::End Of The Line – Scripted Actions::

Mysterion exited the room quietly, leaving Stan and Wendy to work on their game plan before they took off for their own tasks. Back out in the dark hallway, barely illuminated by the light coming in from the lab, he took a second to breathe as he pulled the door shut behind him. The snick of the latch was a satisfying sound in the silence, but he knew it didn't mean safety for his friends.

No, they were all about to go into risky territory. Stan and Wendy would be working out in the open; if Marie came up to check on the lab, she would probably see them, and whatever delays they'd set up would be discovered and undone... but Mysterion was depending on those delays. He needed every second he could milk out of this- long enough to find his partner and figure out how to evacuate everyone before busting this place down so no one else could use it or rebuild it ever again.

Stealing that deep inhale and long exhale felt like the last seconds of peace he'd get for a long time, and he let it linger in the dark for the moment he had.

Out of that dark, something grabbed him.

How they had gotten so close without making a sound, he did not know. The first hand arrived over his mouth; covered with a tough glove that wouldn't care if he bit into it, but his teeth made the attempt anyway. Feet kicked out towards the door he just shut, trying to cause some kind of noise, but he was pulled backwards before he could connect as the other hand was followed by an arm that secured around his chest. Whomever had grabbed him, their approach was from directly behind, and they were tall enough to lift him clear off his feet and begin carrying him elsewhere.

Deeper into the dark, in fact. Away from the double doors that went back to the lab, and then into one of the side hallways that was nothing but pitch black shadow.

His back arched as he tried to wriggle and writhe away, throwing elbows out to try and catch the body of the person who had lifted him up, kicking at the air to make himself a difficult burden to carry. All of this didn't seem to bother them, though; he felt strength in the arm around his body, tightly secured and not allowing him to shift even a fraction of an inch as he struggled against the living restraint. The hand over his mouth was, likewise, as still as stone and strong enough that he couldn't even whip his head back and forth whilst the fingers were curled around the shape of his jaw.

His awareness was still keeping track of his map; with him looking at the door, he was carried off to his left when they entered a side hallway- what would have been his right if he were facing forward and not being carried backwards into the dark.

That same awareness reminded him that the side hallways were thinner than the main hall, and he stopped trying to stab his bony elbows back into his abductor. Instead, he threw his arms out, desperately trying to find the walls to grasp at any protruding feature. Fingertips just brushed something... before the person who'd grabbed him turned their body and, in turn, his body so they were side-stepping down the hall.

His hands still groped out, forward in the dark, but found nothing to grab onto.

"Shh... it's okay, Kenny."

A soft voice behind his head. Adult, whispering, gentle.

A voice that knew his name.

"The power is going to come back soon. Marie's work crews are pulling the collapsed gate out of its housing right now, and the river is going to start flowing again. You won't be able to get Alyssa out of her cell, but you can still help her. I'll tell you how, but you can't yell for Stan and Wendy when I put you down... they have their own jobs to do."

… who is that? It sounds like... It sounds like Kartwright, kinda, but the cadence is a bit off. Is that...?

Mysterion blinked. Another one. Just like a version of Eric, an adult version of Eric, had pulled him out from being trampled, there was someone else here whom he both did and didn't know- another version of another one of his friends, all grown up, who seemed to know exactly what was going on.

Their hand loosened, enough that he could move his head, and he made a small nod to signal he had no intent to run or scream. The hand pulled the rest of the way off of his face, and he was lowered to the floor and allowed to regain his feet.

"... Alyssa?"

There was a faint chuckle in the dark.

"Let's go save my ass, shall we?"

"But- wait-" He could barely hear her steps- this version of Alyssa upped her stealth game something hardcore, and it was up to him to scramble down the dark hallway and follow after her while trying to keep his brain from exploding. He had so many questions, and there was a strange kind of panic to which ones he'd have the chance to ask before this encounter ended. "How did you- why are you- who else is here? What's going on? Eric saved me from getting trampled back out in town, and-"

He stumbled on his own words, feeling as if someone had whacked him in the back of a skull with a golf club.

"Holy shit it's a loop, isn't it- you! You're from this timeline's future, and this- this has already happened for you!"

"Got it in one, as usual."

"... then it all comes out okay?"

She didn't answer him right away. Her steps stopped, and something about the quality of the sound made him think they'd reached the end of the hallway. He heard a few thumps; the sound of knuckles rapping against a wall. The sound was solid the first few times... but one strike was different. Hallow. He heard something click, and then a grind of stone against stone as something moved.

"We're playing this according to our memories- what we saw, heard, and did when we were... well, you guys. My Kenny told me what to say to you, where to go, what to do..." Her voice strained a second, and there was more grinding in the dark. The air changed- from stagnant and musty to a sudden chill and dry breeze that hit him in the face. Faintly, he could perceive a dim orange light; like a long neglected LED that was low on battery but still giving off a flickering glow. With that, he could identify that a space had been opened at the end of this hallway. His guide had opened up some kind of secret hatch that led into a narrow shaft with a ladder running through it.

An escape tunnel.

"... based on what he remembered. Predestination is a bitch, as usual."

Predestination.

A time loop, secured by a time traveler who would act as an anchor and keep it stable.

"You're here to anchor the timeline, keep it stable while we try to untangle the different possible futures." He posited as the false wall thudded into its fully open position. Against the faint light in the escape tunnel, he could actually somewhat see her- a shape in the dark, but identifiable. He'd felt the gloves against his face, but with her outline he realized she was wearing a familiar design of coat; a long one that went to her knees, with a hood up over her head.

That was the Buttlord costume.

She didn't confirm his statement verbally, but instead turned to him in the dark after the false wall thudded into its fully open position. He heard her hand rifling through some interior pocket or otherwise, and a moment later she reached out for him and presented him with two objects. One was clearly a screwdriver- he knew it the second he grasped the handle. The other was... small, and round. A disk of some kind, the size of a quarter.

"What's this?" He asked.

"Pure copper. Conductive... kinda like a wheat penny."

He blinked. A wheat penny. He'd heard something about a wheat penny before- when Kartwright talked about how she'd broken the machine... as she'd been strapped into it.

His heart dropped into the floor. The tiny bit of metal he'd been given suddenly felt incredibly heavy, as he realized what it meant.

"... no... don't tell me..."

He felt sick. He'd promised himself he wouldn't let that happen. When he'd first stood up on that platform, looked at the machine in detail, he swore to himself he wouldn't let Alyssa get strapped into that thing. He'd rather die and go listen to Satan's soap opera of a love life for the rest of eternity than let that happen-

He was grasped by the shoulders. In the dark, he was aware that she'd bent to be near even with him, although it was too dim to really call it being eye-to-eye. Both her hands held him, bringing him back to this moment where time was already ticking away.

"That copper disk is going to save a life today, Kenny. You need to get it to her. If you go down the escape tunnel, unscrew the cover of the first ventilation shaft you see, go straight, straight, straight, left, straight, left, you'll be able to open up a gap in her cell just big enough to give that to her. After that..."

She paused.

"... so long as you go with your gut, you'll get it right. Even when it seems wrong."

At that moment, the lights came on.

It was sudden, and blinding. Overhead lights flared to brilliance, and Kenny had to duck his head and look away, using his hood to shield himself from it after spending so long in absolute dark. Lids screwed tightly shut, and his hands flew up to protect his face even further when it felt like the shade of his hood wasn't quite enough. Doing so caused the screwdriver and the coin to fall to the floor, both of them dropped in lieu of protecting his face.

The hands on his shoulders had disappeared. He assumed she, too, had rushed to protect her eyes.

When he was able to look up again, he found himself alone at the end of a narrow hallway, dotted with doors. The secret wall was still open, the ladder beyond being a path that both went up as well as down- probably something that ran through the whole complex. And his guide?

Gone. Disappeared elsewhere, silent as a ghost.

Glancing down, he saw the tools that had been given to him; the screwdriver and the little disk of copper.

He didn't want to pick them up. Correction, he did wanna pick them up, just long enough to toss them down the ladder and forget about them. He wanted to reject what he'd just been told, and find a different way.

Kenny wanted to find a different way, any different way.

… Mysterion picked up the dropped items, and slipped beyond the false wall that had been opened for him.

The script was already written for him... he just had to follow it.

::The Author's Corner::

Short chapter, but I wasn't gonna stretch word-count when the flow felt just right.

ONWARDS!

-Buttlord