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Valerius-1497 was a Mark XV Clockwork Cherub of the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids and a member of the Department of Problem-Solving. He was later turned into a parakeet.
Description
Personality
Having a taste for philosophy and thought experiments, (PROSE: Magic Trick) Valerius was prone to outrageous hypotheses, but was more conservative in his actual expectations than the more optimistic Carter-1277. (PROSE: Lord Thymon and the Department of Problem-Solving)
Biography
Origins
Valerius-1497 belonged to the Department of Philosophy until it was disbanded by the Supreme Quaestor of the Cupid Intelligence Institute for questioning whether there could be such a thing as absolute knowledge. Subsequently, Valerius joined Pythagoras-858's Department of Problem-Solving. (PROSE: Magic Trick)
The Lord Thymon affair
In 2019, the Department of Impossible Things shuffled off the assignment of dealing with Lord Thymon to the Department of Problem-Solving. Pythagoras-858 left his Problem-Solvers — including Valerius, Juliet-178, Carter-1277 and Edwin-750 — to develop solutions. When Pythe returned to Lab 5, the Problem-Solvers, following an idea developed by Valerius had filled it with clocks, with the intent to summon Thymon, only for him to be frozen due to the short supply of time energy that would result.
Deeming the idea mad enough to have some chances of working on a conceptual entity like Thymon, Pythe allowed them to go forwards, threatening to detonate a Reality Bomb to lure Thymon to the Cupid Homeworld. After he was indeed summoned, Juliet ended up taking it upon herself to simply hit him with a Cupid Arrow, romanticising him and solving the issue decisively. (PROSE: Lord Thymon and the Department of Problem-Solving)
Later developments
On April 19th, 2019, Valerius was one of the Cupids fruitlessly interviewed by the Blue Feather as possible suspects in the affair of the theft of a mailbag from the Cupid Post Office, simply because they had been glimpsed somewhere in the broad vicinity of the Post Office on that day. (PROSE: Acquaintanceship-982 and the Missing Mail Mystery)
As a parakeet
When the faceless magician's magic hat caused the Cupid Homeworld to be overwhelmed by a flood of white rabbits, the main five members of the Department of Problem-Solving and Lord Thymon took refuge in an empty warehouse while most of the Crew took refuge outside the Homeworld. After three days, having concluded that only a Deus Ex Machina could save the Homeworld, Valerius told the others that they should summon Aphrodite herself to help. The plan worked, but before she used her powers to make the rabbits and hat vanish, the goddess took out her anger at being summoned without permission on Valerius, turning him into a (mechanical) parakeet. The Problem-Solvers elected not to tempt fate by asking Aphrodite to reverse the transformation, content to add returning Valerius to his natural form to their list of problems to be solved. (PROSE: Magic Trick)
On Halloween 2019, after the Great Ghost's legion invaded, Pythagoras-858 gathered up the Problem-Solvers, including Valerius. After the One-Way Forced Spirit Realm Gateway transported a few Cupids including Pythe to the Spirit Realm by accident, the remaining Problem-Solvers inspected it, but were unable to find the reverse switch until Pythe himself managed to materialise in Juliet-178's house like a ghost and tell her how to do it. Subsequently, the Problem-Solvers, Technophile-963 and Igor-1612 boarded a Fog Ship and flew it to the abandoned Prime Universe theatre where the spirits had retreated to make the kidnapped Frankenstein-818 create a Reverse Spirit Realm Gateway. There, the Problem-Solvers managed to sneak Frankenstein safely off the stage while the ghosts were defeated. (PROSE: The Ghosts and the Machine)
When the Skirmish at the Cupid Theatre broke out between Paintbrush-122 and Sketchbook-430, Valerius was the only member of the Department of Problem-Solving who could be reached at short notice. Observing the fight and the argument on which it rested, Valerius merely commented that “one of them was probably lying about the other being the plagiarist — unless he wasn’t, in which case it was out of his hands and the Department of Paradoxes should be notified”, and did not actually achieve anything in terms of breaking up the fight itself. (PROSE: Plagiarism of the SavageMen)
Various elements within the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids subsequently worked on ways to turn him back, including Pestilence-301 and the Department of Wizardry, but none had been successful by 2021, especially as Valerius the Parakeet did not trust Pestilence and refused to try any of his potions.
The whole Department of Problem-Solving reminisced about some of their past cases together at the Christmas party organised in 2021 in the Cupid Homeworld by CS-NA. (PROSE: The Winter Quests)