Archive | January 30, 2016

Trouble in Cloverleaf, continued, for @InspectrCaracal, exactly 409 words

after this.

This story is of questionable canonicalness – it probably happened, probably about 100 years after Cya & Leo graduate from Addergoole (or about 93 years after the end of the world) – but the exact date is up in the air, as well as some details.

It follows the Apollo/Boom stuff you can find on top on the Boom tag by about 2 years.

Luke knew he wasn’t thinking straight. He was flying erratically. He was having trouble controlling his wing movements when not in flight. His fists were clenching and unclenching. He hadn’t been this stressed, this worried, in decades.

There were groups the Addergoole teachers and staff monitored, most but not all of them Addergoole grads. Boom had always been Drake and Luke’s purview, because they were the two teachers least likely to be sent away.

Luke knew, more than anyone else outside the crew, how Boom was balanced, and how precarious that balance was. If Cya had just thrown that whole balance out of whack – for whatever reason – he was looking at chaos, disaster, and the possibility of World War Four.

He landed with a thump far enough outside the city to not worry their guards. Cloverleaf had an efficient police force. He’d always assumed they needed such a force to deal with the threats of this post-apocalypse world: dragons and Nedetakai, lawless humans and the few remaining returned gods. He’d counted their numbers and wondered what would happen if he had to attack Cloverleaf, or if Cloverleaf attacked Addergoole, but he’d kept his concerns secret. Regine didn’t need to know. Mike would draw his own conclusions.

Cynara balanced by the rest of her crew would not go to war with Addergoole. The rest of the crew balanced by Cynara would not go to war with Addergoole. He’d watched them and run the numbers. He’d talked it over quietly with Shira and Laurel; he’d decided they weren’t a threat.

And now, now when he’d gotten everything calm, when he’d gotten used to the stability of Cloverleaf on his border, when everything had been normal for fifty years, now Cynara had to go and screw everything up.

Why? He stomped through the city, not minding that he was making a scene. He’d been visiting enough that they were comfortable with him now – guards, runners, shopkeepers. He’d been here enough that he was comfortable here.

He wondered if that had been part of Cynara’s plan. He’d been thinking of her as sort of a mini-Regine, and Regine wouldn’t have thought of calming down the opposing Mara. But Regine was a scientifically-minded super-genius Grigori (if that wasn’t saying the same thing three times), and Cynara hadn’t even gone to college.

What was she up to, and why now? He stomped into Leo’s dojo, ignoring the students who tried to stop him.



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