Pythagoras-858
Pythagoras-858 was a robotic detective whom Jenny Everywhere teamed up with to solve the Rifts crisis. He was a member of an organization called the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids and was a traveller through the multiverse in his own right, by means of his Fog Ship. He was the Prefect of the same C.I.I. Department to which his best friend, Juliet-178, belonged.
Description
Physical appearance
As a Clockwork Cherub, Pythagoras was a small golden, winged, humanoid robot with a round, sketchy face and short, wiry hair. He usually wore a beige trench-coat and a brown hat with a green ribbon, (COMIC: Jenny Everywhere Meets The Crew Of The Copper-Colored Cupids) once described as a “ worn, brownish, formless hat that might have been a 1930s fedora, a few environmental disasters ago”. (PROSE: The Winter Quests)
Personality
Pythagoras-858 was a highly driven individual, always remaining focused on whatever his current mission was, to the exclusion of his own interest. (COMIC: Jenny Everywhere Meets The Crew Of The Copper-Colored Cupids) He once claimed that “everything he did” was always “pragmatic”. (PROSE: The Grand Multiverse Hotel) He could be brusque, or even downright unpleasant, to people he suspected of deceit, though he was kind and respectful to those he trusted. (COMIC: Jenny Everywhere Meets The Crew Of The Copper-Colored Cupids)
He had enough of an independent conscience to deplore the unethical aspects of the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids' modus operandi, but not enough free will to rebel against his programming altogether; thus, he instead devoted all his time to preoccupations which were genuinely beneficial to everyone, including but not limited to the Crew, other than romanticising people. (PROSE: The Grand Multiverse Hotel) His best friend Juliet-178 deemed him “one of the most noble and courageous [members of the Crew], and certainly one of the ones most liable to speak his mind to authority or even disobey programming”.
Although greatly valuing his friendship with Juliet, Pythe was willing to sometimes keep secrets from her.
He was bad at charades. (PROSE: The Winter Quests)
Biography
Early life
At some point, Pythagoras-858 travelled to ““an alternate timeline where the Pharaohs defeated the Macedonians and their civilisation advanced well into the 16th and 17th centuries, complete with thaumato-technological advances well ahead of anything Western civilisation [was] doing in […] the early 21st century”. There, he acquired an Electromagnetic Ankh.
Pythe claimed to have been instrumental to the Crew's binding of the Embodiment of Time, Lord Thymon. (PROSE: The Grand Multiverse Hotel) At some point, Pythe met and befriended the Prime Universe's Sherlock Holmes at a point in the detective's life when he was already retired. (PROSE: The Time of the Toymaker)
Defeating Claus-025
Christmas 2019 saw the multidimensional entity known as "Santa Claus" begin to assert his existence in the Cupid Homeworld in the form of Claus-025. Pythagoras-858, who understood the danger presented by Santa Claus, “tackled [Claus-025] before he could start distributing presents, released his reindeer into the wilderness of an uninhabited snowbound dimension, and stuffed him in a burlap sack until Boxing Day". When the sack was opened, Claus had mostly evaporated; only "a few crumbs of chocolate cake and a red pompom hat" were left behind. Pythe deposited those in the Void before burning the burlap sack. (PROSE: The Time of the Toymaker)
Pursuing Mandragora-257
Pythagoras-858 explained to Jenny Everywhere that prior to their meeting, he had, for considerable amounts of time, been tracking a criminal of his own people, Mandragora-257, (COMIC: Jenny Everywhere Meets The Crew Of The Copper-Colored Cupids) having failed originally to stop him on Venus at Morningstar 1 — during which event several Wellsians also escaped despite his best efforts. (PROSE: The Grand Multiverse Hotel) Pythe observed him taking several physical forms and cheating death, and learned that Mandragora's incarnations all shared his golden eyes. (COMIC: Jenny Everywhere Meets The Crew Of The Copper-Colored Cupids)
Meeting Jenny Everywhere
Some time into his quest to find and defeat Mandragora, Pythagoras became cut off from the Cupid Homeworld due to the Rifts. However, as he had “been told” that there was not much someone like him could do about the crisis, he simply continued to seek Mandragora. While he was flying his Fog Ship through the Void, a version of Jenny Everywhere who had been looking for a way to stop the Rifts shifted into the back seat of his Ship. In the ensuing confusion, they crash-landed the Ship on a desert planet and talked things out. While initially mistrustful of Jenny, Pythe as convinced of her good intentions; after she shared what she knew about the Rifts, he decided to investigate the location of the hideout of the Consistency Imperium, and let her come along in his Ship — being that she had lost faith in her abilities as a Shifter so long as the crisis continued. (COMIC: Jenny Everywhere Meets The Crew Of The Copper-Colored Cupids)
Travels with Jenny
Pythagoras spent several months travelling with Jenny Everywhere, looking for the source of the Rifts. They found a number of suspects, including a “bull-guy” who had invented a Rift-making ray, a time-traveller with a bowtie, and a young space behemoth called Fyargathaaark865blububurgh$1gkzo who had been playing with xir dad's chemistry set. However, they noticed that all of these situations had righted themselves without their help; whether or not they were the starting point of the Rifts epidemic, they came to the conclusion that they were not the right point at which to attempt to influence the Crisis's development. Instead, the path to salvation was to find whoever had been accelerating the Rifts' spread from dimension to dimension.
As they were reaching this agreement, the two stopped at Hilbert's, the Interdimensional Hotel, to have dinner. There, Pythe helped Wendy VII revive the Queen of the Black Market, who had been poisoned by a Wellsian, Forga sog-Forgos. However, for fear of preventing a paradox (as he realised the Wellsian existed in his past), he was unable to foil the Wellsian's broader plan. During those same events, Pythe unwillingly parted ways with Jenny as she involuntarily shifted to parts unknown in a fit of temper upon running into Sylvester Shoebill. Pythe thus left the Hotel on his own in his Fog Ship. (PROSE: The Grand Multiverse Hotel)
He ultimately ended up coming back to the Cupid Homeworld with Marksmanship-522, Bibliophile-962 and Tracker-764 in the Faction of the Fooling Fish's tachyonic sailing ship following the destruction of the Consistency Imperium's base and the end of the Rifts Crisis. It had transpired that Pythe's hunch was correct and Mandragora-257 was indeed partially responsible. (PROSE: Rifts Crisis Officially Over!)
2020 Christmas crisis
In December 2020, Pythe was tasked by the Cupid Parliament with acquiring toys from the Interdimensional Toymaker so that the Cupid Homeworld could celebrate the winter holidays without needing to give Santa Claus a foothold in their world. He traveled to the Workshop of Madame Tarsa thanks to Pessimist's Fog Ship, only to discover that Tarsa had been frozen in place by an unknown party. He then set off into the Multiverse to find the culprit, though not before sending Juliet-178 and Arganthone-056 to the Workshop to investigate possible ways to unfreeze Tarsa.
Pythe made his way to 1895 London in the Prime Universe and recruited Sherlock Holmes (in what was their first meeting from Sherlock's perspective). He transported Sherlock to the Workshop, where he had the British detective examine the crime scene. Holmes pointed out that Tarsa's cane had been stolen, and helped Pythe arrive at an additional hypothesis: that one of Tarsa's own living toys, one she'd just created, was responsible. He took Holmes to Frankenstein's World to consult the Baron about the likely psychology of such a rebellious creation, and, using what Frankenstein told him, correctly guessed that the toy — who turned out to be a puppet clown — would be headed to the Interdimensional Black Market. There, Pythe and Holmes help the Queen of the Black Market fight him off, but were unable to prevent him from teleporting to yet another world. However, they bargained with Skollops ag-Warka, who had witnessed the Clown's departure, and obtained the coordinates from him in exchange for the Whistle of the Witch Varganax.
The Clown had retreated to Shenanig, where, after bumping into Doctor Curious, Pythe, Holmes and Wendy learned that the culprit for the freezing of Tarsa had been Sebastian Steer, only for the incomplete living toy he'd been attempted to steal and finish himself — the Clown — to turn against him. Pythe managed to convince the Clown that he shouldn't try to emulate his villainous “father”, but rather his other parent, Tarsa. Convinced, the Clown returned to the Workshop with Pythe, Wendy and Holmes, where they found that Juliet and Arganthone had succeeded in freeing Tarsa from her ice prison, with the help of Jenny Everywhere. Thanks and goodbyes were said, and the Cupids returned to the Cupid Homeworld. (PROSE: The Time of the Toymaker)
April Fools' Day
On April Fools' Day 2021, Pythe was called by Jenny Everywhere after she'd encountered a member of the Faction of the Fooling Fish who'd been posing as her. Pythe flew his Fog Ship to the Fish's tachyonic sailing ship and talked the Fish's hired bodyguard, Lainya Vantrik, into letting him see the Faction's higher-ups. They greeted him jovially as an old friend, and he was able to make them apologise for having gone overboard with some of their pranks this year in their rush to make the most of their newly-acquired interdimensional capabilities. (PROSE: Multiversal Mischief)
j=== December 2021 quest ===
In December 2021, the Supreme Quaestor called Pythe to his office in the C.I.I. Headquarters to inform him that he was to meet the goddess Sigyn in Finland in the Prime Universe to discuss her granting ownership of something she was auctioning off (the venom of the Wyrm of Loki) to the Crew rather than one of its enemies. Pythe, anticipating that Sigyn might set the onto a mythical quest to prove their worth, took Juliet-178 with him, although he refused, at first, to fully explain the nature of the assignment. After traipsing through the snowy woods for some time, they found a Rune Stone, which Pythe figured out how to use to summon the goddess. She set them the task of slaying “a certain Wyrm” in the World Below before disappearing in a flash of light.
To find their way to the rest of the Quest, they elected to lose themselves further until they found themselves in the Forest. There, they found a small waterfall, and figured out that there must be a cavern hidden behind it. There was, but, much to their dismay, it was not the entrance to the World Below; it was actually the burrow of a carnivorous Scandinavian Troll, Tero Trollgarsson. Panicking, Juliet activated her stolen Dematerialisation Engine, transporting herself and Pythe to the Interdimensional Tavern — but also the Troll himself. There, Juliet greeted Tpxszum as an old friend, before the three of them were invited to have a drink by an old man whom Juliet quickly recognised as Odin. Though Juliet briefly seemed to have offended Odin, he clarified that he was in jest, before speaking a prophecy to them and advising them to keep the Troll with them throughout the rest of the adventure. He then departed, leaving them at the Tavern.
Figuring out that a part of the prophecy was telling them that a hearth would somehow show them the way forward, they discovered that a version of the Norse fire-god Logi in fact resided in the Tavern's hearth. In exchange for some scented firewood, which Tpxszum agreed to provide later, Logi created a portal to the World Below for them. There, after some trekking, they crossed paths a gigantic talking serpent. They hesitated, unsure whether he was the “serpent” they were to help recover or the “wyrm” they had to defeat. However, the Troll, overlooking their words of caution, decided to charge at the snake, holding that it would be the goddess's fault for not having been more precise in her request if she didn't like it, and that the sooner he technically fulfilled the terms of the quest, the sooner he could go home.
The fight was interrupted before it had properly begun by the appearance of CS-NA, the ship-building robot from the Cupid Homeworld, who had been off on a quest of his own across the Multiverse, trying to understand the spirit of Christmas. Realising that his appearance at such a timely moment could not be coincidental, they deduced, with the serpent's input, that they were being manipulated from afar by Loki, though Pythe was initially skeptical. After convincing the serpent not to harm Cesse (who he temporarily thought might be another candidate for the “Spider” of the prophecy, and thus best gotten out of the way despite the Cupids' theory), Pythe and Juliet realise that the Wyrm they must actually defeat could only be the venom-dripping serpent affixed above Loki's prison to prevent him from escaping. Realising that the fulfillment of the Cupids' mission might be to his father's benefit, Jormungandir agreed to lead them, Trollgarsson and Cesse to the chamber where Loki was imprisoned.
On the fairly long way there, they came across his brother Fenrir, who realised a scheme to free Loki was afoot and tried to stop it. Juliet tried to shoot a Cupid Arrow at the giant wolf to make him sympathetic to their own desires, but CS-NA stopped her from taking the shot, due to a line in Odin's prophecy warning them to “hunt not the Hound”. In the end, Fenrir ended up getting fortuitously knocked out by a boulder, allowing the group to proceed. In Loki's chamber, they were confronted with Sigyn, whose identity Pythe finally explained to Juliet, as well as the nature of what they were trying to obtain. Urged by Sigyn to get to the Wyrm-slaying already, Pythe got advice from Loki himself; at his suggestion and with his consent, they allowed a few drops of venom to reach him, causing him to thrash in supernaturally-charged pain — and causing an earthquake as a result, which shook the serpent loose from the roof of the cavern and knocked him out with falling stalactites.
While Pythe and Juliet were dealing with the snake, CS-NA, having been convinced to do so by the trickster, freed Loki from his bonds. However, his escape was short-lived, as he was soon recaptured by Fenrir, who had regained consciousness. Pythe and Juliet got Cesse to explain himself to them, and, seeing how he'd had the best of intentions, agreed not to mention his brief lapse of judgement to anyone. After Cesse helped Loki's family set up a Christmas party within their cavern, the group returned to the Homeworld. CS-NA set up a huge party for the entire Crew and a bevy of their friends, with Jenny Everywhere visiting the Homeworld and bringing gifts for Pythe, Juliet, Cesse, Arganthone-056 and Lord Thymon. As they ate, Pythe began discussing with Juliet whether they should set up a new protocol for Crewmembers dealing with deities other than Aphrodite, but Juliet convinced him to put off “office talk” until after the holidays, and he ended up instead reminiscing about past cases with her and the other members of his Department, Valerius-1497, Carter-1277 and Edwin-750. (PROSE: The Winter Quests)
Behind the scenes
Origins
Pythagoras-858 is one of the main protagonists of the The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids series, of which Jenny Everywhere Meets The Crew Of The Copper-Colored Cupids was an installment as well as being a Jenny Everywhere story. His prior history with Mandragora-257 was detailed in preexisting prose stories, The Resurrection of the Wellsians and The Dark Cabaret, also starring Pythagoras. The start of the character's journey through the Void during the Rifts crisis, leading him where he is at the beginning of the Jenny story, was depicted in the short story Pythagoras-858 and the Quest for the Stovepipe.
Notes & References
- ↑ First appearance in directly Jenny-related media; actual debut was in 2019's Lord Thymon and the Department of Problem-Solving.
