Hon enters the med bay, hybrid and chimera kids in tow. She tries not to touch them as she ushers them in, disgusted,
Hon: Where is it we’re putting these? And why is it there’s suddenly so many of them running about and making things sticky?
[farrah turns from seeing to an old crow, clipboard in hand.]
F: Cepni’s set up quarters for orphans near the barracks. There are more because families who have been keeping Hybrid children hidden are joining us to fight for their chicks to have a better life.
H: yeah well, if they could do it in a way where they stop following me around, that would be great.
kid: Mother!
H: See? It’s always “Mother” this, “Mother” that. Find a new babysitter will you?
Pak across the room: Mother?
H: yeah, I hid a few kids in the bar cellar and that was their nickname for me or something, but now they’re all doing it somehow.
P: All the chicks?
H: No, just the Hybrids Cyras rescued from the Doves, and all the Chimeras. I think the Chimeras started it though. [squints at a chimera kid who reaches their arms up to be picked up. she wrinkles her nose].
P: I’ve…heard them do that. When I was being held by the Dole, they’d march the chimera chicks past the room we were caged in. They were usually crying, and calling out for “Mother”.
Farrah’s eyes narrow: Mother, hm? Where was it they held you when this happened?
Pak: Their main temple in the City, I think. That big Branch one. That’s where they did all the testing on us. [shivers].
Farrah: Mother…
Hon: Well, I’m offloading these onto someone else. Toodles.
[Hon leaves with kids. Farrah ponders. Ree shows up]
Ree: Lars’s creepy mom is asking for you, Farrah.
F: Right. [to pak] Thank you, Pak.
P: Not sure I helped any, but sure.
Ree and Farrah walk in hallway.
R: Any results yet?
F: I imagine that’s what I’m being summoned for. Any news from the boys?
R: Scra’s back from the rally. Sounds like they were unsuccessful, which is what we expected anyway, but still sucks. No news on Ky.
F: I hope he finds his sister soon, the clock’s ticking.
R: you don’t need to tell me. Tiraa and I are doing our best getting everything organized, but it’s a shitshow. There’s been some broadcast from the City too that’s been ruffling feathers down here. It really will be a miracle if we pull this off.
F: we’ll get it done. We have to. There’s no other choice.
[they enter lab. Madam Paylette is studying the equipment]
F: Madam Paylette? Any news on the sequencing?
MP: We have results, and they’re as we suspected. The DNA from the hairbrush you took from the castle are a match to your friend’s.
Ree: hairbrush?
F: I took one from the Queensrooms when we were at Blackroc Keep.
R: and now -
F: it proves Scra’s lineage. He really is Avarie’s Crow King.
R: [smirks] He’s not gonna like that one bit.
MP: It is the conclusion to my search all these years. Every late night of research, every year locked in that prison, finally vindicated. The samples from the old Crows show a high match percentage to the royal DNA too, so at least now we know what the Dole wanted them for. Although why is another question.
F: How…did you end up imprisoned here? I haven’t had the time to ask, but why did you leave Avarie at all?
MP: Why? Because it was in my blood to do so.
F: Blood?
MP: Yes. My mother helped found this island, at the side of the Director’s mother.
R: what -
MP: My mother was tired of the ban on progress on Avarie. There were too many hypotheses to test, too many things to discover. So much potential wasted, because of a single, mad ruler, generations ago. She came to Kooup with the rest of them, but while they plotted to overthrow the Crow King, my mother worked. She tried to persuade them that to fight would be fruitless, that they should focus their efforts on transforming Kooup into the utopia they envisioned. But Eagles are notoriously greedy and single-minded when they wish to be, so they flew off to get beaten in a war, and she left them to it.
F: She’s the reason Kooup is so much more advanced than Avarie?
MP: A large factor of it, yes. She had made great strides on Avarie, but the continent itself had too many limitations. Namely, caerulum.
R: caeru - ?
MP: it is an ore found only on this island, used for its versatile properties in much of the technology around us now. [taps on a part of the machine that glows the blue that’s been seen throughout the comic]. Conductive, but also a good insulator. flexible, yet brittle. Unremarkable, and yet, if you find some old enough, can have the energy to be its own power source.
R: And where is this…stone? Glass? found? I’ve not seen any lying about.
MP: [gestures around] What, you thought these tunnels were dug by gigantic moles? Worms, perhaps?
R: It’s all been -
F: Mined. For 50 years.
MP: These are depleted of course, I have heard there are still some sites operational to the south, but supply is limited now. Another thing my mother warned them of, and yet another example of Eagle greed.
F: Avarie has its own version of caerulum, but it’s far more rare and more like plain glass.
MP: Not much can be done with it, and the Council prioritized using the strongest of it for their weapons. Fools.
R: So your mother left you on Avarie?
MP: Yes. My mother knew the war would not end well for Kooup, so kept me out of harm's way. It was only after I discovered the account of a Queensmaid smuggling her last egg from the battle that I became interested in the mystery, and it was the Council’s animosity towards my research that spurred me towards the hunt for the missing royal, in the end. They would fund my research, just not that research, and so I took matters into my own hands. I knew blood would be the trail to follow, I just did not have the means to analyze it, but had heard rumors of the chimeras washing up on our shores and knew Kooup had what I needed. [to Farrah] you had left already by that point, and I felt it was prudent, in the name of research, to follow. My son wanted to come too, and so we left.
I had, of course, underestimated the hostility we would receive on arrival. I first approached the Director herself, explained who I was, who my mother was, and why I was there. It was then I learned of my mother’s death, although she could not tell me how it had come to be. She had left her research though, and I absorbed it all.
I got to work, making great strides in many areas, including DNA analysis. I created the Hybrid surveillance scheme, I oversaw the construction of the City defense system, all as per the Director’s orders. I became top of the field in a few months, and so the Dole found out about me. The next thing I knew, I was kidnapped in the night and put to work in their labs.
Chimeras are a funny thing to get right, you know. Establishing a method for external egg fertilization, then perfecting the precise 50/50 split of the species in the embryo, is not something consistently achieved, and there were many…varied results. Most did not pass the Altimeter’s inspection, and so had been left for dead out in the wilderness I was told. That is how that Murder Boss came to find and rescue them, as I believe it. That was also why the Dole did not show them mercy a second time when they discovered Duune, I assume. They could not have their failures running around. They could not have other people know what they were doing. It soon became too much for me to compartmentalise, and I refused to work any further, thus landing myself in the prison.
F: But why was the 50/50 split so important to the Altimeter? Why was he even making the chimeras in the first place?
MP:...I can make assumptions as to his plans, but none that are definitive. I was not given access to where it was they were harvesting the eggs from for the experiments, but this analysis here has proven something else, too. I took samples from the chimera children we are looking after. They are all genetic matches to the DNA from the hairbrush.
Ree: T-then -
MP: I think we have found the missing Princess, after all.
F: “Mother”, indeed.
I've just finished the previous ep which marks all the eps that I need to do before the comic returns as finished! Just waiting on WT to let me know the return date, then I can tell y'all~