Part 1: Quarantine
Part 2: Odd Jobs
Part 3: Shuck
Part 4: The Old North
Part 5: Dirty Dave
Part 6: Multipliers
Part 7: Kilogold
Victor stood in the holo chamber, trying to avoid looking at the predicament his two most treasured loved ones were in. In contrast, Shuck walked through the real scale light based facsimile with great interest. “So, you weren’t kidding… wife and daughter, huh? Cute kid, and the wife… I think she could have done better, to be honest.”
“Do you have any useful insight, or am I wasting my time showing this to you? This is more painful to look at with every passing second.”
Shuck walked over to look at the four intruders. “Hmm. If none of them are a kinetic caster, you probably could have grabbed your wife and kid before jumping out. They can’t close that gap fast enough to stop you.”
Victor froze. “Do… do you think that’s still an option? Just jump in, grab them, and jump out?”
Shuck weighed the thought for a moment, then shook his head grimly. “No… with the temporary disorientation caused by a time jump, you probably wouldn’t be able to act fast enough. If they were just a bit further away, a time bubble might work, but I don’t think you could throw one of those up fast enough either with your reaction time. And that’s assuming they don’t have time blocking artifacts, which they almost certainly do.”
Shuck inspected the sword held by one of the invaders. “We really can’t underestimate these people… I think they knew you might quarantine them in time to study them this way.”
Victor was surprised by the thought. “Why do you say that?”
“Look at their clothes and equipment. It’s not basic; very high quality crafstmanship, probably has potential output befitting class sevens. But the construction is… odd. Unique, or more precisely the exact opposite of unique. By the shape of the sword and accompanying garb, I can’t tell what caster type any of them are.”
Victor hadn’t yet even considered trying to decipher the type of the casters based on only their appearance, because he thought such a thing was impossible. “You are saying that you can normally do that?”
“Yeah, it’s really not that complicated. A sword made for a gravity caster has noticeably more weight to it, while a kinetic caster’s sword will be have less weight but still more than other swords made for other types of caster. That’s just one detail, there are a dozen other that can be used as clues. But none of those clues are on their weapons or armor. Even the masks might be part of this… face types, eye color, hair color, even resting expression can indicate the type. They don’t want us gathering information.”
Victor was stunned. “Really? You aren’t pulling my leg with all of that nonsense?”
Shuck paced back and forth, almost ignoring Victor’s comment as he thought out loud. “I’m tempted to bring in Ghost on this, but… no, that’s probably a bad idea. He would ask too many questions that I don’t want to answer. But that leaves us little other option… we need to come up with a broad spectrum strategy.”
“We?”
Shuck turned towards Victor. “Yes, we. This is a locked room puzzle that actually quite intrigues me… With limited time and resources, how do we get your family to safety and live to tell the tale? I’ll tell you what… give me a fifth of your remaining share, and I will personally fight for you. That still leaves four fifths of your share to pay one good caster to fight alongside us. ”
Victor could almost feel the previously large sum of money slipping between his fingers, but he reminded himself using that money to pay for his family’s rescue had always been the plan. Slightly reluctantly, he agreed. “All right, I suppose you can consider yourself hired. But what about the remaining funds? You seem to know more about this business than I do.”
“I would like to volunteer.”
Both Shuck and Victor turned to a female who had entered the room when they were both preoccupied. She wore the standard Meta travel uniform of a white hooded travel cloak, but filled out with her much more curvaceous feminine form. Her hair was a bright purple, likely dyed to hide her original hair color, and she wore light filtering shades that hid her eye color too. The one thing she didn’t hide was her generally fair skin, though such a characteristic was overwhelmingly common for a Meta. Victor grew slightly annoyed, but he was more confused. “Excuse me? Who are you? I have this chamber reserved for another thirty minutes, I thought I made it clear when I did so that I did not wish to be disturbed.”
Shuck scoffed. “She’s clearly a Meta. How do you not know her? Aren’t Meta all related?”
This time, Victor was the one who condescended to Shuck. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you personally knew the name and appearance of every single ancestor going back centuries! For all I know, this one could be my great great grandmother, or one of my great granddaughters!”
Shuck raised an eyebrow, taking alternating looks at both the still unidentified female and Victor. “Hmm. That… could get rather confusing, I will admit. Kinda weird to think about meeting members of your extended family out of chronological order…”
The female spoke up again. “Vic, you may just call me Miss Meta for now. Time toggle threat, I can’t elaborate any further. But the important part is that I want to help you save your family.”
Victor grew more openly annoyed. “Excuse me… did you just call me Vic? It’s Victor. Vic! Tor! Please, I’m under a lot of stress at the moment, I really don’t need this!”
The female giggled slightly. “Oh, just relax… Like I just said, I want to help. Whatever rate you are paying is fine, I’m sure. Now, what’s the plan? I just need to-”
Victor raised his hand. “Stop right there. Shuck?”
Shuck shook his head. “You read my mind. We are up against an ambiguous enemy, so we need a more balanced team than just an electro caster and two gravity casters. Kinetic would be preferable, thermal would be the second choice.”
Miss Meta objected. “Now, wait a minute! I’m a Meta, I can mess with time itself! Surely, that’s more useful than some kinetics!”
Shuck smirked as he shrugged at the protesting female, all while grabbing the light folder on the way out of the room, causing the hologram to immediately blink out of existence. “Sorry, lady. Our opponents will likely have protection against localized time powers, so you are flat out wrong. Not to mention, if I recall how all this business works, the quarantine Victor has already have set up will interfere with you jumping in at the same time. In the end, I don’t think we can properly use your assistance.”
Both Victor and Shuck left a stunned Miss Meta in the chamber as they left, discussing in earnest what they knew and what they were planning. Victor started off with a suggestion. “I believe Gerald should be able to get me a kinetic caster… I assume from your comments earlier that you don’t want to grab many people from your immediate time period.”
“Correct. Anyone above class five should be fine, but we want the most powerful one we can afford.”
Victor couldn’t help muttering a snide remark. “I don’t suppose you would be willing to help offset that cost with your own funds?”
“This isn’t a challenge that can be fixed by blindly throwing money at it. Adding my funds won’t change our odds much. Once we get a third member, we need to practice for a month as a team, minimum, going through all potential scenarios. Both assuming the only opponents are the four visible as well as assuming they have reinforcements right behind them.”
“I’m not waiting a month. We will do it in two weeks.”
Shuck sighed. “I understand why you want to save them as soon as possible, but that’s not enough time. We need to prepare for several potential team dynamics, and even then we don’t have great odds of facing a selection of casters that we practiced against.”
“If we spend less time practicing, we save money on the other member if we have them charge by time instead of for the job itself. We can get a more powerful caster that way.”
Shuck bit his lip, thinking. “That’s your call, I suppose… trading teamwork for power is a trade, but I don’t have enough information to say if it’s the right call. I suppose we will see.”
Victor scratched the back of his head anxiously, wishing in vain that he could bring himself to make some kind of pun to lighten the mood. But he never could think of any good ones when under such stress. “I guess we will.”
Thanks for reading! If you are enjoying the story, you might also enjoy some of my other published work on Amazon! It’s set in the same fictional universe, but follows different characters.
Gatekeepers, Book One: Unquestionable Truth
Gatekeepers, Book Two: Order of Gravitas
Same post on Minds