fleets: HI EVERYONE LONG TIME NO SEE! (crickets chirp) ah... I guess people left after I didn't update for over a year...
oh well. Anyway, for anyone who is left, I am officially back from the hiatus because Rend is OVER. Hurrah! Since it has been such a long time, I would highly recommend you start from the beginning again, but at the same time I know none of us really has a lot of time to spare in this fast paced world. SO do whatever you like, lovely readers!
Why do I always update in the dead of night? T_T
Welcome back :)
Chapter 12: Introduction to Magi-tech
Dark knew that Talon Three had lots of tricks to remain hidden, but he hadn't really appreciated just how many tricks they had. After Hawk had gone over the rough plans on what they were going to do, it had been determined that their first order of business was to get the hell out of the United States so they would be less at risk for getting caught. Dark didn't really know how they were going to smuggle themselves past immigration, especially with the government on the alert to watch for them, but somehow…
It had been a combination of subtle makeup (Dark had actually watched Kestrel transform from Asian to dark-haired Caucasian with deceptively simple makeup), impressively believable fake passports, and perhaps most impressive of all, a carefully placed correspondent at immigration itself who let them through without any questions besides a harmless "how was your flight?" It had been done so smoothly that Dark hadn't really noticed they were risking a lot in their attempt to leave the country. Bates, however, didn't seem all that surprised.
"Organization. Discipline. Charisma. The networking and capital to acquire coadjutors where you need them. That's what you need to dictate the sublunary world the way you desiderate."Dark heard Bates murmur in his mind.
"Acquire the what? Bates man, I understood barely half of that," Dark muttered, trying not to make it obvious that he was speaking to a creature invisible to everyone but him.
The little sentry eye hovered just behind Dark, and he could hear its deep 'dark lord' voice by his head. "Coadjutors. Accomplices. Bribed idiots. Lord Vaati would commend this conception."
"Ohhhh bribed idiots. Talking to you, I can imagine all the idiots Vaati likes to keep by his side."
"How incredibly rude, brat."
The only information that was given to Dark by the two former Talon men were that they were going to the famous university city of Cambridge in England. They had a few useful connections there if they ever needed assistance, and some powerful ones at that. They explained to dark that the connections were only to be used in an absolute emergency, as there was more risk for them the more people were involved. Apparently they also had a safe refuge apartment within the idyllic city, and as the taxi maneuvered them through the roads to their destination, Dark took in his first view of the skies in Europe. They weren't nearly as rain inflicted as foreigners tended to fuss about, and he figured he could have appreciated the quaint streets of proud gothic architecture if he weren't here for less-than-legal reasons. He peered at the narrow streets, reasonable only for bicycles and pedestrians, that wound their way through the buildings like wormholes tunneling through an apple: this place had ample places for a runaway to slip away if there ever was a need for that…
Dark yawned. He was tired. Travelling always made him tired, and this time they had boarded the plane dead in the night. They finally pulled up in a district a few miles away from the university where many cyclists zipped through the streets. Dark guessed they were going to do a bit of walking to reach the actual apartment, though, as an extra precaution – there was no need for the taxi driver to know where the three of them were actually going. Ugh, walking. Dark hoped he'd have time to lie down and rest a little once they reached the safe house.
"Don't yawn on us now, Darkie."
Kestrel's voice made the teenager snap his half-lidded eyes open. "Hm?" he murmured tiredly.
"You're with us now, and when you're with us you'll be following our policies. And that means we work right away. Word of advice," Kestrel, flicked his sunglasses with his thumb, "coffee's your best friend. There'll be lots of it at the apartment."
Dark's face fell, and then he sighed dejectedly. "Thanks…"
XXXXXXXXXXXX
"We're going to assume they're not going to follow us inside, then," Vaati stated, leading the way with a tiny magical flame that lighted the dark abyss of the forgotten temple. As they made their way along the narrow passageway that led them along a straight path, the sorcerer took the time to light each torch they passed so that they would be able to follow the exit faster, should an emergency turn up.
Dugal seemed calm and collected, but his hands twitching constantly to his pistol betrayed his agitation. "We'll work on that assumption until we're proven wrong, Mr. Engst."
"Oh ho, the flawless Talon leader is actually improvising now? This is going to be perfect isn't it," Vaati's sneering face was lit up by the fire he held just in front of his chin.
"They had a few tricks I hadn't accounted for."
Vaati stopped in his tracks as the walls that had hugged them up until now parted. The light no longer bounced off the walls, because they had stepped into a room of sorts. The sorcerer took a cautious step forward, wary of traps. "You know, if those hounds do manage to follow us here then they're going to force us in a difficult spot. I won't be able to use my best abilities without risking a cave-in, and if we get surrounded by lots of those things then I'm not sure how long I can keep them at bay. They're at an advantage in the dark."
The sorcerer took a deep breath, and then took his chances. He focused on the small flame that flickered at the center of his palms until there were three large flames that burst outward, lighting up the entire room. Two of them grazed a few more torches in the room, making it easier to see what they were dealing with.
And what they were dealing with was a slumbering temple, effectively dead after years and years of being forgotten.
Vaati hadn't actually been to a temple had turned dormant. He knew about the skittish dungeon poes that were caretakers of pretty much every dungeon in existence: they lit the torches that had gone out and they stocked the pots with whatever objects that had been left lying around, from stray arrows to money. The dungeon poes had long since abandoned this temple, and now all that was left was a lifeless husk of what the dungeon had been back in the day.
Dust covered pots lined the old stone walls, decorated with cracked murals of armored creatures that appeared not unlike the Darknuts Vaati was acquainted with, back in the day. The only door in the room was blocked by huge chunks of debris that was impossible to move: a cave-in had blocked the room on the other side. A cracked pot had fallen on top of a floor switch, but the mechanism appeared to be broken as rust-tipped spikes poked only half-way above the floor just in front of it. The wind mage walked towards the trap and poked it with his foot, causing the pot to crumble. The switch was released, and there was a labored creaking as some of the spikes appeared stuck where they were.
"This place is dead, Dugal. Why did you need my help for dealing with these rusted traps?" Vaati called over his shoulder. He quickly found, however, that Dugal had already made his way over to a section of the floor that had crumbled away to the depths below. A steel cable that had been installed from a recent, previous visit was drilled secured to the side of the wall and provided a means down. Dugal flicked a small flashlight on and wordlessly dropped down, but only after giving Vaati a quick nod to follow him.
Vaati frowned, then shrugged, and then peered over the edge. There wasn't anything to worry about a dormant temple, right? And besides, if any traps were still active then that fool Dugal would take the damage for him, going on ahead like that. The sorcerer gently floated down after Dugal who stood waiting for him below, illuminated by the tiny dot of his flashlight.
"It's not as dead as you might think, Mr. Engst," Dugal started to explain as soon as Vaati caught up, his voice echoing eerily through the temple. "You'll see soon enough. It was just asleep until – "
"Until someone stupidly meddled here. Got it."
The Talon leader's face flickered with dangerous irritation. "Not many people are as disrespectful to me as you for a reason, by the way."
"I'm older than anyone on this planet, brat, so I'm allowed to be as disrespectful as I want," Vaati snapped.
Dugal frowned, tried to wrap the teenager's (?) words around his head for a few seconds, and then decided it wasn't even worth arguing. It would make him feel dumber for wasting his time arguing seriously about his age against a kid who appeared years younger than him… Instead, he waved his flashlight around the room they were in. "This is where I need your assistance," the round opening of the light swept across a small pillar about five feet high situated in the middle of the room. There was a glass crystal, fogged black in some spots because some dust had burned there recently. Vaati's eyebrows arched slightly in familiarity: the thing reminded him of one of those fire-spewing pillars that were often found in dungeons across Hyrule. Dugal continued, walking over some cracked tiles and towards a switch on the floor. The flashlight waved towards the door on the other side of the room, past the suspicious pillar. "I thought this switch might open that door on the other side, but it turned out to have quite a different effect. I need you to find a way through that door for me."
The sorcerer walked around the room with mild curiosity and came to the conclusion that the only things of interest in the room were the door, the pillar, and the switch. "What did the switch do?" he asked, though he had an idea. Unless dungeon architecture had changed drastically since the time he'd reigned to the last age they'd been built, he knew that while dungeons could be complicated, the layout of individual rooms usually weren't: i.e. everything you saw was what you needed to solve the 'puzzle' in the room.
"Just a case of fireballs that chase you around the room…" Dugal absentmindedly brushed some dust off his suit, as though he didn't want to be reminded of his previous trip here.
"Okay, great. Press the switch." Vaati smiled to himself, enjoying the discomfort of the former Talon leader.
Dugal placed his foot hesitantly on the floor switch. He stopped just before it clicked into the floor. "Are you going to tell me what you plan to do?"
"Oh I don't know," Vaati was positively grinning now, much to the other man's annoyance, "I thought I'd improvise," he stressed the last word, drawing it out accusingly.
Dugal gave a short sigh and rolled his eyes behind his glasses. "I understand you're annoyed…" he trailed off. Then, with a tight-lipped frown he stepped down onto the pressure plate.
The room lit up with a flash of fire bursting from the pillar in the middle of the room. Small flares circled with increasing speed around the glowing crystal until it met in the center to form a floating fireball. Dugal had backed away to the corner of the room, not too eager to be the one who would be chased after by the fireball, while Vaati watched it lazily. The fire floated in place just above the pillar for a few seconds, and then it charged towards the Vaati.
The sorcerer raised a palm full of concentrated wind energy and casually shot it towards the flame and pillar. It exploded towards it with incredible force, snuffing out the light before it shattered the crystal on top of the pillar. The room went completely dark except for Dugal's lonely flashlight that zipped around on alert. There were a few uncertain seconds where nothing happened, and then there was a small chime that reverberated throughout the room. At the same time, the torches along the walls lit up automatically and the door groaned open.
Vaati bit his lip, holding back his wave of snickers at seeing Dugal's reaction towards everything magical. The man had done an admirable job to keep his composure, but his knuckles were tense around the small black flashlight and his gaze was still stuck on the broken pillar. "Feel free to stay behind, Dugal. I can probably navigate the dungeon faster if I go alone." His red eyes narrowed slyly. "And we can raise my share to eighty-five percent while we're at it."
Dugal snapped back to his collected demeanor and rudely brushed past Vaati. "If you would be so kind as to warn me when you do… that…" he waved his hands towards Vaati's palms, "next time. And absolutely not. We agreed to fifty-five and fourty-five."
The sorcerer scrunched his nose, and then hurried after the snippety Armani suit full of insufferable human. "What? Wasn't the deal sixty-five and thirty-five?"
Dugal barely glanced back, but Vaati could just imagine the grin in the other man's voice. "Hm? Oh, didn't you keep proof of documentation that stated our agreed contract?"
"Uh… what?"
"You even signed it and everything. We can discuss it when we're done with this whole thing, Mr. Engst," Dugal continued smoothly.
Vaati threw his arms up in the air. "I never signed anything so – "
"Exactly," the former Talon leader interrupted him sharply, completely changing the turn of the conversation and whirling around. "So it's pretty childish, don't you think, to be caught up in the numbers of who gets what?"
Vaati blanched. His grin had completely vanished and was trying to decide what expression to make. When the other man ended the conversation with a terse, disapproving frown, Vaati's grin decided to stick with a confused, embarrassed squiggle. He didn't really feel confident when it came to winning against things with legal nitpicky rules. He was much used to blowing things up. So of course he'd needed signatures right? Argh… he messed up this time and…
Vaati's squiggle turned into a frown. Wait a second…
Dugal had been just as caught up with numbers as he was, so that meant that the bastard had simply said that to turn the tide of the conversation against him.
Just because Vaati had made fun of him a little.
Vaati boiled up at the thought that Dugal had managed to shatter his momentum like that, just by distracting him with an unrelated topic and acting like it had actually meant something. He'd been completely tricked into thinking he'd messed up, and that angered him the most.
Vaati's gaze hardened at the silhouette of the man who he was sure was laughing quietly to himself now.
And that's when he decided…
Armani looked better in flames.
XXXXXXXXXXXX
Kestrel hadn't been kidding when he'd said they'd get to work right away. Even though they were all exhausted from travelling, Kestrel had seemed fine working, even with having only five hours of sleep on the plane and working for several hours straight without resting. The dining table had been taken over with all of his things, and had effectively become "Kestrel's desk." He had his computer, some black box device connected to it, a few weird gadgets, two cans of Red Bull, a cup of coffee, four water bottles, and packets of trail mix and potato chips strewn around all over the table.
Dark wasn't really sure when the dining table had turned into some kind of junk-apocalypse, but that was what he arrived to when he was woken up by the voices of the Talon men the next morning. He stirred from the couch, batted away Bates who had tumbled off the pillow and was now fluttering irritably around his face, and tried to catch the conversation that was going on. Kestrel was tapping his fingers on his mouse with a frustrated rat-tat-tat as he spoke to Hawk.
"I can't do it. I'm stuck! There're bits and pieces I can gather from all the messages related to the government but I can't prove anything, you know what I'm saying? It's like when you get a multiple choice question and they ask you how apples and oranges are related, and you know the answer is 'fruit,' but the only answer you can circle is 'vegetable.' And you just want to write the answer yourself but instead of a pencil, all you have is an eraser? Do you get what I'm saying?"
"Mmm kind of," Hawk replied, scratching his head. "So what do you think the answer is that you just can't get at?"
Kestrel's sunglasses bobbled as his nose twitched. "There's a point person who's being included in all of the information streams, but it's a hidden correspondent. Look here," he pointed at the mess of codes on the screen for one of the cables he had been looking at. As Dark approached groggily, he could see a few names on there in the decoded encryption Kestrel was pointing at that he figured were the people the message was addressed to. "See that?" Kestrel moved his fingers to a jumble of Egyptian hieroglyphics that were randomly dancing in the middle of the code. "I've never seen anything like it, okay? Maple-"
"- The computer," Hawk interrupted with a roll of his eyes, turning to Dark briefly when the teen had joined them.
"- registers that there's supposed to be information there, but it's a garbled mess," Kestrel continued onwards, disregarding the interruption. "All I get are symbols that don't mean anything, and any time I try to get at it," he typed a few commands into the computer, "it turns into something else," he finished with a lopsided frown as the symbols transformed into happy faces and flowers.
Dark leaned forward and couldn't help but laugh a little. "They seem to be having fun," he grinned, watching the happy faces rolling in place between the letters, "I didn't know the government hired people like that."
"We don't even know if he's with the government," Hawk muttered, "we don't know anything about him, except that he's included in every single one of the correspondents in the government. Even the highly confidential ones."
At this point, Bates flew close to the monitor so that his pupils were almost passing through the screen. "Well if that isn't an integrated spell block, quite carefully crafted I'd say."
"What's that, Bates?" Dark watched the little sentry eye dart around the screen. The other two lifted their heads at the mention of Bates.
The sentry eye swirled up to Dark's level. "A spell block, imbecile. Why, can't you see it?"
"No."
"None of you can see it?"
Dark glanced briefly at Hawk and Kestrel who seemed to be waiting for an explanation patiently, since they couldn't see or hear Bates at all. "No, probably not."
Bates stared at them, as astonished a creature with only an eye could appear, and then proceeded to laugh in his booming evil overlord laugh. The sentry flew around in small circles, giggling maniacally and occasionally snorting something about 'philistine primates." Dark watched with unamused impatience while Kestrel batted his right ear, where Bates was currently fluttering around.
"Does anyone else hear squeaking?" Talon's techie asked.
Dark replied with a huff. "Believe me, you'll stop calling him squeaky once you actually hear his voice." He reached over for two silver decorative plates and held them over the sentry threateningly. "All right Bates, cut it out or I'm going to stick you between these plates and then squeeze you under a dictionary."
Bates immediately stopped laughing, seeing Dark towering over him with the two intimidating plates. The sentry shrunk back, and then muttered to himself, sinking down onto the keyboard. Bates sulked, glancing back at the code from time to time with as sour an expression a single eye could make. After the third glance back, however, something occurred to him and he slowly unfurled its wings. "Imbecile… if I release the spell block, will we be able to postulate the location of Lord Vaati?" he asked somewhat timidly with a small, hopeful glimmer in his eye.
Dark tapped his chin, "Hmm, maybe."
Hawk, getting impatient from not being able to hear what Bates was saying, cut in, "Darkie, what are you discussing?"
Dark broke his gaze away from, what he had to admit was pretty adorable, pitiful stare of Vaati's loyal sentry eye. "Bates here was saying there's something called a spell block on that line of code, and that he can remove it."
"I would have to coordinate my erudition with the one with the optic shielders."
"He wants to work together with Kestrel." Dark supplied, speaking slowly as his brain worked at translating Bates' esoteric English. "And those are called sunglasses, Bates," he added a little later.
"Me?" Kestrel looked around for the invisible sentry to no avail. "That demon thing of yours can help me decipher this code?"
Dark turned towards Bates who was now flying in circles around the Talon techie. "I will assist in recovering Lord Vaati." The sentry stopped circling Kestrel eagerly and flew up towards Dark's nose. "Relinquish the red round earth fragment to the technology gentleman so that he may visualize what I visualize."
"What, give him this?" Dark brought out the small red stone with the eye marking etched into it.
Kestrel's eyebrows scrunched together. "What's that?" he peered over his sunglasses, "Will that curse me?" He still hadn't forgotten about what Dark had said about Bates before.
"Eh, probably. At the very least, what he says will give you a headache." Dark tossed the small stone towards Kestrel. "Here, catch."
The other man yelped and fumbled with the stone in surprise as it landed in his palms, and he had a petrified expression as he resisted the urge to fling it away. He slowly let his gaze fall on Bates who was watching him with eager anticipation. "H-hi there," Kestrel managed uncertainly at the flying eyeball that had materialized in his vision. He was more taken aback by Bates' voice when he finally heard it: he'd imagined something squeakier, just like Dark had.
"We will immediately begin disentangling the spell block," Bates ordered.
"Wh-"
Whoosh!
Dark watched in amusement as Kestrel's left eye shone red behind his shades without warning, and the startled man shook his head at the sudden new view of Bates' vision. "Augh, what the hell!" Kestrel squeezed his eyes shut, and for a few seconds he nodded occasionally, most likely in response to something the invisible sentry was saying. Finally, with much trepidation, Kestrel slowly opened his eyes again. His eyes darted around in overwhelmed nervousness, and then gradually relaxed into a state of awe. "Whoa… are those like, runes? Like magic?" he peered at the computer screen.
There was a brief pause where Bates was no doubt answering the question, and then Kestrel pointed at the screen. What followed didn't sound too different from someone talking to a foreigner on the phone.
"So those things are blocking access to the code, you're saying?"
"Er, what? You mean…"
"Okay okay, slow down. I didn't catch that."
"… Do you speak English?"
Dark shook his head with a pitying grin as Kestrel continued to talk to the empty air where Bates was, having apparent difficulty in understanding the sentry eye's words. He pat the other man on the shoulder good luck, and went to lie back down on the couch. Hawk tilted his head wonderingly and then leaned against the wall, watching Kestrel talk to the invisible sentry with a confused expression. "Is your demon that difficult to understand?" Hawk asked Dark with curiosity. "Like old English or something?"
Dark snorted. "Oh, it wouldn't be bad at all if it were Old English. Bates just has a language of his own," he rolled his eyes.
"Huh." Hawk shrugged. He looked at Kestrel again, who appeared to be having a little more fun this time, tapping his keyboard and making exclamations about how cool everything was, and also explaining to Bates what all the computer commands were that he was using. Considering how Kestrel's tech speak was often gibberish enough, he figured that was Kestrel's revenge on having to deal with the garbled English of Bates. Well, it wasn't his problem now.
Hawk stretched. "I'm going out to buy lunch."
He was about to walk out the door, when Dark's voice stopped him. "Hey, Hawk."
The other man looked back over his shoulder. The teen was lying on the couch, but he was far from relaxed. He looked up at the ceiling with a concerned furrow of his brow. "Magic in a computer code. In government cables. What do you make of it?"
Hawk sighed, and then turned away uncertainly. "I'm not sure what to think anymore, Dark. I haven't been sure about anything, really, since the disaster with Avilux," Hawk added with a weak chuckle. "I mean, magic? Who believes that? But the deeper we delve into this the more confusing this becomes. Why is the government connected to all of this?"
Dark nodded. "Think about it, though. They're making a big deal out of finding Vaati, and there are few people who have more connections to magic than he does. All of this sorcery business… it's all pointing to the government. They have something related to magic that they're not sharing with the public, you can't deny that."
Hawk didn't say a word, lost in his own thoughts. He agreed absent-mindedly, but he was busy remembering something from the past.
The Air Force Academy. The incident with the shard. The unreasonable and sudden dismissal of everyone involved, including himself when he had been too nosey about it…
Maybe they weren't thinking far back enough. Perhaps this whole thing with magic and secrets was something that had begun much, much farther back than the deal with Avilux I.
Whatever it was, were they ready to deal with it? What if this whole mission was a much bigger scale than they were envisioning?
"I… think I'll go buy lunch," Hawk repeated quietly.
fleets: Dugal had it coming. Really, he did. Vaati's not a super patient fellow.
Anyways, this chapter was more to get me back into things - I haven't written about the OA world in a looong time. And speaking of long time, I have a feeling most of the reviewers I'm replying to here have left this story for dead ;n;
Lord Siravant: Mr. Secretary? You'll be introduced to him relatively soon, I think ;)
SubZeroChimera: Thistle definitely knows a bit too much, huh? I would agree with that XD
purplegc: Dugal wouldn't worry about trackers since he knows that they know he's on the same tiny island with them. He's planning to look for trackers later, but there's no way he'd know that this particular device forces Vaati's teleports to send them to Guam no matter what. Magic isn't his expertise, and he'd expect even less for the government to know anything about it.
Reily96: You'll find out pretty soon. Less than 4 chapters at the very least.
henslight: Yes, we can't forget that Dugal has the Phantom Hourglass somewhere! ;)
Midna Hytwilian: He's having a rough week with magic craziness and all. Maybe he's getting too old for this XD
jioplip: Let's see, if I remember right, your chess analogy is pretty good so far. Thistle's a player I'll tell you that much ;) Condor as Black Queen? You are good! And you probably already finished by now, but I loved Super Paper Mario.
msfcatlover: Dugal and Vaati: fighting ensuing... now.
Sapphiet: Seeing as how they're working together now, Dugal and Vaati don't seem to be in a good spot to win against the government :P
meefgal: You don't annoy me at all! Haha and I'll take that as a compliment :) my goal is to keep my stories unpredictable for everyone, for as long as possible hehehe
Centikkime: Awww thank you so much! I always get insecure about OCs since I've always avoided them when I was only on this website to read stuff (it's really difficult to have them fit in a story naturally, I guess...). And hmmm, I'm not familiar with those but I always enjoy being introduced to new bands! I'll definitely check them out now, so thanks! :D
Vexam Authoress: Haha so these messages are replies by me to people who reviewed :) This is so that even anonymous reviewers can read a response from me. Also, using this system, it's like an unofficial promise that I'll be back with a next chapter so I can reply to everyone :)
i-wish-799: Yep! You'll see pretty soon. Though... I guess you wrote that review over a year ago so you might not even see this reply T_T