slapping together a simple recall program." He said, noticing now that his voice did not carry at all. It made him feel like he was trapped in a coffin with unseen walls pressed in all around him far more than being trapped in infinite nothing.
The only other option he could think of that might be safe to attempt was to start a download into his dog body, who he could only hope was still connected to the access point claw. He did not want to attempt it until he managed to get to Thirty-Two though. If it worked, it could very well be the end of his existence as an already barely operational machine. If he ever returned, he would likely end up right back in this void, with his crumbling system inaccessible to him and unable to be repaired further. There would be very little he could do in that state, and he might end up so cut off from everything by then that he would not even be able to return to his dog body. All the more of a reason to fix Thirty-Two now. Unless, if he perhaps had way more luck than he had ever shown before, the act of leaving and returning would be enough to trigger a reset of his position. But how could his system even attempt that if it did not know where he was? For the same reasons, he knew that he was thinking too far ahead on this untested plan. He was not sure if downloading himself would work to begin with, because it might rely upon his system being able to find him. Well, he would not know until he tried, and he would not risk it until he could safely get Thirty-Two out of this place along with him. They would probably end up having to share the same body, but he was certainly used to that sort of thing by now, and she would make for a far better 'roommate' than Edgar.
With his potential exit strategy coded and ready for execution at a moments notice, he turned all of his focus on to creating a means to get to Thirty-Two. As far he could tell, there was nothing he could create that would help him figure out the distance between the two of them, nor help him figure out if he was moving and at what speed. The lack of workable data was crippling his ability to function in this place. Under normal circumstances, it would have been easy for him to just transfer himself to her coordinates, but without that information...
Maybe with a little clever coding he could devise a program that would draw her pieces to him. The same problem of the lack of coordinates remained, but there was a potential work around. He had come into contact with her pieces all of those years ago when he had first tried to put her back together, and he should have automatically logged the data of their contact. If he could draw upon that information, he might be able to create a program that would recognize what remained of Thirty-Two's data and draw it to him without the need for coordinates.
The problem was that he was not entirely sure if that information still existed. He 'did' regularly clear out old and irrelevant data logs. Something from that long ago would be long gone by now. Although...maybe the damage from the fusion of the amalgamation, the event that had corrupted and destroyed so much of the data from his SCC days, might actually save him in this instance. His memories had been restored upon being absorbed by the amalgamation for that short amount of time after escaping Charon, so perhaps some of that old data was now accessible again too. He had never attempted to delete any of his corrupted data because doing so would have run the risk of introducing even more instability to his already deeply unstable system, so it was all still there, just inaccessible, until...
With considerable haste, he began looking through his data logs, which was no easy feat given how it was continuing to fill up with garbage data information and error reports. His occasional clearing out of the archive was now helping him get to some of the earliest logs faster than he ever would have otherwise. Not even the constant barrage of error logs was slowing him down.
Dismay struck him as he was hit with a different sort of barrage. Plenty of corrupted file notices, all of it from the damage the fusion of the amalgamation had caused. Most of the logs from before that event were still corrupted and indecipherable, but several were now viewable where they would have not been before.
"I was with her right before the fusion took place, so the logs of my interaction with her pieces should be..."
His sifting through the logs came to an abrupt stop.
"There!"
Silent for a moment, he took in everything that was there at lightning speeds.
"So much of this damaged information is well beyond my ability to decipher, but I think I have just enough fragments to-" He trailed off into silence as he brought several lines of code into existence.
He looked over the program several times, hesitant to execute it. If this didn't work, he was risking another potential crash, and even if he escaped another failed program execution without harm, he was still very close to running out of ideas.
"Well, I can't just sit here doing nothing." He said to himself, forcing back his worry. He gave the command to the program to start running and tensed up as he waited for an onslaught of errors.
Much to his surprise, he was spared. The logs showed the usual amount of errors that this place was generating, but that was it. The program was running without flaw.
He looked out toward that galaxy of fragments and wondered if maybe the program wasn't actually doing anything despite running without causing errors. As far as he could tell, that distant field of stars wasn't getting any closer to him.
Or...or was it?
He nearly gave a shout of surprise when several of the lights suddenly surrounded him, but the rest remained far, far away. No, maybe not the rest. A few seconds later and several more fragments joined him. Regardless, though. If this was the speed at which the fragments were being drawn to him, it would be a very, very long time before they all arrived. He suspected that it was another perspective issue that this darkness was causing and that many of the lights that belong to that galaxy were much farther away then they appeared. Thirty-Two's pieces were seemingly much more spread out then he was capable of gauging through sight alone.
"This is fine, I suppose." He said to one of the tiny fragments of light, drawing it and its many counterparts closer as he tried to figure out which piece might go where. "I'll wait as long as I need to."
It was only just now dawning on him how long this project might take. He was looking at possibly years of work, slowly putting these pieces back together while waiting for the rest to reach him. He knew deep down that he did not have anywhere near the time he needed to do this. Between his need to get back to the outside world and the hard limits his failing system had put upon him...
This felt so much different from Courage. Courage had been easy to put back together. It was like his pieces had wanted to join together again and had willfully helped Atticus along with the task. He also knew Courage and understood him on a level that he had never shared with Thirty-Two, so where it had once been obvious to him which piece went where, he was not having the same easy time with it for her. In fact, as he tried to put several of the pieces back together, he got the impression that they did not want to come back together and were resisting the attempt. It felt as if the spirit of his once grandmother-like figure had long since fled these inert shards.
"Don't tell me that I entered this void just to find out that-" He hesitated, overcome by the sheer injustice of it all. Thirty-Two had never deserved any of this, and he was not about to leave her languishing in this void forever.
So he kept working to put the pieces together. The futility of the task continued to smack him in the proverbial face, and yet he ignored it as best as he could. Every time he seemed to fit a piece or two together, half the time it would just fall apart again the moment he stopped applying any force to it. Several pieces that he tried to take control of simply crumbled into even smaller points of light the moment he made contact. The simple fact of the matter was that he was not trying to piece a still living person back together again. This was a corpse.
"Even the last time I tried this it had felt different." Atticus wistfully admitted to the steadily growing star field swirling about him. "I arrived too late, it seems. Did your false soul dissipate while you were lost in this place? What a sad ending for you to have met. If only I could have-" He stifled a sigh, feeling like a fool for having put himself in his current situation when deep down he had known that it was far too late to help Thirty-Two. "Not only could I not save you from your unhappy fate, but I'm not even sure if I managed to fulfill my promise to you. Courage seems to think that I-"
"You did." A familiar voice spoke directly behind him.
He tried to turn around to face the voice but found that he could not and only managed to disorient himself further. Instead, that ghostly hooded figure walked into his line of sight like she was standing on solid ground.
"You did indeed give me the one thing that I wanted, and by extension, the thing that I tormented Thirty-Two to give me for the entirety of her short life. It was this desire that kept me rooted to the realm of the living. I could not leave until it was fulfilled, and Thirty-Two could not be rid of me until then either. We truly hated each other, even though we were always uncanny mirrors of one another. I have...come to regret much of what I did to her, but it is far too late to make amends."
The ghostly figure reached a paw upward, grabbed the hem of her hood, and slowly lowered it, revealing a dog's face that undeniably resembled Shirley's. She had the same large eyes, although they were sunken into her skull and she had dark, puffy circles under her eyes. The skin of her cheeks were droopy and wrinkled with age. Her large ears were just as droopy. Unlike Shirley, her fur had long since gone gray with age.
"That day you met Shirley was the day that you gave me my greatest desire, fulfilled your promise to Thirty-Two without even knowing it, and freed me from what has kept me bound to this earth." A smile broke out across her ancient face. "I got to see my granddaughter one last time and know that she survived her trials. With that one simple act, I have been given the peace of mind that I was denied in life."
The smile on the face of Shirley's grandmother quickly faded though. "There is a reason why I have not moved on yet, and it was not simply to see Edgar fail so spectacularly." A brief smirk returned to her face. "Although it was very satisfying to watch him slowly come to understand the depths of his failure. Poor, old Edgar never really stood a chance against the might of his creation. The only way he might have succeeded in overpowering them was when they were still new and too disorganized to collectively deny his will. His mistreatment of his daughter accumulated into a betrayal that he never saw coming or had any hope of recovering from, and it was that same mistreatment that caused Elizabeth to bring him back, thinking him greater than he ever truly was, only for him to complete his final fall into utter ruination. Ah, but I am getting ahead of myself. No, the reason why I am still here is not out of a need for vengeance against Edgar, even if I rather enjoyed getting to take part. I am here because there is something I have wanted to tell you and now I can finally do so uninterrupted. What you must understand is that Thirty-Two is not the only one my spite has harmed."
Atticus thought for a moment. "You must have been haunting me ever since the amalgamation was made, because they were with me the entire time and that is where the fragments of Thirty-Two went. You must still be bound to her as a ghost, so there has not been anywhere else for you to go. The thing is, I certainly don't remember you causing me any trouble. If you were trying to torment me like you did for Thirty-Two, I never noticed. With all of the supernatural creatures that cause trouble on the farm, I'm a little surprised you never showed yourself."
Shirley's grandmother nodded with understanding. "Like your siblings, I was diminished after the fusion event, to an even greater extent than I already was when Thirty-Two died. The loss of her fragments to this void made my connection with the world of the living all the more tenuous. Unlike how your siblings recovered, I only continued to fade. I have often had little to no awareness of what is going on around me or have had any sort of presence while I haunted you in that attic. Seeing my granddaughter revitalized me to some small extent, but I have been limited in my ability to communicate with you. This will be the last time we speak, because I intend to move on once my conscience is clear."
She reached a paw out to one of the floating fragments of Thirty-Two. "I plan on taking her pieces with me so that maybe she will find some sort of peace in death. Her life was an unhappy one and I don't think she would have wanted to come back even if it was possible for you to put her back together again." The ghost's sunken eyes fell upon Atticus with a mixture of sadness and understanding. "Don't think that you have failed her. Know this, the only time she was truly happy in this life was when she got to play grandmother to you and those other two who so cruelly betrayed her. In the end, I think you were the only person in this life who did not fail her."
Atticus was nearly beside himself at this point. "But...whatever she had that counted for a soul is gone. We 'abominations' don't exactly get the benefit of indestructible spirits like you ghostly types do. All of her time spent in this nothing destroyed her. There is nothing left of her to take anywhere but these soulless pieces. Everything she ever was is gone...forever."
"This is where you are wrong. What is left of her is here...with me." The cloak of Shirley's grandmother began to glow with a bright light. "I've been keeping what I could save of her safe. This is all that I was able to salvage, but I tried my best to do what I could for her after I tormented her so. I am sure she will be able to find some measure of peace in the hereafter."
It did very little to relieve the grief Atticus felt at having been unable to fix her, at being unable to give her the chance to live the life she more than deserved, but at least this was better than the complete obliteration he had assumed she'd gone through.
"So what is it then that you have been needing to tell me all of this time that is so important that it has kept you from moving on?" Atticus asked, trying to keep his voice even leveled despite the grief he felt. Grief that he was trying so very hard to work through before it could consume him. There was too much to concern himself with right now to allow himself to give in to sorrow. As with everything life seemed to throw at him, he was uniquely capable of pushing past the pain it caused so that he might live to give life the middle finger for another day longer. He could not think of any better way to honor Thirty-Two than to keep living in spite of, and to spite this existence and the pain it had caused for them both, and even for the rest of their siblings.
Shirley's grandmother considered him for a moment. "I think it would be better if I showed you rather than try to explain."
She reached a paw out toward him, and...
Atticus burst through a door, out of breath, only it wasn't actually him. He was just along for the ride as he looked through the eyes of another. Two dogs who shared their own resemblance to Shirley moved in closer to Atticus's out of breath host, worry etched deep into their features.
All three of them flinched as their hut shook from an explosive boom that was far too close for comfort.
He felt the person he was inhabiting gather up just enough breath to say, "That which I have foreseen is coming to pass! We were not able to avert disaster! We...no, I must get her out of here! They are coming!"
The two dogs, who must have been Shirley's parents, looked to each other with mournful expressions. In spite of the urgency of the moment, they took time to hug each other, then Shirley's grandma, and then the mother hurried over to a cradle to lift a small bundle up out if it.
"You gave her the potion?" Shirley's grandmother asked.
"Yes, she'll sleep through...all of it." Her mother sniffed.
Her grandmother took the bundle where her tiny puppy face could be seen deep in a peaceful, drug induced sleep.
Shirley's mom rushed forward to hug her mother again as tears spilled from both of their eyes.
"I am sorry, my child." Shirley's grandmother said to her daughter in a grave voice. "I did all that I could to change your fate, but it was not enough. Keep them at bay for as long as you possibly can. Do not worry. I will be with you soon, once I have delivered our dear Shirley to safety."
Both parents produced daggers as anger and determination replaced their sorrow. Shirley's grandmother knew that it would not be nearly enough, but she also knew that the SCC would catch up with her before she could get Shirley to safety unless...those two threw their lives away to delay them just long enough.
Another explosion rocked their tiny hut as Shirley's grandmother raced to the other end of it, jumped out a back window, and ran out into the forest to give herself more cover. She held the tiny bundle close to her chest with everything she had. Edgar would never pry this child from her fingers. Never.
As she had long since foreseen and dreaded, she heard gunshots echo out from the hut. She squeezed her eyes shut and wept for her family, but she knew that she could not falter now if she was to cut even one thread tied to the horrible fate that lay out before her.
Deeper and deeper into the forest she ran, with nothing but regrets swirling in her mind. She had tried to work with the SCC, just to give herself more time to find a way to avert the fate of her people, a fate that she had foreseen the very day the SCC had arrived. She had known that refusing them would have only ended in her people being slaughtered sooner rather than later. In the end though, she had only delayed the inevitable, despite all of her efforts to appease Edgar. Now she could hear near constant gunfire as the SCC obliterated everyone and everything she had ever known and loved. Smelling smoke, she glanced back only once to see her home in flames. She could also see the light of many flashlights as the SCC pursued her into the forest. How she longed to go back there and fight them to her very last breath, for the sake of everything that the SCC was reducing to ashes. She knew perfectly well that going back would be suicide and that there was already nothing left to save. The SCC's destruction of her people would be so all consuming that all that would remain was rumors and stories for others to propagate. All that mattered now was getting Shirley to safety. Once this child was safe, then her grandmother could make her last stand.
A sharp whistle made her stop in her tracks. As she worked to regain her breath, she scanned the dark branches overhead. It took her a moment to catch the pair of yellow eyes gleaming in among the leaves.
"Hurry!" She called out to the shadowy figure. "They are on my tail! You must take the child and get out of here immediately!"
Without so much as rustling a single leaf, a tall, black cat jumped down from the tree, landing with perfect grace, and stalked toward her.
"I see that the worst has come to pass." He said in a hushed tone. His tail swished with agitation as he stared up toward the plume of smoke in the sky. "It seems that today is the day that I finally pay my debt to you, my farseeing lady."
"You know that you are the only cat I trust, dear thief." She said with a great fondness for him that not even today's tragedy could keep her from expressing. She carefully handed off the bundle to him. "Get her to the safe house and keep her hidden for as long as it takes for the SCC to stop searching for her. It might be years until that day comes. Although, if what I am seeing comes to pass, I may end up giving Edgar exactly what he wants. That might be enough for him to lose interest in Shirley. If this is the sacrifice I must make to protect her, so be it. I just...I just wish that I could see where her fate lies." Her voice quavered with uncertainty. "How will she ever thrive as the last of her kind?"
"Have no fear, my lady. We cats will take good care of her and see that she grows up knowing her heritage. She will not just survive the end of her people, but she will thrive in spite of all that she has lost."
"She will be alone in this cruel world, but thank you, dear cat. Be gone with you now. There is no time left for you to stand around here, and it is time for me to meet my own fate."
The cat placed a paw onto her shoulder. "Give them a fight worth remembering, dear lady."
And with one graceful leap back up into the branches of the trees, the black cat was gone...and so was Shirley.
Nothing but doubt and worry for her grandchild's life went through her grandmother's head. No matter how hard she tried to see her granddaughter's future, none of the images she received gave her a clear picture. More often then not, such things meant that death was near for that person.
She turned toward the approaching lights and planted her feet into the ground. These people would go no further! For the sake of her granddaughter's uncertain future!
It took a moment, but she soon spotted Edgar in among the scurrying rabble of SCC soldiers. She tensed up, both in fear of and in fury toward him. This was the man who had brought ruin to her people and she would do everything in her power to bring him the same ruin.
"EDGAR!" She cried out, her craggy voice carrying long and far through the forest. The lights briefly froze and then rushed toward her. She let them overtake her and she soon found herself with her snout pressed into the dirt.
The soldiers spoke in hushed whispers as the crunch of Edgar's boots neared. That man just loved to take his time, as if it were his favorite way to show that he was in complete control of everyone and everything.
Finally, a boot crunched down into the dirt directly in front of one of her eyes. "Where did you hide the girl?" Edgar's calm and icy voice drifted down toward her.
She closed her eyes, and with a sigh, answered, "I've told you a million times, Edgar. We do not know if she has the gift, and we will not know until she has reached the proper age for it to start manifesting."
The boot tapped impatiently. "All the more reason for why we want to take her into our care. It was impossible to run any proper tests on her while she remained living in that slum you called a village. Well, it's nothing but a patch of burnt ground now." The dirt crunched again as Edgar dropped down into a crouch. "None of this needed to have happened, you know, and I may still be generous enough to let you live, if you tell me which hollowed out log you decided to stuff her in. We will find her, count on that, but you can make this easier for yourself in the meantime."
Shirley's grandmother put on a little smirk and fought the hand holding her head down just long enough to look up into Edgar's eyes. He was a very regal looking man, but no amount of kingly charm could hide the ugly disdain he had for everyone in those icy cold eyes of his. "I know what you intend to do with her, Edgar, and I will never allow it. I have made sure that she is out of your reach, forever. You will never find her. That I can promise you."
He met her smirk with his own. "Is that so? Well, you know where she is, so I guess we'll just persuade you to tell us."
He raised a fist and several SCC soldiers moved in. Only a single kick registered before the memory mercifully skipped forward, although it did not spare Atticus from feeling the aftermath of what Shirley's grandmother had endured.
Blood dripped from her mouth as she lay sprawled out in the dirt. One eye had lost all sight and she was not sure if it was just swollen shut or if they had damaged it so severely that...
Edgar moved in again and loomed over her. A boot came down onto her already broken arm and she cried out. "Well?" He asked. "Are you ready to talk?"
"Y-yes," She choked out. "C-come closer."
Edgar went down into a crouch again. "I don't have all night. Speak up before I lose my patience with you."
Now that he was just close enough, Shirley's grandmother gathered up some bloody spit and...
Edgar didn't even flinch as she hit her mark. He wiped the spit off his check, and without skipping a beat, said, "Charming. I really do not understand why you insist on prolonging this. I will give you one last chance to tell me where the girl is or I will give them the signal to break any bone left in your body that hasn't already been thoroughly broken."
She spat at his feet since she could no longer reach his face.
"That is truly a shame." He sighed with mock disappointment and then raised a fist once more. "Again."
The soldiers moved in.
The memory skipped forward once more and now it was clear that Shirley's grandmother did not have long for this world. Every breath she tried to take was a struggle and caused sharp shards of pain to explode in her sides. Her one functioning eye had a hazy quality to it. Only a few shards of teeth remained in her head and her tongue had swollen up to the size of an apple. She could not move her arms or legs without great pain.
"It's clear she isn't going to talk." A solider spoke up, sounding disgusted with the way this had all turned out. "There's no way she's going to survive those injuries. How are we supposed to take her back to interrogate her f-"
"Be quiet before I demote you." Edgar broke in, sounding more frustrated with the solider then he did with his prey being on death's door. "We'll have every square inch of this forest searched by morning. The girl will be found. As for this wretched creature? I figured from the start that we might as well get her dying so that we can use her to create a Construct. Put the call out to have the reserve team bring in the materials we need for the ritual."
Shirley's grandmother heard Edgar draw near and couldn't help but cry out when he grabbed her head and lifted it. That smirking face filled her fading vision. "I always planned on doing this to you, once we had that girl secured and we no longer needed to play nice with you flea bitten mutts. Even if she doesn't have the power of foresight, I figured we should keep her around to breed until she produces several dogs capable of your powers. We are about to find out if a Construct can have the same powers as you, and if all goes well, in a few years I will have multiple dogs and Constructs capable of helping me shape the future to my liking. Although, I'm starting to doubt if seeing the future really is all that it's cracked up to be when you must have seen all of this coming and could do nothing to stop it." A terrible gleam entered his cold eyes. "Or maybe you were always a waste of such talent. It is no wonder at all that every last one of these mutts died under your protection."
Rage boiled up inside the dying body of Shirley's grandmother. Using her fury as a catalyst, she called upon a form of magic that she had abstained from using for the entirety of her life. She had always found this branch of magic too cruel and too vengeful for her tastes. But if anyone deserved to suffer the full brunt of such black arts, it was Edgar Astor.
Her voice croaking and her swollen tongue slurred her words as she gazed up into Edgar's eyes and intoned, "I curse you Edgar Astor. I curse you to fail in all things that you set out to create. I curse you so that misfortune follows your every step. May you never find peace or prosperity again, and may death loom close so that you forever fear and wonder if today will be the day my curse finally takes you. May your aspirations be left unfulfilled for all of eternity."
Those cold eyes blinked, unperturbed. "We deal with plenty of curses in my line of work. I'll have it lifted the second I return to the lab."
Not a moment after he had spoken those words, a heavy cracking noise started up overhead. He just barely managed to step back before a massive tree branch came crashing down right where he had been standing. Shirley's grandmother put on a wide, toothless grin, despite the branch now blocking Edgar from her line of sight.
"I see this curse did not waste any time winding up." Edgar mused, still sounding unconcerned. "All the more reason to have it lifted the moment I get back."
The memory froze and then shifted to somewhere else. Atticus found himself involuntarily looking around a room that was weirdly familiar to him. He was certain that he had been here before. His new host looked down briefly and he saw the unmistakable glow of a Construct. This had to be a memory Shirley's grandmother had seen along with Thirty-Two.
Thirty-Two scanned the room again. She seemed nervous. Her eyes fell upon a cluster of monitors built into a wall at one end of the room. It hit Atticus then that he knew where this was. He remembered looking through those monitors and into this room when he had first come online. This was the location of his very first memory. In fact, this must be where all new Constructs are first brought online and tested after the ritual is completed.
A hateful, cold, vice-like grip bit into both of Thirty-Two's shoulders and she shivered as a dark presence seemed to all but engulf her. 'When he appears, tell him what he does not want to hear. Deliver my message...or else.' Her own voice whispered into her ear. She was used to that soft, deeply spiteful tone that was so unlike the way she spoke, despite it sounding just like her.
The lights overhead flickered from the sheer force of this malevolent spirit's hate.
This was not the first time Thirty-Two had wished she could turn off her ability to see the future. At least it spared her from being startled when Edgar suddenly burst into the room. Atticus was completely taken aback by the stark changes that had come over the man in what could have only been a few months since the creation of Thirty-Two.
Gone was that regal figure. He now had a pronounced limp, perhaps caused by some curse induced accident, and walked with a cane. His arms and legs had withered and he had a hunch to his back. His eyes had gone hazy white, like he was slowly going blind, and he had considerably less hair atop his head. While said hair had already gone white before the curse was laid upon him, it was now tinged a sickly sort of yellow color. To sum it up, Edgar looked as if he had aged twenty years in the span of only a few months.
He glared at Thirty-Two, as if she were to blame for his current state, and then limped over to a table to look through several papers.
"Found another counter-curse in the archives this morning." He muttered out, more to himself than to Thirty-Two. "It didn't work, of course. Just like all the others. I swear that wretched mutt is going to have me sacrificing newborns by the rate things are going."
Thirty-Two dared to say something that she really should not have, knowing how happily Edgar liked to dish out punishments for just about any reason. "Would you really sacrifice a newborn to save yourself, or is that one line you're not willing to cross?"
He chuckled without look up from his papers and dismissed her with a wave of his hand. "Sacrifices must be made."
She was not sure if he was making a morbid joke or if he was actually serious.
The lights flickered again as that malevolent force pressed down upon her and compelled her to deliver the message she had been given.
"She...she want's you to know something!" She blurted out, feeling the pressure lighten a little.
"Oh, does she now?" Edgar mocked, having taken notice of the lights. "I hope she realizes that even after everything that's happened, I am not afraid of her or her curse."
"She's telling you to give up. That you'll never remove the curse because...because she didn't give it an end condition. For curses like these that were cast without a way for the person cursed to end it by fulfilling certain conditions placed upon them, you have to go and appeal to the one who cast it upon you in the first place. If that person is dead..."
Edgar's eyes snapped in her direction, and she shrunk back at the quiet fury he displayed within them. "Are you really so stupid as to think I haven't already read every scrap of information we have on curses? Of course I know that! But the whole reason why the SCC exists is to defy the supernatural. I will find a way to free myself of this curse, mark my words. I just need to find the right countermeasures."
The scene faded out to be replaced by the same room, only now it looked all the more disheveled with books and papers strewn about everywhere. Once again Thirty-Two was waiting to meet with Edgar.
She fought back a sigh as she heard the doorknob jiggle and Edgar very carefully opened the door. He glanced around the room with a downright paranoid expression, like he was expecting to see cracks beginning to form in the ceiling in preparation to fall atop his head. Slowly, oh so slowly, he shuffled inside. His head was bandaged up, obscuring any hair that he might still have left from view. If he had looked sickly in the last memory, he looked downright like a corpse in this one.
"I nearly died yesterday." He said in a flat tone toward Thirty-Two. "I'm sure you would have loved that, and her even more so." He picked a book up off the table and flipped through it absentmindedly before letting it drop to the floor. "I'm just lucky I didn't end up so concussed that I'd have to spend another month in the hospital wing...like the last incident."
He dropped into a chair like the mere act of sitting down took every last scrap of energy he had. "Time is running out. I understand that now. I am dying, and I cannot afford to lay about in some hospital bed while I wait for my failing health to do me in, or for some other curse related disaster to befall me. I did not want to rush this, but I must begin the process of making myself into a Construct. Considering that she has not left you even after all of this time, it seems clear to me that I should be able to remain attached to my Construct indefinitely. I've seen how she is able to compel you to act against your own will on more than one occasion. It should be easy enough for me to bend a brand new consciousness to my will until it knows nothing but how to act as my thrall."
The malevolent presence dug its claws into Thirty-Two and she suddenly found herself chuckling as the spirit made a puppet out of her. "Oh, Edgar!" She cruelly laughed, no longer having any control over herself. "Do you really think you can escape your curse by becoming a parasite?"
She staggered toward him, laughing like a maniac. "Here is one test you never made when it comes to your Constructs, but then again, you've never had a fellow cursed person to kill and see what would happen with the resulting Construct. Well, understand this, Edgar. Constructs take plenty from the person they come from, so I can promise you this, your Construct will inherit the curse from you. You cannot escape your fate. Nothing will free you from the curse. It will follow you wherever you try to hide and you will only ruin a second life by attempting such a cowardly trick! Who are you to force another being to share in your curse when they are innocent of your crimes?"
And, just like that, it all slammed into place. As the memory disappeared and Atticus found himself floating in the void again, he was left reeling from the implications of it all. In an instant, so much of his life now made perfect sense. All of those times he had questioned if he was the living incarnation of bad luck...he had not been insane to wonder why he attracted misfortune to such an unnatural extent.
"I see that you understand." Shirley's grandma softly spoke up. She shook her head regretfully. "I am sorry. You never should have had to bear the burden of Edgar's curse. I never intended for it to harm an entirely new being, one who is innocent of Edgar's crimes, but, understand this, it isn't quite so bad as it seems. You see, you did not inherit the full brunt of the curse. When you were made and Edgar became a ghost, the curse was, in a sense, split in half. Some of it went to you while the rest remained with Edgar. Trust me, if you were dealing with the full curse, you never would have lived long enough to make it to this point. Instead, a cloud of bad luck follows you, tipping random chance against your favor more often than not."
Still struggling to process the implications of all of this, Atticus gave voice to the one horrible thought that was making him feel as if his processor was about to explode, "It can't be removed, can it? I-I'm always going to be this way."
"As much as it pains me to admit, yes, there is nothing that can be done to remove it. I created the curse without an end condition in mind and I have been dead for far too long to have the means to affect it now. You must understand too that you are not just a bearer of the curse. You were born of it, and thus misfortune is woven into your very being. To attempt to remove it now might just unravel your already precarious existence."
Atticus wished that he could flop down into a chair just as hard as Edgar had. "Answer me this one thing then. Did...did everything with Him happen because of the curse? Did Owen really die because of my bad luck? Am I actually responsible for what happened to him after how hard it has been for me to try and convince myself otherwise?"
If it was true, it threatened to send him down a dark path from which he would have no hope of recovering from. There were some things too painful that not even he could push past, and having his deepest, darkest fear about Owen's fate prove to be true, that He had been right all along, after all of his struggles to convince himself otherwise, well, there was no coming back from that.
Shirley's grandma raised a paw. "It's not like that. The curse does not take away a person's free will or compel them to act in certain ways. This person you call Him was not driven by a curse to murder. He did so because he was an evil man who wished to harm another. My curse does not absolve any being with a will of their own from the responsibility of their own actions."
In spite of her assurance, Atticus still felt like he was one stray thought away from spiraling. Even if the curse had not compelled Him to murder and torture, had it still put everything on a crash course toward Owen's death and Atticus's own torture? The more he thought about it...perhaps not. Owen being such an open book and blabbering about his talking computer had been the thing to tempt Him into doing what he did. No random chance tipping in the wrong direction had caused any of that. Owen had not been careful, that was all, and even then he was still not to blame for what had happened to him, or for what his carelessness had caused Atticus to suffer through, in the same way Atticus himself was not to blame for his death. In fact, there was at least one specific incident that Atticus could cling to as proof of the dichotomy. Owen just happening to walk in on that freeloading spider at the wrong time and their encounter slowly escalating into the apartment burning down seemed like a far more likely candidate for something Atticus's bad luck might have tipped in the wrong direction.
Atticus chuckled, although he thought that he sounded half insane. He decided right then and there that it might be best not to dwell on what was the curse and what was just bad choices that had spiraled out of control, because to do otherwise would destroy the last few shreds of sanity that he was already struggling to cling on to.
Trying to take all of this in good humor, because what else could he do but laugh at yet another attempt by life itself to kick him down, he said, "After all of the times I was so convinced that I was a living bad luck charm, I can hardly believe that I was right the entire time. I guess I can't be too angry. If none of this had happened exactly as it did, I never would have met Courage, and I would say meeting him has been pretty lucky. Maybe, just maybe, he has always had enough luck to combat my misfortune. I'm sure he will be glad to keep sharing it with me."
The ears of Shirley's grandma drooped even lower than they already naturally hung. "I really do wish that I could do something to free you from my mistake."
"Well, look at it this way, without Edgar's curse messing up his plans, I probably wouldn't be here."
"No, you are here because of his mistreatment of his daughter. No curse compelled her to act against him. She did so of her own free will."
"Yeah, well, Edgar would not have rushed things if it weren't for the curse. For all we know he might have kept a bit more of an eye open for sabotage if he had not been so desperate to create his Construct as soon as possible." Once again noticing the rabbit hole he was falling down, Atticus laughed, "You see? This is why I should probably steer clear of overthinking this because it will only lead to insanity. I only exist because Edgar was an idiot who got himself cursed, while at the same time the curse is also responsible for ruining my life, despite causing it in the first place."
Something else struck him then.
"Wait...h-has my bad luck been what draws so much misfortune to the farm?" Feeling his ever tenuous grasp on what little sanity he had left slip even further, he uttered out a small, "Oh boy. I think I might be better off keeping this tiny revelation to myself. C-Courage does not need to know!"
Shirley's grandma gave an apologetic dip of her head. "Since I am unable to undo my mistake, allow me to help you in the only way I can now." She gazed out into the void as if she could see something that he could not. "I will find you a way out of here, since I do not play by the same rules as you newfangled machines. Oh, but before we go-" She reached up into the star field that continued to swirl around them, it having only grown as Atticus's program ran uninterrupted.
Plucking one of the larger pieces from the galaxy that had once been Thirty-Two, she offered it up to Atticus. "Take this. She would have wanted you to have it, and I foresee that you will have great need of it very soon. Just keep in mind that it was never meant for you. Once you begin using it, I suspect that it will grow unstable and eventually break down, so you will have to make the best of it while it still works."
That mattered very little to Atticus. Even once it was broken, it would remain a piece of Thirty-Two that would be with him until he met his own end. Until that day came when he could return it to her in person, he would guard it with everything he had. This was the only memorial he could give her. After all, there was nobody else left to remember her or grieve for her loss. Atticus had come so close to meeting the same forgotten fate as her, before he had met Courage, and so this was the one thing he could do for her.
"This way." Shirley's grandmother spoke, turning so fast that her cloak fluttered as if stirred by a heavy gust of wind.
At first Atticus struggled to follow, still more than just a little tripped up by the lack of visual and data input. Realizing that they were never going to get anywhere like this, he made himself very small and allowed her to carry him in her paws. He was glad for the chance to rest.
"Hmmm..." She muttered as she squinted into the dark. "I think we are getting close."
"I'll just take your word for it, I suppose." Atticus replied, failing to pick up on whatever it was that she was seeing.
Before he even realized it had happened, like they had suddenly stepped through an invisible curtain, he found himself back inside his own green, patchwork microchip system. Never had he thought that he would be so glad to see this crumbling disaster that was 'him'.
"Ignore the mess!" He blurted out, escaping her paws to float about sheepishly, as if he could somehow cover up the piles of debris.
"This is where we part ways. I must return to Thirty-Two so that we may finally leave together."
Her words hit Atticus like a truck, destroying any happiness he might have felt about escaping the void, but before he could say anything to her, he suddenly sensed something thoroughly alien within the confines of his system, and a low voice spoke up, startling him.
"It looks like you have finished the last of your business here. The final strings tying you to this world have been severed. Are you ready to go now? I have been waiting a long time to collect you."
Atticus flipped around, saw that the Grim Reaper himself was just standing there in his system like he owned the place...and proceeded to swear profusely.
He had not seen this entity since that day his system had reached a critical failure point due to him having not been able to tell it was happening while he was in his dog body. Well, to be more exact, he had not noticed until crucial parts of himself started failing...like his memory banks. With Courage's help, he had tried to use an old backup from his time with Him to bring his system back from the brink, but of course a desperate move like that had ultimately failed to work and thus this supernatural being had stepped in to save him. Of course, even Atticus's siblings had been working from the shadows to bring him back because they would have died right along with him at that point before they had managed to separate themselves from him almost entirely, but he had not known any of that at the time.
"Why is the avatar of DEATH inside of my system?" He demanded, and dared to float closer toward the black hood of the being. "Hands off the merchandise! I am not ready to go yet!"
"I'm not here for you...yet." The deep voice of the Grim Reaper almost...chuckled. "But we do seem to run into each other way too often for someone who is still very much alive."
The cloaked figure raised a bony hand and poked the ball of light that was Atticus. He jolted away, feeling a profound cold spread out all over him from that brief moment of contact...even though he should not have felt anything considering that he was currently lacking any skin to feel heat or cold with.
"I just like to push my luck, I guess." Atticus groused, wishing that he could shiver and feeling as if he had aged thirty years in the span of...however long it had taken him to traverse the debris field of the amalgamation and get to this point where he was somehow having a conversation with death itself...again.
Shirley's grandmother moved in closer. "Let's go back to the void and gather up Thirty-Two. She is allowed to pass on like any other being with a soul, correct?"
"Considering that these beings are-" He pointed a bony finger at Atticus. "A bit of a new phenomenon, there aren't exactly any rules in the book about them."
"There's a book?" Atticus continued to grouse.
Ignoring him, the Grim Reaper concluded with, "I see no reason why they should be treated different from any other soul. I mean-" Another bony finger was pointed at Atticus. "Me and him already have a bit of a history."
Her expression softened. "Well, if all is well on that front, then let's get this over with. I would like to be reunited with my family."
She nodded to Atticus one last time, turned back toward the way she had come, and quickly disappeared beyond that unseen curtain. Before good ol' Death himself could follow, Atticus called out to him, "Hold on for just a second."
"Yes?" The big bag of bones asked, turning toward him with an ominous swish of his cloak.
"It just occurred to me that if you had not let me go back after the backup failed, and if none of this had played out the way that it did, Edgar would have likely remained trapped in that soul jar for all of eternity. Was this all just one long ploy to get a soul that you never would have been able to reap otherwise? Did you only let me live so that you could get to Edgar?"
The hooded figure let out a deep, unsettling laugh. "I would have collected him one day, no matter what. No living being can escape me forever. No, I helped you because I wanted to help you. Nothing more. Although I do have a certain fondness for Courage as well, and I would like to see him live for as long as possible."
"I'm pretty sure that if Courage heard that death itself has a fondness for him...he would die of fright. I hope that isn't how you're planning on taking him out."
"Of course not, but you on the other hand..."
"Hey! What did I say about touching the merchandise?"
"You really have changed. Are you sure that you still have it in you to see your mission through to completion, now that you are full of so much more life than when He used to send you to me before drawing you back over and over again."
"I'm going to save Courage. Don't think for a second that I'm going to leave him to be die by his illness just because I...well, I wouldn't exactly call it having a new lease on life, but the way I feel now about living doesn't matter if it means letting Courage suffer for the sake of my own life."
"It will only be harder for you now, when the time comes."
"I know, and I don't care. You and I can have a big laugh about it in The Big Coffee House In The Sky when the time comes."
"If that is what you wish, but I am truly interested in seeing how this will all shake out. Try not to die before then, okay?"
"I will never understand why Death is so interested in keeping us alive, but I guess we all need...hobbies."
"Don't sound so grumpy. Would you rather I work to kill the both of you sooner?"
"I don't think you even need to try, we are already very good at nearly getting ourselves killed, thank you very much."
"Despite my best efforts, and despite me going against my very nature for the sake of you both."
Atticus drifted away, taking a moment to repair a few of his crumbling pieces out of sheer habit. "Yeah, well, I go against my nature every day by not going full super weapon on every person who annoys me, so its not some great loss."
The hooded figure shook his unseen skull. Chuckling, he bowed to Atticus and said, "See you again soon, but hopefully not too soon."
"That's not an ominous thing to say or anything. You really just can't help yours-" He cut himself, realizing that he was already alone.
"I think I've dealt with more than enough supernatural nonsense for one lifetime." He sighed, preparing to download himself back into his dog body. It was time to find out just what sort of damage his siblings were likely still wrecking on the outside world.
All he received upon his attempt was one giant error message. So, his dog body was no longer connected to the claw then.
"It looks like I'm going to have to use Thirty-Two's last gift much sooner than I had hoped..."
End Of Chapter
A/N: I've definitely gone back and forth a lot through the years on if I actually wanted to include the concept of Computer inheriting Edgar's curse in a lesser form and have that be the reason for why he seems to attract so much bad luck, because it turns out he quite literally does. I've always worried that the curse concept would give off the wrong impression and imply that it was compelling characters to act in certain ways. I hope I've made it very clear within the text itself that it does not take the agency away from various characters. What I'm going for is more that when random chance is involved, luck will generally not tip in Computer's favor. It's not that the curse is outright compelling those around him to act against him, he just has really bad luck and thus random danger and disaster is much more likely to occur in his presence. My reasons for keeping this plot point is mostly just that I like the irony of how Edgar's curse is both responsible for Computer's existence while also routinely ruining the very life it caused. It also gives an explanation for why the farm attracts so much danger and why Courage can spend the months that have passed within this story without needing to be around to keep Eustace and Muriel safe, because the cause of their misfortune isn't around either lol. In the end, I hope I made the right choice by leaving this plot point in, because I've spent plenty of time doubting if I should or not.