Fanatical Zeal Chapter 2

[viceversailles]

Title: Fanatical Zeal Chapter 2: Al and his Explosion Potion
Rating: Teen
Major Warnings: Abuse, sexism, transphobia
Genre: Canon Compliant, Side Character Focus

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Myles, Months Ago, circa 4.5.  

“First door, sec-ond, third door, fourth door, fourth-door-on-the: left,” Myles murmured to himself, counting off the rooms with a rhythmic shake of his Implement. Mom had insisted he use Dad’s old mnemonics to commit the Blue Heron Institute to memory. He knew the classlist by heart, and had almost considered drinking the student guide, with so many people to keep track of. He’d even done his own research on recent fiascos, like the one that'd gotten him a spot at the Institute. Though, that was as much from listening carefully while Mom gossiped with her clients. 
 

If anyone asked, it was to show off to Mister Belanger. To earn a workshop space on campus.

Soon, he might say the same of Mister Bristow.

The room was relatively barebones, with three beds and only one person and his luggage inside. Whether that person was the necromancer or the summoner was up in the air, but the sole alteration to their shared dormitory gave Myles some idea: a large painting above his bed. Lady War, with her sword aloft, rallying soldiers from every country and century to clash beneath her. A boy in a button up shirt lounged below the painting, armoured right arm resting on his bedpost, while he gazed out the window into the setting sun. He glanced at Myles as if surprised to see him.

Had he been poised there since Mister Belanger’s speech, waiting for his roommates to arrive, while he held command of the room? It was a lot of effort put into looking at ease. 

Myles sympathised. 

“Songetay. Easton Songetay,” he drawled, offering his gauntleted hand. Expecting Myles to cross the room to shake it. 

With an Implement that archaic, he probably wasn’t referencing the Steve Fix movies. He might not even know those movies. This guy was just genuinely that level of a traditional practitioner, where family name loomed larger than first. 

He placed his own thermos down beside his bed. He could match that vibe. 

“Sutton,” he said, offering his hand- which Songetay crushed in his grip. Sutton performed an exaggerated wince. “My family makes potions for yours.” 

The summoner swished his hand up and away, brushing back hair that wasn’t there. Maybe it’d been longer before he’d had it shaved. “Best to leave the moneymakers untouched, then, huh? Wouldn’t want to snap a thumb that could save my life.”

Myles decided to laugh. “Thanks. My mom could grow it back, though.” 

And she had. Twice now. The nociceptors hadn’t come back right, but they’d agreed the numbness had its uses. 

Like playing into a macho fantasy.

Songetay snorted. “My father would leave it mangled. Builds character, he’d say.” He leaned over to his bedside table, picking up a pen with his- unarmoured- left hand, and tapping it against the scar over his eyebrow. “Marks the Self, lets the spirits know you’re a survivor. What do you want for breakfast?” He looked Myles up-and-down, a brief flick of the eyes. “You could use some extra muscle.”

Myles blanched, between Songetay’s nonsequitur, his unexpected kindness, and the pride he held for his wounds. “Uh, my mom sent the staff a meal plan. But thanks for asking.” 

“Your mom decides what you eat? What are you, five?”

“She’s very careful with nutrition. There’s some minor alchemical benefits to the diet.” Benefits like good circulation and lower odds of cancer. 

Songetay shrugged, writing his own order down. “I suppose she must have time to spare, to quibble over details like that. Your father has run of the family, then?”

“My dad’s dead.” 

That came out colder than he’d intended. Songetay looked up at him, surprised by the spine Myles had been trying to hide. Perhaps considering if he should apologise, or give condolences. 

A more neutral topic, then. Let the pity linger. “I help my mom brew the orders she organises. We have plenty of time to talk.”

Songetay scoffed, of all things. Perhaps Myles had overcorrected from pitiable to pathetic. 

Or, Songetay was just a bit of a dick. 

“And is your mom also why you weren’t announced, with the other new students? Didn’t want her little boy getting embarrassed on his first day of school?” He shot Myles a smug smile, like he’d scored a point.


And he had, actually. Mom hadn’t wanted her son to be stepped on, even as she taught him how to be a doormat. 

But Myles parried with a smirk of his own, his real satisfaction shallow. This was simply the way the game was played. Give ground, appear weak, let them win- and when they try to take advantage? 

“I asked the headmaster myself, actually.”

Impress them.

Easton’s eyebrows rose like a fish yanked up a line. “And… he did? Why?"


“Can you keep a secret?


“Aren’t we both?”


Oh.


Good. The Songetays must have also had a messenger from Bristow. That meant it probably wasn’t a coincidence that he’d be rooming with Easton. He wasn’t wasting his time investing in this guy. “But can you keep a secret for me?”


“Sure. Unless my father asks me.”

That was as good as he was going to get. He leaned close, cupping a numb hand by Songetay’s ear. The boy straightened to attention, as Myles whispered, “I asked the headmaster not to announce that I was joining the school, because-”

The door opened, and Myles woke up thrice. Memories scattered, and the end of his sentence fell away, brushing past fabric and frayed threads, to settle at the bottom of a steel flask.

---

Velvet, Now

“You needn’t have worried. By all means, Hudson’s destruction was an anomaly.”

 
Al was doling out the restoration potion from Myles’ Implement, separating it into flasks while the rest of them lounged in Sutton Laboratories. They’d all slept in and slept poorly, the night’s biting cold lingering under heavy black clouds. The Lab’s stark silver lights provided no relief. Bags had boiled snow in beakers, to make tea, coffee and hot chocolate. Buttons was handing them out. He waddled over to her with the drinks cuddled against him. 

The display was almost cute enough for Velvet to discount the buttons sewn in place of his eyes. The Hatchling looked up at her, and his head lolled to the side like an abandoned teddy bear, silently asking to play. 

She took her coffee with a strained smile. “So why was he destroyed, then?”

“A confluence of factors, perhaps. The antidote began to transmute him, the ritual reacted- only for it to hatch Easton within a fragile Hudson. Incarnate forces are called inevitable, but even Death can trip on her own toes.” 

Velvet felt her mind draw a blank, reaching for something that’d been removed. It’d been happening a lot, since she’d dreamed of being Easton last night. Of being whole. Clearly Tyler had hogged all his higher learning. She was intimately familiar with War, of course, but this was hardly a battlefield.

Tyler looked up from their book, reading by the window. Songetay Hall loomed behind them, cold golden stars loitering in the dark.  “What is- ah, thank you for the tea, Buttons. What is the ritual an Incarnate of, then? Siege? Shelter?"

“Is Real Estate an Incarnate?” West asked, sounding very confident in his stupidity. 


Al hummed, lifting a flask to eye-level, to confirm the amount of bright purple potion inside. “Wealth is, as a facet of Fortune. But Incarnates are often boldly coloured, with stark symbols. I haven’t fit anything we’ve seen to that description. With The Carmine Exile having conjured it, you’d expect everything to be blood red.” He glanced at her. “Present company excluded.” 

“Hey!” 


Just because she’d hatched with a ponytail as red as her clothes? She spluttered as she struggled for a comeback, but Al was already continuing with his work. And here she’d expected some solidarity from her fellow Implement. 

She hadn’t even known Myles had an Implement. Al had even had a name ready, like her.

“I’m sure he didn’t mean to be mean,” Bags said. They were named for their eyes and pockets. Myles’ coat had apparently hidden a plethora of packs and holsters, because the Hatchling looked like they’d been up all-night, packing everything besides the kitchen sink. 

At least they had eyes to have bags under. Between Buttons’ buttons, Al’s opaque glasses and West’s scars, Bags and Tyler were the only Hatchlings she could see eye to eye with. And even then, Tyler had Easton’s Sight. A summoner’s Sight, for taking allies and enemies apart.

Velvet couldn’t help but feel dissected, under their inspection.

“You uh… look like War herself, in my opinion.”

Bags had more of Myles’ warmth. “Thank you.” Finally, someone smart enough to recognise her superiority! “Al, what are you even doing?”

“Portioning these out for each of us to drink.” 

West spat his hot chocolate onto Buttons. “What?”

“They should pair well with the coffee.” Al compared the levels of two flasks, before tipping one into the other. “No promises about the hot chocolate.” 

“It burns,” Buttons said quietly.

“Oh. Sorry roomie.” West rolled up his sleeve, and used it to dry the other Hatchling off. “But seriously! You want us to drink the kaboom juice?”

“It’s more like wine. Which I suppose is a variety of juice. Most like kombucha, really.” 


“You want us to drink the kaboom-cha, then,” Tyler said.


“The Incarna-Transmutative Antidote, yes. Active ingredients include echoic nostalgia, three mended friendship bracelets, a zinc anode, and pineapple, if you’re allergic.” 

“...Why?"

“The pineapple is for flavour-”

“Why are we drinking it?” Velvet half-yelled. Only Myles’ last request kept her calm.


Be cool. 

“Oh, was that what you were getting at? The mission hasn’t changed, though we’ve botched it completely. Given the potion was insufficient to revert Hudson Musser, we should use it to reverse ourselves to our itemised forms.”

With the benevolent smile of a doctor delivering medicine, Al offered Velvet one of the doses. His expression slowly wilted under the weight of hers. 


“You don’t seem enthused.”

“And you don’t seem to get why we might not want to explode.”
 

“Buttons has informed me that rigid connections link each of us with our place and person of origin. This suggests that reverting the majority will revert the rest. If we truly desire to restore Easton and Myles, we need only destroy ourselves.”

The chemist looked around at their motley crew. Velvet crossed her arms, glove over gauntlet. Tyler slurped their tea loudly. Bags watched the whole affair like a standoff, tired eyes darting, while West’s attempts to dry Buttons had devolved into bapping his face and giggling. Buttons provided only token resistance, hands raised as much in surrender as defence.
 

“And it’ll be more of an implosion, really.”

Tyler spoke first. She almost appreciated the backup enough to tolerate their annoying voice. “Won’t the ritual retaliate again?”

“What more can it do to punish us? We already exist.” 

Velvet conceded the point with a nod. 

Tyler didn’t. “And furthermore, what makes you so certain that the antidote will work any better on us than it did Hudson?”

“We appear to have digestive organs, for one.”

“But if- and please do follow me step by step on this one- if perchance, it is the potion itself that is the problem-” 

 

“It isn’t.”

The model seemed as insulted by the interruption as by Al’s confidence in his heretofore useless kombucha. “-Or, if not that, then if the situation is more complex than it appears, aren’t we risking the destruction of not just ourselves, but of the bearers whom we reflect?”

“That…” He looked at the hazard signs that dotted the laboratory-dash-classroom. “That is a risk we take regardless. The longer we linger, the more likely we are to be pressured into the next phase of The Placement Test.” 




Velvet thought of her dream last night, but Al’s voice took a turn for the evangelical, rattling off a list of risks like they were apocalyptic prophecies. “Bricks through windows, graffiti on walls, assassins in the night, worse Others than Hatchlings on the prowl, all mounting to a fever pitch before we take the challenge, and that will only make it targeted. We may be stolen while our practitioners are trashed, and if they are restored without us, whatever shards of Self have been lent out may never be returned.” 

Al’s head swivelled to meet his glasses with her gaze. All she could see in him was herself, a knight out of place and time, dressed all in red and metal. 


“Losing Implements like you and I are akin to losing a limb, Velvet.”


She set her jaw to suppress a shiver.
 

Al smiled again. More smug, still patronising. “Besides. We’re only restoring things to the way they are supposed to be. It should be easy. I suspect we cannot even exit the ritual’s grounds without transforming.” He waggled his thermos, just like Myles had, but accompanied the habit with a smirk. “Out of the house? Back in the box.” 

Buttons raised his hand. West had gifted him the rest of his hot chocolate. Buttons took a long, unblinking sip, copying Tyler with their tea.

“Ah, finally,” Al said. “Someone with enough patience to wait their turn.” Tyler gasped, scandalised. “Yes, Buttons?”

“If transforming us transforms them,” Buttons asked slowly, like a child trying words for the first time. “And leaving the ritual transforms us, then why don’t we just leave the ritual?"

“Well- Hmm.” 

Al studied his bright purple explosion potion.

“...I hadn’t thought of that.”

Tyler shook their head, poking a finger into their book like a judge’s gavel. “It’s a good idea. But it says here that The Placement Test shuffles its layout to sabotage attempts to map it. If we make for the border, it may simply move it. It probably did, while we slept.” They leaned back, over the arm of their lounge chair and against the window, sipping their beaker of tea. “And besides, this is a Ritual Incarnate. It isn’t just some rules and a gimmick, it is an Other. One markedly more powerful than us, mind. Even if it reacts slowly or stupidly, the scale of its response could wipe us out.”

“Does that rule out rescue, then?” Bags asked like a deflating balloon. 

Velvet paused, waiting for Al to tell them how drinking poison was the solution again. When he didn’t speak, she glanced at him. He was still looking at the dose of antidote, transfixed. Trying to replace his single-minded confidence in it.

“We shouldn’t count on it,” Velvet said instead. “I don’t remember much about Zed-” apparently he did technomancy, which sounded complicated- “But even if someone came out to find us, they sent us in to get Hudson out. We’re probably the best they’ve got.”

“So, what can we do?”

“I…” Al started, only to be silenced by everyone’s attention falling on him. His metallic glasses still reflected on Myles’ Implement. “...I don’t know. This took two months to brew.” 

“Sunk-cost fallacy aside,” Tyler said. “I do ultimately agree that we should avoid engaging with the wider Placement Test. Perhaps we should focus our resources on hunkering down, study the clues to determine the reason for Hudson’s demise-”

A thump cut them off. The five of them who had already been looking at Tyler glimpsed a tennis ball bouncing off the window behind them. Velvet felt the hairs on the back of her neck and arms stand to attention. Tyler, oblivious, muttered “Oh, what is it now?” and turned to look behind them.

A furry missile launched itself through the window and into Tyler, shattering the glass.

Comments

[mdfification]

Enjoying Myles.