Living in the Loop: Life #28 – odds and ends
Disclaimer: none of the characters are mine, but belong to their appropriate owners.
7-1
"You know, this is a first time for me," Moiraine Sedai, one of the greatest Aes Sedai that had ever walked their world, told Angelika.
"Your first loop or your first loop away from your home world?" Angelika decided to clarify.
"The second," Moiraine looked around, shifting her trunk in the process. "Back home, I have already gone through several, and let me tell you, if you think that it gets easier with practice, you're wrong."
"I believe you," Angelika shrugged as she trotted along the taller woman. "It also very despairing, if it is a real word-"
"It is-"
"-Right, well, I know from where you're coming from," Angelika continued without breaking her stride, "and I got to ask you: have you ever tried to do anything different, to be anyone different from who you usually are?"
"No, and I don't think I can," Moiraine responded with a frown, though it was hard to tell: in this Loop Angelika's eyesight was definitely worse for wear. "You see, I live at a very troublesome time, when the Shepherd of the Night is about to make his final and ultimate bid for the destruction of the world. I really don't feel that it is the right time for me to be someone else..."
"And to do things differently?"
"Oh, I do that, no problem. Still, I usually end up redundant around the same time and end up killing Moghedien and getting killed by her over and over again."
"Have you tried stopping her first?"
"I can't. She may be Forsaken, but she still has a lot more power in me – until the very end, and even then it costs me my life."
"Hah. And I thought that my life was bad," Angelika whisked away some biting flies. "Are there any other Loopers in your world?"
"Egwene, I believe, and Perrin. Sadly, they're not the closest to me, so getting to know them is difficult."
"Hm." Angelika wanted to shrug, but decided against it – she was not in the right shape to do that right now. "I'm not the best friends with Mac or Connor Temple either – far from it – but I did get to know them well enough in all those loops. Still, most of my encounters with Mac came from the Loops when I was a great white shark, and he – a saltwater croc, so what do I know?"
"So, this isn't your first Loop as an animal?" Moiraine said carefully.
"No," Angelika confessed. "Still, previously I was a shark, not a land animal, remember?"
"Fair enough. So when this will be over?"
"When we die is my best guess," Angelika shrugged or tried to as her body rippled instead.
"Oh dear," Moiraine swung her trunk once more. "I guess that we'll have to make the best of it."
"I agree."
And Moiraine Sedai the African bush elephant went on through the Serengeti plains alongside Angelika Finch the white rhinoceros (not a shark!).
7-2
The Canadian Tire™ store loomed in the dark of Toronto's night – on the outside. Inside, however, it was still illuminated well enough to see without night vision goggles.
"Right," Evan spoke to Mac and Dylan. "Toby said that here was both a time anomaly and a creature of some sort – and it already killed a security guard."
"Wonderful," Mac said in the same brittle-bright tone that he tended to use with Evan lately, ever since Sam has died. "I'm going left – you two do whatever you want."
"Wait!" Dylan called out, but Mac was through with listening to either of them for a while: he went forth and soon found himself...hopelessly lost among all the shelves in the massive store.
"Yo! Prehistoric Monster! Are you here?" he called out, only half-teasing.
A loud growl coming from above was Mac's reply. Slowly, the Englishman looked upwards...
...and so a jaguar. A common, modern, ordinary, jaguar.
Instinctively, Mac fired, but the big cat was already jumping away, seeking to escape from the human rather than to attack.
Reloading his tranquilizer gun on the go, Mac followed the jaguar from below – and ran through into a time anomaly!
"Whoa!" was the only thing he said as he suddenly found himself in a South American rainforest. "This is something new!"
A green anaconda that was lurking offshore nearby had a slightly different view of the event: it burst from the water, its mouth wide open and it struck.
7-3
"You wanted to see me, Black?" Angelika Finch said crossly. She had been in Hogwarts in several previous Loops, but never as the Head of the House of Slytherin: it was a nervous and an ill-fitting experience, and the fact that this was after the fourth year in this universe did not make Angelika any happier.
But now this. A friendly (well, relatively friendly) invite from Sirius Black? Rowling has never written anything like this, but the headmaster Dumbledore had insisted and Angelika had to stay in character, so here she was, having tea with Black and feeling unhappier by the hour.
"Yes, Sni – Snape," the (de-facto) head of the noble and ancient House of Black replied with a slight grimace of his own. "I want to offer a truce."
"And what do you mean by that?" Angelika asked, the CFO temporarily overriding the Potions' Master.
"If you promise to treat my godson decently, I'll treat you decently," Black promptly replied. "How does that sound?"
"Ok," Angelika nodded, eager to get over with this ASAP. "It's a deal."
Black blinked. "You feeling okay there, Snape?"
"No," Angelika glared. "I'm having a bad month already, and spending more time in your company than it is necessary isn't helping any. So, if agreeing with you will help me get out of this house faster, I'm game." She whirled around and left in a successfully gothic flourish of robes, perhaps for the first time ever since she ended up in this Loop.
Black just stared silently at her retreating back until Kreacher decided to take advantage of this situation and 'accidentally' spilled some hot tea onto his robe, trousers and shoes. And then it was back to hi-jinks as usual.
7-4
"Mac, Mac, where are you?" Dylan called out as she and Evan continued to search the Canadian Tire™ store, both for the monster and for Mac. "Evan! Any luck?"
"No," the latter admitted unhappily. "It's like he has vanished off the face of Earth..." and then they came across the time anomaly.
"You don't think?" Evan and Dylan exchanged knowing looks. "Of course he would."
Slowly, the two of them made their way through the time anomaly and found themselves... in a South American rainforest. It was wet and hot and humid and stinking.
"Mac! Where are you?" Evan called out, before Dylan grabbed him by a sleeve and pointed something out: it was Mac's tranquilizer gun, lying half-submerged in a river's shallows.
With some sort of a strange cry Evan dove in.
7-5
"Professor! Professor?"
"Yes, Mr. Black?" the headmistress of Gryffindor asked the wizard as her head appeared in the fireplace. "I must point out that it isn't the best of time for you to be calling me-"
"I'm sorry, but have you seen professor Snape lately? She seems to be somewhat... off lately."
"My boy, I am extremely happy to hear that you're taking your offer to be nice to the poor girl seriously," the face of Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster of all of Hogwarts, appeared in the fireplace as well. "We were just discussing this and other topics at our staff conference."
"Oh! I did not know that you were having a conference! I'm quite sorry!" Sirius tried to frantically backpedal. "I'll call later?"
No luck. "No need to, my boy," Albus said brightly. "This is irregular, but I've expected this. Please come in – I admit that it's a bit hard using the floo, but since I'm the headmaster..."
As Albus Dumbledore droned on, Angelika and Moiraine – the heads of Slytherin and Gryffindor – exchanged thoughtful looks: now what?
7-6
"Ms. Finch?"
Angelika Finch (in this Loop – never a part of Cross Photonics) opened her door. "Yes? It is I. And who are you?"
"Oh! Uh! I'm... officer Leeds!"
"Splendid." Angelika's tone of voice showed full evidence to the contrary. "And what do you want?"
"We're here to talk about Evan Cross-"
"I've parted my ways with Evan when his wife died. She was my friend, and Evan – not so much. If he has a problems, check out his company – if anyone knows about him, they are to be found there."
"That's the problem, ma'am. He's, uh, missing."
"Well he isn't here," Angelika said indignantly. "I haven't seen Evan Cross for a while now-"
"Can we check?"
"You have a warrant?"
"Um, no?"
"Then no. Have a good day."
And Angelika Finch closed the door.
"That didn't go well," Lt. Leeds said sheepishly to no one in particular.
7-7
The meeting at Colonel Hall's was not a particularly happy event at the best of circumstances, and now – especially so. "Lieutenant? Report," the aforementioned colonel said curtly.
"There's nothing report, sir – just another dead end," Kenneth Leeds said sheepishly before glaring at his part-time nemesis. "What's so funny, major?"
The latter opened his mouth to retort but fell silent at the colonel's glare. "Report," colonel Hall said even more curtly, and the major complied.
"Sir. Dylan Weir has quit from Wildlife Control a while now – she either failed a psychological evaluation or did not take one, period. Either way, they couldn't talk to us properly either – not at the moment: some wild cat, a jaguar most likely, had escaped from someone's private zoo and they had to catch it."
"In other words – more dead ends," the colonel said flatly. "Looks like that we'll have to buy out Cross Photonics or at least take it under our unofficial control if we're to remain in control of the situation. Understood?"
His subordinates just nodded in reply.
7-8
"Shouldn't you be doing this with Dylan and Evan?" Angelika Finch asked crossly as she and Mac Randall made their way to the Canadian Tire™.
"I would, but you're Awake in this Loop, and I never fully forgave Evan for losing Sam," Mac grimaced. "Well, maybe 'forgave' is a wrong word, but still. I got options for the moment so I'm going to use them – okay?"
"I don't like to be referred as an 'option', but I don't like you either, but here I am all the same," Angelika replied. "Very well, what do you want me to do?"
Before Mac could reply, the windows of the store exploded and out came a literal flood of dinosaurs. They were small – much smaller than the dinosaurs Mac and Ange had encountered previously in the base time line – but they were carnivorous and they were hungry.
Ange and Mac looked at each other and frantically retreated to call for back up.
7-9
The tiger looked like the Bengal variety, but it was still magnificent: orange, black and white, with blazing eyes it looked very much like the basic "Tiger, Tiger," of Blake's poem. The fact that Ange was dreaming it only made this impression stronger.
"Yes?" she asked, figuring out that if this was a dreaming, she was in control of it. Probably. "You wanted to talk to me?"
"Still do," the tiger rumbled. "I am known by many names – the Shepherd of the Night; the Black King; the First Evil, but the one I prefer to use is Shai'Tan."
"Master of Moghedien, I believe? Moiraine has told me about you-"
"Yes, Moghedien is one of my Forsaken, but I have many more, and I would like you to be one of them."
Angelika stared. For a moment she thought that she was talking to Lt. Leeds when he accidentally offered her to be 'his Ange', only this was far less funny. "Now why do you want something like that?" she finally asked.
"You're already partway mine; you're selfish and clever, not unlike Grendael," Shai'Tan promptly replied. "Join me, and I will give you what I want – power and wealth, respect and love and companions!"
"Or, as Mathew has written, 'All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me'?"
"Precisely! That, admittedly, was not the best episode in my life, but I was being honest even then, and besides – you're not that Man."
"No," Ange agreed. "Most certainly not, but neither am I that Grendael of whom you speak. There may not be much of a line between being selfish, between not being a hero and being a villain, but it does exist and I shall not cross it. Go away – I deny you."
"Fool," the tiger said almost fondly. "I will have you, on your terms or mine, and when I do, your knowledge will be mine, believe it!"
And then he was gone.
7-10
"And that what happened," Angelika told Moiraine a while later. "Out of curiosity, you didn't get a visit by the same entity last night, did you?"
The Patil twins, (in this loop), Ange and Moiraine were clearly fraternal, since they were quite different from each other, aside from their ages. The fact that one of them was a Gryffindor and the other – a Slytherin, only made this situation more bizarre.
"No," Moiraine said firmly. "He never did. He never will, and you never should either – join him, I mean."
"I have no intent to," Ange shook her head. "I may not be a hero like Evan and the others are, but forsaking myself or whatever? This isn't going to happen!"
"Good!" Moiraine said with evident relief. "I'll hold you to that!"
And the two girls (young women?) just smiled in mutual respect and friendship.
"We'll just see about that," Grendael Parkinson muttered as she looked from around the corner. "You haven't seen the last of my master or me yet Patil! Or Finch. Whatever."
"Gren, we will be late for class," Daphne Greengrass came up to her friend.
"Coming, Daph," the other Slytherin (the other other Slytherin?) replied and ran off with her to see what latest idiocy Gilderoy Lockhart will pull.
End Life #28