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  • #3129

    Jean-Pierre Duroy, the Grand Intendant of the Palace of Versailles woke up every morning an hour before dawn, when everything was still calm, the last fêteurs of the guest nobility were, at last, fast asleep and the stars’ lights were beginning to fade on the dark sky. The Palace was never sleeping really, but this was as close a moment of peace as he could get.
    His wife Annie, the Head of the Royal Pastries Chefs, would usually sleep contentedly an hour more, waiting for the chantecler’s sonorous hail to the rising sun.

    When he realized he had overslept for the first time in many years of services, he knew there was something not quite right about this particular day.
    As usual, and especially during winter, there was much to be done. Preparing the routine menus for the noble tables, getting his army of little people bustling around to stock the fires with wood for the cold-fearing ladies, clean up, wash clothes, drapes and the darn mirrors. Receive the fresh foods from the local markets, clean up the latrines, which tended to get clogged with the dreaded cold… When that was done, he had to make sure the servants were doing their job properly, not abusing the generosity of His Majesty, taking good care of the Gardens, which was an horror when the snow started to melt, ensuring the guards reported to their duties, etc. etc.
    And after all that, no matter what, do a meticulous accounting in the Royal Ledger.
    Jean-Pierre was but a cog in that enormous machine, but a cog which could make a vital difference between a day gone right, and a day gone awfully wrong.

    He had to turn that day around quickly lest it would be the latter, he thought while putting his white starched breaches. A last look at his wife who was starting to move her weight around and yawn, and he was out.

    #3128
    Jib
    Participant

      Joseph, the puppeteer felt a drop of sweat fall from his left eyebrow. The Queen had frowned. She was selecting the artists for the party and she didn’t seem very pleased by his performance. The string from the puppets kept breaking. He had tried all those he had brought with him and it was his last. Unfortunately he wasn’t responding very well to such a stressful situation. He hoped he’d have listened to his wife when he’d woken up this morning. “Take the frog”, she had said. And he had taken the donkey.
      When the tail of the animal fell from its butt, he awakened in his bed, all wet. His wife was snoring as usual. It all had been a dream.

      #3127

      They arrived to the tunnel, it was almost dawn. Sanso spotted a ghostly flicker near the entrance. The cave network was guarded by a kind of protective spirits who checked your mission order so they could establish the right connection between the way in and the way out.
      Sanso felt a twinge of irritation as he recognized the ghostly figure.

      “Rifraf”, said Sanso as affable as he could manage.

      “Stop”, said Rifraf with a tone cold enough to freeze your spine. “You know the procedure”, he added with his hand stretched in front of him.

      Sanso looked into his rough leather bag to find the mission order. He could swear that the objects and papers had moved on their own while he wasn’t looking. It was a mess. He looked carefully at the paper he found and handed it to the guard. Rifraf seemed to have slowed his movement on purpose. He looked at the document. He looked at it again, looked at Sanso briefly, and at the document again.

      “This document is incomplete, you can’t pass”, said the spirit.

      Sanso looked at the mission order and realized that he had handed the copy. The original had two curly fleurons on the top and on the bottom. That’s why he didn’t like this one, he was a bit too rigid about the protocole.
      Where was this … document ? Sanso looked in his bag frantically as Rifraf was beginning to disappear. Here it was. “Hold on”, he said to the ghost. he checked quicky if there was no other typo or missing element. Everything was there. He just hoped Rifraf would say nothing about the grease stains.

      The guard snorted and nodded, as if reluctantly. He waved his hand and blue torches began to light up, showing the way.

      “Follow the blue lights”, said Rifraf and he disappeared.

      Sanso felt the warmth flowing back in his bones. When Sadie looked out the window, he was feeling much better. “What is taking so long ?”, she asked with a frown.
      “Administration”, he said with a grin.

      She answered with an eye-roll and her head disappeared in the coach. The sun was rising.

      #3126
      TracyTracy
      Participant

        “Is this a breach of time travelling protocol?” wondered Sadie. “Strictly speaking timewise, cork bums aren’t fashionable for another twenty years or so.”
        “Well, I suppose that’s how trendsetters operate normally, how else would fashions change?” snapped Conseula, whose heart was set on a new Gilles Culeau bum. “And if you think I’m going to settle for the sheeps head wig currently popular, when those gorgeous elaborate confections of jewels and feathers are just a decade away, you’ve got another think coming!”
        “I do think it would be wise to wait until we get there first before deciding on costumes, so that we fit in, you know, stay inconspicuous. Not only that, but are all these bums and whalebone hoops going to fit through the tunnel?”
        “Incon fucking spicuous? Us? In this timeframe? Are you completely mad?” retorted Consuela. “Not fucking likely! Say, Chair, can you recommend a wig shop?”
        Sadie sighed, and hoped the tunnel was very wide, and very high.

        #3098
        Jib
        Participant

          “Aaahahah…” Linda Paul ended her laugh abrutptly and looked fearsomely at the three newly dubbed Musqueerteers. “You thought the competition was over, girls ? It had only just begun.”

          The girls swallowed in unison, all pouting disappeared from their young drag faces.

          “Sadie Merrie will guide you through the Time Sewer Machine, and your next challenge will be to arrive clean and shiny at your destination. A broken nail… A lost eyelash”
          The crowd of defeated queens and the other clients gaped as Linda Paul’s kept silent longer than necessary.
          “And you’ll be out. Ahahah. Everybody here will watch you and follow your every moves for this mission. So remain dignified, you represent all the Queens of our time”

          :fleuron:

          When Linda Paul had talked about the Time Sewer Machine, Maurana had silently hoped it was a typo for Time Sewing Machine. But her hope faded away like a crying widow make-up when she saw where Sadie Merry had led them.
          They sadly left the buzz and cheer ups to go through a small door in the backstage of the club. It opened in a dark courtyard. It was already night outside, and a breeze made the young Queens shiver. No light. There was a black hole in the middle of the yard and they could smell what was inside before they could see it.
          “Phew”, said Consuela, “It’s worse than inside Maurice’s pants”. It didn’t help relax nor clear the atmosphere.

          They heard the noise of an engine starting and suddenly the lights went on. Maurana looked behind her back and saw Sadie Merry near an electricity board with blinking lights. Their was something shiny about her whole being. It looked like a protective extensible gloss suit fitting her sobre attire and her beehive wig perfectly. It didn’t seem to touch the clothes or the humongous wig, and yet it was moving graciously around.

          Terry looked at the sewer. The content had begun to turn around and was soon turning fast enough to create a kind of vortex of garbage. “Where are our suits ..?” asked Terry with a hopeful smile, looking around. The older Queen’s gaze killed this hope in a squish.

          “You have to shout your team slogan, girls”, Sadie said flatly.
          “A slogan ?” asked the Musqueerteers. They looked at each others, and Consuela giggled.
          “Wigs for all”, she tentatively offered.

          Sadie Merry rolled her eyes and pushed them in the sewer which was now glowing purple. She could hear the crowd inside the club chanting “Wigs for all! Wigs for all!” She jumped in the trashole, wishing she hadn’t eaten barbecue pork chops before coming.

          #3094
          TracyTracy
          Participant

            “and there were some people singing. They were singing christian songs…”
            The CD in the parcel sitting in Trove’s kitchen from North Carolina was in fact from a family of people who all sang like angels. They had often said that they should start their own church…

            #3092
            Jib
            Participant

              The three drags had rented a limo to go to Linda Pol’s bar. It was located in the Court Julien and the narrow streets weren’t fit for a limo, but they didn’t care. They had to be noticed and a limo seemed the right choice at the time. Of course, they booked it together because they were young and had not enough money for their own personal limo.
              “We should have taken the white one, black is so common and we look like a hearse”, said Consuela, pouting outrageously with her porn red lipstick.
              “The rooftop is not high enough for my hair”, whined Maurana.
              “No, mum, I’m staying at Robert’s house tonight, we are going to work on calculus for the exam next week”, was saying Terry to her… his phone with his normal voice.

              #3089
              TracyTracy
              Participant

                Trove wondered if she threw away all her stuff and went severely minimalist, the endless packing stuff to move dreams would stop. There was an unusual twist to this dream though: they had been living in Kove’s rambling house, presumably on the south coast of England (Kove was Dude’s ex) and when Kove came back home it became clear that it would be a good idea to move out (although there was nothing about the ex part of the actual story in the dream). Trove didn’t know whether to move back to Spain, or back to the Midlands. She wanted to see her grandfather again in the Midlands (even planned on going back there at least for a day or two to see him ~ despite that he had died years ago), but the thought of living there again was like an enormous black cloud. We have to go back down south again, we have to, she thought, and then realized painfully that she was too grown up now or too old to have anyone to move back home to, they would be “on their own” which was not without difficulty for some reason. Then, the packing started. The endless sorting out of mostly rubbish. One of the bedroom cupboards had an oven in it, a filthy blackened hole of grease and debris.

                #3074
                TracyTracy
                Participant

                  The parcel had been delivered to her house, and not to her new friend and neighbours house just down the road, for various reasons mostly to do with efficiency, post offices and lack of specific house addresses. The parcel containing the music had been sitting in her kitchen for almost a week, which oddly enough was probably as long as the parcel had taken to travel from North Carolina.
                  Trove (for that was her name) and Dude (for that was her partners name) played a tile game of rummy, and it was an unusual game that night. Dude noticed missing tiles on the table on at least five occasions, and not altogether unsurpringly assumed that Trove should have been wearing her glasses, instead of placing incorrect sequences with missing tiles. Trove on the other hand, bearing in mind that she was not in the habit of doing this normally, insisted that the tiles had simply disappeared, or changed somehow.

                  #3022
                  Jib
                  Participant

                    “And now, breathe in, a little bit more… and let it out.”

                    Amanda didn’t think it possible for her chest to expand more than it already had. She swayed her body, hoping that maybe it would allow more air in. It was useless, she had the impression she had lost some air. Perhaps she shouldn’t breath too deeply when Johnette… no, when the goddess speaking through Johnette asks them to breathe in.

                    She had been introduced to Johnette and the Goddess of the Antic Earth by her friend Mona, whom she hadn’t seen in years and when she fall upon her the other day, she convinced Amanda to come to the Earth Circle Group and try the meditation “because it is so fun”. But Mona didn’t come to the circle the first time, and she hadn’t come either this time. Amanda didn’t know why she came back, she hadn’t felt anything the first time. But they had asked her if she was coming to the next meeting, and she couldn’t say no.

                    “Allow the divine breath of the goddess to fill your mind and your body with its pranic power of sustentation. And take another deep breath.”

                    And there, she had been thinking again, she had lost the rythm. She managed to exale silently with a few contortion of her body and caught up the group with shorter and shallower movements of her chest. It was exhausting.
                    “It’s only been the second time”, she reminded herself. No need to tell that she wasn’t feeling at all the effects of the pranic power of sustentation. Her body was more tense after the sessions. And the worst was her disappointment when all the others would talk about the wonderful experiences with the goddess and her angels. Johnette had told her it would come, and that she needn’t worry. She had to be free of her expectations and certainly not compare herself to the others.

                    The group was composed only of women. Except Norman, but he didn’t count. He was with Bianca. Amanda was sure that she had a wonderbra. She couldn’t have such a perfect breast at her age. And she didn’t seem the kind to have her breast reconfigured. She chuckled at the idea.

                    “Ahem.”

                    Amanda winced. Johnette was frowning. Or was it the Goddess. The idea gave Amanda the creeps.

                    “Now; clear your mind, my friends, for the next location will be revealed.”

                    Amanda had no idea what the Goddess was talking about. But according to the loud whispers, the others knew, and were expecting it. She noticed that the Goddess wasn’t frowning and caught a fleeting smile.
                    Johnette’s body began to shake and the most disturbing whale sound filled up the room.

                    “Sorry,” said Bianca, “wrong CD”.

                    #3018

                    Special Detective Bryan Connor of the Third Task Investigative Unit of the Surge Team Force pored desperately over his case notes. He’s been tracking the elusive Wordblade ever since the Wordblade almost wiped an entire Verse civilization off the face of Demonta, where the surge began. He scratched his temple feverishly & clamped his eyes shut. The Wordblade’s latest massacre occurred on Twitter, where he publicly slaughtered the alphabet.

                    “How is it possible that he cannot be caught?” He pondered aloud. “He commits deed after deed of expression & he cannot be accounted for.”

                    Just then, Mari Fei strode through his marble-walled office. Her commanding stride elicited an aura of assurance and regal confidence, & Connor turned around & met it with relief sighing through his breath. “Ah, Professor Fei of the Institute of Spirit/Consciousness. I’m so glad to see you. Perhaps you could-”
                    “Assist you in locating Wordblade?” She chimed in. She laughed heartily at the sight of Connor’s astonished & mildly bewildered expression.
                    “Don’t bother yourself with asking me how I know. I just do.”
                    “Ah, then I have no need to impress the severity of these circumstances. The Wordblade’s elusive deeds are overwhelming: he seems to be intently breaking every rule for the sheer fun of it & he doesn’t care.”
                    Professor Fei slowly walked pass him & climbed up the spiral stairs that led to a balcony overlooking the vastness of the Murtuda Galaxy. The Murtuda was the biggest galaxy in the southern Universe, & by far certainly the biggest, boasting a total of 125 portal-highways that bore the blood of intergalactic travelling.
                    “Bryan,” she sighed. “Don’t concern yourself with catching Wordblade or understanding his motives. That young man is a danger unto himself, so we just let him be.”
                    “But if we let him be then we may never calculate the amount of havoc he could wreak!”
                    “I know that, but the issue still-”
                    “No!” He broke her off. “The Counsel always justifies his deeds as an issue of self-freedom. He’s out there slaughtering alphabets & kicking poets’ butts for being normal & the Counsel embraces that?”
                    He became silent for a moment, contemplating the Professor’s response. He knew he took a bold step but the Surge Team was on the verge of capturing Wordblade & they needed as much help as they could.

                    When the Professor turned around, she looked calmly at him.

                    #3009
                    TracyTracy
                    Participant

                      It was the month of mass lunacy, and all through the house, all the creatures were snoring, except the mouse. All mad as Almad on the Rides o9f March, Mari Fe cackled out loud, then pulled a face, remembering the feel of the spongy mouse between her fingers in the kitchen sink. Expecting the blockage in the drain to be dog hairs, the surprisingly solid but spongy feel had been a shock, and the sensation had lingered nauseatingly.

                      How long had he been in the mop bucket? Then it dawned on her ~ the dog leg riddle. Of course! He appeared just after the first dog leg clue ~ and no doubt left, via the mop bucket, when the dog leg riddle was solved.

                      Mari Fe shivered, it was all rather spooky. No wonder she felt a bit mad.

                      #3006
                      Jib
                      Participant

                        The pond was full of black tadpoles. The creatures were wriggling restlessly, following invisible currents, connecting dark stains packed with thousands of them. Benjamin Goat immersed a small plastic bottle into one of the biggest node, it sucked the little buggers like a fat syringe.
                        “Such a small container won’t reduce their population too much”, he thought. Indeed, he had always wondered why there were so many of them in the early stages and why you would see so few frogs or toads. The remaining tadpoles were beginning to gather around his hand. He repressed a shiver. A new idea for a movie just sprang up from his subconscious. Something to do with man-eater tadpoles. That would certainly hit the box office for months.
                        He smiled. There were enough of them in the bottle.

                        “Yuck!” said a fat pink lady before licking her strawberry ice cream.

                        “It’s for my son”, said Benjamin just before realizing he was justifying again. His psychiatrist had told him there was no need for justifying, it was like apologizing, and he needn’t apologize, he was the great Benjamin Goat after all. He snorted and mimicked drinking from his bottle. This time, she was disgusted. She made the mistake to hold her ice cream too far from herself and one of those Gib’s monkey with the pink ass stole it. She was shouting now, people would pay attention to her instead of him. People always pay attention to what’s more annoying.
                        Paradoxically, he felt a pang of jealousy. He was not used to let go of others’ attention.

                        His cell phone vibrated, three long vibrations and seven short ones. The code for his secret society. It was a great idea to put it in his last movie, unfortunately it hadn’t had the desired effect. People were so gullible that they would believe everything that came out in a fiction movie.
                        “The Jesuit is in the place”, said a vocoded voice. That was all. It could only mean one thing. It was all going according to the plan. He smiled and handed out the bottle to a kid. He wouldn’t need that after all.

                        #2997

                        After a few months travelling from Spain to France in their quest for the dragons, with already two visa applications for China rejected, endless unkind mocking laughs or condescending looks from strangers, and having had to pawn temporarily the sabulmantium to buy Vincentius a shirt, Arona and her motley family were thinking it was time for a turn of fate.

                        It didn’t take them too long hopefully.
                        Of course, the sabulmantium was recovered as soon as they had realized it was actually more lucrative in this dimension to have Vincentius take off his shirt in shady bars at night for a few meals and lodging, and some little extras. Mandrake had been kind to provide ample squeaking mice supplements, which Arona had politely declined, for which Mandrake faked each time the saddest of disappointments. All in all, so far their life on the roads had been easier than she would have thought.
                        Of course, they’d lost Sanso a few times as he couldn’t stay at one place for too long, and keeping track of his movements was near impossible. So they relied on trust that he would always find his way, which surprisingly enough, he did every single time.

                        He had been the one to provide them with the way to the island actually. One day, after weeks without news, he’d reappeared, hammering at the door of their little room at the top of their 9 storey hotel in Paris, near the St Honoré Market Place. He was wearing the quaintest bright violet velvet surplice, and was carrying a bottle of glowing green liquor.

                        To settle in a lovely island of the Ocean they called Pacific… It didn’t take too much convincing: Paris was starting to get boring, and far too cold. Arona missed the moist glowing warmth of Leormn’s cave, that was so good for her skin. She didn’t miss the riddles though.

                        The entry point of the tunnel was inside the catacombs, and they’d almost got lost a few times, she could have sworn, although Sanso was ever confident they were on track, even when a few dead-ends were staring at him in the face with toothless skulls grins. But after a few hours, the tunnel actually broadened, and glowed a lovely shade of orange.

                        It was funny, traveling through the Earth’s crust, made her almost feel at home. If all the dragons of this realm had left, and were hidden somewhere, she was certain it had to be to such a place. It gave her hopes again to meet one in this strange land which had forgotten magic.

                        #2981
                        Jib
                        Participant

                          Have you ever dreamt that you forgot to put your pants on to go to school or to go to work? How did you feel in the dream ? Ashamed ? At ease ? Were you wondering how you got there in your undies ?
                          Dream memories were flying in Madam Li’s head. It had been a recurring dream in her childhood and her most dreaded fear. She had always checked on twice before living her house that she had a dress or trousers long enough to hide her ankles.

                          Her cell phone didn’t have any battery left and she was late. She would have to find one in the street. She ran out of her apartment after having checked her outfits twice and reassured took the elevator. She had her bags with warmer clothes inside for when she’d arrive in Harbin for the ice festival. She looked nervously at her cell phone again, still no battery of course. She put it back in her handbag. Someone entered the elevator, 30 more floors to go. She gasped when she realized the man, a westerner, had no pants on. She looked away quickly. Was he not aware of the missing element in his outfit ? She decided to make as if everything was normal.

                          Things went worse when she got out of the elevator. There were two men and a woman waiting at the check out desk, and they had pink underwears. Apparently the first man didn’t know them and the service apartment employee behind his desk didn’t seem at all surprised by the situation. When it was her turn, he looked at her, and at her long dress. She gave him the keys and as he turned away to put them back on the wall, she noticed that he was bare legs too. Something was wrong. Was it a surge in the population ? Would she have to stay here longer ?

                          #2971
                          TracyTracy
                          Participant

                            Katarina knotted the scarf under her chin and grinned at her reflection in the mirror. The disguise was comfortable, colourful and effective. The carpet shop was located on a coordination point in an alley off Fountain Square, easy enough to find with a CP nav ap. There were several ordinary carpets hanging in the window and piled up near the door, in case any unsuspecting normal tourist chanced on the CP, but the new stock of old flying carpets was ready in the back room, awaiting approval from the Surge Team representatives, ready for the flight to Moscow.

                            #2968
                            ÉricÉric
                            Keymaster

                              Madam Li contemplated the pill-like translucent object glowing bright red which could barely fit in the palm of her delicate hand.
                              People usually said that you could try and hide your age as well as possible on your face, but that hands didn’t lie. Hers actually were still a young woman’s fine delicate and smooth work-of-art.
                              The snow had stopped immediately, leaving the weather in the Pudding area as it used to be: a pale mist of polluted fog, thus returning Shanghai to its normal weather patterns. The rote was there in her hand, full of the last surge’s energy, a tempting promise of uncontrollable power, but she had seen far too much power struggle and horrors to be really tempted by it.

                              Ed’s demise had taken her by surprise. Although she did look young, it was her heart who really betrayed her. She hated people leaving her, and she would have expected Ed to survive her own death. It was the first time she was considering ever so briefly the thought of retiring. Of course, she still would need to find a replacement at her post, but China was full of eager potentials, that wouldn’t take too long.
                              Putting the rote in the diplomatic case, her gaze trailed on the invitation, still on the table. She wasn’t ashamed to admit her first thought went to the cleaning lady who had been careful to dust all around it, without moving it an inch off the glass table top.
                              Spain just came as an afterthought, already having lost its appeal as soon as summoned.

                              Wrapping herself in her white fur coat, she called for a taxi. She would be just in time for the ice festival in Harbin with a warm dog legs’ soup and some yak butter tea.

                              #2961
                              TracyTracy
                              Participant

                                Pearl sighed. “I can’t find the location. Even the dog leg method didn’t give me any clues. I’m going to forget this for awhile and have an hour on Flackbook.”

                                Mari Fe breathed a sigh of relief, and tried to erase Moscow from her mind. But before she had time to refocus, Pearl shouted “Aha! Katarina inserted the address on my newsfeed. Here is it, Mari Fe, look!”

                                It said:

                                “19 January at 15:00 in UTC+03

                                Каждую субботу начиная с 08.12.2012 на Лубянской площади / Every Saturday Moscow, Russia, Bolshaya Lubyanka 2, 107031”

                                Mari Fe groaned.

                                “There’s more!” Pearl said, “Baku / Azerbaijan “ ‎12.01.2013 Армия во время митинга в Баку”. She looked at her watch, and frowned.

                                “Mari Fe, prepare for teleport right away. We have less than 6 minutes to get to Azerbaijan. Toot! Toot!”

                                “But I only have one pair of thermal socks and one Norwegian wool sweater!”

                                “Oh cheer up, Baku is among the world’s top ten destinations for urban nightlife, so I’ve heard. And Baku hosted the 57th EuroVision Debt Contest in 2012, too. We’re going to Fountain Square you’ll love it.”

                                Mari Fe set a strong intention to arrive in summer.

                                #2959
                                Jib
                                Participant

                                  Humans were not the only one worried by all the surges or strange events happening on Earth, or under Earth. I’m not talking about Lemurians or Atlanteans having taken refuge in the center core of the planet or anywhere else. I’m talking about a people counting more individuals than humanity could ever add up.

                                  Ant 23532353577321 of the colony under the hill didn’t have a name. But it had been chosen for a very important purpose by the Queen. At first it wondered why it was so that such a small ant among the countless other ants would be chosen. Its little brain even began to wonder about chance and probability, but in the end when the Queen summoned it, she told Ant 23532353577321 that something happened when she expelled the 23532353577321st egg. An impulse of the Queen that she herself didn’t quite understand. And the Queen was quite intelligent because she could use the countless minds of her ants to think and to analyze and to evaluate. But an impulse, she couldn’t understand because everything she ever did was calculated and carefully thought.

                                  Anyway, that impulse led to a change in her hormonal system at the very moment that she designed the egg. It was not a worker egg, neither was it a soldier egg, nor a prince or a princess. The Queen herself didn’t quite know what it was but she was sure Ant 23532353577321 was special and doted of unknown qualities. During the few ant years that had gone by since that moment, the Queen’s gigantic mindnetwork came to the logical conclusion that it could be a consequence of the surges. BUT, the smal spark of Ant 23532353577321’s mind, introduced the unexpected in the equation and the reflection, and the Queen wondered if Ant 23532353577321 came here for a purpose. Logically, another question followed : what purpose ?

                                  #2955
                                  ÉricÉric
                                  Keymaster

                                    While stroking his mustache fondly, Ed Steam had the clearest realization that although he’d done that quite a few times in the past mostly to his advantage, it was a lot of work to rewrite timelines and figure out the hows and whens of everyone in his team.
                                    Maybe it was actually time for him to restore the original timeline while disappearing — by faking his own death to be certain nobody would thwart his carefully thought retirement plan. Then, he could also stop dyeing his mustache he figured… So many things to take care of, retirement would be so sweet.
                                    Although the Egyptian timeturner gave him all the time in the world, he actually felt like he’d lost already a great deal too much of it, and started to enact his plan without further ado.

                                    Procuring a body double was actually not so hard. The last surge had brought a few of them in Thrifteen’s Alley in their Moreguest Facility. A switch and a twist of the pocket portal and a zap and a blink of the miniaturizer was enough to get there and come back in seconds with a frozen pocket-size life-suspended body from the testing stock, with convincing enough miniaturized slim lips, safely put in a test tube in his waistcoat pocket.
                                    A six-shot cudgel from his artefact war trove was all he needed to make sure the amateur assassin in red robes they’d hired would be taken care of easily.
                                    Then, an enscombulator bedazzler ray spray would be enough to convince Mari Fe she’d managed to hit him, buying him time enough to then deminiaturize the thawed slim-lipped body double, to slip in his stead.
                                    Last, but not least, he would then have a few seconds to discombobulize Mari Fe while disappearing with a backup transportable portal. The plan was perfect. The original timeline restored in pristine conditions.
                                    Only for a few minor details of course. He’d almost forgotten to reprogram the mini-man in his pocket with enough memories for him to be a convincing Ed-himself sans la moustache of course. At least, for the short time he would survive (surge victims discovered still alive were placed in life suspension by the team, but this was mostly for medical analysis as they usually wouldn’t survive their conditions).
                                    Oh, and the bloody mustache of course… A squeeze of foolicle solventilator would be enough to make it temporarily invisible.

                                    Simple enough… Well, sandbagging Mari Fe would have probably conveyed similar results with minimal efforts, although the elegance of his plan, as well as the fact that he was loath to hit ladies did unmistakably weight in favour of it.

                                    And with that, he would be back in time for dinner.
                                    In fact, he already was.

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