Helen Ch 2
#2 of Cadi, Volume 7: Helen
"This anomaly, here. Even after inputting the magic signatures for all of the guardians and all of the permutations that we can think of for Nothing's signature... the entire Indian subcontinent is still dark."
Cadi stared at Tammy's computer screen, rubbing her face as she thought hard. "That's so fucking weird... with a population like theirs, it should be... pretty much glowing..." she said in disbelief.
"Right," Tammy said emphatically, "But it isn't... and there has never been an officially reported fur from the area. That's... impossible."
Cadi closed her eyes and thought, her hand moving up to rub circles on her forehead. "So... either we accept the data as true, and that the entire subcontinent is the world's single biggest statistical anomaly... or..."
"Or we accept that something is throwing off the sensors there. Some... other kind of magic that is either blocking our sensors... or is changing the magical signature to something we can't detect yet, the way Robin did in Nottingham without knowing it," Tammy finished for her. "Honestly... scary as it is... I find that one a lot easier to believe."
Cadi let out a deep groan. "You know what I'd love, Tammy? A simple problem to have to deal with. The kind where you could just sit down with a cup of coffee and get it figured out in a long afternoon."
Tammy laughed dryly at that. "Cadi... with transdimensional magic that we still don't fully understand... plus whatever other magic there is in the world... I think you're in the wrong line of work for that kind of problem. I love you. But we're shit out of luck there."
Cadi sighed and lowered her hand, opening her eyes and looking down at the mouse. "I know, Tammy. I just... wish that wasn't the case, you know? So, how do we deal with this?"
Tammy shrugged, "Best scenario I can think of is to get someone out there to investigate it firsthand. Get some readings, at least."
Cadi stared at the map, getting a very weird... very uncomfortable feeling about all of this. She grimaced, unable to shake her feeling. Tammy saw her reaction, looking up at Cadi curiously. "What's up?"
"Nothing. Probably nothing. Back on the version of earth I was pulled from, I had a... I can't even really call him a 'mate'... He was awful. Basically... held me captive... He... had a fucked up plan to sire seven sons with me... only my seventh was a daughter..." she said, taking a deep breath, her heart starting to race in her chest as she closed her eyes again. "But... even if there's a version of him on this earth... there's no way that he would have any ability to pull something like that off... so this can't be him," she said.
Tammy could tell that she was saying it with so much certainty in order to convince herself more than to convince Tammy of that fact. Tammy looked at her for a moment before she said, "Right... so... you want me to get on the line with Robin to see if she can send a team over to investigate?"
Cadi opened her eyes, turning away from the map to look at Tammy. "Yeah. That sounds like the best plan. I'll... let you take care of that," she said, turning to leave the computer center, with Tammy sitting there, looking at her friend with some very intense concern in her heart.
Lynsay and Krystie stepped through a doorway into the jungles of India, near the heart of the anomaly that Tammy and Cadi had discovered. "Emmet was telling me that there are a lot of old ruins around here, so we're going to want to be careful as we search," Krystie said, her brow furrowed as they started making their way through the jungle, their senses on high alert.
Lynsay's long, pointed ears were turning every which way as they stalked through the underbrush. After about a mile of searching, her ears stopped and pointed in the same direction, aiming straight ahead of them. She held up a hand to Krystie, whose own ears were starting to pick up sounds that didn't sound like just wild animals.
The muscular feline pulled out her scanner before they moved forward, trying to get a read on the magical signature of the place. It was like nothing they'd ever seen before. Where Nothing's magic was... chaotic, with a signature to match, this one was almost more... deliberate. Very intricate, like a mandala. But there was still a... harshness to the shape. It may have been more intentional, but that didn't mean it was kind.
They continued working their way to the source of the sounds they were hearing, after uploading the readings to Tropico. After about another mile, they came to the edge of a large cleared area. "Well... I guess we found the ruins you were talking about... only, they don't look so ruined these days..." Lynsay said in astonishment.
The ancient city was... yes. Looking very far from ruined at this point. There were clear lines of difference between older stonework and newer concrete, the red and the gray contrasting oddly, but on top of that, surrounding the area was farmland being worked by dozens upon dozens of furs they could see. What's more, within the outer walls of the ancient structure, newer buildings could be seen rising above it. These included what were... unmistakably guard towers. They could even make out furs standing on them holding assault rifles, watching the surrounding area vigilantly.
The two felines moved back away from the edge of the jungle, making their way back to a clearing where they could regroup. "That's... not a small number of furs..." Krystie said in amazement, wiping her hand across her face as she sat on a fallen log.
Lynsay paced for a little bit, her brows furrowed as she tried desperately to concentrate. "How the fuck did a place like that happen... I mean... it suddenly makes sense why no furs ever came from this area, but... fuck..." she said, dazedly.
"It happened by the will of the great Zaros, the avatar of the wilds," a bold voice said from the edge of the clearing as a group of soldiers led by a small group of tigers came through the jungle off to one side. Their leader was tall and well-muscled. Even Krystie had to admit that he would have been pretty handsome under different circumstances. Flanking him on either side were two tigers who looked younger while bringing up the rear just ahead of the soldiers was a tigress.
The tiger at the front of the formation looked at the two Tropicans curiously. "You two don't look as though you are from around here... and from what we understood, the furs outside of these lands had all vanished. Curious. Father will want to learn more from you two," he said, his tone full of arrogance and scorn.
The two cats looked at each other, sharing the understanding that the process of "learning from them" wouldn't be as pleasant as a chat over a nice drink and maybe some snacks. Krystie stood back up again, looking at the lead tiger warily. "Thanks, but we're going to have to decline the offer of your hospitality," she said, her voice dripping with distaste for the way this tiger was behaving.
The lead tiger glared at the two. "That's not up for negotiation," he said before looking to the one on his left, "Lucas, please secure the prisoners," he said, and the tiger there strode forward, grabbing hold of Lynsay's wrist. What was interesting was that Krystie noticed that the tigress actually looked worried, unlike anyone else in the clearing there.
Before Lucas could really get a good grip on Lynsay, Krystie stepped in, sending a powerful blast of air at the tiger, which knocked him away from the lynx, leaving him to fly into the arrogant leader of the group, knocking him into the formation of soldiers. The only one not hit by the flying tiger was the girl.
Krystie then quickly opened a doorway back to Tropico, shouting "Come on!"
Lynsay quickly got up from where she'd been knocked by the air blast and rushed toward the door. But as they were running, the tigress cried out a frantic, "Stop!" She ran toward them, and Krystie was prepared to close the door before she got to it, but she reached Lynsay first. She bowled into the lynx, tumbling with her through the doorway.
Krystie quickly closed it behind them, leaving them in one of the staging rooms at the castle. Several other members of the crew were waiting there, ready to act if they were needed, but when they saw them tumble through the doorway into the room with the tigress and a shouted command to "Fire," they quickly jumped into action. Charlie and Jewel pulled the tigress off of Lynsay, holding her steady as Krystie helped her friend up before turning her attention to the tigress.
She was pretty young... only about eighteen, from the looks of her, and unlike the rest of the soldiers, she was wearing a dress, made of beautifully ornate fabric. She looked afraid, but she wasn't struggling against the two who were holding her. "Alright, who are you? What is that place? And who is Zaros?" Krystie was not nice with the way she asked the questions, but she was still running on a lot of adrenaline.
"My name is Helen... youngest daughter of Zaros... that place is his kingdom... and he is... delusional... he thinks that he is the avatar of the wilds, but... he's just crazy... believes that humans don't deserve the world..." She said, and the fear in her voice gave Krystie pause, realizing how hard she'd come down on this Helen.
She took a deep breath and centered herself, bringing her fingers up to rub her closed eyes for a moment. "Okay. I'm sorry," she said, taking another, deeper breath, and holding it for a long moment. "What were you doing, rushing at us the way you did? Were you actually trying to stop us?"
Helen gave Krystie a bit of a sheepish smile, "Not really... honestly... I was trying to get the hell out of there... and you... with your magic... that's amazing..." she said, looking at her in awe.
The cat sighed and nodded to Jewel and Charlie, "You can let her go," she said, looking around the room. "I think that we can find a nicer place to talk. Am I right when I guessed that your dad wasn't going to pick a nice place for the conversation he wanted to have with us?" She was smirking at Helen, who laughed and gave her an almost apologetic look.
"No... you'd have been in the 'punishment room' as he calls it... torture chamber, more like," she said with a sigh, giving the lizard and wolf a smile as though to say that there were no hard feelings. They couldn't help but smile back at her. "Thank you. I worried when the reports came in about the districts... but... I guess I didn't need to," she said with a little laugh.
Krystie laughed and nodded her head, "Not really, no," she said, as she was typing away on her phone, sending messages to various people to meet up at the palace here shortly. She turned it off and tucked it back in her pocket. "Okay, I'm going to take us to the palace. Is there anything you need before we go?"
Helen blinked, thinking for a moment. "I... can't think of anything... I guess... let's go?"
Krystie nodded her head and opened a door to a... really nice-looking room in the palace. She saw Helen's face light up as she stepped toward it, looking all about as she walked through the doorway without a word. The members of the crew traded a bit of a laugh and shrugged before Krystie went through with her and closed the door.
The room on the other side was a very elegant sitting room, with some lovely chairs and a balcony overlooking the town square. Helen scampered over to the balcony, looking out over the city in awe. Helen could see her little tail just dancing away, while her ears were twisting and turning around, trying to track the sounds that were filling the space.
As Krystie waited there, Christine came in through one of the doors, walking up to the agent. "So... you brought someone back with you?"
Krystie gave her a lopsided grin, "Yeah. More... she tackled her way through the door before they could open fire. She seems pretty harmless, though," she said, turning her head to look at the balcony. "I mean... just look at her... a truly brutal killing machine if I ever saw one, ready to wreak havoc on the island..." she said with playful sarcasm.
Christine laughed and shook her head as she walked over to the tigress. "Helen? I'm Christine. The governor of the island. I'm pleased to meet you," she said, her voice warm. The tigress turned around suddenly, looking a little overstimulated by the city, but she took a breath and tried to calm down. The act seemed... oddly familiar, but Christine couldn't quite remember from where.
"Hi. Sorry. Yes, I'm Helen," she said, bowing to Christine.
The wolf laughed softly and smiled, "No need to bow. We're not that formal here. Please, come sit with me," she said, leading her over to the sitting area. She sat down in one of the armchairs. The tigress watched intently before she looked at one of the other chairs and sat down in it, herself. Such an odd girl.
She smiled and poured a cup of coffee, which she offered to Helen, "Would you like a drink?"
The tigress leaned in and sniffed at it, looking a bit confused before she picked it up and took a sip, and recoiled a little, "It's really bitter..." she said, setting it down on the table. Christine laughed and added some cream and sugar to it, stirring it in before nodding toward it again. Helen warily picked it up once more before she took another sip, and her face lit up, "Much better, thank you."
Soon enough, Kestrel and Briar came into the room as well, Helen particularly surprised by the size of the badger. "Wow... I haven't seen a lot of furs as big as you are..." she said, only having had experiences with the elephants and her father being on Briar's scale. Last to arrive before they started was Tammy, who looked very excited to see Helen.
For her part, Helen was very tickled by how cute and small Tammy was, but before she could get distracted, Christine spoke, "So, Helen. This is Briar, Kestrel, and Tammy. We are guardians of the island... well, Tammy is more of our magic expert, but she is very intelligent, and we greatly value her input."
Helen looked surprised as she looked at the other women in the room. "But... you're all girls... but you are... protectors..." she said, shaking her head and taking a sip of the coffee as she breathed, trying to center herself. "Sorry... females aren't... respected where I am from." There was a bitterness in her tone that the others could understand.
"Not to worry, Helen. Please, tell us about where you are from. How is it that so many furs are living in one place without any intervention from the human governments?"
Helen laughed and sighed, "It's not a nice story. I was born just a normal, wild tigress. All of my family were wild tigers. One day, I was exploring some ruins and found a crystal. When I touched it, it came to life and... that was the day that I became like this. My whole family did. My father was already crazy, and wanted to rule over humans... believing that they were unworthy of the world that they had stolen from the wilds," she said, grimacing.
Briar and Kestrel echoed that expression as she continued. "He immediately took us to investigate the surrounding villages... but we quickly found that all of the humans in the surrounding area had changed as well. So... he... changed his plans. He took the able-bodied men and made them his army, while everyone else was sent back to the ruins that our family called home... with me. I had to prepare the place for a new city, and it wasn't easy work. But... by the time he got back, I was actually pretty proud of our people and what we had accomplished together," she said, a happy look on her face.
"But, when I got back, before anything else, I went back to the ruins where I found the stone and... tried to stop it. It crumbled, and I had to run to get out as the place collapsed. I think I did something good, though, because after that, we didn't really find any more villages of furs that hadn't been turned when I'd first touched it. Not until about a year later, when other furs started appearing, coming to our growing city."
"But they were different. There weren't any more warriors among them. They were... people who didn't fit in. We started sending spies out to find out what was going on and discovered that it was happening all over the world. My father demanded that we free all of the ones within our reach, and left a... bloody message for the governments around us. Any furs in our domain were to be brought to him to be his subjects."
Tammy perked up at that, looking at Christine, "That explains why there were never any reported furs from the subcontinent! And the magic from the crystal that she touched... that must be why our sensors can't see any there," she said, getting a little bit of a confused look from Helen.
Christine nodded her head, "I think you might be right," she said before looking at Helen to explain, "We have sensors that search for the magical signatures that are present in the rest of the world. The area you are from has no hits for our signature, but the magic from the crystal probably muddles it and makes it so that we can't detect them."
Krystie nodded her head. "I scanned the magic near the city. I'd never seen a pattern like it," she said, pulling out her scanner, taking it over to the television to plug it in, projecting the image for the signature onto it. It was a beautiful pattern, but as she had noticed before, it was a fairly harsh and unforgiving one.
Tammy got up and walked over to it. "Fascinating... It really is quite striking, isn't it... and nothing like the signatures we're used to," she said, continuing to study the image as Christine tried to pull the meeting back onto track.
"So, Helen. Can you tell us what has been going on since the other furs started appearing?"
Helen nodded her head. "Dad... well, all his bluster over wanting to 'reclaim the world from humanity' was pretty quickly shown to be a lot of bullshit. He got his kingdom, and he settled in to just rule over it. Not that he was any good at ruling. He was way better at just... making grand statements and bullying people around. If I hadn't been there to fill in the gaps, nothing would have ever gotten done."
She took a long, deep breath, "I hated the fact that I made his kingdom work. But I couldn't just leave the non-warriors to suffer when they couldn't follow his vague, grandiose proclamations. I made it work in order to keep them safe. And I turned out to be really good at it," she said with a little laugh, shaking her head. "We wondered what was going on when we heard about all of the districts being empty... but I guess I know what happened now," she said grinning as she looked back toward the balcony.
Christine smiled, nodding her head "Yes. We've got... actually another tiger to thank for bringing us here. I wonder where she is..." she said as the door opened and Helen's heart stopped. Cadi bustled into the room.
"I'm sorry, I was taking care of a situation in Bermuda, and Dawn told me about the message as soon as I got back. So, we've got news about what's going on in India?" She asked Christine before her eyes swept over the room and she saw the young tigress, her own heart halting in its tracks as their eyes met.
The others saw the way the two froze at the sight of each other, confusion plain on their faces. No one spoke for a long moment as the two tigresses just stared at one another. Even as they could see the pain on their faces.
Cadi was the first to speak, choking out a faint, "Helen?"
The younger tigress had tears pouring down her cheeks as she replied simply, "Mom?"
Christine quietly urged the others out of the room, leaving the two tigresses a moment of privacy. Helen stood up in a daze from the chair and walked over to Cadi, still just trying to wrap her head around what was happening. "You... what..." she really started crying as she rushed forward, beating her hands on Cadi's chest, even as she pressed close to her. "Why did you leave me?!? Where did you go? Why didn't you come back and save me?!?" She was yelling through her sobbing as years of pain just came rushing out.
Cadi wasn't bothered by the pounding on her chest, but just wrapped her arms around Helen, holding her close to herself as she brought her face down, crying into the top of her daughter's head. "I didn't mean to leave you... there was magic... it took me away and changed me... It only just put me back in the world... and..." she said, breathing in with a big sob, "I didn't know... if this was even the same world that I'd left... I was just lost... and alone... and confused in the middle of a city... and surrounded by people who needed saving..." she said, her tears soaking Helen's hair.
The younger tigress' arms wrapped around Cadi, clinging to her rather than beating at her as the older tigress continued. "I... as soon as everyone here was safe... I had Tammy look for you... trying to see what we could find out about things back at home... that's when I learned about the anomaly... and had Robin send her team to find out... what... what was going on..." she said, just crying her heart out as the two of them just sank down to the floor, holding each other and just letting the pain of their separation out with one another.
At least until they both... passed out from the overload. Curled up on the floor together there in the room.
While that was going on, Christine organized the others to run what investigations they could, Tammy turning her attention to inputting the new magical pattern into the search engine. When she did, the room went silent.
The Indian subcontinent lit up like a Christmas tree, with a concentration of magic that was so overwhelming for the system that it couldn't accurately display it, leaving the light to simply pulse.
"Shit..." Christine said breathlessly as she pulled out her phone and sent a message to Robin, who hadn't joined them when the meeting with Helen had been called. "Robin? Where the hell are you? You need to get your ass down here, now," she typed, sending it and just turning to look at the screen once more.
While everyone in the room was trying to process what they were seeing, Robin stepped into the room, kind of stumbling as she rushed. "The fuck, Christine? What's so urgent that... you... huh... okay..." she trailed off as she came to stand beside the wolf, staring at the screen. "Yeah... I needed to see this..."
They all stared at it for a long moment before Robin took a breath and looked at Christine. "I'm getting the strong feeling that... there's more of a story behind this... give me the rundown."
Christine explained about the op that Krystie and Lynsay had just been on to the jungle, and the information that Helen had just shared with them. Robin was... really not sure how to handle that news. "So... what you're telling me... is there's a psycho tiger... trying to rule over a kingdom of furs... in the middle of India... and we're only just discovering this..."
Tammy chimed in then, "Well, to be fair, the magical signature is completely unlike anything we've experienced before, and so it didn't show up until we ran Krystie's readings through the search algorithm."
Robin took a breath, letting it out slowly. "Okay... so... I get that..." She breathed, rubbing her forehead. "And I thought the humans were bad... but this fucker..." she said, looking up from the screen to look at the others in the room. "We can't just... leave him to treat his people like this, can we?"
Christine was leaning against one of the desks, just doing everything she could to breathe. "It's... not that simple... they're armed... with soldiers trained to fight..." she said, doing everything she could not to panic. "With the governments, they just wanted to squeeze us until we broke... this psycho... I don't think he would just stop at that."
Robin rubbed her forehead. "Fuck... I just... argh... we're not warriors here. We don't have soldiers to take on someone like him. How the hell are we supposed to deal with a threat like this... because now he knows about us... and from what you are telling me, he's not going to stop looking for us."
Tammy nodded her head solemnly, "At least he doesn't have access to Nothing's magic to be able to get to the island. The magic where he's from is something completely different, and from what Helen was telling us, he doesn't even really have any idea how to use it. Helen was the one who had anything to do with it, he's just been kind of... reaping the rewards."
Robin frowned, shaking her head. "He hasn't had the motivation to push for more than that... now he does... especially now that we've shown that we've got the ability to just... drop in on his doorstep, make fools out of his people... and, oh right, as far as he knows, we just kidnapped his daughter."
Briar frowned at that. "He might thank us for that one. Sounded like he regarded her as a failure... as much as she was the one who kept his kingdom together behind the scenes."
Robin looked flatly at Briar, "So... before long now, he's going to be desperate. Even if he doesn't come after us, he's going to end up needing to get back onto the warpath and is going to start rampaging around the countryside. Either the humans living around him are going to suffer for Helen's absence, or the furs who aren't his army are going to suffer, or both. We can't let that happen. I won't let that happen. Fuck," she said, turning away from the map to pace around the room.
Tammy spoke up, then, "One thing that he doesn't have access to, though, is magic like ours. One fur with an N-bracelet and the wits to use it creatively could render his army unable to fight."
Robin stopped her pacing, looking around the room at Kestrel, Christine, and Briar. "Or... four guardians could do the job."
"Plus your crew," Krystie said, standing up and walking over to her captain, showing that she had more people to count on than she was giving herself credit for.
Robin laughed and smiled, giving her friend a hug. "Yes, and my crew. Plus, who knows how many other furs on the island are willing and able to fight, given the chance?" Robin looked at Tammy, "How quickly do you think you can make those N-bracelets?"
Tammy grinned at her, a mischievous look in her eyes, "In two shakes of a mouse's tail."
As they all set off from the room, they left in better spirits than they'd been when they realized the scale of the challenge ahead of them. Even Robin breathed easier as she went back to her keep, calling in her 'forces' to brief them on what they had discovered. It was still strange to her to be the effective military commander of the island... not that they had much of a military to begin with, but the point had been made clear. What they lacked in numbers, they more than made up for with skill and power.
Hell, they weren't an army. They were way more of a spy force, and with the kind of power they could wield, that would be pretty devastating to this Zaros. Still, she needed to talk with this Helen. She needed a clearer understanding of her father's military capabilities.
After the briefing, she stepped through to the palace once more. She made her way to the room where Cadi and Helen had been left, walking into the room without knocking first, far too caught up in her purpose.
Inside, she found the two tigresses sitting on the floor, just cuddling and talking softly with one another... catching up with each other. When she saw the younger tigress, Robin's heart skipped a couple of beats, and she had to take a breath. "Ahh... hi... I'm... Robin. I just wanted to come and talk to you a bit... Helen, right? I'm sorry I didn't come to join the conversation earlier, I just had a mess that I was working on cleaning up at the time..."
What the fuck was this? Why had the simple sight of this tigress taken all of the wind out of her sails? And Helen looked up at her from where she was sitting, having been recovering from the intense emotional release that she and her mother had shared. She smiled softly up at the vixen, which only made Robin's heart race again. "Oh... hello, Robin. Yes, I'm Helen... and I'm Cadi's daughter," she said with a little musical laugh that sent shivers up Robin's spine.
"Oh. Well, I didn't mean to interrupt. But... yeah. At some point... we should... talk. I'm... kind of in charge of what passes for a military here... and... yeah."
Cadi couldn't help but grin a little at poor Robin, a twinkling in her eye as she saw the vixen's reaction to Helen. "That won't be a problem, Robin. I'm sure that we can arrange for the two of you to have an opportunity to discuss what Helen knows of the challenges that we're dealing with right now."
"Great. I... I'll leave the two of you be for now, then. I'll... catch up with you later," she said, trying not to just rush out of the room, closing the door quietly before she leaned her back against it and just tried to breathe and get control of what felt like a panic attack to her.
But it wasn't a panic attack.
Meanwhile, back in the jungles of India, Aman was examining the place where the confrontation had taken place, looking for any evidence that the interlopers had left behind.
As he looked, he caught a glint of something in the grass in the moonlight.
He walked over to investigate it, and picked up a piece of equipment that he'd never seen before. It was fairly small and compact, with a display screen on it above a keyboard.
He turned it over in his hand, examining it closely. He popped off the back panel and smiled as he found seven green, glowing crystals.
He really didn't care about the loss of his sister. He hadn't lost his brothers or any of his men. And for all of the trouble those girls had caused, they seemed to have brought him something... far more valuable than the sister they'd just lost.
His father would be very pleased.