So, chapter up. Contrary to popular expectation, Petra's version of a ritual is less robes and chanting, and more Step one, do the thing. Step two, do another thing. Step three, clean up. Simple and this chapter, we get Red Room school, Heaven, and Nico and Nicholas.
Petra woke up on cold tiled floor in a laboratory.
A hologram flickered into existence. A mousy, bespectacled man, wearing a beige suit and a pleasant expression. The hologram spoke, "Hello, Miss Fury, I see that you are awake. Please take a seat."
He gestured to the laboratory stool in front of the empty table. Petra pushed herself off the floor and sat, awkwardly.
The projection moved to the other side of the table and took a seat as well, the chair shimmering into existence. Leaning forward, he began, "There is a matter that would benefit from your consultation. As a fellow intellectual, there has been a certain matter that has caught my scientific interest. Tell me, how would one deal with a rogue fairy?"
Petra twisted her hands nervously and replied, "The standard procedure is either a banishment or a binding. Banishments usually work for changelings by throwing them into the fireplace and sending them up a chimney or a myriad of other such rites, but bindings are simpler, and you don't need to overpower the Fae."
"Then, how would I go about binding a fairy?" The Doctor was interested and nice.
"The ritual's core is simple. Mortal blood, drunk willingly, to chain, and mortal breath to forge the lock and key. It's a binding to force a Fae to bend to one's will, to usurp its name and impose another upon it, until the padlock breaks and the binding shatters as the heart ceases to beat and the mortal's soul flees."
The hologram raised an eyebrow, asking, "And if this 'ritual' is as simple as you claim, why aren't we overrun by assorted fools with fairies on leashes?"
Hesitant to contradict the Doctor, but taking comfort in the familiar, the girl fidgeted and answered, "It's not the binding that is difficult, but the summoning. Fae know of the threats beset about this mortal plane and will struggle most fiercely when brought hither. A broken circle, a stray breeze, a wandered mind." She shrugged, "Even the meanest of mistakes may magnify mishap into misfortune."
"So all your so-called 'binding requires is blood and a few words?" The Doctor asked.
"Yes." Petra nodded earnestly. "Mortal blood for a chain and a change, then mortal breath channeled through speech for shaping the Fae by redefining its nature."
"And it will last for a lifetime."
"Blood and breath. The binding will break with the binder's final breath. What is the span of a mayfly's birth and death to one of the Resplendent?"
The Doctor smiled, "Thanks you for your contributions, Miss Fury. Take a drink from the cup to your left please."
Petra did. The room blurred, and she heard the Doctor say, "I look forward to your enrollment in school." Then it was dark.
Do you know how irritating (and off-putting) it is to wake up in a totally unknown location, especially when the change in décor is ridiculously jarring? No? Me neither, well, until now. Mum knocked me out during the party and then (I presume) she kicked me into normal creation somewhere convenient, after which I must've gotten kidnapped by HYDRA goons and finally ended up in this creepy little interrogation cell, wearing steel handcuffs, which are ouch. Huh, I learned another new thing today. So, you know that folktale/movie/fiction thingy in which iron burns Fae? It's a lie. Cold iron doesn't burn, it gives you frostbite, so the expression "welding cold"? Yeah, it's a lot less expression-y for me. Steel's not pure iron, and I'm not pure Fae, so it's less freezing welts and open sores and more like what normal people feel when they stick their hands in ice-water. Not much at first, but as time passes, cramps and tremors start and you feel convinced that you're going to get hurt even if you know that nothing permanent will actually happen.
The door opened behind me. Ooh, even creepier, since the walls merge seamlessly with the door, so the poor schmuck (in this case, me) inside would get a scare when the interrogator enters (stage left and back).
Two cups of water are set down on the table. The guy smiles (I think he's trying to be nice), and says, "Hello Miss Crow, let's talk."
Showtime.
"So, whaddya wanna know? I dunno what dad meant with all the world domination stuff, so if you're trying to ask me about where his bases are or what his designs were, no dice. The most I can tell you is that he had brother issues galore and could cook up a hell of an insanity plea if he's standing on trial and that's before he started messing around with Asgard trinkets and weird and useless Christm—" I gagged, coughing as I suddenly couldn't get the words out. Oh right, Asgard doesn't celebrate Christmas. But I did imply that the Infinity Stones were just trinkets as far as Asgard was concerned, so there's that to be thankful for. I took a drink of water.
The man nodded to something behind me as my insides started to burn with cold. I collapsed, boneless, spasming as I clutched my stomach. The COLD reached spread, up to my heart as it slowed its beats, then up my spinal cord, up, up, into my head. I saw psychedelic colors and heard the screaming of a thousand thousand throats, felt my name torn from me and ohdivinitiesaboveI'mswearinglikePwhoamIwhatsmyname THISISNOTOKAY I'M PANICKING!
"You are Jack Frost." A hoarse voice cuts through my haze, and I could feel myself changing, hair shortening into a bob and glamour rippling into white combat boots, navy cargo pants, and a hoodie splayed in frost. That was sooo not in the So You're a Fairy 101 I got.
Petra came to awareness again in a vertical section of pipe. Beneath her feet lay a grate, with a larger square of open space in the middle. The pipe ended somewhat higher than she could reach, with (2,5) stenciled onto the top. It was like getting trapped in a well—an almost claustrophobic experience, with less than comfortable amounts of space, and disorientating curved walls. Four voices shouted in unison. Wake up! Wake up! You are students of the Red Room now. Loyalty is expected! Insubordination will be severely punished! From now on, you have no identity but that which we give you, you have no homeland, no name, no family. Your have been brought here to be shaped into weapons to better serve a higher purpose!
They spoke of world peace, and of their future contributions thereof, of protocol and timetables whilst they were within the program. There was a constant repetition of obey, obey, obey, and formulaic responses to tears, yelling, sleeping, and other such infractions to the rules consisted of the cold phrase "([number, number]), _ will not be tolerated" and a spraying with water from above. She could sense that the water was cold, but silence and a lack of overt insubordination had kept her from "suffering" the punishment.
While disobedience was punished by the phrase and spray combination, dissension was openly mocked, and the argument was torn apart, followed by a series of verbal attacks on the speaker. In time, her fellow students' defiance had been muted by sleep deprivation and the lack of food, and while she had no way to count the hours, the voices had changed many times. After a bit, commands were added in, from simple and pointless orders of the sort one might find in obedience training, "sit", "stand", "touch your toes", to more degrading ones, "defecate", "urinate", followed by the welcome "eat", "drink", "dispose of waste" that came after bags of nutrient solution and water were thrown down.
Petra had heard the same voice a handful of times when there came the command to sleep. Sitting down, she leant back and dozed off.
It was all too soon that she was woken again, and the cycle repeated, orders and speeches, with the addition of longer and longer passages that they were told to repeat. Our purpose is service. We are not people. We are weapons. We dedicate ourselves with unerring discipline to the Cause. We are the tools that shape the world. We have no name, no self, no family; we have no past, no hometown, no mothertongue; we have no desires, no…
Time lost meaning as everything blurred into an endless present, nothing mattering but obedience and compliance, and constant mantras drilled into her foggy and sluggish thoughts. She could not muster more than the bare minimum of energy demanded, and she felt a vague, but increasing desire to get a jet of water to spray over her—if she could force herself to speak unprompted, that was.
The whole ordeal ended after a few sleep cycles, and numerous combinations of voices. Their last orders were strip, dispose of clothing, wash, and dress. There were a few snags when someone didn't take off their underwear, but that was it. They were clean, fed, relatively coherent, and dressed in the clothes they had been given. Magnets descended, pulling the pipes up, and they were free. Free enough, at least, and finally putting voices to numbers and numbers to faces.
They were immediately called up by another four voices. So, with habits newly engrained, they reacted with immediate obedience, walking up the stairs by the side of the giant pit that had contained their pipe-prisons. They were greeted by five rows of older teenagers, all dressed in the same plain dark uniform they wore. All of the teenagers were standing at parade rest, hands behind their backs, faces blank and facing forward, though their eyes looked at them instead of fixing on a particular spot in the distance. The first row had four people, the rest had five, an even assortment of different ethnicities, sexes, builds, and comely or homely features.
The four, two male, two female, step forward. "Assemble according to your numbers." The stocky male said.
The quartet then separated, calling numbers from one to four. The children lined up, six to a leader. The rest of the teenagers moved, each one standing by their respective junior. They produced boxes and scissors. With quiet commands, the older teenagers ordered the new students to move this way and that, shortening their hair into practical crops. Finished, they put the silver bracelets inside the boxes onto the children's left wrists, the bracelets automatically shrinking to fit. Still not fully recovered from their fugue state, the students dumbly let themselves be manhandled.
The taller girl smiled kindly, the transition from dispassionate machine to human being extraordinarily jarring. Privately, Petra found it suspicious. "You are Class Cinnabar. We are Class Mulberry, the middlemost senior class studing your curiculumn. We will be your mentors throughout this stage of your education. Follow us, we'll take you to the dormitories. You remember the rules, I hope." She gave them a wan smile, "Otherwise, you'll be disciplined."
They were led to an empty room by the quartet, the rest of their seniors leaving with a tilt of a head as farewell. The room was long and rectangular. It had no door, triple bunkbeds lining the two walls, two toilets at the end, and curious panels on the walls. "We'll come for you tomorrow. For now, sleep." The other boy said, equally calm in tone.
Petra was the first to move, choosing the middle left bunk nearest to the toilets—one of the most defensible positions for her. She climbed onto the bunk after shedding her shoes, her classmates soon following. As the lights went out, there was a low buzz, and the girl's tracking bracelet—not entirely unfamiliar, SHIELD had similar ones, stuck itself to the panel on the wall. Judging from the shrieks and shouts of surprise, it had happened to everyone.
She slept, and dreamt of darkness and deeps and diabolic whispers.
On the bright side, I'm not brainwashed. On the not-so-bright side, I might as well be. Don't get your name broken, kids, it never helps. My default state's now a slightly military dress-uniform-y glamour and a permanently cheery temperament. Luckily, I was already that way. I realized a bit ago that dear ol' snakeys won't be doing anything particularly bad to me cause' it won't work—perks of being Unseelie, but they will give me orders. Sucks for them, since I only have to obey orders to the letter, and orders wear off, so, things like "shut up" doesn't mean that I can't bang the table, or crash chairs into the floor, etc. and I'll start talking after a couple hours anyways. Unfortunately for them, I'm too much of an asset to lose, so they're at a loss as to what to do. While I'm basically stuck with the bloody Winter Soldier because it was his blood in the water and his voice that named me. I hate my life.
Shadows twisted. A boy appeared from the heart of their darkness.
"Nico di Angelo." Fury said, bored, "son of Maria di Angelo and presumably Hades. Only known shadow-traveler currently alive, powerful enough to pop up in China without permanent injury. Polyglot, fluent in classical and modern Greek and Latin, Italian, English, and Mandarin, with a smidgen of German, French and Russian vocabulary thrown in. Swordsman, but passably familiar with many other forms of combat throughout history. Has suspected ties to the underworld, in both senses of the word. Physically fourteen. I presume that you're my new liaison?"
The boy glared at him grumpily, "Despite my protests, yes. For your information, I didn't want this job."
"I didn't ask, kid, and whether or not you didn't want the job doesn't fucking matter, we're still stuck doing it unless you can find a motherfucking alternative. Breathmint?"
The kid looked at him strangely, took the mint, and pulled out a folder. "Let's start working then."
Despite the initial unpleasantness, things soon settled into an exhausting, but acceptable routine. The panels disengaged when the lights went on, signaling that they had a quarter of an hour to wash and dress before they were to file into the dining hall. They then collected trays of breakfast and kept an eye on the display boards as they ate. Once given their schedules for the day, they headed to classrooms or exercise rooms, ran and stretched and leapt and danced, being pushed to the breaking point every day by cold-eyed sharp-voiced teachers who expected them to learn volumes of information, geography and biology and chemistry theory, practical applications in bomb-making, poisons, plant & animal identification, mammalian body structure, landmarks and locations and the like. They were drilled to politeness and pleasant temperament as they learnt language and culture in the same class, taught the litany we are weapons, we have no identity, we do not judge. Scorned for mockery, held in contempt for lack of respect, their teachers laid the groundwork for future conditioning.
Yes, Nico was reminded of Leo. Make of that what you will.