Infinities Edge

[Kazanna]

Elias grinned and in an odd, yet fluid motion, slid the ring onto her ring finger, and swept her up in his arms, kissing her adoringly. He held her tight in his grasp and upon breaking the kiss gently, he held his face close to hers for a moment longer.


Aquarius waved a hand at both Carlith and Fate the instant before the heckling began, he simply smiled at the younger couple, knowing the feelings of the emotion between them very well himself.


It would have been a perfect moment, save for that within Elias' life as well as anyone within the Lunaris Clans circles, calm, peaceful moments never last long enough.


Aquarius rose as a message rang out in the neural link he had with his personal Comm. He glanced to Elias, "Pardon me Elias, but I need to go and attend to something." he glanced to Gemma, "Miss Livingtree, you have complete use of my lab while I'm away, I'm sure by now you know how to use it's functions."


Without another word, he simply vanished into thin air. Elias sighed, muttering, "He forgot to take the silencing spell off them..." Elias glanced to his mother and Carlith who were throwing a silent fit, and then back to Gemma. "I imagine you've had a bit of time to think of how you'd like our wedding then hm?" he grinned slightly, teasing Gemma in his mothers stead.

 

[Elle Joyner]

Staring at the ring, Gemma was oblivious to what was going on around her, her heart beating somewhere in her throat as she stared at the glittering stones. It felt surreal, everything that had happened in the past few years. She'd gone through so much, yet through all of it she had never imagined ending up where she had. She could still remember that first night in the bar as if it had happened yesterday, and with fondness, she recalled her abject disdain for the man she was now agreeing to marry.


Looking up when Aquarius spoke she smiled and bowed her head, "Thank you. The lab and I are well acquainted, yes. Good luck."


Turning to Elias she smiled brilliantly, ignorant to the two women henpecking in silence. She didn't mind the absence of their voices, chiming in on so special a moment - even if she were going to be family, soon enough.


"I won't lie and say I haven't imagined it once or twice... or... well, quite a bit. But I don't want to plan one second of it without you there to plan it with me. Honestly, you're the only detail that really matters, anyway."

 

[Kazanna]

Elias chuckled lightly, and let his head fall back slightly, it was one of Aquarius' traits he had seemed to have inherited from the man that was his mentor. Elias nodded lightly, "Yeah... Such events... aren't really my forte, but I do have access to most of the cybernet, so I think my assistance will make things a bit easier... unlike other future husbands would..." He turned to his mother and Carlith after a moment, frowning, "I know you can fix yourself Carlith... Why not help Gemma set up the lab for the tests you want to run and send Dolly's drones out to run the other needed tasks."


It seemed as though a fraction of a moment had passed when Aquarius returned, he glanced through the door, pushing it open slowly, he looked haggard, his clothing was in tatters. Elias frowned at him, and raised a brow, "Less then a minute later..." Elias said quietly.


Aquarius nodded at him, his features looked halfway between puzzlement and understanding. He regarded the situation lightly before he slumped back into his desk's deep chair. "Five months... six hundred years ago..." He rubbed his head, producing his pipe, he lit it without even touching fingertip to the end, a spell simply activated and he took a long drag off of it. He stared at the desk for a long moment, before he spoke quietly, "I opened an account... under your name..." He glanced to Elias, "Well, your names... rather..." He shrugged and tugged a ledger out of his shirt, "Played the stock market... and... put into place a... very long term plan for growth... Ah... I believe... your set for a while now... at least until you blow up a moon, or something... consider it... like a wedding gift..."


Elias simply blinked at Aquarius, before the man lay back in the chair, and fell asleep, his dark eyes shutting as he blacked out. Carlith and Fate blinked at him with a curious look, before Carlith took up the ledger, and began going over it slowly. She flipped through the pages rapidly, her eyes studying each page, before she glanced at Fate, her face white. Fate raised her shoulders and gave Carlith a confused look, before Carlith finally tapped her throat, the spell cancelling.


"He left the stock building portfolio's open, and added in adjustments to the bank accounts for maximum yield accounts... across ten separate banks... across a hundred accounts per bank... He did this one for the company once... we had to go back and reverse it... I guess... Six hundred years is the cap limit he's reached... because we couldn't do it much longer then that... wonder what he used as... seed money..." She scratched her head and sighed. "I hate time travel..." She tossed the ledger at Elias, who caught it with one hand, and overturned it to view the numbers on the final page, which, were dated from the day before.


"Oh..." He said softly, before snapping the book shut.

 

[Elle Joyner]

She'd gotten somewhat used to it - the randomness of living with people like Aquarius, bouncing in and out the way he did. Centuries, for him, could pass in seconds for the rest of them, and in fact they usually did. It wasn't strange anymore, to find him saying goodbye, only to walk through the door a minute later as if he'd never let, having been gone for years...


Listening as he spoke, Gemma only smiled, shaking her head. It also wasn't surprising, to put it mildly... the things he did in those centuries he was away. He could pop into the middle of dinner with injuries of war and proclaim he'd saved a universe from devastation, then sit down and ask that they pass the bread.


And really, Aquarius wasn't the only one.


When the man had fallen asleep and Carlith took over, Gemma glanced to Elias, a brow quirked, "So... should I ask, or just assume I don't have to worry about us having a small wedding...?"

 

[Kazanna]

There was a pause in Elias' response. He took a moment to clear his throat before opening the book again, he glanced at it, muttering, "We could... purchase a star system with whats in here... and it's in neutral funds now... they're able to applied to... any system's currencies..." He glanced to Gemma a moment later and looked almost embarrassed as he said, "With the money I have from all of my bounties over the years... along with this... we could purchase a few if we played the economy game correctly..."


Elias had been almost whispering, he was honestly slightly shocked he'd never thought of how much money he had made. His ship, his armor, and most of his supplies had been company property, or given to him by WFI. The profits from his bounties had gone into maturing accounts that, over the years, had stacked up. He was forty-five now, by legal standards, and he'd started in his early twenties, before he could even legally drink. So as he thought about the prospects of his current future, he realized how much wealth he had amassed. It took him a moment to realize that despite how staggering it was, his mentor, Aquarius, must have more wealth then anyone in creation. He frowned slightly, and scratched his head as he closed the ledger again, letting his hand holding it fall to his side.


"Wonder how much he has in the bank..." he thought out loud.


Then, came a knock at the front door to the house, and Elias' frown deepened as the door was almost savagely kicked in, "Oi! Uncle! It's time!" a booming voice called out. A large face stuck itself through the doorway of Aquarius' study, it looked like the face of a wolf, but was at the height of a very tall man, and spoke in plain English, "It's time to plan the tournament!"


Elias froze in place, muttering, "Oh... It is that time... Isn't it..."


Aquarius' eyes drifted open slowly, and he stared at the ceiling for a moment, before muttering, "Aye... So it is..."

 

[Elle Joyner]

It was more than a lot to take in. It was shocking, really. She'd never been tight, monetarily. As a child, her parents had been decently well-off and being the CEO of a company at so young an age had benefits as well, but she got the impression from Elias's reaction that the amount in the ledger was more, even, than he had expected... which only meant it had to be a mind blowing sum.


The hits kept coming. Engaged and monetarily set for life, all in one day... They certainly knew how to welcome a girl to the family.


Her smile faded only slightly as the newcomer peered through the door. She'd become rather accustomed to watching Elias's reactions to determine whether or not it was something to worry about, but after reading the ledger, she couldn't quite judge. Still, there was enough in the short exchange to suggest it wasn't entirely great news.


"Tournament?" She asked, a brow quirked.

 

[Kazanna]

Aquarius stood, and motioned to Carlith and Fate, "Your turn, I did it last time." He seemed to vanish a moment later, reality folding around him.


Carlith groaned, finding her voice, she shook her head, "Dammit! I was going to announce this year! You asshole!" She screamed after him. Carlith turned to Elias, and then to the wolfman, "You, The Arena, YOU! Out! I was going to announce! You fucker! Your in cahoots with the old bastard!" She raged and began throwing things at the wolfman, who just grinned and howled out, "This is gonna be great!"


Elias sighed, and covered his face with his right hand, groaning, "Do I have to go as well..?" He asked quietly.


Carlith and Fate both turned on him, shouting, "Yes!" unanimously.


Elias groaned and sighed, he looked to Gemma, "I need... some help... because there is no way I'm going in as I am now. Not after..." He looked to Carlith, a sour look on his face, "After what happened last time."

 

[Elle Joyner]

Watching the exchange, particularly Carlith's fury, Gemma frowned. She didn't think it was an irrational thought, wanting just a few minutes of blissful awareness over her engagement... Yet once more, they were back in the thrust of some ridiculous drama or another. Of course, she was smart enough to recognize that this was, undoubtedly, an indication of what life was going to be like, marrying into the family, but it was nevertheless frustrating...


She would have liked to think it wasn't as bad as everyone seemed to be making it out to be, but she knew well enough by now that if Elias was apprehensive about something... it was going to be awful.


Turning to Elias as he faced her, she shook her head, her own expression hardly one of mirth, "It's too much to ask for a nice, quiet evening to celebrate, hmm?...I'm not even sure what's going on, but you know I'll help you, whatever you need me to do."

 

[Kazanna]

Elias shifted his attention to a tome on the book case. He took a step towards it and pulled on a book, until the case shifted and slipped to one side, pushing the ladder that enabled one to access the high shelves aside, Elias motioned to Gemma to follow after him. This, was a place he had yet to show her, but she would have seen Aquarius, Carlith, or several of the other members of the house enter from time to time. Within the chambers of the greater library of the house was a trans-dimensional portal that transported anyone entering the library from any of it's various points of access to the Grand Library on earth. It was within a chamber that Aquarius had had constructed many thousands of years before humans could even walk, and he had viciously defended it for all of his life afterwards.


The library was a geometric shape, it shifted constantly, in reality it was a long tube over five miles down into the earth's crust. Elias had spent a lot of his training here, learning history, among other things. The uppermost floors were home to the technological library, where all the books in the lower section, which had been sealed off several centuries before to keep them preserved lived. Elias had absorbed the knowledge within through not only his nanites, but from reading hard copies of books that did not even exist any longer.


He stopped once he was just inside, and would wait for Gemma until he spoke, if she followed after him, he would remark, "This is Aquarius' Grand Library, he and Carlith have preserved books, tomes, and scrolls here from nations that have burned, and been sacked a thousand times. He moved the entire library in Alexandria the hour before it was burned, and he has the original version of the Quran in the lower levels. They also store their memory files here... that's what were here for..."


Elias would glance back at the passageway, "You need to see what I'm going into, get an idea of anything I need to work on, If they're starting prep for the Tournament today, that means I have today, tomorrow, and most of the next day to return myself to top fighting shape, Or I'm probably going to die at least once during the tournament." he said quiet seriously, but with a hint as though dieing wasn't that big of a deal during the tournament.

 

[Elle Joyner]

Gemma followed him, feeling her patience filtering out. It was supposed to be the single best moment of her life thus far - and yet, here they were, back in the mystery, back in the throes of drama and intrigue. She didn't care about the new room - not because it wasn't amazing... Really, if she weren't so irritated, it would have easily been one of the house's most fascinating features, but it was hard to be impressed when all she could think was... they were supposed to be done with it all...


Elias spoke, but she only half heard him, shaking her head when he fell quiet again. More talk of dying and pain and struggles. Like it was going grocery shopping, or changing one's shirt. Like it were some mundane, every day thing that she was just supposed to shrug her shoulders at... laugh at the idea of.


A sigh escaped and she looked up at him, "...I don't suppose this is one of those situations you can just walk away from?"

 

[Kazanna]

Elias continued the front that he was building stratagem for the tournament, right up until the door closed and sealed behind Gemma, he was mid-sentence when it sealed.


"So in the upper levels are charts on last years finalists, I think it would be a good place to start..." He paused as the door sealed and then a smile tugged at his lips, "It's not something we can walk away from, Run though, definitely, we can run, very fast, and very far. I'm thinking far end of farthest nebula... take a habitat out there so we can go on a vacation... as I promised you I would take you on... and if you felt like it, you'd still have access to at least a state of the art laboratory." He suggested.


Elias leaned against the railing of the walkway that was one of several hundred within the great library, his gaze was fixed on Gemma as he awaited her reply. In all honesty, when the mention of the tournament had come up, his first thought was to run as far as he could as fast as he could, and now, with all of the legal issues behind them, they were free citizens, legally able to do anything, anywhere, and with the sizable monetary contribution from Aquarius and from Elias' own savings, he alone could fund any project they wanted to undertake, be it for the advancement of technology, or simply their own pleasure and amusement.


"Plus... I can set it in a tow line behind my ship... with the tesser engines, we can go anywhere, and it's the only ship that exists right now with an operating tesser engine... after what I did..." He glanced away guiltily, with a grin on his face. He had caused a lot of issues in his time, creating the need for a ban on the tesser engines had been one of them, and his ship had technically had the engine decommissioned, but with the intimate knowledge he had of the vehicle, he had replicated it within minutes of it's removal, tested it, and deemed it as efficient as it's former.


"So my love...?" He offered her his hand, a grin on his lips, he asked, his voice nearly melodious. "Shall we run away? Escape from the madness before were sucked back in, and flee to the Infinities Edge?"