Eliza In The Flesh!: the rules.

 

Vector knew that everything was played by rules. Some had very little, others had too much. For example, he knew that no matter how much Beth wanted to deny it, she too, was run by rules. Bound, more like, by her own conditions; she cannot dream. This is a fact. He found this out when he onced asked her what she would do when she would get back.

“I don’t know,” she shrugged, frowning. “Get rich, be famous, die.” She responded. No reunion with family, no joyous hobbies. It reminded him of an empty room. An unnerving one, especially unfamiliar.

 

She had another rule. This one he understood. “Play games you know you can win.” To be fair, this one was more of a theory. “Do not let go of your power.” Elizabeth was born a duchess, someone already with a name made for herself before she was even born. This was all she had known. Even a sliver let through would be like a crack in a dam or a step on a tightrope. Dangerously unpredictable.

 

Vector had found this rule in particular through trial and error. “Beth—”

“It’s either Your Grace or the Duchess of Rainford to you, Crawtz,” Elizabeth scowled. Vector furrowed his brow. “You seem uneasy going through the portal. You’ve done it before in the past, haven’t you?” He wondered aloud.

“I don’t like gambling,” she muttered, twirling the string attached to her pearl through gloved hands. “You don’t like a lot of things,” he scoffed, the words falling out of his mouth before he could register them. “True,” she, to his relief, sighed unfazed. “But gambling especially.”

 

Over the course of their shared experiences, Vector recognized a pattern. It didn’t take much to find one among the many snake scales Beth seemed to envelop herself with. Beth, the ever sly and sneaky nobel, liked to upturn the tables, slither herself into small cracks and widen them. He was too preoccupied with cleaning up her messes to think much into it. But in his freetime, moments before he passes out from his exhaustion, he likes to trace the weed back to its roots no matter how far down it went.

 

Elizabeth creates wars she knows she can win. Every hiccup, every scuffle, it always played in her favor at the end. If she hadn’t anything to gain, she still wouldn’t lose. Though if Vector checked the rules of fortune, he would undoubtedly know that she was going to suffer eventually. If not loss, then perhaps Beth never gained anything to begin with.

 

“You ‘ere meant to do great things, Crawtz, not be content with ‘em,” his captain one day, ever the wise man he was, told him so tersely that Vector had no choice but to believe it. “That is the price for greatness.” This was Vector’s rule. Granted, not his only one, but the one he circled himself around. It was never constraining like Beth’s but always a matter of dependency. Wherever the wind blew, Vector would follow with it. This was a fact.

 

***

 

Maybe it was his ideals that compelled the captain to give him the watch long ago. Maybe the captain felt bad for him because he had reached a standstill in his work. Maybe Vector will march all the way to the captain’s quarters, shove the watch into his hands, and wake up the next morning to find it frustratingly back on his study table. Twice.

 

His captain treasured it. He told him he got it from a siege where he commanded his former ship that he called “The Gloria.” A fitting name for his history, he thought. Why he gave such a relic to Vector was still unclear.

 

The first time Vector asked, the captain had crossed his arms and kept his unreadable expression stoic as always. “Whatchu mean, Crawtz?” he huffed in his heavy accent and firm tone. “It’s nuffin’ but a piece ‘o junk up on me shelf. The lil’ rebels thought they ‘ere clever, hidin’ their treasure with a puzzle.” Then he sighed and took the watch from his hands. “I guess they were. Never solved it. Tried. Couldn’t.” He looked at the watch with eyes that reminded Vector of a giant’s. Curiously beholding human items with great importance, yet unable to use them themselves. 

 

He never told him what the puzzle was, or if there was a time limit, or even if he was maybe, in the slightest bit wrong. “But there ain’t no head cleverer than yers. ‘Cept maybe mine,” he chuckled, placing the watch delicately into his hands with such confidence, Vector was almost inclined to believe him. 

 

When the wings first sprouted from the sides of the watch, it was already dusk. Vector had been working since dawn. The solution was so laughably simple that Vector could have cackled himself to insanity. He had almost considered destroying it with the last ounce of consciousness his brain had to offer, but Junior Junior poured him a glass of water, sat him down, and talked him out of it.

 

His first idea was to set the watch’s hands to a time. Maybe that could unlock something. So he spent the entire day trying countless possibilities. He stopped counting after the forty-second attempt. Finally, he decided that he would change the watch to fit every hour, then every minute, then every second, until finally, he heard a click.

 

He was watching the grandfather clock as his reference, counting the seconds in his head. One final turn of the sweep hand and everything else seemed to fall into place. The hands on the watch—having previously been dormant—began to move. Two miniature, pearlescent wings sprung out from either side. This was another puzzle.

 

“Junior Junior?” Vector called for the robotic construct. “What happened approximately one hour and forty-six minutes ago?” Junior Junior stiffly turned his head towards him. “OF COURSE. ACCORDING TO MY INTERNAL CLOCK AND MEMORY SYSTEM, ONE HOUR AND THIRTY-SIX MINUTES AGO WAS THE EXACT TIME OF DUSK. MAY I ASK THE SIGNIFICANCE?” Junior Junior replied, tilting his head to the side. “Nothing much. Just trying to solve a puzzle.”

“THEN MAY I BE OF ASSISTANCE?”

“Well— I suppose you may.”

 

“HAVE YOU CONSIDERED ALIGNING IT WITH DAWN, SIR?” Junior Junior suggested as Vector drummed his fingers on his desk. “What makes you say that?” Vector attentively inquired. “WELL, SIR, IT’S SUCH A COINCIDENTAL TIME FOR THESE PUZZLE MAKERS TO CHOOSE. ESPECIALLY SO LONG AGO,” he explained. “BUT ISN’T YOUR ENTIRE LIFE’S WORK BASED ON DISPROVING COINCIDENCES?” Vector pondered this for a moment, staring down at the watch in his hands. “Newton’s third law,” he muttered, and Junior Junior shook his head. “NO, MORE OF A FOIL.”

 

Junior Junior had insisted on waiting for dawn while Vector rested, but he responded with a quip shutdown. “I’m not.”

“SIR, ACCORDING TO MY CALCULATIONS—”

“You’re malfunctioning.”

“SIR—”

“I’m not sleeping, Junior Junior,” Vector hissed before sighing. “Sorry.” The construct showed no reaction. “IF YOU SAY SO, SIR.” And Vector, deciding he was keeping Junior Junior from his duties, quietly dismissed him.

 

Vector waited on the deck, watching the sunrise. The watch in his hands ticked on with anticipation. 5… he counted to himself. 4… his eyes were getting heavy. 3… but his mind couldn’t be more alive. 2… warm rays gingerly grazed his skin. 1… he turned the wings to align with the hands of the watch.

 

In the middle was a spiral connecting the hands. At first, Vector dismissed it as a… poor design choice. But he soon realized as the wings spun around in an orbit that the spiral began to open. Inside arose a whimsical stone, like flights of fancy entwined with an old wisdom. No, not a stone.

“A pearl,” he whispered to himself. “A sky pearl.”

 

He sprinted with excitement to the Captain’s Quarters, watch in hand and everything else behind him. One day. That’s all it took for him to solve it. It had to be some sort of record! Something that meant something. Maybe it was the breakthrough he’d been looking for. Maybe it was like the sword in the stone. Maybe he was like a child showing his parents his drawing.

 

“...and then it just— it just— opened!” he explained, exasperated. The captain stroked his beard gently. “Keep it,” he said. “Then I was— wait, what?” Then he stood up in his all giant mightiness, took the watch, and wrapped it around Vector’s wrist. “Not a soul’s smart ‘nuff to best ya, Crawtz.”

“I had help. From Junior Junior—”

“And only a fool would solve it alone. Keep it, Crawtz. You earned it.”

 

He tucked the pearlescent wings back into the watch. It wore itself a coat of gold and straps of bronze. Ever since he solved the puzzle, a small button snuck its way into the top. It was a subtle difference that he missed the first time. On the back of the watch was a message, etched in gold and unmistakably read: “The winds of time kneel to none.” This watch, too, had rules. Albeit contradicting ones.

 

Vector, never being one for satisfaction, craved more. More knowledge, more answers. Is this it? He couldn’t help but wonder if the prize he worked for was really all that special. It’s always in the pits of failure tha desire lurks in. Especially after the deck caught fire, and the captain demanded he cleaned it up.

 

“LEAD RESEARCHER CRAWTZ,” Junior Junior bellowed from the doorway, nearly giving him a heart attack. “Oh… Junior Junior, hi,” he greeted, letting his eyes avert to the guest besides him. A very yellow shade of blonde, and blue eyes shockingly electric. A crown made of bronze sat atop her head, and a very distinct scowl was plastered over her face. She wore such strange clothing for a noble. He expected a fancy hat and one of those ever popular bustles. Instead, she dressed herself in very reserved clothing, neatly thinned gowns, puffy sleeves that were definitely not from the same timeline, and a corset that wrapped around her torso.

“Who— who’s this?” he gestured to her, becoming increasingly anxious. “Elizabeth the Second,” she said but in a way that Vector would not assume it to be a rule or a fact, but a truth. “From the House of Lowery.” Ah. He would think to himself long after their first encounter. This must be the work of Fate.