Act 2

Scorpion looks round curiously at the new place. It isn't anywhere he recognises at all.

Otoha falls off.

Skewb wipes a tear. "That was so moving. I was shouting that Romeo was fine the whole time."

A little boy with messy black hair and big red eyes wanders in. He looks about 3. He looks scared.

Ami goes to see if he's okay.

The boy looks at Ami with fright. "U-U-Um.…"

She smiles.

"Where are we anyway?" Skewb asks. This isn't Washington DC."

He draws his sword at the boy but soon yelps in pain and drops the sword.

Ingo looks around. "I... May have been off aim..." he admits. He glances at Skewb. "You don't know this place at all?"

The boy hides in a hoodie that he's dragging that is 12 years too big for him.

Ami pats his head.

Scorpion picks up the sword and hands it back to Skewb, hilt first.

Skewb takes the sword. "Thanks. I take it this boy is your friend and that I shouldn't kill him. Ever since I lost Jamie I devoted to killing everyone who wasn't a direct friend."

Scorpion doesn't know who the boy is but he thinks that he shouldn't be killed. "He is only small and harmless," he says.

"S-Seriously, I look 3..." The boy mumbled in a high pitch voice in response to Skewb. He can pronounce the word 'seriously' pretty clear for a toddler.

"Look. I don't care. I've been tortured for years, losing everything I held dear. I don't care who's a threat and who isn't. I kill on impulse," Skewb says.

"Maybe there would be room for empathy in me if Jamie was still alive, but she isn't, so there isn't."

Scorpion winces...that speech drives a little too close to home for him. He curls up to Ingo and hides his face in his jacket.

Ami hugs the child.

The boy tenses up.

"Oh. Okay. He is a friend I see." Skewb says looking at him and Ami, and unsummons his sword.

"We're not here to kill anyone," Ingo says sternly. Maybe Skewb is in pain, but pain happens, it's no excuse. "Let's find whatever we need to find anyways and leave."

Ami strokes the boy's hair.

He squeaks and covers his face with the hoodie. "P-P-Please stop!"

She asks what's wrong.

"I-I-I'm don't think I'm 3... I woke up with this big hoodie... I remember a g-ghost..."

Ami holds his hand. "It is strange, maybe you could show me where you saw the ghost?"

"I-I don't know miss... I don't remember anything..." He murmurs quietly.

"Where are we anyway?" Skewb says, getting up.

Then Tyrian falls out of a mirror like stone.

Ingo sighs. This day is turning into all kinds of weird. "What were we even looking for?" he asks Scorpion.

Tyrain looks around. "Who are you and where am I?"

Scorpion is still nervous. "I'm not sure," he says to Ingo. "Where are we, do you think?" He eyes up Tyrain curiously, staying close to Ingo.

Tyrian looks around in confusion. "What is this place, it is so... Contorted."

"Obviously a different dimension," Ingo states. He speaks to Tyrain. "You, do you know where we are?"

Otoha sits up slowly.

"Let's walk around and see what we can find ".

Ami rolls her eyes when she sees Otoha.

"I know nothing, I touched the mirrorwater of Galadriel and now I'm here," Tyrain tells Ingo.

Otoha does the cuckoo sound.

"For the kings sake not again".

The boy stammers nonsense at Ami. "W-Wha... U-Uhh... A-Ah... Who are you? My sister?" He looks extremely confused and distressed.

"I haven't seen you before, plus I wanna get away from my sister," Ami replies.

"Might as well come with us," Ingo tells Tyrian. "We're all lost too."

Otoha giggles at him.

"Hang on... Tyrian, how did you fall into this place? If we're here at the same time as you, maybe it's not a coincidence."

Otoha hops around like a frog.

"What duress is the child under? I may have supplies to help him". Tyrian pulls out his medical kit.

Ami sighs "Can you treat the frog?"

Scorpion watches Tyrain in interest, hoping that he has some poisonous items. He's not nicknamed The Scorpion because he likes to watch soaps on TV. Which he doesn't.

The boy looks even more scared at seeing the medical kit. "Nononono! No pills, no pills, no pills!"

Ami hugs him "There there, shush".

He takes a deep breath and sits down. "S-Sorry... Just for some reason I see something medical and I think of pills for some strange reason..." the boy is definitely smart to have such a vocab at his age.

"Mirror water... Pills... Misdirections... There's something big I'm missing here. What is it?" says Tyrain.

Ingo wonders why he always has to be the normal one. It's stressful managing a bunch of lunatics.

"What are pills?" Tyrain says. "I have an herb that could sooth your stress if you wish to be calm".

Ami sniggers. "Hop-along over there".

Tyrian notices Scorpions attention. "Why are you staring, what do you wish to say?"

Scorpion smiles at Tyrian. "That's an interesting selection of items that you have there, Sir. Are any of them toxins?"

"Yes". Tyrian pulls out a red vial. "This is nervesong it intensifies all pain felt by it's recipient".

Scorpion admires the red vial. "That is fascinating. Can you tell me more about it please Sir?"

"Yes, it is made by... What ... By, mixing chopped kingsroot and burnt pipegrass in a vat of cold water."

Scorpion listens to Tyrain and smiles. He doesn't know what those items are but he stores it all away in his brain for future reference.

"Wait! I got it!" Skewb suddenly says.

"To clarify, nobody knows for sure why we're here or what's going on, correct? Life seems to seem to distorted. Is everyone feeling this?"

"Yes, Otoha is acting dumber than usual " Ami remarks as she sits next to the boy.

"I think I might have it a little," Ingo says to Skewb.

"Losing memories, losing sanity, losing faith, you guys following me?"

"Does Otoha acting like a frog count, it's usually a duck."

"Skewb, my sanity is fully functional," says Scorpion. "You don't get employed in a super important job at the Government, if you are not 100% sane."

"Good. Not many others are hearing me very well besides Ingo which further fuels my theory."

"Oh, right... Hmm..."

Otoha bounces over to Tyrian.

The boy looks at Ami. "S-So uh... Do you have a name miss?"

"Ami and that thing hopping around is my sister Otoha."

"Wait!" Skewb points to Scorpion. "You there. When you found me, where there any other people in the room?"

"No, nobody at all," Scorpion says. "Ingo didn't appear until a couple of minutes afterwards."

"RIBBIT " Otoha yells in Tyrians ear.

Tyrian gives the frog child a strange look.

She bounces around him.

"Then we made a huge mistake coming here," Skewb says. "We're in my sub consciousness. Everything affecting me is now affecting you guys. It isn't affecting Scorpion because I had a moment with him with no distractions."

Scorpion gives everybody a b*tch please look at these words, although he gives Ingo a sympathetic look,. As a family friend, Scorpion sees Ingo as an uncle.

"Really?" Ingo says, considering what Skewb said. "That's not very helpful. We sure meant to go somewhere else."

"Ah... Mii...? Ami?" the child says.

"Yes ".

"Um... I got a word I remember people calling me but I don't have a name...".

"What is the word?"

"Black, I think."

"That's nice."

"I can't have a colour as a name can I?"

"Kuro sounds nice".

"K-Kuro... I don't know... I think... That hurts to think of..."

"That's why many people are here for a different reason though. Memories are being distorted as well as thoughts," Skewb says.

"It could very well be," Tyrain says. "My question is why would Galadriel's mirrorwater bring me into your mind?"

"Apparently the settee can travel into consciousness as well as dimensions," Ingo says to no one in particular.

"What what, eh," says Ami.

Scorpion is impressed. He secretly plans to go inside just about everyone's consciousness when he gets back.

"It could very well be that we were all strapped to the settee from the start, including the young boy, but your mind took a memory from another day," Tyrain continues.

"Cuckoo as my sister."

Otoha exhausts herself.

"I can explain that actually. What was it you said about a ghost earlier?"

"Please do before she wakes up."

"We're all slowly losing our sanity. Either that frog is a person, or it's not even there, or something like that. Point is, the longer we stay here, the worse things are gonna get."

The boy saw a ghost, that's the only thing he can remember, other than the word Black.

"Strange, that reminds me of something, a tale of ghosts in my land," Tyrain says.

Ingo nods. "Well, whatever we were looking for isn't here. So the obvious answer is to leave. Immediately. The settee is still here, hopefully still working."

Ami picks up Otoha.

"Come on let's go," she says.

Scorpion helpfully gets back onto the settee. He is totally unfazed by all that has happened.

"That would be best," says Skewb. "It's better to just call this a failed mission that risk losing our minds."

Tyrian enters the object, not wanting to stay in this room.

Ami puts Otoha in the sofa.

The boy hesitantly sits next to them.

Ami holds his hand.

"That's everyone." Ingo starts pulling levers, in a haste to get out, doesn't matter where.

"Besides, I might have another way of removing it, but I'll do that in my own time, Skewb says. "Oh btw guys, noticed anything different about me?"

"What is it?" Scorpion asks Skewb.

"Noticed how my sanity since coming here has slowly improved?"

Tyrian stares around him in confusion about what he is in.

"I was trying not to lose mine."

"That's my subconscious getting a grip on life. It's trying to dump my insanity into anything else it can find, which because we are here, is you guys. I'm unwillingly giving you my insanity. Me and whats-his-name can stay here, but you guys can't."

"Well, that's okay for me," Ingo says. "Maybe I'd finally understand my brother. It's not like I make good use of my sanity anyways."

"If you insist, but you're risking everyone else's minds too Ingo."

Scorpion nods. "Hey, maybe I should stay here then?" he suggests. "My sanity cannot be compromised cos I have a very important job."

"Do any of you have runes that you found in there, mine may have fallen from my satchel," says Tyrain.

"What's he smoking " Ami whispers to Ingo.

Scorpion asks Tyrain what a rune is.

"A rune is a mystical stone designed to graft into a weapon to allow certain magic to be created with it."

Scorpion understands this perfectly. He wonders if Saturn's glaive contained a rune...

The boy takes something out of the hoodie's pocket, it looks like a necklace with the yin yang on it. "Ami, please can you help me put this on?"

She does.

The necklace shimmers and the boy's eyes light up. Then he puts his head in his hands. "Oh God oh God the ghost cursed me and turned me into a toddler..."

"It's an interesting dilemma," Ingo says. "All of us with lower levels of insanity, or leave you with it all? Doesn't sound very good of us." Ingo looks at the others. "Is anyone else willing to stay?"

Ami shakes her head "I'm a nurse so no."

"I will stay with you for a while," Scorpion says to Skewb. "But I have to be back by the morning, for my job. Also, Ingo must tell my family where I am".

Skewb looks between Ingo and Scorpion.

"You know what? Fine, but it's unlikely we're gonna find any shock collar here, which is what we were he for to begin with."

"...And you guys can't do it very soon from now so I will go look for it."

"A shock collar, that's what we came to find?" Ingo asks. "I was more concerned for your sanity. I can... I can take them all home and then come back to try and help."

"Please child try to remember anything you can of the ghost," says Tyrain.

"It was a person, a dead guy thought I was hitting on his old girlfriend when it was the other way round..."

Scorpion tells Tyrain that his dad had a magical glaive. "It had really weird effects if you hit somebody with it," he says. "But my dad won't talk about it much and cries if you mention it".

Tyrian shows his longsword to Scorpion, two glowing emblems are on it's hilt

"Do you want to see what the sword can do?"

"Yeah," Scorpion says at once.

"Ok back up everyone."

The child backs up.

Ingo stands back, slightly in front of the others to protect them.

Scorpion peeps out from behind Ingo.

Tyrian thrusts his sword down and a small shockwave bursts around him.

"That was the earthweaver rune."

"Ow. Ugh. Powers like that bring back bad memories to me," Skewb says.

Ami and Ohota mysteriously vanish.

Scorpion stares down at the ground curiously and then back to Tyrain. He is impressed.

Tyrain then raises his blade upward and it began to spark with electricity.

"That was the skymothers rune."

Scorpion tells Tyrain that it reminds him of Pokémon powers.

Skewb looks at the now gone Ami "Did... Did somebody just disappear? Ingo, is there some kind of way to easily return to the previous area?"

"You see, now Ami is gone, her sanity is back, but everyone else's sanity is gonna get a little worse."

"The same way we came here," Ingo says. "The settee."

"Okay so the way I understand it, besides moving places, the settee can also warp individual people to the place they were last. That's useful, but the more we use it, the worse things get."

"Check this out," says Tyrain. He sheathes his blade and draws his dagger.

We are in the settee.

Tyrian twirls his knife and vanishes entirely.

"Shadowskiss rune," Tyrian's disembodied voice says right behind Scorpion.

Scorpion blinks in surprise but isn't as shocked as he would be if he hadn't spent the past 16 years living with a stalker (AKA, his adopted sister) and having one for an uncle. (AKA, Emmet, Ingo's brother).

"A little better is better than as bad as it was," Ingo states.

"Think Skewb think. When did I crack? When did I lose my sanity? I lost someone. Who was it? What Pokemon?"

"Guys, did any of you ever see me with somebody? A Pokemon? Not Espurr, he's fine, but he's not with me. A human resembling Pokemon. Any clues? Anyone?"