Chapter 228: Some Young Girl (Patreon)

***Dr. Daniels***

The subtropical forest gave way to a massive golden wall that looked perfectly flat at first glance, but take a few hundred steps back, and he could make out the curvature, sloping into the massive dome that surrounded them. He needed to find a way into the guts of the ship itself, not the habitation area.

There was a rather large golden door inset into the wall, and Garth tried to inject mana into it to open the damn thing, to no avail.

“What are you doing?” the carefully enunciated words of a child whose soft palate was still developing caught Garth by surprise. He glanced over his shoulder and spotted a black-haired little girl, maybe four or five years old. She was wearing a simple one piece dress with some hand-stitched flowers, and giving him a quizzical look.

She didn’t appear perfectly human, as her face was sharper than it should be, and her ears had a bit of a pointed curl to them that would get more pronounced as she aged.

He glanced back at the magical script flaring up on the control room’s door, behind which his doppleganger had decided to hole himself up. Garth was using the ship itself as an immune system, slowly narrowing in on a combination of restrictions that would disable him.

Already he was feeling a little under the weather. If this mouthpiece died, it would make it harder for him to zero in with his reinforcements.

“Hacking the mainframe?” He said, raising an eyebrow.

She giggled. “That’s just a wall.”

“That it is,” he glanced at her again. “Would you happen to know a way in? so far nobody’s been able to help me.”

“Are you trying to break the door?”

“Kinda?”

“Mommy says you shouldn’t break things.”

“Well, your mommy was talking in absolutes, when in reality, life is full of grey areas. There are times when things need to be broken. There are jobs dedicated solely to breaking things so new things can take their place.”

“Oh. That sounds fun. Is that what you’re doing?” she asked, glancing at the door.

“Yep,” Dr. D. said, leaning on the door, channeling mana into the seams in an attempt to pop it off its hinges. “Maintenance called for new doors for all the most important places on the ship, and I’ve got the job of breaking them off before we can put new ones in.”

“Can I help?”

“I doubt it,” He said, making a dismissive motion. “I appreciate the offer though.”

He turned his attention back to the massive golden door throbbing with mana flowing through it. It seemed like he’d have to grow his core quite a bit more before he could crack through the enchant-work flowing through the doors like it was the most natural thing in the world.

To Dr. D’s eyes, the ship looked alive, which was fairly impressive, considering he’d gotten a lot better at biology over the last eight hundred years.

If it’s alive, Maybe I can introduce a false signal that can weaken the door’s ability to keep me out, he thought, placing a hand on it. Thinking of the pulses of mana like neurotransmitters, he began trying to replicate and modify the signals, adding junk information to the door’s setup.

That was a problem though, because between him and the inner working of the door was a solid slab of tough, impermeable forcefield, that didn’t allow any mana to pass from one side to the other. The first line of defence.

The skin.

I’m gonna need some real force to cut through this thing, shame I don’t have more mass or more bodies, then I could just brute force it. As it stands I might have to go back to the drawing board and see if I can find some maintenance equipment or something capable of cutting-

Garth’s musing was cut off when a chubby little girl-hand placed itself against the door next to his thigh.

There was a brief dimming of light and an audible whomp, as concentrated mana with a blueish hue was gathered around the girl’s hand and injected into the door with a force that Garth could feel reverberating through his chest.

A gaping hole was burnt through the door, and the little girl snatched her hand away with a yelp, gasping as she cradled her seared hand.

“Ow, ow, ow.” She whimpered, experiencing the first serious injury of her young life.

Heal

“Lemme see.” Garth said, kneeling down beside the monstrous entity, all thoughts of his little play-fight with his doppleganger cast aside. There was something more valuable here.

Garth took her hand and soothed the pain, repairing the flesh as quickly as he could, allowing the little girl a quick reprieve from the burning onslaught.

“Didn’t they teach you not to get caught in your own backscatter?” he asked, watching her face closely.

“Who’s they?” She asked as her expression softened, tears slowly drying.

“The people who taught you how to do that?” Garth glanced over his shoulder, noticing the wall slowly closing. Nice digs, other me.

“Nobody taught me.” The little girl said, marveling at her newly repaired hand.

“Re-he-heaaallly?” Garth asked, stroking his evil twin goatee and making a funny face, causing her to giggle and scrunch up her face in an attempt to copy him.

“My name’s Garth Daniels, but some people call me Dr. Daniels. What’s your name?”

“Jean One.”

“Your last name is one?”

“Like my daddy, Mark One.”

Garth put a hand to his temple. “Okay let me get this straight, your name is Gene One, and your dad’s name is Mark One?”

“And Mommy’s name is Jelly One!”

“Of course it is,” Garth said with a shrug. “And how old are you, Gene One?”

“Ummm…” she counted on her hands, finally coming up with eight fingers, in two sets of four. “This many.”

“Eight years old? You look five, tops.”

“Eight months, silly!” she said, whacking him with a clumsy palm.

“What has science done?” Garth asked, looking at her wide-eyed until she put her hands over his face to make him stop staring. Obviously his doppleganger had been doing some experiments of his own. Did he know this little abomination could cut holes through his ship? If not, I sense opportunities on the horizon.

He glanced back at the slowly closing hole.

“Tell you what,” Garth said, manifesting a stiff leather card out of the skin of his palm, laced with a tracking spell. The flesh was dead, so his Doppleganger’s ship shouldn’t be able to kill it. He flipped it out between his index and middle finger like a magic trick, handing it over to the little girl.

Dr. Daniels.

Permanent cosmetic/combat enhancements.

Governments overthrown, bullies assimilated, body disposal on request.

L.L.C.

On the back was a series of helpful tips for getting in to contact with him regardless of what planet he was on, to the effect of taking out personal ads or stopping by the seat of local government and asking for Leroy Jenkins.

Garth had assimilated a lot of mayors at this point.

“If you ever get bored with the limits of how much they can teach you here, feel free to give me a call.”

“I can’t read.” She said, frowning.

“I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it soon, just hold onto that for now.”

“Jean?” a woman’s voice came from deeper in the forest, coming closer.

“Here mommy!” Jean shouted, kicking Garth into action,

Time to go. He turned and jumped through the narrowing hole in the door, squeezing his body into a noodle, pooling on the other side of the thick golden material.

Now, to see what makes this spaceship tick.

***Jean One***

That man was silly. Jean thought as he turned into a snake and squirmed through the hole in the wall, just barely outpacing the closing hole.

She looked down at her healed hand. Nice though. I wonder why he wanted me to call him?

Jean frowned, thinking about the conversation for a moment.

He guessed she was five years old, meaning she was growing much faster than he thought she should. Mrs. Banyan was always giving her funny looks, too. How much faster, though?

Jean frowned, trying to figure out exactly how much faster she was growing, but she didn’t know how many months were in a year, so she decided to give up on that, thinking about the rest of the conversation.

The limits of what they can teach you.

They, Implying he wasn’t one of the people of the Fertility.

He seemed extra interested in what she did with the mana to break the door. Something he couldn’t do, for some reason.

Jean’s young mind instinctively organized the information in small notes tied to bigger ideas with a little string bow tie, like bricks at the bottom of the pond, ready for her to bring them up and add on to them later when she needed to.

Outsider, interested in me, growing up surprisingly fast. I’m different.

“Jean! There you are!” Mommy said as she pushed through the underbrush, stooping down to pick her up. Jean put the final bow tie on the memory and sank it into the pond to think about later, turning her attention to mommy.

“It’s almost lunch time. Are you hungry?” she asked as they began heading back.

“Oof, you’re growing like a weed, sweetheart,” she said, carrying her back to the city. “It’s a good thing your mommy is so strong.” Mommy flexed her arms, drawing a giggle out of Jean as she marveled at how the feel of her arm changed.

Mommy liked to say and do things things that made her laugh.

“Mommy?”

“Yeah sweetie?”

“Can I learn how to read?”

Mommy shrugged, the motion bobbing her up and down.

“I don’t see why not.”

***Finn Jenson***

“It says if you can’t attend the hearings, that they will rule against you by default.” Fin said, holding the official letter up with trembling fingers. His whole body felt like it’d been dumped in a bath of icewater.

First the immortal Founder dies, and now the Saviors descended from the heavens again with…Bureaucracy. Even the heavens have paperwork and red tape, it seemed.

“I can read, young man,” The horrifically large insect hummed.

Somehow…Somehow! This enormous monstrosity had as much claim to the Earth as the Mississisipi Empire. More, even, according to the horned Saviors, in their flowing robes.

I wish I’d never followed that damned paper trail. Finn once again bemoaned his fate, having followed up on the ‘carnifax’ citizen who’d been leased a huge swath of land just east of the Green Hell.

Somehow he’d become the creature’s secretary, having nimble, if somewhat pudgy fingers, and a keen sense for organization.

“The problem we face here, and we can be sure they’re aware of it, is that their little meeting hall is far too small for me to attend.”

“It says here that you can either shrink or transmute your form to something smaller if you wish to continue to attend the hearings.”

“They’d like that, wouldn’t they?”

Finn frowned, glancing up at the massive, house-sized eyes before he flinched and looked away. He couldn’t read any kind of emotion from the insectoid face, but her voice sounded…amused?

“Fetch the Lawbooks, Secretary.”

“Sure, umm…what did you have in mind?”

“Vandalism.”

Finn’s brows crept up, and he found himself staring at the giant insect.

“Now.”

“Right, Right,” Finn nodded, carefully traversing the edge of the giant lily pad, trying not to dunk himself into the creature’s pond. His sweat-stained clothes were worth more than his family name, as the empire had already begun cannibalizing itself in the wake of the Founder’s death.

I should probably get around to selling them for some silver and a new pair of peasant’s garb. I don’t like the way people have been looking at me the last couple days. It wouldn’t be a perfect disguise, as Finn’s jiggly body would draw a fair share of attention, but there wasn’t much he could do about that. At least, not quickly.

Finn hopped off the pad and onto the bank, hustling down the narrow trail down the mountainside to the small hand-wagon full of books that the ant-woman had lent to Carnifax. He was loading his arms with books on the law of the Saviors when he heard the ring of steel and felt a sharp pain in his side.

“Umm…” Finn glanced down and spotted a shortsword lightly pressed into the soft flesh of his side, not hard enough to break the skin, but hard enough to make a point. The sword was connected to a rough hand, which was in turn connected to High Inquisitor Nathanial.

“What are you doing here, Jenson?”

“Picking up some book – ah!” Finn let out a hiss of pain as the pressure increased.

“You know what I meant. What are you doing working for the enemy?”

“I don’t really have a choice.” Finn said, wincing.

“There’s always a choice. Even if it’s a shitty choice.” Nathanial said, leaning in close, his half-nosed visage forcing Finn to look away.

“I –“

“Secretary, bring your friend.” Carnifax’s thrumming voice cut through the woods so clearly that Finn forgot about the hundred yards of thick woods between them.

Finn glanced up at Nathaniel, who narrowed his eyes, then nodded. Together they walked back up the trail to the huge pond, Nathanial keeping the blade pressed into Finn’s back as they walked.

“Don’t be shy, introduce yourself.” Carnifax spoke again as they came into view.

Nathaniel glared at Carnifax, his breath hot on Finn’s shoulder. After a moment, the pressure on Finn’s kidney went away, and he sheathed his blade.

“Nathanial, High inquisitor.”

“No last name, Nathaniel?”

“I’m a bastard.”

You can say that again, Finn thought.

“Ah, a spawn of the previous human gold-hat wearer?”

“What?”

“It always seemed to me that you can tell a lot about a human’s place in society by the size and material of their hat. Steel hats for soldiers, cloth hats for scribes, leather hats for rangers and workers in the wild. Gold hats for Kings.”

Nathaniel chuckled. “There is no blood relation between me and The Founder. Officially.”

“Of course. What can I help you with, Nathaniel? Surely you didn’t come here for Secretary?”

“My name’s Finn?” Finn interjected.

“Shut up.”

“Hush, Secretary.”

Finn shut up.

Nathaniel squared his shoulders.

“Just wanted to see if the Saviors are truly considering giving the Earth to a giant bug.” He said with a sneer. “I thought it was a metaphor, but I guess not.”

“Nathaniel, what do you expect that I’ll do when I’m given ownership of the planet?”

“Other than sheer unbridled chaos?” Nathaniel asked. “I imagine you’ll invent a new flavor of ice-cream with flies in it.”

“Nothing.”

The grizzled Inquisitor raised an eyebrow.

“Do I look like I want to make decisions for a bunch of monkeys?”

“I can’t say that you do.”