Akyooterat, God of Squirrels (Part 1 of 2)

As brilliant-but-psychotically-murderous villains go, Mr. Vehement Marrow ranked rather low in Audrey’s estimation. While his monomaniacal obsession with tapping the power of the ley lines that converged in New Babbage was, to a degree, rather endearing, Miss Kilcannon could plainly see that his penchant for over-complicated schemes–involving so many precariously assembled parts they were all but predestined to collapse in failure — meant it was most appropriate that the angry alchemist be permanently relegated to the lower echelons of the internationally naughty. This did not mean, however, that Mr. Marrow was incapable of making a thorough going nuisance of himself. 

It was yet another nefarious bit of Marrow-ness that prompted Audrey, and fellow Temporal League agent Lady Gwendolyn Canby-Cross, to leave their respective eras and travel once more to the 1880s to assist recently inaugurated League member, Dr. Jing Qian. While the good doctor had been blessed with considerable genius and considerable talent, she was still a neophyte at the grand game of frustrating the plans of evildoers and generally saving the day… a day which found Audrey and Gwen high above New Babbage, the pair having established themselves on a wide ledge just below the top of the City Hall clock tower. In their unflattering, but period-appropriate, work clothes, the ladies labored with daring speed to assemble the period-inappropriate heat ray device needed to aid the doctor. In the midst of bolting together the weapon’s many intricate components, the ladies’ efforts were interrupted by a sonorous, terrified

“HAAAAAAAAAAAAAALP!!!”

For Audrey, it was a “HAAAAAAAAAAAAAALP!!!” she knew all too well. A “HAAAAAAAAAAAAAALP!!!” she’d heard often in the course of her duties in 1920s Metropolis Zero, issuing from the mouth of an intractably uncomplicated gentleman whose mind was typically untenanted by anything more complex than a cocktail recipe. It was a “HAAAAAAAAAAAAAALP!!!” she was very shocked to hear here.

“Oh good lord!” Audrey exclaimed, abruptly stopping her work and nearly dropping her spanner off the clock tower. “What’s he doing here?”

“PULL ME UP!!” was shouted from the corner. “AUDREY!! PULL ME UP!!”

Ignoring the confused looks from Lady Gwendolyn, Audrey abandoned her gadgets and went to take a look around the corner of the tower. She peered over the edge to find her gaze met by the pale, stubbly but agreeably chiseled visage of Arconus Theobold Reginald Arkright the Fifth, desperately gripping the clock tower ledge… approximately 18 years before he was due to be born.

“ARE YOU GONNA STARE OR ARE YOU GONNA HELP ME?!?!” 

Opting for the latter, Audrey got hold of the young man’s coat sleeve with one hand, grabbed some decorative bit of clock architecture with the other, and helped the lad heave himself up onto the ledge much to his relief.

“God I hate New Babbage!” the fellow exclaimed. “My space-bending tricks always go bladders when I’m here!” 

“And yet, as a mark of your extraordinary brain power, you tried to levitate 240 feet straight up knowing you might not even make it.”

“I nearly made it,” said Mr. Arkright, known to his close acquaintances as Archie. “You know I’m not afraid of a bit of high flying in Met Zero. It’s only here that my tricks cut out without any warning.”

“It’s the devices,” said Audrey. “Has no one ever told you about them? The locals call them ‘reality enforcers.’ I haven’t studied them closely, but they seem to generate some form of charged particle, something akin to Fherrily radiation but at higher frequencies so it randomizes certain kinds of energy emissions. They can also disrupt specific categories of chemical reactions. They say it helps discourage certain undesirables from settling down here and causing mischief. The locals’ tolerance for supernatural hooligans flying around throwing spells at each other is famously limited.”

“I’m not a hooligan,” said Archie, bristling, “or any kind of magician either! I just needed to see you.” He brushed the soot and wrinkles out of his clothes and was surprised and pleased to realize that somehow he’d managed to avoid losing his cap. He looked over Audrey’s shoulder and waved. “Hullo, Gwendolyn! How’re the 1960s?”

“Like I always say, you’ll just have to live long enough and find out.” Gwen barely glanced in Archie’s direction, distracted as she was by her attempts to spot the source of  some mysterious noise from below.

“How did you even get here?” asked Audrey. “Don’t tell me you talked the League into transporting you.”

“I told them I needed to see you… I mean, really, really needed to see you. Well, not you precisely, but I think they sent me to this date because they knew you’d be here. I’ve got a huge problem back home.”

“Mr. Arkright,” said Audrey, “you have a great many problems, none of which are so pressing as to necessitate crossing the time barrier to interrupt my work!”

“Trust me,” said Archie, “this is something new. And big!”

“Hate to be a pest, Aud,” said Lady Gwendolyn, “but you really need to finish setting up that capacitor whatsit while the solar thingy is charging.” She glanced down at the display screen of a small, bleeping device that was resting against the wall in front of her. “We need to have this finished soon. The Ravilans are coming.” 

“Ravilans?” queried Archie.

Audrey looked back at Gwendolyn. “Do we have time for exposition?”

“Make it fast!”

“Right, here’s the story,” Audrey said to Archie. “Dr. Qian was doing a routine check on the whereabouts of Vehement Marrow, that insane alchemist who hangs around here, and she discovered he’d left town and travelled to a place called Ravila. She also found he’d hired a couple of henchmen which is always a bad sign, so she fired up that flying gyro thing of hers and followed Marrow to Ravila where she discovered the bars had all been nearly empty for several nights in a row — another sign that something bad was brewing. Well, it turns out Marrow had slipped some kind of mind control drug into the wine and ale consumed by Ravilans and, with most of the drinking population in a highly suggestible state, convinced them to join a religious cult he’d fabricated to worship some god called Akyooterat.”

“‘Akyooterat’?” Archie repeated to make sure he’d heard the name correctly. “Never heard of that one. What’s he meant to be god of?”

“God of squirrels for all I know. As I said, Marrow just invented him, but that’s not important. What’s significant is that Marrow whipped his mind-controlled cultists into such a religious fervor that they became willing to do anything to appease they’re new god. And Marrow convinced them that the way to win his favor and enter paradise for all eternity was to attack and destroy New Babbage’s City Hall. It seems Mr. Marrow had somehow come into possession of a number of heavily armed air ships, but couldn’t hire as many mercenaries as he needed to mount a successful attack against Babbage. Now he has an army of entranced zealots on their way to blast this city to pieces, destroy the ‘reality enforcers’ and seize control of whatever’s left.”

“This sounds bad,” said Archie, stating the utterly obvious. “You can stop him, right?”

“Jing is in her gyro-flyer, about to intercept the Ravilan fleet,” Audrey explained. “She’s spreading a cloud of gas containing an antidote that will counteract Marrows mind control drug. When the air ships pass through it, the Ravilans should return to normal and end their attack. But just in case it doesn’t work, the heat ray Gwen and I are setting up should incinerate all of them and their ships quite nicely. A last resort, you understand… I’d hate to have to use our big, shiny, sexy weapon on innocent dupes. No matter how glorious the pyrotechnics would be. It wouldn’t be polite, I guess.”

“So what you’re saying,” said Archie, “is that you’re not busy right this second and you can hear me out? Because Metropolis Zero is taking a serious thrashing at the moment and I could really use some help.”

Lady Gwendolyn called to her co-worker: “Audrey, I think we have a complication. And it’s large and metal and climbing up the clock tower towards us.”