Chapter 26:
The work of building better defenses around the caves where they were housing some of the nuke fuel was going well. With the stone in the tunnel put back to sleep, Fionna was making excellent progress on both of the jobs she had. The 'easy' nodes for the Tesla Barrier were all done, leaving only a dozen really deep nodes to get finished. That would get her out of hock with Cow-tits. There was just one fly in the ointment...
Just as the thought crossed the leggy blonde's mind, a tingling at her hip announced her problem was here for the daily visit. She had just that long, and then she was physically a hundred feet away as a massive blast of flame hit the ground where she'd been standing. She could feel the heat from where she was standing.
"Shoko," Fionna howled! "That was too much! You coulda' hurt somebody! I'mma bash you!"
Of course, it wasn't really her sister's fault. There was something—someone—else at play. Shoko owed Maja a favor, and the witch had been inciting the elemental to attack Fionna multiple times a day for the last week—really since Fionna put the stone in the tunnel back to sleep.
She claimed to be studying Fionna. Given what she was doing, Fionna thought she was studying the Quicksilver Curse. The question was: why? Fionna had her ideas, but she was starting to get irritated by the games. Glancing at a thicket, the bad bunny decided it was time to have a chat.
The witch yelped in startlement when Fionna blipped into her personal space. Fetching back a pace, Maja babbled excuses.
"I know you're trying to help my dad," the tall blonde rumbled, "but what you're doing is dangerous. People can get hurt. You're going to put this aside until the end of the week. I'll be on a break then. You can poke and prod all you want."
Elsewhere, the Ice Queen sat listening to the chirping of birds, as she did her best to conjure up the old feelings of peace that she remembered from her old life. Days gone by, thought Simone Mertens. And now I understand what that really means.
She'd stepped off the track somehow, and now she had to watch others who were still living those quiet days. She'd been resentful at first, but just like her husband, she'd rolled up her sleeves and gotten busy.
"Thinking of something," asked Roselinen? "Home," Simone replied. Glancing up from contemplating her teacup, the tall wizard admitted, "like you, I can't help thinking about what I lost."
Nodding at the massive tree that was visible even at this distance, Simone remarked, "I was born in the wilderness, but I might as well have been born in that house. That's where I woke up... to Finn's face."
Minerva whistled. "You didn't grow at all," she burbled. Simone chuckled. The AI remarked, "we'd experimented with cloning before the war. They'd gone as far as cloning pets and small animals. If you were willing to pay the cost, you could have your beloved dog or cat cloned over and over—to keep them with you for life. Even then, the animal would go through normal growth from a baby to an adult animal. We didn't have a way to accelerate it at all."
"Not quite like that," Simone murmured. "I don't think anyone could duplicate what the Hand did that night. Technically, it was really outside what the Cosmic Beings allow, but Marceline's father really owed daddy quite a bit for taking care of her after the war. She was his only heir, after all."
"So Hunsen Abadeer bought your dad off," Rosie surmised. Nodding, Simone agreed, "something like that."
Changing the subject, Minerva opined, "this is like nothing we ever had on the Ark..." Simone chuckled, "you should've seen it before Bonnibel's kingdom grew. The convenience of the shopping was good, when Candy Town was built, but I miss the quiet."
With a grimace, Rosie asked, "do you mind if my son...?" "Not at all, Rosie," Simone replied. "I'd rather the place went to family. If it helps him get his head on straight, so much the better. We're all suffering, just now."
The sound of a car coming around the curve up the hill and up the dirt road announced they had a visitor. Minerva grimaced. She'd been trying—and failing—to find time to bond with these two.
Truth? She found Hurletta emotional. Blargetha was off-putting due to her dabbling with weapons of war, and Bonnibel was a flighty know-it-all who seemed to think that her shit didn't stink. Those were the women who were most often around her son.
Cherry had been doing her best to be aloof, while Nadia seemed to have so immersed herself in the world of her cyborg people that she seemed to forget that Minerva had once been human. All totaled, Roselinen and Simone were the most normal and well-adjusted of the women in her son's orbit and the ones Minerva got along best with.
Sure enough, a sinister-looking black truck hove into view. The blacked-out windows belonged in a show at the cinema.
No sooner had the vehicle rolled to a stop, than Star climbed out from behind the wheel, sans bodyguard. Her eyes took in the three men who were standing around the little clearing, just out of earshot. "Take a hike," she told them.
The trio moved out of sight further down the hill. Turning to Simone, the little woman announced, "we have a big problem..." Her eyes flicked to Roselinen.
The plump pillow murmured, "you're going to talk about something that you think is too horrifying for my ears to behold... You don't understand what my world was really like."
Star frowned at her. "We lived in a world where the punishment for severe crimes was done in public, Star," Rosie declared, "the better for the citizens to understand what awaited them, when they got out of line. I... was surprised at how gentle the punishments that are levied here are. Your father honestly was the one who was shocked."
Blowing out a breath, Star declared, "I believe Astartes may have been kidnaped by the Red Palace. I... think my sister is in the hands of..."
Simone shot to her feet, as what little color she had drained from her face. "I'm guessing that this is really, really bad," Minerva burbled. "They... they're a cult of sadists," Simone murmured. "Finn... He's tangled with them a couple of times, when they tried to... do business here. They once tried to buy Star's mother."
"Ok," Rosie murmured, "what's a sadist? And how long would it take to get to this Red Palace?"
Simone began to pace in mild agitation. Thankfully, it had been quite a while since the Ice Queen had made an appearance, so her mental health was in good shape today. Lucid, she was the rock that the family depended on.
"How do you know this," she asked? "I thought Castle Lemongrab was cleaned out..." She might've been asking how Star had checked the temperature of Mireya's bath. Rosie was a little startled to realize that Simone already knew the child and her mother were missing.
"We've been scouring the castle for days," Star responded. "Except for that small dab of blood in one room, we couldn't find a damned thing. No bodies. Nothing. We haven't even been able to locate Tallulah."
With a heavy-hearted sigh, the wood-nymph announced, "something came across my desk from the underworld. It was... a short video. There was a girl getting ducked in a pool, over and over. They were slow-motion drowning her. I... recognized it as being the pool in Castle Lemongrab. After doing some digging, we found out it had been put out in the underground film scene by somebody named Reverend Blood. He's..." "...a denizen of the Red Palace," Simone sighed.
"Who are these people," Rosie interrupted? "Why would they do something like that to somebody in that castle?"
"There are people in this world who... take pleasure in hurting others," Simone responded. "I imagine there're people in every world who do that," Rosie retorted. "These folk are a cult," Simone responded. "Some say they're devoted to a dark god. Others say maybe they worshiped Marceline's father, thinking he cared about such things. The bottom line is that they hurt people and either record images of the process or put on live shows for like-minded folk."
"So, if Mireya is in their hands, we have a serious problem," Rosie surmised. Glancing up, she added, "we have to tell Finn."
Shaking her head, Star responded, "daddy would lose his shit." Shaking her head, Rosie retorted, "this isn't Blargetha's little fainting-spell, Star. We can't hide something like this from him and just smooth it over later, when he gets back. For all we know, those sick fuckers have murdered your half-sister for money. This..."
"...kicks in the ultimate sanction," Minerva murmured. Her son had been down deep in a very dark place, when he'd written that particular decree. She wasn't quite sure where she fell on the spectrum, but she agreed with Star. She didn't want her son committing a bloodbath, even if these creatures may have deserved it.
"We're not going to go murdering everyone in sight, Min," Simone interrupted. "This is going to be a targeted affair. We're handling my husband's business, while he's away. We will take this out of the realm of Finn's emotion, so this doesn't go too far."
More than a thousand miles away, the King of Ooo gave vent to a bout of sneezing. The sneezing went on for several minutes, leading Katsumi to wonder if there were still mold in this space. Finally finished sneezing, the big man drew out a handkerchief to wipe his nose, remarking, "wonder if somebody's talking about me?"
Rolling her eyes, Talia retorted, "I'm sure a lot of people are talking about you. Almost as if he hadn't heard those words, the big man pat the wall beside him, remarking, "they said it had good bones. It's in really good shape..."
He meant the cyborgs. While he'd been keeping Talia occupied and pacified, they'd basically come in with their machines and basically reconstructed segments of the building, hardening it somewhat. Katsumi imagined them as being astonished that the place was so sturdy.
"Da," agreed Baba Yaga. "What do you think I do in my spare time?" With a shrug, Finn reminded her, "it is a thousand years old."
Much of Yakutsk had already fallen to ruin, with rubble choking the streets. That was before you got to the city's core getting flattened by a mushroom bomb. Frowning as that thought crossed his mind, the big man rumbled, "there shouldn't be anything here at all. You... you must've done the same thing Katsumi did..."
Baba Yaga glanced away. "You tried," the Nine-Tailed Fox surmised. "You tried and failed to save the city." "It almost killed me," Baba Yaga sobbed. "I gave it my all, but in the end, I could only save the bomb..."
Katsumi goggled at her. "Y-you...," she babbled. "I don't understand." Baba Yaga—Talia—walked into her bedroom and shut the door. Calling after her, Kat howled, "w-why would you save that thing?!"
Finn rumbled, "the bomb might've gone off, Katsumi. If it did, the whole planet would be gone instead of just a piece of it. If we'd had both of them go... none of us would be here. She saved the world, but she lost all her neighbors and friends."
When the rusalka failed to return, Finn motioned for Katsumi to follow him out. He had some idea what those memories did to Talia, and he wanted to spare her the agony of staring people she knew in the face, while she relived her failures.
Outside on the street, the big man stared up at the balcony, where he'd helped bring in the massive piano that occupied the middle of the space. Said he, "you're like they were. Almost a thousand years of hating on each other and feuding with each other."
It took only a moment for her to realize which they he was referring to. Said he, "the only difference was..." "...they were intimate," Kat burbled.
"You can't stubborn your way out of this," he rumbled. "You can only get clear of it by..." "...being honest," the witch responded. "You got any idea how hard..." Those blue-blue eyes arrested her, cutting her off in mid-sentence. "Yeah," she sighed, "you do..."
Shaking her head and muttering curses, Katsumi turned and went back up those stairs. Finn turned and headed down the street, bound for the place where they'd stashed Talia's furniture, while they rebuilt her apartment.
Arriving back at the airlock, Katsumi stood there a moment staring. He's got the both of us pegged right, she thought. They'd never once managed to apologize. It always came down to one or the other sort of drifting back into the other woman's orbit.
Talia would offer her a ride somewhere. Katsumi would share a meal on set or a juicy bit of gossip. They'd start talking, just as if they hadn't had a knock-down, drag-out fight. Grow up, Katsumi, she told herself. Bill's been telling you the same thing for months now.
Steeling herself to get cussed out, the kitsune stepped through the airlock to find herself staring Talia in the eye. The older woman had a bottle of that nasty homemade hooch in hand. A part of her wanted to cuss Talia out for doing that. Her knees hurt, Katsumi, the witch reminded herself.
"I'm sorry," Katsumi rumbled. "I got out of pocket." Again. Still. "You care," Talia responded. "I'm not used to people who give a shit. It's... not very Russian."
She'd been expecting to have to all but grovel to get past this. She'd been lining up her arguments for why she'd gotten so angry. Now, she admitted some truths of her own, "it's not very Chinese either."
Glancing up, she said, "I'm... I didn't get to say goodbye. I spent a thousand years wishing I could've at least heard your voice one more time. I... When I heard the missile was on its way, I was scared enough to piss my pants, and the only person I could think of was you."
Chuckling bitterly, Talia responded, "I wish I could say the same. I was thinking of Yuri and wondering what happened."
Katsumi had heard some of the story from her new in-laws. Yuri had been involved in an accident at the Kargan Antimatter Power Plant. He'd died and somehow been reborn as the Lich. In Katsumi's eyes, he'd always been a bit of a nihilist with a mad-on against post-Soviet Russia, though Talia had never been able to see those things.
Striding forward, the kitsune hugged Talia. In short order, the tears were flowing. "You didn't want me to say I'm sorry before this, but I have to say it," she whispered. "I'm running out of time all over again." Talia flushed to her hair.
Stepping back, Kat declared, "they... they have something like cannabis, Talia. I... maybe they could synthesize something like CBD oil, so you'd not have to drink away the pain." Talia's face whipped around.
Nodding, the Nine-Tailed Fox said, "he told me about it. One of his in-laws smokes something like cannabis for her arthritis. Since he's married to a couple of eggheads, between them, they should be able to synthesize something for you."
Baba Yaga stared at the wall for a moment, as she struggled with the emotions they were both feeling. Then, she murmured, "are you... did you accept this...?"
"Did you," Nine-Tailed Fox snorted? Shaking her head, the kitsune said, "no-one can just watch somebody they love just fade away like that, Talia. Why do you think he came here like this, when he could've just shown up, played your stupid games for a bit, and gone home?"
Blowing out a breath, Katsumi said, "but I understand your reasons, even if I can't agree with them. I have to live with your choices, even if I wish the decision was something else. I'll... I'll be calling. We'll be talking. Right up until the end."
Moments later, Finn stepped into the door announcing, "the Grid-Face folks are gonna' start bringing up the furniture. Let's give 'em a hand, Kat."
Moving to the balcony, Finn started gathering up the ropes that lay there. Shaking off the emotion of the moment, Katsumi joined him. The pair began fixing ropes to the supports there and, moments later, they were hauling up the chairs and tables and other things that the cyborgs had removed.
The job of returning all of the furniture to Talia's apartment took most of the day, with the cyborg's bringing lunch out from the airfield during the break at noon. As the trio sat around Talia's table, working their way through lunch, the rusalka remarked, "how goes El Presidente's space program? When do you land on the moon?"
Katsumi fought down the urge to cuss her to hell. Truth be told, she was curious herself. With a shrug, Finn said, "Blargetha promised me she'd have the new rocket for people ready to go in a few weeks. We should be able to test it before the Ark comes back from behind the moon." Swallowing the bit of sandwich in his hand, the big man added, "I'm just glad we got control of the rocket base before anybody else could do something with it."
That was knee-slapping-funny to the rusalka, who howled laughter at him. It was more off-putting behavior for someone who should've been crying in thanks.
"Ok," Finn muttered. "What gives?" Katsumi could tell by his tone that he was caught between curiosity and irritation that Talia was taking the piss out of him like this.
"You sound like a man who's got it all under control," the rusalka chuckled, "when you're barely grasping the surface."
The big man was staring her straight in the eyes now. No longer so merry, Talia coolly informed him, "you don't have the rocket-base, you have a rocket-base."
Katsumi, who'd been mostly on the edge of those conversations in the family's quarters, nodded thoughtfully. With a heavy sigh, she agreed, "Talia's right, Finn. All the major powers of our time had rocket-launching facilities. The Russians had several. The United States had several, and even the Japanese had one."
As the King's eyes got big, Katsumi added, "that's just the governments. In the west, even private companies could build a launchpad. The one you have is only one of probably a couple-dozen scattered around the world. If there's any tech left at any of them, it's something for your rogue gum-person to grab."
Finn groaned. "It's a big problem, gigolo," Talia said. "The Russians, Americans, British, French, Indians, and Chinese all had rocket-launching ships fitted with nuclear bombs... what you call mushroom bombs. Most of them are likely at the bottom, but some might be in forgotten ports or maybe shallow water."
The big man got up and wandered out onto the balcony. When Talia might have gone after him, Katsumi stopped her. "He's overwhelmed, Talia," she said. "He's drowning."
She pitied him for the naivete he'd shown in taking on this project as much as she admired the breadth of spirit that had called to him to do it. He was in the same head-space she'd been in the fateful day she landed in Shiyan village and found a town full of fucking mad-scientists concocting genocide.
Taking a breath, she said, "let's start with the where's, Talia. I think it's enough to get our arms around the problem to tackle the where's. We can figure out how to get rid of the stuff when we know where everything is."
Talia was starting to feel a little of Finn's despair, and she muttered, "only fucking NATO and the GRU knew where everything was, Katsumi..." "Then we find one of their planning cells," Katsumi retorted.
"Easy as that, eh," Talia murmured. "Looking-Glass, Talia," Katsumi chuckled. "My dad served on a Looking-Glass plane before he retired. They had the targeting lists. Everything's there." "But we still have to find one," Talia insisted. "Most of them probably went up in smoke..."
"...but Nadia's people catalogued every wrecked airship they could find," Finn rumbled, as he returned to the fray. "If there's one out there, Nadia's people know where it is, and they maybe even have salvaged gear from it."
The rusalka sat there a moment, pondering her empty lunch-plate. "We had a similar plane," she announced. "There was also a system called Dead Hand. The computers and equipment were buried in the Urals, near the Arctic. The machines had targeting lists too."
Frowning, the witch rumbled, "a lot of those things are gone, gigolo. Is it really worth it to...?" "My son told me of a ship sitting in the mountains west of the Water Nymph Confederation, T," Finn responded. "He found out that there's probably a rocket-launching ship sitting in shallow water in the Confederation's capital. They may have given gumwad a mushroom bomb that had been laying inside it."
Blowing out a breath, Talia spat curses. "We... we have to find those ships...," Katsumi muttered. Her eyes flicked to Talia. "I... I'll prevail on the council," the rusalka muttered. "I'm still Baba Yaga. I can get them to search in the Urals. If the bunker's not been hit by a strike, we can find it. I can bring the mashina devushka there."
Moving past them, Finn said, "I'mma get the guys back to work. We should wrap stuff up, so we can get going, Kat."
When he'd gone, Katsumi's yellow eyes fell on Talia's, seeming to say 'just you think about this'. "Fine," muttered Talia. "Fine. One last throw of the dice. We'll find these awful things." "It's all I can ask, Talia," Katsumi murmured. "Don't leave this on Nadezhda's back. She doesn't have the knowledge you have. Let's put all of this to bed. Then you can rest."
At the closing of the day, the King of Ooo returned from an excursion to the massive freezer the cyborg's had installed in the basement at his behest. The place had been stocked with enough food for Talia to exist for a year without leaving home.
Seeing what he'd wrought, Katsumi felt a little guilty about more or less derailing Talia's plan. Still, she'd get to keep her friend a little longer, and she'd be working on her fellow fallen-starlet until she finally quit her suicidal bullshit.
As Finn laid out dinner, Talia bustled around in her bedroom, rummaging in the wardrobe there. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, she emerged with a picture in her hands. Katsumi had been afraid she was back-sliding at first. Now, face looking somewhat haunted, Talia lay the picture on the table, face up, startling Katsumi.
"The last day of filming," the kitsune burbled, as she reached for the picture. To Finn, Talia explained, "it was one of those awful rom-coms from the mid twenty-first century, Finn. Kia the Succubus Girlfriend, with me as the title character."
Nodding at Katsumi, she said, "she played my boss, Imai the Demon-Fox. Art imitating life, eh?" Frowning, Finn rumbled, "that explains why they keep calling you Miss Imai."
The kitsune flushed to her orange-red hair. The movie had done poorly in the U.S., but it had been very popular in Asia. She'd never been able to break the villagers of the habit of calling her Imai.
"Two real-life witches playing witches on the silver-screen," Katsumi grumped. "That's a helluva coincidence." A moment later, the kitsune frowned and rumbled, "were there others? Were we the only ones?"
With a shrug, Talia replied, "that Brazilian girl? One who played my sister, Guinness? I think she was a Quetzlcoatl..." "A flying serpent," Katsumi howled? "Nah," Talia replied. "Nature spirit. Like me. We went bar-hopping in Toronto, and she got hammered on Peppermint Schnapps. Saw her slag some guy in the men's room when she thought she was in the lady's room."
"Alanza did that," howled Katsumi?! "She may have been a kid from the jungles of Ecuador, but she wasn't as innocent as you thought," Talia chuckled. "We had a lot of crazy times, when we were working in Mexico City. She tried to hide her powers from me, but she kinda' started to get sloppy near the end." Running her fingers through her hair, Katsumi murmured, "shit, we really did miss the sign."
Finn said, "let's focus on the right now. I'm'a get Nadia's dudes started digging into their records. They've been flying airships for about sixty years now. I'mma see if they've got something on this Looking Glass you were talking about."
Nodding, Katsumi agreed, "I'll get busy hunting through archives in Wizard City and elsewhere. I'm the one guardian who no longer has to stay tied down." "Right," said Talia, as she began filling her plate, "I'll speak to the council tomorrow. It'll be my niece running things. Under the circumstances, I probably shouldn't be leaving town at the moment."
Nodding, Finn went in his pocket and deposited a small box on the table. It was far plainer than the overdone packaging of her day, but Katsumi recognized it as the sort of box a satellite phone typically came in. "I'm gonna guess that you can probably figure that out," the big man announced.
"Just make sure you figure out what time-zones are," Talia retorted. Flushing, Finn responded, "uh, yeah... I had a long talk with Peebles about that... It's good."
Next time: The Ice Queen in action.