Editing DbS (section)

== EPILOGUE ==
⚇乂⚇

'''WHAT CHILD IS THIS'''

THE TECH ROOM WAS LOVELY. Wires were scattered everywhere, and despite the messiness and my deep disliking for messiness, it was nice.

It had been six months since I had been in Shakespeareland. Six. Whole. Months.

I hadn’t been on an assignment since- I had really been trying to help out my friend, Jed, with tweaking the metal bowl that had served as a transport to another world.

We had been mostly successful thus far—the only thing we needed to fix was how large and bulky it was.

“We just need to… smallify it,” Jed had said, shaking his head slightly, trying to get the dirty blonde hair out of his face.

He could’ve cosplayed as Shaggy from ''Scooby Doo'', given how he looked. From his dark brown eyes to his almost sort of bangs to his trying-to-grow-a-beard, he was the spitting image of him. Only, his personality was different.

He was a tech wiz… unlike Shaggy. And he did not have a dog.

“You mean minitaturize?” I asked, poking a blue wire carefully.

“No, no,” he insisted, flipping up his welder’s mask which had had just put on. “I mean ''smallify.'' As in, make it a bracelet.” A mischievous look crossed his face. “Or maybe… a watch.”

Jed Wilkie was notorious for inventing watches. Not the time-telling ones, although he was good at those too, but the spy ones. He had figured out how to implement a laser pointer into some while putting in a bird call maker in another.

“Okay, but like—” I was cut off by a spark coming in my direction. It quickly simmered out, but just for good measure, I scooted away, down the table, and away from Jed and his welding devices.

“Got it!” Jed exclaimed after a moment, flipping up his mask once again. He held up a small device.

“This, this is what does the magic!”

It was small enough to not be noticed by most, and I had in fact skipped over it in my initial examinations of the bowl hat.

“What is it?”

Jed scratched his head. “Dunno. Just looks important.” ''Well, that was a letdown.'' Upon seeing my face, Jed grinned. “Nah—I know it’s important. Got all these fancy switches on it. ‘Sides, it was definitely made by a tech dude.”

“But what’s it called?”

“Well, it’s a new discovery- doesn’t have a name yet! It could be called…” Jed thought a moment. “The Foster-Wilkie compartment thingamajig!”

I raised a brow, trying to hide a smile.

“Okay, okay… uhhh… the transporter!”

Another brow raise. Jed held up his hands in surrender. “It takes a while to come up with genius names, okay!”

I grinned and gave a laugh. “Yeah, yeah, I know… what about ‘jumper’?”

He shook his head. “Sounds like jumper cable. Or a jacket. It’ll get confusing.”

“Bro,” I said, glancing over at him. “You know how confusing the other names of things are, right?”

Jed paused. Then he grinned and spoke once more: “Yeah, fair enough. Jumper it is!”

Thus and so, the little story-jumpy part was named.

That wasn’t at the top of my list for that day, though—oh, no. I had to write letters- specifically to Benvolio- and I probably needed to get stuff done with the book you are, in fact, presently reading.  

The book was easy enough… but the letters were easier. For example, the Benvolio one.

I won’t bore you with the details, reader, but essentially, I had become a genius overnight.

Like, alright. When I left the to-be-destroyed building, I had grabbed a flimsy, paperback version of Romeo and Juliet. It wasn’t one of those fancy translation ones that go from Shakespeare to modern English, it was just your standard, English class, Romeo and Juliet.

Except it wasn’t. It wasn’t like Romeo and Juliet. Sure, there were still the important-ish bits, but I was there. Which was a little eerie, because Shakespeare existed something like… what, four, five, hundred years ago?

Anyway—I had stapled (the noise had made me cringe) pages to the back of the book, what was now safely in a book cover, and written a letter to Benvolio.

''And he had responded.'' Which was super cool.

Apparently, he was to be married to a woman called “Lady Portia” (as he said in his lengthy letters), and she was just ''the best''. Abigail loved her, Montague found her intriguing, even the stiff Mrs. Capulet was fond of her. Benvolio was confident they would be a good match. And what’s more, Benvolio had been promoted. He was now, apparently, a sort of advisor to Escalus (which was good, because he certainly needed a competent one), which provided a) a bunch of job opportunities, and b) more time to spend with Lady Portia, who was good friends with Escalus’ to-be wife. It was all coming together rather well for my friends in the realm of Shakespeare.   

Back to the present, though, I was walking out of the tech room, which is when I saw… her.

She had a very thin face. Her pale skin was freckled with… freckles, and she had these almost greenish-brown eyes. She couldn’t have been much younger than me, she was maybe around fourteen, possibly?

Upon seeing me, she grinned and briskly walked on up.

“Hi!” she exclaimed brightly, brushing a strand of gingery hair that had escaped from her thick ponytail out of her face. “I’m Carmen.” She stuck out her hand for a handshake.

I gave a small smile back. “I’m Nate.”

She gave me a very serious look. “I know. You’re writing about Shakespeare.”

This caught me off-guard—only a select number of people knew about this great undertaking.

She stepped back, possibly pleased about her taking me off-guard, a small smile crossing her face.

“Well, hang on, it’s not like a Shakespeare fan-fiction, or anything,” I said quickly, trying to avoid any very much so incorrect assumptions.

Carmen laughed. “No, no, I didn’t say it was. I know what you’re up to.”

An unsure look passed over her face, and she paused a moment. “I have… encountered a lead, concerning a certain Tom Halifax.”

This was not something I had expected. I thought back to the dart his goons had shot at me. A shiver ran through my body.

I knew what this meant. Usually, when an agent discovers a bad guy, they go after him—usually. I wasn’t sure if I would be allowed to do this… because the book writing process was sapping up most of my time.

Carmen, presumably reading my mind, gave a vague hand wave. “Not a problem. The Major’s given permission.”

I nodded, slightly. ''Guess I’m punching Uncle Tom in the nose, then.''

“Only thing is,” Carmen said, giving me a somewhat mischievous look, a small grin crossing her face. “We gotta go through a book to catch him.”

I didn’t mean to. I really didn’t. But I groaned. Okay, look, I didn’t ''love'' Shakespeare. I do love books… but do you know how many books I liked where I could die within the opening scene?

Carmen sighed. “You’re the only one with the expertise in this field, Nate. I need your help on this.”

''It’s not as if I can pass up a chance to jump into a book… and plus, it'' is ''my job….''

I nodded. “Let’s do it. When do we leave?”

“Two weeks,” she replied, face lighting up excitedly.

 Her excitement was contagious. A grin slowly formed on my face. “Sweet. See you there… tech lab?”

Carmen thought for a minute. “Wait. No. Hold up—yes—yes. Yes, the tech lab.” (It is not my fault in the slightest that Jed had named two different places two very similar names.)

“Cool. See you in a week, then.”

“Yup. Mhm.”

I paused, turning on my heel back to her for a moment. “Carmen. What book are we jumping into, exactly?”

She gave one of those mischievous smiles that little did I know I would encounter many more a time while on our journey.

“Evercore.” She held out a book to me, taking it from a pocket in her bag. I peered over at it, realizing that she probably had several copies of the same book stashed in there—otherwise, why would she have given me this one?

“To keep?” I questioned. Part of me thought, ''Score! A new book!'' The other part was beating its head against the wall in frustration.

She gave an affirming nod. I looked down at it, taking in its details.

It wasn’t very old looking— in fact, I thought I recalled seeing a book like this in a bookstore years ago and hearing of its release. It was quite popular.

Its cover showed a boy with a staff-like thing, a grin on his face, encountering a… was that a dragon? It must’ve been.

It was large, and green, and had scales o’ plenty. I could only imagine how it would look in real life. Carmen’s voice snagged me from my thoughts.

“We ready for this, partner?” She had held up her hand, yet another grin on her face, an excited light in her eyes.

Once again, her excitement was contagious. I grabbed her hand, the height difference hardly significant, as she was perhaps an inch shorter than me, and gave her a confident smile.  

“Let’s go save the world.”
[[Category:Novels]]