Chapter 20:
Patrick Petrikov sat himself atop a stump at the top of a rock-strewn hill that had been cleared of trees by the nymphs in their quest for cheap building materials. Slipping the baby-carrier off, he checked his daughter for signs of needing a change. Mona lay in her stroller watching him as he cared for her sister. The older sister already had a shaggy mop of unruly reddish hair that had been an endless topic of conversation in the family. Of course, Mona's grandma did have relatives with red hair. Betty Grof-Mertens' hair had a reddish tint to it when she spent time in the sun. The younger sister's sparse hair was a sandy-brown.
Of course, the big news was the red-tinge to Nadine's eyes. That was an un-natural color for a human. As he put the bottle to Nadine's mouth, the young father found his mind wanting to go down worrisome tracks. Fi had a crystalline heart. She had enchanted crystal infesting her body. What if she'd passed the infection on to Nadine? Simone had been making noises about checking the little girl out. Nearby, soldiers stood chuckling about their pussy-whipped leader. No self-respecting dude in Slime-Kingdom sat on the nest hatching the eggs!
Ignoring the snickers and funny looks, Patrick got the job of taking care of his kids done. Then it was time to go. The patrol went up and down over hill and dale, finally meeting up with the patrol that had gone northward earlier in the day. Patrick knew there was resentment there. The terrain was rougher and wilder the further north you went. The badlands there had been scoured by his father's ice, leaving rocky creases in the land that ran twenty and thirty feet deep in places. The young wizard rationalized it. Fi needed to be here. Somebody had to watch the kids, and he wasn't trusting a nymph to do it.
As the young hero crested yet another jagged, boulder-strewn hill, his lieutenant called out to him. "Sire," the man shouted. Patrick, who'd been reconsidering Fi's efforts to drag him to the gym, glanced up in annoyance. His blood ran cold as he caught sight of the pall of black smoke on the horizon. His mind immediately went to the massive army of humanoids that had terrorized the border months ago. They were supposed to be in Lizard Kingdom. Billy had been dodging around them for days, while he worked to get the lizard-folk forted in. Could there really be two armies? "Sire," his lieutenant rumbled, "we need to act." They needed troops here.
Patrick's mind was on Fionna, who was south and east of the Grey Forest on the 'Outside' looking to copy the reflecting node. For a moment, all he could think of was his wife–alone but for a few guards–and panic filled his mind. From somewhere inside, a voice sounding like his dad's offered calming advice. The enemy was here. Keep them here, and he bought time for Fi to reach the Grey Forest's gates.
Elsewhere, Fionna stood staring at her creation in profound unhappiness and unease. She'd been burning up the minutes on her phone–and annoying the shit out of Lina and Nadia–asking all kinds of sciency questions. Mostly her stepmom put up with it. She was behind. Looking back at all the times and at all the ways Emeraude had tried to help her learn, the tall blonde was ashamed. She'd resented the older woman's help, and she'd leaned into her mother's affection and sympathy as a crutch against her very real problems. She'd modeled herself after her father because he never seemed to have the same issues getting through life, when everybody said he was dumb as a post. It had never occurred to her that Finn had evolved himself to master his handicap rather than hiding from it.
I'm sorry, mom, she thought. She'd been failing. She was still failing, really. She saw failure when she looked at the lump of weirdly glowing stone before her. She felt no closer to solving the problem than when she'd left here weeks ago, but, with spring just around the corner, she was running perilously short on time. The armies of hungry peeps were going to be on the move again, and people in the condition those folks were in would be perilously close to not giving a fuck. There had already been sick fuckers literally eating some of the Lizard-Cougar's peeps. Billy had killed a lot of those fuckers, but there might be others. She had to figure this out because Nadia had bigger fish to fry.
Billy's squeeze, Abieuwa, had a whole lot of peeps dodging killer animals down in the jungles. Most of her dudes spent their time chasing down animals instead of anything really useful. Nadia was busy working on another barrier machine to solve the problem. When she wasn't doing that, she was probably doing the same thing as Sarah was doing–working out how to fix the grey dirt the undead left. She didn't really have time to work on another reflecting node. Not really a shock that daddy's hair is going grey, the Bad Bunny thought. It was all his. Even when other people were fucking up and failing, it was still his burrito to build.
"Fuck," she thought. "I'll have to do it again." Her unhappy assistant groaned in disgust. That meant they'd be out here another few hours. They would be out here another few hours, when he wanted to get inside and out of the chill air. There was a mug of some hot, spiced berry-juice waiting on him in a bar somewhere, and he wanted to get back to it. As he was pondering how to talk his boss out of that, she suddenly shimmered and disappeared, blinking back into existence a hundred feet away. Before he could figure out just what had happened, that became the least of his problems, as a shower of arrows landed around him, piercing him a dozen times.
Fionna felt the strange tugging of Maja's rabbit's-foot charm. It was a weird tugging like somebody pulling at her hair. And then she felt the power of the curse kicking in, literally blipping her a hundred feet in the blink of an eye. Almost before she could react, a hail of arrows and steel darts shredded the egghead that Bonnie had lent her to work on the node problem. But, moments later, that was the least of her worries as hundreds of dudes came screaming out of the forest. Well, she thought. I guess I already ran out of time. Conjuring the reddish pink crystal skin that had given her the sobriquet Red Knight, the tall blonde prepared to face down death the way she had hundreds of times already.
To the south and east, the Bad Bunny's father had his face buried in Sarah's report on all that was and wasn't getting done down in the basement. Blargetha was making progress. When she wasn't poking and prodding at Sarah, she was making progress. A piece of him wanted to put a stop to that. Sarah was going through some stuff, and the poking was starting to really wear on her. With Shoko busy with the job he'd given her and Nadia prohibited from working on weapons, he didn't have a lot of choices though. Somebody had to watch the evil bitch. Finn was crippled with regard to understanding the whole business, but he owed it to Sarah to read these reports and at least try to understand what she was saying.
Beeps stuck her head in the door, announcing, "a Javier Falcon is on the line..." "Thanks, Beeps," the big man said, as he reached for the phone. "Hey, que pasa, amigo," Finn greeted the detective. "Yeah, man," said Finn, "I'm hangin' in there. Feeling better, thanks." Smiling at the rogue's subtle jabs at his drinking abilities, the big man said, "yeah, brother. We can hit some pubs. Come on by, if you want. I'll tell Ramona to save you a seat on the plane and hook you up with some crash space. Mi casa su casa." Breakfast rolled her eyes. He sounded like some dude talking with his old school chum. Shutting the door behind her, she went back to editing his latest letter. They were getting better, but she halfway wanted to send the King back to school himself.
The big man spent well over an hour talking with his chatty friend, laughing and joking when he was supposed to be reading Sarah's report. Breakfast very nearly called him on it. She would have if they weren't all worried about his mental state at the moment. Finally, as the clock on her desk chimed to announce that dinner was just an hour out, the big man excused himself from that long, drawn-out conversation. Stepping out of his office, the big man shut off the light, announcing, "headed up to the nursery. See you in a bit, Beeps." Nothing like the gregarious face he'd shown the rogue on the phone. Giving her a polite peck on the lips, the big man got on his way.
Back in the hills north of the Grey Forest, a worried Patrick dialed Fi's phone one more time, praying that she was ok and worrying himself sick that she wasn't. There were a lot of people out there. Thousands of them, in fact. Scouts had reported that there were, quite literally, thousands of starving souls out there beyond the forest. They were hungry and tired, with their ribs showing. Lots of them were girls and kids, but there were a lot of dudes who were well-armed and looking ready for a fight.
Behind him and on either side, he had his much smaller force arrayed and ready to go. They only had a couple miles of open boarder to guard, but he felt overwhelmed. If the enemy wanted to push this, things might get dangerous fast. He needed to focus, but his mind was on Fi. He wanted his wife here with him. It wasn't really any safer for her than where she was. If she'd made it back to the forest, it might be less safe. The nymphs could simply close down their gates if they wanted and seal themselves into their haven. At the same time, Patrick wanted to know things were in hand.
Miles away, the object of his thoughts did a neat pirouette, as she sliced off the arms of two men reaching for her. She was tempted to blip herself all the way back to the safety of the forest. She could do it. She thought she could do it. At the same time, the admonishments of her moms and grandmother were in the back of her mind. After her dad's ugly scare with the Curse, they'd extracted a promise from her. Cool it. Let us do some digging in the libraries to find out just how serious this thing was. As far as they knew, she and her dad were the last two members of the family showing the signs. And the Quicksilver Curse had gone very virulent in her dad.
Men screamed in pain as she dealt them fatal wounds. Without serious doctoring, those men were going to die. It was ugly. Her daddy wanted an end to the ugly, and Fionna thought he was right. At the same time, she had a hubby and two babies to live for. And, well, somebody had to take over if dad went down. That might be Billy. It might be Star. It might even be Fionna. Cut-thrust-cut, and two more men went down, as the Red Knight slashed and hacked her way towards freedom. The space was opening up. She was getting closer. Unfortunately, just as it looked as though she were going to win free, a couple-hundred more dudes rushed in. Fuuuck, howled the Bad Bunny.
Up ahead, the Matriarch paced out her fears on the walls of the east-gate castle. Her mind was on her daughter, out there somewhere. She hadn't been very happy for Fionna to be out in the wilds beyond her walls. There wasn't much sanctuary in the world of Ooo. The Huntress Wizard knew that better than most anybody, but Fionna was her best-friend's baby. She would have died to protect Simone's child. "Mother," rumbled Voletta. "I know what you're going to say, Voletta," the Matriarch interrupted. "No, Mother," Voletta retorted. "I don't think you do. I was actually going to suggest that we send a car. I can hold the sally-port open with troops. We have those men that the King lent us."
Emeraude flushed to her hair. She felt all of a fool just then. She'd told Voletta and told her again that only her orders could put nymph lives at risk. She'd tied her Lawkeeper's hands. Her aim had been to avoid the excesses of her mother's rule–to be a better leader than either of her predecessors. Now she was standing in the way of her own success. "Make it so, Voletta," the Matriarch rumbled. "It will be done, Mother," said the Lawkeeper, as she began to move. Minutes later, three trucks went roaring out of the gates with a couple-dozen slime-dudes riding in the back and a couple of Voletta's wizards in the cab. Emeraude stared after them, her mind on her baby–out there somewhere and in danger.
Indeed, Fionna was surrounded at the top of a hill, with dudes coming up on either side of her. She was toe-to-toe with a few dozen, all trying to pile on to get her on the ground. She knew what that was about. It was her earliest lesson from her dad. Don't let them ground-and-pound you. When you were on your butt, you were out of options. She didn't have access to the curse. She was desperately trying to keep her promise as her hand reached, figuratively, for the curse again and again and again. At the same time, she had the powers the crystal sword had given her.
Spires of jagged stone rose from the ground, skewering this man and that. Little hardened nodules formed under the bare feet of some of the men, piercing their tender flesh and taking the fight out of them. She was buying time–delaying–as she tried to figure out what she was going to do here. Unfortunately, they were bringing up heavier and heavier weapons. She halfway feared these dopes might have a cannon. Her dad feared that the Bandit-Bitch was arming these peeps, and that would pretty much prove the case. Twisting and turning, slicing and chopping and stabbing, the Bad Bunny fought on, doing her best to cut her way out of the trap.
Now and then, the charm in her pocket would start to vibrate. Her lucky rabbit's foot would buzz like her mom's secret sex-toy. Then her powers would kick in, whether she wanted it or not, snatching her a few hundred feet away. She wasn't sure how the damned thing worked, but she was going to kiss that fucking witch when she saw her next. Of course, it was tempting her more and more and more to just take the plunge. The Curse was calling to her. She could blip herself all the way back to her safe little hotel room and be waiting up on Patrick with dinner.
The roaring of engines in the distance announced the cavalry was coming. It was like the moment Lina came swooping down out of the sky on the Lich's island to snatch her out of the jaws of certain death. Her keen eyes picked up the sight of three trucks, roaring over the terrain, taking the whoops at a speed that would have been fatal if they wiped out. One blip, she thought. She thought one blip was safe enough. It was pretty certain that she wasn't getting off this hill without a fight, and there weren't enough of her mom's dudes in those trucks to fight their way to her. Do or die, Fionna, she decided. Concentrating–and praying as she'd never prayed before–the pretty blonde took hold of the Quicksilver Curse and jumped.
Nyneve Dufort slammed on the brakes and swerved as the strange crystal figure sprang into existence just a dozen feet in front of the truck. It took all the skill she'd picked up in the last couple of months not to roll the truck and kill the occupants as she dodged slamming into the Matriarch's wayward kid. The nymph in the rear passenger seat screamed swear words at the strange figure, but Fionna's mind was on more basic matters. Namely, getting the fuck out of that place. Shedding her crystal armor, she hopped into the back of the nearest truck, shouting, "get us the hell out of here! Step on it!"
The reasons for her terror became readily apparent as hundreds of men came swarming down the hill towards them. Nyna Dufort threw the truck into reverse, roaring backwards away from the oncoming menace. Pulling a deft move, the plump nymph sawed on the wheel, as she spun the car a hundred-eighty degrees. And then she had the thing back in gear, roaring away with the squeal of tires and a cloud of smoke and dust. As the horde of enemies receded into the distance, the Bad Bunny breathed a sigh of relief. It was only then that she realized her phone had been ringing off the hook with her mom and hubby calling and calling.
The girls were waiting in their places when Finn walked into the dining room that evening with only Emeraude and Marceline absent. The King was whistling a tune, his mood much-improved by his conversation with his old chum, Javier. It was a hopeful sign to Simone. The weight of the job was crushing him. She could only wish she was physically there instead of stuck in fucking Wizard City. "Evening, honey," Cherry greeted him, as he passed her. "Hey," he greeted her, leaning down to kiss her as he went by. Every face there was staring at him, as he sat down, but he seemed oblivious to it. "Dinner smells great," he said. "Who cooked?" "Peps," Bonnie replied. They weren't getting any less busy, unfortunately. With a smile, Finn said, "I'm just glad to be here with you all. Let's eat."
"How was your day," Simone asked? "Decent," Finn replied. Winking at Hurletta, the big man said, "me and 'Letta had good visits with the head-doc this morning." Hurletta blushed. "Didn't get to spend all the time I wanted with the kids," Finn admitted, "but I'm'a maybe go back up there later." "Don't forget sleep," Drew admonished him. Nodding, he said, "yeah... workin' on that. Thanks, babe. This daddy thing is tough work..." The doctor frowned at him. No complaint about being hectored. Nothing. What was wrong with him? "Anything interesting happen today," Betty asked? "You seem like you're in a quite the mood." Simone and Cherry both glared at her for seeming to spoil the moment. Finn, though, took that in stride.
"Talked to my buddy, Javier," Finn said. They'd had a good chat and caught up. Chuckling, Finn said, "dude's tryin' to get me to come out for a bar crawl." He'd had all the tequila he wanted to drink. Like forever. Frowning, the big man admitted, "found out somebody from the wastelands in the west has been maybe taking Blanca's coca-leaves. Takin' a lot of 'em." "Coca-leaves," Betty piped up? "Yeah," said Finn. "Her peeps and some of the Tequila-peeps chew on 'em. Makes 'em feel good." Blanca had once offered him Coca-Tea, and he'd been kinda' feelin' good after drinking a cup. "How much coca are we talking," she asked? Her tone suggested a shoe poised to drop. "You know something, mom," Simone announced. "Spit it."
With a heavy sigh, Betty said, "in my time... you could make... I guess you'd call it an extract of coca-leaf. We called it cocaine. It was a very dangerous drug." Cherry's face whipped upwards from a long study of her plate. "I've been getting feelers from some low-level capos about selling a new drug they found," she blurted. She'd been getting a lot of pressure to let them put it on the market after cutting them out of the licorice and hooker business. "You can't let them do that," Betty howled! "Cocaine is horrifically addictive!"
"Slow down," Finn interrupted. Turning to Betty, he said, "I'd rather have a business that's under some kind of control than running crazy in the wind. These dudes might just might try bringing this stuff in anyway. How dangerous is this exactly?" With a sigh, Betty said, "it's give-up-on-sex addictive, Finn." Several of the women there blushed, and Cherry goggled at her. She'd sampled the wares a time or two, but nothing she'd ever had was better than fucking. "Cocaine... cocaine's destructive," Betty said. "It was destructive when I was young, and it had been around for over a century. I can't imagine how destructive it might be to people who've never seen it."
With a sigh, Cherry said, "something like that has a very corrosive effect on the underworld. People start to value the money more than their loyalties. I have to squash this." "Ok," Finn agreed. "Question is, who would be putting this on the market..." "I think the people in question have connections to the Wax-Hustlers," Cherry admitted. Finn's frown deepened, as he thought of a pretty face from a very-recent encounter. His mind had stopped believing in coincidences. Cherry was still talking, and she said, "the wax-folk operate a fleet of airships. Each of their households has at least one, and some have as many as a dozen. They operate all over the west, and they come as far east as Turtle Kingdom."
"They've come farther," Hurletta opined. When everyone was looking at her, the slime-princess said, "a wax-hustler carried my sister to the east. She was captive on one of their ships for a while, remember?" Nodding, Finn said, "and I think I know who this woman is." Shaking himself, the big man said, "ok. We have our decision. Cocaine is banned. Anyone offering it for sale is to be put to death. If the gangs want to bring coca-tea, that is sanctioned, but extract of coca is off-limits." "Thanks for understanding, honey," Cherry agreed. Of course, that still left his worrisome coincidence.
He'd never delved too deeply into the woman Blargetha had described. His mind had been fixated on the Bandit Princess, and the encounter with the half-demon in the mines in Emerald Kingdom had cemented his worries over what she was doing. Now his mind was going in a different direction. What if the Wax-Hustler that Blargetha described wasn't just a henchman? What if she was a partner? It would explain a lot. More to the point, it opened up the question of just what her motivations were.
The change was subtle, as the girls watched their husband. His mind slowly wandered, his expression becoming more and more distracted. Somewhere in the middle of the soup course, his mind wandered off. It came as no surprise to anyone when he excused himself halfway through the chicken, wandering out of the dining room and leaving worry in his wake.
The King went downstairs. He went down and down and down to levels of the palace that nobody visited who wasn't a committed member of his family. He went down to the place where his problem-child currently spent her time under the watchful eye of his android wife. Blargetha was just as he'd last seen her, though sporting a natty red dress today that showed off the charms Maja had gifted her with. Indeed, the sexy red dress with the cleavage cut that went from her neck all the way to her belly seemed wasted in the dim light of Bonnie's lab.
The evil genius had her face up against some kind of microscope, as she wielded a soldering tool. Piles of the little plastic boards Nadia called circuit-cards lay scattered around the room as if Blargetha had worked on them a bit and discarded them. Indeed, the room stank of chemicals and unsavory odors. So into what she was doing was the slime-princess that she nearly jumped out of her skin when Finn called her name.
"Fuck," she growled! "Don't you know how to knock?!" Finn's face was hard and distant, telling her that he had no fucks left to give. "I'm busy," she muttered, "or did you want those weapons you asked for?" "Who was she," the big man growled? "Who was who," the irritated princess retorted? The big man got in her face and snatched her out of her chair, causing her to yelp in terror. "Who was the wax-woman," he demanded? Chaffing at her wrists as if in injury, the plump woman retorted, "fucked if I know." His eyes suggested he didn't believe her. "She knew you well enough to want to reach out to you," Finn insisted.
"Did it ever occur to you that certain things bring you a name, Finn," the plush princess retorted. His look of utter bafflement made her laugh. She had a strangely pretty laugh. Tugging the knot of his tie, the slime-princess said, "you're known far and wide as a man who... takes care of problems. What do you think I'm known for? Hmm?" "So you're saying she knew you from science or something," he asked? "Was she a science-buddy?" Turning back to the soldering-station, she said, "she wasn't my friend, Finn. Not anymore than you are. To her I was just a living machine–someone to build the ugly things she needed. That woman didn't give two fucks about me. She'd have done me in when I gave her those fucking rockets..." With a bleak smile, she stroked the valley between those big cans of hers, drawing his eyes to the scar there, as she said, "not as personally and with way less panache..." The big man flushed. Glancing away, he said, "we have a deal, Blargetha..." She laughed, "a pretty one-sided deal, Finn. There's more to life than living."
"I let you keep your life," he muttered. "You're an ungrateful bitch. You act like you're the victim in all this, when you were responsible for a lot of the war." "You have no idea what it's like to be me, Finn," Blargetha snapped! "I was hated and looked down on by my sister and her idiot friends until I started to hide my intelligence. I've had to pretend to be a dummy because I intimidate men. I was cast as my sister's enemy before we were even born because she got hatched first. I couldn't have a man of my own until she got married and had an heir. Do you have any idea what it's like to live like that?! Do you?!"
This was going somewhere he hadn't expected when he left the dining room. It was going somewhere his conscience didn't want it to go. It was one thing to hate this woman for what she'd done to his friend. He'd been afraid that she'd done away with Hurletta. It was something else to see this woman as a person–alone and vulnerable with all the problems that every person had. "I'm alone, Finn," she sobbed, "alone against the whole fucking world. That shit preys on your mind. And now I'm a dead woman walking, living under a suspended death sentence. And when I'm gone, nobody'll be there to collect the body..."
"We have a deal," he muttered. "I have no reason to kill you." "Until 'Letta has her way," she retorted. Finn got in her face, snarling, "I am King. Murder's not sanctioned on my watch, Princess Blargetha." "Not even for what someone might have done to someone you love, Finn," Blargetha murmured? Her breath against his face sent a chill through him. "Not for Breakfast or Toast," she asked? His face went red hot. He'd planned to torture men to death. He'd planned to have a torture-party for Toast. "An event like that does things to a man," Blargetha murmured, as she straightened his tie once more. "I... more than earned your wrath for what I did to my sister. Do you dispute that?" "I told you that you have nothing to fear from me," Finn growled, as he turned to go. Standing at the door, the big man growled, "do what you promised me, Blargetha... You need have no fear of me, then."
Wonder what the toxic-twins are going to do with their mound of Cocaine now?