“Good evening Onder, I’m sorry I left you in here so long. I don’t think anyone would be capable of moving you to your room.” She gave him a weak smile full of pity.
Onder rubbed his forehead; his head was pounding. The conference did a number on him, causing him to pass out for the night. His entire body ached as his soul yearned for the little brother he had lost. One that was different from the man he saw onscreen last night.
He looked up at her, tears still streaming. “He hates me, he totally hates me now. If he found his stuffed cat, he already knows who I am.” He buried his face in his arms. “I didn’t save him. He’ll never forgive me and I can’t blame him.”
“He will see reason eventually; you must give it time. I meant what I said before, if we have a good opportunity we’ll make a plan to rescue him,” she assured him.
Onder shook his head. “I’m going to get him away from that place, but he still won’t forgive me. He won’t come willingly either, that message was clear from the press conference.”
“I don’t doubt he’ll refuse, but we have resources here we can use. I know you don’t want to, but we can keep him in holding here. Of course, it will be difficult. Human sedatives won’t work on him. We’ll need some reality glue if we want him to stay here.” Reu started typing on her computer. “We will give him the lowest dose possible, just enough to relax him while we’re getting him the help he needs. With enough work from you and from him, he will understand why he needs to be here with you.”
“The reality glue won’t hurt him at a low-dose?” he asked.
Reu nodded. “It will only stop him from using his powers and relax his mind so we can talk to him properly. I’m going to send my drones to look for the ingredients, but that may take a while. If we find traffickers that dabble in void siren poaching, we can also get it from them.”
Onder finally stood up. “Do you have any leads on trafficking groups right now? There’s always a chance they’ll have connections to poachers, and I can annihilate them in no time. I need to speed this process up.”
“You know I can’t send you directly into a trafficking ring. You would cause too much damage, and the victims would be killed.” She walked over to him. “For now, you can focus on training and controlling your rage. Once you can limit your strength to a single target, I will gladly send you directly to the trafficking rings.”
She patted him on the back and walked out of the room. Left alone, he wandered over to her computer and took a look at the screen. The computer was on its lock screen, protected by a passcode and a DNA scanner. He hung his head in defeat and followed her out of the room.
Lunai returned to her apartment at the end of a long, boring day. The morning conference had set a tone of excitement that did not persist. There were no new cases for small-scale combat and Bliss seemed detached, telling his interns to sit and write reports instead of actually teaching them anything. Despite the lack of cases, there was still plenty of work to do, with the phone ringing every two minutes to inform Bliss of some unimportant case updates. They also had to fill out a bunch of special reports for an Armageddon-associated event, which took almost the entire day.
She opened the Proximal social app on her CellPulse, looking for any posts about the morning conference. She found many people praising Bliss for addressing human trafficking, and for uncovering Armageddon’s involvement. Many were discussing how terrifying it was to know that someone so powerful was a trafficker; his poor victims must've been so terrified. She could find a few posts talking about her, with most people supporting her decision to follow Bliss into space.
Honestly, it probably was breaking protocol, but I couldn’t just watch him get taken…of course the public would side with me; Bliss is their favorite hero.
She picked up Cromble and walked to her room, dropping the cat on her bed. She plopped down next to her. “Looks like I’ve already got some fans, right?” She started scratching her head. “That’s one perk of being Bliss’s intern.”
The next morning, Lunai was surprised to find another hero in the call room with Bliss. The man was a huge blob with stubby arms and legs and a smiling head on top. He wore a blue and white striped suit that covered all of his blobby body except for his head. A cute drawing of a star with a blushing face sat in the middle of his suit. Lunai recognized the man as one of the attending heroes at the agency. He was sitting next to Bliss and making balloon animals.
“Why hello young lady! I hope you're ready for another amazing day as a hero. Would you like a balloon animal?” He held out a balloon in the shape of a whale.
Lunai accepted it. “Sir Jelly! I've loved you ever since I was a kid! Are you working with us today?”
“Yes, I am! Bliss has been assigned to help me take down a human trafficking group we’ve been following for a while now. That means I’m also taking his amazing interns!”
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Lunai put her bag down and gently placed the balloon animal inside. She had a huge smile beaming across her face. This was the first time she would be officially working with an attending hero on a mission.
Bliss ignored Sir Jelly and turned to Lunai. “There’s an armada of warrior ships that typically flies around the border regions of the Agónta empire and the coalition of unaffiliated planets. It has been on our radar, but we haven’t been sent to deal with them because they haven’t shown any hostilities. Last month we intercepted a transmission between the ships in the armada; they were discussing a recent haul of prisoners that we believe to be humans.”
Sir Jelly interjected. “It’s taken a month but we’re finally ready to act! Dr. Crux decided Bliss would be a perfect fit for this mission, especially after his powerful statement yesterday!” He started ruffling Bliss’s hair. Bliss gave surprisingly little resistance.
Argalax entered the room and took a second to process Sir Jelly’s presence. When he realized who it was, he bowed and immediately introduced himself. “Sir Jelly, my name is Argalax, Platinum Promise in the field. I am happy to meet you.”
“It’s nice to meet you too, Argalax! I was just telling this young lady here that your team will be joining me on one of my missions!” He passed him a balloon animal as well, which Argalax was too polite to refuse. “By the way, miss, what can I call you?”
“Oh, of course. My name is Lunai, Hollybrook in the field.” She reached out to shake his hand, which was incredibly soft.
Suddenly, two pings rang throughout the room, and Lunai looked down at her wrist. Argalax did the same, and they both found a message from Bliss. It was a document with a description of the Armada ships and the general mission to infiltrate their ranks.
“What’s the plan for infiltration?” she asked. “I know Sir Jelly is an expert, but the three of us were all on TV yesterday. They might recognize me and Argalax, and they would definitely recognize Bliss.”
“We’re mostly going to observe Sir Jelly and take his cue of when it’s safe to board. I’m also helping with the bait; Sir Jelly is going to take the appearance of a known trader in human parts that the agency recently captured. Posing as him, he sent a message that he has a human heart for sale, and when the Armada sends their team to pick it up, we’re going to lure one away," Bliss answered.
He then pointed to the giant blob. "Jelly will take that guard's identity for long-term infiltration. Once he has been able to survey each ship and find where the humans are kept, we will focus on taking control of those ships and removing them from the area before the fighting starts."
Bliss took a jar out from under the desk. He held it out for the group to see: a dry human heart.
Lunai’s eyes widened. “Where did we get that? Is it from a dead refugee? Did they give us permission first?”
Bliss started laughing. "Calm down, Lunai. It’s my heart, I took it out this morning." He started spinning the jar in his hand.
Sir Jelly beat Lunai to an exacerbated response. “You removed your own heart? I thought you would be sedated for the procedure!”
“Sedate me with what? No way Crux would waste his reality glue on making me comfortable. I’d rather avoid being sedated anyway.” He gently placed the jar in a box and handed it to Sir Jelly, who held it with caution.
“Well, as long as that’s what you prefer…”
Bliss smiled at Lunai and Argalax. “Interns, we’ll be doing the drop-off at midnight. Are you ready for your first 24-hour shift?”
Argalax and Lunai nodded at him once again. She hoped she would have enough self-respect in the future to push back against a spontaneous 24-hour shift, but a mission with Sir Jelly was too exciting to pass up, at least at this point in her career. She was itching for something other than paperwork to do and was down for any mission offered to her. Unfortunately, the day would still be filled with paperwork in preparation for the midnight meeting.
Bliss walked to the back of the room and typed a code into a keypad on the wall. Lunai didn’t notice the keypad before as it was never used or pointed out by her senior. The wall slid open and revealed a room with two beds in it.
“This is the on-call room where you can rest during a 24-hour shift. Of course, we’ll be out after midnight for an unknown amount of time, so I’d suggest you rest up whenever you get the chance. The code is 1-2-3-4, can’t forget it.”
Lunai and Argalax surveyed the room. The two beds were separated by a half-wall in the middle of the room, allowing at least a small amount of privacy. The beds were both slim and small, barely fitting either Lunai or Argalax. It was still bigger than Bliss, but it wasn’t very hard to make a bed big enough for a human frame.
“Honestly, this job is more fitting for the long-term mission team, but Dr. Crux wanted me on it. After Sir Jelly gets on the ship, we’ll be able to leave the office and wait for him to page us. Until then, we’ll just continue business as usual, but you two will be off tomorrow since you had to stay up all night.”
“What about you, will they send another senior so you can rest?” she asked.
Bliss shook his head. “Technically, I don’t need to sleep, so I still have to show up. It’s what happens whenever I’m the senior on a service, they don’t bother having a replacement in case I need to be active for two shifts.”
Lunai threw her hands up in protest. “That’s horrible! You still deserve a break, why would Dr. Crux structure it that way?”
“You don’t need to be offended on my behalf. I’m happy to put a little extra work in if it means other heroes are free to help where they’re needed.” Bliss walked back to his computer and sat down. “Sacrifices are required to be a hero; I’m sure you know that by now. Dr. Crux only scheduled it that way because I insisted I didn’t need a backup hero to step in.”
Lunai wanted to protest, but she still didn’t feel close enough to Bliss. If she could gain his trust and friendship, she could start to crack his enigmatic personality.
Of course I know it takes sacrifices to be here, but you can’t give up your entire life and personhood…
Lunai and Argalax spent most of the day reading information reports about the armada. They filled out a few forms about their participation in the mission and why they would be acting outside of their current department. They were finished at 3 PM, left with several hours to rest before the mission truly began. Lunai took a seat on one of the call beds and let herself fall asleep, trying to ignore the fact that Bliss and Sir Jelly were sitting in the room next to her. Despite not having Cromble with her, she started to drift off, knowing there would be real hero work for her to do when she woke up.
It can't possibly be as bad as the first mission, right?
Character Art
Sir Jelly
HOST STATUS: LORD CRESTFALL (ERROR)
[BREEDING SCHEME ABORTED] Su Ian Hoo woke up male, uninjured, and infinitely more spiteful.
[FOREKNOWLEDGE ACTIVE] She knows exactly who holds the hammer.
[OBJECTIVE] Dismantle the Chancellor's plot using pure, unadulterated chaos.
Cursed into a useless peacock, then murdered and reset—Lord Crestfall is done with destiny. This time, the "Immortal Scam" is taking no prisoners, only grubs, and certainly no breeding partners.