Chapter 25:
Even the Nine-Tailed Fox was shocked by the changes to the little flat that Talia had inhabited for the last thousand years. The first surprise was the massive block of machinery stuffed into the hall before the entry. It was obvious from the heavyweight doors that it was some kind of airlock.
"Meant to keep the mold and contaminates out of the space," Katsumi surmised, as they passed through into the interior of Talia's space. Finn nodded, and Katsumi found herself thinking, duh! What good does all this do, if the place gets contaminated again. He doesn't have time to keep coming back, baka!
Within the apartment, they found the most shocking changes. One of the walls had been blown out into the suite next door. The floors, ceilings, and walls had been stripped bare. And over the existing structure, the cyborgs had layered a strange grey substance, much like spray-in insulation.
"They'll build interior walls and stuff over this," Finn remarked. With a sigh, he admitted, "they had to call another ship in with some materials they need. It'll take another couple days. You'll bunk with us a little longer."
Baba Yaga harumphed at him. Her tone suggested that she was caught between anger at him and embarrassment that he was doing so much for her.
Nodding at the door they'd come through, the big man explained, "they put in that special door and an air-filtering system. That'll keep mold and stuff out of your space." Blowing out a breath, the King of Ooo murmured, "I... can't come by very often, T. I just got too much stuff on my plate."
Turning away, the big man remarked, "besides, you probably don't like people just droppin' in." Both witches flushed. He was very good—far better than most men—at reading women's emotional state.
Having shut down the encroaching moodiness, the big man said, "let's go. They've probably got lunch ready." "You going to play for waiter again," Talia chuckled. Stroking her cheek, Finn responded, "if you want. This trip is about you, after all."
That was a bit much, and the witch spun on her heel and stormed out, cussing him the whole way. It was an ugly reminder to Katsumi of the way she'd often treated Bill. You need to get better, she thought. Bill didn't deserve some of the things she'd said to him.
Silence reigned in the car the whole way back to the airfield, with the trio locked inside their own heads. Katsumi stared alternately at Finn's back and at Talia's. It's like we saved up every hateful thing we ever wanted to say to every bad boyfriend we ever knew, she thought, and now we're vomiting hate at the people who love us the most. It needs to stop! Trouble was, she didn't quite know how to stop it.
As the pair climbed out of the car, Talia straightened with a groan, clutching at her left knee. Arthritis, Katsumi surmised. Likely not helped by pressing a clutch pedal.
Without a word to either of them, the prideful wench strode straight across the battered pavement and up the ramp of the plane, disappearing from sight. She's going to drink, Katsumi thought. Her eyes flicked to her father-in-law, who's face was troubled.
"She's going to lose her ability to get around on her own at this rate," he sighed. His eyes flicked to the car—the wreck that Talia had lovingly cobbled together to let her move around this ruined land.
Katsumi found herself having a strange epiphany. Every car she'd seen in Bonnibel Bubblegum's resurrected civilization came with a manual transmission. In her day, the idea was archaic—something afficionados loved. They were just too inconvenient for normies.
She might have wondered at the reasons for that if she were more into science and sociology. In the right now, she found herself facing down another, more unpleasant, epiphany.
"I don't know why you put up with this... with us," the Nine-Tailed Fox muttered. In response, the King of Ooo gave vent to a deep, almost bitter chuckle. "Do you think this is my first rodeo," he rumbled?
Katsumi felt her face grow warm. "I was ten," the King rumbled. "Just starting to understand the world. The only female I ever knew before that was my adopted mom. The first girl I met was tall and curvy, and she smelled like nothing I ever smelled before." Wrinkling his nose, the big man admitted, "mom smelled like... mom..."
Katsumi barked a laugh. On a good day, her mom smelled like soap. Sometimes, she smelled like the hospital she worked in. Typically, she smelled like whatever food she'd been cooking for dinner that evening. When Katsumi discovered perfume, the difference in scent for a kitsune, was jarring.
"Peebles was a mess of old bad choices and ugly memories," Finn muttered. "There was no way for it to ever work out because I was always going to get compared with those dudes." Flushing to her crown, Katsumi glanced away, as she took in the ugly confirmation that he knew women all too well.
Glancing up, he said, "then Marcie blew into my life... kicked me out of my house..." Bitterly, he declared, "but in spite of all that, she was funny and a blast to hang out with, and I didn't have to put up with the snooty attitude. At the same time, somehow she was actually worse."
The Nine-Tailed Fox goggled at him. He often seemed madly in love with the both of them! "That's how us guys have it," Finn sighed. "My brother said you could love a woman, or you could understand her, but you can't do both."
Glancing up at Katsumi, he added, "but to build a family, you have to do it... you have to walk that line. You have to care about them, when you really want to punch them in the face and walk away." Turning towards the ship, the King of Ooo said, "I'mma go inside and scare up lunch."
As Finn headed towards the little kitchen the airship housed, back in the civilized kingdoms, his erstwhile girlfriends were up to mischief. They'd started early, using teleportation to shake their bodyguards off, and they'd driven back-country roads to reach the maze without being seen.
Of course, reaching the maze had been the easy part. What they found even in the entrance had left them shocked and terrified. It was only Jake's cajoling and pleading that convinced her companions to continue at all.
Resting in one of the few stretches where there was no trap or monster, the quartet reflected on what they were dealing with. "He actually went through this place twice," Viola burbled. All four women knew exactly who he was.
"You think my husband is an idiot," Bronwyn chuckled. She'd been making comments like that all day, which was earning her no points with her relations. It was very much like she was reminding them who was top-banana in their little group.
It isn't like Jake didn't tell us this, Charlie thought, with a sigh. They were the 'side-chicks'. When push came to shove, Bronwyn's needs had a higher priority than they did. You weren't supposed to fall in love, dumbass, Charlie reminded herself.
"No," Charlie responded, "I never really thought of him as stupid. To be honest, I guess I got caught up in being angry at my dad for being a dummy."
"You don't understand him," Jake sighed. Both her sisters stared at her in abject puzzlement. "You think he's a mush-head because of his mistakes," Jake sighed, "but you forget that he's half-alien. Finn even saw it once..." "You mean that thing with Bonnie and her pals going nuts and transforming everything in sight," Viola burbled.
"Finn transformed everything back, using a magic widget, but he used the simplest command to do it...," Jake confirmed. "So... it turned dad back into his true form."
Glancing up at her sisters, she said, "we probably all have true forms, just like dad... various bits of alien tacked onto dog and rainicorn bits. We'd probably look like ass instead of hotties." Viola, who'd made her living from being fawned over, shuddered.
"Point being," Jake sighed, "dad... if I've got urges to do awful shit, dad... dad has it in spades. You don't know what that's like. Finn literally saved him from being a monster and gave him something sort of like a normal life."
Laying her head back against the stone wall of the maze, Jake sighed, "I don't know how he survived those first years. I... went off the deep end, and I couldn't find my way back if I tried."
"We... didn't help," Viola murmured. Blowing out a breath, the actress admitted, "I got lost in Video-Land. I rarely thought about the rest of you. I forgot all the promises I made when I was on my way up. I was supposed to put mom and dad in a house. I was supposed to retire dad from the Post Office. I didn't do any of that..."
"Yeah, well, I moved to the far side of the planet," Charlie chuckled. "How's that? Huh?" Laughing, she said, "I did my best to get away from the people who cared about me."
"Neither of you hurt other people," Bronwyn rumbled. "You didn't ruin lives. You didn't bankrupt little mom-and-pop businesses just to make a few more coins." "Well, my brother likes his money," Charlie chuckled.
Her tone sounded forced, but Kim had been getting more and more estranged from them every year. "Who said anything about my father," the half-bear retorted?
Silence reigned, as really no-one had anything to say to that. Truth? Charlie wouldn't have expected her niece to do something like that. The young, innocent girl, who'd been devoted to skating and playing with other kids had grown into someone—something—that Charlie didn't recognize.
Do you even recognize yourself, a voice whispered? She had been... who? There had been a time where she'd been a daddy's girl. There had been a time where she'd been a typical young woman, in love with the idea of love and in resolute lust with her uncle of all people.
You killed the old you with bad choices, Charlie, she thought. He's been telling you the life you led is over. Maybe now, you can actually internalize it.
"I have something to say," Charlie announced. "Listening," Jake sighed. Her tone sounded beaten—as if she just knew that Charlie was going to suggest they teleport themselves home and forget about this insane plan.
"There's... there's a part of my vision that I didn't share," Charlie muttered. Viola's glare of utter rage told exactly what she was thinking. With all that was going on, the last thing any of them needed to be doing was keeping secrets.
Taking a deep breath, the curvy girl admitted, "I... didn't want to say this because I feared it would blow up our family. The... Kingdom. We... In several of my visions, we ended up fighting over the kingdom... with Kim."
Viola's jaw came open and Jake gasped, but Bronwyn was hardly surprised. Rising, the half-bear came and knelt before her aunt. In the arresting tone of a princess, the younger woman commanded, "tell me."
Charlie didn't really want to have this conversation, but there seem little choice. "We're... we're all in the prophecy," she admitted. "All six of us. Each of us has a part to play. I... didn't want to influence anybody else's place."
"You were protecting us," Viola surmised. "No," Jake murmured. "Telling us that there's a prophecy doesn't actually hurt anything, Vi. There's something else here..."
Face gone hot, Charlie admitted, "I... had a choice... I'd have had Gibbon either way... My son would be Court Wizard either way. Only in one of my visions... I sided with Kim... Things kinda' went south for me after that..."
Blowing out a breath, Charlie added, "I needed to get that said. I didn't want to go into trying to read the future with a bunch of lies hanging between us."
Bronwyn could see it in her eyes. She felt selfish for turning on her brother to make her own life better. Rising, the tall girl announced, "my dad's choices are his own, aunt Charlie. Why should anyone else wallow in evil to earn him a few more coins." Shouldering her bag, Bronwyn suggested, "let's get moving. We can't pretend to be in bed all day. Our various bodyguards will start to wonder."
"One more push," Jake Jr. declared. "We're not far now. Dad told me about it. There's... there's a puzzle up ahead. We solve the puzzle, the last door opens." Brushing past her, Charlie announced, "in that case..."
In spite of the bravado, the last bit of the maze was the most challenging of all, with fiendish traps that neither Finn nor Jake Sr. had ever mentioned in their endless stories about the maze. Still, after a couple of ugly side-treks that nearly saw them crushed under boulders, stabbed by poison spears, or simply forced to teleport back to the entry, the quartet emerged at last into the presence of the Wish-Master.
The evil being was just as their father and uncle had described—a long, serpentine creature, with glowing red eyes. And all they had to do was cross the last little bit of space to his side to win wishes.
"This is it," Charlie sighed. "This is what we talked about." The plan all along had been to phase their bodies and just float on across. Trouble was that Bronwyn couldn't fly, and there were some complications in the plan. Chief among those was the very issue of just what constituted completing the maze. If they phased themselves, did that still count?
Charlie had quickly hit upon the idea of staying inside the boundaries of the maze. If they only phased themselves out of reach of the traps, they could say they'd completed the maze fair and square, just as if they'd dodged them.
Glancing at Jake, Charlie said, "you only need to hold it a few moments, sis. You can do this." "I'm good," the shapechanger responded, though she didn't sound all that confident.
Back in Yakutsk, the King of Ooo strolled over from his conversation with the cyborgs to collect the plates from lunch. His expression, to Katsumi's eyes, was far milder than they had a right to expect, given that Talia had spent the last twenty minutes or so giving him a ration of shit.
She'd come back from her little cubicle smelling of liquor, setting the tone for lunch. Then, while consuming the excellent food the crew had cooked, she'd proceeded to down half a bottle of wine. However, if she was feeling no pain from her arthritis, she had plenty of energy to hurl insults.
She'd heaped abuse on the big man when he asked her what she wanted to eat, as if it mattered not at all that he was trying to hard to please her. Now, as if to deliver the final slap in the face, the rusalka studiously observed, "a most excellent pile of slop! Not even a single maggot!"
Mildly, Finn replied, "I'll let the cook know..." Without a further word, he turned and strode back across the ruined tarmac and straight up the ramp.
Irritated past her tolerance level, Katsumi, growled, "can you please stop treating him like that?! He's bending over backwards to take care of you, and you treat him like an asshole boyfriend who can't ever remember your birthday."
The rusalka flinched, telling her that she'd scored a strong hit there. Seeing that she'd caught Talia flat-footed for a change, Katsumi declared, "he told me you'd ceased holding back the sands of time."
It was the politest way she could come up with to talk about her frenemy's decision to commit slow-motion suicide. Talia's flush was all the confirmation she needed.
"I don't understand," Katsumi rumbled. "I don't understand why you'd do this..." "I'm old, Kat," Talia muttered. "You're not much older than me," the Nine-Tailed Fox growled.
"It's none of your business," Baba Yaga retorted. "Isn't it," growled the demon-fox? "The world's still on fire, and everybody with the power to do something should be working to put out the flames. Here you are bailing on us!"
Jabbing her in the chest, the kitsune growled, "this isn't the time for us to be sulking like children!" Shooting to her feet, the rusalka snapped, "is that what you think?!" "You want to quit," Katsumi accused! "You just want to quit!" Face hot, the witch retorted, "I'm tired of carrying all this on my back! I'm tired of holding up everything! Let somebody else do it for once!"
Katsumi saw red, just then. Emitting a terrifying growl from deep inside her chest—sounding like the fox she'd been named for—the kitsune punched Talia square in the mouth, snapping her head back and slamming her back down on her chair.
Wiping at her split lip, the rusalka muttered, "the first one's free..." Katsumi flushed. This wasn't the first time she'd hit Talia. She'd slapped her twice—once for a truly awful prank and the second for revealing that she'd cheated on her then-boyfriend. This was just the first time she'd actually done it with her fist.
More to the point, the Talia of yore was a ferocious fighter, willing and able to pummel men and women both if they'd wronged her. Usually, you got one warning before the beating commenced.
Every time it got that far, Katsumi backed down. Today, she went straight at her dear old friend, declaring, "you deserved it. You and I... we helped make the world into a mess. We used our own cults of personality to sway things. We chose up sides. We egged the conflict on instead of using our influence to calm things down. Now, you want to skate on things and drop it all in the lap of a child, who's barely able to walk."
"The Crowns of Ooo do not fight," the King announced.
Both women spun to face the big man, who stood at the bottom of the ramp just now. In icy tones suggesting a man out of patience, the King declared, "the Peace of Ooo has been disturbed. You will cease that or face my anger."
With a growl of rage, Katsumi turned and stormed off. When Talia might have done the same, the King said, "you're drunk. You won't be going anywhere except to bed. Don't argue, Talia. You won't like the outcome." With a yelp of fear, the Mighty Baba Yaga turned and waddled up the ramp with all the speed her arthritic knees could muster.
As Finn stepped off the ramp to go look for his son's wayward wife, his quarrelsome lovers stood before Aquandrius the Wishmaster, doing their best to face down his baleful stare. All Jake Jr.'s bravado melted away in the face of a creature who could literally erase her from history for one poorly chosen word.
"Well," hissed the Wishmaster. "We don't usually see so many make it to the very end." Viola grimaced. Even with all Finn's careful planning, her father had very nearly died here. Hot-Dog Princess's knights had all bit the big one. On Finn's second outing, he'd done far better, but the Huntress Wizard had very nearly eaten it too.
"Haven't got all day," Aquandrius burbled. "I was having nappy time. Which of you's going first?" With a grimace, Jake burbled, "I... I guess that's me." Grinning, he said, "whaddya' want, kid? Pair of eyes? Some tits?"
Jake said nothing, while she wracked her brain for an answer. "C'mon," Aquandrius teased, "cat got your tongue..." Gathering her courage and will, as she realized that she held the key to keeping this thing on track, Charlie announced, "conference time, sis. Let's make sure you don't fuck up like our aunt did."
Took a couple of false-starts to get this one whipped into shape. We're more or less closing in on the end of the Baba Yaga thread, at least for now. We're also closing down the thread with Jake's daughters, as we head for the climax of this story. Expect to return to the main thread in chapter 27.