Filed by Operative Marty Twist
HELLO MY NAME IS MARTY.
HEY HEY I’VE NEVER WRITTEN A REPORT BEFORE. SO LET’S GIVE IT A GO.
OH, WAIT. ALL CAPS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE RUDE, RIGHT?
Is that better?
Right, so here’s what happened. I grabbed Petrina’s infodump as she decayed. And it just seemed to me that we had kinda been yanking Ash’s chain a little. So I grabbed my friends Ricky and Joey, and off we went.
Sure enough, we found Ashtara on the floor, shot up with nul-matter. “HEY, THERE ARE TWO OF YOU!” I said.
“It happens sometimes,” said one of him – the guy they call Lugh. “Say, Petrina, could you turn it down a little?”
“I’m Marty. Sorry about that.” I could sense that the human female crouched next to him was trying to remove the nul-matter with some kind of metal implement.
“Fun times,” said Joey, “digging around in your musculature with pointy tweezers.”
“Does it look like he’s enjoying it?” said Tara. It seemed to me that she had increased the amplitude of the sound waves she was producing.
“No, it looks painful!” I shouted, responding in kind. “And potentially damaging to your tissues.”
“True dat,” said the damaged Ashtara, Owen, faintly.
“I don’t have any other options,” the crouching female replied. “Matter attractors, magnets, lasers…none of it works on this stuff. I have to go low-tech.”
“They keep varying the volume,” complained Ricky.
“It’s nuanced. It indicates emotion,” said Joey.
“Um, if you’re not enjoying it, why aren’t you doing it the easy way?” I queried.
There was silence.
“And what would that be?” asked Tara.
“See?” said Joey. “Nuance. That was what humans call a dramatic pause.”
“You know what happens when you mix matter and antimatter?”
“An explosion,” said Tara. “Well, more accurately, a reaction producing mutual annihilation and a lot of energy.”
“Woot woot! So what do you think happens when you combine nul-matter with pos-matter?”
“With what?”
“I shall tell you. Mutual annihilation and a lot of nul-energy. Nul-energy that Ashtara ought to be able to lick up like candy.”
“I got another one,” said the medic. “I’m working as fast as I can, but there are a lot of fragments.”
“I can’t help,” said Owen. “I know they’re in there, but I can’t precisely locate them. I’m blind to them.”
“And where exactly am I supposed to get pos-matter?” asked Tara.
I’m sorry to say it, but we all laughed.
“WHAT IS SO GODDAMN FUNNY?” she said.
“I really don’t get this volume thing,” I muttered.
“Nuance,” said Joey.
“The cause of our humor,” said Ricky, “is that you’ve got an absolutely humongous gob of it – by our standards, big enough to build palatial dwellings for trillions of us – on the end of that stick there.”
“The Staff of the Matriarch,” Tara said. She waved an appendage at the medic. “Back off. I’m about to do something inappropriately phallic.”
“Tara,” said Owen, “if you mess up that crystal, it could scotch the whole power grid.”
“Who cares?” said Tara.
“Who cares?” said Lugh.
Tara gingerly prodded Owen’s wound with the tip of the staff. Owen made a noise which, to my admittedly untrained senses, seemed less than content.
Tara plunged the crystal into the wound. There was a flash of brilliant blue-white light. Then another.
“You’re going to have to move it around,” groaned Owen.
“Hang in there,” said Lugh.
Tara moved the stick carefully, in a slight swirling motion. There was a cascade of blue-white flashes in repeated succession. Lugh’s head jerked back. “Mother of compost bins!” he exclaimed. “That’s…”
Owen bounded up from the floor. “Chasedoesn’thaveripscortchthathasanythingonthatgear. Lookmylegishealedalready. IfeellikeIcouldbenchpressastarship.”
“Owen,” said Lugh, grasping his hand. The two of them apparently made some non-vocal exchange involving eye-contact followed by a physical gesture obscure to me which involved bringing their faces into close proximity.
“They’re smooching,” said Joey.
“I thought the term was snogging,” said Ricky.
Then they raised their arms, vanishing into blue-white light.
So that was Ashtara’s real form.
Wow.
Honestly, most of us had been thinking that maybe the SongLuminants had lost it for a bit by admitting the Nau’gsh, or that it was some kind of elaborate practical joke. Lucius had seemed so sweet, but so stupid. Types like him don’t get into the club. As Joey says, they get sent out for beer and pretzels, and then are never given a spot on the couch.
I don’t understand half of what Joey says. Joey watches too much television.
Anyway, Ashtara was advanced. Really advanced. And powerful. Really powerful.
“What the Sam Hill is he doing hanging out with this bunch of losers?” Joey exclaimed.
“Sam Hill?” I queried.
“I got it from Phil’s infodump. It sounded good.”
Ashtara only levitated for a moment, then settled into another distinct humanoid body. “Woot woot,” I said. “Nice complex matter manipulation there.”
It made the confusing human gesture known as a smile – confusing because we had learned it could signal contentment, an invitation to intimacy, or an impending attack. “I’m here,” he announced. “Time for the end game.”