I was just getting back from this family restaurant. You know the kind, it was the sort of franchise that served Burgers and an American approximation of Mexican food. Margot and the girls had been there with me. Maci had come as well, because as things between her and I carried on, Margot and I had decided to try our best to integrate her into our little family.

Intriguingly, Maci and Filomena seemed to get along like a house on fire. Which confusingly is apparently a good thing, despite this version of humanity not being innately fireproof, like in other universes I’ve been to.

It was hard at first, since both of them were atonal stoics, who barely emoted in front of strangers...or friends. Then they slowly started to get used to each other and suddenly it was like the two were sisters, or like a really close niece and aunt.

Mint seemed to like Maci too, but Mint was an adorable, pistachio-dusted, cinnamon bun who was friendly with pretty much everyone, which was nice, but also didn’t make for a very clear litmus test for whether Maci would jive well with the family. Fortunately, it seemed everything was going well so far.

In any case, I was on my way home from a dinner out with the family, when I got pinged by the FC-Units that were stationed in Uhrwerk. The ping was quickly cut short but it managed to reach me all the same. I looked into the issue with my data-feed and realized that apparently an outside force had tried to interfere with the transmission.

It was the immortals again, but not the gods this time. I’d already settled my issues with the gods after cracking a few skulls, killing off a few idiots, and doing a political two-step that had about one-third of them afraid of me, and two-thirds of them willing to be bought off.

I got the channels themselves to take over with the rest of the peacekeeping effort by kickstarting a few end-of-days type scenarios to make a very clear point to the heavenly wills. You know, the beings that were supposed to be supervising all these gods and goddesses who’d suddenly found the gumption to pick a fight with me. Now the heavenly wills were keeping the so-called forces of good from running amuck, actually doing their bloody jobs.

This naturally means that the forces of evil and neutrality were trying to get their lickings in because no one ever learns and their kind of stupidity is an ailment solved only by death or vigorous beatings.

The heavenly wills were supposed to police this group too, but they had less control over what these two segments of the immortal population did, since a lot of them were “heaven defiers” and “heaven ignorers”. Doing as their own thing, regardless of what the world’s will had to say.

Oddly enough, I suspected evil would be easier to deal with. Demons were big on might is right, and surprisingly staunch contractors...assuming you got the terms right. The fact that demons were the biggest faction in the whole evil alignment meant their culture and tendencies trickled down through the rest.

That wasn’t to say that any of them could be trusted of course. Lack of morals and principles didn’t go hand in hand with being highly reliable and trustworthy.

I just meant that if I went down the list of troublemakers putting my foot up enough asses they’d learn to settle fuck down a lot more quickly than the neutral groups and good groups did.

In a lot of ways, criminals who knew they were doing bad things for selfish reasons, were easier to talk than people who genuinely believed they were in their rights to act as they did, and zealots who were fighting for a cause.

“Hm…”

I paused and had a thought. It occurred to me that something must have triggered this sudden decision to fight. I looked into my data-feed going back as far as the first plot that was set up against me.

I continued searching until I found what I was looking for. Then I generated a sun made of dark matter and dropped it on the target. Destroying everything thoroughly and tearing a fairly massive hole in the dimensional fabric of the channel itself.

A salvo of similar dark star explosions was sent to all any locations where the target had hidden portions of his soul, because of course, the agitator trying to play puppetmaster in the shadows, would also be the sort of guy to use that old gambit.

There was a fair amount of collateral damage, but in the face of the collateral damage that these idiots were creating in their bids to take over or, fight for so-called freedom, I decided to instate a relaxed policy of following the laws of life and death. Meaning, the unintended victims would wake up once the repairs on the channel were done, like the fire and death today were all a bad dream.

“Hon…?” said Margot. Gently placing her hand on my shoulder.

“Oh, hey...Sorry about that,” I said. Realizing that I’d probably looked strange just standing on the sidewalk, staring at nothing, as I had.

“Nah, it’s no big...Besides, it’s only been a few seconds,” said Margot. Seeming to understand what I was concerned about.

“Ah, good...I might have just cracked the spatial boundaries between a couple of the channels. We’ll need to repair that later,” I said.

Margot looked miffed for a moment and then she sighed and shrugged.

“Let me guess, there was an enemy base that needed to be flattened,” said Margot.

“Pretty much. The good news is that I think I might have gotten the source of the recent rash of attacks from all the more troublesome groups,” I said.

“Oh, do tell,” said Maci. Startling the both of us, because we weren’t quite used to her being there when we were out of the office yet.

“Huh?!... Oh, there was some big yokai. The nurarihyon of one of the major channels and his collective of spirits and fae was the one making waves. Would you believe the guy wasn’t even directly trying to go after us, he was using us like an anvil for cracking the defenses of a couple of his foes” I said.

“Why wait to fish in troubled waters, when you can stir the pot yourself?” said Maci. Her tone sarcastic and filled with annoyance.

“So he’s dead?” said Margot.

“Yeah...I believe so at least, “ I said. Nodding. A slight frown on my face as I carefully parsed through the akashic record to confirm the agitator’s demise. I was pretty sure the guy was dead, but I was also getting the sense that I might need to re-confirm later, just to be sure.

*************************************************************************************************************

A little later in the day, I was over in the head offices of Doorknocker Solutions. We hadn’t completely left Pittsburgh. The mayor of the city and the governor of Pennsylvania, both made the company some very lucrative offers to keep us from leaving the state.

That being said, Henrietta still set up a new corporate office in Arcadia for the sake of staying in touch with me since I now spent a large portion of my time in Uhrwerk.

“Hey, Henri,” I called out, as I walked into the office.

“Evening, Monty,” said Henri. Yelling back a greeting from somewhere further within the floor.

I think after six, almost seven, years of working together she’d finally started to let her hair down around me. In the lower floors, she was the prim, polished, straight-laced woman she’d been when we met. However here in the higher floors, she often went in around in a t-shirt with scientific formulas printed on the top.

Her office was less of an office, and more of a mad scientist’s laboratory. Heavy metal blasted from the small, couture, speakers on the shelves, while she dissected beasts and machines harvested from Uhrwerk. There were vials and bottles and boxes of minerals and substances that were being experimented upon.

My office was right across from hers. As I approached my office, I peeked inside her office and saw no one was in there. Confused, but unconcerned, I shrugged and headed inside my office to look through the reports she usually prepared for me, and do any work that had been left in the to-do tray on my desk.

I opened the door to my office and found Henrietta sitting at my desk, typing away on my computer. Her creamy skin was marked by soot, grease, and drops of beast blood. Her hair pulled back into a tight bun.

“Oh, there you are,” I said.

“Hey, Monty. Give me a sec to wrap up these finance reports and we can chat,” said Henri. Not looking away from the screen.

She was sitting in just a bra and panties. Displaying a physique that would be perfectly at home on any centerfold. Her clothes were crumpled up on the floor in the corner of the room. Stained with blood and some other kind chemical slurry.

Her presence in my office was nothing out of the norm. I generally wasn’t here half of the time, and as I said, her office was basically a bloody laboratory. As for her state of undress, she wasn’t an exhibitionist. As if to prove that when it rains it pours, less than a month after Maci and I started to get serious, Henri reached out to Margot and Margot started making hints that maybe me and Henri should have a chat. Two months after that, we were dating.