#fluctra

The hidden basement of the Castrators Assassin Guild was awfully quiet today. Well, actually it was a pretty nice amount of quiet for Fluctra. She was sitting in a chair in the main hallway, cleaning and taking care of her weapons. Everyone else was out today, doing contracts and other business. Even Isa, who normally stayed here to manage the bakery front, had left. Fluctra thought the vampire mentioned running low on sugar a few days ago. Fluctra flipped a knife offhandedly before checking it at the wall. It sunk into the wooden wall like, well, a hot knife through butter. Satisfied, Fluctra retrieved it, setting it with her set.

A small clamor caught Fluctra’s attention. Fluctra stiffened before beginning to walk quietly towards the noise. Thoughts of intruders flashed through her brain before she heard the familiar babbles of a young child coming from the crash. Well it seems like she isn’t the only one here after all. Fluctra rounded the corner to see Drew, Erin’s beloved son, sitting on the floor. The small dark-haired child dressed in his usual pink sweatshirt was surrounded by many different items: Isa’s metal pans, some chiseled bits for building, the towels normally used to clean blood off blades, and a woven basket overturned. Fluctra didn’t question how he’d gotten all this stuff, she knew it was better not to ask honestly. He was just a really strange toddler, everyone knew that. Child of god and all that jazz. Said child of god was looking up at her as she stared at him. Fluctra wasn’t the greatest with kids. No one was hiring her to murder them and as such she really didn’t interact with them much, being an assassin and all. Drew was the only exception but she still wasn’t dealing with him by herself like, ever. Erin always had someone watching him to make sure he didn’t get hurt and Fluctra made sure she never was assigned babysitting duties. She may respect Erin but she has limits.

Speaking of a babysitter, where was Drew’s? The kid was just stealing stuff unsupervised. Sure he could get away with basically anything even with a guardian watching him but touching Isa’s bakeware was basically asking to be murdered, everyone knew that. There’s no way anyone would just let Erin’s kid do something that would put him in any kind of danger. Plus no one was here today. It was just Fluctra as the only adult around. Well, the only person older than a toddler around but you get the point. Someone was supposed to be watching this kid and it was not Fluctra.

Fluctra looked over at the babysitting chart tapped to the wall, still making sure to keep one eye on Drew. It wasn’t her name listed under today’s date, no; in fact, it was Hunter’s. Fluctra groaned. Hunter was not the best person to trust with a kid. Flucta knew he disliked babysitting duties, well most duties in general. Hell, he’s not even here most days. Someone must have thought it would have been a pretty sick joke to write him down for today’s date. Well Fluctra is not laughing, seeing as Hunter is nowhere to be seen and she’s the only one around. Great, now she’s a babysitter. Her quiet day of relaxing weapons cleaning just got cancelled because now she has to make sure Drew doesn’t accidentally kill himself.

Speaking of Drew, she should probably be keeping an eye on him. Fluctra focused back on Drew to see that he was not by his mess of stuff. In fact, he wasn’t anywhere in her line of sight. Fluctra could feel a headache coming on. She got lost in thought for one minute and the kid’s gone. Great, just great. Now she has to go find this kid.

Luckily for her, toddlers are not quiet at all and her trained assassin ears picked up on the telltale signs of mischief being made down the hall. The same place in the hall that she was just sitting in while she cleaned her weapons. The same place that had. All. Her. Weapons. Welp, Fluctra is doomed.

Speedwalking back into the other room, Fluctra was met with the sight of a small child holding a very big knife. Seriously, how is he even picking that up? It looks like a broadsword in his tiny hands.

“Drew, put down the knife.” She commanded in what she hoped in a gentle tone. Drew, lawless child that he is, instead just pointed the knife at her. Ok, bad, the toddler has a knife and also seems to know how to use it. If this were any other person she’d be commending their form but this is Erin’s fucking kid who is pointing a knife at her. See, this is why children shouldn’t be allowed to spectate on spars. They learn.

The two of them were at an impasse. Drew was not putting down the knife and Fluctra did not want to get near Drew holding the knife. She’s pretty sure he’d stab her right in the shin, he’s at the perfect level for that. Fluctra wracked her brain for any other solution to this problem that did not involve her being stabbed and maybe even losing a few fingers. What did kids like? Toys? Drew had toys but honestly she thinks the knife might count as a toy to him right now. Food? Maybe she could bribe him! Now that’s an idea.

“Drew, if you give me the knife I’ll get you snacks. Snacks are better than knives. Snacks yum yum.” God this was awful, she was baby-talking to an actual baby. How the mighty had fallen, from feared assassin to stressed babysitter. Thank god no one else was around to see this.

Drew thought on her offer before simply saying, “No.” Fluctra was surprised that he even knew words but then again she really didn’t know how babies work. He’d never spoken to her, that's for sure. He’d rejected her offer so she needed another one. She still wasn’t ready to risk losing a limb to a child. Again she thought hard about what kids might like. Her mind went back to all those items he had dropped on the floor. Maybe she could make a trade?

Fluctra rushed back to that part of the base, calling a quick “Stay there” behind her. She piled all the stuff into the basket and made her way back to Drew who was still holding the knife.

“Ok I have your stuff. I have no idea what you might want with this but you were carrying it so you probably needed it for something. So here’s my deal, we trade this stuff for the knife.” The teenage assassin offered. Drew gave her the most deadpan look she’d ever seen on a toddler’s face. Fluctra shivered. Those dark beady eyes really stared into your soul huh.

“Fort.” He stated. Fluctra blinked in confusion.

“What?” She said dumbly. Fluctra, trained assassin of 15 years old, rendered speechless from the word of a child. She was so happy no one else was here to see this. At least god granted her one small mercy today.

“Make fort then knife.” The child said. Awareness dawned on Fluctra slowly as she processed his words.

“You want me to make a fort with you and then you’ll give me the knife?” Fluctra asked. The toddler stared at her with an expression that clearly read “Yes, you dumbass.” It was a creepy expression to see on a baby’s face but she got the message.

“Ok ok we’ll make a fort. Just follow me, we can use the meeting room table as a base.” Fluctra said, hefting the basket of fort-making items up and walking with Drew the Pointy Menace to the meeting room. She was already planning the fort in her head. They could use Isa’s pans for walls and the towels for banners. The chairs could be used as support and Fluctra was tall enough to reach the top of the closet where she knows the extra sheets are. Fluctra may be being coerced into making this fort but damn is it going to be the best fort ever made.

An hour and a half later, the fort was done. A masterpiece of engineering seeing as it was made by a teenage assassin and a baby. It was cosy inside and big enough for Fluctra to sit up straight and not bonk her head, which she was doing. A mess of blankets and pillows covered the stone floor and Drew was making good use of them. He still had the knife but was using his other hand to finish the detailing of the final wall. Yes, there was detailing on the walls. Fluctra did say this would be the best fort ever made.

But the fort was made and Fluctra really needed that knife back. It was getting late and she did not want anyone coming back to find Drew holding a knife and Fluctra just standing there. She cleared her throat loudly and held out her hand. Drew looked down at her hand and for a moment Fluctra worried he wasn’t going to keep his end of the deal but thankfully that moment passed and the knife was dropped safely into her hand. Fluctra checked it over, making sure that it wasn’t here in any way or that Drew hadn’t tried to teethe on it or anything. Thankfully, it was fine. Fluctra secured the blade back in its rightful place in one of her many secret compartments hidden in her armor.

“Well this was fun but I really have to leave. Weapons won’t polish themselves. We should do this again sometime. Actually, we shouldn't. I am not babysitting anymore.” Fluctra said to Drew as she climbed out of the fort. She looked back at him and he looked at her with his strangely intelligent and nerving baby face.

“…Ok, fine, the fort building was fun and maybe, just maybe, we could do it again.” Fluctra admitted. It's those dark eyes, man, they see everything and just force it outta you. Drew didn’t say anything but gave Fluctra a nod. Fluctra nodded back. Interaction over with, she left the kid to his fort. And just in time, she could hear light footsteps coming from the bakery upstairs. From the sounds of it Isa and Erin are back. Perfect. No more babysitting duty for her now that Drew’s mom is back.

Electra had once said that morality didn’t matter— it was just a construct people made up to make them feel better about their existence. “If someone can say that there are ‘bad people’ and ‘good people,’ then they can say that they are the ‘good people.’” She’d said it like it was obvious.

Fluctra had trusted her.

She wasn’t stupid, she knew there was some value to human constructs. She had taken philosophy before; the fact that morality is a construct wasn’t news to her by any means. But Electra was her friend, her mentor, and she wanted to believe that she was right. Money was something solid and objective, morality was subjective. You couldn’t get anywhere by being good, but you could get somewhere by being rich.

(The fact that money, too, was a construct, was something Fluctra was aware of. She didn’t think about it too hard.)

Fluctra had trusted Electra. Electra didn’t return that. Now look at where they were.

Fluctra was sitting in an unfamiliar house in an unfamiliar town. Nothing here felt safe. Ruepa only let her have a few of her belongings, and he inspected the ones that he allowed, because he didn’t trust her.

Well. The feeling was mutual, at least.

Everything in Grand Magus Cove felt off, somehow, like the air itself was ready to turn on you at a moment’s notice. The eponymous sea surrounding the town was clear to a fault. Something about the silence and emptiness of the city— all houses with no people— felt like lying in wait.

Electra was sitting in a safehouse of some kind, thousands of blocks away from all known civilization. It was her and her son. That was all it had to be. It was safety incarnate.

She could rest, she told herself.

It didn’t feel real, was the thing. “Electra” and “safe” didn’t go together. The mundanity of the days felt less like a break and more like waiting for the next danger to hunt her down.

She didn’t think about it too hard. She had a child to take care of.

The rustle of a paper beneath her foot startled Fluctra. She’d been looking for the beach (because she might as well enjoy her time while she was here), but the maze-like structure of Grand Magus Cove was turning her in circles.

She checked what she had stepped on. It was a discarded newspaper, dated June 23. The headline, bolded and sitting atop an image of Taffie and Electra sitting in his candy shop, read:

TAFFIE IN LEAGUE WITH CASTRATORS! POIYA RESPONDS…

She’d known that The Daily Ball was gimmicky, but geez, was a little tact too much to ask for? She reminded herself that these were the people she was working for, now. She couldn’t criticize them too much, at least not yet. She was still trying to get them to believe that she wouldn’t betray them. She was still trying to convince herself they wouldn’t betray her.

So if she had to put up with some dumb article headlines that sometimes hit too close to home, that was okay. As long as she had people who had her back, she’d be okay.

The waves nipped at Electra’s legs. It was a good day, so she thought she’d take Drew to the ocean while she slept on the beach. “Sleep when the baby sleeps,” the parenting guides said, but her baby was a demigod so he didn’t sleep. It was a disaster.

Good news: he seemed to be enjoying… whatever he was doing. Last time she checked, he was choking a turtle in a drunken rage. Bad news: that was, like, two hours ago. Eh, he’d be fine. Not like he could die, anyways. A very indignant and very British voice seemed to say, “How could you do that to your son?” But in her defense, Taffie had never tried to raise an immortal alcoholic baby.

She’d just woken up from her nap because she was sweating her balls off, so she thought she’d take a quick dip in the ocean to cool off. She quickly realized that she forgot to pack a bathing suit, and she was not interested in walking back home with her normal clothes sopping wet, so she settled on just dipping her legs in. It did the job well enough.

She looked around for Drew. He was a bit far away, eyeing a crab with a strange amount of concentration. She smiled.

It was a good day. She could live like this.

Fluctra was ready to run. Poiya had asked to have a private talk, and if there was one thing Fluctra knew, it was that Poiya did not like her. They thought she was a traitor, said that she’d be perfect because “she’s unassuming but deadly,” whatever the hell that means. Fluctra only knew this because Taffie told her. Taffie didn’t like her, either, but he seemed to feel some sort of obligation to help her.

It seemed that most people here didn’t like or trust her. The loneliness, at this point, should feel like second nature, and it did somewhat, but it was mostly just lonely. Electra had once said that things die and— no. Electra might’ve said something, a million years ago, but it doesn’t matter now. That traitor shouldn’t be listened to.

“Fluctra.”

She stiffened.

“Hi, Poiya.” She said after a beat. She turned toward the perpetrator, drenched in the artificial glow of the floodlights. It seemed to cast a halo around their ears.

A drizzle became clear as they spoke. “You’re staying here forever, aren’t you?”

“Yes. Yeah, I am.” Fluctra nodded quickly, stubbornly avoiding eye contact. She looked at the pavement instead, which was growing puddles with raindrops you could only see if you looked closely.

“Hm. Why?”

Fluctra paused. “Because I have nowhere else to go,” she answered. It was vulnerable and stupid to say, it just spilled out.

The silence she received was loud. Her throat locked up. She was still staring at the pavement.

“I wasn’t even expecting you to show up. Guess I underestimated you.” Poiya said, finally. It was void of pity or regret.

Fluctra watched as they walked away.

Electra was running out of food in the safehouse. She’d known this would happen at some point. It made her panic all the same.

She tried to form some sort of plan. She’d have to fly out at night to avoid being caught. She might be able to steal something from Meowriza and Dave’s treehouse if she was lucky, but she was more likely to get caught and have to do labor for them forever. Fuckin’ fae.

A better idea would be to just nab wheat from the Community Farm. Avoiding Chroma might be difficult, since he spent half his time there, but it was do-able. She could use that wheat to make bread, but bread wouldn’t sustain her forever, so she’d have to kill some cows and chickens as well. She’d have to do that out of earshot from peoples’ houses, because the animals would definitely start freaking out.

“Avoid Grand Magus Cove, at all costs,” was assumed.

A tenet of being a reporter for The Daily Ball was that you had to tell your supervisor about anything that could possibly be spun as a story. If it was a good story, they’d pay you, and if it was a bad one, they’d tell you to stop wasting their time. Easy as that.

Fluctra liked the simplicity of it all. She didn’t even have to be the one to deal with the grayness of “good” and “bad.” She just had to search for news, tell Ruepa about that news, and write something about it. The rest of it was out of her hands.

But today, she hesitated. She’d known this story for a while. It was a good one, for sure. She just couldn’t shake the feeling that it was wrong, somehow.

Money over morality.

Fluctra knocked on Ruepa’s door.

Electra raised her wings.

Inside the office, the sound of shuffling paper could be heard.

On the balcony, the sound of wings spreading echoed throughout the empty night air.

“Come in when you want, Fluctra.” He said, his voice filtered through walls and careful silence.

“Erin, where are you going?” A familiar voice rang out, bringing to mind a face framed with pink hair and days wasted in a candy shop.