Richter, commander of the Agency’s forces had had enough. He had actually, under the advice of his Bards, Wizards, and Guardians, retreated away from the insufferable monkey mayor with the insipid name, the voice from hell, and the inexplicable sour smell of citrus. The Wizards had then used scrying magic to locate Fletcher and his people, while the Bards attempted to sweet talk the mayor so Richter could calm himself.

It hadn’t worked. Fletcher was in three different places, and one of those was giving off divine interference. Until very recently, when he was in three different places, and two of those places gave off divine interference. One of those places was deep underground, and very far from the city of Saxwhacket, and that made absolutely no sense. The Wizards, for as useful as they might be when the going was simple, were useless right now. He had been advised not to put the Rogues or Rangers into the field, since they didn’t want another Flunt-on-the-Rustle. Richter hadn’t been there, but the leader of the team had been given a verbal dressing down that was now the stuff of legends. The highest level admin had come down to give that guy the business, because he’d gone against some magically binding treaty made up by who-knew, for a purpose Richter couldn’t imagine.

The things holding him back were three: one, all Nakamamon had magic and could therefore pose a threat. Two, all his people were in a tizzy about the Flunt-on-the-Rustle situation, and were convinced breaking treaty was suicidal. The third reason he wasn’t moving forward was that the intelligence still wasn’t clear.

They had steamrolled the Wizards out of the traitor Jacoby’s team, and under interrogation by Rogues and Wizards, he’d divulged that they’d sent Fletcher and his team on ahead to Saxwhacket—

“Fuck’s sake,” he grumbled. “How am I supposed to take any of these things seriously with names like these? Fucking Widdershins Oxnard Bumblefuck Von Syphilis, mayor of Sex Addict.”

He stood and did a table flip, then sat there seething some more while the low level Wizards serving as his aides righted the table yet again. They placed all the tools back on his desk delicately, staring at the floor, and another person arrived with another plate of food, which he ignored.

Whatever the mayor of Saxwhacket might be, he seemed functionally immune to the wiles of their Bards. They had come at him from every angle, but he returned their civility or threats with pure vitriol. Oxnard Widdershins was the absolute worst, and it was even worse with him having the dumbest name.

Richter was beleaguered, he was put upon, he had orders from the highest ups, and he was frankly infuriated. It was unthinkable to him that he could let one pathetic little creature stop him from doing his job.

“Enough,” he told his aides. “Get my class leaders in here, now.”

They scurried out, and soon after had all the class leaders in his magically-erected, soundproofed, scrying resistant, elemental-attack proof tent. One Guardian, one Rogue, one Bard, one Ranger, one Wizard, and lastly, one Sorcerer.

The one that scared him.

“I’m through messing with the mayor. There will be no more negotiation. No more trickery, or whatever the hell is happening right now. We’re getting a fix on Fletcher’s position, and we’re taking him out.”

He got some nods and mumbled words in response. These were mostly muttered thanks or relief. They didn’t like the thought of ‘negotiating’ with the mayor any more than he did. No negotiation was happening, so to hell with it.

“I want the Rogues all entering the city,” he said. “I want reports on Fletcher’s whereabouts. Communication channels open with our Wizards at all times. How many of the walkie talkies do we have?”

“Ten, sir.”

“Great. Ten Wizards stay on the comms, ten Rogues going in. We stick to stealth.”

“Get the Rangers in, doing long range surveillance and scouting. No one is to attack, for any reason.”

“EXCUSE ME!” The mayor thundered from without a few minutes later. “You and your people have NOT been granted PERMISSION to enter the city!”

Richter ignored the monkey’s bellowing voice from without. Even if he had seen one or more of their people entering the city, it didn’t matter.

“I am TALKING to YOU!”

“The city blocks are flying and constantly in motion,” the Guardian class leader said.

Richter turned to the Wizards. “What are our options?”

“We already have a small number of potions of flight,” the Wizard said. “They’ll last about an hour each.”

“I want a production facility, and if we can’t scry Fletcher’s location, let’s move production to the highest priority. Everybody you can spare on flight potion manufacture.”

“Sir, this is a city…” the Guardian said. “It will take hours and hours to search through every city block, and that’s assuming he doesn’t move.”

This city was the worst possible place for them to be searching for someone. Richter’s teeth clenched, giving him the look of someone about to have a seriously hard time going to the bathroom, while outside the monkey kept right on howling his impotent indignation. Good. It was time for the mayor to have a reason to be angry.

“What about me?” the Sorcerer asked quietly. All the others turned her way. The one with the dark skin, the Mohawk of pure white dreadlocks, and the sides of her head shaved. The one that scared everyone.

“I’m not fully up on your abilities, soldier,” Richter said.

***

The thing Blake had become threw its head back and roared out in challenge. It was huge, a ten foot towering mass of muscle with a broad, stupid and malevolent look on its face. It definitely wasn’t human anymore, given its three thick fingers and toes, its mouth wider than my entire head, and the muscles it had, which belonged to no human. There was basically no neck. It was called a Brawlder and it existed only to fight.

“Fight me!” The fighting aspect Nakamamon bellowed. Nᴇw novel chapters are publɪshed on NoveI~Fire.net

“Oh, Blake,” I said.

Blake the Brawlder stood in a large room containing a bunch of Wizard ritual circles. These were far more elaborate than any of the ones I’d seen Wizards make in the field; they were carved into stone and filled in with metal. The stone had been transmuted into metal as well, on the central ritual circle. Blake was pacing before a foot thick, twenty foot by twenty foot ritual circle. In it, strange candles guttered, some clumps of fur and other animal bits sat, and other material components lay inside smaller circles. These included small piles of powder, both metallic and regular, what looked like a flaming feather, and piles of precious stones. One was a ruby the size of my fist.

Also, the only reason we could see any of this was that Trent had opened up a small hole in the floor and we were peering through it. From what we could see, the walls also had runic ritual circles in them, and this was the only place which didn’t have one. This room did not have an access point: no stairs in, no windows, no doors.

“How do they feed him?” Vellenia asked.

“Poor thing,” April said, not knowing the whole Blake saga.

“Come on!” Blake beat his hands against his chest and stomped on the floor.

“What do we do?” Trent asked. “Garnet won’t go in there, and metal takes a million times more mana to deal with.”

I pursed my lips in thought. “I’ll take care of Blake. Once that’s done, you can… I don’t know… ideas?”

“Make a hole through the entire castle so it falls all the way to the ground,” Azalea said.

Trent looked at her, then at me, then at her again.

“That is diabolical. I love it.”

It took some serious amount of time for us to sneak back down under the room and work the stone just so the gigantic slab of metal would fall vertically. If we could stand it on end, Trent could make a slot and cause it to fall out of the whole castle.

It took creating a ramp, and slowly getting the thing to fall in just the right way, while Blake bellowed and called out from above.

“Azalea and I got this,” I said, and engaged Blizzard.

Blizzard: Spend an Affinity Token to create a snowstorm centered on any point you choose within 50 feet. The snowstorm stretches for 50 feet in all directions. The blizzard causes minor ice aspect damage for those who spend at least 5 seconds within. It reduces vision and has a low chance to cause a target to slip and fall prone.

Blake would be using Durability to shrug off the effects of Azalea’s poisons. I squinted at Blake and tried to engage Identify.

Identify Check: You currently have 10 levels of Identify and 10 levels of Ingenuity. The check to learn your target’s attributes is Very Difficult, and requires 8 successes. Would you like to spend 8 Tokens to succeed automatically?

Total Tokens: 10 Ingenuity and 8 Free Tokens.

Note: Due to Post-Sharing Clarity, your Puppetry and Durability are both boosted by 3 levels.

I did not, and received my success notification a moment later. With 26 levels to use, it wasn’t difficult to score 8 successes. I ended up with 12, which gave me more information.

Blake’s stats were very skewed.

Blake

Brawlder (fighting aspect) - level 46

Attributes:

Affinity 4

Durability 12

Ingenuity 1

Likability 2

Agility 10

Muscularity 26

Free Tokens 1

Fighting Skills:

Body slam 24

Focused Rush 22

Diamond Body 18

Takedown 16

Intercept 2

I blinked, then turned to Azalea. “Do you know how many to use on him?”

I had Dazzle from Vellenia, and she had her own fairy magic, just on the off chance this failed and Blake spent the next three seconds smearing me all over the ritual circles on the walls and ceiling.

The Token went cla-cling and disappeared in a puff of magic, then manifested the snow out of nowhere. At the same time, Azalea dropped into the room already firing off poisonous spines. Two of them stuck in Blake’s neck before he literally turned his body hard enough to have a metallic sheen, and the next bunch went pinging off him.

“Come on back up—” I couldn’t say more, before Blake went charging at my poisonous little minx. Just before he got there, though, he slipped on the ice, and I watched as Azalea vaulted over him using her hair tentacles. The sexy purple girl landed in a superhero crouch, and Blake got slowly to his feet, shaking his head.

He got another three steps into the room before collapsing on his face.

I let out a breath and listened as Vellenia and April did the same.

“Now,” I said, “Let’s see if we can drop this thing like a coin through a slot.

***

Cinzy kept running her hands over her distended belly, looking down at it in wonder. She’d gone through nine months of pregnancy in just over a week, much like what had happened to Tara once she’d gotten back.

“You got me pregnant,” she breathed.

I couldn’t argue with that. There was no argument to be had anyway.

“I don’t know if I’m ready, Fletcher,” she continued. “How do I know if I’m ready to be a mother? I’m twenty one years old. And a boy.” That statement left a lot hanging, like whether she could handle raising a little boy, or whether she preferred having a girl to boy.

“It will be fine,” I told her. “Tara’s with you, Regina’s with you…” Jacoby was probably with her. Pretty soon, if Ivy and Isabelle wanted to be with her, they would be, along with the adorable little slut Celine. The Lovers hadn’t been messing around when they gave me a Fertility Quality at level 7. I wondered if it were possible to get the Nakamamon ladies with child. I thought I might end up trying. The lure of having that power was seductive, and it was strong. “I promise, my mom and dad will help out, my sister will help out—“

“Fletcher!” She cried, much louder than I’d have preferred. “We’re fugitives from the Agency. They can freeze out the money they pay us. They can leave us with nothing!”

I smiled at her. “We don’t have nothing if we stay here,” I said. “We have everything.”

Her eyes widened, and I knew she hadn’t considered just living here. Away from pop culture and away from the hustle and bustle and impending global climate catastrophe, where we could grow food every day, and fly, and use magic.

“You want to stay here?”

I shrugged. “Why not? No violence, free healthcare courtesy of me, all the food you could ever want and some you never knew existed. Trent can build us better houses than these, or Alan and Celine. I don’t think we have anything to worry about.”

“You can’t just expect me to throw away whatever life I have on earth just because some god gave you the power to put a child in me!”

I didn’t have the will to clamp a hand over her mouth, and she was a Bard, so interrupting her just wasn’t possible when she was magically enhanced like this. Plus, it was time to move anyway.

I heard shouts from the pursuit team, and with a grin, I scooped my gorgeous pregnant girlfriend in my arms and leapt off the roof towards yet another block.

Cinzy tucked her head in tight this time and looped her arms around my neck, swearing softly and telling me how upset she was. It was hardly necessary; I knew she was super pissed off.

We soared up and away, around the next block, and then skimmed the edge for some time. They were expecting this, and had several people in positions on blocks nearby to watch for this tactic. I didn’t like that they’d learned so quickly, and I didn’t like how many of them there were after me. Of course, at the time, I had no idea that I wasn’t just going against the one pursuit team, but people from Richter’s main team who’d gotten into the city and had engaged their flying Nakamamon, or their flight spells from the Wizards.

It was a furious chase, and it wouldn’t end well. Curiously, no one was attacking any longer. I couldn’t help but appreciate that. They were worried about the citizens.

“I’m sorry, Cinzy,” I told her, as we alit on the wall of a building to rebound in another direction as fast as possible. I was more maneuverable than the Rogues and Rangers and others on their flying bond mates, but there were so many and they were coordinating.

“Sorry for knocking me up?”

“Oh, no, of course not. I think you look amazing with a baby in you. I think it might be a kink of mine. No, I’m talking about the fact that they’re going to capture you soon.”

She snarled the next one. “What do you mean, they’re going to capture me?”

“When they pull me off you, I’m going to disappear. And that means you’ll be in enemy hands.”

“Fletcher—”

“There’s no other way. I’m sorry.” There was another way. “Actually…”

I stopped, jerked a door open, and pulled us inside. Then, well over a mile away, a different Fletcher pulled the door open and let the chase go on another few minutes. Both OG and Fletcher II stared at one another for a moment in the Eelysian compound, before Fletcher II engaged his fairy wings yet again, and took off in a completely different direction. It was, in truth, a mistake to head back to the lab.

This is Christopher knowing that hindsight is 20/20.