38 - Lost in Translation//Foley, Paxton

Mr. Foley giggled, then giggled again. He couldn't believe how well everything had worked out. Putting a fire under Navy was as easy as convincing the young man that he thought Deanney was doing a better job.

He'd easily brought him all six Noiz that those insolent kids had taken. He took each in his hands, examining it closely, giggling uncontrollably.

With these little stones he'd gotten a power he'd never known he'd wanted. A magic that could take their reality and make it better.

And in making his reality better, Paradox City itself got better. As long as he had the Noiz, and Paradox City had him.

"Are you okay, sir?" Navy asked, standing up straight, diligent as always. "You were quite winded after Mr. Phipps attacked you. You slept for sixteen hours straight"

"I'm fine, Navy," Mr. Foley said, shaking away the memories. "Better than fine. Great! I can't believe you followed them back to their hideout. Better yet, that you used the SWAT team under the guise of a 'covert operation'."

"It wasn't too much effort, sir," he said.

With all Navy had done in the past few days, Mr. Foley considered giving him a break. A pat on the shoulder and a vacation to somewhere nice and tropical, but he knew that wasn't what Navy wanted. The cunning look in the young man's eyes told him he lived for the thrill of the chase.

And it wouldn't be long till their next chase was up.

"Seven Noiz," he said, his eyes scanning the papers Deanney had brought to him. Pages upon pages of an ancient Gaelic text alongside their translations done by The Man of Manx. "One more, and the Very Great Power will be ours."

"If we scour these pages, I'm sure we'll find it," he added, more to himself than to Navy.

"I don't think that will be necessary," Navy said, stepping forward, fire evident in his eyes.

"Navy!" Mr. Foley said, roaring with laugher. "You wily boy! You've figured it out, haven't you."

"Shall we go, Mr. Foley?" Navy said, opening the doors to their home office.

"Where?" Mr. Foley asked, pulling on his Noiz and pocketing the rest.

"A friend's," was all Navy said.

-HEIST_ON-

When you changed your perspective, things could become entirely different. However, no matter what happened with a perspective, things either got better or worse.

When Paxton changed his perspective, he immediately wished he could go back to his original view.

"The eight Noiz together become the Very Great Thing to birth a wish," he repeated, his eyes trained on Alejandra "That is the direct translation. It's not the Very Bad Thing. There's nothing to be afraid of."

"Aside from Mr. Foley wishing we would all blip out of existence," Nora suggested. Both Paxton and Alejandra shot her an identical angry look.

"Sorry," she said.

"I don't know what hack job your translator did, but just because he figured out the Noizmaker technique, doesn't mean he knows anything else," Paxton said confidently.

"That's where you're wrong," Alejandra said, walking up to him and pointing at the book. "Ancient Gaelic translates differently depending on the mutations of the words surrounding it."

"Of course! I already know that," Paxton explained. "The mutation here results from the word for 'Great', a variation of the very title of the Mooar Shee!"

"That's incorrect," Alejandra said. "I don't remember exactly what he said, but it was something about the variant coming from the noun, not the adjective."

"But the word for 'Thing' doesn'-" Paxton started to argue when he finally saw it.

His perspective had changed. Suddenly, he could read every word on the page.

Unfortunately, it was for the worse.

"It's in future tense," he said worriedly. "Not present; this whole quarter is written in future tense!"

"Yeah!" Alejandra said. "He said that too."

"Who said that?" Lea asked as she joined them.

"My translator," she said. "When I left home, I went to Ireland to find out what this book said and I met a translator."

"His great-great grandfather was a historian who dealt with this specific variant of ancient Gaelic and it was passed down for generations. He thought it was all just for a research project, but when I made my Noiz and it worked... I knew it would really destroy us all."

"Destroy us all?" Nora said. "Paxton?"

"Yeah, Paxton?" Lea chimed in.

Paxton felt nervous with everybody's eyes on him, waiting for him to say something. So he did what he did when he was nervous; he read.

"The eight Noiz together will become the Very Bad Thing, born of that wish."

"That wish?" Lea asked. "Not a wish?"

"The Very Bad Thing?" Nora added.

Paxton didn't want to answer, didn't want to think, so he read some more. This time he read from the beginning

"The eight Noiz were created to stop the Witch Maiden Cree from becoming Queen. Spurned by the loss of her throne of Central Ire to her younger male cousin, she plotted from the sidelines to become the ruler of all of the Goidelic Kingdoms. Her plots were borne of a single magic, which itself was borne of a single wish."

"A wish -the ability to entirely change something without a true, fair effort- is usually nothing more than a dream, but as a skilled young Princess with access to the greatest sorcery teachers she quietly made her magic a reality."

"In response to her reign of terror, the sorcerers and sorceresses of the Goidelic Kingdoms, some of whom had been her own teachers, came up with an anti-wish magic born of humanity's feelings, translated into music."

"Musical magic was chosen because it was the area of magic where the Witch Maiden was seen as least proficient at."

"Eight stones, the Noiz, would transform the greatest man in each battalion of the Goidelic Army into an instrument of battle. They would do so by transforming into great warriors and raising the pitch of their hearts to match the anti-wish magic of the Noiz. These weapons would then be used by the eight sorcerers and sorceresses to seal away the Witch Maiden Cree through a neutralization process."

"After the sealing, the stones would have the opposite effect to a sealing. A circumstance that would come to be known as the Very Bad Thing. If the Noiz were used again, they would instead work in favor of wish magic. Once weaponized, they would have no choice but to obey and attempt to break the seal of the Witch Maiden Cree."

"But that is not her only means of escape, as it can only be assumed that the Witch Maiden will hone her craft in the sealed dimension of wishes. Thus, it is presumed that under any circumstances the eight Noiz together will become the Very Bad Thing, born of that wish."