Originally posted June 29, 2009
((CoH introduced a wonderful tool in 2009, the Mission Architect. Players could make custom missions, including specialty villains and custom tasks. I wrote a multi-part adventure that resolved the issue of Robi's origin that Shiv and her friends ran through together on night. On a whim after playing through the missions, I had brought forth a particular story element.))
It had been going so well. With help from Adam and his technomages, they had traced the ghost information on Robi to a data storage facility run by The Keepers of Memory. The Keepers kidnapped Dr. Stein, trying to pull from his mind what Siobhan and her team destroyed. It killed him and soon after, the small group of heroes smashed the one remaining copy of his work. The secrets of Robi's origins rushed over them as they shattered the machine.
Shiv set the tiny bundle down on the table, needing both hands to work the mortar and pestle.
Dr. Stein had noticed something special about is daughter Abigail; some affinity for magic he hoped to tap and sell. He experimented on all sort of small animals, even a band of raccoons that had settled into his home's attic. He kept splicing parts of his kin to part of tiny creatures then watched them die in miserable pain. Dr. Stein never knew his success. After defeating the Keepers of Memory, Siobhan felt secure no one else would, either.
In one sense, the whole adventure confirmed what Shiv already knew. Robi was nearly equal parts human as raccoon.
She ignored the slight movements of the bundle on her workbench. Picking up a small knife, Siobhan pricked at the tip of her finger and let the blood dribble into the bowl. Here in her maker's hut, her smithy, she only needed a little. If this was going to work at all, it would work in this place of her power.
Then it all went down the pan. The Spiders had learned of the loss of the data they had entrusted to Keepers; stolen information they had never reviewed. Dr. Aeon put the parts together and decided it was worth his mad interests. He kidnapped Robi. Shiv gathered another team for the rescue. It had not been so easy.
Steadying the bundle with one hand, Shiv began drawing the circle with deft, well practiced gestures. The contents calmed at her touch, content with the warmth.
They were not Robi. Shiv took a deep breath to stifle the gorge that rose in response to the memory of her sword crushing feral skulls containing tiny, sharp teeth. They were not copies or clones. They existed as the twisted mix of science and sorcery born of her captive wife and delivered of Dr. Aeon and The Mu Goddess. Shiv and her group could not have possibly destroyed them all. Some doppelgangers must have escaped the destruction of the lab and the defeat of their masters. Shiv couldn't decide what to do about the escapees. She had more pressing concerns.
Shiv began to unwrap the bundle, a lab coat she had grabbed in her haste. She cooed in response to the weak tittering from inside.
She had left the other to go back and ruin the center. Shiv had smashed tubes and devices, beakers and centrifuges. And then she heard it.
Siobhan smiled at the wee kit at the center of the lab coat.
"Shhhh, lass. 'twill bae oer in a wee shake." Slowly and with great care she performed the ritual. The familiar Gaelic rolls off her tongue. She had performed this ceremony before, for her coven. Whatever technology Dr. Aeon had left in the tiny creature, whatever magical influence The Mu Goddess had asserted, this rite would sever. The tiny pup would be free; free to grow according to her own will and nature, and the guidance of her parents.
"ach, Her parents," Shiv mused aloud as she rewrapped the kit. "Ye'll ave Becky up tae high doh, ah reckon."
-
Siobhan deftly set down the laptop with one hand as she cradled the nursing kit with the other and settled deeper into thick couch. The Internet seemed less intimidating than when she first arrived in Paragon. Today, she continued he study of raccoons. She found a couple of potential names and an amusing article entitled "Twenty Good Reasons not to Have a Pet Raccoon." She looked down at the tiny, latched kit at her breast. "Yer no pet now, are ye lass?"
A small spell had altered the shape of her breast and started lactation. She rubbed her forehead with her free hand, wishing she could master the coming conversation as well as her own body. She toyed with, "Nae really, Becky. She followed mae 'ome." She knew she would stick with the unvarnished truth. "Ah 'ad just spent the previous hour killing any number of creatures that looked like Robi. When I wrecked the lab that created those abominations, this came out of one of the tubes. T'was alive. After all that blood, after hearing all those Robi's screaming at mae when ah kilt them, ah jist counnaet raise mae sword one more tiem."
"Ah counnaet kill her and ah counnaet leave 'er there tae die."
Shiv sighed and brought her other arm around to cradle the human/raccoon hybrid pup. She waited in the semi-darkness of the room for her wives to return, singing quietly:
Shoo Shuggy over the glen
Daddys wee pet and mummy wee hen
baby baby bunting your
dady’s gone a hunting
to fetch a little rabbit skin
to wrap his baby bunting in
-- by Mindy's Bad Art
Robi was hungry famished even, as she flew threw the darkness of Croatoa at her fastest speeds. Her body glistens as she pushes her muscles to there limits the sinew stretches some even tear. Her tiny body strains it want her to use her magic's to speed her self and take the strain off but she refuses, she wont stop wont use her bunny magic. She squishes her face her mouth open her tongue hanging out unknown to her as she pushes even harder but she knows there is more yet, her body is already repairing the damage her muscles are growing stronger with each moment as much as it fights her, her body wont stop meeting all she asks of it and her tears flow for it. Not since the day she first new pain. When the man came with there gasses and she didn't save Becky, the day she went unhuggery, the day her lighting hurt her skin and made her cry out, the dark day when doctors poked her and she had to have Bunny help her get better. But the bad screaming man that took her had hurt her in taking, He said he had notes and formulas and fixed her get better. Now she had it again and she was going to fly like she used to tell she couldn't any more.
Not tired just she could resist the hunger no longer she wips to her home. Home a word she likes, she has lived many places but this may be her first home. She waves her hand at the door and the lock beds to her will open the door for her. She wanders in ready to whip threw the house on her way to the cold food box when she smells it fresh milk and baby. Her stomach growls as she sees the nursing baby, wet tears streaks down her face as a flood of memory fills her mind, thought blocked and memories safely chained burst threw as she takes to her knees. "Babies Not for eating" she says to her self stealing her will not to burst from the house.
-- by Rex Celestis
Siobhan smiles at her wife, one of her now three loves. For a moment, she see Robi through the lens of Dr. Stein's memory. He walked the family of dead mutant raccoons to the dumpster himself, weighing each failure against the pain caused his daughter. At the bottom of that pile of tiny kits, no larger than what clutched at Siobhan's breast, Robi still breathed. Robi grew, hungered. She survived at the cost of her family and by the graces of a delayed truck to the incinerator. Babies not for eating, indeed.
"Aye, grádhág. Tis a baby. Tis our baby." She unlatches the pup and cradles it in the palm of her hand. "Would ye like tae 'old 'er lass? The bairn cannae see or 'ear ye, but she can smell. She wants tae touch 'er mum, ah ken." Shiv helps Robi settle the kit in her short fur covered arms, Robi's hands play over every inch of tiny creature. Hypersensitive paws take in the warmth, the fur, the cold wetness of a nose. Siobhan could cast a spell to help Robi lactate if her wife wanted, but that would come later.
For now, Siobhan watches her wife snuggle their new child and feels the dampness gathering on her cheeks.
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