legionmissions | THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

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THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS - Modplot

Like many cursed objects, the cursed floppy disk containing Tsarista was unearthed by archaeologists, trying to excavate artifacts related to Earth's heroic history. Mystified as to why it was preserved in a strange container that seemed meant to protect it from corruption, they'd created a makeshift system to try to view the data on the ancient device.

Opening the .txt file of "Troubleshooting Windows '95" on it, opened up the world to a whole lot of trouble.

After breaking free -- and through the roof of the archaeology building of the university -- the evil queen cackles in delight at the new world she's found herself in. Nearby television "personalities" recording a puff piece in the park, quickly turn their camera drones on the escaped Queen, broadcasting her to the entire UP.

"At last! I'm free! And oh me, oh my, has the world changed. What a narrative mess it is now, so complicated. And fraught with conflict that isn't easily resolved. And there are so many new settings, in all these UP worlds! No matter. I'll fix it all. I'll make it so everything makes sense."

With a snap of her fingers, magic light pours through the nearby New Metropolis media archives, and everything from datachips, to rare paper books, to flexi tablets came pouring out, swirling around her in a storm of paper that quickly turns into a storm of words.

"My name is Tsarista. Queen Tsarista. And I'm going to turn this galaxy of blank pages into a carefully curated masterpiece -- ruled by me, of course!"

After the display, there's only one way to stop the bubble of unreality that's settled over New Metropolis: by going in and tearing it down from the inside.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Well. A glass chamber. A toilet. A sci-fi bed. And a radio playing cheery music. This probably isn't quite what was expected when they entered, but there they were.

The music plays for a moment before there's the soft noise of a PA system activating. "Hello," says Babbage's familiar voice. Nothing too bad about- "and, again, welcome to the Aperture Science computer-aided enrichment center."

Oh.

"Your specimen has been processed and we are now ready to begin the test proper. Before we start, however, keep in mind that although fun and learning are the primary goals of all enrichment center activities, serious injuries may occur. For your own safety and the safety of others, please refrain from--" There's a sudden electronic noise, and his voice picks up in pitch and speed, barely understandable. "-Por favor bordón de fallar Muchos gracias de fallar gracias--and back. The portal will open in three, two, one."

There's a soft noise and a hole appears in the wall. They can see themselves, crowded into the tiny room through the portal. It leads to a small room where the cell they were in seems to have taken up most of the room. If they walk around, they can see a regular doorway leading to a room with a big red button.

Good luck.

When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world. His hand rose and fell softly with each precious breath. He pushed away the plastic tarpaulin and raised himself in the stinking robes and blankets and looked toward the east for any light but there was none.

With the first gray light he rose and left the boy sleeping and walked out to the road and squatted and studied the country to the south. Barren, silent, godless.

Rich looks down at himself, at his dust-covered filthy clothes and at the revolver in his belt, and gives a flat look to the sky.

"Why are you so committed to having me be Viggo Mortensen today?"

Twice now. Twice.

Rich sighs, coughs slightly because of the odd hitch in his lung, and goes back to the tarp, kneeling next to Sam and gently shaking his shoulder with a grungy hand.

"Hey, Sam," he says gently. "Wake up, kiddo."

When Sam wakes, the first thing he'll see a bearded, gaunt, grubby hobo hovering over him.

Edited 2017-03-25 04:05 (UTC)

Sam's first instinct is to roll over and try to pull a pillow that isn't there over his head. "It's Saturday."

Sam's second instinct is that actually, this is way too uncomfortable to be bed, and he (somewhat grudgingly) flops onto his back again and opens his eyes.

"W-haaa?!" There is, unfortunately, nowhere to back away to when you're already lying down.

"Ssh!" Rich hushes him, looking around to make sure there's no one nearby. "We don't know who else might be out here with us."

Rich tugs at Sam's shoulder gently, trying to get him to sit up.

"We went into that story bubble thing. Remember? To fight the evil queen? She put us in something, uh...not so family friendly."

Rich sits back and takes the revolver out of his belt, releasing the lock and checking the chamber.

"As in, 'our gun only has two bullets, but oh, look, that's conveniently just enough for the two of us.' That kind of not so family friendly. Everything's gone a little 'On the Beach' on us." He rotates the chamber to line the two bullets up and snaps the gun closed again, and tucks it back into his belt. "We need to get moving."

Sam sits up, and despite the fact that something in the back of his mind is screaming as soon as Rich starts on the gun, his expression is almost deadpan. "I did...not understand that reference, but okay."

Because this is apparently just how life is now. Get dropped into screwed up "we might have to shoot ourselves" land, get possessed by magical jewelry that turns you into a rage zombie, interplanetary death arenas - sure. Another day on the job.

(isheseriousthisissomessedupcanwejustgohomenowandhaveanormaldaywheretheworstthingthathappensistryingtotalktogirls - )

Deep breath.

"Also, I don't know about you, but I can't seem to use my powers."

He can feel them. Almost. He can feel the Nova Force still sparking away inside him, but right now it's just an ember, warm under the surface. He can't seem to get anything to flare up.

Realizing that he's painting a pretty dreary picture, he pats Sam comfortingly on the shoulder.

"It'll be fine, though."

Never mind that the sky is gray and the light is dim and the trees are all dead and the whole world seems choked by dust. Never mind the fact that it feels like there's something nasty chewing up the inside of his lung. It'll totally be fiiiine.

Rich stands up and starts to fold the tarp and pack away all of their junk into their cart. Instinctively, he knows what it all is, and what it all does, and how it's supposed to be tucked away, and how they Do Things to survive, like the knowledge of the character is implanted into his brain.

"We can break out of this thing. We either have to just make the story end whatever way it's supposed to, or find a way to break out through the edges of it, and the whole thing'll collapse." Difficult to do when he's not even sure what ending it's supposed to have to begin with (he knows about the movie but it's not like he ever sat down and watched it), but not impossible. "We just have to keep cool heads, watch each other's back, and try to dial down the hero thing and just look out for ourselves. None of these people scan as real, so we don't have to worry about helping anyone that's in trouble, and we can get as nasty as we need to with anyone that comes after us."

Edited 2017-03-27 06:15 (UTC)

"Break out through the edges like...do something crazy and totally not what we're supposed to be doing, or literally walk off the side of the map?"

In a situation as weird as this, Sam figures it's a fair question.

He gets up, does a quick stretch (because wow, sleeping on the ground really messes with you), and moves to help Rich load up what is apparently their stuff. It's not a very impressive fortune, and it's not like he's got terribly high standards of material living. "We really pulled the short straw on this one, didn't we?"

Their stuff is...not impressive at all. It's crap. Still useful crap, but crap. And not as much of it's food as Rich would've liked.

Rich takes in a deep breath and lets it out.

"We've pulled the short straw before, Sam." Rich getting the Surfer's hand through his chest. Sam falling sway to that horrible, horrible ring. "We got through it."

He gives him a reassuring smile.

"We're Novas. We do the 'light in the dark' thing, right? Can't do that unless it's a little dark."

He starts pushing the wobbly cart along, towards a nearby road.

"And either's seemed to work so far. Doing something off script or moving away from where the story is. Only problem is I think I've seen commercials about this movie but I never watched it or read the book. Something something about a guy and his son walking down a road, trying to get somewhere better. Without knowing how it's supposed to go or where they're supposed to be, it'll be hard finding the right way of changing it. And we've got food and water to worry about. If we go traipsing off into the wilderness, we might run out. I think we should go along with things until we actually run into...something. Something that feels like a story moment."

He pushes the cart onto the road.

"And then we need to be us instead of the guy and his kid. Provided it ain't something that gets us killed."

"There was a book?"

Yes, Sam is that guy. He's getting better about reading! Kind of.

"But okay, got it. Play along until we can hear the dramatic background music, then do something preferably not stupid and risky." He wrinkles his nose. "Hey, uh, you remember that this is us, right?"

They're pretty good at doing things that are very stupid and risky.

"There are levels," Rich says cheekily. "And different types of stupid and risky. So it's less trying not to do something stupid and risky, and more we just have to make sure we pick the right kind."

And so they walk, and the world sort of melts into itself as they do it. It simultaneously takes days and days and doesn't take any time at all. Time is fluid in this place, but Rich gets the feeling that it'd all blend into one long trail of grayness even if it was all real, even if time was flowing normally.

They walk and sometimes stop and sleep and dig around old convenience stores for anything edible, then walk some more. The cold settles into their bones, never enough to really stop or slow them down, but always ever-present, just enough to leave them uncomfortably chilled. The hunger never really goes away either. They at least have enough water. They have what they need to boil it and filter out the ash.

Rich holds the coughing in all day during the days, resisting the tickle in his throat, the catch in his lungs, and only deals with it at night, after Sam has long since fallen asleep from exhaustion. He goes just far enough from the fire that it isn't loud enough to wake Sam up, but close enough that he can still see the flames flickering, can still see the bundle of blankets Sam's under. Then he coughs and coughs and coughs, retching up fluid and blood and something gross and clotted.

Then after spitting out the blood and breathing and breathing and breathing, as if to make up for barely doing it all day, he walks back to the fire, and collapses, exhausted, next to Sam. They sleep cuddled together the same way they did that night in Murderworld, after they'd fought Wiress.

Eventually, they find a highway, with a jack-knifed tractor-trailer blocking the road. After spending the night sleeping safe and dry in the carriage, it's time to move on. They have to pass all their supplies under the carriage and shove the cart through on its side to get past it.

After they do, Rich isn't ready to leave it yet. It's awful big truck.

"Might be something useful in there," says Rich, climbing up on top of the truck's carriage. "The back's too far over the railing for us to get in that way, but maybe somebody got the same idea and cut into the top." He shoves himself up onto the roof and that's when he sees it. A skylight that had been cut into. "Yeah, someone cut a hole through. They might have taken everything, but if they couldn't carry it all, they might have left something behind."

He waves down to Sam.

"Grab the lighter and one of the magazines and gimme a hand."

Edited 2017-04-14 07:50 (UTC)

"I'm assuming that means you don't smell gas." Sam rummages through, and pulls out one of the magazines. "Hey, at least we finally found a use for Cosmopolitan."

He tucks the lighter in his pocket and holds the magazine in his teeth to keep his hands free to climb up next to Rich, and makes a face as he takes the magazine back out of his mouth and hands it over. "I sure hope that doesn't give me the plague or something."

As soon as Seras stepped into the bubble she felt like she was home. Things were familiar to her, yet different. She recognized the streets of London, but things seemed a bit different. Like she wasn't in the right era. The streets weren't lit with modern lights, rather they were lit with gas flames and the buildings seemed older than she remembered.

The biggest change wasn't with the city, but rather with her own clothing. Gone was the uniform that she was just getting used to and in its place was a dark dress of some sort of fabric and her boots with heels. Seras wasn't used to wearing high heels at all and she had to walk carefully or she would end up twisting an ankle or something like that.

Something was drawing her to one of the houses, and she let it guide her. Maybe if she followed what was leading her, she would be able to get out of here. She stood at the door of a house and looked up. She didn't recognize it at all, but for some reason it felt familiar to her. Before she realized what she was doing, she was inside the house and in a bedroom.

"It's been years since I've slept in a bed," Seras said quietly as she found herself climbing into it, suddenly very tired.

Edited 2017-03-28 04:28 (UTC)

There is someone already in the bed when she attempts to climb into it Her voice, plus the movement of the mattress, is enough to wake him from his story-induced slumber.

Hiccup blinks blearily up at Seras. Upon seeing a person he doesn't recognize getting into bed with him, he jumps back with a "BWAUGH!" and rolls off the bed, landing with a painful sounding thud.

"I'm okay," he mutters from the tangle of blankets that fell with him.

Dipper had been tucked slightly out of sight in an old fashioned chaise lounge near the window, bundled in blankets, and hearing Hiccup slam into the floor wakes him up, too...

Making him flail and also fall to the floor.

He looks over at Seras and Hiccup from the floor.

"...'Sup."

Everyone was falling out of beds and chairs in this place. Hiccup flailing and falling out of bed and then Dipper being surprised and falling out of the chaise lounge was enough to snap Seras out of the trance she was under and make her flail and fall off the other side of the bed. "BWAH!!"

She recovered quickly enough and pulled herself to her knees and looked around. "Uh...Hello." She said, giving them both a small, uneasy smile. "I really don't know what's going on."

Toothless pokes his head through the door, wondering what all the commotion is about.

"Me neither," Hiccup says as he extricates himself from the tangle of blankets.

"The last thing I remember is New Metropolis and the crazy woman that was attacking it. She must have had something to do with this, whatever it is."

Dipper looks down at his clothes.

"This looks like some kind of reality alteration...thingy. The mission briefing talked about her having some weird fixation with stories, right? And she ripped apart all those books. Maybe she shoved us in one."

A pause, as he looks around the room.

"It's looking a little gothic in here. Maybe a horror novel?"

Seras blinked at Toothless for a moment as she stands and walks over to offer Hiccup a hand up.

"The streets looked like some I've seen back home around London, but I'm not too sure. Even in the dark it seemed like things were...older?" She said, turning to look at Dipper.

"I don't know of many stories set in London and I don't think this is something about Jack the Ripper."

Hiccup grips her hand and hauls himself up. Luckily, his peg-leg was in bed with him, so he doesn't need to hunt that down.

"Nothing I've ever heard of either. This is more than a little after my time." He comments wryly.

"Not much to go on, anyways. Other than it probably being a horror story, all we know is that there's at least four characters, and apparently ours," Hiccup points to himself and Seras, "are in some kind of relationship, if the fact that the narrative wanted us to be in bed together means anything."

They're in high school and it's like they're supposed to be there. Like they've always been there. They just suddenly find themselves sitting at a table in a high school cafeteria, like that's just perfectly normal place to be after going into a magic bubble.

And they're both randomly older, because why not.

"If people start singing, I'm throwing myself out a window."

Please, God, let it not be that kind of high school story.

"We can hide in the janitor's closet. No musical number ever happened in a janitor's closet."

She's not really joking about that. It would just be too much, considering her center of gravity is totally different all of a sudden and she doesn't recognize her own voice.

Her hair is long again too, which isn't bad, but it is so close to going right in her mouth at all times. She gives it a quick toss which attracts the attention of a guy sitting behind Dipper and-

"Don't look now, but that guy is giving me the creepiest stare."

Dipper turns his head just enough to look at the guy, then narrows his eyes but it's not just because of the guy staring. It's that...this seems familiar. It seems like something Mabel has probably read or watched.

"He's improbably good-looking, but also overly intense and weirdly pasty. He isn't eating food in front of everyone else..."

He didn't have a tray or a packed lunch or anything.

"Weirdly colored eyes..."

He looks back to Pidge and raises his eyebrows.

"He's probably a vampire," he says matter-of-factly, very quietly, in case the vampire has magically good hearing. "Which means this is one of those creepy stories where the vampire guy practically stalks a teenage girl 300 years younger than him and it's supposed to be all romantic or something."

He waves a hand vaguely.

"We should figure out a way to stake him." He looks around the cafeteria. "Do you see anything made of wood?"

"Oh no, one of those..." Pidge puts her head in her hand. "Before you ask, those stories will never go away, not in the future or ever. Anyway, I think we'd have to go to the shop room for wood."

The cafeteria tables are plastic, the lockers are metal, and the trees don't seem to have sturdy enough branches to stab with. And he is still staring at her.

"And let's make it soon. He's giving me the kind of stare that makes me think I should file my own missing person's report to save time."

[cw: horror canon, so gore, monsters, war, probably dead kids, evil clowns, the works]

It's dusk and it's raining in Derry.

Rich sits on a porch that isn't quite his and watches it all come down. It isn't quite his because the house is his house and isn't his house. The story took a little bit of inspiration from his mind, just enough that the siding of the house is a certain familiar shade, and the mailbox looks the same as it always did, but despite his brain trying to tell him it's his childhood porch, in front of his childhood home, he knows it's not.

Just like the street in front of him isn't the street he grew up on in Long Island, no matter how much his brain is trying to tell him it is.

His hands aren't his own, either -- or at least tiny hands like that haven't been his for a very long time. When he looks down at himself, what he sees is familiar, but only vaguely. It's a once-familiar sight long forgotten; he only barely recognizes it as himself.

"Blue blazes, what is all this?"

People's forms have been changed by the stories, though. His was changed more than once. Is that what this is?

He turns to see who's with him and is more confused than he should be to see another kid, and more confused than he should be about that kid's identity. His brain flickers through his mental "look out for the bitty ones" Rolodex -- not Sam, not Dave, not Dipper, not that quiet kid with the dog, not that new kid Danny, not Kubo, not --

Too blonde. There's no blonde kids on the team -- not normal blonde anyway, Dave's hair is almost white -- and then his brain kicks itself with a big ol' "If you're a kid, one of the other adults got turned into a kid, too, duh."

Then it gets easier. He met Robbie closer to childhood than Robbie'd met him, still toothpick skinny and small. Eyes squinting, he finds Robbie in that face and in that shade of blonde hair. The only other blondes are Wash and Grif, anyway, and he figures young Grif would look more...ferrety, and the boy's eyes are a familiar, specific sharp shade of blue.

"Robbie?"

Edited 2017-03-30 18:09 (UTC)

Derry can do funny things to people's memories, burying the ones that it doesn't want them to recall and sometimes creating shallow new ones in their place. New ones that people accept readily, when the truth is awful enough and their subconscious is willing to do anything to ignore reality.

For Robbie, this story is harder to resist. Here he is, on a small town street that already looks like home. Old growth trees, tidy lawns replete with bushes, gingerbread porches. He is home in New England. In - Derry.

His mind doesn't even fight being a child, takes it in almost by osmosis. The small hands on the porch rail, how tall it is against him. He'd have to jump to sit on the railing. Hasn't he wished for years that he could go back and do it all over again? Do it all right? This is your chance, something whispers through his brain. Here you are, small and unscarred, on the porch of your buddy Bill's house, in your t-shirt and Keds.

When Rich first starts talking, it does nothing to stop Robbie from falling headfirst into the story. It's been raining for a week. The power's out at home. He's bored, and he's gone to see if his friend's still sick. Blue blazes is as much a part of this 1950s era as his plain white t-shirt.

His name is what snaps him out of it. "No, I'm - Rich?"

If he sounds confused, it's because he's instantly confused about why he was going to say Richie before he'd finished recognizing Rich as Rich. It was almost like he thought... like he thought...

But it's gone, whatever it was. Richie, Bill, Derry, the blackout, home - everything slips cleanly out of his mind, like a newspaper boat down a gutter.

"Cripes, you look like twelve!" Once he looks at the other boy, really looks at him, it's obviously Rich. The chin, the nose... it's exactly what Robbie would have expected in an old photograph of Rich, and that's reassuring against the sudden emptiness of his head. He was thinking about something, what was it? Robbie looks around at the rain, the houses, his own skinny bare arms and then turns back to Rich. "This looks... normal. Normal for us, not space normal."

"You don't even look twelve, Toothpick," Rich teases.

The way he speaks on the ship is usually filtered through those telepathic earplugs, and even when it's not, even when the English slips out to fellow English-speakers underneath the telepathic buzz of words, his accent's gotten softened a little over the years. All that exposure to alien languages.

As a kid again, with those experiences still there but not quite so close to the surface, it's back again in all its nasally glory, as strong as it was when he first moved away from Hempstead and closer to Manhattan.

"I bet if I was my normal size I could pick you up with one hand and use you as a barbell!" He mimes weightlifting with what is currently a fairly scrawny arm, albeit one that's slightly less scrawny than Robbie's.

He's enjoying the novelty of this, at least for a moment. With friends like the New Warriors, he'd always wondered just a little bit what it might've been like to meet them younger. He already knows they'd have gotten on fine with the friends he did have, Bernie and Caps and Ginger Jaye, just because of the kind of people they are. And maybe, just maybe, high school might have been a little more fun instead of just...survivable. Safety in numbers, right?

But then they wouldn't have been them, would they? They wouldn't have gotten the powers they'd gotten or lived the lives they'd lived. It was all a billion little bits of serendipity. Still, just for a moment, it's kind of novel.

Edited 2017-03-30 23:51 (UTC)

"You're the toothpick, Toothpick," Robbie tosses back at him, elbowing Rich in the side for good measure. Literally ribbing him, and that tickles him. It's so easy, isn't it, to slide back into boyishness.

With Rich threatening to use him like a barbell, it's too tempting to play the unnamed but popular children's game of 'Can I pick my friend up?' Rich might be teasing Robbie about his size, but Rich is looking pretty thin himself. He has not yet discovered the gym. "Oh yeah? I bet I could pick you up right now with one hand and my shoulder."

Maybe not a child's version of it, anymore. They know how to do a fireman's carry. That's a distinct advantage of how it was done when he was really a kid, trying to hug people off their feet, but the point stands. "I could get you off the ground with one hand tied behind my back."

He doesn't get to take the bragging further, because a scream cuts through his monologue. It doesn't end, and it's high, like their voices, and young. Robbie's face is that wide-eyed, open-mouthed way of terrified children who don't understand the situation more deeply than 'bad'.

But he only stays frozen long enough to figure out which way the noise is coming from, and then he runs down the porch stairs, into the rain, and towards the screams.

Rich's expression mirrors Robbie's but then creases into something deeper than little kid "oh no, that's bad." That's a death scream, he's heard enough of them, high screams among all the chittering of mandibles and the shredding sounds as the bugs fed --

It's also a familiar scream. The voice calls to him from somewhere far back in his memory. They run out into the rain and are quickly soaked to the bone, and then they see it, they see neighbors starting to gather around something grotesque, something yellow and red. It turns out to be a little boy in a raincoat. Blood runs down into a storm-drain from the space where an arm should be attached to a shoulder -- it's the same arm that Rich had lost against Thanos, as a matter of fact -- and the currents tug at a small pair of glasses that have fallen off of a pale face.

A face that's far too pale.

A face that's also very, very familiar.

He forgets where he is, he forgets who he's grown up into, he forgets this isn't his world or his town or his street. All that matters is he knows that face.

What rips out of him is a scream and a sob somehow compacted into one hard and terrible thing.

"ROB!" he screams, dropping to his knees next to the body of his little brother. The terror sinks its hooks in because it's not an alien fear -- this has happened before, when he came and helped his little bro against the Strontian war criminal Robert had pinned with Nova Force for hours. It had been a more fortunate outcome then, but this time, Rich comes a moment too late, and the horror feels just as real and tangible as the last time he saw his brother's blood on the ground.

"Rob! Robby!"

Some of the adults there try to drag him back, and he fights them, lost to his hysterics.

"Let go! Lemme go!"

He doesn't need to be able to gauge the level of pain and anguish for the screaming - and, worse still, the end of the screaming - to have him chilled to the core by the time he skids to a stop on the slick pavement.

The sight that greets them... there's a well-meaning adult that tries to block his view, and a murmur about how someone needs to put the little pitchers away. They shouldn't see this.

Through the haze of muted shock, Robbie thinks that's a mangled metaphor. Little pitchers have big ears, but right now it's Robbie's eyes that are as big as saucers. The blood in the rainwater is nauseating to see - it makes it look like there's so much blood, too much blood. Robbie can't look, and yet he can't look away. He killed so many kids, but he never saw them. He was blasted miles away in the moments of their deaths. He can see a bit of bone, and -

Robbie's spared any mental comparisons to past nightmares. Rich's reaction is so visceral that it blots out anything else, with a keening scream and calling for Robbie, trying to get to the body in the gutter...

But I'm Robbie, he almost says. I'm Rob.

He's not stupid enough to believe he's the only Robert in the world, and the explanation smacks him in the face as he takes another look at the boy on the ground. That boy is younger than they are. Could be five or six. His eyes are open, and his cheeks are pudgy. He wasn't that far away from toddler. He looks like an even younger Rich - exactly like an even younger Rich.

Rich has a brother named Robby. How dumb can Rob be to forget that? The kid had even been kidnapped. They cut off his finger. His eyes flicked over to check but ... right.

He's trying to fight the ghastly, panic of helplessness. They were just a few blocks away, goofing off, and they should have been - no. This can't be right. Robby isn't six - he's about Robbie's own real age, and he's not here. There's no chance that Robby is here, on a Legion mission to New Metropolis, regardless of what age he is or how much that body looks like him. Waiting for Rich to stumble on him. No way. Billions of people on Earth - billions of Earths - this is not something that just happens.

Robbie puts himself between the adults and Rich, hooking an arm around Rich's chest and taking over trying to tug him back. If the grown-ups picked Rich up, they could try to take him who knows where - and the only way to stop that is to cause a huge, super-scene at the feet of a dead child. There's no fucking way Robbie will do that.

He has to get Rich to leave, so he has to convince Rich it's not Robby. Robbie just knows that. Rich wouldn't leave his brother, or Nita, or any of them. But how does he do that when he's eleven and penned in by an ever-growing number of adults who he doesn't want to engage with anymore than necessary? Because pulling isn't working, Rich outweighs him and out-stubborns him.

"Rich, Rich," he whispers quietly. "It's - it's NuPonder, Minnesota."

NuPonder is meant to mean a few things at the same time. It's the town where they fought a bunch of robots meant to look and act and think like dead people, practically handpicked to fight the New Warriors in the most effective ways possible. This, too, is not not real, but more importantly, there is something going on that knows exactly how to dismantle them. Robbie knows it and can't stop it from working. Show him a dead kid, one that even now he can't stop looking at. The rainwater is pooling over the little boy's eyes. Show Rich a dead teammate, soldier, friend, brother. If they stay here staring, it doesn't matter if it's real or not. The mental damage will take Rich (and Robbie) out of the fight for New Metropolis.

They have to go somewhere else and breathe and try not to think about dead children. "Come with me, Rich. He's not your brother. I promise he's not yours."

"Let go! I have to get to -- he's my brother, I have to --"

The adults barely have a chance. They're still struggling to hold him back because even as a small child, there is no immovable object that can stand in the way of the unstoppable force of a human rocket, but then there are small hands against him, wrapping around him, and a small voice.

And shorthand.

They have a shorthand. He and his friends have a shorthand. Things they can say where one word makes something click because of all they've done together.

"NuPonder -- what are you even saying?" he says, turning to Robbie, tears still streaming down his face, and then he stops, as the gears start clicking.

"Not here. Not him," he says, nodding. "He wasn't on Legion World. You and I were, if we see any other Legionnaires, it might be them, but he's not -- it's not --"

He wipes a hand over his face to try to get the tears off, but it's futile when they're in the rain anyway. Fake parents come over and fake grieve, as he gets himself back together and starts stumbling along with Robbie -- with his other Robbie. The one that's real. That's really here.

"It dug in. He was one of my probies. Took on this Strontian war criminal -- he pinned her with the Nova Force for two hours. My baby brother pinned down a Strontian. I almost didn't make it in time and he got hurt real bad; he was in the healing tanks for days."

It took something real to use against him. His brother's baby face, yes, when now he was long grown, but he was even positioned the same way on the ground as when he flew in and saw that witch smiling with his little brother's blood dripping from her hands.

"Geez, Robbie, this place is working us over from the get-go. What is it? What story is this supposed to be? It's...familiar. It's not just what happened to --" pause "--to that kid, it's something else, something --"

A little brother in a yellow raincoat. Small town. Rain. Dull-looking adults with dull eyes that didn't react the way they should to a dead kid, concerned but almost...unsurprised. He was dead in a gutter, near a sewer drain. Why a sewer drain, what was that calling up? Something...old. Something from childhood.

That's when he sees the red balloon. The adults are all gathered around the dead boy, around the grate he bled out into. Now that the two boys have walked away, there's another drain near them and no one's watching the two of them.

And there's a red balloon, just floating there. It moves in the wrong direction, going upwind instead of downwind. It moves in the opposite direction of the rain and their hair and the leaves getting tossed around. Another balloon floats out of the sewer drain, letting them know where the first came from and it floats the wrong way and up, up...

The adults don't see it. One even glances their way, eyes lazily glancing over the balloons, and then looks away.

"Robbie, I don't think they can see the balloons -- why can't they see 'em?"

Edited 2017-03-31 05:49 (UTC)

Nodding along at Rich's tale and patting his back is the best he can do. He doesn't grasp the full significance of a Strontian, but he understands that Robby was - is - powerful. That he wouldn't be dead, and that Rich is back with Robbie, a little less seduced by the scene that will haunt them.

"They're trying harder this time," he guessed with a shrug. "To get us into our parts. We aren't kids, so it... maybe has to hit us harder so we stop thinking and just act. Like kids do. Remember how we used to just know and do? No hesitation, just swing the swing as high as you can and jump."

Like the yellow slicker and red blood and Robbie's own blue eyes, the balloon is one of the only thing that the color seems true. It makes everything else flat and dull, sliding just a bit into gray scale against the colors that an author would note.

He knows that it's wrong. The balloon does not belong here, in the pouring rain, and it certainly shouldn't move like that. Robbie's good at How Things Move, even if he doesn't always know the why.

A red balloon, so perfect and cliche that it beckons to him.

The urgency is gone, and Robbie reaches towards the string of the bright balloon. He doesn't grab it - he'd have to take his hand off Rich's back, where it's been firmly planted since he started shepherding Rich along, and step into the street.

His words come back to him. Robbie swung the swing, but he doesn't jump. He consciously refuses to go get the balloon. There's something not right about it. Don't take anything from a stranger, especially one you can't see.

"Isn't it obvious? The adults are blind dopes because we're in a kids' story." When the main characters were kids, the adults had to be idiots, evil, or both. There was no running home to Mom and Dad in a kid story, or there'd be no story.

Across the street, a flash of red appears in the dark void of the storm drain. A second balloon slips out of it, rising up from the street as it drifts towards them. The fear burbles up in his stomach with it. The churning sick fear of childhood, when fight or flight is fight, flight or freeze, and Robbie is frozen. His adult/child brain is certain: helium balloons belong in sewers even less than little boys. One is ugly but possible; the other is a violation of fact. Balloons float up.

So how did it get in the sewer? And how did it get out? It's too fat and round to have fit through the gap between metal and concrete.

Robbie remembers how he used to be afraid of sewer tops and manholes when he was a little kid, younger than he is now. He thought the kids would come loose beneath him, and he'd fall forever until he died. It was a silly fear, he told himself. They're bolted in place, set in cement, and there's nothing to be scared of. When he was a boy, there was always a friend of a friend of a friend that it had happened to. Swear to God.

Don't be a baby because some magic made you shrink.

But staring into that black, gaping maw of the drain with the dead, glassy gaze of Rich's brother gnawing at the back of his head... it's hard to listen to his better judgment. More rules of childhood are running through his head. Don't walk on the manholes. Don't step on the crack. Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.

Pools of water in his eyes.

"Rich..." Robbie's hand moves from Rich's back to grab Rich's and tug, but Robbie's rooted. The balloons have halted their march, still just out of reach, waiting for two small boys to take them.

Red balloons. It's the color that bothers him, he realizes, more than the demented physics. The balloon is part of a story dancing on the tip of his tongue. The exact red balloon of idyllic childhoods of yesterday juxtaposed against... against what?

Against dead kids in the street.

And then he remembers. Oh, not the story that he's in, but a popular concept of fiction. A trope so hardcore that it's a truth.

Kid stories are where the real monsters are.

The witch in Hanzel and Gretel. The Big, Bad Wolf. Voldemort. All the things that didn't hesitate to hurt innocents, to turn little boys by the score into donkeys, to leave them cold on the street. All the kids books.

His hand tugged again, sharply. Something pulled that kid's arm off like a chicken wing, and it can't have gone far. "We should go figure this out and come back."

What he means is, it's working. Robbie's head is usually a dark place loaded with bloody memories - it doesn't take much to inwardly unnerve him. The balloons, plural, are freaking him out, and he doesn't want to stay here with them until he can rationalize the story they're trapped in. He's had nightmares about this; he knows he has.

Rich has seen more than his fair share of monsters and more than his fair share of kids being killed or hurt. He's seen children reduced to parts. He heard their screams in the background of their caretakers' distress calls when the nursery creches of Xinti fell into Xinti's sun during the war. He felt them connected to him, mindless, all individuality swept away, when they'd been assimilated by the Phalanx.

But normally when he faces monsters, he's at full power. He can blow up star destroyers with one hand. He's not a powerless kid, with one of his best friends who's also a powerless kid, trapped in a bubble of reality with one.

His hearts starts to pound, and he starts to move back and away from the drain. He lets go of Robbie's hand, but it's to hold a protective arm in front of Robbie, putting his body between Robbie and the drain. It's instinct. He's bigger. ~~He's always been bigger, he'll always be bigger.~~

Rich starts to push them back away from the grate and more balloons float out, but now they start to lazily drift all around the two of them, like a red carpet is being laid out for them, as if they're saying : This is all for you.

And then there's a laugh and a voice that only sounds like it's human because it's wearing a human skin, and Rich freezes. It has that affect, the voice reaches inside and just freezes everything.

"Aren't'cha gonna say hello, boys?" the voice hisses from the sewer grate, and then there are eyes flashing from the dark and a painted face and the vaguest outline of teeth that are just slightly too sharp. "There's all kinds of wonderful things down here! Cotton candy, and rides, and all sorts of surprises. And balloons, too. All colors."

Another balloon bobs up.

"They all float down here."

Rich tries to scream and can't, he can't force the air out of his lungs, but he can still feel his hand, still feel his arm pressed against Robbie, and that's enough. The protective arm is more liquid than the rest of him, and he grabs onto Robbie's wrist with an iron grip and then tugs them both along, away from the sewer drain, back towards his pretend house on his pretend street.

"RUN!"

He runs and even though it's awkward to sprint while still holding onto Robbie, he refuses to let go.

Edited 2017-03-31 23:11 (UTC)

The arm that's thrown out across Robbie's chest is a nice gesture, but all it does is make him puff out his chest and try to stand a little taller. Despite the fear or maybe because of it, Rich has redirected him into such a natural stance for him: proving he's enough. He's old enough to be a superhero. Cool enough to try out for the Avengers. Awesome enough to be a New Warrior. Sorry enough to keep living. Right now? He's big enough to be the one doing the defending, and, yes, he is even self-preserving enough to stay away from the magic sewer that a balloon just came out of.

As if the grate has to argue with Robbie, too, it pukes up more balloons. Half a dozen, maybe more, and they nearly encircle the boys like lazy lightning. The ones that Robbie watches - they barely seem to move from second to second, but the one he loses focus on suddenly reappears at the far corner of his vision, shepherding the blonde closer to the brunette.

Something laughs from in the grate and all around him, and it sounds like nothing he's ever heard before and nothing he's ever wanted to hear again. There's a tone that Norman Osborn has in his laugh, that Bullseye has. They sound nothing alike except for some twist in their laugh, and you know. You know that they have just enough of a grip on reality to smash it and they'll do it because it's fun.

"Hello boys!," Robbie snaps it out automatically, one-upping the voice as best he can by trying to imitate the guy from Independence Day. Trying and failing, because he's eleven. His body couldn't find puberty with a map right now, so forget sounding like an adult. He answers without thinking, before the yellow eyes glint out of that darkness.

Before he squeaks at the sight of them and jumps as the grease paint melts into view around them. Jumps in place - his adrenaline says get back and his heart says leap in front of Rich because, holy shit, there is a goddamn evil clown.

Robbie will never be sure if he'd have made it off that street without Rich. He was running as fast as he could, but... in hindsight, it will seem slow. The sprint is a one-word order, autopilot, and Rich's hand clamped around Robbie's wrist, yanking him along.

It isn't until they've stopped (not until they're safe - after seeing that, they aren't safe until they're back on Legion World, back in their twenties, with a few dozen superheroes in the same room) that Robbie wastes breath on trying to talk, though he's panting softly. "Did you - I could smell the cotton candy. I could smell it in the sewer."

"Ohmanohmanohmanohman." Now on Rich's "family's" porch, he paces back and forth, and he surprises himself with how panicked he is, but he's figured it out. He's figured it out and he remembers how terrified he'd been the first time when he saw that stupid clown, back when it'd just been fiction.

And he's powerless here. He's got a whole thing about not having his powers. There are a lot of people who can adapt when their powers are again and he is not, will never be, and has never been one of them. It feels like a limb is gone, like the core of his body's gone all cold, and he feels useless and vulnerable in a way that's intensely uncomfortable.

"It!" he says, grabbing Robbie by the shoulders and shaking him slightly. It's not an angry shake, it's just panic, a "Don't you see??" kind of shoulder shake. "Stephen King's It! That's the story we're in right now! That was the killer clown!"

He lets go and starts pacing again.

"My parents wouldn't even let me watch this movie when I was a kid! I watched it over my buddy Caps' house 'cause his parents always let us watch R-rated movies. Thanks to that stupid clown, I didn't sleep for two days."

And now they have to go against the damn thing? As kids?!

"Ohmanohmanohmanohman."

Normally, he's not the type to panic under pressure. Ever. But normally he wasn't a kid again, powerless, and being forced to face one of his worst childhood fears.

Rich panicking is not helping Robbie stay calm, and he does his best to hide the antsiness, the twisted fingers, in wringing out the ends of his shirt until he's grabbed and shaken.

"It?" But then, recognition. It's been a long time since he saw that mini-series or read the book. The first, and only, time that Robbie saw It, he barely saw It. He heard plenty, though, with his eyes glued just above or below the tv, trying not to catch a glimpse of the screen when it sounded scary. Robbie's voice gets that dreamy, I-remember-that tone, despite remembering something that had scared him so bad his bladder shriveled. "I saw It when I was 13. The parentals didn't know, and I didn't tell 'em."

It was eighth grade, and Robbie was barely older than the kids in the movie (and probably the same age as the actors). He had finally won the argument that he was old enough to let himself in the house after school, to be trusted to not burn the whole house down. He found himself in a sudden upswing of social standing. Robbie had as many electronics as most of his classmates have in their entire house in his bedroom, and he had a few precious hours of guaranteed time sans the parental units every day. He didn't have to supply R-rated movies and violent video games. His friends smuggled plenty, sneakily borrowed from their parents or older siblings stash for the younger boys to try out at the Baldwin house where no one bothered to supervise.

It took them three days to watch the miniseries that someone had taped off tv, complete with commercials. Robbie always kicked them out at five o'clock, just in case. Just in case someone got it in their head to come home at five and have a family dinner at six, where they'd all laugh about how fun it was to sometimes be so kitschy.

That didn't happen on any of the It days though, although he wished it had. Robbie was left by himself for two or three hours more, refusing to go into the bathroom to pee until he saw his mom or dad arrive home. Just in case, his subconscious said. But the rest of him stuck to the story: he wasn't scared. He just didn't have to pee.

And now they're here - in It, in Derry, and Robbie is shivering from wet clothes and dread. H catches his tongue between his teeth to stop the chatter. He is undersized and living out a story where the children fight with belief, and Robbie knows that he is screwed. He doesn't believe in rock 'n roll. He doesn't believe that silver stops a monster. He doesn't believe in anything enough.

Ohmanohmanohmanohman. God, he hopes he doesn't get Rich killed because he's all fear and no faith. Rich isn't allowed to die here. "What are we going to do? It can be anywhere. It is everywhere."

He's not expecting a real answer. "This is the beginning of the book. Do we..."

Dammit, he wants to be older. Bigger. Less small sounding, because trying to sound matter of fact in a faltering boy soprano is frightening him even more. They're kids. They're just kids, and this is too much to throw on slim shoulders. He takes a gulp of breath. "Do we skip ahead to the end?"

Edited 2017-04-02 03:45 (UTC)

"I forgot it was a mini-series. I always remembered it as a movie." Then he remembers: Caps had bragged about stopping the VHS from recording during the commercials.

Rich has to force himself to calm down, to stop letting the fear control him. It's hard when he's this close to the ground, hard to feel brave when it doesn't feel like fire is flowing through his veins like it's supposed to.

But he knows just like Robbie does that in a place ruled by belief, by thoughts and feelings and fears, that Robbie's possibly going to have some trouble. His friend is going to need him -- and he's going to need Robbie, too. Rich knows he also has a few things working against him here. One: he's got some pretty terrible fears and memories to draw from. The bugs. The Phalanx. The Many-Angled Ones. And more.

Two: the whole 'believe in yourself' angle to this has never really been Rich's forte.

It's a sobering thought. They can't panic. They have to look out for each other.

"I dunno, but whatever we do, we stick together. I don't care if any of the fake adults try to pull us apart. Starting now, we call a permanent sleepover. We need to make sure neither of us is ever alone."

That was the ticket in the miniseries.

"That's what it took, right? A bunch of kids sticking together, looking out for each other. We've already done that. We already were a bunch of dumb kids looking out for each other, it's just this time we don't have superpowers."

But they also were in a world that didn't necessarily require them. That was the point of the thing, that a bunch of powerless kids had been able to fight a monster with just the power of belief and friendship.

"Hopefully, it's not just us in here. There's got to be some of the other Legionnaires, right? Probably in the roles of some of the other kids. We just have to find them."

Edited 2017-04-14 08:08 (UTC)

"Stick together," Robbie repeats dumbly, because he keeps wanting to argue that their parents could pick them up and take them home. It's so easy to separate little kids who have curfews. He has to make it work, though, because he knows the story. It feeds, and Robbie is not walking onto a scene like that one bully they found in the sewer.

So, he decides, Rich is right. They'll stick together like glue. He's already a champ at sneaking out of the house. Sneaking into one, if the parents aren't agreeable, can't be much harder, and it's not like his were the most attentive.

Robbie laughs at the thought and shares it. "If they're my parents, they probably won't even notice. I don't remember much about the parents, but I think that was a thing. The adults ignored everything. Like us running down the street. We're basically invisi...ble..."

His faltering is no accident. A balloon is floating by the porch, a smidge out of any little boy's reach.

SOMEBODY COME AND PLAY

The balloon spins around in a wind doesn't reach the boys. On the opposite side, there's more writing.

MIKE
BEN
STAN
BEVVIE
EDDIE
GEORGIE
RICHIE
BILL

The names don't even bother to morph beneath the thick black marker that crosses them out. One second, they read as they should. The next, they are something else entirely, as if to answer Rich's question.

NITA
GRIF
BRAINY
KID Q
VANCE
ROBBY
ROBBIE
RICH

The names are scratched out with dried blood that gets wetter and wetter as the list goes on. The line across Robby Rider's name is running down towards Robbie's.

The balloon is already turning away from him again, but Robbie is already scrambling to throw anything he can get his hands on at the balloon. A garden spade hits home just as the balloon finishes its 360.

SOMEBODY COME AND DIE is just visible before the balloon pops in an explosion of red mist that rains down on Robbie below. He is freckled with blood, and Robbie screams before he can get a grip. After a few ragged breaths, he chokes out, "We need little kid stuff to fight with. Itching powder and, and ... I don't remember. Spitballs. Slingshots."

Edited 2017-04-27 22:51 (UTC)

It's a story everyone's heard before. It transcends time, genre, and even other universes. A hero faces off against a cruel villain to rescue a fair maiden.

Anyone could break free from a simple trap like this--and that's why Tsarista has engineered a little twist. Instead of overpowering Legionnaires with villains of her creation, she will set them against the villains among themselves.

Three Legionnaires found themselves within the crumbling walls of what was once a great stone castle. Most of the wooden roof had rotted away long ago, leaving nothing to protect them from the rumbling gray clouds threatening rain overhead. Grass grew between the large flat stones that made up the floor and thick green moss crawled up and down the walls. A fire crackled in a tremendous hearth that was protected from the elements by the last remaining portion of the roof.

There by the fireside, a figure in a regal white and gold dress was tied tightly to a chair. Behind the chair stood Videl, dressed in a luxurious red gown with intricate embroidery and a plunging neckline that left very little to the imagination. Two crooked black horns grew out of either side of her head, draped in silver and jewels. In her left hand, she held a black scepter topped with a flaming orb.

"Oh, you foolish hero," she chided, gaze directed not her captive, but across the empty stone expanse of the old castle where stood a gallant figure bearing sword and shield. "Trying to rescue my dear princess, are you?"

Fareeha had found herself on hourseback, armored with a sword hanging off her hip and a shield slung over her back. It took her a few moments to orient herself, but seeing the decrepit castle in the distance on a high lonely hilltop with a path leading directly towards it was a pretty clear indication of where she needed to go.

She rides up, dismounts, and brandishes her sword and shield; she's not exactly sure what she's running into, but she's smart enough to know not to go in unawares.

Hearing the evil enchantress toss some shade her way, she pulls her weapons closer against her as she eases her way into the castle.

"I don't try - I succeed. You'd be safer just relinquishing, ah --" And now she finally gets a look at the 'princess', "relinquishing the prince to me!"

The captive "princess" wasn't all that interested in staying captive, to be honest. Vance shifts, pulling at his bonds. Which are just a little too well done for him to get out of.

(If he could remember his telekinesis, it would be much easier.)

He looks up when the hero arrives, looking relieved. "You came!"

"No, I think I will be quite safe as I am," said Videl. She slowly stepped around the chair where Vance was tied, lazily stroking his hair with her free hand and smiling down at him.

"Don't be alarmed, my darling," she cooed. "I will dispatch this unworthy fool."

Videl raised her staff above her head and drew a symbol in the air in flames. She thrust her staff forward, sending the rune into the center of the room. A low rumble sounded, but it was not thunder. The rune shuddered, sending a shower of sparks in all directions, as it grew into the form of a dragon. The beast, composed entirely of flame, stretched its wings and roared at Fareeha, sending forth another flurry of sparks. It was easily as tall as two of Fareeha as it stood now on all fours.

From her place by Vance, Videl threw back her head and cackled. "Best of luck 'succeeding' against my pet, hero," she taunted.

Fareeha ducks behind her shield as its blasted with dragonfire. She can feel the heat curling around the edge, but miraculously her shield holds up. Once its abated and the creature lies in wait, she throws a glance over at Vance and Videl.

"Excuse me while I deal with this rude interruption - "

She turns her attention back towards the dragon, and then sprints forward with a courageous yell, brandishing her sword and raising her shield, to both cover her from its head as she darts close, and to use it as a secondary edge as she comes within striking distance. The heat is intense and she almost feels cooked inside her armor, but she's nothing if not determined.

Vance jerks his head away from the touch to his hair, baring his teeth in a show of defiance.

Only a show, of course, because the ropes were annoyingly tight. He hated feeling this helpless, especially watching his knight in shining armor going into battle.

Videl pulled her hand away from Vance with a soft chuckle. Such disobedience, she thought to herself. That would definitely need to be dealt with later.

But at the moment, there was a more pressing matter to address---one with a sword and shield who seemed quite intent on facing off against Videl's fiery conjuration. Videl took a few steps forward, holding her staff outstretched and trying to pour a little more magic into her dragon. She was confident that her princess was securely bound and wouldn't manage some miraculous escape just because the sorceress's back was turned.

"I believe that was my line," Videl shot back at Fareeha. A slow trickle of flame curled through the air from Videl's staff to the fiery dragon, something rather like a lifeline connecting the two.

The dragon roared again at Fareeha, sending a stream of fire in the hero's direction. It lifted its right foreleg and lashed out, swiping at Fareeha with flaming claws outstretched.

Fareeha gives Videl the barest flick of attention, but it's enough to notice the line of fire between her and the dragon.

Then her attention's taken by the stream of flames and she ducks back down beneath her shield, waiting for it to subside. When it does, however, she's met with a blow from its claws. The armor protects her for the most part, but she is flung to the side and battered up against the stone wall. It winds her, and he gasps for breath as she rights herself.

She glances up, taking stock of where her sword and shield have landed, and how far she is from Videl; if she can take out that staff, she'll have a better chance at taking out that dragon.

"Hold tight, Vance! Someone needs to learn when they invite injustice to their house, I will always come knocking!"

She springs up from the ground, making a move to collect her sword and shield before barelling towards Videl.

"Well, if you want to get REALLY technical about it..." There's something that niggles at him about 'injustice'. Or, rather, the 'justice' part of it. But that's who he is, isn't he?

Luckily, since this is going by story book tropes, whoever tied Vance up wasn't that great at it. Or had decided that, because of the large and floofy skirts, tying up his legs wasn't a priority. And, honestly, the skirts meant that standing UP from this chair without help would be difficult.

It does mean, however, that since Videl's standing close to him? He can reach out with one leg. And, as she's turned away from him? He instead kicks out at the back of her knee.

Videl lets out a laugh as her dragon knocks Fareeha aside like a doll, watching in delight as the battered hero tries to recover. How sad and fragile this hero is, bolstered by bravado but with little strength to call her own. What would be the most fitting end for such a creature, Videl wonders as Fareeha collects her gear. Burned to ashes? Steamed alive in her armor? Or perhaps torn limb from limb?

'Injustice' nags at the sorceress's mind, but she roughly forces it back. Justice? Hah! Justice is for the weak, for those unable or unwilling to seek out the power to put down injustice in their own lives.

Videl opens her mouth to hurl a scathing retort at Fareeha, but cries out in pain as Vance's foot connects with the back of her knee. "Aaargh!" Her left leg crumples beneath her and she falls forward, dropping the staff as she throws out both hands to catch herself. The staff clatters to the ground and rolls a few inches out of Videl's reach.

However, the spell remains unbroken, the magic flame still linked between the dragon and the head of the staff. The dragon whips its head around when it hears Videl cry out. It swipes at Vance with outstretched talons, mindful of its mistress's position on the floor. Fareeha is momentarily forgotten.

Vance's attack couldn't have been better timed; Fareeha takes the moment and - instead of gathering up her sword and shield, she rushes back to Videl.

It's a risk, because if this doesn't work, she'll be wholly vulnerable. She reaches for Videl's staff, intending to wrench it away.

It's a risk that's made a little less risky by the fact that the dragon is focused on Vance at the moment.

There's not really a way to brace for the swipe, nor a way to get away from it. Vance shouts as the talons connect, throwing him aside and into a wall. At least the chair hit the wall first, shattering under the impact but leaving Vance winded as he smacked the wall and then fell to the floor with a groan.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS - Modplot

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The Road - closed to Sam and Rich

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cw: gross lung stuff?

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Dracula

Re: Dracula

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Dipper and Pidge - Twilight

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IT - closed to Robbie and Rich

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Rescue the Princess - Fareeha, Vance, and Videl

\o/

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