—————
Dirt and leaves shifting beneath my feet, I descended the ramp leading down to the subterranean garage under the Visitors Center.
The contents of the cavernous space hadn't really concerned me while I had been stripping the building of salvage during my first visit, especially considering the results of the many bats living there. Unfortunately, that was no longer the case.
I stopped in front of the narrow garage shutter, which was open by about a foot at the bottom and thereby provided an entry point for the bats. Borrowed gas mask in hand, I drew more and more of the fliers in my vicinity and sent them into the garage. I watched through the swarm slowly gathering inside as one of the small bats twisted like a gymnast, hanging onto a wire with the digits at the end of its wings, and tensed. A few moments later I heard the faint sound of something wet splattering on the hood of a glass-roofed SUV.
The vehicle had once had an atrocious green paint job, if the similar wrecks I had seen elsewhere in the park were any indication, but the bats' acidic guano and urine seemed to have been long since stripped most of that away.
Waiting a few more minutes for my swarm to gather in strength, I pulled the mask on, stepped toward the door, and breathed deep to make sure it was working. It helped, marginally. Mentally bracing myself, I pulled at the canteen shaped mass in my swarm sense and Blue-infused water flowed from the canteen at my hip, under the garage door, and into the mechanism.
For a few moments I made sure it was functional, raised the garage shutter an inch, then in one fell swoop raised it fully and drove my swarm through the garage. At the light, at the onslaught of my swarm, the bats took flight as a screeching cloud of thin-skinned wings and small, furry bodies that came at me with a nauseating cloud of fetid air that had been trapped in the garage.
A dense swarm and thin barrier of Blue-infused water shielded me from the bats in the chaos of the seconds following their sudden awakening. Then they were gone, into the dark of the surrounding trees.
The acrid stink in the air was still strong enough to peel paint and for good measure I recharged the water and sent it to the opposite garage door, opening it as well to help clear the air.
I looked in on the garage while it aired out a bit and the large room was just as I'd seen with my swarm. Guano was everywhere, albeit in somewhat orderly and concentrated lines as it followed wherever the utilities had been run along the ceiling or lighting hung. Unfortunately, that left the two rows of once green tour vehicles as the direct victims of the bats' residence. Leaves, dirt, scattered guano and refuse littered the floor, though fortunately the right side of the garage, where a pair of the park's red and white jeeps and a pair of four-seater golf carts were parked, had survived comparatively intact beside the SUV's.
Still, there was a revolting amount of shit covering just about everything in the room. It really would have been preferable to avoid this, and if not for the masks and filters intended for the heavy mold in the utility tunnels I'd have passed on opening the door at all.
But that wasn't the case, and with Artur volunteering for the heavy lifting on the surface, I was down here. I wasn't sure if his volunteering for the other job was just him being polite or if he was trying to avoid the mess down here as long as possible.
Either way, that left me being the first one to deal with the garage filled with bat guano. Gathering the Blue-infused water once more I made a path of steps for myself and entered the garage.
It was a bit of an odd feeling, being back here. Irrational as it was, I couldn't help but feel a little frustrated at returning to this place once more; it was like a magnet.
A week of trekking back and forth across the island and we were back here, scraping the bottom of the metaphorical barrel. But then, there wasn't another option. With no rescue coming, and a need to get back to civilization to salvage some sliver of his life, Artur had had no other option but to help himself.
The first plan came together after reviewing what we needed to call for help, what was available, and what we knew about the island. The main issue lay in actually calling for a rescue. Fortunately, an immediate solution to that had been sitting at the veterinary building, where the investigation team had left behind a long-range radio system complete with an antenna mounted to the roof.
The question then became how to power the system, and, again, the veterinary building provided a solution in the portable generators it had on site.
But then we struck on the problem of actually fueling them. Whatever diesel was stored on site would have gone bad, just as it had at the bunker and likely everywhere else on the island; so while we had a means of communication, we didn't actually have the means to use it.
Further planning had stalled at that point and we had had to take a recess to blow off steam for a bit. Each of us had gone our own ways, seeking out our distractions, with me venturing out into the jungle to confirm my hypothesis about the pure Green and Artur beginning a new whittling project.
It was Artur pointing out later that night that the generators didn't have to be run on diesel fuel that got the plan moving again.
According to Artur, diesel generators could also use kerosene as fuel and kerosene just also happened to be used as jet fuel, something he'd learned after being near a helicopter gunship in the process of refueling. Evidently, kerosene had a rather distinct and pungent smell.
What made that relevant was that unlike other processed fuels, kerosene had a long shelf life. As fate would have it, there had been a helicopter meant to bring VIP guests to and from the island so it stood to reason there would be some stored at their airfield for it to refuel. It was a viable solution and an easily available one at that.
It was entirely too optimistic.
When we reached the airfield it was both impressive and disappointing.
In one sense it was more than we had expected. I hadn't been anticipating anything more than a dirt strip and something to keep aircraft out of the rain, but it turned out to be a fully equipped airport, if a small one, with a paved airstrip, a pair of hangars, a radar and air control tower, and several glass-faced auxiliary buildings that made me think they were terminals or receiving areas.
But it wasn't finished. Outside the core structures, the air control tower and the pair of hangars, everything had been left incomplete when the island had been abandoned.
It was almost a repeat of the Visitors Center, with the incomplete structures being partially consumed by a wilderness eager to reclaim the rectangle of jungle that had been clear cut to make way for the airstrip and its facilities. And if that wasn't enough, the location as a whole had suffered due to the ocean being only a short walk away. The salt and spray of the sea could be smelled in the air, and coupled with the general humidity all exposed steel had a heavy patina of rust.
But the structures aside, the real problem was that it hadn't been left untouched like the rest of the island had. While the fuel would have been fine had it been stored properly, as it should have been when the original park staff had evacuated to the mainland to avoid a storm, that hadn't been the case. When Artur and I arrived, we found the main fuel tank empty, the refueling truck dry, and the remaining spare barrels of fuel left out beside the airstrip with their tops open or bottoms rusted through.
A bit of poking around had given us a good idea of what had happened. Evidently, the investigation team hadn't just consisted of people stationed at the veterinary building, and for whatever reason, those at the airstrip had left in just as much of a hurry, enough so that they'd left the hangars open and debris from their things had been scattered across the airfield.
As best as we had been able to figure, when the team left they had filled up a helicopter or three with whatever had been left at the airfield and hadn't bothered to put away the remaining fuel drums or re-seal those they hadn't emptied. Now, years later, exposure to the elements had rendered whatever was left unusable.
It was a flat bust, with only the small amount of usable supplies I'd been able to dig out of the hangars making up for it. I'd finally gotten a piece of magnesium at least, for whatever a fire striker was worth at this point.
But while the easiest option had been ruled out, the reminder of the investigators' presence led us to looking into more unlikely and previously disregarded approaches to powering the radio system.
There were alternate options already existent on the island: a geothermal plant and wind turbines in the north, and a hydroelectric plant in the south. All we had needed to do was re-activate them. 'All', of course, being a gross oversimplification.
In defense of the idea, the fact that the geothermal plant on the other island had been left running for years without maintenance and eventually had been used to call for rescue had made it seem marginally less implausible at the time.
The plan wasn't in any way practical, we would need to figure out how to operate the facility and reroute power to the veterinary complex or find somewhere to bring the radio to the power plant. There were a dozen and one problems and privately I had thought it unlikely we would be successful, but having an objective had ensured Artur had remained focused, his mind occupied, and had kept him from falling apart. Barebones as it was, it was at least a plan.
So gathering our things we set out again with the intent to figure things out once we got there.
That had been the idea.
I'd refrained from informing Artur about the 'decommissioning' part of the investigatory teams' activities on the island. It was a risk, a balancing act in keeping him going, and one that ultimately backfired worse than I could have thought when it turned out that the term 'deactivated', when used to describe the geothermal plant, had been a synonym for blown the fuck up. It had been a gamble that I lost, and Artur… Well, he'd had hope. It had been effective in keeping him going, but turned to poison when it fell through.
Fortunately, while the plant itself had been a total loss, the time spent on the cross-island trek and hike up the island's volcano hadn't entirely gone to waste. While it had been arduous, and time-consuming, the trip had ultimately served to inspire our current plan while also allowing me to confirm the existence of yet another color at some hot springs we stopped at. A Red colored energy, unstable and difficult to work with, it had filled in some blanks I'd been struggling with concerning the mixed energy of the jungle-covered mountain impression.
The more relevant takeaway came in the actual process of venturing out to the geothermal plant, when we passed by another of the park's 'green' power generation methods: wind turbines.
Built on the southern face of the volcano in a series of scattered clearings, nine out of the ten had collapsed, with the sole surviving turbine now in the process of being reclaimed as the jungle consumed the clearing it had been built in. Regardless of their current state, their presence had given me an idea. We could make our own.
It was something I'd looked at in passing during my warlord phase, due to the ready availability of the requisite materials in the wrecked cars left scattered throughout the city. However, as appealing as it had been to use car alternators and daisy-chained twelve-volt batteries as emergency backup power, it hadn't turned out to be particularly viable.
The biggest issue I had found after a cursory web-search was that the alternator-turbines would have been hideously inefficient; it would have taken an unreasonably long time to charge a single battery, let alone an entire bank of them, to any appreciable degree. The flaws in the system had ultimately made me look elsewhere.
Now? While it still wasn't a good option by any means, it was our only option. The only practical one, at any rate, when a signal fire of sufficient size would draw the attention of the island predators and attempting to make a raft would be tantamount to suicide. That the alternator-turbines would be a fairly simple and straightforward project that could keep Artur occupied was an added bonus.
Of course, calling the project 'simple' was entirely relative. It was certainly a simpler prospect than attempting to reactivate a geothermal or hydroelectric plant, or somehow repair and tap into a full-sized wind turbine. We only had to gather up as many alternators and batteries as we could to account for the alternator turbines being unable to produce much of a charge and as many batteries as we could because the ones available were old and wouldn't be able to hold much of a charge.
It was a plan though, and one that, after spending a few days at the veterinary complex prototyping the idea, had proven to be a promising one.
We just needed to gather the materials.
A dozen batteries and alternators at the veterinary complex, then twelve batteries and four alternators from here, six of both from vehicles left at the airfield, and however many we could find at the workers' town and the hydroelectric plant.
I grimaced at the first jeep's shit-covered hood. Hopefully it wouldn't be as disgusting to retrieve the others.
Using the Blue-infused water I popped the hood and got to work.
-I-
After being at it for half an hour and beginning work on the second jeep, the sound of footsteps and crunching leaves preceding Artur's descent into the garage was welcome. I politely extended a series of steps made from water for him to reach me while he pulled on his mask.
"I pulled the parts from the garage out back and found the wiring you mentioned," he reported, leaning over to look into the engine compartment. "Are you almost finished here? I can take the battery."
"Almost," I grunted, and jerked my head the left at the pair of four-seater golf carts parked beside the other jeep to disguise the reflexive discomfort at how easily I had pronounced the foreign syllables. A length of water shot out, slipping into the rearmost seat before it rose up and the water moved onto the second before returning. "There are four batteries in each of those. Get started on moving them while I finish here?"
After a moment's hesitation he nodded, and without further comment moved over to begin working on the batteries.
I welcomed his quiet acquiescence and went back to work on the alternator and battery.
As useful as it was being able to communicate more clearly, the fact that I was able to comprehend and speak an unfamiliar language with increasing ease was disconcerting.
It had been a week since the helicopter failed to show and the skill, ability, whatever it could be called, had fully come into its own. In that time I'd gone from unknowingly understanding certain words, and being able to respond to a very limited extent, to being able to have complete conversations.
Assuming it wasn't limited to Russian though, this development could greatly broaden my options after I finally left the island. It was one of the few redeeming aspects to it that I could see.
But why it was happening, and how, had been a constant weight on my mind since the night the helicopter hadn't come. And even more concerning than that, what else had changed? Or been changed?
First it was the Color power, or powers, and now there was this. Contessa had shot me in the head, she would have had to have that damage fixed before dumping me here and the few people she could have gone to didn't ease my concerns in the least.
My arm ached as I shifted from the battery to the alternator and worked the socket wrench back and forth, moving the vine bone with pulses of Green and pulling at the Blue composing the liquid flesh.
It was frightening. There was something happening with my brain, maybe even with the connection to my passenger if the phantom limb integration with the Colors was anything to go by, and there was nothing I could do about it.
But I could still speak, still read, was still myself… at least I thought so. I hoped so. That was worth something.
Over the next short while I worked quietly as Artur came and went, focusing on the intricacies of moving the vines making up the 'bones' in my prosthetic while not allowing a hint of my inner turmoil show through. Eventually I finished unbolting the alternator, detached the connectors, and had the battery ready to be pulled.
"Artur!"
He popped up from his work on the golf cart, and I hefted the alternator with my flesh and blood hand and pointed down into the engine to indicate the battery with my prosthetic. He returned a thumbs up then went back to unbolting the golf cart batteries as I turned toward the entrance.
Emerging from the dark of the basement garage, I blinked against the bright, mid-morning sun. As my eyes adjusted I ascended the ramp with the alternator in hand, Artur jogging past me with a battery from the golf cart and another from the jeep held in his arms.
I didn't bother telling him to slow down. After he'd accepted the reality of being abandoned, and after the airfield and geothermal plant fell through, he needed to keep moving or else he would just stop. As concerning as that was, though, I wasn't good at being comforting, and no quick solutions came to mind. For now, it seemed that the best thing for him was to stay productive.
Following him at a much slower pace, I turned right at the top of the ramp, pulling my mask off as I walked along the side of the building and hooking the straps on the canteen at my hip. Stopping at the corner and standing just out of sight, I watched through my swarm as Artur walked past the titanic, brown furred, black shelled male elephant beetle resting at the foot of the Visitor Center's front steps. Artur set the batteries down on the bottom step, and my stomach twisted a little when he moved to pat the titanic beetle on its proportionally tiny head. Disguising the darker reality of its existence, I had it exhale and press its head into his palm.
Stepping away, he patted the enlarged beetle's bulk and I sighed, rounding the corner as he grabbed one of the batteries and took it inside. My attention was on the beetle as I approached, watching from my perspective as it, I, shifted the beetle about and moved it as naturally as a beast as large as it should've moved.
At least I had some leeway in applying movements to it thanks to its sheer size.
And it was massive. Not including the horn jutting out of its head, which made up another third of its length and brushed the ground as it fed on the gathered fronds and piles of berries gathered to help offset its upkeep, it had last measured in at twelve feet long by six feet tall by six feet wide. I couldn't even begin to guess how much it weighed at this point, hundreds of pounds at the very least, and that growth had all happened in just a few days of infusing energy from the pure Green Impression into what had once been a six-inch long beetle that fit in my hand. Only a few days and it had taken on a similar profile to a small family sedan when resting, and at its full standing height it was just as tall as a minivan— or a carriage, as Artur had compared it to.
It wasn't a bad comparison actually, and admittedly was helped along by the saddle of blankets laid down over a slight ridge that jutted up at the fore of its thorax and the wide basket of woven vines mounted atop the shell covering its now non-functional wings; the driver's seat and passenger areas respectively.
It wasn't my Atlas, wasn't what I had been hoping for when I initially thought of enlarging a beetle... but I would settle for it being my Oliphaunt.
Maintaining the beetle was a costly drain on my limited supply of Green, even with the pure impression gained from the jungle and not having to support the whiptail at the same time.
That it had been killed in what was meant to have been a simple experiment was frustrating, though I couldn't begrudge Artur for his hasty draw. It would have been one thing if it had just sat in the heavy gauge wire cage I'd put it in. It was another matter entirely when it entered some sort of berserker state and nearly tore through the cage in an attempt to get at Artur, who had been sitting nearby to relay what he observed via radio.
Hearing gunshots and being called on the radio moments after it had passed out of range, being told it had gone into a murderous rage and returning to find a cage built to hold small dinosaurs nearly torn apart, it had been sobering.
That the unexpected results of the experiment, and subsequent testing to confirm them, had just led to more complications, was only icing.
In the immediate the cost was minimal, as I'd already intended to let it die; all that was lost was what I may have learned and even that was offset. It was the long term takeaway that my enlarged insects were basically raging berserkers when not under my control that was far from a welcome revelation, particularly considering the plans I'd had at the time for enlarging a beetle to serve as a beast of burden.
The whiptail being in such a state would have virtually been a non-issue; I could have kept it near me wherever I went, and it would have been little different from the wasps, ants, and spiders I kept on me.
That wasn't the case with the Oliphaunt, not with its limited mobility and the size I expected it to reach based on how effective a single suffusion of pure Green had been in enlarging the whiptail. I couldn't necessarily bring it with me if I had to go into more dense or difficult terrain, in which case it would go into the berserker state and likely destroy whatever was nearby. It being a pack animal, that wasn't exactly a desirable outcome.
With the complication of not necessarily being able to keep it close at all times, I'd begun to worry over what would happen if I lost control of any enlarged insect. For all its capabilities the whiptail had only been an enlarged spider, while the elephant beetle I had intended to enlarge already outweighed it multiple times over and its strength was only going to be magnified once I began enlarging it.
It potentially destroying whatever it was carrying aside, collateral damage may not have been too great of a concern here on the island, but elsewhere? If I was in an urban area or working with others? The state of the enlarged insects was a problem.
The only minor upside to it all was that it only took a few experiments with a handful of disposable scarabs to determine that the berserker state was a result of my using the mixed-Green energy of the mountain, and from there to narrow it down to the presence of the Red energy mixing with the Green.
From there things had fallen into place. Minimal experimentation with the Red had given me a good idea as to its nature, it serving as an agitant and exciting agent— almost an opposite to the Blue which had thinned and calmed the Red-mixed Green I had been using. The difficulties in controlling the Red and Green mixture on a fine level and overall application compared to the pure Green were night and day, and with the discovery of a Red colored energy at the hot springs we had stopped at earlier in the week I was able to pin the root cause down to the introduction of that into the enlargement process.
However, just knowing the cause was little consolation, not when I couldn't act on that knowledge due to the timetable Artur and I were operating on. No, simply not using the Red-influenced Green simply wasn't an option, not when I had such a limited supply. I suspected there was some potential in separating out the two energies as I had managed to gain the Blue aspect of the Visitors Center rather than both, but forays into that had thus far proven inconclusive.
If I couldn't refrain from using the Red-tainted Green, though, I did have one other option: investigating the alternative application of the Blue's effects on organisms' minds. Abhorrent was it was, as much as I didn't want the power, it was a potential solution that I couldn't allow myself to overlook.
But the effects of the Blue weren't absolute, something I'd only recognized after working my way through the first two-dozen scarabs; it was the sense enhancement I had noticed during my initial testing that tipped me off.
The way I'd come to understand it, the minds of the insects I applied the Blue to were breaking under the strain, their senses being amplified by too great a degree and being overloaded due to too much sensory input. I had been boiling them, I'd come to realize. Well maybe not literally, but close; as best I could determine I had been accelerating the hardware beyond what it could handle. However, the comparison made me think about going in the other direction; if I could slow down it down instead. Could I 'freeze' the bug's mind rather than boil it?
Dozens of bugs later and the answer seemed that, yes, it was possible. And in the process, I learned more about the intricacies of what the Blue could do, what it took for the deleterious mental effects to occur going in either direction, and more.
It was attempting to slow things down with the Blue that I figured out I could put something to sleep, and from there send them into a far deeper sleep verging on a coma— as I'd currently done with the Oliphaunt. It may as well have been a vegetable while I was controlling it. Still distasteful, but in that state, the problem was largely solved while leaving the utility of its waking state of its rage as a contingency. Flip the switch in the beetle's brain to awaken it while fleeing and it would keep fighting once I was out of range.
And then there was another direction to the research. While having a non-lethal takedown method was nice, it was a more tactical development and secondary to the strategic potential that the sense enhancement represented. The distorted senses of my normal swarm were capable enough, but they had their limits and being a little more than a fly on the wall would expand my observational capabilities multiple times over.
Broadly speaking, the various mental applications of the Blue were ripe for abuse. I didn't want the temptation of them any more than I had when I noticed it during testing, but I could accept being able to take the good from the bad.
Sighing, I adjusted my slipping grip on the alternator and began toward the beetle, walking up as Artur took the second battery inside. Looking past him I saw all we'd gathered was neatly piled just inside the door: batteries, electrical wiring, pipe, nails, screws, hammers, and more. Not very much all said, most of what we needed was elsewhere or already back at the Veterinary Complex, but it was several hundred pounds that wouldn't need to be hauled by the Oliphaunt until after we salvaged what we could from the workers' town.
The trailer itself wasn't exactly light though, or sturdy, so every pound removed counted for something. Turning I looked behind the Oliphaunt, grimacing at the hodgepodge of rusted steel interlaced and tightly woven vines sitting oversized truck tires.
Not for the first time that morning, the concern of whether it would hold together or not came to mind and setting the alternator on the steps I stepped over to the trailer and touched my prosthetic's fingers to the vines wrapping its frame.
Reaching into the back of my mind I touched the slightly dim Green Impression of the small jungle clearing and drew forth a long streamer of Green, channeling it into the fibers of the woven plant. Searching for signs of strain, I found clusters of taught vines that were on the verge of snapping or had come loose.
Guiding the Green, concentrating it, new shoots burst out and were woven into the existing vines to further reinforce the structure. A patch job, but it only needed to hold together for another day or two.
Moving on I searched for further weak points and stepped back a few minutes later with the Impression much dimmer than had been. There had been a lot. Coupled with the ration needed for the Oliphaunt tonight I wasn't going to have much left to use for myself.
Salvaged from the veterinary complex, it had taken almost a full day of work from both Artur and I in order to get the trailer rolling, and then another few hours for it to move under load without something breaking or the wheels screeching.
Still, it was serving us well so far and had already survived being pulled around for a day. Regardless of its inherent problems, it was the only way the alternator-turbine plan was going to work out without turning the gathering period into days of back and forth trips across the island. That wouldn't have gone well, not with how much time that would give Artur to think himself into a hole.
Grimacing, I turned again to look up the stairs.
Artur had grabbed the last of the batteries from the garage while I'd been working on the trailer, but now he was sitting at the base of the stairs to the second floor, holding a bottle he had taken from one of the offices while grabbing bundles of electrical wiring not used in the construction.
The downside of keeping yourself occupied with work: When the work was done, there was nothing left to distract you from the things you were pushing away.
Handling it by falling into a bottle, though?
Trodding up the steps I entered the lobby he looked up from the bottle, a finger picking at the red wax seal the cap as I crossed the hall.
"Coming to tell me this isn't a good idea?"
I shrugged. "That was what I'd intended. I'm not saying not to, it may help for a little bit and if the mood warrants it I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to drown your sorrows."
He nodded, conceding. "But?"
The prompting caught me up for a second. Did he want me to spell it out? "But abusing it will do you no good. There's only so much and before long you'll run out, then where will you be? We're making progress," I continued, trying to reassure him. "The wind turbine was working just fine when we left. Don't give up so soon."
Looking back down he rolled the bottle in his hands, a small smile pulling at his mouth.
"I know," he said, continuing to roll the bottle back and forth. "I just needed to be reminded. It's just…" Trailing off he stared at the bottle's label for a long moment. "Your Protectorate," he said, pronouncing the word in English, "it wasn't like a military force, was it, not with what you've told me about it."
I paused, considering where he might be going with this."No. I suppose the best comparison would be that we were like a... patrol force?" I frowned, the words not quite matching up with what I had intended. My mind unconsciously making up for my limited vocabulary? "The Wards were like a neighborhood watch," I told him in English.
Artur nodded. Not in understanding, but simple acknowledgment. "Well, in three days I will be declared missing without leave when I fail to check in with my commanding officer. After that, between one to three days later my case will be sent up the chain of command and charges of desertion will be put forward. I have no papers, so even if I had the means to go home I cannot. And the payment promised to me for this… hunt, will languish in a bank account, with no way for me or my family to access it. I came here for nothing."
"Oh."
A bitter smile twisted at his lips and he nodded. "Yes. Oh. I trust that the plan will work, but that doesn't really matter much, does it?" Shaking his head he snorted; bitter, dismissive. "You know I thought you were some monster when you pulled me out of that ambush? I thought you were some kind of witch or demon, like the kind my grandmother told me about to keep me in line after she and grandfather took me in. Now I'm beginning to think you and I have a lot in common."
He stared at the bottle for a long few seconds before setting it aside and rubbed his hands against his pants as he looked up again. "You promised me your help, and I am thankful, but this… all that's left for me to do is to keep moving forward and hope something happens."
So worse than expected, but at least he hadn't given up entirely. "I—"
"Are we finished here," he asked suddenly, then blinking and flushing pink a little he gestured to the lobby. "Here, I mean."
The change of subject was sudden, but a relief. Nodding my affirmation I was left unsure as Artur stood and walked briskly past me, leaving the lobby.
Maybe he wasn't doing better, but I could deal with him simply managing. I would take managing over him being a mess.
But if, when, the time came that he couldn't manage any longer? I looked down at the whiskey bottle, then stooped to pick it up by its neck and proceeded back to the kitchen. Not the best option, but that just seemed to be how things were going.
Shutting the lobby doors behind me and checking that Artur had everything, I pulled at the Blue-infused water in my canteen and spun it out into a disc of water to step on, then climbed onto the Beetle and took my place on the saddle, letting my legs rest on either side of its small head as I got comfortable.
Artur had settled in and I glanced to the Visitors Center, shaking my head. One more day and we'd be back again.
"Giddyup."
Resting my hands on the hump I sat back and loosened up as the beetle rose, stretched its legs, and started forward in its slow, ponderous stride.
—————
A/N 2: Urgle Burgle. This was… not what I originally intended, not by far. It was supposed to be short for one thing. Another part of that could be attributed to how long it took due to things coming up in life, as well as a few rough patches arising during production with the continually growing length making the editing take longer and longer… but anyhow, that was 6.1. Not an interlude as intended, but what I originally had planned wasn't anything special so in all likelihood, there may be a second Interlude from Arturs perspective at the end of the Arc… probably, I'm still weighing that.
Anyhow, onto the 6.2. Since it wasn't merged with 6.1 I filled this out a bit more than originally intended so I hope I'm giving you something to discuss.