“...and we should hopefully have the new mine operational in no more than ten days,” concluded Martis Tievais, Blake’s Minister of the Interior.

“Excellent, well done,” Blake replied. It was times like this that he wished he didn’t always need to wear his masked helmet as part of his ‘Lord Ferros’ persona. It kept his subordinates from seeing his encouraging smiles. Still, it was important that he be ‘Lord Ferros’ to these people. The only people who followed him, with the possible exception of Simona and Leo, did so out of fear. The public only obeyed to the extent that they did out of fear. Fear was what kept him alive. If people were to find out that beneath the daunting mask of Lord Ferros stood some schlub named ‘Blake Myers’...

Blake stopped that train of thought before it could get too far out of the station. He didn’t want to think about that now, or ever.

“Moving on, any update on the elf?” Blake asked Leo. “Has he actually done anything worth noting yet or is he still just, like... sitting around?”

Leo nodded to Gunta Izkapts, the Minister of Justice.

“The Elsel- the elf has largely behaved himself, but an incident occurred last night” Gunta explained. “It seems that an altercation broke out between him and two citizens. He was roughed up somewhat, but his two opponents are much worse for wear. There are conflicting accounts about who caused the incident. As of now, we have all three of them in custody.”

“Let the elf go,” Blake ordered. “He didn’t do anything.”

“B-but it is still undetermined if he is the culprit in this matter!” the Minister objected.

“Give me a break. He’s all alone in a country that hates people like him. Do you really think he’s going to go around picking fights with people? Let him go. As for the others, I want you to make sure that they’re punished as fully and as publicly as possible.”

“My Lord, I don’t think-”

“Gunta, you know full well how I feel about Otharians attacking other people just for being from someplace else,” Blake stated, his tone laced with warning. “I want it made clear to everybody just how little tolerance I have for this shit. I want you to come down hard on them. As hard as you can within the limits for this sort of thing.”

“...as you wish,” Minister Izkapts conceded with a resigned nod.

“But while we’re on the subject, double—no—triple the surveillance on the elf. I don’t trust him either. If he’s anything like those other two, then-”

”BLAKE MYERS!!! GET OUT HERE RIGHT NOW!!!”

Speak of the devil...

The room went silent as everybody turned to stare at the door where the furious but unmistakable voice of Sofie Ramaut had come from. Blake, in particular, went white as he realized what she’d just done.

“STOP HIDING AND COME OUT, YOU COWARD!!!” the woman hollered from behind the metal panel.

“Everybody out, meeting adjourned. We’ll handle the rest tomorrow,” the engineer-turned-despot commanded, trying his best to keep his voice sounding as calm and composed as possible. He wasn’t sure just how well he did, but at least he kept his voice from wavering. “Use the other door. I’ll deal with this myself.”

Once the others had filed out, Blake, ever so reluctantly, opened the door and an enraged Sofie barged in, her expression looking like she was ready to murder him. Without saying a word, she swung something long and thin at his head, which Blake managed to barely block with his arm.

“Hey! What the fuck are you...” he protested as he finally got a good look at the ‘weapon’ she brandished. “Is that a stick?!”

“Shut up, you fucking prick!” she snarled as she swung the thick tree branch at his head again. “Every single time I think I see some shred of humanity remaining inside of you, every time I have hope that maybe there’s a decent person hidden beneath that fucking mask of yours, you prove me wrong! I swear-”

On the third swing, Blake finally managed to catch the wooden weapon and bring an end to the sudden assault. He willed his mask to melt down into the rest of his suit so that he could talk to his assailant face to face.

“What the hell are you on about this time?” he demanded to know.

“Strapping bombs to children, you lunatic!” she cried as she struggled to free her tree branch from his powerful grip. “Samanta told me everything! How could- How- GRRRRR! Let go!”

“No way!” Blake shot back as he tried to understand just what the crazed woman was frothing over. A moment later, he managed to put the pieces together. It had been so long since any of it had been relevant, he’d largely forgotten about it. “Look, Sofie, calm down. I didn’t strap a bomb to Sam’s neck. That’s not what happened.”

Sofie glared into his eyes. “Oh really?” she asked, sarcasm dripping from every syllable.

“Really!”

“Don’t lie to me, Blake! She told me you blew up a body with a collar to show her what it could do! Tell me right now, can Samanta’s collar explode?! Yes or no?!”

“...wellllll technically-”

“BLAKE!”

"Hey, I didn't make the rules for how this stuff works! You think I wanted cantacrenyx crystals to explode if you arrange the power flow wrong?! That's just how it is! Yeah, her collar can explode. So can this suit, so can all my robots, so can this entire fucking fortress! Almost everything I make could explode if configured incorrectly. That doesn't mean I strapped a bomb to her neck. I would have to significantly rework the internal systems of her collar if I wanted to blow her head off."

Sofie rubbed her temples, her eyebrows scrunching together in frustration, as she tried to process what he'd just said. "So... not a bomb..."

“No!”

“...unless you want it to be.”

“Once again, not my choice.”

“But you told her that it was a bomb.”

“Look, this is a lot more complicated-”

“Blake, that’s almost as bad! Putting somebody under that sort of trauma is a horrible thing, especially if they’re a child! She’s been living for an entire year thinking you could just snap your fingers and kill her whenever you want!”

“I did what I had to do!” Blake spat. “And stop acting like she’s some fucking angel! She didn’t tell you why I did it, did she? Huh? You just listened to her sob story and drank it alllll up, didn’t you?!”

“What are you talking about?” Sofie asked, his sudden outburst causing her to shrink back slightly.

Blake leaned in towards her, refusing to let her back away. “Who do you think stabbed the knife into my spine? It wasn’t one of their Apostles or soldiers; it was your beloved Samanta! She literally stabbed me in the back after I saved her fucking ass from the bastards that killed her family, and you know what? If I hadn’t clamped that thing around her neck and told it I’d kill her if she attempted anything, she would have tried to finish what she’d started. You weren’t there, you didn’t see the way she looked at me. I wasn’t a human being in her eyes. I was something that had to be put down.”

Sofie withdrew under Blake’s intensity, turning her head to avoid his gaze. He could see the conflict raging inside her, and he reveled in every second of it; though it felt like she argued with him constantly, such moments were frustratingly rare.

“Why go through all this then? Why didn’t you just kill her?” she finally asked.

Blake hesitated. Did he really want to just tell her everything? For a split second, he considered just telling her some half-truth, but no. It was true that Sofie was generally frustrating and annoying and even infuriating much of the time, but one good thing to having her around was that he could open up to her in ways that he couldn’t to the Scyrians. She’d harp on whatever he told her, saying that he was a moral degenerate or something along those lines, but strangely, he never felt hate from her. It felt liberating to finally be able to confide in somebody, even if all it engendered was scorn.

“I almost did,” he admitted. “It was close, closer than I want to admit. I was so... so angry then. I don’t think you understand what it’s like to just lose half of your body in the span of a second. I sure wouldn’t have been able to comprehend it before it happened to me. It doesn’t feel like you just lost half of your body, it’s like you lost half of what you are. You feel like you, as a person, can never be whole again, and it just makes you feel so... violated. Everything in your world just falls apart, and then it’s all down to a war between the part of you that wants to curl into a ball and cry and the part that wants to make everything around you burn and suffer for your pain.

“Well, the world in flames part of me won. In that moment I wanted to make everybody and everything feel the anguish I was feeling, especially her, but... she was just a kid. If Samanta had been your age, I think I actually would have killed her right then and there. It would have been messy and painful, too. But there was this one little part of me still left inside that wouldn’t stop yelling that she was just a child. That voice saved me. It made me stop just long enough to realize what I should do.

“Samanta’s a believer. You know the type, right? The ones who aren’t just religious, but actually live and breathe all that shit. That’s her, if you can’t already tell. Hell, she was quoting scripture as she stood over my broken body. When I looked at her and I saw the hate and the fear and the conviction in her eyes that said that killing me was a holy act of goodness, it was like I was seeing everything wrong about this country all wrapped up in a single little girl. If I could fix her, if I could fix the dogmatic worldview, and the xenophobic hatred, and the slavish worship of authority, and the rampant ignorance... if I could fix all that, then I could fix everything about this place. Besides, her entire family had just been murdered before her eyes out in the middle of nowhere. She would never have survived on her own. So I took her with me.”

“So you were just gonna ‘fix’ her?” she asked, skeptical. “That simple? Just debug the code, unclog the pipes, tighten the bolts, and suddenly she’s all better? People aren’t machines. It’s a lot more complicated than you’re acting. Especially given the things you put her through.”

Blake shot Sofie an annoyed glare and let out a sigh. “I know, I know. I thought I could do something. Show her the truth, but...”

“But it’s not going so well, is it?”

“I didn’t think it would be this hard. She’s stopped fighting me every day over her studies, so there’s that, but... I think what I want, more than anything, is just to have her understand that what she did wasn’t some virtuous deed. She’s never once expressed any real remorse over it, never once told me she was sorry. I’ve taken care of her, fed her, taught her, protected her, given her a home, and I’m still the enemy in her eyes. No matter what I do, it can’t overcome some stupid fucking passage in a book saying that I’m evil and need to be eradicated.”

“The problem is that she doesn’t view this as a home, she views this as a prison and you as her jailer. She’s right. You do treat her like a prisoner. And you’ll never make real progress until you stop.”

“I don’t treat her like a prisoner at all! She has her own room, she can go generally wherever she wants in the fortress, she can-”

“She has a collar! Strapped! Around! Her! Neck! Nothing else matters!” She groaned and rubbed her forehead in exasperation. “Look, you still don’t trust her, Blake. The way you deal with her practically screams that, and everyone can feel it! Take the collar off. Show her you believe that she can grow and learn on her own, instead of saying that you view her as a threat in what’s supposedly her own home. You can’t be a father figure for her and treat her like a criminal at the same time. You have to trust her, and that starts with getting rid of that damned collar.”

“I never said I wanted to be a father figure for her,” he vehemently denied. “I just wanted to set her straight and keep her from dying out in the wilderness or alone in an alley somewhere, that’s all.”

“You expect her to grow up without parents? She needs a father, and sadly, you’re the best she has right now. So I suggest you take another look at what she needs and how you treat her.”

Blake’s mind kept flashing back to that fateful night and to the almost euphoric mix of fear, pain, and exultation he’d seen plastered over her face in the light of the moons. Sure, she could still be petulant, moody, uncooperative, and unappreciative, but it did seem like she wasn’t that anymore. Was Sofie right? Was he sabotaging his own efforts?

“I’ll think about it,” he eventually replied.

“Think quickly,” Sofie said, crossing her arms. “And while you’re at it, tell her the truth about the collar, or I will.”

“Fine, fine, I get it,” Blake grumbled.

“Good. It’s annoying having to find something metal-free to beat you with. Now while I’m here, let’s talk about Crirada.”

Blake groaned.

“No groaning! You promised to help them more, so what are you doing about it?”

“I’m working as best I can, but there are limits. The Flying Toaster can only carry so much in a single trip, and decreasing my current reinforcements even a little risks that damned woman breaking through and ending the siege.”

“Can’t you just make more zeppelins?” Sofie wondered.

“Given the proper crystals, sure, but that’s one of the biggest limitations of cantacrenyx technology. We can only pull so many of them from the ground a day, and I don’t get to choose their size. I don’t have the materials I need to make a second one yet.”

“Then what else can you do? Can’t you just make some big trucks or something and drive a robot army north?”

“I already lightened my security in Otharia to beef up the units in Crirada when you asked the first time. I’m not doing it again, not with the Otharians the way they are and not with that peasant army up at the border.”

“Aaargh! Come on, people are dying up there every day! They have to be on their last gasps at this point!”

Blake shook his head stubbornly. “If we want to turn the tide, we’re going to need to find new weapons. New ideas. Actually, do you know what would do it?”

“What?”

“If you got that catgirl to fucking work with me and help me make some real explosives.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have made her dislike you,” Sofie shrugged.

“I didn’t do anything!”

“You yelled at me, her sister.”

“Oh, come on! This whole ‘we’re family’ act is stupid bullshit.”

Sofie’s eyes flashed with malicious intent, and Blake brought his arm up just in time to block another swing of the tree branch.

“Say that ever again and I’ll make you regret it for the rest of your life,” she warned.

“What, you’ll find a second stick and start dual-wielding?”

“Blake, I’m not joking! Pari takes her ‘family’ very seriously, and so do I! She’s my precious little sister no matter what you say, and if I ever saw somebody yelling at her the way you yelled at me, it would get far uglier than what she’s doing to you! You should just count your blessings that she didn’t try to blow you to smithereens!”

“Maybe if she tried, it would give me some clues and I might be able to figure out how to make the bombs we need,” Blake replied with a roll of his eyes.

“I’m serious!” Up came another swipe of the stick, once more ably defended by a blocking arm.

“So am I!” Blake countered. “We should be on the same side here. Didn’t you say that another ‘family’ member is still in Crirada? If you want them to survive, then help me! Get that little urchin to cooperate so we can end this stupid war and go back to doing the things we wanted to do in the first place!”

“Fine, fine, I’ll talk to her,” Sofie grumbled. “I’ll do what I can, but she’s stubborn and does what she wants most of the time. You have no idea how hard it’s been to keep her from blowing up every campsite and inn room we stopped at these last few seasons. I shudder to think of what might have happened had you not created that courtyard for her like I asked. Come find us in a few hours.”

As Sofie turned to leave, Blake realized that thanks to her furious outburst taking precedence, he’d nearly forgotten all about a certain grave misdeed. “Hold on!” he said, quickly grabbing her by the shoulder before she could exit the room. “Don’t think you can just skip out of here after what you did!”

“What did I do?” she asked, puzzled.

“You said my name in front of everybody, you idiot!” Blake growled.

“...and?”

“You realize there’s a reason I wear this mask every time I leave my chambers, don’t you?! I didn’t call myself ‘Lord Ferros’ for fun! I’ve worked constantly to craft an image as an overpowering, domineering figure that nobody would dare oppose, because that’s the only way I can reliably wield power here, and you just destroyed all of that with the people I need to work with the most! I need these people to bow down to me, and nobody is going to bow down to somebody called ‘Blake Myers’!”

Sofie just stared at Blake’s aggrieved visage for a moment before a small smile crept onto her face. She let out an amused snort, which quickly turned into a fit of giggles.

“This isn’t funny!” Blake protested, which just led to more snorts from his counterpart.

“Blake... oh Blake...” Sofie said in wry amusement.

“What?!”

“They already know who you are, Blake. They knew your name before I ever showed up.”

“W-wait, everybody?”

“Not the public, I think, but your advisers or whatever? Oh yeah. They probably knew from the start.”

The news stunned Blake, sending his mind reeling. It didn’t make sense! “But how? And why didn’t they...?” he mumbled to himself.

“Blake, chill. This is a good thing. It’s probably the only reason they’re still serving you. It let them know you’re human. I mean, who would want to work for a faceless monster?”

With an amused smirk lighting up her face, Sofie turned and walked out of the room and out of Blake’s view, leaving him standing alone in the conference room, slack-jawed and befuddled.

“Oh, and don’t worry,” Sofie added, popping her head back around the door frame, “even with a name like ‘Blake Myers’, we all still know that you’re a violent, angry jerk. Later!”

*     *     *

Every so often, Blake would redesign some or all of the interior of his fortress, creating a whole new layout of rooms and hallways. It helped spice things up a little and let him deal with things like two moochers who’d decided to just crash at his pad for an undetermined length of time. However, it always took him a little while to fully remember how to get to various places, especially concerning rooms he rarely visited. He’d often need to consult a map for the first few days. This time, however, he didn’t bother. All he had to do was head towards the sounds of explosions and the high-pitched laughter that followed.

Soon enough, he emerged into a large courtyard and squinted as the strong midday sunlight washed over his eyes. Once his vision adjusted, he saw what appeared to be some sort of war zone before him.

In an effort to keep the courtyard from becoming an oven of reflected sunlight and burning-hot metal, he’d placed the room at ground level and covered the floor with four feet of topsoil and grass. The effort of essentially ripping out a large section of a pleasant field, transporting it into the city and deploying it in his fortress made him realize just how difficult and demanding landscaping must be back on Earth, but he’d been proud of the final result. He wished he’d thought of it before, and it rankled him slightly that it took a suggestion from Sofie for him to even think of it. The soft green grass provided a welcome change of pace from the smooth grey metal that so dominated the rest of the place. At least, it had on the first day. Then Sofie’s little monster had set up shop.

By the end of the second day, Blake’s idyllic pasture had disappeared for good. Gone was the lush flowing grass, replaced instead by a series of craters of various widths and depths. Bits of dirt and plant life could be found strewn all about the area, not just in the craters and on the small patches of field that still remained, but also on the benches set against the side walls, the one remaining table in the corner, and even on the clothes and hair of the two children responsible for the mess.

Pari Clansnarl was every bit the pint-sized terror that Sofie had portrayed her to be. When she’d first said that the catgirl would burn down the entire city if left unattended out in an inn somewhere, he’d humored his fellow Earthling but hadn’t put much stock in her claims. The woman had demonstrated a tendency towards hyperbole, after all, and how could something so adorable be that dangerous?

Now that he’d witnessed the tyke’s true nature firsthand, any urge he had to scratch behind those ears had evaporated into thin air. He thanked his lucky stars every day that he’d listened to Sofie’s advice on this particular matter. The last thing he needed was more chaos out there to deal with, or, even worse, any remaining Otharian resistance hardliners hidden in the population getting their hands on her explosives. Just thinking of Otharian candle-based IED’s made his blood pressure spike. In other words, while he thought it good that Samanta finally had somebody around her age to associate with, he wasn’t sure that this particular child was the best choice.

He spotted the two children on the other side of the yard, standing over a freshly created smoking hole. While Pari looked to be her typical ebullient self, Sam lacked her usual sullen demeanor, her mood seemingly overrun by sheer bewilderment, as if she didn’t know how to feel about anything happening in her life right now. Blake understood where she was coming from.

That sympathy didn’t stop him from feeling slightly irate at her, however. She’d been the only person he’d given his name, so the knowledge of his identity could only have come from her. The revelation further clouded his already muddy thoughts concerning the girl and his relationship with her. On the one hand, truly reaching her and showing her the error of her ways and worldview remained one of his top goals. If his own actions were impeding that goal, then it was only logical to address said actions. On the other hand, he couldn’t help but feel that her actions constituted some form of attack towards him, some childish attempt at undermining his authority. Even if Sofie claimed it hadn’t worked as intended, part of him wanted there to be consequences.

Both of the kids spotted him just a moment later. The way their faces fell when they noticed his presence reminded him how much he hated dealing with children. He’d always thought that children were all a bunch of selfish, ungrateful, and annoying little runts, and between Samanta’s passive-aggressive angsty brooding and Pari’s complete inability to show him an ounce of respect, his opinion had only solidified further. Still, he put on his best smile and gave a friendly wave. He needed this to go as smoothly as he could manage it, and if that meant putting on a false veneer, then that was what he’d do.

“You kiddos having fun?” he asked in as dadly a manner as he could manage.

“Pari was having fun with Sammy-friend until Metal Man came,” the catgirl replied, her ears flattening against her head and her tail beginning to flit about.

“Hey, hey, call me Blake,” he said, as friendly as could be. “Sofie says you promised to show me how to make nice explosions. Can we do that now? I’m very busy.”

“Hmph!” Pari snorted, turning her head off to the side in a huff. “Pari is busy too! Metal Man should come back later!”

Blake’s smile faltered slightly for a moment as the urge to strangle the brat in front of him flared up inside him. God, he hated dealing with kids.

“Just give him what he wants and he’ll leave so he can get back to ranting about this woman he hates,” Samanta chimed in from the side. Blake sent a pointed glare her way, but she just returned it with the same dead-eyed stare she usually gave him.

Luckily for him, his ward’s words did the trick and Pari perked up immediately. “Metal Man will leave quickly if Pari teaches him?” she asked.

“If you do a good enough job teaching me, then yes. And for the last time, my name is Blake!”

“Metal Man, come look! Pari will teach!” the child chirped as she ran back to the other side of the enclosure to a large patch-covered sack and pulled out a variety of objects from within. The items fell into two categories: metal container and contraptions of various sizes, and small blobs of what looked to be some sort of soft wax.

“That reminds me,” Blake began as he joined the child on the other side of the courtyard, “is the wax I got for you acceptable?”

Pari frowned in seeming dissatisfaction. “Pari can use Metal Man’s wax, but grandfather’s wax is way better. If Pari didn’t need to use last of grandfather’s wax to store supplies, Pari would not use Metal Man’s wax.”

With practiced motions, the girl quickly connected several of the larger metal contraptions into a larger unit. Curious, Blake reached out to inspect it, only to have it pulled away from him at the last moment.

“No!” the beastkin cried, possessively hugging her equipment to her small chest. “This is Pari’s! Metal Man get his own!”

“And where did you get yours?” Blake inquired, his blood pressure rising. It was like Sofie had trained her to be as obnoxious as possible.

“Grandfather made it just for Pari!” she proclaimed as if that answered the question.

Blake fought back a comment about this mythical absentee grandparent, knowing it would only derail the conversation further. Still, he couldn’t help but wonder at the identity of this mysterious figure. Whenever people mentioned other people when speaking, they sent understanding about the person in question along with their words, just like how they did with any other words. Most often, that understanding would contain bits of the person’s appearance or personality. This held true for Pari as well, or at least it did when she was talking about anybody else, like Sofie or Sam. But whenever she mentioned her grandfather, no images or anything else of that sort came with it. All Blake ever got was a feeling of strength and power. It bothered him and made him wary. Maybe the power she sent along was just the worship of a child, but either way, he didn’t like the thought of some powerful old man hiding out there somewhere left him a little leery.

With a tired sigh, Blake activated his powers and drew out some metal from the nearby wall, quickly forming it into a copy of Pari’s equipment. Pari let out a small gasp at the sight, her eyes suddenly twinkling with interest as if she’d just found something new to play with.

“Show Pari again!” she demanded.

“Maybe later,” he answered with a shake of his head. “Let’s just get this started. Show me how to make a bomb.”

“Pari doesn’t make bombs, Pari makes candles,” the girl stated.

“Right, you just keep telling yourself that.”

Pari picked up several of the wax lumps and quickly opened them with a claw, revealing several different small supplies of dried seeds, leaves, and even a tiny collection of different insects. “Just copy Pari,” she said.

Pari proceeded to use several containers to measure out portions of four ingredients and pour them into a mortar, all while explaining what each was and where she found it. Blake followed along as best he could, trying to imitate everything she did down to the finest detail and committing it all to memory. After combining all four ingredients, the child pulled out a pestle and began to grind the seeds, leaves, and bug carcasses together.

“Isn’t all of this too dry?” Blake wondered aloud as he crushed an insect with his pestle, his mind already working on ways to speed up the whole manufacturing process.

“Mix not ready,” Pari replied, continuing to grind away with patience he’d never seen in her during any other activity. Several minutes later, she finally stopped grinding and sat up a little straighter. “Mix ready now!”

Blake looked about for a stash of water among the ingredients but didn’t find one. Instead, he stared in disbelief as the child picked up the mortar, brought it closer to her face, and proceeded to spit several times into the container before placing it back on the ground and resuming her work with the pestle.

“Seriously?” he asked incredulously.

“Nya?” the confused catgirl replied.

“I have to spit in this? Why not just use water or something?”

“Metal Man is really stupid,” Pari responded, giving him a condescending look that made Blake want to throw her off a cliff. “Why would Pari use water in candles? Water makes fire go out!”

“Saliva is also-” Blake ground out before catching himself. Arguing with a normal child would be unproductive. Arguing with this one would perhaps constitute the greatest waste of time in history. “Whatever. So I just spit and keep grinding?”

“Uh-huh,” Pari said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Fighting down his irritation, Blake did as instructed. Several more minutes of intense grinding later, Pari pronounced them done. She then pulled out a large block of wax. Blake recognized it as some of the wax he’d provided, a sort made by a Scyrian insect that seemed to fill the same ecological niche bees filled on Earth. Then she took out a series of small cylindrical containers and, with a precision born of years of repetition, used a tiny flame to melt the wax and coat the insides of the cylinders with thick layers of it, creating a casing to hold the mixture.

“So you just pour it in and that’s it?” Blake inquired.

“Sometimes Pari mixes more wax inside,” she replied.

As the two of them poured their mixtures into their respective candle shells, placed wicks in the middle of each, and covered the open tops in another layer of wax to seal them up, Blake couldn’t help but find the process underwhelming. He’d expected some sort of secret ritual, but instead, he’d gotten nothing more than a girl grinding up common items into a paste and putting it inside some wax. It made no sense to him that this wasn’t more known. Given the abundance of these materials, some aspiring alchemist surely would have discovered something along these lines centuries ago, right? If he hadn’t seen the results already, he would have believed this all to be some sort of hoax on the child’s part. After all, who would believe that mixing plants and some dead insects together created an explosive compound?

Ready to test the results, the three of them moved more towards the center of the chamber. Blake pulled a small metal wall up through the soft ground for protection, something he realized he should have done days ago.

“Pari lights candles like this,” the girl explained, snapping the fingers in her left hand to create another tiny flame. Then, once the wick caught, she threw the small wax cylinder over the wall and ducked.

Crack!

A sharp explosion echoed off the walls. Even though he’d expected it, Blake still reflexively flinched at the sound.

“Heeheeheeheehee!” Pari giggled manically. “Now Metal Man try!”

Unlike Scyrians, Blake couldn’t just conjure fire from nowhere, so he had Samanta light one of his candles with her electrical powers instead. Quickly tossing the lit candle over the wall, he bent down beside the others and waited for the Earth-shattering kaboom.

Only silence greeted them.

“What the hell?” Blake muttered. Covering himself in his full armor, he strode over to the candle, which sat, unlit, in a nearby crater. Picking it up, he saw that the wick had indeed burned and melted away the wax at the top, but the fire seemed to stop at the mixture inside.

As soon as he’d returned to the safe side of the wall, defunct candle still in hand, Pari tossed a second of hers over. This time, his helmet and mask still in place, Blake stood up to watch what happened.

The candle bounced, its wick still lit, and settled against a small mound of dirt resting on the side of a moderately sized crater. Voraciously, the fire ate its way down into the wax and then-

Crack!

Once again, the candle erupted in thunder and flame. Quickly Blake had Sam light another of his creations and threw it over. It bounced several times before settling several feet from where Pari’s candle had been. Just like with hers, the flame rapidly worked its way into the wax, but then, instead of the desired fireworks, the fire simply petered out with a pathetic little wisp of smoke.

“What the hell!” Blake said again, much more vehemently this time. “Did I fuck up somehow?”

“Metal Man bad at making candles,” Pari giggled in from the side.

“Gee, thanks. How about I make some more and this time you watch me and tell me what I’m doing wrong.”

“Okay!”

This time Blake went slowly and deliberately, making sure he had the right ratios and confirming each step with the child both before and after.

“Are you sure I can’t use water or something?” he asked as he stared at the mostly ground materials in the mortar.

“No! Pari spit every time!” she stubbornly insisted. “Makes paste smooth!”

“Ugh, gross...” Blake spat once more into the mortar and resumed his work.

Minutes later, he stood over another crater, profanities spewing forth from his mouth like water from a broken hydrant. Another dud! The frustration of failure threatened to reach a boiling point now, spurred to greater and greater heights by the catgirl’s amused laughter.

It didn’t make any sense! They’d followed the same steps and used the same ingredients! Pari had even signed off on the second batch after each step! There was no difference between his candles and hers, except...

Blake paused in his rage as a strange thought came to him, one that seemed almost ludicrous but was perhaps the only explanation. Then a second idea came to him, one that he could use to perhaps solve two problems at once.

“Sam! It’s time for a test,” he proclaimed, striding back to the others.

Samanta stiffened at the sudden change in his demeanor.

“Do you remember what I taught you months ago, about the foundation of science? The scientific method?”

“Ummm, I think so,” the child cautiously replied.

“Well, I guess we’re about to find out. You watched us this whole time, right?”

Sam nodded hesitantly.

“Good. I want you to figure out why my candles do not explode and hers do. I want you to prove it with an experiment.”

“Uh...” Samanta stared blankly into the middle distance as she considered the situation. “You both seemed to do the same things... and you used the same ingredients... except... spit?” She looked toward him, somewhat nervously.

Blake shook his head. “This is a surprise exam. I’m not going to help you.”

“Well, the one difference is that you used different spit. Maybe your spit is different from hers for some reason.”

“Very well, then how would you test for that?”

“Um... well Pari’s candles are the ones that work and they’re the normal ones since she is the person who always makes them, so I guess those would be the standard group-”

“Control group,” Blake interjected.

“-the control group,” Samanta corrected. “And then candles with your spit would be the experiment group and uh...”

“Should I make the experiment group candles?”

“No, Pari should and use your spit because spit is the, uh...”

“Independent variable,” he prodded.

“...independent variable,” Sam repeated nervously, “and the other variable-”

“Dependent variable.”

“-would be if the candle explodes.”

“That’s a good start, but we can go further, can’t we?” Blake asked.

“Uh?” Samanta replied, puzzled.

“If it is spit that makes a difference, is it Pari’s spit that makes it work, or my spit that makes it not work? Maybe it’s not Pari that matters. Maybe it’s that I’m not from Scyria.”

“Well, Pari could make one with my spit too then. Maybe a fourth one with no spit at all as well.”

“Interesting...” Blake said, rubbing his chin. “Well, Pari? Sam seems to have a plan. Will you help her?”

“Pari will always help Sammy-friend!” the catgirl chirped with a broad, toothy smile. She pulled out more supplies, while Blake made four separate mortars and pestles to contain each of the samples, and the pre-adolescent alchemist got to work in a flash.

Soon enough, four separate candles sat on the top of the low wall.

“Let’s begin the testing,” Blake declared. “Save the control group for last.”

Sam picked up the candle made entirely without any sort of bodily fluids and handed it to Pari, who lit it and threw it over the wall. Several moments later, the flame fizzled out without even a hiss. The next candle was the one with Sam’s saliva; it too went out without the desired boom. The third candle, Blake’s, predictably behaved just like all his others—a dud like all his others.

“You gotta be fucking kidding me,” he grumbled as the fourth and final candle arced over the wall and towards the pockmarked land on the other side.

Crack!

“What... the FUCK!” Blake cried, whirling on the catgirl. “Do you have like, explosive spit or something?! Are you some sort of freak?! What the hell are you?!”

“Nya?!” Pari yelped, scrambling away from him. Strangely, the little gremlin seemed just as confused as the rest of them.

“I’ve seen her spit in every candle and they don’t all explode,” Samanta chimed in. “They do a bunch of different things.”

“So, then what, like, a catalyst of some sort? Are all beast people like this? What about other stuff? Have you tried blood?”

“Grandfather said to not use people’s blood! Too dangerous, grandfather said!” Pari said, still backing away slowly.

“Did he say people’s blood, or did he say your blood?” Blake pressed. “Who the fuck even is this old bastard, anyway?! I’m sick of you always talking about him and never saying who he is!”

“Grandfather is the best!” Pari declared, her chest swelling with pride. “Grandfather is super strong and super great! Grandfather makes the bad people run away and then grandfather kills them anyway because bad people are bad!”

“What kind of bullshit answer is that?! That didn’t tell me fucking anything!”

“Nya?”

“Blake, leave my sister alone!” a stern voice from the end of the room commanded. Blake turned to find Sofie marching out into the courtyard.

“What, can’t I get some answers? Don’t I deserve some goddamned answers by now?! Don’t we all?!”

“If she doesn’t want to talk about him, then she doesn’t have to talk about him.”

“I don’t know if that’s even what is going on here,” Blake grumbled.

“That’s not what you’re really mad about, is it? What’s the real problem here?” Sofie inquired.

“The problem is that your ‘sister’ is some sort of fucking mutant, and nothing works without her!” Blake fumed. “This ruins everything! If the bombs only work with her spit, then I won’t be able to mass-produce them to win the war! We’ll only be able to make a few each day! Fucking bespoke munitions! This is bullshit!”

Sofie shrugged. “Yeah, I had no idea. I don’t know what else you want me to say.”

“You didn’t think it was weird that she always spit in her concoctions?”

“She makes candles that explode and crawls into the corpses of acid-spewing toads and all kinds of other shit. Everything about her is weird. Why would something that insignificant stand out?”

“...fair point,” Blake conceded.

“Pari, sweetie, did your grandfather teach you to spit in your mixtures?”

“Uh-huh! Grandfather always did so Pari did too!” the child attested.

“So is there like this deviant catperson genetic line somewhere in Scyria where their bodily fluids are bizarre chemicals?” Blake wondered aloud. “And why haven’t I heard of them?”

“Maybe they were hunted down or something?” Sofie speculated. “Pari never mentions her parents, only her grandfather.”

“Hmmmmm, yeah I could understand why that might happen,” Blake agreed.

With Pari now busy putting away all her toys, including the new ones Blake had just made, his eyes now fell on Samanta. It had taken some work, and she’d struggled to remember all the terminology, but overall he believed that she’d demonstrated a good understanding of the basics of scientific thought. As her teacher, he couldn’t help but feel a bit of pride in her. She’d listened and learned, internalizing concepts that he’d taught her a while ago.

“Listen up, Sam,” he said to the girl. “You did well and passed the test, so I guess you deserve a reward of some sort. So... here.”

Samanta stiffened as Blake bent down, grabbed the thick metal ring that encircled her neck, created an opening with his power, and removed it from around her throat. She took one hesitant step back and then another, her eyes quickly moving from Blake’s face to the collar and back, looking for some sort of trap.

“Look, uhhh,” Blake continued when Samanta just kept staring at him like a deer in headlights. “If this were a movie right now, there’d be this sweeping, sappy music playing and I’d say something moving and emotional and we’d hug and cry and all that, but this is real life and I’m still not completely over the fact that you paralyzed me and shit but like... this is your home now. I’m sorry, I should have taken it off a long time ago but I wasn’t considering your feelings. So... yeah.”

Blake looked at his young charge, hoping that his words had some effect, but she didn’t even seem to hear him. Her attention was focused on her throat as she touched her hands to her neck gingerly, as if afraid she would still find the smooth metal wrapped around her neck. Then, without warning, she turned tail, sprinting as fast as she could towards the far exit without even a single word.

“Could have at least said thanks,” an annoyed Blake muttered as he watched her small back disappear into the shadows of the hallway.

“Well, that was the most pathetic heartfelt monologue I’ve ever seen, but at least you did it,” Sofie commented with a bit of a snicker, that annoying wry smirk back on her face.

“What’s that smug look for now?” he grumbled.

“You like her more than you let on.”

“I do not! You’re just making shit up.”

“Am I? You didn’t notice me but I was watching from the hallway during the whole last bit. You said you wouldn’t help her, and then you led her along the whole way. You wanted her to succeed.”

“...I just wanted to see all my hard work pay off, that’s all,” Blake huffed.

“Sure you did,” Sofie replied with a knowing grin. “It’s funny, after all the complaining you do about her and what she did, you actually do care for her somewhere deep down in there, don’t you. Maybe there’s still hope for you ye-”

WHOOP-WHOOP-WHOOP!

Both of them froze as Blake’s battlestation, placed out of sight and mind in a nearby corner the whole time, let out its customary shriek and began unfolding.

“That time again?” Sofie sighed.

“Yep,” Blake stated as he made his way over to the skitter. “Actually, it’s good timing for once. Those flags you made arrived in Crirada last night. I thought you might want to watch and see what happens.”

“Oh, good, I’d like that. Speaking of which, did you give them a good look to appreciate my world-class sewing machine skills?” she said with pride.

“No, and it’s only world-class because you’re the only person to ever use the sewing machine I built three days ago.”

“Spoilsport,” she grumbled.

“Quiet, it’s starting.”

As the various skitters ambled out to face his nemesis, a small one about the size of a moderately-large dog sprinted out ahead of the rest and headed straight for her. As it went, several compartments opened up to reveal several cloth flags that Sofie had created several nights before. Among the ten or so flags that deployed were the flags of the United States of America, Mexico, and Brazil. Since they weren’t sure of the woman’s country of origin, Sofie had tried to include as many likely countries as she could remember flag designs for, but sadly she only knew a few.

As the skitter approached the woman, it slowed down. Blake couldn’t hear it, but about now is when it was supposed to start playing a recording of their highly limited knowledge of Spanish, which was basically just “Hello” and “Where is the library?” repeated ad nauseam. The pair watched with great interest as the woman spied the small skitter, seemed to tense up, and...

“She punted it,” Sofie flatly observed.

“Yes, I can see that, thank you.”

“She seems really furious now, for some reason.”

“I’m not blind, you know. I’m watching the same thing you’re watching.”

“I don’t think that worked. I think we just made her madder.”

“No duh. We’ll try something else next time. Now be quiet, I need to focus on-WHATTHEFUCK?!”

Blake hurriedly zoomed out as two of his skitters suddenly switched from ‘operational’ to ‘destroyed’ without warning. What he saw baffled him.

Bouncing and rolling across the battlefield was a massive chunk of ice about the size of a mansion.

“Where the hell did that come from?!” he cried as he watched the gigantic boulder of frozen water continue along its trajectory—thankfully missing the other skitters, though some only barely—and crash heavily into the mighty Criradan walls.

Switching to a different camera that provided a better view of the city as a whole, a stunned Blake spotted half at least half a dozen other gigantic projectiles—including fire, stone, ice, and water—flying towards the city from various points in the Urban encirclement. Panicked, he zoomed in on the nearest source and blanched.

“Oh my god,” Sofie gasped.

“What in the world is that?” Blake wondered in horrified fascination.

“I think I’m going to throw up,” Sofie warned, turning away.

On the screen, the two of them saw an overhead view of what could only be described as an abomination. A mass of flesh, it writhed in place as it sat on a large bed of some kind, one large enough to hold several people at once.

“Those are people...” Blake barely managed to breathe, his voice barely audible over the sound of Sofie’s retching and the contents of her stomach spilling onto the mangled grass below. “Are they... sewn together?”

Against his better judgment, he zoomed in further, upping the resolution as best he could as well. What he witnessed horrified him. It looked as if somebody had taken someone and sewn another person to both his left and right sides, joining them shoulder to shoulder so their flesh had almost melded into each other and turned them into some sort of artificial conjoined being. While they each possessed their legs, it looked like only two arms remained while all the arms in between which would have gotten in the way of their joining had been cut off. Looking even closer, he saw the eyes of the outer men had been plucked out and their eyelids sewn shut. Their noses were missing as well.

“Are those... Manys?” Sofie asked, her voice weak. “Look, they all seem almost identical, if you ignore the...” She fought back a second vomiting session. “...the wounds. It’s like they took triplets and fused them together. It looks so horrible, they must be in so much pain...”

Blake winced. He couldn’t bear to look at them any longer, so he quickly returned his view to the battle between the woman and his units where, thankfully, his skitters seemed to be holding their own for the moment. “As bad as they look, they’re worse news for us. Their range is much farther than anything I have over there, even my sniper skitters.”

“What? So you can’t stop them?”

“Not with what I have over there, no. Even if I send everything I have towards them, those things are heavily protected and in fortified positions. All my units would likely get wrecked before they could even get close enough to do any damage. It would be like troops charging at cannons during the Civil War.”

“But otherwise, the Ubrans just keep tossing giant fireballs on the Eterians! They won’t be able to hold out like this!”

“This is why I needed Pari’s help so badly. They beat us to artillery. Fuck!” Blake unleashed his frustration, slamming his fist against the nearby wall. The sound of metal crashing against metal rand out into the courtyard.

“Then what can we do?!” Sofie cried.

“...I don’t know.”