JL New Wave: Kiz and The Outsiders (IC)

A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes.


There is a place all minds go when they dream.

A place all minds go when they imagine, when they storytell, when they weave fiction out of notions.

That place is also a being, an entity that inhabits and incarnates every aspect of that which is Dream.

That being and place are one and the same-- Dream is also The Dreaming, and The Dreaming is Dream. He takes us through our nightmares and our daydreams, and guards the borderline between truth and fiction, the ultimate adjudicator between what dreams come true and what truths are overwritten by dreams.

The Dreaming's geography is strange and nightmarish and glorious and mindbending, and we need not go into every detail here.

But on the very fringes of The Dreaming, out on the very outskirts, there are little nexuses of Dream-- islands of dreamstuff, self-contained dreamworlds. Some are whole planes of existence complete unto themselves, Lands and Narnias and Middle-Earths and Ozzes and All-Worlds and Saints Elsewhere.

One of these is a place, with the permission and leasing of The Dream Lord Himself, in which is housed a living prison for gods and fae and nightmares, bound to the will and spirit and flesh of a being named Kiz.

Void Walker, Void Binder, Summoner...

...he captures that which cannot be killed, cannot be tamed, and martyrs his living flesh as that which these beings cannot escape. With them at his command, he calls upon their powers to right mystic, cosmic wrongs and maintain mystic, cosmic balance.

But when he does not call on them, they live here, in his Demense, his Manse Between the Worlds.

In an act of catastrophic effort to avert cataclysm, with the rare granting of passage across that boundary between Waking and Dreaming, Kiz unveiled his Demense in The Waking World of Earth-1 in order to trap a creature that could threaten whole Universes if left unchecked.

The process of this drew this creature, this Spectrumonster, out of The Waking World and into the pocket-universe of Kiz' Demense, but so too did Kiz fall back with The Spectrumonster into that pocket-universe.

So now does it all come crashing folding burning resting back into The Dreaming.

And, dutiful and dauntless, what friends Kiz had made upon Earth-1 follow him into Dream and The Dreaming.

This is what happens next.

And what odd dreams our heart makes.

"Holy shit tacos, grandma." Jameson knelt down and plunged one of his fingers into the stream of languid, brown sludge. It was much creamier than it looked. It smelled like hot chocolate. He darted his tongue at it, looking back at his grandma for a second. Then he plunged the whole finger into his mouth. A moment later and he titled his head back and laughed, falling back onto a puffy white mound of powder sugar.

"Welcome to Candyland," Edna said, chuckling and plucking a fat lollipop as big as a sunflower that was swaying in a faint, warm breeze. She sunk a row of clean, white teeth -- unlike the dentures she had to put up with in the waking world -- into the pink and white swirling strata of the lollypop and snapped of a mouthful of sugary goodness. "It was the first realm I created..." She cut off as something caught her attention.

She tilted her head up to the sky as a giant eagle burst out of pink cotton candy clouds. Upon its back sat an old man, one she'd had a crush on her whole life. She snapped off another chunk of lollypop.

In the way of dreams, Jameson turned and poured himself through the space between them until he was next to his grandmother. He was getting good at that. "Is that really HIM?"

"Oh yes." Edna blushed but didn't look away as the man's worn, leathery face gained detail as it drew closer. Eventually the giant eagle set down upon a gnoll of evergreen flavored, mint green gummies nearby.

"It has come to pass!" Gandolf hissed, one hand upon the hilt of Glamdring. His other leaned upon Narya, his wizard's staff. "The darkness in the east has fled. It is the coming of a new age."

Edna looked between the delicatble if worn cut of Gandolf's lips and her grandson's wide eyed enthusiasm. "All the worlds of my youth are here," she said. A smile erupted on her mouth to match Jameson's. "When you are regent, you'll add many more."

"Not if we tarry!" Gandolf's glance had a look of awe tempered with tempred pragmatizism. He was a hard man. He'd seen too much betrayal and felt too much heart ache to have simple, easy expressions. That's why Edna had recruited the real Gandolf instead of making her own.

"It's really Gandolf?" Jameson slapped his hands together. "Hot fu-"

Gandolf's staff whipped out and wrapped Jameson upside his head. "Mind your tongue with the Lady of Light."

Moonlight kissed and caressed Edna's flesh as she wrapped her Tolkien garb about herself. Her body was no longer a youthful girl's but instead elven. She'd taken over the role of Galadriel. It had been unpleasant what she'd had to do to make that happen, but that was behind her. She swept a forefinger through pale tresses of corn silk. Her figure was trim even by the standards of a maiden. She always liked Cate Blanchett, and while she'd had a different image of Galdriel in her mind growing up, the collective across the Dreaming wouldn't let this incarnation go.

"Damn Grams," Jameson shook his head, "When will I learn to do that?"

"It's hard to change your body image, but you're a beutiful boy as you are." She raised Nenya, the Ring of Adamant to her lips and kissed the liquid, traquil stone set amongst the simple mithril of the band. And the radiance of stars erupted around them all, wrapping the three in its white light. Strictly speaking, Edna knew this wasn't cannon, but she'd given herself allowances when she'd shaped the ring into existence.

They'd shattered Sauron countless times, but his darkness always grew in the east. There was so much darkness in the east. Something timeless that refused annhilation. She'd thrown countless armies and questing heros at the problem. Always the darkness crept from the east.

When the light faded they stood in the very place Frodo had cast the One Ring. Miles high, Mount Doom's peak oozed a sludge of molten lava tht dropped miles through the air upon an endless lake of fire that had to be inspired by Hell itself. Still the intense heat did not touch Edna and while Jameson looked uncomfortable his skin wasn't melting off. Gandolf still had Narya, the Red Ring of Fire upon his gnarled, right ring finger. So all three of them were untouched by the press of the earth's furnace.

It also happened to be a perfect vantage point to look out upon Nothing.

"It's like the Neverending Story," Jameson said. The land just broke away, exposing the darkness and absence that was usually hidden from the many worlds of man's dreams. But here now beyond the land had crumbled and seperated.

The blackness was absolute. It was painful to look upon. It beackoned. Edna wet her supple lips with her tongue. It was breathtaking, and yet she weilded Nenya afterall, so it was bearable. It had to be. So it was in the way of dreams. A faint frown marred the beautiful shape of her face.

Gandolf gave voice to what she was feeling. "The edge of our Demense..." He trailed off, his hand clenching the hilt of Glamdring hard. His knuckles popped. "We must fill this void. We won't have another opportunity like this. To stay our hand, this could be the means to complete Middle Earth."

"More." Edna nodded her head. Still her frown remained. She looked down at her ring of power. She'd invested much of herself into over the years. She looked toward Jameson. "But he's not ready, and I feel stretched thin, sort of stretched, like butter over too much bread." A faint smile played at her lips falling into the old grooves of those lines.

"Aye, it might be reckless." Gandolf's hand eased itself from around the hilt of Glamdring. He raised the hand bearing his ring to hers. Power and understanding passed between the two ring bearers. It was another non-cannon power, at least Edna had worked hard for there to be a deeper connection between the Three. "Vilya is the greatest of the Three, and yet with the passing of Elrond, it needs to be borne. We have spoken thus. When Bilbo took up the ring-"

"Aww, c'mon grandma." Jameson tore his eyes from the gapping darkness and back towards his grandma and the greatest wizard of all time. "I'm ready for it, I know I am. I can do this. We've been practicing for ages."

"It's just felt like ages." Edna looked down at her hand entertwined with Gandolf's. "It's how dreams work. I wanted you to experience this world and the Skerries to really understand. You don't quite get what this could mean."

Jameson looked at her and nodded. "No your right." He puffed up his chest then sighed. "I'm sure there will be other chances."

"Doubtless." Gandolf snorted. His eyes never left the darkness. "It's been three ages since Eru wrought Eä from the Void. How many more before the Void is exposed? If this wound is not healed, it will be our doom! Don't be a fool, Lady."

Edna looked up at Gandolf and sighed. This was what she'd wanted. It was just happening faster than she'd have liked. It'd taken some doing to make Vilya available, but still...

"Let us adventure more. If the opportunity remains then we will act. I won't gamble on my grandson's life." She removed her hand from Gandolf's and instead took Jameson up in a hug. "Listen. This is more than enough land."

"Of course. I'm just glad to be here. This is amazing. Candylandy and Middle Earth. Sure, I've got a few I'd like to see, but two worlds is more-" He gulped and turned back towards the darkness. "It'll be fine. I'm sure. Yeah."

Edna smiled and looked at Gandalf. He was always a hard one to read. She raised Nenya and enveloped them in starlight. They had many adventures after that day, but each year they came back to gaze upon the gapping hole. By the third year, they realized that the Nothing was nibbling away at Middle Earth. Still, Edna waited. She now spent most of her time delaying the dissolution of her realm, but they had time. She gifted Jameson Vilya that year and tasked Gandalf with training him. The kid took to it like a fish to water. Edna bought him another four years to train before the Three had council.

So it was decided amongst the Three in the Seventh Year. They joined hands and for the first time in an Age, the One Ring was formed. It was no longer a distinct object, but now a manifestion of their union. And they claimed dominion over the powers of the Seven and Nine, through them they beheld the grace of the Unseen World.

And a closed heart can lead to closed off dreams.

On his way to the outskirts of one of the endless realms of the Endless to a place called the Skerries. It took less juice to dwell there, but there were also less protections. Kiz grunted as his hands remained wrapped around the cord of yellow and red. It had frayed a thousand and one times, and each time he'd redoubled the knots and tangles. The light was as much a twisted chain tying Void Binder to the Nightmare of Lights, as it was anything else. Without the pressing rigidity that lay upon Creation, protagonist and antagonist were free to use metaphor and simile to define their relationship without fear of abrogating the natural order or shearing the fabric of reality.

But Kiz was not free to engage his full attention to poetic attestations with his newest antagonist. With his hands bound in contest and feet fixed upon the ferment of his Demesne, Kiz was not free to just focus on that contest and remain cohesive. He still needed to tread the boundaries between realities and planes, and he was steering a barely tethered island. It moved with ponderous temerity. He'd promised Morpheus no repercussions upon the Waking world, and he’s managed that. However, that binding clause to their agreement hadn't applied to any of the thousands of pocket dimensions and out right dimensions, realms, and way points along the way back to the Dreaming. Time hadn't been on his side ascending to the shores of Creation, and he didn't have time to placate the boundaries of other realms on the way back. He had seconds in a realistic sense. He needed his Demesne back in its parking spot, so he could focus his full attention on the Spectrumonster.

And he was tired. Tired to his core. This was his core. Traveling across the temporal strata, moving vast distances across the universe of Creation was fucking hard for something the size of himself. A self that transcended a mortal's coil and extended deep and wide across its own dreamscape turned pocket dimension. It was as much himself as it was a prison torn, ripped, and scooped out of his infinite, immortal soul to imprison terrible blights, but that prison was crumbling under the strain of a rapid ascent and even more precipitous descent.

Worse, the Rogues had given voice to the burgeoning bond forming between the four of them. The idea given structure had forged a new pact. The Outsiders were born, so he had to worry about two mortal souls whose deaths would shatter Lisa like a dropped vase upon a hard rock. Thing was, Morpheus kept the division between Waking and Dreaming intact for a reason. A man descending to the bottom of the ocean had a real problem with the gasses in their blood. Those gasses contracted; pressurized they condensed and could get into places they weren't supposed to. Worse, they left a emptiness. To compensate, more air had to be pushed in to fill that voided space. Well, the goal was to descend slow so the shock to the system didn't exceed the structural integrity of a man's lungs and vascular system. Now Kiz found himself serving as life support for two mortals, whose deaths could not be allowed to happen this day.

So yeah, Kiz cut some corners. He cut a lot of them. And all of them had to do with himself. His Greater Self, his Demesne slammed into a smorgasbord of toy realms and pocket universes like the great comet Chicxulub striking the Earth to end the reign of the lizards and heralding in the ascendency of mankind.

He was pushing the boundaries of the pleasantries afforded to him by his oaths and alliances with High House Dream. The damage wrought across the dimensional hierarch and its vast strata was staggering. It wasn't possible to give an object the size of his Demesne that much kinetic energy and not expect things to get broken. Dream had to have accepted that. Understood that for today, for right now Kiz was as much a servant of Destruction paying homage to Death as he was a loyal Lessee of the Dreaming. Could any serious peerage of the realms and dimensions expect less when this magnitude of permission was granted? You didn't clear a celestial body to jump its god given orbital parameters and not expect a mass extinction event. Right? Dream had to have just hoped that this one would be contained to the solar system equivalent of the the trajectory it took to travel all the way from the Dreaming to the shores of Creation and back again. Kiz was fucked if that assumption didn't hold, but he wasn't naive enough to not expect an international incident out of what he had just done. He just hoped he didn’t get evicted.

The pressure was mounting. Each Armageddon his passage inflicting on the small places, the forgotten realms, and little fiefdoms that filled the space between the really big places, vast realms, and active kingdoms of the peerage cost Kiz a piece of himself. His soul, because there could be no hiding the fact that his Demesne was as much a manifestation of his soul, the most cardinal, intimate aspect of it, as anything else could be. It was losing integrity. Cracks formed along its tectonic plates as Kiz’s very sense of self began to fray and disintegrate.

To a Void Binder, integrity was everything. It was the reason he poured so much of himself into filling the tears and pockets forming in the Outsiders as they traveled with him. Their was guest privilege to observe — that couldn't be broken — but more than that was the impact it would have on Lisa. He had obligations yet undischarged to her. Obligations he refused to let slip.

So Kiz tore himself to tatters keeping the integrity first of Len and Rory, and second the burgeoning relationship he was building with the Spectruomonster.

Former required a flurry of tiny details to be scribed and sutured onto their sense of self, erecting a skeletal framework that would hold together their belief in who and what they were. There was no other way to compensate for the loss they were experiencing as everything they were was simultaneously dematerializing and pressurizing. Something needed to be rematerialized. Something had to fill the new spaces opening up, and be flexible enough to leave when that pressure let up.

The latter fought the intimacy of what Kiz offered. The hope behind what a bond could offer to something that had given up on hope and fallen to the baser aspects of its emotional spectra. Kiz fought to maintain his hold both physical and poetic with the Spectrumonster. They fought here and in the Dreamscape forming between them, but that was what it took to bring something new into being. Births were designed to be fucking hard. Making something was always a thousand times harder than breaking something. You didn't cleave something from nothing without a mega ton of energy. Except Kiz didn't have as much as he needed. He'd used up so much dealing with Ravana.

Just as they neared his home, the place in the Skerries where he could rest and trust that what remained of his Demesne and the Outsiders would be okay on their own, he slammed into a barrier. Like ice forming over the surface of the lack while the diver was below collecting his next meal, Kiz could see where he needed to go, but he just couldn’t find the hole that would let him breath again.

You gotta dream big or the dream just might devour you

Havel didn't wait for his lord's orders. He rose from where he knelt high upon the tallest tower in his lord's keep. He was his lord's banner man, but unlike the others he didn't feel compelled to debase himself upon the shores of Creation. He was content to serve in whatever capacity his lord called upon him, and often that was a minor incarnation. That was as his lord willed it, and so that was as it should be. Havel turned, placing his helm upon his brow. The darkness consumed his shame and hid his failures.
He looked upon the dissolution of his lord's Demense, and he knew. He quite enjoyed words, but this was not a time for speech. He was a military man, and he knew when duty called. He leapt from the Tower of Revelry. Shield up and sword out, Havel shot down and then through the fabric of his lord's realm. As he did, his armor fell away. He stopped hiding himelf from himself.

There was a dark hilarity in his face, and perhaps in his heart, too, you would think—and you would be right. It was the face of a hatefully happy man, a face that radiated a horrible handsome warmth, a face to make water glasses shatter in the hands of tired truck-stop waitresses, to make small children crash their trikes into board fences and then run wailing to their mommies with stake-shaped splinters sticking out of their knees. It was a face guaranteed to make barroom arguments over batting averages turn bloody.

--- --- ---

"Fuck nuggets," Tanha said, as she saw Havel's body plunge like a black comet towards a gapping hole near her master. The whole realm was going to hell in a handbag and now this?

Her expression started as a scowl and descended into grim malice. Her teeth cracked in her pretty little mouth, and she ground the remains to flour. The next moment she remade them, but still it was important for to express her distaste, even if no one else could benefit from her performance.

She hopped over the side of the wall and hurled a billowing parachute of gossamer behind her. It burst out and around and behind, arresting her fall. She glided to a stop between the Outsiders. She liked the one with crazy eyes, Mick the Firestarter. Len, the bitch's brother, was too dead inside to get her going. At least that one would be a challenge to spoil.

She rose and the gossamer collased around her is a shimmering gazy wisp of silver and crystal. It was unregulated chaos, seething in the eternal moment before creation where the imagination was still free to be everything and anything.

"Come with me if you want to live." She paused long enough for dramatic effect, the goassamer collescing into a slutty cowgirl's outfit. Her hair wound into a long, golden spoil of sun kissed gold. Freckles spread across her cheeks, and her plump lips became cherry red. Her leather vest hung open with the sheer white tunic beneath cut wide to expose the sides of each of her breasts. The tunic rode high, exposing a wide swatch of her midrift. Her skin held just a hint of a tan, like white toast just starting to brown. Her leather pants hugged her hips and rode down her thighs to get lost in her cowboy boots. She paused, tapping her noise. "I almost forgot." She slapped her right hip, setting it to rest on the butt of one of the big guns that gunslingers used. The gun belt hung casual across her belly, bullets studded its length like spikes in a gothic dancer's costume, except Tanha was dressed to kill this time.

"We HAD twelve seconds before this whole place goes to shit, now we got a solid 8 seconds." She paused, winking. "Hope you boys are true desperados." She laughed and her hand blurred with blinding speed as she grabbed the ginormous revolver from her hip and blasted off three shots in rapid succession. The first bullet tore at the edge of the chasm nearest Mick. The second was on the other side of the trio. The final shot was further back behind the trio. Each bullet tore a chunk out of Kiz's Demesne. The ground around the new holes shot out spider cracks that widened and more stable land fell away like they'd been standing on a very unstable iceberg instead of solid ground.

A moment later -- assuming the Outsiders didn't jump away -- a small island amongst the chaos of the Dreaming's frayed edges, the Skerry, fell away from Kiz's Demense and dropped into White.

The whiteness stretched in all directions. They were a spec upon a blank page. An infinite distance away Kiz's Demense looked like a toy replica of tree, castle, and haunted woods. Pieces fell away like a melting ice berg. They were Outside. A fitting place to become something new. To rewrite a story. Maybe add a few new pages to a favorite novel or relive scenes that left an indelible trace upon someone's soul.

For a time there was no time so they could have palavered at length. Civilizations could have come and gone or it could have been just the pause in a reader's flow as one page was turned so another could begin.

"Okay boys. We got some real jerks out there who have taken over Kiz's turf. Job's simple enough. We want to leverage the shit out of the situation to force one of the principals to back down. Failing that-" Tanha paused, pointing at a dark spec, like a period that had lost its sentence. "-I think Havel plans to murder every living soul, real or imginary. The principals used to hole up in Middle Earth, but I think they've gotten bigger than their britches. Decided to muscle in on our boss's turf, see? So now we gotta put things right."

She paused, growing into this new role, method acting her way to a new persona. "And you darlings are in the thick, at least y'all got some eye candy." She winked. "And maybe a lil more."

"Anyway, think they've added a western. When it comes-" She cocked her head; her eyes unfocused. "Here it comes. Think cowboy. At least I'm pretty sure its going to be a western."

The space wasn't theirs for long. Something came rushing at them with the speed of the big bang.

--- --- ---

The man in Black fled across the desert, and some Desperate Heros -- Desperados -- followed.

For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare...

All the world was falling.

Gravity itself was yawning like a mouth to eat them all.

"Son of a biiiiiitch!" Heatwave roared, clinging to whatever structure would hold a grip... whole creations screamed past them...

...one might think, oddly, of the nightmare-inducing tunnel of Willy Wonka infamy, except straight down from orbit at a velocity most terminal...

"Whose idea was this?" Heatwave followed up, his burn-callused, infuriated face twisted into knots.

"This is why I'm the plan guy," Captain Cold retorted, glowering at his oldest friend and partner. "From now on, I make with the big ideas not you, hmm?"

Heatwave was Mick Rory, pyromaniac, sociopath, addicted to the thrill of the fight and the flare of the firelight.

Captain Cold was Leonard Snart, calculator, mastermind, chill to the extreme, taker of his dues.

Together they were Rogues, harriers of The Flash and of The Gem Cities. At least they used to be.

But the other Rogues had gone far from what semblance of a code they'd once had, leaving these two Rogues with no place to belong-- even among misfits they were misfits.

Thus, they had dubbed themselves Outsiders. And thrown in their lot with their cosmic new ally Kiz, the Summoner, The Void Binder, The Warded Man, "Bellerophon."

And now they felt like they had been thrown into a tower heist gone wrong, and the elevator's safeties had all been blown and the basement was coming up way faster than either of them would like.

"...fine," Rory agreed dourly. "For now."

kizkiz said:

"Fuck nuggets," Tanha said, as she saw Havel's body plunge like a black comet towards a gapping hole near her master. The whole realm was going to hell in a handbag and now this?

Her expression started as a scowl and descended into grim malice. Her teeth cracked in her pretty little mouth, and she ground the remains to flour. The next moment she remade them, but still it was important for to express her distaste, even if no one else could benefit from her performance.

She hopped over the side of the wall and hurled a billowing parachute of gossamer behind her. It burst out and around and behind, arresting her fall. She glided to a stop between the Outsiders. She liked the one with crazy eyes, Mick the Firestarter. Len, the bitch's brother, was too dead inside to get her going. At least that one would be a challenge to spoil.

Click to expand...

Reflexively, Mick whipped his flamethrower handgun up to this new target--

--but just as reflexively, Len's hand was up in his line of potentially literal fire. "Easy, Mick, this one's part of Bello's crew. So she's part of ours."

Mick's lip twitched. "Well. At least this one's pretty enough. I liked the chimera better."

He'd had to ditch an open offer from a pretty pretty pussycat in order to dream-dive after Kiz and his crib, so he was still fairly sore about that. Tanha's outward beauty was at least consolation.

kizkiz said:

She rose and the gossamer collased around her is a shimmering gazy wisp of silver and crystal. It was unregulated chaos, seething in the eternal moment before creation where the imagination was still free to be everything and anything.

"Come with me if you want to live." She paused long enough for dramatic effect, the goassamer collescing into a slutty cowgirl's outfit. Her hair wound into a long, golden spoil of sun kissed gold. Freckles spread across her cheeks, and her plump lips became cherry red. Her leather vest hung open with the sheer white tunic beneath cut wide to expose the sides of each of her breasts. The tunic rode high, exposing a wide swatch of her midrift. Her skin held just a hint of a tan, like white toast just starting to brown. Her leather pants hugged her hips and rode down her thighs to get lost in her cowboy boots.

Click to expand...

Heatwave was given perhaps-understandable pause. "Yeah, okay, I like this one too."

Len smirked faintly.

kizkiz said:

She paused, tapping her noise. "I almost forgot." She slapped her right hip, setting it to rest on the butt of one of the big guns that gunslingers used. The gun belt hung casual across her belly, bullets studded its length like spikes in a gothic dancer's costume, except Tanha was dressed to kill this time.

Click to expand...

"And I respect her taste in accessories," Len drawled, then focused on Tanha directly rather than talking about her like she wasn't in the room. "Now. Exposition. Sitrep. Whatever. What the Hell is happening?"

kizkiz said:

"We HAD twelve seconds before this whole place goes to shit, now we got a solid 8 seconds." She paused, winking. "Hope you boys are true desperados."

Click to expand...

"They don't make 'em any desperater," Rory professed, grammatically wanting but no less enthused.

kizkiz said:

She laughed and her hand blurred with blinding speed as she grabbed the ginormous revolver from her hip and blasted off three shots in rapid succession. The first bullet tore at the edge of the chasm nearest Mick. The second was on the other side of the trio. The final shot was further back behind the trio. Each bullet tore a chunk out of Kiz's Demesne. The ground around the new holes shot out spider cracks that widened and more stable land fell away like they'd been standing on a very unstable iceberg instead of solid ground.

Click to expand...

In a world of the unexpected, this particular maneuver was unexpected and then some. But-- if this was their way of going with her if they wanted to live--

--Cold appreciated that reference, Rory was more of a Backdraft man--

--then they were going with her. Even if that was overboard.

kizkiz said:

A moment later -- assuming the Outsiders didn't jump away -- a small island amongst the chaos of the Dreaming's frayed edges, the Skerry, fell away from Kiz's Demense and dropped into White.

The whiteness stretched in all directions. They were a spec upon a blank page. An infinite distance away Kiz's Demense looked like a toy replica of tree, castle, and haunted woods. Pieces fell away like a melting ice berg. They were Outside. A fitting place to become something new. To rewrite a story. Maybe add a few new pages to a favorite novel or relive scenes that left an indelible trace upon someone's soul.

Click to expand...

They fell into the great wide white window of a web forum where one might compose a text post-- only that wall of text was yet to come, and the possibilities were yet as infinite as the distances-- as wide as the yawning in gap of time dilated by a relativistic expanse undefined by the walls of any natural universe--

kizkiz said:

For a time there was no time so they could have palavered at length. Civilizations could have come and gone or it could have been just the pause in a reader's flow as one page was turned so another could begin.

"Okay boys. We got some real jerks out there who have taken over Kiz's turf. Job's simple enough. We want to leverage the shit out of the situation to force one of the principals to back down. Failing that-" Tanha paused, pointing at a dark spec, like a period that had lost its sentence. "-I think Havel plans to murder every living soul, real or imginary. The principals used to hole up in Middle Earth, but I think they've gotten bigger than their britches. Decided to muscle in on our boss's turf, see? So now we gotta put things right."

Click to expand...

"I heard 'turf,' I heard 'job,' I heard 'leverage,'" Heatwave rumbled. "I'm way the fuck out of my depth but I know those words. Speakin' my language."

Snart nodded. "I heard those. And I heard 'collateral damage' between the lines. We're your huckleberries."

kizkiz said:

She paused, growing into this new role, method acting her way to a new persona. "And you darlings are in the thick, at least y'all got some eye candy." She winked. "And maybe a lil more."

Click to expand...

A slow-burn grin spread across Rory's lips.

kizkiz said:

"Anyway, think they've added a western. When it comes-" She cocked her head; her eyes unfocused. "Here it comes. Think cowboy. At least I'm pretty sure its going to be a western."

Click to expand...

"'Think cowboy,'" Rory mused. "The Hell does that mean?"

"It's like Kadabra's illusions," Snart replied quickly. "His holograms, he can program them at a thought-- except here, it's-- we're programming reality around us-- what a fucking trip, and here it's in the code that we always pull jobs sober--"

He held up a hand-- closed his eyes tight like a secular man trying to meditate for the first time-- focused hard--

--and soon Havel wasn't the only Man in Black, as Snart wore a long black coat, and a black hat.

Rory made a disbelieving noise, and scrunched his own face up, almost comical in his intensity-- he wasn't a man of extensive imagination, save for dreams of fire, but what self-respecting Heartland criminal hadn't ever fancied themselves a cattle rustler or train-robber? His outfit flickered once, twice, three times, stopped-- he tried again--

--and became a more colorful counterpart to his monochrome Thousandth Man.

Each of their signature weapons became a single sixgun holstered at their respective hips, Cold's inlaid with icy blue steel, Heatwave's with fiery gold.

"Let's ride," Heatwave snarled.

kizkiz said:

The space wasn't theirs for long. Something came rushing at them with the speed of the big bang.

--- --- ---

The man in Black fled across the desert, and some Desperate Heros -- Desperados -- followed.

Click to expand...

Gitty up!

The man in Black fled across the desert, and some Desperate Heros -- Desperados -- followed.

Oh he was in a hurry. He was in a big god damn hurry alright, but if you didn't ever stop to smell the roses, what was the point? Right? He didn't care what name was used to describe him, so he thought of himself right now just as Mr. Black. It was apropros, and he so loved prose. Whether it was whispering into the ears of his lovers as he fucked them to death or shooting off a verse or three over the still cooling body of an enemy. Almost all occasions called for some verbal garnish.

Except right now. He shook his head and laughed. Well fine. He'd do it anyway. "You've got to be kidding me." The house was empty. Not even the bones of a corpse or the carcass of the favored goat. Mr. Black scratched the back of his head, pushing his black cowboy hat forward. He raised his right hand palm up, questing for some morsal of flesh or bone, even a remnant would do.

He couldn't help himself. He started laughing. A great, jolly belly laugh. "This is so ridiculous." After a few minutes when the humor started to fade and he could get ahold of himself, he shook his head. "They forgot about the farmer. Ah well."

Mr. Black didn't feel hunger over much, so he didn't bother to check the larder. He could have poisoned the well, but it seemed unsporting for the people following him. And even though he should care about tormenting them more, killing them was never part of his plan.

His questing had located a few shortcuts. Whether intentional or unintentional, Mr. Black walked another ten miles through the desert towards the closet one. He encountered some scorpions and the occasional spider. Some cockroaches flitered about, but nothing with enough juice to make the squeeze worth it.

He picked up his pacing, jogging across endless planes of cracked, dried earth. It wasn't a sandy desert. It was a hard place. Where the land couldn't take the stress of dehydration, it cracked and revealed veins of rock. The only plant life at all was Devil Weed. In another life, Mr. Black would have enjoyed lighting fires of Devil Weed each night to leave just enough bread crumbs for his pursuers to madden them. He liked to baste the meat while he cooked it. Let it stew in its own juices. He did enjoy debasing his victims. "At least I think I do." He shrugged and laughed. "Sure why not."

Mr. Black didn't have time for games. He had lots of people that needed dying, so he didn't leave any small signs of his presence. Instead, he jogged through the scoarching heat by day and the bone chilling cold by night. He got lucky on the fifth day. He found a waystation.

Finding the little boy was easy. Guessing the boy's name wasn't too bad. "Hey Jake," Mr. Black said.

Jake was curdling up in a ball in the barn of a steam punk inspired barn? It was hard to really call it a barn. There was some sort of nuclear powered water faucet and some other post-modern gadgetry. "Not steampunk then," Mr. Black remarked to himself.

Jake continued to shiver and cry in the corner. "Please, no don't hurt me."

"'Fraid you aren't in the ka-tet this time, little slugger. But don't worry, there are other worlds than these." Mr. Black's smile gleamed bone white and blush pink. He let another happy laugh. "Well, you can join mine. It's gonna be a doozy." Mr. Black raised his hand up in the air, "No, no excuse me. Wrong verb. My bad."

"What's that mis...mister."

The boy might have had some more stuff to say, but Mr. Black wasn't paying attention. He was a bit busy finding the right verb. "Will is a little harsh, and it implies that you had a choice but I over rode it." He shook his head, smiling. This is what life was about. Putting real meaning around the random acts of life. "Have? No."

Mr. Black shook his head. "Gotta remember, I'm on the clock this time. Seriously on it. I won't use inappropriate metaphors to describe how much i'm on it or its on me, but let's just say we better get cracking, okay?"

Jake was backed into the corner. His clothing was more 1980s tight jeans and shirt. Sneakers that were velcro. Pretty boy with his long blonde hair and blue eyes, around twelve years old. But his eyes made him seem older, more profound. Jake turned those eyes on Mr. Black. He got a very determined, hard line to his mouth. He took a deep breath and held it.

Mr. Black's hands flickered through the five forms of Turning Death's Door and sketched out a quick counter sigil in the hay on the floor. It wasn't much. He ripped Jake's soul out of the boy's body, tore it into five equal parts and rewove the mess into something equally beautiful if no longer human. This new non-soul got shoved back into Jake's corpse. It was violent and rushed. Really a third dan necromancer could have done this, but Mr. Black was in a hurry. And Jake was a powerful enough entity to warrent a little artistry, but not that important to waist more than a few minutes on. Mr. Black pulled the whole thing inside out, so the material was inside and the immaterial was on the outside. "Presto chango, we got ourselves a wraith. Welcome to Team Black."

Mr. Black raised his finger. "There's a horse the next building over. Why don't you turn that, we need to pick up the pace. I'll meet you out front."

"Sure mister." Jake said, floating through the wall. He was more etheral blackness and gleaming red eyes than a boy of twelve, but there were still enough traces of humanity.

Mr. Black turned and skipped down the stairs, whistling a ditty to himself. The basement was dark, but Mr. Black could see in darkness. It was well provisioned with three rows of canned foods and dried goods. But Mr. Black didn't eat food. It was well preservered and stocked considering how many centuries had passed, but that was because of what lived down here. It burst from the wall in fury and prophecy the moment Mr. Black's boot soles touched the floor. To some it would be frightning, an apparition of living concrete, wood, and earth. It's touch was the weight of the earth and the age of civilization's past.

"The Man in Black will be your-" The voice was a terrible quake and onrushing thunder. It came form the ground and the walls all at once in an echoing caco*phony.

It didn't bother Mr. Black though. "Ah, you've got the wrong guy. Doesn't matter. Your the Demon of the Horse, Dun the Earth Bound. I bind you by your name until the sundering of All Worlds. You are mine, such is the power of my own name." Mr. Black's right hand plunged into the the ground. There wasn't much left of the rows of provisions at this point. The bursting presence of the demon had knocked all them over. Mr. Black's arm sank up to his elbow before he found what he was looking for. "I don't need your prophecy; I need your speed."

Mr. Black closed his hand around the jaw bone of a giant horse buried two feet into the ground. He pulled it up and out and raised it towards the shambling mound of ramshackle dirt and rock. "I need a horse that can beat the wind and travel across all the earths."

"You will deliver all into darkness. Nothing will prevail, but you will not find redemption in your destruction. You will only find ruin and damnation. You hold the desperados as much as they hold, but there are-"

"Sure, sure." Mr. Black walked back up the stairs and tossed the horse jawbone. He raised his hands to the sky and then swept them down past his knees. The black leather of his gloves smoked with how fast and intricate his fingers moved. The friction heat built up but Mr. Black ignored it. He finished his incantation -- Shaping the Forgotten Beast -- and cast the immaterial essence of Dun into a new seeming.

What came out of the earth was black obisidan with a tangled maze of ivory like horns bursting along the crown and mane of the beast. Its body was three times the size of a normal horse; its three eyes were bone white and distributed across its forehead. Long tusks protruded in like an extra set of teeth and its six legs ended in a bramble's nest of bone spurs. It looked like it was in pain. Its breath, such as it was, was labored and ragged. It reared up and when its two front legs slammed into the earth the ground trembled and quaked.

Mr. Black leapped upon Dun's back. Jake joined them upon a steed of blackness and death. A creature of pestulance like a puppet animated by an ameteur. Bones protruded from its flesh where compound fractures had ruptured and then healed all wrong. Still it kept pace well with Dun. Mr. Black was pleased with Jake's work. Mr. Black gestured off to the northwest.

"Jake there should be a town that way. Grab them and meet me beneath the Cyclopean Mountains."

Jake saluted. "Sure mister." And the nightmare he rode upon burst forward. Earth shot out behind at the sudden acceleration. Jake was a black smudge on the horizon within a minute.

Mr. Black pumped his fist into the air and hooted. "Now we are starting to pick up steam." He wheeled Dun around until he found the small tear in space. It was something Dun had no problem ripping up and hurtling through. Space contracted and then sling shot the pair hundreds of miles towards the distant mountain peaks that divided the Great Desert from the Western Sea.

Forty days and forty nights

Tanha squatted, poking the tip of her massive revolver at the sun baked ground. The metal of her gun could only scrap a fingernail deep channel in the ground. It was more like hardened clay than sand. Perhaps it was a mistake for people to call it a desert. There was dust, but it was a superficial layer. She panned her head around, her hair flowing from side-to-side like a turbluent golden river. She was a passable tracker by standards of this place, but the only traces of life she could find was the dried out husk of a cockroach and a few spindles of Devil's Weed.

"Well this sucks," She rose and holistered her gun. With a flick of her hand, she conjured forth her Cup and spied upon the remaining gossamer in her possession. It wasn't much, maybe enough to spin a few fictions into reality. That unsavory man, Constaintaine, had deprived her of her farming trip. Her Cup vanished when her thoughts ceased to keep it present.

She was tempted to spit on the ground, but that was now unladylike and she was fast becoming a lady. So instead she simpered and sighed for the better part of an hour. Still her companions had yet to arrive. She crossed her arms and tapped one of her boots. She rolled her eyes and shook her head. They were slower than a virgin giving birth to twins, and she felt like she was the momma and it was furiously painful waiting on the two runts to pop out. And all the while the Man in Black and even the whole damn world kept moving on.

She rubbed the bridge of her nose and walked circles around the puckered asshole through which she had been spat out. They all had to start this story from the same place, that was the rules of this place and most but not all others. This ka-tet was destined to walk the path. But there really wasn't time for all that malarky.

She rose in a burst of speed, turned and drew her gun. Her finger squeezed the trigger and let off a bullet. The bullet sailed through the empty air for hundreds of yards. A moment later a shower of dirt rose in the air where the bullet must have met its end. She sighed again and holstered the gun.

She'd seen her far share of deserts, but this place was d-e-a-d dead. After another hour of firing off her gun just to see how far the bullets went, she ran out. She sighed and filled all forty of her empty gun casings with dirt. Then wasted a mote of her gossamer to transmute the dirt into gun powder and whatever else it took to be a bullet. She spent a few more bullets firing at the sun just to be sure it couldn't be hit.

The Outsiders said:

They arrived, scrunching up their faces like they were constipated. One of them almost popped out an eyeball, he was thinking so hard. Each became a cowboy and each of their signature weapons became a single sixgun holstered at their respective hips, Cold's inlaid with icy blue steel, Heatwave's with fiery gold.

"Let's ride," Heatwave snarled.

Click to expand...

"About damn time, I think I almost would have preferred playing the part of a Stuffy Man..." She trailed off then trailed back on. "Seriously, it's not that hard-" She waved her hand, "You know what, forget it. There will be water if god wills it." She looked around, "And he doesn't."

"And in case your eyes are broken, nothing including us will last long out here. I'm open to suggestions for things to ride. I sure hope your trig, or this whole place will be reaped by our dear old friend the Man in Black. One giant Charyou Tree. A modicrum of civility held his hand before, but he's under no such constraints now." She tilted her head to the sun, which was approaching the horizon. "Given the differentials between Kiz and here, I'd say we got forty days and forty nights, tops." She looked at the setting sun, "Make that forty nights and thirty-nine days."

Into that ominous tract...

kizkiz said:

"About damn time, I think I almost would have preferred playing the part of a Stuffy Man..." She trailed off then trailed back on. "Seriously, it's not that hard-" She waved her hand, "You know what, forget it. There will be water if god wills it." She looked around, "And he doesn't."

"And in case your eyes are broken, nothing including us will last long out here. I'm open to suggestions for things to ride. I sure hope your trig, or this whole place will be reaped by our dear old friend the Man in Black. One giant Charyou Tree. A modicrum of civility held his hand before, but he's under no such constraints now." She tilted her head to the sun, which was approaching the horizon. "Given the differentials between Kiz and here, I'd say we got forty days and forty nights, tops." She looked at the setting sun, "Make that forty nights and thirty-nine days."

Click to expand...

The two Outsiders narrowed their respective gazes at the cowgirled Faerie Queen.

"Snart," Mick growled, "she's using words I don't get, and I've seen every Eastwood movie ever made."

"If we needed to know what they meant, she'd explain 'em," Snart waved this away, "and I think I parse the overall gist. But hold your horses, lady, we've got ways of getting in and out of Dodge fairly quickly-- you have to if you want to operate on our home turf."

"There's no God to will us water," he snarled, "but at least we'll have ice."

And he drew his gun, leveled it, and pulled the trigger towards the horizon...

...but while he expected to unleash a stream of ice across the flat hardpan which Mick could then jet them across using his heat gun as a rocket booster, just as they'd done back in Keystone-Central, his metamorphosed pistol instead shot a single bullet.

It hit the ground ahead of them and burst in a blue-white light, expanding to form a fairly wide puddle of ice.

It began evaporating almost instantly, not even melting, just going straight from solid to vapor as it hissed up off of the ground.

This gave Snart pause.

"Fuck us and the horse we rode in on," he grimaced.

Rory tried his gun, too, and this fired a bullet that exploded like a firework in a rush of flame and force, but again not a continuous stream of flame.

He squinted at Snart. "We don't have a horse."

Snart sighed, wiping his forehead. "I know we don't have a horse--! ...sorry, sorry, this just... this just really isn't my element. It's not just the heat, it's the humidity. Or lack thereof."

"I don't mind it so much," Mick Rory shook his head. Then jutted his head towards the horizon, glancing at Tanha as if to say 'ya comin'?' "Might as well start walkin'. If we're gonna die out here, let's die on our feet."

Journey of ten thousand miles.

The Outsiders said:

This gave Snart pause. "Fuck us and the horse we rode in on." He grimaced.

Rory tried his gun, too, and this fired a bullet that exploded like a firework in a rush of flame and force, but again not a continuous stream of flame. He squinted at Snart. "We don't have a horse."

Click to expand...

Tanha twisted a strand of liquid gold hair around her forefinger and giggled at the failed antics of the two men. She'd scryed on them during the battle against Kobra, working like an odd couple of elementals. It was funny to see them twistng into knots.

"Careful you don't run outta bullets either, Misters." She mocked grimaced, "Cuz then my dear sweet cullies, you'd be worth about as much as a bucket of piss in this here desert."

She rubbed her smooth, flawless chin. It came to a soft point with the cutest little dimple at its apex. Her eyes twinkled like tinsel on a christmas tree. "Could make a giant glass slide, but that'd only get us so far." She closed and opened her other hand and a pile of liquid silver gossamer like a heap of bubbles appeared in it. "But not much point in all that. There's supposed to be a cabin a few days out-"

She cut off as a black streak arced along the horizon miles away. It started on the western horizon and moved at blinding speed to the east. Tanha pivoted, squiting her eyes. "Hmm, wonder if you'd call it a 'Gun Wraith' in this place?" She shook her head, "Maybe our antagonist left us some convinent plot device to speed us up there." She shrugged, talking more to herself now then to the Len or Mick. "Journey of a ten thousand miles starts with a single step, right?"

The Outsiders said:

Snart sighed, wiping his forehead. "I know we don't have a horse--! ...sorry, sorry, this just... this just really isn't my element. It's not just the heat, it's the humidity. Or lack thereof."

"I don't mind it so much," Mick Rory shook his head. Then jutted his head towards the horizon, glancing at Tanha as if to say 'ya comin'?' "Might as well start walkin'. If we're gonna die out here, let's die on our feet."

Click to expand...

She shot Mick a wicked little grin, "Oh just wait until it gets dark out."

She took a deep breath and dismissed her gossamer. She turned and started walking to the West, the Cyclopean Mountains were so far away they didn't even register on the horizon. She huffed a strand of hair out of her eyes, it puffed up and over back of her head.

All the day had been a dreary one at best, and dim.

kizkiz said:

"Careful you don't run outta bullets either, Misters." She mocked grimaced, "Cuz then my dear sweet cullies, you'd be worth about as much as a bucket of piss in this here desert."

Click to expand...

"Not sure we ain't already," Snart snarked. "But don't you worry. These guns got deep pockets."

kizkiz said:

She rubbed her smooth, flawless chin. It came to a soft point with the cutest little dimple at its apex. Her eyes twinkled like tinsel on a christmas tree. "Could make a giant glass slide, but that'd only get us so far." She closed and opened her other hand and a pile of liquid silver gossamer like a heap of bubbles appeared in it. "But not much point in all that. There's supposed to be a cabin a few days out-"

Click to expand...

"A few days?" Rory snorted. "You'll be lucky if Len makes it a few hours."

Snart scowled at him. "I'll live."

"Sure," Heatwave smirked.

kizkiz said:

She cut off as a black streak arced along the horizon miles away. It started on the western horizon and moved at blinding speed to the east. Tanha pivoted, squiting her eyes. "Hmm, wonder if you'd call it a 'Gun Wraith' in this place?"

Click to expand...

'Gun wraith?' Cold mouthed at Rory.

'Got me swingin',' Heatwave mouthed back, and shrugged.

kizkiz said:

She shook her head, "Maybe our antagonist left us some convinent plot device to speed us up there." She shrugged, talking more to herself now then to the Len or Mick. "Journey of a ten thousand miles starts with a single step, right?"

Click to expand...

"Lao Tzu," Cold nodded grimly.

"Damn right, it's lousy," Heatwave harrumphed.

Cold sighed. "Read a book."

kizkiz said:

She shot Mick a wicked little grin, "Oh just wait until it gets dark out."

Click to expand...

"Promises, promises," Mick murmured back from under lowered eyelids.

kizkiz said:

She took a deep breath and dismissed her gossamer. She turned and started walking to the West, the Cyclopean Mountains were so far away they didn't even register on the horizon. She huffed a strand of hair out of her eyes, it puffed up and over back of her head.

Click to expand...

The blonde woman pursued across the desert, and the gunslingers followed.

And then...

...not far behind them...

..****** folded. Unfolded.

And out of space a woman emerged, thudding onto the hardpan with a grunt.

"Solid again. That was quick. Ow."

But her hair still whispered constantly about her in an unfelt breeze, and she knew which way her brother and his bro had gone.

And Lisa Snart got to her feet, checked her gun, and hunted the hunters.

To watch yourself pretend to be yourself is to know the madness of the end of worlds.

The problem was there was just nothing left to hold the heat. The world was moving on. Much of it was already waiting in the clearing, at the end of the path. Tanha engaged in light conversation scattered over periods of long silence as befit the scene. The cracked earth they walked over vomited back the entire day's heat within the first hour after sunset. The vacuum left by the departing of the sun went unfilled. All conversation died away during that sad hour.

"Oh," she said, ignoring the mounting cold, "At least there's still the North Star." There were only a handful of stars left in this world's night sky. They were sprinkled across the velvet black cloth of the night sky. Their light was faded and twinkled like bulbs whose filaments were about to burst. One star was just a little brighter than the rest. Tanha shrugged. "It guided the three wise kings to the man Jesus, might work for us. Never know."

Tanha talked around the fact that the cold was here, and that it was the type of cold that wormed into the bones, drawing out the smallest aches. She didn't have many, but she imagined the two men did.

What she did have was ample exposed flesh, which was what the cold feasted on, stripping it of all heat within the space of a breath. Her breaths came out in great gusts of white fog. The cold may have been freezing cold, but there was no water left. Even the spit in her mouth was a dried out white mucus foam. And she was one of the the fair folk! Her skin cracked and reddened as the same strain the earth was under was visited upon her. How stupid could she have been to venture into this death trap, trying to save the only man who'd ever managed to tame her.

She opened her mouth to speak again, but the wind stole her breath. After all there was nothing to obstruct the wind. It picked up microscopic grit, freeze dried them and then rubbed the whole thing against everything until everything was smoothed flat. The cold grit was thrust into every open hole or exposed stitch she had. It felt like the bite of a fire ant mixed with the sting of a wasp repeated millions of times over. And she knew of pain, she was both a sadist and a masochist in equal measure. Without an air tight enclosure, it was impossible to escape the madness of the wind. If that wasn't worse enough the wind carried voices and magnified them into screams and preserved those insane cries across hundreds of miles and over years. The death screams of the fallen preserved for the sole purpose that the agony of the past might take root in the hope of the present.

These she knew were all the protocols enacted when a world was ready to die. It was amplified across the strata of possibility at the center of which was the Dark Tower. And this Dark Tower knew its end was coming. In the past there had been at least one unbreakable spark of hope to rewind the clock and allow existence another shot at continuation. She knew this story too well not to know that. He'd gone by many names over many lives, but he was not here now. This time was different.

Instead, there was Tanha huddled with Len and Mick around the ugly, watery flames of the Devil Grass. When had they made that? Had it been Mick coaxing flame from the infernal weed? It wasn't dried out but neither did it have anything close to water. Instead, it had a toxic sludge running its veins that drove men to schizophrenia. The smoke was a notch milder than outright eating it, but as long as they kept upwind the effects were meager. The warmth of the fire was arguable, equivalent to huddling around a lighter for warmth against the long, freezing death of the world, but it was better than nothing. It gave some hope of warmth.

Tanha shook her pretty little head. The cold was maddening even to her. That was the failing when you entered into someone else's reality. But she was a fucking queen of the dark siddhe.

Tanha's exquisite brows narrowed as she tilted her head between the pair of Outsiders. "Your aspects help," She grinned at Mick. "Your pal seems not mind the cold as much as he did the heat, but I reckon you could use someone to warm you up." Her hands were not warm but neither were they cold. She curled against Mick's grizzled body, leaning her head on his shoulder. A small shake of her head parted her mane of corn silk hair as she looked up at him. In the horrid light of the Devil Grass fire, her hair didn't shimmer so much as undulate as the fire vomited sparks and smoke in fitful spurts.

It was surreal watching herself play herself in this story. She realized then that the wind had shifted on them. The smoke of the Devil Grass was blowing into their faces!

kizkiz said:

"Oh," she said, ignoring the mounting cold, "At least there's still the North Star." There were only a handful of stars left in this world's night sky. They were sprinkled across the velvet black cloth of the night sky. Their light was faded and twinkled like bulbs whose filaments were about to burst. One star was just a little brighter than the rest. Tanha shrugged. "It guided the three wise kings to the man Jesus, might work for us. Never know."

Click to expand...

"That star was in The East," Cold harrumphed. "Or they were in The East going West so the star was West of them, I never was clear on that."

Heatwave didn't speak, only shivered, hugging himself, leathery face squinting at Snart.

Cold shrugged. "When you wear a parka to work, you get a lot of Christmas riffs. Or 'South Park.'"

"Hnh," Mick harrumphed, teeth chattering. "Wuh-wish you had it with yuh-you now."

"Yeah," Snart agreed. He was fine, the cold seemed to slough right off of him. But Tanha and Rory were feeling the freezer-burn. "And our goggles."

Time skipped like the tracks on a battered CD.

kizkiz said:

Instead, there was Tanha huddled with Len and Mick around the ugly, watery flames of the Devil Grass. When had they made that? Had it been Mick coaxing flame from the infernal weed? It wasn't dried out but neither did it have anything close to water. Instead, it had a toxic sludge running its veins that drove men to schizophrenia. The smoke was a notch milder than outright eating it, but as long as they kept upwind the effects were meager. The warmth of the fire was arguable, equivalent to huddling around a lighter for warmth against the long, freezing death of the world, but it was better than nothing. It gave some hope of warmth.

Click to expand...

The fire helped Mick with more than just physical temperature.

Fire was his obsession, his driving ambition, his one true love. He hadn't had an open flame to gaze at for what seemed like forever, and here it was-- he could watch it dancing like a goddess all day. The pharmacological properties of the fumes only exacerbated his mesmerism, he could see shapes in the flame, The Ghost Rider, The Wildcat...

kizkiz said:

Tanha shook her pretty little head. The cold was maddening even to her. That was the failing when you entered into someone else's reality. But she was a fucking queen of the dark siddhe.

Tanha's exquisite brows narrowed as she tilted her head between the pair of Outsiders. "Your aspects help," She grinned at Mick.

Click to expand...

It took Heatwave a second to drag his mind out of the fire. Several long sessions. And he frowned at her. "I dunno what that means. Aspects?"

"She means the outfits we made ourselves," Cold mused, flexing his hands to try and keep feeling in them. "We didn't just rewrite our gear to mesh with this 'story arc,' we rewrote ourselves. Subconsciously, I guess. Wrote ourselves into it."

kizkiz said:

"Your pal seems not mind the cold as much as he did the heat, but I reckon you could use someone to warm you up." Her hands were not warm but neither were they cold. She curled against Mick's grizzled body, leaning her head on his shoulder. A small shake of her head parted her mane of corn silk hair as she looked up at him. In the horrid light of the Devil Grass fire, her hair didn't shimmer so much as undulate as the fire vomited sparks and smoke in fitful spurts.

It was surreal watching herself play herself in this story. She realized then that the wind had shifted on them. The smoke of the Devil Grass was blowing into their faces!

Click to expand...

Mick was about to confirm the affirmative. Watching the fire had gotten him in a certain... mood. And body heat was a damn sight better than no heat at all. But as the smoke washed over him in earnest he turned his head to gaze at the fire once more, watched it flare up in his mind's hallucinations, listened to it whisper to him in the raging roaring voice of Danni Ketch's Hellrider form...

...but then a black splat like ink made from shadow flew out of the darkness, clapping over the fire and snuffing it out, even muffling the smoke and keeping it from escaping.

And Lisa Snart stood there, her gun out, looking grim. "What happened to insisting we stay sober on the job, Len?"

Leonard Snart stared at the woman with the long dark hair dressed in black. "...Leese? You're... you're alive? Like... with a body and everything?"

The Ebon Glider smiled sadly at him. Unlike Cold, she'd had her mind unlocked somewhat to the vistas of Void and the influence of thought on spacetime-- it was all like origami-- by the influence of Kiz. But she still had a long way to go, and she was struggling almost as much as they were to maintain a sense of her "self" in the face of the stark unforgiving wilderness.

But she understood a little more about the transformation she'd undergone in coming here. Not as much as Tanha, but more than the boys.

"It's just an aspect."

She nodded to the Unseelie.

"Thanks for keeping 'em alive. Now everyone gather close."

And-- a variation on her ability to wrap everyone up in her own (un)living dimensional pocket, a variation on her theme-- she couldn't fly at ghostly superspeed, here, so much the pity, but she--

--she unfolded, swirling around them in a dome.

Warm. Airtight. Bigger on the inside.

Not as good as Kiz' Demense as a "safe space" for her favorite special snowflake and his crew. But it would do in a pinch.

Can you sleep in a dream? Or do you just dream about sleeping?

Lisa said:

But she understood a little more about the transformation she'd undergone in coming here. Not as much as Tanha, but more than the boys.

"It's just an aspect." She nodded to the Unseelie. "Thanks for keeping 'em alive. Now everyone gather close."

Click to expand...

Tanha smiled, regaining a sense of herself, "If you recognize the debt, I am happy to oblige, Sai." She flicked her hand on her hat in a small salute. Although Lisa wasn't Kiz; their was a proxy relationship, two degrees of seperation. Something that helped to draw a portion of her owed allowance, because the prisoners of Kiz didn't have the same rights, titles, and privileges as this strumpet did. Tanha shook her head again, stretching, showing off her perky breasts beneath her barely there blouse and an expanse of tanned midriff. "There will be water if god wills it."

Lisa nodded and said, "Now everyone gather close." She wrapped everyone up in her own not quite living but not dead dimensional pocket, a variation on her theme -- she couldn't fly at ghostly superspeed, here, so much the pity, but she unfolded, swirling around them in a dome. Warm. Airtight. Bigger on the inside.

Tanha hated the bitch with every fiber of her being. Hated being demeaned into drawing from this strumpet. Hated that this strumpet had captured the eye of her master. Hated the strumpet's pretty little face and smug smile. But she was not above being passive aggressive. So Tanha flashed her most winning smile and tipped her hat again. "Thankee Sai! Not as good as Kiz..." Tanha trailed off, kicking at the hard packed dirt, "He has bedrooms and food and-" she cut off looking Lisa up and down, giving a small smile, "But it'll doe in a pinch, and hey it's a great first try, don't measure yourself to high. Well anyway, grave dirt and drab colors are better than freezing to death. At least it's warm and airtight. Gotta start somewhere."

"Well, I'm bushed." Tanha tapped her lip in thought. Just like before, her hands flew out and liquid silver gossamer streamers whirled from behind her and along her fingers. The skeleton of a four poster bed wrought from crystal and silver took shape. Tanha's fingers wove in rapid, intricate gestures like she was weaving a tapestry with thread so fine that you couldn't see the thread. The gossamer split and split and split until it was invisible. Shimmering curtains that undulated in their own breeze grew from the top of the columns. A thick mattress of feathers and satin materialized. Tanha hopped up on to the side of the bed, kicked her boots off and fell backwards. She sighed, then rolled over onto her side. She crooked her finger at Mick. "Come and light my fire, big boy."

While some discuss if near the other graves be room enough for this.

kizkiz said:

Tanha smiled, regaining a sense of herself, "If you recognize the debt, I am happy to oblige, Sai." She flicked her hand on her hat in a small salute.

Click to expand...

Lisa opened her mouth to reply. But a distant alarm bell rang at the back of her brain. Maybe it was something she'd read in a book a long time ago. Maybe it was something engraved on her because of her parlay with Kiz. Some rudimentary Junior Woodchuck Guidebook for Greenhorn Void Walkers.

But it told her, hard, in no uncertain tones, that she did not need to go around acknowledging debts to Faerie of any Court.

"No debt was implied or should be inferred," Lisa replied with weary tonelessness. "Y'all would've been dead from exposure or crazy from satan-sativa smoke if I hadn't shown up anyhow. I'd say calling it even would do ya fine."

kizkiz said:

Tanha shook her head again, stretching, showing off her perky breasts beneath her barely there blouse and an expanse of tanned midriff. "There will be water if god wills it."

Click to expand...

"She keeps sayin' that," Cold grimaced. "But I ain't seen no God, no Will, and no water."

"The world's moved on," Lisa murmured. "Stands to reason God'd be ahead of that curve."

"Now everyone gather close." She wrapped everyone up in her own not quite living but not dead dimensional pocket, a variation on her theme -- she couldn't fly at ghostly superspeed, here, so much the pity, but she unfolded, swirling around them in a dome. Warm. Airtight. Bigger on the inside.

kizkiz said:

"Thankee Sai! Not as good as Kiz..." Tanha trailed off, kicking at the hard packed dirt, "He has bedrooms and food and-" she cut off looking Lisa up and down, giving a small smile, "But it'll doe in a pinch, and hey it's a great first try, don't measure yourself to high. Well anyway, grave dirt and drab colors are better than freezing to death. At least it's warm and airtight. Gotta start somewhere."

Click to expand...

"Yeah," Lisa squinted at her, totally getting the passive aggression in waves, feeling those catfight claws just snipping at the air, Real Housewives of Mid-World Skerry, or whatever. "It's my first day, and I don't even have my starter Pokémon."

She half-considered plastering Tanha's mouth shut with the black goo that came out of her gun-- an aspect that mimicked her true-form's tendrils, though more conceptually than literally --but she knew that might buy her hurt none of them needed right now, and it might constitute a waste of ammo.

kizkiz said:

"Well, I'm bushed." Tanha tapped her lip in thought. Just like before, her hands flew out and liquid silver gossamer streamers whirled from behind her and along her fingers. The skeleton of a four poster bed wrought from crystal and silver took shape. Tanha's fingers wove in rapid, intricate gestures like she was weaving a tapestry with thread so fine that you couldn't see the thread. The gossamer split and split and split until it was invisible. Shimmering curtains that undulated in their own breeze grew from the top of the columns. A thick mattress of feathers and satin materialized. Tanha hopped up on to the side of the bed, kicked her boots off and fell backwards. She sighed, then rolled over onto her side. She crooked her finger at Mick. "Come and light my fire, big boy."

Click to expand...

Lisa got the impression that this was two thirds seduction technique and one third middle finger to Lisa-- she couldn't craft a four-poster Disney Princess bed out of her form-- no Weasley Tent here, just a dome. Lisa squinted again, and bit her tongue hard. She had to tread carefully-- she didn't know all the rules--

--she hadn't even realized she was learning the rules until the pieces had fallen into place there in the blasted battlefield that had been The Gem Cities.

Coming back more out of his head and into his mind now that the smoke had been quashed and the fire extinguished, Mick quickly recognized the two-thirds of that that was seduction, however.

Grinning slowly, loving the idea of a little damn body heat after all this... he took his hat off and tossed it aside. He got two steps and then glanced over his shoulder.

"Leese. Thanks. Could we get a little privacy, here?"

Lisa's cheek twitched. "Yeah, sure."

And then she changed how she had unfolded. Added one more fold. Maybe two.

...and a wall rippled down there under the dome, giving Tanha and Mick plenty of space to play around in.

While Lisa and Len were together. Brother and sister.

Len sat with his back against the wall of the dome, head tilted back and hat on the ground beside him. "I miss when I was the one that knew what was going on. When I was the chessmaster instead of another piece."

Lisa picked up that hat, dusted it off, and sat down beside him, rolling it back and forth in her fingers. "Oh, I think we were always pieces in someone's game. Toys in a dollhouse. Text on a screen."

"And now you're a philosopher," Len laughed a broken laugh, his throat still feeling like it was full of broken glass from being so parched and cold-- even through his aspect.

"What can I say? Death changes a girl. And so does Despair."

A brief aside before bed.

Tanha hated the bitch with every fiber of her being. Hated being demeaned into drawing from this strumpet. Hated that this strumpet had captured the eye of her master. Hated the strumpet's pretty little face and smug smile. But she was not above being passive aggressive. So Tanha flashed her most winning smile and tipped her hat again. "Thankee Sai! Not as good as Kiz..." Tanha trailed off, kicking at the hard packed dirt, "He has bedrooms and food and-" she cut off looking Lisa up and down, giving a small smile, "But it'll doe in a pinch, and hey it's a great first try, don't measure yourself to high. Well anyway, grave dirt and drab colors are better than freezing to death. At least it's warm and airtight. Gotta start somewhere."

"Yeah," Lisa squinted at her, totally getting the passive aggression in waves, feeling those catfight claws just snipping at the air, Real Housewives of Mid-World Skerry, or whatever. "It's my first day, and I don't even have my starter Pokémon."

"I'm happy to help however you need, Sai." Tanha lowered her eyes briefly to the ground and raised them back up to peek at Lisa. "If you need to practice..." Tanha smiled all innocence and sunshine, retreating behind the veneer of the persona she'd donned. "You could try summoning me a few times?"

She half-considered plastering Tanha's mouth shut with the black goo that came out of her gun -- an aspect that mimicked her true-form's tendrils, though more conceptually than literally -- but she knew that might buy her hurt none of them needed right now, and it might constitute a waste of ammo.

"I'll take that as a no, then." Tanha's look crestfallen was perfectly sculpted. Her lower lip wobbled then she twisted her mouth into a half smile and droopy, sad eyes. "Well the offer stands, Sai. You are Din to this ka-tet. I'm your servant, and you my master."

Lisa and Len before bed... said:

Lisa picked up that hat, dusted it off, and sat down beside him, rolling it back and forth in her fingers. "Oh, I think we were always pieces in someone's game. Toys in a dollhouse. Text on a screen."

"And now you're a philosopher," Len laughed a broken laugh, his throat still feeling like it was full of broken glass from being so parched and cold-- even through his aspect.

"What can I say? Death changes a girl. And so does Despair."

Click to expand...

--- --- ---
About 8 hours later...
--- --- ---

While Lisa was aligned to Death and attracted to Despair, Tanha was of Dream and Desire. Tanha had no clue how to halt the march of zombies or push a cult to insistence on suicide. She had no sway over the passing of the soul nor the fetters that bound ghosts to their failures in life. Tanha was more than a little surprised to find herself meditating upon the differences between Lisa and herself as she rode Mick through another orgasm. It didn't take much to keep such a virile stud going orgasm after orgasm, even within the bounds of Creation Tanha could keep a man of Fire and Delusion going like a perpetual motion machine until there wasn't any juices left in him. The only hope a mortal ever had was approach Helligan had taken; outright denial before the seed of desire could take root. It didn't guarantee resistance forever, but it was the path all alcoholics learn. There was no taste that didn't lead to swallowing.

"I have licensure," she whispered into Mick's ear as they climaxed towards their fifth orgasm. "Not even Kiz could begrudge me, but I like you, little fire ant." She let a small tincture of laughter escape from her mouth. It was like the tinkling of a small, silver bell. Flame danced along her back and up along her hair, igniting into a fireball mane like a lion of fire. She arched her back and thrust her fat, heavy thrust towards Mick's mouth, letting him suckle upon them. She ran her hands through his hair, pulled his head back so that their eyes were locked in each other's.

"Like heroine, little pet, one taste of me becomes a life long addiction that can never be sated." She ran her tongue along his, resting her other hand upon the other side of his throat. "But, you know. They always know deep down." She smiled and thrust down upon Mick's cock, letting him spurt inside of her. As their juices commingled, she milked more than just his seed.

His Heart Grace blossomed once more like a charred little rose, granted his was a tainted, twisted thing, but it was sustenance none the less. There were many emotions her kind preyed upon, but her favorite had always been lust. She took just enough to sate her hunger and refill her Cup. Only a rank amateur killed the goat because they were hungry when they could live on its milk indefinitely.

Tanha rose from Mick and finally let his psyche plummet down into the depths of sleep. She helped him along with a slow, lingering kiss upon his wish. "Sleep tight little bug." She smiled down at him as she dismounted and hopped off the bed. It had been easy to change her seeming to accommodate Mick's desires, but with the others there were still appearances to keep. It was easier for Lisa to think this was just a cat fight between young girls, when she looked as young as Lisa.

She crossed the room and laid her hand upon the "door" that divided the two places, pushing with enough force to make it clear she sought entrance.

"A thought occurred to me, Sai," Tanha drawled when she entered Lisa's chambers. "Your aspect in Creation was built around transport." A slow, completely innocent smile spread across her cherry red lips. "Perhaps we could attain great speed if you-" Her baby blues skipped to Len, interested as to his reaction as much as his sisters. "If you let me shape you into some horses. I could make us quite a stylish coach with which you could pull us across the desert." She arched her eyes, "Or have y'all come up with a better idea?" Her eyes flickered between the two of them. "Unless you were otherwise detained." A small smirk betrayed her lack of innocence in any of the words she'd used. "It'd be a fantastic educational opportunity for you as well, Sai."

There are other worlds than these...

Jake knew the face of his father, and he hated it. He'd always hated how arrogant and mean his father had been. The parties and work events always came first. And whenever Jake's grades slipped, well father was sure to call him to the study to be yelled at. He hadn't known he was looking for a new father, but Mr. Black had never yelled at him.

Jake was a black streak across the horizon, speeding towards the town that was hundreds of miles away from the way station of his second birth. But his new friend never tired. It never ceased in its affection for him. He was happy that Mr. Black had taught him how to make friends. He had always shied from "putting himself out there." His old father had always insisted it was important to keep trying, even after people made fun of you and pushed you around. But Mr. Black made more sense. These friends he was making would never make fun of him or push him around. They just wanted to be with him.

Now he had an opportunity to make bunches and bunches of new friends, and he wasn't afraid to put himself out there. He knew the secret to making friends now, so when he encountered an old man munching on some of the Devil Grass, Jake leaned over the side of his best friend. Black tendrils shot out from Jake's outstretched hand like Spiderman webbing. Yeah he liked that thought. He made the darkness more like that, black webbing that he could cocoon new people in. When they emerged they were like a butterfly, much nicer and prettier, at least towards Jake. Other people that encountered his new friends would join his social network. Mr. Black had taught him how to make his friend's make other friend's so eventually everyone could be his friend.

Jake flew through the town, snatching up new friends left and right. There were twenty hanging out in a bar, which was technically illegal for him to enter. He justified it, because he wasn't going there to drink. Beer was so gross anyway, why would anyone drink it? This town was like in the old westerns he sometimes watched on T.V. There were only like forty or so people to turn into new friends. When he was done, he called them all to follow him out of the town and back into the desert.

It was there about five miles outside of town that Jake encountered a man in gray.

"So," The Gray Man said, "It's going to be like that, is it?"

"Huh?" Jake was confused. He turned to look at his friends to see if any of them knew what the stranger was talking about. They just made grunting sounds and pushed forward to give the stranger a hug and make the stranger a friend. Jake was about to let them, after all most adults usually didn't make sense when they talked to him. Besides he had a funny feeling about this guy.

"Darkness will not avail you scion of Udun. Go back to the shadow! You cannot pass." The Gray Man's hands were a blur. They moved as only a gunslinger's hands could, although Jake didn't know how he knew that. In an instant, the Gray Man had two of the largest guns Jake had ever seen. "I am a servant of the White, wielder of the Eld's guns."

Jake raised a hand to signal to his new friends that it was okay to claim this man, when one of the man's ginormous guns lit up as if by a nuclear bomb followed by the crack of thunder. Before Jake could blink let alone recoil that same hand exploded. Darkness spurted from the stump. The black webbing that he'd used to make his new friends was now working to catch all the fragments of his hand and bring them together no matter how small. Mr. Black was a really great dad, Jake thought, to make sure his son didn't die while making friends.

The forty-two new friends shambled past Jake. Apparently they didn't need the hand signal after all. The Gray Man's guns made his friend's heads explode like a package of Lady Finger fireworks lit off on the Fourth of July. Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop and Jake lost ten friends just like that. This mad him angry and he raised his hands -- the one that got blown off was back to normal -- and he hurled a storm of black bullets at the Gray Man.

"You fool of a T-" The Gray Man was cut off as the black bullets flew at him. But instead of running or hiding, the man leapt into the crowd of Jake's friends. The Black Bullets rained down like arrows, darkening the sky before dropping like mad ravens amongst both friend and foe alike. Then the man threw off a corpse riddled with black bullet holes that he must have used like a shield.

"Wow," Jake said. "That was impress-" Then his head exploded.

In Mid-World Skerry, Stage Coaches You.

Mick Rory was a horny bastard, that much was certain.

He didn't date much, he was somewhat married to his work, but oh, he recognized a pretty filly as much as he recognized a pretty fire, and Tanha was both in equal measure, scorching hot in multiple senses.

And yet-- and yet-- this woman was like living Viagra in a way he couldn't comrephend-- Rogues had seen some crazy shit in Keystone-Central, but they'd traipsed well beyond that strata of reality here. She was like one of those hentai chicks, an impossible sex-demon...

...his body shook, but the more he got the more he wanted, dehydration suddenly the furthest thing from his mind...

kizkiz said:

"I have licensure," she whispered into Mick's ear as they climaxed towards their fifth orgasm. "Not even Kiz could begrudge me, but I like you, little fire ant." She let a small tincture of laughter escape from her mouth. It was like the tinkling of a small, silver bell. Flame danced along her back and up along her hair, igniting into a fireball mane like a lion of fire. She arched her back and thrust her fat, heavy thrust towards Mick's mouth, letting him suckle upon them. She ran her hands through his hair, pulled his head back so that their eyes were locked in each other's.

Click to expand...

Riveted by the pyrotechnics-- he'd never been able to combine fire and fucking before, but oh he'd daydreamed about it-- this was part of why he'd been so fascinated by The Rider-- he didn't even think twice about being the sub to her dom for now, clutching first one nipple in his teeth and then another as she demanded it-- and stared unflinching into her gaze when she locked it on his.

kizkiz said:

"Like heroine, little pet, one taste of me becomes a life long addiction that can never be sated." She ran her tongue along his, resting her other hand upon the other side of his throat. "But, you know. They always know deep down." She smiled and thrust down upon Mick's cock, letting him spurt inside of her. As their juices commingled, she milked more than just his seed.

Click to expand...

"AH!" he grunted as another dose of him somehow spurted up from his core and splattered inside her again. His breathing hitched, but she just kept going. "Snart always makes us work sober. But darlin', you're an addiction I can get behind."

kizkiz said:

Tanha rose from Mick and finally let his psyche plummet down into the depths of sleep. She helped him along with a slow, lingering kiss upon his wish. "Sleep tight little bug." She smiled down at him as she dismounted and hopped off the bed. It had been easy to change her seeming to accommodate Mick's desires, but with the others there were still appearances to keep. It was easier for Lisa to think this was just a cat fight between young girls, when she looked as young as Lisa.

Click to expand...

In his dreams, Mick Rory said something cool and bad-ass to Tanha as she went away, but he had already passed from waking to sleeping-- how could you sleep if you were already in The Dreaming? --and the conversation played out to no audience but the inside of his eyelids.

It was a good conversation, though. You would have liked it.

kizkiz said:

She crossed the room and laid her hand upon the "door" that divided the two places, pushing with enough force to make it clear she sought entrance.

Click to expand...

Len had fallen asleep hours ago, mid-sentence, as they had attempted to make plans by scritching them in the dirt, and Lisa had sat there quietly trying not to be painfully aware of everything that happened beneath her domed envelope-- trying not to think about the stuff that Tanha and Heatwave were doing to each other.

When Tanha approached, Lisa accepted the nudge and parted the dividing wall so that she could come in.

Len stirred, blinked-- almost immediately wakeful, like a soldier stealing a catnap on the plane before a HALO drop.

kizkiz said:

"A thought occurred to me, Sai," Tanha drawled when she entered Lisa's chambers. "Your aspect in Creation was built around transport." A slow, completely innocent smile spread across her cherry red lips. "Perhaps we could attain great speed if you-" Her baby blues skipped to Len, interested as to his reaction as much as his sisters. "If you let me shape you into some horses. I could make us quite a stylish coach with which you could pull us across the desert." She arched her eyes, "Or have y'all come up with a better idea?" Her eyes flickered between the two of them. "Unless you were otherwise detained." A small smirk betrayed her lack of innocence in any of the words she'd used. "It'd be a fantastic educational opportunity for you as well, Sai."

Click to expand...

"People keep dropping incest jokes around us," Len harrumphed. "Like this is some kinda Luke and Leia shit. We got the same initials as them, but that's where it stops."

"I don't know much about lucid dreaming," Lisa admitted, narrowing her gaze-- not accusingly, she was careful not to do it accusingly-- but pensively, "but it's frustrating as shit when you're dreaming something cool but you lose track of it because you can't figure out which character you are. We could seriously use a ride out there, but I'll be pretty damn useless to the crew if I lose myself in the process. If I can't come back and get lucid again after you-- shift my landscape."

Len chuckled faintly-- his sister had suddenly got seriously more impressive in the last day or so, and he couldn't be prouder of her. If only dear ol' ironsided dad could see them now. "But yeah. We might just have a plan."

Lisa pointed to the scratches they'd carved in the hardpan.

"When I followed you guys here from Earth," she noted, "I was able to use my tendrils to probe the echo of the rift Kiz left behind and unfold myself along it-- accordioning back together at this end. It may look like normal lustrous brunette locks again, but my hair still has an-- aspect-- of being tendrils. And I can feel-- somewhere ahead-- that there's more rifts like that-- little packet pocket pockmarks in reality-- all we have to do is get to them and I can unfold us along them again, shave ages off of our trek."

"That way we can all stay ourselves. Or as much ourselves as we can afford. And we don't subtract away my gun in the process of giving me the bibbidi-bobbidi treatment."

Three ships in the night

"People keep dropping incest jokes around us," Len harrumphed. "Like this is some kinda Luke and Leia shit. We got the same initials as them, but that's where it stops."

"You sleep in your sister's pouch," Tanha said, resting her small hands on her hips. "That's a special kind of relationship, but I'm not judging. And you passed up an opportunity at tag teaming me." She shrugged. Snagging Len was a long term play, but it didn't hurt to start early.

"I don't know much about lucid dreaming," Lisa admitted, narrowing her gaze-- not accusingly, she was careful not to do it accusingly-- but pensively, "but it's frustrating as shit when you're dreaming something cool but you lose track of it because you can't figure out which character you are."

Tanha laughed like the tinkling of a thousand glass bells. "That's not lucid dreaming, Sai. That'd be Dissociative Identity Disorder." Her smile was innocent but a smirk hid somewhere behind the scenes. She was a perfect liar and a face dancer the likes of which would rival the Tleilaxu, so it was always anyone's guess what she truly felt. It was a challenge Kiz had even after knowing her for a thousand years. So much so that sometimes Tanha didn't even know what was truth and what was lie.

"We could seriously use a ride out there, but I'll be pretty damn useless to the crew if I lose myself in the process. If I can't come back and get lucid again after you-- shift my landscape."

Tanha held up her hands, palms up like she was being held up at gun point. "I'm just looking out for you, Sai. I've seen so many of my master's disciples fall along the Path..." Her cherry red lips compressed. "But I get it, you are afraid, and fear is the mind killer...the little-death that brings total obliteration. And y'all are so knew to the Path." She lowered her hands, "It's fine I guess. I was just Dan-Dinh."

Len chuckled faintly-- his sister had suddenly got seriously more impressive in the last day or so, and he couldn't be prouder of her. If only dear ol' ironsided dad could see them now. "But yeah. We might just have a plan."

Tanha clapped and bounced up and down on the balls of her feet, which incidentally sent her breasts jiggling beneath her sheer top and leather vest. "Awesome Sai!"

Lisa pointed to the scratches they'd carved in the hardpan.

Tanha lurched forward, bending over at her waist with her one hand stroking her tanned cheek and chin. Her unlined brows furrowed as if she was in deep thought, seriously contemplating the chicken scratch.

"When I followed you guys here from Earth," Lisa noted.

"Yeah," Tanha said, nodding so emphatically that her blonde hair cascaded down obscuring most of her face. "I see that."

"I was able to use my tendrils to probe the echo of the rift Kiz left behind and unfold myself along it-- accordioning back together at this end. It may look like normal lustrous-"

"Ha!"

"-brunette locks again, but my hair still has an-- aspect-- of being tendrils."

"That's kinda creepy..." Tanha was still bent over at the waist, her tight leather pants painted onto her skin. The curve of her ass and flare of his hips and bust impossible to ignore. She wiggled. "But kinda kinky, I guess, Sai."

"And I can feel-- somewhere ahead-- that there's more rifts like that-- little packet pocket pockmarks in reality-- all we have to do is get to them and I can unfold us along them again, shave ages off of our trek."

"Yes Sai, there are skinnies out there..." Tanha said, raising back up from her intense scrutiny of the etching in the hard packed surface.

"That way we can all stay ourselves. Or as much ourselves as we can afford. And we don't subtract away my gun in the process of giving me the bibbidi-bobbidi treatment."

"Get to them, you say? How far? We need to get to New York Prime, getting lost between worlds or dropping out entirely would suck, but your Din in this Ka-Tet."

Nothing but plain to the horizon’s bound.

kizkiz said:

"Get to them, you say? How far? We need to get to New York Prime, getting lost between worlds or dropping out entirely would suck, but your Din in this Ka-Tet."

Click to expand...

"My... depth perception of spacial relationships in this place is... I don't know exactly," Lisa admitted. "But I think we can reach one with a few more hours of walking. Provided, of course, you leave Mick with enough juice to even walk tomorrow, and you stop-- distracting-- my brother."

She snapped her fingers in front of Len's face and he blinked out of a thousand-yard reverie, shaking his head-- even he hadn't proven immune to Tanha's charms long term, she was literally hypnotic, and she had... really been pouring it on.

He hadn't even had enough focus to continue his protests against accusations of incest by pointing out it would also be necrophilia, as he had with Kiz himself what seemed like... so very, very long ago.

"Ah, Christ, woman, put those away," he waved his hand in front of Tanha, trying to keep the spell broken as much as he could, angry with himself for letting his judgement get basically literally clouded like that.

But then he paused, as though managing to process some of the stuff that had transpired while he had been all clamored up in the glamour. "Wait. New York Prime? There's more than one New York?"

"Well, there would have to be more than one York," Lisa pointed out, "for there to be a New one."

Len squinted at her. "That... almost made sense to me."

"The question is, which New York Prime is it?" The Ebon Glider mused.

"Wait, how can there be more than one New York Prime? Doesn't that mean it's the-- first one, or the main one? There can't be more than one main New York."

"You would think that," Lisa agreed, with a voice that suggested she'd seen a lot more things than she'd expected while she had been chasing her crew to this Dream-Skerry, but offered no further explanation.

"I don't know much about dins or kas-tet," she regarded Tanha, "but the mortal boys need rest before tomorrow. I think I can still shield us from the worst of the wind and the sand and the sun while we're moving, but we're going to have to push hard if we're gonna reach that 'skinny.' When we get there, let me worry about navigation. Savvy?"

The night is long, longer than it should be...

"Get to them, you say? How far? We need to get to New York Prime, getting lost between worlds or dropping out entirely would suck, but your Din in this Ka-Tet."

"My... depth perception of spacial relationships in this place is... I don't know exactly," Lisa admitted. "But I think we can reach one with a few more hours of walking. Provided, of course, you leave Mick with enough juice to even walk tomorrow, and you stop-- distracting-- my brother."

"What? Who me?" Tanha looked around like Lisa must be talking to someone else. There had to be some other lustful twenty something that Lisa was talking about.

Lisa snapped her fingers in front of Len's face and he blinked out of a thousand-yard reverie, shaking his head-- even he hadn't proven immune to Tanha's charms long term, she was literally hypnotic, and she had... really been pouring it on.

He hadn't even had enough focus to continue his protests against accusations of incest by pointing out it would also be necrophilia, as he had with Kiz himself what seemed like... so very, very long ago.

"Ah, Christ, woman, put those away," he waved his hand in front of Tanha, trying to keep the spell broken as much as he could, angry with himself for letting his judgement get basically literally clouded like that.

Tanha's hands went up into the air. "I'll put anything you want anywhere you want it." Her chest thrust out. Her skin shimmered like she was hot and heavy for something. She batted her eye lashes and placed a whisper of a smile on her face.

But then he paused, as though managing to process some of the stuff that had transpired while he had been all clamored up in the glamour. "Wait. New York Prime? There's more than one New York?"

"Well, there would have to be more than one York," Lisa pointed out, "for there to be a New one."

Len squinted at her. "That... almost made sense to me."

"The question is, which New York Prime is it?" The Ebon Glider mused.

"Wait, how can there be more than one New York Prime? Doesn't that mean it's the-- first one, or the main one? There can't be more than one main New York."

"It's like a prime cut of beef," Tanha said, her languid eyes dropping down towards Len's crotch. She wet her lips with her tongue. "Sure you could eat a hammock or rump roast if you were in a bind, but why oh why wouldn't you eat the prime when it was right there?" Her eyes flickered towards Lisa for a moment, then she shrugged and leaned backwards. "Especially when the cow is eager to be eaten." Tanha's smile was coy and sweet. Her legs parted a few inches, just enough to draw attention to the gap in her thighs.

"You would think that," Lisa agreed, with a voice that suggested she'd seen a lot more things than she'd expected while she had been chasing her crew to this Dream-Skerry, but offered no further explanation.

"Mhmm," Tanha said, "I most certainly do."

"I don't know much about dins or kas-tet," she regarded Tanha, "but the mortal boys need rest before tomorrow."

Tanha pouted and looked down at the ground, tilting her head lower until her golden hair started to obscure her face.

"I think I can still shield us from the worst of the wind and the sand and the sun while we're moving-"

"Assuming there will be a sun or a tomorrow." Tanha shrugged, drawing sigils in the ground in a random, chaotic pattern.

"-but we're going to have to push hard if we're gonna reach that 'skinny.' When we get there, let me worry about navigation. Savvy?"

"Yeah, sure, whatever." Tanha scribbled out whatever she'd been etching in the thin layer of dust that rested upon the hard packed, shattered clay ground. Then her mood passed and she looked up at Lisa. "You know, I would have thought you'd invoke grave dirt." Her hands flickered in three tight, intricate gestures and then both reached back around before hurling a streamers of gossamer over the ground. The living silvery dream substances of mortal minds undulated as it writhed upon the ground. Then Tanha twisted her and hooked her fingers around three times. "Pillows."

And then the ground was littered with a dizzying array of pillows of every sort and style from Buddhist wheat germ meditating crescents to pink, silk down stuffed monstrosities. There were even a few memory foam bed pillows. "Well this is going to be a boring six hours," her eyes ran over Len's body, "Unless you need someone to cuddle with. We don't have to do anything you aren't comfortable with? I'm quite good at putting boys to sleep."
--- --- ---

The day never came. The hours creeped by but the sun never rose. Instead after about six hours the moon took on first a yellowish color like old parchment, which deepened into cantaloupe oranges followed by blood reds. Outside the air remained cold and the ground desolate.

Tanha woke Mick with a hand job, but didn't do much besides clean up the mess she'd made in a very lewd manner. She was scrupulous about ensuring that Mick was immaculately clean and free of any aftermath of his waking. Then she gave him a long, probing kiss, letting him grope her, before pulling away and giggling. "Rise and shine, babe."

I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring.

kizkiz said:

And then the ground was littered with a dizzying array of pillows of every sort and style from Buddhist wheat germ meditating crescents to pink, silk down stuffed monstrosities. There were even a few memory foam bed pillows. "Well this is going to be a boring six hours," her eyes ran over Len's body, "Unless you need someone to cuddle with. We don't have to do anything you aren't comfortable with? I'm quite good at putting boys to sleep."

Click to expand...

There was a glitter in Len's eyes, and then there was a visible mental effort to shove that away, an effort so monumental he looked even more exhausted afterwards.

And then he managed to reply: "No, thanks. I never had much of a childhood. Neither of us did. I was never a boy."

kizkiz said:

The day never came. The hours creeped by but the sun never rose. Instead after about six hours the moon took on first a yellowish color like old parchment, which deepened into cantaloupe oranges followed by blood reds. Outside the air remained cold and the ground desolate.

Tanha woke Mick with a hand job, but didn't do much besides clean up the mess she'd made in a very lewd manner. She was scrupulous about ensuring that Mick was immaculately clean and free of any aftermath of his waking. Then she gave him a long, probing kiss, letting him grope her, before pulling away and giggling. "Rise and shine, babe."

Click to expand...

"Rise?" Mick mumbled, basically lost to an addiction just as intense as his pyromania. "For you, always. An' shining's something I can always arrange."

He had to blink a lot of times before his eyes focused. Belatedly, he thought to make sure he was dressed.

"What time is it?"

"Moot," Lisa frowned grimly as the dome partially folded up, and she glanced up at the open, murksome sky. "Seems like my spacial perceptions aren't the only thing wonky here. And-- and I think it's getting worse? We need to hurry."

"What's that they say about a journey of a thousand miles?" Len wondered. "'...you'll never get there without shortcuts and hauling ass?"

Playing Catchup

Three hours ago...

Mister Black stood high upon the tallest peak of the Cyclopean Mountains stretching his hands even further into the air. The twisted demon that had taken him here writhed and wiggled beneath his feet. Mister Black was standing, reaching up on his tip toes, trying to get just a little bit higher. He rose even higher onto the edge of his metal boot tips, and his middle finger just scrapped the moon. It was a small white orb, cold and soggy.

With his other hand he cast three bindings in quick succession. First the Sundering of Nightmare's Lament, which tore into the fabric of this constructed reality. He wasn't of Dreams, but Despair and Death did touch upon the Dreaming. Next was Enduring the Long Night, which set firm the grasp of Despair upon the natural order of the heavens. Finally he placed an intricate, knotted warding of his own devising called The Endless Tangle of the Labyrinth.

He lowered himself down until he was sitting astride his mount once more. "That should do."

"Impressive."

Mister Black laughed as he nudged his mount around. A man in grey, dressed like a cowboy with his hands on large revolvers stood close by. Mister Black didn't make any immediate movements, but he wasn't troubled by this new comer. "Felt the urge to palaver, did we?"

"Something like that." The Gray Man said, a hair of a smile twitching his lips. "You've been harassing Middle Earth for ages."

Mister Black smirked. "Three days can seem like ages when you are waiting for Christmas morning."

The Gray Man raised his hands up but without the big guns in them. "I know what we've done to you and yours. I keen it, as they say."

"As they say." Mister Black nodded. "I'm a wee bit impatient."

"Have you considered that you can succeed and win at the same time? Slip your leash for awhile?"

"You don't know my bond with my lord then." Mister Black shrugged. "I'm not here to palaver, so this is where I kill you."

He raised two fingers up. "Two words that'll stick in your craw. Magdalene Grimoire."

"Hmmm."

Praying for Horsies

Len and Lisa said:

"What time is it?" Len asked.

"Moot," Lisa frowned grimly as the dome partially folded up, and she glanced up at the open, murksome sky. "Seems like my spacial perceptions aren't the only thing wonky here. And-- and I think it's getting worse? We need to hurry."

"What's that they say about a journey of a thousand miles?" Len wondered. "'...you'll never get there without shortcuts and hauling ass?"

Click to expand...

"Yeah," Tanha said, looking around. The morning hadn't come, but the stark black of night had retreated to a muddled gray color as if the sky was obscured with smog. The cold of night warred with what should have been the heat of day, resulting in low lying fog, ooze out of the ground like oil from a teenager's pores. A healthy dose of Despair had been heaped upon the desolation of the eternal almost night. The wind was still there, picking up grit and rubbing it into every exposed patch of skin. The could redoubled its efforts, dropping down below the point at which water froze.

"Well," she craned her neck up towards the sky and squinted. "Look's like Havel upped his game." She turned back towards Lisa, "I hope you can keep up, because walking in this miasma will take ages."
Tanha waited a moment before adding, "We could always do plan B?"