Ally-1243
Ally-1243 was an earnestly cheerful Mark XIII Clockwork Cherub, one of the ragtag members of the Blue Feather taskforce.
Description
Personality
Ally was extremely positive and relentlessly excitable, throwing himself with reckless enthusiasm into whatever the Blue Feather did, even activities that were not the sort to inspire chirping and dancing in most individuals. (PROSE: Acquaintanceship-982 and the Missing Mail Mystery)
Biography
Early Blue Feather misadventures
The Blue Feather were originally housed in a derelict warehouse located on the opposite side of the Mainland Cloud, where Acquaintanceship had to use an upside-down crate as a desk. They weren't given missions of any importance, and indeed, it could be months in-between the missions they did get, disappointing as they were. For example, they once went months without any assignments at all after “the Great Grape Jelly Stain Catastrophe”, their grandiloquent name for the occasion upon which Marmalade-624 spilled grape jelly on his tablecloth and hired the Blue Feather to wash it off. (PROSE: Acquaintanceship-982 and the Missing Mail Mystery)
On April 29th, 2019, (PROSE: The Faction of the Fooling Fish) they were hired by Philatel-426 for an unusually significant operation: locating a bag of mail that had gone missing from the Cupid Post Office. They unsuccessfully interviewed a number of “suspects” — otherwise known as people who happened to be glimpsed at some level of proximity to the Post Office on the day of the crime — but at the last minute, Acquaintanceship realised the truth and actually solved the mystery: Philatel had himself stolen the mailbag, which contained blueprints meant to be transmitted from the Department of Architecture to the Department of Construction so that the latter could begin work on a new giant warehouse. The construction would have involved the destruction of the Post Office's west wing, which was officially vacant, but which Philatel secretly used to store his stamp collection. Rather than turn him in to the Department of Discipline, the Blue Feather blackmailed him into letting them use the selfsame west wing as a new HQ, while convincing the Department of Construction to build their new warehouse on their old site instead.
Just as they were getting settled in, Colonel-028 rushed into their new office with a new mystery to investigate: the theft of a pie from his windowsill. (PROSE: Acquaintanceship-982 and the Missing Mail Mystery) Having badgered badgered the Cupid Parliament into authorising an official investigation, he set the Blue Feather on the task. Following a trail of pie-crumbs, the Blue Feather found a Rift leading to the Faction of the Fooling Fish's headquarters in the Prime Universe, where they briefly confronted the Faction for the first time. After fleeing back through the Rift, they got the Department of Rifts to close it. After the Rifts reopened and had to be closed a second time after a second Fooling Fish incursion, the Blue Feather were assigned to guarding the location of the Rift, in case it opened again. (PROSE: The Faction of the Fooling Fish)
Late 2019 holidays
On Halloween 2019, Ally participated with his usual mix of cluelessness and goodwill in the Blue Feather costume contest organised by Dandy-432, with his ghost costume consisting of a single sheet in which he had, in fact, even forgotten to cut any eye-holes. (PROSE: The Ghosts and the Machine)
In December, Ally talked Pessimist-242 into going to the Prime Earth with him on a “mission” which turned out to be an excuse to frolic around in a newly-snowy field. Pessimist was unimpressed by all the snow-related activities Ally insisted on showing him, culminating in the Mark III accidentally being trapped inside a snowman, which caused Ally to believe that the moaning, shambling thing had magically come to life. After Pessimist collided with a rock, which shook the snow off him, Ally believed Pessimist had defeated the “snow monster”, a notion he did not bother to contradict. (PROSE: Ally Builds a Snowman) Back on the Mainland Cloud, Larrikin-1029 later spotted Ally begging Pessimist to let him show him how to ski. (PROSE: Larrikin and the Christmas Pudding)
On Christmas Day proper, Dandy-432 organised a dinner party in the Blue Feather's wing of the Department of Postal Services' building. Ally attended it with the rest of the Blue Feather, and reacted enthusiastically at Dandy's suggestion of playing some party games after the dinner proper. (PROSE: A Copper-Colored Christmas Carol)
Behind the scenes
Ally-1243 is a secondary recurring character in The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids.
