Building Faith, my Dresden Files SI is one that has been posted on both Spacebattles and SufficientVelocity, is getting a sequel series now that the girls are no longer minors.
Twinned Thought tells the continuing story of Faith and Molly Carpenter as they live and breathe within the world of the Dresden Files. Officially, it starts with the story Under Water, but I'm giving you all a preview with "Boom Camp" and "Field Trips" to link the fic to its origins.
Boom Camp
Chapter One
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“No, absolutely not. This is a serious training camp, Dresden, not a carnival.”
“But Captain, it’s a boomtown, where we’re training young Wardens in how to use their evocation effectively,” Harry said. He was talking to Captain Luccio about what to call this Warden training camp in general. He and Warden Ramirez had what Fai and I felt was an awesome idea, but he was getting shot down. “Camp Kaboom would be a perfect way to sum up what we’re doing here.”
“I said no, Dresden,” Captain Luccio said, brushing her blonde hair out of her eyes a bit. From what my sister told me, she was supposed to be this old Italian woman that happened to get hit by someone called Corpsetaker. She got Freaky Friday’d with the body Corpsetaker was in, and then Harry killed the necromancer. With a gun. I still wasn’t sure how to feel about that, and judging from Captain Luccio’s looks toward him, she really wasn’t either. “Dios, you don’t want to set a bad example for your apprentices, do you?”
“Sometimes it helps to know what not to do, ma’am,” Faith said, cheekily looking between her and Harry. She had her blonde hair tied back in a tight braid, and I’d helped her get the red highlights into it so it looked like a single stripe of red wove itself down the tied off hair. She and I had been leaning against the wall nearby while Harry spoke with Luccio. Neither of us was entirely certain about this. The people brought here were training to be Wardens. They were practicing their evocation, something that I completely sucked at other than wind. Faith wasn’t much better. Except her lightning was something.
“Yeah, Harry’s a good influence even when he’s being a bad one.” I smiled at the woman before looking at our boss. The first thing one tends to notice about him is his height. He’s tall enough that he could be a basketball player, but he’s leaner than most would be. Today, his dark hair was actually trimmed short and slicked back. He wore jeans, a simple T-shirt with a logo I didn’t recognize, his black leather duster, and, oh yeah, a piece of gray fabric woven into a cloak. The Warden’s cloak indicated just why we were here. “He’s taught us well.”
“So I’d heard,” Captain Luccio said. “Warden Morgan was complimentary of what he’d seen in you.”
“Wait,” Harry said. “Morgan was complimentary? Of my training practices? Of me?”
“In his way,” Captain Luccio said. “He would be here himself, but he has other duties in Europe right now.”
“We understand,” Faith and I said in unison, bowing our heads slightly. “The war effort is important.”
“Which, of course, is why we’re here,” Harry said. “To get these baby Wardens ready for the front lines.” Harry grimaced. We could feel his frustration with what he had to do. Some of the Wardens in training here were younger than us, and we were barely over eighteen. To throw them up against Red Court vampires was something that just sat wrong with Harry. Wisely, neither my sister nor I brought up the fact that we’d faced down our first Red Court vampires at the tender age of fourteen.
Hey. Maybe we were getting the hang of this wizard thing, after all.
“Yes. Dresden, take your apprentices out to meet with the younger trainees and introduce yourselves,” Captain Luccio said. “I am sure that they will enjoy meeting with you. You’ll be able to get a good handle on who we’re going to be training here.”
“Of course, ma’am,” Harry said.
“And send in Warden Ramirez. I need to go over bits of his part of the curriculum with him,” Captain Luccio said. She then looked sharply at him, a brief hint of suspicion coupled with attraction flaring from her. I didn’t need my sister’s foresight to see where that’d likely lead. “And no, he won’t convince me that this camp should be called Camp Kaboom either.”
“I’ll let him know,” Harry said, stepping toward the door. “I’m sure he’ll be in shortly.”
My sister and I filed out the door after our mentor, and once we were a good half-block away from the saloon, I turned to Faith. “So, this is totally Camp Kaboom, right?”
She nodded with a grin. “We’ll have to let everyone know.” Then she frowned and a wave of uncertainty passed through her.
Harry glanced back at us. “Everything alright, grasshoppers?”
“Something’s bugging me about this,” Faith said.
“Memories?” I asked. See, my sister’s a bit on the special side. I don’t mean that in a bad way, but she was reincarnated. She occasionally had memories of what I’d call another version of our world that acted as almost precognitive visions, like Cassandra’s Tears yet not quite. Sure, they weren’t exactly what went on here, but they were close enough that it counted.
“Maybe,” Faith acknowledged. “Nothing specific, but it feels like there’s something I should be paying attention to.”
Harry looked to the side of Faith for a second and frowned as a small spike of concern passed through him. “Maybe try meditating on it later, Faith. In the meantime, we should probably do what Luccio wanted us to. She is the boss, after all.”
“Your boss, maybe,” Faith muttered with a roll of her eyes. Of course, the fact that she’s easy on the eyes has nothing to do with why he wants to make her happy.
Fai, she’s like two centuries old, I sent back. I loved having a mental bond with my twin sometimes. “And Harry’s our boss, Fai. We’re here to follow his lead.”
“And maybe get some better insights on how to not suck at evocation, I remember,” Fai said with a small smile. She wasn’t really all that annoyed with Harry anyway. She just didn’t like being away from Drew now that we’d reconnected properly with him. They still weren’t quite where they were before the incident that lost him his arm, but I could tell they’d be on the way soon enough.
“Come on, grasshoppers, there’s kiddos to meet and some other Wardens too.” Harry gestured for us to follow as he led us into the heart of the former mining town.
As Harry said, at one point, the town had been a boomtown. It was built up around a vein of copper that went dry about a year after they started mining. It was located pretty high in the mountains, maybe a hundred miles northwest of Albuquerque. We were the only human presence near here for miles. The only evidence of human activity were the remains of the town itself and the abandoned mine further up the mountain proper.
There were maybe forty-something kids in the middle of setting up tents in the middle of what had to be the remains of a church or something. As Faith and I passed the stone walls, there was just a presence that passed into us. The two of us hadn’t been great about going to church recently, but we still believed. It’s kind of hard to stop with our family. Daddy’s a Knight of the Cross, and Mom’s as devout as he is. We were raised in the religion. We had faith, and I had Faith, my twin. Yeah, I know it’s a bad pun.
“So, do we just pick an area and start setting up a tent then,” Faith asked.
“Yeah, you can do that. I’ve got an area for me and the other older Wardens,” Harry said as he looked around. Oh no, he wasn’t… He was, wasn’t he?
It’s Harry, Moll, what did you expect? Faith sent to me with a nudge of my side. Amusement filtered through my link to her, overriding the trepidation she’d been feeling up to this point. She knew Harry Dresden as well as I did, perhaps even better sometimes.
“Afternoon, everyone!” Harry could really raise his voice. Plus, with his height, he really could stand out when he wanted. Given that no energy was being gathered, I was pretty sure he wasn’t using any magic, but his voice carried throughout the hollowed-out church. The would-be Wardens stopped what they were doing and turned toward Harry, and the Wardens that helped set up their tents were paying attention too. A sense of awe passed over the crowd. This was Harry Dresden, the man who was worth admiration. Who, per Faith and his own admission later on, rode a freaking zombie dinosaur. That was something that I knew my sister still regretted missing. Seeing Harry and Butters the Polka Man on the back of a zombie T-Rex would have made me love the man even more. Harry, not Butters, I mean. He was worth paying attention to.
“You all know who I am already, I’m sure, but in case you don’t, I’m Harry Dresden. I’m the Regional Commander for Eastern North America, and though I’ll confess to not wanting the job in the first place, it’s mine, and I intend on doing it well. Part of that job includes coming here to this lovely camp in a former boomtown and training you. You all know why you need it.”
Harry managed to look a little sheepish, and a wave of guilt passed through our mentor. “There’s a war on. It’s been going on a while, and the Council’s taken heavy casualties. From all over. You all are the new recruits, the ones who need to take up the slack. You’re here because you have a talent for evocation. We’ll hone it. Make it better, and we’ll make it so that you don’t just end up a statistic. I look forward to working with all of you.”
A cacophony of emotion washed over the run-down church. Respect stood out as the common emotion between all of the would-be Wardens, but I could feel a bit of fear, anger, and mourning. These kids knew what was going on, what they were going to face, or at least they had some sort of idea. They’d been chosen for this training because of their skill. Fai and I had been chosen because we were training under Harry and had been since we were fourteen. Some of these kids looked to be barely out of grade school. Still, they understood. They’d be trained, and they’d be sent to fight Red Court vampires.
“And some of them will die,” Faith whispered, indicating she’d been thinking along the same lines as me. “It’s a war. People die.”
“We’ll be training them so it’s less likely, grasshopper,” Harry said. “You two too. We’ll see if we can’t get your evocation up to snuff before the camp’s done.”
“What, so we’ll make things explode good here at Camp Kaboom?” I asked as a small group of trainees approached us. Two of them, a boy and a girl, appeared related. The boy was shorter than the girl by a couple inches, and his red hair was cut short where she wore hers long and pulled back into a ponytail. They were dressed much like we were, in jeans and long-sleeved shirts appropriate for the weather. Of course, their tops were forest green, but Faith and I wore a nice sky blue. Around each of their necks was a pentacle necklace. On the girl’s right hand, she had a pair of inscribed rings, and on her brother’s left was a charm bracelet, likely a shield.
Accompanying the siblings were a Hispanic girl and an Asian guy. The girl was shorter than the male sibling, maybe a couple inches above five feet in height, and she had high cheekbones. I might not be as attracted to women as my sister, but I could admit she was attractive. Her curves helped too. Of course, I think it was probably a rule that we all wear jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. Hers was a maroon that looked just shy of black. Hooked at her waist was a wand carved from some sort of tree branch. It clearly was designed more for evocation than for illusion work like my antler-based ones. The Asian guy compared to the others, was rather plain. I don’t want to sound racist, but I have a hard time identifying where East Asians are from at a glance. He could have been Chinese, Korean, Japanese, or any of the other nations around there, and I wouldn’t know without asking. He had a buzz cut that definitely didn’t help. He wore a red plaid flannel shirt over his jeans, and unlike the others, he had a full-on wizard’s staff. It was a gnarled piece of wood that looked like it came from some sort of hardwood. Oak maybe.
“Camp Kaboom?” asked the redheaded girl, humor dipping into her voice. “That’s better than anything we’ve come up with. Terry was going with something a little less oomph. Camp War Den just sounds like a bad pun more than anything.”
“Believe me, we’re no stranger to bad puns,” Faith said, giving a significant glance toward Harry.
“Hey! I resemble that remark,” Harry said as he waved. He turned toward the newcomers. “Well, you know who I am, so, who are you?”
“Well, as my sister said, I’m Terry Trailman, and she’s my twin sister, Tina,” said the redhead boy. He gestured to the two others near him. “This is Carla Martinez and Ducky Nguyen.”
“Ducky?” I asked. It was an odd name for someone to have.
“Nickname. My given name’s Duc, but it’s easier for Americans to remember as Ducky,” said the guy I could now ID as Vietnamese. His accent was faint. “Warden Dresden, it’s an honor to be learning from you. My teacher says many good things about you. He also said many worrying things, but overall, he was complimentary.”
“Always nice to have someone on my side,” Harry said, his eyes flicking up and down the newcomers, taking them in. We all avoided locking gazes as none of us wanted to trigger a soulgaze, but Harry’d mastered the art of taking in someone’s eyes without looking too long. I needed to figure out how to do that. It irked me that Fai could pull it off on occasion. “These are my apprentices, Molly and Faith Carpenter.”
I glanced to my sister for a second, and then we turned toward the newcomers, smiling. “Hello.”
“Oh, nice, another set of twins,” said Tina. “We’re not the only ones, Terry.”
“And they’re easy on the eyes,” Terry said. “So, which of you is which?”
“Faith has the red streak in her braid,” I said.
“And Molly’s got the pink and blue tips,” Faith continued with a shake of her head. She still thought the dye was ridiculous, and she was still completely wrong about it. Plus, it irked Mom a bit more than our tattoos. As much as we loved our mother, tweaking her every so often did wonders for my self-esteem. Faith’s too, even if she wouldn’t admit it. “So, how old are you?”
“Well, my younger sister is the tender young age of sixteen,” Terry said with a grin. Ah, he knew the burden of the older twin sibling as well as I did. Rubbing the time differential in their faces mattered a lot.
“He’s only ten minutes older; don’t let him fool you,” Tina said. “Plus he’s two inches shorter, so that matters a lot. And the saying goes ‘age before beauty,’ after all.”
“Seventeen here,” Carla said, a smile settling on her face. She had a kind of resigned annoyance when looking at the Trailman twins. “And much less interested in a twin pissing match, so please, if you decide you want to blow something up, please do it outside the church area.”
“And aiming down-wind,” Ducky said. “I don’t want a stray spark to light my hair on fire. Again.”
“Dude, you don’t have much hair left,” Terry said with a grin.
“I know,” Ducky replied.
“It looks good on you though,” Faith said, giving the guy a once-over. She definitely appreciated how he looked. I knew my sister’s type for guys, and Ducky definitely fell in there. “Makes you more approachable.”
“If you say so,” said Ducky, returning my sister’s once-over with one of his own. He was more than appreciative. These young Wardens-to-be really needed to shield their emotions better. “I’m almost eighteen myself, so I keep track of these three when we’re together. For the most part, anyway.”
“Well, maybe you can help my grasshoppers with their tent,” Harry said. “They’ll be spending time with you and the rest of the trainees.”
“What about you?” I asked.
“I’ll be just down the way. Carlos and Bill spotted a good point for us to pitch tent,” Harry said.
“He means that they’ve found a place to drink together,” Faith said with a grin. “Saloon of some sort, right?”
“Yeah, something like that,” Harry said, and Faith’s stomach dropped. I could feel it. Sinking realization set in for her, but she kept her face clear of it.
“Setting up a tent isn’t a big deal,” Terry said. “Come on, we’ll stake you out a spot near us.”
“Yeah, that’d be a good plan,” Faith said, glancing from Harry to the other set of twins. “We’re all here to learn, right?”
“Yeah,” the other set of twins agreed, and they turned to lead us. Carla and Ducky followed along, a little ahead as I hung back with my twin and Harry for a second.
“You figured something out,” I said.
“Sort of,” Faith admitted, glancing to Harry and then back to the twins walking off. “I think we should stay close with them and keep our implements ready and with us every day we’re here.”
“Why, Faith?” Harry asked. I knew he’d have to talk with Luccio about this if we mentioned it, but this sort of thing was something we needed to be ready for.
Faith glanced to the Trailman twins again and said, “Because if we don’t, they might die. Or others might.”
Oh. That was bad.