Wheel! Of! FISH!

A Failure to Communicate

2004-04-09 - 10:35 p.m.

Seagulls wheeled and laughed raucously overhead as the sun beat down on two immobile figures in the picturesque old French courtyard of the Napoleon Bar.

The Estrovik called the Teacher's Pet, or more simply 'Pet, sat cooly in her chair, staring across the plank table, both hands resting in loose fists on the smooth old wood.

She was tiny and a thousand rainbow mindglass shades in the prismatic mirrors of Wheel's spectacles. He watched her silently, a half-grin tugging on his lips, the glaring eye atop his cane focused unblinkingly on his unwilling brunch companion.

Somewhere, a guitar was playing.

A light sigh.

"It's really a very straightforward pair of questions. If you like, you can even ignore the first one and just tell me where my trans-aetheric tulpaic realizer is."

"Rot in hell, little man."

Wheel grinned. "I think not. If I end up in Hell, I'll be busy being torn to pieces by Cerebus in the driving rain or blown forever by a howling wind. No time to rot." His grin thinned out to a razor's edge. "Now answer my damned questions."

She didn't have the decency to raise an eyebrow. "No."

He sighed more dramatically, sagging in his chair while making certain not to let the glittering eye of his cane droop an inch. "Why do women have to make a big argument out of every little thing?"

Meanwhile, a mere dozen or so yards away, ace reporter, devastating martial artist, and all-around swell guy Quentin Holte was waiting quietly and totally unobtrusively in the doorway of a dilapidated luggage shop. He had been watching the Napoleon Bar for the last ten minutes, and was growing a little nonplussed. No one was coming out, and no one had gone in since he saw the motorcycle rider arrive twenty minutes earlier. A few people had started to turn towards the place, and then suddenly appeared to lose interest and amble away, or remember urgent business elsewhere. As hesitant as Holte was to risk any sort of action in a public restaurant, he knew a mojogame when he saw one. He started to stroll smoothly across the blazing street, hands in his pockets, and just as he lifted his foot to step onto the curb in front of the Bar, he felt a strange whispering just past the dusty recesses of his hindbrain.

He had left the oven on.
He really needed to buy an umbrella right now.
He was poisoned, and needed a doctor.
He should call his mother.

There were monsters in there.

He raised an eyebrow, and casually lifted his left hand, humming tunelessly to himself as he traced out sigils in the air, unweaving the rather strong aversion ward that had been left on the sidewalk.

Wheel was getting nowhere. He kicked the chair back and stood up, levelling the cane at 'Pet's forehead. "Do you have any idea who you're trifling with, madam? I am an Illuminate of the Fifth Order. I am a Discordian combat pope. I was trained by Rastafarian hit-men and blind monks on a mountain on the moon. I am a wizard of unparalleled creativity when it comes to finding ways of blowing large holes in things, and you are ROYALLY ticking me off."

She neatly folded her arms, leaning back slightly, and blew an elegant raspberry.

Wheel was furiously reaching for his lightsaber when there was a light *bumph* and a puff of brimstone, and a small grey felinoid imp was hovering in the air over Wheel's right shoulder.

"Boss."

"Beat it, Q'yph. Listen here, you trollop ... when I find out how you hormone-crazed halfwits got into ..."

"BOSS."

"Shut UP, Q'yph. Can't you see I'm busy being threatening? Where was I?"

"GEEZ, boss! Someone outside is ..."

Wheel irritably rubbed his thumb over three of the alephs on his cane's beaten silver bands, and left it hovering in mid-air, glowering as it swiveled to keep its burning gaze locked on the slightly disquieted but well-composed 'Pet. The Psychedelic Illuminate turned on the heel of his golden Converse to face the imp.

"Q'yph."

"Sahib."

"I TOLD you what to do if someone was outside."

"Yeah, but ..."

"And someone is outside."

"Yeah, but it's not just ..."

"And you're a pentadimensional imp with staggeringly overblown reality-twisting powers."

"Well, yeah, but ..."

"And a tiny, tiny brain."

The imp's ears flattened, and he narrowed his golden eyes. "Fine, sahib. You told me to stop anyone who tried to come in. I'll stop him." Q'yph rolled his eyes as he vanished in a sulfurous reek. "Or at least slow him down," he muttered.

Wheel turned back and found he was looking down the barrel of a surprisingly large pistol. He paused, mouth half-open, and then half-turned to his floating, glowering cane, still humming with arcane energies.

"WHY did you let her pull a gun?"

The technomystic instrument turned its staring eye towards Wheel. A gravelly voice rumbled from nowhere as the glowing aura of the cane pulsed. "Thou didst animate me and work thy arts 'pon mine runes of stillguarding." If the cane had any features other than a huge crystal eye held in the tentacles of a silver squid, it would have frowned. "The lady hath gone nowhere. Thou sayeth nothing about the pulling of guns."

Wheel gritted his teeth and slowly raised his hands. "Now, calm down, Miss ... 'Pet, isn't it?"

The hammer cocked back with a dry click.

"Come now. You must realize this futile. I've been shot at many times and I've yet to die of it, and even if you did somehow manage to drive a bullet forged by demons from the metal blood of elder gods etched with my name a hundred years ago into each of my hearts, my cane would then kill you. It would then go on to kill everyone you've ever cared for, had a casual conversation with, or bought coffee from. Do you really want all that blood on your hands?" He spoke lightly, with a faint grin.

She half-smiled herself, pistol held expertly in one hand as she sat at the table. "I've had worse."

Meanwhile, Quentin Holte finished unravelling the wards, and shaking his hands like a man who brushed cobwebs from a bookcase he stepped into the cool darkness of the bar. Eyes darting around, he saw no one and immediately began towards the bright courtyard door. There was a *bumph* and an acrid whiff of brimstone, and a felinoid imp appeared hovering in the air in front of him. He stared unmoving at it for a few long moments, and then it cleared its throat.

"Ahem. I am Q'yph, and I ... I am here to distract you."

Holte raised an eyebrow.

Outside, Wheel was trying to remember whether he had been shot with a pistol this large from range this close before, as 'Pet smiled pleasantly behind the enormous gun and the cane hovered muttered to itself. Suddenly there was a sound like the opening ceremonies at Dresden and the door to the bar exploded outwards. A streak of grey smoke whizzed by at blinding speed. Q'yph managed to call out "I waaaaaant ooooovertiiiiime ...." in a howling Doppler voice before he hit the wall and vanished with a tremendous crack. 'Pet's eyes darted aside for a moment as Quentin Holte casually stepped through the ruined doorway, hair gleaming in the sunlight, hands folded neatly behind his back, peering around the courtyard. As soon as she broke her gaze, the cane spiralled into Wheel's right hand with a whicking hiss. 'Pet, irritated, immediately kicked off a few bullets, but they zinged away within inches of Wheel's face, kicking purple sparks off of nothingness. He grinned as he brandished the cane.

Holte took in the scene in a moment and flowed like water between Wheel and Teacher's Pet, locking eyes with the Estro as he gestured Wheel back invisibly. The two stared at each other in the hot, still air, reeking of gunsmoke and thaumaturgy. The stare went unbroken as seconds stretched into minutes. There was a dull clink as 'Pet set her gun down on the table and a scrape as she pushed her chair back. "Now, just a moment here," began Wheel as he stepped around the table, but Holte immediately hit him with a no-look flat strike that sent him across the courtyard, landing in a chair which promptly spilt over backwards.

There was no sound but the chatter of the city outside and the laughter of the gulls.

Then they moved.

He was a master of every art worth mastering, the true fist of the Dragon, his speed and grace defying description. She was a scrapdog brawler who had learned from the dirtiest and oldest fighters in this seedy and glamorous neon America, her body enhanced with metal and chemicals and magic. He threw a barrage of heel-palm strikes with cobra fury. She took them on her forearms, dull clanks resounding from blows that should have shattered bones, and suddenly backhanded Holte across the face. He spiralled to the cobbles, immediately coming up in a half-Mantis, cocking an eyebrow and faintly smiling as he rubbed his bruised jaw. He lunged, shuffling on one foot, his other leg shooting out with a vicious series of Ken Lo kicks. 'Pet was driven to the wall of the enclosed courtyard before she managed to catch his attacking foot. Holte allowed himself the luxury of a small chuckle as he snapped around on his free leg and whipped the Estro across the courtyard. She tucked and rolled, smashing into the far wall with a resounding crash. Bricks crumbled as she got up, looking irritated, brushing masonry from her army jacket. "THAT was not nice," she growled, charging back with a headlong rush that carried her right through his retaliatory claw punch.

Wheel dusted himself off and paced back and forth at the edge of the courtyard as the battle raged, tables and brickwork and cobbles shattering, the air rent with fury, killing blows shrugged aside, enough techniques innovated to found a dojo every day for a thousand years. This reminded him of the time he had seen one of Frankenstein's last monsters fight a black-masked man in Taipei, except 'Pet seemed quite a bit stronger than the monster. He hated this. He preferred guns. Or swords. Or at the least comically oversized hammers. He snapped his fingers, spiralling his cane back into its pocket of nothingness. He immediately dialed a mental number on his telepathic bonefone, the first one on his cerebral quickdial. The line cliked as it was relayed through a biosatellite and buzzed quietly as it crossed over into a Matrix link.

Eclipse was hard at work in her custom environment, snatching darting metallic datafish from the dark surging informational sea in her jaws, digesting what they had to offer, and using the information to create new schools of shiny darters. She had been tracking the movements of Wheel and his chums from the Invisible College, as well as notable personalities who turned up in the searches, and been spending some time running her piercing echolocation cries over the black mirrored walls that cut her off from data on the Estrodome and Doc Oblivion. Suddenly Wheel's voice icon, a bright purple metal W on a golden apple, appeared, bobbing in the metaphorical water next to her. "H'lo, my dear," Wheel's voice crackled across the bonefone connection.

She chirruped. "I wondered where you were, my foolish one. Hasn't anyone ever told you that you're supposed to call your wife before you set out on one of your chaotic pilgrimages?"

His sheepish grin was audible. "Well, it was kind of a spur of the moment thing."

Loud booms and cracks resounded over the line. "What IS that? Where are you?" Eclipse glubbed. She snapped at a passing minnow flickering with ones and zeroes. "Oh. The Napoleon Bar. Interesting. Now what's all that noise?"

"Bit of a toss-around, m'love. Nothing to be concerned over-YAAGH!" There was a rustle of static and a crunch of masonry, followed by a gasping mutter. "... threw him like a damned javelin. Anyway. Could you and that pseudomammal of yours do something for me?"

"Anything," she said with her dolphin smile.

"I'm going to need a bit of image manipulation. And a security blanket. Let's get a full Invisible suite running for all security cameras, recording devices, and flyover satellites that have picked this up ..."

"What kind of portraiting are we doing?" asked of the Lady of the Waters. "Blotting you and ... is that Quentin? ... and the girl out of the picture completely?"

"No, nothing so crass. Just give it a tweak so me and the lady leave quietly together after exchanging a few pleasant words. That should cause a few thromboes down at the Estrodome. Leave Holte out and Q'yph out, though."

"Done and done, my love. Is Q'yph all right?" She furrowed her melon as she scanned the footage of the imp streaking into the wall and vanishing.

"He's fine. Just licking his ruffled fur back at the House." There was a roar and the hazing song of shattering glass. "Gads. I'd better go. Coming to the Crescent City, I hope? It's becoming quite ... scenic lately."

"I wouldn't dream of missing it, my darling."

"Good-good. I ... ah-oh. Gottagolotsofloveadieu!" He cut the line just as he ducked clear of a spray of flaming chi from a stray hadoken. "This is intolerable," he growled.

"Hey!" he called as the two whirled by, rabbit punches being battered aside with waterfall kicks. "HEY!" he shouted as they clashed by the other way, Muta knee strikes meeting forearm shivers.

"Stop. Stop! STOP! STOP, STOP THE MADNESS!"

If they heard, they didn't deign to acknowledge it. A shoulder throw took out a set of chairs.

Wheel couldn't stand being ignored. Most especially he couldn't stand being ignored by two extroverted brutes who had absolutely no idea why they were fighting. He pulled open the left side of his aloha shirt and his lightsaber flipped out into his right hand. "All right, then," he muttered, rolling the hilt in his hand. He waited.

The two warriors came to another impasse. A vicious straight right from 'Pet was met with a graceful elbow capture by Holte. Holte retaliated with an attempted nerve strike, but 'Pet snatched his hand in her own and pinned it in a crushing grip. She attempted a rather vicious knee between the legs, but he smoothly wrapped his leg around hers, immobilizing her. The two were locked face to face, 'Pet snarling and heaving, Holte cool as jade, only a sheen of perspiration belying the intensity of his efforts. This went on for what must've seemed an eternity to the two mighty warriors ... or to any pop culture shamans unlucky enough to be stuck watching. Fortunately, Wheel had an edge.

More specifically, he had a lightsaber.

There was an ominous hummmm and an amber glow in the bright noon as the golden blade sprang into being in the tiny gap between the two glaring faces of the two warriors, interrupting their martial chemistry. "Eh-heh-AHEM." Wheel coughed exaggeratedly.

Quentin Holte effortlessly broke his grip with 'Pet and turned with furious eyes to Wheel. "What the HELL do you think youURRRKKAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh ..."

He was cut off as 'Pet, well-trained by bastard mercenaries and government thugs, used the split-second distraction to grab Holte by the throat and hurl him with a booming overarm Hulk-level throw that sent the Invisible known as Archimedes Lochs on an arc over the Napoleon Bar and out across the city towards the Gulf. She dusted off her hands and turned to Wheel with a smirk.

Wheel sighed.

"Bloody hell."

He snapped his heels together, kicking on his Garrick Impulse speedsoles. He gestured with the lightsaber at 'Pet. "This is NOT over, young lady." He was gone in a blitz, following the rapidly receding speck of Quentin Holte.

She laughed to herself as she retrieved her bag from a pile of rubble and her helmet from the tree it had been blasted into. She walked out through the empty bar and straddled her motorcycle, wincing at the hot leather saddle. She turned the key ... and nothing. She grunted and looked down to see her engine had recently received loving attentions from sort of energy-blade weapon. Swell. She sighed and took off her helmet again as she began the stroll across the city towards the secret lair of the Estrodome.

Unseen in the shadows far behind her, Weaver Black nodded as he made a note in a simple grey pad, and followed.

*****

Don't forget to check out the Table of Contents, true believer!