Chapter 18:

Tom came stepping out of the fire in the altogether–a habit that did absolutely nothing to endear him to Pedersen, who was getting a little tired of the elemental exposing himself to Pedersen's wife. Lina, naturally, thought it was a hoot. She'd joked about the elemental's little-brother, suggesting that it was not quite as impressive as Tom thought it to be. It made little sense at all to Olesia Okonski. Lina was a water-bag. Oh, her body was stuffed with wires and gadgets, and half of her was artificial, but there seemed little point to Olesia in Tom's efforts to show off to someone he couldn't bed. Pretty Billy had suggested that maybe Tom's efforts were directed at her, but that made even less sense. She was a member of the Royal Clan of the Fire Kingdom, and she wasn't interested in a common thief.

"She's not here," Olesia announced, as the thief scanned the room. Tom's face flared up in embarrassment. Nodding at the box of sand on the table, the Royal declared, "get you dressed. Billy will be back soon. He'll want to know what you saw." Drawing on the sand there, the thief fashioned himself a natty suit. It made Olesia giggle, considering that Princess Raghnild had needed to buy Tomas out of a very bad situation with his gambling debts. Striding across the room, she reached out to the street-lamps outside, figuratively watching as pretty Billy came up the street with Pedersen. Likely Lina was out in the woods with her strange conveyance, waiting on them. Billy had been planning to move on today.

The big man had a look of worry on his face, and she found herself wondering about that. Was it something they'd found, or was it those women. It was mad on its face that he would be sharing his bed with three. It was almost as mad as his father, who was romancing fourteen. She couldn't help laughing at the whole situation, and she'd more than once called him a fool. Stepping back from the door, she waited as Billy unlocked it. Moments after it opened, Pedersen squeezed through, and Billy came after.

The look on Billy's face said it all. He was in a foul mood. Tom got right to the point, because Billy wasn't really a fan of his. "There's an unusual quantity of gold and gems there," he said. Billy frowned at him. "I was inside," Tom said. "While you were watching from that roof, I went in." Which Billy had asked him not to do. Billy found himself a little paranoid these days. Somebody, somehow, had known he was coming to the Muscle Kingdom, and they'd decided to do him in. He wasn't taking chances now. It was no secret at all that Finn was allied with the Flame King. More than allied, they were married, with two children. Any enemy worth their salt had to figure that Phoebe would come in on Finn's side when he asked it. Billy had no way of knowing how many people knew about elementals being able to use fires to spy, and he was hesitant to risk that.

He's done it, thought Billy. He's already done it, so use it. "Alright," said the young soldier. "What did you see?" "There's stockpiles of wealth," said Tom. "It's a vault of some kind, but the men guarding it aren't normal bank guards or even soldiers..." "Gangsters," he asked? "Possibly," Tom agreed. "They're definitely rough men. No uniforms. Most of the people aren't purple-folk." "Any Emerald Folk," Pedersen asked? "No," said Tom. Billy grabbed at his hair in frustration. This didn't make sense, and this was why Billy had been considering back-tracking. It felt a lot like the trail had gone cold here.

Princess Nieve had been taken by wagon down to the train-station. She'd been packed onto a train, which had headed east and north, bypassing the Bee Kingdom. They'd followed the train's journey, stop-by-stop, until it led them here. This town, in the empty nowhere north of Purple Kingdom, had been the final stop–the literal end of the line. The train had gotten broken up here, with the engine heading west again with a new train.

Billy had spent hours in the railyard with Pedersen, hunting through the cars. Lina had spent a while pouring through the records, using her peculiar powers with machines and electronics. Tom and Olesia had mostly cooled their heels in this little flat. After days of nothing, Pedersen had grown suspicious of the lack of clues, and he'd gone down to the morgue and graveyard, hunting through records and looking for fresh graves that might conceal the body of a Princess. It was an ugly idea, but Tom had supported him and even gone down to help. Still, they'd turned up nothing. No secret graves. No evidence of a murder. Nothing. Nieve had simply disappeared.

"There was a room inside, Bill," Tom offered. "Not exactly opulent, but better fitted than the others." "A bedroom," Billy asked? Tom nodded. "Almost a suite," he said. "Inner bedroom. Outer room with tables and chairs." "For greeting people," Billy rumbled. His mind was working on the problem. "She was here," he rumbled. "Where'd she go?" Pedersen turned to their irritating spy and asked, "what else was there? Can you sketch the interior? How much did you see?" Olesia had said that it wasn't very easy for her to look around when she was one with a fire. Her powers and skills were weak compared to Phoebe's, suggesting Tom's were weaker still.

Moving to the table, Tom motioned for somebody to bring him the nub of heavy graphite he typically used for writing. Careful of burning the parchment on the table, he sketched as much as he'd been able to see. Billy suspected that he'd done a lot more than simply 'look through the fire'. As the elemental sketched out room after room, Billy began to suspect he'd gone out through one of the big fires–maybe in the kitchen or something–and prowled around for a while. Half of Billy wanted to pound him into nothing–or freeze him solid. The other half wanted to kiss the elemental's toes because he may well have just gotten them back into the game.

He was being tentative. He knew he was being tentative. He hadn't been able to go full balls-out since he'd gotten cured of Wildberry's toxins. His mind kept going back to his wives and babies. You need to cure yourself of that too, Bill, he thought, because he could just as easily lose his life over his fears as by being reckless. A part of him wondered if his dad felt this way. "There's space enough in here for a wagon," Bill rumbled. "They could literally have rolled a wagon through the gate, put her inside with the door shut, and rolled the wagon back out again with nobody the wiser." Pedersen nodded in agreement.

Face curled in a frown, the Froyo-person asked the obvious, "but where did they take her? They clearly want her alive, or they would have just done her before this." Sitting down, Billy spent a long while staring into space. This was all starting to trouble him. He'd originally thought that she'd been kidnaped for the cash, but no more demands had come–not even instructions for delivering the ransom. Then, when they'd arrived here, and she'd seemingly disappeared, he'd found himself thinking maybe one of her relatives hired out a hit on her, covering his or her tracks with a ransom demand.

"She's not a prisoner," he rumbled. Every face there snapped over to his. "Not completely," Billy rumbled. "She's not being held in a cell. She's got space to entertain..." Voice betraying incredulity, Pedersen burbled, "you're thinking maybe she's in on it...?" "Maybe," Billy said. "This whole thing never seemed plausible to me. She went out completely without guards. To a public health-club. Why?" It didn't make sense for a princess to make herself so vulnerable these days with so much ugliness going on. "To be spirited away," Olesia murmured. "Perhaps to meet an illicit lover." Billy's face snapped up to hers.

The elemental flushed under that scrutiny. Plump and round of face, she'd admitted she was no looker. She had Royal Lineage–she had the Okonski knockers to prove it–but Billy was already a Prince with far prettier ladies. Shaking his head, Pedersen said, "maybe, Olesia. Still, we're buggered right now. We don't have a trail. We don't have anything to go on. This investigation's stuck." With a sigh, Billy said, "I better phone this in..." Bonnie was going to chew him out for his lack of progress.

As Billy steeled himself for the unhappy reaction to his report, another missing Princess was dealing with the unpleasant answer to her fervent wishes for rescue. The Queen of Ooo was back. At least that was how Blargetha thought of her. She had the imperious demeanor–and the ugly, sneering attitude that suggested she'd knife you if you crossed her. She came striding into the slime-woman's cell, looking natty in a dress in golden silk.

The sight instantly made Blargetha prickly. She'd had her own clothes in her cell. She'd had all her finery–the silk dresses and fancy underthings. Finn was a jerk, but he treated his Royal Guests very well–far better than Blargetha would have treated him had their roles been reversed. Just now, the plush princess was wearing a coarse woolen dress that chaffed at her skin and made her cross. She'd been in this room for days, with only the cot in the corner for comfort. That was another ugly part of her new existence, suggesting she really had gone from the pan to the oven.

In her old cell, she'd had a decent bed–queen-sized. She'd eaten good food. She'd had access to books. She'd even had health-care, if you enjoyed Drew Princess's endless poking and prodding. Looking back, the only thing she'd really longed for was freedom, and the only threat she'd lived under was that of her sister getting hands on her and turning the tables. He wouldn't have let it happen, Blargetha, she thought. Not Finn Mertens. He wouldn't have let Hurletta just murder you. Even the Lich didn't get that. Face it. You didn't trade the frying pan for the fire, you traded the guest-room.

"And how are we doing," asked the evil wax-person? Heels click-clacking on the floor, she paced around Blargetha's work-table. The plump woman had been laboring at this for days. Really, she'd figured out fairly quickly that these books weren't what their owner thought they were. She'd just been stalling as she tried to figure out if she could survive telling the truth. Now, she was out of time.

"These aren't design schematics," Blargetha rumbled. "These are maintenance manuals." Holding up one of the Queen's prize books, Blargetha told her, "if I had a death-rocket, I could use this to keep it running, but it doesn't get into the technical details of the parts." The Queen frowned at her. "Kill me or not," Blargetha growled, "I can't use this. I can't." She ticked off the problems that needed solving on her fingers. "I need a fuel," said she. "I need not just the shape of the parts, I need the metallurgy they used. I had to create the materials for my tanks from scratch, but you saw how well that went. If I tried to use muck from the slime-kingdom to make a rocket, it would just burn up."

The nasty little woman stopped in her endless pacing, and Blargetha feared she might well have killed herself. Still, it was better to just get it over with rather than fret herself to death. She couldn't work in these conditions. She'd just be delaying the inevitable. Slapping her hand on the table, the Queen made Blargetha jump. "Ok," she said. "What do you need?" Doing her best to still the terrified tremor in her voice, the slime-princess replied, "I need books on metallurgy. You'd have to steal them maybe from the Grid-Face People... Or possibly the turtles..." "You can't come up with the metal on your own," demanded the Queen? Jaw jutting–she couldn't help peacocking–Blargetha replied, "I can come up with anything I damned well please, madam. I'm a genius. Just ask me. The question is: do you have time for me to do the experiments I'd need to figure it out?" The Queen flushed, telling Blargetha she'd scored a hit.

They stared at each other for a long few minutes, with Blargetha doing her best to still the beating of her newly-developed heart. Her new body was strange in any number of ways, and there were moments like these where these new bits and bobbles Maja had given her brought enhanced terror. She didn't like to hear her heart race like this. "Ok," said the Queen. "I'll see what I can pull together. Keep working with what you've got for now." "I can do some rough schematics," Blargetha allowed. "I think I understand some of the principles from what these contained. I need some deets, though. If you want a rocket that will work the first time, I need details." "You'll have them," growled the wax-person, as she turned and stalked out. Blargetha let out a breath when she'd gone.

Chelsea was still muttering swear words when she walked into her office. The men waiting there shuddered at the sight. She'd had one man killed last week. You never knew when it was coming. She'd be upset about something, and an order would go out to waste somebody. That was the hell of it all. You might think you'd gotten off for something you'd screwed up, but you'd get wasted days or weeks after the fact, as if she was just waiting for a good time to do you in. Fedir Brutko had come to fear her good moods as much as the bad because she was apt to pretend to kindness and lure you closer when she was happy. Unfortunately, the closer you got to her, the nearer you got to death.

"There's someone snooping around the waystation," announced Mr. Petrov, the lead guard. He was lead because he'd managed to hang on through the twists and turns of his master's life. He'd survived all of the double-crosses and dirty deeds, where other men had managed to get dead. Key to his survival was that he always farmed out his work. He was forever calculating which of her hapless henchmen was most in favor at the moment. He would make certain that person was selected for a job when it might likely lead to failure. When the fuckup invariably came, he would be right there to stick in the knife. Fedir had been doing his best to forestall a rise up the ranks. He was still looking for an exit. Finding himself in this office was an unpleasant development.

"Resting-bitch-face is gone," muttered Chelsea. It was half of a question. Fedir himself had bundled the impudent bitch from Muscle Kingdom into the wagon that was taking her east. "She's in Laurel Kingdom," Hogan replied. Fedir knew him as the man who handled transportation. Fedir also knew him as a thief. He'd been skimming–sneaking coin to make an escape. Fedir knew that because he'd been skimming from the skimmer. Hogan wasn't the only man who wanted to escape.

Hogan said, "rumor in the town is that there's a tall, blonde man. Some say he might be human..." Chelsea's face snapped up. Peihong had been certain Finn the Human was in the far east, chasing her. "It's Billy the Human," rumbled Mr. Petrov. He'd been in Muscle Kingdom cleaning up the mess when the four dogs who'd been paid to do the boy-hero got themselves wasted in the train station. "He's this close," demanded the wax-woman? "He's hit a dead end," Hogan replied. "There's no trace of her." There was one trace.

The bag was over Hogan's head before he even realized it. Fedir had seen the two men come in, and he'd kept one eye on them, covering the move with a cough and a reach for the cough-drops he'd been taking for the last week. Hogan struggled, but he might as well have just gone with it. They were tightening the bag's drawstring almost before the bag came to a stop. As the hapless gangster breathed his last into that tight, leather bag, suffocating, Mr. Petrov asked, "what do you want to do? I can send Fedir down to close out the station... before the enemy digs too deep..."

Chelsea was pacing. She was thinking. Fedir swallowed hard. This could be his chance to escape. "We have a chance," she said. Mr. Petrov gave her an uneasy frown. A chance at what? "Billy the Human's not going to give up," said the wax-woman. "He's like daddy. He's not going to turn around until he's got a body." She was talking about murdering a princess. That was a little beyond the pale, and all present grew a little nervous. "We can get rid of him," said Chelsea. "We can feed him information we want and lead him into a trap. We can kill Finn the Human's kid."

Mr. Petrov went very pale. That was actually worse. Rumors were circulating about what the King of Ooo had promised to do to anybody who so much as mussed the hair of his precious family. Nevertheless, Petrov offered, "Fedir's familiar with the area. We can have him make the drop." "Not a henchman," growled Chelsea! "I need this done personally. Take Fedir and a couple of others. Maybe Boyd and Riley. They've got the Why-Wolf curse. They can be muscle." Fedir said not a word, though Mr. Petrov looked like he'd shit himself. This was his chance to fail. This was his chance to end up on her shit-list. "Right, boss," he muttered. Motioning for the two murderers to pick up Hogan's corpse, he turned and headed out.

Back in the former Berry Kingdom, Lollipop sat watching her partner as Ingrid talked up their husband's offer. The former model would have had to admit that Ingrid gave a good speech. She was amazingly charismatic and shockingly effective at making good arguments. She had the crowd of Berry-folk eating out of her hand without offering much of anything substantial. Finn would have been well-pleased.

On her side, Lollipop was still a little leery of their 'hosts'. After the first set tried to feed them the bodies of the dead, she had trust issues. Now she always made sure Ingrid ate first. So far, there had been no shenanigans, but the model-turned-fighter kept a knife at hand at all times. This was the fourth group Plantain had introduced them to, so far, and conditions here were much the same as before. The Berry-folk were living hard. Starvation was rampant, the dipped having killed much of the wild game in-country.

"When could we expect supply of food," asked the leader of the band hosting them? "We have food waiting on the border," Ingrid replied. "We'd need you to move there..." The gathered councilors burst into complaints. They would be giving up what little territory they had! The Warrior Princess listened calmly to the complaints for several minutes. Then, with a dazzling smile, she said, "there's time to reclaim the land... later. Let's focus on getting your people to safety." When a couple of young hot-heads would have argued, Ingrid tutted, "your people's lives need to be first. Let's get them in a place that can be defended... a place where they can be fed."

It was the same argument she'd been making to all of these little groups. It was only a little dishonest. She intended to drop these folk in Plantain's lap for him to defend. Finn wasn't providing soldiers. He was providing food and medical supplies. He didn't want the Berries armed, but he was willing to accept it as long as their aggressive energies were channeled. Plantain was turning some of the young hotheads into soldiers and using them to police his burgeoning realm. The old Berry Kingdom was a shambles, but there was a hope of reclaiming it.

Lollipop sighed her relief when the gathered elders finally agreed. They'd be headed back to the border now. Even beyond getting out of these creepy woods, she had reasons to be away. She had work to get done, and she wanted to see her kids. As the meeting broke up, the pretty model hung out, waiting on Ingrid. Unfortunately, two of the Berries decided to hang out to harangue the beautiful warrior over one last detail.

"There's another force," said the older of the pair. "They're working out of the dead land..." Lollipop shivered. The dead lands were the ugly, grey blight the Dipped created around Wildberry's capitol. They had scoured the land clean of even microbes. The former capitol was more devoid of life than a flippin' desert! An uneasy Ingrid nonetheless asked the two men to tell her more. Lollipop groaned. She could already see where this was going! Indeed, Ingrid wasted little time going straight there. Rising from her place, she went immediately to Plantain.

"What do you know about strangers in the dead-land," she asked? "Rumor," rumbled the giant egg-plant. "There's rumors that soldiers came down through the burn and camped in the old capitol. I gave it little credence. There's nothing to eat there, and I could hardly see how they would be feeding themselves." Unless they had help.

Lollipop shivered at the look in Ingrid's eyes. They'd never figured out who killed their bodyguards. Some of the men had been shot with dart-guns. Wildberry's soldiers–the men armed with such weapons–were mostly dead. They'd died either in the run-up to the final battle with the Dipped or in the ugly battle on the last day. This mystery army could well be the men who'd killed their bodyguards. The model's eyes pleaded with the soldier. She didn't want to go to the dead-land. She wanted to get home for a little while. "Lend me a small company," Ingrid announced. "Take these back with you." Lollipop sighed. She'd be going too. They had to stick together in this. Even if she really wanted to punch ghost-face for this.

Blargetha dodges death, Ingrid and Lollipop mend fences with the bad berries, and Billy... hesitates. Time to get back on the horse, big boy.