In the circular shadow of the flying saucer, a narrow beam of green light illuminated the man overseeing the project. Faint blue-and-gray rings beamed down from the soles of his bulky metal boots, suspending him in the air, hovering. A weathered, thick lab coat with Dye buttons bedazzled his form, itself overshadowed by a steel harness around his chest, from which knobs, vials, mechanical arms and a beeping metal backpack hung. A bowler hat shaded his head, with a set of brass goggles protecting his eyes, their lenses occasionally lighting up with indicators and displays–ones too small to see from Ruvle’s distance. Around him, a dodecagon of orange pillars that looked green on some faces–stoko?–had been jammed into the mountain’s stone, vibrating. Cascading waves of blue light funneled up their networks of built-in cracks at right angles from each other. Ruvle tasted metal.

  Nerso. The fucker who did this to her eye. Here at the top of her climb, crouched behind a large boulder, one step lower than the flat area around the dodecagon. She’d been careful to approach outside of her best guesses of sight lines, keeping underneath the cliffsides where possible, and the slope down from this boulder made for a quick getaway.

  Near him, outside of the light, was a muscled figure in a black cloak embossed with Dye. Hair of different colors peeked out of the hood. Fygra. With one sleeve rolled-up, she waved her hand down at the rocks below, dismissively, and the earth complied with the will of a true citizen. It eroded away, centimeters at a time, disappearing under the action of the wisps of green smoke that emerged from her hand. Ruvle caught a whiff of vinegar in the air and controlled herself from coughing.

  “Another five meters should be enough,” Nerso said, his voice rough, yet dripping with false dignity. “Acid treatment any closer may damage the glint.”

  Fygra raised her other arm to let her other sleeve fall, then blasted the earth with more gaseous acid, boring a hole of slag wide enough to plant a Fool’s Dye tree in.

  “Divine,” he said.

  “You never told me you were sure that this would work,” she said, her hands still smoking with the acid, and then fading back to normality.

  “A new theory is never certain.” Nerso answered, peeking into the hole. “But I’m confident in this one.”

  “Yes. Mmm, it’d be a shame. I’m quite looking forward to a new glint.” She pulled down her hood over her brow, dimness to darkness. “It quite makes up for your snub against me.”

  “Some projects never quite work out,” Nerso said. “In retrospect, a poor choice. I’d hoped to parlay it into territory gains. I could have given the genetics kit to you.”

  The waves of light on the dodecagon of pillars stopped ascending, holding static. “I don’t understand your machine’s feedback,” Fygra said, looking to the nearest pillar.

  “They’ve finished raising the glint,” Nerso explained, checking a clipboard newly-presented by one of his mechanical arms. “This stage holds it laterally steady as it diffuses from the rock naturally. It should emerge any moment now.”

  “So long as it’s mine,” Fygra said.

  “I haven’t changed my mind on that,” Nerso said. Something blinked green and white on his goggles. He looked up into the distance, craning his neck, and the lens of the goggles extended forward like a hand-telescope. Ruvle turned to follow his gaze. There was something in the sky, a distant black triangular speck…she turned back. “This glint does nothing that I need for my plans. There are no stakes for me–it’s a perfect test of my prediction and extraction system.”

  “Any power is deserved power, to me,” Fygra scoffed.

  “And it is why you can have it,” he said. “I will, however, ask a favor.”

  “I don’t keep long-term favors,” Fygra said. “Make it soon.”

  “You can get started on it immediately after today,” Nerso said. The pillars’ waves of light gradually dimmed. Ruvle did not feel clarity when looking at that hole in the stone. “That territory gain I wanted.”

  “Yes?”

  “Carve out a block or so in central Stepwise, for me. I have a project that will need a leveled lot in the middle of a population center,” he said.

  Fygra fumed. “Mmm, I am not pleased to be giving up territory as a rider to a deal in the last seconds.”

  “A criminal bargain for what you’re getting in return, I’d say.”

  “Oh, yes. Where are my manners,” she said, half-sincere.

  While Fygra bent to jump down into the slag pit, the flying saucer listed and tilted, precessing on its central axis. Nerso looked up at it. “Straighten that up,” he called out.

  A speaker in the saucer buzzed to life. “Something’s wrong with the vortex stabilization. We’re working on it,” came the hurried voices of henchmen inside, slowly being drowned out by a distant roar. “This wind changed unexpectedly.”

  The…wind was behaving strangely at large scales…

  By now, the roar overcame the hum of the pillars, and Ruvle identified it–jet engines. She looked back over her shoulder and followed the black triangle, no longer a speck, but something distinct–a jet, atomic fire out of its back gradually throttling down as it flew by. A twinkle of gold poised on the head of the cockpit. It glimmered. It was getting closer–no longer the jet, but the gold. Ruvle ducked, just before it hit–a rumble that cracked the earth and pained her ears. Someone landed with the force of a railgun shot, right outside of the pillar dodecagon, the unmistakable mineral glitter of Dye heralding his arrival. Ruvle should not have come here.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Othek stood from his crouch, contempt on his face, dusting fragments of Mount Radius off his robes. With a sneer, he righted his extravagant top hat, staring directly at the true citizens.

  “I’m terribly sorry, the invitation must have gotten lost in the mail,” Othek said, taking slow steps forward. Did…did he somehow have…? “Awfully plausible that I didn’t receive one, given the recent…reorganization of the postal service.” Ruvle had gotten good at reading partial faces, given how Chain wore his mask with printed zigzag tooth outline all the time. Even with Nerso’s goggles and Fygra’s hood in the way, clearly neither expected him.

  “Othek…Perfectcoil,” Nerso said, in the tone of a forger pretending not to be familiar with their rehearsed lie. “Was it?”

  “The one and only,” he answered, passing between two of the pillars. “The true citizen of Stepwise north suburbia. I’ve put my position to good use, and I should be included in these diplomatic engagements.” He bowed sarcastically.

  Fygra finally jumped down into the hole and sprang back up in an instant, holding a something in her hand. A thing. It had a color. Purple, that was it, purple and black. “Mmm,” she said, turning to Nerso. “Regardless, your test did what it needed.”

  “Oooohoo-hoo!” Nerso said, losing all interest in the man in gold and instead gawking over the glint, his goggles flicking out a three-pronged microscope nozzle and dialing it to the big lens. “Wonderful, it’s all there! I can feel my mathematical reasoning going all warbly, this is it!”

  “Excuse me,” Othek said, the sneer back in his voice. He approached the huddle. One of Nerso’s mechanical arms nonchalantly pushed him away, and Othek fumed. He approached again. The arm pushed. The arm crumpled like a straw being smashed flat against a table, metal bending and creaking, pops and snaps failing to impede his march. “I reiterate–”

  “I heard you the first time,” Nerso said, snapping to look at him, his goggles blinking with indicators and the lenses flicking back. “Watch your step, Othek. The seconds you’ve already taken from me are a loss of more value from the world than you will contribute in your lifetime.”

  Othek put his hands behind his back, his expression unchanging. “My time is just as valuable as yours. All negotiations require it.”

  Fygra quirked an eyebrow.

  “You do have the demeanor, I’ll grant you,” Nerso said, his remaining mechanical arms clacking pincers and skittering through the air outwards.

  “Because I am your equal. And an equal deserves the same seat in the grass in the true meadow of life.”

  “Oh, you two can stop avoiding the subject now,” Fygra said, tucking the glint of gas into her sleeve. “Othek.”

  He quirked an eyebrow at her.

  “Your tact tells me that you want this glint. You won’t have it. It’s mine.”

  “That will be Nerso’s decision as to who he bestows boons on. Not yours. And I think I may have slipped his mind as a promising candidate, one he has already chosen over you once before.”

  “Do not remind me,” Fygra hissed. Nerso shrugged, losing interest.

  At this point, Ruvle was prepared to sprint back down the mountain and hide under a cliffside at a moment’s notice. She’d far outstayed her welcome and her curiosity, which was why it annoyed her so much that she had to stay behind in case she could swipe Othek’s hat again for more Dye. Any article of clothing could tumble down the mountain if knocked off, too. She had to brave a danger that others would not, for a chance at power too obvious to deny. A nobody would walk away.

  “I should remind you–”

  “I should remind you,” Fygra interrupted Othek, “that you had one of your own until recently. This is not a justification for giving you what’s mine; this is proof that you cannot be trusted with power.”

  “Power is not entrusted. It simply is.” He rolled up his sleeves, closing his eyes and cracking his knuckles. “And I? I am powerful.”

  Othek thrust his hand upwards towards the flying saucer, revealing another something in his palm. Tiny, a wisp the size of a candle’s flame, a shadow of its former shadow. Ruvle scrambled to rationalize it. The acid…did Chain lose a shred while dunking it under the pool? When it bubbled and hissed, did a whisper of gas escape? Or did the full glint, in control of the movement of air, eject a tiny portion in its death throes? The flying saucer precessed further, still airborne; Ruvle felt the wind flutter her fez’s tassel, and something in the transport beeped in alarm…but it held.

  “Damage report,” Nerso called out, disinterested.

  “Vortices are unstable but holding,” a henchman’s voice called out. “We’re making compensatory measures.”

  Othek grunted, holding his hand as far forward as he could, eyes fixed on the machine, expressing what was left of his glint to the fullest–and it wasn’t enough. The saucer did no more than tilt, the wind did no more than blow a firm breeze, and Fygra did no more than give a deadpan look. Ruvle smiled. Chain might kick himself at the sight, but to Ruvle…watching her enemy fail with what little she left him? That felt better than leaving him with nothing.

  Nerso sighed, as his goggles’ displays glittered with rapidly-flickering lights, servos actuating along his steel harness. Nubs of small rods extended from flush surfaces. For an instant, she could see them extend all the way like slingshots being pulled back, revealing acrylic tubes filled with glowing white liquids, there for the blink of an eye before they zipped back down into their spots. The rapid plunging and shape reminded Ruvle of medical injections, but smaller, perhaps priming Nerso with a drug from ports already established in the harness–she couldn’t imagine any needle piercing the skin of a true citizen.

  “You are not powerful, and you are wasting our time,” Fygra said, flicking a hand at him. “Don’t challenge me.”

  Othek pulled back his hand, grunting in frustration. “I very well can,” Othek said, shutting his eyes, and then reopening them with golden irises. Fygra’s free hand smoked with green gas; he kept talking. “Don’t think I don’t know your final acid vapor technique. Careful, now–wouldn’t want to destroy your own prize.” He chuckled.

  “And it is not my only technique.”

  “No, but I could defeat you with a hand behind my back. For your own hand to be tied…well, this will be short,” he said.

  While Fygra stanced up, Nerso sighed again. “Right, right, I think I’m done with this.”

  “You had your chance to do this peacefully, Fygra,” Othek spat. He cocked his fist back–

  The lights on Nerso’s left goggle lens formed two overlapping arrows, the universal fast-forward symbol.

  –and charged at Fygra with blinding speed, first forward–

  One instant passed.