The sound of pen scratching against paper filled the classroom. The professor had written out an elaborate diagram of advanced rune structures, and the students in class were trying to copy the contents of the whiteboard before the lecture moved on. Joan was halfway through scrawling the most complex rune of them all when she looked left to check on Vell, who was currently on his phone.
“Vell, dude,” Joan whispered. “I know I said you could borrow my notes sometimes, but this is a bit much.”
“Huh? Oh, yeah,” Vell said. He looked up from his phone. “Yeah, don’t worry about it. It’ll be fine.”
Vell waved her concerns away and went back to his phone. He wasn’t copying the board for two very good reasons. Firstly, he already knew everything this lecture was trying to teach him. Secondly, this was the first loop and any notes he took would be eradicated -along with Joan, himself, and most other people on campus- when time looped in upon itself. Vell was taking a little time before the inevitable apocalypse to squeeze in some independent research.
Runes could be used to replicate magical effects without actually having to study and learn the spells involved -though that was not to say it was easy to learn. Every rune was made up of a series of straight lines, that had to each be carved to very specific lengths, in a very specific order. The simplest magical forces, like “move” contained only two lines, while more complex functions like “disassemble” could have up to six. The professor had just informed them all that a Kraid Tech lab had recently discovered a seven-line rune.
The rune on Vell’s back had ten lines. Whatever it represented was incredibly complex -or incredibly powerful. Vell was prying his way through Kraid Tech’s press releases and scientific journals, trying to find more information on this seven-lined rune they had supposedly discovered. His efforts hit a speed bump when he got a message from Harley.
HARL33:
hey vell
what do u call an octopus with a gun?
vharlan03:
a glocktopus
HARL33:
lmao nice
but no!
you call it today’s apocalypse
and he’s headed ur way
Vell looked up from his phone just in time to watch the door slam open. The last thing Vell saw was a bright-red cephalopod brandishing a gun in his direction, and then it all went dark.
----------------------------------------
“So,” Vell began. “An octopus a with a gun.”
Leanne sipped at her morning coffee and let out a deep sigh. Lee and Harley, oddly enough, shared her lack of enthusiasm.
“Fucking marine biologists,” Harley grumbled.
“Marine biologists?” Vell questioned.
“Yes, dear, you should get used to hearing about them,” Lee said, her usual polite tone edged with bitterness.
“You’d think in a school like this it’d be the particle physics guys, or the pyromancers, or something,” Harley said. “But half the time it’s the fucking marine biology lab that causes the apocalypse.”
“It’s more like twenty-seven percent, to be fair,” Lee said. Leanne rolled her eyes.
“Whatever, fifty percent, twenty-seven percent, they’re too many of the percents!”
“What, do they like, summon Cthulhu or something?”
Vell had to wonder how many different apocalypses a bunch of fish research could cause.
“No dear, Eldritch Ichthyology is a separate department,” Lee said. “Quite safe, actually. I don’t think they’ve ever caused an apocalypse.”
“Which is a shame, because I’d like to see Leanne fight Cthulhu,” Harley said. Leanne pondered the potential showdown silently, and, oddly, didn’t seem opposed to the idea. “But no, it’s always dumb shit like octopi-”
“Octopuses,” Lee corrected.
“Octopuses with guns, or making everyone’s eardrums explode trying to make a whalesong translator, or causing a plague that makes everybody grow gills and stop being able to breath air.”
Harley ripped one of her heart-shaped pancakes in half and shoved it in her mouth. She was only halfway done chewing when she felt the need to vent her frustrations once again.
“Fucking fishy bastards,” she grumbled.
Vell nodded along. He could tell the loopers had a grudge, and it sounded like a justified one.
“You want me to handle it solo?” Vell said. “Doesn’t sound like any of you guys want to put up with it.”
Harley chowed down on pancakes and chewed thoughtfully.
“Nah, I’ll handle it,” Harley said. “I can shut down their experiments pretty easily.”
“One of the lead researchers is quite infatuated with Harley,” Lee said, with a coy note of teasing to her voice. Harley stuffed her face with pancakes and did not dignify Lee with a response. Disappointed but not surprised, Lee shifted focus to Vell.
“Thank you for offering, but Harley should be able to handle it,” Lee said. “She’s well versed in exploiting her feminine wiles.”
“I got wiles for miles, baby,” Harley boasted. She wolfed down another pancake with surprising speed and threw her plate away. “I’ll get on it. Y’all can chill.”
Harley headed off to class. With the meeting apparently adjourned, Leanne soon followed. Vell still had to work his way through his waffles, so he lingered for a while. Lee stayed behind as well, burying her nose in a book as the conversation ended.
“So Harley’s got this?” He asked.
“Without a doubt,” Lee responded.
“Huh. Now I kind of don’t know what to do with most of the day.”
“It’s always beneficial to keep up with schoolwork,” Lee suggested. “You never know when a particularly troublesome apocalypse will eat up valuable time. Best to stay on top of your academics.”
Vell nodded in agreement. It was still only the second week, so his studies weren’t too strenuous, but he knew that would change soon enough. The Einstein-Odinson college curriculum pushed students to their limits -about thirty percent of freshmen didn’t make it to their second year. The workload overwhelmed them one way or another. Vell didn’t intend to be part of this years statistic. At least not yet. He might get sick of dying every other day eventually. He wasn’t sure if his curiosity about the ten-line rune would outlast his patience for daily death.
Vell’s curiosity caught on to something new as he glanced at Lee. While he’d found out about Harley and even Leanne’s studies by now, he still knew nothing about Lee.
“So, speaking of schoolwork, what are you studying?”
Lee looked up from her book as if she was confused by something, and looked around. She saw no one else Vell could be talking to, though.
“Oh, sorry, me?”
“Uh, yeah,” Vell said. “Sorry if I’m interrupting.”
“Oh, no, it’s fine, this is -it’s nothing,” Lee said. She slammed the book shut without marking her place and set it aside. “What were you saying?”
“I just sort of wanted to know what you’re, uh, studying here,” Vell said. “I know Harley’s into robotics and Leanne does sports, but I kind of don’t know what you do. Harley mentioned magic?”
“Oh, yes, well, my family has a bit of a history in magikinesis, so officially I’m studying that,” Lee said. “My real passion is hydrokinesis, though.”
“Two kinetic magics? You can handle that?”
The art of magically controlling anything, be it mana or water, required very specific mental discipline and self-control. While it was possible for anyone to control two or more forms of kinesis magic, most people chose not to just because of the headache it presented. Once you’d learned the “habits” of one kinesis, trying to learn a second was comparable to a right-handed Russian learning to write Japanese left-handed.
“Well, I happen to have more time on my hands than most people,” Lee said. Vell couldn’t argue with that. “I intend to make the most of it.”
“Well, if you can manage it, more power to you,” Vell said. “I couldn’t even manage one.”
Vell had tried his hand at pyrokinesis once, in his teenage years, but after setting himself on fire eight times, he had given up -for about seven months, and then set himself on fire five more times, at which point he gave up for good. Thankfully he’d been smart enough to keep a fire extinguisher handy all thirteen times. Even as a teenager, Vell’s persistence was equaled only by his intelligence. Also his flammability.
“It’s a challenge, I’ll admit, but I have been acquitting myself well so far,” Lee said. She brushed a loose strand of hair back behind her ear. With one line of curious questioning ended, Vell picked up on another.
“So how’d your family get started in magikinesis, then?”
As quickly as the loose strand had been put into place, it slipped out again. Lee’s hand twitched despite her attempts to control it.
“That is, well, it’s a very long story, darling,” Lee said. “I’ll tell you some other time. Wouldn’t want you to be late to class.”
“Alright,” Vell said. It was about twenty minutes before classes started, but Vell took the hint. Lee didn’t feel like talking about her family. Vell couldn’t help but be curious about why, but he restrained himself. That was Lee’s business. She stood and slung her purse over her shoulder as she prepared to leave. Vell got in one more, far less prying question.
“Got any plans tonight, Lee? My roommates and I were gonna watch some movies,” Vell said. “We can invite Harley too, if she’s done by then.”
Lee bit her lip for a moment.
“Tempting,” she said stiffly. “I’ll see if I have anything planned tonight.”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Lee bent at the waist, almost bowing, before realizing that was an odd way to say goodbye and waving instead. Vell shrugged and decided to finish his waffles before they got cold. He’d somehow ended up with even more questions about Lee than when he’d started.
Between her refined looks, genteel mannerisms, and her ostentatiously British accent, Lee always seemed out of place to Vell. She was like a living anachronism. It was equal parts concerning and intriguing. Vell wanted to know more. The first theory he’d been able to formulate involved Lee being displaced from the 18th century as part of a failed time travel experiment, but she had mentioned owning a cellphone growing up the other day and dashed that theory against the rocks.
Vell made the decision not to worry about it. Thanks to the time loops, they would be spending a lot of time together. Anything worth knowing would come up in time.
----------------------------------------
After getting her face and hair dolled up for the days events, Harley focused on her wardrobe. A variety of options, all in shades of red, had been plucked from the laundry basket where Harley kept all her clothes. She had a very spacious closet, but it was reserved for things far more important than her outfits. Harley narrowed her choices down to two, and held them up to display to Botley. Harley’s robotic familiar, currently plugged into an ankle-high humanoid body, turned between the two curiously.
“What do you think, Botley? The v-neck says ‘hey, look at my cleavage’, but the tight sweater says ‘hey, imagine my cleavage’.”
Botley’s round head rotated thoughtfully before pointing to the sweater. Harley nodded in agreement.
“Good instinct, Bottles, always better to leave it up to the imagination,” Harley said. She dressed herself and snatched Botley out of the chair he was sitting in to walk him over to the closet. While most of her clothing was settled, the most important part of any outfit were the accessories. Harley threw open her closet doors to peruse her options.
Several dozen mechanical bodies, and a few dozen more loose limbs, lined the shelves, each with a unique configuration of mechanical appendages and integrated tools. Harley placed Botley on her shoulder and tapped her finger against each of the robotic bodies in turn.
“Let’s see, we’re going to want something waterproof, something that can handle chemicals, going to need to borrow the scanner off of this one...You feeling bipedal or quadrupedal today, Botley?”
Botley pointed a tiny hand towards the shelf with several quadrupedal bodies. Harley nodded.
“Right, right, better for swimming,” she said. Botley had roughly the intelligence of a dog, but Harley still liked to let him make his own decisions when he could. He was a surprisingly effective decision maker, even. Botley’s adorable little robot head could only hold so many thoughts, so he never fell victim to overthinking.
With the final decisions made, Harley grabbed her tools and got to work. The chosen body required a little customization, but Harley had disassembled and reassembled these bodies a dozen times over. She could build a Botley body with her eyes closed at this point. Swiftly finishing her work, Harley plucked Botley’s head from its current doll-sized body and plugged it into the new frame. It had a long, thick body with four short, flipper-like limbs.
“You look like an otter,” Harley noted. “Heh. Ottley.”
Botley had no voice to laugh with, but he did give a small hop of pleasure at the joke. Harley pointed to the shelf.
“Stay,” she said. There was no need to give Botley any vocal commands, as they shared a psychic link, but Harley liked to do it anyway. Botley dutifully plunked down onto the shelf. “I’ll summon you if I need you. Be good, no parties while I’m out. You remember what happened last time.”
Botley remained motionless. Harley patted him on the head and headed -reluctantly- to the marine biology department. She knew she was going the right way when she started to smell fish and desperation. The characteristic perfume of Michaela.
With one final deep breath, Harley pushed open the door to the marine biology department. Inside the room were some of the most slimy, disgusting, simple minded, and useless creatures Harley had ever seen. There were also a lot of fish.
Barely containing her disdain, Harley wormed her way through the marine biologists. She deliberately avoided touching them out of fear that whatever made them so insufferable was contagious. Her efforts at avoidance were made all the more complex by the fact that most of the researchers and students were excited to say hello for the first time this school year. Her frequent visits to this department to prevent numerous fish-based apocalypses had made her an unfortunately familiar face to this loathsome band of misfits. Harley politely made her way through the crowd and found her way to the most disgusting of all.
“Hey Michaela,” Harley hissed.
“Harley!”
Michaela turned Harley’s way, and Harley resisted the urge to let the disgust show on her face. Harley respected people who were passionate about their craft, but Michaela had taken her love of fish a bit far by magically grafting very large, very visible gills into her neck. The flaps in her neck opened slightly, exposing the inside of her trachea. Harley bit her tongue as Michaela walked over.
“I was wondering how long it’d take you to come looking for me,” Michaela said. She grabbed Harley in a tight hug, with her hands wrapped low around Harley’s waist. Too low.
“Hey Michaela,” Harley said. “Just a heads up, your hands go any further south I’m feeding them to the sharks.”
To her credit, Michaela actually pulled her hands away before she started laughing off Harley’s discomfort. The very handsy hands of Michaela settled in an uncomfortably tight grip on Harley’s shoulder instead. Harley took what she could get. It was an improvement, albeit a minor one. On several occasions last year Harley had needed to physically remove Michaela’s hand from something it wasn’t supposed to be touching.
“Oh Harley, you know you missed me,” Michaela said.
“You could say that,” Harley said. It was wrong, but she could say it. She glanced to the side and found a potential exit strategy from the conversation.
“Hey, are these new fish?” Harley asked. She tried to pull herself out of Michaela’s grip, failed, and pulled a little harder. Michaela reluctantly released Harley from her grasp and Harley made for the nearest fishtank.
A small colony of clownfish were bustling around a small cluster of anemones. Harley noted that the fish tank was far too small to comfortably accommodate its occupants. For Michaela and her crew, fish were objects of research, not living things that needed to be cared for. One of many reasons Harley disliked Michaela, but moreso, why Harley disliked the man in charge of the whole department.
“Michaela! Stop fooling around with her!”
Harley bit her tongue so hard she nearly drew blood. She knew, and despised, that voice. Now she had to deal with the only thing worse than Michaela: Michaela’s dad.
Growing up, Harley’s father had had a saying about certain arrogant people: “You’d kill yourself jumping from their ego to their IQ.” With Michael Watkins, you couldn’t kill yourself that way. If one jumped from his ego aiming for his IQ, they’d starve to death during the fall. It was a shame, because he actually was one of the most brilliant ichthyologists of the modern age -the problem being he thought he was the greatest ichthyologist who had ever, or would ever, live. He expected everyone to take part in his delusion, as well. Anybody who didn’t bow down to the self-proclaimed king of fish research immediately went on his shitlist.
“Hello Doctor Professor Watkins,” Harley said. While it made Harley throw up in her mouth a little to say, Watkins insisted on being addressed as both Doctor and Professor. Harley wasn’t in the mood for the twenty-minute angry monologue that would ensue if he was not appropriately addressed. She’d been through it more than once.
“If you’re here anticipating to steal more research material, you will leave disappointed,” Dr. Professor Watkins said.
“For the last time, I didn’t steal anything, you don’t have a patent on the concept of tuna!”
During the last school year, Harley had developed a synthetic muscle fiber based on the muscles of a tuna after seeing one in the fish tanks in Michaela’s lab. While there was certainly an element of inspiration to it, Watkins had made it into a full plagiarism case. Any official proceedings had been swiftly dismissed as the banal idiocy they were, but Dr. Professor Watkins never let anything like overwhelming evidence that he was wrong get in the way of him thinking he was right.
“Dad, don’t scare her off again,” Michaela said. She grabbed Harley by the shoulders and pulled her close. Michaela stood significantly taller than Harley, and she made a point to put Harley’s head as close to her chest as possible. Harley reminded herself not to bite and looked for an escape route.
“While I’m here, actually,” Harley said. Her quick scan of the room had borne fruit in the best way. Harley wormed her way out of Michaela’s booby trap and walked over to one of the largest tanks in the room. “Who’s this big guy?”
Harley pointed into the tank, at a familiar face. As much as an octopus had a face. Two very judgmental yellow eyes stared right back at Harley.
“That would be Octavius,” Dr. Professor Watkins said. Harley turned to look at the octopus to cover the fact that she was rolling her eyes. An octopus named Octavius.
“And what’s he here for?” Harley said. “Got him scheduled for any experiments?”
“No, actually, he’s set to be put down,” Michaela said. “We attempted to introduce new neural growth pathways and increase his intelligence a few days ago, but it seems to have failed.”
Harley looked back at the octopus, then back at Michaela.
“So...put him back in the ocean?”
“Albeit unsuccessfully, he’s been genetically modified,” Dr. Professor Watkins said. “Reintroducing him to the ecosystem could be disastrous for the local populations.”
“You could anesthetize and sterilize him,” Harley suggested. She knew for a fact that they had octopus anesthesia on hand. It wasn’t exactly an ideal option, but it was leagues better than outright execution.
“An overwhelming waste of time,” Watkins said. “On top of a complicated procedure, we’d have to return him to the ocean. Who has time for that?”
“We live on an island,” Harley said. “The beach is right outside your building!”
She gestured to the western wall. When the room was quiet, one could hear the waves lapping against the short. The room was never quiet when Dr. Professor Watkins was around, though. He opened his mouth the moment Harley closed hers.
“Don’t presume to lecture us about what we do with our test subjects, plagiarist,” Watkins sneered. Harley turned around and mumbled under her breath.
“Living things aren’t test subjects,” Harley said.
Harley made eye contact with the octopus. Octavius stared right back with a keen glimmer in his eyes. After a moment of thought, Harley held up her hand, out of sight of the Dr. Professor, and mimicked the motion of a gun. Despite his best efforts, Octavius flinched in surprise. Harley smiled to herself.
“You clever son of a bitch,” she whispered. Octavius’ eyes narrowed in a fishy glare. He was faking. Just waiting for his opportunity to get out of the tank and get revenge. Harley turned back to the two Watkins.
“What a shame,” Harley said. “Make sure you’re careful when you get him out of the tank, or he might try and get you!”
Michaela laughed at the idea. Dr. Professor Watkins scoffed at it.
“You see, this is why I don’t like you associating with this plagiarist,” he said. “What utter imbecile would think an octopus capable of revenge?”
Harley shot a knowing glance to Octavius. The octopus crossed two of his tentacles and tapped a third against the sandy floor of his tank.
“It’s a fish, Harley, it doesn’t understand ‘revenge’,” Michaela said with a laugh. Harley frowned.
“He’s a cephalopod, actually,” Harley said. She crinkled her nose and called out to Botley with her thoughts. At her command, the otterlike robot appeared, though not at Harley’s side. There were a few empty fishtanks across the room, and Harley poofed him into one of the empty tanks. Botley swam around happily in the water for a moment before Harley gave him a single mental command: break out.
Botley saluted in Harley’s direction, braced his flippers against the back wall of the tank, and launched himself into the nearest pane of glass. The fishtank shattered as Botley propelled himself violently into the wall of the tank. Harley poofed him out of danger before he hit the ground and then pretended to be shocked as saltwater and broken glass spilled across the floor. Dr. Professor Watkins appraised the disastrous situation and immediately sprang into action to assign blame.
“Michaela! I told you to verify the integrity of the tanks!”
“I did!” Michaela lied. The two Watkins scrambled into action to undo Botley’s damage. While they were distracted, Harley turned to Octavius’ fish tank and pressed her face against the glass.
“Listen, buddy, I get it,” Harley said. “If I had to spend all day with these guys, I’d be planning to wipe out the human race too.”
Octavius looked away, trying to act innocent. Harley tapped on the glass.
“Octavius, work with me here,” Harley said. “Give me a few hours. I’ll get you out of here and show you humans aren’t all bad. If you still think we deserve to be eradicated at the end of the day, fine. Honestly, humanity has probably had a better run than we deserve.”
Octavius put a pondering tentacle to his mantle. After some time to consider the offer, Octavius curled one of his tentacles into a crude approximation of a thumbs-up. Harley returned the gesture and fished a water bottle out of her purse, holding it up to the edge of the tank. Octavius stared at her.
“What? You’re an octopus, you can squeeze in here,” Harley said. “I promise I’ll get you something more comfortable later. Right now we need stealth.”
After a hesitant pause, Octavius jiggled his head in a rough approximation of a nod. He swam to the back of his tank, into a small shelter area, and pulled out a disturbingly well-crafted duplicate of himself. Harley made the executive decision to not ask any questions about that. She had to focus. With the decoy in place, Octavius undid the latches on top of his tank from within and slithered over the edge, squeezing into the water bottle effortlessly. Harley placed it gently in her purse and headed towards the door.
“Okay, this was fun, good seeing you again Michaela, you too Dr. Professor Watkins, and remember, you can’t copyright a tuna!”
Harley skedaddled before either of the Watkins could get a word in edgewise. She’d managed to avoid flirting with Michaela, so the worst of the day was behind her. All she had to do now was convince a hyper-intelligent octopus with genocidal intent not to wipe out the human race. Compared to dealing with the Dr. Professor and his handsy daughter, that would be a piece of cake.