Can You Hear Me?
Ten-year-old Gwen is not happy.
Not happy in the least.
It is evident in her knitted brows, the tight line that was her lips, the small ball she had scrunched herself up in the corner of the hospital-white enclosure. Her emerald eyes are focused on nothing in particular, but they glitter and glow with frustrated impatience. Absently she begins to tap her foot on the tiled floor until the incessant sound is answered by an inhuman growl.
"Quit that." the massive figure towering beside her muttered.
And after pointedly staring at him, Gwen obliged the eleven-year-old mutant his request not because she feared him and his hulking form.
Admittedly, she was frightened of him when she first woke to a dull throbbing in the back of her head not to mention unfamiliar surroundings.
She had gotten to unsteady feet, releasing a groan as she slowly grew aware of a strange heat radiating from behind her. She glanced over her shoulder and her eyes grew saucer-wide at the sight of Kevin. Instinctively, she shrank away, back pressed against what felt like glass but looked like tiles.
"Kevin 11!" she hisses, waiting for the surge of recollection to hit her any moment.
"And you're Gwen." He responds, his tone casual, almost bored.
The young girl narrowed her gaze at him suspiciously while struggling to remember where she had been and what she was doing prior to her waking. Oddly, it was all a blank, not a blurred vision, not a hazy memory.
A complete and utter blank.
It doesn't occur to Gwen to hide her confusion, not until she hears a labored, almost grating sound that turns out to be Kevin's chuckles.
"Can't remember anything, can you?" He gives her a toothy smirk.
"I don't know what you did to me or where you brought me but if this is another lame attempt at getting Ben I'll-"
"It ain't me who did it." He snorts, unimpressed and even less intimidated by the young girl's temper. He hasn't seen what she was capable of, doesn't know the extent of her magic and the strength she possessed. And so long as he made no motion to indication he was going to harm her, he wouldn't learn about her abilities until later in his young life.
"Besides," he continues, "We're in the same boat."
What compelled him to tell Gwen, Kevin didn't know. But whatever it was that did, it also compelled the red-head to believe the older boy.
Without warning, the room shifts, the bright fluorescents overhead dim to near pitch-black, the tiled walls alter into faded brick, the hospital-white floor smudges into asphalt-paved streets. A streetlamp flickers to life, revealing a dingy alley leading to an impenetrable tunnel of darkness.
And the two youths find themselves short of breath despite having done nothing physically strenuous. But their muscles ache, their lungs burn for air and their skin glistens with a faint film of sweat. Gwen is in Kevin's vulpamancer arms, her ankle is swollen and her face is twisted in pain. The older boy fares no better, one of his gossamer-green wings is torn to shreds effectively grounding him.
"What's going on?" Gwen winces at the sharp searing pain from her ankle, completely bewildered and terrified.
Kevin says nothing, does nothing to betray his ignorance of their situation. He uses his gasping to catch his breath as a reason for his silence. Memories, visions, they suddenly flash into their minds in a deluge.
They had escaped. From a facility of sorts, broken out of a holding cell, fled from painful experimentations. Gwen had devised the plan, acted as decoy and distraction. Kevin had provided the muscle, acted as an amalgamated meat-shield and living armory.
They had been running. Past corridors and hallways, through guarded doors and locked gates, down empty streets and deserted alleyways. Rapid beating of mighty wings hummed, Kevin took to the sky. Reverberating words were uttered, Gwen followed suit.
They had been chased. Men, women, faceless and featureless, dressed in black silhouettes, armed with guns and rifles far too advanced for Earth's level. Muzzles smoked, shoulders pushed back into their sockets from wicked strong recoil.
There was a shot in the dark. A damn lucky shot in the dark.
A beam shoots through wings, a petrosapian arm reaches out and is caught by two slim, human hands. Kevin proves to be too heavy for Gwen to support and their descent swiftly follows. The older boy's wings desperately flap to slow them down together with his pyronite arm spewing fire. His efforts aren't enough to stop them from crash-landing but it is enough to enable him to twists his body and have his tetramand torso absorb the brunt of the fall.
Gwen summons the winds to lessen the impact. Her fiery tresses whip about her face as another beam streaks past a hair's breadth from her temple. It misses its mark but it is enough to break her concentration and the gusts dissipate.
There was a dull thud followed in a split-second by an ominous snap.
Kevin grunts, none the worse for wear save the numbing ache gnawing at his back where his injured wings are. Gwen tries to blink back the pain-induced tears but is unsuccessful. Her ankle is broken, the skin already turning an angry shade of red. Trembling fingers gingerly touch the swelling and she cries out.
The older boy turns sharply towards her and sees what made her scream. He glowers inwardly, telling himself it's not his fault she's hurt. He didn't ask her to take his hand. It was she who reached out to him. She did it of her own volition.
And he waits for her to blame him, his verbal counter-strikes and arguments at the ready. What she says next, however, was unexpected. "Are you hurt?"
He blinks, all three eyes, and dumbly nods. "My wings..." he gestured.
"But you can run, right? Get out of here, try to find my Grandpa and tell him what happened. Ben won't trust you but my Grandpa will. I'll act as decoy again so you can escape."
"What makes you so sure I won't just run?"
It is Gwen's turn to blink, and she stares at him in annoyance despite breaking into a cold sweat, "Because if you do run, you'll owe me and I promise you, you won't want that."
Under different circumstances, Kevin would have laughed at the confidence and defiance Gwen was showing him. Instead, he proceeded to run.
Not before scooping up the young girl into his furred arms that is, an action that was met with no protest from the girl in question.
How long they ran, neither knew, but for the moment it seemed like they lost whoever it was pursuing them. Kevin took this moment to gather his bearings, petrosapien arm resting heavily atop a dumpster for a few moments until the object groans in his grasp and gives way to his weight.
At the sound of crumpling metal, something glimmers in the tunnel.
"Who's there?!" Kevin is the first to make demands, shifting Gwen in his furred limbs to distance her from his pyronite arm. When he is met with silence, the snarl that snuck past his piscciss volann maw was muffled by the roar of his flames as they surged towards the tunnel.
Whoever it was, whatever it was lurking in the shadows, the fires ricocheted off it and back towards the pair.
An invisible barrier is erected, diverting the inferno up and away from Kevin and Gwen.
This is getting too dark...
The pair stiffens at the words and look to each other, the confusion in their eyes declaring neither of them to be the source. The streetlamp winked out briefly and is replaced by the sterile glare of florescent lights. The alleyway is gone, having reverted back to the room with hospital-white floors and tiled walls.
Kevin is still holding Gwen, though she is no longer injured and neither seems to feel the fatigue and exhaustion from earlier. Kevin expects himself to drop the red-head upon his own volition at any moment.
But he doesn't.
He continues to hold her in his furred arms, allowing himself to notice how she wasn't revolted by his misshapen form. She had made no attempt to set herself down, not when they were in the alley and not now that they were back in wherever this place was.
"Kevin?" her voice is soft, hesitant, "You can put me down now."
The mutant obliges her request, but not too quickly. "Did all that really just happen?"
"I don't know. But whatever it was, I get the feeling it's not over yet."
Gwen's intuition would prove to be correct for the next thing either knew, the room rippled. When everything cleared, they were in a limestone cave. Only the walls were jewel-encrusted and between them hovered a small, multi-hued gem the size of Gwen's palm.
Their attire had changed, gone were the tattered shorts Kevin wore; gone were the cat-print shirt and pedal pushers Gwen sported. A black fabric spanned across the entirety of Kevin's form, stopping just short of his shoulders, ankles and the base of his tail. Gwen was now garbed in cerulean velvet, gossamer sleeves flaring out and ending at her wrists. The hem of her dress was undone, tattered and torched in some sections.
An ominous aura filled the cave air, it was oppressive, intense, and it made it nearly impossible to breathe. The next breath they took brought in more than just air into their bodies. Memories rushed into their minds.
They had been searching. For this little bauble suspended in mid-air, an object of immeasurable power. Gwen had become aware of its existence, believed it to be more than just myth or a figment of yester-years. Kevin merely had a notion of it, but decided he wanted it, needed it more than anyone else.
They had been journeying. Past blockades and gateways, through great expanses of decaying forests, down frozen gullies and boiling streams. Ground devouring strides were made, on horseback and on foot.
Their paths had crossed. More times than once, each seeing the other beyond what Glamour or Curse that shielded them. They held each other in contempt out of principle and out of blood-ties but denied themselves the luxury of allegiance to their own beating hearts.
This is getting too melodramatic...
The voice is faint, but Kevin and Gwen hear it again. It is female, ageless, neither young nor old. Its tone is annoyed, upset, but its ire isn't directed at either of them. The gem emits a blinding sheen, and again the pair is back in the strange room.
"Okay this is fucked up." Kevin growls.
Gwen agrees, though she would have used less profane words. She plants herself in a corner, curling into a ball, "My head hurts."
Kevin begrudgingly admits that this is all proving too confusing for him as well, Galvan-intellect or not. He plants himself beside Gwen and the pair waits in anxious silence.
Eventually, Gwen starts to tap her feet absently on the tiled floor and stops when Kevin growls in annoyance. The mutant grunts and decides to return the favor by repeatedly smacking his tail against the wall.
They hear shattering glass, but the wall is intact, unscathed.
I hate this Dry Spell!
Again the voice.
"Hey! Hey you! Whoever you are! We want answers and we want it now!" The older boy yells, fists clenched.
Wait, are you talking to me?
The two can almost hear the blinking accompanying the question.
Wow. Just. Wow. I guess that Dry Spell must have made the fourth wall weaker than I thought.
"Fourth-"Gwen began.
"Wall?" Kevin finished.
Eep! Could uh, could you two pretend to have never heard me talk? And pretend you were never in the scenario-room?
"You're not making any sense." Kevin hissed.
"Wait, fourth wall? Characters? Scenarios?" realization dawns upon Gwen. "No way. This can't be happening."
She feels herself being picked up by her shoulders and raised until eye level with Kevin, "Explanation. Now." He barks.
Gwen sighed, as unbelievable as it sounds, she responds "We somehow got sent to an alternate universe where we're not real people but characters in a story."
"WHAT!?" his yell resonates in the room.
Gwen winced at the volume, "It could be worse. We could be in a fanfic."
Uh... oh gee! Guess what! I can totally write you guys back home to whatever reality you originally came from!
The young girl stares up in disbelief before groaning, "Can you be any more deus ex machina? We must be in a fanfic."
--
Author's Notes:
This is the prize from my Gwevin fanart/fanfic contest that Chibi Hime won. Apart from the DA subscription, she got a one-shot drabble with a theme of her choice. Her theme was "Mutant!Gwevin with a twist." Sadly, I'm no Jeffrey Archer and I'm terrible at twists (if Traps is anything to go by). Hopefully this is "twist" enough for you Chibi Hime n.n And yes, I acknowledge being a no-talent hack for breaking the Fourth Wall and combining a 50 theme drabble with a prize-request. If this isn't to your liking, Hime, lemme know and gimme a different theme (no twists plz? D8)