infiltrating the court

[msmortal]

The plan is refined and strengthened, contingencies are set to deal with various ways Thorn could've strengthened his defences, Mortal receives a very interesting email concerning one of their mother's contingency plans - namely that her assets have all been either frozen or transferred to Mortal themself, so Thorn doesn't have access to them -, and when Mortal and Promise judge there's nothing more to be gained from further planning they (eat dinner, sleep again, have breakfast, go over the plan once more when it's not completely fresh in their minds so they see if they come up with anything new, purchase Promise a mobile phone and a power generator to charge its battery in fairyland, eat lunch while Mortal teaches Promise how to use that, and) part ways.

On this side of the veil, Mortal gets to work. The first step: getting at least two safe houses, one for their HQ and the other for contact with the place near Thorn's court. They end up getting five, for redundancy's sake. The main HQ is near Seattle, the other four safe houses are in Greece, Russia, Japan, and Argentina. That, and getting the necessary existing equipment, is the easy part - you end up with contacts of the relevant sort when the bulk of your wealth comes from the kind of thing you can get with sorcery. The hard part is getting the various specific bits of technology that don't exist yet, including the the many types of trap and ammunition they'll need. Processing fairy voices with software turns out to be a dead end - apparently they're weird magical superpositions of sounds that make software go ?!?!?!?!? - but everything else, as agreed upon, can be made to spec nicely enough.

It'll take a couple of weeks beyond the one month for everything to be ready. Mortal hires someone who talks very fast.

And after the ball's going, there's not actually much for them to do with their time. They fret about details of the plan, order more redundant pieces of stuff (especially the to-spec stuff, not being mass-produced means they'd better have a lot of it to start with in case anything goes wrong), and have various antsy and anxious and calm and relaxed and terrified and panicked moods. A month is a long time...

At one point it occurs to Mortal that Promise might've decided to run away and not help, and then they'd never see her again and that would be terrible, and why would it be terrible anyway? It's just some fairy, fairies are evil, one must remember that. Even though she wasn't, of course, she was smart and resourceful and moral and ridiculously hot, and if they never see her again she'll never order them again and the tingly feelings won't ever happen again. Except what the heck, what are they even thinking? The answer, of course, is that they want to see Promise again. Why? To save their mother, of course. The only reason being ordered like that felt good was because Science. Of course. Of course.

The month passes-

Comments

[msmortal]

And the invisible traps and surveillance devices are set in appropriate corners.

"Are you ready? And in the end should we do stopthensayyourname or sayyournamethenstop, do you think? I hope there are enough bullets there... I hope he hasn't thought of a way to circumvent this. Could he have created wards specifically for darts? Could he have found us out?"

[imeanforever]

"Hasn't had enough time to develop, let alone opportunity to test, novel ward forms. - I think, I think something would have been different by now if he noticed... and I'm leaning stop first, you don't need the 'then' that way."

[msmortal]

"Yeah, not to mention that if he has anything he can activate he won't be able to. Stopsayyourname, okay, good, this will have to be our mortal hireling 'cause he has our names but yes okay."

[imeanforever]

"Yeah." Deep breaths.

[msmortal]

She sends the mortal a message to that effect.

And then, once again, they wait.

[alicornucopia]

Thorn doesn't show up for a long time.

[msmortal]

Which gives time for anxiety and nervousness to turn into bordeom and then turn back into anxiety and nervousness.

"He's onto us. Is he onto us? Verve and Sand aren't acting weird, they've evaded questioning. He's not onto us. Is he?"

[imeanforever]

"I don't think so. He may take months to show up at this specific court," Promise says levelly. "Especially since your mother isn't at it."

[msmortal]

"...right. Right. This doesn't mean anything. Okay." She sighs.

[imeanforever]

[msmortal]

She shakes her head a bit to clear it. "This is nerve-wracking."

[imeanforever]

"I know."

[msmortal]

"The worst part is that we can't really- stop. We can't slip, we can barely talk because something might be going on that needs our attention, and this. Is. Booooooring."

[imeanforever]

"Yep."

[msmortal]

Sigh. Watch the screen, because they must.

[imeanforever]

Watch watch.

[msmortal]

Good thing the batteries in those traps and devices last a long time, and Mortal packed spares if need be. They ought to be covered for as long as it takes.

[imeanforever]

Thorn takes a long time to show up.

But two months after they caught Verve, in he comes.

[mrmortal]

Ducking finally.

He's made sure his mortal hireling has been called upon somewhat unpredictably so they wouldn't grow lazy, and now they're there, ready and waiting to say the words and mean them. Mortal and both fairies are awake, him on coffee to make sure he'll lose nothing.

The trap is ready - bullets and darts will stream at him until a dart penetrates, but it will only start doing so once Promise releases a button, to make sure they won't accidentally capture the wrong vassal. Mortal himself has his hand on another button, one which will send his hireling a buzzer to indicate he ought to start ordering.

Their attention on the screens showing the views of Thorn's room, they wait for him to walk in.

[imeanforever]

He doesn't go to his room right away. He checks on things. They have to belay orders for Sand (Verve's gone to another court by now) and bite their fingernails while he quizzes Harp on whether she's seen anything -

- and eventually, Blossom on his arm, he goes to his room.

[mrmortal]

...yeah, they said they'd wait until Thorn was Blossomless to do this, so no activating traps for now. "Verve said he spends around a month in a court or something, didn't she?"

[imeanforever]

"About. Maybe less because your mother's not here and she's probably still his project and might be inconvenient to move."

[mrmortal]

"What does he even do with his- no, sorry, ignore what I said."

[imeanforever]

Promise doesn't answer.

[mrmortal]

Yeah, probably not a good question to ask an ex-project. Besides, he mostly has an idea. "I'm... very sorry you had to go through that."