As A Consequence Of Your Action (Jumpchain)

[Zerak]

Several years ago I dropped this Jumpchain on SB, as an experiment with writing an entirely different style of Jumpchain than I usually do. I have decided now to mirror it on QQ, so that people who don't go to SB can at least see a bit of what this 'Jumpchain' thing is about. Even if I'm not writing the usual Jumpchain. (It's only two jumps long, for one thing, and both jumps will be full-length stories.) Still, hopefully this will expose people to at least one Jumpchain fanfic that hopefully avoids the usual pitfalls of such.

Click to shrink...

Will this be continued? Or just cross posted?

 

[cliffc999]

It's already completed on SB, so, cross-posted.

 

[ezfijezdizezoedk]

It's already completed on SB, so, cross-posted.

Click to shrink...

did you cross post this to precede you making another chain?
or did you just do it because you felt like it(or any other reason)?

 

[cliffc999]

I felt like it, also I recently realized that unlike when I was starting out, currently QQ has a nontrivial amount of readers who don't also follow SB, so I cannot rest assured that all of my work there is known here. And sure, I have a lot of old crap that doesn't need mirroring but this particular one is one of my greatest hits, so it comes over.

 

[cliffc999]

Jonathan POV:

And so, having finalized our plans and with only a few miscellaneous preparations to complete and a few days to wait before we set out on our death-defying mission to save the world, life cooperated by giving us absolutely no new complications, distractions, or diversions while we waited.

Sure! Und hy vaz de Princess Hasenpfeffer ov Spaetzle, as Jorgi would have said.

They called me from the Imperial garrison to the Red Cathedral the day after Tarvek had first informed us of its importance. Agatha was still in the recovery process from one of our preparations last night and Gil and Tarvek were helping monitor her through it, so between her unavailability and the Red Cathedral's traditional semi-hemi-autonomy Vanamonde had decided to kick the problem over to us 'Imperial interlopers' as soon as the Cathedral's own guards and the Mechanicsburg Town Watch had hit it and bounced. Without a direct order from Agatha he didn't want to be responsible for sending Jagers into the Red Cathedral and upsetting the unwritten agreement, after all. But the Empire wasn't part of those mutual understandings, so our "high-handed autocratic ways" that had rubbed some people in Mechanicsburg the wrong way now made us the perfect scapegoats to blame the 'interference' on.

The "It" in question was apparently a single intruder who had been discovered in the Cathedral's basement in the crypt containing the mirror, who had attacked and soundly thrashed the pair of the Bloodstone Paladins who'd discovered her when they'd attempted to remove her. As the town's automated defenses didn't operate inside the Cathedral, the second attempt had been a mixed force of Paladins and militia that had made a second attempt in force and with C-gas grenades.

I stood looking at the rows of unconscious and gassed bodies being ministered to by the first-aid team, that had been found politely dumped outside the door of the crypt with the Abbess prominently perched on top of the pile.

"So our intruder isn't killing anyone, but they really don't want to be interrupted while they're in there." I stated the obvious. "Any signs there's more than one?"

"No," Vanamonde replied. "The people peeking in the door weren't able to see clearly due to the lighting but from all appearances it was a mob scene vs. a single highly-mobile target, not a mass melee. And the Abbess had been shouting 'Get her!', not 'Get them!'."

I grumbled to myself. I had no idea who the hell was in there and screwing around with a key component of both our and the Other's schemes, but they had picked the exact wrong time to be doing it. If they broke that damned thing then our plan would be delayed for weeks while the Other's conspirators tried to brainstorm a new way to smuggle Agatha out of Mechanicsburg and we pretended to believe it, and the timing of the Baron's attack on the sub-orbital cannon had placed us on a not-very-flexible schedule. But whoever they were they clearly weren't from any of the major players already in the game - if the Baron had somehow found out what everything we were up to and wanted to shortstop it then our intruder would have simply destroyed the mirror and already left, and none of the possible competitors from the Order of Jove would have been either this unstealthy or this reluctant to kill anyone. So I had literally no idea what I was walking into here.

Well, I did have one idea. Whoever this was they were already worn down from having had to fight all these people... and I was entirely fresh, and was among the Best of the Best.

"Right," I nodded. "All right. Sergeant, I'm going in there alone to try and talk to them."

The sergeant of the detail of troopers who'd accompanied me down gave me a look that wordlessly communicated precisely how idiotic he thought I was being.

"That's why your people are stacked up outside the door. Don't enter after me. I'm certain the Abbess and her people lost partly because they were getting in each other's way in there. Just contain the problem."

"And if you go down, sir?"

"Then keep throwing the C-Gas in there until you've hit the bottom of the bag. I'm fairly certain the prior team failed because they only used one grenade," I replied, and then turned to Vanamonde. "And if that doesn't work, then you'll have to interrupt them up at the Castle."

"Good luck," he nodded to me.

"You in there!" I called. "Parley!"

"LEAVE ME ALONE!" a young woman's voice called, sounding as if she were at the ragged edge of desperation. "I DON'T WANT TO STEAL ANYTHING! I JUST WANT TO GO HOME!"

"The door is this way, Miss." I called back.

"NO IT'S NOT!" she shrieked. "IT'S RIGHT HERE! IF I CAN JUST OPEN IT-" she sobbed.

'The door is right here?' I wondered. Who the hell else would possibly know what one of those mirrors even was, let alone think it would be their only way back-

And then I heard the rhetorical landmine go click. Again.

You have got to be fucking kidding me, narrative causality! Even for you, this is reaching!

I unclipped my holster, pistol still inside, from my sword belt and handed it to the sergeant for safekeeping. And then, with my sword solidly in its sheath, I stepped forward into the crypt. As I crossed the room the kneeling figure that was dimly silouhetted against the inactive mirror in the light of the torches became more and more visible.

The intruder was a young woman, almost certainly as tall as I was, dressed in skintight leathers. She was heavily muscled but still with the build of an acrobat, and her twin swords were clearly visible in sheaths on her back. And as I drew closer, the color of her green hair became visible in the torchlight. I sighed inwardly. Of course it was her.

"Miss?" I called to her, coming to a halt about fifteen away from her as she knelt at the base of the mirror closely examining some of the machinery around and hooked into it, and she immediately spun to face me and leapt to her feet like a cat.

"I told you to stay away!" she shrieked, and in a blurring eyeblink she drew both her swords and leapt forward. Her crossed swords remained in high-guard position as threats-in-being and distractions as her actual attack, a flying jump-kick, went just past my ear when I stepped to the side just at the exact right instant.

"Can we just talk?" I pleaded as she converted her landing into a graceful pirouhette and recovered and pivoted in a flash to whirl her primary blade at the level of my neck. Apparently I was presenting enough of a threat that she felt desperate enough to escalate to live steel-

I bent my knees just enough that her slash went a centimeter above the crown of my hat, then used the springing motion of rising to my feet to hop to the side and lift one arm just in time to let her off-hand thrust pass underneath my armpit instead of through my heart.

"You're the sacred guardians of it, you'd never let me use it, you wouldn't let me in here, but I need to use it, it's my only way back, just a little more time-" she panted heavily as she struck at me again and again. She was pressing hard enough that I was reaching the limits of what footwork and timing and terrain could do to keep me from being skewered, and she was clearly too hysterical to be reasoned with.

Very well then. If we're going to have to do this Wulfenbach style, then let's do it.

I let her left-hand slash clang against a stone pillar that I'd been retreating towards, then took the momentum back with a wrist-parry to her other hand that then went straight for an arm-lock as I stepped inside the arc of her swing. Expertly trained at in-fighting, she whipped her free hand back in to club me in the temple with the hilt-

-to be taken entirely off-guard by my stepping in from close to contact and giving her a 'Pirate's Kiss'. Even the best-trained people sometimes didn't adapt well to sudden changes of style mid-fight, and my going straight from elite fencing to the uglier side of freestyle caught her off-guard just long enough for my head-butt to ring her bell hard and leave her seeing stars and with a bloody nose. She was far too tough for a single hit like that to take her down, or even slow her down for more than a fraction of a second, but at this level a fraction was often all you needed.

I knew even as I laid in the uppercut to her solar plexus that I was going to take a hit in return, because this woman was really almost as good as I was. She even was almost as good as she thought she was. But I'd been hit before- in fact, being the regular workout partner of people such as Gilgamesh Wulfenbach and Bangladesh DuPree got you really really used to taking a beating. Hell, I sparred with Jagers. I was pretty much Ol' Man Death in his prime when I really got going, and right now I felt like going pretty damn hard.

But in order to break my wrist-lock and free up her other hand to elbow me over the skull she'd had to drop one of her swords, and that was my real goal here. Allowing her to go for the clinch got her to drop the other sword, and she grinned as she got both arms around me in a bear-hug and began to squeeze the wind out of me-

Just as planned.

Because I'd already seen from how I'd been able to trap her one blade against the pillar that she wasn't paying sufficient attention to her surroundings. So, since we were still adjacent to the pillar then even with my arms pinned against my sides all I needed to do was plant a foot, push-off and pivot hard, and turn us both and push her staggering sideways into the stone. That impact loosened her grip on me a fraction, and I feinted another headbutt just long enough to leave her guarding the wrong thing and give me a clear shot to heel stomp her instep. Her counter to that was an elbow strike to my forehead, but her momentarily being off-balance on one leg and my anticipation of her next move gave me a free opportunity to twist loose of the grip her remaining arm still had on me, and so her strike did nothing except push me back and out of reach.

I feigned a moment of fear and started backpedaling to bait her into rushing out after me instead of stopping to pick up her dropped weapons, and since she was highly distraught and more than a little hot-tempered ordinarily she fell for it. Good. Ever since she'd gone for that first sword slash my greatest fear had been that she'd go so far out of her head that I'd need to kill or seriously injure her to stop her. But without her swords, this was merely a brawl.

A really, really, really crazy brawl. The sort of brawl that even Jagers would go "Ho yez!" at and remember fondly for a long time afterwards. But... like I said, I'd been hit before. And she was at least slightly winded from all the fighting she'd done earlier and half out of her head besides, while I matched her in speed, size, and reach, outmatched her in weight and strength, and was maintaining perfect mental focus while she was at least half hysterical and so even further off her edge than she already was. So the outcome wasn't ever in doubt.

Since I actually was trying to take it easy on her- I wanted her subdued, not beaten half to death- it went several minutes longer than it could have, but at the end of it we'd beaten each other up enough like mostly civilized people that she was no longer able to continue. I'd done well enough that I was not only still standing but still at least three-quarters combat-capable, but I'd definitely be feeling it in the morning.

"Will you please just tell me who you are and why you're doing this?" I asked, leaning back against a stone pillar. Not that I didn't already know who she was, but you never revealed that you had true meta-knowledge when you were in my situation.

"Zeetha," she gasped from where she sat on the floor, leaning back against another pillar and silently weeping. "And- it doesn't matter now." she said despairingly. "I trespassed in a temple and tried to tamper with one of the most sacred artifacts. They execute people for that."

"Not in the Empire," I said. "Not unless you kill people in the process, which you didn't."

"But I tried to kill you," she moaned. "And you hadn't even drawn your blade- oh Ashtara." she finished in a despairing wail. "I tried to murder an unarmed opponent. When I was the one who'd originally- oh Mother, I'm so sorry-" she trailed off, sighing and closing her eyes. She then painfully rolled forward into a kneeling position and lowered her head. "I, Princess Zeetha of Skifander, confess my dishonor for all the world to hear. I submit freely to my captor's justice, and I offer my life in return for the life I so unworthily tried to steal."

Holy shit, this was not what I'd been expecting when I'd won! At all!

"I, Captain Jonathan Fairchild of the Imperial Air Corps, spare Princess Zeetha's life out of mercy at her visibly not being in full possession of her faculties at the time she transgressed, and decide that justice would be served by my first finding out what the hell is going on before I pass any other sentence on anyone." I replied with equal formality, knowing damn well that she was taking this that seriously and wouldn't respond to anything less.

"I..." she gulped. "Dishonor is not so easily waved away, Captain." she said, still kneeling with head bowed.

"I don't have honor," I replied matter-of-factly, and her head snapped up to look at me in shock. "I have duty. And duty requires that I make my best-faith effort to know the truth before I pass judgement."

"Oh," she replied softly, settling back down from her initial shock. "I... of course, Captain. Ask your questions." she continued with a regal dignity.

"Why did you believe that mirror could take you home?" I asked her.

"They're sacred artifacts back home," she replied immediately. "Our legends have it that we originally reached Skifander through one. Did you know that they can transport people from one mirror to another, instantly?"

"I knew that," I nodded to her. "Extremely few people in Europa do, however. Why were you so desperate to use this mirror?"

"Because I don't know the way back!" she wailed. "I... there was an expedition to Skifander from England. It arrived there over two years ago. My mother is War-Queen Zantabraxus of Skifander, so when the expedition asked for a volunteer to return with them I was chosen as Skifander's representative to Queen Albia's court. But- on the return trip I fell sick. I was delirious with fever for over a week, and before I recovered the expedition was attacked by pirates." She paused as if to give me an opportunity to ask questions, and I nodded to her to continue. "By the time I regained consciousness I was in a slaver's cell. They'd spared me because of my 'exotic nature', but they'd killed everyone else..." she trailed off.

"I'm sorry about your friends," I said to her softly.

"Thank you," she replied with equal softness. "Well, to cut a long story short I broke out and killed everyone, then burned their whole little pirate fortress down. But..." she broke off to laugh with vicious mockery at herself. "You know, in hindsight, I really do have a 'fly off the handle and try to stab people when I really shouldn't' problem. Because while I hadn't dishonored myself then-"

"Pirates and murderers." I agreed.

"Pirates and murderers," she acknowledged matter-of-factly. "Still, it wasn't until after I'd finished my rampage that I realized that I had no idea of where I was or how I'd gotten there. I'd been so sick on the expedition out that I had no idea of the route. Everyone else in the expedition was dead, and the pirates hadn't bothered to take any of the maps or logs with them before burning the airship to cover their tracks. And like an idiot I'd just killed all the other people who could have possibly known the route. So there I was, stuck in Europa, with nowhere to go and no idea how to get back."

"You didn't try finishing the journey to England?" I said.

"How?" she replied. "One girl with a pair of swords and a tall tale and nothing else? Without any of the expedition available or any of the credentials or proofs that had been sent with them, I couldn't even get past the British Embassy's door guard, let alone get them to agree to send a message to their Queen. The expedition hadn't been able to communicate back from Skifander, after all, so they had no idea they'd be expecting anyone."

"What did you do then?" I asked.

"I wandered around guarding caravans," Zeetha shrugged. "Most of the other fighting for money done around here isn't remotely honorable, and I don't exactly know a lot of other trades. Eventually I ended up with a traveling circus doing an 'exotic barbarian princess' routine."

"How did you end up here, today?" I probed.

"We rolled into town a little over three weeks ago, and the war flaring up had made the roads unsafe enough that Master Payne decided it would be best if we layed over here. I'm surprised you missed our show. You obviously don't recognize me, and I'm one of the headline acts."

"Three weeks ago?" I nodded. "I was really distracted by some other things then. And if you're a traveling circus then normally you don't stay in any one place this long."

"Except when wintering over, no," she agreed. "So after we'd finished our round of shows... well, if we did the full routine every week after week, people would stop showing up and we'd be wasting money on the sets. So we've been living off of savings and odd jobs down in the 'stranded tourists' encampment mostly. I came in here today because I was so bored I'd been doing the tourist routine everywhere, and I'd wandered away from the tour and into the basement mostly at random. Just to see what kind of trouble I could get into-"

"And you happened right into the mirror."

"Yes!" she agreed. "And... okay, I admit it. I completely lost my head. You know that most people in Europa don't even know that Skifander exists, and the few who do think that it's a fictional place only from the Heterodyne Boys stories, right? I'd spent years here with no evidence at all, no physical proofs of where I'd really come from except a headband and a pair of fancy swords and my memories. I was beginning to doubt even those. I'd honestly been wondering if my whole life prior to the airship was something I'd simply made up while I was delirious, and..." she sniffled. "Seeing the mirror, just like the one I remembered back home- it was finding out that my home, my family, were actually real again. That I wasn't just a crazy person. And knowing that they were all just on the other side of that portal-" she stopped. "So I tried to open it. I did everything I could think of, every ritual I'd ever heard of in all the ancient lore back home- but nothing was working." She sighed. "Then the temple guards showed up and interrupted me, and it all happened from there." She stopped and paused. "Wait, do you actually believe Skifander is real, or are you just humoring the crazy person too?"

"I believe it," I said, and then in full knowledge of exactly what drama bomb I'd be detonating I continued on as if I had no idea of the significance of what I was about to say. "I know a man who said he'd visited there once."

"WHAT?" Zeetha screeched, so forgetting herself that she shot right up off her knees to grab me by the shoulders. "Who?!? Please please please, even if you're going to execute me in the next five minutes just tell me who!"

"Baron Wulfenbach," I replied to her matter-of-factly, and both her arms and her jaw went as slack as overcooked noodles.

"The Baron?" she squeaked. "The conqueror of Europa? The mightiest warrior on the continent?" she finished in awe. "Holy shit, Dad!"

"That's the- wait, Dad?!?" I finished with the appropriate degree of astonishment.

"Um, yeah," she blushed. "My father was an adventurer from Europa who'd arrived there through the mirrors over twenty years ago. He and my mother met, got married... you know. That's how I knew the language- he'd taught her, and she'd taught me growing up. So since I doubt anybody else from Europa was wandering around Skifander being a solo mighty warrior then... damn." she trailed off. "And I thought I had powerful relatives on Mom's side."

"The Baron did return to Europa from a mysterious years-long absence overseas at about that time," I agreed. "But given your age, you'd have been a very small child when he left. I doubt you'd remember him to recognize him. You obviously didn't recognize his name, as everybody in Europa would have been speaking it when you first got here."

"My father called himself 'Chump' while he was in Skifander, and yes I know what it means in your language. But of course I'd recognize him," she said matter-of-factly. "There's a portrait of him hanging in my mother's palace! All the while I grew up I kept staring at it, wondering where my father was, what kind of adventures he was having now... why he'd left." she finished sadly.

"Don't ask me," I shrugged. "He's my boss, not my best friend. But I am one of his closest advisors, which is how I'd heard him talking about Skifander before." I paused. "If it's any consolation, he obviously didn't want to leave. I've only heard him mention it maybe once or twice, and briefly... and like a man who didn't want to talk about it. Like how men talk about a long-lost love."

"That... that means a lot." she said, breathing heavily. "Thank you. And of course you're one of the Baron's closest advisors. The way you fight?" she said affectionately. "He'd be an idiot not to have you as one of his own war-party. Did he train you?"

"Some of it," I agreed. "And I had several other good teachers. All the rest I picked up the hard way."

"That's how you learn," she nodded, before realizing. "Oh, crap. I'm still under sentencing. So, ummm...?" she trailed off embarassedly.

"... I'm just going to file this under the legal category called "no real harm, no real foul"." I said. "And no, it's not because you're probably my boss' daughter. The story you just told me... you had every reason to be completely out of it. I'd need a heart of stone to punish you harshly for that."

"And the damages?" she said, waving her hand to metaphorically encompass the pile of people she'd beaten up earlier today.

"You said you were working for a circus that had been stranded in town for weeks," I said matter-of-factly. "I'm pretty sure you don't have any money to actually pay for damages. And even the Imperial tax collectors can't actually squeeze blood from stones."

"... pretty much." she agreed ruefully. "So what happens now?"

"Well, I can understand how you'd not recognize the Baron's face as your father's even if you knew what to look for," I said. "The caricatures they use for him in all the Heterodyne plays aren't remotely decent likenesses, and he's not a man whose picture shows up in the newspaper very much. But there's also a portrait of a younger Klaus Wulfenbach available up in Castle Heterodyne, because he was best friends with the Heterodyne Boys. So let's go up there and have a look at it."

"Thank you," Zeetha sniffled, reaching into her pocket for a rag to blow her nose with. "I've been luckier than I deserve- even if we can't ever make that portal work, this is still the best day of my life." she said, grabbing my arm and putting it in the 'escort the lady' position as we turned to leave.

"Princess, I regret to inform you that I already have a girlfriend," I said politely.

"Damn!" she swore and let go. "Well, you can't blame a girl for trying, can you?"

"Not at all," I agreed. "Just... please don't try the same on the even more impressive-looking young warrior you're going to meet up at the Castle, all right? Because he's very likely your brother."

"I have a brother?!?" she squawked in renewed astonishment as we exited the room, and I did my best not to grin.

Okay, I had no idea why the hell this happened or how the hell this was going to fit in, but... well, at least they'd have a chance to know each other before it all went to hell.

And hey, at least she wasn't one of the people trying to kill us.

* * * * *​

Author's Note: Remember how I said I had no room for Zeetha in this story? Well, she disagreed. Loudly and at length. And eventually, she won.

And then it occurred to me that if Zeetha ever actually saw the mirror in the Red Cathedral first - that is, before she'd met Agatha and gotten the reassurance from her that Skifander was actually real - she would flip the fuck out. And at that point I knew how I could introduce her to the cast.

The rest of it is just our poor beleaguered SI having to make honest feelings do dishonest work again so as to avoid getting into the whole 'I am actually from a world where you're all fictional characters' thing.

And really, Queen Zantabraxus didn't have ONE damn portrait of her husband commissioned? Yeah, eff that noise.

 

[cliffc999]

Gilgamesh POV:

Agatha was still unconscious, so I'd left Tarvek to take a turn watching over her to come and meet Jonathan. The message he'd sent had said that he had something really important to tell me, that it couldn't wait, and that I'd definitely want to be sitting down when I heard it.

So I arrived at one of the many sitting rooms in Castle Heterodyne and saw Jonathan standing there looking like he'd just been through the nightly barroom brawl at Mamma Gkika's. Along with him was a strange young woman who looked even worse than he did, with long green hair, bronzed skin, and who was dressed in tight fighting leathers and with an exotic pair of twin swords leaning against her armchair- wait, one of those swords looked like one I'd seen hanging in Father's bedroom-

"Is this him?" the strange woman asked Jonathan nervously.

"He is," Jonathan said, and she gulped and smiled at me nervously, running a hand through her hair. "Gil?" he turned to me. "I wasn't kidding about the 'You want to sit down' part."

"All right," I said, taking a seat. "So what's gone wrong? Because you both look like you're about to tell me the world is ending."

"The world as you know it kinda is about to end." Jonathan said. "Zeetha, this is Gilgamesh Wulfenbach, son of Baron Klaus Wulfenbach. Gil, this is Princess Zeetha of Skifander, daughter of Chump and yes she knows what it means in our language-"

"Skifander?" I cut him off, remembering that name as a place my father had mentioned enigmatically several times in very unguarded moments. He'd never really been more forthcoming whenever I'd pressed him on it, except to admit once that I'd actually been born there-

Oh. My. God.

"'Chump' was the name assumed by a great warrior from Europa who came to Skifander and married my mother-" the Princess began tentatively.

"-circa twenty years ago," I finished dazedly, and she nodded slowly along with me.

"I showed her the picture of your father as a young man that's hanging in the portrait gallery here," Jonathan said. "She identified him as the same 'Chump' whose portrait hangs in her mother's palace-"

"I have a sister." I stammered out, overwhelmed.

"I have a brother-" she began, and then suddenly we were both out of our chairs and hugging each other as hard as we could. Oof! I inwardly gasped as I felt my ribs creak. I guess she'd inherited the same kind of strength I had! We drew back a little, grinning at each other like idiots, and then we started another hug. This time I put some real muscle into it and eventually she squeaked and tapped out with a thump on my back. Hah!

"Damn!" she said admiringly as we stepped apart. "Seems like our father hasn't been neglecting your training, has he?"

"Oh you have no idea," I said, taking a more careful look at her exceptional musculature. "I'm guessing our mother is also a great fighter and raised you the same way?"

"War-Queen Zantabraxus, the toughest woman in Skifander!" she agreed with me proudly. "And we've got to spar sometime and see which parent did the better job, huh?"

An involuntary chuckle from an adjacent chair made us both turn to Jonathan. "Yeah, you're related all right."

I burst out in helpless laughter. Even with everything that had gone wrong and everything facing us, this was just so right-

"Zeetha, this is Captain Jonathan Fairchild," I began introducing them.

"One of your father's closest advisors and a member of his personal war-party," she acknowledged.

"Still underselling yourself, Jonathan?" I said with good-natured exasperation at certain longstanding personal quirks. "Everything he said is true but he's also one of my oldest and closest friends... and in every way except officially, my-our father's foster son." I explained to Zeetha. "As much as he's a brother to me, he's also one to you."

"Oh!" she said wonderingly. "He hadn't said anything-"

"He never does." I agreed with her. "It gets kind of annoying sometimes."

"It's complicated," Jonathan said plaintively. "Okay... the simple version is that the Baron took me under his protection when I was about twelve after he defeated my father, who'd been a very, very hated enemy of his. He was too honorable to hold the sins of the father against the son, so he saw to my upbringing but he also concealed my identity because the list of people who'd probably want to kill me just for who I was related to stretches at least halfway across Europa. Officially I'm just a war orphan who was taken into the Baron's school for gifted Sparks as a precocious young talent who then met and befriended the Baron's own son there, and between that and merit was eventually raised up to become an unofficial part of the household. So that's all I, or anybody else, ever tells anyone."

"That actually sounds like stuff that happens occasionally back home," Zeetha nodded. "Is Dad going to let you claim your inheritance one day?"

"There isn't any inheritance," Jonathan said. "My father was basically a bandit king, not any kind of legitimate ruler." he shrugged. "Can't say I miss him, honestly. He wasn't exactly what you'd call a good parent."

"Ouch," Zeetha commiserated. "Well... however you got here, I'm still glad to meet you too, unofficial brother," she said warmly, and Jonathan gave a rare beaming smile back.

"So, would either of you care to explain why my siblings old and new look like they got ran over by a barfight piloting a hoomhoffer?" I probed.

"Well..." Zeetha began embarassedly.

* * * * *​

"Wait, you're the same age I am?" Zeetha said. "Exactly? But that would mean-" she turned pale.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"... I think I just figured out why neither of us ever knew about the other. Or about why our father left our mother." she said pensively. "Did Dad ever say anything about how Skifander views twins born to the royal line?"

"No," I said, and Jonathan shook his head. "It was like pulling teeth to get Dad to even mention Skifander at all, let alone expound on it."

"There's a prophecy," she began, hanging her head shamefacedly. "Okay, I'd call it a superstition but a lot of people wouldn't- anyway, it's the common belief that if twins are ever born to a Queen of Skifander and both are allowed to live to adulthood, disaster will plague the kingdom as a result. Which is why, whenever it happens, one of the two infants is..." she swallowed heavily. "Put to death."

"What?" I said. "Are you saying that our mother-"

"Of course not," Jonathan snorted derisively before Zeetha could even say anything, and her head snapped towards him in shock. "Gil, think. Your mother was still alive when Zeetha left Skifander for Europa. If somebody had tried to kill you when you were a baby, what would your father's reaction have been?"

"Either the attempted murderer would have died on the spot or he would have," I agreed. "And since both of our parents are still alive..."

"Mom's the same way," Zeetha agreed. "Nesting fafflenargs looked like kittens compared to how she got about anything possibly threatening me when I was little- no, there's no way she could have agreed with anyone trying to kill you or else we wouldn't have two living parents right now. But there are a lot of hardliners in Skifander who'd believe that prophecy even if she wouldn't have, and-" she shook her head. "It's virtually certain that at least one of them tried."

"Zeetha, I hate to say it but you are really not selling me on Skifander right now," I admitted frankly.

"I can't really blame you," she said. "Anyway... mom never mentioned that you existed, do you understand? No one had ever mentioned that you existed. There were no records, no paintings, not even any hints. Right up until Jonathan told me in the Red Cathedral that I had a brother, I'd thought I was an only child!"

"Up until I walked into this room, I'd thought I'd been an only child," I told her.

"Okay, your father obviously never expected that he'd see either your mother or your sister ever again, or else he'd have at least told you they existed. Likewise with your mother thinking she'd never see Gil or your father ever again." Jonathan analyzed. "Wait. Zeetha, did your mother ever mention how old you were when 'Chump' left for Europa? Or did she ever mention why he left?"

"I- going by the dates, me and Gil were only several months old when it happened." Zeetha answered. "And mother never told me why whenever I asked her why my father had left or if he was ever coming back, except to emphasize that he'd hadn't abandoned us. That he'd done nothing dishonorable but had left because honor had required him to, and that he couldn't come back. And then she'd make it very plain that she didn't want to talk about it anymore."

"Jonathan, what are you thinking?" I asked him.

"That your father returned with you at the earliest practical age to be transporting an infant across rough country," Jonathan said. "And from what Zeetha just said, that your mother agreed with his leaving and why he couldn't come back." he finished. "Obviously we won't know for sure until we ask him, but I'd bet anything you care to name that your parents spent the first couple of months politically stalling and/or beating off the assassins to give you enough time to grow to where it would be safe to carry you home, and then faked your death."

"That makes perfect sense," Zeetha agreed. "If you'd vanished one day then it would have been assumed that Mother had finally bowed to what the other queens would have been demanding and finally had you put to death. And if our father then 'stormed away in grief and rage'... well, what else could you expect from an outlander who didn't understand how important it was to kill your own baby over a superstition-" she trailed off angrily.

"And all it would take is some very elementary stage-managing and everybody would look at the timeline and believe the version of events you just outlined, instead of a simple 'Father left and took me with him'." I finished. "And of course nobody in Skifander would ever talk about it afterwards, especially if our mother made it plain she never wanted to be 'reminded of her grief'. So you never learned about my existence-"

"They'd almost have had to do it that way," Zeetha said, paling in realization. "I mean... Gil, you do realize that your being alive in a faraway land no Skifandrian could hope to reach at that time wouldn't change the fact that you'd still be alive, right? Meaning that to avoid the prophecy of doom, the hardliners would have to kill the twin they could still reach..." she gulped.

"Our parents split up forever and faked my death to Skifander and concealed your existence from Europa to save both of our lives." I concluded. "I owe Father so many apologies." I sighed, thinking about how I'd raged at his inability to open up to me when I was younger. But if my very existence constantly reminded him of the wife and daughter he'd had to leave behind forever to save my life, of course he'd be as stoic as possible around me. He wouldn't want to actually show a child his grief and regrets and let that child believe it was their fault, would he?

"Now I really wish Mother could have gotten on the airship with me," Zeetha said. "But... at least most of us are together now."

"Oh hell," I suddenly realized. "Jonathan, given everything that's going on right now, how the hell do we even tell him? I send him a direct message that my long-lost sister has shown up, and he'll put the entire war on hold while he rushes over here as fast as possible!"

"Everything that's going on right now?" Zeetha said, and I looked to our relevant master of concise explanations for an answer.

"In less than a week we, and a couple of our closest friends that you'll soon be meeting, are heading out on a vital mission that if it succeeds will turn the entire tide of the war against the Other," Jonathan said. "Without the Baron's permission. And part of its success depends on getting far enough ahead of him that he can't haul us back like misbehaving children before we reach where we're going."

"And I should cooperate in lying to our father why?" Zeetha demanded.

"Because you've never snuck out and done something dangerous before our mother thought you were ready," I said to her disbelievingly. "Not even once."

"... you're sure you've never been to Skifander?" Zeetha groused.

"Well, twins separated at birth clearly isn't just a figure of speech anymore," Jonathan teased us.

"The thing is that for all his brilliance, the one place Father's rationality fails him is the safety of his child. Children," I corrected myself. "It was hard enough to convince him to let me leave Castle Wulfenbach just to go to university, and that was in the most heavily-defended city in Europa!" I sighed. "So no, it doesn't matter that we're ideally suited for the task and in the proper position to execute it when nobody else is, and that the fate of the war almost certainly relies upon it. If we told him what we were up to ahead of time, he'd still do his best to stop us."

"Well, yeah, but the army here isn't his army," Zeetha pointed out practically. "It's the Lady Heterodyne's. So could Dad stop you even if he knew?"

"Not in Mechanicsburg," Jonathan agreed. "But there's a difference between 'doing something we know he wouldn't like' and 'directly disobeying his express command', and while we'd do that latter one if the fate of Europa relied on it, we don't want to. Because..."

"I have the best brothers," Zeetha gushed approvingly. "Yeah, I get it. Frustrating your parents is just part of growing up, but directly disobeying a royal command is a matter of honor." She chewed her lip in thought. "But fear not, for I have a brilliant plan!" she said brightly.

"She said, immediately before the airship burst into flames," Jonathan teased her.

"Ha-ha," Zeetha glared mock-outrage at him. "Do you remember the question you asked me in the cathedral about why I hadn't reported the loss of the expedition to Queen Albia's court? So, now that I have access to people who actually have access to diplomatic mail, how's about I write up that report and send it in so they finally know that Professor Consalmagno's expedition was lost and how? And mention in that report that 'Princess Zeetha of Skifander, Daughter of Chump' was the sole survivor? That's a name only one person in Europa outside this room would recognize."

"And the delay in having an 'information' copy of the message sent to Father at the same time we heliographed it to the British Embassy in Paris would give us enough time to finish what we need doing, while at the same time letting him know that you're in Europa and that we found you. But in a manner that gives us plausible deniability for not telling him right away, because its just possible that we're oblivious idiots who didn't figure everything out." I agreed.

"Emphasize that you've been graciously enjoying the hospitality of the Empire as per Lord Gilgamesh Wulfenbach's instructions when you send the report, so your dad knows the twins are getting along fine," Jonathan recommended.

"Works for me!" I said, before finishing "And Jonathan, you know I hate that title."

"You hate being addressed as 'the Wulfenbach heir', no first name, even worse, and what else can we put in official diplomatic mail? 'Gil' doesn't quite cut it there." Jonathan remonstrated with me.

"Okay, glad that's settled." Zeetha said. "Now," she began far more seriously, "how's about you brief me all about this vital mission to save Europa that we'll be going on."

"We?" I said, to be pinned to my seat by a withering glare.

"You are my brother. The ruler of these lands is my father. If you're at war, if this mission is so important, then damn right I'm going to be out there fighting with you! I am a warrior princess of Skifander and I do not stay home where "it's safe" when my kin are facing battle!" she angrily demanded.

"Gil?" Jonathan cut me off. "Don't even try. I know you're enjoying your first chance to be a protective older brother-"

"How do we even know he's the older one?" Zeetha complained.

"Okay, okay!" I yielded. "And I wasn't trying to-" I took a deep breath. "I didn't want to demand that you come," I tried to explain. "You're my sister, yes, but this isn't your home or your army. You're not required to fight our wars, and I don't like to conscript people."

"That's fair," Zeetha settled down. "But I just officially volunteered, so tell me everything."

* * * * *​

Tarvek POV:

"Agatha?" I asked gently, as she slowly stirred in her hospital bed.

"Did anyone get the color of that mule?" she moaned. "Oh God- this is a worse headache than even the damned locket ever gave me..."

I checked the readouts again. Everything was nominal.

"Do you want a painkiller?" I asked her.

"Half a dose," she said. "Don't wanna be too thick to check the readouts..."

"All right," I said, setting up and delivering the injection. "Let me know if that takes the edge off."

"Thanks," she said, looking up and around. "Huh. Where's Gil?"

"Jonathan came in and said there was something that needed his immediate attention," I told her. "They're still dealing with it. But it's not that kind of emergency, whatever it is." I said, giving her arm a reassuring pat. "Mechanicsburg is fine, and nothing's on fire or under attack."

"I'll ask 'em about it at dinner, then." she agreed, closing her eyes and laying back. "Wait. Did I miss dinner?"

"It's one-thirty in the afternoon," I said with a quirk of my lip.

"Guess not," she joked with me, still slightly loopy from the half-dose of morphia. "So, the readouts?"

"Right here," I said, heading over to the nearby workbench to grab the relevant printouts and bring them over to here. "Let me know if you need any of them read to you," I said, sitting down.

"Should be fine," she said, settling her glasses on the bridge of her nose and slowly going through the sheets. "These look good." she eventually finished, handing me the readings and leaning back against her pillow. "Glad this headache isn't for nothin'." she mumbled.

"Do you need anything else?" I asked her. "Water? For me to adjust the bed?"

"You don' have to be such a nurse," she joshed at me.

"Agatha, do you know what a precious gift it is to me to have someone allow themselves to be helpless in my presence?" I said, the words suddenly tumbling out of me before I could stop them. "I can count the family members who'd do that on the thumbs of one hand. And I don't have too many more friends who would either. It's an honor and a privilege to have one more of them."

"Your family's horrible," she replied softly.

"You've definitely been talking to Violetta too much," I chuckled at her. "But she's certainly not wrong."

"She's nice," Agatha agreed with me drunkenly. "And her and Jonathan are so good for each other too."

"Wait, that hand-holding I glimpsed last night wasn't an aberration?" I said surprisedly. "Are you telling me they finally-"

"Not gonna gossip," Agatha mumbled back at me with a sly grin. "So I can't tell you that yeah, they pretty much did."

"Well," I said, settling back in my bedside chair. "Good for them." I continued with far more cheer than I actually felt, feeling strangely disturbed for some reason. Why would I possibly feel this way? Jonathan was one of the finest men I knew, and I'd seen him and Violetta hopelessly pine for each other for years. I'd certainly trust him to love and cherish my cousin like she deserved-

I looked at Agatha lying there, innocent and vulnerable and less than an arms' length away from me, and suddenly realized why I might possibly be so alarmed at the thought of love having unexpectedly bloomed in my absence.

"And Gil?" I said, cursing myself at taking advantage of a woman who was still under sedation but unable to stop the words from bursting out again.

"I dunno," Agatha said in drunken honesty, before drifting off to sleep. I reached out and gently pulled the blanket up under her chin so she'd be warm.

She didn't know, I sighed. Well, that certainly made two of us.

* * * * *​

Author's Note: Yeah, the plot decided to go run and hide under the bed for a bit while all these feelings started nosing around the plot bunny hutch. But hey, I worked out a headcanon that makes both Klaus and Zantabraxus be tragically yet nobly separated rather than angry misunderstandings and got two chapters out of one day, so I'm happy!

I mean, really, we already know that Klaus can stoically torture himself for the rest of his life to do what he thinks is best for his children, so why should the woman he married be unlike him?

And yes, Tarvek can't help being a weasel in any universe. Poor boy.

As to what's up with Agatha... I'm trying this new thing called "mysterious foreshadowing". I hear it's catching on in some places.

Oh, and this is a hoomhoffer.

 

[cliffc999]

Jonathan POV:

We spent the last week before our departure date training harder than ever. Even with Spark-augmented medicine Agatha still needed a couple days to recover, but after that she needed to cram in as much survival, evasion, resistance, and escape as we could give her in addition to putting on a final combat polish. Zeetha hardly needed any individual training, but still needed as many sessions as we could fit in to get acclimated to working with us and learn to anticipate our moves. Tarvek and Violetta gave us some tips on how to deal with Smoke Knights. And Agatha received some last-minute specialized coaching that Zeetha had been able to obtain for her at Master Payne's circus, who were confused but gratified at how their 'castaway barbarian princess' had turned out to be a real castaway princess and was now being diplomatically received up at Castle Heterodyne and able to arrange some very well-paying consulting work for them with the Lady Heterodyne.

One key piece of intel that Tarvek had brought us spurred a last-minute change in our plans. As it turned out, the Smoke Knights had a large-scale concealment field that was capable of hiding an entire airship. Tarvek knew the basic design principle, and he and I were able to reproduce one with the resources of Castle Heterodyne's workshops and a feverish all-nighter. There would have been serious pushback from the Order of Jove if he'd been caught giving this technology to the Empire - and that would be just from the faction that was allied to us - but as a one-off for this vital a mission, we felt it was worth the risk. The "All Shadows Must Come Into The Light" protocol as put forth by Dowager Princess Sturmvoraus meant that essentially anything went for the Smoke Knights, even the normally unthinkable, if it was necessary to defeat the Other. And as Violetta was still technically a Smoke Knight if not currently a Mondarev, we could get away with one cloaking device as long as she was its operator.

Which meant that our original plan of hoping to follow our 'captive' selves via prepositioned ground teams along the probable exit routes when we were transshipped from the Fortress of Storms was now our backup plan, not the primary. With a cloaked long-range airship at our disposal we could put an entire airborne strike team on the task of following us to wherever Lucrezia's people had their last Summoning Engine cached. The Jovian renegades would of course know about the concealment field and very likely be using one of their own on their own airship or airships, but the vibrational resonance trackers we'd created and attuned to Agatha would allow us to do a 'long tail', staying just over the horizon from our quarry and yet still following them all the way home.

Tarvek finally finished finessing the arrangements with the contacts he was 'betraying' us to. This afternoon he, Gilgamesh, and Agatha would 'innocently' walk into the trap laid for them at the Red Cathedral and be abducted to the Fortress of Storms. Once we had a confirmed timeframe, we sent our messages out for the Baron to receive... early enough that he could conceivably rush the fleet to wherever we were going, late enough that there would be nothing he could to do interfere with the mission.

Right now Zeetha, Violetta, Higgs, Dimo and Agatha's honor guard, and a crack crew assembled from the best available Imperial soldiers and Jagers in Mechanicsburg were boarding the L-79, a brand-new long-range Flotsam class assault transport I'd had placed under my command. Our job would be to fly up and take station near the Fortress of Storms the night before, and wait to follow the homing trackers in Agatha away from there to where the Summoning Engine was. As soon as we had a location, we'd send a general call out for the reinforcements and then attempt a covert insertion of the strike team to extract Agatha, Gil, and Tarvek along with the intel on the Other's research we so desperately needed, or at least one living brain that contained it.

But until we could do that, Agatha, Gil, and Tarvek would have to survive in the heart of the enemy by themselves. They would admittedly be doing it as Trojan prisoners, but that part of the plan was still the riskiest of them all. Stripped down to bare necessity they didn't really need anyone alive save Agatha the instant they got to the other side of the mirror. Tarvek would probably be kept alive as one of 'theirs', but the risk of betrayal was a definite possibility. And Gilgamesh... well, he'd just refused to let anyone else do it. The only four other candidates with either the sheer combat power, stealth, or both for the job of keeping themselves and Agatha alive in the heart of the enemy base would have been either myself, Violetta, Zeetha, or Higgs.

The problem was, Violetta simultaneously didn't have quite enough value as a prisoner and definitely had too much potential threat rating as a Smoke Knight for them to do anything but cut her throat as soon as she was taken. Zeetha was one of our most powerful fighters but had the least covert ops experience, and as a complete nonentity to the Other's renegades would almost certainly be disposed of on the spot as merely another guard. And me? I might have had enough value as a hostage against the Baron to be worth keeping alive, but I wasn't remotely as certain a bet as Gilgamesh was in that regard. Besides, he and I were the only two really qualified airship captains available in the party, and someone had to conn the L-79. And as for Higgs...

"Still wish I could have gone with 'em." Higgs said to me quietly as we stood at the top of the boarding ramp. It was the dead of night in Mechanicsburg, and we were loading up as silently as possible. In a little under twelve hours Agatha, Gil, and Tarvek would be in enemy hands at the Fortress of Storms. By that point we'd already have stealthily sailed up from Mechanicsburg and be in position.

"I wish you could go with them," I agreed. "But the same logic that nixed Zeetha also applies to you; to them you'd just be an anonymous trooper that they'd have no reason to bother dragging all the way to their real destination."

"Didn't say I didn't know it. Just said I didn't like it." he fumed.

"Remember what I said about your not being able to stop a real Heterodyne from doing whatever she damn well wanted to?" I said.

"I remember," he nodded, chuckling softly. "And my head entirely agrees with Milady; somebody has to do it or else we probably lose the whole damn war, and she's really the only one who can do it. Doesn't mean my heart agrees."

"You really do care for her, don't you?" Zeetha said to him gently as she stepped up alongside us.

"Of course I care," Higgs said to her. "She's our Lady Heterodyne. The last Heterodyne. If she falls, one thousand years of tradition and service ends with her."

"Ees verra difficult," Dimo said, as he stepped aboard behind her. "Ve vants to chust wrap her up like a little keed, und keep her safe. But at de same time ve vants her to lead us, because she's de Heterodyne. And ve can't hef both at once."

"She's not just your war queen, she's your High Queen," Zeetha nodded understandingly. "And your enemy's already hurt your ruling house so badly that she's all you have left. At her age she should still be in her princess lessons with a whole family to support her, not-"

"Carrying everything by herself," Higgs agreed.

"Well, she's not carrying it alone," I said. "Her friends will be with her, and her other friends will be right on her heels."

"You'd better believe we'll be!" Violetta said, approaching us, and then she turned to me. "Cloaking device is hot. Everything checks out."

"All de veapons und ammo ees loaded," Dimo reported.

"All Jagers present and accounted for," Higgs said.

"Vibrational trackers set up and locked on," Zeetha said. "Primary and backups both."

"Good," I said. "All right, everybody get to your berths and rest up. We'll be on station in a little under eight hours, and then it'll be watch-on-watch-off until we get a signal from the Fortress of Storms. After that... we'll see what happens."

"Let's go," Higgs nodded to me, and Dimo punched the button to close the loading ramp as I turned and headed to the bridge to get my airship ready to lift.

"You are the one with whom it all changed. Now we can see nothing ahead but the end." the voice of the Dreen echoed yet again in my memory.

Well, I sighed to myself. If nothing else, I'll finally get to see what they meant.

* * * * *​

Klaus POV:

We met in the conference room of Castle Wulfenbach immediately after the reduction of the sub-orbital cannon and Lucrezia's main base. As I'd expected from the moment she'd made the diversionary nature of her gambit clear, we'd been unable to capture any key minds with the knowledge we'd needed. The entire effort here, although effective at furthering destruction of several strategic strongpoints across Europa, had ultimately been nothing but a gambit to draw my attention and the bulk of our forces to this part of the Low Contries at this specific time. And while there were several disquieting possibilities as to why Lucrezia would have ordered that done, the worst of them - that we were being grouped together for a devastating area attack by some inconceivable Black-level item or devastating force - had failed to materialize. Even so, the instant the sub-orbital cannon had been successfully destroyed I had ordered the dispersal of our forces into several sub-fleets separated by over a dozen miles each, so as to preserve at least the bulk of our troops in the event such a trap was sprung while still allowing us to come together and reduce any concerted attack by conventional forces.

The special envoy that had just arrived from London with Albia's reply to the dispatches I had sent to her with Commander Wooster finished her initial presentation, and I attempted to digest the enormity of what we had heard.

"And you are certain of this- foolish question." I interrupted myself. "Of course you are."

"Both Professor Zardeliv in Paris and the Royal Society's own temporal mathematics research have confirmed it," Trelawney Thorpe confirmed. "Your own observations of the 'temporal ghost' that Lucrezia Mongfish manifested to you as were the final pieces necessary to solve the paradox equations that the Incorruptible Library had initially hypothesized regarding the 'Muse of Time' phenomenon."

"And in conjunction with the observations that Her Undying Majesty had personally made?" I asked her.

"Her Majesty sends her regrets and apologies that she waited perhaps too long to search the Well of Memory," Thorpe replied. "But she can testify with certainty that the 'Gray Witch' who attacked the ancient queens over five millenia ago was indeed Lucrezia Mongfish."

"Time," I said. "It is confirmed then - the Other is manipulating time." I said.

"Then how do you fight something like that?" Prince Martellus asked worriedly. "If she's going to go back to the past from our future- if this is already destined to happen- then we're going to lose."

"Not necessarily," she replied to him. "That's where the paradox phenomenon comes into play."

"At some point in the... 'middle' is a scientifically imprecise term but will suffice for current purposes... of the closed temporal loop formed by Lucrezia Mongfish's travels through the timestream, some force or phenomenon independent of linear time intervened." I explained to him. "At this point the 'Muse of Time's' existence became impossible, because the events that led to its- her- creation didn't happen. But at the same point she already existed at some discrete point or points in the past, as with her ancient attack upon the God-Queens of the past, so she could not simply cease to exist either. Hence her current state of being as a paradox - both real and unreal at the same time."

"With the degree of that reality - the extent to which she can actually manifest and affect things - fluctuating up and down as the circumstantial factors that led to the existence of her particular time track come closer to or further away from fruition, from moment to moment," he nodded understandingly, and I reminded myself yet again not to underestimate this young man. "Do we know what any of those causal factors actually are?"

"Only one of them is obvious, and that much only by inference." I stated. "As the probability of Agatha Heterodyne being forcibly imbued with Lucrezia's mind rises or falls, so does the probability of future-Lucrezia's existence in the flesh and therefore so does the existence of the 'Muse of Time'. Which is precisely why she is remaining as safe as possible in the heart of Castle Heterodyne, with my son and one of my very best officers and an entire detachment of my forces aiding her Jager home guards in keeping her as safe as possible-" I broke off as I noted with alarm that Miss Thorpe had been going paler and paler with my words, until she'd become positively gray-faced with shock. "What?"

"Herr Baron-" she began, almost stammering. "I- let me emphasize that Her Undying Majesty had already told me to bring this up with you as soon as was practical. I had intended to do so after this phase of the meeting was over, but now I'm afraid my information has become far more immediately relevant than either I or Her Majesty's government had ever surmised."

"What information," I requested flatly, grinding out my patience as if with a millstone.

"Slightly over two weeks ago, a diplomatic courier from the Lady Heterodyne arrived at our embassy in Paris-" she hurriedly began. In only a few sentences more, she completed her explanation of exactly what 'far more immediately relevant' information she thought had bearing upon the discussion.

"WHAT ON EARTH DO THOSE IDIOT CHILDREN THINK THEY'RE DOING?!?"

* * * * *​

I immediately ordered the entire fleet, save the slower units that we'd be leaving behind, to proceed at flank speed towards the Fortress of Storms. The directional bearing on the 'vibrational tracker' that Agatha Heterodyne's courier had delivered to the British Embassy along with her dispatches still pointed directly at Mechanicsburg, but from the information we'd received I expected that to change at any time. I only hoped that Lucrezia's gambit with the sub-orbital cannon had not decoyed us sufficiently far enough out of the way that we could not reach them in time.

Castle Wulfenbach didn't remotely have the speed for this kind of long-range dash so I left it behind with a suitable escort detachment and shifted my flag to one of the fast dreadnaughts. Prince Martellus likewise ordered his own fleet flagship and the Fifty Families' fleet units to close in and to keep station with ours. I'd also ordered several of the scientific exploration vessels detached to the fleet, after hurriedly loading certain specialized equipment from the Castle onboard them. After several hours of our frantically recalculating and revising our designs in light of these new events, we met up again in the largest laboratory to discuss our results.

"I must reluctantly admit that my cousin's plan was not only most audacious but actually well-reasoned. Were it not for the other factor in play, their scheme would almost certainly have worked." Prince Martellus mused.

"The problem is that they have no knowledge of that factor," Trelawney Thorpe replied to him. "If it was just a matter of letting them 'trap' Agatha and then extracting her once the key bit with the Summoning Engine was done, they probably wouldn't need our help. But what they don't know is that bringing Agatha there will make the Muse of Time-"

"-able to manifest in our reality. Fully." I stated. "It wouldn't even require the memory implantation to be successfully completed. By these tentative calculations, simply having it be an imminent event would be sufficient to close the loop enough for Lucrezia to regain a 98+% synchronization with current space-time."

"And at that point we're talking about fighting against an entity with sufficient power to destroy several people on the level of Queen Albia," Thorpe said pensively. "Simultaneously."

"Not necessarily," I stated with conviction. "The attacks of the 'Gray Witch' were against entirely unalerted foes and with five millenia worth of technological advantage on her part, and we suffer neither disadvantage. And as fragmentary as our knowledge of the temporal mechanics in play are, we at least have some knowledge. And we have almost two days to finish constructing weapons and devices that can at least to a limited extent interfere with the temporal resonance in play and hopefully decohere her again, limiting her power."

"But she'd still be incredibly powerful. And we have no idea of what resonant frequencies to even use to produce such an interference," Prince Martellus stated.

"Lucrezia Mongfish and I have a longstanding personal vendetta," I said. "And regardless of the nature of her existence or her new powers, her mind remains her mind."

"That's why you have these proposed new fittings to your personal combat mech," Miss Thorpe stated. "You'll hang yourself out as live bait, let her attack you, while the onboard sensors gather the data necessary on her nature to allow for last-minute adjustments."

"While you use that data to calibrate the array of resonance projectors we will have set up, and Prince Martellus coordinates the conventional forces against the rest of the battlefield. I bait her into position, you present the genuine threat of destruction, and he grants us the freedom to operate." I stated.

"Herr Baron..." she said softly. "It's too risky. We have nothing to confirm that the resonance projector array could possibly be calibrated in time, or even that it has sufficient power to disrupt her existence in the first place. Unless we're impossibly lucky with one of the first several attempts, you almost certainly won't survive."

"I will last long enough," I said confidently. "And this is necessary. We must present a viable enough threat, an irresistible enough temptation, that she must honor it on this battlefield. We already know that preventing Agatha's possession will not destroy the Muse of Time, and Lucrezia explained to me precisely how an unkillable time ghost can and will continue to plague Europa by inspiring madmen on down the ages with secret knowledge. This will be our one opportunity to destroy Lucrezia's temporal ghost once and for all - in the moment where she is finally real again."

"But what of the Empire, Herr Baron?" Boris asked me plaintively. "Forgive me, but Gilgamesh is himself at the heart of the danger as well. It is horribly possible that we might lose you both on the same day."

"In that unfortunate event then the Empire will be Jonathan's," I unhesitatingly proclaimed. "I will draw up the relevant papers immediately after this meeting. The order of precedence shall be Gilgamesh first, and then my... my adopted son. Milady, Your Highness, you have both borne witness to my statements of intent here and now."

"The Dreen also exist outside of time, or sideways to it," Prince Martellus said. "Could they assist you in this effort, Herr Baron? Either with their knowledge, or their own prowess?"

"I have already asked them," I said. "They answered that they cannot help, because they did not help."

"Damned acausal phenomena," he muttered.

Miss Thorpe closed her eyes and inhaled and exhaled deeply, then opened them again. "Herr Baron," she began detreminedly. "There is a great secret of the British Empire that you are unaware of, but which I will on my own authority reveal at this hour of necessity. I can offer you an alternative to-"

"But I already know of the true potential of a Sacred Guardian, Miss Thorpe," I replied to her great consternation. "And while your offer does you great credit, it will not be necessary."

"Unnecessary?" she exclaimed, shocked to her core.

"Yes," I said. "Because what I need you to do is-"

"Another message from the British Embassy, Miss Thorpe," a messenger interrupted us, entering the room and laying it before her.

"Odd," she said, wrinkling her brow at it. "This is just an 'information' copy of a routine diplomatic dispatch and its addressed to you, Herr Baron. Your messenger of the watch simply assumed it was for me because of the source."

"What would possibly-?" I began as I took the message from her and glanced at it, and when my eyes hit a certain word I swore I felt my heart stop.

Zeetha?!?

* * * * *​

Author's Note: And so the endgame approaches! And as our heroes sail into the heart of danger, a separate danger they were entirely unaware of looms! Will the Baron get there in time? What was the mysterious offer of the dauntless Trelawney Thorpe, Spark of the Realm, and why did the Baron turn it down? Will Martellus break his winning streak and find a way to Tweedle out at the last second? Tune in on the next thrilling episode of Girl Genius!

We thank poster 'Spindler' for his idea in the SB thread of giving Lucrezia a fork so that our heroes get to have their climactic battle at the same time Klaus and a Lucrezia can get their climactic showdown. For those who have played the Continuum time-travel RPG, think of the Muse of Time as having been heavily fragged, but as the paradox grows closer to being repaired she grows more and more able to affect the material world again. And this isn't the Anevka-clank, but the full-on 'quantum-molecular forged' uber-death robot that Lucrezia went on a trans-temporal extravaganza with.

Oh, and the Smoke Knight airship cloaking device is totally canon. And Violetta is indeed pulling the 'we have a single Romulan officer on board, therefore using the Romulan cloaking device on a Federation ship is totally legal!' trick.

Now I just have to figure out how to write an upcoming multi-part epic battle sequence on multiple levels without fucking it up or anticlimaxing. This is gonna be one of the more complex things I've ever done, so... might take a bit.