Stained Glass

[Gavin Etheridge]

Were he a more jaded man, Gavin could say that the world was a pretty shitty place to live in and agree that ignorance was bliss. He would say that the peace Carraig held onto through neutrality was an illusion since he seemed to be having to make more and more quiet agreements with the larger countries of the world just to keep things running smoothly and keep his people from knowing anything was wrong at any given moment. Designing, selling and launching satellites for Creta from off the coast of Carraig and in the vast emptiness of Xing. Lending money to Hans to help rebuild Amestris while not telling him why he had absolved all Amestrian accountholders of their debts with Carraig. Things were somewhere between too tense and too calm, like that moment where a jack in the box is wound and pinned, ready to spring and unleash hell. It kept Gavin's stomach in knots and kept him awake more often than not, constantly keeping tabs on what Drachma might have been doing in hopes of knowing before they might launch attack on Carraig, or anyone else, for that matter.

Gavin ran his hand through his hair, pacing in his room. Artemis had seen how distant the King had been lately and how he had been so distracted, pushing around the food on his plate at dinner more than eating it. He'd been stressed and worried more often than not, but a vacation was rather out of the question for now. And it funny, too; he worried so much more about everyone else, their healthy and their happiness, but often neglected his own for the sake of running things smoothly. Toss' sister had finally work up from her coma, so he'd told Toss to take some time off to care for her. Artemis and Fiachra were trying to keep their relationship quiet from Artemis' family, but Gavin would not deny his guard taking time to spend with his General as much as she could. He would indulge the wishes of others for the sake of knowing they were happy when the world seemed to be full of nothing but misery. And if he could make that happiness for his family and his peoeple last, just a few minutes more, then he would do whatever he could.

Dressed onliy in a large sweater and jeans, tonight Gavin found little comfort offered by the fires of the forge, and that his beloved cello and violin weren't being the company he craved. He wondered if Rosaleen would indulge him with a visit since her company seemed to have a curing affect against melancholy. But for right now? Only one thing came to mind that he needed. He needed his family, especially before they were too busy or grown up to need him in return. An idea came to mind. Something harmless and something fun. Leaving his rom and trying to put his worries aside for right now, he sent a request to have a few small things picked up for him: a 3/4" PVC pipe and three connectors, and three bags of mini marshmallows.

The pite was cut into one-foot sections and a connector put on each one. One section was delivered and resting outside of Arty's door as Gavin crept off to find Sorcha in the lab, hard at work on something amazing, no doubt. But she worked far too hard for a girl her age. Just as he did, she needed to have some fun. They all did while they could. Gavin's moves were silent as mountain wolves that occasionally snatched up their sheep. There she was, puttering with stuff, lost in her own world. Perfect. Gavin peered around the corner. Check left. Check right. All clear. Nobody to stop him. A marshmallow was loaded vertically into the PVC blowgun. Deeeeeeep breath, careful aiiiiiim, aaaaaaaaand....

]b]FOOOOOMP![/b]

PAP!

Right in the temple. A perfect headshot that Gavin was most pleased with. The marshmallow had sailed perfectly through the air and shot the Princess right in the side of the head. He waited for her to remove her goggles and look up at him as he grinned like the cat that ate the canary. He dropped down a second blowgun and bag of marshmallows by the door where he stood, waved at her with his own weapon, and took off like a shot. He was King. He could have a head start.

[Guest]

"Almost.....almost....."
With tiny tweezer-like tools, Sorcha carefully adjusted the miniscule wiring that lined the inside of the panel of the marvelous shiny contraption that was once a smartphone. Currently, it was anything but that, as many tiny pieces had been removed and scattered about her desk, and many more tiny parts had been inserted in their place. A mad scientist's organ transplant, on a smaller, digital level.
"Success!" exclaimed the red-haired tech wiz, as her final tweak to the circuitry was finished. The final result: A short ranged digital override and hacking device, perfect for tapping into to nearby computer systems, shutting down certain devices, or even controlling objects and vehicles that used a computer interface system. If it was any more complex than a toaster (that Sorcha hadn't gotten her hands on already) then it was subject to her latest device. Why? Well why not? Hacking was fun. It was fun to mess with people or play jokes. And sometimes all the serious people needed her to hack things of strategic importance for information and what not. But all that aside, all she had to do was build the user interface system for the handheld device, and she would be all ready to give this baby a test drive, and then-

FOOOMP. PAP

Wh-what? Sorcha fell down to her back in a highly comical fashion, overreacting to the projectile that had suddenly hit her in the head. What was this? An attack? No! It was Kamahen all over again. Back in Kam. So much bloodshed. Charlie was everywhere. She lost all her limbs and most of her sanity. It was an unwinnable war, didn't they understand!? Shifting her goggles from her eyes and onto her temple, Sorcha glanced around, looking for the source of her maiming. Lying on the floor, she found the evidence: a marshmallow. Amber eyes glared at the expended ammunition carefully, shortly before deft fingers plopped the sugary confection into her mouth. It tasted delicious. How horrifying. This could only mean one thing! Sorcha's head spun around, and there, standing at the door, was none other than Gavy himself! He grinned mavelontly, gloating his victory over the tiny nation of Sorcha, Population: 3/4^2. Foolishly, the belligerent aggressor dropped an ammo cache and one of his weapons in his hasty retreat. He would regret such a mistake!

The redhead girl grabbed her device which had once actually been a phone and held it to her ear.
"This is Captain Sorcha Etheridge, we're under attack. Requesting permission to engage the enemy. Roger" Said she, muttering in a hushed, secretive tone to no one but herself.

Preparations were needed. The enemy was bigger and stronger, and had a legion of a thousand troops at his command. Stealth was key. Jumping to her feet, Sorcha began rummaging frantically through her drawers and cabinets until she happened upon that which she sought. A set of paint. Sorcha dipped her fingers into hues of green, brown, and black and smeared the colour across her face in lines and blotches until half of it was covered in crude camo pattern. Victory was assured! Grabbing an old fashioned bowl shaped Creig soldier helmet off a shelf and plopping it onto her head, along with some tape, which she used to fasten the bag of marshmallowy ammunition to her hip, Sorcha grapped her oversized blowgun and sprinted off down the corridor, in hot pursuit of the dastardly enemy that had so sneakily sneak attacked her in her moment of vulnerability.

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With her body dragging against the floor, Sorcha slinked down the hallway, clinging to the shadows, a brilliant master of darkness. She was the night! She was the hero Carraig deserved. She would dispense marshmallowy justice like a Batman pez-dispenser...except with marshmallows...yeah. Perfect. Except instead of running around disguised as a bat who got dressed in the dark, Sorcha was disguised cleverly as a wayward cardboard box, Solid Snake style. The tactical advantages of a sturdy box were numerous and invaluable-- from being hidden from the enemy's sight to practical shielding from incoming marshmallows, and also, for hiding her trump card. Sorcha giggled mischievously to herself as she patted the contraption tucked underneath her arm. It wasn't anything flashy, just a battery powered semi-box shaped high pressure fan device, with a hose fastened to the tube her daddy had so unwittingly left in her hands. As she shuffled around the corner, hidden completely beneath her cardboard box, Sorcha spotted the enemy, standing outside Arty's room, ready to shamelessly ambush her when she was to exit her room. But it would be Sorcha who would have the element of surprise now! Sorcha filled her tube with six marhmallows and stuck the tube out of a carefully cut hole in the front of her mobile cardboard fortress, lining it up with Gavy perfectly. Calibrations set, all systems ready. Ready......
"Fire!"
The switch was flipped and the and the air pump hummed to life, quickly applying pressure to the tube and ejecting the marshmallows at high velocity, hitting the king in the back in rapid succession.

[Guest]

Unfortunatley for Sorcha Artemis woiuld not be coming through that door. Least to say she had already left. And now in the fluffy sugary warfair she was going to win. Kurt at the ready after being modified to fire marshmellows she loaded him from her hiding spot outside staring down the scoop in her camo sniper's pit. The ground leading it it completely booby traped.

The blue dot (she switched to blue to show her ammo was non lethal like she used during training session) trained onto the princess and in seconds sahe fired twice. One now slightly toasted marshmellow hit the girls chest the other her head. She chuckled deeply to herself as she reloaded and aimed up thisd time shooting down an envolop that had been attached to the cieling above by string.

In the envolope would be a frame. A frame of Gavin doing something the king would most likely like to hide. And she had the whole thing on a dvd. The only other thing written was a simple phrase. "Come at me bro!"

[Gavin Etheridge]

/8/For the first time in almost two hundred years, Carraig was at war, not with one entity, but with two, fighting them at the same time. Resources were limited on all fronts, but how they would each approach the situations would all be very different. Gavin knew that both opponants were very clever and masters of their fields respectively. One might as well have been a ninja assassin who hid comoflauged in her near-nudity and bright colours, and had worked hard to earn her reputation as the most lethal woman in Carraig, if not most of the civilized world. The other? A genius beyond the scope of Gavin (and he had no trouble admitting that truth), her calibre of brilliance enough to make Stephen Hawking go "derp."

Gavin knew he was probably no match for them, but outside the palac walls that was a fact nobody needed to know. He wouldn't mind getting stomped by the two ladies in his life he cared for most. Crouching by the corner of the hall, Gavin had a decently clear shot of Artemis' door. He had been hoping she'd come out and give him a chance to get her right between the eyes, but that moment never game. Instead, he was hit six times in a row, down his back. Ah! Dead already in a war he began, and at the prime of his age! Surely Dietrich would be a bit giddy at the chance to take Carraig as his own vacation hot spot.

Whipping around, loaded and ready to fire his blowgun again, Gavin was met by neither his little girl, or Artemis; instead, he was met by a box. Ah, so she'd built herself a mobile fortress and some way to launch multiple rounds at once. He expected no less from his clever opponant! But where she she had the technology, Gavin had the speed! Hopping up quickly, Gavin ran toward the box and just past it, plopping his hand on the middle of its top to hold it in place. Mobility denied, Gavin grouched down again quickly, moving his hand to lift up just the corner of Sorcha's fortress and fire at her. Sure, he only got one shot per go, but he still would get them in!

PFF PFF!!

He ducked down behind the cardboard sanctuary. This was war, and everyone for themselves! Artemis was above them somewhere, but not in the hall... clever boobied-ninja! Another small but harmless shot was fired from Kurt, severing the tiny thread that held an envelope to the ceiling. The envelope flipped over and over for Gavin to catch and duck back around the corner, away from where he'd be most easily shot at by the two of them. The blowgun was tucked into Gavin's belt loop for a moment as he pulled out the photo, blanching at it. It hardly showed anything, but was more than enough. The white socks. His bare legs. The boxers and the white button up shirt. Those huge sunglasses. The photo only showed a third of Gavin, really, taken just as the King slid across the floor lipsynching to Old Time Rock & Roll. Arty had known for years he liked singing along to things, but did she have to photograph it? And if she did, couldn't she at least have gotten a better shot of him?

"Come at me bro!" was all that was written plainly on the back of th picture; where Arty had this, she had more. lots more. Ohhhh she was toast! Soon as he found her, anyway. Gavin loaded another sugary bullet and shot it at Sorcha's box as he ran past, ducking away from the windows and hiding down low in the hall.

[Guest]

"We've been compromised, we've been compromised. The box has been immobilized. I repeat, the box has been immobilized."

Sorcha shouted sporadically as she thrashed underneath the cardboard structure like a wild caged animal, but to no avail, for the enemy's weight was too much. Golden amber eyes looked on in horror as the corner was forced open like an near suicide assailant pries open the hatch of a tank. Various vivid images of her life flashed before her eyes in an instance (along with some instances of what she could only imagine to be Andy Warhol's inner psyche), as the plastic tube was positioned at near point blank range of her face.

FFFP!-

Crippling agonizing unfathomable pain did not sear through Sorcha's writhing body as the squishy projectile collided with her poor defenseless head, splattering her brains across the drab, dark walls of her desolate cardboard prison, leaving her corpse crippled and broken upon the- Oh wait, it bounced off her helmet. Never mind. All was well. But immediate action was necessary to escape the ingeniously simple trap that the enemy had sprung upon her. Like a cat escaping a one way box to the vet, Sorcha tore and clawed her way out of the side of her box like a savage animal- scrambling out the hole in a matter of seconds once it was large enough for her lithe body to squeeze through.

"FREEDOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM" shouted she, arms outstretched in total exaggeration of the horrors of her imprisonment and the satisfaction of finally escaping.

PFF PFFF

The world spun into a blur until everything began to fade into darkness. Oh god no, she had been hit! It was all over, all over man, all over! Wait....Sorcha glanced down at the duo of marshmallows that had ended her short life. Were they....toasted? This could only be the work of Arty. That fiend . With a look of absolute seriousness, a scowl upon her face, Sorcha stooped down to retrieve one of the lightly browned snacks. Quickly plopping it into her mouth, with a continued expression of solemnity, she slowly chewed the dastardly weapon, ignoring all else around us. Gulping down the warm sugary goodness, she paused.
".......delicious" muttered she, austerely.

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