• Twelve chimes resonated in the still October night air, announcing the midnight hour to the whole of Icarius, so-called City of Inventors. The source of the vaguely ominous sounds – a mountainous old clock tower at the centre of the city, its pale face lit by a combination of flickering light bulbs in need of replacement and the full moon peering curiously over the tops of swirling black clouds. The overall effect was rather eerie, but the streets were void of anyone with the time to notice such things.

    Three figures cloaked in darkness stole silently along the otherwise empty streets, keeping to the shadows on the off chance that anyone should look out their window and see them. Despite this, the rare working streetlight would occasionally catch a visor or plated glove in a ray of filmy light, advertising their existence to anyone who cared to look.

    But no one did, and the armored curiosities reached their apparent destination with no human contact whatsoever.

    “This is it, then?” breathed the smallest of the trio, voice muffled by the helmet encasing his entire head. It looks a bit like a motorcycle helmet with a gas mask built into the mouthpiece, but it was obviously metal-plated at the very least. This one was painted a rusty, metallic red.

    “No,” replied a slightly taller member of the party, sarcasm dripping venomously from his whispered articulation. “We just thought we’d pop in for a spot of tea with some old friends, then we’re off.”

    A heavy sigh issued from the tallest of the group, who towered over the other two by what was easily a foot. “Howell, be nice to the new kid,” he said quietly, addressing the sarcastic man in the burnt orange helmet. “Newbie…” He paused, struggling for words.

    “Be less dumb,” Howell supplied.

    ‘Newbie’ sighed and reached into a messenger bag slung over his shoulder and cast a sidelong glace at the tall man with the blue helmet, his direct superior. He withdrew a long, thin pin and grumbled, “No respect… can’t even call me Winston…” before inserting the instrument he was holding into the lock and setting himself to the task of breaking and entering.

    ---

    Had the record player not been on full volume, Leonardo Barnes and Leo Noble might have heard the sound of their front door being opened from the outside, but each was caught up in his own thoughts of clocks and drapes and combustion engines and had no room for thoughts of death.

    “Suppose we… no, that wouldn’t work,” Leo said reticently, glancing vaguely up from his book, Death of an Interior Designer, a romance novel in which there were no dead interior designers, or any at all, for that matter.

    His partner ‘hmm’ed absently without raising his bespectacled eyes from the antique-looking clock whose innards he was tinkering with. Leonardo Barnes had an affinity for clocks, which he mad evident by decorating the entire front room with old clocks that did not work. During a dry spell of ideas, he tried unsuccessfully to fix them as a form of meditation. Leo was of the opinion that Leonardo did not want the clocks fixed, or they would be fixed by now. Leonardo was of the opinion that Leo should keep his brain leakage to himself.

    “Maybe if we simply increased the size?” Leo said, pursing his lips and pushing a long lock of honey-blonde hair out of his face.

    Without looking up, Leonardo replied, “They’re too big already.”

    Leo shut his book with a snap and stood up from the uncomfortable lump of wood that roughly passed as an armchair which he had been sitting on. He took to pacing before the bookshelf next to Leonardo’s desk, glancing occasionally at what his partner was doing and becoming increasingly aware of how irritating the record player really was with each step he took.

    “D’you mind if I…”

    “Not at all,” muttered Leonardo, flailing dismissively then running a hand through his short, spiky brown hair.

    Neo removed the pin from the record and immediately noticed a change, though not for the better; at the precise moment that he turned the record off, two strange men wearing armor walked nonchalantly through the door, each holding a hand gun.

    “All clear, Val,” said the slightly bigger one in the orange helmet. Leo stared incredulously at the men but chose to say nothing. Leonardo looked as though he had seen a ghost.

    Val, the tallest armored man with the chrome blue helmet, walked in, a very large rifle dangling from one hand. Winston stepped quickly aside, his gun trained on Leonardo.

    “Gun down, Craemer,” Val said calmly, nudging the smallest figure lightly with his elbow. He reached up with his free hand and removed his helmet to reveal pale skin dotted with freckles, colorless hair that hung into his sunken grey eyes and a smile that suggested that he did not want to be there in the slightest.

    “Mister Barnes, always a pleasure,” he said in a hoarse voice, inclining his head toward Leonardo. “And, ah… Noble, I presume? You remember my colleague and me, I assume? Stefan, and I’m happy to introduce Winston, who’s taken over for Dante.”

    “How could I forget someone like you, Shockley?”

    Leo shot a glance at his partner, perturbed, only to discover a meek, equally terrified man peering at the intruders from behind his wire-rimmed spectacles, trembling fiercely. His narrow face was a portrait of fear and, oddly, irritation. Leonardo offered his friend an apologetic stare, his silver-blue eyes wide and the knuckles of his shaking hands white from clutching his screwdriver so tightly.

    Shockley seemed to grow bored with waiting for further response, so he pressed on. “Well, gentlemen, I hope this wasn’t inconvenient timing for you, but we will be requiring your compliance. We’ve heard tell of a new, ah… ‘project’ you two have been working on,” he said, his thin lips curling into a smile that would be more accurately described as a grimace of pain.

    “Go to hell,” Leonardo said quietly, unable to keep a small tremor out of his voice.

    “Listen, scum,” snapped Howell, cocking his pistol. “You, of all people, should know what we can do. Now hand it over.”

    “Do you even know what ‘it’ is?” Leo asked forcefully, narrowing his eyes.

    “Well that’s why we’re here, isn’t it?” Winston said matter of factly, keeping his weapon pointed at the floor.

    Shockley threw him a sharp look and resumed the role of negotiator. He examined the scuffed steel plate covering his forearm, his reflection distorted by the scratches and dents in the battle-worn plate, before saying, “Hand over the prototype and we won’t have to kill you.”

    “Maybe,” Howell added nastily, shaking his gun ominously.

    Leonardo’s lip curled into a slight sneer. “We don’t have one yet.”

    The armored trio exchanged glances, each with their own thoughts regarding their purpose. The intruders, better known as the Knights (or three of them, at any rate), had been sent to procure the prototype of the inventors’ latest idea under suspicion that it would be used against the Cydonian government by the Erisian rebels. In the event that the prototype did not yet exist, they were to make sure that it never would.

    “Then any material you have regarding the thing,” Howell amended, jerking his gun impatiently at nothing.

    Leo opened his mouth to say something but his compatriot held up a hand to put whatever thoughts were currently leaking on hold. Instead, he responded, “If we give you the blueprints, you’ll leave?”

    “Sure,” Howell said, taking a few steps forward, putting himself slightly ahead of the others. Beneath his steel-plated bucket of a helmet, a smirk played across his lips. Of course they would leave. Not necessarily a good thing for the inventors, of course.

    Leonardo Noble protested silently, fixing Barnes with a grimace fit to curdle mild, which was busily ignored by the recipient. Leonardo Barnes tread carefully on his way to the bookshelf keeping his hands in plain view at all times and a wary eye on the man in red, who seemed jumpy and inexperienced, and thus, trigger-happy. He didn’t search the bookshelf, however. He knelt at an umbrella holder printed with an antique-looking map of the world and rummaged through its contents which consisted not of umbrellas, but of rolled up maps and scrolls of parchment with various uninteresting technical drawing on them. A small noise of satisfaction told the spectators that he had found what he was looking for, and he pulled out a roll of parchment triumphantly as though unsheathing a sword. Leo frowned very slightly but made no movement otherwise as his partner handed the papers to Shockley, who unrolled them.

    On the yellowed paper the beginnings of what seemed to be a revised draft of an iron creature, detailed sketches of specific parts and several flawed designs with many crossings-out and scribbles tacked on at the corner. Eyeing the scale, Shockley couldn’t help but marvel at exactly how intricate the designs were, not to mention how grand the scale was expected to be.

    An impatient cough from Howell brought him out of his reverie and he quickly folded the parchment and tucked it under his arm.

    “Take care of them,” he grumbled, gesturing vaguely and turning to leave. He paused, reconsidered, and added, “Craemer, stay behind and help. You might learn something.”

    With that, Shockley Valentin left a sadistically grinning Stephan Howell and a doe-eyed, terrified Winston Craemer to dispose of the evidence. He shut the door softly behind him, humming quietly under his breath as two gunshots rang out almost simultaneously. He felt bad about the whole thing, honestly. The inventors had had the potential to be great, but a witness was a witness, and the Knights of Cydonia did not exist.