Athwart History (Closed)

[Obuzeti]

There's a faint click as the front door to the mirror-Coulee clicks open. Past it is the dim outlines of the outside realm - the faint glimmer of water in the reflected light, and past that, endless dark. Jack comes in, his tread heavy on the tile, and closes the door behind himself. "Ellie," he greets quietly, and moves to settle against the wall to the right of the mirror, close enough to feel its heat but out of its line of sight. There's no telling how much time he spends in this precise position behind the infinite multitude of mirrors, just out of sight.

He's quiet for a long moment, looking at nothing.

"You alright?' he eventually asks. Not what happened, nothing like that. He doesn't really care for humans. They're too distant from his reality. Whatever Ellie is, she shares his general isolation and penchant for wandering. They identify as something else, though what that is he doesn't know.

Besides, he knows most of what went down. The Tower has too much glass in it to really shut him out.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Ellie freezes in place, her heart rate spiking-but the click is here, not there-so no action required, and the irrational fear of discovery, of imagined, nightmare accusations of trespass-they fade away, and the tightness in her throat loosens as the girl relaxes.

Ellie offers a feeble smile at his greeting, though it wasn’t an insincere one-she’s almost relieved to see him, can take comfort in the company of her friend and fellow ‘inbetweener’, though she’s not sure he thinks of it like that.

“Hello Jack.” She looks back down at her scribbled, simple math-finishes adding it up, and then neatly writes it next to the indicated address before he speaks again, and she has to think a little harder on her pencil point and that paper, the gloved fingers of her free hand pulling at and balling up the hoodie sleeve sticking out of her coat one.

“I...don’t know.” She answers honestly and a little slowly, setting her pencil down and staring at it a moment. “Jen….Jenna and...Mr. Halwell...um.” She seems to realize that he probably already knows, eyes trailing back up to him. “The Tower.” She finishes awkwardly, and while Ellie doesn’t sound angry or even upset with the pair-she does sound a little shell shocked, blown away. This was no happy liberation for the girl who wandered. The Tower was the only bit of structure or safety she’d ever known-and she’d left it in the wake of it being turned upside down.

She doesn’t know what to do-she needs Sarah to tell her what to do. Maybe how to feel? And she doesn’t know how to say that without sounding, maybe, like a crazy person, or a baby. Jack doesn’t need crazy people or babies. She’s his friend. She worries about him sometimes, alone in here. He’d also given his condolences once, when she told him she lived in the Tower. She hadn’t understood that, really...and she’s not sure she understood why what had happened yesterday had happened, either.

Nothing makes any sense anymore.

“Jack, do you know where Sarah is? She...she wasn’t in her quarters, when it happened.” Ellie glances down at the yellow pages tear out and her scribbled notes, the inexact distances she’d have to travel in The Other. “I heard she might be in a hospital. I’m...I’m looking for her.” Quiet a beat, and while she does want Sarah’s help, needs to hear her thoughts, her decision on what she should do, her help in talking to Cid-that...wasn’t all.

She rolled the corner of the page up a little, then smoothed it out, then rolled it again-picking at the edge with her fingers before, finally-

“I...I’m worried something might be wrong.”

 

[Obuzeti]

Jack gives a tiny nod, not much more than an inclination of his head. "I saw, yes."

It'd made him feel better, though probably not for the same reasons as anyone else. It was reassuring to remember that whatever kind of freak he was, Adamant was something vastly more alien and cold than he could ever be. His counterpart was beastly and cruel, but ultimately subject to at least a law of physics, even if not the standard one. Whatever ejected Elias from the pilot seat was something that owed no allegiance to mortal bounds. Jack isn't that far gone. He's strange and isolated and a freak, but not that, at least.

The second reason is that Cid is a fucking prick and watching him finally get his ass handed to him introduced Jack to a level of schadenfreud that he was previously unacquainted with.

"I don't know where Sarah is," he says with a shrug. "But the room that Cid claims is hers never had anyone in it anytime I looked, after that fight against Marrane. She's somewhere else entirely, so I don't even know where to start looking."

It's a harsh truth but the only one he has to give.

"That said," Jack continues, quietly, "I would be willing to bet that as soon as Cid wakes up, he'll go to check that Sarah is still wherever he left her. That or his office might have something we can check in the meantime."

Cid he doesn't care at all for, and Sarah's pity burns, unintentional as it is. Only Ellie seems to really get it. If she has anyone left in the first world, it seems only right that Jack help her find that person. It's more than anyone ever did for him.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

”But the room that Cid claims is hers never had anyone in it anytime I looked, after that fight against Marrane.”

Ellie goes still, frowning at her inexact figures on the paper. Somewhere else…

And-spying? Spying on Cid? She can’t go spying on, he wouldn’t like if-no, no, she won’t do it. She’ll just have to wait and...

“Sarah d-didn’t send for me, after that. I...I didn’t go to her, either. I thought...” Ellie murmurs slowly, tracing back how many days Sarah had been unaccounted for in the Tower, in such a case.

As for waiting or maybe even...hiding? From her-it was just, Ash had been there that morning, and then the next-gone forever. Gone. Even Cid couldn’t keep her safe, not out there. Ellie hadn’t wanted to think about it. She did her best not to, and imagined Sarah might be doing the same. But what if...what if not? What if Sarah had, for once, needed her?

And what if Sarah needed her now?

She can’t talk to Cid. Can’t show her face, not with what had happened. She needs Sarah for that, but more importantly-she needs to know Sarah’s okay. Something felt wrong about her absence, about her...hiding away, even as the Tower fell.

Sarah would have looked for her. Even if that meant spying.

“What...what do we look for, up there?” Ellie ventures, hands trembling as she sets her pencil down and folds her papers up around it-and the stolen phone book page. She shoves it all into her backpack, and is ready to go. It made more sense this way, anyway-it would have taken a very long time, wandering hospital after hospital in the hopes Sarah was close by.

It suddenly occurs to her that Jack had offered to help without even being asked-and the flush of gratitude she has for his friendship helps settle her nerves. She’s a coward who’d rather be hiding, but she’s not alone, and she won't hide. Not until she knows Sarah's okay, at least.

 

[Obuzeti]

Jack sits. He looks past Ellie.

He remembers his mother. Frail, weak. Dead long before he'd ever even unlocked his curse, this parallel existence of his. He remembers the long moan of the wind over the endless plains in Wyoming, in Niobara, out where the cities don't even bother to draw lines anymore. He remembers the emptiness of the barn and the house after he'd buried Mama, and the desultory year that followed, picking at vegetables he'd hated.

Her absence felt so much louder in those empty plains. There was no comparison. He'd known no one else. It had just been - them. And then, him.

He had been alone.

Jack looks back to Ellie, and his shoulders tighten as he looks at her thin frame and the threadbare stretch of her hoodie.

"We should go look for her," he says. "She might need help, but more importantly, she doesn't deserve to be alone. Wherever she is."

Ellie doesn't deserve to be alone, he means, but this is an answer she'd never accept. She deserves to know that a home waits for her.

"Bills, medical test results. Things like that," Jack says, and offers a hand down to Ellie. The misshapen limb has five fingers, a palm, but they're lumpy with geodes, twisted with amethyst and quartz veins that thread through the stony flesh. "Cid likes to keep track of everything. He'll have a paper trail for us to follow somewhere, if only so he has physical proof to reassure himself he's in control with. We follow that paperwork to wherever it goes. Or hand it over to Protagonist. Whatever."

He doesn't like Marie, either, but her scorn for her own disability has earned his grudging respect. Being a hero did her no favors, like him.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

“No, not Sarah.” Ellie worriedly agrees, fingers twisting at the ends of her long sleeve. Never Sarah-she deserved...she deserved the world, and...and she doesn’t know what else. Sarah had saved her. Sarah was the mother Ellie fiercely wished she had always had.

Jack offers her his hand and Ellie stops short, not quite flinching-but not registering it for what it is, initially-eyes widened, flicking from it to his face-before that flush of gratitude she’d felt reached her face in a relieved smile, and she took his hand without further hesitation.

“Thank you, Jack.” Ellie feels a little braver, a little steadier backed up by her friend. They’d find Sarah, and then, well... Ellie would be a better daughter, this time. Sarah had disappeared right under her nose.

Not again.

~*~

Holding Jack’s hand allows the world walker to follow him seamlessly, lily pad to lily pad before they’re looking into an office she’s only been to a scarce couple of times, in all the years she’s lived in the Tower.

El Cid hasn’t been home yet. Ellie doesn’t know where he is, but she’s glad to find the floor empty. Still, there’s the others, and even though she saw Tectonic in Atlantis-Ellie doesn’t trust him not to show back up here, omnipotent and somehow knowing she’s erred.

“The furniture rises up from the floor.” Ellie whispers, peering at the empty space and particularly watchful of the elevator. “There’s a backup panel, over there.” The mousey girl hesitates, then glances to Jack. “Should I…should I sneak over to it?”

 

[Obuzeti]

"Go ahead," Jack says with a frown, inspecting the room from his side of the mirrors. Something feels . . . off. It's a sensation he's never had before - like vertigo of the soul. There's distance here that shouldn't be, a depth that the physical world gives the lie to. "Be careful. This isn't right. Something here isn't. I don't know what."

It's probably not a trap - he'd know if anyone was hiding anywhere in the Tower nearby - but he can't shake the feeling.

It's also clean of any sign of someone living here. The sheets aren't ruffled or slept in. There's no laundry lying around, or books set out of place - Sarah liked reading, right? - no clip newspaper articles from Peter, no personal anything. Cid could have cleaned the place out of course - he'd do that - but it's one more creeping sensation on the back of his neck.

He flickers into the mirror set into the closet, and comes back out, his mouth in a grim line. "There's uniforms, but none of Sarah's casual wear. She's not here. Probably hasn't been, either."

If Sarah had been on her feet, she'd have something out of costume. She's not Cid. She doesn't live in the suit.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

”Go ahead.”

Ellie gives one last anxious look about the place from beneath her hood-before she pressed her fingertips to her side of the glass, imagining surface tension on a bubble-

“Be careful. This isn't right. Something here isn't. I don't know what."

Ellie nods solemnly, taking this information seriously-and passes through the glass and into the room proper, from cold to warm air. No alarms go off, no one shows up to demand what she’s doing here, and nothing, really, happens.

Ellie releases the breath of air she hadn’t realized she was holding and moves for the backup panel. She wonders what doesn't feel right to him, and what that could mean.

“I found her costume. The new one. I found it, and a hatbox of old things. Things she looks at sometimes I think, when no one’s around…?” Ellie bites her lip as the panel lights up beneath her fingers, wanting credentials. With only a tinge of guilt, she taps in a password she’s not supposed to know.

The office illuminates, and after a moment looking over a bareboned, top down view map-Ellie taps on the circular desk, and what she thinks she remembers being a filing cabinet of some kind.

“I don’t know if she’d take them with her or not, but with the Tower...um. So I took them to be safe.” A longer pause. “Her Minnie Mouse watch was missing, though.”

Ellie’s not sure if that was a good or bad sign.

The desk and cabinet had lifted from panels in the floor and Ellie crept over to them, fiddling with her sleeves nervously. But, she wants to find out where he might have sent Sarah, and...well. She was curious. Sarah had drawn her into her world, some. Cid not so much. The knight was kind of a mystery.

 

[Obuzeti]

"Something else to add to the pile," Jack murmurs, as he looks over Ellie's shoulder from the window behind her. In transparent glass his reflection is more than a little ghostly - he only turns visible in the light sheen, or where flaws warp the glass. "Go through the filing cabinet. Look for payment receipts, if for nothing else than my own curiosity."

Jack smiles. It's a bitter thing. "Cid loves paperwork. He'll have the details somewhere else, but the receipts are always on hand."

He'd been a big fan of nickel-and-diming the other League members, back in the day. It had been annoying back then. With him in charge, he doesn't imagine the habit's gotten any better. Power is always better with proof.

In the meantime, he steps through every reflective object in the office, testing to see if he can locate where that creeping sensation comes from. Nothing really gets him closer except for the glass of the lightbulb in the elevator. It's dizzying, there, but that could also be a result of trying to fit himself into a smaller space than usual. Any reflective surface can contain him, but trying to emerge from one smaller than his body just doesn't work. They just act as peekholes instead.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Ellie nods and feels a little better-she’s not the only one who’s curious. She has the distinct feeling Jack would like to be sorting through, too, and resolves to just-bring anything interesting over to him. She’s already here. She knows there would be a lot to explain as it was.

And there is a lot of interesting, if strange, stuff...kind of boring, though. With all the technology Cid has, he seemed to prefer to take notes and write some things out on paper, and indeed-receipts upon receipts upon receipts. She can understand a little bit about the notes-paper always worked. You didn’t have to plug it in, or worry about it being broken. She doesn’t really get why the receipts, but she always had the feeling of things being tight-she’s never really questioned it. It was so much better here than it had been at home or on the streets, anything more just felt...extravagant.

A file folder closer to the front looks newest, and it was the only medical looking thing she catches sight of. The name is blacked out, but it looks doctor-y, and it’s in New Zealand-she can’t think of anything else that’d be that way, at all. Ellie takes it. And then she sees something else, a legal pad tucked into the side of the drawer and…huh. Lots of names. Most she’s never heard of before, she doesn’t think…?

“There’s a list of names.” Ellie says with a frown, her brow furrowing as she turns a page, then another, then another. “Names and dates…? I don’t…oh.”

On two seperate but same dated lines, both Mark and Ashley were listed.

It’s a death list of some kind. The hairs on the back of her neck stand up, and Ellie briefly can’t fathom why he would have such a list. And-where was Modal? He had died that day too, hadn’t he? They’d been too late to save him, Cid had said…?

Ellie’s eyes move upwards on the page, back-reading names-but the closest one to these was a long while ago-months. The dates went back a much longer time than that even, years. But...if Modal was one of these men, and Cid knew he was dead...then why did they go out to save him?

Had...had Cid lied?

Ellie keeps the notepad, and while she closes the drawer-she doesn’t go back to the back up panel to lower anything back down. She has a very, very bad feeling about this list, and while Sarah’s name was mercifully not on it-she had the sudden idea it could have been, and the idea was frightening and creepy.

She’s relieved to slip back through her own reflection-too distracted to think about the unsettling thing of moving ‘through’ the window so high up.
“L-look. Do you see...do you see Modal’s name on here, anywhere? Shouldn’t he be with Mark a-and Ashley?”

 

[Obuzeti]

Jack's brows draw down. He scans the list of names, then hisses. "Montague Pentecost. Look halfway up the page. That's months ago."

If he had hair on the back of his neck it would be standing all the way up. Nothing about this office feels comfortable anymore. All the carefully free-of-details paperwork, the blacked out forms, a death list with dates that have never been publically released -

It's bad. Jack doesn't know precisely what the involvement is here, how deep it goes, or what it even is, but this is bad.

"Let's check out that New Zealand clinic," Jack says, quiet. The hum of the air conditioners is the only other noise in the soundproofed office. It's too clinical and sterilized. He feels exposed, and he's not even physically there. "Should be some leads there on where to go next. Take the papers with you."

He doesn't want to stay here any longer. His instincts are screaming at him to get out.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Months ago.

Ellie doesn’t know what that could possibly mean, doesn’t understand it-but if Modal was dead, and Cid had known he was dead-then Ashley and Mark had died for nothing.

Nothing.

“G-good idea.” Ellie agrees, nodding fast and sliding the stolen papers into her backpack, worry for Sarah shifting to fear for Sarah, and the urgency makes her hands tremble, a little.

For nothing…

She took his hand, and they left the place.

~*~

Another office, this one not as grand nor as high tech as El Cid’s-but just as quiet and empty, or so Ellie thinks. This time it’s not a window but an actual mirror, large and hanging on the wall behind the desk and some filing cabinets-other than a smaller one in a restroom, the place was lacking on reflections-it didn’t even have windows.

“Not going to climb out, this time.” Ellie whispers, the same cautious peering around from beneath her hood, looking for trouble ahead of time. The cabinet was metal and in the way, she might knock it over if she climbs on top of it-too much noise.

Instead, Ellie takes a step back-and vanishes into The Other without a sound, reappearing in the center of the real office not even a blink later. She glances at the closed door and listens a moment before venturing over to the desk and filing cabinet which…is already open?

 

[Obuzeti]

Jack almost misses it when a grey-suited figure slides into reality in the corner of the office, drawing down a mechanical mask. "Ellie?" it asks through the fuzz of a masker, and there's a click, and then the voice is recognizable again. "You're looking for Sarah too."

It's Peter, looking a sight more effective out of his ragged jeans and backpack and in some kind of League stealth suit. Jack counts at least a dozen pouches that he can see and immediately assumes it comes from Marie - her packrat tendencies are a dead giveaway. Though, to see her working with one of the new generation, that's a new twist.

He's agreed to help Ellie, but even one more person is already throwing static onto Jack's reflection, fouling the quiet helpfulness he'd leeched from her. He retreats into the mirror before the boy can notice, giving Ellie a nod forward.

Peter, ignorant of her companion, waves Ellie over with him as he returns to the filing cabinet. "The resident nurse is prescribing very high level tranquilizers to a ship captain at the nearby dock - and she has a blacked out name on the patient register that's located on King Island, which should be uninhabited. It's a bird sanctuary. I think Sarah's stashed up there."

He keys his mike for a moment. "Top, found Ellie at the office. She's looking for information too."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

“Peter!” As always Ellie was happy to see him, and she crosses the room to hug him without a moment’s hesitation. She knew he had left the Tower, she had checked his room-but that was different than seeing him safe and sound. She didn’t have any brothers or sisters and thank goodness-but Peter was the closest thing, and what she imagined a brother would be like.

She draws back, a bit of a frown, worry-was he here all alone? And geared up-he’s on a mission. A real one, looking for Sarah, too.

She glances at the mirror but Jack has disappeared, and she takes that as her cue not to mention him. “Yes.” She answers, joining him at the filing cabinet, listening carefully to what he tells her. Tranquilizers, King Island, a bird sanctuary-he’s connected the dots already, always so smart with things. She probably wouldn’t have connected the two.

Ellie opens her mouth-just as Peter reports in to whoever must be helping him, sent him.

And she closes it.

~*~

A little ping goes off, and for a brief moment-Marie doesn’t know what it’s for. Her eyes flick to Axiom’s green light, and then display over it-she taps a key on her keyboard and the smart phone device she’s equipped him with relays the reason for the ping, the primitive wire frame models of the room and it’s occupants popping up in a window. Someone’s there with him, but as he starts to talk and as she taps into the visuals, she sees it was indeed Sanderson.

For a brief moment Marie’s almost impressed-but irritation comes immediately on the heels of it. That kid shouldn’t be in the field at all, let alone solo. Points for initiative, she guesses.

"Top, found Ellie at the office. She's looking for information too."

“Noted. Pass your Atlantis button along if she can’t get there, and fall back to base-we can send in a drone for recon, form a team, get moving on your intel.”

Form a plan. Careful and calculated.

 

[Obuzeti]

Peter doesn't give hugs - not to anyone but Sarah - but he'll take them from Ellie, who's as good as his sister, sometimes, one that isn't sick all the time. He wraps his arms around her tight, and has a passing thought that he can introduce them now. His hero life doesn't have to be totally separate from Anna, anymore - she can meet people that aren't the nurses and doctors that work with her.

He thinks about her meeting Sarah, face to face, and his eyes blur. He blinks hard, squeezes Ellie once, and draws back.

"I'm glad you're alright," he says to her, and then pulls the button he'd been given and hands it to Ellie. "If you want to come visit - or want someplace to stay - this'll take you down to Lana's home. She and her people have been . . . amazing."

It's so different from what he's used to. The Atlanteans don't look anything like them, don't speak their language for the most part, don't get anything out of them being there - but no one that Peter has heard of has resented them. Maybe it will come in time, but Elias is already planning ways to renovate their destroyed city, and Vivianne's been on half a million dates or something, and there's some tree hero that's supposed to replant the sea beds once he wakes up. It looks good. It looks really good.

He looks at the office - reluctant to leave - but there's no way that Cid doesn't have something nasty around Sarah, protecting her or threatening her or whatever. That's his style, and she's too - everything - to risk. So he nods and glances at Ellie. "I've got a mentor. One of the League heroes. She says to drop back so we can get a full team ready, and go in to rescue Sarah."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

A mentor, and a 'she'. Ellie nods solemnly, accepting the button after a moment's hesitation, and a bit of worry. "Only if...if you won't need this one." She assumes he can get another one-she thinks?

"It sounds nice, I...thank you.". A kingdom under the sea! Fairytales, and Ellie can't help but be curious. Yes, she will have to go there, see it. At night maybe. Was there night?

"Be...be careful Peter. Be safe." Ellie hesitates a moment, looking over his helmet and suit-he looks like a hero. A real one. He has decided his allegiance. Peter was younger than she was, but sometimes, seemed so much more grown up. She gives him another hug. "Be very safe."

And then with a final nod and a little wave-she stepped back into The Other, and was gone.

-*-

Ellie eyes the red lightning in the distance, but she's more than safe. It's not angry with her yet, though it might be once she steps through the wall, when she comes back. She shouldn't need to though, she wouldn't think. Or...maybe? Why she's safe moving from The Other to the real world but not necessarily from The Other to Mirror World she doesn't understand-she's been careful since that painful shock, very careful not to pass through the wall when it's angry.

It had never managed to hurt her before, and it made her nervous that it had.

She turns her attention to the cylindrical device-she has time, here in the nothing. It is smooth in her hand-only one button on the top, four inches tall and maybe an inch in diameter. There's a little black screw through the bottom, with a head she's never seen before-though she admittedly doesn't know much about tools. She doesn't trust there not being more to the teleporter than just the tech required for travel. If Peter's mentor was who she thought she might be...

Ellie pockets it with a frown.

Atlantis was deep under the ocean. Moving vertically in The Other was hard enough, but trying to travel -leagues-? And if she messed up-no, it's good she has this thing now. She is curious about an underwater Kingdom, and if Peter and Jenna were down there...

But would Sarah be?

Having thought her next moves over, Ellie walked a few feet, turned-and found her back pressed against a wall that wasn't there. She imagined floating in a bath-and slipped through.

She's in in the dark, cold office, just out of view of the mirror. "Jack?"

She fidgets with her sleeves, and wonders if she went to the docks, if she'd see the island-and then be able to get to it. Could be risky-if she didn't step far enough, she could end up in the water-and she can't step while in so much mass.

Also, she could not swim.

She'll trust her friend. The worst that can happen is he echoes Peter's...his -mentor's- instruction to fall back.

And then she would be alone.

Ellie swallows, and she reminds herself that it's Sarah, and for Sarah-she would pretend to be brave.

 

[Obuzeti]

Jack steps back around the corner of the office into Ellie's sight, just out of Peter's - who takes photos of the patient registration they'd found with some miniature camera, and then -

Jack blinks hard, a strong sense of deja vu invading him for a moment, then glances away from the empty office. "I'm here," he says, in lieu of something more reassuring; he doesn't know what else to say. "What'd you find?"

It's a sort of cylinder with a button on top, looking kind of like a grip. It's very classic League technology, compact and simple in appearance, and it kind of reminds him of Protagonist, in its lack of frills or features. Machinist would have painted at least one set of flames on it somewhere.

"Find anything worth pursuing? I couldn't."

He hasn't - the cabinet he'd looked through had been prescription records and medication shipments. Promising stuff, but he didn't have the experience to comb through it and find anything incriminating. He'd browsed maybe a dozen files before he got tired of "painkiller prescription, 40 mg, work-related injury" and its multiple incarnations.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

The usual intensity of Marie's focus shifts-having been sitting slightly forward, and now she draws in a breath and leans back a little in her uncomfortable chair, eyes moving from an empty office suite to her tablet without much consideration.

~*~

“I’m here.”

It’s enough, and Ellie settles-and then with a start, realizes she hadn’t looked very hard in the office at all, and-she finds the button back in her hand and withdraws it from her pocket- and can’t quite remember how it got there, where it’d come from.

Someone had given it to her, she thinks. She’s sure. It would take her to Atlantis. That’s where she’s supposed to go, if she’s not in the Tower. ...wasn’t it?

Anything worth pursuing?

“The bird sanctuary, on King’s Island. There’s a man on the docks being...being prescribed tranquilizers.” Ellie tells him this as if she knew it, when in fact-she doesn’t remember reading it, anywhere. She looks down at the button again.

“I...feel like I’m supposed to stop looking…?” Ellie’s eyebrows raise, confusion flickering over her features. What? No-no, she’s not going to stop looking, wait for help-whose help would she even be waiting for? The whole point, the whole point was to find out where Sarah wants to go, where Sarah wants to be. If she wanted to be on King’s Island, if she’d talk to Cid for her-Ellie would stay there with her, and the League didn’t need to know where they were, because they had already emptied the Tower and hurt Cid in the process.

Ellie wouldn’t betray him yet further.

But...if Cid had lied about Modal, if Mark and...and Ashley had died for nothing...

“Jack-” Ellie looks at him, her doubts about the League and her torn feelings of guilt and loyalty, the unsettling discoveries so far all there and present and murky, but he was her friend, he knew things, understood better than she did.

He knew what it was to be an outsider, even among those you considered allies.

“Is Sarah in trouble?”

 

[Obuzeti]

Jack considers the question, and the weird way Ellie delivers it and the information that comes from - nowhere? It stinks of someone using their power, though he has no idea who or what. Instead, he shakes his head. "I think wherever Sarah is, she's not changing much one way or the other. Someone took her to keep her. But I also think that unless someone gets moving, she's not getting free either."

He doesn't have body language like humans do. Jack's crystalline form doesn't have a nervous twitch, or the sway of breathing - he stays still as a rock, the refracted light scattering from the amethysts in his skin - but his eyes, limpid and unblinking, are all one needs. They're wide, but without tremble.

"She's always been good to me," Jack admits. It's not easy. "I don't like the pity, but her kindness isn't attendant on that. She just doesn't understand."

He inclines his head towards the door of the office. "Let's go find her. If we need help, we'll go get it. But there's no reason to stop yet."

The only mind-affecting powers he can think of offhand are Mindmelt's, too, he doesn't say, and anything that revolting creep doesn't want is something to hammer at. How he'd reach here, or even if he is, Jack can't say. But that's all the more reason to leave.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

‘Someone’ being Cid. It’d have to have been Cid. And if Sarah had wanted to be away-Ellie wanted, badly, to believe Sarah would have told her, would have sent for her, would have, have-have something! She did believe it-but there was also that awful little whisper somewhere in the back of her mind that maybe...maybe not.

But...would she really have shut out Peter too? Ellie could dog herself, feel and believe she was worthless-but not Peter.

Jack speaks, and mutely, Ellie nods. No, Sarah did not know what it was to be different, to be…outside. But she loved her. Despite...everything, Sarah loved her. She has to believe that, no matter what. She will, because to doubt it, to listen to those naggling anxieties of inadequacy-was to doubt and belittle Sarah.

And she loves Sarah.

Jack’s eyes are wide. Ellie remembers the list, and her sense of urgency remains high-and the phantom instructions, the odd contradicting feeling that it was time to stop-she dismisses it, was suspicious.

“Thank you.” Ellie says yet again, and every time-it’s sincere. They would send for help when they had to. Not before.

She moves towards the door of the office, opens it into the dark reflection of the hall-and then takes his hand to follow him in their wandering.

~*~

Ellie can’t see how Jack sees-she wasn’t aware of the reflections like he was, the windows and the lily pads. She can follow him, or rather-be led along by him, but on her own, Ellie can only traverse Mirror World by moving through it as conventionally as she would the real world-minus the help traversing through The Other provided.

He finds a mirror in the building. He remains, as ever, a thing of magic to her. She’s grateful for his help, and his sharing of his dimension, his plane. It made searching so much easier, safer.

Safe enough she’s not at all anxious to split up-nothing could touch her here.

She wanders in the dark and cautiously turns her flashlight off before opening each door-peering through for the telltale light of a mirror or reflection before risking it again. She doesn’t want to tip someone off to their presence. No, not at all.

But...there doesn’t seem to be anyone here. A few rooms remind her of the dog shelter-the tall black counters with the inset sinks and drawers, the tools of animal care. Others look more sciencey, chemicals in locked cabinets against the walls, birds in cages nestled in for the night. Beyond the windows of these she can see the overgrown foliage in some sort of courtyard-the free flying birds maybe?

Why would Cid send Sarah to a place like this? It’s no hospital.

Weakly, Ellie considers he maybe would have thought she’d like the birds. But…the list. That list. There had to be an explanation, but try as she might she can’t muster one. It’s created a sickening feeling of dread in her chest, a fear different than what she’s experienced before. She’s no longer looking for Sarah so Sarah could help her talk to Cid-she’s looking for Sarah because she’s afraid for her. To protect? her from Cid. It’s a dizzying thought, and the idea of Cid going from protecting father to threat makes her want to vomit.

But Sarah. She needs to find Sarah.

She opens another door and finds herself in a room with an empty hospital bed, and what she’s come to recognize as a two way mirror. Ellie peers into the real version of the room for a moment, almost moves along-but there’s something about it, something off.

She lifts her hand and touches at the glass, tries to figure out what that something is. There is a sense of space vaguely reminiscent of Cid’s office, but different. She feels as if...as if the room on the other side of the glass, the space there was full? Underwater or...or concrete, dirt.

That didn’t make sense, though. It’s an empty room.

Empty.

Ellie frowns, moves to step through the reflection-but nothing happens. There’s SPACE there, she can see it! She pressed her palm flat to the cool surface, tried to imagine the tension of a bubble, or the feeling of a warm bath-and she can’t move through, as if the room truly was filled with something else. It’s...strange. It’s very strange. It makes no sense, and maybe coming into it from the Other would help her figure it out.

She retreats from the room and returns to the hall. She’ll pass through the reflection here, and step from the real hall, avoid any chance of the Red Lightning’s ire. Ellie moves to slide through as she’s done numerous times since discovering how.

This time however, it’s a mistake. She no sooner steps from The Other and into the hall when a pulse causes everything to lurch sideways, makes her stumble. Ellie gives a startled squeak that ends in a pained gasp as she goes down, lands hard on her hip and shoulder, bounces her head on the thinly carpeted tile. It hurts, but it’s nothing compared to the painful pressure suddenly in her ears, her sinuses-her hands come up and clutch at her ears as she curls in and shuts her eyes tightly against both.

But an alarm is blaring loud enough somewhere to nearly drown out the cacophony of startled bird squawks in the adjourning rooms, and she hears, or maybe just feels a heavy door slam open around the corner. No, no, no-there’s something terribly wrong but Ellie can’t put thought to what it is-her extreme disorientation and rising panic don’t let her. She turns onto her stomach and inches forward to Step, to escape-and realizes with a start what the terrible wrong is.

Separation, loss-a sense as previously constant as sight and touch and smell, taste and touch-The Other. She can’t sense The Other, and she can’t get in, she can’t escape!

 

[Obuzeti]

Whatever Ellie's trying to interact with, Jack can't even touch it; when he tries to step through after her he glances off the mirror he'd meant to step through and instead winds up a room over, right as he hears her start to shriek and an alarm goes off. He turns in time to see a door slam open and a B-lister from Australia step through - Cossack, a villain who'd always been smart enough to stay long out of the way of the League and its compatriots. He has on a stereotypically Outback outfit, tough boots and jeans along with a dusty, wide-brimmed hat, which he tips at Jack. He's already mounted on a lead statue of a horse, which surges to life as he taps it with his heels.

Cossack can animate things he's holding, you see.

Jack swears and tries to duck back as Cossack surges forward, but the other man looses an actual ball and chain like a medieval flail, and the thing whipcracks forward of its own accord and cracks into the mirror - the shock of which cracks both it and him, through it. There's ugly, loud cracks as his crystalline side splinters, and he chokes and doubles over the blow.

Cossack hauls back with his heels, forcing his mount to rear, and then whirls the flail with a cute little lasso motion that sends it spinning far faster than the motion would indicate. The iron ball smashes into the reflection of Jack's head where he hunches, doubled over it pain, and smashes it right open in a spray of fine shards.

That's when a beefy fist surges out of the shattering mirror and snag the chain of the flail as it passes by. The fist is as thick around as Jack's entire midsection. His form shudders grotesquely and bulges, crystal snapping and shattering as it expands past its limits, and then it bursts like a grenade, hurling sharp points everywhere. Out of the glassy mist, a thick, heavy form surges up out of the gemstone geode that had been Jack like the world's ugliest moth shedding its cocoon. It's studded with thick, wiry brown bristles in irregular patches, sallow, tough skin like old leather, and muscle-bound under a sagging, heavy gut - all stinking meat and porcine thickness. When it stands up, it's as tall as Cossack on his mount, even as he futilely attempts to snake his weapon out of that brute grasp.

Heavy, sharp tusks clop together as Tweedledum licks its chops, a tongue as long as a ladle snaking out over a wet snout. This is Jack's alter ego, his catalyzed form and counterpart to the distant, emotionally paralyzed cripple he's been reduced to. Rather than reduce his mortality and flesh, Catalyzation had seen fit to cram it all into a Jekyll-and-Hyde-like transformation that saw him more beast than human.

"Horsey-man," Dum says, and tiny, piggish eyes blink, yellowed and malaised.

In response, Cossack draws a pistol belted at his waist and shoots Tweedledum right in the left eye, which bursts messily. The ensuing squeal of pain and rage is deafening, and Tweedledum's trunk-thick arms clamp around the horse and rider, lift them up over the boar-man's head, screaming, and then hurl them into the adjacent wall in a kicking, scrambling mess of lead horse legs and bellowing rider. It's reinforced, but not enough to bear the weight of the mount - the concrete shatters under its weight, leaving the animated statue kicking, stuck on its side halfway through.

Then Tweedledum hits it full charge, head lowered and tusks bared, tusks long as broom handles, like an elephant's. The resulting impact shoves it right through as Cossack dives out of the way.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Ellie rises to her knees, then her feet-staggering back into the reflection she’d just stepped from-but she can’t figure how to move through it, like a muscle she’s forgotten how to flex. The Atlantis button, though! Yes, that, that was an escape, she can’t remember when she got it, why she was carrying it, but now it might save her, give her escape since her powers-

But then she hears glass shatter-glass explode. She stares at her own feet, eyes wide-it sounds just like the living room mirror had a long, long time ago, when her father had thrown it violently through the television.

Her head snaps up, fingers loose around the cylinder in her right pocket as she turns to stare down the hall in that direction. The pressure is immense, but it doesn’t distract her from a new and sharper anxiety. Dee? Had they somehow seen, somehow hurt-!

A gun goes off and something squeals, and then an entire HORSE comes crashing through the wall, thrashing-Vivid Walker? Was Vivienne here?- And shortly after an even BIGGER thing, a monster burst through, driving it the rest of the way across the hall and into the opposite wall.

Ellie starts down that way, gets exactly two dizzied steps-and then her fingers finally close around the button, which she jams down as hard as she can.

POP

And just like that, she’s free-there’s no pressure, no dizziness-the Other is there again, just on the other side of the veil she’s been cognizant of her entire life, had learned to pass through at puberty.

It’s an entirely different world down here. Crisp and cool and clean, fairy lights of floating jelly fish and distant alien architecture just outside the crystal dome of the room she was in. It’s a world straight out of fairy tales-and Ellie takes in exactly none of it, already running before she’s even fully filled her lungs.

“Jenna!”

She runs through an arch taller than some houses, down a darkened, blue flame lit hall where she sees her fellow wards, the traitors ambling around, alone and in groups and sometimes accompanied by tall Atlantean women in matching tunics, scales all various shades of blue-they turn and they stare at her.

“Jenna! Jenna, help!”

She Steps despite the danger and is suddenly fifteen feet ahead. Then twenty. Then thirty five-

“Jenna! JEN-” She can’t hardly breathe she’s so winded, “-NA!”

She nearly Stepped again-but the woman she was so desperately looking for was suddenly there.

The diminutive, russet skinned Filipina catches her by the arm, in costume and carrying a clipboard in her off hand. Her lips were turned in an uncharacteristic frown, and her warm brown eyes concerned.

“Ellie?”

“It’s Dee!” The out of breath, panicked girl blurts, speaking louder than any present had ever heard before. “It’s Dee, there was glass, a monster! You have to help him, you-”

“Where at? What was happening?” Jenna caught sight of the teleporter button, then turned her head to look back at an Atlantean fish woman leaving an alcove of some kind. “Let’s get Lana and Elias, and-”

“No, there’s no time, we have to go now, NOW Jenna, he could be hurt, they might have hurt him-and Sarah! Cid maybe drugged Sarah, is keeping her locked away!”

Jenna’s eyes cut back, her frown deepening. “Okay.”

“Now!”

“Alright.” Jenna reached for the cylindrical device still in her clenched fist, and for a crazy moment, Ellie wants to shake her because she’s moving so slow. She’s so calm, so self assured-and Ellie doesn’t want her to be calm because this was important, this was the most important-Dee might be in trouble, he could be added to that list.

But maybe it would be alright. Jenna wasn’t just her friend, she was Velocity, and even before she'd met her, Ellie had believed she could do anything.

As if she'd read her mind, Jenna's eyes flicked up, firm resolution reflecting in them. “Let’s go fight the good fight.” And she pressed a button Ellie hadn’t noticed before, a simple depression on the side of the cylinder.

POP

~*~

Wherever Ellie had been, (apparently with Dee?) it was now a mess.

Jenna let go of her panicked friend’s arm and blurred in place, vibrating every cell she had to get her mind moving, give her time to take things in. Some kind of fight had happened here-was happening. The floor’s messed up in places, the walls are cratered and knocked in, she can see some beakers and a counter knocked over in an adjourning room with ITS separating glass wall broken-the heck was going on here?

“It’s better-I don’t know how-nevermind. Nevermind, Dee. Dee’s important, he might be hurt-I’ll look for him in the mirrors-” She sounds like she’s speaking in slow motion, but the ginger haired heroine’s expression and panic were obvious, and if Jenna thought about it a moment-her voice might have, too.

“BecarefulbutImashoutaway.” But what could catch Ellie?

Her friend nodded, then vanished-leaving Jenna to cut around an overturned Dyson designed looking pillar on the floor-and deeper into the building.

 

[Obuzeti]

The room they'd been in had been next to what had been an exhibition room of some kind - more of the Dyson-looking pillars had been arranged in grid formation across a low-ceilinged room, forming a quadruple set of pillars that marched across a wide hallway to a door some hundred feet distant. There was no other furnishings or even windows - there's something eerily clinical about the lack of care for anything but purpose, here. It sticks more than a little of Cid's harsh functionalism. The pillars are placed equidistant about three feet apart.

A good third of those pillars are wrecked into shattered pieces on the floor, though, and it's because Cossack's taken to using them as cover, weaving his mount in between them as a tremendous boar-like figure pounds after him. The marble horse is worse for wear, part of its head shattered, leaving a cracked lower jaw and most of the neck, but that hasn't affected its mobility. It darts, deerlike, between pillars, weaving and ducking through them with fluid grace, each one buying a second as the screaming abomination behind them charges into or shoulders aside each one, their mass and weight enough to stop his momentum with each heavy impact - but he hasn't stopped running into them either, and the brutal collisions haven't slowed him down at all. He runs headlong into another pillar just then, and cracks it in half, then takes a step aside to fling off the collapsing top half before he shoulder barges into the next one.

Cossack wheels once to jab his flail at the Boar like someone else would flick a towel, and it snaps as if it were one, but with a heavy whomph of air parting before thick iron. It cracks into one of the beast's tusks - and gets stuck on the point, which is evidently much tougher than it looks. The towering monster jerks its head back with a snarl and pulls on the flail, jerking the other end out of Cossack's hands.

Undaunted, he draws a whip from a back satchel, its leather length gleaming with edged steel, as his mount dances back from a clumsy-swung fist. The whip lashes out and scores along the Boar's upper leg and side along bare, piggish flesh, laying it open to a deafening squeal and a spray of blood.

In response, the Boar pulls the impaled flail off its tusk and makes to sidearm it at Cossack, only for - some kind of worm to blast out from the floor of the hallway and intercept his arm when he pauses it whip it forward. The new creature is too slim and fast to get a good view of, but there's an impression of slick, gliding turquoise, and sharp pincers or fangs that almost take the Boar's hand at the wrist off. The flesh there melts into clay-like lumps that drip from the savaged limb, along with the iron ball; the worm plunges back into the ground, swift as it came, even as the Boar grabs at it with its other hand.

Having turned away from Cossack, it then receives another brutal slash of that metal-bladed whip along its back, staggering forward and screeching in pain before wheeling to charge at him again.

For all that the tag-team seems to be brutally effective, the whip wounds are closing swiftly, and the mutilated hand is already steaming, flesh creeping out along the bared bone and reconnecting muscle.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Jenna’s not sure what Ellie’s pulled her into, but the infighting of the bad guys can’t be helping. She sees that whip lash out in slow motion, narrows her eyes as it cuts into some sort of tusked, ugly pig monster. Yeah, that ain’t cool-whips hurt. She’s unavoidably reminded of Rush and the sadistic smile that’d been on her red painted lips as she used it on her.

First target acquired, Jenna burst forward-just as a-a thing bursts from the floor. She darts to the left instead, materializes in a wide eyed standstill behind her goggles. Paul? Was Paul Marrane here?

Pigman’s lost a hand in a weird melted goop, doesn’t notice her arrival as he swipes at whatever it is-and then the jerk with the whip lashes at the poor guy again. Her heart hammers hard and she nearly keys her communicator for the calvary, but...since when did that devil color things turquoise? She’s seen glowing green, some purple, foul bursts of amber-but not turquoise. Given what had happened not long ago at all, she’s reluctant to cry wolf and cause a panic over nothing.

She’ll wait. She can probably afford to wait.

Velocity dissolves into her famous light blue blur, the shimmering subtle sparkle in her costume catching what light there was. She runs the perimeter of the space several times, taking in what she’s got to work with and against who-and then vanishes with a burst of speed for that whip.

She seizes the cutting end of it in her silver gloved hands before darting perpendicularly away and out of Pigman’s charge. Wrapping the nasty weapon around one of the pillars she races off for one of the empty steel cages, no bigger than a cubic foot-and returns to lob it straight into the man’s ‘bared’ chest.

*!*!*

Twisted on his mount and with a tight grip on the whip, Cossack is easily caught off guard by the sudden reversal of his forward arm motion-and the impact of a fast moving object he doesn’t even see. He’s yanked off of his mount in a jerk and a noisy clatter of metal, the horse going dead in an instant as his legs break contact with it-an immediate obstacle Velocity had apparently hoped the monster would trip over.

The blue blur is on Crocodile Dundee in an instant, barely giving the man time to process what had just happened. She loosens the whip from the pillar and wraps it around the man from knee to sternum, ties it off in a near perfect bow from his back, having rolled him more than once to get that done.

It’s from there she materializes, one silver boot on the back of the man’s shoulder and hoping he doesn’t throw up on her other one.

“Boys, boys! You’re both pretty, and you’re both going to prom.”

~*~

Elsewhere, in Samson:

Two dings sound from a small speaker to the left of her keyboard, indicating two teleports in quick succession. Marie doesn’t bother to pull up the data-it’s probably Elias heading to another grocery store or something equally mundane, shopping for his new flock.

But then another, sharper sound rings out over the whir of the servers, one that has her lowering her tablet and glancing to the right-most monitor. The previously flatlined blue line ripples, then spikes-speed force use. A glance at another monitor shows Jenna half a world away, in the same quadrant of the globe where Axiom’s green blip steadily glows. The hell?

She pulls up the crude wire model framework being recorded by the smartphone device she had equipped her with, brings up the feed being transmitted from her goggles. The teleporter hadn’t been Jenna’s either-it was one registered to Axiom, and while frustratingly foggy, Marie suddenly, if vaguely remembers him passing it on to Sanderson.

There’s mostly smear as Velocity races around wherever the hell she is-and then it’s a standstill.

And she’s looking at Tweedle Dum in all his piggish glory.

What.

“Elias.” Marie doesn’t even know where to begin with THIS shit, and rather than tight or angry, her voice is a smidgen disbelieving. “Dum’s on the goddamned loose in New Zealand. Jenna’s there for some-”

“Guys, I got contact with hostiles-crocodile dundee wannabe and-hey, you got a name?-pig looking guy. Also some-well, some other thing. Not really sure what it is.”

Marie’s communication with Elias is silent for several beats as the woman takes a deep breath, drags a hand through her hair to grip and hold for a moment. She pointedly doesn’t open one for Jenna.

“...reason. Sanderson might be in attendance somewhere, and Axiom’s not far either-but him I at least understand why he’s there.”

 

[Obuzeti]

The great heaving pigman - Tweedledum, apparently - turns and cocks his head at Jenna. His eyes are beady and set way back in his skull, heavy brows overhanging them protectively; the nasal ridge raised so high that he has to turn his head to look at her instead of looking straight on. He might well be blind straight in front of himself.

The great, flared nose sniffs, a wet inhalation, almost a snuffle. Then it turns towards Jenna and sniffs again, deeper, like a bellows.

The eye facing Jenna blinks, and the big boar-man straightens up, cocking its head to the side as it looks at her. The two ears poking out at the base of the skull - flapped, wide and set close in behind the head, turn and spread out, focusing on her like radar dishes.

"Lady?" he says, and it's a deep voice, like an elephant's groan on the first syllable, rising to a squeak on the second - an incredible vocal range, and one that shapes the human words awkwardly. He squats down, big and broad knuckles of his remaining hand touching the tiled floor flat, and there's a heavy thud as his weight comes down on them, the muscles of his forearm bunching and the meat spreading under his massive weight. It gives an ape-ish cast to his slouching stance. "Who?"

The whip cuts still stand out, scored flesh red and open to the air, but the blood has already ceased running and the flesh knits together like moss recorded over days, creeping together and knotting into that gristle-bound skin over each wound. Even the missing hand is now reforming, bone extending into the air with flesh winding over like kudzu-clad trees from the American South.

"My taste don't run to no chink bitch," Cossack says, vicious, twisting as he tries to get up. In response, Dum turns his head, and a disgusting noise echoes from his great, broad throat as he tilts back. Then his head snaps forward and he hocks a massive, slimy, filthy loogie straight over the bound man's face, a viscous ball of - gunk - the size of a football that splatters over the villain's face.

Cossack goes still. He might not even be breathing at the moment, though all things considered, that could be a wise decision at the moment.

Dum grunts and turns back to Jenna. "Pretty." he says, admiringly, though he makes no move to touch her, instead just looking at her blue uniform - and oddly enough, not the body under her uniform either. The sparkles and reflected blue highlights are what he's looking at. The boots, especially.

~*~

"Well, it's been a hot minute since I heard that name," Elias says, confused. He takes in the list of names in attendance; two girls and Peter, who was going to be invisible by dint of his power, and decides to have faith in Jenna. "He's smitten with the girls. Have Jenna take him to Ellie and escort them out. That should take eyes off Peter too, so he can investigate or bug out or do whatever he's doing. Dum likes girls."

It's not even a lecherous appreciation - he just thinks they're pretty, like a magpie's appreciation of shiny things. For all his grotesque physicality, Dum has a childlike mind and was always terribly easy to entertain or distract.

"I thought Dee wanted to stay away from the fighting, so I dunno what he's doing down there, to be honest," Elias admits. "I usually don't know what he's up to, either."