Chapter 294: New Year’s Resolution
Alexandra Erin on March 27, 2015 in Volume 2 Book 8: Elven Holiday, Volume 2: Sophomore EffortIn Which Mackenzie Gets The Finger
Knowing Amaranth’s tendency to over-prepare… to say nothing of taking things over and making them her own… I had half suspected her of managing our expectations in her description of her preparations for a New Year’s Eve party, but the whole thing turned out to be pretty low-key.
She just covered a couple of tables in the main downstairs lounge with white cloths and laid out some snacks and sparkling beverages on them. The platters and glasses were Glory’s: heavy crystal patterned to look like interlocking leaves. They were the fanciest things there.
The kind of crackers you could get in a box and the kind of vegetables that the cafeteria thought were really special toppings for a salad bar weren’t terribly exciting after the cruise ship fare, but it wasn’t bad. It was, in a way, more my kind of party.
“Do you think we should maybe try for pizza, too?” Amaranth asked me. I think what she really meant was do you think I did alright?
“I think we’ve got plenty of food right here,” I said. “I can’t imagine we’ll need more.”
“It’s not really the quantity I was thinking about,” Amaranth said.
“If anybody turns up their nose at this, I don’t know how much they’d go for delivery pizza,” I said. “Anybody could have made their own arrangements, but nobody did.”
“You’re getting a lot firmer in your dealings with elves,” Glory said, slipping in beside me on the other side from Amaranth. I hadn’t realized she’d entered the room.
“Yeah, well… seeing people scared makes them less scary,” I said. “And maybe the same thing is true about seeing them overwhelmed, or awed, or having a really good time… maybe I’m seeing more than a bunch of distant, perfect immortals now.”
“That’s good,” Glory said. “Not that I don’t want you to be in awe of me, mind you… I would just prefer it to be for my own merits and not the mythic reputation of my race.”
“There are definitely awe-inspiring things about you,” I said.
The night went pretty slow and smooth after that. Even though we were in theory still under threat of attack at any time, it was a lot less nerve-wracking to be lounging around Oberrad House, hanging out and snacking, then it had been to sit around the conference table on the flight back. The defenders probably felt a lot better to have almost two dozen reasonably warm bodies reinforcing their numbers, with all those extra pairs of elven ears perking up around the perimeter. For our part, being at ground zero meant that if something happened, we would know about it and… if such a thing were possible at all.. be able to do something about it.
Nothing did happen, though. People breezed in and out of the lounge as time scrolled by, with more of the party spending time at the party the closer to midnight we got. I felt a small wave of anxiety when I realized I was in a room with three of my lovers and the moment of the traditional kiss was fast approaching.
Glory had sort of called dibs back before the trip, but I felt like Amaranth had a sort of precedence… Steff would be the first to admit that she had the least claim on me, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t hurt to have it demonstrated when she didn’t have anyone else around. Of course, she and Amaranth could always kiss each other, but that presupposed that Amaranth wouldn’t want to kiss me…
“You’re wearing anxious face,” Steff said.
“Is it that noticeable?” I asked.
“It is to me, hon,” she said. “Let me take a stab in the dark. You’re thinking about logistics, aren’t you?”
“You sound pretty sure about that.”
“Well, if you were afraid that we were all going to die in a sneak attack, you’d look worried,” Steff said. “But you don’t. You look anxious. This means it’s probably something social. Let me make this easier on you: you can kiss everybody.”
“Wouldn’t we have to be really fast?”
“I don’t mean at the same time.”
“But, I mean, I’ve never actually spent New Year’s Eve with anyone like this, but I’m pretty sure the idea is to do it at midnight,” I said. “Even allowing for the traditional twelve bells…”
“Hon, you’re being way too literal about this,” she said. “Let me put it this way: midnight is the trigger. There’s probably an upper limit somewhere on how long you can wait before it’s just a regular kiss, but I’m not sure where it would be or how you’d figure it out, or who would care outside of you and maybe Two, and she’s not here. Kiss Glory because it’s her house, then kiss me if you want to, then kiss Amy, because that girl is fast in many senses of the word but she is the world’s slowest kisser.”
“…you have a point about that,” I said. “It still seems like something that we should be trying to get done at the stroke of midnight.”
“That’s because you’re thinking of it as a problem to be broken down and solved,” Steff said. “This isn’t magic, Mack… it’s superstition. There’s no success or failure. If you have one or more people in your life you’d like to start the year off smooching with who want to kiss you back, then you have already succeeded. There’s no target you have to hit for it to count.”
“You’re sure Amaranth won’t mind going last?”
“If she’s ticked off that she’s not first, she’ll be over it by the time her turn is through,” Steff said. “Though if you’re really worried about that, you could always talk to her.”
“I think I’ll trust her to be mature about it,” I said. “I know she has her jealous edges, as much as she likes to think otherwise… but she’s never let them rule her.”
“It’s your call.”
“Now that that’s solved, I find myself wondering if it’ll even be an issue,” I said. “I hate to be the one who keeps bringing up the doom and gloom scenarios, but right around midnight would be the perfect time for someone to attack.”
“Well, there hasn’t been a peep outside for hours,” Steff said. “I mean, there are a couple of frat houses having their own parties tonight on campus, and some people stumbling around drunk, but nothing furtive and clandestine in our neck of the not-woods.”
“Huh… that’s almost more suspicious,” I said. “Nobody hanging around just to be vaguely menacing?”
“Would you do that, when you could be back at Treehome partying?” Steff said.
“I’d think that question would apply during the whole of break,” I said. “Is New Year’s Eve really that a big deal to anyone over there? I get why Glory wants to do the whole traditional kiss-at-midnight thing, but I thought caring about the passage of individual years was the kind of thing that elven society looked down on as a mortal thing.”
“Yeah, acting like whole decades pass in the blink of an eye is what ‘mature’ elves do,” Steff said. “But middlings? My impression is a lot of them count the days until the big one-double-oh. I know winter break is usually just one big party leading up to a blow-out when the year turns. The powers that be would probably become the powers that were if they tried to send their troops out now.”
“That sounds pretty reasonable,” I said. “If it’s really that big a deal for middlings, I’m kind of surprised that Glory didn’t plan the cruise around it. It wouldn’t even have had to be any longer, if we’d just left a day later or something.”
“It still would have cost a lot more money to book for New Year’s, without an extra day,” Glory said, from across the room. “And I don’t really know that it would have been worth it for the equivalent of one more extra fancy dinner. Anyway, I picked the non-holiday cruise for a reason… I have to imagine that the crowd got a lot rowdier tonight. Though these are really excuses. When you get right down to it, I didn’t want to start the year anywhere but here.”
Midnight came and went without event, except for the events that were signified and triggered by midnight. If Amaranth was at all put out by the order of operations that Steff had suggested, I couldn’t tell. I had the impression Glory kissed several of her retainers, though all of that had died down by the time Amaranth and I broke apart.
“Dee’s not here,” I noticed.
“She’s been sound asleep since shortly after you got here, baby,” Amaranth said. “I asked her if she wanted us to wake her, but she said she’d rather have the rest… she’s been pushing herself really hard.”
“I hate to break up the party, but that actually sounds like a really good idea,” I said. “I know I had a nap earlier, but I was running on excitement for so long, and then nervous tedium after that… right now I kind of feel like I could just collapse until spring. I know that’s not an option, but I think I’d like the chance to get a good night’s sleep at least, especially if we’re sure that no one’s going to be sneaking up on us tonight.”
“I wouldn’t say sure,” Glory said. “It just doesn’t seem likely… I think to get anything done tonight, they’d have to whip everyone into a frenzy and then commit one hundred percent to it, you know? It’d be all or nothing… and nothing seems more likely.”
“Yeah, I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that and go lie down,” I said. “Goodnight… happy new year.”
It was nothing… nothing that night, and nothing the next day. Ian’s arrival was delayed by weather, but in the least interesting way possible. He arrived several hours behind schedule, but was never out of touch with us and there was never much suspense that he would make it.
He wasn’t up for much except for collapsing into a comfortable bed by the time he got in, but I collapsed with him and he found his second and then third wind at various points in the night. Neither of us felt like straying too far from bed the day after that.
When I’d first told Glory that I needed Ian to be able to crash with me at Oberrad House during break, she’d told me she suspected that some of her girls were interested in guys, they just weren’t into the cultural baggage that went along with it in the middling society of Treehome. It seemed like she was right, though I didn’t know how much Ian’s presence for a few days would do to break down that particular barrier.
Some of the elves of Glory’s court were definitely very interested, in a distant and slightly giggly way, to have a man in the house, but it also seemed to cause a certain amount of… fluster-ation.
The fact that I was with him seemed to make everything more taboo… I don’t know if that’s because they saw me as Glory’s, or because middlings didn’t really seem to do bisexuality. My impression was that adult elves were a lot more fluid in their pairings, but the younger set was really kind of big on the all-or-nothing. They liked to pick sides and stick with them.
On the subject of picking sides: the absent members of the court did drift back in before break was over. I could definitely pick them out from the crowd by the way they sort of slunk around at first, but I didn’t bother to figure out who they were. I had meant what I’d said about not bothering to hold a grudge over it. They hadn’t missed a fight, they hadn’t left the rest of us to fight for our lives in their absence… they might have, but things hadn’t shook out that way.
And really, this was kind of an ideal scenario. If everyone had come back to campus and then nothing happened, then the next time Glory needed everyone to pull together, everyone would be thinking about how they’d shown up for nothing… but now, everyone would be thinking about those who hadn’t shown up, and how that had looked, and how it had been for nothing.
We did have a few more of what I’ll call near-incursions, after New Year’s Day… that is, there were some lone elves hanging out on campus suspiciously close to us, but they always backed off soon after someone noticed them. Dee was of the opinion that most of them were more curious than hostile, and she would know. She also reported that there seemed to be a spike of fear just before they ran off, in a lot of cases.
“Someone’s still out there, looking out for us?” I guessed.
“If so, it is someone quiet, with an elusive turn of mind,” Dee said.
“I’m putting my money on the Gnomish Avenger,” Steff said.
“I do not believe we would ever be able to settle such a debt, unless the person, being, or agency responsible chose to come forward,” Dee said. “That they have not done so yet may indicate that they have no desire to.”
“I hate to think that,” I said. “I mean, I know objectively that never knowing why the attack failed or who has been looking out for us isn’t much different than if nothing at all had happened, but I’d always feel like it was hanging over me, somehow… like we owe someone something, and they might show up to collect it at any time.”
“Well,” Glory said, “that’s not exactly disastrous as a worst-case scenario, is it? I mean, whoever they may be, they have provided us with a valuable service, one that I would give much for in gratitude, if the party who did it were known. But it’s not a service we asked for, so I wouldn’t feel too terribly about refusing them if they asked for something unreasonable.”
“How confident are you that you’d be in a position to say no?” Steff asked.
“If they wanted to extort something by force, there’d be no need to go through the rigmarole,” Glory said.
“But why go through the rigmarole in the first place?” I said. “If they knew the situation here, they must have known you were looking for defenders…why not just come forward and offer their services?”
“If we knew that, we’d probably know who they were,” Glory said. “I think Dee had it: we’ll only know if it suits them to tell us.”
“Yeah, I guess we’ll just have to live with that,” I said.
“That beats several alternatives,” Steff said.
There was a polite, precise knock on the front door… loud enough to carry up the short flight of stairs and through the open lounge door. I think we all jumped a bit, but no one more so than Steff, who leaped about a foot in the air.
“Sorry,” she said sheepishly. “I, uh… I didn’t hear anything.”
“…I didn’t, either,” Glory said.
She looked at Dee.
“I was not aware of anyone approaching,” she said. “Shall I send for Pala?”
“No… it’s my damned house, let me get the door,” Glory said. She rose smoothly to her feet. I started to stand up, but she waved me off. “I’ve done enough hiding behind others… for as long as remain a queen, let’s make that mean something.”
“If you’re sure…”
“You’re all right up here,” she said.
There was no sound I could hear for a bit, and then the sound of the door opening. A very precise, slightly clipped female voice said, “Is Mackenzie Blaise in, please?” I thought I recognized it, but I couldn’t say from where.
“One moment please,” Glory said, then she called, “Mackenzie?”
I stuck my head out the lounge door and looked down at the front door, though at the angle all I could see was a long coat. The bright winter sun behind the figure had the effect of both silhouetting her and stabbing my eyes. The first thing I noticed as the figure began to resolve itself into a person was that she was short and lithe. The second thing I noticed was the hilts of the swords crossed on her back. The third thing I noticed was the ears.
“I understand that you were offering membership in this house organization for those who would defend it from attack during break,” Kai said.
“Yeah… uh, yes, we were,” I said. “I think that’s more or less over, though?”
“Yes,” she said. She held up a small package, brown paper bundled in a roll and tied with a ribbon. “Please do remember in a few years.”
I took the package and watched, a little stunned as she turned smartly on her heels and walked away. Her bare cat feet didn’t leave the slightest trace in the relatively fresh snow.
“Are you going to open that?” Glory asked me.
“I’m pretty sure I already know what it is,” I said.
Wow, what a twist!
I have clicked Kai in the tags to refresh my memory, and noticed she is not tagged in this chapter.
Also there is duplicate text starting with:
“You’re wearing anxious face,” Steff said.
AWESOME
Hah! That was not expected, but it makes a certain kind of sense. Kai want’s to be free of Sooni, but has no real options since she is a slave and her education is being payed for by Sooni’s father. However because her entrance into the Imperium and the school was contingent on being a free person, she can use local laws to separate herself from Sooni – if she has someplace to go.
By joining Oberrad when Sooni graduates she could remain at MU and in the Imperium.
WAT
WHAT IS IT!?!?!?! I don’t know and it is eating me.
It’s the finger of the elf that previously was injured in the failed attack on Oberrad. She came back to retrieve it, but they didn’t have it. Kai must have been the one who cut it off, and kept it as a token to later show them what she had done.
Repeats several paragraphs starting with ‘“You’re wearing anxious face,” Steff said.’.
I continue to really enjoy the story. Thank you.
@Markaslin:
One of the elves lost a finger in the attack.
The subtitle of this chapter is “In Which Mackenzie Gets The Finger.”
So I’m guessing it’s that pizza they were talking about ordering.
BABY KAI KAI 😀 *runs away lest the tiny catninja come after me*
I think the people who guessed catninja are justifiably proud now. I suspected it, but it was for a different reason and didn’t think Kai would act on her own.
“I think the people who guessed catninja are justifiably proud now.” I just went back to #288 and “catnin” doesn’t appear anyone, so I don’t think anyone guessed catninja out loud, or otherwise posted it.
Nocker guessed it in the comments of #289, actually.
Out loud? You’re not real familiar with the whole ninja “thing”, are you
Oh hey, this chapter subtitle brings back memories.
It is, as usual, extremely clever.
Oh no, Mack is stuck in a time loop!
a time loop! Oh no, Mack is stuck in
No timey whimey bullshit please.
It keeps happening.
I blame Praxis, “dead” necromancers are always up to this kind of shit. . .
Unless it is also wibbley wobbley …
Anything that can sneak up on two point five elves and a subtle artist is pretty scary.
And that ‘scary’ person comes from a society that practically worships the concept of ‘obligations’.
So do nekoyokai not show up to subtle artists?
They don’t if they’re chesire cats
I’ve never been so happy to be wrong.
Excuse me, I need to go pick up my jaw off the floor.
Oooooh, well I was getting worried that there wasn’t gonna be an attack at all and all the buildup and worrying was for nothing, but that reveal definitely capped off the tension in the past handful of chapters nicely.
Points to everyone who at least guessed the Nekos, I’d say. Good to see Kai back. And awesome, based on what we heard (or didn’t hear) of her defense efforts.
Heh. Good reveal.
Nitpicking, the 10 paragraphs starting with ‘“You’re wearing anxious face,” Steff said.’ are duplicated with only minor changes.
that’s been happening on and off for a while
Still think there’s a time loop being teased.
There was also this weird spot where Mackenzie shifted tense from past to present momentarily.
Can someone get that phone?
Because I fucking called it!
In all seriousness, this kind of implies a whole lot. On one hand, Kai is obviously hella strong, but given her training that’s something one can expect. On the other hand, she’s got at least two full sized swords. That’s the kind of thing one generally only finds regarding Samurai, and is definitive of their specific fighting style. Given the heavy caste system Yokano has even relative to real life japan and it’s status of having a central imperial authority that’s probably not the type of title one earns easily, especially not either a female or a Neko.
It’s not like she’d carry two swords out of necessity. Neko’s have claws and fangs of their own and Yokano education includes offensive magic. She could have done comparable damage with one sword or even none at all given how her training has gone.
Though her delivering alone is also noteworthy. Kai is the one Sooni has the least amount of experience with and is also acting alone here. For all we know, she didn’t attain any kind of new honors and simply stole another sword from the Nekos, or Sooni herself(Sooni in particular, her short blade complimenting her longer one). There’s a chance she somehow went renegade and had a falling out at some point.
Considering that Yokan is a modern society, such things are probably not based on “earning honors/titles”, she has training and a pair of swords because Sooni’s father paid for them.
Now they may or may not have a “Samurai” class, if they do it’s probably hereditary. However in a modern society I doubt the restrictions on who may or may not carry specific weapons are still in place – or are at the least easily brushed aside with liberal applications of money.
Yokano is modern in the same sense that the Imperium is modern. The caste system established centuries ago is still very much in power, and it’s very clear that that power is concentrated in the hands of a number of greater families. Hence why Sooni’s family can essentially do as they please to a village that’s “theirs” and make demands regarding slavery that even Mercy wouldn’t dare to. Even the Imperium’s “we don’t believe in human rights, you can be bought and sold over a shoplifting mistrial” is said to be shockingly liberal by comparison.
Or there is a rule to the affect that you can equip your retainers with whatever you yourself are permitted to wield
Can someone get that phone?
Because I fucking called it!
Yes, yes, congratulations on successfully carpet-bombing the target. Shame about all the innocent bystanders, but this is war. Collateral damage, acceptable casualties, ends justify the means. 😛
Kai is a ninja. She specializes in speed, stealth, precision, and mental discipline, basically a sneaky monk with swords. In many editions of d&d, they can Pass Without Trace and have special mental defenses like Slippery Mind. Samurai don’t sneak any better than paladins and knights do.
I think zeel was right on the money: Kai wants to finish her paid education from Sooni’s dad, and then bail and never see that bitch again rather than go back home and be Baby Kai-Kai for the rest of her miserable life. But she needs official protection and an official place, or else the Imperium deports her as soon as she detaches from Sooni. So, Oberrad – outcast central.
I’m not entirely certain how this will work out for her legally. She is in the IRM on an educational visa – which she only qualifies for if she is a free being. That means that as far as the IRM is concerned (due to some amount of dishonesty) she is not a slave to Sooni’s family. This gives her an out, since they can’t compel her to return to Yokan, as they have no legal holding on her.
However, her visa won’t be any good if she isn’t a student, which means that once she graduates she will need to return or acquire citizenship or a work visa.
Detaching from Sooni isn’t the real problem, it’s graduating. Of course she can easily avoid that by failing to take enough credits, or more likely, going for a higher level degree. However any continued education after Sooni graduates will be on her to pay for.
Joining Oberrad is a first step, but she still has some work to do – like finding a job to pay for her own education.
I’ve been getting the vibes that paying work isn’t something terribly hard to come by for people with the right skill-set. Trapezing through the woods killing shit being one of them when said woods are like 8th dimensional hyperplanes full of horrible fauna directly next to a bunch of moneyed young people. Especially when you aren’t tied to a major race or guild and are willing to dismember anything in your way.
Aaaaaaaaaah, AE, you are the best!
You know we are always excited when old characters show their face again.
How much range is there
From being “awe-inspiring”
And “aww-inspiring”?
Ooh! Go Kai!
Nek-oh SNAP!
You know — I had just been starting to fret slightly at the pacing. Wondering when something was going to, you know, *happen* again. Feeling like things were, perhaps, just a bit…dragging.
And, once again, AE proves that she is the supreme storyteller, somehow wrapping it all back up and around again into a perfect little time-bomb of exploding plot revelation and delight. I’ve learned my lesson, this time. I swear. AE — you rule.
Tho I still want to know how anyone who has ever left the city for any reason didn’t twig immediately to the fact that a biped made the tracks. Bipedal cat tracks would have narrowed the suspect pool considerably.
I think she was on all fours for part of the fight.
Why do I get the impression that whatever ‘tread softly’ power she has only works on her feet, not her hands
I think it was mentioned for stealth spells that it may be more efficient to just put them on the feet and nothing else.
This could mean that it wouldn’t register as for hands, but it could also mean that if she goes down on four “Feet” with such a limited range, it’d screw up the center of balance and gravity and put the spell radius between her front and back paws but cover neither.
Which sounds like the most likley. Kai would have hit them, run, wanted to go faster, gone “oh shit” then corrected herself.
I think she left tracks intentionally though, if she didn’t want to leave a trail should could have erased them after the fact.
I agree. I think that was done purposefully, to make them wonder, in the same way that she didn’t come to them until now to make them wonder. The mystery builds up her worth to them – it proves she can remain unseen/unsensed (at least by them; it seems pretty clear that the elves were being put off by her now and again). Plus, it backs up the idea that it was definitely her who did the protecting. Without the tracks, there would at least be some chance that she simply came into possession of the finger somehow (however unlikely that might be).
Exactly, the whole thing is a performance. She leaves obvious, but incomplete tracks, and then brings them a trophy from the battle. Together with her ability to sneak up on the house, this proves she was the one, and that she has incredible skill.
Found this a few days ago, been reading it, finally caught up. I have to say, I’ve been enjoying it a lot.
Welcome to MU!
Please sign here that you have read and agree to the weapons policy. . .
Only took you a few days?
I had to hammer through for a month or so to catch up from when I started reading.
Tip o’ my hat to you.
That’s what happens when I have FAR too much free time…
The fact that the day after I caught up I started a new job and thus now have much less free time is just the icing on the cake.
Congratulations on the job and your mad reading speed. 🙂
I started rereading a while ago and it took me several months to catch back up reading several chapters a day. Where did you start reading? ‘o.O
I didn’t think that we’d ever see Kai again. Her showing up really caught me by surprise.
Oh, is this the last chapter of the current book? I’d wondered if the story was briefly on hiatus.
Considering the “new semester” thing, does that mean that we won’t see any chapters on Mackenzie’s adventuring class adventures? For some reason, I assumed there was some chapters/storyline coming on that…
Is everything ok?
Huh, I just noticed that The Forum is technically still up. It’s just been hacked… So the index can’t be viewed. Weird, I didn’t think it was still even hosted.
Wow, double cool. It appears that Pheonix1123 posted the MU timeline from the old wiki. In the spirit of preserving such things, I have copied it into a Google Doc for safe keeping.
Still no new story and nearly two weeks since the last, I Hope AE is OK and not something serious.
Has anyone any word from elsewhere?
New semester begins the 21st. Presumably she is in the depths of planning, preparing, maybe even building a buffer. Yeah, it was a bit of a tease to say “MU RETURNS FRIDAY! … for one chapter…! And then an actual break that I neglected to mention…!” But, all for the best, I imagine.
According to AE’s most recent post on her personal blog, she’s taking a break from writing Tales of MU. She posted this on April 10, 2015.
If you want to read the post, go to:
http://alexandraerin.dreamwidth.org/639501.html
Nice twist! I did not suspect that even a little. 😀