Posted using PostyBirb",
"writing": "Niel came-to to an aching jaw. Right, boot to the face. Not a maneuver he’d ever experienced on the football field.\n\nHe cracked an eye open. The walls were bare plaster, the floor some white scratched linoleum. The room had the feel of an abandoned office. He was chained again, as were the other three, but the U-bolt holding his chains was between his legs. And he was wearing pants. \n\nOne meant he could jerk off if he needed it, the other would make that difficult, unless he could maneuver his ass around. The pants had seen better days, worn and gray. The shirt might have belonged to a mechanic, by the oil stains on the sleeves. \n\nThe door was closed, and he couldn’t see cameras, but it didn’t mean there wasn’t a guard on the other side of the door who could hear everything they said.\n\n“Fedor,” he whispered, “can we talk?”\n\n“Da,” the Pallas cat replied in a normal tone. “No one close.”\n\n“Hello,” the german shepherd said, the word slurred. He concentrated, raised his hand, waved, and then it dropped.\n\n“What’s wrong with him?” Niel asked.\n\n“Drugged,” Dario said. “Stubers have strength. They make sure he does not break out.”\n\n“Wieland,” the german shepherd said. “My name is Wieland.”\n\nFedor said something in Russian in an unflattering tone, and Niel glared.\n\n“We’re all tied in this room for who knows how long. How about we don’t restart how the two of your passed the time on the way here? We can’t escape if all you’re doing is bitching. We’re on land, probably in a city too, so all we need is to make the plan and pull off the play.”\n\n“Thun,” Wieland said. “This is Thun.”\n\n“Where is that? I’m not familiar with Germany beyond a bit of the language.”\n\n“Switzerland,” Wieland said with a shake of the head that caused his head to bob.\n\n“Do you know why we’re here?” Niel asked. “I thought it was about me, since I’ve met both Fedor and Dario, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never met you until now.”\n\nThe German shepherd shook his head, and it bobbed again.\n\nNiel leaned against the wall and gave his aching muzzle a rest. He raised his hand to massage it, but the chain stopped it halfway, and he leaned forward. This way, he had enough play to rub along its length. He watched the dangling chain as his fingers worked. \n\n“Dario, you know sigils, right?” He looked at the capybara and shook his chains. “Know any that can get these off, now that you have enough play for it?”\n\nDario sighed, his shoulders slumping. “I am no soldier. I know frase for sex, stamina, honesty, for work without sleep.”\n\n“But in the container, you said the problem was space. Why did you, if you wouldn’t have—” Niel snapped his mouth shut, then winced as the ache flared into pain. If he wanted them to not bicker, he had to lead by example and keep his mood in check. “Alright, but you know sigils. Can’t you just make something that’ll work?”\n\n“Too dangerous,” Dario said with a shake of the head.\n\n“More dangerous than what we’re in right now?”\n\n“Yes.”\n\nNiel stared. He didn’t know enough to call the capybara out on it; but it was magic. That stuff was always just a wave of a wand, a few words, in movies, and anything happened. Well, a wave of the cock and written symbols, in their case, but the principle was the same. Magic fixed anything… didn’t it? Why couldn’t that cursed bat have given him one set of memories where Niel knew something about the magic the Society used?\n\nHe calmed himself. He wasn’t getting anywhere dwelling on a failed play. What else did they have?\n\n“Is there any chance we have more than our family’s powers to work with? The Society has individual powers. Since we follow the same god, we should have something like that.”\n\n“We have diff’rent agreement.” Wieland slurred.\n\n“Not Society,” Dario added with some vehemence. “We are Survivor. We have power that makes us Survivors, and power of family. Society wants that. Tell us we are like them. Marry our daughter to sons and we…” Niel lost the rest, as Dario lost his English in his anger. It was a full minute before he stopped with a look of defiance. Did he even realize he’d been speaking Spanish the whole time?\n\n“Da,” Fedor said. “Always same power.”\n\n“So,” Niel said, doing his best to keep this from feeling like a lost cause. “If we get these off, we have Dario’s invulnerability, but he doesn’t know how to fight. Weiland’s strength, which he can’t use because of the drugs in his system. You have enhanced senses, which includes pain, so violence isn’t going to be something you look forward to, is it?”\n\nFedor looked away and nodded.\n\n“And I don’t age,” Niel finished with a sigh. So much for this not being a lost— “wait, is it that I don’t age, or that I can’t be killed?” His jaw hurt, so it didn’t have some sort of super healing, which would make—\n\n“Know little of Irvine power,” Dario said. “Jarod has no son until you. No other has power, and he did not tell other details.”\n\nNiel leaned in and rubbed his temple. “Right, someone told me part of that before. But why aren’t any of you initiating them for him? Jarod was surprised someone other than him initiated me, but Olavo knew it could happen, so his father knows too, and I’m betting your Patriarch does. Why didn’t one of them find one of his descendant and initiate them?”\n\nDario shrugged. “Not know Patriarch mind. I am son of a son of a daughter. Patriarch and Elders not know I am there.” He slumped. “This does not happen to one as me. I not matter.”\n\n“All matter, to Him,” Weiland said, Sounding defiant despite the slight slurring of the words. “We are important because of Him. We have a duty to Him and those who are His. You matter. We all matter.”\n\nNiel looked at Fedor, but the Pallas cat tilted an ear in amusement, and Niel realized he’d expected him to have a soliloquy about how he saw the world like this was a movie.\n\n“Whatever the reason, they think we’re important enough to kidnap. Wieland, please tell me I’m wrong and those guys aren’t Neo-Nazis.”\n\nThe German shepherd spat and cursed. “Nazis are scum. They are scum.” He nodded to the door, and the motion made him fall on his side. “They make trouble at the college. They are arrested. Germany has no love for Nazis, but they don’t stop. They harass me and my friends. Any who are canine and say that any of us who are not fighting to bring ‘Germany’ back is a traitor.” He spat again. “They don’t fight for Germany. They fight for power to oppress anyone not like them. They are who took me. In the night while I slept. Cowards. I woke to the sting of a needle and fought until I was too weak.”\n\n“Why us?” Dario asked with a whine in his voice.\n\n“Survivor,” Fedor said.\n\n“We do nothing with Nazis,” the capybara replied.\n\n“Actually,” Niel said, and was glared at by Dario, “the Survivors exist because of the Nazis. The expedition to Antarctica started with them; someone reported seeing something during a flight. A researcher at Oxford found out and wasn’t going to let Germans get the glory. That’s how Jarod ended up on it. I figure it’s how each of our ancestor ended up there. So we have a connection to them. I just don’t know if it’s got anything to do with this, unless one of you has more information.”\n\n“No,” Dario said. He’d made his stance clear, and that showed he hadn’t known of a connection.\n\n“Not care for stories of old people,” Fedor said.\n\nWieland was silent until he noticed Niel watching him. “No one speaks of that time.”\n\nNiel had a good idea why, but it had no baring on their situation.\n\nHe closed his eyes and tried to come up with something. He was the one who’d done the research. There had to be something in there that would explain why them, why now.\n\n“Someone comes, many,” Fedor whispered. Thirty seconds later, Neil made out sounds of steps approaching.\n\nThe door opened, and six men entered, all canines, while the same number stayed in the hallway. Fedor and Dario got one each, while Niel and Wieland got two a piece. He saw the holstered guns and considered reaching for it and… then what? He was chained; there were more men outside. How many shots did guns have, anyway? And how many others in the rest of where ever they—\n\n“Ouch.” He glared at the rottweiler, who pulled the needle out of Niel’s neck, smirking. So it had been more a surprise reaction than actual pain.\n\n“Now you don’t get to cause anyone any more trouble.”\n\nThe rottweiler kept a hand on his shoulder while the collie undid the u-bolt. Then they pulled him up and any thought of making a run for the end-line vanished with the realization they had to help him walk. By the time he and Wieland were placed in the back of a van, Niel’s body barely responded to his demands.\n\n“Where are we going?” Niel asked the man who sat behind the wheel, and was confident his words had been clear enough the man was ignoring him, not that he hadn’t understood. “I didn’t go,” he said, trying to put urgency in his tone. “You’re going to have to help me when I go. You’re going to have to hold it for me.”\n\nThe driver muttered something in German Niel couldn’t make out. Wieland chuckled. “He thinks,” he slurred, “you think. He idiot.” It was only the two of them in the van. Niel hadn’t seen where Dario and Fedor had been taken.\n\n“Nothing else to do.” He focused on enunciating properly. “I’ll try anything for a chance to get out.”\n\nNiel gave up elaborating. The drug made the whole thing too difficult.\n\n* * * * *\n\nNiel jerked awake as he slid to the side, his arm moving in time to catch his fall.\n\n“You okay?” Wieland said, and Niel nodded. Then realized the German shepherd sounded clearer.\n\nNiel righted himself. “You?”\n\nWieland shrugged.\n\n“What’s it like for you and your family?” Niel asked.\n\n“What do you mean?”\n\n“Well, Dario’s family lives with the Medeiros, from the Society. There’s tension there. Fedor’s family is somewhere in the north of Russia, Siberia, I think. What’s your family like?”\n\n“Yours?”\n\nNiel sighed. “I don’t know that there’s a family to speak of. I mean, there’s me and Steward, my dad,” he added and Wieland nodded. “But my biological father wants nothing to do with me. I couldn’t even get him to give me a rundown of what having his blood running through my veins means.”\n\nWieland didn’t speak quickly. “My family is large and strong. Very large. We welcome the husbands of our daughters into the family. Some say we marry them to bring more power to the family, but that isn’t true. We chose who we love, and that is enough. I thought the Cuevet were the same with the Medeiros, but then Dario said what he did, and until he spoke Spanish, I understood he didn’t like it. The Spanish still sounded like he was unhappy.”\n\nNiel chuckled.\n\n“My father is an engineer. My older sister is married. Her husband is fun in bed.” He paused. “We are a normal family.” He shrugged. “Little drama.”\n\n“I guess not every family has to be mired in drama.”\n\nHe rested his head against the van’s wall. That’s what he was going to aim for, once this was over. Finish his history major, become a teacher and live a life so quiet, the world would forget he existed.\n\nHe chuckled. Wasn’t that exactly what Jarod had done?\n\nMaybe he wasn’t as different from his father as he thought.",
"writing_bbcode_parsed": "Niel came-to to an aching jaw. Right, boot to the face. Not a maneuver he’d ever experienced on the football field.
He cracked an eye open. The walls were bare plaster, the floor some white scratched linoleum. The room had the feel of an abandoned office. He was chained again, as were the other three, but the U-bolt holding his chains was between his legs. And he was wearing pants.
One meant he could jerk off if he needed it, the other would make that difficult, unless he could maneuver his ass around. The pants had seen better days, worn and gray. The shirt might have belonged to a mechanic, by the oil stains on the sleeves.
The door was closed, and he couldn’t see cameras, but it didn’t mean there wasn’t a guard on the other side of the door who could hear everything they said.
“Fedor,” he whispered, “can we talk?”
“Da,” the Pallas cat replied in a normal tone. “No one close.”
“Hello,” the german shepherd said, the word slurred. He concentrated, raised his hand, waved, and then it dropped.
“What’s wrong with him?” Niel asked.
“Drugged,” Dario said. “Stubers have strength. They make sure he does not break out.”
“Wieland,” the german shepherd said. “My name is Wieland.”
Fedor said something in Russian in an unflattering tone, and Niel glared.
“We’re all tied in this room for who knows how long. How about we don’t restart how the two of your passed the time on the way here? We can’t escape if all you’re doing is bitching. We’re on land, probably in a city too, so all we need is to make the plan and pull off the play.”
“Thun,” Wieland said. “This is Thun.”
“Where is that? I’m not familiar with Germany beyond a bit of the language.”
“Switzerland,” Wieland said with a shake of the head that caused his head to bob.
“Do you know why we’re here?” Niel asked. “I thought it was about me, since I’ve met both Fedor and Dario, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never met you until now.”
The German shepherd shook his head, and it bobbed again.
Niel leaned against the wall and gave his aching muzzle a rest. He raised his hand to massage it, but the chain stopped it halfway, and he leaned forward. This way, he had enough play to rub along its length. He watched the dangling chain as his fingers worked.
“Dario, you know sigils, right?” He looked at the capybara and shook his chains. “Know any that can get these off, now that you have enough play for it?”
Dario sighed, his shoulders slumping. “I am no soldier. I know frase for sex, stamina, honesty, for work without sleep.”
“But in the container, you said the problem was space. Why did you, if you wouldn’t have—” Niel snapped his mouth shut, then winced as the ache flared into pain. If he wanted them to not bicker, he had to lead by example and keep his mood in check. “Alright, but you know sigils. Can’t you just make something that’ll work?”
“Too dangerous,” Dario said with a shake of the head.
“More dangerous than what we’re in right now?”
“Yes.”
Niel stared. He didn’t know enough to call the capybara out on it; but it was magic. That stuff was always just a wave of a wand, a few words, in movies, and anything happened. Well, a wave of the cock and written symbols, in their case, but the principle was the same. Magic fixed anything… didn’t it? Why couldn’t that cursed bat have given him one set of memories where Niel knew something about the magic the Society used?
He calmed himself. He wasn’t getting anywhere dwelling on a failed play. What else did they have?
“Is there any chance we have more than our family’s powers to work with? The Society has individual powers. Since we follow the same god, we should have something like that.”
“We have diff’rent agreement.” Wieland slurred.
“Not Society,” Dario added with some vehemence. “We are Survivor. We have power that makes us Survivors, and power of family. Society wants that. Tell us we are like them. Marry our daughter to sons and we…” Niel lost the rest, as Dario lost his English in his anger. It was a full minute before he stopped with a look of defiance. Did he even realize he’d been speaking Spanish the whole time?
“Da,” Fedor said. “Always same power.”
“So,” Niel said, doing his best to keep this from feeling like a lost cause. “If we get these off, we have Dario’s invulnerability, but he doesn’t know how to fight. Weiland’s strength, which he can’t use because of the drugs in his system. You have enhanced senses, which includes pain, so violence isn’t going to be something you look forward to, is it?”
Fedor looked away and nodded.
“And I don’t age,” Niel finished with a sigh. So much for this not being a lost— “wait, is it that I don’t age, or that I can’t be killed?” His jaw hurt, so it didn’t have some sort of super healing, which would make—
“Know little of Irvine power,” Dario said. “Jarod has no son until you. No other has power, and he did not tell other details.”
Niel leaned in and rubbed his temple. “Right, someone told me part of that before. But why aren’t any of you initiating them for him? Jarod was surprised someone other than him initiated me, but Olavo knew it could happen, so his father knows too, and I’m betting your Patriarch does. Why didn’t one of them find one of his descendant and initiate them?”
Dario shrugged. “Not know Patriarch mind. I am son of a son of a daughter. Patriarch and Elders not know I am there.” He slumped. “This does not happen to one as me. I not matter.”
“All matter, to Him,” Weiland said, Sounding defiant despite the slight slurring of the words. “We are important because of Him. We have a duty to Him and those who are His. You matter. We all matter.”
Niel looked at Fedor, but the Pallas cat tilted an ear in amusement, and Niel realized he’d expected him to have a soliloquy about how he saw the world like this was a movie.
“Whatever the reason, they think we’re important enough to kidnap. Wieland, please tell me I’m wrong and those guys aren’t Neo-Nazis.”
The German shepherd spat and cursed. “Nazis are scum. They are scum.” He nodded to the door, and the motion made him fall on his side. “They make trouble at the college. They are arrested. Germany has no love for Nazis, but they don’t stop. They harass me and my friends. Any who are canine and say that any of us who are not fighting to bring ‘Germany’ back is a traitor.” He spat again. “They don’t fight for Germany. They fight for power to oppress anyone not like them. They are who took me. In the night while I slept. Cowards. I woke to the sting of a needle and fought until I was too weak.”
“Why us?” Dario asked with a whine in his voice.
“Survivor,” Fedor said.
“We do nothing with Nazis,” the capybara replied.
“Actually,” Niel said, and was glared at by Dario, “the Survivors exist because of the Nazis. The expedition to Antarctica started with them; someone reported seeing something during a flight. A researcher at Oxford found out and wasn’t going to let Germans get the glory. That’s how Jarod ended up on it. I figure it’s how each of our ancestor ended up there. So we have a connection to them. I just don’t know if it’s got anything to do with this, unless one of you has more information.”
“No,” Dario said. He’d made his stance clear, and that showed he hadn’t known of a connection.
“Not care for stories of old people,” Fedor said.
Wieland was silent until he noticed Niel watching him. “No one speaks of that time.”
Niel had a good idea why, but it had no baring on their situation.
He closed his eyes and tried to come up with something. He was the one who’d done the research. There had to be something in there that would explain why them, why now.
“Someone comes, many,” Fedor whispered. Thirty seconds later, Neil made out sounds of steps approaching.
The door opened, and six men entered, all canines, while the same number stayed in the hallway. Fedor and Dario got one each, while Niel and Wieland got two a piece. He saw the holstered guns and considered reaching for it and… then what? He was chained; there were more men outside. How many shots did guns have, anyway? And how many others in the rest of where ever they—
“Ouch.” He glared at the rottweiler, who pulled the needle out of Niel’s neck, smirking. So it had been more a surprise reaction than actual pain.
“Now you don’t get to cause anyone any more trouble.”
The rottweiler kept a hand on his shoulder while the collie undid the u-bolt. Then they pulled him up and any thought of making a run for the end-line vanished with the realization they had to help him walk. By the time he and Wieland were placed in the back of a van, Niel’s body barely responded to his demands.
“Where are we going?” Niel asked the man who sat behind the wheel, and was confident his words had been clear enough the man was ignoring him, not that he hadn’t understood. “I didn’t go,” he said, trying to put urgency in his tone. “You’re going to have to help me when I go. You’re going to have to hold it for me.”
The driver muttered something in German Niel couldn’t make out. Wieland chuckled. “He thinks,” he slurred, “you think. He idiot.” It was only the two of them in the van. Niel hadn’t seen where Dario and Fedor had been taken.
“Nothing else to do.” He focused on enunciating properly. “I’ll try anything for a chance to get out.”
Niel gave up elaborating. The drug made the whole thing too difficult.
* * * * *
Niel jerked awake as he slid to the side, his arm moving in time to catch his fall.
“You okay?” Wieland said, and Niel nodded. Then realized the German shepherd sounded clearer.
Niel righted himself. “You?”
Wieland shrugged.
“What’s it like for you and your family?” Niel asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, Dario’s family lives with the Medeiros, from the Society. There’s tension there. Fedor’s family is somewhere in the north of Russia, Siberia, I think. What’s your family like?”
“Yours?”
Niel sighed. “I don’t know that there’s a family to speak of. I mean, there’s me and Steward, my dad,” he added and Wieland nodded. “But my biological father wants nothing to do with me. I couldn’t even get him to give me a rundown of what having his blood running through my veins means.”
Wieland didn’t speak quickly. “My family is large and strong. Very large. We welcome the husbands of our daughters into the family. Some say we marry them to bring more power to the family, but that isn’t true. We chose who we love, and that is enough. I thought the Cuevet were the same with the Medeiros, but then Dario said what he did, and until he spoke Spanish, I understood he didn’t like it. The Spanish still sounded like he was unhappy.”
Niel chuckled.
“My father is an engineer. My older sister is married. Her husband is fun in bed.” He paused. “We are a normal family.” He shrugged. “Little drama.”
“I guess not every family has to be mired in drama.”
He rested his head against the van’s wall. That’s what he was going to aim for, once this was over. Finish his history major, become a teacher and live a life so quiet, the world would forget he existed.
He chuckled. Wasn’t that exactly what Jarod had done?
Maybe he wasn’t as different from his father as he thought.",
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"title": "Hope in Coincidences, CH 25",
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