Much like the rest of the Golden Hour, Caelus had hoped to arrive at the Dewlight Pavilion under more welcoming circumstances. The Oak Family’s secluded mansion within the Dreamscape was the latest of several sites that the Trailblazer was investigating on a solo crusade of his, eager as a hound to sniff out any scrap of truth behind the mysterious murders on Penacony. He was so eager, in fact, that he had opted to keep the other members of the Astral Express in the dark on his not-so-legal inspections. The memory of what had happened the last time he was in the Dreamscape and someone had trusted him to keep them safe was still raw in his memory like an open wound. He wouldn’t make the same mistake again. He couldn’t.
Had these indeed been the aforementioned normal circumstances, Caelus might have decided to steer clear of Sunday and his private abode entirely, lest he anger the aloof host of the Dreamscape and receive a swift eviction from Penacony. He knew that there were many reasons why he shouldn’t be doing this, but as Caelus took a moment to look at his phone and felt as though a hearthful warmth was radiating from the smiling face of the girl in the selfie, he could only think of one reason for why he should. He’d pull every thread that he could until this nightmare on Penacony was finally unraveled or he’d die trying.
Ready to throw down his life for his cause, Caelus unlocked the door to the Dewlight Pavilion’s front lobby and found… nobody.
Whether it was destiny itself guiding him or simply the unaccountable variable that is the Trailblazer’s dumb luck, Caelus had reached the mansion at a very opportune time, with its security detail called away to its outer premises to ‘address a disturbance.’ The front door of the mansion seemed to gleam with a gilded joy, happy to finally present itself without the ever-present security detail blemishing its otherwise-stupendous surface. Caelus, on the other hand, wasn’t as overjoyed. He had expected at least some form of resistance (even having packed a surplus of Floatdisc Burgers in case he needed a pick-me-up between battles) but the vacant lobby made this all look so easy that it only made him more uneasy. Could this all be a trap..?
Regardless, he couldn’t turn back now with a golden opportunity like this before him. Caelus pressed on through the waiting room towards the mansion’s mysterious interior, one hand still firmly around the handle of his baseball bat at all times.
He was prepared for anything.
It was almost thirty minutes later when Caelus finally stumbled his way through the unveiled door to the mansion’s main hall, having been stumped by its puzzle lock for far longer than most other visitors (welcome or otherwise) would be. Were it not for leaving too much evidence of his clandestine attempt at a break-in, he would have just smashed those dumb Torment Eagle statues apart to see if that worked, but instead he had been left with no choice but to pursue a far less fun means of brute forcing the solution. Frustration bubbled inside Caelus as he realized that he wouldn’t even be able to bring up Sunday’s appalling ability to overcomplicate a door of all things without incriminating himself in the process. The young man sighed as he moved on, just counting his lucky stars that nobody had seen him or his embarrassing puzzle-solving attempts.
Silence and stillness hung over the hall like a shroud, as though Caelus stood in a holy place where one must never raise their voice or speak ill, lest some terrible punishment befall them. As Sunday’s innermost sanctum in the Dreamscape, perhaps that was in fact true, although it made the lack of any security personnel all the more unusual. Perhaps it was another predetermination by the powers that be or merely more good fortune that they were absent, but Caelus could only presume that, in some characteristic show of arrogance, Sunday did not see fit to station anyone in this closed-off area if nobody was ever intended to reach here without his express invitation to begin with. It still left him uneasy, but at least it was better than the alternative of stepping into the hall, only to be met with a dozen angry armed men on the other side of the door.
Venturing from the mezzanine balcony down to the ground floor of the hall, Caelus was at first relieved to see that the next door standing in his way would be the last, with the golden plaque proudly presenting ‘Sunday’s Office’ to him. However, his mood quickly soured when he tried the handle, only for it to stay cold and still as if it was frozen in time. Caelus rubbed his forehead, already weary of Sunday’s paranoia (even if Caelus was proving it completely correct and perfectly well-placed right now.) If this door was anything like the previous, then another puzzle of some sort would open it up, but what could it be..? Caelus turned around to examine the hall for any clues and found his gaze drawn to its finest attraction – the sandpit.
The model landscape in the hall looked to be a near-perfect replica of the Golden Hour district, but scaled down so small that it could fit entirely on a single table. While Caelus was pretty sure that it was just a visual aid for the Family during their meetings, where they might literally mold and shape their most beloved venue in the Dreamscape by their own hands, it was certainly an impressive set piece. In fact, having now spotted a certain device affixed to the edge of the model, Caelus wondered if there was more to be discovered with the diminutive district.
In truth, Caelus had never personally seen a Gulliver’s Arch before. Dan Heng had once mentioned the portable tablet-sized portal device and its shrinking capabilities in passing as one of several novelties he had recently added to the Astral Express database (hence how Caelus recognized it) and March had begged Caelus not too long ago to help her find one on the IPC marketboards in the hopes of using it to try out some daring point-of-view shots for her camerawork. The Gulliver’s Arch was firmly plugged into a slot at the southern side of the model with its bright blue portal ready for use, inviting anyone to personally examine the replica city from a far smaller perspective if they so chose.
Caelus pressed a thumb to his chin in thought. Would Sunday really be the sort of person to hide the means of unlocking his office in plain sight like this? It was definitely eccentric, even by the Family’s habits… But then again, so was masking the hall’s entrance behind a series of Torment Eagle statues. As Caelus scanned around the room and saw nothing else conspicuous enough to merit an interaction (save for shooing away a few origami birds that had opted to roost nearby) this seemed to him like the first thread to start pulling.
Besides, as a Trailblazer, how could the young man resist the chance for explore..?
Caelus pressed his hand against the Gulliver’s Arch and felt himself transported; yanked, pulled, squeezed and stretched down and down and down, descending deep through a waterfall of bright blue bubbly bedlam, before being swiftly teleported to the other side a little less delicately than he had expected. As he gathered his senses and eyed his new surroundings, he found that, as expected, he was now a little less in a far more literal sense too. The model city was now extravagantly blown up around him as though he were standing in the real thing (for as ‘real’ as the Golden Hour could be considered.) Were it not for the artificial people posing in its plaza repeating the same message over and over or stuck in an endless cycle of tripping over the same sidewalk, it would seem like an almost picturesque copy. Caelus looked over his shoulder at the Gulliver’s Arch, once able to fit comfortably in both of his hands but now standing tall and proud like it was a favored monument of the tabletop city. He couldn’t help but constantly be astounded by the strange delights to find on this path of the Trailblaze.
Sadly, the idea for a photocentric sightseeing trip back here with March (after all of this unpleasant murder investigation business was finally over) would have to wait. There was an mission to carry out. Now the question remained, where would Sunday hide a puzzle in this place..?
The intrepid investigator was in the midst of plunging his arm elbow-deep through yet another trash can with an obsessive eagerness in the hopes of finding a secret switch (or at least some neat items to add to his inventory) when his concentration was broken by a sound from afar. From his minute standing spot on the inches-wide side street, the volume and the distance seemed warped to Caelus, making it more akin to a rumble of distant thunder. Still, it was distinct enough to be recognized for what it was – the creaking of a door.
Caelus felt a chill creep up his spine as he realized just how vulnerable he was at the moment. Did Sunday have guards stationed in this hall after all? Had they just been on a break or in a meeting, only seeing fit to return now? Was it Sunday leaving his office, solving the solution for how to open but now presenting a whole new dilemma altogether? Was it someone else investigating the manor for their own purposes, like Aventurine or Acheron? Or was it something else, and all of this had just been a means of luring him into the razor-sharp embrace of the deadly specter haunting the Dreamscape?
Whoever or whatever it might be, Caelus wasn’t keen to meet them at his current size, lest they be not too understanding of his ‘sightseeing.’ He was certainly so small that a passerby would easily overlook him, but anyone scrutinizing the model in more detail could spot him standing out compared to the generic appearance of the recyclable dummies. He could always try to break down the entrance to the nearest building (assuming that it wasn’t just a sticker or something) but the broken-down doors might just invite more suspicion. His pride relented as he reached for his phone to send out a message to the Crew for backup, only to find that his phone wasn’t getting any signal here.
Hearing the drumming beat of faraway footsteps drawing closer, Caelus took a chance on huddling behind a prop Unicycler parked in a nearby alleyway and pressed himself against it, peeking around its side to try and find out the truth of the unexpected arrivals.
The Stellaron Hunters had only been asked once what their purpose was with breaking into the Dewlight Pavilion. Kafka, Silver Wolf and Blade had all chosen to answer the security officers’ incessant questions with actions rather than words. With no one left to rudely ask them about their private affairs a second time, the three agents had traipsed past the mess they left outside the back entrance and let themselves into the mansion.
Silver Wolf was already on her wrist computer, blocking any outgoing communications for the mansion with all the effort of breezing through a video game on the easiest difficulty. “I can’t believe they told us this place was going to be tough. The Family’s network looks like it’s centuries old.” The girl peeked over her shoulder towards the back entrance they had used. “Nobody’s gonna follow us in here, are they?”
“Relax,” Kafka said, her sultry voice beckoning Silver Wolf to do just that. “I’m sure we got them all. Right, Blade?”
Blade said nothing as he wiped the blood from his sword and returned it to its sheath.
Silver Wolf brought up the mansion’s blueprints as the trio walked and talked on their way to their mission destination. “Okaaay, so what we’re after is inside Mr. Pigeon Wings’ office, but it’s locked down tight. He won’t lock it with anything normal either. I heard he’s got a thing for ‘testing guests.’”
“We’re in a hurry,” Blade emphasized. “We need to meet back up with Sam as soon as we can. We don’t have time for these games.”
Silver Wolf pouted at the sacrilegious statement, but chose to leave it be. “Chill out. I can try aether editing to make a way through the wall. It should just need a couple minutes. The Dreamscape makes it…” She searched for the right word. “…laggy.”
Blade gave a curt nod. “Do what you need to. I’ll sweep the rooms.”
As Blade stalked the corridors in the hall to ensure that he hadn’t missed any of the security detail while Silver Wolf started tapped away on a hardlight keyboard at a blistering speed, Kafka took the small moment of respite to walk over and admire the sandpit in the center of the hall. Her eyes danced across the miniature architecture and its virtual populace, drinking in all the detail that she could spot. It reminded her of some of the simulator games Silver Wolf had shown her in their off time. There was a lot one could say about Sunday and this meticulous metaphor for his need to shape and control this precious Dreamscape of his, but Kafka couldn’t deny the quaint craftsmanship on display, whether it was ‘real’ or not.
Kafka felt no need to hide a smile from the fake audience below as she reached down and pinned one of the robotic pedestrians beneath a fingertip, feeling them go limp beneath her fingertip (and only vaguely able to hear their weak voice repeating ‘I am an Oak Soldier’ over and over as she did.) She was always fond of playing with puppets, after all, and it was undeniably fun to look down on the Golden Hour like this-
Her breath paused for a microsecond. Elio’s words, from just before she had set out to Penacony, rang through her head.
“You must ensure that the Trailblazer does not fall into the hands of the Family. When you find yourself looking down upon the Golden Hour in its entirety, reach out to him. You’ll know where to take him when the time comes.”
Kafka wasn’t one to overlook a ‘coincidence’, especially whenever Elio’s predictions were in play, and the Gulliver’s Arch had not escaped her notice. She couldn’t fathom what he was doing here or why he would have used it, but if the Trailblazer was indeed right under her nose, it was in her best interests to spirit him away. For his own safety, of course. Whether or not she might benefit from a tiny Trailblazer for her own purposes afterwards…
Well, maybe that was just another ‘coincidence.’
With just a flick of her fingers, Kafka tugged on the air, and as commanded, intersecting strands unveiled themselves to her. Even in the Dreamscape, no living soul could sever themselves from the thread of destiny. Kafka plucked one of the strings and the slightest hum, quiet as a whisper, emanated from its surface. Far below, almost all of the ‘people’ seemed unaffected. They were just seemingly-unfinished imitation of real humans; they had no strings to pull, no sounds to make, no color to show.
That’s why it was all the easier to spot the single speck of purple lighting up in the miniature city below – the one ‘real’ person in the sandpit. Kafka dismissed her strings and leaned in to examine the telltale flicker of a small soul.
Kafka smiled. “Found you.”
As soon as Caelus had seen the distant colossal figures of the Stellaron Hunters in the far distance, he had hoped to make himself as invisible as he could, crouching down in the shadow of the large automobile and remaining as still as he could (and only because he feared trying to somehow pry the door open and hide inside might set off an alarm.) He was eager to see what business the mysterious trio had to do with Sunday and if it might finally blow this case wide open, but not so eager to do so when he could be easily mistaken for some minuscule black-and-yellow bug and smeared underthumb. Even if they did recognize him, he didn’t want to imagine what the woman with a ten billion credit bounty and an obsession with orchestrating his life could do with him literally in the palm of her hand. As soon as they finished whatever it is they were doing and left, he was going to beeline it back to the Gulliver’s Arch.
At least, that was the plan until Kafka decided to start admiring the sandpit.
Caelus could feel the hairs on the back of his neck electrifying and standing on end as he peeked around the parked automobile. Kafka’s eyes swept across the streets of the model city as she tugged at her ethereal strings, while the city’s tiny terrified occupant prayed that she would be called away or simply lose interest. Kafka was already intimidating enough, but at this scale, her massive presence was so overbearing that it felt like it was literally pressing down on him. It was almost dizzying to try and look up at her from his hiding spot, and so he decided to stop trying altogether. For a moment, he hoped that she had lost interest and would move past him.
Unfortunately, Elio’s script said otherwise.
“Found you.”
Caelus trembled as Kafka’s words seemed to ripple the air and even his skin, her deep voice only amplified even further as she dominated the skyline. How did she see him?! He was petrified by the massive Stellaron Hunter’s gaze, her eyes now firmly locked on him.
“Don’t feel too bad. I might have cheated.” She gave a single curt laugh, sad that she couldn’t see the Trailblazer’s expression from her vantage point. “Now… what exactly are you doing down there? Don’t you know you’re breaking and entering?” Kafka purred, her hypocrisy not lost on her. “You could get into big trouble if the Family caught you like this. Maybe it’s for the best if I keep you out of harm’s way for now…”
The Golden Hour was basked in total darkness as the gargantuan woman leaned a little further over the model, blotting out the ‘sun’ of the ceiling light above. When Caelus had stood in the shadow of Phantylia back aboard the Xianzhou Loufu, the Lord Ravager was large enough to grasp him in her hand like he was just some common plaything, but even she paled in comparison to the ‘giant’ Stellaron Hunter towering over him now. Caelus doubted that he could even match in height against a single one of Kafka’s fingernails – a comparison that she seemed eager to measure for herself as she reached down towards the ant-sized object of her desire.
“Stand still.”
Kafka spoke with a stern yet sultry tone, as though Caelus was a pet she was training to heel on command (and under more relaxing circumstances, it might have even worked.) However, with her hand now large enough to crush an entire train car of the Astral Express with ease and that same hand now fast approaching him, the only thing on the young man’s mind was his fight-or-flight response (and it heavily favored the latter right now.)
With a burst of speed that he didn’t think he was capable of until now, Caelus sprinted away from the encroaching hand. With no hopes of outrunning her, he opted for the quickest means of escape that he knew by tackling the front door of the nearest building (and hoping that his earlier concern about it just being a sticker was unfounded.) Relief washed over him as the door proved to be real and he burst through into the building, only to be swiftly followed by a rush of leather-scented air whipping against his back as he only barely managed to avoid Kafka’s hand closing in around where he once was.
Caelus caught his breath, hunched over in the facsimile of an under-furnished office lobby that he was now hiding in. He only had a moment to do so before the entire entrance was blocked by a single purple eye as Kafka leaned her head down to peer inside the lobby.
Kafka’s chuckle seemed to rumble the tiled flooring beneath him, making his uneasy legs wobble like jelly. “Oh? Are we playing hide and seek now? Are you sure you don’t want to just surrender now? Wouldn’t it be so much easier? Why don’t you come on out..?”
Caelus could feel the familiar sensation of something invisible tugging on him, like he was a puppet and someone was pulling on the strings around his joints. Not a stranger to the Stellaron Hunter’s nigh-hypnotic Spirit Whisper, Caelus shook himself with the reserves of adrenaline he still had left and brandished his bat, spinning it in his hand as a show of might despite the massive size disparity. To his credit, Kafka wisely decided to shift her head away from the entrance, lest the boy lash out like a cornered rodent and deliver a swift swing straight to her open eyeball.
“…Well, suit yourself.” Kafka’s voice echoed down to Caelus as she disappeared from view, standing back to her full height. “We’ll do this the fun way then.”
Caelus’s grip on his bat tightened. He didn’t like the sound of that.
Kafka eyed the adorably small building below her, gently running one of her fingers against its rooftop. She was just so tempted to uproot the whole tower in her hand and keep it as a souvenir, with its ‘honored guest’ inside as a special treat… but even if it didn’t hold the risk of killing the most essential actor in Elio’s script, who was she to destroy something so beautifully well-made?
Besides, she was in Penacony. Didn’t she deserve to indulge in a little entertainment..?
With Blade having returned and confirmed that the mansion was clear for the time being and Silver Wolf having more difficulty breaking open into Sunday’s office than anticipated thanks to the Dreamscape’s ‘clunky’ material, Kafka called her companions over for an interlude.
As she informed the two of them about what she had found and who she had found, Kafka turned her gaze to the Gulliver’s Arch. “Bladie, Wolfie, would you two be so kind as to flush our dear Trailblazer out of hiding for me?”
Blade delivered an indignant glare at the unorthodox proposal, but he nonetheless complied. The sooner he agreed with his handler’s demands, the sooner he’d be done and back to the actual mission. Silver Wolf, on the other hand, was far more keen to post a comment. “Wait, seriously? Why do we have to do it?”
“We can’t risk a member of the Family finding him like this and putting his story to an anti-climatic end, and I’d rather one of us stay on the ‘outside’ here just in case Sunday decides to come home early, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Yeah?” Silver Wolf popped her bubblegum. “And what if he does?”
Kafka smiled as she felt the weight of her submachine gun and its full magazine, ready and waiting in her hip holster. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it. Just go fetch the Trailblazer. Oh, and… you’ll be gentle with him, won’t you?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Silver Wolf fished out another stick of bubblegum and started chewing. “‘Stick to the script.’”
Kafka smiled. “I guess you can go off-script a little. I’m sure you have some ideas..?”
As the hacker looked at the Gulliver’s Arch, her eyes lit up as she was struck by a bolt of inspiration from Kafka’s words. “…Yeah, actually. I’ve always wanted to see if I can mess with one of these.”
Blade glowered as the hacker brought out her wrist-mounted aether editor, manipulating it next to the Gulliver’s Arch. “Can we just move already?”
“One sec,” Silver Wolf said, unable to hold back her grin as she began altering some variables on the portal settings. “Juuuuust gonna make a few tweaks first…”
Caelus was pacing back and forth in the miniature office lobby, trying time and time again to get a signal on his phone so he could let his friends know about his predicament, but to no avail. The stubborn young man was about to try turning his phone off and on again when Kafka decided to tap her fingers on the side of the building, her voice echoing from outside.
“‘Little Trotter, little Trotter, let me come in…’”
A few disparate clouds of chalk and plaster spilled from the ceiling to coat him as she taunted him. Even when Kafka was being as soft as humanly possible, she was still capable of jostling the entire building like it was made of cardboard. The only bright side to Caelus in his current predicament was that Kafka only seemed interested in toying with him more than anything, rather than anything genuinely malicious. Had this been the same situation with Sunday, Caelus assumed that the man would have simply stamped his iron fist down on the building to demolish it before nonchalantly wiping away the remains and building a new ‘less infested’ replacement.
Nonetheless, Caelus couldn’t continue his investigation from the clutches of a self-appointed colossal caretaker. He refused to budge.
“Have it your way. Besides… I’m not the wolf you should be worried about.”
Caelus tensed up. Did she mean Silver Wolf? What could the hacker prodigy be planning for him? Was she going to start deconstructing the model with her aether editor? Was she going to hack the mansion security and alert Sunday? Or perhaps-?
The answer came through the entrance of the building as a leg as tall as Caelus’s whole body kicked down the front door.
Caelus had been ready at first, brandishing his bat with all the fervor of a knight bearing their beloved blade for combat, but that stalwart intensity smoldered at the surreal sight of the Stellaron Hunters’ shortest member needing to stoop her head just so she could fit through the barely-intact doorframe. While Caelus had been scaled down to what seemed like a single puny percent of his former height, Silver Wolf had retained a slightly larger fraction (no doubt a result of her hacking the Gulliver’s Arch for a few alterations in her favor.) To a casual observer, she’d still be comparable to a common insect, but as Silver Wolf entered the lobby and Caelus had to stare up at the woman who was now over twice his size, he realized that even the smallest shift in the ratio had become a big problem for him.
Shards of wood and glass crunched underfoot as Silver Wolf casually stepped over the remains of the door that she had just kicked down. “That was fun. I could get used to this.” The hacker faced down against Caelus and, despite her best efforts, she couldn’t help but laugh as she now found herself looking down on someone for a change. “Hey there, shorty! You gonna come quietly?”
Caelus grit his teeth and raised his bat once more.
Silver Wolf popped her bubblegum before spitting it out to one side and giving an excited smirk to the waist-high warrior. “Yeah, I didn’t think so.”
In a typical physical bout between the two, there was little doubt for who would emerge the victor. Caelus sported a physically-impressive Stellaron-enhanced build, had honed his reflexes through many rounds in the Boulder Town Martial Exhibition, and surviving Himeko’s coffee was proof enough of his incredible stamina. Meanwhile, Silver Wolf was a computer hacker on the short side who hadn’t thrown a punch outside of a fighting game in years.
However, when said computer hacker was standing at an amazonian height, Caelus was feeling less confident about those odds.
It only took a moment for Silver Wolf to close the distance towards him with her long strides. The bout of destruction against the door earlier seemed to have convinced her that weapons wouldn’t be necessary for a duel in her advantage like this. Caelus, by comparison, was more pragmatic and opted to swing hard with his bat as they came into contact with each other, aiming for her hip to try and knock her down like he was chopping down a tree. Caelus felt the bat smack hard against flesh and he exhaled… only for his breath to catch in his throat as he saw that his trusty bat had failed to meet its mark. Instead, Silver Wolf had easily foreseen what the Galactic Batter would try first and simply snatched her hand forward to catch his attack mid-swing with her comparatively herculean stature. Her palm had blemished into a bright red from the blow and he heard her wince through her teeth, but what he had hoped would be a homerun knockout had been downgraded into a mild case of skin irritation.
Silver Wolf saw fit to capitalize on her counter strike by completely wrapping her fingers around the barrel of the bat, contesting Caelus for the right to wield his favored weapon. Caelus was so shocked by Silver Wolf’s disparate strength that he didn’t anticipate her pulling back all of a sudden. The forceful tug by the amazonian woman was more than enough to pull the bat free, disarming and dethroning the Galactic Batter. The Stellaron Hunter looked over the confiscated weapon for only a second before tossing it over her shoulder with the same disregard as her gum.
“Ugh. I thought it’d still be kind of a challenge if I was at least nearly as small as you, but this is a total breeze. Lame.”
Had he really been disarmed that quickly? Caelus was almost thankful that nobody else was here to see the embarrassing display. Still, while his previous bet hadn’t worked, Caelus wasn’t going to surrender to such an obnoxiously condescending opponent. He still had his fists, after all. It was time to take a page out of Aventurine’s book and go all in.
As Silver Wolf went to grab at Caelus’ head to force him down to the floor, the boy juked himself to the side before leaning in with his shoulder and swinging with a series of mean jabs at the abdomen (having picked up a thing or two from Luka back in Belobog.) Ego had gotten the better of Silver Wolf and, while she was temporarily the more dominant physical force between the two, a punch or ten to the gut was still a punch or ten to the gut. Her legs spaced apart and her stance became unsteady as she missed with her retaliatory swings, the speed of her smaller opponent stumping her. Caelus continued his flicker of jabs, darting side to side from the clumsier swings of his larger opponent, and he felt a spark of fiery determination rising inside him – tall or not, he could topple her down.
Unfortunately, ego had also gotten the better of Caelus, and as he went for a cheeky uppercut against his winded opponent, Silver Wolf found her footing (after recalling how Sam stood in the heat of battle) and managed to ensnare Caelus in the same trap as before by catching his attack in her palm. Caelus froze up as his hand sank into the twice-larger mirror like he had tried to punch a thick mattress.
Caelus shook his head. Please no.
Silver Wolf nodded. Afraid so.
The girl clutched her hand shut like she did with the bat, wrapping it around Caelus’ own (along with his wrist and some of his forearm) before putting the squeeze on him. The boy immediately choked back a very inappropriate word as he felt the bones in his hand nearly pop under the pressure. His attempts to pull his arm free of the blunder he had made were met with failure, his limb now pinned in place by Silver Wolf not even exerting that much of an effort in her own twisted version of a never-ending handshake.
The young man’s shame only grew as Silver Wolf decided to lift her arm over her head, taking the trapped Trailblazer up with it. Caelus yelped as he felt something nearly dislocate in an arm that was now tethering him in the air, thanks to Silver Wolf lifting him clean off the ground. Silver Wolf watched Caelus kicking his legs in the air and still trying to pull himself free with all the cold pity of someone holding a bunny rabbit by the ears.
As if to make these humiliating matters even worse, the entrance was cast in shadow once more as the massive Kafka leaned down to peer inside the lobby again, intrigued to see how Silver Wolf was handling the situation on her own thus far. “Well done, Wolfie. He didn’t give you too much trouble, did he?”
Even Silver Wolf seemed to falter as Kafka’s amplified voice rolled through the lobby, but she kept her grip on the captured Trailblazer. “I’d say ‘GG’ but this was a total stomp. Still, being this tall for a change was pretty cool.”
While they could only see a fraction of Kafka’s face, the squinting of her large eye and a single wry laugh made it clear that Silver Wolf’s comment seemed funny from Kafka’s perspective. “You know that you’re only about a few centimeters tall right now, don’t you?”
“Hey, don’t ruin my win!” Silver Wolf rolled her eyes. “Whatever, let’s just take him and-”
Whatever Silver Wolf had planned was interrupted by a desperate Caelus delivering a swift headbutt to the distracted girl’s face. The gamer lacked the same restraint as the Trailblazer, swearing something foul as she staggered back and clasped at her nose for fear that it might be broken – and in doing so, releasing Caelus from the human hand turned bear trap. Caelus wasted no time and immediately turned to flee up the stairwell.
Kafka watched as the Trailblazer escaped further up the building while Silver Wolf sputtered and snorted through her nose, more worried about the whistling noise it was making than her target. “Hm. Don’t worry. Take five, Wolf.” Kafka leaned back away from the building, calling out to their third of the trio elsewhere. “Blade, you’re up.”
Meanwhile, Caelus was getting very nervous about how exactly he was going to escape. Running up to the roof was just a dead end and an open invitation for Kafka to just abduct him with a pinch of her fingers. Deciding that just eluding them on a random floor would at least buy him some time, Caelus stopped ascending around the midpoint of his ascension up the stairwell and (after catching his breath for a moment) switched to fleeing down this floor’s corridor. Maybe he could find a garbage chute or-
A calamitous flash of steel crashed through the far end of the corridor with all the destructive force of a runaway train, and only a miraculously quick reflex to jump aside from whatever was hurtling towards him saved Caelus from being painted against the intruding object, the wall behind him, or a combination of the two. Caelus could practically feel his heart about to explode out of his chest as he lay stunned against the ground, looking up at his own horrified expression reflected in the steel surface of what had just barreled through the entire length of the corridor:
It was a sword.
Blade retracted the sword that he had skewered into the building like it was a training dummy, leaving an open gash across its midsection. While Silver Wolf had tested out a few changes in the variables for the Gulliver’s Arch, she had overestimated the values when she went through first and deployed a quick adjustment for ‘a bit more leniency.’ That single change in a mathematical formula had resulted in Blade emerging from the gate not at the size of an insect like the others, but instead standing eye-to-eye with some of the cityscape’s rooftops.
“Do be careful, Bladie,” A hint of disapproval managed to sneak its way into Kafka’s cadence. “These are such nice models and I’d rather we not break them. Plus we can’t have him dying here, remember?” Kafka leaned closer to better observe the scene below, reminding Blade that even if he was a ‘giant’ in the model city, he was still about the size of a common household pet in Kafka’s eyes.
Blade’s gaze whipped over to Kafka. “If I wanted him dead, he’d be dead. It’s tedious trying to only graze a target this small.” His eyes moved back to the building and, much to his frustration, the Trailblazer had disappeared from view in that brief moment. This abstract goose chase was proving to be exactly the waste of time he had predicted it would be.
Blade stepped back for a moment to take a stance (not seeing any reason to readjust his placement for a poor pre-programmed pedestrian below, trampling the tiny automaton underfoot with a sad crunch and a garbled marketing slogan.) He closed his eyes as he ran his hand against the cracked metal of his namesake, feeling the power thrum across its time-honored surface, like striking a match to light a fire. He aimed to cleanly slice away the top half of the building so that he could simply fish his obstinate prey out…
“Ah ah ah…”
The actual giant present here intervened by pinching her finger and thumb around his sword, pinning it in place with trivial ease. “I think that’s a bit excessive, don’t you?” Kafka chuckled, testing Blade’s strength against her own as she lightly tugged on the ‘toy’ weapon. “Do you need me to take that away from you until you learn how to play nice..?”
Blade seethed with so much indignant rage that he was almost tempted to try wrestling the sword out of her grip (and lopping off a few digits in the process to teach her a lesson) were it not for the concern that he might break his treasured sword.
“Besides,” Kafka continued. “Aren’t you forgetting someone..?”
Silver Wolf’s voice crackled as she barked at Blade through his earpiece. “Yeah?! Do you even know what floor I’m on? Did you ever think of that, huh?!”
There was naught else for Blade to do but look up at the lackadaisical lady looming over him and glare daggers at her before reluctantly relinquishing his weapon. “…Fine.”
“Good boy,” Kafka said, releasing her grip in turn as a reward for his good behavior. “I’m sure you can catch him just fine without cutting him to ribbons.”
“I’m going to break the building down, piece by piece, until he has no choice but to come out, and then we’re going to get back to the mission.” Blade practically spat out the tail end of the sentence, lashing it at Kafka (even if his doll-like stature undercut the menace.)
Kafka sighed. She really did like the model work, but since Blade had already taken it upon himself to start ruining it, she had to give some leeway. Besides, it was rare to see him in such a cooperative mood, and she didn’t want to ruin a good thing. “Fine. Just try not to make too much of a mess.”
Blade turned back to the building, gazing through the windows to try and spot his quarry, while flexing the fingers on his bandaged hand. “No promises.”
The radio piped up again with Silver Wolf’s reasonable reaction. “Can you at least tell me which floor you’re going to start smashing so you don’t, y’know, accidentally kill me, you marastruck lunatic?!”
Blade exhaled silently through his nostrils. He wish he had just joined Sam on their mission instead.
If Blade hadn’t atomized him by nearly skewering him on a sword the size of a train, then Caelus was convinced that the heart attack he had nearly suffered would do the trick instead. The hallway on this side of the tower had been carved away and it was nothing short of a miracle (and adept model craftsmanship) keeping the remaining bits of the ceiling and floor intact. Most of the wall with the windows had been demolished in a shower of plaster and glass shards by the angle of the sword, forcing Caelus to slink against the floor to remain out of sight, only barely hidden by the remaining knee-high bits of construction material that remained.
Could he crawl on his belly all the way to the end and round the corner to the other side of the building? Even so, Blade had clearly figured out which floor he was on, so staying here was a bad idea. Going back down wasn’t in the cards with Silver Wolf no doubt climbing up after him, and going up to the roof was a losing man’s bet with Kafka still just waiting to scoop him and congratulate him on his stupidity the moment he stepped out there. Where else could he go? What could save him in his hour of need..?
Against all of his better judgment, Caelus turned his mind to a certain individual he’d met back in Belobog. Their cheshire smile was just as punchable in his mind’s eye, but the ever-resourceful rogue had indeed imparted a few ‘parting gifts’ to the crew upon their departure from Jerilo-VI, and Caelus still begrudgingly held one in his pocket. Caelus rummaged into his jacket and found an orb the size of a golf ball, with a heart lovingly drawn on its face. The note was still attached to its surface.
“Lots of love from your good pal, Sampo Kindness Koski!”
As if being handled like a rag doll by Silver Wolf for Kafka to see earlier wasn’t humiliating enough, now Caelus was resorting to accepting aid from Sampo of all people? How the mighty Galactic Batter had fallen. For a moment, he wondered if this was even worth escaping from the Stellaron Hunters-
The sound of hurried footsteps in the stairwell sped up the Trailblazer’s decision. Silver Wolf was on the prowl after him, and he had a feeling that she wasn’t going to be in a good mood after the stunt he pulled with the headbutt. Dignity be damned, there was no other way out.
Caelus flicked the fuse on the pocket bomb and deftly lobbed it over the fraction of a wall still standing. Blade had only a second to see light bouncing off a silvery speck in the air before the impish twinkle was replaced with a foolishly high concentration of hot white light from the flashbang. Blade’s composure broke as he snarled, clutching one hand over his watering eyes and lashing out wildly with the other (and sadly doing little more than scraping down the side of an entirely different floor.)
Caelus wasted no time in hoisting himself back to his feet. If up was out and down was out, then that just left going sideways. The building on the other side of the alley below him was fortunately much shorter, with its rooftop just a few storeys below where he was at the moment, and it was even fortunate enough to have a Bubble Pinball machine mounted on its corner.
Still, even if he told himself he wasn’t actually that far in reality, the dizzying fall to the ground below left Caelus worried. What if he missed the jump? Maybe being smaller would cushion the impact that gravity held on him? Maybe the sandpit environment was already altered to account for any accidental trips its tiny visitors might take? Or maybe none of it would really hurt because this was still the Dreamscape anyway?
In hindsight, Caelus realized that he should have thought about these questions before he had already leaped out of the tower.
Fortunately, the Trailblazer managed to cross the distance and his knees met the neighboring building’s rooftop below, and although it was definitely a bumpy landing, Caelus deftly rolled as he hit the ground to soften the blow. Across the road, Blade was still rubbing his sleeve against his eyes, while Silver Wolf had only just managed to arrive at the damaged floor he had been on, and it seemed like neither of them had spotted him jumping out like a madman. He had done it! He’d given them the slip!
Caelus pulled himself to his feet and looked up-
“Having fun down there?”
The voice nearly pushed him back down to the ground again. Above him, the mesmerizing visage of Kafka was hanging over him as though she were the Aeon of Demoralizing Caelus With Well-Timed Interjections. Her expression (which was very difficult to miss from this perspective) radiated with an aloof amusement, like she was watching an insect stuck on its back trying to right itself. Caelus was frozen on the spot, waiting for her to reach forth and grab him like before, but instead, she seemed content to simply stare down at him. Caelus felt a cold sweat on his forehead. Why wasn’t she just ending this already..?
Had she not been so absurdly magnified, Caelus might have missed the corners of Kafka’s lips curling into a sly smile. “Oh, don’t let me stop you. The portal’s right here, see?”
Caelus managed to break from the overbearing eye contact of the giantess, only to look down towards his exit. It was just a street or two away, but the distance wasn’t his concern. It was that Kafka had decided to lounge right next to it, her chest resting against the apex of the arch (and, to his concern, threatening to topple it over if she leaned forward a bit too much.) Her hands rested on either side of the portal as if they were loyal dogs, guarding his only ticket out of this golden-saturated hell.
Kafka wasn’t chasing him because she didn’t need to. He would have to come to her eventually. She was just toying with him now. He had been caught in her web from the moment she found him. Was this all just futile..?
No. A Trailblazer never gives up while there’s still a chance. Grim as the situation would seem, it wasn’t over until it was over.
Kafka smirked, reading Caelus like an open book. “That’s the spirit. Off you go, then.” Kafka blew a kiss (and at this scale, Caelus actually felt a gust of wind wash over him as she did.) He fought against the distraction and continued running across the rooftop. This was a good initiative to take on Caelus’ part, as a now thoroughly-irritated Blade was finally recovering from the flashbang, and a snarl in the distance confirmed that Blade’s eyes (blurred and sore as they were) had spotted the Trailblazer darting across the shoulder-height rooftop nearby.
Adrenaline spiked as Caelus practically dove into the Bubble Pinball machine before Blade could take just a few steps to reach him. There was no time to adjust for an ideal path, and Caelus hammered the red button inside. With a cartoonish whirr, the orb pivoted to a new direction and projected a beam of light towards its twin on another rooftop. It wasn’t as direct towards the goal as Caelus would have liked, but with Kafka guarding the gate, there wasn’t much else he could think to try except evading them until Sunday or his guards returned (which would be another issue entirely, but ‘one problem at a time.’)
Caelus rematerialized and he gave thanks for the solid ground beneath his feet once more… only to blank with fear as he noticed that this wasn’t the flooring near the other Bubble Pinball Machine that he had been expecting. The ‘platform’ he had instead been deposited onto was wreathed in bandages, with the scent of dry blood still clinging to the tattered gauze. In the midst of the Bubble Pinball’s travel path, Blade had rushed over and blocked the beam with his hand, and the device had been left with no choice but to materialize him at this new ‘destination.’ Caelus turned his head upwards from the rough palm to its owner to confirm his worst fear.
Back on Jarilo-VI, Caelus had been cast from the icy peaks of Everwinter Hill by Cocolia, only to be caught by the Engine of Creation. A faithful Architect might say that the Amber Lord had miraculously taken notice of his efforts and was looking down upon him in a warm safe embrace. Looking up at the sanguine pools of the harsh giant holding him now, Caelus did not feel a flicker of warmth nor a shred of safety. Were it not for Kafka’s orders, he figured that Blade would simply snap his hand shut like an iron maiden in what even Blade would consider an unenviable death.
“Is that him, Blade?” Even despite her efforts to speak softly, Kafka’s voice still felt like a rumble of thunder crossing the sky.
A single grunt was all the affirmation Blade chose to gave. The Trailblazer’s ‘platform’ contorted beneath his very feet as Blade deftly twisted his wrist, his quarry no longer standing freely on his palm and instead now caught around the waist in a clenched fist. Caelus fought back the reflex to let out a high-pitched squeal as the giant man clearly had no regard for keeping all of Caelus’ ribs intact.
The large Blade turned his gaze from the lowly boy towards his fellow Stellaron Hunter… only to be met with a similar fate as the even larger Kafka reached down towards him. Caelus held on for dear life (although in the swordsman’s grasp, he didn’t have many options) as a leather-clad leviathan wrapped around the ‘giant’ who had already captured him, its five immense fingers curling around their waist in kind. Caelus felt the Clockie Pizzas he had enjoyed earlier today nearly rewinding back up his throat as the two of them were pulled up into the sky above the model city. If Blade was nauseated by the sudden rush upwards in Kafka’s domineering grasp, he didn’t show it (beyond his usual admonishing glares.)
“Thanks, Blade. I’ll admit I was tempted to just pick up the Bubble Pinball when he hopped inside, but who am I to interrupt a good chase scene?” This had been an entertaining show for Kafka, but alas, all good things must come to an end. “I’ll take him from here.”
Amidst his untimely vertigo, the lilliputian Trailblazer could see a brobdingnagian fingertip positioning itself beside him, while the human in the middle of this unorthodox exchange relented and let go. Caelus barely stifled a scream as he fell out of the hand that had been holding him, only to land on the surface of Kafka’s leather-clad fingertip – and his actual scream afterwards was only stifled as Kafka’s thumb joined its twin to press down on him, smooshing the tiny Trailblazer between the two digits.
Kafka deposited Blade back down to the ground. “Thanks. Meet up with Silver Wolf. You two are free to go.”
Silver Wolf’s voice quickly crackled over their shared radio. “I’m heading out the lobby now, so please watch your step, you enormous oaf. Or do you want to smash some more buildings on the way out?”
Blade barely held back a biting remark about ‘no promises’ as he watched his ankle-high associate exit the building and – now far too irritated and impatient to wait on her much smaller strides – immediately picked her up to carry her back to the Gulliver’s Arch himself (much to Silver Wolf’s shocked protests and loud proclamations that she ‘wasn’t an inventory item, you idiot!’)
Meanwhile, in the ‘sky’ above the model city, Caelus felt like a helpless fly caught in the spider’s web. With Kafka’s purple eye baring down upon him in the vicegrip of her fingertips, it felt as though she was staring right through him. Was he so minute that he was beneath her notice, despite being right in front of her face? Is this what it was like to gaze upon IX themselves? His mind reeled as his insignificance was literally reflected back to him in the ocular mirror of her pupil.
A wind washed over his entire body, and it took a moment for him to realize that it was Kafka shushing with her lips. Even the simple act of shushing was now another reminder of how pitifully small he was.
“There there…” Kafka said, keeping her voice low and sultry as always but now with the intention of comforting the no-doubt-frightened Trailblazer (and to prevent popping his tiny eardrums by accident.) “I’m sure you’re tuckered out from all that running and hiding. Relax. You won’t have to worry about that anymore. You won’t have to worry about anything anymore.”
She may have been kinder and gentler than her compatriots, but despite her best efforts, Caelus failed to feel comforted by a woman who could squash him with just a pinch.
“Let’s take this somewhere more private, shall we? Now, how to smuggle you out…” Kafka eyed herself from head to toe as she considered where to place her VIP, given the lack of free pockets on her fashionable ensemble. “Hm. How about..?”
Caelus was treated to a daunting view as his giant handler carried him over to her neckline, dangling him over the breasts below, now perfectly positioned to cushion the fall and sink him into the hefty paradisaical prison Kafka was now offering. Caelus felt his heart skip a beat as the fingertips pressing in on him began to loosen… only to tighten again as Kafka maneuvered him away from her chest. “Mmm, I’m not sure you’ve earned that. Not yet, anyway. Besides, I’ve just had a better idea.”
With the dexterity and grace of an expert tailor, Kafka tilted her hand to face the palm of her hand towards the ceiling and relinquished her hold on Caelus, watching him slip down the slide of her index finger onto her glove-laden palm. It was a glove Caelus was going to become intimately familiar with as Kafka continued to tilt her hand up, pivoting the decline even further and watching as Caelus rolled down the diagonal slope of her palm like a loose piece of lint before rolling over the bump that was the cuff of her glove. The thoroughly-disoriented Trailblazer quickly clung to the thick rope-like stitches embedded at the edge of the glove, lest he lose his balance and careen off the side of Kafka’s wrist into a fatal freefall.
“Now now, don’t worry,” Kafka said, as though she could read his thoughts. “I’d never let you fall. Here, let me tuck you somewhere nice and safe…”
With her free hand, Kafka reached over and tugged at the tip of her glove, opening it up by a hair’s breadth. Just as Caelus realized what she was planning and began to raise a voice in protest, Kafka smiled and simply pursed his lips for a gentle blow, the wine-scented gust of wind pushing the shrunken Trailblazer down a decline once again, only now into the welcoming darkness of her glove’s opening.
Caelus bounced through the thin gap between the luxurious leather and the pampered skin of his captor, eliciting another chuckle from Kafka as she felt the minute hairs on her hand being tickled by the tiny trespasser, before eventually coming to a stop. Devoid of any light inside the glove, all he could focus on was the sensation of the soft crevice he had tumbled into and the cocktail of aromas brewing inside the glove. Leather and sweat were both overpowered by the thick bodily perfume of his captor, so heavy that it felt like it was dominating his mind with each intoxicating lungful. The young man’s futile flailing in the darkness slowed, his will and his stamina sapping away until he could barely remember what he was fighting against or why it ever mattered.
There was no investigation or Sunday or death. There was no doubt or anxiety or fear. There was no outside. There was only here.
There was only Kafka.
Caelus ceased struggling as the fingers he was nestled between gently pressed upon him in a hugging embrace.
Kafka admired her literal handiwork as she felt Caelus’ protests slowing down until she could barely feel him at all, wedged between her index and middle finger. When she opted to press her fingers closer together ever-so-gently to make sure that her guest was comfortable and secure, she smiled as she felt his protests cease altogether.
A flash of blue and the sound of bubbles popping preceded Silver Wolf and Blade returning through the portal of the Gulliver’s Arch. Blade bumped against Kafka’s shoulder as he immediately marched past her and swiftly returned to the mission (and given how funny this had been from where she was standing, Kafka opted to let it slide just this once) while Silver Wolf rubbed the bridge of her nose and gave a groan.
“Did you have fun?” Kafka asked.
“Does it look like I had fun?” Silver Wolf sniffled with the nose that she was now convinced wasn’t too damaged. “…Well, aside from Blade being a complete neanderthal, it actually was pretty fun to mess around in there.”
The hacker paused for a moment before turning back around and disconnecting the Gulliver’s Arch from the model, placing the portable device firmly under one arm. Silver Wolf didn’t meet Kafka’s gaze, instead choosing to take out another stick of gum. “…I just want a souvenir.”
“Right,” Kafka replied flatly, as if she couldn’t hear the gears turning in Silver Wolf’s head with a hundred different ideas on what to do with that marvelous device. “Well, shall we get back to work?”
Silver Wolf blew a bubble and popped it. Kafka nodded.
As the two women walked through the mansion hall on the trail of Blade (hoping to intercept him before he started decapitating nightingale statues in search of a door mechanism) Kafka looked back down at the tiny niche between her fingers.
Kafka chuckled once more, flexing her glove-laden hand and feeling the gears begin to turn with some fun ideas for what to do with her little souvenir.