SG: Innocent Bystander #7 -- Origins 1/2

[Whitney Taylor]

Innocent Bystander #7

Origins part 1/2



January 1994

Savannah after the Songs of Darkness


Follow me, don't follow me

(Follow me) when I was young, I could perfectly see

Now I'm as blind, blind as a girl can be

--My Bones, The Pretty Reckless



"... And I *don't* care what the people on the TV say, Radian *was* the best and *is* the best!" The frail, scrawny child paused to catch her breath, but brandished her little black and white action figure aggressively to underscore her point.


"She *was* quite the talented mage, yes." Doctor Theodore Kelley responded indulgently, though with a slight emphasis on the past tense.


The little girl opened her mouth again, but her father Stefan intervened, mussing the fine, short black curls. "Take a moment, Stelly. You're not quite up to preaching a sermon yet."


"But you are better than you were. Less pain, more strength? That's my doing, though your father has also been improving, somewhat. Now, spit in this jar."


She leaned forward and did so with enthusiasm, delighted that such an important and dignified person as a wizard would ask for such an impolite thing. Theodore pulled his hand back, carefully sealing the container with a cork before producing a handkerchief to remove the evidence of the girl's poor aim.


"What's that for?" Stefan asked.


"Tests. To track the girl's progress." He stood.  "Take charge of our guests. I have work to do." Theodore made his exit, taking the jar and its contents with him, along with the blood samples Stefan had brought.


At the command, Max stepped forward from the dark corner in which they had been watching, unobtrusive. They prepared to address Stefan, but the girl noticed them first. "Are you a boy or a girl?"


"Estella! Don't be rude!"


Max calmly raised a hand. Turning to the girl, they said, "That's a secret."


"Why is it a secret?"


They smiled. "I can't tell you that, either. If I did, it might give you a clue to the answer. You have to be careful with your secrets. I'll give you that little tip, for free."


"Oooooh..." Estella's eyes went wide with awe, and Stefan gave Max a grateful, gratifying look. Then her mind snapped back to her current obsession. "I'll bet *you* wouldn't let on where Radian was, if you knew. If I knew it I'd probably let it slip around my stupid little sister, and she'd blab it all over." She stroked the action figures' hair lovingly. "I hope they never catch her, though. She's so pretty, especially when she was the Dark Goddess. I wouldn't have minded if she killed me then."


"Oh, sweety..." The expression on Stefan's face was such a mix of love and sorrow and worry, it felt like he was reaching straight into Max's chest and squeezing hard. They would have offered the frivolity of some minor magical trick, just to make him change it, but then the girl continued.


"That was when I was going to die anyways. But now it looks like I'm not, so maybe it's best that didn't happen."


That won a smile from her father, relieved and a little bemused. "I'm sure Max here is also happy to still be among the living. Not to mention your own dear old Dad."


"Oh." The pallid girl reddened a little, giving her gaunt face a feverish look. "Well, I'm just as glad to have you, and Max I guess, and mom... and Mina, when she's not running around being a brat. There's still a lot of stupid people I wish would just die, but that can't be helped." She snuggled against her father, closing her eyes.


"I guess we'll have to be satisfied with that," Stefan sighed, scooping her up. "Enough excitement for today."


As Max watched the pair depart from the front door, the mage felt a warning chill down their spine before the warmth of Laylah's sweet breath registered to their more mundane senses. "I heard most of that," she murmured in their ear, "What a charming little moppet! And the father, Teddy's pet mundane. So handsome! No wonder you've been so distracted lately."


They stepped away, turning to face her. "I've no idea what you're talking about. I'm as precise as ever."


She was nothing but friendly solicitude. "You don't need to blush. It's cute! I really think you ought to get out and meet people more often."


"And right now is the time to start, is it?" They retorted sardonically. Public sentiment was not appreciative of mages at the moment.


She sighed. "I meant in disguise, of course. All these years, have I ever done anything to actually earn your distrust? It's dear Teddy's doing, of course. He doesn't think you're clever enough to deal with me, so he warns you away. Well, do what makes you  comfortable. But you'll never win your heart's desire that way." She turned back into the darkness of the hall, leaving Max to their thoughts.


*****


Jacksonville, Present


"Why do you want to get in there so bad? They have guns in there!" Mina sat next to the stricken Maow, carefully holding one clawed hand and watching her face relax from pain to languor under the influence of some drug skillfully and surreptitiously injected by a camo-clad calico who had introduced herself as A'a'a'a'a. To Mina's relief, the catgirls' first aid skills far outstripped her own, and they had fixed up their injured in short order while she slumped to the ground in exhaustion. Other felinoids gathered with them behind the mangled wall of the hedge maze, treating the human in their midst with varying degrees of curiosity, suspicion, and total disinterest.


"That door is closed! How dare they!" Minyang did not respond to Mina's words so much as address the complaint to the world at large. She was as much of a leader as the catgirls could be said to have, but she seemed as prone to irrationality as any of them.


"Of course. And if it were open?"


"Well... it would be... less likely to contain interesting things?"


The single yellow-green eye port in Minyang's helmet was fixed on the big house as she stood boldly in a gap between the shrubbery. Mina flinched as a bullet slammed into armor, hurling the suit and its wearer to the ground. Minyang was on her feet in an instant, screaming defiance, but from behind leafy cover this time.


"Interesting thinnngs to eat in there!" purred an excited catgirl.


"Ourrr machine, that we hunt, to make humans less problemmmmmatic."


"Oh, yes. That too."


"Claw sharpeners!"


Mina closed her eyes, not wanting to think about that house and the awful women who lived in it. If not for all this noise, she could have curled up for a nap, right here next to Maow. Maow, who had come to her in her hour of need, after being spurned... Why had Mina sent her away? There had been reasons, they had seemed good--they probably still were, but she had trouble recalling them now. What if Maow hadn't been wounded, but--?


"Brrrrphhhhhrrr." An impressive mass of armored muscle flopped to the ground beside Maow. The catgirl Numnum gave her unconscious compatriot a sniff and a solicitous lick on the face. "The beast-friends have nnnnot fled. They do not realize that they are free..."


"Do you mean those horses? They just want to stay near the stables, probably. That's their home. Usually people who can afford horses take pretty good care of them."


Numnum appeared to contemplate this silently. Mina had about five seconds to savor the sensation of being listened to by someone before another voice broke in.


"Numnum, prepare. If the furrrrrriest among us shed our hair at the same instant, it should be enough to block out the sun. Thennnn, under cover of darkness, we strike!"


"Gross!" The outburst caused Minyang to turn to her, speculatively. Mina lifted her hands protectively to her own brown hair, currently bound messily into a ponytail. "What about Maow? Haven't enough people been hurt? They could have fired right through these bushes if they wanted to."


Minyang's helmet was off, and her eye bored into Mina's. "Innnnntolerable that the door remain shut."


"Maybe we can talk to them..." Mina was getting the hang of how these catgirls worked, and a glimmer of an idea had kindled in her tired brain.


"Mmmake them open the door?"


"If I do, you can't just go rushing in right away. You have to wait a little. And you can't attack, or eat any of them. It's not their fault that they're doing this."


"Why do it at all, then?"


"Because I know where part of the machine you're looking for is, and if you don't hurt anyone else, I'll tell you.  Now, does anyone have anything white?"


*****


"We almost shot you. But Robert was sure that looked like a flag of surrender. It is white, I guess."


"Thanks?"


"I can smell that thing from here. What the hell(tm) is it anyway?"


"It's... a white hairball on a stick."


"That's nasty."


"We didn't have anything else white... Look, I'm here. Do you want to talk or not?"


The eye that had been peeping through the cracked door disappeared, and the sound of fervent discussion erupted. The door opened again, wider this time, and a whole face appeared: white, mustached, thirtyish. "Come on in. Leave that mess outside, though."


Mina hesitated.


There was a sigh. "I swear on my honor as a Southerner you won't come to no harm."


"And I'll be able to leave, right? I can tell you, I wouldn't be much use as a hostage anyway."


"Alright, fine. I swear on my honor as a Southerner you won't be harmed or held."


It would have to do. Hurling her "flag" onto the lawn, Mina stepped into the widening doorway. The door closed behind her, and she was surrounded by rifles. Just pretend you're taking part in some reenactment. There were women here, too--Robertas?-- and though their dresses were plain, unadorned brown, someone had made sure to make them with 19th century patterns. They accessorized well with the rifles.


"Why don't you have a seat and you can say your piece?" One of them twanged, motioning towards what looked like a very valuable antique sofa. Mina settled down lightly as she could, not wanting to know what would happen if she damaged it.


"Do you know what the catgirls have come here for?" She looked nervously at the faces surrounding her, trying to identify traces of personality underneath the blank-eyed fanaticism. She had hoped that distance from Miss Rule would diminish her hold over her victims, and maybe it would with time, but at the moment they still seemed well enthralled. "There's a machine, something high tech--it wouldn't fit in with your aesthetic, I can tell you--" though she did notice some electric lights in the house, "If you give them that, they'll leave, and won't damage anything else." I hope.


There were glances exchanged within the group. "I think I know what she means. I helped fetch the dang thing and move it to the garage out back."


Mina let out the breath she had been holding. "And you don't have to worry about the other buildings, right? Just the house?"


"It don't seem right," muttered one of the Roberts, but he was shushed by his fellows.


"You tell 'em where it is and get 'em out of here." Said the man who had opened the door.


"Also--the front door--they don't like it closed. Can you open it up a crack?"


"Open the door, hell(tm). Why? We'll still shoot 'em if they try for it. They got all that ground to cover."


"I... don't think they'll try. They just don't like to feel you're being... inhospitable. And one more thing. Two of your men are out by the cistern. They need help. Bring shovels." She'd have to talk to Minyang again, make her understand about the half-buried men somehow. She stood up carefully, looking down. For the first time she noticed the strap of her bag, sticking out from underneath the couch. "That too. It's mine."


The faces around her hardened, a fanatical light in their eyes. "You can't take nothin' from the house."


"... but it's mine..."


"That's for the mistresses to say, and they ain't here. The bag stays, but the contraption out back you can take. We got a deal?"


Mina swallowed, her throat sour. The bag had her wallet, her cash... and, unless it had been taken, her fancy gun shaped laser pointer. Yes, it was only a cat toy... but it was a high tech, super powerful cat toy, the only such item she possessed. But these people were beyond reason... and she was beyond the reach of any help. She reached out to shake the man's hand. "We got a deal."


*****


"And that's how I lost my most valuable material possessions," Mina murmured to Maow, who lay sleeping on a portable cot. She watched dully as Minyang and her squad hauled their precious mind control device around on a flatbed, causing browsing horses to scatter before them. The sight of the thing caused visions of cherry bombs to dance through Mina's head. If only she had powers, like exploding things with her mind... From the house, three men marched unspeaking with shovels over their shoulders.


She stroked Maow's hand absently, listening to the mutters and growls of A'a'a'a'a as she puttered about the catgirls' tank, making it functional again. What would happen now? Would they take her home? Take her prisoner? They didn't seem bad, exactly, and some were very nice, but the idea of trusting her welfare to them was unnerving given that they occasionally ate people.


But what choice did she have? She was too tired to run... and Maow... she wanted to be there when she woke up. She owed the catgirl that much, whatever happened.


The flatbed, pulled along mostly by the efforts of ginger Numnum, made its way down the drive. As it passed in front of the house, an object came sailing out of the upper story window. Mina gasped, standing up. Catgirls scattered in every direction, screaming. The object landed on the flatbed and sat there, inert.


"Be right back," whispered Mina to the injured girl on the cot, before pelting up the drive. She had less reason to fear the airborne package, having recognized it as her own bag. As she approached the flatbed, it occurred to her that just because it was her bag didn't mean that it contained her own things and that it might instead contain other, nastier things. She stopped before jumping aboard, looking around. Numnum, lying on her belly several yards away, gave her an encouraging claws-up.


Oh well. If it's got a grenade I can at least blow up the mind control device, thought Mina as she clambered onto the flatbed. She nudged the bag with her foot. Then she picked it up and tossed it onto the device's console. Nothing. Cautiously she unzipped the main compartment... there were her work clothes, her stiletto heeled boots, her fancy laser pointer. Everything.


Mina looked up to the balcony. Nothing there but a rocking chair, creaking in the wind.


Continued in part 2

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