The next morning, I sat huddled in my office, wishing that the world would
end or I could vanish, one. My new wings fluttered gently with my agitation
and I bit my lip to keep from crying with humiliation and anger. The lab ray
had been excessively cruel this morning. Not satisfied with making me a little
Cybunny, it had now changed me to a faerie Cybunny! There are few things less
daunting than a lavender Cybunny with pastel blue eyes and purple curli-cued
wings. It wouldn't have been so bad if I'd been turned female, I thought with
a sniffling sigh. But I was stuck as a male with a set of looks that was definitely
not suited to my normal masculine tastes.
But the world goes on, and there were a lot of Blumaroos up north who didn't
know or care if I was my normal Uni self or a ridiculous frilly thing, but who
DID care about whether or not another avalanche would wipe them out of existence.
I told myself I owed it to them to continue my current investigation into that
sabotage. And, too, I owed it to Sabre-X and his little committee. I'd talked
them into investigating it so that they could hire me, and fifteen hundred credits
salary a day while we worked on it was the kind of money that could buy a lot
of consideration- at least from me.
So, after trying both the selfish and unselfish reasons for why I needed to
keep going, I managed to avoid the thought of simply abandoning this world somehow.
Blchocobo had my faerie 'crying glass', which we were using to keep track of
our avalanche-starting Lupe, and he'd be down to the office later in the morning.
In the meantime, I had just finished looking through the councilor profiles
that Councilor Bloriarity had sent me. There were a couple of real possibles
in there, I figured, and I really ought to go up to Terror Mountain and see
about doing some digging- figuratively speaking, that is.
I went out into public again, acting as nonchalant as possible so no one would
suspect anything was wrong. I managed to get to Terror Mountain without attracting
any significant attention, but then the going got harder. I had to make contact
with the investigation commission and give them copies of the data I had, both
from the Councilor, and the id that I had pulled out for our Lupe friend. A
bit of asking around in the city led me to the temporary office that they had
set up. Myncha was the only one in it when I arrived. He looked up and his eyes
did their usual bug out trick.
"Hi, Myncha," I said calmly. "I've turned up some interesting things on our
investigation and I need to give you copies of the..."
"MonoKeras????" he chittered.
"Yeah, it's me. Lab ray again. Look, if you're busy, I can just give you the
copies and you can..." but Myncha had already started his shrill nonstop cackling.
I've never cared for that laugh, and even less so now that I was the target.
I would have slapped him silly, but it wouldn't have done any good. He would
have just wound up knocked flat on his back, pounding the ground with hands
and feet while he continued that wild howling. I suffered through it in silence,
looking around at the bare office and wondering what sort of investigating you
could do sitting here.
Myncha calmed down enough to talk. "Love those wings," he chirped.
"Yeah, right, thanks."
"No, I mean it. They're stunning. And your eyes are absolutely gorgeous. And
you've got such a cute little smile-- tehehehehe" and he was off into another
little fit. I took a deep breath, reminded myself that he was one of the pets
that was paying me all of that money, and managed not to strangle him. "OK,
OK, OK," he finally chattered. "What've we got, huh?"
I told him about talking with the councilor, and about finding out the identity
of our Lupe He wasn't interested at all in the political data from the councilor,
but that last item about the Lupe got him to going. He was soon running through
the sheets of information I'd generated the evening before and chuckling with
satisfaction. "By the way, how are things going on your end?" I asked.
"Good, good. We've got forty searchers hired and they're all out on the slopes
now looking for clues."
"Forty? That's a lot hired in just eighteen hours or so. What are you trying
to do, search the entire mountains inch by inch in one day?"
"Yep! That's our mission, find it all, and find it yesterday. I love this sort
of job. The job where you get all the money you want because it's so important
they'll do anything to keep you happy. I haven't had this much fun since the
war ended!"
"No doubt. So how do you run it all from here?"
"Easy! Tekeli-Li set up a system of talking crystals and I have them in eight
teams of five. Got the whole thing going right here," and he patted a crystalline
box with switches all over the front of it. I recognized the standard military
voice-style setup that we'd worked with in the past.
No sooner had he mentioned it than it started squawking. He quickly flipped
a switch and started talking with one of his team leaders. It seemed that they
weren't finding much, but he kept telling them to try this area or that. Finally,
he told them to quit where they were at, go to a totally different slope, and
start hunting there. After he flipped things off, I asked him what he thought
he was accomplishing.
"Oh, nothing important, really. Just making sure everyone's been around to
just about everywhere, and that no one in Terror Mountain is going to get through
the day without seeing at least three teams."
"Interesting. What's the purpose in that?"
"Sabre-X's orders. He said if we were going to be public, then we had to be
so public that no one looked at us anymore. Then we can do whatever we want
right out in the open and no one thinks anything about it."
I laughed. "Tekeli-Li was right, he's even more devious than I am. Good idea!"
I looked around the office and found a chair off to one side. "Say, do you mind
if I sit down and look over this information again? I want to decide who to
talk with next and where to look to find our mysterious sponsor."
"Go ahead, go ahead, no problem at all, got a whole big office here and nothing
to fill it. Gotta get some more furniture, I can see that now."
"Uh-huh," I agreed and managed to escape to a corner where I curled up with
the information Bloriarity had sent while Myncha played shuffleboard with his
search teams.
I looked through the list of eleven names. All Bruces, of course. Four females
and seven males. Four blue, two green, one yellow, two red, one electric, and
one gold. I read closer. After my reading earlier, I had concluded that I had
three main suspects:
The first was the second in command. He was a Bruce with connections to chemical
manufacturing. He'd supported a lot of policies designed to keep Blumaroos out
of the chemical business, and had been known to make slighting comments in public.
I figured chemicals would give him a good supply for explosives, or at least
the ability to think that way.
The second was a female named BelindaU. She was the head of the educational
affairs section. Bloriarity had included the curricula list that she had authored,
and it was really eye-opening. This lady had some very interesting ideas about
how to get rid of unwanted social elements. Not only that, but she had friends
from her college days who had since disappeared, later to become suspected of
being part of several terrorist groups. Obviously intelligent, she would have
made the decision to cleanse the area and would have had it executed without
ever touching a thing herself. A good candidate.
The third was an ambitious young Bruce from the heart of the capital city.
Bloriarity included a lot of material on him, mostly copies of his campaign
literature and public speeches. He'd catered to his constituents well, and had
positioned himself to be in a prime position to gain more power if the current
leaders in the council were disgraced. Not only that, but the impression I got
was of someone ruthless enough to not hesitate at any action... particularly
if it were to NeoPets that he had never seen.
The relative quiet was broken by a beeping from my Neopager. I yanked it out
and found, as expected, the code to call my office. "Hey, Myncha," I called
over to him, "mind if I borrow your Neoterminal? My Neopager says I need to
call my office."
"Neopager? Thought you didn't use those things."
"I didn't until today. I have a helper now, and this is the best way for him
to keep in touch."
"Oh, sure, sure, it's right there, get on it, I'm not using it."
"Thanks," I replied briefly as I punched up my office Neoterminal number. After
only a slight hesitation, I hit the voice talk option. Neomail comes free as
part of the access charges, but voice and video calls cost more. But voice was
pocket change and this was probably an emergency.
Sure enough, the excitement in blchocobo's tone told me we had a live one on
our hands. "MonoKeras! Our subject is up to something, he's getting ready to
go on another mission. Better hurry back and see this."
"Right," I snapped, said a good-bye to a busily occupied Myncha- who seemed
to be trying to talk to two teams at once- and hurried to the tube back home.
I walked into the office to find blchocobo with his eyes glued on the crying
bottle and his right paw holding a pencil above some handwritten notes. I didn't
say anything, just walked over and read the notes over his shoulder. He moved
his paw so I could read them, but other than that, he didn't even acknowledge
my arrival with so much as a nod. I glanced at the bottle to see what our Lupe
was doing. It looked like he'd gotten a seat on the air service that went straight
to Tyrannia. Interesting, but how did he get there... I looked back at the notes.
"Subject went to ATM on corner of westside drive and tylinda boulevard. Pulled
out large amount of Neopoints in bills. Estimate low five digit figure. 10:13
a.m. Leaves there and goes straight to airlines. Gets seat on clipper to Tyrannia,
10:48...."
"Hmmm, I see what you mean," I muttered. "Get a pile of cash and head out
for the next mission."
"Uh-huh," blchocobo replied absentmindedly. I could tell he'd become totally
lost in the view shown in the bottle again.
I looked into the bottle myself to see the Lupe leaving the air terminal at
Tyrannia. He wasted no time in leaving the central area and heading east. I
frowned to myself. "They made the volcano off-limits a couple of days ago, what's
he doing trying to go there?" Blchocobo just shrugged. I hadn't expected much
of an answer, the question had been rhetorical anyway. We both watched. Nimbly
avoiding the occasional patrols in the area, and crawling under the fence, the
Lupe was soon entering the heart of the volcano. He pulled out a fire gem and
tapped it on a short rock pillar. I couldn't quite catch all of the pattern,
but I recognized enough to know what he was doing.
Sure enough, the Fire Faerie appeared within seconds. They talked for a bit,
and the Fire Faerie nodded before she disappeared. The Lupe waited. We waited.
Blchocobo complained that we didn't have any sound so we'd know what was up.
I told him I thought I knew. When the faerie returned, I was proven right. She
brought two fairly large boxes. The Lupe opened them, looked inside, nodded
and snapped the lids back shut before giving the faerie a large bundle of Neopoints
She flicked out one last time, and the Lupe left with his goods while blchocobo
sighed. "That's it, then," he said. "He bought something for his mission. I
wonder what it was."
"I don't," I said. "I know."
"What?"
"Nitro."
"What's that?"
"It's a magical liquid that you mix with snow to create exploding snowballs."
"Exploding???"
"Right. But they don't have to be in the form of snowballs, it can be in any
form. It makes sense, now. He digs a trench, soaks the base in nitro, fills
it in, then uses a fire bomb to set the explosion off. Simple, and there would
be virtually no trace."
Blchocobo gave a low whistle. "Clever. What do we do now, wait some more?"
"Not quite," I replied, reaching for my Neoterminal. "Now that he's got the
goods, he's headed to Terror Mountain again on foot. My guess is he's going
to be in there to do the hit early tomorrow morning. Now to call Myncha at headquarters
and tell him playtime is over. This one is coming down fast."
To be continued... | 
