As Luna and Sunny changed back from golden and silver statues with clocks in their
pregnant looking bellies, the sense of clockwork efficiency their spiritual aura was
encouraging through the estate vanished with it. No one having a clue where it had come
from or where it had gone. And truth be told, those who were aware of it's short coming
and going on the night shift would indeed miss it.
Helen asked in Kira's mind, herself still a fountain head in the front yard as Kira was a
statue in the entry way, 'You were really hoping you'd convinced them to join our life style
hadn't you Kira?'
'And what if I did?... I have a right to speak out on the virtues of my way of living... We all
made our choice. It's not a crime to offer the same choice to others... '
'Hoping they could have been your brides for eternity Kira? I must say the male mind set
must be effecting you.' Helen said amused.
'Nothing wrong with being male.' Nessie inserted.
'We don't have real genders, we're souls whose bodies are art that happen to appear to
have one gender or another... '
'You could always try to convince some of the pups or cubs to join in, something about one
of those quadruplets makes me think she wants to join us even though she doesn't know
that we even are.'
'DON'T EVEN joke.' Kira thought, 'You think I'd offer this choice to someone whose too
young to even comprehend the full scale of that choice? Don't confuse me with the
monsters who tricked innocent people into signing a piece of paper they felt would protect
them legally from police if it was found out their gallery was full of people.'
'I know Kira I know, sorry. I didn't mean anything by it.'
'What made souled art ugly was that it was just another name for slavery and
imprisonment. We are this way because we've accepted it.'
'And the more souled art we collect the more happy Alpha Kaylee shall be, we know.'
All the living art agreed to that.
Leslie said from her spot next to Nessie and Helen, the zen like feeling of the water flowing
through and effectively being part of Glenale herself being part of her water system. 'They'll
come to us, of their own free will as they should. We call out, they answer back and we'll
welcome them into our sub-pack.'
'I still find it weird we gained this power, game being brain dead or not.' Helen thought.
'I believe simply it was the only way we could indoctrinate volunteers without the direct
power of the game itself. And her, Glendale herself, knows better than ANYONE, having
witnessed all of it, that this game has to end.'
'You know I had an amusing thought, of Kimberly joining our pack after she realizes she
can still be pink as a statue...'
Helen said, 'Her joining us is just fantasy.'
'I know. That's what makes it fun to pretend.'
'Is that why you've chosen to stay male until Luna and Sunny die of old age, marry, or
chose to become part of our sub pack?'
'Heh... I was thinking that load?'
'Yes.'
'I think if they chose to stay mortal and marry someone else I think I'll make myself look
like a statue of one of them for their wedding for fun... It seem Trinity also let some facts
slide, like our particular Transform of fate makes it IMPOSSIBLE for us to be smashed,
broken, stolen, or neglected...'
'Guess that fear back when were in he gallery, alone, unable to speak to each other, and
being smashed, stolen or broke WAS a possibility got to her more than it got to the rest of
us.'
'We were ALL terrified at that!'
'Seems she might have been scared of it more than us. People experience different levels of
fear, it happens.'
+++++
Father Mike, for one of the few times in his life, lost his cool calm demeanor, "... this is not
good, this is not good at all! Not in the least!"
Serenity blinked, "What are you talking about?"
"THERE CAN'T be family size elbow room at the top of the food chain! The eccosystem and
laws of supply and consumption wouldn't allow it! I'm thinking that dragons appear to be
exist in the three digit range at best, and the lion and wolf people I think were pulling
things thin as it was! But MORE sentient species could cause there have been MORE WARS
through history then there already were! It would be horrid!"
Madam Serenity got into a thinking pose, "Maybe things aren't as they appear then."
"Eh?"
"One, Father Paul is still naked while you're still wearing your priestly robes."
Both men started at this, both had gotten so used to it they felt it wasn't even worth noting
or even registering in their minds.
"Two, if everyone who had ever been effected by the game had always been as they were,
then no one would have ever used the game and the game would have never existed in the
first place and as you said before, Anthropic principle. We wouldn't BE HERE making a cure
for the Game if the game hadn't become the silent epidemic it has."
Again the men nodded.
"Three, there are many people who have been turned into objects by the game, many. If
they had always been as they were, then they'd never been in a position to HAVE souls in
the first place, effectively killing them, and reality self seems to be using 'good-bye, never
saw you' as a last resort. Something else is behind this..."
"Something that makes more sense than god's reality having assimilated us into the new
existence?"
"Granted. But maybe we need to think of it from the other perspective, what makes LESS -
nonsense!- You said it yourself that the laws of ecology wouldn't allow for a large number
of equal positions on the food chain. And living art victims would lose their souls and NO
ONE WOULD HAVE EVER PLAYED THE GAME EVER if this continues to shock wave to it's
logical conclusion, and like you said, you wouldn't have discovered the cure FOR the game
if you both hadn't become VICTIMS of the game. It would create a -paradox- and reality
does not tolerate paradoxes. And if no one played the game ever, or at least the levels we
know it's been played, we wouldn't be here creating a cure in such massive amounts to
begin with!"
"I'm pretty sure there is no such thing as being 'semi-assimilated' into reality."
"So am I, but seriously we're all flying blind here. Father, do you still have your ID with
you?"
Father Mike, the one wearing clothes, nodded, and took out his photo, "Still shows a
human being."
"I know this barely makes any sense in comparison, but it could be your curses bled over
due to being exposed to so much of incomplete cure repeated for so long... "
"You haven't changed. And neither has Judas."
"My curse says -in particular- that it's impossible for me to be change, be altered, et
cetera , et cetera. Judas doesn't have a turn at the game.... although, he might have
something else to do with it."
"Explain fully please."
"If he really is a descendant of one of the witches' familiars. Then he might have acted as a
medium causing the curses to bridge over after being weakened by the cure caused by the
fundamental truth in both your minds you're brothers causing your curses to bleed over to
accommodate that."
"Does that even make sense?"
"It makes more sense than us making a cure for a game that if things follow to their logical
conclusion no one ever played! Now let's have breakfast and get back to work."
Judas and the priests all nodded at this.
++++++++++
1680
In spite of Monica shorted and slighted for her now reduced status, she kept her job as a
teacher of the word of the Lord to the next generation. Being told the finer points of the
Lord's word by a fellow child had not been easy for any of the students. And she had to
fight keep her task twice in the last five years.
One of her problem students, Gita, seemed particularly surprised at this. Monica
remembered, all three had come and gone through her class, they had gotten their
christian names and had each recited the christian creeds perfectly. They also never seem
to try to make friends.
In fact, the three girls had a good deal of experience making friends.
Monica's mundane human senses couldn't see the children who they did make friends with
ended up Gold Deer, Fairies, Dolls, or pieces of art.
Monica had noticed she was aging at only relatively half the speed she should have been.
She had her good cry and moan about that and moved on. She knew she wouldn't be
moaning about it soon enough. Though one moment of time of regaining decades of youth
was one thing, aging at half the speed she should have began to get people's attention.
She wondered if she'd have to leave Glendale once she was old enough to find a husband,
again.
Monica did notice however, the girls went through the entire ceremony of receiving their
Christian Names as if they were puppets in a show, there was no emotion behind their
actions during the entire mass at all.
Something in Monica's gut was very happy to see each of them leave her class, and a
feeling of dread when the other entered, though she knew thinking such thoughts about
innocent children was wrong. And they were just innocent children.
+++++++++++
1680
The loud chiming of a clock echoed through the misty streets as a blond teenage girl
walked through the lantern dotted night. She walked calmly and evenly one in front of
another, a lady's umbrella open and laid on one shoulder. Contrary to how she was
dressed, she openly displayed an eyepatch contrasting the entire effect of her demeanor
and frilly dress.
A huge lupin form emerged from the mists behind her. His fur as black as midnight.
"Lovely night for a stroll love... " He whispered hotly to her in one ear, "But a lady like you
shouldn't but out all alone, isn't proper 'en all... why don't I escort you along to where ya
going? Be many a bad man about here tonight I hear. Any old Jack can come along and
damage a pretty thing like you..."
"Thank you but no thank you." She said politely and calmly, being proper and looking him
in the eyes with her good one. She tightened her grip on the little umbrella.
"Oh love, but I insist..." He reached out one giant paw at her shoulder on the side of her
ruined eye in her blind spot.
Immediately in one fluid motion she pirouetted around and released the hidden sword in
the lady's umbrella, slicing into his arm.
"YOU FITHLY MONKEY!" The lupman swore using the racial slur for human being.
He backed off before she could stab him in the stomach. He then dodged to the side and
charged at her blind side, but -again- it was like the eye-patch wasn't even there and she
reacted like she knew where he struck before he did!
The sword went through his paw's major nerve, severing it, she slashed the weapon
between the bones of his claws leaving his hand worthless and bleeding.
This battle not really going how he intended it, and there always being more women
elsewhere, he turned around... exposing the back of his knees. He had gotten exactly five
leaping bounds before he felt something fast and sharp impale him in the legs, causing
him to fall foreword and skid, shedding fur and leaving skin raw.
'This has to be a bad dream!' He thought.
That was when he heard his worst fear, the sound of the police.
He felt someone pull the sharp blades out of his legs and wipe them on his fur, he turned
around and slashed her face off, but he easily dodged it, though there should have been no
logical way a human being could have reacted in time!
She stabbed him through the elbow. He snarled and hissed at her.
"You're the police's problem now, I'll leave you to them."
"Finnish me off!"
"No."
"Do it! Or I swear! I'll hunt you down and eat you!"
"You won't be hunting anything with those legs ever again, good luck on relearning how to
walk."
"Damn you women! Damn all of you! I'll take the lot of you and RIP YOU! And if not me!
Then one of my pups! And if not one of them! Then one of their pups! And he shall RIP you!
And RIP you! Do you hear me!"
The young lady wasted all of five seconds before the police arrived turning her head and
said in a calm even voice, "Good-bye 'Jack.'" And walked away.
The police found the crippled lupman howling and snarling a few minutes later.
++++++++++++
Earlier that morning, Tabby held a letter addressed to simply 'Trevor, leoman.'
"Someone has way too much money." Tabby thought the letter having come overnight
express mail to the station shortly before she arrived, "Or they're really impulsive in how
they spend it."
The men at the station however weren't that interested in her, instead they were chatting
about, "You seen the chief this morning?"
"She seem more rigid than usual?"
"If you ask me she really just needs a boy friend..."
"Don't even joke."
After going through the method to make sure what Tabby had waiting for her wasn't a
letter bomb, the police simply let her go. Of course, Tabby wasn't about to let thing go
that easily!
"I'm her roommates!"
"Sorry we can't just give away where a cop is healing up, we make enemies."
"Ask Chief Gillie! She knows me!"