Render Unto Caesar
It’s Cal again. Been an hour this time.
The squad is back in Cetteville, the ChaotiX and the Cabal are updated on the situation, and we’ve brought Venom with us, who will be staying at a guest room at the School.
We have rooms for humanoids, fluffies, and both. A number of fluffy members live on School grounds, like Bomber, Petra and Launch.
So Michelle is gonna look like a total dumbass when she starts hunting Venom down.
And Pax is gonna figure out that I’ve pulled a fast one sooner or later, he may already know, but I think I’ve bought some more time to put a proper plan together.
We ARE gonna return Venom to Frisco, but when we’re READY.
Of course, if Pax knows that Venom isn’t there, he may go ahead and reveal the truth about Oliver’s death.
Pax gave us a deadline. Presumably, once Carnage and spawn are both there, Michelle’s hunt will begin. Perhaps she’ll go after those two first, as practice before she goes after Venom.
Right now, any time we can buy will help.
Carnage hasn’t reached San Francisco yet, and neither has his spawn, but we have people monitoring every plane landing in San Francisco, and we’ve got a list of every truck headed that way in the last couple of weeks.
Now, the hard part is pinpointing which vehicles Carnage and the spawn are in, but when we do so, we’ll have a rough idea of how much time is left until Pax’s deadline.
As MIKA just said, once they’re both in San Francisco, Pax will be expecting all of us to back off and leave Venom to be attacked by their fluffy half’s former owner.
And you know what will happen if we don’t do that.
Pax thinks he’s already won. He thinks he’s got me in a box, that there’s no move I can make that won’t benefit him, one way or another.
He thinks he’s got me checkmated.
Because here’s the thing, dear readers: even if we give in to Pax’s demands now, it’s only a matter of time until he makes the exact same threat AGAIN, to cajole Cal into doing something ELSE for him. Blackmailers aren’t afraid to move the goalposts. If Cal caves, he’s Pax’s bitch for life.
So the only way to nip this shit in the bud before it gets out of hand is to remove any power his threats may have.
Unless the other four Stones of Octavo fall into my lap sometime this afternoon, we don’t have the option of simply killing the blackmailer.
Killing Pax does nothing to impede the Light of Peace. They’ll probably take over some other unfortunate schmuck, and for all I know, they already have backup bodies arranged.
And they’ll inevitably spin Pax’s death to make Cal look like the bad guy. You remember what Pax said when he revealed his true identity, right, dear readers?
I warned him, he can’t expose me without exposing himself.
That’s the worst case scenario, though. Hopefully, it won’t go that far.
And I know what to do to prevent it from going that far.
The same thing I did last time.
So we’ll take the only option we have, and hopefully, we’ll be free to do as we please in San Francisco. We can return Venom there, kick Michelle’s ass, kick Carnage’s ass, and figure out if we need to kick the spawn’s ass too.
I’ve got Susan and Xavier working on getting everything ready, and assuming that Carnage and his spawn don’t reach San Francisco today...
Well, this time tomorrow, everything will be clear.
Right now, me and Marley are at Faucheuse Tower’s laboratory, meeting with Dr. Sander Gwenn, hematologist and hemomancer, and Dr. Alex Ginger, geneticist.
Both of them are ChaotiX members, in the Unseen Union and Nerd Squad respectively. Our magical and scientific squads, if you really need a reminder.
These two have been working together to use the fragments of Carnage in our custody to track every other piece down.
Hemomancy is just another word for blood magic, and Carnage is the result of his Klyntar half bonding to his fluffy half via the latter’s bloodstream, which is why Sander is involved in this particular project.
He’s the best blood mage on the side of good, even if he doesn’t like calling himself that.
Sander was involved in my empowerment, dear readers. He helped Des make that potion Cal drank to give me my darkness juju during the Vulcanus crisis.
And Sander prefers using beef and pork blood in his craft, because he knows that the superstition about human blood being the best kind to use is just that, a superstition.
So drinking that potion wasn’t an act of cannibalism. Still ironic, considering how I came out to play for the first time.
If we’re all done with the latest round of recapping, let’s move on to business.
Thank you, MIKA.
Sander and Alex are standing in front of a desk, where a computer has been rigged up by a cable, to something that looks like a futuristic black Thermos flask.
Sander taps the flask.
“We’ve got one of the fragments of Carnage in here, Cal. It’s soundproof, before you ask. The young Dr. Ginger and I have made a lot of progress with this endeavor, and we don’t want Carnage to know that.”
Alex is looking at the computer’s screen.
“I’ve told you, just call me Alex, unless Peter’s woolly is in the room. Otherwise it gets confusing, remember. Cal, come over here and take a look.”
I step over to the monitor, looking at the screen like Alex is.
It displays a map of North America, with dark red dots in various locations.
There aren’t a lot in San Francisco, and there are none in Canada or Mexico. Or Alaska, or Hawaii.
“So this is all of them, Alex? Every piece of Carnage?”
Alex nods.
“Yes, and I think we’ve found the piece of him heading to San Francisco right now.”
He points at one dot, slowly moving from right to left across the screen, currently right over flyover country.
“The theory that he has hitched a ride on a plane seems to be correct. Once we’ve identified which plane he’s on, you can easily send some team members to greet him when he lands. Now that we know how fast he’s traveling, calculating his time of arrival won’t be hard.”
“Good, but we’re gonna need a COMP app for this. It’ll help the Carnage Catchers eliminate those fragments. If we can get all of them, Carnage will stay down.”
I point at one dot, which I think is in Oakland, one of several places where Carnage has been sighted before.
“What I don’t get is, he still has a few pieces near San Fran, so why is he even bothering to take a plane there when he’s pretty much already there?”
Maybe the one in the plane is bonded to some poor fluffy? I dunno, Carnage doesn’t really NEED a host, does he?
Because he’s reached full symbiosis with his Klyntar, yes. They’re effectively one and the same.
Yes, but that doesn’t rule out the possibility that he can still bond to hosts, and if he HAS bonded to a host, we shouldn’t assume that the host is a FLUFFY.
I don’t really want to imagine what Carnage with a human host is like. He’s bad enough WITHOUT opposable thumbs.
If he was bonded to a human, he’d have a much harder time stowing away on a plane without getting caught.
Unless it turns out that the Klyntar can turn invisible or something. Maybe he just shaped his biomass to look like a suitcase.
Well, we’ll find out when his plane lands.
Marley floats up, looking at the screen.
“Cud yu twack da spawn of Cawnage dis way, San-dew?”
Sander shrugs.
“If we had a piece of it, we could. The technology is easy enough to repurpose for finding any Klyntar, but we would need a piece of them to do so, and I’m not sure if Carnage’s spawn is pulling that trick.”
I mull it over, looking at the moving dot on the screen.
“I’m not so sure myself. Venom said that the spawn is inexperienced, but might prove to be more powerful than its predecessors. We don’t know what it can do. All we can do is make guesses based on what Carnage can do. Spreading pieces of himself… forming his tail into an axe… and anything Venom can, at least.”
Jack walks over from the area he was working at.
“At any rate, I’d like to be a bit more involved this time. Last time, I was stuck here with the rest of the Nerd Squad, equipping the team with anti-Klyntar weaponry as fast as we could make it, but this time, we already have plenty of anti-Klyntar weapons, and I’ve got my gloves and boots.”
I turn to Jack with a smirk.
“I can’t make any promises yet. Depends on whether shit goes as far south as it did last time. If we can’t handle this with the team members currently in the squad, we might need more heavy hitters. I’ve got the other Omegas, the Saingans and Al’s family standing by, and that’s just for starters. But if it’s just Michelle, Carnage and… Fill-In-The-Blank this time, the squad might be good enough as-is.”
“If you need me, you know where to find me. I’ll be working on the Rails of Time for a while, Val and Suzy have been helping me find some old trains we can Frankenstein together for the frame.”
“And those Dehak Busters are nowhere near completion, so we probably won’t bring Jeff into this one.”
“Cal, I don’t think he’d want to be brought into this one.”
“Ha! Yeah, he had a Vietnam flashback moment earlier. He’s still not ready for the big leagues, but he’s getting there, bit by bit. Let’s get back to the main concern.”
I walk over to Miles, sitting at another desk and fervently typing away, clearly programming something.
“Can I count on you to program that app I mentioned, Miles?”
He grins, keeping his eyes on the monitor.
“Already working on it since I overheard you mention it. I should have a working version done by tomorrow, but it’ll need some fine-tuning…”
I smile at him.
“Good work, Miles. I know we don’t spend a lot of time in the field together anymore, but I want you to know, I’m still proud of you.”
“Cal, mate, what Jack said applies to me too. If you need me, I’ll always be there for you.”
I really don’t deserve that kind of loyalty.
At the Stahlberg house, Kirk lies in a hammock in the back garden, hung up between two trees, wearing his street clothes and limiters.
The hammock is made of webs, courtesy of Reilly, but for some inexplicable reason, Kirk’s webs are black, like Niv’s.
Perhaps it’s just because of their mutual affinity for darkness.
Kirk’s new fluffy, Knuckles, is playing buggy tag with Asimov and Hershey, Erwin’s fluffies, and Argyrum in fluffy shape has joined in.
Argyrum didn’t see the appeal at first, but they quickly became a fan of the fluffy nation’s favorite sport.
As for Erwin, he’s at Cetteville’s flagship Foundation branch, but he’ll be home by the evening, unless the ChaotiX busts another underground fluffy mill today.
Kirk looks up at the sky, the sun getting closer to the horizon ever so slowly.
The expression on his haughty face says that he’s got something on his mind.
“Daddeh, am yu awwite?”
Kirk turns his head, seeing Knuckles looking up at him.
Knuckles is a red pegasus stallion with purple eyes, and a slightly wooly coat of fluff. He’s a flooffy, one of Erdrick and Aurelia’s half-fluffy, half-woolly offspring, but that’s another thing you should already know.
Along with the fact that Knuckles can glide, like pegasus woollies can. The hybrids aren’t guaranteed to inherit the innate gifts of the magical side of their family.
Kirk chuckles, reaching down to stroke Knuckles.
“I’m alright, Knux. I’m just… thinking about something.”
In truth, he’s thinking about the circumstances in which he first met Calvin and the ChaotiX.
Elsewhere, as the tie-dye school bus full of hippies continues its voyage to San Francisco, the host of Carnage’s spawn sits on a bean bag chair, waving his hoof back and forth through the air.
“Wut wuz in dem nummies?”
He hasn’t noticed the big smile on his face.
His other speaks up in his mind.
“Daddyyyyy… I feel kinda straaaaaange… hehehehehe…”
Yes, they’re both feeling the effects of that brownie.
“Wut am su funee?”
“What? Hehehe.”
“Yu keep gigg-win fow sum wee-sun.”
The other replies with a defensive, embarrassed tone.
“N-no I’m not! You’re clearly hearing things. Hehe.”
One of the hippies looks at the stallion.
“Who are you talking to, little dude? Man, that’s strong stuff for a fluffy.”
“Oh, fwuffy wuz jus tawk-in tu fwuffy sewf. Finkin owt woud.”
“When does this stuff wear off?”
Meanwhile, in Atlantic City, outside the local branch of the Caesars chain of casinos, people look up, seeing something big flying down to the ground, glowing with an aura of heat.
THUD
The burning entity lands in front of the casino, slamming his fist into the ground, leaving massive cracks and a crater, making everything shake.
He stands up straight, furling his wings and turning to the casino with a smile on his face.
He can see the people already fleeing from him, and he basks in their fear, even if it’s only a fraction of the fear he used to inspire.
“Yes. This will be a good place to start the incineration. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s…”
The entity marches straight into the casino.
“…and render unto God what is God’s.”