Indeed, Abby. And now is where I diverge from my outline.
New chapter.
CHAPTER TWELVE:
An Unexpected Reversal of Fortunes
Estelore said nothing more on the subject, even as they approached the final wall. Cloak had managed to adapt his Earthsight into Woodsight, even mouldering wood such as this. Cloak was concerned, but he clearly could not sway Estelore from what she was determined to do.
He feared for her. He feared for what the ramifications might do to her sanity. She might lose it like any supervillain origin story, or it might shatter like a fragile vase. Sure, the RAFians joke amongst each other that they are insane, but that is all said in jest. Even Seal's Sanity-Sucker was nothing more than a glorified vacuum cleaner, really.
But this was serious. Cloak had seen this before, because he had
been in Estelore's position before. Allowing anger to fill you up, allowing yourself to hold onto it, never relinquishing the anger, the hatred, the pain. All it does is hurt you, and those around you.
Cloak never liked to see his friends, especially the ones he held dear, in such pain, in the pain that he had burdened himself with, pain he knew and recognized all too well. If Estelore didn't let her anger go, if she didn't allow at least some modicum of forgiveness in her heart, she will hurtle down a path she may never recover from. Cloak felt as if he couldn't allow that, but his efforts, his endeavors, have proven again and again to be fruitless and futile. Estelore amongst the first RAFians that he made friend with. If she and the others had not, Cloak might still be inclined to believe the things that he was raised to believe -- both about Dwellers, and about himself.
The plain, wooden door leading to the massive room was still quite intact, if a little on the rusty side. The door was undecorated with all the paint chipped off, like the wall surrounding it. Cloak could tell that there was a massive machine in the room and it was the only sort of furnishing, aside from a threadbare, moth-eaten couch. And he knew there was only one occupant, but he didn't need Woodsight. His feline sense of smell could detect his scent quite easily, as if he hadn't found the time to bathe in some time. His feline hearing picked a sort of scuffling movement. Those were things that he didn't bother to disguise, apparently.
They only waited a moment or two before charging into the room.
"What do you mean by it?! What do you mean about siphoning off Sol's substance and strength and --" Estelore roared immediately. But it was more subdued than Cloak was expecting. Apparently, some of Estelore's passionate anger cooled somewhat.
Cloak could see why Estelore stopped midsentence. The man before them had like zero intimidation factor. He was like Tom Hanks or whoever it was in "
Castaway", only his beard was longer, dirtier, and scragglier, and the man himself was far thinner and clearly malnourished. His clothing -- clearly secondhand, as well -- just hung limply off his thin frame. He wasn't skeletally thin, but he was still too thin to be healthy. A lot of his teeth were cracked, chipped, or missing entirely. All in all, he was a pathetic-looking man whose simply appearance was sufficient to inspire pity.
He stood before the machine, whose beam was more visible from this angle. It looked.like one of those bubble guns that parents use to make bubbles for their kids. The machine was shaped like a "7" with a solid base that seemed to be on wheels of some sort. It looked almost professionally made, somehow. At the back, almost as if they were a power source, were four diamonds cut and faceted in the classical diamond shape. There was a white diamond atop, a blue diamond below the white and to the left, a yellow diamond below the white and to the right, and a pink diamond on the bottom.
"Oh, hello," the man said, speaking surprisingly genially, "I'm Jonas Barlowe. And you are clearly
RAFians."
All four were taken aback by such a polite reception. Yes, even Esty.
"Estelore, Cloak, Aquilai, and Saffa, if I'm not mistaken?" he said.
This just unnerved them.
"How'd you know that?" Saffa said, suspicious.
"Hmm?" he replied, still ever so politely. "Oh, I read the reports over at Cadmus."
Then he looked like he let slip something he wasn't supposed to.
"Oops. Looks like I broke the confidentiality agreement," he said, with a shrug, "oh, well. It's not they'll come looking for me after my fall from grace, anyhow."
"You need to stop your machine," Cloak said. "Before you do irreparable harm."
"Oh?" he said, never abandoning his polite intonation. "Oh, yes. That."
The RAFians expected resistance, expected him to fly into a rage with a passionate refusal. They expected him to drop and completely abandon the veneer of politeness, or at least, respectfully deny their request.
But he didn't do any of those things.
"Oh?" he said. "Right you are, then."
He flipped.the machine into reverse and started returning the substance, strength, and energy back to the sun. The RAFians were gobsmacked. He had actually
complied with absolutely
no resistance!!
