I've Got a Twig (Twig Let's Read)

fabledFreeboota · Aug 9, 2017

Join me, scurrilousSeafarer, a certified Worm addict and Pact apologist, as I read through the third of Wildbow's wonderful webnovels, Twig. The second of Wildbow's webnovels that I was reading while waiting for Worm's sequel.

It was a time when I'd caught up with everything. I'd read Lord of the Rings for a lark, and Worm saved me from Game of Thrones. (I made it 6 books in before I stopped enjoying the experience.) It was dark, tragic, and beautiful and hopeful all in one go. And I binged it like the idiot I was. The audiobook has helped me appreciate it properly, because it tempers my disgustingly fast reading speed. I decided, after a few weeks of reading wormfic, after writing a horrible, horrible alt!Taylor, and a few months of exceedingly dumb things with S9 members, to read Pact. AND IT WAS GOOD.

And took me less than a month... DAMN IT! I enjoyed it thoroughly, but broke several speed regulations on the way. So I'm pacing myself. I'm going to take it chapter by chapter and... damn it I just finished three arcs. Well. I'm delaying myself. I'm going to steal a joke or two from Matt and Scott, the format from Doctor Mod, and then drown the two in my own esoteric sense of humour.

fabledFreeboota · Aug 9, 2017

Funnily enough, our story starts with no omnitrigger warning. I don't recall if there was one on Pact, but lets be fair, if its bad its probably going to happen at some point in a Wildbow story.

-How does it go? The first lesson, something even the uninitiated know.-

Don't play god unless you're sure you can smite it. We open in a creaking, wheezing barn. Bow doesn't describe looks so much as textures, feelings. You get the sense of dilapidation on top of underuse on top of refurbishments. Its empty, aside from the four that stare about for the fifth occupant of the room. The type of monster that 'bow comes up with.

-
We were doing fine on that count. The air around us was stale, but it was still oxygen. Water ran around and below us, flowing over our bare feet, redirected from gutters to the building's inside.

What had once been a barn had been made into a warehouse, then abandoned partway through a third set of changes. A floor of old wooden slats reached only halfway down the length of the old building, what had once been a hayloft. If we stood on the edge, we could look down at the floor below to see uneven floorboards on top of compacted dirt. The original barn's door was still there, mounted on rollers. I leaned over to get a better look. I could see a table, some scattered papers, books, and a blackboard. The only light was that which came in through windows. A scattered set placed on the upper floor, and more well above head height on the lower one.

Aside from the four of us, one other thing occupied the hayloft. It was hard to make out in the dim light that filtered in through the window, like an eel in dark water, and if it weren't for the fact that we'd seen it approach, we might not have noticed it at all. Sleek, four-legged, and tall enough I couldn't have reached its shoulder if I stood on my toes, it was wound around the pillar as a snake might be. Unlike a snake, though, it had four long limbs, each with four long digits, tipped with claws. Head flowed into neck, which flowed into shoulder and body without a without prominent ridge, bump, bone or muscle to interrupt the sequence.
-

Subtle hints to start, language like "an eel in dark water" that subtly colours your impressions, gives a sheen and a slick texture. Not sleek like a snake, or a reptile. Like an eel. It coils, it slinks, it stays perfectly quiet as it tastes the air. One might think think that our protagonist would be frozen with fear. No, he's caked with wax, and smiling. Almost playfully, he informs his comrades of its blindness, almost drawing its attention.

-
It uncoiled, setting a claw on the floor, and the old floorboards didn't elicit an audible creak. Large as it was, it managed to distribute weight too evenly, and used its tail to suspend some of its weight.

It didn't walk, but slinked, each foot falling in front of the last as it passed within three feet of us. Its wide mouth parted, showing just a hint of narrow white teeth.

There was no cover, nothing to hide us from it.

I saw its nostrils flare. It opened its mouth to taste the air with a flick of a thin tongue.

The way things looked, we were very close to doing the opposite of 'flourishing'.

It was hard to put into words, but my thoughts connected with that thought, and it was funny.

I grinned, and flakes of wax fell from my face at the movement. I watched the thing continue onward, toward the back of the hayloft, head turning as it sniffed the surroundings. It unwound its long tail from the wooden pillar that held up the one end of the overhanging hayloft, and it moved with a slow carefulness.

I stared at its eye, and saw how it didn't move as the head swept from one side to the next, the slit of the iris barely changing in response as the faint light from the window swept over its head.

"It's blind," I whispered.

The movements of the creature came to a halt. It froze, nostrils wide.

Gordon, just to my left, put out a hand, covering my mouth. He was tense, lines on his neck standing out. Trying to put on a brave face, as our leader. Gordon, strong, handsome, likeable, talented. A veneer covered his face, as it did all of us, almost clear, cracked and white at the corners of his lips where he'd changed his expression, coming away in flakes at his hairline, where his hair was covered by the same substance.

The creature turned, and as it did its tail moved around until it touched the outside edge of the makeshift gutter that we were all standing in, fine emerald scales rasping against wood.

When Gordon whispered his response, I could barely hear him utter, "It's not deaf."
-

The ol' "it can hear and smell you but not see you" trick.

We're introduced to the first of his companions. Gordon. Strong, handsome, talented, likeable. I could go on but I won't. But I could. From there, we are intoduced to Helen and Lilian. Lilly is terrified, clutching at her bag, hood up. I got the sense of her being more clothed than the others, yet still shivering while they remain still. Helen for her part, remains passive. She doesn't even blink as water slides past her eyes.

We watch as the creature eats kittens, and our protagonist establishes a less than stellar set of morals.

-
I nodded, and he pulled his hand away.

I had a glimpse of the girls. Helen and Lillian. As different as night and day. Lillian was bent over, hood up and over her head, hiding her face, hands clutching the straps of her bag, white knuckled. Terrified, and rightly so. The coating on her face was flaking badly.

In contrast, Helen's face didn't betray a flicker of emotion. Her golden hair, normally well cared for, cultivated into tight rolls, was damp and falling out of place. Water ran down her face, splashing in through the side of the window where the makeshift gutter came in, and the droplets didn't provoke one flinch or batted eyelash. She could have been a statue, and she'd kept her face still enough that the wax that covered it hadn't broken, which only helped the effect.

Still and silent, we watched as the creature moved to the far corner of the hayloft.

It snapped, and the four curved fangs were the only ones that were any wider than a pencil, visible for only an instant before the head disappeared into detritus piled in the corner. A furred form struggled before the creature could raise its head. No swallowing, per se. Gravity did the work, as teeth parted and the prey fell down its long throat.

A second bite let it collect another, small and young enough it couldn't even struggle. Tiny morsels.

"Kitties," Lillian whispered, horror overtaking fear in her expression.

Mama kitty shouldn't have had her babies in the same building as the monster, I thought. Wallace's law at work.
-

If he can say that about kittens, he can say that about you. They make their way out of the building with a minimum of upskirt, and something else is mentioned of the sort of setting we're in. Old buildings are patched. Trees and branches intertwined with brick. Described as if they've been planted. And red, all of it red. I smile and picture the redweed of Well's War, even as we are drawn to the the Academy. A collection of old buildings, now something big. Something, that like all else, smells of death, and fat. Even as it rains.

Lillian is picked out as the newest of the gang, and a fifth member of the contingent. Jamie, a book in his lap, shoes and boots sorted around him, and a visitor in an oversized coat.

-
Gordon nudged me. He pointed.

The window.

I nodded.

The makeshift gutter was little more than a trough, with little care given for the leaks here and there, and it fed into wooden barrels at the edge of the upper floor, with more channels and troughs leading into sub-chambers and tanks below. It had been running long enough for debris and grime to accumulate, a combination of silt and scum collecting at the very bottom to make it treacherous. Our progress was slow, and I had to remind myself that anything faster threatened to make noise, or risked a fall.

As if to follow the thought, Lillian's foot skidded on the bottom of the trough, and she tipped forward, straight into Helen's arms. The creature stopped its slow consumption of the cat's litter.

We were frozen, waiting, while the creature sniffed the air.

It returned to its meal.

We made our way out, everyone but me flipping up their hoods to ward off the rain. I let the droplets fall where they would, on hair that refused to be bound down beneath a thick layer of waterproofing wax.

There was no ledge outside the window, only the real gutter. Bigger and more solid, if still treacherous with seasons of accumulated grime. The roof loomed above us, more up than over, as barn roofs were wont to be. Red leaves collected here and there.

"I stay," Helen murmured.

There was no questioning it, no argument. We couldn't afford to make the noise, and it made a degree of sense.

"I'll go first," I volunteered, craning my head a bit to see the way down. Being the sort of building it was, the barn-turned-warehouse-turned-something-else was tall, with a long way to the bottom. The gutter pointed groundward at the corner, fixed to the brick exterior at regular points by lengths of metal. It worked as a ladder, but not one that was fun to use. The 'rungs' were too far apart, too close to the wall.

Someone grabbed my arm. I thought it would be Gordon or Helen, as they had the personalities to be arm-grabbers. It wasn't.

"You go second," Lillian whispered to me. "I know you well enough to know that If you go before me you'll look up my skirt."

"Me?" I tried to sound innocent.

Gordon jabbed me. His expression was no-nonsense, his green eyes a steely grey beneath his hood, absorbing the colors of the clouds above. His mouth was a grim line.

"Okay," I conceded.

"I'll take your bag," Gordon whispered. Again, there was no argument. Lillian handed over the backpack, loaded down with tools and supplies.

She accepted Gordon's support in getting down to the downspout, and began her slow descent.

I fidgeted. My eye traveled over our surroundings, buildings scattered like they'd been blown around by strong winds and planted where they lay. Older structures had a charm to them, simplicity and a character that came with age and gentle wear and tear. The oldest and the newest buildings had been shored up by strategic plant growth, branches weaving into and through damaged sections, growing to complement masonry, around bricks and supports. The very newest growths had a characteristic red tint to the leaves. The rest were dead, left to petrify.

The Academy loomed above it all, those same elements taken to an extreme. It had been an old collection of buildings once. A rush to grow and meet surging demand had led to a lot of the same haphazard growth.

It all had an odor. There were smells that became second nature, and there were smells that were ingrained in the psyche as bad smells. Ones that spoke of death, of long sickness, and of violence. Rendered fat, decay, and blood. Each were heavy on the air.

Ironic, that things so overgrown and reeking of decay were the parts of the city charged with progress.

You'd think the rain would wash away the smell.

I checked. Lillian had moved down one rung. I shifted my weight from one foot to the next, annoyed.

She wasn't one of us. She was new. Allowances had to be made.

It wasn't the first time I had told myself any of those things. I'd heard it from Gordon. It didn't make it any less annoying.

I bent down, peering over the edge of the gutter to the road below. I could see the windows, the boxes further down.

"Sy," Gordon hissed the words, "What are you doing?"

Gripping the ledge, I swung myself over.

I let go, and enjoyed both the moment of utter terror and Lillian's gasp of horror, before my fingers caught hold of the window frame below.

My right foot slipped on the damp windowsill, scraping peeling paint off and away before I brought it back up to the sill. Water and paint flakes sprayed below.

When I looked up, Gordon's head was poking over the edge, looking down at me.

He moved his head, and I could hear him speak, very patiently, to Lillian, "Keep going. Don't mind him."

Peering in the window, I could see the interior, the lower floor. The desk, the notes on the experiment. Another table was heavy with lines of bottles, vials, jugs, and yet more papers, scattered. Rain poured down on me, tracing its way down the back of my neck, beneath my shirt. The waxed and waterproof cowl and short cloak had kept my shirt dry, and I shivered at the sensation.

I tested the window, and was utterly surprised to find it latched. I drew a key from my pocket, trying to fit it into the gap, hoping to lift the latch, but it proved too thick.

The key went back in place. I removed my hands from the windowsill one at a time, to dry them in my armpits and then reposition my grip.

Gripping the windowsill, I strained my body, reaching down and to the right. The doorframe that bounded the large sliding door was just out of reach…

Holding the windowsill with my left hand, reaching with my right leg, I touched the frame with my big toe. I found a grip, and I used it to better position myself. Fingers dug into the space between bricks, where water had worn away mortar, and I heaved myself over, using my toes and only my toes to perch on the top of the doorway.

Were it any other door, I wouldn't have fussed, but I was still just high enough off the ground to have cause to worry. This had been a barn, and this door was the type that let wagons or draft horses inside.

I paused on top of the door, cleaning my hands of wet and grit.

"Watching you do that is making me nervous," Lillian said, looking down at me. She'd progressed two more 'rungs'. She was the shortest of us, next to me, it didn't make it easier for her.

I flashed her a grin, and more of the waterproofing wax that I'd caked onto my face cracked.

I worked my way down to a crouch, still on top of the door, then slid down, draping my front against the door itself. I let myself drop the rest of the way, landing bare-footed in mud.

I couldn't get the smile off my face as I passed beneath the drain pipe, making a point of looking up at Lillian, who was making a point of her own in turn, glaring down at me, very clearly annoyed.

"You had an audience," a soft voice stated.

I turned.

Amid empty crates and a door that had been taken off its hinges, jumbled together as trash and detritus, I could make out the fifth member of our contingent. Jamie had a book in his lap, our collected boots and shoes neatly organized around him, and he had company. A black-skinned boy with a hood and cloak far too large for him, tattered enough that it had probably been a hand-me-down for the last person to own it. His eyes were wide.

"I thought you were keeping lookout," I said.

"I was."

"The whole point of being lookout is that you tell us if there's trouble."

"Is he trouble?" Jamie asked.

"I'm no trouble," the boy's words flowed right off the back of Jamie's, without a heartbeat of hesitation. "The trouble is inside."

"The snake thing," I said.

"You saw it?" he asked. His eyes went wider. "Then you should know if you're going to steal something, you shouldn't steal from there."

"We're not stealing," I said. "We're just looking."

The boy didn't respond. He watched Lillian's glacially slow descent.

I met Jamie's eyes. If it weren't for Helen, who was a special case, I might have called Jamie the quiet one. He wore eyeglasses, though there were all sorts of ways to fix or replace bad eyes, and his hair was long beneath his hood. Not out of any style or affectation. He simply never liked how it looked when it was short. His face was narrow, his eyes large as he shifted his gaze to look from me to Lillian. His hands held firm to a book that sat across his knees.

"Helen?" he asked.

"Stayed upstairs."

A nod.

I wanted him to figure out how to deal with our bystander, given how he'd failed to warn us about the boy in the first place, but Jamie was silent.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"Mine?"

"I know his," I said, striving to not sound as annoyed at the question as I felt. I pointed at Jamie to make myself as clear as possible.

"Thomas. My friends call me Thom."

"Did you hear about the crying man of Butcher's Row?"
-

He was kind of sad it took as many arcs as it did, and how his defeat, while fitting, was less impressive than his Lawyer's. He lost his dog, and his house.

We're given a name for our protagonist. Sly. Not the screaming one though. Jamie uses it to try and stop our protagonist from continuing.

-Do you remember Mother Hen?"

Thom nodded. "That nurse who- the babies."-

Something something black and white, there was a Gecko involved, it was kind of the reason I stopped reading the comments section really.

-"The nurse. Yes. Both got caught, right? Everything got tied up neatly?"

"Yeah," Thom said. He couldn't meet my eyes, so he focused on Lillian instead. "The authorities from the Academy got them."

"Exactly, Thom," I said, "But who told the authorities?"-

So this is what we are neatly given. All wrapped up for us. A band of child detectives and informents, the famous five. Mystery solvers! They bribe Thom to keep well away from the rest of the story. Good job. Anywhere else and he'd wind up trying to join in. They send him on a very important snipe hunt.

Sly sneaks inside, and peers about the inside of the barn, looking for... Helen. Lurking by a rain barrel. Half of her attention on Sly, half on the creature. And its probably because I'm doing this after a little more experience, but I'm getting the image of her eyes moving like a chameleon's. The room drips with atmosphere and rainwater, into barrels and onto papers.

-
His eyes moved. To me, then Jamie, to Lillian, and then the barn-turned-warehouse.

I was nodding before the word came out of his mouth. "You."

"You're clever," I praised him.

"Why?"

I made the universal gesture for money, rubbing thumb against two fingers.

"Really?"

I nodded.

The gears were shifting in his head. Processing, calculating.

"I've heard things," he said.

"I bet."

"Useful things."

"I don't doubt it," I said.

"I can get money for it? For telling people?"

"If you know who to tell, and how to sell it," I said.

His expression changed, a frown. Disappointment.

Tick, tick, turn turn. The gears in his head were still moving.

He wasn't dumb, even if he wasn't much of an actor. Then again, he was only ten or so.

I could guess what he was going to ask, and I knew I might lose him if I turned him down too many times.

My mind ticked over possibilities. What I needed, what I had to do.

Before he could venture a question, I interrupted him. "You want in?"

"In?" he asked. Now he was wary.

I reached beneath my cloak, and I fished out a coinpurse. Two fingers reached in, and came out fully extended, two dollars in coins pressed between the tips.

The wariness subsided.

"I'll give you this on good faith. Eight whole dollars if you follow through. I need you to do something for me."

He reached for and claimed the money without any hesitation.

"You said you had friends?" I asked.

"Sure."

"On top of the grocer's place. Corner of Oxbow and Halls. Wait there. Take turns keeping an eye out. You're looking for a black coach, led by two stitched horses, heading toward the Academy. You'll know they're stitched because they're wearing raincoats. Won't be more than two hours' wait."

"Uh huh?"

"There's a rain barrel up there. They're going to have to stop to wait for the way to clear before they can carry on their way. What you're going to do is tip over the barrel. Send water off the edge of the roof, onto the horses if you can. Might want to prop some things up around the barrel, to make sure it happens."

He frowned a bit.

"Ten dollars, all in all, for you and your friends, for one afternoon's work. Pretty good deal. Don't think you can do it?"

"I can do it," Thom said.

"You sure?" I asked.

"I can do it," he said, voice firm.

I studied him, head to toe, taking it all in.

Reaching beneath my cloak, I collected a note from a pocket. I pressed it into his hands.

He looked down at the money, stunned.

"If you don't follow through, you won't get a deal like this again," I said. "Think hard before you try cheating me. A big part of what we do is find people."

Mute, he nodded.

"Go," I said.

He went, running, feet splashing in puddles of water.

Lillian was about halfway down.

"You lied to him," Jamie said.

"Would you rather I told the truth?" I asked.

"If you're going to get him involved."

I shook my head.

"Which leads me to ask… what are you up to?" Jamie asked. "You weren't just getting rid of him or making trouble."

"I'm going inside," I said, starting for the door. "Tell the others if they're wondering."

"That's not what I'm asking," Jamie said.

But he didn't move from his spot, and I was already gone.

I passed under Lillian a second time, peeking up her skirt a second time, more to needle her than out of any lingering curiosity. The big door was, as it turned out, locked, and I wasn't able to bypass the big padlock any more than I could bypass the latch of the window above. But the door rolled on wheels, and the wheels fit in ruts, a long, shallow channel.

I headed to the end of the door opposite the lock, and I pushed the full weight of my body against it. The lock rattled, heavy.

I tried a bit more pressure, pushing, and the door tilted, the bottom corner closest to me rising out of the channel. Gripping the door, I lifted it up and away, wood scraping concrete as I created a triangular gap.

I slipped inside, my eyes immediately going to the hayloft, the upper floor.

Helen was there, sitting with one foot propped up, both hands in her lap to keep her skirt pressed down. Her face was still expressionless. Half of her attention was on me. Half was on the creature. There was a rain barrel beside her, rigged so it hung over the edge of the hayloft, collecting the water that ran in through the makeshift gutter, feeding a steady stream down into containers below. Runoff from those containers fed into the corner of the building. A drain from when the building had been a warehouse, keeping the goods dry.

I studied the papers on the desk. Water from one of the windows above spat down. Barely large enough to qualify as drops, but they dotted one paper, making ink bleed. Sketches of the beast. Notations on structure and anatomy.

One of the texts on a table beside the desk was hand-made. Pages had holes in them, and a cord was laced through, tying them to the heavy leather cover. With care, I paged through the thing.

One being, knit together from several. The better traits of each, all drawn together. References to Wollstone's texts, to the ratios of life, and to the volumes of genetic code for Felidae and Eunectes Murinus.
-

Bow gives us a sense of scale with all these texts. This isn't a madman. This is a mad academic, studying a mad science. For those of you who like me didn't actually bother to look up those latin names, Felidae is a cat. And Murinus is an anaconda. I dub it, Cataconda. Funnily though, our mad scientist also gave it venom. Start with a mamba or a cobra? Ah, but then you lose the power of constriction AND poison. Its maker keeps a list of its din din times.

-
A whole chapter on digestive enzymes. Diagrams of the thing's fangs, which I had glimpsed as it devoured the mother cat, with labels for the reservoirs of venom that wasn't true venom. It was enzymes, much like the ones bugs used to dissolve their meals before supping them. Notes suggested that the feature helped with the digestion of any and all food.

Little doubt of what this thing had been engineered for.

My finger traced the labels of glass containers, bottles and vials. Blood, bile, cerebral fluid…

Venom. I'd expected it to be green, but it was clear, in a glass container with a murky exterior, about as tall and wide as a wine bottle, though more cylindrical.

There was a noise at the door, and I took a long step to the side, toward the shadows beside one of the big wooden containers for water.

Only Lillian, followed by Gordon, passing through the gap. Gordon was the largest of us, and it was a particularly tight fit for him.

I continued paging through the text.

Diet.

My eye traveled down the list. Meal times, meal sources, meal sizes.

Pig carcass.
Dog carcass.
Pig carcass.
Scavenged meal, unknown type.
Pig carcass.
Pig carcass.
Scavenged meal, dog.
-

Brutus, Judas, Ginger...

Sly scans the texts, and scans through the book to find today's date. Meals, ever growing. Its owner returns, washing his hands and applying au-de-pleasedontkillme. Midway through feeding it, he manages to catch Gordon and Lilian. Congrats you two, you suck at hiding. Helen and Sly reveal themselves, and of course identify Jamie's lurking outside. Knife to Gordon's throat, the man roars about playing gaming and kids revealing themselves. The beast relaxes, probably coiling up like only a snekitty can. The man, annoyed, realises that his greatest invention can't actually smell them. That's why "blind" is a weakness. Lil' Lilian almost misses Sly's subtle clues and cues, but mentions that "Meal unknown" isn't exactly a good thing, and that he is now a Snake Charmer.

He takes offence, and Sly takes a bottle.

-
It wasn't fully grown, but it was close, and it grew fast. Two meals a week.

I recalled that it had eaten the cat, and then looked back at the entries.

Forty pounds, sixty pounds, forty pounds, est. one hundred pounds… I noted the numbers, and tried to find the pattern between those numbers and the meals.

I moved ahead a few pages until I reached the first partial page. Room left for more entries.

Last meal, just over two days ago, goat carcass. It was hungry already. Quite possibly getting ready for one last growth spurt. The more recent meals were larger.

Gordon was crouched, peering at labels on bottles. He saw me looking, and tapped his nose, then pointed at the bottles

I nodded.

I tapped the book, getting his attention, and stepped away while he read the entries.

He didn't have much of a chance to read.

There was a sound outside, violent, of things falling over. Chaos.

I could picture Jamie's hiding spot, the way the door had been propped up. This was a warning.

"Hide," Gordon whispered.

You don't have to tell me, I thought, but I held my tongue.

Very carefully, I closed the book. I shifted the angle to return it to the position it had been in. My eye swept over the room.

Water on the floor. Did it matter?

No. There was no time, besides.

I slipped into the shadowy crevice between the water tank and the wall. Gordon and Lillian were already gone. Helen, who had been above, watching everything, was now gone. No doubt hiding behind the water barrel, a step away from where she had been.

Four seconds passed before I heard the lock rattle.

The door's wheel slammed back down into the rut as it was pulled to one side, but there was no sign of concern or suspicion.

He closed the door behind him, and the sound of something being dragged joined the sound of hard shoe soles on the wooden floor, marking his progress across his makeshift laboratory.

"Damned beast," he muttered. "Where are you?"

He made seemingly deliberate noise as he cleared a table, then dropped his burden on top of it.

I heard a grunt, his, and the smell of blood filled the air.

The amount of light in the room shifted. I judged it to be the beast's bulk blocking the light from the windows above.

"There you are," he said.

With swift strides, he crossed to the water tank I crouched beside. He wasted no time in dipping his hands inside, splashing water as he swished his hands inside. Some of the water that slopped around the top of the tank splashed down on top of me.

I was close enough to touch him.

There was a scuffle and a thud as the cat-snake creature touched ground, eager to get to its meal. Its creator was already at the desk, picking select vials, dabbing a bit on his wrist, then rubbing his wrists together.

I thought of Gordon's gesture. Touching his nose.

Scents?

Pheromones.

It was how he controlled the beast he had made.

I could see him as he tidied papers, only periodically glancing over his shoulder. He hummed. But for some stubble on his chin, he looked like a gentleman, with a four-button vest under a butcher's apron and an ankle-length raincoat. His hair was sandy, parted to one side.

I could see the creature raise its head. The meal was in its mouth, and it was angling its head to let it all slide down its gullet.

Its creator used a pair of tongs to collect a bloody sack. I took it to be the sack the creature's meal had been in. Another pig, perhaps.

He disappeared from view.

A rustle.

Then the tongs clanged to the floor. The beast changed the angle of its head.

"A child?" the man's voice was touched with incredulity.

There was a commotion, a scrape of steel on concrete as a foot dragged on the tongs.

I remained where I was.

The struggle continued, intermittent, as he backed up, the desk of papers to one side, the table of bottles to the other. He had a carving knife to Gordon's throat. Presumably the same one he'd used to cut open the creature's meal and get its attention.

"Two of you. Are there more?"

Gordon was silent.

"I'm asking you!" the man was angry, outraged. "Are there more? Girl! How many? Tell me or I cut him!"

"A few," Lillian said. "Four."

"The noise outside. That was one?"

"Five, if you count him," she said, her voice small.

"Do not play games with me!" the man roared. "Show yourselves! Each of you!"

I exhaled slowly.

I stepped out of the gap by the water tank.

Helen was above, at the hayloft. Standing by the edge. Lillian was closer to the door. She and Gordon had been hiding in or near a garbage bin.

The beast was relaxed, having just eaten its fill.

"Children?" the man sounded incredulous.

He wasn't wrong. At thirteen, Lillian was the oldest of us. Gordon was only twelve as of last month.

"Yeah," Gordon said, his voice strained. The man had his throat caught in the crook of one arm, exposing his lower throat.

"An infestation," the man said. "My experiment didn't root you out?"

His eye traveled over each of us in turn. I saw the faintest crease appear between his eyebrows.

He seemed to come to a realization. "You've covered yourself in something. So it can't smell you. This was premeditated."

I met Lillian's eyes. I jerked my chin. Pointed at her with my hand.

The easy, natural interactions and cooperation that followed from years of working together weren't there with Lil. She was new. A recent addition to the group.

I almost thought she got the wrong idea, until she opened her mouth.

"Yes," she said. "We… heard about you."

"Heard what?"

"That there was something loose in the slums. It was eating pets. It ate a man that was sleeping outside."

"No," the man said.

"Yes," Lillian said. "There are witnesses."

"The witnesses are wrong," the man said.

"You let it go out to find its own food," Gordon said, his voice still strangled. "You couldn't afford to keep it fed as it grew this large. You let it feed on strays. Which it did. Except one of those strays was human. It's in the book. Meal, unknown type."

I edged around behind the man.

"You don't know what you're talking about. I've studied its leavings," the man said, ignoring the label. "Nothing human."

"Nothing conclusively human, you mean," Gordon said. "But you aren't able to identify all of what it ate."

"You!" The man raised his voice. He sounded more emotional than before. "Up there! Girl! Stay put."

Helen froze where she was.

"You're a killer," Gordon said, more insistent. "We were calling you the snake charmer."

I edged closer to the table.

I didn't make a sound, but the snake charmer sensed trouble before it arrived. He wheeled on me, the knife dangerously close to Gordon's throat.

I lunged in the same movement, seizing the big bottle. The venom. I held it high.

"You don't care what happens to him?" the snake charmer asked.

"I care," I said. "That's why, if you cut him, and if it looks like he isn't going to be okay, I'm going to throw this at the both of you."

The snake charmer's eyes darted around. He couldn't watch all of us at once.

"Move!" he said. "Go around. I want you as a group."

I didn't budge.

"Move!"

"No," I said.

"It's over, snake charmer," Gordon said.

"That is not my name!"

"It's a name they'll give you," Gordon said. "They'll make you a monster. It's what the Academy does. Dehumanizes the dangerous ones. You can't get all of us, not with the way things are, here. Some are bound to escape. They'll tell people, and those people will find you. You know the resources the Academy has."
-

The Academy gets rid of the people it can't afford to have out and about. It takes the mad mad scientists in before they mess up. Resources. Plural. He babbles about how he needs to prove himself, and honestly? It's scary that this is what a lone man can accomplish. A man eating cataconda. It's practically a nonconsideration.

-
"No," the snake charmer said.

"You don't know?" Gordon asked.

"This is not my fault," the snake charmer said. "The Academy… this rests on their shoulders, not mine. You can't enroll without showing your skill, and you can't show your skill without experimenting, but oh, no, they don't allow that, do they?"

"There are ways," Lillian said.

"No!" the man barked, "No! Not nearly enough. The world is changing, and they're deciding the course. They're putting us in this situation, where risks have to be taken. Gambles have to be made, or history will continue to be made, names attached to great discoveries, and the rest of us? If we're lucky, we get left by the wayside. If we're not, we're just fuel for what they're setting in motion."
-

Progress, at the price of the people. Our theme for the story? Most likely. Wildbow has spelled it out in the past.

"Carrie." - Gestation 1.1

"You're a person that I'll likely see again the following Tuesday." - Bonds 1.1

I also just really like this quote. He stays remarkably rational for someone who is starting to rave. Very antebellum of him.

We learn that Lilian is a student at the Academy, while Sly and co are not. Then Sly tosses a jar of venom at Gordon. Gordon is set free, in time for Charming to catch the jar. He tosses it back to Sly, who doesn't even try to catch it.

-
"I'm a student there," Lillian said. "I just started, but… I'm enrolled. First year of study. Not them. Just me."

I could see the man's expression twist. Incomprehension. Comprehension, which was almost worse. Hatred for a thirteen year old girl.

Then rage, not a clean, pure kind, but one that only drove him further into a corner.

His hand tightened on the grip of the knife.

I figured out the destination he was arriving at before he did.

I arrived at my own, and I mustered up some courage.

Very deliberately, I grunted, heaving the bottle of acid at the snake charmer.

He heard the grunt, but so did Gordon. With the snake charmer's attention caught between Lillian and me, Gordon found a chance to protect his throat, keeping the knife from cutting.

The bottle flew lazily through the air. Gordon ducked, head down, and the snake charmer released him.

The man caught the bottle in a bear hug.

He stared down at the container.

All the same emotions he'd felt for Lillian, now aimed at me, progressing much faster this time. Incomprehension, comprehension, hatred, rage.

Directed at me.

I backed away, stumbling, falling. I covered my face as he swung, using the waterproof cloth to try and shield my body.

He didn't throw at me, but at the floor. The chance of me catching it was small, but by throwing it at the floor, he could guarantee that the bottle would shatter into a spray I couldn't possibly shield all of myself from.

The pain was sharp, at first, droplets touching skin, immediately breaking it down. Then it burned.

The horrible coldness was worse, because it suggested dying nerves. All down my arms, and one side of my face.

I screamed.

The creature turned its head, but didn't move.

The man turned, wheeling on the others. Gordon was ready, already closing in, taking advantage of the short moment it took the snake charmer to adjust his grip on the knife, so soon after heaving the bottle.

A tackle, shoulder into the man's gut, taking advantage of smaller size and a good physique. Gordon drove the man back.

Gordon was the hero, golden haired, noble, likeable. Talented.
-

Gordon shall henceforth be known as... FLASH. AHH!

The king of the impossible manages to wrest the knife from his attacker, and Helen soaks the Charmer. His cologne is lost, and his pet sniffs him. All it'll take is one wound...

-
When he broke away, letting the snake charmer stumble back two steps, recovering balance, Gordon had the knife in hand.

The beast rose to its feet. Sniffing.

I managed to stop screaming, going as still as possible.

It still edged closer to me. Interested.

Still hungry, I noted.

Helen acted. Tipping over the barrel.

Drenching the snake charmer, washing away his charm, the pheromones.

"Brats!" the snake charmer spat the word. "You little shits! You think you have control of this situation?"

"Your experiment is trying to decide between you and Sylvester over there," Gordon said. "You smell, he's bleeding. Both are tempting."

The snake charmer made an incoherent noise.

"Thing is, if you start bleeding…" Gordon said, trailing off. "You'll suddenly be a lot more tempting."

"Try it," the snake charmer said.

Gordon did.
-

So after the "moral" protagonists of Worm and Pact, people who... ok they did this sort of thing, but it took a warmup. Here, we start with murder. This is cutting a man in front of a murderous Anakitty. They watch as it swallows him, legs first, as he begs for mercy. Lilian tends to the venom scars across Sly, unsettled by the Cataconda's messy eating habits. Dig back a little and...

-
He approached, and the snake charmer tried to grab him.

The man's hands only grabbed clothes. A hood and cloak meant to keep the rain off. Gordon let him, and ducked low, the clothing bunching up around his neck and upper chest.

Gordon sliced the snake charmer's stomach. A shallow cut.

Another grab, wrestling Gordon, trying to overpower with strength, seizing one arm.

Gordon let the knife drop out of one hand, falling into the palm of another.

He cut the back of the man's left knee. When the man fell, screaming, Gordon cut the other knee. He skipped back as the snake charmer fell.

The snake stirred, its attention no longer predominantly on me.

I could see the snake charmer realizing the same thing I had minutes ago. He knew his experiment. He knew how it hunted. It scavenged, sniffing out prey. Blind, it reacted to noise and smell. Minimizing the noise one made was vital.

Given the situation, however, staying silent spelled the man's doom. Already, his creation was sniffing him out. He smelled of blood.

"Pheromones," he said, knowing how dangerous it was to speak, that every sound helped him lose the tug of war that let the creature decide between devouring him and devouring me. "Let me- I'll come with you. You can take me in. You win."

Nobody moved or responded.

He used his arms to pull himself forward, progressing toward the table. Each motion drew more attention from his beast.

Foot by foot, he closed on the table, and each sound was akin to a fisherman's line, reeling in the beast.

He reached the table, struggling, and he raised himself up, using one hand to drag a leg forward, propping it under him. Reaching across the table-

Gordon kicked the leg of the table, hard. The table shifted a foot, and the snake charmer collapsed.

"No. Please."

The snake charmer looked at us. At Gordon, then Helen, who loomed above, perched on the hayloft. At me, as I glared at him, my face burned. At Lillian, who was sitting in the corner, hands over her head.

Who was not one of us.
-

She's new. Not acclimatised to their lifestyle. You see, Lilian seems to care about this sort of thing. The others don't. Except Helen. Helen has a one liner ready.

-
"Please," he said. "Not like this."

Helen's expression didn't change. Gordon shifted his position, placing himself between the snake charmer and the table, arms folded. I remained where I was, limp and breathing hard.

I could see it dawn on the man. Comprehension settling in as he realized what he was dealing with.

The snake seized the man's feet, and began the very slow process of swallowing him.

The snake charmer's screams became frantic.

"Lillian," Gordon said, raising his voice to be heard over the screams.

"I don't want to see."

"Then shield your eyes. But your job is to keep us in one piece. Sly is hurt. Focus, and make sure he doesn't die."

I felt the burning stop as Lillian tended to me. By the time she was done, the screams had stopped. The powder that dusted me made it hard to see, but that was fine. I was lifted to my feet.

"I have to say, I'm very interested in what the fuck you were doing, faking that fall, setting yourself up to get hurt just now," Gordon said. "You'll have to tell me later, when you can talk again."

I managed a nod.

"Off we go," he said.

I could hear the door open.

Helen spoke for the first time in a while. Her voice was cute. "The Academy sends its regards, Mr. Snake Charmer."
-

Helen is fun.

Nice little start to the story, self contained adventure. In res media, tongue of the slip there. Biopunk. Pretty creepy kids, for what'd otherwise be your usual 5 mystery solving kids premise.
Lets see where this takes us.

Phigment · Aug 9, 2017

Helen pretty well stays fun.

fabledFreeboota · Aug 10, 2017

-Gordon had one arm, while Lillian was dividing her focus between supporting my other arm, keeping us moving and trying to examine me. It made for some uncomfortable stumbling and fumbling around, including some grazing touches of the burns, but I didn't want her to stop doing any of it. I bit my tongue and inside cheek and endured it, blinking my eyes to try to generate the tears I needed to clear my vision. I was mostly effective. -

Go home Sly, you're drunk. Well, that and bathed in venom. The little touches of healing and poking at burns made me wince.

-Jamie was waiting outside, his book under one arm, our shoes and boots in the other hand. All the laces had been tied together, making for only one knot that he had to hold to carry them all.

The bundle dropped from his fingers and landed in a puddle. I spotted my left shoe, on its side in the puddle.
-

Jamie shows that like Lilian, he is capable of concern. Empathy. These are important things. And of course Sly cracks a joke.

-"You're hurt!" Jamie said.

"You just got my shoe wet," I said. I started to point, then winced as skin pulled where the enzymes had eaten away a spot on my arm. I held back a cry of pain. My arms had taken the brunt of it. There wasn't a spot on the back of my arms where I could have laid a hand flat without touching something the enzymes had devoured. Some of the burns eclipsed my hands in size, and my arms weren't large. My skin looked like a sock that was as much holes as it was fabric, and the flesh beneath was angry, a scalded red, with blood seeping out from crevices.

More burns on a similar scale speckled my neck, one cheek, my side, my legs, and one foot. My clothes had absorbed the worst of it, elsewhere, only droplets reaching through.
-

And I hold back another wince. Jamie and Sly talk, try to debate it, and Sly cracks some more jokes despite being in horrible pain. Our ensemble of kids discusses the merits of just leaving the Cataconda to be, and once its settled that it'll probably

-
"I saw through the window, but I didn't realize how bad it was," Jamie said. "I thought you all had everything in hand, but then Sy fell, and I wasn't sure if I should go for help-"

"My shoe," I commented, managing to point this time around. Fixating on one thing made it easier to handle the pain. The wounds themselves didn't hurt, but the edges burned like fire.

"Sy didn't fall. He took a fall. Wording," Gordon said.

Jamie's expression switched from confusion to an accusing glance. Thinking that Gordon might be wrong didn't even cross his mind.

"Why?" Jamie asked. "You got yourself badly hurt, you twit."

"Did I?" I tried to exaggerate the surprise in my voice, and all the pain-relief chemicals that my body was dosing me with made me sound even more exaggerated, my voice almost breaking. I added some sarcasm for good measure, "Oh. I hadn't noticed. Thank you."

Lillian spoke up, "It's nothing too dangerous. I don't like some of these spots on your side, but I don't think you're going to die from it. Not soon."

"Not soon. That's the best we can hope for," I said.

Jamie looked closer at one of the wounds. With Gordon still supporting me and both Jamie and Lillian fussing, there were a few more accidental touches of the burns. One of the touches didn't actually hurt so much, but I played it up, flinching and letting a gasp out, if only to get them to stop.

"Don't let him distract you," Gordon said. "He's trying to dodge the 'why' question."

"I'm trying to hurry this along," I said. "Priorities. Can I get medical attention? Pretty please?"

"Still dodging the question," Gordon observed.

"Let's go," I said. "Wait. Jamie needs to pick up my shoe, which is getting soaked through, thenwe can go. Maybe since Jamie won't stop touching me to make sure I'm okay, Jamie and Lillian can make sure I walk okay?"

Gordon looked me over, suspicious. "You'll tell us on the way, then?"

"Assuming there's something to tell," I said. I felt the burning at my wrist get worse, and my little noise of pain wasn't intentional. I reached for my wrist, and Lillian slapped my hand away like I was a kid going for the cookie jar. For her benefit, I said, "Hurts."

"Good," she said, sounding like a cross between the bossy older sister and a schoolteacher. "Maybe you won't do that again."

She wiped at my arm, clearing away blood where it had welled out from the center of the burn. Where the blood had run through the edges of the scar, the trickle had left a faint pink line. Spreading the enzyme around.

"Sy," Gordon said.

"Gordon," I cut him off.

There was a pause. I hesitated to call it tension. He wanted me to come to my senses, I wanted to wait long enough for his concern for my well being to override his curiosity, which was bound to happen sooner or later. Tension implied something being stretched to a limit, but we were both being patient.

I felt the burning sensation at my side getting worse. From a six to a seven on the scale, and I was the one who caved, in the end.

"I promise I'll tell you after," I said.

He seemed to consider, rolling his head to one side, then the other.

"Fine. Jamie, take over?" Gordon said. "Seems to want you for some reason."

"Jamie is shorter, I don't have to stand on my tip toes while he's holding me up," I explained.

Gordon transferred his hold on me to Jamie, who had to transfer his hold on his book to the other arm.

"And he's nicer," I added. Jamie rolled his eyes.

"Did you lock the windows?" Gordon asked, ignoring me. The question was aimed at Helen, who had emerged from the door behind us.

I turned my head to see Helen's nod. She and Gordon worked to slide the door closed. The movement of the wheel through the rut spat water at our legs.

"Let's hope it stays put," Gordon said.

"I thought we decided that it wouldn't go anywhere after eating," Lillian said. "Carnivore eating habits. Hunt or scavenge, eat, rest, rouse, repeat."

"It was hungry enough to eat two meals. Probably going through a final growth spurt," I said. "Let's not rule anything out."

"Okay," Lillian said, right beside me, and I was genuinely surprised at the note of anxiety in her voice, how it had cut the word short. "We can leave now."
-

I'm tempted to go with Sly's first impression here. She's unsettled. Spooked. A man is being digested and everyone is just cracking jokes like its something normal. Although I'm a Brit, so the whole laughing off mortal peril with minor humor sort of thing is typical. They put on their shoes, except for Sly, who is now unable to walk without pain, and make their way into town. Bow keeps reminding us he's in pain. Casual little details on the blood and burns.

-
Very nearly but not a question. A plea?

I suspected it was fear, but that suspicion sat askew in my head. Lillian had experience with that stuff. She'd had hands on experience with creatures and experiments at the Academy. More restrained than that one had been, but the idea of the unrestrained experiment wasn't enough to justify the thought. It was probably well fed enough that it would ignore any meal that didn't walk right into its open mouth.

Or lay there struggling as the snake charmer had.

There we are, I thought. The snake charmer. I could remember Lillian shielding her eyes. The anxiety had more to do with the reminder of the man and the way he'd left this world. If he had left it. There was a chance he was still in there, alive and slowly dissolving.

Gordon had collected the bundle of shoes but hadn't handed them out. Which was fine. My feet were muddy, and I had a burn on the top of my foot that would have made wearing the shoes hard. The burn announced its presence every time I stepped in a puddle.

It wasn't a particularly short walk back, and I was content to keep my mouth shut. If I started talking, I might have started grunting or making noises in response to the pain. If I started whimpering, then Gordon might have started reminding me that I'd done this to myself.

Instead, I focused on the future. The snake charmer had been handled. Were questions possible? What about my injuries?

"We're close to King," Jamie said, interrupting my thoughts. I realized Helen and Gordon were talking, with Gordon doing the lion's share. I'd tuned it out.
-

Hopefully he'll have his eight friends with him. Yeah Bow, sorry but... I've read the comments on Twig. Worm jokes. Worm jokes everywhere. And maybe one Pact reference. Brutal honesty, but I'm not allowed to lie.

-
"Yeah," I noted.

"Busy street means head down," Jamie said, very patient. He tugged on the front of my hood, so it could shroud my face in shadow. "Hood down. We don't want your face to scare the locals any more than usual."
-

It's funny because his skin is being digested. God knows how this kid is able to keep a straight face, even while distracted, considering he's just been maimed for life.

-
I couldn't help but smile wide at that.

The main street was framed on both sides by taller buildings, a great many of them being apartments. People sat on steps beneath the overhang of their porches, smoking, and the occasional light glowed from within rooms above.

The plant growth that supported the structures reached overhead to meet and mesh. An arch, to introduce us to the main street proper. King Street. It was a thick crowd, even in the late afternoon, the sun setting. Men and women in raincoats, with umbrellas, walking on either side of the road.
-

Turn left for Harbinger avenue, right for Jacob's Street. More plants though. This stuff is an infestation.

-
Lillian and Jamie stopped supporting me quite so much. I started to teeter over a bit, and Jamie caught me at roughly the same point I stuck a leg out to catch my balance myself. I hadn't realized how heavily I'd been leaning on the others, or how dizzy I felt.

Horses pulling coaches outnumbered cars at a nine to one ratio. Of those horses drawing coaches, only one in five were truly alive. The remainder were stitched, their hides patchwork, seams joined by thick black thread or by metal staples with burns where they touched flesh. Were I able to see beneath the heavy raincoats, I would have seen the thick metal bolts that had been screwed into points down their spines.

Live horses were an affectation, really. There was a convenience to them, as they didn't suffer from the water in this city where it always rained, they could be taken out hunting, and they had personalities. A horse could be a member of one's family. There was a lot to like.

But the stitched horses, voltaic horses if you asked someone who knew what they were talking about, they were cheap, they didn't get tired, and rather than food, they could be kept going by connecting wires to the bolts on their backs and waiting. When a stitched horse had done its work for the day, it could be placed in what amounted to a long closet.
-

It's ALIVE! It's not truly ALIVE! So, we have cars. Automobiles. We also have the night of the living cavalry, being paraded around like normal. Sutured, welded, and kept moving by voltaic energy. Archaic language for electricity... automobiles... circa turn of the century, but definitely not ours. The scariest thing is that the voltaic horses are cheap. No rules to the road, but that feeds into one of my favourite Wildbowisms.

-There were no rules for the road, but everyone found their way. Most people here knew most others. A lack of courtesy today could be paid by a lack of cooperation from others tomorrow. That wasn't to say there weren't idiots or disagreeable types who others paid no mind to, but it largely worked.

Like the branches and plant growth, it amounted to a planned chaos. The exact shape and character of branches couldn't be decided in advance, but the key elements were given attention, the problematic ones pruned. The squat apartment buildings didn't have room for even stitched horses, which meant every essential service had been put within walking distance. Pubs, grocers, tailors, barbers and the like.-

Rude yet insightful observations on the local climate. This builds an atmosphere, more of the culture people have. Packed in and permitted to develop on their own, with the occasional prod and poke. So... people are mostly polite, technology is advanced but not that much, and it always rains... we're in England loves. Turn of the century England?

-I raised my eyes. Looking down the length of King, I could see it rise at a gradual incline, until it touched the perimeter of the Academy itself. Radham Academy, to be specific. All things flowed from it, all things flowed to it. I imagined the same went for any Academy. Stick one somewhere, and people would collect to it like flies to a carcass. The advances and work that went hand in hand with an Academy would bleed out in a very similar way. First to the city as a whole, then to surrounding regions.-

Science! Progress! Key themes for our Story! But, most scarily, there are multiples. These things are everywhere, and serve like flytraps. One can't help but feel the disdain in Sly's voice.

-
Jamie grabbed the tip of my hood and tugged down, forcing me to look at the ground in front of me. I'd been showing too much of my face.

We moved as a huddle, and with our heads down and hoods up, we weren't much different from half of the streets' occupants. My burns didn't earn me a second glance, because I scarcely warranted a first one. I suspected that Gordon had chosen where he stood with the idea of shielding me from others' sight, for added assurance.

I liked the thought. It made me wonder if any other people in the crowd were in similar straits.

Ahead of us, a large shape loomed. It looked like the offspring of a deer or rabbit might, if their offspring was squeezed out too early. No larger than one of the cars on the street, it was pink, with stretched skin, the translucent eyelids appearing bruised with how they let some of the darkness of the black eyeballs beneath leak through. Its head sat crooked, forcing it to see the way forward with only one of its two wide set eyes. Its mouth hung open.

Most prominent, however, were the legs. Not much thicker around than my leg, half again as long as the tallest man on the sidewalk was tall, the four legs ended in points, a single claw to each leg. Saddlebags were strapped to saddlebags to form chains that draped the thing like a peculiar sort of jewelry.

As the coaches and cars on the road made way and cooperated, so did the people on the sidewalk. This however, was motivated by discomfort and fear. Men and women gave the thing almost the entire sidewalk to itself.

A woman led it on a fine chain, holding an umbrella overhead, though the creature's mass already helped shelter her from the rain. She was barely entering into her twilight years, but only the pale color of her once-blonde hair suggested as much. Her face and body were young, and her clothes looked expensive, though they tended toward the simple.
-

Oh it's just a stillborn deerabbit, nothing too big, just almost as big as a freaking car. Dragged around by an elderly woman. Still, people on the sidewalk run the heck away, so at least stuff like this isn't too commonplace.

-
I very nearly tipped over again, as Jamie let go of me and stepped forward to obscure the woman's view of me.

Feeling as wobbly as I did was more than a little concerning, and a delay was the last thing I wanted.

"Hello Mrs. Thetford," Helen greeted the woman, smiling.

"Helen," Mrs. Thetford said, tugging on the chain to make her packbeast stop in its tracks. Her expression changed from an easy smile to shock. "Look at you! You look like something the cat dragged in!"

How apt, I thought.-

I want you to picture a Snekitty coming up to you with Sly in it's jaws, then looking up at you with those big, round, nonexistent eyes. Unless it had eyes but was blind? Poor Snekitty.

-
"It's Sylvester's fault," Helen said. "He pushed me and I got wet."

Of course she invents a lie that makes me look bad. I made a point of hanging my head, to better conceal my injuries. I could see the crowd passing around and to either side of us.

"Sylvester, for shame," Mrs. Thetford said, and she used my name as a rebuke, and the way she said 'shame' even made me feel a bit abashed over the deed I hadn't committed. "You really should be nicer to girls."-

So our main character is Sylvester, Sly for short. That's nice. Thetford admonishes and mollycoddles the lot. I get a feeling we might see a bit more of her in the "kindly mother" role.

"And you," Mrs. Thetford said, reaching under Helen's hood to comb Helen's hair back with long fingernails. "You should give some thought to keeping better company. I know you're loyal to your so-called brothers and sisters, but you could do so well if you devoted some time to others. Your caregivers have very nearly polished you into a diamond, and it would warm my heart to see you finish the transformation."

"Thank you, Ma'am," Helen said, smiling, pretending to be a little shy. Not a lot, but enough to be humble. "It means a lot that you think so well of me."

"If you decide that you would like to become more of a lady, I would be more than happy to introduce you to some people who could teach you the finer points. Music, dancing, etiquette. The same goes for you, Gordon. You're evidence that Helen here isn't a simple fluke. It would take more doing, but I think we could turn you into a proper gentleman with some tutoring."

"I might take you up on that offer, ma'am," Gordon said.

"Do! You should," the older woman said. She brushed Helen's cheek with her fingers. "You're a dear. I would have you for myself, if I hadn't already had my fill of raising children."

Or Aunt rather, if she's had her fill of children. She walks off with her deer/rabbit faetus pack animal, and I pray that that disgusting thing eventually puts some hair on.

Helen the odd and precocious child and Gordon the hero. Yknow. I'd have thought Jamie would have been a good candidate for gentlemanly pursuits, but then I recalled that he isn't a hero.

"For now, if it's alright, I'll have to content myself with getting home before it's dark. I'm looking forward to getting dry again," Helen said, sticking me with a look.

"Of course! Now I feel bad for keeping you. You know where to find me if you would like those lessons."

We hurried on. Rather than take the long route around to the sides, we passed under and between the legs of the packbeast that was carrying Mrs. Thetford's shopping.

By the time we'd flowed back into the crowd, almost invisible, Helen's expression had gone flat again, her eyes cold. The smile was gone.

She saw me looking.

"Are you upset?" she asked.

"Why would I be upset?"

"I blamed you."

"I always get blamed. I'm used to it."

She seemed to take that at face value.

I might have pursued conversation, but it would have been purely for self gratification, and I was feeling less and less like talking. My brain had apparently decided that the easiest way to handle what I was feeling was to declare that all of me hurt, and certain parts of me hurt enough that I was reconsidering my 'one to ten' scale of pain. If I focused on any one part of me too much, it quickened.

All of that in mind, I was very glad to see the orphanage.

The building was perched in an odd spot, beside a creek and a stone bridge that was thick with grown-in vegetation. The land by the riverbed was stony, uneven, and threatened to be damp, discouraging building efforts, but the building itself had been here long before the Academy, serving as a home for shepherds when Radham had only been a few buildings set around a crossroads.

That it had withstood the test of time was either pure luck, or the person who had mortared the stones together had known what they were doing.

One floor tall, with a stone exterior, it lacked the reinforcing growths that marked so many nearby structures. The only wood came from a tree in the backyard. A short stone wall encircled the property, only three feet tall, and the height both served as a way of keeping the smallest children on the property and was paradoxically welcoming. I couldn't approach it without wanting to hop up onto it.

Toward the back of the property, I could see that Ralph Stein was in the process of walking the top of the wall. The route went from the right side of the gate, over to the right of the house, alongside the riverbank, around the back of the house, under the tricky bit where the tree's branches hung over, up the left side of the house, and then over to the left side of the gate. All on the weather-rounded, uneven stones that made up the wall's top, virtually always in the rain.

My focus wasn't on that.

Our band of children reaches an orphanage, showing that they have no parents. And that Sly is still in agony.

-My focus was on the black coach parked to the left of the house, beneath the overhang in the roof. The horses were wearing black raincoats, utterly still. Their driver stood beside them, smoking.

My eye didn't leave them as we made our way down the steps that had been set into the slope. Each one of the stone stairs had seen enough traffic and years that they'd been reshaped, as if buckling faintly under thousands of footfalls.

Gordon pushed open the door. Lillian and Jamie helped me through.

We stopped in our tracks at the sight of a man in the front hallway.
If it had a brain and a nervous system, the parts could be used for making a stitch, or voltaic creature. The quality of that stitched was indicated by the placement of the stitches that gave them their name. Poorer work or a stitched that had been 'repaired' often involved joins in visible or inconvenient places. Across the face, or across the joints, where they interfered with function. A good stitch had the joins and scars kept just out of sight, under the chin, or in places where clothes could cover the work.

The figure that stood guard by the door was the most human-like stitched I'd ever seen. Tall, broad-shouldered, the parts had been selected for size and raw power. But for stitches visible just past the cuffs of his jacket, I might not have known. He wore a suit under a hooded raincoat and carried a pistol at his hip.-

Zombies. Frankensteinian ones, but Zombies. The undead. As manservants. As Horses. The smell of death, omnipresent. Perfumists must make a fortune. Expert stitchers. Novice stitchers. Velcome to Ubervald? Wilkommen am Innistradd? We of course shamble past this, and encounter our proper Mother substitute.

-He was, in two short words, a problem.

I smelled tea, and I heard very little commotion. If I hadn't seen the coach outside, I could have put two and two together to figure out that we had a guest.

"That would be the children," Mrs. Earles said.

The others properly put away hoods, cloaks, shoes and boots before toweling their feet to a reasonable state of clean and dry. Lillian bent down and had me lift up my feet one by one to dry them.

"Thank you," I murmured.

"It's what I'm here for," she murmured back.

One by one, we headed around the corner from the front hall, into the sitting room. The room itself had homey touches, and was very much Mrs. Earles. It was her perch in the evenings, the part she made her home. The knick-knacks and decorative carvings, still, were placed well out of reach of errant hands, on the mantlepiece above the blazing fireplace and on various shelves and bookshelves.

My eyes scanned the shelves and bookshelves. Searching.

Mrs. Earles didn't give off the image of someone who ran an orphanage. She'd struck me more as the assistant to that sort of someone. Managing one child had a way of turning women into mothers, wearing away at certain things while exaggerating others. Even with help, managing sixteen should have pushed her to an extreme in some respect. Something in the vein of a tyrant or a defeated woman, a woman who turned to vice to escape stresses, or a saint. But she wasn't any of those things.

A part of me wanted to think of her as a mother, but she wasn't. She didn't pretend to be. She ran Lambsbridge, she kept us fed and sheltered, and she was quick to use the threat of a smack to keep us in line. Even though I'd been a recipient more than once, I could appreciate that she didn't hesitate in that respect. I had to live with fifteen others, and if they were allowed to run rampant, I faced more grief than I did dealing with the occasional rap to the knuckles.
-

Somewhat praising really. "She's not my mother, but I respect her."

-
Mr. Hayle, by that same token, was almost but not quite my father.

He frowned as he saw me, immediately taking in details that more than a hundred people in the busier part of the city had failed to spot.

"I'll make sure you don't have eavesdroppers," Mrs. Earles said, disappearing.

"Thank you," Mr. Hayle said, without turning to look at her.

We stood in the entry to the sitting room, while he examined each of us, silent.

He was an older man. Sixty or so, as far as anyone's age could be pinned down with certainty. He hadn't prettied himself up or taken advantage of Radham Academy's resources to remove wrinkles or revitalize his hair. His hair was grey and waxed back away from his face, and his wrinkles cut so deep into his face that I could have imagined them as cross-hatching done with a scalpel. He wore a doctor's coat indoors, the fabric thick, dyed black so that it wouldn't show any blood stains. His gloves had been pulled off, and the ends were sticking out of one pocket. A collection of files were already tucked under one arm.
-

So our characters truly have no parents, not even our resident scientist. So Zombies and cosmetic surgery. More scarily, doctors wear black. To hide the stains. They debrief, in a small fashion, identifying the snekitty's resting spot and mentioning how Sly is still slightly eaten. And the Charmer is of course, slightly more eaten. Doc is ok with this. He even asks how Lil is coping. But not really comforting, more like "How's the internship going? Man eaten alive? Oh we used to do that for college initiation."

-
"The other children are accounted for. I'll be in the kitchen, where I can intercept anyone coming your way," Mrs. Earles said.

"Thank you," he said.

She retreated, leaving us alone.

"I was planning on a longer meeting," Mr. Hayle said. "To look at Sylvester, he might not be able to stand for the duration. Is he stable?"

"I'm stable," I said, at the same time Lillian said, "He is."

Mr. Hayle frowned. "What happened to you? No. Hold off on that. If you're stable, let's cover the essentials. Tell me, how was it?"

Gordon answered. "Our target's second experiment is in one of the warehouses, off to the southeast of King. Sleeping off a meal, we're hoping. It's there, with all of the notes. As for the target, he's…"

"In his experiment," I said, managing a smile.

Mr. Hayle didn't smile back. "I don't understand. Clarify?"

"Dead," Gordon said. "Swallowed."

"Complications?"

We collectively uttered a chorus of 'nos' and shook our heads. I glanced at the back of Jamie's head, saw the faintest hesitation before he joined us in shaking his head.

"What happened to Sylvester?"

"The snake charm- ah, our target, he arrived, forcing us to hide. He found me in my hiding spot, purely by chance, and took me hostage. Sylvester distracted him, and was splashed with-"

"Enzymes," I said.

"Splashed with enzymes, during the altercation that followed."

"I did what I could," Lillian said, "Neutralized the spread with counteragents our target had on hand."

Mr. Hayle nodded. "Good. Lillian, I believe this marks your third assignment with the group?"

"Yes, sir."

"Would you do another?"

I didn't miss the hesitation on Lillian's part.

I tried to view things through her eyes. Seeing the man get swallowed. The horror.

"I would, sir," she decided.

"Good. You'll continue to have my support at the Academy, then. If you don't find all doors are open and all resources available to you, let me know. Your tuition will continue to be waived."

"Thank you sir."
-

Lilian is basically on a sponsorship. Clean up the other applicant's messes, and we'll show you the ways of SCIENCE. Waive her tuition. Of course, with scientists being this dangerous, it's probably the easiest way to climb social stratas right to the top.

-
"That takes care of the, ah, what did you call him? The snake charmer? Now, unless there's anything else, I should look after Sylvester there."

There was a jumble of 'no sir's from the others.

He crossed the room, and the others were quick to get out of his way. I used the opportunity to move to one side, further into the sitting room, and scanned the shelves.

There.

Mrs. Earles didn't keep matches close to the fireplace, and she didn't keep them where the smaller children could get them.

Even for me, it would require that I stand on my toes and reach high overhead.

The problems that came with being small.
-

Mind of an adult, body of a child.

Sylvester is slowly able to limp towards the car, given no support by his father. Winding. Wounded. It urgh... It's not pleasant. He's prodded, entire sections of his arm melted. And Doc asks more about his Friends slash Gang slash Siblings. He says that he's willing to talk, but Doc reckons he wouldn't betray them out of a sense of comradery.

Mr. Hayle was talking while he found and put on his boots. "I do want to have a longer discussion. I'll need to rearrange my evening, which will take me at least an hour. Add the time it takes to deliver Sylvester… hm, it would be late. Too late?"

"The younger children will be in bed. I could ask Mrs. Earles," Gordon said.

"No. I'll be by in the morning. I only considered tonight because I thought you'd want to know how Sylvester was. I can send someone your way, if you're willing to keep an eye out the window for them. A quiet, short visit to pass on word."

"Please, sir," Gordon said, sounding far more solemn than I'd have expected.

"I'll see to it. Thank you for another job well done. Sylvester?"

I was out of time.

With a wall between myself and Mr. Hayle, each of the others positioned to see, I reached up to the shelf, and felt my burns stretch, eliciting a tearing sensation, and a fresh renewal of pain.

I closed my fingers around the matchbook, then collapsed against the wall, panting.

"Problem?"

"Moved too fast," I said.

Mr. Hayle gave me a sincere look of concern as he did up the buttons of his coat and took his umbrella from his stitched bodyguard.

"Let's get you looked after," he said. He paused. "No shoes?"

"Burn on my foot," I said.

"Carry on, then."

I discovered that stopping and then moving again was quite possibly the worst thing I could have done. Every burn felt fresh. The movement of my arm was the worst of it. The stitched bodyguard helped me, even going so far as to lift me bodily to my seat. All the same, by the time we reached the coach, I was sweating bullets from pain alone.

The coach's interior was red, the windows stained to reduce the light that came in, and something that looked like a glowing orange minnow swam in a bowl overhead, casting light on the interior.

The driver steered the stitched horses around. Before long, we were on King Street, heading for the Academy.

"It's rare that I have a chance to talk with one of you," Mr. Hayle said. "Can I see your arm?"

I offered it. He probed the edges of the injury.

"I suspect you'll resist, out of loyalty to your… brothers and sisters? Is that how you think of them?"

"Friends. Gang," I said. I swallowed hard. "Sometimes I think of them as siblings. What am I resisting?"

"Giving me information. Can you tell me if they're doing alright?"

"Yes," I said. "They're doing everything they're supposed to do."

"Is that so? Something tells me you wouldn't tell me if they weren't."

I smiled a little. "What makes you think that?"

"I've watched you grow up these past few years. I'd like to think I know you."

I nodded. I forbade myself from looking outside the window.

"Not up to talking?"

"Not sure what to say, sir."

"Tell me about the snake charmer."

"Yes sir. Um-"

A crash shook the coach.

I could hear shouts. Mr. Hayle's coach came to an awkward stop, lurching, then jerking to the left before finally going still.

He twisted in his seat, and slid a panel to one side. "John?"

There was a pause. The driver replied, "Water. Knocked me off my seat. One of the voltaic horses got drenched. It's gone quiet."

"Water?" Mr. Hayle asked. He frowned. "I'll be right out."

Suddenly, a Chekov's gun shows up. Sly's little prank gets a horse wet. The carriage stops. The doctor leaves the carriage. And Sly gets a look at some paperwork. All it takes is exploiting the weaknesses of the Stitched bodyguard, and he's able to get his hands on some paperwork.

I remained where I was, very much in pain after the sudden movements.

"Douglas," Mr. Hayle said. "Look after Sylvester. Be ready to come outside at a moment's notice."

"I understand," Douglas said, the words clumsy in a way that was hard to define. Too precise, the local accent rounded off at the edges. I suspected it would be worse if it was a more unfamiliar phrase.

The door of the coach closed.

One, two, three.

I forced myself to sit up.

I opened my eyes.

Naturally, going outside, Mr. Hayle hadn't taken his paperwork.

When problem solving, the simplest answer shouldn't be discounted.

I reached for the files.

The bodyguard reached out, blocking my hand with his.

"That is not yours," he said. The words were clumsier than his 'I understand.'

If it was a human bodyguard, and not one that had died and been reanimated, rendered very simple and loyal in operation, I suspected I could have manipulated him or sent him out of the coach.

Stitched were easier in some ways, harder in others.

I pulled the matches out of my pocket.

I struck it.

He didn't flinch.

I blinked.

Reduced to very primal, simple function, they were supposed to have reactions to fire. Nine times out of ten, it was fear. One time out of ten, it was violent and destructive rage.

The quality of this stitched was top notch. Had Mr. Hayle or the person he bought the stitched from somehow solved the problem?

"Put that out," the stitched told me.

I reached out, bringing the match closer to him.

He didn't move.

"Put that out," he said, more firmly.

I moved my hand, and he remained where he was.

No, the problem hadn't been fixed. But they'd found a step forward.

He was frozen.

I'd hoped to distract and disturb him enough that he'd forget his instructions and let me snatch up the files. This, however, worked. Still holding the match up, the whole of his attention focused on it, I grabbed the stack of folders.

I returned to my seat.

Before I could open the folders, the door opened.

Mr. Hayle studied me, his expression blank.

I froze, caught red handed. Well, the red hand was the burn, but-

Or not.

-
"And it all makes sense," he said.

"Yes," I said.

"Sylvester," he said, climbing up into the coach and taking his seat, "You know why I made you."
-

OoOh.

-
"Yes sir."

"Each of you. My colleagues in other departments have made weapons, monsters, they've made viruses and more, with the understanding that there may very well be a need for these weapons."

"Yes sir," I said.
-

Oh god.

-"My focus, as you very well know, is on," he reached over, and he tapped me on the forehead. "The brain."-

Oh Brian. They were right. We're all Bonesaws now. I'm not afraid here you understand. I'm excited. Call me Jack, call me Manny or Sibby, because damn if every idea that came out of that girl's mouth wasn't bloody fascinating.

-
"And I was dumb just now," I said. "Failed project?"

"No," he said. "No. I made you. Like I said, I know you."

"If it helps, I'm starting to believe you, sir."

"It would be stupid of me to make you for a purpose and not expect you to fulfill that purpose. Mistakes here and there are to be expected, and your mistake here was expecting me to be dumb. You're still developing, and each of you are still being refined in your own ways."
-

So. The kids are all inhuman. Well, except Lilian. Guess we know why she can actually be bothered by the horrors about her.

I nodded.

"Why didn't you ask for the files?" he asked me.

"Because you might have said no, and you would have known I wanted them," I said. "And because I think people are more genuine when you catch them off balance."

He nodded.

"Something to keep in mind," he said. "And I suppose I'm getting too predictable, if you were able to arrange this."

"Yes sir," I said.

"Take a look," he said.

For a telling second, I thought the files would be empty, that he might have checkmated me.

But I paged through them, and I found them filled with pages of data, notes, design, and more.

I honestly don't think it's in Sly to just ask for something.

-Helen, project Galatea.-

Will do it for pearls.

-Jamie, project Caterpillar.-

Project Bookworm. Project Silverfish?

-Gordon, project Griffon.-

Flash Griffon.

-Sylvester, project Wyvern-

Like project Dragon, but lamer.

-"Why?" Mr. Hayle asked. "All that for a glance?"

"Yes sir."

"What, specifically?"

"Expiration dates, sir."-

There we go. Experiments that can't last forever. Smart move that. Can't have em all running about forever and a day. I mean sure, they're people, but... they're all pretty vicious. Still. That's a death sentence hanging over Sly and his friends. Would you share something like that. "Hey, wanna know the exact time and date of your death?"

fabledFreeboota · Aug 10, 2017

-Thicker around than any three of my fingers put together. It probably cost twenty dollars, if not more. A good week's wages.-

*Fans self with wad of twenties* That's inflation for you.

-Traveling across the desk, it struck an identical syringe, eliciting a pair of high, sweet songs from the ringing glass.-

-I stepped over to the window, my feet kicking up more papers as they might stir leaves in the fall.-

Leave a kid alone for five minutes...

We get some lovely scene painting, that give me this almost tumorous growth attached to the city, walled off from it. No, more like a Tick. A hospital lets it pull in more students, and the sort of people that go to Stitchers for a checkup.

-About the only thing that was the same about the two places was that it was raining. A light rain, but enough that just about everyone had their hoods up.-

Yep. England.

-I didn't enjoy looking, but there wasn't much else to be done. I'd read the books, I'd read the various papers, and I'd slept. Seven days I'd been cooped up here.-

So Sly's been shut in, while his skin fixes itself. The pigment is slightly different, but the boy they took it from probably saw a little more sun.

-I felt the point where the breeze came through as though ice had touched the new skin. -

Wince. These reminders throughout are great at making my skin crawl.

-"More or less the same, professor. But as intractable as he gets, his behavior differs from month to month. This time, he wanted to be alone. Very much so."-

Hmm. I'll make a note here, changing behaviour. I'll have to watch out for this in the narrative, little changes in personality.

-Make a note. If we're bringing another student on board to oversee the Wyvern file, that would be a good way to bring them up to speed while doing something constructive.-

For reference's sake, I want you to associate this with every time I say Hmm.

()

Let's try that.

Sy thinks,

-My brain, however, it felt like it had been poked, prodded, beaten and kicked into the dirt, then made to do a marathon after the fact.-

I say,

Hmm.

And you say, "I hate your whimper!"

I get the feeling they did a little more while he was under the knife.

-"I can well imagine. How in the world did you pull over the shelf?"-

So yes, the room has basically been trashed by our precocious protagonist.

-"Your… the Lambsbridge gang has asked for you. I myself would appreciate your help."-

Whelp. There we go, the name of our team. Unfortunately, for the sake of comedy they will henceforth be known as the Twigs.

As Sly promises to come out, he's basically demolished it even further, setting up a door to collapse, leaving glass across the floor. Little rascal.

We're introduced to one of Sly's handlers. Lacey. He doesn't like her.

-"I'm glad you're okay, Sy," she said, her voice soft.-

And to be honest after a chapter or two of Sly and Sylvester, I just thought Sy was a tpyo. Those things tend to come up if you're digging through, and once or twice it kind of breaks my focus. But its all bloody well written, so its less a speedbump or a hurdle and more an awkward pebble.

Anyway, the room had a case of spiders. And snakes. Why would you lock up a child in there? Clear danger. Poor snakes and spiders. He's encouraged to come out, and Doc asks about poor Lacey.

-"You don't like her."-

No.

-"The night I dropped you off, I gave them a task. It is perhaps the most important job that the Lambsbridge project has been given. One only your particular group can do."

He'd had my attention. Now he had my curiosity.-

I promised myself no reaction gifs. So, no Django for you. Interestingly, Lambsbridge is the name of the project, as opposed to a gang name as I'd ended up inferring.

-"I positioned them at the Mothmont ladder school to investigate a problem, and they've run into a block. No forward progress."-

It's for social climbers.

-Three weeks ago, a student at Mothmont killed his father, then himself. The victim was a Crown State Senator. Autopsies didn't indicate any particular chemicals or abnormalities. Nine days ago, we had another incident.-

Turns out? Yeah. They keep doing it.

-"You're sending us after killer children," I observed.-

Child assassins vs child experiments. A cunning plan.

-"No, Sylvester, it doesn't. Mothmont was made and supported by rich and powerful individuals with the premise that younger students would graduate from there and move on to the Academy. If they couldn't pass the entrance exam, they would continue their studies at Mothmont until they could. Only the best in teachers, facilities, and students."

"Except for the parent murdering part," I noted.-

Sly. Is an experiment. Is not a real child. It's actually plausible that this is something he has to make a note of. Human's do not enjoy their children murdering them.

They discuss that of course children murdering their parents is a bad thing, and someone should probably stop that from happening.

-"Each major department was given a share of funds to go toward major projects. Rather than devote my funds into one project, I devoted them to six very different projects. The plan was for the six to form a whole."-

So. Doc's project is a team of child assassins/mystery solving orphans. I can imagine the conversation he needed to have with his superiors.

"The Famous Five, but they kill people." - Dr. Hail

"Hmm." - Chamberlain.

"We'll name them after monsters." - Dr. Hail

"HmMm." -Chamberlain.

-"It's unfortunate that only four of you proved viable, but you've turned out well, you each show more and more promise as you develop, but you remain one member of a unit. A gestalt. Your group is feeling your absence, and they feel it strongly enough that they went out of their way to ask for you."-

So it's no coincidence that we have Flash the jock, and Jamie the bookkeeper. Gestalt. I love that word. The important thought is what role does Helen play, and what role were the other two meant for? Soemthing I child can do. Playful cute? Shy? Angry bully?

-I looked out the window, and very casually remarked, "It's sort of disgusting when a woman as old as you are tries to giggle and act like a little girl."

I didn't look at her to see her reaction. That would have taken away from the effect. My peripheral vision suggested she'd reacted as if I'd slapped her full-on in the face.-

Ah. Tattletale. There we go. Violent needling of others, going for gut punches. But not really like that so much as... I need another reference here. But I get the sense of a very inhuman intelligence. Something that enjoys testing other people. Something that knows when to play with its food. That still craves attention. For now, I'll call it as it is. A little bratty. I dislike him in this chapter. But at the same time, following his thoughts becomes very scientific.

-"I did, but that wasn't it. Give a man a gun, tell him to shoot his neighbor or he gets shot. The first man we put in this situation does it without a care. He pulls the trigger. The second man cries and moans, he begs his neighbor for forgiveness, then he pulls the trigger. The third man cries and moans, begs for forgiveness, and pulls the trigger, and the fourth man takes a bullet because he won't bring himself to do that."-

Now take this sentence. Read it again. Now read in Heath Ledger's voice. Or Jack Slash from the Worm audiobook. It scares me that this is our protagonist. It scares me that Lacey thinks it out, and tries to solve it. Tries to think who's meant to be the good person. But Sly...

-"No," I said, calm. "I didn't say anything about someone being better or worse. They can face the situation any way they want to. They've got a gun to their head, it's their choice. You? Maybe you're like the second man, maybe you're like the third, but you definitely don't have a gun to your head. If you're being nice to me, it's for your benefit, not mine."-

Creepy. Unsettling. And damn near heartless. Taylor cared. Blake cared. Sy is... not so much careless as... I can't help but think he was designed like this.

-Gordon took one look at me, and I saw genuine worry in his eyes. "You had an appointment."-

-"You didn't know it was coming. I didn't either," I said. "At least I don't have to worry about it for another thirty days."-

So... once a month, general maintenance? They bring him up to speed and he forces himself into a leadership role.

-"What you don't know, and why I think you're stuck, is that you're too prone to patterns. You have your own way of doing things, but it's too rigid, when your enemies are hiding in the shadows. You need to shake it up."-

So, "Sy", I'll stick to Sly for when he's cunning and Sigh for when he's bored. Sy splits himself and Jamie here. Street-smart vs book-smart. Jamie is that little chick in the foghorn leghorn cartoons, Sly is Bugs Bunny.

-I smiled.

The pain in my head was going away by the second.-

Its my experience with Worm speaking through again here, but I swear this is something along the lines of conflict mediation. It hurts to be inactive. It hurts to not be working. I'd call this another control mechanism for the Academy. Think out of line, avoid thinking, pain puts you back in line.

Time for more plotting!

And before you ask, yes. This growth in updates is exponential. See you tomorrow for 1.4-7.

fabledFreeboota · Aug 11, 2017

-Our conversation had to stop for a moment when a group of boys veered our way, kicking a ball between them. They circled the tree that was holding up one corner of the glass roof, then headed off toward their makeshift goals.-

This, for any Americans in the audience, is football, a silly sport played by those unable to cope with an ovoid ball. Our Twigs take a moment to hash out the details, sorting their backstories. They are all orphans that know each other. Well. That is kinda pretty much all we got to go on anyway.

-"I've been here before," Lillian said. "Before I was a student at the Academy. Teachers know me, they like me. We leaked the idea that I was suspended, and the rules of Mothmont mean I can come back here whenever, to get some classes in, use facilities or brush up. I might have to explain to my parents, but I think it's okay. Nobody's asked how I know you guys, but I don't think it's a problem."-

So Lilian, despite her youth of... unspecified as of yet years, is a full-blown student of an Academy that outright rejects people unless you can put together a working Cataconda. Also, she is not an orphan. Though she hangs around with a bunch of motherless monsters.

-"Overall, we have a cover," Gordon elaborated, "Nothing so questionable that anyone's going to raise questions. But people have a way of taking things at face value, and this situation hasn't really bucked the trend."-

They talk like spies, not children. Its unsettling.

-"Oh, you know me," Gordon said. "It's only been a week and I'm almost the best student in my class, best at sports, and most can't even bring themselves to hate me for it. "-

Nor I. Its working, Flash.

The assassins are onto them though, with a variety of murder attempts. I'm pretty sure Jamie nearly getting run over was down to walking while reading though.

We are given a little more information about the structure of the Academy. The Tower researches the brain, but improving the mind is apparently, a dead end. Claret Hall is a living space, where students eat and study Stitching 101.

-"We were thinking it could be some neurological manipulation," Jamie said. "Helen was looking into hormones and drugs at Claret Hall."-

Diseases. Drugs. Hormones. Everything but the brain.

Hmm.

They start monitoring the crowd, and display more troubling levels of insight into their own appearance.

-"Fix my hair," I instructed Helen, "Give me a kiss on the cheek or something, be tender about it."

"I like you?" Helen asked.

"You're a big sister to me, but actually acting like a normal big sister. It can be misinterpreted."-

This sort of, acting a certain way, shaping other people's perception of them. They really aren't that human are they? They test and check and act insidiously scrupulous. They can act as well as they like, because it's all an act.

In any case, they do it to attract a nondescript bully. The lesser spectacled bully. He doesn't like Sigh. I don't like him either. I have the death sentence in twelve fandoms. After they take turns fluffing up their plumage and chirping angrily, Flash expresses his disdain.

-"Him," Gordon said, sounding offended at the question. "You and Helen teaming up on him. Why'd you go and do that to him? You knew you'd get someone's goat by having Helen be gentle to you, and you did, and then you twisted the damn knife. If you wanted to verify that he wasn't one of the people who were trying to kill us, you could have asked me."-

Sly...

-I sighed, "I'm establishing the pecking order."-
...ellipses...
-"I didn't say I'd be at the top of the pecking order," I protested.-

Yeah, that's putting on cruise control and entering a neighbourhood known for the fine quality of the fists. Rolling down the window and making catcalls.

-"We shake things up, see what happens," I said. "What moves, what doesn't, what doesn't move like it should. We pay attention to what comes next, and we might get clues. I just happened to draw everyone's attention, and whoever was paying attention to you lot is paying extra special attention to me now. I'm betting they're confused."-

Painting a target on your back and then mooning anyone who looks at it is a rather confusing tactic.

-"I suspect the only person who really gets how you think is you, Sy," Gordon said.

"Helen gets me," I said.

"Helen is-" Gordon started. "Yeah."-

I enjoy Helen. Minimal talk, maximum impact. They head off to the classes, and Sigh forces me to play "emulating human, or being playful?"

It's a brilliant game that I have to play in every bloody conversation, because he's established himself as a manipulator, and an abomination of improperly peer reviewed science.

-Jamie's long hair was pulled back into a sailor's ponytail, low and resting against the neck, which wasn't how he normally wore it. It was nearly invisible with his collar up. I reached out and flicked it with my finger.-

That's a shame. Perfectly serviceable and scholarly look.

-"Now, back to what I was saying. Wollstone's ratios are used in seventy percent of what you'll be doing if you go on to attend the Academy. The golden ratio, seen here, could be said to be the precursor to what would eventually be Wollstone's nine ratios. With a few quick measurements, we can quickly divine which of the nine ratios is used for a given organism's physical structure or composition, and working backward, so long as we can keep to the ratio, we can trust that the organism has the fundamental supports for life.

"For example, if you'll turn to page seventy-five, we can see where the fundamental pattern of a cat is outlined. Keeping to Wollstone's 'wise' ratio, we can discern which parts of the pattern apply to specific parts of the cat. Now, it gets more complicated when we decide to alter the pattern, or the how of it, but you should begin to have a glimmer of how a ratio can be used as a shortcut to understanding…"

My forehead hit the desk. I closed my eyes and tried to fall asleep.-

Pay attention Sigh, you're worse than Clockblocker. This exposition stuff is solid gold. Wollstone's ratios make the science they use natural in usage., comparable to the appearance of the golden ratio in nautiloi shells. If I'm reading this correct, they identified a series of progressive ratios, unique/shared to various forms of life, that enable them to determine the shapes that they are creating as they produce them. Add a dash of cat, a bit of anaconda, and as long as the ratios hold up, it should be good to go. Sit back, let it grow, and make a few adjustments as you go, same way that they describe the process of using trees and such to form their buildings. This isn't playing god so much as playing Darwin, or LeMark. Genetic manipulation/guided growth.

-To his credit, Ed did know how to throw a punch. He knew how to throw ten.

To my credit, I managed to stay on my feet until the tenth punch. I didn't manage to deliver anything substantial in the meantime, but I wasn't curling up into a ball and crying uncle.-

Sly, I'd give you some support here but... you aggroed him, and you did it for a purpose. Normal kids watch and laugh. Spooky assassins watch from a distance. And like that, they have their culprits, or at least a glimpse of them.

-As curious as we were about the murderous children, they were curious about us. They couldn't know me well enough to know how I operated. Even Mr. Hayle didn't, and he'd practically designed me.-

Damn it. Smiting! Never make something you can't smite! This is how you get hyperintelligent psychopaths running around. I wouldn't muck around with humanlike intelligence without a full course of poking, prodding, and locking the thing in a lab.

-"Inside. Three boys. I can give Jamie partial descriptions."

"Three boys," Gordon mused. "That's not good."

"Poisonings are usually done by women," Helen said, as she joined us. "Meaning we're dealing with four."

"At least," I agreed.-

That Sly dog...

fabledFreeboota · Aug 11, 2017

So. Jamie shows off his sketching, and one can hear the sound of pen pressed against paper.

-"That looks round. Also, he didn't look sinister, but he didn't look interested either. It was cold."

"Like Helen sometimes looks?"

I considered. "No."

"You, then. On a bad day, after an appointment?"-

The two try to do a police profile, build a sort of mugshot of the assassin that Sly caught the best glimpse of. And it's neat. These sorts of comparisons to their friends. Helen continues to be the benchmark for comparisons. A good measuring point. Jamie continues to write in his diary, and Sly reads over his shoulder because privacy isn't a virtue.

-"Case of the bad seeds," I commented idly.-

I like bad names like that. Fun.

-From memory: Sly in the Tower, after he ran away. Before he recovered from one month's appointment, he had to do the next.-

Hmmm. That doesn't sound good... with the personality thing, I'm thinking... something like regeneration? The old Sly dies, the new one is born? Might explain why he was reckless back in the barn.

-"They weren't lost. There was emotion there. They were human, but they weren't nicehumans."

"You're not a nice human sometimes," Jamie remarked.-

I ain't calling him human till I hear it out his creator's mouth. Fun to see that he can distinguish people like that though.

-There, I'd been free to be me. Here, I was being made to conform, just like some of the fruit I'd seen grown at the Academy, placed inside molds that would shape their growth. Fruit shaped like certain animals, or like human faces.-

Munce burger, get your Munce burger right here!

-"There are parasites that induce suicidal behavior in the host as part of the life cycle."

"Sure. Transoplasma Felidae. Feverish behavior and a compulsion to drown oneself. Weaponized version was Transoplasma Necis, but that saw reams of people biting off their own tongues to choke on the tongue or aspirating the blood. Well known enough."-

That is marvelously evil. And the best part is, the behaviour would probably degrade bit by bit as they reach the final stages anyway. Increasing aggression, self destructive tendenceies... I give Sly the stick, but I'm a bit sinister myself really. Can't help but appreciate something so twisted.

-I started to come up with an explanation, then dismissed it. Felt weak, like too much of a reach. "What if it made them suggestible? Broke down the walls in their heads, left them open to receiving instruction? Get access to the children, slip them something that leaves them open to being influenced."-

Manchurian Candidates. Clever.

-"It's good to think about why," Jamie said, his voice quiet but not meek. "You have a good sense of things, but it's important to identify the details that are feeding into that sense. You see little details, and your brain picks them up and puts them into storage, while your conscious mind doesn't register them. Prey animals use that low-level awareness a lot, figuring out that a predator could be nearby, and we still have traces of that prey thinking."

"I don't see myself as a prey animal," I said, smiling.-

What a marvelously human thing for you to say, homunculus.

-"You two decent in there?" Gordon asked, voice muffled by the intervening door.

"Am I ever decent?" I asked.-

Chuckle. Snort.

-He opened a drawer in the desk, pulling out five more dime novels. "Doll Man and the song of the moon?"-

Hah. Please tell me this is proper children's entertainment here?

-"Doll man and the revenge of the swarm queen?"-

Brilliant. So he's either a villain protag, or a horror character, this society prides itself on progress so... yep. I'm calling it as Horror villain protagonist, stalking down scientists. Or a cautionary tale, where he only catches the careless and the sinners.

-Jamie held the other three little novels so they fanned out. A lady in white and a rat crawling out of the darkness, a man with a bird mask, and a handsome young man with a dog accompanying him through a forest.-

Hmm. White dressed Wildbow character, I'm going with... nah, can't think of it. As for the others? Evan, and... Johannes and Good Boy?

They get a little info, and confirm three boys are the killers. From there, more thinking! Its kinda hard to do reaction to these parts, cos I just sorta go full Watson when people explain stuff in my presence. Nod my head, and follow along. Wait and trust in the character's perceptions.

-Gordon nodded. "Our mad doctor or doctors act the role of the murderer, the children are the murder weapon, and that weapon needs to be kept controlled and concealed. The school is a setting for it. That still leaves questions. Who, how, why."-

Kids, kids, parents? Clearly rigged to head after the families.

-Gordon openly scoffed. "Brawl. You got beat, Sy. I was talking to some of the others, and Ed actually got worried when someone suggested that you might be a real scrapper, growing up in the orphanage. I nearly split something, trying not to laugh."-

So Sly is in fact, just that bad at fighting? You'd have thought they'd have taught him that, but... intentionally designed weakness?

-Dust the glasses with something, poison the silverware, deliver the poison while serving water, refresh the bread bowl or salad, drop something in the food while we go from the buffet to our seats, or simply take advantage of the bumps and shoves that come with being in a crowd of hungry students to stick us with a needle.-

It ain't paranoia if they are all out to getcha - A Real Noxian Hero

Surrounded by girls, and a crowd, Sly and Jamie start flirting as the natural response to being caught checking out a woman's legs. A feeling I have never experienced. Trouser wearers are where it's at, young Sly.

-"Some people are born to be the hero of a story," I said. "I was born to be the villain. I see the charming, good looking, obnoxiously noble type of guy and I feel compelled to start a battle I'm doomed to lose."-

Make more jokes like this Sly. They let me dehumanise you further. That's a good thing, mind. Past the moral event horizon, through that hole, and back out into the space I call "loveable bastard."

-

"Oh, Gordon's a villain at heart," I said. "I don't know if he knows it yet, but there's a scoundrel in there just screaming for an excuse."-

Flash has the ultimate wingman in young Sy. I'd say it's nice, but it's all an act, oriented towards getting more information.

-"It's good if you've given up on making yourself look good, because that ship sailed hours ago," Miss Ribbons commented.-

Yeah, I've been thinking he's evil ever since the "feed a man to his own desperate creation" thing. They part from the girls, and are about to dig in when...

-I was exceedingly aware of the state of my food. On such an empty stomach, I couldn't afford to get poisoned. -

That'd be a real shame. Yep. People start looking like you just told them what cheese mites are.

-They didn't settle for poisoning us.

They poisoned everyone.-

The safe approach. Everyone but the assassins are now feeling nauseous. I'm not. I'm a packed lunch man. I don't even buy snacks anymore, because a change of catering company just robbed me of bacon turnovers. I work the whole morning now. No midmorning break, no reward to myself for a good night at the gym. Damn them. Damn them all.

-My eye fell on Miss Ribbons.

I felt the uneasiness, watching her. I saw the look in her eyes. Just the same as the boys had been.-

And that makes four.

-They're making a play, and we're still completely in the dark about what they are and what they're doing.-

To be fair, we're also in the dark about what you are, Sly.

For the hell of it, this chapter was read along backwards. Have fun figuring that one out.

fabledFreeboota · Aug 11, 2017

We open with a tide of vomit and rising filth. Someone started a Cauldron morality debate. Unaffected by the stench and vitriol, the Twigs start to... talk about the situation and plan accordingly. They're pretty smart like that. It's kinda enjoyable, and never a snail's pace. They don't bounce so much as ping-pong ideas.

-Knowing we'd already served ourselves, they'd tainted the food, affecting most of the other students and teachers. -

I mean, was there something to be lost in poisoning everyone, Twigs included? They identify the poisoner as Mary. Feining sickness in Helen, they move to leave. A cursory scan reveals some irrelevant teachers.

-The red jacket was unfortunate, not because it was a sad attempt at acting a member of the upper crust, but because his skin was now very flushed, matching the jacket. He was sweating, in obvious discomfort.-

All he needs is a red brick wall, and his camoflauge is complete.

-"Everyone!" Red-jacket boomed out the word. He had a faint but real British accent.-

Oh. So we aren't in England. That's surprising. And good. I've read one too many 'punk novels that never get out from England.

We get back to more puking and sickness. Plucking a jar, the Twigs pick up another few, and collect a little of the endless stomach clearing throughout the room.

-"I'm a bastard, born and bred," I said. And there's no way I'm handing a weapon over to a potential enemy.-

Guess he's honest, at least. They wander off to the girls' showers, to plan and think out things. More debating! More tactics! Actual communication!

-"They get individual stalls?" Jamie asked. "Why do they get individual stalls?"-

Ok, Bookworm is human enough.

-"I'm well aware," Helen said, turning her blank expression on Lillian. Anyone else might have sounded irritated, but Helen didn't sound anything. "If I had an idea and ignored it, then it would be my fault."-

And Helen isn't.

-"Mary Elizabeth Cobourn," Helen said. "Her father isn't influential. Accountant to the rich and famous. It's why I didn't pay particular attention to her."-

That sounds influential.

-I nodded. Most mothers were teachers, nurses, or homemakers. Nothing so interesting that we could ask. There were more women attending the Academy, but few from the last generation.-

Huh. Equal rights for Stitchers.

-Jamie nodded. "The puppeteer is using these students as murder weapons. As a killer, he has a pattern. Murder-suicides. One after another. The suicides cover up evidence. If Mary keeps to the pattern, she's either going to come after us-"

"Or she's going to go home," Gordon said. He paused. "Oh."

I followed his thoughts to the same conclusion. "This is the endgame."-

Yasee, reacting is kinda a bad idea, on a paragraph by paragraph basis, because of the speed at which conversation flows. More importantly, its all clever, justified enough that my opinion is immediately skewed to theirs. Plus, Sy and pals don't really make decisions, or at least they don't eliminate possibilites. Thankfully its all very parsable. Basically, Badseed and the assassins, they've forced the Twigs' hands. Kill, or watch the tykes wander off. They talk some more and... let's pick a good point to interject.

-"Nothing," Jamie said. "If I try to argue, you'll win. You'll say something about the poisoner being a woman after all, and you're faster on the draw than I am, so okay. I forfeit the argument. You're right."-

We get the sense of camaraderie, and that they all do this all the time. The sense that they do this all the time, which, given what I've read so far, is probably true. No rest for the wicked.

They all end up retiring to their rooms, but not before uncovering a dreadful secret about one of their teachers.

-"Yes. Dressing up, playing up the accent. They picked him because he was local, not because he was upper crust."-

Cor blimey govna, faking a British accent?

Sly also manages to turn another door into a death trap. That seems to be a talent of his. Sadly, he is unable to make use of his trap, and is instead dragged out to deal with generic bully and his equally replaceable cronies.

Or rather, their master. The terrifying... Mary. She calls him a scoundrel, understatement of the year.

-I shrugged. "I'm not denying that I'm a scoundrel. I do have to wonder what you are."

"That, Sylvester, would be telling," Mary said.-

Now I can't really pick one line from the final section. I like the whole thing. WB knows how to make a cliffhanger.

-"I'm going to assume you're lying and stay comfortably at a safe distance," she said. "You're going to tell me about your friends. Share what you know. In exchange, I'll be merciful."

"Merciful?"

"I'll shoot you properly, once in the head, once in the chest. Then I haul you over and push you into the furnace before taking my leave."

"The alternative being?"

"I take your legs out from under you, then hold you up to slow cook you while you're alive."

My eyes were adjusting to the gloom. I could see the look in her eyes.

She totally would.

I exhaled slowly. "Okay."

"Good boy."-

Sly is willing to save his bacon. Back bacon. From wild boar. Smoked. Gentle. Do you know what the best part of British Suburbia is? FARM SHOPS!

Back on track though... I'd believe him selling out his friends. He hasn't really shown much loyalty.

fabledFreeboota · Aug 11, 2017

As a bawdy Englishman, of course I'm going to distort the hell out of the first paragraph.

-"That was a little too fast," she said. "Stand with your back to the door. Try the knob."-
-I did. I turned the knob to the side, tugged-

I can act high and mighty, but I giggled at every goblin's name. Every time they came up. For the entire book.

-She wasn't wearing her uniform, but a sweater, cloak and hood, and a skirt with stockings and boots. The gun was in her lap, pointed at me, and other weapons sat within arm's reach. A hatchet, hammer, and the knife she probably planned to use if it came down to it.-

Bow has a thing about lethal children. Mary has been promoted to Stabby Longstocking. Sly, for his part, uses the ol' protagonist's toolbox. I'm fairly convinced he's intended to leave via the furnace, and Stabby is going to leave via coal chute.

-"You've made it clear that I'm going to die," I said, holding my position. "I didn't expect it this soon, but I've always figured it was going to happen. If there's a chance I get to die sitting down, just after an interesting conversation, I consider it a pretty good end."
She moved her head, and the light from the fire danced across her face with the motion. "This isn't a conversation. It's an interrogation."-

Hehe. Yeah, a protagonist talking to you is never a good thing. Getting a Doctor Who vibe. Let me figure out your plan before I die.

-Had she caught me mirroring her? Was she aware of what mirroring was?-

Ok, social parrot. That's one to remember.

-"If you were really merciful, you'd tell me. It's a kind of torture, making me go to my grave without all of the answers."-

I mean, that's enough to torture the reader too.

-In terms of life expectancy. Or project expectancy. There's more glory in breaking new ground than there is in refining someone else's work, and the entire setup of the Academy is all about innovation more than doing good work. We're a casualty of that."-

Shoddy work and new projects, refusing to improve existing projects? Mad scientists indeed. Still, fixed lifespan is good and dandy for avoiding loose experiments.

-"Okay. Okay. New projects. You know how the departments portioned out cash for various measures? We got funding as a special project. Got it better than some. Six individual cases, each managed with an entirely different approach."-
-We're meant to develop into something monstrous over time.-

Already there, Sly.

-I'm the black sheep, or the black lamb, Mary. Gordon is the multi-talented hero, Helen the actress, Jamie the bookworm and record keeper, Evette is the problem solver who steps out from the background to deliver answer and solution in one fell stroke, and Lillian is a student on the verge of becoming the teacher, eventually to become master, surpassing professors in her mastery of the Academy science. -

So... just enough to work out those team dynamics earlier. Intellectually they seemed similar enough.

-"I'm supposed to cover the gaps for the others. You… you're very specialized. You were prepared for one task. Anything else is peripheral. I'm built to be part of a composite whole. You… you've got the boys, but you don't have them. There's no support. You're among kindred but you're alone."-

Canny beggar.

-This far into our dialogue, I had a sense of her. Before, I might have had to guess. Now I was suspicious that this was a willful lack of movement. She was trying very hard not to give me anything.-

Every little twitch and signal? Damn. I envy that.

-"You stand alone, Mary Elizabeth Coburn, and you know it."
She looked down at the gun. "I feel like shooting you now."-

Sly is very much like Tattletale. And I wasn't much of a fan of Lisa, I'm afraid. Well, except the one liners.

-"I'm real. Woman-born," I said. "An adjustment made after the fact, so my head works in a slightly different way. A shot to the heart will kill me. But maybe one to the heart, watch me die, then finish me off with one to the head? As one experiment to another, it would be very much appreciated."-

Huh. That surprises me. Fine. Sigh. You are now afforded humanity, you abandoned child. Probably unwanted. Yep, it'll have to be medical experiments for the lot of ya.

-"You're a fatalistic little shit, aren't you? That's really not an act, huh?"-

Its all acts.
Anyway, a large chunk of the text follows that is deductions and interplay, and holds me captive long enough that I can't really comment on it that much, beyond how natural the reveal seems. The way he just digs it up.

-You put the effort in because you think he'll praise you. You'll be his triumph. His girl. You love him, as a parental figure or as anyone at the start of their journey to adulthood can be infatuated with an adult.
We're opposites in that respect too. You love your creator.-

I like this. That sort of attention craving. From what we've seen of Sy so far, taking something like that and using it as leverage is only second nature. He only stops himself from going too far because she's cracking and he needs ammunition for later. I will have a little think on that last part. Can't tell if Sy despises his creator for creating him, for treating him as an experiment, or as a force of authority over him. He acts out a lot, what with the door and all. Its just something I'll watch for.

-I decided that I'd dedicate myself to helping the others. If I can keep them alive longer, or support them, I'll do that.-

Ok, he has a motivation here. But he confessed that as part of manipulations. Not trusting him.

-I want to keep you alive because you're kindred. Not kin, but a bird of the same feather.-

And he cares about his fellow experiments? Sentimental over other sentients?

-The best way to surprise someone was to be surprised as well.
The door smashed into the room with a force that sent me from my seat at its base to the center of the room.-

GORDON'S ALIVE! The Twigs have a daring fight that lasts about the extent of "Here, have a Sy. Woopwoopwoop." The others filter in, and they manage to work out...

-I nodded. "Clones. Possibly with implanted behaviors. Probably something plugged in for imprinting to their creator and a reversal of the typical love for your parents."-

Huh. Cloning too. Biology is pretty advanced in this here setting.

-Too far away to be anything but a deliberate miss.-

Manipulation successful, precocious child.

This is the chapter that lets me like Slyvester. A little. Low cunning from a position of weakness, backed into a corner. Well. Basically trapped in a situation that lets him talk. Yeah... that's not really backed into a corner for a character like this.

fabledFreeboota · Aug 13, 2017

-"Thank you," I said. "I appreciate the rescue. The sentiment, anyway."-

Smug little cuss. We open to... PLANNING! I love reading it and dislike commenting on it!
Seriously, its just fairly natural and full of repartee anyway. Adding comments feels like butting in on someone else's conversation.

-She's been imprinted with set behaviors, but she's still human, with hopes and fears.-

Alright. So she's human too. For a vat grown. Sorry if I'm a little of an elitist snob for that, natural births. Well, and artificial conception. Huh, guess when I put it like that she's still pretty human. My views on clones tend to flip flop.

- It's called dissonance. You believe one thing deeply enough that it's central to your identity. Then something, me, steps in to challenge that belief.-

So yeah, basically you broke her world view and stuck a knife in the one thing she believed in. She'll be alright...

-"It's possible," I said. "We know where she's going. She's going to pay a visit to her creator."-

Smart.

- There are chemical ways to promote aging. Hormones, substances, alter the seventh ratio. -

Ok, so Wollstone's ratios contain the ageing process. Other ratios? Beyond the relation of various body parts and traits? Something for the brain, the nervous system... Enhanced growth, faster breeding for Anakittys.

-We saw people try this a decade ago in the Indian Empire. Crown scientists tried to make a slave class that grew to maturity, with a specific level of intelligence.-

Oh GOD. The British Empire. That's not... that's not the people you want to give science like this. Not the revolutionary era, every American that goes on about tea parties... It's after that. India. Boers.

-"How do you think it went, Sy?" Gordon asked. "Do you see slaves everywhere?"
"That's not saying it didn't work," I said.-

Oh God. Just less efficient than regular people as a labour force. Too much effort to brainwash. Forced servitude. Everything that ever vilifies the British... they hold back. Wildbow won't be holding back punches.
Just. The casual way with which this is all engineered. I didn't realise it was that easy.

-"Oh my god. It really, really is," Lillian said, eyes wide, the incredulity she wasn't voicing clear in her expression.-

-"Lillian," I spoke up.
She looked at me, a crease between her eyebrows. Annoyance, worry?
"That Academy know-how you just dropped on us? That was good. Smart stuff."-

Really. I enjoy this exposition. It helps me understand the technology availlable to the Academy. Sly slips off, pretending to be guaranteed dead since Mary will now be unable to talk to her brothers without questioning the reality of her existance.

-Humans were complex creatures. Add the rewriting of patterns, augmentations, grafts, revival, drugs, and everything else, and 'human' became an awfully unclear term. Every new discovery meant the introduction of things that had never been done or discovered before, more things that muddied the waters.-

Yeah... I think just using person might be the easy way of going about this. Anyway, they go off to fight, Sly goes off to investigate. More clues, more well written deductions via process of thinking.

-It was sobering, to know that the foundation and excuse for my being rested on the backs of two corpses.
Two who were like me.-

Ok. So he can feel bad about this? Fair enough.

-Shake the box, and it generated chaos. Maddened, they would seek to escape, butting their heads against barriers. They would turn on their closest neighbors and strike out. Even seek to kill. In their frenzied movements, they were very predictable.-

Yeah, um... think about that with people, is of course what we're meant to be thinking.

-Jamie had been very quiet after that response of mine.-

For good reason!

-I penned out an illegible signature in blood.-

Audacitous enough to work. Crazy genius.

-Coin for bodies. The area here was too nice for it to be lucrative, compared to areas closer to the orphanage where people couldn't pay their way out of being sick.-

Bring out yer dead. And the sick. And the living. Orphans that sit, and watch their families dragged off, and recognise their father when he's back up and walking the day after.

-I stepped closer, and I stuck the letter opener into his crotch. Not hard enough to pierce anything, but enough to let him know there was a point to it.-

Viscious little...

-"…the boys!?" Mary's voice rose at the end, a question.
There we go, I thought.
And she was using the words I'd given her, using my labels.
I sat back and listened.-

Managing to force her every thought. Damn. This is crazy levels of manipulation. That little, seed their thoughts approach.

fabledFreeboota · Aug 14, 2017

-"Mary, I won't talk to you while you're being like this."

"I'm scared! I've never been scared! And you're not answering my questions, which-"

"Mary."

"-isn't making me feel any better!"-

Mary has a little talk with her creator. She wants to know just how much she means to him. Hint, somewhere between diddly, and squat.

-Mary was displaying more emotion in a given word than I'd seen from her during my entire discussion with her.-

Thoroughly needled.

-"I'm still proud of you, Mary," he said. There was a pause, uncomfortable and long. I had to fight the urge to peek in the window. The puppeteer resumed, his voice low and soothing, as if talking to an infant "Deep breath now. In… and out. There we go. Tears wiped away, hair fixed up, and you're not so flustered. Do you feel a little better?"-

And her creator... actually cares. See Sly? Some people are just decent, besides the whole child suicide assassins deal.

-"I feel as though, if I had to guess, you might have told them that they were special, and you only spend time with me because I need the extra practice and training."-

Damn. Girl had issues before Sly got there.

-They left us scraps, told us that when classes weren't full we could fight between ourselves to take the additional spots.-

Huh. Seems like an easy way to get some extra help. Pretty smart, really. So once upon a time the Academy wasn't attracting everyone anxious to not be devoured by stray monsters?

Anyway, they have a short and insightful disccussion. Watching people with keener intellects than my own usually leaves me speechless, but we learn some JUICY TIDDBITS

-Only a suspicion. The funding is spent, the department was cut back, but several of the projects lived, and it costs relatively little to keep an ongoing project operating.-

Hmm. I reckon true on this, a retooling for immediate gains.

-"Yes. As much as they prize innovation, they prize control more. A mind that runs away with ideas is cherished there, so long as it remains there. Within or with the Academy. Here? Past arm's length? Not something cherished, but despised. That's our enemy."-

Well, I'm perfectly fine with all the snakecharmers and puppetmasters being under one roof. At least then there's a semblance of control.

-"I don't see any other way to do it. Trust me, Mary. I gave you a wealth of talents, but I'm not without my own. This is something I can manage."-

He has a very particular set of skills.

-Mary had fallen silent.

An imprinted phrase? Planned, crafted as something that wouldn't be repeated in everyday conversation.-

Nevermind, he's cool with controlling her. Guess Sly's helping her after all.

-In this case, it was pure accident, but he made it happen. His head turned to look up at me, and the brick-ish box of shingles had already left my hand. He brought his face straight into it.-

Ouch. Wince.

-He's a bastard," she said.

"I never pretended to be anything but," I said.-

Mannerless orphan child, your charm is winning my heart. You are but moments from crossing into "too entertaining to judge" territory.

-Providing the moths a flame to follow was one thing. Creating a desire and filling it, destroying the prey at the conclusion.

It was another to leave your enemy only one path, and follow them along it.-

And there we go. You adorable little mastermind.

-"I was feeling better," he said, mumbling. He coughed and spat, "Thought I'd check how things were. A thug on the street waylaid me."-

A gentleman thug.

-Lopsided, as games went. Her with her arsenal of knives and whatever else, me with my letter opener and the knowledge that she was scared, though she was only willing to show it to her maker.

Who, as he'd endeavored to communicate to her, wasn't to be discounted as a player of our dark little game.-

Ok, if anyone can send me some headcanon voices for Sy, that'd be appreciated, because I'm trying to find an average here between the Artful Dodger and the Joker.

fabledFreeboota · Aug 14, 2017

-This was what I lived for. Literally speaking.-

Snigger.

-I knew that Mary knew the same thing, and would react accordingly. She knew I knew, and I knew that.

Ad infinitum.-

Guffah. Ok. I think I have the genre pinned down. Black Comedy Action. This is to the "mystery solving orphans" sort of story what Hot Fuzz was to Police Action flicks. And a constant, healthy sense of humor is great. Esoteric at times, but that fits my sensibilities.

-But imagination was only imagination, and as much as it helped to put myself into others' heads and look at things from set angles, I was missing pieces of it. -

Well, that's good. We were about five minutes away from Sly rendering his teammates superfluous.

-The brick I'd thrown at him had been aimed at her, in an abstract way. -

I don't think I can convey how amusing I find this sentence.

-This is why Gordon gets on my case, I thought. Spend too much time thinking, miss my chances.-

Wait, so thinking isn't a free action here? Gonna take that as a liberty to imagine him freezing mid conversation to carry on his internal narrative.

-Even just approaching the boy's dormitory, I could smell the sickness. Over a thousand students periodically venting fluids out of every orifice.-

Oh god, they brought up Arc 22 didn't they?

-"They're better than I am," Gordon said.

"At?" I asked. "Fighting?"

He shrugged one shoulder. "Wouldn't say that. Using a knife? Throwing something? Definitely better. Fighting? Eh. Brawling? Definitely not."-

Flash, AHH, he'll punch every one of 'em.

-"Brick smashed him in the face out of nowhere," I said. "Puzzling."-

The question is, is this a brick joke?

-"I hate it when people call me Lil," Lillian said.

I made a mental note of that, storing it for future use.-

Lil' Lilian.

-"Separate them, pick them off one by one," Helen said.-

I can almost pick up anticipation off that line.

-"Okay," I said, "Whatever. Let's joke around about Sy really wanting a family, deep down inside. Mary's situation has made me realize it's what I really want. It's a yearning even."-

Call it sarcasm, but all sarcasm contains a nugget of honesty and depreciation.

-Her arms wrapped around my shoulders from behind, and she hugged me tight, before leaning forward to give me a peck on the cheek. Too perfunctory to be anything serious.-

Best sister.

-"I'm never wrong," I said.

The sudden burst of protest that came from every corner and every mouth overlapped to the point that I couldn't pick out individual words.-

Laughing with you Sy, not at you.

-"I don't know how up to talking the puppeteer is," I said. "Again, brick to face."

"You keep saying that like you're proud," Jamie said.

"It was a beautiful throw."-

The best Brick.

-It was a moment of stupidity that left me mostly in the front of everything as our third boy stepped out of the room he'd been hiding in, pistol in hand. He wore a uniform, but he had a cloak and hood on over it, possibly to conceal himself better in the dark.-

School uniform and an anorak is a recipe to be bullied, large fake child.

-For an instant, I thought we hadn't accounted for all the clones, but then he made a small sound of fear. Human frailty, not maliciousness.-

Yeah, Sy continues to unsettle me.

-"Oy!" Gordon shouted. "Got your kid brother here!"-

This clone's so raw I can still smell the vat.

-"Oh, Mary! How are you doing?" I called out. "They really like using you as bait, don't they?"

"I volunteered," Mary said. "My plan."

"Funny how that works," I said. "You'd think the puppeteer would work harder to convince you that you should stay alive, if you're that special to him."-

Banterous. Yeah. I'm growing to love Sy.

-"I'm curious, Mary, why did you change your mind? You sounded so insistent about not wanting the puppeteer to put himself in danger by coming here. Then he said his magic words and, well, can you clarify? It doesn't make sense."

"Magic words," she said, her voice soft.-

You don't have a choice, do you? Sit there, and listen to the first person to make you question what you are.

-"Often enough? In the way you really wanted?"-

Breakfast. The most important meal of the day.

-Our Gordon. A hero on paper, skilled, strong, fit. But if anyone took him for noble, they'd be wrong. A noble person didn't take advantage of inches of height difference to slam their forehead into someone's mouth.-

Brawler, not fighter.

-"And they don't use you?" Mary asked. "You're not tied to them, these other orphans? Would you give them up to save your skin? Oh, wait, you don't care about your skin. Expiration dates, huh?"-

To be fair, expiration dates can probably be postponed as easily as they've been set.

-"You described yourself as a villain. You're a liar, a cheat, a thief, a grubby killer."-

-"When I was asking about breakfast, about the little things that count," I said. "I was really asking if you felt loved, if you truly loved your… father, or whatever you see him as, or if it's just something ingrained in you."-

One last moment of doubt. I think we're almost to a breakthrough.

-That was how he had them kill the parents. A kill phrase, a letter they were to read at a set time or something sent to the home.

Gordon fell, and the clone barely staggered, heedless of pain and injury.-

Oh dear. Berserk mode.

fabledFreeboota · Aug 14, 2017

-He pushed, and with the way my arm was twisted around, my head pointing forward rather than up, I was put in the position of having to let him destroy the arm or letting myself fall.-

I enjoy mechanical descriptions of stuff like this. S'wat helped self defence stick in my head.

Berserker gets going, robs every weapon Sy has to hand.

-Good job, Sy. Pick a fight, achieve nothing except arming the other guy with successively larger weapons. Shall we go find a sword to give him?-

Huh. Some of these are seeming downright intrusive.

-I was cut off by the slam of a door. The eldest clone had kicked a door that Jamie was trying to use as a shield. The door closed, and Jamie, Lil and Helen backed up.

"Do you want to be that?"-

Asking the killer if she wants to be an unstoppable killer. Oh wait, look, he has no choice.

-I knew she had emotions. I'd seen them, or I'd seen hints of them. The problem was that she only let herself be vulnerable with her creator. The same man that had turned his back on her.-

Come on Mary. You're a classic change sides kind of character. Join em before they beat you up, and make you join them.

-One of the first lessons students learn in the Academy, is that life wants to survive. We've been at the survival game for a terribly, terribly long time. Against hostile environments, against predators. So long as a student doesn't work against that impulse, either on the fundamental level or while dealing with the individual, they can trust that life will find a way.-

Life um er um, it finds, uh, it finds a way.

-Meeting Gordon's gaze, I was shocked to see just how hard walking that way was. His eyes had dark shadows under them as if he hadn't slept in a week, and his skin was pale, his pupils narrowed. Each breath he took was laborious, the sort of ragged hauls for breath I'd expect someone to take after being underwater for minutes, but they each came right on the back of the last, with a phlegmatic cast to it, prompting his entire body to jerk a little, as if something kept getting stuck and coming unstuck as he strained himself.-

Bow's job is to make us feel every wound he inflicts on his characters. And with a host of doctors and surgeons, I rest assured that he will live to be maimed another day.

-They had, however, equipped him so he would pick up the skills he needed and master them faster than most. -

Hmmm. Enhanced learning. Probably standard across the group.

-I yelped a little as I saw Gordon take a knife in the side. I saw him bring one arm down, away from the clone's wrist, pinning the knife in place. With the slickness of the blood and Gordon's sheer tenacity, the clone couldn't pull it free.-

-But Gordon kept stabbing, and soon reached the point where the clone wasn't resisting as the knife went in and out of his midsection. The clone soon dropped, and Gordon went with him, having been leaning so heavily on him for support.-

Brutal. Horrifying. And showing just how nails these characters can get. Good Lord.

-"Pawn?" I heard the woman utter the word. Outrage had pushed her to speak where she'd been caught up in silent horror, watching children shoot, stab, and use weapons on each other, spattering her school hallway with blood.-

To be fair, the halls were already spattered with sick. I don't think its going to add much to the cleanup time.

-Oh come on, Mary," I said. "Come on. I bet I'm describing almost exactly what you're hoping for. You don't care about the boys, -

-You have a reality and the puppeteer is at the center of it. You're trying very hard to avoid thinking about what it means, that he went out of his way to plug a special sequence of sounds into your head, and set it up so that you'd kill. -

-How grim is that life, the two of you never speaking about what happened tonight, and how things changed?-

-"Don't say it," Mary said.-

And that's... a perfect little wrap to her character arc. Almost there, and the next bit breaks my little heart.

-"Alone," I said. "If you move forward, you'll be alone."-

-She let the bloodstained paper fall to the floor.-

-It was as if the words had been read, all the same. Mary charged, mindless or unwilling to think, knife in hand.-

She breaks. Breaks bad enough that losing her mind, giving in to commands and hidden controls, I the only option she can think of. She charges the lot of them, robbed even of that simple escape. And then Helen gets stabbed.

-I watched Helen tighten her grip on Mary's wrist.-

-Helen wasn't a fighter, but that wasn't to say she wasn't strong.-

-Her limbs moved in ways they shouldn't have, joints bending the wrong way.-

-Helen raised one leg up, over her own shoulder, and wrapped the foot around the back of Mary's neck.-

-"Back in the furnace room, I mentioned Doctor Ibott. You cut me off before I could say more about him. See, he's the one who handled Helen."-

-"But Ibott only does big things. Monsters that can win wars. Juggernauts and ship sinkers. Well, the guy who heads our project poked at Ibott's pride, and got Ibott to do something smaller and cleverer. Helen's the only one of us who isn't human, you know. Vat grown, like you, but built from scratch. She's only an actress because she had to learn from the beginning."-

Ok, so. 1, I owe an apology to the rest of the Twigs. Congrats. You are all abominations of science, but you are HUMAN abominations of science. Helen, for her part, appears to be a sort of cross between a woman and an anaconda. And Sy calls her a femme fatale? An assassin or spy?

Snakehips. Strangles people to death. With her hips.

That line about Ibott leaves me wondering though. How did they needle him?

"I say good sir, I wager since you only construct gargantuan monstrousities, I wager the sum of fifty pounds sterling that you can't construct a project for anything shy of demolitions work." - Dr Le Rinks

"Why indeed, I reckon he's yet to construct anything smaller than his house. And he lives in a manor!" - Dr Hail

"Pah, methinks he might be compensating for deficiencies in his own construction, eh dear boy?" -Dr Le Rinks

"Hold my ale you rapscallions, I have wonders to work." (Rolls up sleeves) - Ibott

Several months later, a cup of alcohol sits within a hermetically sealed chamber in the room of the esteemed Dr. Le Rinks. A knocking arrives at his door. Why, its Ibott, and a little girl!

"Ah, come in, tell me, what's this girl?" - Dr Le Rinks

"Helen, my invention." - Ibott

"Ah, you've finally stuck your todger in the right place eh? Well, I always said the greatest invention a man could make was his own child." - Dr Le Rinks

"Helen. Helen no! Bad Helen! Get down from there! No choking!" - Ibott

-"It's your call," I said. "Fight to the death like he wanted, or stick it to him. Join us."

It took a long time before she found the courage to nod.-

Welcome to the Lambs, child assassin and murderess. You'll fit right in.

-Mary. You do not have a command like Clyde does.

I won't say I didn't try, but only managed to induce short fits to reset your mind.

I grew fond of you, I admit. What I told you was not lies. If it comes down to it and Clyde fails, run. Find your way.

I will find you. We will be together, and we will succeed.

– Percy-

Aw, what a shame. Daddy loved you after all, Mary.

Phigment · Aug 15, 2017

That part with Mary was pretty cruel.

fabledFreeboota · Aug 15, 2017

-People didn't want to disturb norms. If one looked like they fit into the greater scheme of things, then it took a kind of courage to step away from the herd and stand out, challenging that. Doubly so when schools or the Academy were involved.-

Treating Sy as someone else's problem is probably the easiest way to cope with him.

-I cringed a little, glancing back. Lacey, who had one hand on her hip.

"That doesn't mean anything to me," the student said.

"I know him. He's mentally unsound and a challenge to deal with. The blood on his hands is his own fault. He got away from his caretaker, and I need to get him back now."-

I like Lacey. She has to cope with Sy. I hope we continue to see her.

-"Goodbye, Sylvester," Lacey spoke to my back.-

Goddamn.

-"I thought about what you said," she told me. "I don't know what to say except that you're right. You win. I've asked to be taken off your project. Professor Hayle agreed."-

-"I want to make excuses, justify, argue, give any one of a number of responses. But I'm doing it for my sake, if I remember right, not for yours. I guess the only thing I have left to say is that it's your loss in the end, Sylvester. You need people who know you and your history. How you've developed, how you operate, what you need."

"Maybe," I said. "But I also need the autonomy to decide who I work with. You say you know me, you get how I operate, in a lot of ways. You see that as a good thing, but it's the opposite for me."-

He basically made living with him untenable, drove away the only person that might know what he gets up to. Damn. I don't look forward to seeing Sy with even less supervision. Well, I kinda do, but it's not going to be pretty.

- I was tired, my brain too active for too long. I was starting to stumble.-

Think and think until you can't think anymore. Until you've thunk a hole in the ground.

-She produced a small comb from a shallow pocket in her uniform dress. Rather than make her move, I rose from my seat and took it from her hand, before letting myself fall hard against my cushioned seat.

I held it up for Mary. "So you can feel more like yourself."

"I don't know who myself is," she said, but she took the comb and began working it through her hair. There were more than a few tangles that required sharp, violent tugs to figure out.-

You broke her, and now you're helping put her back together. Little bits of kindness.

-"It's not hard to figure out. You were told we're the enemy. We're the bad guy. Visits were visits. You knew where you stood."

"Sure," she said, the word curt.

"They're going to want to talk to you, ask questions. Be ready for it. You don't have to tell them everything, but anything you tell them will smooth things over. I don't have anywhere to be, so I'll be with you until we figure out where things stand. I'm your ally, your advocate, I offered you a place with us, I will make it happen. I promise things will be okay. "-

Can't tell if trying to build rapport, or trying to create dependence.

-As they filtered away, we were left in the company of a few scattered students who stood closer to the Tower's entrance. I recognized some as members of Jamie's team, two men and two women who looked a little more tired than all the rest. I also spotted the two remaining members of my team, two men who were standing to one side, smoking. Behind us were the students who managed the stitched guards.-

Remaining. Looks like we've had a few Laceys so far.

-"It's the Academy," I said. "This is a small department with a shortage of funding. You should see the manpower backing the other projects."-

Lots of little mad academics currying mad favor for mad resources for their mad departments.

-Dewey was, along with Lacey, the only one who'd been present from the beginning.-

And then there was one. Sy knows where Dewey stands, but I don't think Dewey will last too long.

-"It's a body. Each department has a focus. The Tower is the head. Record keeping. The Rise is the shoulders, or the collarbone, the neck, supporting structures, storage, think backpack. Then you have the Academy headquarters. Center of everything, Claret Hall-"-

The neck bone is connected to the, knee bone.

-She sounded so excited. A kid with a chance to show her stuff. She wasn't a project, but she was clever in her own normal way. Exceptionally so, it could be said. Maybe it was because she'd been pushed to keep up with us, maybe it was because she was a rare breed.-

Ok, there we go. Another little piece. Lil. Precocious. Overachiever. But eager, with little mnemonics. Keen to show off. Intelligent. Has to support the Lambs to earn her place with the academy.

-Ibott. He was someone who had been elevated to a position in society that didn't suit him in the slightest. He was among the most brilliant minds at Radham, clever, not bad looking on the surface, he had the veneer of the upper class and none of the follow-through.-

A gentleman and a thug.

"Forty foot monster? I'd call that stunted, that's barely the size of my todger." - Ibott

-"Sylvester put me in harm's way so we could capture our target," Helen said, before I could say anything. "It was the best way to get me to where I could be most effective."

I would have worded that better, I thought.

I was barely finished the thought when Ibott struck me.-

"Lad. Mate. I put together fifty foot abominations, and a girl that strangles grown men with her hips. You want to say something? You want to make something of this? I'll have you." - Ibott

-"Always good for a first impression, Ibott is," I said, glancing at Mary.-

Yes. Yes he is.

-"I don't understand."

"If he wanted to, he'd run Radham," I said. "He doesn't want to, but he still has that clout. Not what I would have wanted you to see while trying to win you over."-

"Hey up bursar. I said, I needed another few bob to put together my project. Oh, that thing, oh I'm using that as a horse for now, too short for anything else." - Ibott

-"Do you think you're going to have less nightmares, if you spend more time hanging around us?" I asked.-

To be fair, her job is probably going to be just as bad for that. Med studdent, that young...

-"Dog and Catcher are after Percy," he said. I noted how he watched Mary. It seemed he'd been filled in on my intentions there, too. Jamie's work, no doubt. Keeping everything in order, making sure the messages were passed along.-

Dog and Catcher. A Man and his pet dog? Mr Wint and Mr Kidd?

-"The children we were copied from, he had to do something with them. He sold them, to others with ambitions in line with his," she said, and she couldn't maintain eye contact, staring down at the ground instead. "It's a group. One he tried to keep secret from even me. And it's a lot bigger than you'd think."-

CONSPIRACY. INTRIGUE. PLOTS AGAINST CROWN AND COUNTRY!

fabledFreeboota · Aug 15, 2017

-Overshoot, Percy mused. A species finds itself with no predators and an abundance of resources. The species grows by leaps and bounds, oftentimes exponentially, and quickly reaches a point where it vastly exceeds the space and resources available.-

Never heard of the phrase before now. But familiar with the concept. Mass die-off until equilibrium is reached.

-Percy wanted to help it. To give it an hour of his time, or find its owner and tell them how to maintain it better. -

Shoddy work vs a sense of pride.

-A stitched wasn't easy to make, but the attempted and ultimately partial revival of the dead had been one of Wollstone's first projects, and had consequently been one of the most detailed in Wollstone's literature. All one had to do was obtain the materials that the Academy controlled and follow the documentation to the letter.

The materials were inexpensive, the end product lasted years, longer if kept dry and maintained at the right temperature, which this poor thing wasn't.-

Oh god. They'd be outnumbering people within the year if it was any easier.

-Flesh was cheap. Dead flesh cheaper.-

The people of Radham are meat for the grinder.

-It had parts of a human face, writ large, the features largely concealed by long black hair. Here and there, where flesh wasn't sufficient, large amounts of metal had been set in place, fixed to flesh and bone. Light from a streetlamp reflected green in its eyes.

The other figure was a man, wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a long jacket. The light from the streetlamp reflected green in his eyes as well. He carried a stick with a collar fixed to one end, ready to snap shut once touched to the throat, a bear trap without the teeth. Sometimes it had spikes, Percy knew, but no.

No, Dog and Catcher wanted him alive.-

I'd have been too tempted to ironically give them the other name. Catcher the monster, and Dog his handler.

-They could see better than him, they could track scents as well as any bloodhound, they could hear, as rumor went, a leaf settling on the ground, and they had the wits to use that information.-

Smell like they sound, lost and their found...

-This was not that. It was a project that had been started, one largely doomed to failure. When structural integrity had failed, crude metal engineering had been set in place. When circulation was poor, things were rerouted, tubes set in place to serve where veins and arteries couldn't, sometimes outside the body.-

Hmmm. First we've seen of projects with a little machinery thrown in. Are there dedicated Engineers at the academy too? Or do they stick to keeping the trains running, and inventing cars? Biology certainly seems to have progressed the most out of any field.

-Catcher's voice was rough-edged, a man who had smoked or was speaking through a bad cold. "You changed coaches twice, walked through deep puddles. Even wore a maggot-ridden blanket."

Maggots?

Percy pulled at the piece of cloth he'd put over his head, but it still took a second for his eyes to adjust. He saw the maggots wriggling, and flinched, casting the cloth away.

His scalp crawled, now, his neck and face. Once he felt it, every drop of rain he couldn't verify with his eyes was potentially a maggot, vermin, filth.-

Unsettling. Anything to ditch the Catcher and his Dog.

-In the same moment he realized his own mortality, he knew his legacy was gone.-

Legacy. Saw his creations as his continuation... yeah he might've been a father of sorts.

-The collar, slightly too wide around for Percy's upper arm, slammed shut. The hole was large enough that he could have pulled his arm free if he'd been given the chance, but he wasn't. The weapon rotated, the edges digging into his arm, and the implicit promise was that trying to pull free despite the pressure might see skin scraped away by the weapon's edges.-

Wickedly sharp, needlessly cruel.

-No, it was a gas. Pea-soup thick, the cloud rose steadily despite the downpour.-

Huh. Designed to stop them from sniffing him out, I take it?

-The fingers seized his bleeding lower lip and tugged. Leading him like a mutt on a leash, and he knew it wasn't his Mary.

He obeyed all the same.-

Nope. Worse. So much worse.

-He opened his mouth to ask, but whatever it was that had filled it with foul taste, it was like a thick flour, caking his tongue and inner cheeks, making them stick to his teeth. His lips bound together, cracking and bleeding as he pulled them apart.-

That stuff is disgusting. And neat. And god help you if it works like that on your internals.

-He obeyed, fumbling until he found the rain barrel. He made use of the water, rubbing at his eyes, only to pull away long strings of goop. It snapped before he could get much of it. He pulled away as much as he could, checked his vision, and still found it blurry. His second attempt suggested that absolutely none of it had dissipated.-

Continues to be increasingly abhorrent.

-"It uses the mucus membranes," she explained. "Binds to to the mucus itself. You're going to be congested, and you'll be pulling gobbets of the stuff from your nose and mouth for a long time. Give it an hour or two and it'll be more solid. The rinse is meant to clear things up."-

Yep... that's... enough to choke you to death on rapidly solidifying chunks of material. And there's probably something just as evil in our history that inspired WB.

-"But you saved me?" Percy asked.

He could make out enough of her face to see a smile.

"You saved me, and you sacrificed three stitched and a trump card to do it. You're with them."-

The Rebel Alliance? Cauldron? The Secret Society of No Thorburns?

-The destination, as it turned out, was a nondescript store with an old cowboy's hat over the door.

"Ever been to a place like this?" his companion asked, ascending the stairs ahead of him. She shot him a light smile over one shoulder.

"I, ah, never have, believe it or not."-

The old bordello of secrecy eh?

-"You did well."

Talking to me.

"I failed. My creations are dead."

"Mmm, I'm afraid so," the old man said. "We confirmed for ourselves. Three boys and a girl, killed by the Academy's set."-

Oh, Assassin kids? How novel. Good show!

-Percy chose his words carefully. "I feel as though I'm being judged."

"We all are, always," the woman with the birds said. "Are you weak, strong, useful, a fitting romantic partner, a friend, an enemy?"

"I'll reword. I'm on trial."-

Sorry did she just ask if he was up for it?

-"Your work seemed impeccable, considering your limited access to Academy resources. They protect their texts and charts with a dangerous passion. It's half of what Dog and Catcher do, rounding up those who have or copy the books. Every academy has projects that do, dressing them up as patriots and protectors of the Crown."-

Those books teach you how to make plagues and Catacondas. I'm pretty sure they should NEVER leave trustworthy hands. Like those folks from the Academy.

-Percy managed a smile with his cracked, gummed-up lips. "Imagine, please, a new method of warfare. One where a single man or clone can infiltrate, they can target children, replace them, the clones would educate their new peers in how to act like children, and slowly but silently capture an entire generation. One command or order, all in one night, and an entire city would be brought to its knees."-

MAD Science. Damn. I tip my hat Percy, that's a lot crazier than discrediting the Academy.

-In answer, Cynthia reached up and tapped one of the red lights.

Percy nodded in realization.

"We'll be working together," she said. "To create beautiful pieces of work."

"And you'll be doing it with more resources," the bird woman said.

"While staying well out of sight," the old man said, with a little more emphasis. "I'm sure you understand."

Percy nodded slowly, taking it all in. He allowed himself a smile.

"I'm sure it won't take much convincing to have you act against the Academy?" the old man asked.-

Oh I am liking this. A collection outside the Academy, subversives acting in concert?

-Percy smiled a little. "They're treading dangerous ground. Verging on collapse. Hayle sees it too, but he thinks he can make minds brilliant enough to solve the problem. I think he's only going to wind up contributing to it. No, I most definitely don't have a problem acting against them."-

So... the Lambs have a double role. Raise a generation of savants to take charge of the Academy, people with the wits to prevent revolution, revolt, or a bucket load of nightmares escaping?

-He almost didn't hear her. His finger traced the closest vat.

He would create life, play the littlest of gods.

Clones, he thought. From Ancient Greek Klon-. Meaning Twig.

He smiled at the thought, before going to wash his face.-

Oh. Well. There's where the title's from. Taylor was a Worm, Blake made a Pact, and Sy befriended a twig.

Arc 1 in retrospect.

Opening chapter in media res, mid mission. Good, lot of hints at the sort of world we're in.

Found the middle few chapters hard to press through, until I started to approach them through a "sit back and spot the dynamic" lens. Watch the characters, try to pick up behaviours, follow along as Sy leaks bits and pieces.

Mary is decent, I enjoy her little breakdown, the ways in which Sy chips at her armor. Guess she'll be putting herself back together, with a friend to hand her the right pieces.

Sy. The bastard. I empathize less with him than WB's other protags, but that's probably down to my frequent cries of "Abomination against nature" early on. He is a bastard. Manipulative. Ever so slightly alien in thinking. Wit, as opposed to strength. Unable to overpower, but knowing where to apply what strength he has.

Italics thoughts have some facts and insights.

Lil is relatively without role in these early chapters. Well, beyond acting as the medic.

Gordon. The hero. Strong, dashing, and able to be violent. Likeable.

Jamie. The nerd. Booksmart, chronicler, and info gatherer. Fair enough. Seems the most emotional behind Lil, a contrast to his approach.

Helen. The Snakehips. An inhuman creature that pretends to be human, lacks human biology. I like her. She's enjoyable to read. Ibott's pet project, or a surrogate daughter of sorts?

Enemy Chapters serve as interludes. So, I guess we won't get to see through another of the Lamb's eyes. Unless the chapters change perspectives, but Wibble hasn't done that sofar.

fabledFreeboota · Aug 16, 2017

Will be doing a spot of editing before arc two, provide context to the quotes. Quality of reading stuff.

Indivisible · Aug 16, 2017

Sy was an interesting in that he is a main charater who cannot win a straight fight and needs his allies for physical stuff. He's a child his mental thing stops him being able to fight effectively. It's quite a change from Taylor, who could take on large numbers of people at once, and Blake, who had become a respectable combatant by the end. The gestalt thing requires more character interaction, which is a strength of Wildbow's.

It's hard to comment much on characters when you're just beginning, but I just find Sy's attempted edginess so adorable. Also, I like the commentary on Female Scientist Who Cares About Child Experiment But Continues With It Anyway.

I'll say more when more of the characters have their characters introduced. You're doing a great job at Let's Reading this story!

fabledFreeboota · Aug 25, 2017

Still editing the earlier stuff. Not really enjoying it. Feels like a trudge. Feels like a trudge to do this with newer chapters too. What I get for yoking myself.

Endless Hunger · Sep 1, 2017

I may just be speaking for myself here, but I'm fine with the format you've been using up until now. If editing it to look nicer makes you not enjoy doing the Let's Read and is a time consuming trudge, I would be completely fine if you didn't do it and stuck with the current format. You can take the yoke off if you wish.

fabledFreeboota · Jan 20, 2018

WHEN LAST WE LEFT THIS HUMBLE PIRATE< DOC MOD TOLD HIM HE WAS LIVEBLOGGING WRONG. WHAT A WONDERFUL WAY TO IMPROVE THIS REVIEW< NOT ACTUALLY UPDATING AT ALL>
SUBSEQUENTLY, WE@LL HAVE TO DO THIS ALL RUSHED TO GET CAUGHT UP TO WHERE BOOTA SITS AT ARC ^.

Let's get caught up in the most expedient and montageable manner possible.

ARC "< HERDING KITTENS

Lost kitten, if found please scream loud enough to be heard.

So... I think this worked a little better for me. Saw a bit more of the group dynamics. Played with expectations. Enjoyed the "locked room" aspect of the arc, so much done in a single space. Showcased that "think our way out" approach, and cemented for me that Twig is about the interplay. Which is nice, after Pact. (I'm helping! - No you aren't!) And Worm. (We're a team! - We aren't friends.)

Still find Sigh and Flash to be somewhere between the girls from St. Trinians and the Children of the Damned, there's this innate untrustworthiness I can put on both. Even if Sy acts a little more human, the manipulative streak makes it hard to get a solid grip on him. I like the Sy that chooses every word to involve Mary in their group, the Sy that wants to be seen as an equal, and the Sy that is counting every little win. Doctor and Diary have a few moments, I enjoyed the names scene as well as the scalpel dispensary. But Stabby Longstocking is still best character, and Snakehips might just be second. Mary feels like the Watson here, which is good because I still feel like I'm getting to know everyone else. H. Ibott is just fun to watch, subtly unsettling in a much more honest manner. Something that's pretending to be normal, rather than someone.

New information

* Enough Stitched to form entire armies. Zombie armies. Cyborg zombie armies. With giant monsters. And tiny little parasites. And great big parasites. Where did I put the white flag?

* GORD SAVE DA QUEEN.

* "I don't even think the Academy can stop the Academy."

Predictions

* Nobody lives to see their expiration.

* Whiskers will show up once or twice to deal with anyone still wandering about on their own.

* Shepherd will return with a new flock.

fabledFreeboota · Jan 20, 2018

Join me, a first time reader and surlySwashbuckler, as I commence a level 5 audit on Arc Three of Twig. No, I haven't done this for 1 or 2. Yet.

The name is a reference to Matt and Scott's masterpiece, but I think I'll stick to something a little closer to Doctor Mod's work on Worm. Probably hash out something proper for arc 1 this weekend. For now... something weak. Something smaller.

Banter is thick in Twig. Thick. Every conversation is full of Sy's little pushes, and I don't think I'd be able to get anywhere if I actually noted them all. So. I guess this is going to be a semi bare-bones, mostly humorous, pick-what-I-like read-along. Damn it if I shouldn't have been doing it like this from Arc 1. Consider it retroactive, I'll give it a reread and post one and two. I think it was only reading this arc that I found enough to talk about. Or rather, found I had enough to talk about what there was to talk about.

3.1 There's something adorable about the chapter starting out, everyone getting dressed, thinking they might all be off to school.

Sy eats toast, loathes his sitcom arch-nemesis, and debates the perks of being a girl before remembering that the girls that he interacts with the most are a junior mad Doctor, Snakehips, and someone who should probably be making a few clinking noises as she walks. I bestow upon her the new name, Knives.

-"You would not believe how many weapons I'm carrying right now," - Knives.

All these happy kids at play. And then we see them display that Hans Lambda charm as they play inquisition. Then you wonder, just what are we doing this arc? So far down in the bowels, so deep, so many floors between them and freedom?

-Heavy thuds marked the barricades dropping down. With the experiment loose as far down as she was, chances were good that they'd only sealed off the exit.-

Ah. Lockdown. Arc 2 showed how well the Lambs excelled in a controlled environment, in the crowded space of a church as they enforced a sense of claustrophobia and panic amongst the mob. Now, before the doors close, we see the extent of how bad things are when a thin stitched woman walks past them, caked in blood. Her skin a part of her, forming a dress. Her eyes pealed open. Her Lips Sealed. Eh? Eh? '

3.2 Sy immediately sorts his priorities. He didn't do it. L's panic and general dislike of her situation gives Sy a look into her bad days. Insight into her Tetradeleocleithrophobia. The discus just what our monster of the week is. Sub-Rosa. An experiment to revive the dead... that was pitched as a weapon. Academy Number One Good Jobbers. I'd have pitched it at the rich and death-fearing. The Lambs race into action! Talking out all their problems and targets in an orderly and understandable fashion. They prepare to find the Gorger, think out the ways in which this could be a greater conspiracy, why Sub-Rosa's strength was hidden. Tracking her down, they find she's staging a breakout.

3.3 Convicts, reprobates and unlucky sods, full of wires, spikes and vials. Let loose by a woman dressed like the most metal nun imaginable. They inform Sy that he should gaze upon the injuries and modifications inflicted on them by the reigning authority on science, the Academy. Sy tests them, gets a pat on the head from Rose, and gets the others to join in as they pretend to be more escaped experiments. Canny beggar.

3.4 Sy reveals he and the others played Prisoner's Dilemma. He and the others torture scientists to pretend to have killed them, saving them from the rampaging spikey-cons, but probably leaving them to die at the hands of loose experiments. The lead convict is a-ok with our psychotic children. Their act is pretty convincing. And ultimately true. Mary almost screws up, but more team bonding ensues. They even meet someone who might know who Rose is, and why she knows how to disable security doors.

-It took her relatively little effort to crush his skull with the one hand. Once the bone gave way, the rest followed fairly quickly after.

My answers! No!-

3.5 Our lambs follow along with the cons and Rose. More threats, and finding the second Shipman, on whom Gordon supposedly develops a crush. He shoots Rose and the gang try to escape. Running headlong into...

3.6 GORGER! His description brings to mind the goalies mentioned in the novelisation of Red Dwarf, engineered to be an 8*24 rectangle of flesh. Something big. Inescapably big. Dragging, heaving himself through the halls. The Lambs, stuck between Gorger and Rose's Thicket, fight her some more. -"You can do it. And it's going to be awesome. I promise,"- It was. Nethertheless, the only way to kill her is by removing her head or heart from the meatsuit that keeps her ticking. L wanted to mention this earlier. -"You were busy electrocuting her and setting her on fire!"- They escape into the vents, and Gordon reveals the horrifying secret. Subrosa built this city. She built this city with rocks and moles. She made Gorger, and every other security meassure in the bowels. They brought her back, and now she wants out. And then bees show up.

3.7 The experiments are loose. Wall crawling leechtopuses that strip skin. They'd be scary, but Helen is scarier. She displays her dominance to one of the squids, but Rose catches up. Sub Rosa has added a friend. Someone is now stuck underneath her coat with her, their electric spike arm joined to her arm. Arsenal increased, she continues to cow the Gorger. She knows its weakness~

Unfortunately, the bees they were stung with are full of poison. Well, sedative. They grow woozier as they talk, figuring out that Rose was a bit of a bitch, and might've been pushed. Oh, and she was still alive the entire time they were working to bring her back. Or conscious. When the Lambs drop like flies, Helen, Jamie, and Sy are the only ones left able to fight.

3.8 CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT OH GOD! Yeah. A lot more conversation. And more following on from the stuff last chapter. This'll be better if I go into more detail but hey? Snakehips proves that she is the best invertebrate to the squiddles, and they run off, sharing to the others that she is the scariest. They rig a poison trap, only to get spotted by a bunch of scientists that start waving them to go away in the most pantomime of fashions. Rose notices, taking a step back from her excavations, and chases the Lambs. -At least we won't have a problem baiting her upstairs.-

3.9 Jamie distracts Rose for a while, telling her stories. The others rig a new trap, preparing the body of Gladys to be dangled like a turkey leg. They poison Rose, but she's not mad. Just disappointed. As she reaches for her turkey leg, she gets pounced on by a lethal mimic, and topples over the edge. And she gets up? She gets up? Nah. Just Gorgered. Gorged. EnGorged.

3.10 The Lambs wander off, to get their friend help, and while Jamie pulls through, while he's been horribly hurt, and sounds... its hard to read when he talks about his conversation. But what makes me love the entire damn arc, what wraps it up flawlessly is the description Sy gives of the man who fixes our Bookworm. Positively one of my favourite Bow moments to date. He analyses the man, pulls everything apart, but concludes that he's ultimately nice. And remarks on how remarkable that is. "People who'd had to fight for power so often set everything but their work aside, even decency and kindness."

From there, the Lambs wait for their chroniclers recovery, but are informed of the next threat. Join us next time, for Sy has a sister in "Enter the Fray!"

Enemy Three. A man gets a slight tweak of the eyes, only to be rejected by his family, betrayed by his friends, and taken for experimentation. A muted head, unable to die. He languishes in psychological torment, but counts the cracks every day. He listens to Wendy, a stitched that talks the same conversation every day, but brings a strange sort of comfort, a way to move forward. When the experiment is taken to pieces, another prisoner is brought in. Ms Fray. Ms Fray immediately makes an impact here. One, she sets Warren free. Two, she brings his friend. Three, she's a badass. Because she accomplishes the above with a tentacled horror smuggled in via her stomach, and a pocketed shard of glass. When we see Warren, Fray, and Wendy again, they've been on the run. Warren has been stitched into a bruiser of a form, strength to match the strength of mind that kept him going. They recognise the presence of the Lambs. And Fray welcomes it.

High points: Academy Women are psychotic. Fray and Rosa get two thumbs and a spike up. Rosa wandered onto the set in a creepy costume and got promoted. Fray steals her scenes, then starts manufacturing more of them in secret.

Low Points: Gladys and the lab jockeys being dum dums, refusing to allow their lives to be saved.

Sub-Rosa: Like all Worm fans, I latch onto the first description of who the body was. The Administrator. Damn if it didn't colour my perceptions for the rest of the chapter. Especially with Rose in the title... I could make a postcanon fic out of this... Ultimately though, my mental image shifted to something along the lines of a cross between a terrifying, biopunk, flesh wreathed abomination, and Mrs. Tweedy. With the hint dropped about Gorger containing experiments, there's a chance she'll be back. I hope. Knowledge of the Academy's workings is an insanely dangerous weapon. That and we haven't seen an Arc villain die yet.

New Information: That thing under the Academy should stay there. Modding yourself is fashionable, horns are in. The Wyvern formula makes you Sigh. Snakehips is going to be a femme fatale. Stitched REMEMBER. Young Author isn't vatgrown, but his spine and brain might as well be. Fray eats squids like she eats her pills.

Up NEXT, ARC $<

fabledFreeboota · Jan 20, 2018

The old man stared out the window as he talked. The rain was coming down hard. Cups clinked softly as tea was poured, while the rain beat a drum on the roof. The entire building creaked with the way the wind blew the branches that extended from the outside.

"We need FANART," he said.

ARC $ SPEED REREAD. NOW WITH EVEN WORSE QUOTING AND REACTION> IF YOU CAN SEE THIS DOC MOD< I DEVOTE MY DEPRESSED SHIFT KEY TO YOU!

4.01

It was fascinating. The houses were like cabins, but the exteriors were well looked after, white, gray, or blue in color, and almost every single one had smoke coming out of the chimney. The streets were gray cobblestone and lighter gray slabs of concrete, covered in white snow and the black grime the wagons and carriages had dredged up. For every man, there were five women, aged eighteen to thirty, and of those five women, four had monsters with them.

Suffice to say, traditional relationships have gone the way of the dodo.

The Lambs and such appear within the town of Kensford, chasing the badass with the squid and the head from the last chapter. A quaint neighbourhood and student area with a literal malignant tumour from where the Academy has grafted itself on.

Its a cutthroat place where all the students work all day in a lab, attempt to sabotage one another, and eventually get shipped off home to marry. I mean, unless they end up getting eaten by snakitties. Or releasing a nun with the powers of the thing from another world.

Key Quotes for the chapter.

None of the young ladies wore lab coats or uniforms. Rather, the monsters in their company were their emblems and badges, fashion accessories crafted of meat and grey matter.

I mean, they're out on the town. I was hardly expecting them to be wandering around in blood splattered black labcoats. The academy must have some very funny ideas about how to clean those things. Truth be told, with all the talk of Wolstone I'm wondering if we ever had Lister in this world. Or Nightingale.

We'd spent months in the Bowels, with only Sub Rosa to deal with at the tail end of it, and that had been less of a team effort than the vast majority of our jobs. Weeks on weeks of dreadfully dull interviews and interrogations, with little to show for it.

Now we were on the verge of another few months of something fruitless. Chasing a woman who forever remained at least one step ahead of us.

There were countless factors playing into it all, but at the very core of it, we were entering into the dangerous years. Important years for anyone, when boys became men and girls became women, but more important for us.

These were the years when we would be coming into our own. We'd be forging our identities and adapting our fit in the group.

We were losing our edge, without opposition to keep us sharp, and without a practical test of our abilities, we couldn't find a new configuration that made up for all the little changes. It made for uncomfortable fits, little bits of bickering.

THEMEOFTHEARCTHEMEOFTHEARCTHEMEOFTHEARC

fabledFreeboota · Jan 20, 2018

All things had hearts. All things had veins and arteries, tracks and paths which were carved through them as they acted out their role in life. Even a rock had its weakness, a point where a chisel and a strong enough blow could destroy it, as points of stress gave way.

Yeah, EXCEPT WHEN THEY DON'T.

The Twigs search the town, search the people about them, and find their way to a band of troublemakers, and a woman that serves as a neat little bit of... I don't know. You can read a webcomic or an actual comic or watch a film and see a character that has a lot of detail put into their costume. Not really a "THIS CHARACTER MUST COME BACK," more a "this is some neat worldbuilding."

At the center of it all was a girl with her hair in disarray, slouching forward on a log, elbows on her knees. Her jacket looked like some kind of new fashion that had yet to take off; it sported a surprising number of black feathers around the collar. She'd had some alterations done to her face and nails, giving one of her her cheekbones and eye sockets a peculiar sort of edge to them, her upper face looking like a stylized skull was trying to push its way out and forward from one corner of her face.

She gets all this speculation from Sy about her backstory, and her sexual orientation. There's a joke to be made about Wildbow going a little overboard sometimes with how in depth minor characters can be. Anyway, she gets recruited as a Posse member, the Twigs reassemble, and the lot of them get one upped by Fray as setup for the next chapter.

Key Quotes and lessons learned.

This was where experiments went when they failed. Humanoid, they were each distorted and misshapen, different features exaggerated or removed. They were piled on top of one another, most but not all naked and bound with straps, keeping arms close to the body and legs together. They had been dusted with some acid or lime or something in that vein, and flesh had melted, but only superficially, leaving the remains mummified. A light snow masked the worst of the scarring, the snow so thin that a feather might have wiped a given forehead or belly clean of it.

Yeah... This is eerie to heck and back. Probably a breeding ground for all sorts of diseases. Its neat that they're all bound. The kind of safety that you'd kind of want to avoid any Nun-Things getting loose.

A message was written on the wall in blood.

I have your real pills.

-G. Fray

All things have hearts. Even the Lambs.

"Oh gosh darn it!" Helen said. She reached into a coat pocket and pulled out the bottle. "Is there any way to tell?"

"Taste?" Jamie suggested.

"Taste it, then," Gordon said. "But there's no guarantees. We can't afford to think we're safe and be wrong. She's here, she's challenging us…"

"And if she knows we're staying here, then she's been watching our every move from the beginning," I said.

Fray... Is kinda running circles around them. Why, she's abusing facts of her opponents upbringing and biology against them. Almost as if she works like they do... eh? Yeah. Forgot to mention on the last chapter. Twigs are taking pills to keep them from dying. A damn fine preventative measure provided they can't get the same effect from eating soya beans on the mainland. Yeah... the novel of Jurassic Park is a little odd.

fabledFreeboota · Jan 24, 2018

"Sorry, little guys," Gordon said, under his breath, to our deceased comrades. "You died for a good cause. Your brothers will avenge you, hopefully."

The lambs investigate the tragic loss of a load of dead whelps. And their pills.

Sly makes it known that the lot of them are going to die a slow and painful death without them.

They think about what fray would do, and Sly sprints off at the first sign of her. Also, Warren shall henceforth be known as Headcase, Wendy gets to be The Help.

Key Quotes!

She fixed the position of her bags, betraying the nervousness behind the guise. "When you start throwing up, the other parts of you that are breaking down will tear and rip. Your stomach and throat will bleed, your muscles will rip, and you'll be incapacitated by cramps. The blood that drains into your stomach will make you throw up more. By that point in time, every hour that passes adds a month to the time it would take you to recover. And that's with Academy help, and it assumes you're taking the pills again."

Don't leave the academy, lambs.

"I let myself get caught," I said. "Stayed in Radham, reached my limit, and when Dog and Catcher came sniffing around, I didn't try to fight them. Stayed put as Catcher came into the building, didn't budge as Catcher came to cuff me."

"Why?"

"Because," I said. "I missed the others. Being with them on the Academy's terms was better than being without, on mine."

*Grumblegrowl* fine-fine. Your plight has moved me. Sly now sits between Jonny Five and Mr Teatime on the scale of humanity.

"What if Fray is the same?" Jamie asked.

"She wants to be a Lamb?"

"She wants the excitement. She wants to have a brain that works differently than most, and she wants to test it. She's been running for so long, she's getting bored."

"No," I said. "I don't buy it."

I do. If only cos Sly kinda acts like that. It's sort of his thing.

I've Got a Twig (Twig Let's Read)

Sometimes frustrated.

Sometimes frustrated.

Sometimes frustrated.

Sometimes frustrated.

Sometimes frustrated.

Sometimes frustrated.

Sometimes frustrated.

Sometimes frustrated.

Sometimes frustrated.

Sometimes frustrated.

Sometimes frustrated.

Sometimes frustrated.

Sometimes frustrated.

Sometimes frustrated.

Sometimes frustrated.

Sometimes frustrated.

Sometimes frustrated.

Sometimes frustrated.

Sometimes frustrated.

Sometimes frustrated.

Sometimes frustrated.