Garth blinked his eyes, trying to get the afterimage of Mr. Glaresalot’s rib cage out of his eyes. His ears weren’t much better off either, only to make out muffled vowels around him. on the edge of his vision, he saw limbs flailing and lots of blood.

I got what I wanted, so this might be a good time to get lost, Garth thought, numbly pocketing the book and pushing himself to his feet.

As his vision cleared, he could make out Linda levering herself up, wounds all across her body seemingly bubbling away like they’d been washed off with hydrogen peroxide.

She turned and started shouting something to one of the people rushing in the door. After a few seconds, Garth’s eardrums fixed themselves, and the sound of shouting flooded into his ears in high def.

“Aaaa, my leg!”

“..Capable of fighting to the entrances, this might have been the start of an attack!”

“So Linda,” Garth said, catching her attention. “I’m gonna go…I’ll catch you sometime when you’re not busy.” The entire underground plaza was the subject of a lock against teleportation, with the sole exception of the gate at the center of the room, so he had to leave physically.

“I don’t think so,” she said, drawing her sword and leveling it at him. “I need time to determine whether or not you were responsible for this.”

“Me?” Garth asked. “I got a pretty good look at Mr. Glaresalot’s last seconds, and if it had been me, he would’ve shown roots under the skin or something, maybe pollen out the ears or turning green. In any case there’d be a lot more wood involved.”

“You’ll have to submit to a scan to make sure you don’t have any tracking spells on you.”

“I think we both know that you can’t make me do that,” Garth said. “Now, I’m going to leave. Either you get out of my way, or we have at it, and you lose more people in the scuffle. You might be out of my league right now, but not by much.”

Garth drew the mana in the room into a golf-ball sized brilliant star in his hand and watched her expectantly.

After a minute studying him, she relaxed, put her sword away and spoke. “You’ll have to use the main entrance, the Bakery is compromised.”

How the hell do you already know the bakery is compromised? Garth thought. It seemed a little too convenient.

“Are you just saying that to get me to fight my way out if we’re under attack?” Garth asked with a grin. Getting him to pull double duty and fight through her enemies just to leave? That’s efficiency.

Linda’s expression remained the same. She had an excellent poker face.

“Ah well, It’s your house after all,” he said, tiptoeing around her without looking away. If it came down to it, Garth was sure he could get away faster than her people could. On the upside, leaving through the main entrance would allow him to find another way into her base. You can never know too much about your political friends.

Garth kneeled down beside the man missing a good half his leg. “Excuse me sir, could you direct me to the main entrance?”

“aaaah...it hurts so fuckin bad!”

“Guess not.” Garth stood and strode past Leanne’s minions, wandering around and following the rush of soldiers until he found the main entrance.

The main entrance was a pair of massive stone double doors above a staircase wide enough for ten men to stand shoulder to shoulder. it was a lot like the outside cellar door you sometimes see in movies from the nineties.

The men who guarded it were crouched low, holding shields and spears towards the inanimate hunk of stone, causing Garth, who was standing up, to tower over them by default.

A couple minutes went by.

“So is something gonna happen or…?”

“SHHH!” someone shushed him.

Garth waited a couple more.

Well, that was anticlimactic, Garth thought turning back and wading through the hundreds of rebels who’d taken places behind him.

There was a bit of muttering and accusatory glares, but Garth made it to the back of the line without anything exploding through the doors and proving him wrong. Matter of fact the entire dome, which used to be humming with activity, was eerily silent.

I wonder what the acoustics are like in here.

Garth clamped down on the urge to ask who farted really, really loud, and put his head down and looked for Linda.

She was still in the command room. It was somewhat cleaned up, with most of the bleeders picked up, but there were still chunks of Mr. Glaresalot everywhere.

“So…doesn’t look like you’re getting attacked, but every time I tried to pull the lever to open the front door, somebody kept smacking my hand. I would’ve been into it if it was a cute girl, but it was some grungy lookin’ dude.”

“You can leave, Garth.” She said quietly, yanking a bloody adamantium fragment out of the wall with her thumb and forefinger.

“soo…care to tell me what happened?”

“Ken must’ve picked up a cursed item. They change up their tactics every forty years or so, with enough time between them to catch the younger generation off guard.”

She took the shard and showed it to Garth.

“This is one of them. It was designed to stay dormant until a certain number of my high command were in a room with me, which is why we never spotted it. once it identified me and three of my generals, it locked Ken in place and, well, you know the rest.”

“Huh.”

“Jim had to have made this himself, you know?” she said, putting the adamantium away in a pocket. “Nobody else on earth has this kind of power.”

“I’m not 100% sure what Jim’s relation is to the Dan Ui Clan, but I’m pretty sure they’re some form of sympatico. So why couldn’t it have come from them?”

“The Dan Ui clan doesn’t give a shit about Earth. They treat Jim like their slave. There’s no way he’d be able to garner that kind of support.”

“There’s a secret Dan Ui research facility like, one hundred and fifty feet beyond the edge of your little dome. That direction.” Garth said, pointing. “Something tells me they might be more interested in Earth than you think.”

“No, that’s…” she frowned. “Not possible.”

Her eye twitched, and a drop of blood fell from her nose.

“I don’t know when they did it, but somebody got me. Fucking mind control.”

“It’s happened to the best of us. Did I tell you the story about the one-armed man with ablutophobia?”

***later***

Garth stepped out of the bakery, nibbling on a dry piece of flatbread, and was stunned by the sheer amount of noise that washed over him. A cheering throng had formed, choking the streets with shouting people.

“All right, all right, settle down, I’ve got some time to do autographs.” Garth said before noticing that no one seemed to actually be looking at him. They were all facing the east gate, standing on their tippy toes or riding their boyfriends to see further.

Fine, not like I wanted to be famous anyway.

Garth didn’t have much trouble seeing over a crowd anymore, seeing as how he towered over the average at six foot six nowadays, but he still couldn’t make out what was happening around the corner.

“What’s going on?” Garth asked the nearest boy, who was rabidly cheering at the back of a taller man, in his own little bubble.

“I don’t know!” he said jovially. “But it sounds like there’s a parade!”

“A parade?” Garth asked with a crooked brow. I hope it’s nude Brazillian Carnival dancers on a giant float, but my luck isn’t that good. Note to self, ask Mrs. Banyan to dance for Carnival.

Garth started wading through people, using his superior height and long arms to elbow people out of the way, making a beeline for the east gate.

Once he turned the corner, he sort of wished he hadn’t made himself so tall

Four men in glittering gold armor trotted down the street on massive stallions, waving and smiling as people cheered madly. They radiated the kind of power Garth came to expect from people in their third tier, and mana whorled around them madly, seemingly caught in the event horizon of their presence. They almost seemed to create a Lantern just by riding through.

Behind them were two rows of fifty men walking on either side of four oversized armored wagons.

And one fat guy on a horse.

Garth glanced back at the lead rider, who was missing a piece of lip and half his nose. He wasn’t smiling like the rest of them, he was scanning the crowd with a scowl, seemingly looking for his next target.

The golden-armored man turned toward him, and Garth started smiling and waving like everyone else. It wouldn’t do to be standing there, a head taller than everyone else, scowling at someone obviously capable of making his life difficult.

“I want to have your babies!” Garth shouted, his words lost to the roar of the crowd. The guy next to him must’ve heard though, because he gave Garth an odd look.

“Who are these guys?” Garth leaned over and asked him through his smile.

“High inquisitors, obviously! Heroes of the war against the vile southern barbarians!”

Guess I’m definitely not going to get naked samba dancers. Ah well, a man can dream. That and it looks like the amount of time I can spend dicking around has reached its limit.

The lead rider’s gaze locked on Garth’s for an instant, and he felt the foreign touch of another’s mind on his own. Pala’s assistance against reading didn’t mean you couldn’t put your own thoughts up front to be read.

Gosh, these are the guys that slaughtered those vile barbarians! Garth thought loudly. What heroes! What stunning examples of – the touch left his mind – total ponces. I mean, who wears gold armor? Either it’s made of gold and it weighs a literal ton while at the same time being soft, or polished brass, which isn’t a hell of a lot better, especially compared to – the man’s eyes swept past Garth again – in complete awe, I wish I’d been born with the capacity to even lick their boots. Alas I’m too old, and too lowborn to ever entertain the notion of – the touch left – kicking the ever-loving shit out of them before jamming those gold helmets up Jim’s ass.

I need to get back to base and tell them to prepare for a fight.

If even one of these guys were touching people’s minds, then the clock was ticking.

Garth waved and smiled and thought admiring thoughts as he gradually inched his way toward the east gate they were leaving behind. The process was slow and painful and his head was so full of nonsense that he felt like washing his brain out with soap by the time the procession turned the corner.

“Thank Beladia,” Garth muttered as he jostled his way through the crowd, fighting against the tide of people trying to follow the procession. Garth made it to his little nook and ‘ported out, landing in the center of the practice yard where citizens of New L.A. – terribly uncreative name – were toiling away to practice their magic and swordplay.

“Alarm! Alarm! All hands to battle stations! This is not a drill!” Garth shouted, grabbing two swords and banging them against each other, forcing people to pay attention to him. in a matter of minutes, Garth’s city was a boiling anthill of frenzied purpose.

*** Finn ***

Finn was riding behind the four Inquisitors and their leader, High Inquisitor Nathanial, when something strange happened.

In an eerie display each of them flinched simultaneously, they turned in their saddles as one, ignoring the roar of the crowd around them to look directly at Finn. No, they were looking behind him, back toward the east gate.

“Felt a ‘port.” One of them grunted.

“Like rats from a sinking ship.” Nathanial said, glaring past Finn, before his eyes refocused on Finn’s face.

“Finn.”

“Yessir!”

“Day one of our investigation, felt a Teleport cast east of the city, at least third tier. Chances are it’s the Prima Regula. Write it down. You’re our letter master after all.

“And watch your ass.” Another inquisitor said, glancing at him. “Last time we came across someone that strong, we lost our secretary.”

“Last three times, actually.” Another one said without looking at him.

The pen in Finn’s hand shook as he took down the note.

“How do you deal with someone who can…” Finn hesitated to use the word, since it was only spoken of in myth and legend. “Teleport?”

“Easy. You don’t spend your time and energy chasing them all over hell and back. Just find their nest and squish it.” Nathaniel said. “Oh, and I spotted a teen that was suspiciously tall and handsome. Write it down. I’m gonna look into him.”

“Yes sir,” Finn said, glancing down at his notebook for composing reports to send back to Intelligence.

Third-tier Teleport user. Affiliation?

Suspiciously handsome teenager?

Finn shook his head and closed his book.

What is wrong with these people?