*Puts hands up defensively* Before you kill me for leaving this story hanging for so long... I'm truly sorry! Real life... and my growing pile of manga, fanfic stories i've been following, and anime to get through :D
Anyway, this story must be over soon anyway (its 51 freaking chapters!)! So i needed a few "moments" to figure out how im gonna tie up some of the few loose ends i hadn't already figured out.
Anyway, Sorry, here it is, please enjoy *bows and exits the room*
Reid was in a daze. He felt like he was staring through a cracked window. Only pieces of the image made sense in some parts, but not in others.
His throat was dry, like he'd been in the hot sun and finally overheated. His nose was filled with smoke, and his eyes stung.
What was worse, he couldn't move! His limbs weren't listening to his brain!
Looking around, he could see that witch standing infront of his friends, and all his friends were holding their heads like they had massive headaches. Something in his brain found this funny because suddenely he let out a dry cackle.
Lyssa, the girl he'd preformed for so many times with JJ, crouched on her hands and knees near Reid's head. She was sniffing him with a questioning look.
"Uncle Orbus?" she whispered. The insane light in her eyes had grown dimmer in her eyes. She leaned closer and started sniffing Reid. That same disconnected part of Reid also found this funny and Reid began to giggle. Reid's face hurt from the twisted smile he'd had forcibly plastered to his face for what felt like forever.
Reid blinked a few times, what was she talking about?
Lyssa looked like she was just about to say something when she jerked her head towards a mirror near where they were. It actually moved! Reid was intrigued for some reason. The mirror shook and the silohuette of two fists appeared through the mist continually, over and over as whoever they belonged to kept banging on the glass.
Near the floor, something shiny caught Reid's cracked and confused attention. A tiny shard the color of purple glass shined on the concrete floor next to the mirror. Reid remembered a piece of the past events that had transpired only moments before; Orbus and Morgan against the mirror, and then gone. Had they been fighting before or after? Must have been before since he couldn't see them after they'd disapeared into the mirror. This must have been what they were fighitng about, Reid decided. Why else would such great friends fight?
Reid felt another giggle rip through his dry throat.
Reid tried to move over to get it, but then he remembered he couldn't move.
But Lyssa could. She crawled on her knees over to the shard of glass and picked it up.
"Ooh, Uncle Orbus what's this?" she asked, wide eyed.
Reid stared at her absently.
"Oh that's right, you wont play when I wrap you up like a present." Lyssa giggled and bent down to loosen Reid's belt bindings.
Orbus was desperate. He'd been so close... He'd played every card he'd ever held.
And now it had all gone up in smoke...
... all because a certain agent had to get his just deserts! Orbus thought savagely as he rounded on Morgan.
"You... Ruined... EVERYTHING!" he screamed as he started hitting Morgan.
"Dude... DUDE!" Morgan was screaming, trying to fend himself from Orbus' attacks. How childish could this guy get?
Reid stretched and rotated his aching wrists. He didn't know how long the circulation had been cut off but it had been long enough to cause alot of pain when he tried to stretch.
"Okay, can we play another game Uncle Orbus? I wanna play Doctor now!" Lyssa giggled. She didn't look burned or scarred like she had before. She looked like a normal, healthy girl.
"But I thought you liked playing Circus." Reid muttered, looking around for the purple glass he'd seen earlier.
"I'm bored. And besides, Mommy and Daddy aren't back yet. I wanna play a new game so they have to come out. They always do when I decide to change games."
The purple shard... where was it? Reid didn't see it anywhere. And what was all this talk of games? Why was Lyssa even here.
Reid looked up and saw Malifeciis still torturing those people over there.
Wait... those people where his teammates- wait that was the wrong word... Companions? Associates?
Reid sat in deep thought as Lyssa kept blathering away on how she wanted to switch games.
"HEY! Uncle Orbus are you listening?" Lyssa called.
Called so loud, Malifeciis turned around on the spot, a murderous look on her face. She snarled and began inching closer to the two.
Lyssa whimpered and hugged Reid, "Uncle Orbus, she's still scary! I don't wanna play anymore!"
Reid was dragged out of his deep thought when Lyssa hugged him, and he finally noticed Malifeciis coming closer and closer. A murderous look on her face as she raised a clawed hand at the two. Lyssa whimpered below his head and Reid felt himself lower a protective arm over her. Reid let out his own whimper of fear, but for a different reason. Pieces of his fragmented memory had coming slashing through his mind so he'd have no choice but to stare at them.
The look on Malifeciis face... the forced circus performances... the painful adventures through the spirit world... that weird field where he'd been forced to sleep... flashing in and out of conciousness, between that field and this hall where he watched his friends get attacked... that awful night a year ago when he thought he was burned alive and then pulled through a mirror by a deranged corpse!
Reid had only one instinct screaming at him, and only one thought screaming out of him:
"GO AWAY!"
And with that there was a magnificent explosion, the whole hall felt like it was being ripped apart. Shards of glass flew everywhere in all different directions. There was fire everywhere and soon he and Lyssa, who was still latched onto him, were coughing heavily.
They weren't in a maze. They were in a tent! A flaming tent!
Lyssa started crying into Reid's shirt. Then screamed and jumped back when she saw Reid was on fire!
Reid didn't feel it at first, he only noticed when Lyssa screamed. His circus longtails were getting licked by flames. And then suddenelly, they were aflame! They sprinted up Reid's body, engulfing his whole body in fire!
Reid screamed from the pain as the fire raged across his body. Then he heard something. It was barely audible over the cracking and screaming of the fire raging on and around him, but when he looked he saw it was Lyssa screaming. She was on fire too!
"Lyssa!" Reid screamed, but it came out alot softer than he meant. He could barely breathe in this fire!
"Uncle Or- SPENCER!" Lyssa screamed, clutching her head as she collapsed from pain. Reid tried to reach her, but soon collapsed from smoke inhalation. He could barely sense Lyssa crawling over to him, clawing through smoldering dirt and burning scarps of cloth falling from the two.
"Sp-en-cer." Lyssa choked, clutching his hand and looking at him with fearful eyes as the fire danced across his crumpeled form.
Morgan hadn't realized he was screaming until Orbus had clapped a hand over his mouth. All he'd registered was that Reid and Lyssa had ignited the second Reid had screamed at Malifeciis, who was now backing away from the two as the rest of his team watched in horror. Morgan was busy fighting Orbus, who also looked pale and slightly sick.
"Le'ggo man!" Morgan struggled through the Circus Master's hand. Morgan finally threw an elbow and broke free. Orbus rubbed his abs painfully as Morgan pressed himself back to the window, just in time to see the Black Witch utter a sharp cry and lunge forward at the two burning people.
"Lyssa?" Reid asked, clutching the poor girls hand as the collapsed again next to him. The pain of the fire had overloaded Reid's sense, yet somehow he was still alive.
"I'm scared..." Lyssa said suddenely in a small, tiny voice that made her appear much more fragile to Reid than he'd precieved her to be.
"It's okay." Reid said unhelpfully.
"She's gonna get me!" Lyssa whimpered, begin to tremble violently.
Something in Reid's dazed and confused mind something clicked and Reid felt himself grasp Lyssa's small arms and force her to look up at him with glassy misted over eyes.
"Where are you?" He asked.
"I'm in my tent like mommy and daddy told me to be." This brought fresh tears to the little girls eyes.
"Who was the last person you saw."
"Uncle Orbu- the Witch!" Lyssa snapped, "She was watching me through the rip in my wall!" Lyssa pointed to a rip in the burning tents wall where a pair of old, cracked, yellow eyes was watching them, laughing horribly. Lyssa shuddered.
"Where's the shard?" Reid asked suddenely, watching the eyes trail down from his face towards somewhere on the ground. Then the eyes did something that made Reid's skin crawl: they started moving down the tent, two eyeballs tumbled from the rip, down the wall of the tent, and started to roll across the floor. A hissing in the background was becoming more and more audible in the back of Reid's ears.
"Lyssa where's the Shard?" Reid cried apprehensivly.
"Uncle Orbus?" Lyssa said confusedly, she was looking dehydrated and she was unsteady just sitting up the slight amount she'd struggled to. Reid looked down at her, and she blinked quickly, "Uncle Orbus? Why are you in my tent?"
"I'm Reid." Reid said, confused.
"I'm scared." something whispered again.
"She's gonna eat me!" The coloumn of fire that was Reid and Lyssa hissed. Morgan could just make out something purple among the flames.
Garcia had been up against the wall, as the pain had receded from her head she'd begun crying, seeing Reid and Lyssa in their state. Now she was wailing as she saw Maleficiis clawing onto their heads, engulfing herself in the flames. At first the hag had shrieked horribly on contact with the two, but now she was cackling, like she was winning.
Orbus banged a little harder on the glass, resuming his pointless task of beating the mirror in some last desperate hope to reach his surrogate neice and the owner of his stolen body.
"I'm scared!"
"She's gonna eat me!"
"I want my mommy!" The flames hissed at everyone.
Reid looked down at his hand, where a shard of what looked like purple glass was whispering it's fears to the flaming Reid.
"I'm scared!" He heard a mini version of Lyssa say as the real Lyssa sat on her heels staring at Reid confusedly. Then she got a weird grin as the eyes got closer... and closer...
"Your that puppet!" she grinned. "And your... holding..." the confused expression returned, "Me?"
Reid looked from the shard in his hand to the small girl infront of him, to the eyes that rolled ever closer... and closer...
"Yes. Do you... want you?" Reid tried, his dazed and fried brain whirred, looking for any means of escape from the eyes that kept rolling closer... and closer...
"I want my mommy." Lyssa said, tears springing into action as she stared at the shard.
Closer... closer...
"I bet we could find her." Reid smiled, not realizing how tired he was until he'd cocked his head to the side as he turned on his charm.
Lyssa wiped her eyes with a flaming arm.
"Do you wanna find her?" Reid asked, holding a charred hand out to the little girl.
Lyssa nodded, taking the hand.
The shard in Reid's hands began to burn.
And the eyeballs that kept rolling closer... and closer...
began to burn with the rest of the tent and it's contents...