Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I found myself once again in the empty white expanse. This time though, I was in my Minecraft body, still made only from cubes and rectangular prisms, and there was… a pile of clothes on the ground?

“What, did you think your clothes fused with you when you changed forms?” Astra asked teasingly. 

Huh. I hadn’t considered it, really. They were my clothes though, I would recognize that purple cloak anywhere.

“Anyway, this” Astra gestured to the empty space, “is your Warehouse. It is where you go between Jumps, where you can store items, and where items you buy may appear. While in a Jump, it can be accessed by spending an hour sitting by a closed door. This will allow you to make it lead here. It will continue to lead here until you will it back to normal, while in the World. You can only affect one door at a time this way.”

It took a while for me to process her words, but once I did I was elated. A home that traveled with me, world to world, that was (or at least seemed) infinitely big, enough that I could collect whatever I wanted from the worlds I traveled to, and was not limited about what I could keep. My blocky hands itched to begin building myself a paradise here.

Astra’s eyes twinkled in amusement. “I’ll give you a couple hours to play. But then it’s on to the next world.”

That was no time at all when it came to impressive builds, but it was enough time to make a basic storage area for the shulkers I had no reason to keep on me (and for my old clothes, which were just awkwardly draped over a shulker, interrupting the Minecrafty look.), and to set up that cobble gen and at least plant a couple trees. The flat, white floor could be broken with Minecraft tools easy enough, but even Silk Touch wouldn't let me pick up the block. Ah well. I could replace it with snow if need be. Still, as I finished planting one of each tree type, I avoided breaking more of the floor blocks. No need to do anything that permanent for a solution this temporary.

All too soon, Astra approached me. 

“It’s time.” she said with a small grin, holding up the Jumping tablet to me.

This time, however, instead of being faced with the name of the world as the header to a page of options, the entire screen was filled with a randomizer wheel. 

“Oh, you didn’t think you had seen all the mechanics of our little game, did you?” Astra asked, voice full of false innocence. I had, actually, but I supposed that I should come to expect surprises from her. After all, I was her entertainment, and what’s more entertaining than watching someone react to surprising new information?

“This Jump, I’m introducing you to randomization . It will be one of the most important determiners of your fate, so you had better get used to it.” 

… Did she think I had never been subject to RNG before? I assured her mentally that I was already experienced with leaving my fate up to the roll of the die. 

“Well, then. Get rolling, gambler.”

Each segment of the wheel had the name of a different fictional universe that I knew about. So I was rolling for my next world.

The options were: Girl Genius (my eyes darted immediately to it. My favorite media ever was one of the options?!), The Glass Scientists (more mad science? cool.) SCP (um. That could be very dangerous.) My Little Pony (what? Tone shift.) Magnus Archives (back to dangerous) RWBY (kinda depends.) Sky: Children Of The Light (interesting… well, at least it probably won’t be dangerous…) Miracle Of Science (oh wow! Somehow I thought that was too niche to end up here. Though I guess it doesn’t matter; it’s not about what most people know, it’s about what Astra knows. … or possibly what I know, it is a surprise that I recognize all these properties.)

Well. Time to spin. I clicked the wheel, and…

GIRL GENIUS

Wow, it’s really happening! I get to go to the world of Girl Genius! I really didn’t expect to get my favorite choice out of 8 options! In an excited rush, I scrolled to see the document…

And I was immediately faced with a new randomizer. This one covered in numbers and labeled age. Interesting, so I wouldn’t just be in my regular body from back home? I rolled, and got… 38. Wow. That’s older than I expected. Not really enough to be a problem, but even at 20 back home I still felt like a child. It sounds odd to say it but I’ve never been that old before. Well. No more relying on the pity of my elders, I guess. 

The next option was also a randomizer. But with only two options. It was labeled Gender. Which was interesting. I had already encountered powers that could change my mind (the knowledge imported by Pinpoint Crafting), so would this change my gender identity? That was a strange thought. I didn’t have a very strong gender identity currently, but still, a power changing the way I saw myself had some-

Astra waved her hand and the label changed to Sex. She gave me a deadpan stare. Oh. Well. I grimaced a bit. One of the things that was nice about my Minecraft body was that I didn’t have to deal with- with organs. I didn’t need to use the bathroom. I didn’t have to worry about my body being sexualized. (though that was as much a factor of the total isolation, really) I wondered if there would be an option for me to be a clank and negate this choice. But I had to get it out of the way. I grit my teeth and rolled. Male. Topping it off with something I wasn’t used to. Great. Well. It would be an experiment. Hopefully I didn’t end up shirtless as often as the main characters. 

Surprisingly, the randomizers stopped, and I was once again faced with 1000 CP and a list of things to buy. Well. I grinned maniacally. Time to find some stuff I really did want. 

I managed to resist just buying things straight away. I didn’t have many points to spend, and I needed my time in Europa to be awesome . 

Speaking of which. I wanted a Drawback, this time. Because I needed to be able to afford more cool perks. After a while of thinking I decided that being a Spark

Scientist - 300 CP Or you may be one of the real movers and shakers of this world! With an inquisitive mind, a well-rounded education and a nice toolbox, you’re a scientist, one of the forces around whom this world rotates! Not necessarily a Spark, you may just be a junior assistant, a staff member, teacher or other, similar professions. If you do want to be a Spark, this origin automatically makes you a minor spark, about as powerful as one of the members of Master Payne’s Circus for instance

(700 left) and taking both 

Guest of the Castle (Sparks only) +200 Your age is now set to young adulthood, and you are one of the young Sparks living onboard Castle Wulfenbach as a combination student/hostage in the Baron’s flying university. On the plus side the quarters are quite luxurious, the teachers and the resources provided for a young scientist are some of the best in the world, Von Pinn makes (literal) mincemeat of anyone who’d harm you, and there’s lots of interesting young minds to collaborate with. Plus, unless you took an earlier start time you’re guaranteed to soon meet an interesting young lady named Agatha... On the minus side the Baron is carefully watching everything you and your compatriots do, and ‘adopting’ any of your work he finds useful and shutting down any experiments he disapproves of. 

(900 left) and

Locket +400 CP Any time you try to use any super-intelligence, or superpowers, or anything out of the ordinary that is not from this jump, this gives you horrific migraines, that feel like burning spikes being hammered into your skull. Cannot be removed. May not actually be a tangible locket in the first place

(1300 left) would work. See, Locket doesn’t prevent me using the Girl Genius powers I buy, which means that the only things it blocks are my Minecraft powers, since that’s the only other world I’ve been to. Yes, those are very useful and I’ll be sad to see them go, but its not nearly as bad as it would be if I had already been to more worlds. (I didn’t notice when Guest of the Castle set my age down to 22, but it’s not like I was set on being old)

Traveling Toolkit - 100 CP And an excellent set, too! This is a full set of incredibly high quality, very much portable tools suited for just about any purposes you may need them for, especially for repurposing existing or enemy works! Just the thing any scientist would need for Sparking on the go!

(1300 left) for free with Scientist. 

Clear Understandings - 100 CP When it comes to opposition between Sparks, you’d be surprised how often it is that grave enmities and terrible wars erupt out of petty misunderstandings. If only any of them had this perk. What this does is to provide you a simple but undeniable advantage. Whenever trying to communicate with someone, people will always understand the meaning of your words in full, unquestionably and unequivocally. No sudden interruptions drop out of the sky to confuse or mislead things, no one makes sudden movements that make things go wrong, none of that! When you’re telling the truth, people know that you’re telling the truth, no questions asked.

(1300 left) for free with Scientist. Feels like a strange perk to have in the world of constant interruptions Girl Genius, but I won’t turn it down. 

A Spark of Genius - 600 CP Or you might be an absolute, incomparable genius in general, I guess. While anyone who takes the Scientist Origin may be a weak spark if they wish to, this is where you go for the good stuff. You now have, and thus are, one of the strongest Sparks on the planet now, an absolute, blazing genius like Agatha Heterodyne,either of the Wulfenbachs, Dr Vapnoople, or others at the same tier. The Spark, that something that makes the wonders of this world possible, is plugged into your mind and soul, inflaming it, filling it with a fire that boosts your mental facilities to unbelievable extents such that many things that should be impossible... suddenly aren’t. While you specialise in some field to extraordinary degrees, like being able to create artificial sparks if you choose ‘Von Neumann Clanks’, your genius is unbound by the petty concerns lesser sparks suffer from, allowing you to shine equally bright in every field from Microbiology to Trans-Dimensional Aeronautics. You have an instinctive grasp for scientific principles, can reverse engineer technology more or less just from seeing it, and have a head for calculation and numbers that defies belief. You can decrypt data in your head, have a completely flawless memory, and are in general the quintessential Mad Scientist. Complete with a gift for cackling and rants that can terrify anyone who isn’t, by the way. When in the Madness Place, especially, you have an outright effect that allows you to warp time and space in a small area around you, letting you do weeks’ worth of work in hours, and outright warp, twist, spindle the mutilate the very laws of physics as you craft your wonders… and horrors. Apart from the SCIENCE!, you have a charisma that borders on mind control, as anyone without a spark, or an exceptionally strong willpower is drawn into your orbit by your sheer force of will, ready to help and serve wherever they can. Your body is also somewhat better than most, allowing you to go all those all-nighters without food and fight off highly trained fighters while barely paying attention. 

(1000 left- discounted by half with Scientist) If I’m going Spark, I’m going all the way. You can’t stop me.

Professionally Drawn - Free You look good, Jumper. Nothing all that extraordinary by itself, but you’d be surprised how often it turns out to be of use. You look like someone drawn and coloured properly by some very skilled cartoonists.

(1000 left) Almost forgot the universal freebie. 

Artiste - 100 CP From acting to painting, there’s a lot of call for people like you around here! Simply put, you have the skills and talent to be one of the greatest, finest artists of all time. Not just in any one field either. Your talent is boundless and unbelievable at everything remotely art-related you do. With the slightest effort, you could be a scintillating star in all fields from writing, painting, singing, underwater basket weaving… er, you get the idea. Crowds throng to listen to a concerto from you, and books you write may well cause knife fights between people wanting to buy them! Such is your talent that in but a handful of months you could become a celebrity every but the equal of the Queen of the Dawn, or any other celebrity you’ve heard of. This also makes anything you do look unbelievably good, from your fighting which looks like a dance, to your clanks which all look like Things of Beauty and Grace even when stuffed chock-full of firepower. 

(900 left) sure, its a cheap trick to upgrade my art with points instead of practice, but come on. I need it.

Clank - 200/400 CP Or you may be of a more mechanical bent instead. You’re a clank now, what would in any other world be called a Robot… or rather an AI to be more accurate. Here, you’re a mechanical existence, composed of metal, clockwork and wires instead of flesh and blood. As you might imagine, this comes with certain advantages. Not only are you entirely ageless, you also don’t really get wounded, and even if your body is destroyed it’s entirely possible to move your intelligence elsewhere.

For 200 CP your body is only somewhat enhanced. Largely limited to human size, you might have a few guns, some magnetic capabilities, but in general your capacities are comparable more with Anevka Sturmvoraus or one of the Fun-Sized Mobile Agony and Death Dispensers of Castle Heterodyne. 

(700 left) Yes, I’m being a Clank Spark. Is that cheaty? Maybe. But freedom from the perils of eating normally, a new pain reduction method (because I don’t have the Minecraft one) and just generally getting to be nonhuman? Yes. 

A Premier Education - 200 CP The Spark does a lot, but it helps to have the right education. Village Sparks working with chicken entrails tend to die to pitchforks much more than city sparks working with sound principles. And now yours are the soundest of them all! This perk provides you an incredible, unbelievably thorough, advanced and extensive education in it, such that your knowledge and skills related to it are unquestionably along the absolute best in the world. This world being what it is, the field in question can be anything from biology to Space-Time analytics, Necromantic Construct Design and Engineering. The narrower the field the better your understanding of it, but as an absolute minimum this perk would provide you a top of the line, first class education like the kind you can get in Rome, Paris, Beetleburg or Castle Wulfenbach. Comes with fully acknowledged Doctorates.

(600 left-Scientist discount) Elzerei- Doctor of Optics. There is little I will not know about light. I miss my tablet so much I’m going to invent it just you wait. 

Girl Genius Box Set - 50 CP The books, the comics, every fanfic and every discussion online. This is everything you need to know about this world, and a lot you probably don’t.

(550 left) look. I’ve missed how many updates by now? I will not stand for it. This isn’t for strategizing. This is for my happiness.

Parisian Collection - 50 CP Outfits! A room full of boxes, all chock-full of the latest fashion from the clothiers of Paris, these are clothes, accessories, shoes and hats, and everything else one needs to look good! They have no sparky advantages, but they look really, really good and are perfectly tailored for you! Expect to be a hit at parties.

(500 left) look, there aren’t that many things that cost less than 100, and I can be vain if I want to.

“You know, you can save points to spend later” Astra commented.

Well, that was good to know, but. This was Girl Genius. I wanted it all. 

Worthy Workshop - 400 CP The tradesman needs the right tools, don’t you know? More than that, they need the labs! You have a full set of labs, for chemical, biological, mechanical experiments, as well as any other kinds you might need. Abominable, perhaps? These are some of the most elaborate, extensive laboratories and workshops in the world, with vast arrays of instruments and tools of the finest make, an unlimited supply of test subjects, and huge amounts of spare parts, reagents, books and journals… everything a spark needs to get going. You have just about any and all parts and reagents you might need, even things incredibly rare like water from the Dyne, and the absolute latest in all parts, of course. Furthermore, any and all properties you have that can support them all develop similar labs and workshops, providing you a virtually unlimited collection of spaces to work from so you’re never, ever left unable to tinker to your heart’s content.

(300 left- Scientist discount) Yes, I didn’t really expect it to end up anywhere but my Warehouse, but it will be a really nice way to deck out my new home. 

Benign Neglect - 100 CP The problem with being a Hero in a world full of Mad Scientists is, they rarely tend to be stupid enough to let you get all ready and going before they start hitting back. Well, that’s how it is for others, at least. Unlike the vast bulk of heroes in the world, you find that until and unless you start directly targeting someone, they simply never count you as an enemy, or even someone to keep an eye on. They won’t be particularly inclined to help you either, but it falls to you to make enemies. 

(200 left) I need some protection that isn’t up to me to make. This is a dangerous world and I am not always mindful enough to actually be able to protect myself. Avoiding being attacked out of nowhere will help.

Well-Seasoned - 200 CP It is a very rare fight that is lost because one of the combatants simply didn’t measure up. No, far more common are simple accidents. Maybe someone was ill, or feeling tired, or annoyed, or any of a thousand and one other things that prevent them from performing at the top of their skills. Such things lose fights and kill fighters, even experienced ones. Well, they won’t kill you, ever. This doesn’t do anything to enhance your skill in any way, but what it does is to ensure that you perform right at the top of them, all the time, every time. Whenever doing anything, you do it as the absolute, complete best you can do at the time. This doesn’t replenish your energy or stamina, but you use what remains with perfect efficiency. Every punch you throw, every stab, every plan made and every word spoken is done as utterly, absolutely best as it is possible for you to do, no matter what. 

(0) possibly could get something like this elsewhere, but again, I need to survive. And this, like Benign Neglect, will help me at least to avoid stupid deaths. 

Before I hit Confirm, though, I realized my soon-to-be-off-limits Minecraftian Inventory had all sorts of useful things in it that I wouldn’t be able to access without a headache. I put away everything, emptying out my inventory completely. Well… I looked at my Totem Of Undying. I wanted to bring it with me. Locket didn’t specify items being disallowed, and even so, using the Totem is activating it, not holding it. A debilitating headache would be worth saving me from death. The armor and tools weren’t worth it, since it was probably a power letting me wield them comfortably anyway, and I could come back for them if need be, but I felt helpless without the Totem. 

“Fine, yes, if you hold your Totem it will Jump along with you. I will bring along things you’re carrying if it makes sense.” 

I guess bringing my normal clothes to Minecraft didn’t really make sense. I didn’t think they could fit my blocky body, anyway. I looked back to the tablet, clutched my Totem, and tried to steady my nerves. I was starting in Castle Wulfenbach, not a war zone. But once I readied myself, I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and hit Confirm. Behind my eyelids, my vision swam with stars.

Chapter Text

I opened my eyes (heard the soft scrape of metal against metal as my mechanical parts facilitated the movement) To find myself strapped down to a slab. Above me, a Spark laughed maniacally. I panicked. That wasn’t fair! ASTRA! THIS WASN’T WHAT I AGREED TO! I was meant to be on Castle Wulfenbach! Protected and penned in my Von Pinn! What was this?!?!

I strained against the restraints, but all it got me was the unnerving sound of creaking metal. 

“AH!” the Spark turned to face me directly, “awake already, are you?” 

I froze, staring at him. Yes, I am. I looked at him, annoyed and confused. Where am I?

He knit his brows together. “I’m sure I connected all the vocal mechanisms.” A flash of anger, not directed at me, but behind my head. “Did Professor Apostol lie about this connecting to extradimensional intelligences?!” I assumed the machine he was talking about was there. 

But right. He wasn’t Astra. I had to speak. Out loud.

I opened my mouth, and an unsure crackling whisper escaped. “Hhhhhello.” 

His eyes met mine and lit up. He flung his head backwards in a new maniacal laugh, and exclaimed, “IT'S ALIVE”

Oh. But wasn’t I supposed to be 38?

I wheezed a laugh along with him, though it sounded more like a steam engine than a human, and said, “Very nice. But will you let me out of here?” 

He did so readily, though he did insist on testing my joints as he freed them. Honestly, the run down and reminder of my new range of motion was helpful. I seemed to be slightly more flexible than an average human. I was disappointed to find myself completely naked (I even bought clothes!) But my clank form luckily did not have anything to hide. 

This was proved technically untrue when he showed me the impressive array of tools hidden away in my hands and forearms, which I suspected were granted me from Traveling Toolkit. After testing my new form (and my Artiste perk) with an elegant twirl, I asked the Spark if he had anything for me to wear. 

After a while (and luckily after the Spark lent me a labcoat), a woman walked in, and did a double take. I looked behind me to see what she was so surprised about. 

“You got it to WORK?!” 

The Spark spluttered. “ You told me it would work!”

Oh, were they talking about…

“ Yes, but I didn’t think it actually would! I designed it to just look like it was doing something; there’s no way it should have actually summoned anything!” 

They were talking about me. But that’s interesting… an in-world reason for me to be here. Sure, not a perfectly scientifically sound one, judging by the woman’s rant, but something much more sensible than me appearing from nowhere or…

Huh. how was I expecting to start as one of the Baron’s pet Sparks. If I had just dropped in, how could I have that kind of history? But… in order to have a history in a world I'd never been to… Would I just… possess some poor soul already there? (or here, rather?) Thats… disturbing on several levels. I’m glad that seemed to not be how it worked. 

As I half-listened to their conversation (an argument about how it was I was summoned by essentially a prank Rube Goldberg machine, the answer to which I already knew was Astra’s magic) I wondered where my bought items were. My Traveling Toolkit was with me. My Girl Genius Box Set and Parisian Collection were nowhere to be seen (which in the case of the clothes I was a bit peeved about) My Worthy Workshop I assumed was in my Warehouse. (could the others be there too?). My Beginner’s Chest… the description implied that it had to start with me, and that it would be something different every Jump. And, most worryingly, my Totem Of Undying was nowhere to be seen, even though Astra told me it would come with me.

But… hmm. My Traveling Toolkit was inside my clank body. I only found it because the Spark who ‘made me’ pointed it out. Perhaps the Totem was there too, but he hadn’t realized it’s importance? 

I looked at the arguing Sparks warily. (I hadn’t been sure the woman was a spark, but the harmonics in her voice as she argued cleared that up. I wondered how she had avoided Arronev, and whether she would continue to. Maybe, if he came after her, I could do something about that…) But right now, they were both an awkward liability when I wanted to open up my chassis and do a proper diagnosis and rummage around. (normally, I wouldn’t dare do something like that, but the thrill of discovery thrummed in my chest and my fingers itched to build . It took a fair bit of will not to just open myself up with abandon, not bothering to worry about their reactions or my vulnerability in such a state. The more rational part of my brain told me the Spark I bought was working.) After a bit of thinking, though, I decided not to care. I was, technically, their invention (well, kinda. At least in their minds, probably) so it wouldn't make any sense for them to take the opportunity to attack me. The biggest danger would be getting them too riled up on Spark and them dissecting me further than I could repair. 

My mind made up, I snuck a little more out of sight. Not enough that they couldn't see me(I was no Smoke Knight), but enough that if they stayed distracted by their argument, they might not notice. 

And then I took out my tools, and sunk into the inviting, electric thrum.

It’s a unique feeling, taking apart your own body. The angles were awkward, and it took some wrist flexibility that I knew humans didn’t have to get my tools where I wanted. I hardly noticed, though, save a quick mental note on my flexibility. I was lost in the feeling of learning , of improving . I could see the mechanics of the universe. A wire here, a gear there, I knew how to make my body run better . I took materials from extra parts around the workshop, from some of the devices used to originally build this body. I couldn’t help myself. 

“Hey! What are you doing?!” My ‘creator’ protested.

I held up my hand, admiring the way the protective plates moved, almost being able to see the structure underneath. “ Improving your design! ” I declared, maniacal glint in my eye, “ Really, it’s a great start, but there’s so much that can be improved! ” I walked up to him and demonstrated shoulder movement, with both my borrowed lab coat and protective covering open so that we both could see the internals of the joint as it moved. 

“ See, if I- “ with my other hand, I began to disassemble and reassemble the joint, making improvements as I went. “ I can improve the joint efficiency by 13%, while allowing for much more backwards flexibility ” as I finished putting it back together, I demonstrated in a move that made it look like I’d dislocated my shoulder.

“ Ooh I see! ” He was getting caught up too, and he helped me as I repeated the change on my other shoulder. 

It didn’t take long for the woman Spark (had he said her name was Professor Apostol?) to join in as well, argument postponed on account of Science!

However, as I continued on to working with the power system (I had a battery that could keep me going without recharging for a week, and that was before I started improving my energy efficiency) they started to lag behind. They weren’t making suggestions. Instead, they were relegated to helping implement my ideas. 

I was a stronger Spark than them, and I was minionizing them. As I paused, the revelation throwing me out of the deepest parts of the Madness Place, they began to recover. 

His dignity damaged by being pulled into fugue by his ‘creation’, the male Spark (I had never caught his name) ran the whole ‘I created you; you serve me’ rant. I had no weapons, no real way to defend myself, but I would be damned if I let this weak Spark be my master . I sunk back into my Spark and told him he did not create me. That I was summoned by Professor Apostol’s device from another world, that I was my own person over which he had no dominion . 

I managed to avoid specific Sparky threats, but the tone of my voice implied an or else that he wouldn’t enjoy. 

The Spark was frozen, anger and fear battling it out in his expression. Before he reached a conclusion, Apostol began to lead him away. 

“C’mon. We’ll report him. The Baron will know what to do with him.”

They left me alone in the lab. Huh. The Baron will know what to do with him . It made sense; my clank body did look definitively masculine. But. I was not used to being he/him-ed. It was… interesting. 

I was of half a mind to redesign my body to be more androgynous and then correct them. (I thought about how I was confident I could redesign my body and marveled once again at being a Spark . Yes I had bought it but it was another thing entirely to feel the potential buzzing under your fingertips, to not just see cogs behind your eyes but to see how they connected .) 

Distracted by my Spark, I began to get back to work improving my clank body. Mostly it was efficiency, dexterity, and flexibility that I improved. Or at least, over most of my body that was what I improved. I also took it upon myself to improve the aesthetics (and make it a bit more androgynous), but mostly I just improved it to look cool and fit my personal aesthetic. (I wound up finding a way of treating the metal of the main coverings to make them shine an iridescent light purple, my A Premier Education in Optics making it surprisingly easy to understand the necessary wavelengths that it would need to reflect to make the color what I wanted.) 

I did, eventually, find my Totem of Undying, hidden close enough to my coolant pump to make extracting it a dangerous prospect. It took a few moments to come down from the technical side of my Spark and understand the poetic meaning of it(because functionally there was no reason to store it there other than the proximity to my center of mass); a second life stored next to the heart. I left it there, though caught up in my fugue as I was, I didn't realize how pointless it was when I placed cleverly treated glass over its glowing green gem eyes to make them look purple. I did also add a bit of defensive plating over the whole area, a metaphorical rib cage to go with the metaphorical heart. 

Once I was finished with the body (and managed to retain the presence of mind to close it back up afterwards), I moved to a problem I couldn’t see. The head ( the eyes ). However, I did not work blindly , so I began the design of a remote eye, one I could interface with my consciousness and use to see from outside myself

I was about halfway through making it and deep in a nest of wires (many of which were connected to it, my head, or both), when the Baron came in. His presence filled the room and I was thrown from fugue at just the sight of him. A real character from Girl Genius. A main character. Klaus Wulfenbach, ruler of Europa. A legend. A character from my childhood made flesh. The person fully in control of the flying city I was currently in. I rubbed a cloth over my optical sensors in an insane attempt to ensure I hadn’t just made myself hallucinate with my tinkering.

Chapter Text

“This is the being you summoned?” He asked incredulously to Professor Apostol and… the other Spark I still hadn’t gotten the name of. I immediately realized I didn’t exactly present a composed picture for him, tangled as I was in wires and parts. I stood quickally (too quickly for the proprioception that I had thrown off with my extra eye experiment. It was one of the things I had been in the middle of fixing.) and stumbled, suddenly dizzy. A few wires pulled themselves from my head and I caught myself on the table, my ears ringing as my sensory inputs changed unexpectedly. I managed to blink away the sight-doubling (I had fixed it but the unprepared disconnection had brought it back, luckily temporarily), and turn more sedately (and while picking up the device my head was connected to, preventing more disconnections) to face the Baron. 

“Herr Baron.” I greeted, Romanian fluent on my tongue (thank you A Premier Education, which seemed to not only grant the specialized knowledge that would have come with a doctorate in Optics, but also the unspecialized knowledge that would have come from the general education classes that one would theoretically take with the specialized ones. That general Europa university knowledge had, upon reflection, probably been part of what allowed me to go so far with the mechanics of my body.)

He raised his eyebrows slightly and glanced at the other Sparks. 

“I was told they had summoned an ‘extradimensional intelligence’ into a clank body they built. I assume that’s you?” he asked, more politely. 

“Yes.” I met his eyes, trying to resist protesting the ‘that they had built’ part. It was true but it failed to credit me for the current state of my clank body, which (excluding the mess of wires) I was rather proud of . 

“What were you doing, before we came in?”

The excuse to brag was too clear not to take.

“Well, I had decided to take a bit of a look at my new, mechanical body. And, well, there were a few things I thought I could improve on , I had finished with the main body and was moving on to how I could work on my own head- and, you understand, the visibility isn't great, and a mirror would be useless if I was going to be working on the improvements I wanted to make to my optics - So what better solution than to build a new, better eye, to see myself with -” My hands had begun to take apart the ‘new eye’ for him to examine (to show off), and I barely managed to stop myself before I hit on where it was already connected to my brain. I blinked, trying to ease myself out of fugue before I did anything (more) stupid. With a whistling steam-sigh in place of a deep breath, I looked back up to gauge the Baron’s reaction with something more resembling sanity. To my surprise, he looked intrigued, not incensed. Ah, of course, his own Spark fixation on the Spark itself- As far as I knew a mechanical host for the Spark was unheard of (it was not as if Agatha had broken through yet, if the timeline on my briefing was accurate). I was a new example, a new angle on an old problem, a- oh. Oh no he would brain core me. Oh I did not think of this when I had chosen to be a Clank Spark. And I chose to start on his airship . I should have thought of it oh. 

His expression shifted to a confusion that on anyone else might be interpreted as concern, and I realized my fear was plain as day in my expression. 

“I don’t know how Sparks were treated in your ‘extradimentional’ home, but I can assure you, I do not burn Sparks. I employ them… and educate them.” Ah, so he interpreted it as fear about him knowing I’m a Spark. Makes sense. Also, I was wondering how I’d end up a Guest of the Castle. I suppose this way makes sense. (though honestly, it's a bit hard to see why he’d put me in the school instead of just assigning me a job. But that’s not the text of the drawback so. I wondered how much power Astra has over him, his decisionmaking. It’s frightening to think about.) 

“Ah, are you offering to educate me ?” It was easy to guess right, when I already knew what Astra planned. What a tragedy, to be such a force of nature as to be controlled by a god. (and that’s what I figured she had to be, at least to me, to him, to everyone in the worlds she brought me to just for her own entertainment).

“Yes. I run a school, here, with a fair number of Spark students. You would… do well there, I think.” I wondered if he avoided saying ‘fit in’. 

“And if I refuse?” I wasn’t planning to. I wanted to meet Agatha, when she came up here, befriend Theo and Sleipnir, and maybe Gil if I was lucky, though my impression was he avoided the school after he came back from Paris. But I wanted to know. I wanted to know how tight a leash he wanted on me, how important it was he kept me on this ship.

His expression darkened, and I half-regretted the test. “I said I do not burn Sparks. This world is not a very safe place for a Spark on their own, especially not one in a mechanical body, as you say. To think yourself above the need for the protection I offer is a hubris I do not recommend .”

I cringed back a bit. The offer of protection felt more like the offer of ‘protection’ one got from the mafia, but he wasn’t exactly wrong. Othar would want me dead for being a Spark… now that I thought about it even Tarvek might want to take me apart to see how I worked, and that was just named characters.

“Sorry. Yes.” I replied hastily, adding “I was just curious” in a mumble. 

His expression softened a bit, not enough to look kind, but enough to not look immediately threatening. 

“You may finish your experiment. I’ll send someone from the school to take you there and get you situated.”

The Spark who had been working in the lab before my arrival (on the body that was now mine) seemed to sputter in discontent with the decision, but it wasn’t as if he could do anything about it. The Baron had made his decision. 

As the Baron left, I turned back to my work. Surely there was enough time before the person from the school got there to make a bit more progress … 

I lost track of time between then and when Theo showed up. Though by that point I had repaired (and improved!) my ‘extra eye’ and had moved on to working on my head. I had finished the more basic augmentations (plate coloring, joint efficiency, extra protection around vital ‘organs’, etc), and had just moved on to the improvements I could now make to my eyes, after all, I had learned so much from making the ‘extra eye’, and there was so much more I thought I could do.

When I noticed Theo come in, I twitched slightly, stuttering as I prepared to battle down my Spark enough to hold a normal conversation. But before I even managed to turn properly to him, he walked up to me with a bright grin.

“What’cha working on?” Well. That was a question I did not need to leave the madness place for. 

My voice sounded odd, echoed back through my open cranium, as I explained the improvements I was making to the optics and how they would work. Theo kept up better than the other two Sparks, but it still became more of a lecture and a minion than Sparks on equal footing working together, especially when we got into the details of my specialty. 

Again, I lost track of time to the whirr of machines, my own parts moving in perfect harmony with what I created, the universe laid bare to my hands. But this time, as I came down from the high of creation, it was as I once again clicked closed my casing, my work complete and perfect . I blinked my new eyes and ran them through a few of the many different modes of sight I had given myself, a test, but also reveling in the new abilities that I had given myself.

“Works well?” Theo asked with a grin.

“Yeah.” I flicked my sight back to the visual spectrum to smile back at him. “Thanks for the help” and for not being mad at me afterwards for taking over the operation. 

“Ah, well, you should be thanking me for these,” He held up a large stack of papers, with writing covering them.

“Oh!! You took notes!” I grabbed for them with excitement, notes on the upgrades to my body would help me remember what exactly I did (what my limits were), as well as being great inspiration for any new projects, and, well, Spark notes always looked so cool . 

“Ah-ah.” he pulled them back, and began removing approximately every other one. I was confused for but a moment before I noticed the sheets of carbon paper between them. Ah. He had copied my- well. His notes. Hm. On the one hand, I felt like the workings of my own body were proprietary information that I didn’t really want the notes for just passing around like Van Rijn’s notebook. On the other- He had written these notes. I had let him work with me, I had let him take notes. (or, I hadn’t noticed enough to stop him.) Even if I managed to take his copy of the notes, there was very little to stop him from just re-writing them as soon as he left my sight. (though my sight was now vastly expanded from what one would expect). I huffed and let him take his half. It was part of the Drawback. That the Baron takes an interest and tracks me and my work. That was where I assumed the notes were going, anyway. Theo had come prepared to take a copy of the notes, so I figured he had been told to. 

“Sorry; the Baron asked for a copy of your notes.” he said, confirming my suspicions and correctly interpreting my huff. 

“It’s not your fault. And I should have expected it.” He handed my version of the notes to me (the originals… interesting). “Thanks.”

“Well.” He tapped his papers on the desk to straighten them. “Let’s get you situated at the school.” 

“Sure.” I followed him out the door of the lab, wearing only my borrowed (or stolen, possibly, since I wasn’t sure if I would be required to give it back) labcoat and holding both my notes and my extra eye(now powered off). (my tools were once again stashed within my casing). I felt a bit unprepared, but nevertheless I strode out to take my first steps out of the lab, into the wider world of Girl Genius.

Chapter Text

“I’m Theo.” He startled me a bit from my half-formed thoughts about the narrative significance of my leaving the lab, and I blinked at him. “Well, my full name is Theopholous Dumedd, but everyone calls me Theo. I’m head boy at the school here.”

Right, introductions. But what name to go by? Well. I was already living out a fantasy, feeling more like the person I wished I was than the anxious hermit Astra summoned from Earth. “I’m Elzerei.”

“Nice to meet you.” he said with a soft grin that almost managed to calm my intense anxiety at interacting with a real Girl Genius character, especially one I had planned to befriend. I had spent- who even knows how long in Minecraft without a single other soul to speak to and now I had to interact with my favorite characters?!

I glanced down awkwardly, unable to meet his eyes. At least I had a year to practice before I met Agatha. We walked in silence for a while. I had no idea what he was thinking, but my own mind was a whirl of anxiety. I didn’t know why it wasn’t there when I first got to Europa (Too much thinking directly of survival, and then the Spark drowned it out) but now that I had a calm moment I was consumed by social anxiety. Did he want me to say something? What should I say? How am I supposed to make friends at the school when I can’t even hold a conversation! I had forgotten how hard it was to speak to people, with how long I spent alone in Minecraft. 

“So, how long have you been on the Castle?” Oh, interesting, was he not briefed on my situation?

“Uhh… maybe a few hours?” It really wasn’t clear through the Spark-haze how much time had passed. 

“Oh, so you’re REALLY new here.” 

“Yeah. This is actually my first time leaving the lab- well, kinda-” I trailed off awkwardly, not sure how to explain. 

“You were made onboard?” He said this with confusion, which makes sense because I had proved myself as smart to him, and just said that I’d only spent a few hours on board.

“Well- kinda. My body was made here, but I-” I thought for a moment, on how to word it. “I am from Somewhere Else. Not Europa. I was summoned here.” Oh. That was- a slight bit more poetic than I intended it. I mean- all true, but. I worried about his reaction. 

He Stared at me. Oh, I had messed up! He thought I was weird. I mean- I was. But in a bad way.

But his expression morphed into an analytical grin and he asked, “So where are you from?”

“Well. I’ve been- traveling. But I was in a world made of cubes. And a world like this one, but with no Sparks.” Very incomplete, but technically an accurate summary of my life so far. 

“No Sparks? How was it for you, then?”

“Oh, I wasn’t a Spark then. I was pretty normal there.”

“So you broke through in Cube World?”

“I- no…”

“You’re in breakthrough?! ”

“Ehh…” I picked nervously at the seams on my hands and looked away. I didn’t think I was in breakthrough. Sure, I was newly a Spark, but I thought breakthrough was… more focused. More destructive. Agatha’s breakthrough was described as surprisingly calm, and I didn’t think I had done any worse than her. On the other hand, I was indeed only a Spark as of a few hours ago. 

That at least got him to hurry in finding me my assigned lab space (which was better than I expected, was this Worthy Workshop coming into play? Though it wasn’t as good as the description of Worthy Workshop implied, which was fair since this wasn’t exactly ‘my property’, I hadn’t expected it to have an effect at all) I didn’t pay too close attention to the paperwork involved, which was just as well since I got the impression my unique situation made it much more difficult. Luckily it was dealt with by Theo and some administrative workers I didn’t catch the names of, though I tried to be helpful enough that he wouldn’t be annoyed with me for it. 

Still, soon enough that it felt like a bit of a whir, I was alone in my new lab. Apparently they took ‘powerful Spark in breakthrough’ seriously, and didn’t want me turning the school to cheese or something. To be fair, being in the middle of my fully stocked lab… It was hard to resist the inviting thrum of fugue. But I had another experiment to run before I explored all the interesting tools . I shook my head to refocus myself… and collected a few of the more interesting but less destructive tools (almost mutually exclusive but there were some) and started fiddling with them while I sat by the closed closet door. I wanted to go to my Warehouse. 

As I worked, though, things started to… not. The vision I saw in my head dimmed and the parts went together wrong. I became distracted, impatient, eventually so much that I gave up on my work and paced by the door. I was aggravated and uncomfortable and everything felt wrong and I had this massive headache- oh. Wait. Is this Locket? Of course, activated by my attempt to access my Warehouse, which is definitely using an ability I hadn’t gotten in the Girl Genius setting. Damn. I tried waiting longer, to see if I could stand the headache enough to at least check if my items were in there, but it was too much. I hadn’t thought to build a clock, so I had no clue how close I was to getting it open before it became unbearable. It felt like I had been waiting forever, and my head pounded so hard I could barely see. I panicked as I tried to call it off, not knowing how, and I stumbled quickly and blindly as far as I could from the closet door. 

This took the sharp edge of it off, and I once again felt like I could possibly think about anything but pounding stabbing pain, but it didn’t go away. It slowly got better as I lay there on the opposite side of the room, sprawled on the floor like I was knocked out while running. I didn’t move for a while as I waited for the headache to subside. I got the message. No Warehouse this Jump. Also, ow. Did it have to hurt so much? Hhh. I guess it did, though. Because if it was less painful I might save it for emergencies, or try to last just long enough to get a supply or something. This… I would say it’s only for life-and-death, but I’m not sure if there’s any situation in which it would actually help, with how immobilizing the pain was. 

But the pain that was still working on receding had effectively killed my urge to work on anything. (I guess Locket does also work for its original job) I just wanted to lie down somewhere dark and quiet, and not think too hard about anything for a bit. 

Once my headache got back down to reasonable levels (it felt like it was taking forever to go away, but that might just be because I wasn’t doing anything to distract myself), I decided I needed a clock. In Minecraft I could tell time fairly easily since the sun set and rose every 10 minutes, but here I really couldn’t tell how long I spent doing anything. However, with my headache I didn’t really want to try building one. I looked around the lab lazily. The tools and equipment that once held so much promise I could almost see what could be made with them sat indifferently. An uneasy thought was that it had somehow taken away my Spark. Though if that was not true and it came back as soon as the headache was done (as I thought was more likely; if Locket was going to activate on my Spark it had plenty of opportunity to do so before this), then technically I could use Locket to keep away fugue if I really needed to stay calm. All it would cost is standing by a door for a while and a truly awful headache. Ugh. Right now that did not feel worth it, though I’d keep it in mind. 

I ended up taking some scratch paper and pencils meant for taking notes and doodling. I was surprised when it turned out much better than expected (I had a headache, I wasn’t expecting much) but then I remembered my Artiste perk. Huh. It felt… very strange to just… be able to draw. I still had the difficulty of thinking what to draw, but if I just started drawing the corner of the room or something… My perspective and proportions were perfect. I could start in one place and expand outward without running into things not meeting up where they should. It was easy to get an understanding of form while still leaving white where the highlights should go. I achieved a sketchy stylization effortlessly, but when I experimented with photorealism it took only a bit more time and focus to make something that felt like it could jump from the page. (though I was still limited in values by the graphite; my darkest darks were nothing very impressive) I… wasn’t sure how to feel about it, honestly. I had always wanted to be an artist this good, but… I was proud of my art at least in part because of all the effort I put into getting good. I had gotten my goal, but I had cheated, and the victory felt hollow. I mean, it was still cool to see the good art, and feel it come from my own hands. It felt magical. But also sad. Because if this was all it took then what had I been working toward all my life? I would be just as good had I never tried and then still took the power. And what could I work toward now? Was there even a point to always drawing every day if I didn’t need to practice?

That was a dangerous question. Art was what had kept me going almost my whole life. It gave me a purpose and a reason to keep going. I couldn’t quit. In service to this thought, I did another doodle. Agatha, perfectly in Phil’s style. That was kinda scary, being able to replicate another artist’s style like that. But that wasn’t quite right. I didn’t want Phil’s Agatha, or a hyperrealistic Agatha. I wanted my Agatha. I tried again. It was beautiful, but still not quite right, not exactly the style I had been going for. (I didn’t know exactly what I was going for, I was going for my style but better but what did that even mean?) I grinned. This was it. I still had something to work for. Yeah, my art was now Very Good, but it wasn’t Perfect. Perfect was impossible. I still had something to work for, a reason to keep drawing. I found a notebook and sewed in the scrap page I had been working on. It would have been a haphazard attempt at arts and crafts, but, of course, Artiste somehow made it still look elegant. That aspect I could easily get used to; not needing to struggle up the hill of learning for every new medium. 

Anyway, I made myself a new sketchbook. No Sparky tricks, even though my headache was dying down enough I thought I could manage some, that wasn’t the point. Just an elegant, rather thick notebook full of (currently) blank pages. For now, it was minimally decorated, though I told myself that once I got my hands on some (good archival quality) paints I would make a design for the cover. Probably put (at least on the spine) the label of ‘GG Sketchbook 1’. 

Satisfied and with my headache finally at a place where I felt I could do Spark work again, I shoved my new sketchbook into a pocket and began building myself a small, simple pocketwatch. 

Well. Did you know that when it comes to making normal things the Spark is no substitute for an actual education? Sure, I could upgrade my own robot body in an insane act of hubris and excitement, adding strange and obscure upgrades in my area of specialization. No problem. An actually normal pocketwatch? Impossible. It wouldn’t go together right until my headache fully went away, I slipped back into the deeper reaches of my Spark, and I turned it into the strangest sundial you’ve ever seen. When sunlight (any sunlight, not necessarily direct) enters the lens, it can tell exactly how much time has passed since the birth of the sun, and from that calculate the date and time. It, however, cannot actually tick forward like a clock, so I need access to sunlight whenever I need to check the time. Also, if it doesn’t get sunlight it tries to calculate using any light around it, and that creates absolutely nonsensical readings. On the other hand, it was one of the most beautiful ‘pocketwatches’ I’d ever seen. 

Of course, leaving a Spark in ‘breakthrough’ (I still wasn’t sure if this was breakthrough or not) unsupervised in a lab was almost as dangerous as not getting them to a lab, so someone checked in on me. I didn’t recognize her from the comic. She was wearing a uniform, but that didn’t actually give me any clue to her job, since the comic never explained what uniforms meant what. At this point I was just doing the final tests on my ‘pocketwatch’ so I figured I was far enough out of the madness place to greet her normally. She had brought a small plate of food (I told her that she could have it; as a robot I didn’t eat), and told me it was dinnertime. That was a surprise to me. (though it shouldn’t have been; I had just been looking at the time on my ‘pocketwatch’. I didn’t know when it had been when I got to Europa, though, so the feeling that dinnertime had come too soon didn’t really make sense.)  

I asked her about student accommodations, and she told me that I was assigned to room with Nickodeamus Yurkofsky. I didn’t remember him from the comics, either, but I tried to memorize the name then. It wouldn’t do to forget my roommate's name, after all. (though given my past history with roommates… we might not end up talking very much.) She also offered that I could go and talk with the other students at the cafeteria, if I was feeling… stable. Apparently the cafeteria was still open for dinner for another hour. 

I first asked her about clothing, given that I was still only wearing a buttoned closed labcoat. It would not make a good impression to be introduced like that. She managed to get a hold of a few extra uniforms and things for me, and told me that she could try to set me a date with a tailor for clothes that were actually in fashion, but that would take (once again) more paperwork. I thanked her for what she had managed to find and asked her to lead me to my room so I could change. 

Luckily, Nickodeamus wasn’t there (he was probably at dinner) and I could change in peace. Unluckily, the clothes were not designed for a robot body. They caught on screws, meaning I had to move carefully (though that was mostly a problem with getting them on), and they hung rather strangely, because there was none of the expected give of skin to my metal plating. I was glad none of it was held up by elastic, as I wasn’t sure that would have been able to stay. I did keep wearing my labcoat. It had big pockets, so I could keep my ‘pocketwatch’ and sketchbook on me. Though I left my extra eye in my room. Once that was settled I found a window and checked the time. I still had about thirty minutes before dinner ended. (probably, if I remembered when it was when the woman told me there was an hour left correctly) But the woman who had gotten me clothes and shown me to my room was gone, probably off to do something else. Which meant that I was on my own for finding my way to the cafeteria. I did, to my surprise, actually remember the way back to my lab, and for that matter the way back to the lab I was made in as well. That was a clear improvement to my memory from normal, so I figured it must have gone along with one of my perks. Which was very cool. My memory normally was terrible, so any improvement was very welcome. 

But that didn’t solve my finding-the-cafeteria problem. I stilled, anxiety overtaking me. Asking someone where it was terrified me. Just wandering did too, the fear of ending up somewhere I’m not supposed to be crushing in a way I was used to but could not adequately explain. Though… in Canon Agatha was threatened by Jäger guards when she wandered into Othar’s holding cell. On the other hand they didn’t actually hurt her and she had gotten through a secret door to get there. Hmm. In Canon the students did seem mostly free to wander the ship with impunity, with the exception of areas they were explicitly kept out of (and even then the punishment for sneaking in seemed to be cleaning the grease traps unless you were Tarvek). So in theory it should be fine for me to wander randomly until I find someone I can ask. Plus, if the improvements to my memory continue to hold true, wandering would let me make a mental map of this area of the ship. So it would be useful for multiple reasons to make the attempt, and not just hide in my room and ask someone for a tour later. 

Chapter Text

While I was hiding in my room and really strongly missing the distractions I normally used to temper my anxiety, I figured this was an opportunity as good as any to start planning. I didn’t know how long I had in Europa, but I wanted to make the most of my time. I figured it was a good bet I’d get to stay at least until Agatha got to Castle Wulfenbach, and thought it sensible to plan as if I’d also stay the two and a half years after that to get to the end of the current plot. 

But the plot of Girl Genius was a delicate thing of gem-like beauty, and I knew enough about it to throw a wrench in the works. The only questions were a) what did I want to change, and b) how would I go about making those changes. 

The first of these was possibly the more difficult. I liked a lot of things from the Canon Girl Genius plot. Yes, there were trials and tribulations that I would want to let the characters avoid… if it wasn’t for how important they were for character growth. And there were several things I wanted to keep that were delicate, that might not happen if I changed things too early. 

I wanted to save Adam and Lilith. But if I changed nothing Gil would do it for me and did I want to doom Maxinia to nonexistence? I wanted to spare Agatha the trauma of watching them die, but without that experience would she have the drive to go to Mechanicsburg? Would she run and get the chance to meet Zeetha?

What about Sturmhalten? The Other’s return was objectively bad. Lars could be saved. I could avoid letting the Baron get Wasped. But… Tarvek. I was… very invested in OT3. I couldn’t just have Agatha never even meet Tarvek. So… let Sturmhalten happen but change the events?

Past that point there were fewer things I felt the need to keep, and important events were a bit less delicate. I wanted OT3, but past making sure they met it was mostly their job to work it out; playing matchmaker can backfire as easily as not. Zeetha would have already claimed Agatha as Kolee-dok-Zumil, which is a hard bond to break. Moloch would already be in Castle Heterodyne, which would make it likely for him to still be minionized even if things changed. Agatha would already be heading for Castle Heterodyne with the power of Lilth’s ‘last words’, which is a hard dedication to break, so making sure she could claim her birthright as Heterodyne would not be so delicate. Dimo, Maxim, and Oggie would already be with Agatha, so them being her Honor Guard would be unlikely to change. The big problem was Violetta. I think becoming Agatha’s Smoke Knight was a huge step up for her, and it would feel cruel to take it away, but Tarvek had done that while delirious. I was unclear as to whether he would still do it had he the time to plan. In a similar vein, I wasn’t sure that Gil and Tarvek could reconcile properly without the balancing effect of the Si Vales Valeo. Other things I wanted to keep… Von Pinn deserved to get a robot body and to return to her proper name of Otilia, but there were ways of achieving that as its own mission, it wasn’t as interconnected as everything else. Colette becoming the Master of Paris was important, but I did get the impression it would happen eventually even without the plot happening the way it did. Most of the other things that happened after the timeskip… were cool adventures but no more important than the other adventures the main characters would be sure to wind up doing anyway. 

So yeah, that meant my best bet was to find a way to make sure that in Sturmhalten, Agatha didn’t get the Other installed in her head. Keeping Lars from dying and Klaus from being Wasped would, in theory, follow from that. I had a goal.

But achieving that… was something else. To actually make sure I avoided the Other coming back, I would need to be there. Or send the Baron in early but that was probably too destructive, and I didn’t really want this to end with Agatha getting captured. I could go for less than a guarantee by changing something smaller, like when Gil found out or something, but that wouldn’t guarantee success, and I wouldn’t necessarily know if I’d succeeded; I wouldn’t be able to change the plan on the fly. But for being there, I would need to get there. I couldn't run away with Agatha, I’d be too likely to blow her cover or otherwise ruin the faking-her-death plan. Tracking the circus’s progress from afar would be very difficult, and I didn’t know how long it was between Agatha running away and them getting to Sturmhalten. Which meant… going to Sturmhalten before them? A dangerous proposition, given how I stood out in a crowd, and that I was a Spark. Sure, a masculine Spark, but… My uniqueness would put me in all sorts of trouble, I just knew it. I might end up needing to use Locket for it’s Spark-dampening purpose, just to stay off the radar. Still, it was a possible solution. Especially since a lot of the students were sent off Castle Wulfenbach when Agatha left, so it might be likely that I ended up out of the Baron’s protection anyway. Maybe I could ask Theo and Sleipnir to drop me off on their way to Mechanicsburg. 

The other solution I could think of was telling Gil a bit early (though determining when is still trouble), and then somehow getting him to send me instead of Wooster in his flying machine. Since he had absolutely no reason to trust me enough for that, and I would have a lot of trouble getting the timings right, it was actually less viable than hanging out in Sturmhalten. Sturmhalten was more dangerous, but it was the option most likely to actually work. 

My plan decided (for now, once it was enacted I would need to improvise my reactions to the ripples), I took to my desk (the desk on my side of the room) to begin sketching. For something to do. For what I wanted Nickodeamus to find me doing when he eventually entered our shared room. What to sketch… hmm. Well to survive Sturmhalten having a few more weapons/defenses installed into my body would be useful. And a way of detecting Smoke Knights. Though there’d be no way to test that until I found some. Idly, I doodled a few deathray designs. Though it was hard to keep them from being more like the Heliolux air fleet’s mirrors; things that condensed light until it could melt you into little puddles. Was I going to end up like a plant, needing sunlight to do anything? Speaking of which, I should design myself some solar panels… instead of food I needed to keep my battery charged, and it wasn’t like there were just wall outlets to plug into. 

Just as I was thinking I should dissect a plant to find out how they did solar panels, Nickodeamus entered the room. (or that’s who I assumed he was, since he entered like he was used to being there, and he looked like a student.) He kind of stopped and stared a bit. I would have been frozen with fear, but a fugue does wonders for the confidence, so I put my sketchbook down and greeted him

“Hey.”

“Hi. They told me I was getting a roommate, but I didn’t realize you were a clank.” He looked away in order to stop staring. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine; I know it’s unusual.”

“They did tell me you’re in breakthrough…?”

I grinned at him. “Well, I am newly a Spark.”

“Congratulations. Though I didn’t know clanks could break through?”

I debated giving him a rundown of my history. But I decided for just then I’d stick with, “I’m special” and a cryptic smile.

Of course as we continued to talk that night I did end up telling him the same summary I told Theo. Nick (as he let me call him) was actually pretty easy to get along with, once I got past my initial fear of messing up horribly and having him hate me. I mean, I was still afraid of it, but now I knew him better I was more confident I could avoid that kind of mistake. 

We stayed up a while, discussing the school, the other students, our Spark specialties (his Spark focused on Geology. He had a very cool rock collection.), and whatever else we thought of. It was a lot of fun. 

Eventually, though, he told me he had to sleep. He also asked if I had to sleep and I honestly told him I didn’t know. So I stayed up, trying to be quiet to let him sleep, until the Locket headache started coming back. Immediately I remembered that in Minecraft I had a perk that meant I didn’t need sleep. And now, of course, it was Locket-ed out. I went to sleep. Or tried to. Trying to fall asleep after a while of only having to get in bed and then it immediately being morning was a bit difficult. 

Over the course of the first year, I had three goals. One, I wanted to socialize and befriend my fellow students as much as possible. I managed to befriend Nick, and Theo was nice to me but not any more than everyone else I think. (he’s just good at socialization.) Zulenna didn’t like me, but that was kinda expected. Though she actually respected me more than I expected. I had kinda expected her whole pompous noble shtick to extend to treating me as less than human because I was a clank, but she didn’t really seem to. She actually was less antagonistic than I thought, but that might be because my shyness often translated to being no threat in the social ladder. Except in classes. They brought out my Spark, and I found that being even a bit in the madness place eased social interactions by a lot. It had to be Spark charisma at least a bit, but it was also that the hubris of madness took the edge off my social anxiety. But with that added social ease, I managed to be at least on the outskirts of the main group as I thought of it (Theo, Sleipnir, Z, and Zulenna mainly, but Nick was also on the outskirts with me). It wasn’t a great job, but I had more success with the socialization goal than I expected, so I called mission one a success.

Goal two was to learn as much as possible, mostly enough to do more with my Spark outside my speciality. This was achieved though paying attention in classes (and trying to ask good questions), eventually getting Nick to teach me proper notetaking skills (I had a bad habit of just thinking I would remember something, and though my memory was much much better than before, I was missing out on all the iteration and error catching that you can do in notes. Plus my sketch/note books looked so much better with designs in them.), sometimes managing to have enough self-control to play minion to a classmate (very difficult, but can actually teach you a lot if you haven't studied their speciality.), trips to the school library, and sometimes just asking my classmates things. Sparks love explaining science they know. I ended up with a much broader knowledge of Girl Genius subjects, from clank-work to botany. I still knew more about optics than anything else, but I was more confident in my ability to do other kinds of Spark-work. 

Speaking of which, goal three was to create enough useful Spark-work that I could use it to survive Sturmhalten. I did end up making myself solar panels. I also made myself a small deathray built into my arm (not light-based… though I usually charged it with my solar panels). It was small, and the blast it made was proportionally small (only maybe one hand big), but it could melt though metal, and I could conceal it in my arm when I wasn’t using it. I also made myself an invisibility cloak (ok, it wasn’t perfect invisibility, I just used optics tricks to make the light from one side pass through to the other without hitting anything hidden in the middle, there was an infinitesimal delay that caused a slight shimmer around the edges, but it was very hard to notice. The bigger danger when using it would probably be sound.) I made sure to make it big enough that I could hide more than just myself in it. I didn’t test it with multiple people, but I thought it could fit at least two without trouble. I had to do a lot of consulting books about fabric working, but it was worth it because now that I knew how to make invisibility fabric, I thought I might be able to upgrade a dirigible to be invisible. Just a small one, the fabric was materials-intensive. And while it was kinda see-through from the inside, any tear or break in it made the whole thing fail, the way it was right then anyway. I might need to improve it before I actually put it on an airship. I also made several more extra eyes. I made a set that would store video memories of what they saw, so I would only need to plug them into my head to get the footage. (basically meaning that I had spy cameras, though I had to get them back to actually get the footage) I also made an ‘eye crown’ which was 7 extra eyes hidden in a hat, so I could look in all directions including up. That had to be plugged in directly, but as a hat that wasn’t visually obvious, since I made sure the port was hidden under it. The advantage of it plugging in was it was very hard for the hat to fall off. It took a long while for me to get used to seeing in all directions at once without tripping over everything, and it still threw me off for faster movements, but I made it so I could also easily ignore their inputs so I could move normally. It was awkward, but it was the only solution I could think of for spotting Smoke Knights. I wasn’t sure that all that would be enough, but I definitely felt more prepared than I was at the beginning of the year, and there was only so much that Spark-work would be able to do for me. The best deathray in the world is no good without the skill to aim it and the speed to fire it.

Chapter Text

I was keeping track of the days in my sketchbook, so it was no surprise when the rumors of a new girl entering the main room in just her undergarments reached me. (Ok, I had spent the entire day anxiously waiting for that, and it still kind of shocked me that it was the day, but I did know it was coming.) I made sure to follow Z so I could be introduced with the rest of the students. (and Nick was there, so I hung out with him. Was he there in Canon and I just forgot him?) I tried my best to make a good impression, but I ended up not saying much. Nick even ended up making my excuses (“he can be shy around new people”). Too soon Agatha was taken away by Wooster, (if I had my timeline right, to go flying with Gil) and I had said maybe three words to her. Nick could tell that I was more nervous around her than even my usual nervousness (of course I was, she was the main character! I looked up to her so much! But I couldn’t explain that.), and asked if I was attracted to her. I managed to calm down enough to tell him no, I didn’t really do attraction as far as I knew, but that I wanted to be friends with her. He… didn’t really believe me, but he accepted it. Which I guess was fair since all I should have known about her was her scandalous exploit and what she told us about being a blacksmith’s daughter and there because of her ‘boyfriend’ Moloch. 

I really wished I had access to the comic so I could refresh my memory of the Castle Wulfenbach arc. I remembered basically everything that happened in it, but the order was a bit fuzzy. Like I couldn’t remember if the going to see the hive engine happened on the first day or the second. I made sure to stay with Sleipnir so I wouldn’t miss her. I needn’t have worried though, since it was easy to see her and Gil in the falling machine out the windows. Nick teased me about Gil being my competition. I told him I’d graciously cede the game to Gil. 

“What, really?”

“Yes. I told you. I want to be her friend. She seems cool. But I’d rather she look elsewhere for romance.”

“Oh.” Apparently he expected me to be jealous. Little did he know I was a shipper. But it seemed that this would actually make him stop trying to tease me about it, which was good. The last thing I needed was to be shoved into Agatha’s love triangle. 

Anyway, it was not very long until they crashed into the Jägergeneral’s chambers. Of course, all the other students knew was that we felt them hit the airship. I smiled a bit, thinking about the Jägergenerals realizing about their new Heterodyne. 

Nick cringed. “You may not get your chance to befriend her.”

“Oh that? They’re fine! There’s no way that killed them!”

He looked at me dubiously. “Not everyone is made of metal…”

I almost bet him that they would be fine, but that was an unfair use of my knowledge of the plot, so I just said, “You humans aren’t that weak, are you?” and poked his arm. 

He rolled his eyes. It was only fairly recently that I had really started identifying myself as a clank instead of as human, and I had been doing a lot of ‘you humans’ jokes. It wasn’t long before Agatha came back to the school, and was swarmed by people asking about her and Gil’s flight. Then Von Pinn pounced on her. Oh right. I cringed back as Agatha was lifted into the air by a livid Von Pinn. I could only stand there horrified and watch as Agatha just wound her up more and more. It was so much more scary to see in person. When Von Pinn was distracted by being late and left, I stood, still frozen, as the younger children started crying. Even as the other older students started attempting to comfort them. Since I had only been there for a year, I had yet to see Von Pinn truly angry like that. It was scary. 

I was brought back to reality as the children’s screams calmed down and turned to excitement. Theo was about to tell his story, The Heterodyne Boys and the Dragon from Mars. I listened only halfheartedly, since I already knew the story from the main comic. Instead I subtly watched Agatha and Sleipnir. I couldn’t remember if Agatha stayed for the whole story or left in the middle, and I didn’t want to miss her leaving. Though I only watched from the corner of my eyes so she wouldn’t catch me staring. But she was enraptured by the story, and did stay to the end. 

After the story ended the conversation shifted, and I quickly realized the trip to see the hive engine was today. It was, in fact, the next thing on the agenda. Of course, I followed along. I mostly stayed near the back (which was also where Sleipnir and Agatha were) and stayed quiet. I had to pull my sleeves over my hands when we climbed the access ladder to prevent the clang of metal on metal, but otherwise I followed along just fine, and no one objected to me coming. I tried to stay near the way out for when we got noticed, but I didn’t realize we ended up leaving a different way than we got in, and ended up being the second to last one out. Theo, noble soul, intentionally let himself be last so we could all get out. 

Running around lost with Theo, Sleipnir, Zulenna, Z, and Agatha was both actually pretty fun, and went on for longer than I expected. The Lackya seemed to always be right on our tails, and we never knew what was in the next hallway. I made sure to keep up and not make any suggestions, since I didn’t want to let my presence affect the plot at that point. Sure enough though, Theo eventually suggested going into an ‘empty lab’ and assured Agatha he’d do his mimmoth catcher routine if anyone was there. It was time for me to meet Gil. Sure enough, he let us in but ended up insulting Agatha, and she ran off. I let her go. There was nothing I needed to help her with, and I would just get in the way of her learning about Othar and having tea with the Jägergenerals. Instead, I followed the others into the cracking vat Gil told us to hide in. He did do a bit of a double-take upon seeing me, which I took pride in. 

I was mostly interested in getting to see Gil’s reunion with Theo and Sleipnir, but I did distract a bit by being a Clank and a student. I’ll never know quite how the conversation went in Canon (it was off screen as the story followed Agatha) since after Gil clarified with them that neither party was receiving the other’s mail, he inquired about me. I gave a very brief summary of my background (“I’m new-I got here a year ago”). And Theo gave more details (like that I was a Spark and claimed to be from somewhere other than Europa even though my body was made on the Castle). Gil’s eyebrows raised as Theo explained, but before he said anything Sleipnir waived her hand in front of his face

“You can take Elz apart later, tell us about Paris!”

As he switched topics I mumbled, “I won’t actually let you take me apart. If you’re nice you can look while I do it.” (I always insisted on being the one in charge of the project when the project was my own body.)

Though I quickly fell in with the other students to listen with rapt attention as he told stories of his Paris days. In Canon his time in Paris was mostly glossed over, so getting to hear the actual stories was a dream come true, though I was disappointed that it seemed Zola and Tarvek didn’t feature as much as I expected. Especially Tarvek. Though when Tarvek did feature it was really funny because Gil didn’t call him ‘Tarvek’ or even ‘Sturmvoraus’, he called him ‘the snake prince’. Which while he said it as an insult it was hilariously poetic, and even knowing who he was talking about I wanted to imagine an actual snake person. 

It felt like no time at all as the storytelling while hiding turned into sneaking back to the dorms so no one would know it was us who were out, which turned into partying at the dorms (I managed to avoid being assigned the alcohol runs by dint of the bottles made too much noise clinking against my hands when I carried them), and that of course turned into ill-advised Sparky fun. Even though I didn’t drink (of course I didn’t; I couldn’t eat or drink, I got my power from my solar panels), as the atmosphere relaxed and the technical talk increased I was less and less shy. My light-based wood burning corkscrew (“Complete with a smoky flavor!”) design was popular, and I was having enough fun that I forgot to keep an eye out for when Agatha got back. It was only late into the night, when I got a headache from not sleeping (I preferred the original symptoms of sleep deprivation, but there was nothing I could do) that I realized I must have missed Agatha getting back to the dorms. If she even did. I would need to make sure I caught her in the morning to keep track of the plot. 

I managed to catch her and Sleipnir talking about her trying fencing, and asked if I could join them. I had been doing a bit of fencing during my year there, trying to get myself actually skilled with weapons on my own merits. I wasn’t very good at it (the small headaches from my Adventurer Hero perk trying to help and then being squashed by Locket didn’t help), but I tried and I was improving. As I improved the headaches also got less bad, presumably because the Adventurer Hero perk only helped you know how to use weapons and tools you wouldn’t know how to use otherwise. 

Anyway, I mostly stayed out of the way, though because I wasn’t great at fencing, Sleipnir had me do a match or two against Agatha so she’d have someone more on her level. I won the first match (it was Agatha’s first real match so that wasn’t a surprise), but in the second match she did an attack I didn’t expect and I did a block I hadn’t learned- resulting in a headache. I wavered, and she hit me easily. Then she asked if I was ok. 

“Hmm? I’m fine.”

“You looked like you were in pain, before I hit you.” Agatha said as we walked back to where Sleipnir was on the sidelines.

“Oh, just a minor headache. I sometimes get them when fencing; something about the precise movements I guess.” I shrugged nonchalantly. “It’s nearly gone now anyway.”

She gave me an intelligent, assessing look. Like she was intrigued by a puzzle. It was a powerful thing to be the subject of that look, and I was reminded that she was the main character. A Heterodyne, though she didn’t know it yet. One of the most powerful people in Europa.

“You’re a Spark.” she said, with the confidence that told me someone had told her instead of it being a guess.

“Yes.”

“And a Clank.”

“Yep” 

“And you get headaches and don’t know why.”

“Well, I don’t dare to go dismantling my processor to find out.” Under the strength of her assessing gaze, I rambled, “They don’t cause me that much trouble anyway.”

She nodded slowly, “That’s good.” She sounded a bit distracted. I was too busy being intimidated by her to figure out why though. 

When she continued on to talk to Sleipnir, I realized what that must have been about. At this point she had no idea what caused her headaches, and the headaches I got were similar to hers. The disadvantage was called Locket, after all. She must have seen me as being in a similar situation, or as a clue to her own. Though unless I missed my guess she hadn’t had a headache in over a day, now. 

We kept practicing for a bit, but it wasn’t long before Zulenna came in and Agatha dueled her. It was a satisfying scene to watch play out in person. Though I thought Sleipnir’s warning to Agatha that Zulenna won’t forgive her was a bit ironic. I remembered it from Canon, but the next plot-relevant thing I remembered Zulenna doing was give her life for Agatha. 

We didn’t fence for much longer, but after we had changed back into normal clothes, Agatha asked me about my headaches, and told me about hers. I was surprised she was so willing to open up about them so quickly, and didn’t have a good response for her rant about them making her feel broken. I told her that mine didn’t trigger with nearly as much frequency, since they were mostly caused by trying to use martial weapons and I didn’t do that much. (I had tested and was relieved to learn that firing my deathray didn’t trigger the headaches.) I also added that I was technically only a year old, so I hadn’t had time to learn all their triggers and stuff. She asked me if I had an idea about the cause. I told her no, and also said it was likely the cause of hers and mine were different, even though the effects were so similar, just because a biological brain works differently than a mechanical one. 

She actually responded by arguing how Beetle theorized the similarities between biological and artificial minds, to which I said I’d like to learn more about that.

“I may have an artificial mind, but I’m not really an expert on them. Like I said, I don’t dare to work with my own for fear of breaking it, and I haven’t had much chance to work with other clank minds yet”

She nodded. “Well I’m no expert in biological brains so I guess that makes sense.”

Chapter Text

To my surprise, nothing plot relevant happened for the rest of the day. I tried to both keep up with what Agatha was up to and not affect what she did very much, but still nothing. I couldn’t remember what was supposed to happen next, but I was surprised it was nothing. I mean, it wasn’t that nothing happened. Agatha seemed to like talking to me, and I ignored my obligations to follow her when I determined it wouldn’t be weird, so I ended up hanging out with Agatha and Sleipnir for a surprisingly long portion of the day. That was both a lot of fun and also terrifying when I thought about it too hard. I was moderately sure that by then Agatha at least saw me as a friendly acquaintance. That was of course what I wanted, but also it gave me the imposter syndrome feeling that it was only a matter of time before I messed it up. 

That night, I determined that since nothing I recognized from the comic happened since fencing, there must have been a time skip I had forgotten about. And I didn’t know how long it would last. I tried to go over in my head what was left. Flying had already happened. Von Pinn had already happened. Spying on the hive engine had already happened, and therefore the meeting with the generals had too. The hive engine hadn’t been activated yet, but unless I was unlucky I would easily be able to tell when it was. And that was the last thing. I couldn’t know if she’d met Krosp yet. There was the fencing clank. Which happened in Gil’s other lab- instead of the flight one. So she had to go there. And was she his assistant then? I think she was still supposed to be Moloch’s assistant now. 

So the next day, when nothing I recognized was happening and she was still nominally Moloch’s assistant, I showed her the student library. I spent a fair amount of time there, learning things outside my field (and maybe reading too many historical fiction books instead of actually learning). At first I was just recommending her books I had read and found interesting, but after I had pointed out how two books had explicitly disagreed with each other on the nature of rust prevention in clank design, we ended up going on a scavenger hunt to find the books that most radically disagreed on factual claims. After Agatha found an old book that claimed that lighter-than-air gasses were a physical impossibility, we both had to stop on account of laughing too hard to turn the pages of the books we were working on. 

I had already loved Agatha as a character before even coming here. But talking with her, hanging out with her, I began to love her as a friend. She had an easy and unwitting charisma that made you want to follow her to the ends of the earth. I felt more than ever that I understood the people of Mechanicsburg. Understood what it meant to fall in loyalty with a Spark. She was the sun and I was the mirror, reflecting and condensing her power but nothing without her light. Of course, that wasn’t really true. I was a Spark in my own right, and while I figured it would change as she grew into her own, probably a stronger one. But leadership had never been my calling, and falling back to support a powerful Spark whose cause I believed in felt as natural as breathing. 

Once we said our casual and friendly goodbyes at the end of the day, I had to reconcile with the fact that while I had made my plan to support her well-being, it involved a lot of standing by and doing nothing while bad things happened to her. It was strangely hard to resist just telling her everything and following her lead. I had to tap into my own Spark, to the mad hubris of thinking that I always know best. Once I had again dedicated myself to my plan, I had a better understanding of what Klaus had meant when he said that her Sparky charisma alone was dangerous. But unlike him, I couldn’t hold it against her. I knew that she wasn’t doing it on purpose, or for nefarious means. She just was one of the most powerful Sparks in Europa, and it came along with that. I was rather surprised by how strongly it affected me, a Spark of the same general caliber, but I supposed that she had the strong situational advantage, due to her being one of my heroes from a young age and my habits leaning towards a follower position. 

But despite that, I was elated. It seemed that she actually enjoyed my company! I was becoming friends with Agatha Heterodyne! This was actually going better than my plan, since I didn’t think I would have time to form a bond with her during the Castle Wulfenbach arc. That would make it much easier to earn her trust when I meet her in Sturmhalten. And would probably improve chances that Theo and Sleipnir would help me get there, since my loyalty to her wouldn’t be in question. Plus, she was Agatha. Being friends with her was better than I’d dared hope. 

There were a few more days, where I hung out with Agatha and ignored my classes and nothing plot-relevant happened. They were paradice. Sleipnir was there a lot of the time, and while before that we were maybe friendly acquaintances, I was growing closer with her as well. When I finally put aside being starstruck, they were good friends. I was almost disappointed when, at dinner, Agatha told us the story of how she had become Gil’s lab assistant, and that was fun but she was conflicted because he and his father had beaten up Othar Tryggvassan, and both admitted that it was actually him. She was horrified by the casual violence of it, and confused because Othar was a Hero. I commiserated a bit, but said I’d have to know them both better to make a real judgment.

Then Agatha left dinner early to write letters to people in Beetleburg about her parents. I didn’t remember anything like that from Canon, and it seemed more important, but oh well. It had been a long time since I actually had a chance to read the Girl Genius comic. I once again lamented that I didn’t have the Girl Genius Box Set I had bought. I had to assume it was in my Warehouse, but that was useless since I couldn’t access it. 

I didn’t know how soon it would be that the hive engine was activated. I considered packing my things, but that would show that I knew something, and I remembered that there had been time for Gil to give Theo and Sleipnir the invisibility lamp, so there would probably be time for me to collect my things before I left. 

It was hard to sleep that night, knowing that at any time the alarm signaling the Wasps would sound. That (as far as I knew) it was the next thing in the plot to happen. I wasn’t even planning to try to change anything. Other than finding some way to Sturmhalten there was nothing I needed to do. But it was an important event, and lots would be happening. Oh, and if I missed the alarm and couldn’t make it out I would be in a lot of danger. 

I was tense the next morning. I tried not to show it though. I certainly didn’t need to be a suspect if it did happen today, and if it didn't, being stressed would just tire me out for no reason. 

Still, when the alarm sounded just before lunch I almost sighed in relief just to know when it was happening, and not be anxiously waiting for it anymore. Von Pinn headed the evacuation, forcing us all onto an outflier. Theo complained that we weren’t even in the labs; we would be fine. I didn’t complain. I knew we would sneak back onto the main ship soon anyway. I stuck with Theo and Sleipnir, and soon enough we were taking turns watching the main ship through a telescope. It didn’t take very long for Theo to spot Gil and Agatha fighting the Wasps, and for Sleipnir to notice the effect of Agatha’s use of the invisibility lamp. They had some member of staff or something send a message to the Baron about it, and then decided to escape back to the main ship, “rescue them ourselves”. I came along, which surprised Theo a bit since I didn’t have much of a habit for joining in their making trouble, but everything was going fine. Zulenna punched out the guard that resisted her ‘feminine wiles’, and we were at the lifegliders in no time. It was only then I realized my mistake. I was too heavy. Even with the lifeglider if I jumped I would just drop like a stone. I needed a bigger one, but the hangar had limited options. I thought that with enough time I might be able to build a bigger one out of a couple of them, but I wasn’t sure I had that time. Nick noticed my hesitation, and immediately deduced the reason. 

“Oh, they don’t have lifegliders for clanks, do they.”

“No. I’d have to make one.” I looked anxiously at the hangar door, vaguely towards the Castle. “You all go ahead. I’ll catch up ” Spark harmonics entered my voice as I slipped into fugue. I didn’t want to miss the confrontation. Though as I started building, I managed to maintain enough sanity to check where they were landing, so I could actually follow. 

I was very thankful for all the fabric work I had done for the invisibility cloak, and for my Traveling Toolkit, which did in fact include a needle and thread. Once I knew where the others had landed I sunk deep into my Spark, trying to achieve the kind of impossible speed that Agatha sometimes did. Even so, when I finished the glider it was 30 minutes later and I was only mostly sure it would hold me. It would also probably last only one trip. 

It was only with the residual fugue still burning through me that I had the bravery to jump. Luckily, my stitches held, and I was free, gliding through the open air. My practice with Elytra back in Minecraft served me well, and it was rather trivial to point the glider in the direction I wanted to go. It was only because I was clever (read: still running on Spark) that I caught up in time. Instead of following the other students to the armory, I recognized the ship nearby that Punch and Judy stole in on. I knew the confrontation happened close to there, so I went there instead. I spent what felt like far too much time trying to get my bearings from there, until I heard it, from ahead in the hallway I was following.

“MOVE! Or their deaths will be wasted !” I recognized that line. I ran toward it and quickly found Krosp leading Agatha and the students back the way I had come. I wordlessly turned around and joined them. As we ran, Nick tried to whisper-explain the situation to me. I already knew, of course, and his summary was a bit all over the place, but I welcomed the in-universe excuse to be able to know these things. 

All too soon, Von Pinn was after us and Zulenna was saying she would hold her off. My heart ached for Zulenna. I knew she would die. She was a jerk sometimes, but she didn’t deserve that. Yes, the Baron would have her revived, but I could not imagine death to be pleasant. The only thing that stopped me from joining her and trying to save her was that it wasn’t Von Pinn that killed her. It was Bang. There was no way I could beat Bang. If I tried to save Zulenna it would just result in both our deaths. So I grit my teeth and kept running, trying to make myself believe it was fine because she would get revived. 

As the sounds of ripping flesh emanated from behind us, we agreed to split up again. The airship Agatha was going to escape on was very small, after all. Theo and Krosp joined Agatha on the rest of the way to the airship. The rest of us stopped and turned around, ready to create more of a delay. I stood in the back, barely able to think under the fear. The crackle of my Spark and the rushing of my coolant battling for my attention. 

The Baron looked larger than life, held up by the Clank and barking orders. I wanted to cower and run, but I stood in solidarity with the other students. 

“STAND ASIDE” the Baron yelled, and I blinked and my senses sharpened to that single point, my Spark winning over my fear. I still managed to say nothing. My classmates made their arguments for why he should let Agatha go. They said she was nice. They said she didn’t know. I said nothing, simply stood behind them, meeting his eyes defiantly. 

And then he gassed them. (us, but it didn’t affect me) I knew it was C-gas, that they were just unconscious, nothing worse. And I knew it would happen. I had known the whole time that that was what he would do to us when we defied him this way. But that didn’t prepare me for seeing my friends fall at my feet, simply collapse around me like puppets with their strings cut. My Spark flared.

“ You gassed them? ” I shrieked, the sound like tearing metal. “ They just wanted to talk, an explanation, and you gassed them? ” 

“They are fine . I simply don’t have time to argue with them, or you.” He pulled a gun from his belt, and pointed it at me. “You are unique. Destroying you would be a tragedy. But my empire comes first. Stand aside. ”

I did so. We had delayed him long enough that Agatha would escape anyway. 

I followed him docilely, as he got to the hangar just too late to stop the airship. I waived at Agatha when she looked back at us through binoculars. 

And then I felt the Castle rock with explosions, fire filling the hallway. I ran back to find my classmates and get them to safety. When the Baron caught up, yelling orders from his Clank throne, he found me standing above the unconscious bodies of my classmates, wielding a fire extinguisher. He set me to work evacuating them, and I went without complaint. Part of me wondered how they had survived this in Canon though, since it seemed like without me they would have been burned. Theo wasn’t with them, though. Of course he wasn’t, he had gone ahead with Agatha. But I knew that he stayed on Castle Wulfenbach instead of escaping with her, so I was surprised when I didn’t see him for a while.

Though to be fair I didn’t go very far. I got my classmates out and then I hovered over them, like a worried mother hen. It was only through some careful convincing that the Baron’s people got me to let them take them to separate rooms. I’ll admit I may not have been fully rational at this point. It was one thing to read about it in the comic, but it was another to see them fall around me, to run back just in time to save them from the lapping flames. 

I… was very relieved when Nick woke up, and he took the time to calm me down. I hadn’t really noticed, but I was in fugue basically the whole time between making my own glider and him waking up. The disadvantage of a strong Spark. It’s harder to stop. 

The next few days were tense. And full of paperwork. I had expected the students to all leave at about the same time, but it was much more spread out than that. Sun Mingmei left first, since she wasn’t a hostage and the Great Hospital was close enough she could send messages relatively quickly to her grandfather. More paperwork was required for actual hostages like Sleipnir to leave, but surprisingly enough it seemed that the Baron was completely willing to release them. As far as I could tell from what the others said about the notes they had gotten, he was releasing them due to the fact that he could no longer promise their safety on board. Basically, Wasps being released followed by explosions and fire was not an environment he felt it was fair to keep them in. To my surprise and relief, I received a similar note. Mine, however, said that while I was free to go if I so wished, my lack of connections meant that he encouraged me to stay on board anyway, unless I could find a safe place to go. Unfortunately, my plan didn’t involve going somewhere safe.

Chapter Text

I waited to leave until Theo reappeared. (during which time Nick left for home. He did give me an address to which I could write, but I knew I would miss him.) Apparently Theo had found Gil, and they were comparing notes on the situation. By the time he came back a lot of people had already left, but he told everyone that was still there that we could meet Agatha in Mechanicsburg. Sleipnir was the only one who agreed to go with him. Though, most of the students were leaving on the dime of their families. Theo and Sleipnir managed to trade enough favors to get a small airship and traveling supplies, but I had no resources. I asked if I could go with them, but said I needed to stop in Sturmhalten. 

“Why Sturmhalten?”

“I… have some research that leads there. Once I finish it I’ll try to join you all in Mechanicsburg.” It was a bold faced deflection, but they decided to let it go. 

I was grateful that they let me in on their expedition, and I made sure to do my best to pull my weight. I think it helped a lot that I didn’t need to eat, so I didn’t throw off their provisions calculations by too much. 

In just a week or so we were in the air and making good time, though we often had to land to resupply, especially since we had packed light on provisions and planned to hunt to make up for it, and to cook that food we had to be on the ground. 

We met Othar during the first week on the road. Theo was ecstatic, I stayed quiet and hoped he’d keep Othar’s attention. The way he talked about Agatha was infuriating, when I knew the truth from the comic. I made the intentional choice to keep my head down and draw landscapes in my sketchbook. 

About two weeks in, our airship broke down, and was basically unrepairable with the parts we had on hand. We managed to turn it into a makeshift wagon (though it was a bit odd working with Theo and Sleipnir. Even when I took over the project I felt like a third wheel. Eventually I resorted to doing my own projects and letting them do theirs, and if we were working together to just integrate them after. It resulted in a lot of strange chimera clanks, but it was much less awkward.) The Wastelands were not a safe place, and I ended up making a lot more weapons. There was my larger deathray, which I cheated and powered with the invisibility lamp. We only used that one in emergencies though, since we didn’t want to run out of power for the lamp. There was a flash gun that just made a very bright light, it wasn’t very good at killing but it could stun most creatures, and was very a good distraction that we could use to lose them with our invisibility items. (with both my cloak and the Heterodyne lamp, invisibility was our main defense.) I kept trying to make hard light, which would be the perfect shielding that we needed, but so far I couldn’t make it larger than about an inch. It was, however, very sharp. It wasn’t actually hot, like you might expect (it wasn’t a lightsaber) but hard light is a very thin material. It ended up mostly being relegated to meat carving, since if you were careful you could clean it by just turning it off and on. 

Theo and Sleipnir also made weapons, including the Stalagmite Gun(ray that induced the growth of stalagmites from the ground) and Hot Pipes(bagpipes that made green fire) that they were shown using in Canon. They were much better for crowd control when the crowd in question was of monsters trying to kill you, rather than random innocents. 

When we finally reached Sturmhalten, I was rather sorry to go. I was almost tempted to give up on the plan and go with Theo and Sleipnir all the way to Mechanicsburg. But I had a plan to carry out. I wasn’t going to let the second Other war happen just because I was afraid of Sturmhalten castle. 

In an alley a little ways off from the market I separated out my things from our cart. I didn’t take everything- I left them the big deathray, the flash gun, and most of my hard light experiments. (I just took one small light knife) But I did take my invisibility cloak, my eye crown, and a couple spy-camera eyes. Everything else I took was built into my body. I was packing very light for this, since it was mostly a stealth mission.

“You’re sure about this?” Theo asked as I plugged my eye crown into my head.

I looked up at the intimidating silhouette of Sturmhalten castle, the setting sun golden behind it. In my mind’s eye, I saw the swarms of Geisterdamen I knew were underneath it, and the hive engines they guarded. I thought about how the Sturmhalten arc was probably the arc of the comic that I had read the fewest number of times. “No…” I looked back to Theo and Sleipnir with a grin I didn’t really feel. “But if it was safe it wouldn’t be interesting!”

“Ha ha, well, we’ll wish you luck.” Theo said as he packed the cart back up.

“See you in Mechanicsburg!” Sleipnir called.

“See you in Mechanicsburg.” I echoed.

And then I was alone.

Possibly, I could have survived in the town without attracting any attention. Hide under my invisibility cloak at night, charge with my solar panels during the day, avoid anyone that looked more noble than a baker. But then what would I do when Agatha came? What good would I have done then? No, I needed a way to actually improve events. Which meant I needed a way into the castle. I was, of course, not actually allowed there, so I would need to sneak in. I knew there were loads of secret passages under it (many of them incredibly dangerous for multiple reasons), but those were no good if I didn’t know how to traverse them. When Agatha actually got to Sturmhalten, I’d want to get my timing just right. I wanted her to have time to gain some kind of connection with Tarvek, and learn that Lucrezia was the Other, but I needed to intervene before Lucrezia was actually installed. The plan that made the most sense to me was to spend my time waiting exploring the secret passages (even then, weeks after leaving Caslte Wulfenbach, I could remember perfectly every hallway I had passed through and how they connected. I knew I just needed to explore the tunnels and I would know them the same way.). Then, when the rescue party of Zeetha, Lars, Dimo, Maxim, and Oggie came, I could lead them directly to the castle without all of the time-wasting exploring and running from monsters and everything. 

Of course, that meant my job now was to explore the super dangerous secret passages. And not get caught. Or killed. Hidden under my invisibility cloak, I checked the change on my battery. I had 8 days until I needed to recharge, but that was if I didn’t use my deathray. I calmed my nerves by reminding myself I couldn’t get lost, and I started towards the sewers. That was where the secret passage the rescue party had found was, after all. 

I, however, did not have their luck. I spent two days in the sewers, exploring randomly and pushing random stones looking for secret buttons. I found nothing. How did they do this in one night?! Sleeping was also a pain. I just found somewhere out of the way and hid myself and my things under my invisibility cloak, but it was not comfortable or particularly safe. I wound up surfacing, spending a day charging my battery to full (which it wasn’t when I had started; full was about 10 days of power if I didn’t use my deathray), and then finding a place where the wall sounded hollow and blasting a hole in it. It was maybe not the smartest idea (it was maybe an incredibly stupid idea) but it did let me see the next hallway, and in there I saw the mechanism for one of what I later knew to be an entire labyrinth of secret doors and tunnels. This was the jump-start I needed to be able to get anywhere, since I remembered where the other side of that wall was. Once I got the secret door open, and thereby got into the secret passage, I had a lot more luck. There were several other secret entrances to the secret passage, and seeing them from the opposite side let me study them. Once I did that, I had a much better idea of what to look for, and finding more secret doors became easier. 

This became especially useful once I started running into the monsters. The most common were the rats. Most were giant, ranging from two feet long to person-sized on average. Many glowed. There were giant spiders, most were of course the Geister’s mounts, but there were other giant spiders as well. ‘Normal’ ones, ones that spun webs of rock and stone (those were a pain), ones that could camouflage to the color of the walls. I didn’t dare touch the sewer water that pervaded the place, acidic as it looked, but it was not uncommon to see serpents or giant squid leaping from the waters to eat a giant rat that wandered too close. It was an ecosystem of its own, and none of it was friendly. 

Luckily, as I explored my mental map improved. I knew the secret passages that lead between the catacombs and sewers, I could tell where in the city each manhole would open. I could run circles around the rats, knowing what sections they dared not enter for fear of the larger beasts. I also, for better or worse, found a few piles of corpses, one I was nearly sure was the poor Sparky ladies that Arronev systematically destroyed in the Beacon Engine. I found secret passages that(mostly likely) lead to the castle, though I didn’t yet dare go close enough to see their ends. I found surprisingly few Geisterdamen, though I assumed that just meant they were holed up in the Deep Down. I could confidently escape those blasted tunnels to recharge my battery, which I ended up running down rather quickly, since escaping from the monsters often required the liberal use of my deathray. I did end up with quite a few slipshod patches on my plating, ugly clashing materials being all I could find to patch the injuries from far too many close calls. I supposed I was lucky I had yet to lose anything I could not replace, but it grated on me as I seemed more and more to belong to those sewers, rusted parts blending in with the look of abandonment and mystery. I did still manage to draw daily, though as I ran out of paper those drawings grew smaller and faster. It was an afterthought, an homage and tether to who I once was. I got more use from the Sturmhalten Sewer Rat Knife I stole off a corpse then I did my sketchbook.

Chapter Text

Then I found the Deep Down. The sealed off ruins, too monster infested for even the plumbers to dare enter. If I didn’t miss my guess, they were also sealed up to hide that the Geisters were now living there. They would be far more dangerous for me, for multiple reasons. They were, as the name suggested, deeper down. The trip back and forth to recharge would be longer, and I’d be more likely to get cut off- trapped in the Deep Down with my only exit guarded by some monster. Them being sealed off meant that the interconnectedness that let me outrun monsters on the higher levels would no longer be there. I might have only one available entrance and exit. There were almost certainly Geisters there, and they were more dangerous than the monsters I had faced both in combat ability(I didn’t know for sure but in the comic they had gone toe-to-toe with Zeetha. The monsters I faced so far felt like they would be nothing to her.), and because they could communicate with one another. Killing one would just bring the others down on me, and running would just leave them on high alert. Not to mention, they were more intelligent than the monsters, and knew the tunnels better than me. I knew the tunnels of the upper levels, and had a general sense of what to look for for traps and secret doors, but I had never been in the Deep Down. 

I charged my battery to full before I dared enter. The Deep Down was… much worse. It was still riddled with secret passages, but there were many more traps, the monsters were much more dangerous and aggressive… There was no defeating them. The only reason I survived was my invisibility cloak. And that I ran fast. And I got lucky. I only lasted maybe an hour before I was back in the upper levels, scared out of my mind. Literally. My Spark latched onto the fear, turning it into a need to prepare . A paranoia. It wasn’t long before I had my own ‘lab’ hidden in a darker corner of the upper levels, using rat bones and acid water to create the weapons I felt I needed. I used the acid to power my battery, creating a new generator that meant I no longer had to leave for fuel; for sun. It was more efficient that way. I made a gun that fired bone spikes, I didn’t even need to carve them with the number of creatures that had bony spikes protruding from their backs. It was much quieter, not powered by explosions but by simple pneumatics; more similar to a blowgun than a revolver. I also built myself armor. By now my clothes were absolutely ruined, just rags vaguely hanging around my body and growing mold. My pockets I had kept repairing, in order to keep my sketchbook and extra eyes from falling into the hungry jaws of some monster or other. My invisibility cloak I hid when I wasn’t using it, and it was very easy to hide. I only found it again due to my perfect memory. Now, I reinforced myself with bone. My eye crown (which I wore all the time, though I only activated it when I felt I needed to; it still threw off my reflexes, even with all the practice I had gotten down here) I reinforced similarly. I paid no attention to whether it could be taken off again. I used my optics specialty to mute the reflectiveness of my plating, and match its color more closely to the walls. It was no invisibility cloak, but my makeshift camo did not impede my movement or my ability to attack. 

When I went back into the Deep Down, it was with the deadliness of a predator, and the single-minded focus on survival of one who knew they were prey.

I couldn’t tell you how long it had been when I was finally captured. I had scrapped my light-based ‘pocketwatch’ long ago by then, and it wouldn’t have been any use anyway. I no longer went to the surface. I charged my battery with the plentiful acid, and I slept only when I needed to, and lightly. I drew before sleeping, but there was nothing in it anymore. My sketchbook was full and I drew over top of other drawings done in the tunnels. They no longer looked like anything but the scribbles of an insane person, but I hardly noticed. 

It took only one Geister to take me down, and it was with a terrifying (but classic!) beheading. I’d have thought I was dead if I hadn’t remained conscious , the broken circuits sending phantom pains from all over the body I no longer had. I was taken up (though passages I had never been in, but memorized easily. They were too stupid to think to blindfold me.) and into the castle. They took my lifeless body as well, though for what purpose I had trouble guessing. Spare parts? The ornate decor of the castle was so far removed from the sewers I had lived in that I had trouble believing it was real. I had trouble focusing. Even the dim gas lights of the castle were bright to my eyes. I changed the settings to match the light level but it was so foreign to me now. I wanted to struggle, but all I had was my eye crown; a way to view my doom from all sides. I wondered where they were taking me, what they would do with me. 

I knew immediately, though, when they threw my body at the feet of Aaronev Wilhelm Sturmvoraus. I was going to end up like Tinka. Studied carelessly, and thrown away when I was no longer interesting. And there was Nothing. I. Could. Do. 

He started with my body. I couldn’t tell what he did with it; my head was placed on a table too low, and all I could do was look at his face. His horrible face, filled with the manic glee of a Spark he didn’t deserve. A perfect avatar for the horror of being torn apart. It was burned into my lenses. All I felt was rage and despair.

Until he left, and even those left me. There was no hope of escape. Nothing I could do but sit and wait for the end… For Astra to take me back home, where this could never happen to me. For Astra to tell me my Jump was failed, that I’ll never see another fictional world as real again, that I’ll never get to see more of Girl Genius, that I’ll be trapped in my original reality for the rest of my life. That wouldn’t be so bad. I never deserved this fantasy anyway. I was never going to win her game; I just wasn’t good enough. 

But that end didn’t come. He came back. He picked me up (my head, that is). He examined my severed neck. He reattached me to my body, though the restraints held strong and my deathray would not deploy. He seemed to repair me, however imperfectly, and then he took me apart again. My world went dark.

Chapter Text

I awoke to see Tarvek, turned away from me and pouring over something on a table. I was too low to see what. My voice crackled; an attempt to speak. He turned to me immediately. 

“T…Tarvek?” My voice was pitiful and my mind was muddled. I knew that I knew him, that I should be dead. I knew he was a hero in a comic. 

He gave me an odd look… I couldn’t quite place it. “Yes?”

I didn’t know what I had wanted to say. Just to confirm. That it was him. That he was real. That I was alive. But a thought occurred to me, hazy through the fog. “Is he gone?” It was a whisper, a hiss of steam.

“Is… Yes. My Father left.”

That wasn’t quite right. Gone wasn’t left. But I couldn’t…

Something was wrong with my mind. It tried to sharpen in panic, and I did manage a bit more lucidity, but not nearly what I knew I could.

“My mind!” I shouted, or tried to, it was still empty, a rush of air hardly voiced. “There is something wrong!” I tried to move but something stopped me. 

“Shh, shh, it's… it's alright.” His expression was still odd, but I couldn’t place it. 

“I need to fix it.” I said; I pleaded.

He let me free of the restraints (oh… that was why I couldn’t move…) I took out my tools… and I realized I could not see what I wanted to work on. I tried to take my eyes out from my pockets… but I had no pockets. I was naked. That was… wrong. 

“Do you have my eyes?”

“Your eyes?”

“In my pockets. My eyes.”

“Ah. I’ll… see what I can do.”

He left. But I needed my eyes. I needed my mind . 

There were notes on the table. The words blurred in my sight, but as I read them something burned, deep beneath the fog. There were tools in my hands and words on the page and something burned . 

I read and I drew and I built and I had no idea what. Words and formulae and diagrams drawn over each other. Parts and machines and lenses connected at impossible angles. 

Someone entered. 

“ Light !” I exclaimed to them, even as my world blurred around me, even as I could no longer place what their bright red hair meant. “ I need Light! ”

I could not parse what they said. They handed me lenses parts machine. The room brightened but it was not right.

“ No! Light! ” I told them, even as my hands built studied destroyed . 

They pulled me. I moved. Nothing registered. 

Until the light of the sun shone down on me, through a window Tarvek had pulled the curtain back from. I closed my eyes, and let my solar panels soak up the energy. 

“Thank you.”

The fog burned away. 

In the light of the sun, I asked Tarvek to bring me my tools (I had foolishly left them in the lab), and some materials. He did so, motivated by curiosity more than anything else I think, and I got to work. 

I hadn’t done much work with my mental circuits (I had intentionally avoided them to avoid exactly this kind of mistake), but even(especially) as my mind cleared I could tell there was something still wrong. With my tools, the extra eyes from my things that he had brought me, and the materials, I could do a fair amount. I could tell, for instance, that my mental circuits were using up far more power than they had before, so much that without the constant input from my solar panels… well I couldn’t tell from looking what would happen, but I knew I had just experienced it. 

I performed a diagnostic, minionizing Tarvek to take readings and work at angles my arms couldn’t bend (working on something inside one’s own head is an awkward exercise). It was clear he was letting me, though. And that under the obedient facade he was using the opportunity to study me. It didn’t matter. 

I found several things that were off in ways that were actually rather easy fixes, if you knew what it looked like before and had a general idea of what everything was supposed to do. I managed to get the power use down to 120% of what it was originally, but everything else was deeper in. A mistake there and I could do worse than Aaronov had. But… while leaving the damage was an option, it was one I didn’t like. Wasting power to think worse was not something I was a fan of. I asked Tarvek for specialty tools for working with delicate machinery, and for a jeweler’s loupe to put on my extra eye. He left, and while he was gone I set up a temporary lab. It wasn’t really that different; I still didn’t dare leave the patch of sunlight to get anything or organize things properly, but organizing my space helped calm me and focus my mind.

He came back with the tools I had asked him for, and what looked like a incomplete set of the notes he had made when building Anevka’s body, focusing on the puppet mind. 

“Oh! Perfect! ” I said as I took them. Yes. Yes, that helped a lot . As I worked, with the renewed direction from having notes for inspiration , my awareness of the danger of what I was doing fell away as I focused on building, repairing, and improving . Yesss… I learned so much from those notes, and there was so much I could learn! So much I could improve . I lost track of time. 

I stopped myself, my hands inches away from the wire. No. That was enough. I had repaired the damage Aaronev had done. I had made improvements (though I wasn’t sure exactly what effect those had actually had). I was done. Carefully, I forced myself to put everything back away, and to close it back up into its black box. I had fixed myself and that was what I had set out to do. No more. 

I looked around and noticed that the sun had moved. My makeshift lab was no longer in the patch of sunlight beneath the window, and neither was I. However, the makeshift diagnostic of my mental facilities (doing calculus in my head. Yes, my Spark made my math ability insane.) showed that I suffered no ill effects. I breathed a sigh of relief. Tarvek was once again gone, but he had left a note attached to the outside of my desk to the servants, telling them to leave me here, but not let me out of the hallway until he came back. It was signed. Well. My first petulant instinct was to leave the hallway. I had spent I-didn’t-even-know-how-long in the monster-filled sewers! There was no way a few servants could keep me trapped here! 

But… I had been captured. If I fled the castle, they would seek me out. I hadn’t actually spotted any hive engines, but it was easy to believe that I had seen too much. If I stayed in the city they would find me eventually, and if I left I would be no good to Agatha. But… If I gained Tarvek’s trust… maybe I could change from what angle I approached the problem of Agatha’s possession. I was in the castle. I could much more easily track the timeline from where it took place, and I could affect the goings-on here much more easily if I didn’t have to sneak in. Sure, I wouldn’t have Zeetha or the Jägers for backup, but if I played my cards right I could possibly get Tarvek’s help. He would be much harder to convince. Zeetha and the Jägers were accepting pretty much any help they could get at that stage, and our goals aligned very well. Tarvek was paranoid and devious and our goals did not align well. It wouldn’t be the friendship and camaraderie that I could have had. It was going to be a battle of mutual manipulation. And I was playing against a master. 

As I waited for Tarvek to return, I started cleaning up my makeshift lab space… until I was distracted by a more pressing issue. Using my extra eyes (or eye singular. I had apparently broken the other two down for parts), I finally got a look at myself. The first one not overshadowed by fugue since I entered the sewers. I was… Ugly wasn’t the right word. My Artiste perk meant anything I built would be beautiful, and I was. A beautiful example of a sewer monster; every aspect of my appearance perfectly tailored to look ancient, decrepit, and monstrous. In the ornate hallway, I stood out like a sore thumb. 

There was no way I could play Tarvek’s games like this. I only had half-formed plans, but being hidden away in labs and basements, a sight not fit for guests, would not be beneficial. I would have more luck the more of the castle I could move through freely and without drawing attention. I probably wouldn’t be able to reduce the amount of attention I drew that much (a believably humanoid clank was not exactly a common sight there. Yes, there were Anevka and Tinka, but both were special.), but it would be a massive improvement if I could look like I belonged in the lavish castle, instead of in the sewers beneath it. 

I didn’t have the necessary materials to actually make a significant improvement (not yet) but I started brushing and wiping off the worst of the grime. The bone armor had been built directly into my plating, and therefore was unremovable without significant replacement, so instead I shored up the attachments, so none of them looked haphazardly attached or like they were about to fall off, and improved the symmetry by carving down the bones to match each other. I cleaned them as best I could, but I would need stronger cleaning supplies to truly defeat the sewer muck. As I had feared, my eye crown had been permanently attached when I added the bones to it, and the frayed fabric scraps from the hat it once was were disgusting. I ended up cutting them off, even though it exposed more of the internals of the eyes. I could replace the fabric once I had something not covered in ooze.

Tarvek returned to find me carving delicate and abstract designs into my bone armor. I looked up to greet him. 

“Hello.” I put away the knife I was carving with. “Thank you again, for saving me. I am in your debt.” It was a dangerous game, but part of my plan. I figured he was much more likely to trust me- and trust my willingness to stay in the castle- if he thought I had a sense of duty to him. It was dangerous to essentially offer myself as a minion to him, even temporarily, since it was giving up both power and control. On the other hand, he seemed to at least try to protect those under him, and it might be a unique experience to gain a follower not through name or title but through action. (Though then again, that was how he befriended Gil, once upon a time.) Plus. I did owe him. I didn’t know who had repaired me enough to wake me up, (but I suspected it was him and not his father.) but I knew it was him who had taken me to the light, who had given me the tools and notes I needed to repair myself. I had failed my mission, and it was Arronev who punished me and Tarvek who saved me.

“You’re welcome. You’re… really fully repaired?”

“Yep. As far as I can tell, anyway.” I inspected the back of my hand as if to look for fault, but didn’t actually put any effort into it. 

“And you’re a Spark? Specializing in clank work, I presume.”

“No, actually my speciality is in optics.” I wasn’t sure where he was going with this, but I saw no reason to lie to him. He would probably catch it anyway. 

“Mm. My Father said the Geisters brought you to him?”

“Ah. Yes.” I panicked a little bit. For some reason I had not thought at all of how I was going to explain sculking about in the obviously secret tunnels to him. “They found me, decapitated me, and brought me to him. I’m surprised by how well he did at reconnecting my head, actually.” There. An extremely truncated summary, but it doesn’t draw attention to where they found me. And then I’m changing the topic back to the technical. Perfect. 

“They decapitated you?! Where were you?!” Damn. 

“In the sewers. I… got lost. And spent a while exploring trying to find a way out.”

He narrowed his eyes at me. It was a transparent lie, but what was I supposed to say? The reason I was there really was basically spying on his family and his lands. I started to think maybe I should have tried to leave when I had the chance. 

“How good are you at repairing clanks?”

“I- I think I’m pretty good. I’ve mostly worked on myself, but I think I’ve done okay.”

“Follow me.”

I did, but I looked back worriedly at the mess in the hallway. Shouldn’t I-

“The servants will get it.”

“Right.” 

The room he led me to looked like a cross between a lab, a jeweler’s, and a suite. It was as richly decorated as the places meant to be lived in, it was filled with parts and tools, and many of those were tiny, meant for the most delicate of work. It was neatly organized, everything clearly in its proper place. Sitting on a bed, gaze vacant, was Tinka.

“Tinka.” I breathed, awed despite myself. I had almost gotten used to meeting the humans of Europa, the main characters I had built up in my head from childhood, but it was something else to meet someone who was a marvel both in my world and theirs. Both a marvel of story and science.

I took a couple steps forward, then stopped, and looked at Tarvek.

“Your Father damaged her, too.” it was a statement of fact, of something I had known a long time, but now I had experienced enough clues to deduce it believably. 

He looked away, guilt obvious enough that it must be there on purpose. 

“You… You want me to help repair her?” That was a real deduction, but not a difficult leap. “I- I’m flattered you think that highly of my work, but- I could not forgive myself if I damaged her further.” 

He met my eyes. “That’s why I showed you here at all.”

Eventually, we agreed that I would look over his work, to see if I could spot anything he didn’t. I unequivocally stated I would do none of the work myself, though as I slipped further into madness I switched from drawing diagrams to building models. 

Tarvek was much more tightly controlled. I was taking his lead on it (though my own force of will, mostly), but Spark barely leaked into his voice, even as we discussed and argued. (Our biggest arguments were on anachronistic materials. I kept suggesting things that he knew Van Rijn couldn’t have used, and while I said if it works that’s all that matters, he insisted that this was a restoration , not a Mad attempt to improve what was perfect . I relented, but since I didn’t know enough about the history of Europa to know what Van Rijn would and would not have, I inevitably would make more anachronistic suggestions.)

Hours later, I lay face down on the stone floor, softly bashing my head against it. We had not made much progress. Tinka was in and out of consciousness, and certainly not fully lucid. Tarvek had explained my presence multiple times, but whether it got through to her we could not tell. Once, upon waking, she called me sister. I cried. (my clank body could not cry, really, but the breaths I did not have to take hitched and my perfect vision blurred) It was Tarvek who corrected her. She spoke very little after that; only when Tarvek told her to for the sake of testing. 

We had solved a few problems. We managed to improve her balance (it must be so horrible for a clank who was built to dance to be without her balance ), and her stutter was slightly reduced, but not to the point that the change could be noticed easily. It was only through Tarvek’s meticulous notes that we could tell there had been a change at all. 

We weren’t getting anywhere, and I was frustrated and tired . 

“I give up.”

“You what?!” He looked up with enough alarm that it seemed he was worried I was giving up for good.

“We can try again tomorrow, but I want to sleep … And clean out my components. Though I might leave that for the morning.”

Tarvek raised a curious eyebrow. “You need sleep?”

“Yep. In about the same amounts as a human.” (not needing sleep is a perk that needs to be bought separately) “I think it’s something to do with how my mind is built.”

“Interesting. The Muses don’t. They can sleep, but Tinka only started doing so after she was broken.”

He said he couldn’t offer me a proper room (I suspected that it was more some influence of his father or sister instead of an actual lack of rooms. The palace was huge.), but that he had another lab space nearby he could offer me. That was, of course, perfectly fine. I didn’t need much space for sleeping, but I definitely wanted lab space of my own to play around in. I stipulated that I needed some way to charge my battery, and said the simplest solution was easy access to sunlight. The lab he leant me had no window, so he showed me a path to a courtyard I could take. 

After giving me bedding, he left me to my own devices. I did want to sleep, but the excitement of the day (and my developed habit of not sleeping until it was absolutely necessary) meant I didn’t really feel ready to yet. I took stock of my things. My built-in deathray was nonfunctional. (I assumed this was some kind of safety measure from one of the Sturmvorauses) My headache (that indicated I was tired) was too bad to fix it right away, though. My eye crown was permanently affixed to my head. I had my sketchbook. (which I noticed was full. I looked at the later pages and noticed how the drawings were on top of each other, creating a scrawled mess that was a beautiful visual rendition of insanity.) I only had one of the extra eyes left. I did not have my invisibility cloak. The last time I remembered having it was stashing it in a corner not long before the Geisters got to me. I was probably not getting it back. My hard light knife had been destroyed by a monster sometime during my time in the tunnels. I had barely noticed since I didn’t use it much anyway. My bone shard gun was also gone, the Geisters probably took it. 

I missed the invisibility cloak most. I told myself I’d work on a replacement as soon as possible. But I couldn’t do any work with this headache. I dusted myself off (really, I felt I was too filthy to go in the bed, but I was far too tired to start the cleaning process. As annoying as it was cleaning myself as a human, it was worse as a clank. Grime could be caught in every seam, and I had to be careful with water, since while my plating was mostly waterproof, my internals were decidedly not. ) and lay down in a bed for the first time in far too long.

Chapter Text

My time in Sturmhalten castle was interesting. Mostly, I had time to myself. I used this first to clean and make presentable my clank form. I made the bone symmetrical, and carved ornate designs into it that I painted a dark purple. I changed my plating back to an iridescent light purple. I turned my eye crown into a hat made both from metal and fabric, so that it wouldn’t fray enough to no longer protect the internals of the eyes. I fixed my installed deathray. I asked Tarvek for clothes (he seemed to prefer woman’s fashion, but he still took the opportunity to dress me.) He had to modify the clothes to fit around the bone armor. (I could have done it but he was having fun.)

My second step was to make myself a new (and improved!) invisibility cloak. I had reduced the shimmer around the edges, and more noticeably improved its durability. I also made myself a new sketchbook, though I was left with the difficulty of how to store the old one. I kept it in my borrowed room, but I knew there was a good chance of it getting left behind that way. 

The last and most dangerous thing I did during my free time was explore. I had no idea how many Smoke Knights were in the castle, other than that it was at least one and probably more, and I strongly doubted my invisibility cloak would fool them. Technically, I was not told that there were areas of the castle I was not permitted in, but I knew if they found me sneaking around where I wanted to (my main goal was to find the chapel that housed the beacon engine) I would be in big trouble. 

The rest of my time was spent helping Tarvek with his work. Mostly on Tinka, but sometimes we would take breaks and talk about other work. I wound up making him essentially a low-power microscope to analyze intricate mechanisms with. I also ended up making a very large and complicated device that used light to map the interiors of metal casings (in order to know about parts that normally one wouldn’t be able to see without opening it up). It was essentially an X-Ray for clanks, but it worked entirely differently and did require the casing to be opened at least a little. This was working on the theory that if we couldn’t figure out what was wrong it was because we didn’t know enough, and that once we improved our methods of analysis we would know enough to figure out what was wrong. It worked to an extent. We managed to completely solve all of the remaining problems with the rest of her body, and be sure that that was done right, but we made very little progress in fixing what had been done to her mind. What progress we did make was slow, incremental, and deeply frustrating. It was clear that to make any real progress we would need something more. (Something like Van Rijn’s notes, which I knew Moxana had.) I had basically come to the determination that Tinka’s repair would have to wait until the circus got there, but Tarvek continued to push on. He, of course, had no way of knowing that we would soon get access to Van Rijn’s notes, so he seemed to figure that incremental progress was still better than none. 

It was only around three weeks until the plot caught up with me. I had not yet managed to find the chapel. I only noticed because I saw Tinka leaving her room. I asked her where she was going and she stuttered out something about Master Payne’s Circus. In an instant, I realized the time for preparations was over. I ran to get my things (my sketchbooks, eye, and invisibility cloak) and followed her. She knew the castle better than I, and I knew she would go to where Agatha was. I only vaguely remembered this section of the comic, but I did recall Agatha seeing Tinka at the dinner. And after the dinner was the first time in the Chapel, where Aaronev died. (I was excited for that part.) I followed Tinka closely. She was walking surprisingly well compared to our tests, but I still wanted to be close enough to protect her from a fall. Plus, I mused as we got to more well-populated halls, it was an easy excuse for what I was doing. I was at Tinka’s side when she opened the curtain to enter the room where Tarvek and Agatha were talking.

“Hi-hi-highness.” She stuttered

“Tinka! Why have you left the lab?” Tarvek exclaimed, but as he looked back, he met my eyes. He wanted this answer from me as well.

“Elzerei?!” Agatha exclaimed. Oh right. I forgot to take into account that she knew me.

“I-I-I heard- Servants said- Master Payne’s circus is he-he- here? ” Tinka answered Tarvek.

“Hi” I said quietly and with an awkward wave to Agatha.

“This is very unusual” Anevka said to Agatha

“Her condition?”

“Oh, no. That she’s moving at all. ”

“Yes, it is . Elzerei?” This time Tarvek was addressing me directly.

“I don’t know. I spotted her leaving the lab and followed. I didn’t want her to hurt herself, but this is the furthest I’ve seen her go under her own power. I didn’t want to stop her.”

“I require maintenance, please please please.” Tinka stuttered to him

“Yes, Tinka, I’ll be there soon. Elzerei, take her back to my lab.”

“...Yes.” I took Tinka’s hand, gently leading her back away from the room.

“I- Circus- Must-” Tinka protested with a look of sorrow.

I let go of her hand once we had escaped the attention of the Sturmvorauses.

“You want to go find the circus?” I asked her.

“Ma-Ma-Master Payne’s- I must-” She started walking in a different direction than the way to the lab. The previous conversation had jogged my memory; I felt I remembered her being led away in the comic as well. But I didn’t know what she did next. I knew the Geisters decapitated her (I wanted to prevent that, but I didn’t know if I could) but that was when she was with Agatha. 

“You want to go to Master Payne’s circus?” 

“Y-Y-Yes.”

“...Would you be able to do it on your own?” I felt horrible leaving her to try that herself, but I wanted to keep track of Agatha. I couldn’t let Agatha get possessed while I was off on sidequests with Tinka. Plus… Didn’t Tarvek end up with Moxana’s notes in Canon? Because there was the whole thing with the book and the key and the library and the Muse of Time? It made sense that this could have been how he got them. If it was, Tinka’s success was assured by it happening in the story.

“I-I-I think- Yes.”

“... Good luck.”

“Th-Th-Thank you.”

I put on my invisibility cloak and crept back towards where Tarvek and Agatha were. They were already leaving, and I only barely managed to spot where they were going. I kept my distance behind them and tried to be silent. I was too far away to hear most of the conversation, but they seemed to be getting along okay. 

I followed them to the dining room, lushly decorated, and filled with servants. Plus, my first time seeing Aaronev since he dismembered me. My hands shook, and I placed them softly on a carpet to prevent the sound of clinking metal. Despite my time in the tunnels, this felt like the most dangerous place I had been yet. I heard the quiet whirr of my internals and wished I had thought to improve them to be quieter. The room was too small for me to be as far away as I’dve liked, so I heard as Agatha made polite conversation with that horrible viper Aaronev. I also heard as her polite conversation turned to self-betrayal as the truth serum set in. It was hard to listen as she gave away her most well-kept secrets with a friendly smile, so I tried not to. I knew what she was saying anyway- it was mostly a recap of the first few comic volumes. 

It wasn’t long before Aaronev (how I hated him) lead the whole party out and into the hallways, talking about how he had “ everything prepared ” I followed the party to the chapel, memorizing the way there. Again, I kept as far back as I could. I didn’t need to listen in, I knew what was happening. I just wanted to be there to watch Aaronev burn, and then destroy his vile engine . But for now I held myself as still as I could. It was hard to hold myself back as they strapped Agatha into that horrible device , but luckily, it was only a few moments after that that Anevka burned her miserable father to the ground, the flames filling the room with the cleansing light of a vengeance richly deserved. It was a cheer that I held back then. 

And then she knocked Agatha out.

“I have my own use for you,” she said to Agatha’s unconscious body as Tarvek caught her. I remembered. Anevka stole Agatha’s voice. I supposed that must be next. I would probably not see it, though. I waited for them to leave, the servants filing out behind them. Once I was sure they were gone, I got to work. The Beacon Engine would never be used again.

I did study it. I took no notes, and I made sure that when I took it apart I did so in a way that was permanent, often taking specific components (especially the more complex or hard to make ones) and ripping them apart. Every connection I took an effort to remember the place of I disconnected. Every bolt I loosened or removed. I disconnected it from power. I destroyed it thoroughly . Sadly, I could not find the notes on it. If I had I would have read them and then burned them. I did learn a lot from it, enough that it was even almost possible I could recreate it, though I suspected a recreation would have even more flaws than the one I was destroying. 

I may have spent a bit too long studying and destroying it. I didn’t keep track, and while my sense of time was normally horrible, it was worse when I was in fugue. Which I was. Several things fueled it. The study of a new technology that expanded my knowledge, the victory over Aaronev that I felt, even though it was not I who dealt the killing blow, the satisfaction of completely and utterly destroying my enemies (which yes in this case meant Aaronev and the beacon engine. Yes I counted the Beacon Engine as an enemy. It had done enough harm to count.)

Chapter Text

I was startled out of my destructive revere by voices by the door. And footsteps, approaching quickly and making no effort to be quiet. I hurried to find and don my invisibility cloak. I was only just in time to watch Vrin dragging Agatha into the room, accompanied by two Geisters in more normal Geister garb. The Geisters were horrified when they entered. I had not been subtle with my destruction, and they gaped at it. They yelled at each other in their own language, and Agatha looked around, confused. She was not nearly as angry with the Geisters as they deserved, but I could not reveal myself to her. I was lucky the Geisters were distracted by the ruin of the engine, since if they spotted me I was done for. My only weapon was my deathray and I could not kill all of them before one could decapitate me. Yes, I was under my invisibility cloak, but I didn’t trust it to protect me from them. 

Eventually, the Geisters seemed to come to some kind of agreement. The two were left to guard Agatha, and Vrin ran off. Agatha shouted questions at her as she went

“Wait! Where are you going?!”

“To punish those who destroyed our lady’s sacred device! Stay with Eotain and Shurdlu, they will protect you.” 

And she left. The two Geisters (Eotain and Shurdlu, apparently.) guarding Agatha too closely for me to reveal myself. I hid on the opposite side of the wreckage from them, feeling safer being more out of sight. My guess was that Vrin would blame Tarvek and/or Anevka; they were the major players left in the castle, after all. Which meant that was where she was going. Could Tarvek beat her in a fight? Does she need him, to repair the beacon engine? Hmm. I really wanted to get rid of Eotain and Shurdlu somehow. Without them, I could reveal myself to Agatha, tell her what they had planned, and then lead her out of the castle, easy as that. With them… I hid and waited, metaphorically holding my breath. (literally, too, but that wasn’t difficult for me with the whole not needing to breathe) 

Agatha questioned Eotain and Shurdlu a bit, but they didn’t speak Romanian, so it didn’t get far. She actually tried a selection of other languages (French, English, German, Latin, Greek, Arabic, and Russian. My A Premier Education meant I recognized all of them, and knew all but French and Russian. I was a bit annoyed at it not giving me French, actually, since the story went to France, but oh well. I supposed I’d sound like a tourist.) but the Geisters didn’t know them either. Eventually, Agatha began to examine the machine. I doubted even she could repair it at this stage (I had spent a long while methodically and thoroughly destroying it with the explicit goal of having it be impossible to rebuild.) but she might learn something. I could not tell if its purpose was discernible from its design, but I hoped it was. I wanted her to learn what horrors her mother had intended to inflict upon her, so that she could be properly wary. 

Eotain and Shurdlu seemed to be unsure of how to deal with their Holy Child messing with their sacred device. One of them seemed to think she should be stopped, the other seemed content to let her work. I couldn’t tell who was Eotain and who was Shurdlu, though. Eventually, Tarvek entered, yelling angrily about- ah. That was Tinka’s head under his arm. The Geisters yelled angrily right back, and he switched to their language. They pulled their swords on him. He could match them pretty well, but he was obviously losing. Agatha yelled for them to stop fighting and explain, but while they did pause (giving Tarvek a couple openings), they didn’t stop. I wondered if this was because they couldn’t understand her or because Geisters could resist Agatha’s commands. Anyway, the opening wasn’t big enough for Tarvek to gain the advantage. He traded blows, getting a cut on the one holding back in exchange for a gash from the one in the front. I shot her. Only in the shoulder (she moved) but enough to take her mostly out of the fight.

Of course, in doing this I revealed myself.

“Elzerei?!” Tarvek and Agatha exclaimed in unison. That was a rush. I should try this dramatic reveal stuff more often.

I pointed my deathray at the other one, as a warning to imply that this fight was over or else . She backed away from Tarvek. Good. 

“Why are you here?! Tarvek said you were helping him with Tinka?”

“I was. Ah- after you left Castle Wulfenbach, They let a lot of the students leave. They said it was because of the hive engine- if they couldn’t provide students safety they wouldn’t keep them.”

“Oh.”

“Also. Do you know what this machine did?”

Tarvek shot me a questioning glance. 

“It looks like something to do with mind transfer…”

“Yes. The Geisters wanted to use it to transfer the mind of the Other into her daughter, allowing her to take over her body. I destroyed it when I finally found it.”

Tarvek looked at me with surprised confusion. Not about the information I said, but that I knew it.

Agatha looked horrified. She also turned a new look of anger on the two Geisters there. 

She looked to me again. “And, the Other really was Lucrezia?”

“Yes. They have hive engines in the tunnels beneath the castle. And a lot more Geisters. We should get out of here.” 

Tarvek looked at me with silent horror. He now knew the extent of my knowledge about his castle was far too great, and that I planned to leave. And, that I had gone to the Baron’s school. I was also the only one in the room with a deathray. His secrets were about to be blown wide open. (They were already, for other reasons. The Baron was probably already on his way, actually, but he didn’t know about that.) 

“Coming?” I asked Tarvek. 

“Wha- No.” he grabbed Agatha’s arm. “He’s a spy for the Baron. He’ll turn us both in.” Ah, so that was Tarvek’s explanation for my original presence in the tunnels. So I was like his Wooster, an enemy spy kept close.

“I am not . I came here for my own reasons and was friends with Agatha on Castle Wulfenbach. I wouldn’t turn her in.”

“But you would turn me in.”

“I have to tell about the hive engines. They’re too dangerous. But what I’m offering is to go on the run with us.”

“You’re on the run?”

“Well, I’m not Wanted yet, but I might be for helping Agatha later.”

He eyed me warily. “I’m staying here.”

“Alright. Good luck dealing with the Baron. If you get captured, see if you can get to Mechanicsburg. That’s where we’re going. Oh, and… take care of Tinka for me.” I looked at her head under his arm. “I’m sorry to leave you like this.”

And then I led Agatha out. I didn’t know the layout of the castle too well, but I found the way back to the dining hall, and from there she knew the way out. The walk out was eerily quiet. We made light conversation, mostly me explaining my time at Sturmhalten (though I neglected to mention why I went there), and her explaining her time at the Circus. Still, where I expected to see servants or Geisters or… anyone, really, there was a worrying emptiness. 

Despite my being on edge, we made it out of the castle okay. The circus wasn’t where Agatha had seen it last, and the town was closed; no one allowed in or out. Right. I discussed our options with Agatha.

“I could take you through the tunnels, but I don’t know the paths to outside the walls. And they’re dangerous. The guards are probably Wasped, so you could just… tell them to let us go. But thats…” I made a face of vague distaste. “I’ll go along with it if you think that’s the best way, but-” 

“No. You’re right, I don’t want to take advantage of them like that.”

“Finally, we could use my invisibility cloak.” I pulled it out and showed her, 

She took it, marveling at how it worked, and clearly trying to reverse engineer it with her eyes “But that’s wonderful! Why didn’t you say that first?”

“Ahh… dramatic timing?”

She rolled her eyes at me, and we donned the invisibility cloak. It was… tight. I made this one a bit smaller than the original, and while it hadn’t been any trouble when it was just me using it, it was annoying with two people. There was definitely enough to cover us both, but the problem was that we had to stand close enough together that it was difficult to walk without getting in each other’s way. It wasn’t much worse than an annoyance, except that bumping into each other made noise, and the cloak provided no sound occlusion.

Still, we got past the guards with only a couple of close calls. Human guards were nothing compared to Geisterdamen or the other monsters in the tunnels; by necessity I was sneakier than I was before coming to Sturmhalten. Once we made it out of the town, Agatha wanted to go to the road, figuring the circus moved on without us, but I said we should check around the outside of town first. I remembered the fight with her activating the circus clanks and crushing the Baron with a chicken house (which actually probably wouldn’t happen this time around) as being close to the town, so they couldn’t have gone far…

The circus wasn’t very hard to spot. They were being detained by Sturmhalten troops, but getting past them was easier than getting past the guards at the walls. They weren’t expecting anyone to sneak in . 

It was the dead of night when we snuck in, but Abner was still awake, keeping watch. Agatha took off the invisibility cloak and handed it to me. I stuffed it back into my pockets.

“Agatha?” Abner said, standing up sharply.

“Hey, Ab.”

“… Lars isn’t with you?”

“No, should he be?”

“Oh, no.”

He took us to see Master Payne, who told us that Zeetha, Lars and the Jägers had all gone to get her when she was there too long to be safe. Agatha gave a incomplete summary of what happened (she left out her heritage), and said that it wasn’t safe. 

I said that if they were trying to sneak into the castle, they’d probably take the tunnels. I also said I knew the tunnels pretty well, and I was willing to go try to find them.

We debated a bit on the prudence of sending a rescue mission after the rescue mission, but I argued that if they didn’t find Agatha they would just keep looking until they did, so unless we had a better way to contact them…

Eventually, we agreed that I would go by myself to get them, with a couple of Agatha’s dingbots for support. I was a bit wary about that, but she told them to listen to me and help me, so I took what I could get. I told them the Baron’s man was probably coming to check out Aaronev’s death, but otherwise I had no excuse to warn them that the Baron was coming himself. 

So I returned to the tunnels. They were swarming with Geisters, and that activity made the normal monsters more active too. But the more secret ones into the castle were empty of Geisters, and it wasn’t too hard to get in. I found the ‘rescue party’ searching the dungeons. 

“Ah, there you are.”

They all look up at me, most warily. Lars responded, “You were looking for us?”

“Yes. Agatha already escaped. I’m here to tell you to meet back with her at the circus.”

“Und how do hyu know miz Agatha?” Dimo said suspiciously.

“We were friends up on Castle Wulfenbach. It’s a long story. But here,” I found one of the dingbots Agatha had given me, and offered it to him. “Does this prove me trustworthy enough?”

They didn’t seem fully convinced, but they did agree to follow me back to the circus. It was much more difficult moving with a full party of nine(me, Zeetha, Lars, Dimo, Oggie, Maxim, Krosp, and the two plumbers) and still avoiding the Geisters, but at least they could help with fighting when necessary and navigation in the case of the plumbers. (I knew the way, but not as many secret other ways as they did. When a way was blocked they were more likely to have a different way around.) But all that stealthing took an annoyingly long time. By the time we made it out, it was doubly annoying for a different reason. It was dawn, and the Baron’s ships had descended on the town. 

“Oh no.” I stood in the exit of the sewers, staring up at the Baron’s airships. I thought I’d had more time. Though I supposed I should have known, since the headache I had from staying up the whole night was reminding me that I had let a day pass without sleeping. 

“Vat?!”

“The Baron is here. Let’s hurry!” 

We rushed back to the circus, not bothering to use stealth to escape the town. (though the plumbers left us at this point. Fair enough.) The guards were mostly busy being surprised anyway. When we got there, we found Wooster arguing with Master Payne and Countess Marie. 

“Hoy! Iz miz Agatha vit hyu?” Dimo yelled as soon as we were in earshot. Well that’s it for any subtlety on that front, but what do you expect. 

“Yes!” Master Payne yelped, and pointed back to the other carts. “I think she took a nap.” 

We all went to go check on her, which did prove overwhelming, but the Jägers seemed relieved to be back with her, and it proved useful that she woke up so she could talk to Wooster. He, of course, wanted to take her to England. She, of course, refused. She was going to Mechanicsburg. Krosp and Zeetha and Master Payne were all giving political and strategic advice, and my headache was getting annoying, so I opted to find an out-of-the-way spot and take a nap. I had completed my mission, I got Agatha out of Sturmhalten with no Lucrezia in her head. My reward was sleep. Having slept in the sewers for a while, I had no difficulty passing out just on the hardwood floor of one of the Circus carts. Oggie asked what I was doing but understandingly left me alone when I said sleeping.

Chapter Text

However, I had gotten used to sleeping lightly, so I was awakened by Maxim’s frankly terrible attempt to pickpocket my invisibility cloak. I attacked him on instinct, but he’s a Jager and I am not particularly strong, so he just casually dodged. I was glad I didn’t immediately go for the deathray.

“What is it?”

“Ve need hyu shneaky-cloak. De Baron is here.”

“Of course the Baron is-” I looked out the window to see an airship very close and actively unboarding. “Oh! He’s here .” I quickly gave him the invisibility cloak, and then followed him as he went and gave it to Agatha, just in time to hide her before the Baron got there. I didn’t even think to hide myself. 

The Baron raised an eyebrow at me when he spotted me, but didn’t otherwise react.

Master Payne met him as he approached and gave a valiant effort at convincing the Baron Agatha wasn’t there, but he was not fooled. 

“I respect that you were intelligent enough to fool my son. It will not work on me. ” He loomed intimidatingly over Payne. “Now, I can be ruthless, but I try to be fair. I am not here to hurt her. I wish to speak with her.” 

“And how do we know you’ll keep to that?” Zeetha asked.

Then the Baron was shocked, and yelled at her in Skifandrian.

“Zur baken Skiff?! ” Zeetha replied, the one phrase of (not Skifandrian but Skiff, right) that I knew without it ever being translated, just from context clues when I read it in the comic. 

“ Kar! Mor baken Skiff!” Well, I could figure that one out too. He continued, and I caught the name Zantabraxus, but couldn’t understand anything else. I assumed he was accusing her of being a spy sent by Zantabraxus to kill Gil? From the context of what he tells Gil later in the comic about her- that she might be sent to kill him. 

They continued to argue and though I had some assumptions about what they could be arguing about, I couldn’t follow the argument at all. It was Greek to me. Or, actually I knew Greek. It was French to me. (I was still salty it didn’t give me French. How was I going to pretend to be a random French Spark to the Castle when it can’t see because of the timestop without French?!) But anyway, I just kind of stood there awkwardly while Zeetha and the Baron argued. I did hear Zeetha introduce herself (or- I heard her say Zeetha, and then Chump. I assumed she was saying Princess Zeetha, daughter of Chump, like she introduces herself sometimes.), and I watched the Baron’s expression for surprise (after all, he was Chump.). It wasn’t long before they stopped, the Baron apparently satisfied but still suspicious, and Zeetha happy and curious. 

“So…?” Master Payne asked cautiously.

“He’s offered to take me home!” Zeetha explained. “Though.” She looked back to the Baron. “I’m not leaving just yet. Agatha is my Zumil . I won’t abandon her.”

It was fun to watch the Baron try to contain his reaction to that information. Quickly, though, his expression of shock changed to annoyance. He sighed and pinched his nose. “... of course.”  

The Baron looked around at us, and for a moment he just looked tired, before he was intimidating again. “I would like to deal peacefully with Miss Heterodyne, but in order to do so I must speak with her. You can tell her to meet me… or I can look for her myself.” It was clearly a threat. 

Agatha threw aside my invisibility cloak, revealing herself. “Fine. Talk.”

For just a moment, his eyes widened, and they tracked me as I went and picked my cloak off the ground. (What? I’m not just gonna let my hard work get stepped on.) 

“You are Bill Heterodyne’s child. You were raised by Punch and Judy. My son believes in you. Most importantly, you seem to have been raised away from the influence of your mother .” Agatha’s eyes widened at that, but she did not interrupt as he continued, “I am inclined to believe you innocent. If you are indeed innocent, I ask that you join me willingly. Yes, you will be guarded . This town is infested with a strange type of revenant. Until I know what happened here- Until it is controlled - I trust no one .” 

“I- I can understand that. Elzerei said they had hive engines beneath the town.” Agatha took a steadying breath. “But the last time I saw you, you had my parents killed . You can understand why I have trouble trusting you .”

“I… did not order Punch and Judy killed. Their deaths were regrettable. But they are currently recovering.”

Agatha’s guard dropped almost entirely to shock and awe. “They’re- that’s- impossible .”

“The procedure is hardly unprecedented. I gather it is why my son did not come here himself.” He said, gesturing to Wooster, who until then was doing a fairly good job of blending in with the crowd.

“I- Okay.” Agatha looked so young. Sometimes I forget how short the comic is from her perspective, how much she has to learn and grow in such a short time. The loss she has to deal with. (Though we saved Lars this time) “I want to see them.” 

The decision made, we all began to pack up. The Baron at first wanted to just take everyone, but most of the circus people were not comfortable with that, and he ended up just checking them with Wasp Eaters and then letting them go. (partially due to some arguing from Agatha.) Though it was unclear to just what extent they would actually be able to move on from the Balan’s Gap area before the Baron had finished his sweeps. Of course, we who went along with Agatha (Me, Zeetha, the Jägers, Krosp, Wooster, and Lars.) had to pack up our stuff and join Klaus on his airship, to go back to Castle Wulfenbach. As Agatha was packing and saying goodbye to everyone, I asked her if she wanted to be there when I told the Baron what I found. She asked if I really was a spy for him, and I laughed. 

“No, but I suspect he’ll find out a lot of what’s here on his own. I think he’ll trust us more if we told him, and it’d be better if he could feel confident the Beacon Engine was never used on you.”

“Ah. True.” She paused for a moment. “I’ll go with you.” And somehow she managed to turn it into a promise of protection. Like she would be there to protect me from his reaction. It was… I had spent the entire jump looking to protect her, to help her achieve her greatness with less pain, and I never expressed this was my intention, and my actions didn’t really make it clear I was trying to help her, and yet she still offered me this protection. It reminded me of why I set out to help her in the first place. Even in this world of schemers, she was a genuinely good person. 

I smiled at her. “Thanks.”

The Baron did leave to handle the whole deal with Sturmhalten for a bit, but he still somehow managed to be on the airship that was picking us up, once we had actually finished packing and were ready to go. It was Agatha who brought up that I had something to say. 

Soon enough, I was back in a familiar position- hiding behind a friend while an authority figure looked down at me expectantly. 

“You had something to tell me?”

“AH. hem. Yes.” I took a calming breath, and tried to ignore the consequences of my actions in order to be able to act. “Yes. At Sturmhalten, I saw the hive engines they kept under the town. They being the Geisters and Aaronev- the dead prince. He ah- was loyal to Lucrezia. Um. She entrusted him with a device- that the Geisters were meant to protect- that she meant to use to transfer her mind into the mind of her daughter. It was the Geister’s ‘holy mission’ to find her and do this. I heard about it while I was in the castle- but I could never find it. When they brought Agatha in, I followed them to where they kept it. Aaronev died before he could activate it- and then his children took Agatha away. Then I destroyed it. You might still be able to find it in the chapel, but I did my best to ensure no one could rebuild it. It… as far as I know, it wasn’t used while I was in the castle, but I heard rumors… Aaronev used it on any female Spark he could find, and they died.”

“And, if they succeeded…” The Baron prompted me.

“It would have been the return of the Other.”

“So it was Lucrezia…” He looked away, saying it more to himself than me.

I stood silently, waiting for him. 

Agatha broke the silence first. “Wait, you suspected her?!” 

“I- There were… stylistic similarities. Not enough to be sure. I didn’t want to accuse anyone until I knew .” 

Another awkward silence. Heh. Isn’t it supposed to be you put three Sparks in a room and they can’t stop talking? … Yeah that isn’t that funny. We were just kind of scared of him. Or I was, at least. I’m not really sure how Agatha felt about him. 

The Baron seemed to snap back to the present from thinking about the past. “And his children?”

“Ah, well. Tarvek saved me when Aaronev took me apart, and it was Anevka who killed him before he could try to… summon the Other.” (and Anevka has the Other’s voice now. She can control revenants with it… should I tell him? … I guess there’s not really a way for me to know that. He’ll probably figure it out on his own. Or Agatha could tell him.) 

“He took you apart?!” Agatha exclaimed. “Are you okay?” The Baron also seemed concerned, though he was more subdued about it. I suppose I neglected to tell Agatha that part.

“I am now. I don’t think I would be if not for Tarvek. He… he didn’t repair me fully, I’m not sure he could, but he repaired me enough that I could work , and he gave me tools and notes…” It was dawning on me how close to death I had come. I mean, not real death, because Astra said that if I died I’d just go home… if I trusted her. Wait! Why didn’t my Totem activate?! Aaronev took me apart , and it did nothing! If Tarvek hadn’t been there would I have just been left to rot?! Was I lied to? Did it even work?!

“Hey. Hey.” Agatha was holding me by the shoulders, looking seriously into my eyes. “You’re okay. You survived, you got through it. You’re okay.”

I looked away, and took deep, calming breaths. I didn’t need to breathe, but it was still comforting. “Thank you. Sorry.” God, I had broken down in front of the Baron. Stupid! Stupid! “I- um. That’s it.” Can I go now? 

I ended up essentially fleeing the conversation. Agatha made me some kind of excuse, I wasn’t fully paying attention. Though the Baron had her stay behind; he had more to talk about with her. I was sad to not be able to listen to that conversation, but also I was too drained to go through another high-stakes conversation at the moment, so I snuck off and found an empty room to hide in. I didn’t know how long I slept before the Baron got there, but it did not feel like long enough. I still had a small headache, and… I didn’t want to deal with anything. If I had been in my world I would tune everything out with watching Youtube or something, but there was nothing like that here. All I had were my sketchbooks (though I was glad I had the chance to bring both of them), my last extra eye, which I could fiddle with, but I couldn’t hide from the world in a fugue when I had a headache, so I lay down in a corner and napped. 

Chapter Text

When I awoke, I was still alone in the small empty room I had hidden in. I had no idea what time it was or how long I had slept. Ugh. Needing to sleep sucked. I brushed myself off and straightened my clothes, so I didn’t look like I had just slept on the floor. When I left the room, I found the ship to be much more empty than I was when I entered. That was strange. What had happened while I was asleep? I did go to sleep during a rather unstable time- almost anything could have happened. Were Agatha and the Baron getting along? What happened to Sturmhalten? To Tarvek? Where were we, even? Well, that was a question I could at least partially answer. I found a window and looked outside. The first thing I noticed was the night sky. Oh. I had slept longer than I expected. That explained the empty halls. But it only exacerbated the other questions. What had happened while I slept? Would I even get an answer before morning, with everyone probably asleep? The perils of a bad sleep schedule.

I wandered the ship. I could work- my headache was completely gone- but I didn’t have a lab, or raw materials unless I scrapped my extra eye, or even a good place to put anything bigger than a small book. Plus, it was the best way to find anyone who was still awake that I could ask what happened. Knowing the ship layout is good anyway. 

It was strange wandering without using my invisibility cloak. I knew I was technically probably allowed here, but it was strange not hiding. The ship was big. It was nothing compared to Castle Wulfenbach, of course, but it was much bigger than like- an airplane or a cart. It still felt more like a building, and a large building- not a house but an office building or something. Or a school. It was big enough that, before I got my perfect memory, I could have gotten lost in it. (Though that isn’t saying too much… I was not exactly good at navigation back then.) As it was, it didn’t take me too long to start developing a mental map of the main corridors. It was much more sensibly laid out than the sewers in Sturmhalten. As far as I could tell, there was not a single secret passage! Not one! Well, unless you counted the vents, but I wasn’t sure those were actually traversable. Plus, they’re not secret, they’re just not meant to be used as passages. 

It didn’t take very long to find a room with people in it. Which made sense. We were in the air; there was no way the ship was just on autopilot. People had to be awake to crew it. I was kinda walking around so I could find someone and ask what went on while I slept… but now faced with that actual opportunity I was afraid. They were busing running the ship, why would they want to talk to a random little girl-- adult clank. … Though they might at least direct me to the rooms for my ‘party’. (though really I didn’t feel like I was part of Agatha’s party since we hadn’t been traveling together at all.) But I was just… I was afraid of them. Of having to ask them for something. Hhhhh…. I could just ask in the morning. Find a place to hide for the night and draw, and find Agatha and everyone in the morning. Ok. Yeah. That’ll be fine.

“Need something?”

“AH!” I spun around and jumped away from the airman who had surprised me. “Um! Hi! Sorry!”

He gave me a flat, unimpressed stare. He was nondescript, blond, and… wait. Was this Higgs? No. No way. That was too big a coincidence. It couldn’t be. It was just an airman that looked… a lot like him. Right… Oh! He was waiting for me. He asked a question, right.

“Oh, no I’m fine! Just… wandering.” (Yes I did actually have something I wanted to ask. No I didn’t want to ask it right now when he noticed me looking at him too long trying to figure out if he was Higgs)

He looked very unimpressed with that answer (though he looked unimpressed with everything). “Mm. You traveling with the Lady Heterodyne?” Interesting way to refer to her. ( was he Higgs?) I mean, it was true, but not what I expected.

“Ah, yes. I mean, I was picked up with her party…” 

He gave me a questioning look. To break the awkward silence I continued.

“I met her in Sturmhalten, so we weren’t really traveling together… until now I guess. Where are we?” 

“The way to Castle Wulfenbach. You weren’t told?”

“Ah… I kinda fell asleep. I. um. Do you know what happened? Um. today?”

He gave me a moderately confused look, like he was trying to determine if I was really as stupid as this statement made me seem. 

“The Baron went to Sturmhalten. Picked up the Lady Heterodyne. Took the Town. Goin’ home.” 

“He took the town?”

“Yeah, some talk of negotiations with the son though. Why, you got someone down there?”

“Well, the son cared for me when I was there, but it sounds like things are okay enough for him.”

“Oh? Live in the castle, did you?”

“Ah, yeah. I was helping the son with a project after he rescued me from being his father’s project.”

“And now you’re with the Lady Heterodyne. What do you make of her?”

“Oh, well, we met on Caslte Wulfenbach first. She was really nice, though I didn’t know she was a Heterodyne then. When she escaped, some of the students were going to meet her in Mechanicsburg. I was, too, but I had to go to Sturmhalten first. Then I was captured, and well… I did still end up meeting up with her.” haha, a perfect cover story, and mostly true. (Which is what made it perfect; I wasn’t exactly a great liar.) 

“And I’m guessin you don’t know any better than I do what she’s been up to today.”

“No, I mean, I know she talked to the Baron a bit before I fell asleep, but.” I paused. That was kinda what I wanted to find out, actually, but there was no way this random airman would know (unless he was Higgs. Higgs might know. But he might not tell me) “I guess it can’t have gone too terribly wrong.”

“Mm.” He agreed noncommittally.

He offered to show me to my quarters. I explained that I had kinda slept through the whole assigning of quarters thing. He asked where I slept then, and I had to embarrassedly explain that I just found a small empty room and slept on the floor. At this point I think he thought I was pathetic. But that was fine because it’s kinda true. He was nice, though, and did enough asking around to figure out that I was in fact assigned a small room, and led me to it. I thanked him and he parted ways amicably… and then as he left I realized no, that had to be Higgs. Once he was gone and half my brainpower was no longer devoted to being terrified of making a fool of myself, I realized that it actually made some sense for it to be Higgs. In Canon, he was on the ship the Baron left Sturmhalten on. (That was how he ended up having the impressive story where he rescued the Baron that Dr. Sun told Gil.) That meant he was in Sturmhalten. Which made sense since part of the mission was retrieving the Lady Heterodyne. (Though I think that was meant to be secret?) Anyway, it made a lot of sense for him to ‘end up’ on the same ship as her, now that she was actually on an official Wulfenbach airship, instead of a stolen one. Him meeting me could be pure coincidence, but with the questions he was asking it wouldn’t surprise me if he sought me out. All the better to get a profile on me. After all, I was a bit of a mystery since I had only existed for a year or so. Plus I kinda disappeared when I went off to sleep. Now that I thought about it, I realized I gave away a lot of information even in our brief conversation. I basically summarized my life here, though I did leave out all sorts of incriminating evidence like my reason for going to Sturmhalten being my meta knowledge, or that I knew Agatha was a Heterodyne from the very beginning. He was a good spy. (and I was a terrible counterspy.) Fortunately, he was on Agatha’s side and so was I, so giving him information wasn’t really a bad thing. 

Still, I was surprised by how anonymous he looked. Even knowing about him he was hard to recognize. (though that was also… mostly my own problem also. I’ve always been a bit faceblind and having to map my memories of drawings to 3-D people made that worse. I didn’t have trouble with other characters, but that was mostly because people tended to have distinct designs and wear their sigils, plus they showed up about where and when I expected them to, putting them in context. Higgs avoided all that.) 

Anyway, since I couldn’t really do anything until morning, I spent the night drawing, mostly. I had skipped drawing the day before (...kinda. Keeping track of time was hard when your sleep didn’t match with the days, but all I had done was a tiny sketch for my Sparkwork before Agatha had come to the castle. I had slept through ‘today’, too. So I spent the rest of the night drawing to make up for it. Mostly relishing in my ability to draw landscapes and mecha (things I wasn’t great at before I got Artiste), but also still annoyed by my limitation to pencil and paper. I had told myself I would build myself a tablet and where was it?! I should have done it back on Castle Wulfenbach when I had time and supplies, but also if I did I’d probably have lost it or scrapped it by accident by now. I think the only thing that saved my original sketchbook from being scrapped while I was in the sewers was that paper wasn’t exactly useful for what I needed to build. And I didn’t really see that problem of safety going away all that soon. Girl Genius characters lost items all the time, and often didn’t have a stable home base to store things in either. I had experienced that all first hand, and while I doubted I’d do anything quite as dangerous as Sturmhalten, I doubted it’d improve too much until the plot was effectively over. Actually, even then… I’d kinda assumed I’d live in Mechanicsburg, but unless I actually become good friends with Agatha I’d need to like… get a job there or something. I’d never had a job. (Yes, pathetic, I know.) hrm. I guess I could just be one of the Baron’s kept sparks? That didn’t seem too bad. Kinda boring plot-wise though; ending the same place I’d started. With all that said, building myself a tablet here would still be different though, since there is no internet or anything. I could only show off my drawings using screens or tablets I made, and I would need to protect the storage medium in order to protect the drawings. Not so bad a problem in my original world, but everything is in so much more danger in Girl Genius. 

If I really wanted it protected I’d give it to the Librarians. 

Now that was an interesting thought, actually. What if I joined the Immortal Library? It made sense Plot-wise, since I seemed to be taking on the role of self-made Muse a bit. (Though mechanically, I was still leagues behind Tinka in elegance… it made me much easier to repair.) It also would be interesting in the more literal sense, since they went on adventures to find books. It would give me the chance to learn a lot , and therefore expand my power as a Spark. (Plus satiate the hunger of scientific curiosity that came along with that Spark.) And I would be supporting a cause I believed in, knowledge, learning, freedom. That was a good plan if I didn’t end up with the main cast.

Chapter Text

Anyway, the next day I joined back up with Agatha and friends. They were surprisingly welcoming, and it wasn’t long before I was just another odd face in the group. I guess that’s part of how she always ends up with these big parties of friends following her around. We got to Castle Wulfenbach somewhere around midday (when I was already starting to get tired again… stupid bad sleep schedule) They separated us there, each being guarded separately as a ‘precaution’, though the distribution of strength of the Guards was odd. Zeetha was noticeably more heavily guarded and curtailed in her movement, though none of us were given the (mostly) free reign that I had grown used to as a student. We were allowed to visit each other, but it wasn’t too long before Agatha disappeared to be able to see her parents, and the rest of us were not allowed to come along. It was disconcerting. All I could guess was that the Baron was trying to avoid letting Zeetha meet Gil, which made sense from his perspective but was clearly putting Agatha on edge, especially since he was doing it subtly enough that if you didn’t know he had reason to be worried about that specific interaction, it was hard to guess at his reasoning. It made me want to hurry along the siblings revelation, just to get past this paranoia.

But I didn’t know how to do that. I didn’t have the scheming chops to reveal enough information without revealing that I knew, and if they knew I knew it’d open a whole world of trouble. Once I was known for having outside information that would be all I was known for, since that alone is incredibly powerful, especially for the schemers at the top. People like Klaus and Tarvek would kill to know what I knew. If they knew I knew… I doubted I’d know peace until they’d wrung it out of me, and even then I’d be forever tied to them, so they could keep their advantage of information against their opponents. 

So I ended up just kinda hanging out with the rest of Agatha’s party while she did whatever. Talk to Gil about him saving her parents I guess. Krosp got out of the area we were confined to, but I didn’t. If he was spying I wouldn’t need to and while I had my invisibility cloak I didn’t have real stealth skills. The risk/reward wasn’t worth it. Wooster had disappeared at some point (I bet he was at least partly hiding from Gil), so it was just me, Zeetha, the Jägers, and Lars. We were all worried about Agatha, and annoyed at being separated from her. (the others more than me there.) We talked politics, a bit. The Jägers wanted Agatha in Mechanicsburg, hoped that the Baron would let her go there, but Dimo was convinced he wouldn’t. Zeetha wanted to know what Agatha’s plan was, wanted to figure out what we were negotiating with the Baron for (the Jägers said they thought Agatha’s plan was to go to Mechanicsburg). Lars was kinda lost, and just wanted Agatha to be safe. I was mostly quiet, trying to think how to say things without revealing my hand. I pointed out how the Baron seemed scared of Zeetha, or scared of what she’d do, since she got the strongest guards. She said that was because he knew enough of Skifander to know she was a strong fighter, but she was thoughtful, like she knew it could be more than that. Lars pointed out the Jägers were strong fighters too, but still had less guarding than her. Zeetha considered that, but if she had suspicions on the Baron’s identity, she didn’t voice them. 

Krosp came back before Agatha. He confirmed that Agatha was with Gil in his lab, and said that the Baron was investigating what was found at Sturmhalten, and had also sent a team to Passholt, which the circus had apparently told him about at some point. (I had kinda forgotten he needed to be told about that with everything else going on, but that was fine because I theoretically didn’t know about it.) I actually asked him about Passholt when he brought it up (to make sure I didn’t seem like I knew) and Lars summarized it, with commentary from the Jägers. Krosp also found out that Mr. Rovainen had been found out as a Revenant, and claimed that Agatha was the Other and ordered him to activate the Hive Engine. 

That got everyone’s attention. Lars, Oggie, and Maxim flat-out denied the possibility, saying it can’t be true. Dimo said there had to be more to this, and Zeetha looked very concerned. I clearly didn’t look surprised enough, because Krosp asked me if I knew something about this.

“I… might. In Sturmhalten, the royal family seemed to think she could control Revenants with her voice. I don’t think she’s the Other; I’m fairly confident it was Lucrezia. But if she told him to do something and he was compelled to obey, would he know the difference?”

“I- I guess. But she wouldn’t tell anyone to activate a hive engine!” Lars protested.

“That’s true. When she was here as a student, she seemed more concerned about it than the rest of us, and she fought the Wasps when it was activated. But… maybe she said something else, and he interpreted it that way?”

“That seems rather a stretch. ‘Activate the engine’ isn’t exactly a vague order.” Krosp countered. 

I had no response to that. It was true. It still wasn’t perfectly clear to me why Mr. Rovainen had interpreted Agatha’s order to go do what he was supposed to be doing that way, though I was inclined to believe the fan theory that he had activated the engine in order to draw the Baron’s attention to the problem. He believed death was better than being a Revenant, and could act on that belief, if in a roundabout way. (him ‘sparing’ Dr. Vg by killing them, for example.) Plus, activating the engine is a bad move, strategically, for the Other. It made a certain amount of sense that it was his own form of rebellion. 

“Vot does der Baron tink?” Dimo asked. 

“As far as I can tell, he believes Rovainen thinks he’s telling the truth, but isn’t sure about Agatha himself.”

“Which means he’s likely to believe Agatha not being the Other, but he might think she did order the engine’s activation.” I summarized.

“That isn’t much better.” Zeetha said. 

“Zo ve tell her vot happen, she tell os vot she tell de guy, den ve tell de Baron eet vas all a meesunderstandink!” Oggie said, his optimism refreshing, if unrealistic.

The rest of us exchanged glances, asking the silent question of ‘who’s gonna tell him?’

It was Krosp who broke the silence. “You think he’d believe that?”

“Especially since we shouldn’t know about this…” I added nervously. 

“So, what? You think we shouldn’t tell Agatha?” Zeetha asked a bit pointedly.

“Well, it would probably make it easier to convince him she didn’t know at the time…” I honestly didn’t know what I thought the best solution was. I hadn’t really planned this far ahead, especially since we were now off of the path of the story as it went in Canon. It was scary, and I kept having to remind myself that even if things seemed to be going badly, it was still going better now than it was during the same time in Canon.

There was more discussion, but I mostly stopped contributing, afraid to mess things up, and not wanting responsibility for whatever goes wrong. They decided they were going to tell Agatha about Mr. Rovainen. I decided their decisions were not my problem. (this was, of course, blatantly untrue since my goal the whole time has been basically to make things go better for Agatha and for Europa than they did in Canon. But. I was anxious about how it would go and wanted to pretend it wasn’t my responsibility.) I ended up drawing to try to distract myself. It wasn’t anything compared to the distractions of the Internet, but if I focused enough to add a bit of fugue it helped me to feel less anxious. 

This kept me busy until Agatha came back. Apparently she had spent a fair amount of time catching up with Gil (Zeetha teased her about this). Her parents were recovering, but it would still be a while until they could do very much. They had apparently been very distressed to see her there, and Gil ended up having to sedate them so they wouldn’t hurt themselves. Agatha was upset about this, but he had her look at the readings and he was not wrong. Before that though, they insisted that being under the Baron’s control was incredibly dangerous, and that she needed to escape to Mechanicsburg. 

Of course, the first question everyone asked was why . Yes, being held by the Baron wasn’t ideal, but he had been friends with Bill and Barry (and with Punch and Judy, too), he had promised to return Mechanicsburg to Heterodyne rule if one was discovered,  and he had generally done right by the Jägers. According to Agatha, Adam and Lilith had reacted like he was going to kill her. 

Krosp was all for escaping. He didn’t trust the Baron at all, and still suspected he would brain-core Agatha, like he did to Vapnoople. Zeetha and the Jägers were prepared to try, but didn’t really rank our chances of success highly. We were fairly heavily guarded, and the Baron’s people were famously good at tracking. They had only gotten away from him before because he didn’t know to look. Faking Agatha’s death wouldn’t work a second time. Lars seemed like he was in completely over his head, but agreed that he’d try his best whatever happened. I was kinda feeling the same, but I did point out that escaping to Mechanicsburg would be increasing her political power a lot, since if she proved herself Heterodyne she would be ruling it. And that the Baron would probably not take kindly to that happening without warning. It would give her more ground to stand on for negotiations, but it would also not be a great way to set up friendly relations. 

Eventually, Agatha decided that we would wait and see. If the Baron seemed to be genuinely trying to get along with her, and let her go to Mechanicsburg under his watch, that would be okay and we would go along with it. If he tried to control her, keep her captive, or seemed like he would hurt any of us, we were leaving. In preparation for this, we all agreed to keep an eye out for escape methods. 

Then we told her about Mr. Rovainen. She was horrified, and confused… until she remembered what she had told him. She explained to us what had happened (though she left out exactly in what way he was rude to her), and was very worried about his interpretation of the orders. She said she was more worried about Anevka now, since she both had the power of the Other’s voice and didn’t know that orders could be interpreted so disturbingly. Apparently she had already told the Baron that Anevka had copied her voice, but this new information meant it was more important that he act on that. But even more than that, Agatha was worried that she could cause harm even accidentally, and while she was prepared to be careful about telling people to do things, she wasn’t sure she could be that careful. Of course, this didn’t mean she wanted to submit to the Baron’s possible solution of locking her up so she couldn’t talk to anybody, but she wondered if the Baron would let her borrow a Wasp Eater so she could be able to tell if someone was a Revenant. 

I pointed out that if he was still worried about her using Other tech he might take it as her wanting to reverse-engineer them to make stealthier Wasps, but we all agreed it was probably worth it to ask anyway. 

Which brought the conversation to things we wanted to ask from Klaus. Obviously the end goal was peace and Agatha in Mechanicsburg, but while we were in Castle Wulfenbach, Krosp and the Jägers wanted more/better food, Zeetha wanted to be allowed to roam more freely, and Agatha and I both wanted lab space.

Chapter Text

The next day, after Agatha spoke with the Baron again, we ended up actually getting a fair amount of what we asked for. It wasn’t clear to me whether or not she told him about us knowing about Mr. Rovainen, but things seemed to be working out. He wasn’t fully ready to trust her, and the Castle was still notably empty of Jägers, save the ones in our party (and possibly Higgs, though I didn’t see him again). But over the course of about a week, they seemed to be working towards trust. I spent most of my time in various labs. Following Agatha’s plan to have an escape plan ready for if things went south, I began working with Gil to add invisibility to his flier. (which was also getting improved by both him and Agatha.) Toggleable invisibility was harder, given the way I was going about it, but with suggestions from them both it was very possible. Plus, it was necessary if the invisibility was to be a surprise for the Baron. Anyway, that project ended up occurring in the lab the Baron had given us, Gil’s flight lab, and probably Gil’s main lab though they didn’t take me along there. But anyway, when Agatha wasn’t doing diplomacy with the Baron or training with Zeetha, she was usually doing Science with Gil or me and Gil. The Jägers tagged along with her whenever they could, which usually didn’t mean the diplomacy meetings, but did mean ending up lifting heavy things for Sparks. Lars tagged along a fair amount, though things between him and Gil were… odd. Also he wasn’t really used to dealing with Sparks of our caliber. Zeetha did end up managing an invite or two to the diplomacy meetings (I didn’t, though, so I’m not sure what happened at them), and she categorically refused to work as a minion, though she did sometimes sit in to tease Agatha and Gil. 

Yeah, the Baron’s plot to separate Zeetha and Gil didn’t really work. The work on the flier being split between our lab and the flight lab meant that Gil snuck his way into our lab on a regular basis, and the guards were not ordered to keep Zeetha out of it. … The Baron prepared for containing Zeetha, but not for containing Gil. 

He was wary of her, at first, (I assumed the Baron gave him a similar vague warning about Zeetha to what he did in Canon.) but it didn’t take long for him to get used to her presence. She noticed him being wary, but he refused to explain himself. (which was interesting because in Canon he freely admitted that he was told she might try to kill him.) Once Gil was at least moderately confident Zeetha wouldn’t randomly try to kill him, they actually got along rather well. Of course, Zeetha teased him, but it was all meant fondly.

That was, until everything went wrong. 

The details of the beginning aren’t important. Suffice to say, Gil may have snuck in some alcohol… which everyone had to have at least a little of… I ended up hotwiring my power supply because dangit I technically turned 21 sometime last year but I’m a robot and can’t drink. Plus headaches instead of deliriousness as the side effect of not sleeping killed my original alcohol-lite method. (Side note: do not hotwire your power supply. Yes, I did it relatively safely, making sure I’d get enough power to live and adding an emergency switch so I could restore the amount of power allocated to mental processes back to normal. It’s still a bad idea.)  Anyway, it was a bit of a party. Zeetha ended up telling some kind of story about her fighting prowess back in Skifander… And somehow that turned into her and Gil deciding that Now They Must Fight. Had I been sober, maybe I would have realized what a bad idea this was. As it was, I was stoked to see their super fast fighting techniques in person. Now, the fight didn’t actually go as bad as you might immediately expect. These were two skilled and well-trained fighters who were used to sparring. They knew how to fight without real risk of harm, and without endangering bystanders. (the equipment was a loss, but replaceable) No, this wouldn’t have been that big of a problem… 

Except that was when the Baron decided to come in. Things happened very quickly after that. He yelled something in Skif and attacked Zeetha. Zeetha yelled something else in Skif in surprise, and only barely managed to block his attack. Agatha declared we were leaving. Gil tried to get his father and Zeetha to stop fighting by jumping between them. I had the same idea but slower. With Gil’s help, Zeetha managed to disengage from the fight to follow Agatha, who was collecting everyone and running to the upgraded flier. 

I, bastion of brilliance that I was, finally jumped between Klaus and where Zeetha used to be, saying, “noo, you can’t kill er, she’s yer daughter!!”

At which point the Baron’s attention snapped to me. “HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT?”

“Wait, she’s my sister ?! Why did you tell me she’d want to kill me ?!” Gil interjected.

“She did try to kill you!” The Baron argued, and then picked me up by my collar, “And this one told her about you, right?” The words were quieter, but infused with even more malice than before. 

I looked blearily up at him. “I din’t…”

“She didn’t try to kill me! We were sparring! It’s not like that was the first time we interacted !”

“I TOLD YOU TO STAY AWAY FROM HER” Klaus roared at Gil, seeming to forget that he was carrying me by my collar with one hand. I ragdolled as he gestured. 

“Apparently for no reason ! Everything was fine until you tried to kill her !” 

Klaus glared at Gil for a moment, and I almost wondered if he would actually give in to that argument. He didn’t.

“What about him .” He said, gesturing with me.

“... who?” I asked

“Wh- YOU! How did you know?!” The Baron replied fiercely. 

“‘M not him. An… ‘can’t tell you that…” 

Klaus stared at me, analyzing. He looked to Gil. “What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s… drunk.”

“Drunk.” The Baron deadpanned.

“Well, he’s limited power flow to his central processor to replicate the effects. It has a manual override-I helped install it-but he doesn’t seem to have thought to use it .” Gil was staring at me meaningfully as he said that. What was he… oh!

I used the manual override, restoring full power to my processor.

And oh, god, the crushing realization of my own stupidity hit like a truck.

“aK! I’msorryI’msorryI’msorry-pleasedon’tkillmeI’msorryIwon’ttellanyoneIpromisepleasedon’tkillme” I cringed away from him, curling up into a ball still suspended from where the Baron was holding my collar.

“How did you know?” He asked again, patience clearly wearing very thin

I needed to answer quickly, but the truth(I knew because I read the comic… and the fan-theories and extra information since it wasn’t actually revealed in-comic yet) would do me very little good. I needed a good lie quickly, which meant I said the most obvious lie, with the idea I could refine it when I got a moment to think about it.

“She told me!”

“Zeetha told you.” He clarified, sounding to me like he didn’t believe it. But he did finally put me down at least. I intentionally didn’t scurry away in fear.

“Well, she wasn’t sure… but the timelines matched up.” I shut myself up before I could make up more on the spot lies- the more lies you tell the easier it is for you to be caught with one of them. 

“How could she have…” the Baron was talking to himself, which meant that while he had doubts, my lies were believable enough not to be just blatantly obvious.

“She didn’t tell me all of her reasoning.” Occam's razor. Why don’t I have an explanation for how she knew something (that she actually didn’t know)? She didn’t tell me. Simple answer that makes sense. 

He considered that for a bit, and then snapped back to imperious questioning.“And where are they now?” They almost certainly meaning Agatha and crew.

Gil and I locked eyes. They were definitely no longer on Castle Wulfenbach by now. (Unless they had waited for me, but I honestly doubted it.) Most likely, they were already well on their way to Mechanicsburg, moving faster than any of the Baron’s ships. And invisible. And it was kinda-sorta our fault since we had done two thirds of the building of the flier. And we knew full well this was what we were building it for. 

I tried to nonverbally communicate that it was his turn to come up with a story on the spot. This was done by nodding slightly at him.

He replied with a quick and (theoretically) subtle shrug, accompanied by a glare. I assumed this meant something along the lines of ‘what do you expect me to say?!’ or ‘why are you pinning this on me?!’ 

Klaus sighed and pinched his nose, like he was trying to avoid an annoyance-based headache. He then cut the Gordian Knot of trying to get information out of us by going and asking his actual subordinates.

When he rather efficiently discovered that they went to Gil’s flight lab, he rushed there himself. Gil and I had followed him. It was probably stupid to do so, since he was going to figure out our place in their escape, but I wanted to see his reaction, and if Agatha had really escaped. Plus, he was going to find out anyway, and it wasn’t like Gil or I could escape. We found the flight lab empty, the trapdoor open, wind rushing up into the room. The Baron turned on us immediately. 

“You helped them escape?! ”

“What did you expect? ” Gil retorted, “I was arranging to send her to England to protect her from you! It’s your fault she decided she needed to.”

“She didn’t fully trust you, but she decided to hear you out- unless you seemed like you were going to hurt any of her friends.” I clarified. 

He stared at us. His expression seemed to be warring between anger, exhaustion, and… something else I couldn’t quite read. He put his head in his hands, and looked almost… defeated. Gil stepped forward in concern. 

“Damn.” Klaus said into his hands. It was barely above a whisper. He quickly rallied himself though, and looked at Gil seriously. “How long until she’s in Mechanicsburg?” 

Gil shrugged. “By morning, at the latest.” It was after sunset, so that was rather quickly. “We never tested its top speed after the latest improvements.” 

“... of course it’s untested.” Klaus sighed, not even bothering to put energy into being exasperated. “I have to clean up this mess, you two try not to cause me any more trouble.”

We diplomatically chose not to point out that he kinda caused this problem entirely himself. He walked away… and then stopped in the doorway.

“Wait. Why did she leave you behind?” He was talking to me.

Oh. Yeah, she said we would go if he tried to hurt any of her friends, but left me to his mercy. “I assume she figured that, since I was one of your students, you wouldn’t just kill me outright. Plus, I can take care of myself.” I hadn’t really felt bad that she left me behind, just glad she didn’t hamstring her escape attempt by going back for me. 

Klaus didn’t respond, he just left, apparently satisfied with my answer. 

As soon as he left, I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding (since, you know, I didn’t actually need to breathe and could therefore hold my breath an indefinite amount of time. Though technically I couldn’t have been holding that breath very long because I still couldn’t both hold my breath and speak. … It’s a figure of speech shut up.)

Anyway, Gil and I just kind of… stood there for a bit. Eventually Gil thought to close back up the trapdoor and tidy the notes and papers that were flying everywhere in the wind it kicked up. I was kinda mostly thinking about how I had narrowly avoided death by lying gratuitously to Baron Klaus Wulfenbach, leader of the Empire. And about how the lie could fairly easily be proven false if he asked Zeetha whether she had told me about theorizing him to be her father. … Luckily I didn’t have to worry about that because she wasn’t here right now, so he couldn’t ask her! 

“Zeetha is really my sister?” Gil said, breaking the silence. It seemed his train of thought was also stuck on that particular part of the conversation, though for different reasons. 

“I mean, I think your father’s reaction confirms it.” 

“But that just makes it more confusing that he thought she’d try to kill me!” Gil clutched at his already-messy hair in frustration.

“Maybe it’s something to do with Skifander? Or him leaving it?”

“But she didn’t . But I’ve never known my father to be wrong about anything. Not until Agatha.” 

“He hasn’t been there in what, 18 years? He doesn’t know her other than as a baby, and meeting her a few days ago. He might have good spies here , and he might be good at seeing trends, but he’s not infallible. Plus, it makes sense for him to prefer not taking that risk with your safety.” I shrugged. “I’m not saying he’s not being paranoid, but. It does make sense from a certain point of view.” 

Gil just looked pained.

“I should probably go to bed.” I admitted. My ‘you should really sleep now’ headache was coming back, and it seemed like the action was subsiding for a bit. Though before I actually slept I needed to draw and undo my incredibly stupid inebriation wiring. It was turned off right then, obviously, but I needed to do a proper fix to get everything properly back where it goes. 

Of course, it was only my headache getting bad enough to actually hurt that made me go to bed. Luckily, doing a bad sketch (okay, it was still pretty good because of the Artiste perk, but the headache and my doing it quickly and without thinking both made it only ok, rather than the amazing that I had grown to expect from myself) and just fixing the wiring back to the way it was supposed to be (rather than the tempting improvements that I couldn’t make while I had a headache) actually didn’t take very long once I actually had the motivation to just do them rather than trying to make them better than I had time for.

Chapter Text

That all is to say, I didn’t precisely wake up early the next day. I was once again waking up late (though this was like. 1pm instead of evening) and having to deduce what had gone on while I was asleep. Luckily, this time I had a bit of a better idea of what might be happening, and looking out the windows gave a much better clue. Castle Wulfenbach was flying near Mechanicsburg. Not over it, I noticed, which was actually a good sign for Agatha’s independence. Also, as far as I could tell, it was not actively embattled, which was also a good sign. (And there was no sign of a certain bright pink airship) Castle Heterodyne still had a big hole blown in the side of it from the Other’s attack, but that didn’t really mean much when it came to the question of whether it had recognized Agatha, and how far along she was in fixing it. If I wanted to help her now, it would be easiest to do it from inside the town (and possibly inside the Castle). (Though… the inside of Castle Heterodyne was very dangerous. And Agatha did fine during that section in Cannon, so… maybe I wouldn’t actually go there.) Anyway, it was all moot if I couldn’t find a way off Castle Wulfenbach. 

I wandered the halls again. Castle Wulfenbach was much larger than the ship that had taken us from Sturmhalten to it, which meant that this time I had little hope of mentally mapping the whole thing in one stroll, like I did last time. It was also much more busy. Luckily (or unluckily, maybe) people were very willing to ignore me and just go about their business. I was certainly not the strangest (or at least, most obviously strange) thing walking down those halls. The Baron employed many constructs of many types, and clanks, too, were not uncommon, though most were closer to machines than sapient beings. 

I checked the flight lab first, but it was empty. Made sense. Gil could probably get down to Mechanicsburg officially, on a normal airship. My next thought was to check Gil’s secret lab. Even if he wasn’t there, I could get an update on Punch and Judy’s conditions. However, he hadn’t shown me where it was. (I guessed he must have shown Agatha, when she got to visit them, but none of the rest of us got to come along.) I did vaguely remember from the comic when Gil showed Tarvek there, so Tarvek could escape the airship. And that escape was also via trapdoor and flying machine, so it too had to be on the underside of the ship, but mostly what I remembered about Gil’s secret lab was that it was actually fairly well hidden. And even if I could remember the comic pages perfectly, (which I couldn’t, since I didn’t have perfect memory when I read them) they still probably didn’t have enough specificity to let me find the lab myself. I could seek out Klaus and hope he ‘right monster for the job’d me into doing something useful… but that made no guarantee it’d be useful to Agatha. The whole jump I seemed to be, at least in appearances, working for Klaus. (even when I was working for Tarvek, he thought I was an Empire spy) And while I respected his tactics and admired his resolve, he wasn’t the power I had meant to back. I was not clever enough a schemer to do as he told me to and still have my actions support Agatha’s power more than his own. Of course, if I could ensure that here they had an alliance, (instead of the open hostilities and outright battle they had in Canon) it would mean that I wouldn’t need to watch out for him trying to use me against her so much. Still. While being his pawn was an easy option (it meant I didn’t need to think for myself) it was… not thematically appropriate. I reminded myself that all I was tasked with was survival (and entertainment), and that I still had my Totem rattling around in my casing. (not literally, it was held in place and didn’t make any sound.) (Also I wasn’t 100% sure it worked since it didn’t help with Aaronev. Though maybe that was for the better since he would’ve just wanted to study it… Plus I didn’t die. I guess. The definition of death was less easy to pin down for a clank.) 

Anyway. I didn’t know where Gil was, or where to look for him. I wasn’t looking for Klaus. The other main characters in the Castle… I couldn’t find Punch and Judy, and they couldn’t help me anyway. The students were all gone. Von Pinn… Von Pinn! Castle Heterodyne had sent the Torchmen to take her down to it in Canon, could I hitch a ride? Did that already happen? And if the Si Vales Valeo wasn’t happening… and I saw no reason for it to since Tarvek didn’t get shot… would Agatha kill her? (That was a scary and sobering thought) Would she kill Agatha? (no, she said her Orders prevented it…) Would she manage to ever make it back to her true body, the body of the Muse Otilia? (Without Lucrezia in Agatha, the Castle in the Muse might not insist on trying to kill her, and therefore get wrecked by Higgs…) Would she manage to make it to a Clank body, and out of the Von Pinn body that she was expressly stated to hate? 

So I looked for her. I went to the school. Or… where it was. It was empty, all the equipment still there, but abandoned. The lights seemed darker, even though it was the middle of the day. It felt like seeing a ghost, like a liminal space, like I was the only one left. It seemed that Klaus had sent all his students away. 

Not all of the school was like that. I spotted the maids that had helped Von Pinn (especially with the little ones), I found rooms that seemed to have been converted to storage, I found that the student dorms were occupied, apparently given away as temporary bunks for- someone. I left before I found out. The Empire was too efficient to just leave the whole area empty for this long, though from that perspective it was surprising just how much was left abandoned. I supposed Castle Wulfenbach was big enough that space wasn’t at too much of a premium. Was Von Pinn even there? And if she was… was she okay? Klaus Barry Heterodyne’s death had nearly driven her insane, when she failed to protect him from Lucrezia’s attack on Castle Heterodyne and the resulting fallout. It was only Klaus Wulfenbach finding her a new purpose (to defend the kids on Castle Wulfenbach) that had helped her be… more stable. Would she take this as another failure? I continued my search.

I did find her, eventually, in the abandoned school, pacing by the windows. She looked… stressed. And she didn’t seem to notice me.

“Von Pinn?”

Her head snapped around to look at me, her pacing exchanged for strictly contained furious energy. “Elzerei. I was told you were with the Heterodyne Girl.” She sounded relieved to see me. 

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. As far as I knew, she saw Agatha as the successor to Lucrezia and Euphrosynia, both of whom had done irreparable harm to her and hers. “... Kinda? Why?”

“The Heterodyne Girl cannot be trusted.” The way she said it somehow sounded like both a plea and an axiom. I knew that there was no way I could convince her of the opposite. And yet I had no idea what else to try to do. I wanted to get her back to her own body, to allow her to once again be Otilia, Muse of Protection. But I was afraid that if I managed that and she didn’t change her opinion of Agatha, she would just kill her, after being freed of the orders Lucrezia built into the Von Pinn body. 

“She isn’t her mother. Or the Old Heterodynes.” I insisted gently. 

“She is their legacy.” Von Pinn returned, venom in her voice. 

I frowned. I couldn’t fully dispute that, but, “She’s her own person.” I looked out the window, down at Mechanicsburg, where I knew Agatha was even though I couldn’t see her. “And she’s a good person.” 

Von Pinn looked at me in despair. She knew she could not convince me, just as I knew I could not convince her. We were both confident in Agatha’s nature, and could only be convinced otherwise by her actions. (of course, I wasn’t going to be proven wrong.)

I looked back out the window, thinking about Agatha, about the story of Girl Genius, about Theo and Sleipnir, who were almost certainly down there too, and about all the questions I had about how our new future would differ from Canon.

“I’m going down there,” I told Von Pinn, “to help her.” I said it quietly, almost more to myself.

“No.” Von Pinn was looming behind me, her expression deadly serious. “You won’t. You are under my protection .” She stood at her full height, looming over me, clawed hands splayed dangerously by her sides. Oh no. “And I take the protection of my charges very seriously .” Oh no. “I may not be able to convince Master Wulfenbach” Ohhhh no “But you I can protect .” Oh no oh no oh no. 

I was cornered against the window. I slowly stepped to the side but she matched me easily. She was faster than me. And stronger. As I contemplated my doom I wondered which of the Wulfenbachs she felt she had failed to convince. Probably Klaus, I guess. Maybe both. I tried to calm down. She wasn’t going to kill me. She just wasn’t going to let me leave. (I never should have gone to find her. I should have just built myself a glider and left.) 

I couldn’t fight her. She would win. I couldn’t run from her. She was faster. I couldn’t change her mind, I was her last hope at someone to protect, and she was the Muse of Protection. To get down to Mechanicsburg, I would need to use trickery. I was not very good at trickery. 

I closed my eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, and forced myself to relax out of the fight-or-flight response. She wasn’t going to hurt me, and I was going to find a way to escape her. 

“Fine. But surely you aren’t going to keep me pinned against this window the whole time?” If I could get access to a lab, maybe I could do something. Or find someone with authority over her or the ability to distract her. (I thought of the Jäger André, but as far as I knew there were no Jägers on Castle Wulfenbach, so that wouldn’t work)

“I could. You are a Clank,” My eyes widened as I was suddenly reminded of the theory that she stood vigil over Euphrosynia’s grave for 200 years, back when she was in her clank body. “You do not need to eat or drink.”

Oh no no no. “I do need to sleep . And I’m a Spark . Keeping us completely from our work is not good for us or our surroundings.” I would go insane! Well- more insane! The space between her and the window seemed more and more confining as I considered having to stay there so long. The fight or flight instincts began to kick in again and I considered the window as an escape. How much would a fall from that height really hurt me? Plus, I still had my Totem. If it killed me, I would just come back! (though wasting a revive like that was not… it was a last resort. And I wasn’t sure I trusted it.) And if it didn’t kill me, how long would it take for me to be found if it disabled me? Probably not that long, since we were just outside Mechanicsburg. And, as far as I knew, both the major players of the area (Wulfenbach and Agatha) wanted me alive. Plus, could I Othar my way out of the fall? (I mean… clearly not. I didn’t have his plot armor, but could I find some way to jump and survive the fall? Makeshift parachute… invisibility cloak…. Ooooo. Could I make it look like I had jumped, but actually stay safely aboard? Then find a lab and make a real way down?)

“Sparks are troublesome . And endanger themselves with their work. … At sunset I will allow you to go to your room to sleep.”

Ergh. Yes that was better , but still. That was something like 6 hours of just sitting there, doing nothing . … though I supposed I did have to consider how unstable she would be if she thought I killed myself jumping off the airship. That was, uh. Scary. I had no clue how she would react, but it probably wouldn’t be good.

Well. I wasn’t escaping in the next few moments, anyway. I sat on the floor and pulled out my sketchbook. I wasn’t just going to sit there bored. Out of a lack of ideas, I decided to draw Von Pinn from life. After all, she was standing very still in front of me, and would be for a while.

I couldn’t tell you how long I sat like that, drawing Von Pinn, trying to think of how to escape her. I think at some point I slipped into fugue because I looked down at the paper and there were aerodynamics equations surrounding her portrait, like a haze it emerged from. I still didn’t have any solutions, though. Not ones that were possible without supplies or time to work. 

As I finished up the drawing of Von Pinn, (I had taken longer on it than most of my drawings recently, and it was more polished as a result. Too bad closing the sketchbook would smudge it.) I noticed the sun was distinctly lower in the sky than when I had started. 

On impulse, before closing my sketchbook on my drawing and letting it get graphite on the opposite page, I held it up to Von Pinn. “... Do you want it?”

“No. It is very well-made, but I take no pride in my appearance.” Of course. She hated being Von Pinn.

“Is there anyone else you would want a portrait of?”

“... Why.”

I raised my eyebrow at her. “You’ve trapped me here with nothing to do but draw. You might not get bored, but I do.” 

She looked at me for a moment, and then said quietly, almost too soft for me to hear, “The Muses.”

Oh! I wasn’t expecting her to open up like that. “Ah the Muses. Some of the earliest examples of intelligent clanks.” I started sketching thumbnails, different ways to fit all nine muses on the same page. “Most I’ve only seen artistic depictions of, though I did meet Tinka.”

Her jaw dropped, and her expression conveyed clearly the desperate hope that her sister was alive. “She still functions?! I had thought her lost…” 

I cringed slightly, loathe to tell her about Tinka’s state. 

Her eyes narrowed, quickly spotting my hesitancy. “She does still function, yes?”

“... She… Before I had the chance to meet her, a Spark took her apart to try to study her. By the time I met her, a different Spark was trying to repair her, but… Van Rijn’s work is still too delicate for the modern Spark to replicate. She could walk, and speak- albeit with a stutter- but… there was something wrong that we could not figure out. And- and then- someone cut off her head. I still hold hope that she can be repaired, but. I had to leave. I’m so sorry.”

Von Pinn’s face was a portrait of rage. She grabbed my shoulders and yelled in my face, “WHERE IS SHE?!” 

I was intimidated, and almost folded immediately to her demand, but I realized this was my opportunity. I summoned my Spark, just enough for the courage to do the insane, and I met her eyes. “ And why should I tell you? Aren’t you the same person who is holding me captive in order to ‘protect’ me? Tinka is my friend , and I will not let you subject her to that. ” It was maybe presumptuous to call Tinka my friend. We had only known each other for about three weeks, and my input was mostly helping to repair her. Still, even if she didn’t think of me as a friend, I did care about her. 

Von Pinn physically recoiled. “SHE IS-” But the sentence cut off. I assumed she wanted to continue with ‘my sister’ but couldn’t because of Lucrezia’s tampering. 

I stepped forward, trying to banish my Spark and be kind and nonthreatening, a voice of comfort that she clearly needed. It didn’t fully work. “I’ll tell you, if you let me go .” There was still too much anger in my voice, too much Spark. The fear from being cornered channeled into defiant Sparky rage. 

She seemed to consider my offer, watching me suspiciously. Eventually, she spoke. “You would sell her out for your own freedom?”
… it was kind of true, but also. “You releasing me would prove that you can let go of those you protect. That if you found her, you would be able to let her have freedom.” I was calming down a bit more, though the Spark still rang in my voice, just more subtly than before. “I can draw her for you first. I can tell you care about her.”

That didn’t reveal anything, Von Pinn(Otilia)’s care for Tinka was written in every reaction since I had brought her up. 

“... Fine.”

“Of course.”

As I drew, (a full body drawing referenced from one of the times Tarvek had her dance to check whether repairs to her proprioception had worked. The perfect memory granted to me by my Spark made drawing from memory much easier.) I explained to her about Tinka. 

“I met her in Sturmhalten. As far as I know, she’s still there. Aaronev Wilhelm Sturmvoraus took her apart- he took me apart, too, when I first met him. But I am easier to repair than the work of Van Rijn, and I think he did less damage. It was Aaronev Tarvek Sturmvoraus that repaired me, and he did his best for Tinka as well. I helped, and we made some progress while I was there, but the damage was subtle and complex, and we dared not do anything brash for fear of harming her further.”

“Yes. I know the young Prince Sturmvoraus. He always did have a fascination with the Muses.”

Oh interesting. Would she trust him more with Tinka’s safety, because he was her student?

“Then… Well, you must have heard of the debacle in Sturmhalten? I wasn’t there when it happened, but I think it was the Geisters who cut off her head. I left her with Tarvek… I was repaired even when the Geisters cut off my head, so I hoped he could do it without me…”

Once I finished drawing, (which took a bit since I was trying to make it as good as the one I did of Von Pinn) I tore it out of my sketchbook and gave it to her. 

“Alright.” I said as I stood up. “... bye then.”

“Oh, no. I said I would let you go, I did not say I’d leave you undefended. I’m going with you.”

Oh. That was actually very useful for my plan to get her her body back, (ideally with it being Agatha that does the majority of the work, thereby proving herself to her so Otilia is no longer hostile to Agatha. Ok less of a plan, more of a goal, since I didn’t really have any idea how I was going to accomplish it.) but, it also wasn’t really the deal, and meant that I couldn’t just build myself a parachute- I’d need ways to get us both down. 

“Fine.” I tried to sound more put off by her following than I was, since it would seem odd if I was just perfectly fine with it after our whole argument. 

Then I realized I could use this. “ If you find a way for us to get down there. My plan was to build a glider, but building them for both of us would be harder.”

She stared at me, deadpan. “I do have access to the emergency gliders. You would not need to build me one.”

Oh.

Chapter Text

So we glided down, me on my makeshift (but much better than last time) combination of two gliders to account for my weight, and Von Pinn on a standard one. We landed just outside Mechanicsburg (no point in being a target for anti-aircraft defenses), and made it in the gate without much trouble. It wasn’t obviously guarded, which seemed strange. I had to assume there were some kind of guards that we just couldn’t see? Though I wasn’t even sure whose guards they’d be. Theoretically, Mechanicsburg belonged to Wulfenbach still, since the Doom Bell had yet to ring. (wait, was it rung? … no. I could see that the striker was still without its hammer, meaning that the Bell could not be rung until it was brought up from Mamma Gikka’s.) But, if the locals knew about Agatha (and knew she was a Heterodyne), they would side with her. Same with the Castle. 

In town, the streets looked… normal. It was early evening by then, and tourists milled around while locals sold them things. It felt strange to me; scary. My mind brought up scenes from the Comic during the Siege, where they were a warzone. The quiet hustle and bustle of day-to-day life felt like an eerie calm before the storm. I reminded myself that the Siege probably wouldn’t happen this time. Klaus was not defeated, in the hospital recovering from wounds and drawing opportunistic rebellions. He was not Wasped, and he was not convinced that Agatha was just Lucrezia putting on an act. I didn’t know Martellus’s plans for this situation though. In Cannon, Zola was sent in because of Agatha going public in Sturmhalten. (I think she was sent in by Martellus supporters. There were some hints it was supposed to be Tarvek but I was sure his family thought him dead or dying at the time…) Was Zola even going to be there at all? Her airship wasn’t. I needed more information.

“So, what do you think?” I said casually to Von Pinn, who was following me almost like a bodyguard. “To the Castle, or see if I can find the others out here?” Agatha would almost certainly be inside, repairing the Castle, but the others of her party (Zeetha, Krosp, Lars… not the Jägers because they aren’t allowed in town until the Doom Bell rings.) might still be in town, since the Castle insists that the (prospective) Heterodyne enter alone. They might also be in the Castle since that doesn’t say anything about whether they can enter later, after it’s recognized her. Also in town would be Van and Carson Von Mechan, the seneschals of Mechanicsburg who have been running it in secret while it has been under Wulfenbach rule. They might not be willing to talk to me, though. I did know where Van would be , though. He was most likely at that cafe… that I didn’t remember the name of. Damn. His grandfather Carson would be even harder to find, since I didn’t know where he frequented, other than the bench by the gate (but I hadn’t seen him when we entered.)

“You are not to enter that Castle.” Von Pinn replied, jolting me from my thoughts.

I turned to her. Her expression was stern and forbidding, but not truely enraged. “... I suppose it’d be smart to wait until I know it’s accepted Agatha and she can tell it not to kill me.”

She twitched a bit at that. “You cannot trust her,” she reminded me, though I think she knew that it wouldn’t get through to me.

I ended up wandering, though I tried to keep watch for Mamma Gikka’s and any cafes. I felt like I remembered Van’s cafe having some kind of incongruous name. Something to do with meat?

It took… a while, but eventually I found a cafe with a sign labeling it as The Sausage Factory, and I knew it was the place. Admittedly I must have walked by it like three times before I actually spotted the sign, but. Shut up. 

There was no signage on the outside showing their hours or menu, so I just awkwardly walked in, distinctly aware that I a) had no plan of how to talk to Van, and b) had Von Pinn following me so lies about how I knew things would make her suspicious. … And I would need some kind of explanation for why I approached Van in the first place. And I was a clank so I couldn’t order anything to seem normal about being there! Dammit dammit dammit . This was not my area of expertise. The subtle art of cleverly giving out just the right pieces of information at the right time, or paying proper attention to gossip, finding people, having just the right level of propriety, all that stuff. I was no spy or schemer, I could barely navigate that sort of thing at a normal level! I was a Spark! I could probably re-build the coffee machine, (but I wouldn’t. I could tell Agatha hadn’t yet and I wanted to leave it to her.) but just talking to Van in the shop was beyond me! 

“You think they might be here?” Von Pinn questioned me.

Oh god oh god she was gonna figure me out I had no reasonable reason to be here hhhhh “I… Maybe?” It didn’t sound convincing at all. “It’s a normal meeting spot!” I continued to try to defend myself, building my story as I went, “It would make sense for them to want coffee if they spent the whole night flying. Even if they aren’t here we can ask if they’ve seen them.” 

Oh, and actually that was a strategy! Say enough about Agatha when asking about her that Van takes notice! Though before doing that it would be important to make sure he was actually there, instead of making a scene for nothing. Failing to be surreptitious about scanning the tables was very embarrassing, though I guess at least it fit with what I told Von Pinn.

Luckily, I actually spotted Van fairly quickly. I think it was his two-tone hair and that he sat on the outside side of a bench seat, without anyone else at the table with him. I made a point to pretend to keep looking around after I had seen him, though I wasn’t sure that it did much good in actually fooling anyone. 

A barista approached us… a bit tentatively, and I realized that we stood out a good bit from the other clientele. A clank and a mostly human looking construct, both dressed in tones much darker than the neutrals and jewel-tones that the all-human staff and clientele seemed to favor. (though Van also wore black.) Still, she didn’t seem too fazed, and smoothly asked us if we would like an indoor or outdoor table. I will admit I was completely thrown. I didn’t have any money! I couldn’t let her seat me! Hhhhh. I would need to break the script. 

“Ah. No. Sorry. I just wanted to ask if you had seen my friend?” She looked at me expectantly. (and with a level of kind patience that I really needed.) I tried to prepare myself for the stupid move I was about to pull. “Agatha Heterodyne?” She Stared at me, and the shop went dead quiet, but I barrelled on. I had committed and to dig your own grave meant not stopping halfway. “Long, strawberry-blonde hair? On the run from Baron Wulfenbach? Often wears green?” Van’s eyes were huge as he stared at me in shock. “She was on her way to Castle Heterodyne(I’m sure you can guess why) and I wanted to know if she made it there okay.” At this point I was rambling, every sentence in hope that it would delay the fallout as they processed the new information.  

Luckily for me, Van reacted first, jumping up and angrily ushering us away. 

“What do you think you’re doing ?!” He hissed.

Von Pinn bristled, and the image of her fighting Van flashed in my mind. 

I quickly leaned over to try to calm her down. “C’mon, lets not cause even more of a scene,” I quietly pleaded. 

With this, Van managed to furtively usher us to a sequestered spot, (which seemed to be a cellar) presumably so we could speak without people listening in. 

“I suppose you don’t understand this, since you are outsiders, but you’ve just put yourself in danger. You’ve raised the hopes of the people of Mechanicsburg, and they don’t like to be disappointed. When this Agatha of yours turns out to be a fake, they’ll seek revenge on not only her, but you.”

I crossed my arms defiantly. “That shouldn’t be an issue then, since she’s real .”

Van buried his face in his hands, and then looked desperately to Von Pinn, hoping for sense. He didn’t get it.

“ Unfortunately , the Heterodyne Girl is real.”

I cringed. She was not helping my case. “Hey! Fortunately, fortunately! Agatha’s cool!” I insisted, more for Van’s benefit then trying to convince her, since I knew she was set in her ways.

“No.” She replied simply.

I turned to Van apologetically. “She insisted on following me. Something about ‘keeping me safe’.” As I spoke I thought it might be good to lean into the dynamic of optimistic idiot and long-suffering bodyguard, so I continued, “I was thinking of just looking for Agatha in the Castle, but she thought that was a bad idea.”

He seemed to boggle at my blithe suggestion of stupidly dangerous plans. Good. This way he wasn’t questioning why I went specifically into his cafe. If he feels like he has an idea of who I am and what I’m like, he won’t go digging. Eventually he managed, “Yes. Yes, that is a bad idea.” 

I nodded vaguely, not really committing to agreeing. “So, have you seen her?”

“No.”

“And her friends? She left Castle Wulfenbach with three Jägers, a warrior woman with long green hair, a talking cat, and a normal guy.” (Sorry not sorry Lars, it’s true.) 

He raised his eyebrows. “Jägers? That’s a new one. Still no, though.”

“Well, keep an eye out for them for me?

“I- fine. Sure. … Which Jägers?”

“Dimo, Oggie, and Maxim.” I supplied helpfully.

He blinked at me, apparently not expecting me to have names. “...Alright. Well, Jägers aren’t allowed in Mechanicsburg, so they won’t be here.” He sighed. “Look. why don’t you find some place by the Castle to watch for her? She probably just got delayed by something.”

I considered that. I was fairly confident that she was already in the Castle, and just hadn’t bothered to go anywhere else first since the Baron didn’t have guards preventing her from entering. I didn’t want to have to just sit and wait, but I didn’t really see another solution except going in the Castle. 

“Fine. I guess I’ll go find a bench to sit on.” I groused, starting back up the stairs myself.

So sitting on a bench outside Castle Heterodyne with Von Pinn hovering menacingly over you is much more boring than you would expect. I wasn’t even sure what exactly I was waiting for. Suffice to say it was frustrating. I had gone through so much effort to get down to Mechanicsburg to meet up with Agatha and friends, and now I couldn’t find them? What I wouldn’t give for a phone. (or, more accurately, a phone system where both me and the people I want to contact have them.)

Anyway, after sitting there for what felt like forever(and what was actually a fairly long time; the sun had set while I waited.), Van came back. He wasn’t who I expected, but I brightened anyway. He seemed more wary of Von Pinn this time, but he approached us and told me he found the green-haired warrior woman. He told me I could come meet her, but that Von Pinn couldn’t come. He reassured Von Pinn that I would come to no harm while I was away from her, but she didn’t trust that. 

“You are a servant of those accursed Heterodynes. Your word means nothing .”

I whirled on her. “ Hey. You agreed you wouldn’t coddle me. I understood you following me down to Mechanicsburg, I was going to help Agatha and she is often in dangerous situations. But this is a conversation with friends. I am in no danger . I promise I’ll come back and find you before going on any kind of hair-brained scheme.” My voice had undertones of Spark as I argued.

“I agreed to let you off the castle .” She growled. “And we have no reason to trust him.”

Van took a step back. 

Damn, she was right. I did have no explicable reasoning for my trust in Van. I knew him from the Comic, but I couldn’t explain that. “... Fine. Van, why don’t you bring Zeetha here so she knows you’re not lying, and Von Pinn, when he does you can agree to let us speak in peace, knowing that it isn’t a trap.” I looked between them. 

Eventually, and reluctantly, they agreed to my plan. It was stupid , and a pain , but I did manage to get away from Von Pinn… apparently for a secret meeting between me, Van, Krosp, Zeetha and Lars at Mamma Gikkas. 

I was surprised they were letting me and Lars in on the secret, but I supposed it wouldn’t matter fairly soon. Once Agatha took the Castle and rang the Bell, the secret Jäger bar wouldn’t be necessary. 

Anyway, the conversation was enlightening. Apparently Agatha did go straight to the Castle, and the only reason Zeetha, Krosp, and Lars didn’t go with her was the Castle’s ‘the Heterodyne must enter alone’ rule. Dimo, Maxim, and Oggie checked in with Gikka, and when I told Van about Agatha, he went to Gikka and got the story from her. They asked me what was going on with Wulfenbach, and while I told them all I could, I had to admit I didn’t have good info. I was wandering empty corridors, not listening in on what orders were given. 

And then they revealed what they had found out about what the Baron was up to. Apparently he had entered the Castle. As soon as Castle Wulfenbach got there, he led a whole battalion of troops into the Castle, heavily armed. This was maybe four hours after Agatha got in. That was very concerning. He didn’t just enter the Castle, he was storming it. 

After wrapping my head around that, I told them it might actually be a good sign. He could, if he wanted to, level Castle Heterodyne. If he wanted her dead and didn’t care about collateral damage, he had the Heliolux airfleet, who could melt it to a little puddle when the sun was out, or the Rumbletoys that could destroy the foundations. Nothing was stopping him from taking his troops right up to the Castle. It had to be courtesy that kept his Castle out of Mechanicsburg airspace. 

“Before Agatha ran, they were in negotiations . He’s mad she ran, and I don’t think he wants her in control of Mechanicsburg, but I don’t think he wants her dead , either.” I concluded.

Zeetha agreed, and we discussed how he acted when Agatha was on Castle Wulfenbach, and what the Baron might be trying to do. We decided it was likely he would be trying to either kidnap her, or, failing that, negotiate with her. But even negotiations would be a bit one sided, since most people in Castle Heterodyne would side with the Baron in hopes for their freedom (or at least him not killing them out of hand.) All Agatha would have was the Castle, and that was if she could make it to the Chapel. 

It was Lars who suggested we go in after her, but I agreed. Van, of course, recused himself from such things. He had to prepare the town for any of the results of Agatha’s inevitable encounter with the Baron. A treaty would be nice, but if there was war they had to be ready. No Jägers could come, of course, because of the agreement with the Baron. And I had to explain that if I went, Von Pinn would insist on following. I also shared the necessary context that she had ripped Punch and Judy to shreds, though they were now in recovery- I assumed still on Castle Wulfenbach. 

So then we debated whether I should go. The argument against was, of course, that Von Pinn was no ally of Agatha’s. She was, if anything, more hostile to her than the Baron. She would side with the Baron and against Agatha, and generally cause problems. The argument for was that the Baron was already bringing troops, and he was no idiot, these troops would be the ones most likely to succeed in the environment of the Castle. And, more importantly, Agatha’s best method for forcing the Baron to negotiate on equal ground would be repairing the Castle. He brought too many troops to fight head-on. (especially taking into account that the majority of the prisoners would most likely side with him) Any fighting would be essentially stalling measures to give her more time and space to repair the Castle. And, as the only Spark in our group, I was the only person qualified to help her repair it. (Besides helping in a minion role, but there was a limit to how much that would help here.) 

Krosp suggested I just leave her behind; sneak into the Castle without going back and getting her. This was not exactly a surprise, but I explained that I had promised, and that if I broke that promise she would be less likely to ever work amicably with me or Agatha. Krosp didn’t understand why I cared so much about her opinion, but it was eventually agreed that I could bring her with us into the Castle, with the idea that I was in charge of preventing her from ruining this for us. No pressure. 

We left Mamma Gikka’s just as the evening bar fight was starting, (which worried me a bit since Higgs didn’t seem to be there. Were Higgs and Zeetha going to meet in this version?) so we figured out who would be in the party going in the Castle outside. The party was me, Zeetha, Lars, Krosp, and (reluctantly) Von Pinn. I wondered where Gil was, or Theo and Sleipnir, for that matter, but I didn’t have time to go looking. It was time to enter Castle Heterodyne.

Chapter Text

The sewers of Sturmhalten did not compare to the danger of Castle Heterodyne. It was only the quick reactions of Von Pinn and Zeetha that kept Lars and I from ending up crushed under giant spike balls, or at the bottom of bottomless pits, or impaled on the sword of a ‘decorative’ suit of armor. Krosp mostly managed to look out for himself, but basically half our group kept needing to be saved by the other half. Selfishly, I was very glad that I had brought Von Pinn, given the number of traps she had to personally save me from. I wasn’t useless though! My practice in Sturmhalten was good for one thing; finding secret passages. I was the best at it in the group, and while I did end up leading us into traps a few times, it was my finding secret passages that meant we always had an alternate route when we found the Baron’s people.

It was actually surprisingly easy to avoid run-ins with the Baron’s people, since they moved without even a hint of stealth. Instead of avoiding or dodging traps, they seemed to be disabling or destroying them all as they went. It was a brute-force, salt-the-earth tactic that I really should have expected from the Baron. 

More surprising was the lack of difficulty Von Pinn gave about avoiding them. Before we entered the Castle, I had managed to wheedle out of her an agreement to not actively work against us. I had wanted this agreement to include Agatha, but for her Von Pinn added a strike system. If Agatha did one thing that would hurt me or Von Pinn (or anyone else she considered under her protection), she would start actively working against Agatha, most likely capturing her and turning her in to the Baron. Even despite this agreement, I had half expected for Von Pinn to betray us at the first opportunity, but she did nothing to reveal us to the Baron’s people, even when we were close enough that an ‘accidental’ stumble would be all it took.

Finding Agatha was difficult. She needed to hide from the Baron’s people and the prisoners (and we did too), so it wasn’t like we could ask anyone where she had gone, and the Castle was huge. For a while we just wandered aimlessly, with no clue to Agatha’s location besides ‘probably further in’. Even if we had a set path, we would almost certainly have deviated from it due to having to evade both traps and the Baron’s people. 

I tried to do Castle repairs whenever I had the chance. After all, we were there to help Agatha repair and take over the Castle before the Baron got to her. Why put off repair till when we found her? Though it was difficult. So far my research had focused on building and repairing machinery that was person-sized or smaller. The vast interconnectedness of the Castle made it an overwhelming project, and I was limited to trying to repair individual connections and things like that. I didn’t usually bother with disconnected Clank systems that were more in my wheelhouse, because I got the impression that while the Castle could control them, repairing them wouldn’t help fix the Castle as a whole. Plus, while uncontrolled, or under the control of a Castle that was natural or malevolent towards us, repairing them could just give us a new danger to run away from. (All this to say, repairing a Fun-Sized Moble Agony and Death Dispenser without having any way to make it listen to you is a very bad idea. I didn’t make that mistake, but a suit of armor that I thought was connected to the Castle through it’s base lopped off a couple of my fingers. Would have been more without the quick intervention of Von Pinn, who then yelled at me about it. Anyway, it was fine, there was plenty of scrap for me to use to replace them.) 

Eventually, (after a lot more close calls, which wound up with me needing to do more self-repair, Lars with a bandaged leg, and Krosp with a rip in his coat) we found Agatha. Or more accurately, she found us.

“Of course it’s you!” She yelled, seemingly in the middle of a Spark rant. “Why are you here ?! The Castle is incredibly dangerous!” She looked to Lars, and his bandaged leg, “I told you to stay outside!”

“The Baron was here” I responded, Spark rising to hers. “I figured it’d be a race against the clock to repair the Castle before he finds you.”

“It is . And you need all the help you can get!” Tarvek argued from behind her. Wait. Tarvek?!

“What are you doing here?!” I said to Tarvek, in unison with Agatha, who was talking to Von Pinn. (Though Agatha said it with a lot more malice.) 

I switched gears immediately to explain Von Pinn’s presence, jumping between her and Agatha (In Canon Agatha almost killed her for… fairly reasonable reasons, but I was trying to avoid that.) “She insisted on following me because I was a student on Castle Wulfenbach and under her protection. She still… doesn’t trust you, but she was very helpful in not letting the Castle kill us!”

“Rrrrgg! This is what I’m talking about!” Agatha said to me, “The Castle is incredibly dangerous and you shouldn’t be here .” 

I crossed my arms. “So you expect us to just let you suffer through this on your own?”

We made eye contact, and I tried to impress that I was determined to help. I didn’t come all this way to just sit and wait! 

She sighed. “Fine.” Agatha looked around at all of us, including Moloch, Tarvek, and Violetta. All the people, friends and former enemies, following her around to help. “Just… keep each other safe. No one dies for me.” 

Von Pinn looked shocked, though it was not long until she schooled her face back to neutral anger. It was Tarvek, though, that responded first, changing the topic back to where we were going next and what needed repairing. 

Apparently the Castle had noticed us, and Agatha guessed that it would be us. (because of course the Castle didn’t know us and could only give a description.) When we got back to where the Castle was active, Agatha asked it where we should go to start repairs. Strangely enough though, instead of suggesting the map in the Library, or some other big important break (I wasn’t really expecting it to direct us to the Great Movement Chamber, though I was sure we needed to go there to repair it’s power supply), it listed several breaks, all of which in a surprisingly close radius, given the size of the Castle.

“Castle?” I asked cautiously. “How far from us can you see?”

“Far enough,” it snarked, “to see that you are not even trying to help my Mistress repair me.” 

I rolled my eyes. Sure enough, Agatha had found one of the breaks and was already setting up to repair it, with the rest of the group (save Von Pinn, who was still with me) hovering around and helping. I felt contrary though, and I wanted to hurry up and get to the breaks that were important enough to end up in the Comic. (And to find Lucrezia’s secret lab so we could put Von Pinn back in her Otilia body.)

“Fine.” I had memorized where it had said the breaks were, and I walked towards a different one than Agatha was working on.

“What are you doing?” The Castle asked. It clearly was expecting me to join Agatha.

“What you said; helping repair you. I figure she’s got that break handled.”

“Hmph. ….  ….” It sounded like it was going to keep arguing, but then it just went silent. Warily, I got to work, trying to still keep an eye out for what the Castle was up to. It acting unexpectedly was very dangerous, since it controlled basically everything around us.

Eventually, after I had already gotten fully immersed in my work, it finished its statement with a lame “Fine.”

Then I realized what must be happening. It was getting distracted. Castle Heterodyne, when in good repair, could see and act everywhere inside itself and the town. It could also do so in many places at once while keeping the trains of thought both separate enough to not interfere with each other, and connected enough to act as one being, and for information to be transmitted instantly. 

However, while it was being repaired in Comic, as it gained more area to control, it grew increasingly distracted as it tried to act in many places at once and for some reason had trouble focusing on that much at once. If I recalled correctly, that was only solved once Agatha restored its power to full using Gil’s lightning stick. (... Did he even make that this time around?)

So, while that was a problem to look out for (and another reason to try to get to the Great Movement Chamber), it was within my expectations for the Castle’s problems. I took a breath and got back to work.

Working on the Castle was so much easier with Agatha. It wasn’t trying to attack us, it would tell us where it was broken. Yes, we sometimes had to leave the safe zones where it had full control of its traps, and therefore had to deal with those, but even then it was more likely to give us a warning. Sure, Agatha had to yell at it a couple times to stop it from amusing itself by throwing traps at us on purpose, but generally things were going well. We were slowly expanding its radius of control, almost casually moving from break to break. I kept out of the way and worked on more minor breaks, letting Agatha and Tarvek be the Sparks working together on the main breaks. I did enjoy working with them, but I thought it better to give them space. Plus, it was more efficient for me to work on my own; they had plenty of people helping them already. I do think that my work sped up our progress significantly though, since we could simply get more done at once. (many hands make light work and all.) It felt strange, though, fixing the Castle’s breaks with three Sparks, but they were Agatha, Tarvek, and Me . It was like I was replacing Gil, and I felt bad about that. Though I supposed it wasn’t that different from me working with Gil and Agatha (without Tarvek) back on Castle Wulfenbach. 

Anyway, things were going fine. Which means that something had to go wrong, obviously. We found out what that was when Agatha happened to ask the Castle about something in an area that we had left a while back… and it didn’t know. It went into ‘here’s a musical number (that’s probably just screaming) to keep you busy while I try to figure out what’s wrong’ mode, but Agatha figured out what must be wrong before it did. The Baron was following us, and he was destroying the Castle as he went. When we saw his people methodically disassembling traps, they must have also been disassembling (basically) the Castle’s awareness . As we went and repaired, we gained territory that was controlled by the Castle and therefore Agatha, but as the Baron went, he destroyed the Castle, winning territory for himself even out from the territory we had already gained . And they were somehow targeting the Castle’s awareness first , giving it no time to fight back. We needed to change tactics, because at this rate we would lose , and the Castle would be left a dead pile of rubble. 

The Castle, of course, was panicking when it came back. It had done a diagnostic and found that it had lost access to about 10 areas that it had control over earlier in the day. And that wasn’t counting the areas that had been controlled by a different Castle fragment before the Baron got to them. There was then a very loud crashing sound, like tons of rock falling.

“ Castle !” Agatha yelled authoritatively, “ What did you do ?”

“I am ridding myself of this pest .” it said distractedly, as more crashes rang through the air. 

“ No! We need the Baron alive! ” 

“He is breaking me!”

“And we’ll stop him. Just without leaving most of Europa leaderless and in chaos.”

“But-”

“ HETERODYNE! ” She yelled, pointing at herself. The Castle shut up, and the rumble of falling rock stopped.  “You can try to block his progress, but no killing him .”

We then spent a while trying to brainstorm on how to stop the Baron. Our goal was to prove Agatha powerful enough that he had to negotiate on equal footing with her- no kidnapping her and threatening her into a bad deal, which was what we all had to assume was his intention, invading her Castle like this. But that meant we needed to either capture him , or repel him from the Castle. The original plan was to repair the Castle, ring the Doom Bell, and Agatha would negotiate with him as a fellow ruler, instead of as a citizen to their dictator. Even once he entered the Castle, Agatha’s plan was to repair it and have it deal with him. 

There were several suggestions. (Though Von Pinn and the Castle were quickly banned from making suggestions after their first few were entirely unhelpful.) I suggested repairing/improving some Fun-Sized Mobile Agony and Death Dispensers or something and just running him out of the Castle like that, though since the Castle approved of my suggestion I began to re-think it. Tarvek suggested going back to areas he had already cleared and repairing the Castle’s systems there in a subtle way, allowing the Baron to return to the area, thinking it safe, and be trapped in an area the Castle has control over without being able to prepare. I offered my invisibility cloak for that plan, though it wouldn’t be that much help since there was no way it could fit our whole group. Lars suggested just going and talking to him- since the whole thing was kinda based on a misunderstanding in the first place. (He was quickly vetoed by Krosp, Tarvek, and Moloch. Though Moloch just said if we did that crazy plan he would abandon us to our fates.) 

Agatha- was seemingly ignoring us and building something. Our discussion fizzled out as she finished, and presented her finished clank. It was a strange mixture of looking dangerous and friendly, and I had no idea what it was for. 

“So…” Krosp asked, “what is it?”

“I’m going to send him a message.” 

It looked far more dangerous than a normal messenger clank. “... What kind of message?” I asked warily, thinking about less than friendly ways of ‘sending a message’ 

“I’m going to ask to have peaceful negotiations!” Agatha protested, “This place is dangerous, okay?!” 

It was one of those fancy holographic systems that Agatha made in the comic(I was suddenly really disappointed that I didn’t get to see how she made it), and so similarly, she had to take the recording. 

“Herr Baron. I don’t want to have to fight you. I want to work with you, I want peace. I ran because it seemed like you were going to kill Zeetha, and that proved that I could no longer trust you with the safety of my friends. I am here because I needed an actually safe place from which to negotiate with you. I give you two choices: leave now and negotiate with me on neutral ground after I have repaired my Castle, or meet with me to negotiate in a room controlled by the Castle. I have ordered it not to kill you, and am willing to add orders that you suggest to that for the meeting. Send me this messenger back with your response.”

The recording ended, and Agatha visibly sagged. “Okay. Now that that’s done… I think I’m gonna take a nap. … wake me when the message gets back.”

She was asleep very quickly, and while the clank messenger stood around awkwardly for a bit, it wasn’t hard for Tarvek to convince it that yes we were done and it could go on it’s mission now. Once that was taken care of, we secured the area to be a temporary base, and agreed to sleep in shifts. My headache was already starting to take effect, so I was relieved when it was decided that not everyone had to take a watch. 

Despite the headache, I fell asleep slowly. I was still too used to sleeping only when I desperately needed it, and trying to sleep on the cold stone floor brought back memories of green tunnels and red scalpels. Even in Castle Heterodyne, one of the most dangerous pieces of architecture in the world, it was Sturmhalten that haunted me.

Chapter Text

When I awoke, it was to a loud clang. I groaned, annoyed at being woken. Looking around, I deduced what was going on. Moloch was making the clanging, banging a wrench on a… metal spike? Did he take that from one of the spike traps? Anyway, everyone else was already awake, except Agatha, who sleepily fired a deathray at Moloch. It was blessedly less powerful than the one she used for that purpose in Canon, and therefore did not blast a hole all through everything in it’s path including a mountain on the horizon. Instead, it just slagged the wall behind where Moloch was standing. (He is a good dodger.) But still.

“When did she make that?!” I exclaimed as I skittered away to a place more safely away from the sleeping Spark with a deathray.

“Ah, she made it while we were working on repairs, to help with the traps…” Tarvek explained sheepishly, “I didn’t think she’d use it like this though.” I assumed he had either helped her build it or encouraged her to, by the tone of his voice. 

I sighed. “It isn’t her fault, really.” I looked to Zeetha. “Did she even get any sleep on the way here?”

“Not a lot.” Zeetha replied.

Krosp explained that they were trying to wake her because the messenger clank came back. I made a small mental note that it seemed no one had bothered to try to wake me , even though I was the only other person asleep, but oh well. I made a casual analysis of the returned clank, noticing that it seemed to be subtly rebuilt. Whether that was because it had sustained damage and Klaus repaired it, or that he opened it up to mess with it, I couldn’t tell. I wouldn’t put it past him to have opened it up just out of curiosity or paranoia, though, and a subtle trap on our own clank was not his style. The advantage I’d expect him to take of the clank would be sending it back to us and following it, so he could find us easily. 

“How long since it came back?” I asked the others.

“A bit less than an hour, why?” Lars responded.

“... If he was following it, he’d already be here.” I said, more to myself and less as a reply, but I think it answered the question.

Krosp and Tarvek agreed, but said they didn’t want to play the message before Agatha woke up, just in case. I had to assume that was just in case it was trapped, or rigged with a self-destruct so it could only be played once, or with a relay that would tell Klaus it was received, or whatever else. It didn’t look from the outside like anything of that nature was installed, but the recording and storing of the videos was too central to it’s workings for it to be worth trying to take it apart instead of just waiting for Agatha to wake up. I agreed with this, but also my mind got stuck on the possibility that Klaus had sent some kind of time-sensitive message, (‘show up in x place to talk or it’s war’, or something.) and that every moment waiting for Agatha to wake up was ticking down a timer we didn’t even know about. Uhhgg time time why is there never enough time. 

I was pacing. Nervous. Eventually I just walked off to a corner to start building. I didn’t even know what I was going to build, I was just nervous and I had time to prepare. I felt like I was on a time limit so I didn’t want to waste it.

My first instinct was to build a deathray, but I already had one, and I didn’t want this to end in violence. My second was more invisibility, but I didn’t really have the materials. It being made of fabric meant that the mostly mechanical components available in the Castle wouldn’t help much. My third was better eyes. Sure, my eyes could already see in a wide variety of spectrums of light (not that I had been remembering to take full advantage of that…), but things could always be improved… and yeah. The stone and metal of the halls meant that infrared couldn’t see very far. If I wanted to know where the Baron was, it wouldn’t be good enough. Though speaking of the infrared… I had never gotten the chance to test if it could see Smoke Knights hiding, or if my eye crown would let me spot them. (each method was supported by a different theory for how Smoke Knights actually managed to hide so well.)

To summarize, in the time before Agatha woke up, I distractedly tried to get Violetta to help me test Smoke Knight spotting measures, was summarily rejected, and then wound up building her goggles that let her see in a bunch of different frequencies. This was in a bid to build a rapport with her in the kind of pathetic ‘I made you something so please like me’ school of thought. I wouldn’t exactly say I regretted it, but it wasn’t really what I meant to do. The danger of an unfocused fugue.

So, to test my gift, Violetta went out scouting using the goggles. She came back saying that there were three people in the shut-down section of the Castle that were hiding from the Baron’s people. So. Another group in the Castle. I took my invisibility cloak out of my pockets and asked if she’d lead me to them, so I could see if I recognized them. She questioned my ability to learn any more than she could, but ended up agreeing anyway. Though she insisted we go fast, since she didn’t trust Tarvek to not get killed if she left him alone

It was Gil. It was Gil and Theo and Sleipnir. It took an effort of will to not facepalm so hard that the sound of metal hitting metal rang through the room. Instead, I stared in shock as Violetta ushered me back out. 

“You got your look, we’re leaving,” she hissed.

When we got to safety, Violetta asked me what had rattled me.

“I… I did recognize them. That was Gilgamesh Wulfenbach and- a couple of my friends from Castle Wulfenbach.” 

“What?! But why are they hiding from the Baron then?”

“They must have sneaked here. Gil was probably told not to be here, and he’s almost certainly here to help Agatha. Same with Theo and Sleipnir; they had planned to meet up with Agatha in Mechanicsburg to help her when she left Castle Wulfenbach. I guess they’ve been hanging out in the town for a while before we got here.”

“That… that’s good right?” She sounded confused at my tone, which was serious and worried rather than relieved and happy.

“I don’t know. Hopefully? But it complicates things.”

When we got back, Agatha was awake and the Baron’s message was in the middle of playing. 

“-have no trust in Castle Heterodyne. I promise no harm will come to you or any companions you choose to bring…” As the message played, Tarvek noticed Violetta and I return. He made eye contact with Violetta, but didn’t say anything.

Klaus managed to look… so earnest and pitying as the message concluded, “Please, be reasonable about this. You cannot fight the whole world yourself.” 

“RRRGG!” Agatha tore at her hair in frustration. “That presumptuous- You’d think the ruler of the Empire would know how to compromise !” 

Lars went to comfort her first. And then Tarvek was at her side, beginning to scheme a way around the Baron’s deal. And Gil was on his way. (To make everything more complicated, but that was just par for the course.) I smiled wistfully, thinking of long-imagined futures and pasts. Thinking that Agatha might get that happy ending that the fanfics wrote about. 

I probably waited too long- before I cleared my throat and shared what I’d found.

“There is- There is a new factor at play.”

Tarvek whirled to ask me before Agatha did, but only just.

“Gil is here. With Theo and Sleipnir. Violetta found them hiding from the Baron’s people.”

I directed this to Agatha, who facepalmed. “They-! Ugh. Of course they just waltzed in here! Don’t they know this place is a deathtrap!”

“Why, thank you, my Lady!” The Castle interrupted, “Though I admit I cannot sense them.”

“They’re in one of the spots the Baron purged.” I explained.

Agatha was a bit mollified by that. “... At least that means they probably won’t have to deal with the traps, and the Baron wouldn’t kill them…” She did not sound sure of either of those statements. “We should go get them,” she said decisively, and the party started walking. I gave Agatha directions, but could also overhear Tarvek asking Violetta for the summary behind us. She told him what I had told her. I was curious as to Tarvek’s opinion on the situation, but I had a more important piece of information to catch up on.

“I kinda came in late; what did the Baron’s message say?” I asked Agatha as I led the way. 

“He said that he’d meet us in a place the Castle doesn’t control, because he doesn’t trust the Castle.”

“... ah. Well, it's hard for me to blame him. I think it’d kill him without a second thought if you hadn’t ordered it not to.”

“True. But he didn’t even try to come up with a middleground! I just want-” 

“Shh!” Violetta cut her off. “We’re leaving the Castle’s control. Try not to speak above a whisper.”

“You want a situation where he’s not holding all the cards.” I said to Agatha (in a whisper, to appease Violetta).

“I want a situation where he can’t hurt me or my friends .” She hissed. 

We walked in silence for a while after that, because, well, I didn’t have a solution for that. Not one I was confident enough in to suggest, anyway. 

Besides, we were already close to where Gil, Theo, and Sleipnir were. Soon enough we’d be dealing with- wait… ohhhh no.

“STURMVORAUS! You snake , what are you doing here ?!” Gil spoke first.

“HOLZFÄLLER?!” Tarvek’s voice was strained with emotion, and stealth was wholly forgotten.” You’re the Baron’s secret son?!” 

Gil’s eyes went wide for a moment before he returned to their verbal sparring. “Took you this long to figure it out?” 

“I didn’t have high expectations for young Wulfenbach, but I still expected him to be better than you .” There was more bite to his words than I expected. I knew they would fight(Or I should have), but this felt like Tarvek had poisoned his daggers; was going for the kill. “ Now I know why you’re here. But Agatha isn’t one of your nightclub tarts or pirate doxies. You can take your lecherous ways elsewhere, Wulfenbach .” 

I was panicking. I couldn’t stand watching two people I cared about fight like that. I wanted to step between them, to tell them their own backstories and just fix it, but I knew that wouldn’t help. There was nothing I could do. I wanted to run away. To leave and hope that the next time I saw them they had just magically sorted it out themselves. 

I inched away to hide in the nearest corner as Gil replied, “As if you’re any better you backstabbing sneak . This is one of your plots now, isn’t it?”

Fortunately, (well, unfortunately) the argument was interrupted by a group of the Baron’s soldiers running in. 

“-The Heterodyne girl?!”

“Tell the Baron. Detain them all until he arrives.”

They waived their muskets threateningly. They were mooks, as far as I could tell, but it wouldn’t do us any good politically to hurt them. Plus, guns. It only takes one good shot for a mook with a gun to kill a main character. (I always forget Girl Genius also has just normal guns.)

Annnd Gil was already getting in a fighting stance. Seriously? 

And Zeetha was too?! What?! Were we really doing this?!

Chapter Text

I had never heard a gunshot before. Not in real life. It was like putting my heart on jumper cables. My whole body shook just from the sound, and then didn’t stop shaking. I felt like I could hear the electricity whirring through my system. I scrambled to run, strategy forgotten. 

More things were yelled, the others were fighting, but I wasn’t focusing on that. Eventually(probably seconds but it felt like years) I managed to scrape together enough awareness to throw on my invisibility cloak, and I scrambled out of the room. I almost ran back to Castle territory, but as I escaped the fight my wits began to return to me. If the Castle found me coming back alone, without its Mistress, I’d better have a very good explanation. Which I didn’t. It’d kill me. Great.

As I caught my metaphorical breath, it occurred to me that I wasn’t this scared of deathrays, even though they were often more dangerous. And then I realized my first experience with a deathray was building one, and I’d never actually fought anyone with them. So far they’ve only been on my side. 

So. Options. Go to the Castle and try to have some kind of explanation or plan that it accepts… which I don't have. Go back in there and fight… against human soldiers just doing their jobs using a deathray. Meaning any hit on either side is something I don’t want; a lose-lose situation. Or… wait, and if my friends win I join them for whatever they’re doing next, and if they lose I find some way to break them out. After all, I’m pretty sure they want Agatha alive. … but it might be only Agatha and Gil that they need to keep alive. Deaths on our side were not acceptable . 

So I steadied my nerves, pushed my shaking hands against the floor, and snuck back in. 

I need not have worried. All I found was a bunch of mooks tied up… with wire. (Almost certainly that was all that was available.) Anyway, that meant I just needed to find where my friends had gone. I checked a couple different electromagnetic wavelengths, but the Castle’s walls blocked most of everything, making them not much more useful than the visible spectrum. That wasn’t surprising , the Sturmhalten tunnel walls blocked out everything too , but Violetta made it look so easy ! How come she could use the better optics I invented better than me ? I whined to myself. I had them basically from when I got to GG-world, and only made a human-compatible version that day!

So I picked a random direction and started looking. Though I really had no idea where to look, since we hadn’t had a plan before we got separated. Would they go back to Castle territory? (Which, now that I thought about it, was a really funny and sad way to think about it. The whole building was the Castle, but in some sections its brain was completely shut down. Since it had a distributed consciousness , that must feel like being lobotomized . It’s really a testament to how tough the Heterodynes built that it was still intelligent , let alone- Well, its version of sane.) Anyway, going back there was a gamble, because if Agatha had gone back, the Castle could just tell me where she was and everything would be fine. If she hadn’t , it might kill me for abandoning her. That wasn’t a smart gamble to take, since if I stayed in- well, the lobotomized zone- and she was there, I’d have difficulty finding her but would probably not die since I could avoid the Baron’s people and they probably wouldn’t try to kill me. Hey, that was technically better odds than I had in Sturmhalten! (Where I almost died… shut up.) And if she wasn’t there, I would have a lot of trouble finding her, but otherwise have the same odds. And it wasn’t like the others couldn’t get by without me. (They had clearly proved that.)

I hated being lost. After this I never wanted to wander empty halls in enemy territory lost and looking for something . Again .

Technically, I wasn’t lost. My perfect memory meant I had a mental map of everywhere I’d been in the Castle. Sure, I still didn’t have the spatial reasoning to get the proportions right and have everything line up, but anytime I saw a hallway split off I knew if I had been down it before, and what other rooms and hallways I had seen connect to it. I could find my way out of the Castle (if I went back into territory it controlled), but I couldn’t find Agatha . And until I did I was just sitting around being useless . 

Or… wait. I couldn’t find Agatha, I couldn’t go into Castle territory, but I could still help. I could try to repair what the Baron had broken and expand the Castle back into the territory it had lost. Of course, as soon as I did that it would find me… unless I put it on a timer and got out first. Yes! Mystery repairs here we come! (I knew it was possible it wouldn’t kill me as thanks for helping repair it, but I wasn’t taking my chances. It was insane and murderous after all, and was probably only getting more so as the Baron ripped through its brain.)

The disadvantage of Mission Mystery Repair was that it gave me no information on what was going on. I couldn’t even actually know if my repairs were working (though all the math checked out.), since I left before they took effect. My only source of information was listening to the Baron’s people as I snuck around them, and all I could glean from that was that they hadn’t caught any of our party. Which was good, but not exactly a full summary of the situation. But that was fine . I didn’t need to know what was going on. Agatha would figure it out, and I was working to increase her resources to do so with. And it wasn’t like I was going to run out of places to fix. The Baron’s people were thorough. It took forever to gain any ground since I had to repair or rebuild connections basically every few feet. I wasn’t even bothering to try to repair the traps. 

At some point the chaos must have increased because there was a while where groups of the Baron’s people would rush by me in a panic. It made hiding easier though. They were focused on whatever fire they were trying to put out, not looking for me.

Then it got quieter. I didn’t see anyone. It was just me and what felt like miles of broken machinery. And the knowledge that every time I moved there was a consciousness right there behind me that I wasn’t letting see me. It was simultaneously calming and maddening. On the one hand, it was just me and the work, no distractions. On the other, it was terrifying in this strange way that made it not feel real. It was like those liminal space posts, like the backrooms kinda. It felt like an infinite man made space. But also not like that at all. I would say that the dense technology made the walls feel alive, but that was stupid because they were . Something about repairing the Castle just made me feel that more than talking to it ever did. 

And I was scared and lonely. Most of the work wasn’t complex enough that I had to slip far into the Madness place, especially after a while. Sure, at first I was breaking new ground and discovering the mechanisms of that place , but after a while I was just fixing more tubes and wires that were broken in the same way and same places. It was tedious. But still difficult. So I was alone with my thoughts. And no Madness to filter them for me. 

I tried not to think about Home. I had been doing a good job. I hadn’t really moped about it since Minecraft. (The first few hundred days, once the novelty had worn off… I didn’t have a good time. I tried not to think about it.) Instead, I tried to bring myself back to the mindset I had during the rest of Minecraft. Focusing only on surviving and creating. Getting lost in the rhythm of routine. But it was harder. Minecraft was so much simpler than GG. I could do whatever I wanted. I had no time pressure, I could spend a day just lying on the floor. (Of course, that was 10 minute days and 10 minute nights, so it wasn’t really the same) Somehow I felt more lonely here than I did there. Seeing people, but them not understanding me, I guessed. All they knew me as was Elzerei, the Spark clank. They didn’t know that I was ever not a Spark. They didn’t know about the internet, or memes, or really any references I wanted to make. They didn’t know that I knew them before they ever knew me, that I had become attached to them when they were just drawings on a screen. … They didn’t know I was a girl. 

“Ah HA!” The Castle’s voice rang through the room. Which was impossible. I hadn’t connected it up yet. “It was you!” 

I froze like a deer in headlights. No thoughts passed through my mind. It was only fear and surprise. 

“Well done!” it boomed, and I took a breath. It wasn’t going to kill me. Probably. “You have expanded my reach very far into the Baron’s supposed ‘safe zones’. Though I have to say you could have paid more attention to detail. You didn’t bother with a single one of my beautiful traps! I had to reactivate them myself!”

I eyed the floor with increasing concern.

“Ah well. The Mistress will make a proper minion of you yet.” 

“How did you get here?” My voice shook, but I tried to ignore it. “I- I hadn’t fixed this area yet.” 

“Ah, you think you are the Mistress’s only minion assigned to restore my missing pieces? She sent a group of those little clanks to repair my connections. I don’t like them though. Too small .”

“Ah.” I turned and opened a nearby access panel, to find them swarming around one of the connections. I closed my eyes for a moment as I calmed down. It wasn’t impossible, it was just unexpected. It was fine; I was fine.

Then the floor dropped out from under me.

“WAHG!!”

Clang! I landed on a stone slide. “What-”

Clang! I bounced. “Was-”

Clang! “That-”

Clang! “For?!” I landed in a different room, completely disoriented, and I could still feel my insides vibrating from the impacts. It felt like the sting in your teeth when you bite directly into something freezing cold. I managed to get my wits about me just enough to glare at the ceiling. 

“Castle!” Agatha yelled. Wait, Agatha?!

“You told me you wanted to see him as soon as I found him.”

I finally spotted Agatha, who was eyeing me assessingly. She was probably trying to tell how badly the Castle damaged me by the transportation via pit trap.

I sighed. “I’m fine. Just- at least some warning next time?” I asked the Castle. “What even-” I cut myself off when I realized where we were. The Great Movement Chamber. I don’t know how I didn’t notice sooner. It was awe-inspiring. It was beautiful. The blue glow of the Dyne illuminating the complex machinery extracting power from it, the mysterious glowing mushrooms and other devices dotted around the cavernous chamber, inviting me to explore , to discover . The… worryingly empty… huge array of power cells that had kept the Castle running this whole time, when the water wheel integral to the process of extracting power had broken. And yup, there it was, still broken. But I couldn’t take my eyes off the Dyne. The glowing waters were so much more than I could have ever imagined. I could feel the power flowing through them, the beauty, the possibility for ascension -

I slapped myself upside the head. No. The Dyne was Agatha’s. And dangerous. I had no reason to go messing with trying to be a God Queen. Not to say it wasn’t tempting (it was extremely tempting), but it wasn’t worth it unless I knew it would work. It was much more likely I would just explode and die, and I already had a path to power from Astra. 

I tore my eyes from it, and looked back to the others. Agatha had already moved on to some machine by the power cells, Violetta and Krosp with her. Lars was looking at me with concern… probably because I had just slapped myself for no reason, and Moloch was looking like he did not want to be there. The rest of the party (Gil, Tarvek, Von Pinn, Theo, Sleipnir, and Zeetha) seemed to be missing. 

“Lars? Where’s everyone else?”

He caught me up. Apparently Gil volunteered to go talk to (and distract) his father, Tarvek insisted on coming along so he wouldn’t double-cross us, and Krosp didn't trust either of them… so he convinced Zeetha to go with them to protect Agatha’s interests. The rest of them were going to try to repair the Castle more while the Baron was distracted, but they were attacked. 

“By who?” 

“I don’t remember… I think it started with a ‘t’... he kept ranting about the Castle being his…”

“Tiktoffen.” I remembered his bid to steal the Castle from Agatha in cannon, and wondered how his plan worked with the changed circumstances.

“Yeah! Wait, how’d you know that?”

“Uh… overheard the Baron’s people talking about him.” I lied. 

Luckily for me, Lars accepted this and continued.

Apparently Theo was shot by Tiktoffen’s people, and Sleipnir and Von Pinn were staying with him while everyone else continued. Theo was insisting he could still help with repairs, so it was unclear whether they would have managed to get him out of the Castle. During the fight, the Castle couldn’t help due to power issues, so they went down here to fix it. 

I thanked Lars for the summary and then went to analyze the broken water wheel. As far as I knew, fixing it was the key to getting the Castle’s power generation back online. (Though from there it would take three years to get back to full power unless it was given some kind of jolt)

Fixing the water wheel wasn’t a Spark problem. It was a simple problem with a simple solution that was only difficult because of the physical strength required to move the wheel back into place. But in Canon it was solved by Moloch using Agatha's little clanks, and here she had already sent them to repair areas destroyed by the Baron. Which meant I had to find a new way to repair it. 

Building myself a forklift mecha powered by the last dregs of one of the power cells was probably not the sane solution, but it did work. Sadly, even though it was basically super strength for whoever piloted it, the mecha was bulky, the controls finicky and unresponsive, and worst of all the whole thing was pretty fragile. Basically, it wasn’t useful outside of lifting heavy things. 

In the meantime, Agatha was working on… something. It also involved the Castle’s power systems, and the Dyne water. (Which was part of why I didn’t look too closely… I didn’t want the Castle noticing and deciding I had to die or something. I knew Agatha wouldn’t let it kill me, but still. I let myself get distracted with the forklift instead.) Anyway, once she finished up, we went back upstairs (which was a long trip. Apparently the hole Agatha bust through all the floors in Canon ended up saving a fair amount of time.) and went back to repairing the main Castle, finishing off syncing everything the Baron hadn’t messed with into one coherent whole. It went surprisingly quick, and the (suspiciously glowing blue) device that Agatha was carrying seemed to cut off arguments between Castle fragments before they began. We did meet up with Theo, Sleipnir, and Von Pinn on the way, but Agatha said that at this point it was best if they stayed put until everything was figured out. It felt like no time at all until we were already done with all the repairs… save the areas that the Baron had purged. We could no longer procrastinate dealing with him. Though Agatha didn’t seem phased.

She turned to the rest of the group with a confident smile, and said, “Who’s coming?”

There were immediate yeses from Lars and Violetta.

Krosp said that Agatha would need him there.

Moloch said she was crazy if she thought he’d willingly get involved in that mess.

And I said, “Where?”

“To talk to the Baron.” … Okay maybe that should have been clear.

It was incredibly dangerous. And, more than that, I had the perfect out. I didn’t need to do this. They would probably still succeed without me. I could relax, and not deal with the stress of watching them argue. Of watching in real time as the Baron decided the fate of the world. I had only seconds to decide and I should go. It was so narratively important. The Part Where The Heterodyne And The Baron Ally… Or They Don’t. But I was scared and awkward and I would only make it worse. And I had been silent for too long. 

“You don’t have to come.” Agatha reassured.

“I… I want to help… But I’m not sure there’d be anything for me to do.” I waffled. If she had a plan that needed me I was willing to risk it, but if I would just be awkwardly standing there watching them politic… 

“What do you need to make two more invisibility cloaks?”

Chapter Text

Making invisibility cloaks with Agatha was a lot of fun. Of course, this wasn’t the first time we’d worked together on the invisibility problem, but this time instead of trying to adapt it for Gil’s flier, we were adapting it for the limited time and materials we had on hand. Her suggestions greatly expanded the number of materials the process could work with. (We even got it to work on metal, which gave me Ideas for a future project…) Anyway, with the toggleability, we could even make normal clothes that just had an invisibility mode. This was all in service of the fact that we found big coats before we found just plain fabric. (that hadn’t rotted… basically everything in the Castle had been abandoned for almost 20 years.)

Far too soon, the invisibility coats were done, and Agatha was getting everyone ready for the negotiations. Her plan involved the invisibility as a fallback, and since I wasn’t coming I loaned out my cloak to Violetta. Of course, she herself didn’t need it (Smoke Knight training was better ), but it was so she could whisk anyone away into hiding. Like,  (the example she gave) ‘her lady’ Agatha, who wasn’t going to go in wearing any of the invisibility things. Wait. ‘her lady’? Oh! I must have missed Tarvek giving her service to the Lady Heterodyne. Which by process of elimination meant it had probably happened while I was sneaking around alone. Well. Good. Good for her. Sigh. Here I was annoyed at missing plot developments, but still planning on missing one of the most important meetings in Europa. But no. It was too late, we didn’t have enough invisibility for me to come. And I had better things to do anyway. I still needed to get Von Pinn back to her Otilia body. 

So Agatha and the rest of them started moving, with her telling the Castle to be nice to me and Moloch as they left. 

And then it was just us.

“Well. I’m gonna go check on Theo.” I said to break the awkward silence. 

“Great. I’m going to avoid this insanity as much as possible.”

“In the Castle? Good luck.” I said it genuinely, as much as it sounded like sarcasm. I didn’t believe for a second he would be able to avoid the chaos he seemed to always wind up in, but he deserved a shot at it. 

I knew the way back to where Theo was. I actually knew a fair amount of the Castle’s layout by now. Which meant that when I found a dead end, I knew it was the Castle messing with me.

“Isn’t that a waste of power?” I asked the wall that wasn’t there before.

“Aww, you noticed!” 

“I have a pretty good memory.” It felt weird to say. I had spent most of my life with an absolutely atrocious memory, and it had become part of how I defined myself. But I had a good memory now, so… Ha!

I started walking back, since I was fairly sure I remembered a different way around, when I fell into a (fairly shallow) pit trap.

“I- Seriously? Agatha told you to be nice to us!”

“It could have been deeper.”

I rolled my eyes. “And if she needs to repair me because of you she’ll be very mad. Why are you wasting time trolling me?” I started trying to climb out of the pit. “Don’t you have better things to be doing? Agatha to be looking after?”

“My mistress has chosen to leave the bounds of my awareness.” Its bitterness was clear in its voice.

“Oh. You don’t, huh.” The wall I had been trying to climb dropped out from under me, leaving me at the bottom of the pit again. 

“So I have no reason not to e ntertain myself ” It obviously meant this as a threat… But where had I heard that before. Me being the dancing monkey for a being that could control my entire environment. And the Castle was nowhere near as powerful as Astra. And the Castle had a vested interest in not killing me because Agatha would be mad. Astra…seemed to want me alive because getting a Jumper to mess with was somehow rare or difficult for her. Though the Castle was much more inherently murderous than Astra seemed to be.

“I doubt my being stuck in this pit is that entertaining for you.” like arcing electricity, dots connected in my mind and I had the beginning of a plan. “I was going to go look for Lucrezia’s secret lab…”

“Oh? That’s not what you told the minion. Causing trouble?” It asked conspiratorially. 

“Well…” I hedged, “I was planning on finding Theo, Sleipnir, and Von Pinn first, to invite them along.”

“And you didn’t want him to come.”

“I figured he wouldn’t want to. It’s going to be pretty dangerous; who knows what kind of traps she set up?” 

“So why are you going?”

“A couple reasons. Knowing that she was the Other calls into question the accepted story of how she left. Maybe I could learn the real story. Surely she’d have had to develop the Wasps while she was here. Maybe I could learn enough to invent a cure.” Both (mostly) true, but I didn’t hold out much hope for either of them. The mystery of why and how Lucrezia became the Other was too much for me to solve, but I suspected it involved time travel. Also, in-comic there was a conspicuous lack of Wasps or proto-Wasps in her lab. Sure, there was mind control, but it seemed like a different project. I suspected the invention of the Wasps didn’t happen in Castle Heterodyne, and it was a… older version of Lucrezia that came and perpetrated the attack. That was the lie. I doubted I’d find any trace of notes on the Wasps. Maybe the beginnings of the principles behind them, but nowhere near enough to make a cure. My real reasoning was, of course, finding the Otilia body so Von Pinn could be transferred into it. Though first the Castle fragment currently occupying it would need to be transferred out first. … I might need Agatha’s help for this one. But I didn’t want to wait. Whatever happened with the Baron would cause more things to happen and I needed a chance to get the secret of Von Pinn’s identity out that wouldn’t give away my own secret prior identity. 

“So, being a Hero raiding the Villain's lab?”

“Ha! No, just a Spark learning as much as she can.” I did not want it dropping me down one of it’s bottomless pits, thinking I’d just appear at the top like any ‘true’ Hero could. … Wait shoot I used the wrong pronoun! Everyone here thought of me as ‘he’. I was still surprised that it was so hard to get used to. Also, only the Castle heard, and I doubt it cared about that sort of thing.

“Hm. Fine.” 

I tried climbing the wall again, and this time it stood still.

Almost moments after I resumed my trip to find Von Pinn, I had to quickly duck to avoid flying spikes. 

“You just said you’d let me look for them!”

“I didn’t say I’d make it easy .”

And thus began the sink-or-swim lesson in trapfinding. I had some practice from Sturmhatlen, and from watching Von Pinn and Zeetha during our first entry into the Castle. Mostly it was about situational awareness (...which I was very bad at), and fast reflexes (which… I could notice things fairly quickly, but I would often be caught in a moment of indecision before acting.) This meant that I spent a fair bit of time doing minor self-repair while the Castle groused at how it had to reduce the lethality of it’s traps by so much, and really anyone should be able to avoid them at these slow speeds. 

It was so tiring. And frustrating. At some point after repairing my wrist joint that had been messed up by a suit of armor that had tried to duel me, I just lay face up on the floor, not moving. It felt pointless. Of course then the Castle went on a spiel about how back in its day, minions were made of studier stuff. I couldn’t tell if it meant physically or mentally. 

In the end, instead of slowing me down, the Castle had to use it’s traps to get me to go anywhere, since I could no longer convince myself to do much but dodge traps and think about the historical fiction books I’d rather be reading. They were basically in-universe fanfic, and I just wanted to be consuming media. Anyway, dodging the traps was motivation enough, my survival instinct honed from Sturmhalten. And, despite myself, the near misses and bloody spikes and everything else were enough to really scare me, even though I knew the Castle wouldn’t kill me. 

When I reached Von Pinn, Theo, and Sleipnir, they all reacted in shock. Von Pinn was instantly enraged. (which worried me for a moment until I realized everyone here was someone she was unwilling to hurt… or the Castle but I doubted she could hurt it.) 

Theo and Sleipnir both asked if I was okay, to which I sat down and gave a tired, “I’m fine.” that didn’t reassure them at all. I must have looked horrible. I had gotten too lazy to repair anything outside of core functional processes (the things the Castle targeted least anyway), so my casing was a mess of dents and torn holes. My clothes ragged, littered with new tears and holes. (Of course, they fared much better than back in the Sturmhalten sewers, but Theo and Sleipnir didn’t know that.) Dully, I noticed Theo’s leg wrapped in bloody bandages. 

Before they could interrogate me on my state, I looked to Theo. “And you?”

He grimaced. “Recovering. And I haven't gotten more hurt since you last saw me.” He eyed me more closely, assessing my state as a mechanic. “Plus… do you need help repairing yourself? A lot of these are things you can normally deal with.” He didn’t say it directly, but I realized that we did have tools and materials here, and when we had traveled the Wastelands together I had usually been quick to start repairing myself as soon as I had the materials. 

I lay down on my back, and stared sightlessly at the ceiling. They hovered over me immediately. I sighed. I just wanted to relax. I was tired, tired of being scared, tired of obsessing over the plot and what needed to be changed and kept, tired of putting myself in danger for my stupid plans, tired of this headache- oh. Dammit. But… I had slept not that long ago. There was no reason for Locket to take effect… I forced my memory back to Minecraft. It was so hard to remember. My memories were probably about half from my original world and half from GG, just because of how much my memory improved once I got to GG. Between them, Minecraft was a bit of a short blur. Still, I managed to dredge up memories of most of my powers from there, and… right. One of them let me sense dangers around myself. I had probably subconsciously tried to use it to sense the Castle’s traps. Though honestly, what annoyed me more than that was that my melancholy had apparently not been real, just… just an effect of the stupid drawback. But. I was tired! I had been through two deathtraps. I was still in one! Of course I was tired! I didn’t have the unflinching determination of Sparks like Agatha, or Gil, or… huh. I did, actually. Not now, not as much as them, but the whole jump I had been more determined, more willing to take risks, more able to survive without hours of downtime to just relax. Much more than I had been before. Not to the extent of Agatha, or even most of the GG characters, but… At first I had just thought it was because I was in GG, that being in the world I’d idolized so long gave me more motivation. But that drive went away whenever the headaches came, just like my Spark. 

Above me, Theo had collected tools and materials, but Von Pinn had stopped him from doing anything more. It hadn’t taken much convincing; he was conflicted about what to do, how to help me. He noticed when my eyes focused back on him, and he held up the things.

“...Well?”

I sighed, and forced myself to sit up and take them. I looked to the nearest injury, a nasty-looking gash through the plating on my forearm… and realized that without my Spark I would have a fair bit of trouble fixing it. 

I looked away in embarrassment, and very quietly said, “yes,” handing him back the supplies. He started, and only barely grabbed them in time. 

“... really?”

I held my arm out to him. “Yes, you do it. As far as I can tell it’s nothing major.” It came out clipped. 

Hesitantly, he did as he was told, but his look of concern only increased. Sleipnir played lab assistant, but the mood was quiet and anxious. They both knew something was wrong, but not how to ask. I sighed again. I supposed I should tell them.

“I… Get headaches.” I started. Sleipnir nodded, remembering my conversation with Agatha back on Castle Wulfenbach I bet. “Sometimes a quick jolt, but more often… a slowly growing pain. They’re what tell me I need to sleep, but I get them for other reasons too.” Sleipnir’s eyes widened. I had never let on that they affected me so regularly. “When it happens, it… deactivates my Spark.” At this Theo gasped, most every Spark felt that to be without their Spark was to be without themselves. “I hadn’t realized. It crept up on me.” I was still embarrassed by how often it did that. The thing was that the progress of the pain was much slower than the progress of the dulling of my Spark. 

“So… You can’t fix it.” Sleipnir said bluntly, gesturing to my wounds.

“Not right now, no.” I grimaced, looking away from them both.

It didn’t take long till I was bored. I didn’t want to bother fixing the shallow damage, but it was clear they wouldn’t let me leave with it undone. It was so embarrassing, having to have Theo fix me. And I felt bad. I felt like I’d just been a burden on Theo and Sleipnir, using them to get to Sturmhalten, and now this…

It took me a while longer to give in and ask them if they had something to read. Apparently they had the notes of an old Heterodyne who had enjoyed drinking poison for fun. He apparently had some way of making himself immune, and commented mostly on their flavors. He also liked mixing them together and with other drinks, and liked commenting on what would go well together. There were a couple poison recipes in there, or notes on chemical reactions that happened between poisons when mixed together, but it was hard to get a gauge on what the effects of most of the poisons were supposed to be. Anyway, it was very entertaining, and I relished the chance to just relax and read. Especially the parts that were more like a journal than a notebook, that gave me insights on what he was like. The parts that had more of a story.

“Hey.”

“Huh-wuh?” I looked up from the book, having forgotten to pay any attention to anything else.

“I’m done.” Theo explained. And he was; I was fully repaired. 

“... Thanks.” I stood back up and stretched (well, I was made of metal so I didn’t really stretch like a human, but I did the motion.) I considered keeping the notebook to finish reading, but I figured the Castle wouldn’t like that and reluctantly set it down. 

“So.” I said with more energy than I had had for the entire trip there, “Who wants to try to find Lucrezia’s secret lab?”

Chapter Text

They all just kinda stared at me in shock. Theo and Sleipnir glanced over at Von Pinn, who was looking supremely conflicted. I think they expected her to veto this immediately, but instead she was looking like she wanted to tear something apart, but not saying anything.

“I was thinking,” I continued, “the timeline means she should have invented the Wasps here. If we could find her notes, we could see if making a cure was possible, at least for stealth Revenants.”

“Stealth Revenants?”

“Oh. um. In Sturmhalten I found out the classic Revenant is just the… statistical extreme. The rest act completely normal… except that they must follow all of Lucrezia’s orders. Horrifying, yes, but also… maybe possible to cure? Since the person is still in there?”

They looked pretty stunned. But Sleipnir shook it off first.

“And how do you think we’ll find this lab in the first place?”

“Well. I’ve got a couple thoughts on that.” (I had a couple of answers from the Comic, but I needed excuses for them.) “First, in order to hide her work from the Heterodyne Boys, she must have at least tried to hide from the Castle. That means that she would most likely have had the room built herself, rather than repurposing an old one. That puts my bets on down , since that lets you dig into the rock of the mountain. The second is that for convenience’s sake, it’d likely be near her other rooms.” 

“Huh. That does narrow the search area by a fair amount.” Theo admitted.

Sleipnir looked at me curiously. “I don’t suppose you know where her rooms are?” 

“... I do.” Von Pinn grit out. 

We all whirled to look at her. She looked like she was fighting an internal battle of immense proportion. I cringed. But I needed her to show the way. I knew it was under the Great Movement chamber, but also that there was no connection there. That I would have had to dig and hope I hit the right spot. I also knew there was a secret passage connecting to her chambers, but not where those chambers were. 

We followed her. No one spoke. When the Castle’s traps activated she tore at them with pent up… rage? Will? Something. 

By the time we had made it to Lucrezia’s chambers, we had all gained some scrapes and bruises. Von Pinn was shaking so much it looked like vibrating. I had tried to keep Theo the most clear from the traps, since he still had the bullet wound to deal with, but there was only so much I could do. Anyway. It was secret door finding time. I thought I remembered it having to do with the walls. 

Secret door finding was not a glamorous pursuit. Sure, secret door opening very much could be, but secret door finding involved far too much peering intensely at normal objects, poking and prodding at random things, and trying to do distance math to figure out what areas even have room for a secret passage. (Measuring with your feet like those Youtube parkour guys is much more tedious when it’s the width of a whole room)

We actually found a couple of different secret doors first, though they all led to small cupboards for storing small secrets, none of which were too interesting. There were a few notes on mind control devices, but we determined they were too different from Wasps to really be very useful.

No, the real deal was when I finally found the door in the paneling, revealing the long and winding staircase that seemed to go down forever.

The secret passage was far longer and more complex than I expected. There were lots and lots of doors, though most were other secret entrances. It wove and wound a fair amount, with lots of side-hallways and little rooms. Though it wasn’t nearly as maze-like as the Castle itself. There were, of course, traps every couple steps. Von Pinn did a good job dealing with most of them, though. Luckily, I knew basically what I was looking for, so when I found a low-down door leading to a room with green stone walls, I took initiative and went in. The first things I recognized were the mind control pod things that Lucrezia stuck the cast in at one point. 

It didn’t take long for my attention to be drawn by the rattling of chains. Chained to the wall and trapped in a cage of arcing electricity, was the Muse Otilia. Or, more accurately, her body, inhabited by a fragment of Castle Heterodyne.

My fake reaction was a beat late. “Otilia.” I breathed, aiming for awestruck. 

“The Muse!?!” Theo and Sleipnir interjected in unison. 

“Heh heh heh” Castle-in-Otilia chuckled darkly. To Von PInn, it said, “You have returned, but who are these minions you’ve brought with you?”

“My charges .” she snapped, patience clearly wire-thin.

Castle-in-Otilia narrowed its eyes suspiciously at us. “They are not the young Master.”

I flinched as Von Pinn leapt at it, stopping just short of the lightning cage. 

“THE BOY IS DEAD!” she screamed, voice raw with emotion.

The Castle stiffened, as if it wanted to stand. (though the cage was too small.) “And yet you DARE return here?!”

“Hey!” I interjected, afraid of where this was going and feeling guilty about setting up the meeting when it was going so horribly. I paused for a split moment as I improvised my objection. “...Who are you?” I asked Castle-in-Otilia. 

“Oh? Was it not you who declared me ‘Otilia’?” It asked with a mischievous grin

“Yes… but you aren’t acting like her…” I didn’t have a great excuse for this knowledge, though I could hide a bit behind the idea that I’d researched the Muses

“Observant. Yes, even trapped in this miserable shell, I am Castle Heterodyne !”

“The Castle?! But-” Sleipnir started, gesturing vaguely at the ceiling to indicate the part of the Castle actually inhabiting its own systems.

“ Miserable?! You are lucky she did not trap you within this prison of flesh and bone!” Von Pinn interrupted.

“‘Trap’, so this isn’t your real body either?” I asked Von PInn, trying to lead the conversation to the discoveries I’d wanted to reveal the whole time.  

“No. I am Otilia.”

“And Lucrezia swapped around your bodies. Of course.” I said it like I was figuring it out. “She was playing with mind transfer.” I looked around the room again, trying to see if I could identify the machines used. 

“Surely if the transfer was done here, we could undo it.” Theo commented, following my gaze to the multitude of experiments around the lab. 

I tore my gaze from the technology to look at the people in question. Von Pinn looked to the caged Castle (or possibly just to her own body), but the Castle responded first.

“Yes, yes. Let me out.” It directed as if we were its minions. 

I gave it a level glare. “And you’ll promise not to attack us if we do?”

It grinned at me. “Have you met me before?”

“Not this you, but yes.” I stepped over to the cage, crossing my arms. “Now about that promise?”

It sighed. “Fine, fine. Never get to have any fun” 

Keeping my side of the deal, I found the cage’s control panel, did a bit of quick Sparky analysis of it, and turned off the lightning bars. Almost immediately the Castle broke its chains and left the cage, testing joints that hadn’t been able to fully extend for… well at least since the attack on the main Castle. 

“Free!” It exclaimed joyfully, “Now transfer me back into my systems.”

“What- here? I didn’t think Castle systems went this far down. How else would she have kept it secret?”

“You thought she built all this herself?” It asked bitterly. “No. She stole me from my systems, and captured me , unable to warn anyone.”

“Oh. So you were meant to control this area and the system of secret passages leading to it… and your larger self didn’t notice?! ” I asked incredulously. I had always wondered how she managed to transfer the Castle’s consciousness without the rest of it even seeming to know .

“The rest of me does still function. Good. And the Lord Heterodyne? Where is he?

I made nervous eye contact with Theo and Sleipnir, but quickly started explaining anyway. “The Heterodyne Boys are… missing. The current Lady Heterodyne is Agatha, Bill’s daughter. As for your larger self… it’s now mostly repaired, thanks to her.” 

It narrowed its eyes at me. “Connect me to my larger self, and I shall verify these claims myself.”

“Sure.”

And so we started work on the transfer of the Castle. Which meant first finding and analyzing the mind transfer tech and notes already there. My study of the Beacon Engine proved useful in making sense of them. Then we had to find a way to access the Castle’s systems in the area. Finding the neural (or neural-equivalent) systems in the Otilia body wasn’t too hard, but the room didn’t have a clear port or anything, and it wasn’t even really clear what were Castle systems versus things Lucrezia added. The Castle had a huge variety in its systems, even two things that were for the exact same thing were often built at least slightly differently. I said it was probably a security measure, and Theo said it could just be a side effect of being worked on by so many different Sparks over the years. It was probably both. Anyway. We had to ask the Castle, who was of course loath to tell us anything about how it worked. 

It told us surprisingly quickly actually, with the disturbing comment that it could just kill us after we had finished. Von Pinn protested that before I even got the chance to, so I decided to categorize it as one of the many empty threats the Castle makes towards Agatha’s friends. 

The transfer itself went on without a hitch. Theo and I had made sure we had everything figured out before we actually went through with it, so there were no surprises. 

“So?” Theo asked the ceiling as I prepared to disconnect the Otilia body, “How’s it feel?”

There was a pause long enough that I began to wonder if something had gone terribly wrong, before the Castle eventually responded, “... Why can’t I see anything outside this room.”

I carefully set down Otilia and went to inspect the door. “I assume that means that taking you out of your body wasn’t her only method of keeping this place secret from you.”

I looked carefully at the doorway, realized that the broken connection could be anywhere, and addressed the Castle again. “We might need to know a bit more about your systems to fix that.” I glanced over at Von Pinn, and the only mostly disconnected Muse body. “But it would be unfair to leave Otilia waiting that long.” 

Von Pinn stared at me intensely as I moved back to disconnect her clank body from the mechanical to mechanical transfer systems. We had made both transfer systems at the same time, so it wasn’t very long before we had finished double-checking everything and were awkwardly restraining Von Pinn to a slab. Theo was taking it in stride, but for all I had gotten used to being a Spark, this was my first time really working with anything biological. It was definitely my first time strapping anyone to a slab. It made me feel guilty, like now I was the evil Spark experimenting on people, running over their autonomy. 

I reminded myself that she had volunteered for this, and that we didn’t know what the Von Pinn body would do, left to its own devices. And it was made by Lucrezia. I tightened the last restraint into place decisively.

That was the last piece of preparation, so Theo flipped the switch.

“RAAAAAAA” 

I heard the sound of snapping leather. In an instant, my vision was filled with claws and teeth. I closed my eyes as the screeching sound of tearing metal overwhelmed my senses.

The sound changed, as I cowered on the floor. I heard the shrill tearing metal become the deeper tone of tearing flesh. There was screaming, and some yelling, though I was too distracted to make out the words. Behind my eyelids, playing on repeat, was the Geister cutting off my head. The sound of tearing metal as her sword cut through so many important cables. The unique feeling of suddenly losing proprioception of my whole body. Of the phantom pain that told me my whole body was on fire, of every broken nerve screaming . I remembered it perfectly.

I felt a soft touch on my shoulder. The screaming faltered, and then, as I realized it was my screaming, stopped. It was quiet.

“Elzerei?” I heard Sleipnir’s voice ask quietly.

I curled up, trying to focus on the feeling of fabric on my limbs, the pressure of the floor where I was sitting on it. The fact I could still feel where my body was. Distantly, from what felt like a lifetime ago, I remembered a grounding technique. 5 things you can see- I didn’t want to open my eyes. 4 things you can feel. The ground. My clothes. I reached out, just a bit, blindly, and I felt a hand grab mine. It pulled a bit, like they wanted to help me get up, but I just held it in place and they gave up. What else… I felt pain, still. But not over my whole body. It was localized in my chest and arms. Was I injured? 3 things you can hear. Someone breathing. My coolant pumping, still very quickly. The distant rumbling of the Castle’s machinery. 2… I couldn’t taste or smell. And that technique wasn’t even supposed to be for… panic attacks. It was for dissociation. Still, it was probably time I opened my eyes. I took a deep and slow (and shuddering) breath, and then I opened my eyes. Sleipnir was kneeling above me, holding my hand. Behind her, Theo and Otilia looked at me with concern. There was blood streaking Otilia’s body, and she held a nasty-looking hook, also covered in blood. For a while, no one spoke. They watched me with concern, and I tried to convince myself that the green lighting of Lucrezia’s lab was different from the green lighting of Sturmhalten’s sewers. 

I pulled myself into a more proper sitting position, and took another shaky breath. “So…” I started, more testing my voice than really speaking, “what happened?”

Theo looked away awkwardly. “You were right to say we should restrain Von PInn. As soon as the transfer was done, she- well, her body- attacked you.”

“I killed her.” Otilia interjected, sounding vicious and content in a way I hadn’t heard from her before. Though I guessed it was fitting, Otilia killing Von Pinn. Killing the person she hated being. 

I nodded and stood up, letting go of Sleipnir’s hand in the process. Somehow the green felt brighter then, with only the floor pushing back up against my feet. I stumbled towards the door, where I pressed both hands against the walls as I climbed the stairs.

“Hey!” The Castle down there yelled. “Where are you going?!”

I didn’t respond. I was remembering the warm-toned lighting at the top of the stairs, and trying not to think about green lights on blue-white swords. 

The warm lighting helped. Being alone didn’t. I yelled at the Castle, didn’t it want to know what we were doing down there, what we found? But I got no response. I was starting to wonder if something had happened to the Castle when-

DOOM

It’s impossible to describe the feeling of the Doom Bell. Existential despair doesn’t cover it. It’s like… having your soul ripped from your body and broken in half. Except it isn’t. It’s like all at once being faced with the fact that everything you know and love is going to be completely destroyed. Except it isn’t. It’s like seeing every hope, every stable foundation, shake apart before your eyes. Except it isn’t. It also doesn’t last very long, before you pass out. 

I woke up slowly. And tiredly. I assumed I hadn’t been out for very long. In the Comic, people shook off the Doom Bell pretty quickly. I had no idea how they did it. I was completely emotionally drained, and I didn’t feel like doing anything for a week. I crawled over to the nearest corner that seemed safe and comfortable enough, and I lay back down, staring blankly at the Castle ceiling. It meant Agatha had won, I told myself. But won what? Did she convince the Baron to agree to this, or did she kick him out of her Castle before he could fight back? Was this the beginning of a new peace, or the Siege of Mechanicsburg? And could I bring myself to care? (No, not right then I couldn’t. Not when I was so deep in the Castle that it didn’t matter. Not when I had just experienced enough fear and despair to run dry any semblance of empathy, ambition, care, what-have-you that I had left.) I stared up at the ceiling and thought. Not about plots for the future, not reminiscing on the past, just making up silly stupid stories that wouldn’t have an impact on anything, getting caught up in a world inside my own head. It was harder now, now that I was living in one of the worlds I escaped to most frequently, but I made do.

“There he is!” Theo’s voice called.

Reluctantly, I opened my eyes. “Who?”

“Wh- You! You ran off, after getting attacked, without explaining anything!”

“And then the Doom Bell rang! We thought you might be going to repair yourself, but you didn’t come back.” Sleipnir added, intentionally not looking at the tears still though my arms and chest. 

I sighed, and stood slowly. “I guess I should get to that, then. Did you all connect the Castle to the Castle?”

Sleipnir made a face. “Yes. They've been arguing ever since.” 

I chuckled softly. Of course they were. “Did it manage to convince it about Agatha?”

“Yes” The Castle cut in, annoyed. “The Doom Bell would not ring had I not accepted The Heterodyne.” 

I wondered which part of the Castle was talking, but I figured it’d be rude to ask. “Of course.” 

Otilia approached from the other side of the room. “He’s okay?”

“I’m fine. Just… need to do some more repairs again.” 

That time, I did the repairs myself. I let Theo help, a bit, but it was my body, my repairs, my responsibility. And I needed to prove that I was fine. I was okay. I could fix it and move on. We didn’t have to talk about what happened in Lucrezia’s lab. I didn’t have to think about it. I could fix myself for the thousandth time and move on like nothing happened. I tried to use slightly thicker metal for the replacement panels; trading a bit of efficiency for toughness. I was tired of repairs. 

And so we began the journey out of the Castle, to see what had happened while we were gone. (really, you let Agatha out of your sight for one world-altering diplomatic meeting, and you have no idea what all could have changed.) The Castle was being annoyingly vague about what was actually going on, preferring to alternately tease and threaten Otilia (I’m not sure if it really cared to know the difference) about old times. It also was not shy about springing all sorts of traps on us, though with Otilia’s help (and even Theo and Sleipner’s, really. They weren’t as good at it as Otilia, but still better than me.) it was a lot easier. Though I got the impression that the traps directed at Otilia were a lot less de-fanged. 

Anyway, it refused to tell us where Agatha was with any more specificity than ‘outside’, though the way it said it made me think that it knew perfectly well. Annoying, yes, but at least from a Castle-repair standpoint that meant it probably had full control and perception of the town. Which was good in the sense that it implied the repairs were mostly done, and worrying from the wider perspective of having to deal with the ancient murder-building more. 

When we finally reached the door, Mechanicsburg looked… fine. Better than fine, actually. Looking closer I could see Jägers and probably-Mechanicsburgers partying, and I wasn’t sure, but some of the humans actually looked like Wulfenbach soldiers, partying side by side with the Jägers and Mechanicsburgers. 

I deflated with a full-body sigh of relief. It worked. There was a treaty of some kind. There had to be. There was no other explanation for the Doom Bell ringing and Klaus letting his people party with the people of Mechanicsburg. It worked. It was all worth it. All the- all the everything I did to change the timeline, to make things go better this time around than Canon. It worked. I did it. If I could have, I think I might have cried.

Chapter Text

Of course, it wasn’t just ‘happily ever after’. Agatha had insisted on being an ally of the Empire instead of a member state , and the precedent triggered a fair number of revolts. It was only a couple of days before the Baron whisked Gil away to help him deal with them. (Or possibly as an excuse to get him out of Mechanicsburg) Otilia insisted on staying in Mechanicsburg, to watch over Tarvek (Who she did accept as Storm King), and to try to ensure Agatha’s good behavior like the world’s most threatening shoulder angel. 

Martellus, of course, came to Mechanicsburg a week or so later to bluster and brag. As soon as he got there to remind me of his infuriating existence, I found an excuse to investigate the Red Cathedral and try to find the Mirror. No way was I letting him kidnap Agatha. The Abess fought me on it, but since she did so while professing her belief that Agatha was a fake Heterodyne, sent to ease the ascension of the Storm King (she probably meant Martellus), her vote was overruled and I was given full permission to explore. (With supervision by the Crypt Keepers.) It took a while, and I found a lot of other dangerous and inexplicable things on the way (That the Crypt Keepers kept me from activating/running afoul of), but we found the Mirror. I examined it for a while, and said it looked like a two-way portal. (which I could only vaguely recognize mechanically, and only because I was already looking for signs of it to excuse the fact I already knew.) I made a couple traps nearby, and said they should maybe keep an eye on it in case anything comes out. (The traps were made to capture anything that came too close to the portal and set off an alarm) Though as I made the traps I noticed my hands were shaking. Which, yes, I was on edge, but I shouldn’t have been that on edge. 

When I left the room with the Mirror and calmed down soon after, I realized what it was. The Mirror glowed with a green light. Damn. Feeling stupid, I found a quiet moment and readjusted my optics. With a careful set of filters, I changed my vision to be unable to see yellow-green. I shifted all the greens to turquoises and cyans, and all the yellows to golds and brasses. It took a bit of adjusting to, and plants all looked like they were oddly in shadow, but I could analyze the Mirror and not feel like jumping out of my skin- er, casing.

But Martellus didn’t kidnap Agatha. I couldn’t tell if that was because of my influence or that he would never have had the opportunity with Agatha in the height of her power. He was just a smarmy brute and fought with Tarvek constantly. He mostly left Lars alone though. I think he thought he wasn’t a threat. I was so glad when he finally left. (According to Tarvek, Seffie called him back and that was worrying because they were plotting something, but they’re always plotting something and it meant I didn’t have to interact with him.)

I was staying in the Castle, along with a bunch of Agatha’s friends. (Though Theo and Sleipnir were talking about actually buying a house in Mechanicsburg) The Castle, of course, had a lot of fun annoying its guests, though once Agatha got around to ‘redesigning it with a hammer’, it was a lot more agreeable. Even so, I got a lot more practice spotting and dodging traps. (Or ‘pranks’ after an ill-advised conversation Theo and I had with it, where we explained the idea behind pranks to it. Even a month later, I was still finding sand in my components.)

Gil came back, of course. I hadn’t really expected Klaus to be able to keep him away. He hung out with Tarvek and Agatha almost all the time, and the love triangle betting reached such a fervor that even I heard about it. I did a couple odd jobs just to earn enough money to put down on ‘she dates both’. (Which, while it was the dark horse in Canon, was superseded by ‘she dates all three’, making a quadruple with Lars)

Those odd jobs were art commissions, and I started getting more requests after people heard I was doing them. This then led to a pressure to learn oil painting. (acrylic hadn’t been invented yet.) As a Spark, I reacted with the completely reasonable and measured response of finally beginning my project to invent digital art. The first problem I ran into was that no one had personal devices to display it on. I could make myself a tablet (though it was a fair bit bigger than my Surface back home), but the only way I could show people was on my screen. So I set to work trying to re-invent Agatha’s hologram tech. I managed to make something more vibrant, but it couldn’t project to open air, instead needing to project to a glass pane. Still, from there I was able to develop a fairly cheap method for creating ‘light frames’, picture frames that would project the image onto a pane of glass in the middle. These had the advantages over normal framed paintings in that: you could more easily change the picture in the frame, it could support animation, and lighting wasn’t a problem since the picture glowed. Of course, it did require a steady flow of power or it would just be an empty frame, but for anyone that was a problem for I could upsell them on a battery powered version. It was a work of genius , and everyone still using canvas paintings were fools , blind to my brilliance! Though, naturally, I was the only one who could create the art for my light frames, which meant before I could release them I needed to create an array of drawings and animations that could truly display the brilliance of my invention. 

When Moloch found me, it was in the dark, surrounded by glowing screens, hunched over a tablet the size of a table. I looked up at him as if I wasn’t quite sure he was real. 

He flicked on the lights. “Why d’you Sparks have to be so creepy?”

I hissed, blinking and curling up defensively over my tablet like a feral creature. He crossed his arms at me. Slowly, carefully, I pulled myself out of the madness place, and after a couple deep breaths I felt enough like a person to hold a conversation.

“Yes?”

“Her royal sparkiness wants to talk to you.”

“Ah- sure. Just lemme-” I took a couple moments to (metaphorically) put myself together a bit and shove a couple bits and bobs in pockets. I didn’t have a phone, but I did have a pocket light frame (shaped like a pocket watch, actually, instead of a phone) that could display some of my drawings. 

Agatha was in the library, with Zeetha, Gil, and… KLAUS?! When did he get here?! Wasn’t he off running an empire or something? I stood startled, like a deer in headlights.

“Hello, Elzerei.” He said mildly. “I had heard you were studying some kind of portal?”

Oh. Ohhhhh. Skifander. He had promised to get Zeetha back to Skifander. 

“-hem! Right! Yes. I didn’t make much progress… The technology seemed more advanced than anything I’d seen before.” Settling back into my ‘playing dumb so they don’t know I have outside knowledge’ persona, I started toward the table they were all sitting at. 

“Then it may well have been a Mirror.”

“You said that with a capital letter.” I accused as I sat down. “What’s a Mirror?” I noticed there were several maps strewn about the table, along with books and notes and pencils. 

“The Queen’s Mirrors were ancient devices which facilitated instant communication and travel across large distances. Now, most are lost or nonfunctional.” He glanced at Gil and Zeetha for a second before continuing, “However, I returned from Skifander using one, and I believe that may be our best course to get Miss Zeetha there.”

“I see. Well, I did find what probably is one in Mechanicsburg-” I looked to Agatha, silently asking permission to tell. She nodded, so I continued, “It was in the basements of the Red Cathedral. It wasn’t actively connected to anywhere as far as I could tell. I’m not sure if it’s functional at all, really.” I paused. That wasn’t enough. I wanted to tell them about Martellus’s Mirror, but how to… “We should ask the Abbess.” I wasn’t sure she was in on it, but she was working with Martellus, so she’d be most likely to know.

Klaus accepted it without debate, but Agatha gave me a strange look. She knew the Abbess, and she knew if I had meant that we should ask someone at the Cathedral, I would have said Dr. Yglyn, the Curate. Still, she didn’t say anything and the conversation continued. I didn’t actually contribute much. Yeah, I gave some details about how the Mirror looked and the devices beside it, but most of the conversation was about, well. If we could get the Mirror stable enough, Klaus wanted to visit, and to have Gil meet his mother and everything. Zeetha wanted to bring Higgs (who she named as her boyfriend. Huh. I missed that but I was glad. I had worried my meddling with the timeline had stolen that from them), and wanted to visit some but stay in Europa a while longer. But… we didn’t know if we could get the Mirror stable enough for that, and if we couldn’t… Zeetha had a choice to make. Of course, that was a fair number of ‘if’s. She said we should see what’s possible first. We agreed, and decided to see what we could make of the Mirror first.

On the way out, Tarvek stopped me. He made it seem like he just had a quick engineering question to ask me, but once we were out of sight, he asked, “What does the Abbess have to do with the Mirrors?”

This threw me since I was genuinely expecting a quick engineering question. “Um! Well she’s in charge of the Cathedral right? So-”

He cut me off. “No. If it was just that you wouldn’t have said her. Why?”

I sighed. “Don’t you prefer to find this stuff out yourself, to never let on that you know that I know?” He hadn’t told me he thought I worked for Wulfenbach. 

He shook his head, and seemed to try a different tack. “She works for Tweedle- er, Martellus. If he has access to these Mirrors…”

“Fine. Yes, he does. I ‘heard’ that he has one, or an attempt at one, up in the Refuge of Storms, and he was trying to connect it to the one here. That’s why I investigated it in the first place, that’s how I knew what it was. I directed them to her because she works for him.”

“And why not tell them?”

“I need to… protect my sources. If I show up knowing things I shouldn’t, people will ask why. People will investigate why.” You being one of them, I added in my head, but it was too late. I’d been reckless and had gotten caught. 

“So why tell me?”

“Other than the fact you have me cornered ? And you already figured me out? You thought I was a spy from the beginning.”

“I wouldn’t say I’ve ‘figured you out’.” He mumbled, backing off a bit.

“Trying to figure out who I work for?” I asked with a smile. 

“Red fire, yes! You’ve only existed for about a year and a half, if you were spying for the Baron or Agatha you wouldn’t have risked telling them like that ; you’d have told them in private while the other couldn’t listen. As far as I can tell you’ve only left the Empire through Mechanicsburg seceding, if you were involved with my family politics I’d like to think I’d know -”

“I’ll tell you.”

He looked up at me sharply.

“It’s me.”

“What. No. That’s stupid; you don’t even want to rule anything.” 

I laughed immediately. “You- pfhahaha- I- hahahahaha of course you would. Pfhaha ‘you don’t even-’ heheheheh.” I took a calming breath, and attempted to hold a straight face. “I’ve only existed for about a year and a half. How do you think I knew who Martellus was ? Or you? Or The Baron ” 

His eyes widened. “I’d assumed he’d told you.”

Oh. Whoops. I’d said too much. Could I start the conversation over?

“You- what, you were spying from the moment you were turned on?” He pressed.

“I’m not a very good spy.” I said, ruminating on how badly the conversation had gone so far.

“But you-! Wait.” He stopped, seeming to realize there had to be a flaw somewhere in his initial assumptions. I wondered just how bad it’d be, if he figured it all out. The world had already diverged so much from Canon, I was no longer much of a prophet. Someone finding out would no longer necessarily throw all my plans into disarray, and I was moderately confident that if someone tried to make me spill all my guts, Agatha would try to protect me. 

“Look. I’ve got a Mirror to help look over, you’ve got Agatha to relate this entire conversation to. I’ll tell you both sometime later.” I thought for a moment. “And Gil, too, actually.”

He looked at me incredulously. “Are you using this as a ploy for the Bet?” (It was not exactly unknown that my first foray into using money was to bet on Agatha/Gil/Tarvek ot3. The Castle approved. Everyone else teased.) 

I left without answering, though I think he got his answer from my guilty grin. 

When I caught up with Klaus, Gil and Agatha, they had managed to glean that the Mirror was probably functional, if anyone could figure out how it worked. They were debating the purpose of the turquoise circles (Dials? Displays?) that were part of the surrounding wall. They were clearly involved with the Mirror’s function, but it was hard to tell what was decorative and what was important. I joined in the conversation, and Klaus re-explained some of what he learned of the Mirrors back in Skifander, but we really couldn’t make much progress, at least not without risking breaking it. Which we were willing to risk, but not before we’d exhausted a few more options. 

Which meant next was talking to the Abbess. She was decidedly unhelpful, and refused to admit to any knowledge of the Mirror. Agatha gave me a questioning look and it was really time for me to explain things to her… but Klaus was still right there. Helpfully (for certain definitions of helpful), it wasn’t long before Tarvek found an excuse to pull Agatha away. Gil followed, leaving me with an annoyed Klaus. He muttered something unflattering about Sturmvorauses. I figured it was my job to keep his attention while Tarvek explained what I’d told him to Agatha and Gil. 

“Sooo…” I started, awkwardly.

“Yes?” Klaus asked sharply, still sounding annoyed. 

“Just wanted to start conversation” I mumbled.

He turned to me, looking a bit surprised. He waited just a beat too long before saying, “Fine. Say your piece.”

“I-uh- didn’t have anything specific but… d’y’wanna hear about the project I was working on?” 

“...sure.”

By the time Agatha got back, I had slipped fully into a fugue- a ranting fugue where I explained why my light frames were The Very Best and all who questioned me were Fools! 

“New information” she said, cutting me off. I whirled to face her, Spark-mad, but then I saw the curious expression she directed at me, and I remembered. This was all part of the (new) plan. Tarvek had told her what I had told him and now she was curious about me. I have an excuse to tell her and him what I know, without needing an explanation. (yet) And, I bet the her ‘new information’ was-

“Apparently we aren’t the only ones studying the Mirrors.” She glanced at me. “Tarvek says Martellus has some people working with one at the Refuge of Storms.”

Klaus’s expression of grim annoyance looked right at home on his face. “And of course nothing with that family can be as easy as just going and asking them .” 

It was going to be politics. Or possibly spying.

Klaus’s preferred solution, of course, was just going there and demanding it from them. Just saying that a portal like this (if it worked) would be so destabilizing to the Empire that it is reasonable for him to just barge in and demand their notes. 

This is when Tarvek gave up on pretending not to be listening in and got in a heated argument with Klaus about subtlety. I think it was only Agatha’s presence that prevented it from turning into an all-out fight. (Klaus could probably tell that in that case she would have taken Tarvek’s side, and Tarvek prefers to fight with words anyway.)

Anyway, it was fascinating to see them interact. A lot of it went over my head, but they were talking about the deep lore of European politics. Arguing about the relationships between groups I hadn’t even heard of before, talking circles around each other like combatants, circling and looking for weaknesses. They had very different approaches, of course, and I think a couple times Tarvek misstepped, assuming Klaus knew more than he did. It was hard to tell though. They were operating on a level of politics that I had actively avoided. Even so, I could see the similarities in their ways of thinking. The number of times where, despite themselves, they agreed.

And then Gil came back, holding a sheaf of papers and asking what was going on. 

At which point Tarvek explained Klaus’s ‘terrible plan’, Gil sided with Tarvek, and then Klaus ranted about how he had ‘warned Gil about Sturmvoraus years ago’ 

And Gil faltered. 

The rhyme with Cannon stopped. The stakes were less high and the Baron was more rational for not being Wasped. Tarvek looked betrayed. I didn’t know what to do.

Agatha stepped in then, and the moment broke. She said no, we weren't just going to barge in. She would go to the Refuge of Storms as a visiting local leader, and get a feel for how secret it really was. If it wasn’t that secret, she could bargain for a full run-down of the information. If it was, Violetta could steal what she could, and we would still have more than if we burst in making demands and they decided the best solution was to burn it before we found out. Gil and Tarvek, of course, demanded to come along out of concern for her safety. Klaus understood that he couldn’t come, since everyone seems to put their best effort into hiding everything from him. Plus, well. If he went he would need to bring at least a few guards (downsides of ruling an empire, you can’t go anywhere alone) and then it would basically become his plan. 

“Well, good luck on your tri-”

“No.” Tarvek grabbed my wrist. “You’re coming too.”

I cringed back a bit, but couldn’t really come up with a good excuse.

“Don’t worry” He said with a grin, “Tweedle isn't that much of a threat, right?”

That I cringed a lot at. I had forgotten that he had started out underestimating Martellus a bit.

He gave me a calculating look. “And that is why you are coming along.”

What? Wait… what? Wait… 

Oh. Was he trying to use my meta-knowledge without even knowing I had it? He could tell I was scared of Martellus, and he already knew I knew more about Martellus than I should. So he wants to gauge my reactions and my shoddy attempts at manipulation to learn what I know, and gain that advantage over Martellus. Smart. And also kinda what I was afraid of . (Actually I had been more afraid of not being the one in control of where things diverged from Canon, or ruining Canon interpersonal dynamics by creating an information disparity. But being drug around like a danger barometer was not great either.) 

Anyway as I considered that the group left to prepare for the trip. Including Tarvek, who yelled back a time and place I would apparently meet him. Smug asshole. I would be there, but still. 

I had expected this meeting to be for getting ready for the trip. So when I met Tarvek, Agatha, and Gil at the Sausage Factory a day or so later, and Tarvek took me to a secret back room. (Seriously? Ok fine I guess it makes sense they have them… But how does Tarvek know?)

“You been cozying up to Van?” I asked as a barista brought us coffee and snacks- unordered. 

Tarvek gave me an odd look. “... Yes.”

There was a moment of silence. Gil sat awkwardly, not-quite-looking at me. Tarvek watched me suspiciously, and Agatha calmly nibbled on a pastry, waiting.

“You want to know about me.” I guessed. Though it wasn’t that hard of a guess. This wasn’t the environment for planning our trip to the Refuge of Storms. This was a room for telling secrets. A shady backroom in a building where the real moving and shaking of Mechanicsburg happened. The Room Where It Happens. 

“Tarvek said you said-” Gil started lamely, clearly put off by the vibe- that of an interrogation. 

“I did.” I said, “I did promise I would tell you all what my deal was.” I took a breath, collecting my thoughts. “You may or may not have heard that I came from a different world. It’s true. Though my body was made here, my mind… traveled here. That’s why I was a full person from the moment I woke up.”

Gil nodded along. Agatha looked at me curiously and Tarvek looked like he was putting things together.

“In my original world, there was a comic called Girl Genius.”

“Comic?” Agatha asked.

“Ah- graphic novel- a book except it’s mostly pictures and dialogue. … I should make a comic here-”

“And what was the comic about?” Gil interrupted, looking genuine and curious. 

“Ah- right. It was about Agatha Heterodyne, and her journey to… being The Heterodyne.” It was always hard to summarize Girl Genius. It was so much. It was so important. But this would get across what I was trying to.

“You knew the whole time?!?!” Agatha said, jumping out of her seat.

“Yes. I didn’t say anything because… Well, as far as I can tell, if I never existed, things would have gone exactly as they did in the comic. And I had specific changes I wanted to make.”

“In Sturmhalten.” She was quick on the uptake. I shouldn’t have been surprised. (After all, she was the Girl Genius.)

“Yes.” I took a breath. “In the comic, in Sturmhalten… Lucrezia’s plan worked. She was uploaded into your head.”

They all stared at me. Very faintly, the sounds of the coffee shop crept in under the door. 

“It wasn’t… It wasn’t as bad as all that. You could take control back from her, and when you got your locket back it could keep her down. But still. There were a lot of differences from that.” I tried not to ramble. There was no real point in them knowing what could have been. 

“I imagine so.” Tarvek looked at me with plain surprise. Still curious, no longer so suspicious.

“Um- so. I have mostly been trying to change things in your favor. But I only agreed to this because things have diverged so much that I don’t really have useful information on the future anymore.” 

“In our favor?” Tarvek asked. “Isn’t that a bit contradictory?”

I looked away, embarrassed. Tarvek raised an eyebrow at me.

“Look! I’ve been reading this comic since I was- well, for as long as I can remember- and it hasn’t finished yet, but I’ve always had a pretty good idea of what the happy ever after would be. So when I came here I thought I’d try to make it happen- sooner. And without as much turmoil on the way.” 

“So, what? You’ve been manipulating us this whole time?” Gil asked, accusatory.

“I- yes? No? I’m no master manipulator; it’s just easier if you know what’s going to happen.” I fiddled with the tablecloth nervously. “It’s not like I changed that much.”

“You said you stopped the return of the Other.” Tarvek deadpanned.

“By doing one thing!”

“It doesn’t matter that much.” Agatha said, and Gil stopped glaring at me to glare at the wall.

Eventually, Tarvek asked, “So why are you so scared of Martellus?”

“Ah, well. In the comic, he kidnapped Agatha using the Mirror as an escape route. … that actually turned out to be a good thing cuz it got her out of the Time Stop, but in the Refuge of Storms he- he did a chemical trick so Agatha would have to touch him on a regular basis or risk painful death.”

Gil and Agatha looked appalled and disgusted. Tarvek only looked a bit taken aback, and seemed to be considering the logistics. 

“Agatha copied whatever he did to himself to a Wasp Eater, and later he found out it worked both ways, with different onset periods.”

“Serves him right.” Agatha commented.

“Yeah. But here all I know is he’s dangerous, has malicious intent, and I don’t know his plan.”

“Well. We’ll be careful.” Agatha said, with the confidence of-well- a Heterodyne. It was hard not to believe her.

“Okay. … speaking of people you should look out for. Zola.”

Gil and Tarvek looked at each other, but didn’t interrupt.

“Yes, that Zola. She’s the daughter of Demonica Mongfish and was trained by the Order to be a fake Heterodyne girl.” I fixed the boys with a look. “She’s a lot more dangerous than she seems. And she is-heh-a consummate actress.”

Tarvek looked contemplative. “She would have to be.”

Gil spun to face him. “You believe him?!”

He gave Gil a deadpan glare. “You cannot possibly be that stupid. He only knew we would have a reaction to that name through his extraversal knowledge. Plus… I had heard about the Order’s plan. Nothing about who the girl was, though.”

Gil still didn’t seem convinced, but changed the topic anyway. “What were they planning with a fake Heterodyne girl anyway… they’re all about… The Storm King! Of course! Fake the legend and outflank the Empire through ‘legitimacy’!” He whirled to eye Tarvek suspiciously. “I’m sure you weren’t involved in this at all .”

“No!” Tarvek yelled genuinely. “My plan was much better!” He sighed. “At least they seem to have been smart enough to trash it after Agatha was revealed.”

“Mmm. That’s exactly what worries me.” I interrupted. “In the Comic, Agatha was publicly revealed in Sturmhalten, and they went ahead with the Heterodyne Girl plan early, Zola arriving just a bit after Agatha, and making it into the Castle before her due to being better sponsored. Here they’ve been worryingly quiet. I assume they didn’t go ahead with their plan because by the time Agatha was really widely known, she had already taken the Castle, but still…”

“That makes sense. You lost your advantage when they changed plans.” Tarvek said.

“What did she even do in your comic?” Gil asked.

“Well… she got a copy of Lucrezia stuck in her head, trapped it using a technique learned from Loremisstress Mistiville- or however that’s pronounced- and used it to imitate her (successfully) to her other selves. She told the copy in Agatha (who she was planning to kill) that this was part of a plan to take over Lucrezia’s plans and effectively be her.” 

“... Knowing that she was the Other?”

“Of course.” I thought for a moment. “Though I’m not sure that was always her plan. She bragged about her plans being flexible .” I eyed Tarvek. The full context was that she was bragging that her plans were much more flexible than his . 

He didn’t get the reference though. I mean, of course he didn’t. He had never even experienced that moment, and even if he had, I’m not sure he’d remember it. 

“That’s it?” Gil asked after another lull of silence. “Some vague warnings about his family’s plots?” He jabbed a thumb at Tarvek.

“Yeah. That’s kinda all I’ve got. Or at least everything I can think of that’s important right now.” I shrugged. “I mean, feel free to ask me things but I’m not sure anything else will come up.”

Chapter Text

And so we prepared for our adventure to the Refuge of Storms. Our final political story was that it was my testing grounds for selling my Light Frames outside of Mechanicsburg, since it was so near by as well as being home to at least a few people of the political station to be able to afford them. (they weren’t exactly cheap… especially since I was splitting profits with Agatha since I had used her materials to make them.) Theoretically the others were coming as a favor to me(since I was no marketer), and as a way to… get a feel of the political landscape there I guess? I wasn’t exactly sure. The schemes and politics and stuff still felt about as clear to me as Sparkwork to a Minion. It was powerful, the work I did was meant to effect it, but I wasn’t sure I’d ever really understand it. 

I’m not exactly sure what everyone else was up to. Once it was decided that my Light Frames were to be the cover story, I was caught up in trying to finalize them to be actually sellable. And figuring out the price range. And double and triple checking that they wouldn’t randomly blow up after being sold. 

After what was entirely not enough time, I was on the airship to the Refuge of Storms, pacing nervously. 

“Don’t worry, you’ll do fine!” Zeetha walked up beside me and slapped me on the back, hard enough to make a loud clang and send me stumbling. I laughed it off. It wasn’t like it hurt; I did feel pain, but only for actual damage to my chassis. 

“Thanks.” I stood up straight just to flop dramatically onto a nearby chair. “I’m not really that worried about selling Frames… just… what if something goes Wrong?”

She grinned at me, showing off her fangs. “Then we fight it!”

I smiled back. That was hard to argue against. And it was Zeetha. It wasn’t hard to imagine her actually winning that fight. “I guess so.”

Presenting my Light Frames to Martellus and a smattering of other Valois nobles was an exercise in embarrassment. I stuttered on my words, explained both too much and not enough of the scientific process, fumbled with the buttons when I was trying to change the image, and ended with a weak little “ta-da!” It felt both like it had lasted forever and that the whole of my effort was cut down to a tiny presentation of something small and unimportant.

They didn’t even react strongly. There was no booing, almost no questions. They quickly went back to talking amongst themselves, back to their games. I just hoped I had bought enough time for Violetta to find the notes on the Mirror. 

Embarrassed, I fled the spotlight to find Agatha. The crowd, thin as it was, still seemed to push in on me from all sides, and I could feel them watching me. I had no anonymity in this crowd, and what was usually the most interesting part of my appearance- the purple cloak I wore almost all the time, even in my original world- was not what held their attention. No. They looked at my metal skin, at the obvious seams in it. At my unnatural dark purple sclera. All of these were things I was proud of- by now all of them had been added by me. Every original plate had been replaced or at least heavily modified. I worked from the blueprint I had started with but if I had wanted to I could have moved or hidden any of those seams. I had painstakingly and lovingly built my eyes from scratch. But the way they looked at me I felt like they were picking me apart. ‘Yes, the stuttering Clank with the boring pitch.’ ‘Look at her, she just flubbed her speech!’ ‘How could she ever think such rubbish deserved our time’. Or no. They’d say ‘he’. And didn’t I have complex feelings about that. 

“Elzerei!” Agatha called, pulling me from my minor self-hating spiral. I quickly went over to join her and Tarvek and Gil and Zeetha, and used them as a buffer between me and the intimidating crowd. It was fine, I told myself. It didn’t matter if I made a good impression. I just had to keep attention off Violetta while she snuck off, and ideally keep all these people in the room until her mission was done. It was their Smoke Knights that were most likely to cause an issue, but if they were all together talking like this the Smoke Knights would want to be nearby in case of any assassination or poisoning or something. At least that’s what I figured. I didn’t actually come up with the plan though so who knows. 

The rest of the… party-like thing was fine. I guess. A lot of standing around and pretending to listen to people talk about things like hunting or politics. Surprisingly enough, Martellus did actually buy a small-ish Light Frame, and as uncomfortable as it made me I successfully gave him the spiel about how to properly use it. It helped that he was a Spark and caught on quick. My guess is that he got it as some kind of favor or something to Agatha. Anyway I think it was because of that that a couple other people bought one or two. Not the most expensive ones, and nobody asked me about commissioning specific art for them (even though I had mentioned that as a possibility in the presentation), but still. It was enough that the trip wasn’t a total failure even in that department. 

As for the real purpose of the trip- I didn’t get to see the fruits of that labor until we were back on the airship home. Honestly, I was shocked that we made it there without something going horribly wrong and requiring us to drop everything and deal with it. Though I’m not sure Violetta would agree with my assessment of the trip as uneventful. Apparently not only did she somehow get copies of a fairly large quantity of notes on the thing, she also got meta-notes- timetables on who would come from where to look at it when. 

Looking over the notes with Agatha, Gil, and Tarvek was a Sparky dream come true, despite them not actually having much more than we had already gleaned from the Mirror in Mechanicsburg. Oh sure, they definitely had more experience with it, as well as some truly strange if mostly unavailable phenomena logs. Apparently a huge swath of them were in Paris, taken by one Doctor Dio Zardeliv, expert in temporal mechanics and for some reason on this project. 

“Wait. Dr. Zardeliv?” I wasn’t sure- I’d never heard it pronounced- but… “Uncle Tick-Tock?”

Tavek’s head snapped to look at me. “He’s in the Comic.”

“Yes. I… I’m not sure that’s important, but… yeah.”

“Why is he working on the Mirrors if he’s in temporal mechanics?” Gil asked.

“I… I don’t know. He’s not a very major player in the comic, and what he does do… I’m still not sure if I know the whole picture of.”

“Well,” Agatha said, holding up the papers we had found his name on, “I’m not sure he is working on the Mirror.”

“What?”

“Most of his notes seem to be on phenomenon, and while we can’t get a good picture of those based on just what we have here- I don’t think all of them are entirely related to the Mirror.” She pulled out one of the few phenomenon logs we had, which described a floating and semi-transparent machine that appeared to be measuring some kind of energy from the Mirror. While this page (all we had of the log on that event) was just a description of the device, the wording implied that it had been appearing semi-frequently for a long time. It was also apparently ancient. The event had apparently occurred before the time of the Storm King, with the log being merely a re-creation of what they could find out. 

“You’re saying that this wasn’t caused by the Mirror?” Tarvek asked.

“Not necessarily. It’s a device to measure the Mirror. Any of a number of people could want to study it.” Agatha explained.

“So he’s studying whoever made this?” Gil said, holding up the diagram of the device.

“But what does that have to do with time?” Tarvek wondered aloud.

Back in Mechanicsburg, we still hadn’t made much progress. The Refuge of Storms Mirror had apparently only started working within the last 10 years, and even then only as a connection to Mechanicsburg. It wasn’t a complete dead-end. We could go to Paris and ask Dr. Zardeliv, though that would most likely wind up with us investigating the phenomena and not necessarily actually getting a working Mirror connection to Skifander. We could get the Baron to take us to the Mirror he came out of when leaving Skifander, since what we found at the Refuge of Storms implied that the connections between specific Mirrors can be stronger than one Mirror’s connection to all the rest. 

But then there was the thing with the giant crabs. And I started getting actual requests to buy Light Frames, or commissions for new pieces for them. Tarvek left for Sturmhalten, some kind of political thing I think. I couldn’t keep track of it. I’m not even sure who was supposed to be in charge of Sturmhalten at that point. And Klaus brought Agatha on to the project of coming up with a cure for stealth revenants. And then Tarvek came back from Sturmhalten and Agatha put him on that project. And Gil and Theo and Sleipnir went on- some kind of adventure. I didn’t quite catch it. Some lost secret lab or something. And Agatha had a rather large number of short adventures that I certainly could not keep track of, but it meant you only had like a 50% chance of actually finding her in Mechanicsburg. I actually ended up being dragged along for a couple of those. (The mystery of the invisible castle was made much less interesting by the fact it was actually just missing- entirely moved underground. Still, the rock constructs had very pretty gems.) 

I got the impression that Zeetha was in less of a hurry to get home when she knew there was a high possibility of not being able to come back. I tried not to think about how that mirrored my own situation.

On the one year anniversary of Agatha taking Mechanicsburg, there was Theo and Sleipnir’s wedding. Held in Mechanicsburg, that was quite a party. I drew them portraits. 

As my collection of art for Light Frames (Light Art?) grew, so did their popularity. It wasn’t too long until Tarvek came to me with the news that someone had started making their own Light Canvases (Their name for it, not mine) so they could make and sell their own Light Art. And while I still held the market in Frames, there were several knockoffs being made. He predicted it’d be the new trend in Paris by winter. And so I pivoted to making and selling Light Tablets. (Not canvases. I could at least control the name.) There was no copyright in Europa, so it was better to control the trend rather than try to hoard a secret that was already out. Keeping up with production was hell. Even with borrowed Minions from Agatha, Sparks are not made for making the same thing over and over again. It only took like two months of constant mail with Tarvek’s contact in Paris and desperately trying to keep up with demand for me to give up and decide that the imitators were fine actually. After all, they meant a proliferation of Digital- ah- Light Art (after all, it wasn’t technically digital- I wasn’t using binary information storage.) and display that meant I could actually get commissions for it, or sell it, or distribute whatever I wanted to through it. And since that proliferation was being done by other people, I could actually focus on the drawing. 

Over the next year or so I fell into a routine. I drew. (I drew quite a lot actually, as my fame seemed to grow and all sorts of people asked to commission me) I helped Agatha and Gil and Tarvek with their projects, when they were there. Agatha stayed in Mechanicsburg the most, but even she was out on some adventure or other often enough. Gil of course was technically supposed to be living on Castle Wulfenbach, and while he spent a fair amount of time in Mechanicsburg (certainly more than I suspected his father approved of), he was the one I saw least frequently. Tarvek lived in Mechanicsburg, in some odd exile/limbo from his own city. Still, he was away often, and was the most mysterious about where exactly he was going and what he was doing. Every now and then I joined Agatha on her adventures, acting as one of the more rare of a rotating cast of characters that made up her adventuring companions. 

And then Tarvek brought me a project. An old project. One I had been trying not to think about. Tinka. He smuggled her and Moxana to Mechanicsburg somehow, apparently. Her head was still disconnected from her body, though he had managed to bring that too. We set up in a lab in the Castle, Otilia standing guard by the door, looking apprehensive. Moxana was nearby, face unreadable. 

“Do you have Van Rijn’s notes?”

“Ah-” Tarvek looked at me, startled for a moment before shaking his head. “No. They disappeared at some point after I left.”

“Mmm.” I wondered if they were going on a similar journey to whatever happened in Cannon. “Did you at least get a chance to read them?”

He sighed. “Not enough for it to be much use.”

“We should get Agatha then.” Otilia stiffened, but I continued before she said anything. “She actually did get a chance to look over those notes.” 

“I would certainly appreciate her input…” Tarvek hesitated, looking at Otilia. He almost seemed to be asking permission.

Otilia crossed her arms. “I’d rather not let a Heterodyne work on my sister.”

The sound of shuffling drew our attention to Moxana’s cart, at which point she drew two cards. One was labeled Movement, and it depicted a lone figure dancing above a churning waterfall. Below it, the other card was labeled The Hunter, and it depicted a figure smiling predatorily at the viewer while holding a knife.

Tarvek frowned, trying to interpret.

He was slower than Otilia, though. “You admit she is a monster and still would trust her with our sister?!” 

Moxana just tapped the Movement card, staring unblinkingly at Otilia.

“You truly believe they have changed.” Otilia said it bitterly, like it was the unacknowledged herald of the end times.

Moxana dipped her head slightly, and Otilia stalked away from the door with a bitter chuckle. 

“Fine.”

With a clear look of concern, Tarvek left. I assumed to get Agatha.

I just sat, and looked sadly at Tinka’s head. Her eyes were dim. I wasn’t even sure she could hear us. Mindlessly, I felt the seams on my neck. You couldn’t tell that I had had my head cut off. The seams were there to facilitate neck movement, and they were still essentially the same shape as when I’d been created. But it was new metal, and on the inside there were new junction boxes for wires that were spliced back together, and couplings on coolant pipes for the same reason. 

I heard the metallic footsteps of Otilia walk up behind me. She set a gentle hand on my shoulder. I waited, but she said nothing. The room was silent. To an outside observer, the clanks inside probably looked more like statues, the whole room a diorama of concern.

Eventually, the silence was broken by the sounds of talking outside the door.

Agatha was mid-sentence. “-remember a fair amount, but I didn’t even get to read the whole thing! Not to mention the coded parts that I couldn’t decipher. I mean a lot of them were pretty easy but-” She stopped as Tarvek opened the door, revealing the somber scene. I coughed awkwardly and stepped away from Tinka. 

“... Right. So. Let’s see what we can do.” Agatha said, with that determined, Heterodyne look that said ‘nothing’s getting in my way’.

And so, we got to work. The first day was the hardest. Otilia wouldn’t let me or Agatha (especially not Agatha… my restriction was more self-imposed) even touch Tinka, so we both were just telling Tarvek what to do, and coming up with theories and building models. I think we overwhelmed Tarvek a bit with everything we were telling him to do, and a couple of times he had to tell us to give him space for the delicate work. Even so, we managed to reconnect Tinka’s head and, by the end of the day, she woke up. She was confused, and scared I think, and she had a lot of trouble communicating anything, but she was awake. She wasn’t dead. At that point I went to go sleep. I had been slowly being less and less useful as my headache slowly kicked in, so I decided that victory was a good enough time to call it. Agatha and Tarvek weren’t having that problem, so they were still working when I left. 

When I woke up, it was Otilia who let me in the lab. Apparently Tarvek and Agatha were both off doing some important political thing. Tinka was fully put back together, with no damage visible to the outside anymore. But she was drifting around the room like she wasn’t sure if it was really there, like she wasn’t really present . She recognized me, but couldn’t quite seem to focus on me. Or much of anything. She lost her place in conversation just as easily as in the room, and every now and then she would greet me as if she had just noticed me. She also still spoke with a stutter, but it was much less than she had back in Sturmhalten. Agatha had clearly made progress that Tarvek and I had not been able to, but getting her head chopped off meant she had sustained even more damage than just what we were trying to fix then. Two steps backward, one step forward. I looked over their notes, getting a feel for what I had missed while I was asleep. Apparently eventually Tinka was lucid enough that Agatha could actually ask her permission to help more actively with the repair process, and Tinka granted it. I guessed that Otilia was upset about this, but the notes clearly implied that Agatha did start actively working on the repairs from that point, so Otilia must have relented. Looking at the notes, and the models, and the progress that had been made, I had a couple of ideas on how to make things better. I wasn’t sure that they’d work, but Agatha and Tarvek’s work was inspiring, and I could feel the faint thrum of Spark in my fingers, ready to experiment . 

And then Otilia grabbed my hand, and glared at me meaningfully. I backed off immediately, apologizing. 

“You must ask permission.” The way she said it was somehow threat, judgment, and education all at once.

I backed down instead. My ideas were nowhere near sound enough to test on Tinka . Even if I did go through with getting her permission to work directly, I would want to do it with someone checking my work; slowing me down. Because fast and loose was not how one worked on a Muse . 

So instead I puttered around, writing down ideas and possibilities, drawing them out sometimes, and getting distracted with other things when I hit a rut. 

When Tarvek and Agatha came back, I had a formula for a blacker black (inspired by Vantablack, but almost certainly a slightly different method), but no more progress on Tinka than the ideas I had come up with immediately after reading their work. Which I didn’t even get the chance to share, because Tarvek started by saying that he was informed of one of his people finding Van Rijn’s notebook, and that they were on the run from Martellus’s people for stealing it.

“Along with a key?” I asked. 

Tarvek narrowed his eyes at me. “Yes. Do you have something to say about this?”

I mumbled to myself instead of answering. If that was still happening… should we go to the trains? Deal with the Beast? Paris would be good to find Prende, but Andy was there… The bears were dangerous… Krosp would want to meet them though… Bring Tinka so we could give the book to the Library? It would be hard for any of us to go unnoticed on the trains… Things might be safer now in Klaus’s empire… And wait, would she even go by train to get here instead of to Paris?

“More details, what exactly is she doing?”

“My Aunt Margarella is taking the railway here to bring us the book, which she stole from Martellus along with a key.” 

I spent a moment wracking my brain for the Comic. What was her plan?

“Does her route take her past- ach, I don’t remember the name…”

“What I know of her route did seem a bit strange, I assumed it was to avoid Martellus’s people, though.” Tarvek eyed me suspiciously.

“... We probably need to go save her, then.”

“Explain.”

“Okay, so if I remember right, and if things stayed the same, she’ll be luring Martellus’s people to attack the trains so she can get to one of their… bases or whatever, so she can find the secret thing that isn’t even there -it’s in Paris- but she’ll release a monster and die. So if we want the book we should probably be there.”

Tarvek blinked at me. Agatha, I finally noticed, was holding my notes and running Tinka through a series of diagnostic exercises. It looked like she wasn’t listening, too focused on work, but I somehow doubted that. 

“And how do you expect us to do that? The Corbettites have a fair number of ‘bases’.” Tarvek asked.

“I thought we’d just take the same train as her…”

Tarvek took off his prince-nez to clean it with a cloth, and didn’t meet my eyes. “That’s one train among hundreds. I don’t know her route that well.”

“...oh.”

I kinda stared blankly at him for a little bit. It was so easy in Canon, it all happened by coincidence! Now I had to figure things out! Uhg if only I could remember the name of the Corbettite… fortress… thing. But I couldn’t even remember its title. 

“Ah… well if things stay the same Martellus might be going there? … Wait no that was probably just cuz of Margoletta… Maybe if I heard the names of the Corbettite fortresses I might recognize it…”

“Those are very secret, but maybe more possible…” Tarvek put his prince-nez back on. “Though you usually have a really good memory, you’re sure you can’t think of it?”

That hit like a shot through the heart. ‘you usually have a really good memory’. It was an almost out-of-body experience. Yes, I had a good memory now, because of a perk or something (I couldn’t actually remember what gave it to me…) but. But I wasn’t actually a person with a good memory . I just… happened to have one right now. I had a terrible memory that was good right now. I… I was a person with a good memory. Which was somehow more scary than realizing my memory was better. 

“Ah. Yeah… My memory wasn’t as good back then.”

Tarvek gave me a look, but was interrupted by Tinka walking over and placing her hand on my shoulder. 

She made eye contact with me and said, “I-it is okay. Corrup-up-upted memories do not have to define you.”

“Oh! Ah-thanks.” it was an awkward reassurance to receive. I didn’t need it anymore. I had a good memory now. The me, all those (three) years ago, in my original world, she needed it. So much of what I did back then was defined by my bad memory. But I- a fair amount had changed since then. (it was hard to remember what I was like back then) I was a Spark. I was a clank. I had a good memory. 

I changed the topic. “You’re sounding better.” She sounded a lot more present than when I had come in that morning.

“Y-yes. You all have been a huge help.” here she looked to me, Tarvek, and Agatha. “H-however I still re-require maintenance.”

“So” Agatha said, “How do we get a map of the railways?”

Chapter Text

So it was decided. We were going to spy on the Corbettites to keep Margarella from releasing the Beast. Just in case, I told them to bring clothes without metal in them to wear when we got to the fortress, explaining that if things went wrong we would be facing an enemy that used magnets. I tried not to think about what the Beast would do to me. (I was not built tough like Humongulus. It would tear me apart and eat me.)

I was part of the party that was supposed to sneak into the back rooms of the Corbettite station, because it would be best if I could just look at the map, recognize the fortress name, and we could be on our way with no one the wiser. With me were Violetta and Krosp. The rest of the party never even entered the station. Stealth missions were easier with less people, and they were Official Political People. Getting caught doing that kind of spying on the theoretically neutral (and therefore its own political body) Corbettites would cause real problems. Violetta, Krosp, and I could at least be argued to be working independently. 

Really, it wasn’t that hard. With my invisibility cloaks we could get past the Corbettites pretty easily, and it wasn’t like it was a super well-secured base. There were a few traps, but nothing worse than Sturmhalten or Castle Heterodyne (okay, if they were worse that’d be concerning, it was just a random station). The hardest part was figuring out where they’d keep it, and Violetta didn’t have too much trouble with that. But by the time we found the map (when I looked at it I felt stupid. How could I forget St. Szpac!) there were sounds of a commotion outside, and Violetta was already rushing me back so we could protect Agatha and the others waiting by the airship.

Outside was chaos. A strange airship with a giant fan was flying low, and dispersing strange particles that caught the light like glitter. Some poor monk was shredded up on the ground, the glitter making his wounds shine oddly. As I looked closer, I realized that everywhere the glitter touched was being cut up, and the Corbettites were hiding under roofs or trying to blow it away with makeshift fans. Violetta led us quickly through the chaos to where the others had been waiting with our airship. Tarvek and Agatha were working on something, and almost instinctively I joined them, looking at what they were working on and starting to figure out how to help. They were making a flamethrower, and needed to know the melting point of the glitter. And so I assigned myself the idiotic task of going out and catching some. Of course, I wasn’t actually stupid. I wasn’t just going to go out there and try to catch it with my bare hands. No, I made a quick analysis of what it was shredding on contact and how easily, determined that it made quick work of organics but when going at a slower speed only scratched tougher materials like stone or metal… and okay yes I took stock of the situation and then immediately went out there using my invisibility cloak as a makeshift fan to slow the particles down enough to catch in my bare hands. Yes, a couple shards (because after catching them I realized that’s what they were, incredibly small shards of some kind of crystal or glass.) ended up in my joints and did real damage to my components. (though I didn’t breathe so they didn’t make it too far into my internals) But yes, I would be picking the stupidly sharp shards out of my systems each time I worked on them for a while. 

Let’s not pay attention to that, though! Hey, I did manage to get Agatha and Tarvek a sample, and so we managed to build a flamethrower to melt them all. (Well, all the ones still in the air, the danger was mostly past but I do not want to imagine the clean-up.) After that the fight was basically over, the Spark in the other airship started flying away and the Corbettites could clean up from there.

“St. Szpac!” I leapt up into our airship. “That’s the name I recognize! That’s where she’s going!” 

Dimo stopped me. “Yah, bot ve ain’t going dere.”

“At leazt not in dis ship!” Oggie interrupted with misplaced cheer. 

It didn’t take long to realize what he meant. The envelope was ripped in several places. Our airship wasn’t going anywhere. 

“No- No! If things are going the way I think they are- We have to get to St. Szpac! Margoletta is going to release the Beast and the only thing that stopped it in Canon was Agatha!”

“I don’t know how you expect to get there.” Violetta said, “This thing isn’t going anywhere soon.”

In the background, the Jägers discussed.

“De Beast? He dun mean…”

“Der’s a lot ov Beasts out dere, Maxim.”

Oh yeah, they would know about it, huh.

“This isn’t the only airship here.” Agatha said, looking at the glitter Spark’s ship with determination. She was right, that was it.

“So. how’re we getting up there?” Violetta asked. Oh right. Immediately I started cataloging our supplies, the basic ideas for lots of different Sparky methods of upward movement flicking behind my eyes as I compared them to our situation. Portal-style jump pads? Wings? A grappling hook?

Before I decided, Agatha had already started working on something, and I cut off that train of thought to see what. Ooooo. It looked like some kind of jetpack, based on a combination of the lighter-than-air gas we had left in unbroken sections of our ship’s airbag to reduce the amount of weight that needed to be lifted, and converting the engine into several smaller jetpacks. The fuel we had left wouldn’t be enough for a very long trip, and there definitely wasn’t enough for all of us, but a couple quick calculations in my head told me it would probably be enough to get two or three people up to the ship, depending on how much maneuvering they had to do. In moments I joined in, debating Agatha on how to streamline the packs to be calibrated for the amount of fuel we had, so we weren’t trying to compensate for fuel we didn’t have. Quickly though I switched to stabilization and flight control methods, while Agatha assigned Tarvek to the engines themselves, and reassured him that he would not need to wear one of them. This was a necessary step in convincing him to work on them at all, and he maintained that we were crazy and he took no responsibility for whatever happened to the people who did use them. 

Sadly, I wouldn’t get to try them either. I was a lot more dense than a human, so it would take a lot more fuel or lift gas to get me off the ground. Honestly the design would probably never work for me without enough lift gas to make it unmaneuverable, since the weight of the extra fuel would mean it needed more fuel to carry that weight, etc etc until it became unsustainable. I would need to invent a more efficient kind of fuel… focus!

Anyway, it wasn’t long before we were helping Agatha, Dimo, and Krosp into the new jetpacks. (Agatha because duh, Dimo to fight off the glitter Spark, and Krosp because he was light and could fly the airship back around to pick up the rest of us.) 

The jetpacks roared as Agatha, Dimo, and Krosp took off. It was loud enough that we couldn’t hear whatever Agatha said as she took off towards the escaping airship. To see better, those of us on the ground started climbing what was left of our own downed airship. As they flew up the Spark tried to dump glitter on them. At first they moved too fast and dodged it, but the jetpacks needed constant air input, so they were sucking air (and glitter) towards their engines. Agatha saw the dilemma first, and disconnected the engine of her pack from the wings and airbag midair. 

“AGATHA!” I could barely hear Tarvek yell over the sound of the jetpacks. I doubted she could hear him at all. 

I couldn’t see exactly what she was doing from the angle we were at, but she did something with the engine and started climbing faster, much faster than Dimo and Krosp, and she was careening right towards the glitter. I was frozen in place. I couldn’t do anything but watch and hope she had a plan. I remembered to use the magnification on my optics as I tried to think of a way for her to get out of this. 

Her jetpack engine seemed to suck up all of the incoming glitter, tearing itself completely to shreds. She held it away from herself, but the glitter still scratched at her hands on its way, and with my magnification I could see the small trails of blood. The engine began to explode, and she dropped it, and leaned forward in the air, using the airbag and wings to fall slower than it. Just before the boom of the engine failing hit us like a shockwave, I realized her plan. The explosion would be hot enough to melt all the shards, and (hopefully) would give her just enough lift to glide to the ship. 

As the smoke cleared, I nervously scanned the side of the airship, looking for Agatha, hoping she made it. It took a bit for me to look in the right place, but when I did I saw Agatha barely holding onto one of the metal support rings of the gondola, struggling to find enough purchase to pull herself up. I pointed her out to Tarvek, who was panicking. He calmed down a bit on seeing that she was okay. 

It didn’t take much longer for Dimo to catch up, and he used his claws to grab directly into the hull of the gondola, allowing him to easily carry Agatha the rest of the way onto the deck. Krosp just landed on the deck itself. From there it was harder to watch, since the gondola was between us and the fight. Now that the jetpacks were off, we could just barely hear some kind of conversation up there, with yelling and Spark harmonics, but I at least couldn’t make out what anyone was saying. 

I’m not exactly sure how long we waited and watched, trying to decipher the far away conversation. Probably not very long, really, it just felt long because we didn’t know what would happen next. When the airship started to turn back, it was an agonizingly slow wait to see what we would find aboard. Though when it began to carefully set up to land near us, I was already fairly sure of what I’d see.

Agatha strode down the ramp, with Dimo behind her, unceremoniously carrying the tied-up Spark. Since we were in a hurry, it was quickly agreed that we’d just leave him there for the Corbettites. We had a fortress to save. The Depot Fortress of St. Szpac. 

Having memorized the Corbettite map in just a glance (wow this memory was not to be trifled with huh), I had little trouble helping Krosp and the actual pilot (some guy from Mechanicsburg who was all too willing to come along and help) map a course to St. Szpac on their own maps. So now all I could do was wait for us to get there, and hope we got there in time to stop Margarella from releasing the Beast. 

It was maybe a few minutes before I decided no, we’re doomed. I wasted too much time getting the name of St. Szpac, floundering, trying to remember something I should have . Even now that I had a perfect memory, my bad memory would be killing people. The Beast would escape, and kill people, and it would be my fault . After all, the glitter Spark was almost certainly one of Martellus’s men searching for her. It was fairly soon after that that she got to St. Szpac and released the Beast, and it would take a long while to get there. 

Chapter Text

With some unnamed cold dread seeping up my arms and into my heart, I walked out of the cabin where Krosp and the pilot navigated, onto the deck, filled with our party. It was a small airship, and the deck was filled with activity. I tried not to think about what would happen if we were too late, to believe we would still make it in time to save everyone, or at least everyone but Margarella. (If she died it would kinda be her own fault. I’d still feel bad but.)

It took a lot of work to ignore my fears, and walk up to Agatha and Tarvek without them realizing how scared I was. 

“So… We should work on a backup plan.” I started awkwardly, “In case we don’t get there in time.”

Tarvek took one look at me and suddenly went serious. I must not have been hiding my fear as well as I thought. “What can you tell us about this Beast?”

“Uh. Okay.” I took a breath, collecting my thoughts. I had already warned them a bit about the magnets, but. It was really not everything. “It’s a train. Made by uh- one of the old Heterodynes. It fuels itself by eating. Not just coal but wood, iron, anything it can get ahold of. Though I think it goes for metals before organics.” I shivered involuntarily. “It’s a glutton, eating as much as it can and going wherever it pleases. So it didn’t exactly get along well with the monks. It manipulates magnetic fields- even able to magnetize non-ferrous metals. … That was a lot more important in Canon. Anyway, uh. The monks captured it- I think in some kind of magnetic trap? They lied to it though, and it doesn’t want to be fooled again. It probably won’t listen to you.” I said to Agatha, “It didn’t in Canon. Not until after you beat it.” 

“Wait- what? I thought you were going to say we have to kill it.” Tarvek interjected.

“Ehh. In Canon you just beat it, destroyed it’s body, and transferred it’s mind to a Dingbot so it wouldn’t go rampaging, and it worked fine. I think the Beast was even more agreeable after getting to go on adventures with a Heterodyne rather than being caged for whoever knows how long.” 

Agatha considered that. “Huh. I’ll keep that in mind.”

“How did she beat it?” Tarvek asked, more on topic.

“Right. She lured it over a long elevator shaft, cut off it’s extra cars that it used to store energy, and sent them down the shaft so it couldn’t get them back. Then Humongulus (... or however that’s pronounced) could catch it and- well Humongulus is a clank so they were at a standoff. The Beast could freeze him with magnets, but Humongulus was too tough for it to take him apart. So one of the monks and a bear went to take out the Beast’s core mind, after which the train exploded, mostly killing the monk. (Agatha saved his consciousness though)”

There was a moment of silence.

“A bear?” Tarvek asked.

“Right.” I chuckled a bit. “Krosp gets bears. They were working for Martellus at that point still I think though.” 

Agatha snuck a glance at Krosp, looking almost overwhelmed. “Is that going to happen in our world?”

“I dunno. At this point I don’t have a good idea of what will and won’t happen.” 

“And you didn’t think to tell us any of this before setting out on this trip?” Tarvek asked, accusatory. 

“I told you about the magnets!” I defended myself, “And… I don’t know- I didn’t think it would matter since things are changing anyway? I didn’t want you to have to think about all the might-have-beens that won’t happen. … explaining things like that succinctly is hard too.”

“Mm. Well, you had better learn.” Tarvek said, “I want to know what I’m getting into, even if it’s not perfectly accurate.” 

It was an unforgiving argument, and I spent the rest of the trip explaining as much as I could remember about the train arc. I told them about Brother Ulm, and his mistrust of Agatha. About Martellus’s move to use his pope relative to take over the Corbettites. About Vapnoople creating Krosp to lead the Bears, and them hiding from the Baron, and working for Martellus, Vapnoople’s apprentice, until his ‘masterpiece’ (Krosp) could claim them by taking the Shiny Thing. About Martellus’s strategy of using one stable magnetic field to draw the Beast after it, when surrounded by chaotic fields trying to trap it, though I also said I still didn’t really understand the science behind it, since the Comic explained it vaguely. I was just getting to how Agatha’s plan to beat it involved Violetta, but I didn’t remember how, when the call went out that we were approaching St. Szpac. By then the morning light was filtering through parting clouds. Our heist was at night, and luckily I had slept a bit beforehand, so while my headache might kick in soon, I was good for a little while longer. I stood to look over the railing, down to see St. Szpac.

It was so much worse than I was prepared for. The Beast was huge, seeming to almost wrap around the fortress, which looked more like ruins by now. Small fires dotted the area, smoke rising up towards us. We were amidst a rather large fleet of airships, and a few were still firing weapons at the Beast. Of course, it just ate all the bombs and bullets. I zoomed in with my eyes, trying to spot the monks fighting it on the ground. The movement of the airship made it hard to focus on one spot, so I just saw it in flashes. A monk trying to escape from underneath a pile of rubble. A toolbox, abandoned. A gutted train, burning. A monk lying in a pool of blood. 

I closed my eyes, and zoomed back out, dizzy. I stared blankly at a cloud, trying to steady myself. I felt an unnerving sloshing, like my coolant was flowing in the wrong direction. I steadied myself on the railing. Every movement felt exaggerated, the feeling of sloshing coolant punctuating them. It was like some equivalent to nausea, but I felt it in every limb. I stared blankly at the cloud, not really seeing it. I couldn’t name what I was feeling. My coolant pumped loudly in my ears, churning. I gripped the railing tight enough to feel my joints straining with the effort.

Agatha shook me out of my stupor. “ We’re landing in a few minutes. Help me and Tarvek with these magnetic array designs. ” She was in full Spark voice, excited and determined. 

As I followed, I commented, “I don’t have much experience with magnetics, but okay.”

“ Well the theory is- “ she launched into an explanation of how they were meant to work, and I willingly followed her down into the madness place. It was so much better. Easier. I could fix things, make things better . The world was a thrilling experiment and I could ignore- everything else. 

Things were going well. I was mostly playing a support role, offering ideas and improvements , implementing solutions , but not actually determining the main design, or changing the course of the project. We only had materials for two magnetic staves, but they were powerful enough to lift me and hold me in place, and precise enough to do so without damaging me. (My brain was not electromagnetic like modern electronics, but I was still made mostly of metal and wires.)

I was really thinking we might just be able to do this when I was pulled unexpectedly over the railing. For a split second, all I saw was the gaping maw of the Beast below me, and the staves (our hope of defeating it) flying down into it. Then I was pulled back onto the airship, Agatha and Tarvek straining against the magnetic pull that threatened to throw me overboard. Agatha yelled to the pilot to turn away from the Beast, and instantly he complied, and I felt its grip on me loosen. At that amount of power, the ship itself would probably have been vulnerable to it had we gotten much closer. The ship was mostly made of lighter materials than metal, but there were enough metal rivets and braces to put us all in danger. 

We ended up having to land far enough away that we weren’t even really in the territory of the fortress. There were still rails, but the Beast and fortress were a good hike away. A hike I would not be going on, because if I got too close it would eat me. We also didn’t have enough materials for me to try to make anything to help the people who would be going. I suggested taking parts from the ship, but Tarvek pointed out that if we couldn’t stop the Beast we would need a way to leave. So everyone else left to see what supplies the Corbettites still had.  It was just me. Even the pilot went to go minion for Agatha in the fight. (She told him he didn’t have to, but he was excited about it. Mechanicsburgers.) 

I knew I should have been watching the ship. Making sure that the Beast’s sphere of influence didn’t expand enough to get to it, making sure some Wastelands monster doesn’t find it (I almost hoped I’d run across some Wastelands monster, just for the parts .). But I couldn’t stay very close to it without taking it apart . I needed to help them defeat the Beast. I couldn’t just wait there, doing nothing . 

So I wandered off into the wilderness, trying to turn nature into parts. I had read a fic, once, where Agatha was in breakthrough in the Wastelands without access to a lot of parts, and in it she wound vines and branches and whatever into weapons. I was hoping I could do that. Just wander off into the woods, sink deep enough into my Spark, and come out with a weapon I could use to defeat the Beast; to do something ; to help . After all, it was my fault Agatha wasn’t here earlier to deal with it. I took the plot off the rails, I forgot the name of St. Szpac . I didn’t want to believe it, but I already knew my actions caused deaths that wouldn’t have happened . In Cannon, Ulm was the only casualty of the Beast. Here, even in the brief flashes of unsteady zoom, I saw more than one injured monk. (They weren’t dead, I told myself. The one monk who was lying still in a pool of blood wasn’t dead . Because if he was it was my fault , and I couldn’t- ) 

I threw myself into the work, as best I could. But vines and rocks and sticks weren’t easy to work with . I could barely make fire , and nothing I could think of would have any effect on the Beast. With a lot of work or guessing I could have poison (that wouldn’t affect it). With time I could do basket weaving, or hit rocks together until I had something sharp. The tools already in my Traveling Toolkit were more useful than that! I had almost no wilderness survival skills (outside of Minecraft, but… I couldn’t do that.), and everything useful was hidden under a layer of snow. For all I knew I was wandering right over some useful clank husk, and it was just obscured by the winter snow. 

I wandered, increasingly frustrated that I had no parts . I had tools (I always had tools), but I couldn’t build anything with just- with… just… I looked at my hands, seeing the gears and wires and pistons they were made up of in my mind's eye. 

With just me.

I felt a moment of trepidation, but it was drowned out by the electric buzzing. By thoughts, fully formed concepts that I only processed the edges of, the rest being raw, untranslated into meager words.

Flesh is temporary. Form is a tool. Creation is existence.

Finally, once again the gears of reality revealed themselves to me. It was beautiful, it was obvious, it was more real than reality. My arm , and… Ice . It was non magnetic (probably… whatever. Mine would be ), it was strong, it was reflective . With the right application of heat and cold (which was applied primarily through more ice or snow), I could shape it , use the parts from my arm (left, I was using my right) to augment it , to turn it into a device, a machine, a masterpiece .

It was perfect. I barely paid attention as I loaded snow onto the airship, focused on the grand brilliance of my design, of my plan . After all, the airship controls are so elegantly simple if you understand the principles . I had to do some maneuvering to get some big airship out of my light , but after that everything was in place .

I spotted the Beast, looming threateningly over a group of people. (Well, it’s front car was doing that. It was still also wrapping around the remains of St. Szpac.) Well. We couldn’t have that. I dropped the snow off the side, using the glitter Spark’s mechanisms to create a fine and wide spread, filling the air with frozen mist. Then I raised my left hand into the air- now a large and beautiful crystalline lattice of ice and metal- concentrated, moving parts with micrometers of precision, and I created . In real time, I painted with light on the canvas of the sky. 

The Beast my audience, I showed it a vision of the world off-kilter. Everything the same and yet not quite where it should be. Doubles of buildings, a hazy shimmer-copy of the ground, rippling like waves. I relished in the power I had, to control its entire perception of reality. Just for the fun of it, I began to paint over the ruins with forest, a misty winter wonderland hiding the burning wreck. I laughed maniacally, on top of the world.

It took too long to notice the message painted back for me. Written in light on my own snowy canvas, in a cypher taught on Castle Wulfenbach,

“Elzerei, lure it to the elevator shaft!”

When I spotted it, I was thrown from the depths of my fugue. I remembered why I was doing this, and I noticed my ice arm prismatic array melting. I had maybe a minute before it fell apart.

Elevator, elevator. I scanned the ground for it, using my enhanced eyesight to have even a chance.  As I looked I tried to think of how to even convince the Beast to move. It was one thing to paint an illusion with light , but what would convince it to move? I couldn’t use metal, it probably had a magnetic sense, and would realize it was fake. Heck, I couldn’t even tell if it had seen through my illusion already. I was too far away to hear the conversation on the ground. 

It took too long to find what I thought was the elevator shaft. I still wasn’t sure it was right, but I could feel the ice and metal slipping, drifting out of position as the ice melted. I was out of time. I had to act now. 

The panic made it hard to focus as I painted a pile of coal. It was the best I could think of, to lure the Beast. Non-magnetic (as far as I knew), and something it wanted. It was barely coming together, the madness was so hard to grasp. It was there, but not enough , the coolant rushing in my ears drowned out the buzz of electricity, the fear overpowered the madness. 

It wasn’t working. The Beast saw it, but turned back to the others. I think it was laughing . 

One of the shards of ice slipped out of the array, and shattered on the deck. The sound shot through me. Failure . 

But I would not accept it . I reconfigured the array (what was left of it) for damage. The light of the sun could be used for more than painting . I concentrated the energy into a beam of fire , melting all in its path , and I aimed it at the Beast. It was not my audience, but my prey . A cornered animal, it would run where I corralled it. 

The laser was hard to control. As my array melted, accuracy faltered. I’m not sure what all I burned. With my right hand, I tried to hold the array together, tried to eke out just a little more , just enough . Water ran between my fingers, more ice shattered on the deck. 

And finally, it fell apart entirely. The deck was littered with tiny shards of ice and metal components that were meaningless without the melting ice. And me, lying defeated on the deck, a hole in my casing where my left arm would connect. Its pieces strewn about the deck, unrecognizable after I had repurposed them. 

That was it. I gave up, and lay there, watching wisps of clouds above me. Thinking about how I should never have tried to change things in the first place. How the world of Girl Genius was better off without me, how I wasn’t cut out for it. How I wanted to go home, where I wasn’t responsible for lives, where I had a family that would take care of me, would fix things when I messed them up. I tried, fruitlessly, to remind myself that I did still change the world for the better. That without the changes I made, Gil would be fighting a war with the Other, Europa would be in chaos, missing the ‘golden age’ of Klaus’s empire. But the deaths in that war were only implied, and if the Beast got free, roamed the countryside, those deaths would be real , and my fault . Like a trolly problem but I have to live with the people I’ve killed. But no , because if I’d just been better , not as many would have to die. 

I only stood up from my pity party when I heard an explosion. I went and looked over the side. It was hard to see past the smoke but… yes. It seemed like the Beast exploded. We… won? 

A bit dazed, I went to mess with the crude autopilot I had set up, to try to land and ask what happened. And if they found the book, I guess. Maybe ask how many people died. 

I was so preoccupied with my thoughts that I didn’t notice when I stopped moving. 

“That’s enough.” Astra’s voice said in my head.

I turned, and realized I wasn’t moving anymore, the airship frozen in the sky.

“Astra.” It almost didn’t feel real; that she had come for me. That she was real. She was so outside of everything that felt normal, in this world or my original. “... is it time?”

“Yes.”

I wanted more time, at least enough to say goodbye, to get my experiments back from Castle Heterodyne, to make sure the others could handle things without me (of course they could)

“I’ll give you 12 hours. And then we have some things to talk about in the Warehouse.” Her voice sounded annoyed, like it would be a talk about something I did wrong. I felt a cold panic overtake me, but before I could come up with some apology or excuse, time resumed.

“I- Whatever I did- I’m sorry!” 

No response. She was gone. Or- was back to silently watching, I assumed. After all, she said this was for her entertainment. 

Chapter Text

I ended up needing help landing; a Wulfenbach airship intercepted me before I crashed and got a real pilot on. Oh yeah- the Wulfenbach military (and Klaus and Gil) were here. They were the reason that Agatha could defeat the Beast even after I had failed her. (She didn’t put it in those terms, but… yeah.) I didn’t want to ask, but I did anyway. The death count was 50. Mostly monks, but some passengers as well. At least Tarvek managed to find Van Rijn’s notebook. 

I kept my eyes on the clock the whole time, constantly calculating how much time I had left before I had to leave, but I didn’t tell them until we were on our way back to Mechanicsburg.

It barely came out as a whisper. “Agatha? Tarvek? Gil?” (Gil had managed to switch ships to join us. I doubt he had his father’s permission.)

They heard in my voice it was serious, and took me to an empty room to talk.

Then they waited for me.

“I’m leaving.” I said it bluntly. I didn’t know how else to say it.

“What? Where?” Gil started.

“Why?” Agatha asked.

“I-” I sighed. “This isn’t the first world I’ve traveled to, and it won’t be the last. If I stop here-” I checked the clock. ”If I don’t leave in 9 hours, I’ll never be able to go home again. So-”

Agatha hugged me, and I cut off. Then she pulled back, just holding my shoulders, to look me in the eyes. “Do you need help?”

“No- I just wanted to say goodbye. I don’t know if I’ll be able to come back.”

With a wry grin, she responded, “I’ll tell the Castle to let you back in whenever you do.”

I gave a half-hearted smile. I wanted to apologize- for not doing enough, for letting people die- but I doubted they’d accept it.

“Who should we tell?” Tarvek asked pragmatically.

“I don’t know how to explain it, but there’s no reason to make a secret of my leaving. I don’t want -like- Tinka to think I abandoned her.”

“We’ll say you’re going on an expedition. That way you can pack, tell people you’re going, and have a goodbye party!” Gil interjected. 

Agatha let go of me, and I wiped my eyes. (I couldn't cry, but it was still a gesture that made sense to me.) “I- yeah. That sounds good. Thank you. For- for everything.” I looked at all three of them. 

“Save the sappy stuff for the party.” Gil said, smiling.

“You can bring things with you between worlds?” Tarvek asked.

“Ah- yes. I think only things I’m carrying, though.”

“Then you’ll need a lot of bags.” Agatha patted my shoulder, and then turned to leave, Gil and Tarvek following.

I was left alone once again, but this time, I was a bit more hopeful. I still felt bad about how many died for my mistakes, but I tried to put it out of my mind. There was no changing it now. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t my fault. It was fine. 

I could lie to myself long enough to make it the last 9 hours.

By the time we reached Mechanicsburg, I didn’t have much time left. We had to do some Sparky improvements to make better time, and I still only had two hours to pack and say my goodbyes. 

Packing wise, I mostly only took the things I had made. My light tablet, a lot of light frames, my sketchbooks, that sort of thing. But then because of the limited time, a lot of the party was talking and running around while people tried to get together gifts. I said I didn’t need them, but Agatha insisted I have a proper expedition travel pack since I didn’t know what I’d be facing, and then Tarvek said I should have extra batteries and materials, and then Zeetha wanted to give me a sword as part of a Skifandrian traveler’s tradition, and Tarvek wanted to give me extra notebooks, and then I remembered I should write letters to everyone who wasn’t there. (In the rush, I only wrote ones for Nick, Theo, and Sleipnir.) 

Everyone had well wishes for me. Violetta gave me tips for surviving in enemy territory. The Jägers gave me tips about stealing hats. Agatha, Gil, and Tarvek scribbled some notes of ideas and information they thought I’d find interesting. 

Zeetha seemed to understand best, though. She told me to hold on to everything I could of home, to not let missing home consume me, or cause me to miss out on the places I travel to, but at the same time never forget who I was or where I came from. To never let myself believe my home wasn’t real, or that I wouldn’t return to it. 

She grasped my shoulders. “You will make it home, and you will bring back everything you learned on your journey.” She hugged me. “Good luck.”

And then my vision faded to stars.