Chapter 37:
Bronwyn woke with a start to find herself in a soft feather bed. The room was dark around her, and she fumbled for the light on the table. Had she dreamed it? Had she dreamed the men in her room? Flicking the light on, the plush pretty found herself in a tiny room that was much like her room in the family railcar. A private car, she thought. She was on a train somewhere. There was no motion. The train was stopped. How long, she thought? That was a big question with many different answers. How long were they going to be here? Long enough to escape? How long had she been out?
Orzsebet was hunched over the documents Finn had left when the door opened behind her. The King had gone off with her agents, heading into the town to ask some pointed questions. They hadn't found the missing Queen Bee, but they'd found some interesting love letters between the ogress and her evil friend, the wax-hustler. Those documents had led them here–a nowhere town in the middle of the bandit-lands. It would have been a nothing place if not for the fact that six rail-lines converged here. The local lord made his hay selling protection to the rail barons. He was the surety that they could stop and resupply their trains here. He protected the marshaling yards and kept his neighbors at bay.
"Good evening, Miss Rainicorn," the Agent Princess rumbled. Bronwyn frowned at the strange woman's back. She didn't know this person. Was this her kidnaper? "They were holding you prisoner," Orzsebet murmured. "Have a seat. The King will be back soon." Bronwyn shivered. She didn't like being in such a position where someone knew so very much about her, while she knew nothing about them. More to the point, she didn't know where she was, so she couldn't teleport herself out of this spot. Even if she did, all she had on was a thin nightgown.
Coming around in front of the stranger, she sat herself. Their eyes met. "We were hardly expecting to find you in a box, Miss Rainicorn," Orzsebet rumbled. "Care to tell me how you got there?" "Who are you," Bronwyn demanded? With an airy wave of her hand Orzsebet replied, "agent of the King..." Those words brought back memories. Finn. This woman worked for Finn. That made her one of a handful of people. She wasn't a gangster, clearly. Her mannerisms suggested she was aristocratic. Agent Princess, she thought. "Where am I," Bronwyn asked? "On the King's private train," the Lady of Spies replied. "We brought you here after we rescued you." "W-where's my grand-uncle," Bronwyn demanded? "Where's Finn?" Her voice was edging towards panic, but that stood to reason. She'd been snatched up and locked in a box for weeks.
Those too-knowing brown eyes burned into Bronwyn's eyes, sending ripples of terror shooting through her body. She didn't know this situation, and, for all she knew, she might very well still be a captive. At the same time, she was in somebody's private car, and that someone was connected to Finn. There was a hope that she would at least have an opportunity at escape. All she had to do was figure out where she was. "Ok," said the half-bear, as she sat herself, "what's been going on?"
Down in Jungle Kingdom, the Ice Prince stood facing down disaster as his wife and family dithered. Readings from the bunker were troubling to say the least, but neither Nadia nor Bonnie could think of a way to deal with the problem. They wanted to spend time constructing machines to go down into the bunker to take a look. Sarah had repeatedly offered to go, but Simone had shut that idea down unequivocally. She was bound and determined that they were only going to risk a member of the family if they had some hope of success in resolving the problem. Abieuwa was no help at all. The Jungle Princess bounced back and forth between terror and despair over the risk to her people and a self-righteous indignation over what she saw as usurpation of her people's legacy.
And now, as his phone rang and rang off the hook, the big man was running quite close to the bottom of his well of patience. Glaring at his own mother, who'd just shut down the fourth or fifth attempt by Sarah to enter the bunker, Billy snatched out his phone, flicked it open, and snarled, "what?!" A startled Nieve gabbled something that sounded perilously close to nonsense. "I don't have the time, Nieve," Billy growled. "I'm in the middle of a crisis, and I don't have time for the games. Is there something you want?" The young princess had hardly been expecting that reaction. With her grandmother standing there watching her, the young woman did her best to make a peace offer, suggesting that she could come down to the Jungle Kingdom to see him.
Billy frowned at the phone. That didn't make any sense at all, and he said so. "You've made it pretty clear that you don't want anything to do with me, Nieve," Billy retorted. "I've done my best to respect that. I don't really have the time to play games right now. Have a lovely evening." Without a further word, the big man hung up in her face. "William Simon Mertens," Simone growled! "That was perfectly awful of you! That's your..." "That's not any of your business, mom," Billy shot back. "You guys set me up in that mess. I don't want to hear any complaining about it." Simone goggled at him.
Turning to his other wife, Billy said, "the Guild of Surveyors is to schedule a meeting tomorrow morning, Abieuwa. That's not negotiable. I want to see every document. Since a member of this family will be at risk from whatever's down in the bunker, I want to know what the level of risk will be..." "She's a machine," Abieuwa shot back! Even to her own ears it sounded petulant and insensitive, bordering on selfish. "She's not fucking indestructible," Billy shouted! "I won't risk my stepmother's life on your lies! It's not negotiable! Those are my orders! Carry them out or else!" Without another word, the big man strode across the room and out the door, slamming it just about as hard as he could, making a thunderous noise that was heard across the palace.
Abieuwa goggled at the door. When Sarah suggested she go after him to mediate, Simone stopped her. "He's a man, Sarah," she said. "He's asserting himself as a man has to. More to the point, he's right. You could walk into that bunker, take a burst of radiation, and check out just like any of us. In my father's time, machines had to be specially hardened to deal with radioactivity..." A glance at Bonnie's frowning face told Simone all she needed to know. Sarah wasn't going. That was that.
Back in the Candy Palace, Odessa stood over her granddaughter, her face contorted in rage. Nieve lay on the floor sobbing having been slapped hard enough that her ears were ringing. The guards had literally had to pull the older woman off of her. Her grandmother's guards. Her own bodyguard was still in the east in Lizard Kingdom. "You can be replaced, Nieve," Odessa growled. Nieve opened her mouth to suggest that the old bitch get on with it and shut it again as she realized that she might not survive replacement. Her aunt was in the King's prison. Finn had custody of Yolanda, and the King gave generous terms to a woman who'd raised a weapon against him. Odessa clearly had no such qualms. The old woman turned and strode out, snapping her fingers at her guards. At the door, the old woman said, "she's to stay here. The Royal Physician will be checking in." Nieve flushed. She'd driven William Mertens away. There was little chance of a baby now.
As the young princess pondered escape and the mystery of how her life had gone so terribly wrong, her erstwhile husband was facing his own crisis of faith. The Ice Prince was brooding in the Princess's Private Garden, when his fire-elemental lover found him. The space was beautiful to Olesia's eyes, and she thought it made the perfect place to spend time with a lover. The heat that many of the family found oppressive warmed her strange, malleable flesh, bringing a sense of well-being. At the same time, she'd watched over the last few days as the family's peace slowly began to disintegrate in waves of bickering and anger over a problem that one of their number had brought in. From a gratitude to Abieuwa for accepting things as they were when she found Olesia in bed with her husband, the young princess had grown a little irritated with the wench herself.
Now this.
"I'm sorry you got dragged into this," Billy offered. His expression was twisted in a frown that hardly suited his handsome face. Olesia remembered the smile-wrinkles on his father's face and how the King's face hardly seemed suited to them, and she realized that Billy was slowly walking down the road his father had been on for decades. He was carrying the world–a world that was stubbornly insistent on going its own way even when it was headed straight over a cliff. How long before the man she loved ended up with that perpetual frown on his face?
"William," Olesia interrupted. "Get away. Go out and get away. From us." Billy stared at her. Stroking his cheek, she said, "you're too close, honey. You're too close to this. You're always pushing and striving and struggling. For us. For the foolish wenches that share in your life. And us... we're often too self-absorbed to listen when you're trying to save us from ourselves. You have to let them fail, honey. So they remember why you're here." He knew his jaw was hanging, but he knew she was right. He'd always known it. His father had said it in unguarded moments when he was angry with Bonnie or one of the others. His father had preached it at him the day he headed off to look for the Lich's origin.
"Ok," said Billy. Standing on her toes, the plush princess kissed his cheek. She hadn't been lieing when she said she would be good for him. And maybe that was the thing that kept his dad's life from spiraling out of control. Women like Drew Princess and Lollipop kept Finn from getting sucked into the endless swirl of chaos that were the powerful women who shared his life. Billy leaned in and gave the elemental a smoking kiss before turning and snatching up his jacket. As the plump girl watched, he headed out, bound he knew not where.
As Billy had a bout of honest soul-searching, his father was dealing with a much less esoteric problem. The girl was the sort of plush you typically found in the Purple Kingdom, with plump grapes under her cheap, homespun peasant blouse. The pale bluish tinge to her skin screamed hybrid, suggesting maybe she'd been born to some dude out of Engagement Ring Kingdom, who'd slipped across the border to play. Finn remembered Connie telling him that when they were teens and still tip-toeing around the whole 'dating' thing. Connie had reasoned that if men of her kingdom were ok sneaking across the border to slip one of the locals the ole salami, why couldn't she have a little fun?
Orzsebet's agents had flushed her out of her lair in the shadowport when they rescued Bronwyn. She'd fled into the night, little realizing that the phone she had in her purse was leading her pursuers straight to her. In the cities of the heartland, it wouldn't have mattered. In the Bandit Kingdoms, where InterFone had trouble maintaining its network without having to bribe the locals to piss off, there weren't so many phones that you could disappear into the background. This wench had been easy to catch up to, and they'd just kicked in the door to her hotel room and hauled her out.
She'd been trying out various combinations of her pheremones on Finn and anybody else in the room with little success. Between bangin' the shit out of Orzsebet the previous night and the nanobots in his bloodstream, Finn was hardly interested. More to the point, the spies had been inoculated against such things through the FIRM's fiendish chemistry. They weren't interested either, and the young lady was getting to the bottom of her bag of tricks. She was a jaded soul, and she'd been dancing around the subject of her imprisonment here for hours, doing her best to reveal nothing while she pried information out of her captors. Finn imagined her planning to sell that information to the Bandit Princess when she was free. Which she wasn't ever going to be.
"Let's cut to the chase, Ms. Ghisoni," said Finn. She was leaning forward, trying to show off those tits. Finn now leaned forward. In a soft voice, the big man announced, "there was a second box in your lair... What was in it? Where did you send it?" Coyly, she twirled a lock of her long, dark hair with her finger. "I'm not a man you cross or trifle with," Finn rumbled. "Ask any of these men... Or maybe you could ask Mr. Hansen..." That name did get her attention. "Yeah," he said, "your boyfriend's probably fertilizing a field right now..." Her face curled into a frown.
Leaning in, the big man said, "I hurt him... a lot. I hurt people who harm those I care for. I handed him over to men who continued to hurt him. He was happy to roll over on you for little or nothing. He told us where the box with my grand-niece went. He sent us right to you. He's dead. There's no reason to hold loyalty to him or anybody else. Save your own life... Tell me where the other box went..." The plump woman looked taken aback by all of that. Her coy and haughty demeanor deflated just a little. He could see the calculation. She was calculating that maybe she could bluff him or talk her way out of this.
"You're Finn the Human," she rumbled. "I know who you are... More importantly, I know the man you are. You'd never hurt a woman..." Sitting back, she gave him a sweet smile that seemed to say, 'checkmate'. Her eyes said it. What was he going to do now? Lock her up? She wasn't going to talk. She wasn't going to betray her hidden masters. Finn grimaced as he was confronted with the ugly that was the world of the King of Ooo. He had a choice–betray his friend or betray the principles he'd lived with all his life.
Sitting back, the big man said, "you're right, Ms. Ghisoni. I'm not a man who commonly kills or harms women. I'd certainly never torture a woman." Turning to the spies, the big man said, "please torture Ms. Ghisoni. I'll be outside." Without a further word, the King got up, slid his chair back under the table and strode towards the door. Imogen Ghisoni stared at his back as he walked across that room. Her eyes flicked to the ugly, masked men around her. She knew very well what a mask did to a man. Her now-dead boyfriend had told her what it felt like to put a mask on his face. It was like hiding what you were from the world. It was... liberating. Burglary? Highway robbery? Child's play. Even murder was no issue when you wore a mask. Who would know you?
"I-I...," she stammered. The King kept walking, his hand reaching for the door. Something told her that, did he put his hand on that knob, she'd be left here alone with these ugly, ugly men. And they would hurt her. They would inflict cruelty on her very-tender flesh. These masked men didn't have any qualms about hurting a woman, and she knew it as well as Finn the Human did. "It went across the ocean to the shadowport in the south," said the gangster. Finn stopped. Chest rising and falling with her terror, the plump woman stared at his back. The King didn't move. Torture was still on the table.
Taking a deep breath, the plump woman sat there a moment, caught like a spider in a web, hanging between life and death. "It was a kidnap victim," she admitted. "They flew her in from Bee Kingdom. There were a dozen bee-peeps who flew her here. I didn't see what was going on. That's... not what you do." It wasn't safe to watch. It wasn't a good idea to know too much. Knowing too much brought you into precarious spots like this, where you were on the edge of being tortured to death. Finn turned slightly to face her, and the plump woman began to spill her guts. She'd heard them. They talked in code, but she thought the woman was important–that maybe she was a noble or even a Royal. She'd been boxed up by the bee-peeps. Imogen herself had given them the materials and left them to their work. Her men had put the crate on a ship and sent it to the shadowport on the eastern edge of the jungle. Nodding, Finn said, "you get to keep on breathing a little longer, Ms. Ghisoni. You're going to write all of that down. Now." In the right now, Finn was headed back to his train to look in on Bronwyn.
Late that same day, the King's son strode up to the Ugly Jackal bar with beer on his mind. He'd been wandering most of the afternoon, ignoring the increasingly frantic phone calls from Abieuwa's number–and even a couple from Rags and Noemi. He was cooling off–slowly. He was no longer enraged to the point of wanting to smash someone. Now he just wanted them to take a minute to really think about things. They weren't on a good trajectory here. The bunker was getting worse. Billy didn't have all the science, but looking at the increasingly worried faces of Bonnie, Nadia, Blargetha, and Sarah, he had a sense that the readings were getting worse, not better. The bunker was going critical. He didn't think it would be overnight, but he didn't think they had piles of time either, and Abieuwa needed to step up and stop playing games with the knowledge that she had.
Just now, after spending the afternoon roaming around under the still-stifling winter sun, the Ice Prince wanted a pint of something cool. It seemed forever ago that he'd slipped into a bar with JJ at his side and had that first glass of beer. His dad had always let him have a little beer once in a great while–usually after they'd finished some big chore on the treehouse, but he'd never had a whole one all to himself until that night. Striding into a bar in an isolated corner of Abieuwa's capitol, the big man found himself reflecting.
Life had seemed so simple back then. He had everything he thought a man needed–a good job, a woman who loved him, and big dreams for the future. He imagined his father felt much the same. I can see how men come to hate women, when it sometimes feels like all the trouble in the world comes from them, he thought. It wasn't right to think that way, and he knew it. At the same time, there were moments Nieve wasn't the only person he would have put over his knee.
The music was thumping inside the bar–a searing beat heavy on the drums. It was the sort of music his wife loved to play–and Rags and Noemi loved to hate. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light inside the bar, he was arrested by a sight that stole his breath and came close to having him drooling. The woman tending the bar had his immediate interest. He'd honestly acquired a taste for dog-girls because he'd banged the shit out of JJ on occasions so numerous, it didn't bear thinking about. His long-lost wife had been hungry for dick like nobody he'd met since–maybe Katsumi, though she had reason to be after literal centuries of being celibate.
The girl was tall as he was, with pale platinum-blonde color, complimented by a big, poofy blue dress like a woman in the north might wear. She sported a generous endowment of big, round knockers, and she came broad in the beam like his mom. Icy blue-grey eyes completed the look. Beautiful and exotic, she had him forgetting all about his earlier thoughts of swearing off women. It was crazy, really, because he already knew the answer, but Billy couldn't help wondering how his dad had managed not to jump on every hot chick he came across because he certainly could have.
The girl was the center of attention there in the tavern with a couple dozen horny bar-flies clustered tight to the bar such that the waiters and waitresses had to wade through them them. She soaked up that attention like the beautiful creature she was. At least she did until Billy approached. Their eyes immediately locked, and the girl gave him a smile that said 'come hither'. Of course there were a bunch of thirsty dudes there between them.
Hundreds of miles to the north, the big man's sister stood facing down her own failures as she stared out at the gap in the wall. Billy had left word with Star and Lollipop that he wanted Fionna packed and ready to go at short notice. Trouble was that, even with the crisis with the dummies who wanted to stir up war squashed, Fionna the Human Girl was troubled. She wanted the wall closed. Her great masterpiece of work was unfinished, and with the Grid Face People and their princess bending all their will to the crisis in the south, the hoped-for help seemed as though it wasn't coming any time soon.
She was sitting on an isolated hilltop–something that irritated Princess Ingrid. The Warrior Princess looked on all the world as a grand battlefield–a cosmic chessboard with enemies and allies scattered across it. A wise general did his best to keep the enemy scattered and his–or her–friends close. It hardly did good to have an ally, after all, if they insisted on putting their neck out there on the block to get their head chopped off. "Ok, Fionna," growled the older woman. It always seemed to come out that way to Fionna, even when Ingrid was being peaceable. She was one of the oddest of the Royal Wives. "What's ailing you," asked the tall blonde?
"The defensive barrier is of limited utility when there remains a massive vulnerability in a critical area," Fionna replied. "You still not sleeping," Ingrid rumbled, as she sat herself. Of all Finn's children, she felt the closest kinship with this one. She didn't understand William. She'd never understood wizards or their habits. The little wood-nymph was odd for no other reason than that she desired to remain aloof from power–as if that was possible for a princess. Fionna was very straightforward. At least she was when she wasn't having a moment like this.
Fionna flushed to her hair at that hard question. "I imagined that I didn't need to portray a falsehood before you, mother," she replied. Ingrid chuckled, "because I didn't know the old you, eh?" Draping an arm over the younger woman's shoulder in familiar fashion, the tall blonde murmured, "just between us girls... it's not the words from your mouth that cause the angst, Fionna... Nobody's ever going to forget how this came to be. I'm a warrior. Sentimentality has no place on a battlefield. I made my peace with your husband's actions and their reasons. He did have good reasons, as you've said yourself. I don't have to enjoy the changes."
Fionna frowned at her, and replied, "I thought you just said..." "...that sentimentality has no place on a battlefield," Ingrid interrupted. "I can feel my emotions without giving them free reign." The younger woman shut her mouth. Reaching down, the tall princess took the youth's hand, twining their fingers together. "What's ailing you," she asked? "I told you," Fionna replied. "But you have the power in your hands to finish the barrier," Ingrid replied. Fionna glared at her. "I risk burning the forest to the ground," the Glass Witch replied. Ingrid let out a long sigh and said, "look at me... Fionna. Look. At. Me." The pretty blonde turned to face her, those grey eyes betraying sadness mixed with irritation.
"You're letting this other thing that Patrick wants you to be interfere with what you are," Ingrid advised. "Listen to your instincts. What do they tell you?" Taking a heavy sigh, Fionna replied, "that I can't use half-remembered lessons in chemistry and physics to finish the barrier... I'm... I'm not going to finish it this way." "And," Ingrid demanded? "You're asking me to risk tens of thousands of lives and risk the border itself...," Fionna growled! "I'm asking my stepdaughter to trust herself," Ingrid replied.
Back in the Jungle Kingdom, Billy the Human looked up as the barflies began to chant, 'Milkshake! Milkshake! Milkshake!' He was puzzled, not least because this hardly seemed the kind of bar to serve kiddy drinks. He was puzzled at least until the dog-girl climbed up on the bar and began to dance. The big man's mouth dropped open as the tall woman began to do a sexy can-can dance, showing off those amazing fucking legs and shaking that big, juicy ass. Occasionally, the sexy she would bend over slightly and let the boys peep those mega-knockers. Milkshake indeed! The fellas began hurling money at the pretty girl. The more she shook what her momma gave her, the more the crowd howled, and Billy could see how she'd come to be so popular. His dick was hard as an iron bar in his pants, and his mouth was dry as a bone as that outrageous dance wound down.
Face flushed, the pretty dog-girl climbed down from the bar, gathering up the tips that had been thrown her way before heading for the back room, much to the general unhappiness of the patrons. Billy stared at the door where the mystery girl had gone as hard as any of the others. Shaking himself, the big man turned back to his beer and his problems. Having cooled off, he was now working on his apology tour. He'd gotten nasty a couple of times the last few days. He didn't like the feeling of that, and he wanted to get that square.
The big man sat there a number of hours slowly working his way down through a couple of beers as he strategized how to smooth the ruffled feathers without humbling himself too much. He knew very well that if he did that, the unhappy lesson would never take. As he pondered his way through the maze of baby-mama-drama, the crowd at the bar thinned out. The girl had said she was off shift, and she clearly wasn't coming back.
Somewhere near ten, a burst of perfume brought his mind back from tomorrow. Billy glanced up to see the bartender there. "Hi," she greeted him. Billy glanced up into her lovely eyes and found himself staring, rendered speechless. Drawing a chair, she remarked, "new in town? You must be new, or I'd have heard about that handsome face..." It was the corniest thing he'd ever heard come out of a girl's mouth, and it made him laugh out loud. Usually it was men saying things like that. The girl flushed to her hair, looking like she'd run off. Billy gave her a smile, took her hand and offered, "have a seat..."
There were a few jealous faces watching, but the place was mostly empty, working its way down towards closing time. "I'm Simone," she announced. "Bill," Billy replied, as he shook her hand. With a sly smile, she asked, "did you like my dance?" Billy blushed. The pointed ears sticking out of her hair swivelled this way and that, sifting the sounds from the bar, reminding Billy that he was kinda' crowding the line in a way. It was a little weird to think about that, but it was also very dangerous. Back in the days when he worked for the Banana Guard part time, he'd had to clean up a couple ugly fights when dudes got into it over a girl. Popular is Simone was, he could easily find himself in a fight over her if they stayed in this place. "Hey," he said, "let's split. This doesn't seem like a good place to hang out." Simone was quite willing, and, in short order, the pair were headed down the street towards her place.
The young lady kept an apartment over a ramshackle store–a place that had once belonged to her mother before she took a powder. Sitting at the kitchen table in the run-down, squalid little apartment, the big man couldn't help but wonder how a girl like this ended up in Jungle Kingdom living above a storefront and working as a barkeep. "Job belonged to my mom," Simone admitted. "She landed it after she lost the store..." Billy frowned at that. "Well," said Simone, as she laid out tea for him, "she was a pretty bad business-woman, but that wasn't the only reason. My sister, Lady, kept wandering off into the jungle and getting in over her head. When the Guard has to haul your butt out of danger, they fine you. A lot." "Sister," Billy asked, as he glanced around?
"Oh, I have two sisters," Simone explained, as she sat down beside him. "Liz is my other sister... Her thing's fast, loose living. I guess I'm the boring sister." Billy shivered. Those were the three names he and JJ had been batting around for their daughters. Frowning, curiosity eating him up, the big man asked, "how long have you been living here?" With a shrug, she said, "a few years. It's... well, it's all been kind of a blur... My sisters and I grew up fast... Mom says we have rainicorn-blood. I think she was just happy to get out from under taking care of us as soon as she could."
The pale beauty explained how their mother had begun to disappear more and more as the three sisters got older. Simone had more or less taken up the slack–looking after Liz and Lady, doing her best to keep them out of the endless troubles they got themselves into. It hadn't been easy. Liz had their mother's habits of stealing other people's shit and running with bad peeps down to a T. Simone had been at the local Guard House repeatedly bailing her out–hocking half the shit in their house in the process. When you added in Lady's habits of wandering in the jungles, Simone had wanted to dump the pair herself!
"You seemed a little... well... grossed out earlier," Simone murmured. "I'm not a ho... I... I started doing that dance to earn tips..." When Billy opened his mouth to protest, she cut him off, saying, "that's the honest truth. I'm... I want a quality guy. I've been trying to earn enough money to get myself out of this place. I hate it here. It's too damned hot for a dog, and I feel icky and sweaty all the time. Momma dumped us here, and I just want to leave now."
Leaning forward, the heavy-duty hot-dog murmured, "so... That's my life story." Nipping playfully at his elbow, she said, "wanna' get naked...? You're kinda' hot." With a heavy sigh, Billy sat up straight, stared deep into her beautiful blue-grey eyes, and proclaimed, "I'm also your dad, Simone." You could have pushed her over with a feather. She stared at him. Nodding, he said, "my mother's name is Simone. She's your height and build. Big knobs and butt, and platinum blonde hair. You got half of what you are from me. And her."
It was five in the morning, when the Ice Prince strode into the Princess's Royal Salon. He'd spent the night with Simone II as he now called her, prizing out bits of information about who she was and where she was really from. The more he talked to her, the more he became convinced that his guess was true. Somehow JJ was alive. He smelled a rat. He'd been barred from going to the funeral. His wife and kids were buried, and Kim Kil Wan had slapped a restraining order on him to keep him from seeing them one last time. In the moment, it was just the usual dickish maneuver from the meanest of the pups. Now Billy saw something else. Kim had been covering for the fact that the coffin was empty. JJ wasn't in it because, somehow, she'd survived.
His dad had seen the autopsy reports, and he'd accepted them as true. Billy's ice had ruptured some pretty major blood vessels in JJ's lung. She'd drowned in her own blood. Billy had given her first-aid, but he hadn't been able to get a heart beat. Now he had new ideas as to why.
The big man found the princesses head-down and immersed in the job of figuring out what was going on down in the bunker. Newly added to the mix was his brother, Boniface. Abieuwa was on the hot-seat, and gathered in front of her were reams of documents that looked like blueprints. Schematics for the bunker, Billy thought. She'd finally come around to doing the right thing. Not a moment too soon, thought the young prince. Striding into the gathering, Billy announced, "I know what happened inside the bunker, and I know who did this..." Five beautiful faces whipped around to face him.
Billy held them off a moment, while he sent for two more key players. Simone was close friends with Lady. There was a possibility that she'd heard something... odd in the last few years that would have made her suspicious. Much like Simon, Simone had a near-photographic memory for absurd little details. Cherry, as Boss of Bosses, might well be aware that there was a rogue player running around. He didn't want to think that she'd helped cover up JJ's disappearance, but there was a possibility she knew indirectly that the Rogue Pup was alive.
Cherry was a little disheveled, looking as though she'd been pulling another all-nighter. Simone was, much like her namesake, fresh and put-together, looking as though she had the world just where she wanted it. "Need you all to have a seat," Billy announced, "because this is going to get heavy fast." Simone immediately steered herself to a chair. Cherry was a beat late, and she was still in the process of applying ass to seat when Billy announced, "Jake Junior caused the criticality incident in the vault."
Cherry's legs went to rubber, and she sat down in a rush. Simone's mouth came open, while Abieuwa and Blargetha just stared at him in puzzlement. Bonnie and Sarah both goggled at him as if they hadn't heard that right. Bon opened the conversation in his usual calm, collected tone with a dispassionate, "explain..."
It took a moment. Billy found himself gathering his thoughts as he tried to formulate an explanation for the hunch that was burning in his mind now. The big man began far off the mark, explaining that it was unlikely that, even with the amount of material stored in the vault and the dubious methods of containing the radiation used now that they should be having a criticality incident. "Abieuwa's people have been having trouble keeping their purification machinery running," he reminded them. "The methods of storing the fuel pellets have been crude, but the material itself has been much less potent than it was in the distant past. The further up you go in the bunker, the less pure the nuclear fuel becomes. It doesn't make sense that we should have a criticality incident now, when her fuel isn't nearly as good as it once was."
Nodding, Bon agreed, "if the fuel is less potent, but the interval between storage units is maintained as is shown in the schematics, the risk of a criticality incident goes down. There has to be some outside force that brought one or more storage vessels into contact to create a critical mass. I think you're correct, William. Someone or something would have had to enter the bunker and bring one or more fuel containers together. It's likely not enough to go prompt-critical, but it's enough to raise the radiation flux in the bunker and possibly trigger a greater excursion..."
Her lovely face constricted in a frown, Bonnie interrupted, "and you think Junior's behind this?" Her voice said it. She thought he'd lost his mind. Junior had been literally dead for years. "I met my daughter, Bonnie," Billy rumbled. Shaking his head, he said, "her momma named her Simone–after her grandmother on her dad's side. Pale hair, grey eyes, big knockers, and a big butt." Simone flushed to her hair at that assessment of her assets by her own son. "How," howled Bonnie? "How's that possible? She's not a candy-person!" The decorspinator serum couldn't have worked on her. "But she is a quarter alien, Bonnie," rumbled Cherry. "Her father took a dose of poison strong enough to kill fifty normal dogs. And survived it."
Abeiuwa moved the conversation to where it really needed to go. "You say she caused this," growled the Jungle Princess. "Explain." "She's been in your bunker," said Billy. "My daughter said that her mom abandoned her and her sisters here. She abandoned my kids here because she's an awful mom. They were here by themselves through the Lich War. They were here through the war with Wildberry and the Dipped. And then, suddenly, their mom pops up again. Just weeks ago."
"She was here for a score," Cherry surmised. Billy nodded. Momentarily, Sarah and Simone were nodding too. It fit. It fit with everything they knew, collectively, about Jake Junior. The score was everything. "She managed to trick her dad into breaking into my most impregnable vault," Bonnie sighed. "If anybody could get into that bunker, it would be Junior." "But why," demanded Abeiuwa? "What would she gain? She's no scientist. She's a common thief." "But she maybe knew my 'benefactors'," Blargetha sighed. When the others turned to face her, the evil princess explained, "they wanted death-rockets, Bonnibel. They wanted me to build death-rockets. As you well know, such a machine is useless without..." "Something to put on the tip," growled Simone. "She stole them enriched uranium to use in making a bomb." "And probably knocked something over down there," Billy concluded. "She's not careful, Abeiuwa. She's never been careful. Life's a big joke and a big game to her."
Moving on, Bonnie reminded him, "you said you had an answer for the problem." "Junior," Billy replied. "She's been in the bunker. She knows where she knocked over whatever pile of fuel pellets that's gone critical..." "I'll call out the guard to hunt her," shouted Abieuwa! "I've got a better idea," said Cherry, as she drew her phone. As the others watched in worry and growing disbelief, the Boss of Bosses put a hit out on Billy's daughter. Only Billy was in anyway unmoved when she finished. Without a word, he turned to go, saying, "I'll be back tonight. Have Olesia and Fionna here waiting on me."
So, who was expecting THAT plot twist?