Larrikin-1029
Larrikin-1029 was a Clockwork Cherub and member of the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids. As well as a Blue Feather operative, (PROSE: Acquaintanceship-982 and the Missing Mail Mystery) he was secretly a member of the Triangular Society. (PROSE: The Case Against Conspiracy)
Description
Personality
Acquaintanceship spoke in a kind of old-timey-gangster accent and had a boyish, but somewhat dangerous, fascination for violent or dangerous things. (PROSE: Rifts Crisis Officially Over!) He was prone to jumping to conclusions, particularly if this gave him an excuse to engage in behaviour he considered fun. (PROSE: Acquaintanceship-982 and the Missing Mail Mystery)
Powers & abilities
Larrikin seemed to be the most physically-capable of the Blue Feather, displaying great skill at sneaking up on people and capturing them in burlap sacks (of which he always carried one on his person). He also knew how to pick locks, (PROSE: Acquaintanceship-982 and the Missing Mail Mystery) and claimed to be a “chess connoisseur”. (PROSE: The Toymaker's Labyrinth)
He crashed his personal Fog Ship every time he had to use it, although knowing Larrikin, this may have been on purpose rather than reflecting an actual lack of skill. (PROSE: The Mad Cupid of the Euclidean Plane)
Biography
Early shenanigans
At some point, Larrikin attempted to modify himself to replace his arms with “large mechanical claws”. (PROSE: The Toymaker's Labyrinth)
On Thanksgiving Day in 2013, Larrikin returned from a mission on the Prime Universe only to find that the Trio of the Talking Turkeys had stowed away in his Fog Ship, hoping to use the Cupid Homeworld as a safe haven for the span of the day. However, Larrikin threatened to eat them himself, and they changed their minds, demanding to be taken back to the Prime Universe, a request with which the Cupids — with whom this was the Trio's first encounter — complied. (PROSE: The Trio of the Talking Turkeys)
Early Blue Feather missions
The Blue Feather were originally housed in a derelict warehouse located on the opposite side of the Mainland Cloud. 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 — with Larrikin notably helping the others break into Marksmanship-522's house to jump him and interrogate him.
At the last minute, however, Acquaintanceship-982 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. To obtain hard evidence of this, Larrikin made his way into Philatel's office and lay in wait, hanging upside down from the ceiling light, until Philatel passed by and he quite literally jumped on him, trapping him in a burlap sack. Philatel admitted to the theft and the Cupids found the missing mailabg, which he'd disguised as a cushion. 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. (PROSE: Acquaintanceship-982 and the Missing Mail Mystery)
Guarding the Rift
Just as they were getting settled in after the missing mail affair, Colonel-028 rushed into the Blue Feather's 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)
Some time later, Acquaintanceship excitedly gathered the Blue Feather to tell them about their new mission (locating Investigation-464's misplaced coat). When the Cupid claiming to be Pessimist expressed enthusiasm at the prospect, Acquaintanceship finally realised that it was not Pessimist-242 but a cheap duplicate, and that the real article had gone missing — much to the weariness of Dandy, who had noticed much earlier but failed to convince the others of this fact. With the help of Pessimist's Fog Ship, they realised that he had been taken prisoner by the Drove of the Database-Compiling Dromedaries on the Prime Earth. The Ship took them there, with Larrikin egging it on to go as fast as it could. Although the Ship briefly disappeared and stranded them in the Prime Universe, having been commandeered by Dromedary Head Assistant Researcher Darius, it returned almost immediately, having taken care of Darius with the help of Lord Thymon. The Blue Feather returned to the Homeworld and set forth in search of the missing coat. (PROSE: Pessimist and the Dromedaries)
Dandy and Larrikin were guarding the Rift, and rather bored at the lack of activity, when it briefly open again — allowing through not the prank-loving Fish, but a benign old man who was trying to find his way back to his home universe. The two Cupids were surprised to hear that he'd recently met Tracker-764, a legendary Cupid who hadn't been seen in the Homeworld in years. They agreed to help him, only too happy to have a good excuse to leave their post, and the three departed aboard Pessimist's Fog Ship, intent on taking the old man to the Prime Universe and a selection of Prime-adjacent ones to attempt to narrow down his world of origin. (PROSE: The Mad Cupid of the Euclidean Plane)
At some point around this time, Larrikin accidentally threw a rock at one of the windows of the Cupid Parliament building and shattered it. He left a note in the Cupid Suggestion Box to apologise. The Copper-Colored Council of Elders, somewhat annoyed by this improper use of the Suggestion Box, immediately realised the note was from Larrikin, as his writing actually spelled out his distinctive accent, and they decided to make him repair the window himself. (PROSE: The Cupid Suggestion Box)
In the Toymaker's Labyrinth
Larrikin was once assigned a mission to Dimension 8696-2537 with Pessimist-242 as his partner. Both Cupids found this unacceptable, especially as Larrikin had tried to prank Pessimist just a week earlier by putting a tack on his chair, but they didn't manage to sway Taskmaster-523 and departed in Pessimist's Fog Ship for the mission. Irritated by the two Cupids' bickering, however, the Fog Ship didn't take them to Dimension 8696-2537 but to random coordinates which turned out to be those of the gigantic Workshop of Madame Tarsa.
Climbing onto Tarsa's work-table, they were confronted with the Toymaker herself. Fascinated with the Cupids' looks and technology, she decided to try and create a Toy Cupid complete with Love Potion based on samples from the Cupid Arrow Larrikin had tried loosing at her. When Larrikin tried to stop her and ended up damaging the marionette, an irate Tarsa dropped both Cupids, and their Fog Ship (which she shrank down to size and stripped of its dimensional warp drive), into the Labyrinth inside her magic toybox.
After wandering its corridors for some time, the two ended up in Wild West Town, where they were briefly mistaken for new members of the Plush Posse. Even after the misunderstanding was resolved, the Frog Mayor was initially reluctant to let them leave, affecting not to know about worlds beyond the Wild West-themed room, but he changed his tune after realising how annoying the combination of Larrikin and Pessimist could be to have around. Informed by the Mechanical Fortune Teller of the two Cupids' surprising progress, Tarsa sent the Clay Thing to stop them, but it was destroyed by the Fog Ship. They then reached the Doom Room, where Larrikin defeated the giant chess pieces and Pessimist reluctantly foiled the Mechanical Skeleton.
Tarsa entered the Toybox herself and goaded them into a swordfight, making herself the third and final trial of the Doom Room. After the Fog Ship helped the Cupids hold her off and reach the exit, Larrikin destroyed Tarsa's notes and prototypes on Clockwork Cherubs and the Love Potion. Admitting defeat, Tarsa allowed the two to return to the Cupid Homeworld, restoring the Fog Ship to its full size and giving back the dimensional warp drive. Feeling bad about ruining her business idea, Larrikin suggested an alternative one: Thymon Plushies. On the way back, Pessimist informed Larrikin of his skepticism at the idea that such a product could ever be successful, (PROSE: The Toymaker's Labyrinth) but Larrikin kept bragging about his idea in subsequent months, leading Dandy-432 to speculate in The Cupid Courier #1034 that he was the one ordering large numbers of them when large shipments started mysteriously finding their way to the Cupid Homeworld. The Department of Journalism were unable to interview Larrikin on the matter, as he ran from them on sight, refusing to “confess” to anything. (PROSE: Conspiracy-1263 Publicly Accuses the Gang of the Green Gorillas) At some point in October 2019, Larrikin also told Technophile-963 about the Toymaker. (PROSE: The Ghosts and the Machine)
Joining the Triangular Society
Some time later, Larrikin-1029 was persuaded to join the Triangular Society, a small subversive group founded by Conquest-932 to overthrow the Cupid Parliament and Cupid Prime. As he held the organisation's first officialmeeting in a shed, with everyone wearing dark hoods, Conquest's attempts to strike a sinister mood were frustrated by one of the new recruits' complete misunderstanding of the gathering, demonstrated when he asked “when they'd start bobbing for apples”. (COMIC: A Slight Misunderstanding)
However, he also continued on as a member of the Blue Feather. Once Halloween actually came round, he participated in the costume contest organised by Dandy-432, dressing up as a “space robot” by putting his head in a cardboard box with a face scribbled on it. Larrikin then insisted that he was the clear winner, much to Dandy's annoyance. Later, after the Great Ghost's legion started causing havoc, Larrikin worried for “Foggy”, Pessimist's Fog Ship, upon learning that the Ship might have gotten possessed by a spirit. (PROSE: The Ghosts and the Machine)
He attended the double-bill premiere of The Death? Planned It! and The Moonbeams at the Cupid Theatre, with the large horned robot antagonists obviously being to his taste. He stuck around through the credits of the latter episode while the rest of the audience gradually filed out of the building, correctly hoping that there would be a post-credits stinger leading into the next, still-upcoming episode of the series. Thus, he was in a position to use one of his burlap sacks to break up the fight which broke out between the two films' respective directors, Paintbrush-122 and Sketchbook-430, who each felt that the other had ripped him off. After catching them in the bag, he dropped them off before Judicator-337 of the Department of Discipline. (PROSE: Plagiarism of the SavageMen)
The Celestial Foam Network banned Larrikin-1029 from borrowing more Fog Ship after he spent half a day borrowing and crashing one Ship after the other as he practiced his flying. (PROSE: Peace and Quiet)
The first Festival of Giving
In December 2019, Larrikin travelled to the Euclidean Plane to bring them his very own brand of Christmas cheer, and ended up piling up three Spheroids to create a “snow”man, as well as wrapping up a Tangular like a present and placing a Stelloid atop a tree. (COMIC: Geometrons' Holiday) For this reason, Dandy-432 was unable to find him when he tried to gather all of the Blue Feather's members into a caroling group. (PROSE: The Frost King's Treasure) However, Bibliophile-962 was subsequently able to recruit him to run errands between the Department of Documentation's break room and the Department of Baked Goods' building. (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. Larrikin attended it with the rest of the Blue Feather. In a possible version of the party where Philatel-426 had declined Dandy's invitation, shown to Philatel by the Ghost of Christmas Present, Larrikin enthusiastically participated in the party games with which they followed up the dinner, with Pseudo-Pessimist and Ally-1243 also being enthusiastic about the idea when it was put forward by Dandy. When they played a guessing game, it was Larrikin who figured out that the disparaging description was that of Philatel himself. After waking from his Christmas Carolesque tribulations, Philatel wound up attending the party after all, and happily partaking in the various games. (PROSE: A Copper-Colored Christmas Carol)
In late December, on a quiet day off work, Larrikin and Pessimist-242 passed the time by watching Juliet-178 and Diggy-292 playing a game. The lackluster entertainment was interrupted by the unexpected appearance of an unknown Void Ship whose occupant, Hector Fenwick, soon revealed that in his home universe, he was a writer who wrote stories about the Crew. After he made too much of a nuisance of himself, Larrikin and the other three made a joint decision to take him before the Cupid Parliament. After the Parliament made a decision to exile him back to his home universe, Larrikin further asked Lord Thymon to disintegrate him should he ever return; the Parliamentary Cupids chastised Larrikin for the impractical violence of the solution, but could not disagree with the spirit in which the suggestion had been made. (PROSE: The Metafictional Meddler)
After the Rifts Crisis
Larrikin was one of the Cupids who submitted a question to The Cupid Courier's educational Q&A about the Rifts with Doctor Sigma. However, like most questions in the Q&A, his question was nonsensical; he asked if it would be possible to keep Rifts in jars that Larrikin could then throw at people who annoyed him. (PROSE: Rifts Crisis Officially Over!)
In 2021, the week before April the 1st, he somehow threw “an actual mail-throwing party” inside Philatel-426's Post Office. This set a new high bar for the title of most chaotic behaviour in the Post Office, at least in Philatel's opinion. (PROSE: Multiversal Mischief)
Around Christmas 2021, Conspiracy-1263 found a stolen Fog Ship outside his door. Though he came to believe the Ship was sentient and had come to him of its own accord, the Cupid authorities later came to the conclusion that Larrikin must have been the one to steal it. (PROSE: The Case Against Conspiracy) Larrikin greatly enjoyed playing in the pile of snow brought to the Homeworld by the Faction of the Fooling Fish during the actual Christmas party. (PROSE: The Winter Quests)
