"Jinxy..." She leaned against the counter with a sob. For a moment, she felt like she was going to slip back into her despair, but no. She straightened and grabbed her boots. "I'm going to find you, Jinx." She said as she pulled them on and tied them. Grabbing Jinx's jacket, she shoved it into the bag and grabbed the rest of her things. Once she was ready, she headed for the door.
Walking down the hall, she set her face into a determined glare. She was going to get her little sister back now. A crash from a room caught her attention. "Jinx?" She ran around the corner and into a room where the door was wide open. On the floor was a man, books fallen on top of him.
"You're not Heather."
"Heather? Who the hell is Heather?"
"This is... unexpected. However... Was it you that killed Dahlia? That did everyone a favor. You should win a medal."
"Who are you?" Naomi asked warily. This didn't feel right. Somehow, she knew this person would be problematic.
Jinx lay gasping on the color and scratched at her face desperately, as if the pain there would make the agony in her bounding, burning mind any better. It hurt. Worse than anything she'd ever felt. Even worse than the time in the before, when she'd failed at the Master had thrown her in the cells. Oh she hated them. Jinx curled to her side, the memory of the guard grabbing her and the pain that followed. The blood, and the feeling of never being clean again. Bile forced its way up from her stomach as more memories rushed forward. As if a cork had been pulled. She curled into herself, not caring that the floor was dirtier now than even blood and gore and those men could make it. She thought, tentatively, about Nao and almost screamed as an eager flood of memories roared to the front of her mind. Something slithered and scratched at the ruined bathroom floor near her, but Jinx could barely even look, let alone act. The rush of clutter than littered her mind now was too distracting. Not even the floor, or the temperature, or the fact that this wasn't the peaceful bathroom from the world Nao was in registered to her. Then the claws bit into her hip, and the rush of blood and pain cleared her mind for one heavenly moment. Extending her claws, Jinx riped through the laquers' too soft to be hard skin easily and with a pleased smile. The splatter of brackish, black blood helped a little more, though the thing wasn't dead yet. It was like her in that way. Hard to down for long, and even harder to kill. "Yep. That's me~ a Jinx in wonderland. Hey little bendy-twister, know how I can get back?" She asked the thing with cheerful giggling, even as she snapped it's neck. "Guess not."
Naomi glared at the man as he stood and dusted himself off. "My name," he paused to push up his glasses, "is Vincent." He said as he looked at her. "And you...hm. You're Naomi. This is truly unexpected."
"How do you know who I am?" Naomi snapped, clenching her steel pipe.
"Oh I know everything."
"Well if you know everything, where's Jinx?" She snapped, her menacing demeanor back. She was angry now.
"Jinx is beyond my reach, you'll have to find her yourself. Have you tried the school?" He asked with a mocking look. Naomi wanted to punch him in his know-it-all face.
"If you know everything, you know I haven't."
"Then shouldn't you get going?"
Naomi glared at him some more. "Whatever." Naomi turned and ran off. THAT had been no help. Nao sighed. The school, eh? Was that where Jinx was? She hitched the backpack up and picked up the pace. Suddenly, she was facing a black mass. She just now realized the radio was going off. The black haired girl frowned as it seemed to turn slowly, revealing a Venetian Plague Doctor's mask.
"Just... what are you?" The girl held up the pipe she'd been using. She didn't figure that her gun would work on this... mist like creature. Taking a swing, the pipe went right through it. It came for her throat, and she fell backward as she tried to get away from it. It came for her, smog curling up her leg, leaving a mark in her jeans. "Oh no you don't." She said as she backed away again, getting up off the floor. She swung for his head this time, aiming at the mask. The creature recoiled with an odd garbled sound. Naomi shuddered and came for it. That was a mistake, it rust her, and Naomi fell in the narrow hallway once again. It went over her head. As it came back, it stared at her for a moment, then the mask came down. She shrunk back, not expecting the beak of the mask to actually pierce her shoulder as it did. She cried out in pain. As it pulled back, she smacked it a couple more times in the mask. It cracked. She wondered if this was doing any good. By the thing's warped cries, she could only hope. Once again, it reached for her and she jumped out of the way. By the weird way it'd left a scorch mark in her jeans, she didn't want to know what it'd do to her skin. She swung again, and this time, his mask broke. It gave off a shrill scream and suddenly dissipated.
Sitting back on her legs helped too, Jinx soon discovered. The less she though, the less it hurt. So Jinx sat and dug her claws in and out of the things flesh until the throbbing pain eased a bit and her head cluttered again. "Oh shally, my shilly oh dearest little bird~" She sang quietly with a sight. Thankfully, after not thinking anything studiously for a few minutes, the clutter faded to a migraine and she could stand without adding her stomach's contents to the mess on the ground. "Oh Jinxy's a very sick girl, that she is." She moaned softly, taking shuffling steps out of the bathroom and down the hall. Each step was something like a sledgehammer to the head, but she had to deal until she found Nao.
The stairways down were all blocked, and jinx almost ran in the opposite direction of the elevator, its wrongness even worse in the Other World. With no other place left, she slowly made her way upstairs, skirting around locked doors and strange shadows. The occasional lacquer came under her claws and helped relieve the ache in her head. After a while of poking around, Jinx found a door marked 302 that seemed almost alive. "Oho. A door. Does it talk, she wonders?" Jinx said softly as she studied the strange feeling wood. With a shrug, and a giggle, Jinx curled a fist and pounded on the door as hard as she could.
Naomi made it outside without too much trouble. Which way was the school then? Oh. Right. Across the lake. She sighed. According to her map there was a place to rent boats in Rosewater Park. She sighed again and stretched. "Alright..." She walked on her lonely way, avoiding areas where static started up. There were a few unavoidable scrapes, as the bird things could fly. Once or twice, she thought she saw the shadow of a child running around, but chalked it up to the mist. However, it did not deter her from reaching her destination. She looked at the entrance and frowned lightly. She'd have to navigate those pathways somehow.
The park was... lonely, if not seemingly safe. She didn't feel the presence of anything here. Just the fog and the concrete. Sighing, she could smell the lake, though distantly. "Oh... This way then." She backtracked a couple of steps and headed down a pathway that took her straight to the water. A few feet down was a small shack with a boat rental sign on it. She walked over it, not expecting anyone. Of course she was right. She poked around for keys, but didn't find any. "You mean I have to go manually? Fuck me..." She muttered as she grabbed a couple of oars and headed out to the lake.
Finding a boat, she began her row across the water. It was eerie, silent, not even the water making much noise. She shook in fear as she slowly made her way across the lake, only guided by the light from the lighthouse. "Twinkle, twinkle, little... bat... How I wonder what you're at..." Naomi tried to make herself feel better. This was going to be a long row.
There was a whimpered roar from the other side, which amused her greatly, so she kept pounding away. Laughing when a shadow skittered across the floor and the door was ripped open. "What do you think you are doing?" She rocked back on her unsteady feet and grinned up at the Blond haired man. Standing there in her messed up, once-white men's tee-shirt and nothing else, She was quite a sight to see. "Me? I think, it's just a theory, that I was knocking. Knocking at your chamber door." The man stared at her. "I see. Any particular reason? I'm exceedingly busy right now. I don't have the tim-" "Oh but mister! The monsters are real scary. " Jinx whimpered out in her best little girl voice. "I just hoped that you'd let me across your nice room there to the fire escape on the other side. Pretty, pretty please?"
Activating Puppy eyes that always worked on Mother. The man's face flickered, then saddened, then hardened. "I'm sorry bu-" "Thanks mister!" Jinx ducked under the man's arm and made a dash for the window, admiring the decor on her way. Just as she was about to slip out the window, the migraine hit again. Hissing, she sat on the window sill and scrubbed at her face again. "You can't just come in here like that! Mother will think you're being rude!" Instinctively, Jinx looked over her shoulder, sighing when there was only a carved up body where her Enx should be. "It's a really nice room mister 302. I'm apologizing to your Mother now. By leaving. Thanks for letting me in though. Ta-ta~!" With that she hopped out the window and onto the extremely rusted Other World fire escape….and immediately fell through the rusted metal towards the concrete waiting below.
It felt like she was moving nowhere. She could swear she was still in the middle of the lake, stuck in the fog. However, a great sense of relief washed over her as she finally saw some sort of shore through the fog, and finally, she made it to the other side. "Yes!" Naomi scrambled out of the boat and onto the shore. That felt so much better. She silently resolved never to have to use a row boat ever again.
"Now..." Naomi sighed as she headed up to the lighthouse and checked her map. Gods she had a lot of walking to do. She wondered if she could jack a car at some point. Sighing, she headed for the road, once there she took a right and headed onward. She'd have to turn once she hit Bachman. However... it was going to be a nice little stroll just to get up this bridge to Sandford. "Hoh... where's Jinxy when you need her?" She whined morosely. She wanted her little sister here desperately. "Stupid mirror world..."
Jinx was graceless. That's a fact. So when she crashed to the hard ground and rolled a few paces, it wasn't much of a surprise for either her or the split-faced dog staring at her incredulously. "Ooo Hello pretty doggy." She said with a groan as she slowly picked herself up, and pressed herself against the apartment building's brick wall. The dog stared at her with its ears half mast and its head tilted. "Aren't you a nice doggy? Did Jinxy interrupt your thinking? So sorry she is." Jinx said with a cheerful tone as she slowly inched along the wall…..only to come thigh-to-wormy-snout with another dog. "E-heheheh…." Both dogs slathered and growled, Jinx just gulped. "RUNAWAY!" She screamed as she ran in the general direction of away as fast as her legs could carry her.
Walking was becoming tiring already. She was so tired of this town. Home was the second most important thing on her mind as she came up on a bridge. This made her nervous. She didn't like bridges. "Darn..." She muttered as she looked at it. There really was no other way. Taking hold of her proverbial balls, she headed toward it. Then she saw it again, the shadow of a child. "Hello? Is someone there?" She called out, running forward. She could see it at the edge of the fog. "Hey! Stop!" She called, then it disappeared.
"What the...?" She stopped for a moment. She was now on the bridge. Shaking her head, she continued. "This town is so-" At that moment she was pushed. "Hey!" She spun around. There was no one there.
"This isn't funny! Who's there! Show yourself!" There were whispers at the edges of her hearing range. She felt something brush her left knee. Looking down, a shadow stood, staring up at her. There was nothing to cast that shadow, though. "What the hell?" She nearly jumped four feet in the air. She stared at it. "What are y-" It took a swing at her.
After much running around, a lot of it which involved circles and hopping fences only to run into lacquers, Jinx somehow made it to the lakeside port. The dogs where still chasing her though… "Why do you hate meeee?" She whined to them as the three ran down the road. The dogs barked in the way a puppy would at a chew toy. She'd about made it to the water when a tree sprang into her way, causing massive nosebleed and general pain to the much put upon girl. Hissing, and cussing harshly enough to cause the tree to regret its sudden mobility, she scrambled up the tree and dared the dogs to come up after her. Split-face whined pitifully, deprived its favorite snack of Jinxy a la carte. The worm-snouted dog just curled up at the base of the trunk, huffing. Jinx hissed at it and threw a branch for good measure. The man shaped thing sitting near her in the tree seemed to sympathize as it too send down a shower of bark, dirt, and bones while slipping a little.
The man wore a bright orange vest and seemed a boating type of man. Or at least, he seemed like he'd once been that type, being stuck in a tree changed ones hobbies. Something shiny glinted on his chest. Never able to resist shiny things, Jinx climbed over and pulled a ring of silver keys out of his shirt pocket. "Ooo what pretty keys you have. Mind if I borrow them?" The man didn't seem to disagree, so she slipped the ring of keys onto her finger and glanced down. Split-face had vanished, and Wormy seemed distracted by a passing mouse. Grinning, Jinx jumped down the other side of the tree….and realized where split-face had vanished too. "Smart doggy." She took off running again, 'running, running, why haven't I killed them yet? Oh yeah….doggies' and ended up running right off the pier and landing face first in a boat. "Wha- Water? HA! Water! Take that you-" A low growl from the other side of the boat made her groan and flex her claws. She really didn't like killing doggies.