Chereads / Kokoro and the Fourth Wall / Chapter 17 - Calico King

Chapter 17 - Calico King

"I am honored." Calico said as she signed a symbolic gesture of appreciation. I am Calico King and a royal nomad of my tribe's kind. I have told you that I am a mage but I am also a summoner as my profession." It was beginning to feel interesting story coming from Calico and she listened because Calico is supposed to become one of the Mesta king's generals. That meant that whatever Calico involved herself into also meant it affected Adilita's search as well so the artificially intelligent girl could count on how important Calico was to her questions. It wasn't Adilita who spoke but rather Misha who was not as absorbed into observing Calico, "You said you have a husband waiting for you back home but where exactly is that?" Calico's eyes swiped carefully across the table to show the affection in her expression to both members of listeners. "It is sweet of you to ask but my past isn't as important as how I got here." Calico replied, "It is because I used to a faulty scroll to learn a new location to teleport to." It was at that moment Calico retrieved a scroll with writing and showed it to Misha. It was because Misha was an angel and likely magically trained unlike Adilita who only knew pre-scripted information about her world that Calico shared the teleportation scroll. Adilita's curiosity about the scroll had not passed unnoticed by Calico, which is why she handed over in a reasonable manner of being fair to both ladies, when she retrieved from her travel bag a small set of pages.

Adilia read the pages quickly and Misha, being astute did the same with the scroll, both having finished nearly as quick as the other. "I came across these as part of my profession, but they weren't written in my world's language, much less my kind's native one, and mages are known for translating them. The scroll was bought at the auction house, but the pages were given to me by the auctioneering agency along with it." Adilita put the pages down and traded it with Misha's scroll now that they'd finished their reading. Calico watched the pair closely without speaking her thoughts aloud, believing that the pair would quickly understand her. "It's written in Old Anadorian, from the Yeviathan library's sigil language." Adilita said and thought quietly, "It looks similar to the Mestarian King's handwriting." Calico nodded as Adilita revealed something that a golem of Yeviathan City should know and appeared to be already known by the mithra.

"More exactly, it's the city's personal crystal teleportation spell." Calico told them. Misha already finished the papers and breathed incredibly deep from the news and information. "How long have you had this?" Misha asked now that she understood Calico's plight much better. "You knew about meeting the two of us before even coming here if you'd already translated this. You even predicted the bet between you and your brother?" Adilita's translator was still attempting to run diagnostics so she was rather lost by what Misha talked about. Calico was not offended at all by Misha's and nodded, "To be fair, it was unbelievable prophecy that I should meet you. I don't really know what the intentions of the prophet was in sending it. I thought it was a crude joke being played by a fellow magician and decided to find out the mystery behind it."

"So, you're here in Yeviathan City to learn a spell to go home?" Adilita asked while leading on the conversation in a direction that explained it what led Calico to live in a strange city. "So you came here to look for us thinking that you could find a way back afterwards?" Calico nodded then noticed that Gypsy also had a hand resting on her home. "She got lucky; I was supposed to be teleported back to my home after fainting during battle. When I woke up she was being cornered and we saved each other." Misha glared at Gypsy with passive attention. "I didn't actually believe her that one day some random girl was supposed to show up after we set up shop in this city. It looks like I'm about to lose my best waitress and sister. Must be a twist of fate, eh?" Adilita smiled brightly at Gypsy's words.

Misha shook her head as she was wondering how she was even involved in all this when all she'd come to do was to try Gyspy's treats. Misha's friends were still waiting for her so she politely returned the torn pages to Calico. The angel stood from her chair to politely push it in and bowed politely, "Yeet." She said to Gypsy and Calico and waved goodbye to Adilita. Adilita waved goodbye as well as Misha quietly left the little bakery. The andriod was rather surprised by Misha's attitude but also happy to have met her along with Eliza and Ember. It was really understandable since she'd acted the same way in Mesta where other people's problems weren't hers. "Oriwa Konichiwa!" She said to Misha.

Gypsy had been standing so he took the sea Misha had been in. The sliding of chair on wooden floor gently rustled through Adilita's ears. "Spill it." Gypsy said to Adilita as he picked up the angel feather from the table and replaced it with his dual set of daggers. Adilita felt tension cross her circuits as she began to realize that she was now alone with two of the people she'd met in Convergence. Such a realization made her look shyly at the papers. "I kow you're hiding something because you're not a normal golem." Adilita was almost confused at Gypsy's statement when she realized that Calico and Gypsy had lived in Yeviathan City long enough to adapt to it. Adilita sighed deeply as she clearly was caught by the tricky dick of a mithra into being interrogated. Even Calico's warmth seemed to make Adilita cough lightly into her fist. After seeing how silent Adilita was and knowing that Gypsy couldn't bully the android he also sighed. Calico's eyes widened in alarm but she smiled in a way that made her fangs shine. Gypsy stood up and picked up the chair to be thrown through the shop's window. "Everybody #$%^ out! You got three seconds before I turn your rear end hair into a wedgie braided knot and skin your feet for ingredients for my shop." The smashed glass and the chair whizzed behind Misha's white wing's behind her back. The angel was as she'd just left the shop that she leaped and flew away from the shop as fast as she could.

It took all the customers inside Gypsy's shop two seconds to make the connection between broken glass, a runaway angel, and their safety on the line. They were Anadorians after all and most Yeviathan citizens held none-human bloodlines because of the citizenry contract. Even an unperturbed necromancer looked pissed as he wisely placed a few bars of gold to pay for his meal and walked out. He had black tattooed spell markings all over his body to even color the top of his bald head and wore a black magician's cloak. Adilita waited quietly until the last customer left before all civil restraint left. "You don't have to do this Gypsy." Calico said as she put away the torn pages and scroll back into her pages but failed to persuade him after seeing how Adilita had reacted the moment Gypsy took Misha's spot. The nanosecond the last customer stepped the last millimeter out the shop door Gypsy's face began to be deformed by the shape of a gently rounded pretty fist of Adilita Kokoro. Calico King laughed beautifully as Gypsy slipped backwards like a stone boulder into a shelf full of rare ingredients. "You prick!" Adilita shouted completely as her emotional drive began to fill up in her energy. "Oi! Ballucks knees shouldn't disrespect a Citizen." Adilita quickly understood the slang for golem and reached for the pistol off the table.

It was a showdown now that Misha had left Adilita and the reason for it all had been in what was written in the scroll and the torn pages. While Misha had fully understood the spell and the prophecy, Adilita's scanner detected a forged message in the construction of the teleportation spell. The torn pages were the king's handwriting and the original message was that Gypsy would betray her if she was naïve enough to believe the two would help her. It was the trip into Convergence that changed everything because the pair had promised to take Kokoro's very core or rather her "heart". The spell required her heart in order for the two to go home and here naivety just landed her into a trap that Time Lockpiece saved her from. According to the written date that Adilita was supposed to meet them, she was two days late arriving in Yeviathan City. It even marked that she was meant to meet an enchantress from Mesta not an angel. All of this however only created an excuse for Adilita to personally attack Gypsy because of her actually disliking him from the start. She didn't need to understand that her scanner had supplied her much more information from her creator's library than she had led on. The fighting itself was clear as the retrieved file marked Gypsy with one set of tremendously large word on it, "A$$h013."

Whoever created her, actually set Adilia up so that anyone who her creator had dealt with before wither either predetermined friend or foe in her data. Now, with many reasons as to why Adilita should fight, and Gypsy having bruised her ego the moment they met the quarrel would explode immediately. It was when Adilita's hand failed to reach the pistol so that she could ruthless fire away that she saw Calico protecting it with her staff on the sly. The staff was longer and since all the weapons were exactly centered on the table Calico had the advantage of being able to hold onto hers first. "I like you Calico." Adilita pleaded but the magician shrugged and knocked the daggers back to Gypsy's hands with the head of the staff. "Tough, I like my husband more so I'm taking you to Carrow Corrow piece by piece to get that heart." Adilita's eyes teared for a moment of silence as the empty shop became filled with emotions. She realized that it hurt to be betrayed after thinking that they could be friends and it hurt worse discovering that she would find her next clue by forcing it out of them. She had really loved this quaint place, the delicious food, friendliness before the Anadorian Friday curse plagued her life. "Why? We were strangers!"

"Sorry honey, it's this or serve Mesta." Calico apologized as Adilita sniffled for a few seconds as the Mithra was kind enough to pause the fighting for a few minutes to at least explain their randomly seeming villainous behavior.

"In Anadoria there is a saying.

In every Friday the Creators deem it fit to play with us as toys.

When one man falls in love with the woman of their dreams,

Another Ruler falls into ruin and war.

Such is the Curse of Fridays."

-Wren S. Ift the Torn Notebook page.