by P. S. Power
Something in that mental mix worked things out well enough, however. There was a nod and words floating over her head that seemed to be close enough to right that Cindy wasn’t going to correct her.
“That’s good then. We log all of those as your actions then?”
She nodded.
“Right. Exactly that. Now, I need to get with some people. Sara, if she’s still talking to me, for one. I kind of had to leave without saying goodbye. What a bitch move, right?”
She actually meant it, but Turner shrugged.
“She learned some tricks, while you were gone, so had a good idea about where you were the whole time. I had to forbid her from reading my mind, which worked about as well as you might suspect. Still, Christian says that she only did it occasionally, to make certain you weren’t dead. How she managed to keep us from being caught…” The woman knew that however. The Mariah group had been too distracted for their best work, after a short while.
Will raised his right hand a bit, waving a little.
“I was asked to bring Cindy back with me? I wanted to thank you for allowing me to come here and train. If this works… Well, a lot of it will be thanks to the people here. If you ever need my help with anything, please let me know? I consider you all friends, after all.”
He stopped then, knowing that Ms. Turner couldn’t feel the same way about him in particular. Except that she nodded, and stood up again, to give him a fairly tight hug.
“It was a pleasure having you here, Will. If we can help with your missions, know that we have your back. All of you there. Our problems are different here, but…”
Penny laughed from out of nowhere.
“Oh, right… We haven’t gotten to that bit yet. Cindy found that one pretty solidly. It isn’t that different at all. Mariah the Divine Wind is dedicated to bringing the great one from the end of reality, to destroy us all. As a group. Most of them don’t think it’s a real thing, thankfully. Or maybe not. After all, most of them don’t really want to die. It’s clearly related though.” She stopped, then refocused on Will.
Who actually understood it was happening, thanks to how focused he was all the time.
That part was interesting, since he wasn’t more telepathic than anyone else, just so focused that he noticed it when things happened around him that way.
Penny went on, her voice mellow. Almost a purr.
“We have them handled here though, for now. They almost have to strike at us, but if they do we can end them all. We probably should. They aren’t the only group, but the rest seem to mainly want power, not the death of all life.”
That was what Cindy had gotten, to be honest about it all. That the others were mainly just monsters. Hungry and devoted to eating the world. Mariah, as a collective, was simply insane. Suicidal as a movement. Maybe not so crazy that they’d force their own destruction however, before the task was finished. Still, if they could kill them all, they really needed to.
Marcia waved at Cindy then, her face slightly too flat and expressionless, as she tried to control her thoughts. It didn’t really work. Not totally.
“Write up a report on everything before you go? How long will you be gone?” She was just asking, but flickered over to Will, since it was his world they were heading to.
He smiled.
“Well, we get a lot more time there. If she needs a year of work, that will be a little over a month, your time here? Probably no more than a week your time, however. I mean, I can bring her back and forth, at need, so…”
That got a single nod.
“Got it. Better to check in too often than not at all. Do you need anyone else for your team, Mableton?” She was thinking guards, but the truth was that she probably didn’t. Not really.
“Nope. This way, if anything goes wrong, we can cut our losses. Now, I have to work on that report and get with Sara first thing. Where is she now? It’s early, so… Classes with Lauren?”
That made sense, but wasn’t the truth of the matter. It was early in the day, but also a Saturday. The kid was actually getting weekends off from school. Like a real girl and everything. That meant she was sitting in the lounge, watching several Team Two members play video games. She looked like a little girl this time. Her actual age of seven. It had to be nearing eight in the morning now, Cin realized suddenly.
She stood there for a moment, waiting to be noticed by the girl, who only did it after Dave, the all blue man, nudged her. He was sitting near her, but had made a deal with Christian to read his mind every day, so that everyone would know he wasn’t doing anything wrong, being there for the kid. It was an incredible amount of stepping up, considering he didn’t think of himself as dad material.
“Sara… Look.”
There was a happy smile from the girl and a rather tackle like hug.
“Cindy!” She didn’t speak, but a big part of her had figured that the woman had left forever. Almost everyone did that, after all.
“Sara!” She wrapped the kid in a hug, meaning it. That surprised her, since she hadn’t known she was capable of missing anyone. Not really. “There you are.”
They clung to each other for a bit, the girl letting go first, as was proper.
“Are you back for good now?” There was doubt in her voice, but no anger over the idea that it might not be happening. The words had shifted over the girl’s head, in the time that Cin had been gone. From crayon scrawls to rather neat printing in ink. It was a sign that she was growing up, most likely.
Probably too fast, given how good the writing was now.
“Nope. I have to go to Will’s world and help out there for a bit. Then I should be back here. There are things… You know about that?” She really did, but also wasn’t talking about it to all and sundry.
Most of the people in the room actually didn’t know about what was going on at all.
The little kid did however. It was clear that she’d actually done a good bit more data collection than Christian had shared with Marcia. Mainly due to the fact that she’d copied Trivia’s powers. A thing that she was running almost constantly, in all her forms now. It probably wasn’t great as to what it meant for the stability of her little kid brain and mind, but Cin got the idea.
Interestingly enough, the kid already knew enough about Mariah and the other groups to shut them down on her own, if she had to. It would take learning to kill, which was to be avoided, but if Cindy and the others had failed, the tiny girl wouldn’t have.
Oh, it might have taken her years, but it was what would have been going on in the end. It had been her plan, if her friends went down in the fight.
That line of thought got the girl hugged again. She heaved a little kid sigh, but only sounded a bit annoyed with Cindy.
“You just got back. I should go with you… Only I can’t. Ms. Turner and Rachel won’t let me. Not yet. Tiera says I can come visit soon though. I have classes.” She shrugged, not wanting to spend her time doing that, but actually understanding that her brain needed to learn for real, not just pick up other people’s information. At least if she were going to be a useful adult someday. It was in the data she’d picked up from Trivia’s powers.
It meant she was conflicted, but more or less willing to let Cindy do her job. Even if it was hard for her. She thought of the woman as one of her people, after all. Not the only one, since there were others that she was closer to. Rachel had stepped up, acting like a real mom, for instance. Mark had as well. Even Hobbs had, though he kept thinking of her as a small adult, instead of as a child. She didn’t feel bad about that, but it meant that his expectations of her were high.
They sat and chatted for a while, with Will looking on, not rushing them in the slightest. Then, after lunch, Sara pushed her to go and do her work, writing up reports.
“I’ll see you soon? If you don’t come back in a few weeks, I’ll go and find you.” She meant it, and even had a plan to get there, if she needed to do it. It would require blackmailing Troy Lopez into helping her, but she
had some decent dirt on the human from another world. She thought so at least. It might work anyway, if she simply asked. The man wasn’t a jerk, after all.
He would help a little girl out in a pinch.
“You should just ask, first. If you push him in the wrong way, he might say no, on principle. Anyway, I’ll try to be back, as soon as possible. We have things to finish up here, after all.”
Will nodded then, his face pleased. Worse, he actually understood what Cindy had been saying to the little girl. Just having worked it out from context. It was the kind of intelligence that nearly felt oppressive, if you were exposed to it up close for too long.
“Agreed. I think that you have almost won the fight here, for this world. It needs to be finished, I would guess, but that is all. Now, we should get to things? Tor is most anxious to see you again.” There was no sense of playing or flirting in the words.
It was just an actual thing. The man really wanted the help, if she could come up with anything at all that way.
It took her about four hours to finish her report, going over everything, blow by blow and listing off all the information she had about Mariah as a crew. It was a bit boring, but there was a list of names, all of them now being dead. Not that she took credit, or blame, for them having passed at all. She just put the names on the computer screen. Turner would get it, and so would anyone else seeing it. What they wouldn’t be doing was taking it as a confession of guilt.
After all, a few of the people had been congressmen and women. That sort might not love hearing that the IPB would execute them for being pains in the behind too often. Not that it had been about that kind of thing. In the end, even if she couldn’t reach them all, they had a listing of every living person in that group, except for their leader. All they knew about her was that the woman was a female.
Also, that she’d been around for a good long while. Hundreds of years at least.
Other than that, there was very little else to be added to the whole story. So sending it to Marcia’s computer, she went to pack. Will following her in a way that was going to get annoying if the kid wasn’t careful. Interestingly, when they finally got into the little red box, and Will touched her arm, making reality blink around them for a moment, they didn’t step out onto the Moon.
Not Mars, either, she didn’t think.
No, they were clearly in an old fashioned looking city, someplace on Earth. The sky was a pristine and lovely blue above her, which was a giveaway. Next to her Will shifted, his hair turning black and eyes brown. Even his body language altered as Cindy watched. Becoming a bit more hunched and subdued. Then, smiling, he spoke in a different language. She understood him, of course, by reading what he was saying from over his head.
“Capital City, in Noram. This is my Aunt’s home. She’s Countess Thomson. Tamerlane. Her and her husband the sitting Count have offered their home for your coming project. We can also move to another location, if you wish?”
She could nearly make out what he was saying without cheating, since he was going slow. His idea was that she needed to pick it all up as soon as possible. The interesting part there was that he thought she could do it in as little as a few hours, having been exposed to Standard before.
Which, when she read his mind on the topic, was humbling enough. After all, he could have done that for real, and had in the past. English had taken him three days to have down to the point where he didn't have a real accent, after all. That was a dead language in his world.
“Ist vil tak mish loonger.” She shrugged, but the guy got it.
“That’s not bad. If you really work on it, you can do this in a few days.”
It wasn’t going to be that easy, but she was in a different reality, so it only made sense for her to be the one to adapt. They moved to the front of the large house. It was at least three stories tall, and made of a combination of wood and adobe, as far as she could tell. Then it had been painted light blue and white. There were two guards on the wrought iron front gate. Both dressed in what appeared to be clown costumes, if without the face makeup to really sell the whole thing. Then, as she read what they were thinking it was mainly about how they thought she was a rather poor serving girl. They could tell by her plain, drab clothing. Which was done in a manly fashion even. So she had to be a very poor girl, indeed.
A cute one, so at least there was that.
It was the tan clothing she had on, of course. Tan or brown meant you were poor there. Bright colors or ones that would be hard to care for indicated wealth and status.
“Halt. May I have your names, gentles?” She managed to pick the words out without too much cheating. A little, but the words really were similar enough to make some guesses at, most of the time.
“I’m Countier Four Lairdgren, Willum Baker. This is Cinnamon Mableton, who comes from another world to aid us.”
The man had a list of names, which had both of them on it. Interestingly, he didn’t question that Cindy was from another world. He just figured that she was one of the people from space. Possibly a robot. That was all. Will didn’t correct him either. Instead they were taken to the front of the house, and the butler was summoned.
The new man was far more polite seeming. Then, to him they were guests. The guards had both figured that they might be a problem. It was, in their world, their job to think things like that and handle them. Politely if possible, but if it wasn’t then they still had to find a way to make it all work.
They were shown in, the rather dapper fifty something man guiding them gently to a sitting room. It was empty, when they got there. Will settled on a large sofa, waving for her to move in next to him.
“It’s a bit of pretense, but if you sit by me, fewer will try to get you into bed. Not none. They are nobles here…” He wanted to describe things to her, but she already knew that one. A lot of the nobles in Noram were basically giant pervs. It was just part of their society. Being fairly short, compared to them, some would think of her as being beneath them. Then she’d have to lay a hurting on them. That, or put out. Both would be a bit distracting at the moment, however. She was there to work, really.
So she moved in next to Will, her leg touching his, which got the small woman who walked in carrying a large silver tray with food on it, to smile. The lady was prettier than seemed correct, and was wearing a perfect dress that seemed like blue lace. It wasn’t, of course. The whole thing was magical. Will surged to his feet, thinking that she needed to do the same. There was bowing needed, since this woman was a Countess.
That part was interesting, since the first letter of the word was capitalized. Even in Will’s head. Cindy bowed, going low enough that the other two people in the room smiled at her and did it back, nearly matching her. After all, she was the dignitary from another reality. That kind of meant she was important, for the moment.
“Hello. I’m Terlee Thomson. You’re Cinnamon Mableton?” The woman was being incredibly gentle and polite, using her family nickname like she had.
So she smiled.
“Please to meet you, Terlee. Call me Cindy. That, or Cin? If we’re going to be working together, I mean.” She didn't know that one yet, but the woman blushed a bit and nodded.
“That would be lovely. Thank you for considering me for such an important task. I don’t know much about you, but Torrance speaks of you most highly. He seems to think that without you he wouldn’t be alive right now?” She seemed to think that was unlikely, given who her brother was, but Will nodded, catching her attention as she settled the well laden tray on a low table.
“It’s true. That battle was… Epic in scope. I don’t know that he would have lost, but it was very close, Aunt Tamerlane. Cindy nearly lost her life in aiding him. She is… Special. Made much stronger than most, by Timon Baker.”
That was the other woman’s brother, but the full name was used anyway. Mainly because Will wasn’t that comfortable with any of the others in his family yet. The one he was closest to was actually Taman, who was kind of hi
s mentor.
In all he knew Cindy better than his own Aunt. Better than any of his Aunts, if he were going to consider things for a moment.
Before he could say anything more, two boys walked into the room. They were both healthy looking and large for their ages. Then, they were both noble giants, or would be eventually. The younger of the two, who looked to be about nine or ten, stopped when he saw her, bowing instantly.
The words over his head took in everything about her, including her funny clothing, strange haircut and dual toned hair, her roots showing blonde under the black tips. To his mind, she had a fighter’s cut that way, which was respectable, even if she were a bit small. The boots on her feet got more scrutiny however, since they weren’t made of leather, but of rare materials that he knew of only from the new fleet. Plastic composites of some kind.
Only he was nearly certain she wasn’t a machine person. An android, if she had the idea right from his mind.
The slightly older boy next to him just thought that she was pretty. He kind of wanted to sleep with her, but that was in an abstract way that wasn’t demanding in particular. She fixed the smaller one with a rather frank look and introduced them herself.
“Dumas and Clemance Thomson? Both Countiers Thomson, correct?”
Speaking in accented English, the small boy bowed, his right arm moving over his middle.
“I’m Dumas, yes. You’d be… Uncle Tor’s friend, Cindy Mableton?” The deduction was half guess, but all brilliant, so she smiled as the other boy caught up with his smart younger brother. Not that he wasn’t nearly as intelligent himself. The smaller boy simply worked harder at finding out what was going on. It was impressive.
She switched to her awkward Standard then.
“Exactly. Call me Cindy. I need to learn your language, so we should try to use that. Now, I need to meet some people. Enough to build links to them. I know Neesa the Ysidril, so that will work for her people as an entry point. You four for this place… Who else do I need?”