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 Department of Problem-Solving, to which his best friend, Juliet-178, also 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)
Powers & abilities
Like the other members of the Department of Problem-Solving, Pythe had modified his liver crystal so as to resonate in the presence of the other Problem-Solvers', allowing them to sense one another's presence at all times.
Pythe cultivated particular skill at naturalistic body language, beyond what came naturally to Clockwork Cherub, including sighs and literally “warm” handshakes (having found “how to reroute his central heating system into his right palm” for the purpose).
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.
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)
Pythe and Juliet-178 were involved in the Great Ghost Disaster of 1978, during which they learned the rules by which Prime-adjacent spirits operated with regards to possessions and whether they could linger in the physical world past Halloween. (PROSE: The Ghosts and the Machine)
“Two decades” prior to the 2019 meeting between Pythagoras and Lord Thymon, Pythe presented the Cupid Parliament with a pair of forbidium manacles with “the masterful insight that in desperate cases, when no love potion would avail, handcuffs such as these still had a pretty good shot at getting two people together and keeping them that way”. The common sense thereby exhibited drove the Parliament to make Pythe the Prefect of a newly-formed Department of Problem-Solving. The Department would go on to become the Crew's secret weapon, oftentimes being the ones to solve various issues that should have been the purview of other Departments of the Cupid Intelligence Institute. (PROSE: Lord Thymon and the Department of Problem-Solving)
One of the cases Pythe and Juliet subsequently solved together was the Case of the Blueberry Squid. The Problem-Solvers “simply adjusted the temperature of the squid's flux gels, and it transmorphed itself right back into a Strawberry Squid”. (PROSE: The Ghosts and the Machine)
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. Pythe left his Problem-Solvers — including Carter-1277, Edwin-750, Juliet-178 and Valerius-1497 — to develop solutions. When he returned to Lab 5, they 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. (PROSE: Lord Thymon and the Department of Problem-Solvig)
Some time later, however, Juliet tried to wriggle out of a day's work at the Department of Problem-Solving. Her convoluted scheme to get out from under her responsibilities ended up crating over 1500 duplicates of herself, who then spread out across the Multiverse to collectively carry out the punitive assignment given to Juliet by the Department of Discipline. The duplicates all had the original Juliet's memories, and one of them, Juliet the 945th, once told herself to “think like Pythe” while looking for a loophole to get out of a tight situation. (PROSE: The Labors of Juliet)
Mandragora's Great Experiment
- See main article: Mandragora's Great Experiment
When a mysterious S.O.S. was picked up in the Cupid Homeworld, seemingly coming from the Morningstar 1 Base in the 97th Cosmos, the Cupid Parliament decided to send in the Department, consisting in this instance of Pythagoras-858, Juliet-178, Carter-1277 and Edwin-750. The latter was drowsy through the whole endeavour, having recently created a psychic link between himself and a sloth, and failed to properly lock the Department of Problem-Solving's first Fog Ship when they parked some way outside the base. In Morningstar proper, they were greeted by Juliet's brother Dactylopius-177 and gradually discovered that Governor-105 harboured intentions of seceding from the Crew and launching an attempt to conquer the Multiverse, using the power of the seven Wellsians unearthed from beneath the base by Mandragora-257 and Digger-291, whom the former, a disgraced alchemist, had been working on reviving via “Mandragora's Great Experiment”. In their initial interview, Mandragora displayed a clear interest in Pythagoras, respecting him as a fellow occultist; Pythagoras humoured this interest to gain greater access to the digging site for his team, but clearly made his opposition to Mandragora's evil plans known.
After failing to convince either Cupid that, regardless of ethical qualms, the Wellsians were too dangerous to bargain with, the Problem-Solvers attempted to get word to the Homeworld, but found that the Governor had emptied out the communications room. They were then confronted by Mandragora and the Governor, assisted by a Wellsian. The situation turned into a three-way standoff when Dactylopius also arrived, flanked by Digger and a second Wellsian, as Digger explained that he'd been on the rebellion's side all along, smuggling out one Wellsian (and its Heat Ray) to match their enemies' new weapons. The Problem-Solvers were unable to stop the situation escalating until andragora double-crossed the Governor, ordering “his” Wellsian to kill him, but was in turn betrayed by the Wellsian as both aliens revealed that they had no true loyalty to any of the Cupids. They turned their weapons onto Mandragora, seemingly destroying him and causing an explosion which destroyed the two Wellsians as well as the base itself.
In the aftermath, loyalists and rebels worked together to unlock the Governor's three Fog Ships to make their way back home. Pythe berated himself for not having worked out the truth sooner, and also expressed a belief that Mandragora had survived in some shape or form, even if his body had been destroyed. (PROSE: The Resurrection of the Wellsians) When reports came in from “Colony World #2” that the Wellsians had returned, the Cupid Parliament made an official statement to the Crew, claiming that it was “nothing to worry about”. However, certain other parties within the Crew disagreed, and arranged to republicise the old video Fact File about the Wellsians. (PROSE: The Wellsians)
Protecting the Homeworld
Some time later, while walking around the Cupid Homeworld, Pythagoras-858 spotted Conquest-932 sneaking around in hooded black robes and stopped him on his authority as Prefect of the Department of Problem-Solving, reasoning that he certainly looked like a problem in the making. Conquest tried to claim that his robes were not an emblem of evil but merely a way to protect his identity, something Pythe instantly disproved by pointing out that with such a relatively low overall number of Cupids, everybody knew everybody else and Pythe was well aware that he was talking to Conquest. (COMIC: Suspicious)
Some type later, a Retconning Crocodile travelled to the Cupid Homeworld, presenting Pythagoras-858 with a contract allegedly signed by the Crew in the future which pledged allegiance to the Collective. The Crocodile argued that the Cupids had no choice but to sign it to avoid a paradox. Pythagoras dodged out of the situation by burning the contract with his pocket lighter, rendering the signing of it irrelevant as it would be destroyed before the Crocodiles could do anything with it. (COMIC: Time Loops & Treachery)
As a Prefect, Pythagoras once attended a session in the Cupid Parliament, trying and failing to convince the other Prefects that they should drop the question of whose responsibility it technically was to refill the ink in Stenographer-123's typewriter and simply do i, while the rest of the Department worked on “the best way to romanticize anthropomorphic eigengrau eggshells”. The argument had developed into sheer fisticuffs, with Untenable-921 of the Department of Impossible Things physically attacking Pythe, when a faceless magician's magic hat suddenly caused the Homeworld to be overwhelmed by a flood of white rabbits. The main five members of the Department of Problem-Solving, having been ordered by the Cupid Prime to stay behind and solve the problem, were among the few not to flee from the Homeworld, instead taking refuge in an empty warehouse alongside Lord Thymon — though Pythe had to stop Juliet-178 from escaping in the Department's new Fog Ship.
After three days, having concluded that only a Deus Ex Machina could save the Homeworld, Valerius-1497 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 quickly gathered up the Problem-Solvers. 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)
The 2019 Christmas season
During the 2019 Christmas season, Celebration-665 introduced the holiday to the Cupid Homeworld as “the Festival of Giving”. (PROSE: The Copper-Colored Cupids go Caroling) Despite his protests of being “a bit busy” at the moment, Pythe was roped by Celebration into being part of the caroling group which subsequently witnessed the emergence of Lord Nachtos. Nachtos was pacified by Celebration himself, with no intervention from Pythe proving necessary. (PROSE: The Copper-Colored Cupids go Caroling)
As Pythe had feared, however, the festivities caused the multidimensional entity known as "Santa Claus" to begin to assert his existence in the Cupid Homeworld in the form of Claus-025. Pythe “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 later 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)
The Three Spirits, and the potentiality for Christmas Carol plots which they represented, were also able to gain a foothold in the Homeworld. When Philatel-426, who had become the focus of their attentions after being visited by the Marley-like ghost of Mailbag-431, briefly glimpsed other Cupid ghosts trying to reach out to the living, he glimpsed Governor-105's shade trying to warn Pythagoras about something. However, Governor was not able to make himself heard, and Pythe continued on his way. (PROSE: A Copper-Colored Christmas Carol) He would later hear about Philatel's Christmas Carol experience. (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 Crisis. 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, looking for the source of the Rifts. (PROSE: The Grand Multiverse Hotel) During this period, Pythe mentioned the Home City to her on multiple occasions. She initially thought he was referring to the capital of the Cupid Homeworld until she realised that it was actually a city in the Prime Universe and the original home of the Creator. He also told her about the Company of Free Genies, whom he saw as kindred spirits due to the broad similarity between “Problem-Solving” and “Wish-Granting” as lines of work. (PROSE: The Interlude of Jenny Everywhere)
Their investigation into the source of the Rifts uncovered 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 with 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 2021
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)
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)
Later developments
Pythagoras, on a walk in the Cupid Homeworld, witnessed the unexpected arrival of Jenny Everywhere. He was surprised to learn that she was actually visiting Lord Thymon, and even moreso when she revealed to him that the two had begun dating. (COMIC: A Shift in Relationships)
Behind the scenes
Notes & References
