Four rewrites later...
Chapter 36:
"This is my grandniece, Klavdia," Talia declared. The stranger was of a height with the former starlet, and Betty could see the family resemblance. At the same time, Klavdia had bright orange skin, much like a Grid-Face Person.
Seeming to guess what her companions were thinking, Baba Yaga tussled Klavdia's bright orange hair, declaring, "she's the family's current shit-disturber. She wanders into town like I used to do."
Though Klavdia bristled at being labeled a shit-disturber, her grand-aunt was already moving on. "I've had some of our fellows preparing for a journey north," Baba Yaga declared. "There's an ancient settlement near our destination. It should make a good base to go hunting. There's mutants..."
"Da," Nadia responded. "I'll take care of that. I just need coordi... Hmm..." "I have an answer for that," the Rusalka chuckled. "Let's go."
Gathering up her child, the cyborg woman led the way out of the terminal building and out to the line where a number of airships waited. "Remind you of your old world," asked Klavdia? "I had Diamond Membership on four airlines," Talia snorted. "I never flew coach with the proles..."
"I always assumed you flew charter too," rumbled Katsumi. Her voice sounded like a frown to Betty's ears. "Yuri didn't like the bourgeois lifestyle," Talia responded. "He used to remind me that I'd get old and stop getting parts, so I needed to save my money."
"If only he knew," chuckled Betty. A glance suggested that, while bewildered by the by-play, Klavdia was very curious.
"Yuri was your grand-aunt's old boyfriend," Betty chuckled. "He assumed she'd turn old and dry up like a prune."
The younger woman turned a speculative look on the mighty Baba Yaga. "Well now you know why you keep getting told not to wander into town, eh," Talia declared. "Folk will look at you funny if you don't age." "I only needed one for a little while," Klavdia sniffed.
"Since Nadezhda doesn't have orange skin, I'm guessing you're using a spell," Betty remarked. "Da," Klavdia agreed. "A minor thing. It's almost second nature now."
Up ahead, there were two more pale-skinned women waiting on them, looking antsy as if uncomfortable in their own skin. As they approached, one immediately lit into Talia, declaring that she was once more dragging the clan into dangerous waters.
"Cool your jets, Olga," Baba Yaga retorted, "or do you really want the world to blow up a second time?" Primly, Nadia declared, "we've encountered two loose bombs already. We'd rather not find any more floating around. You can help, or you can stay here and bitch. I don't care which it is."
With no further word, she brushed past, bound for the closest flying machine. With a shrug, Talia stepped off after her, with Katsumi bringing up the rear. "Olga, is it," Betty murmured. "Da," the witch responded.
"We'd really like your help," Betty declared. "She's not kidding. So far in the last couple of years, we've managed to shut down two forgotten bio-weapons labs, secure a bunker with enough uranium to blow up half the planet, and seize two lost nukes besides. This isn't just us outsiders..."
"Not just Talia holding on to power a little longer," the other woman chuckled. Olga flushed to her hair, telling Betty that perhaps some of Talia's hunger to pass on from the world wasn't just her own desires. This woman apparently wanted Talia's title.
"Please," Betty murmured. "Help us. We're racing against time. There're outside forces pushing the destruction of the whole world..." "Konechno," muttered Olga, as she too turned for the ship.
Elsewhere, Jake the Dog walked into the kitchen, whilst scratching indelicately at his nether regions. It was one of those things that Samantha had long ago given up on trying to change. He'd be crotchety and surly for days, as he made a big show of trying to do what he'd been told until she just got tired of the drama.
In the right now, there were bigger fish to fry than Jake scratching his balls at the table. As she brought over breakfast, the curvy hot-dog declared, "I have to go home for a bit..."
Glancing up with a frown, Jake rumbled, "wha'for?" He didn't get along with Samantha's family. Samantha's father despised him, and the feeling was mutual.
"My grandmother's sick," Samantha explained, as she sat herself. "I don't want to miss her last words. I'm going to pay my respects before she's gone."
Jake grimaced, but she knew that he'd missed his own father's death. He'd been so caught up in his bad-boy lifestyle that he completely lost track of what was happening with his family.
"This is important to me, Jake," Samantha declared, her eyes burning into his. The stretchy dog began to squirm. As he fidgeted, Samantha kept up the pressure until finally, he rumbled, "I... I guess I'll see you when you get back."
Though she'd hoped he'd go with her, this was more or less what she'd expected. He wasn't big on humility.
"When you going," Jake asked? Samantha grimaced. She'd put off telling him until the very last minute. With a sigh, she said, "this afternoon." It was Jake's turn to grimace now. She'd be leaving while he was at work.
Leaning towards him, she kissed his cheek, declaring, "I'll leave some stuff in the fridge for you." "S'ok," Jake grumbled. Checking his watch, he declared, "I gotta' go. I'm late." Leaving breakfast uneaten, he rose and headed for the bathroom to shower. "Well," she sighed, "that went better than I expected."
As Samantha tossed out Jake's uneaten breakfast, Blargetha woke up in the wastes east of the Rat Lands to the sound of rain hitting the roof of the tent. Time was, that sound would've driven her into a state of panic. In the right now, it was merely irritating.
More on point, Sarah had been outside twice in the night and possibly more. Dangerous creatures had likely tried to reach their camp.
"Stay here," the android announced. Moments later, the plump princess heard the shuffling of the covers as her companion clambered outside.
Minutes crawled by. In spite of being the reason for this excursion, Blargetha honestly found herself tempted to go back to sleep. Without her usual morning dose of coffee, her ass was dragging.
Moments later, Sarah was back, declaring, "it's safe. You can come out now." Drawing on a robe, the plump princess followed her nemesis outside into a cloying mist. The android had thoughtfully put up a tarp over the entry to their tent and laid out a rubber mat. Not that Blargetha truly needed it anymore, but it was comforting.
Settling cross-legged on the mat, the plump princess yawned and stretched. Scratching at the base of her right knocker, she asked, "when do we get started?"
"I need to finish the pathway to the wreck first," Sarah responded. Just now, she was laying out cooking utensils. Blargetha was a bit surprised at just how hungry she was.
"Living on coffee isn't a healthy lifestyle," Sarah chuckled. "Says the creature who could just plug herself in," Blargetha retorted.
"Not supposed to do that, actually," Sarah replied. "I'm supposed to eat healthy too. Plugging in is a short-cut. It shortens the life of my internal battery."
With a smirk, the android offered, "so let's both agree to eat better while we're here, ok?" "Sure," the slime princess grunted. "Why not?"
Breakfast done, the android rose and gathered up some of the equipment from the rear of the ship. "Stay here," she admonished Blargetha. "Draw weapons or something. I'll be back in... say an hour or so."
"Draw weapons or something," Blargetha rumbled, mocking Bonnie's double. The piece of her that had grown up defying her mother's wishes wanted to do nothing of the sort. In the end, by the time Sarah returned, she was deeply engrossed in laying out a weapons array for the Ark, using the knowledge she had of its external layout.
"I had to chase off a couple of goo-bros," the android announced, "but the site's secure. Let's go."
Rising, Blargetha dusted off her shorts and stuffed her notebook into her backpack. Slinging the pack onto her back, she gestured for Sarah to lead on.
As they walked, the plump woman remarked, "he said there was a village here..." "Bonnie chased the villagers away, so they wouldn't get irradiated," Sarah replied.
Frowning, the slime princess asked, "well what does that mean for us?" "We won't be staying long enough for it to matter," Sarah replied. "It's a few milli-Gray per day of exposure... basically a little time in an X-ray booth."
"We won't want to be kicking it around here, though," Blargetha sighed. Sarah nodded in agreement.
Arriving at the edge of the clearing, Sarah announced, "the way this is going to work is that we'll limit our time in the clearing. We'll try to stay forward of the radiation shield. It's cracked and damaged in places, but as long as we stay near where the cockpit was, we'll be alright."
"Right," Blargetha agreed. "It's a pity we can't harvest the engine too..." Sarah sighed, "Bonnie feared that even using the saucer, it was a little too unstable." "Alright," Blargetha sighed. "Let's get at it."
Hundreds of miles to the northeast of the Rat Lands, Talia returned from the toilet to find her supposed chief of staff climbing the walls. Nearer to hand, Finn's cyborg fuck-toy sat bouncing that child on her knee.
"She's not doing well," rumbled Nadia Ivanova. Talia shrugged. She didn't particularly care. They didn't have time to take wagons and sleds to the Urals. While she could've stretched her powers to get there, she'd have been going by herself, which did little to help the situation.
"Did you all go back into hiding," Betty queried? It was clear from her expression that her former fan was intensely curious. "There wasn't anyone to hide from," Baba Yaga muttered, "but the council still tries."
Glancing up, Nadia remarked, "they did well enough at it, that we still looked at them as myths from before the age of knowledge."
Nodding at Nadezhda's mommy, Betty remarked, "she's been in and out of the cyborg kingdom enough that she managed to make a baby with some random guy. I wonder how many..."
"She's our shit disturber," Talia chuckled. "We trade, but we keep to ourselves." Shaking her head, she added, "council's orders."
"I wouldn't imagine they had that kind of power," Nadia remarked. It was a pointed jab at Talia, one she couldn't simply let slide. "Do you think I can smash every person that decides to get uppity," she demanded?
Sitting back in her chair, Baba Yaga rumbled, "as long as they don't trouble me with their complaints, they can make all the pronouncements they want."
Turning to the cyborg, she asked, "how much longer?" "A few hours yet," Nadia responded. "We have to conserve fuel to get home again. We'll do a rolling landing. I have some people I trust staging additional fuel a couple hours flight from our destination, just in case."
Those uncanny eyes continued to study Talia. "What," Baba Yaga demanded? "Checking out my innards again?" "Wondering why you didn't just teleport yourself," Betty chuckled.
"It doesn't work that way," Nadia sighed. "Nothing can come with you... or at least not much. The most I ever managed was a small handbag with a pair of panties, and I lost that twice."
"If I could study that...," Nadia murmured. "It's dangerous enough that I'm the only one who regularly attempts it," Talia retorted.
"It could be a boon to mankind," the Grid-Face Princess responded. "Instantaneous travel anywhere in the world..." "I'm sure it'd make clothing merchants rich," Kvazdia chuckled.
When the cyborg-woman glanced her way, the Rusalka shook her head and said, "don't look for me to be your guinea-pig..."
Nadia jerked her eyes away from the young/old woman's pretty face, her expression thoughtful. Her eyes fell on her own child, and Talia could tell what she was thinking.
She was facing the sting of having thrown away something she didn't know was valuable. She'd been smugly comfortable in her world until that unhappy reality got shoved in her face. Of course, little Tatiana hadn't lost her organ yet.
Resting a hand on the child's head, Talia murmured, "when she comes of age, send her to me. I'll teach her."
"Weren't you retiring," Olga demanded? Chin jutting, Baba Yaga retorted, "I was dying as fast as I could, Olga, but ridding the world of the bombs and chemical weapons has to come first. You can wait a few more years to get the title."
Olga cussed her to hell and back for several minutes, with Baba Yaga firing back just as fiercely until finally the younger woman turned and stormed off into the cargo hold.
"The council likes to blame me for every little problem," Talia declared. "As if we could've remained totally hidden in a world of pocket-sized spy-planes and instantaneous information sharing."
As Betty watched, the Rusalka rose and stepped into the handiest cabin. Announcing her intention to lay down for a while, she closed the door and latched it. "Well, that was fun," muttered Nadia.
Betty's mind was on other matters. Olga appeared very much to be a loose cannon. With Finn's coalition finally starting to get its collective arms around the world's problems, the last thing they needed was someone new on Baba Yaga's throne, especially someone disruptive.
So what to do, Betty, she thought? Interfering could blow things up among Talia's people. And that was before you got into the emotional attachments.
The idea that somebody was pressuring Talia towards suicide would cause both Finn and Katsumi to lose their shit. That could potentially start a war that the world didn't need.
"I thought Nadezhda was Talia's heir," Betty murmured. "Nadezhda's four," Nadia retorted. "Unless they grow up overnight, she's going to be a kid for a long time, Betty. Somebody's got to be in charge while she's growing up."
"So, that's our opening," Betty murmured. "Hmm," Nadia responded? "Tell you later," Betty said with a smile. "I need to think about this for a bit."
As the day drew to a close, Blargetha sat down on a rock, notebook in hand. The day had been a bit of a rollercoaster, and she still wasn't sure they'd actually made any progress.
If it wasn't the local fauna sniffing around the edges of the crash site, it was the endless complications of digging into a ship that had been rotting away for several decades.
Sarah had more than figuratively done the heavy-lifting, pulling apart broken bits of metal to gain access to the interior of the ship. Of course, even there, they'd had mixed results with Sarah accidentally exposing part of the damaged reactor, causing them to beat a hasty retreat.
The whole business was starting to look like a colossal waste of time. In spite of her earlier optimism, Blargetha almost wished she hadn't suggested this.
"We've got a few more days," Sarah remarked. Blargetha looked up to find the android woman standing there with a smirk on her face. She was smeared liberally with dirt, grease, and whatever other nameless substances the ship was filled with.
"That obvious," the slime princess murmured? "Yeah," Sarah chuckled. "You look like Bonnie when one of her super-cool, grand-unified theories goes down in flames..."
Blargetha barked a laugh. Bonnibel was prone to chaining together bits of logic without bothering to check them for consistency. "I'm surprised that you can actually laugh at that," she murmured. "I told you," Sarah chuckled, "I'm not Bonnie."
Turning back to the business at hand, she said, "we'll dig around a little longer today and head back. It's getting late, and I want to make sure our defenses are up..." "Right," Blargetha agreed.
The matter of the moment was a strange cylindrical structure on the roof of the machine, just above where the cockpit had once been. They'd been sawing and grinding at the external structure for much of the afternoon, with little success. Now, Sarah was attacking the problem from the underside—within the volume that had once been the roof of the cockpit module.
"Hey," Sarah grunted. "C'mere a minute." Putting the notebook away, Blargetha stood and wandered over to where the android was fumbling with a set of bolts.
"See these bolts over my head," said Sarah? "Yeah," Blargetha agreed. "I'm going to support this weight... here...," Sarah grunted. "You spin off those four bolts with the windy-gun. Right?"
Frowning, Blargetha responded, "will it work?" "It's kinda' close in size to the seventy-five millimeter socket," Sarah suggested. "Ok," Blargetha sighed. "In for a dime..."
Sarah straightened, locking her knees, hips, and back. Squeezing in behind her, Blargetha fitted their air-wrench to the first of the bolts and carefully squeezed the trigger, filling the air with the clatter of the impact-mechanism. In spite of her fears, the bolt slowly backed out. One done.
"It should work," Sarah muttered, "I put a good bit of heat into the bolts. You might want to speed up, though." Nodding, Blargetha got down to business, going after the next bolt in the sequence and then the next after that.
Slowly but surely, Sarah's artificial muscles took the strain, as the bolts were removed from the structure. Blargetha found herself wondering how long it would take someone to come looking if they got squished by this machine. Don't think about that, she admonished herself.
Finally, she was down to the last bolt, which looked somewhat suspicious. "Last one," she announced. "I'm ready," Sarah grunted. "When I take the load, I'll need you to move aside fast." "Ok," the slime princess agreed.
Reaching up, Blargetha fitted the socket to the bolt head and triggered the impact driver. Just as she feared, the bolt head tore off from the strain. Suddenly, Sarah had all the weight.
Without even being told, Blargetha stumbled back out of the wreck, landing on her butt. With a grunt, Sarah adjust her grip, then began shuffling sideways out of the cramped space where she'd stood.
As Blargetha watched, more and more machinery came free of the wreck, pulling cables and bits of this and that. Finally, Sarah was able to tear the thing free and lay it on the ground beside the wrecked spaceship.
Coming up alongside her, Blargetha stared at the thing a moment. "Ok," she burbled, "what is it?" Rolling her eyes, Sarah responded, "I think it's a weapon." "Ooh," squealed the slime person as she pounced on Sarah! "We're in business!"