#the line about the energy grid in particular goddamn

[ruffsficstuffplace]

The Keeper of the Grove (Part 72)

The dining hall of Manor Schnee had been temporarily turned into a combination situation room/planning area/mess hall for the space and the slapdash nature of their operations.

Among other Queensguard, Agent Gumshoe waited there, pulling out a Fizzle Stick from her breast pocket, putting it into her mouth, and lighting it with her antique Zippo. The tip of the candy started to crackle, the sugar inside it melting and pouring out the other side, and she began to chew.

“They say we were all lucky that we came when we did, guns blazing and putting all kinds of holes in the plans of the Heralds and whoever the hell the ‘Council’ are,” she said. “Poor bastards don’t realize we Queensguard didn’t have the winning numbers on our tickets, and probably never will.”

Used to it, and with their own eccentric quirks beside, none of the other agents commented.

“It’s a hard life, being a Queensguard.

“You got your personal issues, your awful pasts, and your honest desire to make a difference in this world and help people out by putting holes in others, wondering if you’re a fuckin’ hero who deserves a parade, or just a gun with two legs someone else is throwing into the fray for them.

“Then you join the program, and everything goes to even deeper shit.

“Physical training that’ll make the Old World’s Marine Corps weep. School, the kind of eyebrow burning usually done by people lookin’ to tack some fancy letters to their name, have people callin’ em Dr. Whoever-The-Fuck. And don’t get me started on the third part of our training…

“Psychological Conditioning’ they call it, if only because ‘Mental Torture’ doesn’t sound as nice.

“They build us up, then seni through straight through hell and back, then send us back for however many go-arounds it takes before we break. Then they pick the pieces up, glue ‘em all back together best as they can, rinse and repeat, until they either wash out, or they come out the other side one certified Badass Motherfucker who can take on goddamn anything.

“You can’t do something like that without leaving plenty of scars, though, some of them more obvious than others.

“Take Agent Qi, here. Fuckin’ obsessed with the number 7, and his fancy revolver.”

“Seven is life,” Agent Qi said. “Six bullets, one barrel—seven.”

“Won’t say no to a mission that doesn’t have anything—and I mean anything—about it that is or adds up to seven, be it the time the shit’s going down, the letters in the name, or even the coordinates on the map.

“But if it does, you can be sure as shit he’s going to coast through all that with a smile on his face, like he’s the luckiest man in all the realm.”

“Then there’s Agent Gwendolyn, AKA ‘The Knight.’

“Lost her whole team in a mission where she was shadowing all the other functioning nutcases we call ‘Queensguard Agents.’ Almost died along with them—had actually, for a few seconds before her suit’s revival protocols kicked in and zapped her brain back to life, but either something went wrong in the process, or it was that particular moment that she cracked like the rest of us Rank 7’s did, got it in her head that the only way she was going to get through this and more if Gwendolyn died, and was reborn as someone better.

“So now she goes around narrating everything like me, except she calls herself ‘The Knight.’”

Everyone stopped as a new agent walked in, carrying a tray of food in her still armoured hands.

“Hello everyone,” Winter said.

Gumshoe pulled out the free seat next to her.

“Thank you,” Winter said as she sat down, and began to eat.

“You’re welcome, doll. If’n you don’t mind, I’m gonna continue my whole shtick with you.”

“Go on ahead, Gummy, it’s not like it isn’t all over the Info-Grid,” Winter replied.

“Thanks, doll.” Gumshoe replied. She chewed what remained of her fizzle stick for a few moments, then continued.

“And then there’s Winter.

“You’d think the name was her call sign, seeing as she’s got a reputation for keeping her cool through everything; melting her walls and becoming the warmest damn person you’d ever met in your entire life if it’d serve her mission well to butter you up before she cut straight to your heart like a hot knife; and being more than a little bit of a bitch, but no:

“That’s what her grandma named her, like she could see in the future and decided to save a future lover the trouble of nicknaming her their own version of ‘Frosty the Snowbitch.’

“So what’s wrong with someone who sounds like the mythical Queensguard Agent that makes it through training completely intact? Even someone who looks about as well-put together as can be like Ironwood has got his issues.

“Five words: The Keeper of the Grove.”

Winter choked on her food. Gumshoe picked up her drink for her, she took a long swig then sighed in relief.

“You need me to stop, sweetheart?”

“I’m fine...” Winter whispered.

“If you say so. Anyway...

“As Fear is a pretty helpful emotion for getting your ass in gear when you need it to, she didn’t beat it out of her so much as she made it so that she was scared of as few things as possible. Maybe she might get startled or uneasy, but never shitting-your-pants terror.

“It had seemed like a good idea at the time: she was already pretty well and tramautized from a horror show way back when she was still a sweet and innocent kid, and what would be the problem with being scared exclusively by someone that only existed in myth, pop culture, and really bad costumes on Eve of the Ether?

“When it turns out they live in Reality too, that’s what!

“As the Keeper was terrorizing her and her little sis in this very mansion, us crazies in the Queensguard thought Winter had finally broken for good, that this time, there would be no picking the pieces back up and gluing them back together. All we thought we were doing when we hauled her conked-out ass back to base was fix her as much as possible before we set her up for a nice, quiet civilian life with a hefty pension and a whole lotta perks beside.

“Then we all watched the Keeper 86 her sister on live holovision, and it turned out that the only thing in little tiny pieces that couldn’t be put back together was what we thought was reality.

“Nothing new, really, considering all the other crazy shit that happens in Avalon that necessitates an even crazier bunch of loons willing to protect it—AKA the Queensguard—but it still caught us all off guard.

“By the time we realized our big mistake, her sister was dead, the rest of her whole family was in the ground or may as well have been, and since she only ever kept working for us to keep her sister safe, she had pretty much lost everything she ever gave a fuck about.

“And what do you do with someone with nothing to lose?

“Give them everything to gain—namely, the Shepherd Suit Mk. IV, the latest in the line.

“First, Piper’s gearheads strapped guns and sturdy pieces of scrap metal to exo-suits originally made for hauling boxes around, then we started slapping armour and weapons designed specifically for getting shot and shooting right back, and then we shrank it down so you if you wanted to enter a building, you’d only have to duck to avoid banging your head, than break down the door and take a good chunk of the wall while you were at it.

“So where do we go from there?

“You make it smaller, faster, and strap some wings and the very cutting edge in energy-weapons to it, is what you do.

“There’s only three things that are keeping the Big Guys Upstairs from equipping every single trooper with these:

“One, it’s expensive as hell to mine, refine, and use this much Exanite and a shit-ton of other super-rare metals that all the armour, the weaponry, and the wiring needs.

“Two, it eats up power like a bus full of relapsed alcoholics at last call for Happy Hour, which is why it’s a damn good thing it can take out entire armies in the blink of an eye.

“And three, once you put it on, you can’t ever take it off—unlike its older siblings, the spine-jack on this thing becomes part of your actual spine.

“We thought we were just making the best of a very bad situation like usual, squeezing out some more use out of someone we thought we were going to have to put out to pasture, and who didn’t want to go there yet, either.

“But it turns out, the timing couldn’t have been better, because now the little sister turns out to be a whole lot less dead than we thought, we’ve got a messiah gone missing and possibly rogue, and a whole bunch of loonies with alien magitech and animal ears running about the whole realm causing hell and talking about something they call ‘The Truth.’

“You could be blind, and still read all the signs pointing to the one place that has the answers to all the latest mysteries Avalon is throwing at us:

“The Viridian Valley.

“So how many of us loons are going with you out there, soon as it gets dark and we don’t get turned to people-jerky soon as we step out the barrier?” Gumshoe asked.

“None,” Winter replied. “I’m going in with two Tinmen, and that’s mostly for recharging my core.”

Surprise came over all the agents faces.

“Seriously, doll?” Gumshoe asked.

“Yes, seriously,” Winter replied, her serious expression the most serious the others had ever seen.

“Sure you won’t end up putting your waste-management subsystems on overdrive when you eyeball her?” Gumshoe continued.

“I’m sure,” Winter replied. “I may have been absolutely terrified of the Keeper for almost all my life, but that ends now, because the face of my nightmares has kidnapped my little sister, brainwashed her, and seduced her.”

She raised her fists to the sky and started screaming.

“DO YOU HEAR ME, KEEPER?!

“YOU SEALED YOUR FATE WHEN YOU ‘KILLED’ MY LITTLE SISTER ON LIVE HOLIVISION, AND I’M ONLY MORE DETERMINED TO UTTERLY ANNIHILATE YOU NOW THAT YOU’VE KISSED HER ON LIVE HOLOVISION, TOO!

“I’M SCORCHING YOU WITH MY LASERS LIKE BOTH THOSE SCENES WERE SCORCHED INTO MY BRAIN—ESPECIALLY THE SECOND ONE!

“SERIOUSLY! WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!”

Winter sighed and got up from her seat. “Excuse me, everyone, I need to go get some last-minute repairs and upgrades before my big mission...”

“You do that!” Gumshoe yelled, as she and all the other agents were gathered up at the furthest corner away from Winter as possible, holding up their guns and projecting shields.

Winter left the dining hall, the agents slowly returned to their seats.

“Turns out there’s a fourth downside to the Mk. IV!” Gumshoe muttered as she chewed the last of her fizzle stick, pulled out a new one with shaking hands. “If it turns out the person you put it in is STILL pretty batshit insane, getting them out of the suit is going to be a LOT harder than putting them in…

“Like I said: we thought it was a good idea at the time...”

#rwby #fanfic #the keeper of the grove #white rose