Previous Post A splash of water brought Gina Garrick cruelly back to consciousness, especially considering that she found herself seated on the ground, lashed to a tree trunk with some kind of wire roped repeated around her body. "Hey there..." her apparent tormentor greeted her, taking a bucket tied to a rope and tossing it neglegently back down an old stone well behind her. "How's tricks?" The Interior agent squinted through pain (and abused glasses, which had been returned to her nose) to make out the dark figure standing over her. It was a diminutive woman, well under five feet tall, with a decidedly purple complexion. Her clothing was an odd mismatch of mythic fantasy and modern commando, including an assault rifle nearly as large as she was strung over one shoulder. "So first things first... I wouldn't squirm around too much" the figure advised her. She gestured to the tree above Gina's head, where the young captive was alarmed to see multiple bats clinging to the bark of the trunk. "My little pets there? They're tied to the keys of the grenades that are tied to... well, you. As bats go, they're pretty well trained, but they don't really care for sudden movements or loud noises... Make's 'em skittish." "Can I get you anything?" the woman asked casually. "The well water's a little slimey, but we have a generator running an icebox full of things, and down in the bomb shelter there are boxes and boxes of guns and stuff. Not that I'll give you a gun, of course... just bragging there." She smiled as she unslung the assault rifle from her back and stroked it lovingly. "The guy who lived on this farm, while kind of smelly and annoying, he certainly did have some fun toys. I love these things" she noted, changing the clip and cocking the weapon. "I have no idea what he was complaining about in that manifesto of his, going on and on about how technology was ruining your world. I read a bit of it... it can get boring watching trees grow, even if they do it in an afternoon, but then I just went to his little basement armory, picked up this fine fellow and started shooting things instead. Much more satisfying." "At that point, I was wishing I had saved the smelly guy for target practice, but then you came along! And you brought my old flame Griff! How did you ever know that he'd be just the thing I'd want to shoot?" "The desire is likely universal" Agent Garrick replied with a glare. "Ha! I like you, Red. I hope the big dolt shows up to try and save you." "He already did save me... and you blew him up for it!" "What? That?" She snorted. "Please. You think I'd tie you down with the bats and the grenades and all if he wasn't still out there?" She patted the Interior Agent on her head. "Honey, I hate to break it to you, but you're not that scary. Well, your hair is, a bit. Have you ever tried oats and honey as a conditioner? Does wonders for bugbear hides..." "I saw him blow up!" Gina hissed through clenched teeth. "Nah... you saw him disappear." She rubbed her nails on the torn camo tank top she wore. "He's a slippery one... but I know his tricks." "Not all of them" Griffin suggested grimly. There was no flash or other indication of his arrival. He simply wasn't there one moment, and the next he was behind the woman with an arm wrapped around her neck and his gun pressed to her temple. "Heya sexy..." she grinned, not at all surprised. She ran her hand along his arm, then slashed down with her sharpened nails, drawing blood and a grunt of pain from the SPUD agent. She held out her hand to admire the red stain on her fingertips. "Yeah, that's the stuff. It's always about blood, you know" she confided to her hostage, who looked on in amazement, eyes darting back and forth between the purple woman and the supposedly blown-up SPUD Agent. "Roots him to a corporeal state, 'til he closes up. Otherwise, he's such a pain to keep track of... But we have him now." She smiled over her shoulder at him. "What took you?" He didn't relax his grip on her, nor even acknowledge her gambit, keeping the gun to her temple. "Some of us had to walk across the damn forest to find the place, Hemlock, not hop into one tree and out another. Neat trick, by the way... where'd you pick that one up?" "Isn't that fun?" she cooed. "Just one of the perks of being a forest spirit. Oh, and it's Princess Hemlock now. I'm Royalty." "Yeah, you're a royal something..." the SPUD agent scoffed. "You're no forest spirit either. Your father was a horny goblin chieftain and your mother was an easy dryad nymph, and neither of those are particularly rare, must less Faerie Royalty." She shrugged, despite his grip on her, and pressed deeper into his angry embrace. "Okay, so that's true enough... although to be fair, dad does have a sizeable number of goblins grovelling under him in the hill clan. Still, the resume needed a little fluffing up. Then I thought of all those Mountain Kings, River Queens and Forest Spirits... they had noble titles back in the Many Coloured Lands. So that was just the ticket!" "That's what this is about?" Griffin asked, confused. "A stupid title?" "Titles aren't stupid, you silly boy... they're everything. You've been gone from Faerie too long. My problem was that all the best forests of mythic importance either already had spirits or were simply too old and set in their ways to care about getting one. But this one... this one was a real find. Bit of a fixer-upper, sure... but a National Forest, founded by whatever counts as royal decree in these parts? A forest that time literally forgot, albeit with a bit of help, and now completely virgin in every way? That's the stuff right there." She smiled up at the trees around them affectionately. "With a little coaxing, and some helpful time manipulation, I guided the forest back into existence. Boom... Hello Princess Hemlock, Spirit of the Lost Virgin Woods of Time! Or, you know, something equally mythic... I'll focus test some good names. Add my unlikely parentage and next stop, my coronation as Faerie Queene! Give or take a step or two. It's laid out in all the best auguries." "Faerie Queene? You? That... won't work" Griffin argued. "Everyone knows..." "What, that your lopsided sister had it all sewn up? Please... nobody ever predicted the princess's name at the center of everything was Magweed... that's not mythic at all. Nice of her to take all the flack leading up to the big switchover, though. Camellia really worked to screw you two good." She looked over her shoulder at him as she snuggled in closer. "Don't think I didn't notice that you're doing something different with your hair... I like it." "Excuse me..." Acting special agent Garrick called from between clenched teeth. She remained tied to the tree trunk while a bat fluttered on top of her head. "I take it you two... know each other?" "In a vague sense of the word" Griffin snarled. "We go way back" Hemlock confirmed. "Used to live together." "So then... in all senses of the word" Garrick noted grimly. "We didn't live together..." Griffin growled to the purple woman. "We spent months chained up in your father's dungeon because you tried to assassinate him!" "Romantic, wasn't it? If only you had offed my father like I had planned, but nooooooo... You had to go and ruin a perfectly good coup by not exploding in a glorious suicidal sacrifice." "Suicide bombers know they're going to explode before hand!" "I don't care!!!" Garrick snapped, then shrank back down as the bats around her flapped in agitation. "Maybe, now that the meet and greet is out of the way" she hissed in a lower voice, "we could go about working out a resolution here, before I blow up..." "Oh please" Hemlock scoffed. "As if Griff didn't didn't cut the leads on those grenades before he turned visible again." Garrick froze. "What?" "That's true" Griffin confirmed. "You can stand up any time you want to." Gina blinked a few times, then tentatively leaned forward. The wires around her body snapped free easily dropping the grenades to the ground, pins and all, while the bats fluttered up into the night sky. "I... You... Why didn't you say so?" Griffin maintained his deadly hold on their tormentor. "I wanted to find out what Hemi's nasty little backup plan was." Hemlock grinned. "Did I mention the owner of this farm had lots and lots of something called "plastique"? Fun stuff. Anyway, if I die, a very sizable chunk of this heart of the forest will go with me. Very distressing for a forest to lose its spirit you know. I don't see your odds being all that great of escape." He pushed the gun further against her temple. "Looks that way. Maybe I'm ready for that glorious sacrifice now... if it stops you from going after my sister." "I don't... Ah... Hmmmm" the goblin woman considered that. She looked to Garrick. "I don't suppose that you think he's bluffing?" The bureaucrat looked over the young man. "I don't even have a clue what's going on, but... I wouldn't bet on it." Hemlock grimaced. "Me either." She pulled the clip from her machine gun and tossed it into the brush, then ejected the round in the chamber and dropped the rifle to the forest floor. "Here's the deal then... How about you don't shoot me, and I won't lift a finger to harm either one of you. I swear it on the trees... they're sticklers for things like that, you know. Kinda dull that way. You'd like them." "You can't seriously trust her!" Garrick complained as Griffin eased his gun back from his hostage's forehead. "She's a... whatever you said she was! She's purple, and consorts with trained bats! She's misappropriated public lands to become a fairy princess! And now time traveling trees are going to detonate plastique? None of this makes sense, dammit! Someone start making sense!" "She's a little slow on the uptake, isn't she?" Hemlock observed. Griffin shrugged. "In her defense, the paperwork on this whole thing really is going to be a bitch to fill out." The SPUD agent released her with a push, keeping the gun trained on her as he circled around to Garrick's side. "Plus, she's right... I don't trust you. What's the catch to your little deal?" Hemlock tried to look innocent in her fatigues. "Well... I only said that I wouldn't lift a finger to harm you... I never said anything about my little pets." Griffin looked to the bats fluttering around the overgrown farmland. "Heh... you can't be serious." She gave him a wink and whistled loudly. "Oh" Griffin observed as three large wyverns came crashing through the tree tops to land on the branches above the clearing. "Apparently you can be." She gazed lovingly up at the reptilian monsters. "I do like to keep my word. When it suits me." "So do I" Griffin agreed, then kicked her down the well. The SPUD Agent burst into the interior of the small shed, dragging acting agent Garrick behind him as the great toothy jaws snapped at the open air they just vacated. He flung her behind himself and braced the door shut. "Dragons? There are dragons in Kansas?" she blinked, still in shock. "Of course not... don't be silly" he said reasonably. "Those are just wyverns... scaly, bat-winged lizard things. Totally different." "Totally different?" "Well, somewhat different." She looked around the very cramped interior. "Are we..." She shot him an accusing look. "This is an outhouse." "Er... seems like it" he noted. The smell was a real tip-off. "All that was convenient." "I'm in a forest in Kansas, cowering from a goblin princess's dragons inside of a survivalist's outhouse." "I try not to string it all together like that" the SPUD Agent advised. "Especially in the reports." "No" she snarled. "No, I refuse to let my career end like this. It was going well until you showed up!" "Hey! This isn't my fault!" "Whose purple girlfriend is trying to kill us?" "She never was my...!" He broke off his complaint as there was a sudden thud against the door, nearly dislodging him. The wyverns outside shrieked and lashed the outhouse with their tails. "Okay, maybe save this for another time" he growled, opening the door slightly and firing at the beasts as they flew by. "Did you get them?" "Yeah, but... very small brains in a moving target surrounded by bone, muscle and pure hatred" he noted. "So I didn't get them enough." "What about the purple woman?" "Hey, I never shot her. She's a pretty good skinny dipper, as I recall. Er... not that we ever... I mean... Look, she's probably fine, unfortunately. Just wet, pissed, and treading water, provided there aren't any roots in that well to let her do that tree-hopping trick." "So what now?" He was saved from having to find an immediate answer by the ringing of his phone. "Yeah Bixby..." he answered it, holding up a finger to delay any questions for her while he kept his shoulder to the door. "So there was a gateway here at one point? She'd just have to pack up her forest and take it there, and then on through to the Mythlands. Pretty tricky math to get all the timelines to add-up right, but I suspect I know where she got the help. Here's what you need to tell the Director..." he stated, running through a concise list of the pertinent details they had uncovered. "No, you don't need to know what any of that means... there's a lot of that going around." He shot Garrick a sympathetic look. "Look, we're about to be eaten by wyverns, so if you could call in the National Guard for an airstrike or something we'd really appreciate it. Okay, later Bix." Gina gave him a hopefull look through her crooked glasses. "So rescue is coming?" "Definitely" he assured her, just before the outhouse was rocked again by violent impacts. The boards of the walls and ceilings were buckling with larger gaps at each crash. "Just, you know, not nearly soon enough." He looked around. "You have to hand it to paranoid survivalist types... this is really solid construction to last this long. Just imagine how long it would take the ATF to get into this bathroom." She flinched as wyverns screached, circling above them. "Can we fight them?" Griffin ejected the clip from his gun and checked it. "I only have 2 rounds left, so... Plan B." "There is a Plan B, is there?" she asked hopefully. "Can you turn us invisible?" "Er... no. And just to be clear, that trick is kind of classified." "You wouldn't believe how little I care right now" she gulped as the largest of the monsters came roaring past. "Any other tricks?" she asked hopefully, as the outhouse was clearly on it's last legs. Her eyes widened as he hooked her by the waist and pulled her close. "Yeah, one. Just so you know..." , He shifted in front of her protectively, grabbed her arms and pulled them over his shoulders. "...This is also a tiny bit classified." Gina blinked in alarm as the hairs on the SPUD agent's head splayed, split and burst into tightly packed feathers. His chest expanded, wings and a lion's tail unfurled from nowhere, and before she knew it a huge, mythical half-eagle half-lion stood rearing on it's hind legs in front of her. His wings flared, smashing the remnants of the outhouse from around them (though leaving the floor intact, thankfully.) He dropped to all fours, pulling her down across his back as he crouched to pounce. His head cocked to one side to regard the stunned bureaucrat with a shrewd eagle eye. "You're definitely going to want to hang on tight" Griffin advised her with a slight upturn at the edges of his beak. "'Cause this is liable to be crazy dangerous." With a powerful lunge, he launched them both off the ground and took flight past the equally stunned and confused wyverns, who shrieked in outrage and dove in pursuit. "How... You... What..." Gina Garrick stammered, wide-eyed, as the forest sped under and around her. Griffin's wings beat heavily against the early morning air. "How..." she repeated. "Big vicious beasties on our tail..." he reminded her. "Leaves me a little winded. Why don't you pick one question for now, and save up all your others for later." "I... I thought only female gryphons had wings..." "Well, that's just sexist... And really not the first question I thought you'd go with." He glanced behind them at their pursuit, then pushed harder for more speed. "Does that tree up ahead look dead to you?" "What?" Without warning, he tucked his wings in and spun sharply in the air, dislodging her from his back while he rotated beneath her. Grasping her flailing arms with his talons, he pulled her to his chest and curled his body and wings around her protectively. There was a bone-jarring shock accompanied by the sound of splintering wood. Griffin unwound in mid air, returning to powerful strokes with his wings while dangling the Interior agent below him by her wrists. Facing backwards, she could see the top half of a large dead elm topple over, it's skeletal branches catching the wyverns and pulling them down in a crash of timber. "Did you just fly through a tree?" "Yeah" he answered, his voice tight with pain. "It seemed like a better idea in my head, where I imagined the tree was a little more rotted... but it will get us some distance on them." He turned east through the woods. "You need to get out of the forest, find the local police, get control of the situation..." She noticed blood was running down his leg, although whether from the scratches Hemlock had given him or from the splinters of the tree was unclear. "Wait... Me? What are you going to do?" There was a mad shriek from behind them as the pursuit was rejoined. "Roll when you hit the ground..." he told her with one last look down at her. "And get out of the woods." With that he let go. She was unable to contain a short "Eep!" of surprise as she dropped, but followed his directions and rolled with her landing in the underbrush. There she lay, unmoving, as the great winged lizards shot overhead on the hunt for the larger, wounded prey. "Get out of the woods" she repeated once they were out of sight. She struggled through the brush and bushes, tearing her suit, making her angrier and angrier with each step. "The hell with that." "Wyverns" Griffin huffed, flying like a bolk between the tree trunks. "God, I have wyverns. As if Gothenmanders didn't suck enough on the ground..." He glanced quickly behind him and spotted a male and female close on his tail, which left the other female... "Gah!" he screached as the missing third beast plummeted from above, hitting him square between the wings. It clamped down on his shoulder with it's foul mouth while raking his hindquarters with talons. Growling, he spun ninety degrees in the air and ducked his head, smashing his shoulders and back along a heavy trunk as he flashed past it. There was a satisfying sound, like a baseball bat splitting a watermelon, and the weight was torn from him, albeit with a sizeable spray of blood from his shoulder as well. The effort of each wingbeat seared into him as he fought to fly through the pain, but he knew he needed to change tactics. Wyverns were faster and more manueverable in tight quarters than he was. The forest was to their advantage. Wounded, however, he wouldn't be able to get the altitude to reach open sky where he could successfully fight them off. Instead he turned and dove towards a massive tree trunk only to hit it with all four feet then launch himself in a new direction. The wyverns swooped and followed in wide arcs while he pinballed from trunk to trunk. Frustrated by his suddenly unpredictable pattern, the smaller one screached and dove for him as he twisted in flight to snag a tall, thin sapling. It buckled under his weight, bending low to drop him to the ground, where he promptly released it into the oncoming reptile. It shrieked in alarm but was unable to avoid the whiplike tip of the young tree. Caught on the leading edge of one wing the evil thing spun out of the sky, crashing to the scrub below. Griffin was on it in a flash, rending it limb from limb with his hind legs as his talons held it down. Fevered curses spit from his beak as he worked the thrashing thing into a bloody pulp. Enraged the male straffed him from the air, flying by at full speed and catching him squarely on the side and snapping some ribs with its long barbed tail. He rolled painfully to his feet searching the trees for the beast, his breath coming thick and choaked with blood. Whether the reptilian beasts were venomous or if their mouths were simply rampant cesspools was unclear, but their bites were obviously nasty: He felt feverish and light headed, and his heart pounded in both his chest and his ears. Again the tail caught him as the wyvern swooped low from the other side spinning Griffin through the underbrush. One wing pinned under his left side, he flapped wildly as he struggled to right himself. The wyvern pounced from above, pinning him down and striking him repeatedly about the neck, ripping mouthsfull of feathers from him. Its tiny, black eyes gleamed triumphantly down at its previously mighty prey. With a snarl, Griffin shifted back into a human, raised his service weapon and put the remaining two bullets into the foul thing's head. "Thumbs win again" he wheezed, shoving the heavy body off of him. "Yay for evolution" he added just before passing out. "You two do make a spunky pair... I'll give you that" The princess of the forest said, stepping out of a trunk on the edge of the woods. Her skin shifted from bark back to its usual purple. Gina froze, having just exited the forest only 20 feet from the wrecked rental car. "Um... you promised not to harm us" she reminded the goblin woman behind her. "Yeah, but that was only inside the treeline" Hemlock noted. "Trees don't really care much about what happens outside the forest." She shook her head in admiration. "You're tougher than you look, Red. I really thought you'd be wyvern food by now. Where did Griff dig you up anyway?" Garrick turned to face her. "The Department of the Interior. Large parts of your forest are on public land. That makes it my jurisdiction." "Ah. Don't mind us... We're just passing through" Hemlock grinned. "In fact, I really don't care about you or your government. I suppose I could be magnanimous and let you get back to your car, but then there's payback for the well." She shook a soggy boot. "Griff really needs to regret that." "Oh, I've already been back to the car" Garrick assured her. Hemlock paused. "What?" "See, to get into the D.O.I., I spent my summers in college working for the forestry service. We'd light backburns in order to eat up the fuel on the leading edge of a wildfire in order to divert it away from houses and other structures. Good experience" she noted, wiping at her forehead and leaving a trail of ash across her brow. She held up a burned out road flare. "Of course, this wasn't as convenient as a good driptorch for setting some blazes, but luckily the conditions here are very ripe." "You... what?" the goblin woman gasped and spun, peering back into her domain. Deeper into the woods a dark cloud of ash could be seen blurring the higher branches in the red light of dawn, and the snap and crackle of the flames taunted faintly on the breeze. "That's the problem with growing your forest outside of time, you know... you skipped over all of the natural cycle of burn and regrowth that a forest is supposed to endure." She tossed the used flare end over end into the nearby bushes where it continued to smolder. "No! No-no-no-no-no-no-no!!!" Hemlock wailed. "My mythic title! I'll rip your stringy little heart out if it's destroyed!" "Don't worry... this will be pretty mythic too" Garrick countered, unimpressed. "See, without the occasional clearing of the underbrush by natural fires, you have a build up of potential fuel: leaf litter, dropped branches, deadfall and underbrush, that kind of thing. Once that goes up it burns hot and fast. That's the kind of fire that can quickly get out of control, taking out hundreds or thousands of acres of woodlands." She looked at the enraged princess with narrow eyes. "By the way... all of that plastique you were talking about... I don't suppose it's anywhere that could ignite, is it?" Hemlock's eyes went wide and, with a snarl, she ran and dove into the trunk of the nearest tree, disappearing inside it. Acting Special Agent Gina Garrick sniffed with disdain. "And that's why you don't #@$% with the Bureau of Land Management." "Heya squirt" a familiar voice said, followed by a long slurp of a drink through a straw. Griffin groaned and opened an eye, squinting against the light of the dawn to make out the newcomer. "Knew... it. Knew it was you... whole time" he asserted between labored breaths. "Only way... it added up." "And here people always said that Sam was the clever one." She set the cup down next to his head. "That was quite the show." "Show's... not done... yet." He coughed up some red foam from his lips and struggled to rise. "Yeah, I'm thinking you're going to be needing to call in an understudy, 'cause you're a mess" she noted, pushing his shoulder back down with one foot. She walked around him to sit down on the wyvern carcass above his head, relieving him of his pistol and fishing inside his jacket to remove his phone. "You're moving on the Mythlands" Griffin growled. "Maggie..." "It's not her kingdom yet. No reason there can't be a little healthy competition over the lines of succession." She shrugged. "Besides, I already conquered the Happy Place... The Mythlands simply come next. Then the Hell Dimensions. It's really nothing personal, you know... just the march of progress." "Maggie won't let you." "Well, duh" she snorted. "Why do you think I had to go to all this trouble to get my own completely valid --if slightly psychotic-- fairy princess?" She clucked her tongue. "And by the way, seriously Griff... What were you thinking shacking up with that one? Reality shows cast from a more stable personality pool than she came from. Man, that thing with Sam really did a number on you, didn't it?" "We didn't... She... I..." He broke down in a coughing fit and just glared at her. "Aw, don't take it so hard..." She smiled sweetly. She waved his phone at him. "I'm assuming "agent down" still uses the same code these days?" she asked, keying it in and then tossing it back on his chest. "Congrats birdbrain... you've won the day. You're little bureau friend started a fire big enough to make Smokey the Bear scream like a little school girl. I've had to timeshift the forest to a rainy season to keep the whole thing from going up. So we're out of your hair... you won't be seeing any redwoods in Kansas in your lifetime. They would have come in on Wednesday, by the way... really impressive. Ah well... we'll have to catch the gate next century and circle on back." She patted him on the cheek as she stood up. "Well, it's been fun, but I've got things to do. You know, I wasn't even aware that old Garrick had a kid... Gonna have to look into that. I hate the smell of a retcon around the edges of my plans." She gathered up her Big Slurp cola and took a long pull off the straw. "Keep it real, Griff..." Kara the Conqueress said, raising her cup mockingly to the barely conscious agent as glowing time particles coalesced around her body. "Oh! And when you see Cody at Christmas..." she added as she faded out, "...tell him I said "thanks" for the sweater he'll get me." The glare of the hospital room cut painfully into his eyes as he came to, wincing. A quick check proved a variety of tubes attaching him to various monitors. Then the memories came back. Someone leaning over him as he was loaded into a helicopter. Coming in and out of consciousness over the last few... days? Weeks? He checked, and thankfully found that he hadn't dreamed about the removal of the feeding tube. He didn't care to have to choke it up again. "I swear..." a familiar voice announced from the corner of the room. "...I don't know why I keep giving you the choice assignments." He tried to salute, but found his I.V. tangled his efforts. "Ma'am... Agent 311 reporting in." He squinted in confusion. "You came to Kansas?" Director Natalia Katarina Romanza snorted. "Don't flatter yourself Agent... You were airlifted to Walter Reed in DC. SPUD's not going to leave you to grow soft at Wichita General on our dime." She keyed off her data pad and approached his bed. "I had a briefing at the Pentagon, and thought I'd stop by on my way out after hearing you were semi-lucid again." She brushed his hair back from his face. "If you were giving out missile codes in your drug-addled state, I was prepared to put you down." "Don't know any missile codes" he noted. "Plus, everyone knows I'm you're favorite." "Maybe. Once. Maybe. But I've really taken a shine to Agent Bixby. He brings me information. Admittedly, he has no idea what it means, but a gal does like a man who calls the day after." "I've been working on my report" he assured her. "Be on your desk in the morning..." "Mmmm" she noted. She keyed on and dropped her data pad onto his lap. "Tell me what's missing from this one first." He forced his eyes to focus and read through Acting Special Agent Gina Garrick's report. He had to give her credit... it actually seemed to make some semblance of sense, at least it did when you were pumped full of painkillers. What was missing was obvious, though. "She saw... all of it. Didn't report it." He grimaced as he kept reading. "Dammit... I never lived with her! The bit about Hemlock being a bitch is spot on though." "Good. I respect an Agent who knows when to keep her mouth shut." She retrieved the file from him and gave him a wry smile as she turned to go. "Heal up, Agent... I have another assignment waiting for you. As for now, I have to go clear you for visitors before your Aunt burns down everything north of the Potomac." two days later Griffin was flipping channels on the ancient hospital room television when the hesitant knock came at the door. "I hope I'm not interrupting?" Gina Garrick asked, entering. "I'm told I have twenty minutes before visiting hours end. A, ah, green woman in the lobby told me to go on in." "You'd be surprised how little that narrows it down." "I think very little about you could surprise me any more." She pulled a chair closer to the bed. "So... I turned in my report to my superiors." He nodded. "Do they have a sense of humor?" "No." "Ah" he said sympathetically. "So, disappearing forests, wyverns and goblin girls..." "...Didn't go over particularly well, no" she finished for him. "I believe the term laughingstock showed up more than once in my mission evaluation. Long story short, I'm no longer an Acting Special Agent for the Bureau of Land Management." He winced. "Look, Agent... er... Gina, I'm really sorry. I know how much you wanted..." She held up a hand to cut him off. "Long story less short..." she said, pulling a wallet out of her breast pocket. She flipped it open to display the gold and blue badge of a full Agent of the Department of the Interior, adorned with eagles on top and a buffalo in the center. "I received a call directly from the Secretary himself. Said he was a bit tired of receiving nonsensical reports from both OPS and SPUD. Felt he should have a more direct handle on what was going on with our lands. Figured a special liaison on paranormal matters would be just the ticket... and said I came highly recommended." Griffin swallowed. "A Garrick serving as liaison to a US government cabinet on all paranormal activity? How... wonderful. I can't tell you how thrilled my family will be to know I had any hand in helping that come about." She smiled at him blandly. "Remember those questions you asked me to save up? I'd get some rest if I were you. We'll be spending a lot of your recovery time together." She gathered up her things to go. "Have a good night Agent Griffin." "Yes Ma'am... and Agent Garrick?" She paused at the door. "How much about you could still surprise me, do you think?" he asked mildly. She smiled mysteriously as she pushed her glasses back up the bridge of her nose and shut the door behind her. Footnotes, for those who need 'em: Hemlock is a new character, presumably one that Griffin will meet between present continuity and this story. How soon into the future their first meeting might be is anyone's guess at this point. Griffin's twin sister, the Fairy Princess Magweed (aka Maggie) was raised by the power-hungry Camellia Le Fey to succeed the current Faerie Queene in ruling the Many Colored Lands. However, while there are hints as to which princess might be the next Queene, it's far from a done deal at this point in time. Hemlock apparently wants a shot at the title herself. Griffin's ability to be undetectable and intangible is well documented, although this is the first mention of the limitations that bleeding puts on him. Likewise, his potential to someday take on the physical shape of his namesake has been speculated on in the past, but this is the first example of him actually being able to do it. Both abilities remain classified, so keep it hush-hush. Wyverns aren't dragons, really. They're smaller, and only have wings and 2 hind legs, like a bat, rather than wings and 4 legs like a respectable dragon. Any genetic relationship to gothenmanders is strictly speculation. Kara Harper is the daughter of scientist Al B. Harper and time traveler Kinki the Conqueror. For reasons unknown, she seems to be following in her mother's footsteps in this story. Griffin's aunt is Kerry Shepherdson, the Probability Arsonist. It's best not to upset her. In heraldry, there seems to be some debate as to whether a male griffin has wings. This is something of a sore subject among griffins, and you don't want to bring it up in casual conversation. Trust me.

I know I use this reply all the time but I always mean it.