Reflection 3.03
Grab Karen and bring her further inside, Jamie ordered me. Her command was accompanied by a compulsion to do just that and I found myself drifting back inside before I had even fully processed her words.
I found Karen where I had left her, still passed out from exhaustion and tied up to the support pillar. I took control over the rubber tubing that restrained her and untied the far end, but when I tried to unwrap it from around her arms, I found myself unable to do so. I didn't have time to sort through the mental block Jamie had clearly imposed over me, so I simply gave the tubing a quick tug that jerked the sleeping girl awake.
"Wha—?" she mumbled, reaching up with her bound hands to rub at her eyes.
I poked my head out far enough so that she could hear me, but otherwise kept a firm grasp on the bindings so she couldn't flee. "Trouble's coming," I told her. "I'm getting you out of the way."
"Mrrgh, trouble for you or for me?" she asked. "Maybe this is the point where I should be resisting?" The yawn that followed her statement belied her words somewhat. I gave an experimental tug on the end of the rope to see if she'd pick up the hint and rise to her feet, but she stayed where she was—either out of a sort of passive resistance, or she really was too tired to move.
I didn't have time to figure this out either. I cast my senses around the room to see if there was anything I could appropriate and found a reasonably sturdy-looking curve of material discarded on the workshop's floor, some sort of plastic or lightweight metal. It was shaped like a grossly oversized chestplate, far too large for anyone's Karen size to wear, but my main concern was that it was large enough for her to sit upright within, and the curved surface would hopefully slide against the floor without too much trouble.
Once I brought it over, Karen rolled atop it with good grace, and she made a half-hearted cheer as I dragged it across the floor and made my way back to the room Jamie had slept in. Jamie was already there waiting impatiently, but when she saw the state her 'best friend' was in, her eyes softened slightly and she jerked her head towards the mattress on the floor, prompting me to tip the plate and dump Karen across it.
She spent a few moments getting herself comfortable, lying on her back with her bound arms resting on her stomach and her eyes focused on the ceiling. "So, you guys are twins."
Even though I was still unable to pick up her thoughts, when Jamie threw me an aside glance I had no problems in reading her expression. And after all that time whining about keeping it a secret, you start spilling it to everyone you meet now?
I pointedly avoided her gaze, keeping my focus on Karen who was likewise avoiding both of our eyes. "I like to think so."
"And you two are currently on the outs?"
I could feel Jamie's eyes boring into my side. "A minor difference of opinion," she muttered.
"Which has resulted in an angry mob outside about to do their best to set us on fire," I pointed out.
Karen shifted uncomfortably. "Is this something I need to worry about, or can I pass out now?"
"Get some sleep," Jamie said, running her hand through her hair. She frowned as she snagged it against several tangles, her locks having slipped out of its ponytail at some point during the night. "We'll take care of this."
" 'kay."
ooo
Here's something I had to remember for future reference. When Jamie says 'we will take care of this', what she really means is 'I'. She had taken control again; I felt like a passenger in my own body, almost to the point where I was watching events unfold from a third-party's perspective rather than my own.
Wu Lung and his gang—at least that's who I assumed the crowd wearing matching red outfits were—seemed content to wait outside following their leader's challenge. For a little while anyhow. After several minutes had passed and it became obvious that no one inside would be responding, the group began shifting restlessly.
When Wu's patience was stretched enough for him to order a group inside, that became the moment for me—or at least my avatar—to act. I had to give Jamie credit, she had clearly put more thought into the use of our powers than I had. I had taken our original abilities for granted, never trying to apply them to anything other than the most obvious task of scouting.
For example, both Jamie and I had a tether range of around five-kilometres, the furthest either of our spectral forms could range out from the physical body that was our host. This amounted to a spherical zone almost ten-kilometres across—an almost mind-boggling volume when one bothered to consider it.
I used Jamie extensively as in my world as a scout and a second line of communications. She was able to cross from one end of the tether's range to the other within seconds; she could perform a moderately detailed search of an urbanised area in less than an hour.
To put it another way, we were incredibly fast in our spectral forms when we put our minds to it.
The first trio of gang members who walked through the main entrance into the workshop floor found a glowing blue circle lighting up the centre of the room. Various leftover plastics, metals, and other odds and ends seemed to float in the air above this ring, bouncing back and forth across it in a variety of arcing patterns. Stranger than this sight was the fact that there was no noise aside from the ones the gang brought in with them. Shoes scraped against the concrete flooring and startled oaths were vocalised, but the dome of shifting debris was oddly—some might say eerily—silent.
One of the members immediately rushed back outside and reported what he'd seen to the crowd waiting at the edge of the clearing. Even as he did so, however, the ring and the debris itself seemed to shift slightly and suddenly the other two intruders were pelted with a hail of lightweight and mostly harmless junk. It was still enough to send them fleeing after their third member, nearly knocking him over in their haste to escape.
Once they were out of sight I felt myself slow to a stop, allowing the remaining pieces to fall to the floor in a loud clatter. I had to stop and shake my head to clear out the lingering dizziness that came from flying around in circles at such speeds, smoothing out the slight mental strain that came from possessing that many various objects. I had stayed in each one just long enough to send them back into the air, then abandoned it to move on to the next one approaching the ground. Overall a fairly impressive-looking performance, if mentally draining. And if was this bad for me, I had to wonder just how Jamie was faring, having more or less taken the brunt of the strain as she took control over my avatar.
Ow. Maybe not so much, or for quite as long... Her mental voice floated into my awareness as her thoughts ran parallel to my own. Let's try something different this time...
My vision dimmed slightly as her will seized control over my body once more.
ooo
The next group was bigger than the last; half a dozen men and women cautiously making their way through the main entrance. This time there were no lambent lights nor mysteriously moving masses waiting for them as they stepped inside.
One of the women turned towards a man cowering at the back of the group, evidently a member of the first group. "I'm not seeing anything strange going on. Are you sure you guys weren't dipping into something you weren't supposed to before coming here?"
"It was there!" the man protested. "Shit straight out of the Twilight Zone like you wouldn't believe."
"Uh-huh... " The first speaker waved her arm out to encompass the room as a whole. "By all accounts this is one kid that barely comes up to my waist. A crippled kid at that. What's the worst a little thing like her could to do to us?"
There was the sound of shrieking metal as the rusted door behind them slammed shut, dropping the room into darkness and closing them off from the world outside.
The whole group spun around at the sound, making various noises of dismay as they realised what had just happened. Another member moved forward to tug at the door, then stepped in to throw his weight against it to no avail. To his credit, he didn't panic but instead simply turned back to face the rest with a shrug.
One of the gang members raised his hand. "Um... didn't the boss say something about a cape?"
The others turned around and pressed their backs against each other, trying to cover their surroundings with as many eyes as possible. An dull impact somewhere in the darkness echoed through the room. A few of them flinched and brought out improvised weapons, metal pipes, heavy branches, even a pair of highly-illegal switchblades.
Another sound boomed out, this time from the opposite direction and the group flinched again.
"I can see a doorway inside," the one facing in that direction reported. "There's a lot of crap on the floor, though."
"Here's an idea, let's go that way," the female member said.
A loud bang from beyond the door, along with the faint impression of movement within the darkened hallway.
"How about... no?" another person tried.
"What was that?!"
"What was what?"
"I thought I saw something moving past us out of the corner of my eye."
The gang members continued to waffle between moving forward or staying where they were. One or two of them had already taken steps towards the inner doorway, whilst the others looked around nervously. After a brief bout of arguing and swearing, they finally regrouped and began moving along the wall towards their target. Their path brought them alongside an ageing equipment locker, the sort without any shelves and a grilled front door.
"Hey," one of them spoke up, "was this thing here earlier?"
They all stopped to stare at the bulky object resting not quite against the wall. "What, this locker?"
The man nodded. "I could have sworn that there weren't any furnishings when I last looked around." He poked curiously at the holes in the grill. "Yech, it looks old enough to belong here, though." He opened the locker's door and leaned forward. "Smells like it too. But empty."
The equipment locker leaned forward and seemed to pull the hapless person inside, slamming the door closed behind him. There was a brief moment of stunned silence.
"What in the everlasting Hells was that?!" One of the women shrieked.
The locker banged from the inside. "Oi! Get me out!"
"Get him out!"
Another one stepped away from the locker. "The door won't open!" He slammed his pipe against the side and the metal crumpled slightly.
"Hey! Watch it!"
Part of the group had immediately turned and bolted for the inner doorway. The first of them froze in place when he got there, the others running into his back as he suddenly halted.
"Hey, what gives?" one asked as she poked her head around his side.
At the far end of the hallway sat a frail-looking girl in a sun dress that reached to her ankles—the formerly white cloth streaked with dirt and other stains. Her black hair seemed to leech the very light from the air and was long enough to reach to her chest, covering her face almost completely. She had what appeared to be a disembodied head cradled between her arms; it cast an eerie glow over her clothes and body.
The girl raised her head as the remainder of the group belatedly piled through the doorway after them, revealing a single eye peeking through her fringe, glowing with that same unearthly blue light.
She giggled.
"Oh, fuck this. I ain't dealing with this Samara shit." The person who had spoken flipped his arms into the air, throwing his tree branch behind him. He turned and marched away at what could charitably be called a 'quick pace'.
"I—I think it... that it's Sadako," another person stammered as he edged backwards.
"Don't care! I'm out!"
The group quickly turned tail and fled, discovering that the door which had been previously rusted shut was now easily opened. In the wake of their screaming retreat, the man who had been shut in the locker discovered he could now bust down the door and ran after them.
ooo
"That was fun," Jamie remarked as she checked her pockets for her hair tie. "We should do that again, sometime."
"I think you're taking the ghost theme a bit too far," I said. Reservations aside, that had been fairly amusing to watch. Even a bit fun to play the part, if I was being honest with myself.
"Nonsense," she scoffed. "When one chooses a cape identity and a theme, they should do whatever they can to reinforce that sort of presentation. Flurry has her snow, Wu Lung has his dragons, Volley... well he's a Tinker, his gizmos are his theme. You're the only one really lacking in that department, James." She flicked her hands dismissively as she wheeled herself back into the bedroom. "Be a dear and check outside, would ya?"
I shook my head but obligingly dove into the walls of the workshop and made my way around to a point where I could spy on the gathering outside. All of the members of the second scouting party were being debriefed by Wu Lung and the people around him. From the expression on his face, he wasn't happy.
"—you don't understand," one of them was saying. "I swear, that place is haunted! There was some messed up paranormal shenanigans going on in there!"
"I'll give you a few moments to think about what you've just said," Wu Lung, a fully-fledged parahuman, told him, "and to figure out what you're being an idiot about."
"That is beside the point," the woman standing beside him said. She turned to address the scout directly, "Did you see another person inside the building?"
I had to do a double-take, because I had not been expecting Sunny to be accompanying Wu for any reason whatsoever, considering their interactions with each other the last time I had seen him. She looked like she'd seen better days. There was a patch of gauze taped to her face and one arm was wrapped in bandages. She had a red jacket similar to the other members of Wu's gang members, but rather than wear it properly she simply had it draped across her shoulders—to accommodate her injured arm or as a statement of her reluctant alliance, I couldn't be certain.
Jamie? I sent, making sure she noticed what I did.
Hmm... let's just keep this development between the two of us, she sent back.
I missed the exact words the scouts used to answer Wu and Sunny as I turned my focus inward. What? Are you afraid that Karen won't be as passive towards you if she knew that Sunny had come to retrieve her?
I'm not worried, she replied archly. I just don't want her to know you're the one responsible for hurting her sister.
I did not— my response was interrupted as she seized control over me once again and I found myself back in the car we had stolen to flee this far. I felt my control spread throughout the entire vehicle and it rumbled to life, startling the few gang members leaning against it.
What do we know about Wu Lung's abilities? Jamie asked, prompting my mind to recall every instance I had seen the use of his powers, from both our original teammate and his alternate-reality counterpart.
Wu was a Striker-class cape, his power only went into effect when he was in direct contact with an object. He was able to manipulate any inorganic material or construct to form what he liked to call his 'dragons', even if the resulting creations looked nothing like the mythical beasts he'd named them after. In our world, those creations could spit out small sparks in a dazzling display to blind or confuse opponents. However, in this world I had seen him throwing out fireballs the size of bowling balls.
This one's power seems to be more in line with a Blaster-classification, Jamie remarked. So the trick is to bring something to the fight that his abilities will have a reduced effect on.
At the sound of the engine revving, Wu and Sunny turned away from their debriefing as the car abruptly shifted into reverse and powered towards them, accelerating and knocking hapless minions to the side.
Wu immediately stepped forward, placing himself in front of the others. He shouted a question over his shoulder that I could barely hear over the roar of the engine, something along the lines of, 'How attached are you to this piece of junk?' The answer must have been, 'Not much,' since he raised his arms towards the oncoming vehicle. He pressed one hand to the back of a gauntlet and the carved dragon-head spat a ball of fire that immolated itself harmlessly against the metal. Another fireball cracked the glass, followed by a sustained wave of fire. Neither did anything to impede the momentum of the car.
See? Not a problem.
From my closer vantage point, I had to disagree. Despite the fact that his attacks were having no perceivable effect, despite the minions and Sunny diving out of the car's path, Wu stood his ground. I caught a glimpse of his lower face through his helmet, teeth bared in a reckless grin, as he suddenly leapt into motion. He took one long stride with an arm cocked back, then swung it forward in a wild haymaker to punch the car's rear fender as it closed in on him.
As the car was effectively an extension of myself, I had first-hand experience to the true nature of Wu's power. My possession ability worked as a form of telekinesis combined with my inherent abilities as a spectre. For things like a pillow or the equipment locker, I was able to lift them and move the individual parts around as I wished. I couldn't do the same thing for something as complex and heavy as the car. Instead I was manipulating it as if it were my own body—the engine was my heart whilst the gears and pistons were my muscles. The car was effectively doing what it had been designed to do already, I was just providing a mind behind it.
The moment Wu's bare knuckles came into contact with the metal, I felt a sudden jolt as the car seemed to rearrange itself. The sheer momentum that came from that many tonnes of speeding metal should have sent him flying, but even as I watched, portions of the car seemed to thin out and vanish, instantly dropping the mass of the vehicle to a fraction of what it used to be.
A huge gout of flame had erupted from the point of contact, as if a bomb had been placed in the boot and been triggered by the impact. It washed over Wu and the area behind him—now fully cleared of bystanders—even as the car slammed into a sudden halt.
When the flames died down, Wu's gang was treated to the sight of their leader having apparently stopped a speeding car and weathered a sudden explosion with nothing more than a fist and a shit-eating grin. It was an extraordinary feat of showmanship, one I might have fallen for myself if I hadn't realized just how much of the engine block was suddenly not there.
Huh. I wasn't expecting that... Jamie said numbly.
Then the car began shifting.
If my manipulation of objects was a form of telekinesis, Wu's was a form of rearrangement. I had always recalled there being something a bit off about his dragons in my world. Their motions were somehow too fluid for the materials they had been constructed from. Metal cars should not be writhing sinuously as if they were a form of solid liquid. They just didn't bend that way or that smoothly.
Wu seemed to be continuously rearranging the objects he was in contact with. One moment a door was a solid, flat piece of metallic alloy. The next instant it was a slightly curved sheet, the curve growing more and more pronounced with each split second that followed. Wu wasn't moving the pieces around, he was rebuilding it.
With Jamie's will pressing down on me, I tried to fight back as best as I could. As the car stretched itself out, I popped the newly lengthened doors and bonnet in an attempt to strike at him. Even as they flew out at a speed few eyes could even follow, they were already curling in on themselves, blunting their edges and shortening their effective range.
A new thought followed and I retreated into a brief moment of passiveness as Wu completed the car's transformation into a vaguely serpentine length. He shifted his posture into one of smug superiority as the car-dragon coiled in on itself, turning to face the workshop and the supposed occupants inside.
"What's next, brat?!" he shouted. "You might scare some of my crew, but I'll bet you've never dealt with something like me before!"
And I'll bet you've never faced another cape in years, Jamie hissed.
Wu had converted and vented a majority of the car's mass into energy to withstand the impact. The whole thing couldn't have weighed more than a few kilograms at this point—well within the range I was able to manipulate objects a bit more... directly.
With a mental yank, the car was torn free from his grasp as I sent it flying out of his reach. His power ceased its effect the moment his fingers slipped away, rendering the entire construct one solid hunk of metal. Even as he teetered off balance, I reversed direction, swinging the heavier end of the car-dragon in a downward arc and caught him in the chest—as if the car were a golf club and Wu Lung was the tee and ball.
He didn't go flying too far, the reduced mass meant that there wasn't a crippling amount of force to the blow and his armour certainly wasn't just for show. He rolled with the impact and was back to his feet within moments, his arms already stretched out to launch fireballs at his wayward creation.
Armed with a better idea of how his powers might work, I noticed the 'decorative' metal dragon carved onto the back of his gauntlet had a tail that ran the length of his forearm and past his elbow. The tail seemed to shrink with each successive fireball that he launched and after several minutes of this sustained barrage he switched hands, opening up with a gauntlet that perfectly mirrored the pristine condition of his original one.
In the meantime, Jamie went to town on his gathered group. We didn't have the fine control over the car-dragon that Wu apparently did, but it worked well enough as an improvised bludgeon. Unfortunately, Wu's gang was not quite as heavily armoured as their leader was and one or two were knocked out of the fight with each swing. She still took potshots at Wu whenever she found an opportunity, but since she was unwilling to allow him the chance to retake control of his construct, such moments were few and far between.
The sustained beating the car was taking was finally taking its toll, whole panels were blackened from repeated fireball impacts and portions of the car had sheared away completely. Still, Wu would run out of minions long before Jamie ran out of things to beat them down with, so I was left wondering when either of the two would call it quits, or at least decide their point had been made.
I'm not quite certain when I first noticed that Sunny wasn't on the battlefield anywhere. At some point between the time Wu had first countered Jamie's opening shot and the chaos that followed, the older woman had managed to disappear. There was really only one place she would have run off to, but even as the thought occurred to me I tried to banish it to the furthest reaches of my mind.
It was of no use, Jamie had already picked up the errant thought. I spun the car-dragon in a circle to clear the immediate area, then used the built up moment to fling it towards Wu Lung. In the same motion I abandoned the construct and sped back towards the workshop, bursting through the wall in a flash.
Sunny was already halfway to the inner doorway, attempting to navigate the debris-laden floor with just the light from the opened outer door. As soon as I emerged into view, she paused to throw a glance towards me from over her shoulder, then broke into a dead sprint, using my own glowing form to light her way.
I had to stop her. Not because I agreed with Jamie's goals, but because Jamie would likely do something worse than she already had if she knew Sunny was approaching her. I dived towards her, ready to stall her or try to convince her to abandon her plan until Jamie was in a more reasonable state of mind.
I opened my mouth to shout—and everything suddenly went black.
...
"Sunny!"
The hand that had been gripping my shoulder suddenly withdrew as if burned, even as I belatedly flailed my arms to throw off whoever had been shaking me. I blinked sleep-laden eyes in an attempt to focus them and figure out where I was—
I bolted upright, my eyes frantically taking in my surroundings even as my mind tried to deny it. No forest clearing, no abandoned, darkened workshop. Karen and Sunny left alone with my madwoman of a twin.
I turned to my bedside, finding Flurry standing there.
She was pale, an unreadable expression on her face as she stared at me in shock. "What did you just say?" she whispered.
My hand curled into a fist and I pounded it against the headboard, screaming, "Bugger!"
ooo
(a/n)—updates are coming a bit slower, sorry. my 'simple plot idea' has sort of gotten away from itself and become a bit more complicated than i had planned. i'm trying to work through what chekov's guns i may have loaded earlier—figuring out which ones are important and which ones i can dismiss as red herrings. also i find i'm having a hard time trying to figure out what the jamie-in-my-head would do in certain situations. my writing style is to have a scenario and the characters in my head play it out.
in other news, that fact that i've been getting at least one or two reviews for each of the last few chapters is a cause for celebration for me. yay!
some people (both in reviews and out) have been asking if a certain person has made a cameo in the recent chapters. i will say what i told them. "maaaaybe :D"
in other-other news, as of this writing Worm's Interlude 26 was released and i just have to say... well, fuck.
i half want to add some stuff to this story's ending as a result, but i'll prolly have to bite the bullet and let their fates lay where they may. we'll see.