#most things get vaporized so fast they barely get the chance to land a hit tbh

[valiant-portabella-pirkko]

making Saoirse a fully functional Vindicator was both the best and worst decision I've made because, on one hand, she's extremely strong with higher damage than any of my other characters... but on the other hand. she's extremely strong with higher damage than any of my other characters.

[cadouisms]

captive

ch 1 || next ||

karl heisenberg/afab!reader, 18+ ~8k summary: While in Romania as part of your university's study-away program, you accidentally stumble upon a village filled with unholy creatures, and find yourself running for your life. A strange man rescues you and saves you from the brink of death, but there's one caveat: you can't leave. As you come to find out, there's many incentives to staying.

warnings: descriptions of wounds, violence, heisenberg is Mean, collaring, bootlicking, humiliation, smoking

also on ao3

It’s cold.

You’re long past the point of being able to feel your fingertips. The snow has seeped into every inch of your skin, sinking deep into the marrow of your bones. Each heaving breath you take stabs into your chest, and the sheer cold makes your lungs burn to the point that you think you aren’t breathing in oxygen at all, just crystals of water vapor. It makes you lightheaded — or is that the result of exhaustion? You’re sure you’ve been running since the moment you stepped foot into this accursed village, but fear has warped your sense of time. It could have been mere minutes or hours, and with the way the clouds obscure any hope of moonlight, you can’t see the environment around you, much less judge the time of night.

You slow to a stop and immediately double over, frozen hands braced on your equally-frozen thighs as you try to control your breathing. It was foolish to take a walk into the forest in the dead of night, especially since you don’t know this area well, but you aren’t stupid enough to have completely lost your way. It must have been the darkness or some odd pull of fate that twisted your sense of direction, made you take a left instead of a right to end up in this hellhole. You had no idea the village existed in the first place; your host family made no mention of it to you — but then again, perhaps they weren’t expecting you to wander off on your own in the first place. Either way, you managed to stumble here completely by accident, and now you have no idea how to leave.

That is, if you manage to survive the night.

Part of you thinks that you might be dreaming, that this is a nightmare, because monsters aren’t real. But you have no other word to describe the freakish half-man, half-beast creatures that lurk around every corner of the village, vying for the opportunity to rip you to shreds. Based on their growls and snarls, you assumed they were wild animals, up until you caught one running on its hind legs as it gave chase.

You have so many questions and so little answers, but you know that the cold stings too much for this just to be a product of too many sleepless nights. However improbable, this is real, and you have a very real chance of dying.

A vicious growl sounds behind you and pure terror bolts up your spine, sending you fumbling into action as you fall into a fast sprint. The creatures are fast, but you’re blessedly faster — you’ve always been good at running and hiding. You’ve never been in a fight before and you’ve never shot a gun, so you couldn’t defend yourself even if you had some sort of weapon — but you can outspeed them.

Or at least, you could, if it wasn’t so fucking dark.

Unable to see and with panic guiding your footsteps, you slip down a small incline and tumble into icy-cold water. You gasp in both surprise and shock; whatever exhaustion you felt is replaced by pure adrenaline. The rushing stream splashes your face and sinks into the fabric of your clothes, weighing you down, and you have to half-crawl, half-drag yourself to the other side of the bank. You shut your eyes tight as the choppy flow of water laps at your face, threatening to spill down into your throat. You cough and sputter as you pull yourself up onto the ground, hastily wiping the stinging water from your eyes so that you can see.

When you open them, you find yourself face-to-face with one of the creatures. Its monstrous yellow eyes seemingly glow in the night, and despite your fear, you find that you can’t look away. Its lips pull back into a snarl as its hot, foul breath puffs against your face.

You scream.

Before you can run away, it grabs for your arm and digs its claws into your vulnerable flesh. Red-hot pain erupts from the wound and you cry out, futilely trying to pull your arm back to your side. Instead, its grip tightens as it embeds its claws into your skin, and with one abrupt movement it sends you cascading down the side of a steep hill. Your head hits a rock with a sickening crunch and you can’t do anything but lay there, stunned, as your vision swims.

Belatedly, you wonder if you still have your arm.

Your breaths come out in quiet wheezes as you stare up at the cloudy sky. In the distance, multiple pairs of yellowed eyes gaze menacingly down at your vulnerable form. More and more pop up over the ridge, and you have to wonder if there’s enough of you to go around. Would they take turns, or would they fight for it? Would there even be anything left on your bones when the carrion came? You hope they’d be kind enough to leave your face untouched — how else would your body be identified?

You let your eyes drift shut, prepared to surrender to your obvious fate. You’re tired, goddamnit. You’ve been running for far too long, and you don’t see any end to it. Maybe they’ll eat you and instead you’ll wake up from this nightmare with the blankets kicked off your body, inviting the cold chill of winter to send you to this hellhole in your dreams.

You hear a howl — it’s an awful human imitation of a wolf’s howl, rougher around the edges and in the wrong octave, but it screams of violence, of a hunter that has found its prey. The others join in until the hills ring with the promise of your death and it sends such a chill down your spine that your eyes snap open, fear clearing your mind.

Fuck, maybe you are as dumb as some say. If you’re going to die here, you’d rather bleed out painlessly than be ripped to shreds.

You flip over onto your stomach. In the dim lighting, you can just barely make out what looks to be a hole. There’s no chance for you to outrun them now, so hiding is your only option. The snow crushes almost pleasantly beneath your hand as you attempt to drag yourself to the hole, but you find that your left arm is all but unusable. It hurts to move it, much less support your weight with it. The only thing you can do is struggle closer to the hole, inch by tortuous inch.

The howling is getting closer, you think. You peer over the edge — it looks to be a steep drop, but the opening is large enough for you to just barely slip through. You pray it’s too small for the creatures to follow, and with what little strength you have left, you let yourself fall headfirst down into the hole.

You land flat on your back with a soft thud, and though the impact shocks you, you can’t even muster the strength to yelp. Something hums faintly in your ear, reminding you of the buzz of electricity. You turn your head and rest your cheek against the cool earth, letting the noise lull you to sleep as your exhaustion finally takes you under.

  Soft.

Warm.

Bright.

It feels like your body is too heavy and yet far away, all at once. Like you’re drifting in a deep sea of nothingness, weighed down by incalculable pressure. Absently, you wonder if this is what death is like — senseless and empty.

God, but you��re exhausted. Are you supposed to feel so bone-tired when you’re dead? It’s as if you went days without sleeping, like something had come along and sucked all the energy from your body. If you concentrate, you find that you can curl your hand into a fist. Your fingertips catch on rough fabric, not unlike the threadbare blankets you’d been given for your bed, and you rub the cloth between forefinger and thumb. It pulls almost unpleasantly at your skin — not dead, then, you think. You aren’t sure if you’re disappointed or relieved.

Blearily, you open your eyes. Muted colors blur and shift until they settle into shapes. There’s a nightstand directly in front of you, topped with a small lamp that gives the room its warm, soft glow. In the corner of your vision you spot the edge of the pillow your cheek must be resting on, made a dull-yellow color with age. Your neck twinges as you turn your head, and you wince — definitely not dead, then.

You stare at the mottled ceiling above as you take stock of how you feel. Your mouth is cotton-dry, tongue thick and stuck behind your teeth. There’s a dull ache spread throughout your whole body, like you’ve been hit with a truck, and you start to wonder if maybe that’s the case. You can’t remember what you were doing, or why you’re here. You don’t even recognize this place to begin with, and the more you try to remember, the more it seems just out of your grasp, like a word left on the tip of your tongue.

A knob turns, and your gaze snaps to the door just beyond the foot of the bed. It creaks open to reveal a broad figure stepping into the room, and as you catch the hint of its shaggy hair your memories come flooding back: the forest, your misstep into the village, and the awful creatures that lurked within. An image of glowing eyes and snarling teeth flashes just behind your eyes and your adrenaline spikes, causing you to shoot up in bed and scramble backwards away from the figure.

Pain accompanies the sudden movement and you can’t hold back a whimper of pain — you’re more hurt than you initially thought. The figure laughs almost mockingly as it approaches you. “Ah, so Sleeping Beauty finally awakes. I was almost hoping you wouldn’t.”

It — he, you realize — steps close enough that the bedside lamp illuminates his features. Most of his expression is obscured behind his round shades and the wide brim of his hat, but you can still make out his wolfish grin, surrounded by his dark and unkempt facial hair. You shudder.

“Wh —” Your throat protests your attempts to talk and all that comes out is a rough squeak. The man laughs again, obviously finding your awful situation humorous, and your gaze follows him across the room as he picks up a glass of water. You look at him with suspicion as he offers it to you.

“What? You think I would go through the trouble of saving your sorry ass just to poison you?” There’s an edge to his tone that borders on annoyance, and his smirk falls when you make no move to grab the proffered glass. With a huff, he takes a swig from it. “Look. It’s fine.”

Part of you screams not to trust him. You look from between him and the glass, internally debating whether or not to take it, and the man’s patience quickly seems to run out.

“Don’t be ungrateful. I’ll fucking pour it down your throat if I have to.”

That settles it. Hurriedly, you reach out and take it from him. The liquid is cool and refreshing, a balm for your sore throat, and it soothes all the way down. You find yourself uncaring that your lips are technically where his had been just moments ago, or that the water tastes slightly stale — you drain it in just a few large gulps.

As you lower the glass, you catch sight of your left arm and startle: it’s been wrapped in off-white bandages, and you can see where your blood has seeped through to stain the fabric. When you attempt to move it, pain shoots through your limb and you grimace. It doesn’t hurt nearly as bad as before, more comparable to a muscle ache, and for that you’re grateful. You’re happy you still have an arm at all.

“You were in pretty bad shape when they brought you to me.” His words give you pause — who’s they? — but instead of speaking, you watch with trepidation as the strange man reaches into the pocket of his trench coat. To your relief, he pulls a half-burned cigar out along with a zippo and relights it, filling your nose with the acrid smell of burnt tobacco. Wispy trails of smoke accompany his next words. “I’m impressed you made it through the night!”

You’ve calmed down from your initial panic, but something about this man sets you on edge and makes you wary. Still, you know that here — wherever that may be — is safer than being outside in the freezing cold and where those monsters might still linger.

“Where —” You pause to try and coax wetness back into your mouth, to ease the sandpaper-quality of your throat. “Where is this?”

“My factory.” The cherry of his cigar burns strikingly red as he takes a slow, deep drag. He exhales a cloud of smoke that drifts upward, catching on the scant light of the room. For a moment, his glasses stand out stark-black against the white smoke, reminding you inversely of those creatures. It’s not the whites of his eyes you see but the absence of them; his humanity concealed. He rests his foot against the edge of the bed and leans forward, bracing an elbow on his raised knee. “Y’got lucky, kid. You made it pretty close to the boundary of my property. How’d you end up here in the first place?”

You unconsciously lean a bit farther back, unnerved by his presence. “I got...lost,” you admit.

He snorts. “Lost, huh? You must be dumber than you look!”

You bristle. You want to tell him that it was dark, that you couldn’t see where you were going, that you were running for your life — but he speaks before you have a chance to even open your mouth.

“Then again, you’re not from around here, are you? Guess I can’t blame ya, though it’s a miracle you wandered this far out.” He taps the edge of his cigar and sends ash drifting down to the thin sheet acting as your blanket. You have to resist the urge to wipe it off.

If he knows you aren’t from the village, though, then maybe… “How do I get back?” you ask, unable to keep the eagerness from your voice. “How do I leave?”

“Leave?” The man tilts his head, mouth curving into a dangerous grin. His lips pull back to reveal his teeth and the light seems to glint off them, making you feel like the lamb before the wolf, caught in its deception. “Oh, no, sweetheart. You aren’t leaving.”

Your heart drops in your chest. “Wh-what?”

He laughs, cruel and mocking. “I mean, you can try if you want! It’d make for one helluva show. I’d even give you directions to get out of here!” He steps back, planting both feet solidly on the floor below. “But, even if you escaped here alive, you’d still have the lycans waiting for you back in the village, and I doubt you’d survive another encounter with them.”

“Lycans?” you echo.

“Oh, come on.” The man gestures to your bandaged arm with his cigar, flinging more ash around. “Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten. They almost killed you, remember?”

“Those...creatures?” Lycans? Like lycanthropy? “They’re...you mean…”

“Careful not to think too hard. I can see the cogs turning in your head, poor thing.” He drops his cigar and crushes it underneath his boot, grinning smugly all the while. “I’ll leave you alone to process this. I’m sure realizing fairy-tale monsters are real can be quite the traumatic experience.” His laughter trails after him as he disappears out of the room. The door shuts behind him with a soft click.

You stare blankly ahead, mind reeling from all the new information.

Surely he wasn’t serious…? He’d let you leave. He was just waiting for you to recover. Right? Right.

And the werewolves — lycans, as he’d called them — he was kidding about that too! You must’ve hit your head real bad, or made them up as the result of some weird fever dream. You’re still dreaming, you conclude. A dream within a dream.

You lay back against the bed and close your eyes. A dream. You’ll wake up soon, you’re sure of it.

...Except the longer you lie there, the more you begin to suspect that he was telling the truth. Your mind buzzes, too noisy to let you sleep despite your exhaustion, so you resolve to at least explore the room a little.

You swing your legs over the side of the bed and realize you’re still wearing all your clothes, even your shoes. You toe your sneakers off and let them drop to the floor below, then slowly stand. As long as you don’t move too fast, you figure you’ll be okay — you hurt, true, but you don’t feel on the verge of passing out.

The bed that you’d been resting on isn’t a bed so much as it is a stained mattress on an old frame. The sheet you’d been covered with was just that — a sheet. It looks as threadbare as you expected, like it had been in use for years.

The drawer in the bedside table reveals nothing but metallic odds and ends, and the small wardrobe is completely empty. The lack of items and the thin coating of dust along every surface makes the room feel impersonal, lonely.

You discover a thin door that you hadn’t previously noticed. The hinges squeak when you push it open and the light takes a moment to flicker on, but it turns out to be a small bathroom. Cramped as it is, there’s a full-sized tub along the far wall, and your brain lights up at the chance to be clean. You close the door behind you as you step fully inside. There’s a toilet to your right and a sink to your left, and you pause as you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror.

You look like shit.

Dark circles sit heavy under your eyes, made more prominent by the overhead light, and there’s all sorts of grime caked onto your face. As you strip your clothing, you discover more dirt, more blood, and multiple scrapes and bruises. There’s several smaller wounds that obviously had been left to scab over rather than cleaned and bandaged, and you scratch off a bit of dried blood with a scowl. You’re grateful that stranger didn’t strip you, but sheesh. It makes you feel a little gross knowing you’d been sitting in your own filth for god knows how long.

Despite it all, you seem to have come out of it just a little worse for wear. The last thing is to check on your arm, and though it doesn’t hurt so much anymore, you’re a little frightened of what you may find. Carefully, you unwrap the bandages, fully expecting to see an ugly mess of twisted flesh — only to find your arm already scabbed over, like it’s been healing for weeks. It doesn’t have the tell-tale signs of infection, either; the area around the wound isn’t hot or inflamed.

Either it was less severe than you thought, or that man is some sort of miracle doctor.

You shrug off the weird feeling in your chest and turn to the tub, twisting the knobs. The water that pours out is dirty brown from disuse, and you wait until it runs clear before you plug the drain and allow the tub to fill. You sink down into the lukewarm water, drawing your knees to your chest, and breathe out a quiet sigh. The room fills with silence, the faint hum of electricity only broken by the occasional drip, drip from the faucet.

You break down.

You had almost died. You know what you saw — you didn’t hallucinate those creatures, those lycans, and you have the wounds to prove it. You’re in a strange land, far away from your real home, back in America. When your advisor presented you with the option to study away in Europe for a semester, it had seemed like a good idea at the time — you were a second-year student with zero prospects and zero specializations, and it would be fully covered by your financial aid.

But fuck, if you had known coming to Romania would end up like this, you would have never agreed in the first place. It was a last-ditch effort to find something you were passionate about, like the movies, when people go to Europe to “find themselves” or whatever — but, looking back, you suppose they’re always set in Italy or France, not Romania.

Instead, all you got was an apathetic host family who wouldn’t even indulge your half-assed attempts to speak their language, a stronger sense of isolation, and kidnapped, since it seems like the only way you’re leaving is in a bodybag.

You wrap your arms tight around yourself, fingernails making half-crescents in your skin, and stifle a sob. Even if they’d be able to find this place, no one would be coming for you. Not your host family, and certainly not your real family, as you haven’t spoken to them since you graduated high school. Outside of the occasional classmate, you have no friends, either.

The man said he didn’t plan on killing you, but maybe he should have never rescued you in the first place.

By the time the water turns cold your tears have dried, and you slowly uncurl yourself from your sitting-ball position so you can properly clean yourself. There’s no soap, leaving you to methodically rub at your skin until all traces of dirt and grime are gone. The water turns a murky grey, and you drain and refill it once more before you wash your face and hair.

You don’t feel exactly clean, merely… less dirty, but it helped, you think. So did the crying.

Water pools around your feet as you step out of the tub, and to your dismay, you can’t find any towels. Instead, you come upon a roll of bandages and a bottle of mysterious fluid simply marked ‘first aid.’ There’s no other description or any sort of warning label, but it only takes you a second to decide to use it. Still nude, you liberally pour it over your wounded arm, and then rub some on your fingertips to massage into your smaller cuts and scrapes. It doesn’t sting, to your surprise, and it smells oddly minty. You bandage your arm and slide on your underclothes, leaving the rest of your dirtied clothes to sit in a heap on the floor.

You leave the bathroom and flop unceremoniously onto the mattress. The cool air makes goosebumps prickle on your damp skin, but you don’t have the energy to do anything more than half-heartedly wrap the sheet around your body. You feel just as tired as you did when you woke up, and though it’s been two hours since then at most, the pull of sleep coaxes your eyelids to close, and you drift off into a fitful rest.

   “Breakfast!”

The door ricochets off the wall with a loud bang, jolting you out of a dead sleep. The man from earlier stands in the doorway with a small tray carried in his hands, that same insufferable grin sitting lopsided on his mouth as he takes glee in your panic. “Aww, poor baby,” he coos, “did I scare you?”

“Yes,” you hiss. His shaded gaze lingers on you for just a moment too long and you remember you’re very underdressed, heaps of exposed skin making you feel vulnerable in his strange presence. You scramble to tug the blanket around yourself as your face heats up and the man cruelly laughs again.

“You make it too easy.” You tense as he all but struts over, workboots heavy against the floor, but he only comes close enough to set the tray on the bedside table. There’s some slices of bread, cheese, and unidentifiable meat, along with a glass of water. The dishes look grimy and unclean, but the food looks fine.

You take some comfort in knowing he doesn’t intend on starving you. He may want to keep you trapped here, but at least he doesn’t seem to want to make you miserable. “...Thanks,” you finally murmur after a moment. Your eyes flit from him to the food, your distrust evident in your face.

“Don’t worry. It’s not poisoned,” he remarks, obviously noticing your hesitation.

You blanch. “Is that supposed to be reassuring?”

His shit-eating grin says otherwise, but you’re starting to suspect he just likes toying with you, the bastard. “Eat it or not, I don’t care. Just don’t come crying to me when you get hungry.” He turns on his heel, his coat swishing at his ankles, and makes his way toward the door.

“Wait —”

“We can chitchat later. I have work to do.”

“Can you at least tell me your name?”

He pauses, one foot in the hallway, and turns to look at you over his shoulder. His hat obscures most of his face, leaving you to stare at the arrogant curl of his mouth. “Heisenberg,” he finally says, and leaves.

The door shuts behind him. In the silence, you can faintly hear his footsteps fade away until the only thing left is the quiet hum in your ears.

You reach for the tray. The bread is somehow equally stale and moist, but in the worst combination. The unidentifiable meat is also...unidentifiable, but it doesn’t smell unpleasant nor have a bad taste. You tear the bread into manageable chunks and make little finger sandwiches. It only takes a couple bites for you to realize you’re ravenous and you quickly devour the plate of food, leaving you with a sense of that’s all? as soon as you finish.

He brought you food, so naturally that means he has a kitchen. It’s the logical conclusion, you tell yourself, and you set the tray back on the nightstand as you carefully get up from the bed. The bone-deep weariness from earlier still lingers, exhaustion pulling at your limbs, but you feel much better than before. A twinge of pain shoots up your arm if you move it incorrectly, but otherwise it doesn’t bother you.

Remembering that you’re still practically naked, you grab the sheet from the bed and wrap it around you like some sort of toga before you step to the main door. The knob turns easily under your hand, but apprehension prevents you from pushing it open. You don’t know what you’re expecting, but all kidnappers have some weird dungeon-esque room, right? Maybe he’s keeping you just beyond his torture chamber or his murder room or his —

— Study?

The door leads into another relatively-normal looking room. It’s about the size of the bedroom with a desk covered with miscellaneous books and papers at one end of it. The rest of the wallspace is covered with bookshelves, but most of their racks are empty. Instead, metal bits and bobs cover a large amount of the surface and a good bit of the floor. The man — Heisenberg, you remind yourself — did say that you were in his factory, which would explain the abundance of scrap metal around. The question is: what does he manufacture?

Murder weapons, your brain helpfully supplies, which you promptly ignore. You hope it’s something reasonable, like cars or machinery, and not something you’d see in a cheesy horror film.

There’s a rather large and metallic door on the opposite wall from which you entered, and you eagerly attempt to open it. There’s no handle or knob, meaning you can’t pull it open, and no matter how much force you apply, you can’t push it open. It doesn’t budge under your weight, acting more like a stone wall than an exit.

You sigh. No foray into the kitchens, then. The only rooms you have access to are this one, the bedroom, and the bathroom, presumably for a reason. How big is this factory, you wonder? What else lies beyond your small prison? What is Heisenberg hiding?

You give up trying to open the door, and instead explore the study. Most of the books are technical ones about machinery and mechanical know-how, but there’s the odd anatomical book thrown in. On the desk you find an old and weathered notebook, though it’s mostly blank. The pages that are filled have been written in an almost illegible scrawl, like chicken scratch or a doctor’s signature, and you can’t even begin to make heads or tails of what it says.

There’s nothing else of note in the room. No key, no hidden secret evil plan, nothing. You return to your room and resolve to find out what you can organically through talking with Heisenberg.

 Or at least, that was your plan.

You still spend a large portion of your days sleeping, both body and mind needing the extra rest in order to recover from your ordeal in the village. Your energy comes and goes, but you find that your arm is healing incredibly. It’s going to leave a large and ugly scar, but by the third time you change your bandages, you realize there’s no need to cover it again. Your other scrapes and cuts have all but healed completely, and even your bruises have faded to a muted yellow.

Heisenberg is...well. You only see him when he stops by to bring you food, and even then his visits are short. He doesn’t ask how you’re healing, nor does he entertain you with idle chatter — he enters the bedroom in the loudest, most obnoxious way possible (to frighten you), hands you your food, and leaves. On one occasion, he had come in smelling heavily of oil and smoke and had seemed like his mind was elsewhere. He hadn’t even reacted when you called his name.

Most other times, he will at least respond if you speak — like when you asked him for toiletries and he’d groused that you were “a handful.” Nonetheless, you found tattered towels and some half-used soap bars at the foot of the bed afterward.

He almost always manages to sidestep your questioning or answer with a non-answer, but you remember one particular conversation that made your hair stand on end.

“Are you a doctor?”

“You could say that.” And the way he’d grinned had unnerved you, like he was amused by how little you knew, like he had a secret he didn’t intend to share.

He’s a threat, your brain had whispered, but part of you knows he isn’t all bad. He’s certainly less creepy than some Tinder dates you’ve been on, and he’s annoyingly charismatic in an asshole sort of way. Despite everything, you feel oddly drawn to him — though you hesitate to call it anything but simple curiosity. So much mystery surrounds him and his actions, and he constantly defies your horror movie expectations for how a kidnapping should play out.

Escaping sits at the forefront of your mind, but there isn’t much you can do. There are no windows in any of the three rooms you have access to, and the only door that leads (presumably) out into the greater factory is constantly locked. You’ve tried opening the door after Heisenberg delivers your meals in the hope that he’d conveniently forget to lock it, but you’ve had no such luck.

Even if you had a viable escape plan, there’s the issue of actually physically being able to escape. You wear fatigue like a second skin even with all the bedrest you’ve managed to accumulate, and though the physical wounds from your night in the village are practically nonexistent, the thought of having to go through all that again is enough to send your heart racing.

Despite this, you do what you can to fill your time and make it more bearable. You wash your clothes with the soap Heisenberg had supplied to avoid sitting in your own filth day in and day out, and even wash the sheets to the bed. Your thoughts are equally divided between wishful fantasies of escaping, wild daydreams, and wondering when Heisenberg will bring your next meal.

Eventually, sheer boredom drives you to steal a book from the study. It’s one on the intricate makings of a pre-1970s-era vehicle, and though the technical jargon goes way over your head, it helps break up the monotony of your current existence.

(You did, at one point, attempt to exercise to pass the time. It took two sit-ups before you promptly decided it was a horrible idea and you’d rather rot in bed.)

Unwillingly, your life becomes a cycle of wishing and waiting. Wishing for food, for entertainment; waiting for Heisenberg, for a chance to escape. Somehow, your chance arrives much sooner than expected.

With the lack of natural light and your own messed up internal clock, you have no real marker for the passage of time. Heisenberg comes too irregularly for you to rely on him to mark “morning” and “night” with his visits, and you spent so much time sleeping that your own biological clock is out of whack, so the best you can do is guess. It’s on “day” five by your own calculations that you catch your lucky break.

A few minutes after Heisenberg drops off your breakfast, once you’re certain his footsteps are long gone, you head to the door in the study. You press your hands to the cool metal and push, expecting it to be as unyielding as ever — only for it to give under your weight and creak open.

Your stomach drops. For as often as you thought about escaping, most of your daydreams were power fantasies about fighting off lycans and cleverly making your way back out of the village. You have no plan for actually leaving the factory.

Familiar anxiety begins to crawl up your spine as you contemplate what to do. You could return to the bedroom and actually formulate a plan, but — no. The chances of this happening again are slim. You don’t want to risk Heisenberg coming back to lock the door and leaving you trapped here due to your own cowardice. You inhale deeply to steel your nerves, forcing your fear on the backburner, and step out.

It’s dark. Your eyes adjust to the difference in lighting as you let the door shut behind you, casting away your only remaining source of brightness. The difference in atmosphere is like night and day; where your rooms were warm and soft, the metal corridor you now stand in is cold and inhospitable. It’s a place meant for machines, not humans. The ever-present hum that rang faintly in your rooms seems louder, as if you’re closer to the source, and yet it almost makes your skin crawl, like the memory of nails on a chalkboard. You shiver.

Red emergency lights guide your way as you explore your surroundings, giving it the sinister vibe you were expecting à la horror movies. Maybe Heisenberg doesn’t have a specific torture chamber, you think. Maybe it’s the whole factory.

If only you knew.

The corridor leads you straight to another door, which swings open to reveal yet another darkened hallway. It branches off into two separate directions, however, and you remember how Heisenberg had jokingly offered to give you maps to aid your escape. Would it really be necessary?

Yes, you come to find out. You had picked the left hallway out of some vague advice of turning left to escape a maze, but it only seems to lead to more doors, most of which are locked. The single unlocked one takes you around into a large, looping corridor, until you end up right where you started.

You sigh, and turn right this time.

Like before, you find several possible exits, though only one opens. The instant you step through, you feel something in the air...shift. The usual hum is gone, replaced with dead silence, and the room is pitch black. Dread sits heavy at the back of your throat. Everything inside you screams for you not to continue on, but there’s no other option. There's nowhere else to go.

You feel around until the flat of your hand finds the wall, and you walk ahead at a slow pace. The uncertainty of what lies ahead makes your mind conjure up far-fetched and impossible images, and every time your hand brushes up against something unexpected, you jump back with your heart in your throat. You navigate with your other hand extended far out in front of you to avoid colliding into obstacles, and your feet shuffle awkwardly forward, inch by tortuous inch.

You pause as your hand catches on some round protrusion in the wall. You grope blindly at it in hopes of finding some mechanism or lever, but instead your hand passes over rough fabric. It reminds you of material used to make pants, oddly enough, and as you apply pressure you realize it’s covering something firm. You bring both hands together to feel the object and imagine some sort of cylinder under your palms, and as you slide them upward your fingertips skirt over a thickened edge that leads directly to something disturbingly chilled, which gives slightly under pressure. Surely it isn’t…?

An overhead light flickers on. Your hands are on a person. You’re touching their leg. What you had felt had indeed been pants. Your gaze travels upward — they’re naked from the waist up, but their body looks to be horribly mutilated. You can see multiple scars and literal patchworks of flesh that had to be stapled together, and there’s an odd device that encircles their head, like some strange visor, or VR helmet. Their skin is cold to the touch and an ashen grey color.

It’s a corpse, you finally realize. They’re dead.

Except — no, they can’t be, because they start to move.

A service alarm blares loudly as hydraulics hiss, and the body starts to careen forward out of its little pod. You stumble to the side, out of the way, only for the body to turn toward you as if possessed. Something starts to whir.

It has drills for hands.

How the fuck did you not notice that it has drills for hands?

A scream lodges in your throat as the thing advances on you, and you bolt down the hallway. To your horror, there’s rows upon rows of the holding cells, and you praise whatever deity currently watching this shitshow that none of the others seem awake.

You barrel down the hallway at full speed and throw your weight at the door. It bursts open to a wider area, and you barely stop your momentum in time to keep yourself from launching over a waist-tall guardrail. You white-knuckle the bannister as you stare below into unsettled waters.

Slowly, you lift your head. This place is big, far bigger than you ever imagined it to be — you’re in some spacious middle-ground that seems to stretch on endlessly. There’s many levels above you, too many for your panicked brain to count, and several still below you. In the distance, several conveyors transport what look to be human bodies to different parts of the factory.

You think you might throw up, or cry, or piss yourself, or all of the above; but instead you push off the rail and start running. You have to get out before you get turned into one of those things.

A large metal beam drops directly in your path, a few inches shy of crushing you, and stops you dead in your tracks. Another lands to its side, and then yet another on its opposite side, effectively blocking you from advancing.

“You should’ve told me you were gonna make a run for it!”

You turn sharply on your heel — Heisenberg. He saunters forward, cigar smoke trailing after him. In the dim lighting of the factory, you can just barely make out the smirk playing on his lips. “I said I would give you maps. You might’ve had a fighting chance, but you’re shit outta luck without them.”

How can he sound so amused? So casual? As if he isn’t any better than the lycans that prowl in the village. “Y-you’re a monster,” you hiss, though your voice lacks any of the necessary bite to truly appear angry, your feelings too warped by fear and terror.

The smirk drops from his face. The door you had just came from swings open as the creature reappears, its drills spinning menacingly. “Y’know,” Heisenberg begins, flicking ash from his cigar, “you must be pretty dumb to insult the one guy that can help you.” Loosened metal bits start to levitate as if propelled by some unseen force, Heisenberg at the center. He flicks a hand outward and one of the beams from earlier knocks into the backs of your legs and drags you closer to the creature, shortening the distance to it by more than half.

You’re trapped. You may be quick, but there’s no way you’re limber enough to dodge the creature’s drills to get to the exit behind it. One half of the walkway is completely barred off, and there’s no way you’d survive the drop into the waters below. The only option, then, is to run to Heisenberg — as if he planned it from the start.

You want to prove him wrong, you want to be the strong, self-reliant hero like in your daydreams, but you simply aren’t strong enough. This place is too strange, too twisted, and you’re too used to your life from before.

So you run to him.

You run, and you fucking trip.

You barely manage to brace your arms out in front of you in time to prevent your nose from smashing against the floor. You twist onto your back as the mechanical whirring grows louder. The manmachinemonster advances forward at a frightening pace, its mouth open in some macabre grin, and despair clutches at your heart. You crawl backward, feet sliding against the walkway as you desperately attempt to get away. Heisenberg merely watches the spectacle, leisurely puffing on his cigar.

“Please!” you cry out. “Please, I’m sorry!” You don’t have the strength to stand; you cling desperately to his pant leg as if you were a child and bury your face in the outside of his thigh, squeezing your eyes shut against your eventual demise.

He laughs and you can hear the genuine amusement in it. “Enough!” he shouts. The drills stop and the noise around you grows quiet. You stay like that, face pressed against his leg, heart in your throat, until you can gather enough courage to look.

Horrified, you watch as Heisenberg lifts the creature into the air, guided upward by the metal attachment on its head as if pulled upward by some magnet. He slings its body over the guardrails where it hovers mid-air over a deadly drop. It squirms in his invisible gasp, limbs twitching grotesquely in an attempt to find purchase, like an insect in its last moments.

Wordlessly, he lets the body plummet. You’re thankful you can’t watch it drop beyond the horizon of the walkway, thankful you can’t hear the sound of its body hitting the water below.

“You made me waste a perfectly good soldier.” His tone still sounds amiable, like he was discussing the weather, but there’s something else just bubbling under the surface. “I can’t even repurpose the materials.”

You’re still clinging to his leg, your hands fisted into the fabric of his pants. “I’m s..sorry,” you repeat again, trying not to incur his ire. “I didn’t… I didn’t mean…”

He tilts his head down. Between his dark shades and the way his hat casts a long shadow across his face, it’s impossible to tell what he’s thinking. Yet, you don’t miss the way his upper lip curls into a snarl as he speaks. “Didn’t mean what? Didn’t mean to run away? Or did you just not mean to get caught?”

His boot suddenly connects with your ribs, hard, and the single kick is powerful enough to send you sprawling across the floor. Your back slams against the metal guardrails, denting them with your impact. “Dumb fucking mutt,” he spits.

You can’t breathe. His kick forced all the air from your lungs, and though you aren’t sure if he damaged something important, it sure as shit feels like it. You gasp out a silent sob as you curl inward, arms wrapped protectively around your middle in an attempt to self-soothe the pain that courses through you.

His footsteps echo against the metal as he stalks forward, slow and steady. Hopelessness eats at your core — he’ll kill you. He’s held back his murderous tendencies all this time and now he’s going to kill you, he’s gonna turn you into one of those creatures and mutilate you beyond all recognition and —

He kicks you onto your back. Your ribs open and you gasp, breathing in deep as air finally fills your lungs. “Sss’rry, ‘m sor—”

“Shut your fucking mouth.” He digs the heavy toe of his boot into your vulnerable stomach, pressing hard enough to guarantee an ugly bruise, and you cry out as pain shoots through your frayed nerves. He holds his foot in place to keep you in agony, and tears fall freely from your eyes, blurring your vision.

He could crush you. He could kill you. You thought he was scary, but you didn’t expect this. He’s like some mad scientist with superpowers. The lycans were one thing, but now you know you have no chance of escaping. You’re going to die here, whether by his hand or the hand of his creations.

“Please,” you beg, voice hinging on a whine. You cough and thick strings of blood dribble down your chin, mixing with your saliva. You sound absolutely pitiful, and you would be disgusted with yourself if you weren’t so fucking scared.

Heisenberg tsks softly. “Aw, don’t worry, sweetheart. I’m not entirely merciless.” He nudges your face with his boot. “I’ll let you make it up to me. Show me you can behave, and I’ll consider letting you live.” It hovers above your mouth, and you stare up at him through your tears, confusion evident in the scrunch of your brows. “Well?” he prompts. “Stick out that tongue of yours.”

Hesitantly, you do. Spit and blood both drool from your mouth as you part your lips and let your tongue loll out. He presses the underside of his shoe against your tongue and it clicks: he wants you to lick his boot.

Heat coils low in your abdomen as you start to drag your tongue against the leather, lapping up the grime and dirt from its surface. Copious amounts of saliva and blood dribble continuously from your mouth, enough that you can hardly taste the actual repugnant flavor of his shoe. Above, Heisenberg inhales from his cigar, blowing out a cloud of smoke as he watches you from behind his shades. It’s almost calming, in a way, so much so that you’re almost unafraid, and more like —

No. This is gross. You must have hit your head and knocked something loose, because there’s nothing sexy about this, there’s no way you like it. Fear and pleasure are closely related in the brain so maybe your body just got the signals mixed up, because there is no way this is making you wet, there’s no —

An undignified whine slips from your throat, and you hope that Heisenberg misinterprets it as something pained and sad, not as the thinly-veiled desperate noise it truly is.

His mouth curves into his trademark grin as he pulls his spit-slicked boot away. “Maybe you’ll be good for something after all,” he murmurs appraisingly.

And then, blissfully, everything turns black.

  Your head is pounding. It takes everything in you to open your eyes just a crack, but the warm lighting proves too much and you pinch them shut against the threat of tears. Your mouth feels like cotton, and yet you can taste the faint metallic twang of blood mixed with something else, something earthy. Your ribcage hurts, your stomach hurts, your everything hurts — and then you remember: the twisted corpse made of man and metal; the truth about the factory; Heisenberg, so breathtakingly mean — and you shoot up into a sitting position.

You’re in the bedroom again, legs twisted into the sheet on the bed. The door is shut, and there’s no one else in here with you. No weird creature, no Heisenberg, no one. You turn your head to scope out the whole room, and —

You fucking jingle.

Alarmed, you reach for your throat. There’s a piece of metal warped around your neck, and at its center hangs a little bell, like what you would see on a pet collar. Seeing is believing, though, so you stumble from the bed and into the bathroom so you can look at yourself in the mirror.

Bloodshot eyes stare back at you, your face grimy and your mouth stained with blood, but it’s there. It looks like a piece of metal scrap had been twisted and beaten into a circle, then soldered together around your neck. When you shake your head, the bell jingles cheerfully in your ears.

The bastard had fucking collared you.

[cbraxs]

Warped [Time Warp Trio Fanfiction] - Chapter 7

Joe faced his uncle Jack many times over the last five years and he always appeared the same, aging along with him and the others as time went on. Despite hearing stories about Mad Jack from his uncle Joe about when they were younger, Joe could never picture him as anything but a middle-aged man with an unruly mustache and an unpopped monocle. Seeing him in person, only a couple years older than Joe was now, was jarring, to say the least.

The Book laid about five feet away from the statue’s feet. Despite the crowd in the room, there was a clear path from it to Mad Jack, so there was no hope he might not have seen it.

Joe and Anna stared in silent horror as Mad Jack stalked over to The Book. He knelt, and picked up The Book with shaky hands. “I can’t believe…” His trademark demented grin spread across his face.

His boss strolled over and peered at The Book over Mad Jack’s shoulder. “Oh. It’s a… book.” He said ‘book’ the way Joe said a French word he didn’t understand. “Woefully archaic things.”

“This isn’t just any book, Bonefat.” Mad Jack stood, staring at The Book like it was a glass of water in the middle of the Sahara. “It’s The Book.”

His boss was clearly not impressed by the distinction. “Right, my mistake. Now, put down that silly thing and let’s get to work on finding—”

“What an utter ignoramus you are. This is the most powerful item in the entire space-time continuum!”

“Is it now?” Bonefat quirked a brow. “You’re certain?”

“Of course, I’m certain!”

The two men went back and forth, drowning out Joe and Anna’s whispered conversation.

“We need a plan,” Joe said.

Anna rolled her eyes. “Right, because your last plan went sooo well—”

“You can snark at me all you want later. We gotta distract them.” Joe rubbed his chin in thought. “If I can get The Bookaway from them, you think you could get it and call the time agents?”

Anna nodded. “Just tell me the plan.”

Joe looked back over the railing at Mad Jack and Bonefat, looked at the statue, and got an idea. He briefed Anna on his plan.

She glanced from him to the statue, a frown on her face. “Are you sure?”

“If it means getting The Book back. Ready?”

Anna nodded, and snuck down the stairs as Joe got into position above the statue of the Egyptian goddess. He inwardly apologized to it for what he was about to do.

Joe had never done what he was about to do before, but he assumed the process was similar enough to levitation. He remembered what Izzy said about channeling the tiggly-wiggly feeling into exerting her will over the world. He raised his hand towards the statue and tried to do the same.

A green aura slowly enclosed around the head of the statue. It flickered a few times but Joe made it stay in place. A bead of sweat dripped down his temple.

Below him, Mad Jack and Bonefat continued to talk, not even noticing Anna at the bottom of the steps.

Bonefat rubbed his chin and regarded The Book with newfound interest. “If it’s really as powerful as you say, Jackie boy, then it should be in the hands of someone who deserves it. Someone like, well, me obviously.”

Mad Jack laughed as he flipped through the pages of The Book. “Do you really think someone like you could ever— hey! Let go!”

Bonefat grabbed The Book and tried to take it out of Mad Jack’s hands. Mad Jack held on fast, his knuckles pale from the vice grip.

The green aura surrounded the entire statue. Joe moved his arms forwards and back, and the statue followed his movements, rocking side to side.

“Stop pulling on The Book!” Mad Jack shouted. “You don’t—”

With a final shove, the statue toppled forward, set to fall on top of them. As Joe had hoped, the two men noticed in time and leapt out of the way. The Book was thrown aside in their panic and slid to a stop at the bottom of the stairs.

The statue smashed onto the ground, wood splintering in several directions.

Anna took her chance. She snuck out and scooped up The Book while the two men where dazed. She was three steps up when Bonefat grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her around. Anna yelped.

“Little girl,” he chided, “it’s not polite to steal from me.”

Anna tried to pry herself from his grasp “It doesn’t belong to you!”

Joe ran down the stairs to help her.

A blast of green light launched Bonefat into the air. He crashed into the gift shop, taking down a rack of t-shirts with him on his way to the ground.

“Nor to you, little girl.” Mad Jack brandished the amulet from the statue’s neck like a weapon. Smoke curled off the gold symbol. “Give me my Book!”

They amulet glowed bright green, magical energy sparking around it like a Tesla coil.

“Anna!” Joe cried.

“Joe!”

She hurled The Book as hard as she could to him. He caught it easily with the use of magic.

Mad Jack’s head snapped towards Joe, Anna no longer in his sights now that he had The Book.

Joe barely noticed Mad Jack’s look of utter befuddlement as he fled up the stairs. He furiously flipped through The Book, finding pages for time acrobats and time antagonists, but no time agents.

He reached the third floor with a heavy step and nearly tripped on his own momentum. Joe paced through the room, weaving through the frozen crowd and practically tearing through The Book for any sign of time agents. He noticed Izzy up ahead of him when a ding from the elevator made Joe jump out of his skin.

Mad Jack sauntered out of the hallway, gripping Anna by the back of her sweater. He pushed her forward, earning a grunt from her. He smiled sardonically.

“Look who I got,” he said in a sing-song voice.

“Anna!” Joe race towards them.

Mad Jack raised the glowing amulet to Anna’s head. “Not another step, boy.”

Joe slid to a stop. He glared at Mad Jack to no effect.

“I don’t know who you brats are,” Mad Jack said. “Maybe you’re medaling relatives, maybe your annoying time warpers. I don’t exactly know or particularly care. But what I do know is that you have something that belongs to me. Now hand it over before I vaporize her into a million little particles!”

He shoved amulet in Anna’s temple. She whimpered.

Joe’s throat tightened, helplessness washing over him. He could kick himself for leaving her alone with him. “Don’t hurt her.”

“I won’t. As long as you do as you’re told.”

Joe mind spun frantically as he tried to come up with another idea. Nothing came. There was no way he could save Anna and keep The Book out of Mad Jack’s hands. It came down to saving his annoying kid sister or protecting the space-time continuum from a madman who wanted to control it.

“Here. Take it.” Joe tossed The Book to the side. It skidded on the tile until it hit Izzy’s foot and bounced a couple feet away.

Mad Jack smirked triumphantly. He shoved Anna to the floor and went over to The Book.

Joe ran to Anna and helped her up. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said, “but...”

She didn’t need to finish her sentence for Joe to get what she meant. They were fine for the moment, but the second Mad Jack got his hands on The Book… well, they’d be a little less than fine.

Mad Jack trembled with excitement as he bent down to pick The Book up. “At long last I—”

Green lighting arced from Izzy’s head and Mad Jack flew backwards a couple feet, crying out in pain.

Joe and Anna stood there, equally stunned. Green electricity buzzed around Izzy’s head, or more specifically, her hourglass earrings.

Mad Jack paid no attention to her, however, his attention solely focused on The Book. He gaped in confusion. “Wha… what’s going on—AH!”

He reached for it again. Green bolts of pure magic zapped him. He tried again, another painful shock. Joe was watching the definition of insanity play out in front of him in real time and it was pretty… insane.

Mad Jack stood and shot daggers at the two of them. Smoke curled off his janitor’s uniform. “What did you do?”

Joe stepped in front of Anna. “We didn’t do anything!”

Mad Jack pointed the amulet at them. A blast of energy annihilated the wall behind them. Plaster and debris rained down.

“My patience has reached its end!” he spat.

He pointed at them again. They dove out of the way in opposite directions just as another shot of magic scorched the spot where they previously stood.

Anna ran to the fishbowl of marbles and knocked it over, spilling them all over the floor to create a sea separating them from Mad Jack.

Mad Jack’s laugh was punctuated by the fishbowl bouncing along the ground. “Really child? You think a juvenile prank can stop me from—”

He stepped towards them and slipped. He landed on his back with a thud.

Anna raced towards The Book. Mad Jack let loose a bolt of magic at her. She smacked into a wall and crumpled in a heap on the floor.

Joe’s heart sunk. “Anna!”

Fear and rage bubbled in his body. He levitated the fishbowl onto Mad Jacks head. With a flourish of his arms, it spun around like a spinning top. Joe smirked as Mad Jack yelped and fell on his butt.

Behind Mad Jack, Anna crawled towards The Book. Joe breathed a sigh of relief.

Mad Jack shouted. The fishbowl glowed bright green and shattered into a hundred shards flying in every direction. Joe shielded his face with his arms, flinching when glass stung at him.

Mad Jack’s monocle popped out of place and dangled against his face. He fixed a glare on Joe. “Do you think you’re clever, boy?”

“Oh, you know,” Joe said, “only on days that end in ‘y’”

Mad Jack got madder. Good. Joe had to keep Mad Jack away from Anna, buy her time to get The Book and get help.

Joe ducked under another blast aimed at his face and ran. He zigzagged through frozen people and towards less populated sections of the room. He didn’t want Mad Jack to hurt any innocent bystander when he was his target.

He threw more taunts Mad Jack’s way and dodged spell after spell meant to hit him. With each blast, Mad Jack lost accuracy and became more irate.

The amulet Mad Jack was using finally melted into a congealed lump. He threw it to the side. “Enough!”

Joe froze, but not voluntarily. Green energy pulsed around his body. A thousand tiny needles pricked at his skin. He tried to move an arm. A leg. Nothing. He was paralyzed. The only thing he could manage to move was his eyes.

Mad Jack walked into his line a vision. He raised his hand and Joe went weightless, hovering over the ground until he was suspended over the railing. His head spun. Best-case scenario, dropping from that height would break all his bones.

Mad Jack grinned at him, wide and manic like he was going to enjoy making a Joe pancake on the floor. “I cannot begin to tell you how much I hate having my time wasted, but since I’m about to acquire, well, all of it, I’ll let you go with a warning.” He laughed. “No, I think I’ll just jet you g—”

He stiffened and tensed up, his eyes bulging and tongue lolling out of his mouth. He collapsed, and the spell on Joe flickered and died. He caught a glimpse of a man standing behind Mad Jack before plummeting towards the first floor.

Joe screamed. The room whipped past him like a film on fast forward. Wind whooshed in his ears. A blur of black and gold rushed past him on the way to the ground. Joe shut his eyes and hoped that breaking his bones would be that bad.

Suddenly, his descent slowed. He opened one eye. A purple aura surrounded him as he gently floated to the floor.

He stood and patted himself down, brushing off bits of glass in the process. He was a little cut up, but otherwise he was fine, and not a Joecake on the floor.

“You okay there, Joe?”

An Asian woman with short cropped hair and a stern, no-nonsense expression stood in front of him. She wore black cargo pants, military boots, and a mustard-colored turtleneck. A duty belt hung around her hips, slim and functional, unlike the bulky ones he’d seen on cops.

But the most surprising thing about her, other than her sudden appearance, was the silver gauntlet on her right hand. In the middle of the palm, a purple circle of light buzzed with electricity.

“How did you know my name?” Joe asked her.

She bristled, eyes narrowing in irritation. The purple light flared and she shot at Joe. He screamed, and shielded himself with his arms, waiting for his molecules to turn to dust.

But it didn’t happen. Behind him, there was a grunt followed by a thud. Joe lowered his arms.

Bonefat laid on the ground, his body rigid, drool in the corner of his mouth. It was like what happened with Mad Jack right before he dropped him.

Joe stared at the woman. “Did you just Tase him?”

She chuckled at Joe and walked past him, patting him on the head on the way to Bonefat.

“Moià Bonefat,” she said, pulling out a pair of handcuffs from her duty belt. “You have the right to travel through time, space, and history without conducting unscrupulous activities that would lead to its demise and/or destruction. You will be given a fair trial and be properly judged. Eragopay.”

She cuffed him, reciting the speech like she’d done it a billion time before.

“E-excuse me, Madame,” Bonefat said. Joe could hear him grit his teeth. “I assure you that this is one big misunderstanding.”

“Is it now?” There was dry amusement in her raspy voice.

“Yes! You see, it’s all that Jack’s fault. I told him time and time again that stealing was wrong, but he just never listens. I was here to put an end to his wicked ways.”

“Oh, how noble of you.”

“Why, thank you, Madame. So, if you could kindly remove my cuffs and I’ll be on my way.”

She twisted a band on her gauntlet and the purple light turned yellow. “I think Em would want to hear your story.”

Bonefat’s eyes went wide in fear, like she just suggested he should swim in a leech-infested lake. “No, that’s quite alright.”

“I insist.”

She held up her hand and the yellow glow covered Bonefat. In a flash, he disappeared.

Joe stared at the spot where Bonefat was, then looked at the woman. “What happened to him? Did you send him somewhere?”

She stood. “I sent him… to be dealt with.”

“Dealt with?”

A smirk played on her lips. “There an echo in here?” She twisted a band on her gauntlet. The circle in her palm glowed pure green, the color of magic. “Now to deal with this.”

She pointed at the destroyed statue. It vibrated, then went into reverse, like a video on rewind. The splintered and detached pieces shot back into to the statue and it stood back up to before Joe ever toppled it. She did the same to the gift shop, reversing the damage Bonefat caused.

When she was done, she turned him. “Let’s go join your sister.”

~*~

Joe felt like he spent all day going up and down the floors.

The woman led him up the stairs, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that he met her before. He could probably chalk it up to time travel shenanigans, but it still bothered him.

He caught a glimpse of her silver and copper wedding band. Gears whirled silently around the middle like a perpetually moving kinetic ring.

“Thanks for saving me back there,” Joe said.

She nodded. “Don’t mention it.”

“So… do I know you?”

“That depends. What’s the date in your own time?”

“January twenty-ninth, two thousand eleven.”

She pursed her lips, and glanced up in thought. “Kinda? Not really.” She smacked her hand into the gauntlet like she just figured it out. “Sorta. You sorta know me.”

“Sorta? That’s not at all ambiguous.”

To his surprise, she laughed. “Sorry. Can’t give out too many future spoilers. It’s against union rules.”

“So no asking for your name, then?”

“I’m forty percent sure that’s fine. Call me Arkay.”

They reached the third floor. Joe was barely off the stairs when he was tackled in a hug.

“Joe!” Anna cried.

A weight he didn’t realize he was shouldering lifted, and he hugged her back. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine.” She let him go. The Book was in her arms. “Will fixed me up.”

“Will?”

“Present!”

A familiar looking brown hair man waved at them. He stood next to a handcuffed Mad Jack who squirmed on the ground  like a fish on dry land in a desperate attempt to break free.

“I’ll get The Book eventually!” Mad Jack shouted at them. “You all hear me? It’s mine! Mine!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Will muttered. He held up his hand; it was a similar silver gauntlet to Arkay’s. The yellow light blanketed Mad Jack and he was gone in a blink.

Arkay patted Will on the shoulder. “Good job. Heal Joe’s wounds. I got the collateral damage.”

“On it, Missus Kay!”

Joe nearly forgot about the cuts on his arm. They weren’t bad, but he defiantly needed about a dozen Band-Aids.

Will held up his gauntleted hand. The palm glowed green. “This might tingle.”

And it did. In the green light, all of Joe’s little cuts scabbed over and vanished, his skin good as new.

As amazing as that was, Joe couldn’t help but be distracted by the man’s face. He knew he saw him somewhere before, but he couldn’t figure out where. Finally, it dawned on him.

Joe snapped his fingers. “You’re that guy!”

“What guy?” Will asked.

“From the falafel stand! I saw you a few weeks ago. You’re a time cop?”

Will shook his head and pressed a button on his gauntlet. It folded in on itself, becoming a silver cuff around his wrist. “No idea what you’re talking about.”

Was it Joe’s imagination, or was Will sweating?

“A-anyway…” Will said. “Thanks for the call. We’ve been tracking Bonefat for a while now. He’s been stealing valuable art for years to sell on the black market. He managed to elude us by always framing an underling.”

“That’s pretty cruel,” Anna said.

“Most time criminals are,” Will sighed. “Thankfully we got one more off the streets.”

Joe couldn’t help but snicker. “The time streets?”

“You said you got one more off the streets,” Anna said. “So you know Mad Jack doesn’t stay away for long?”

“We’re time agents,” Arkay said coming over to them. The room was just as it was before with everything fixed and put back in place. “We’re always dealing with crooks out of chronological order. It’s annoying, but can’t be helped.”

She turned her gauntlet into a cuff and smiled at them. “You two did a good job keeping them busy. Be proud.”

Arkay’s smile falters as her eyes spotted something behind them. She brushed past them and walked up to Izzy. She placed a hand on the top of her head and spun her around so she could see her face.

Will swore, a faint accent slipping through in the cuss.

Arkay’s eyebrows shot up before going back to an emotionless expression. She looked at Joe. “You said this was twenty eleven, yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“And you’re sure?”

“How would I not be sure?”

Anna elbowed him.

Arkay stared at Izzy for a couple seconds longer before speaking to Will. “We need to tell Em and… them.”

“They’re on leave in Rome,” Will said. “Let’s not ruin their fun.”

“I know, but remember what Em said? Besides, they’ll want to know about this.”

Anna and Joe glanced at each other. Anna looked about as confused as Joe felt.

“You two wanna explain what you’re talking about?” Anna asked.

Will and Arkay flinched as if they forgotten Joe and Anna were in the room. Arkay cleared her throat.

“It’s classified,” she said. “Nothing you two need to worry about now.”

“I feel like we should,” Joe said.

Arkay grabbed Izzy by her outstretched hand and dragged her over to Anna and Joe. Izzy wobbled a few times before regaining her balanced and settled.

Joe remembered when Mad Jack went near her, how he got shocked by her earrings. He guessed he shouldn’t have been too surprised she would have magical earrings that acted like bug zappers when bad guys were around. She and her dad were magic after all.

But if that were the case, then why didn’t they go off when Mysterio was after them? Was he never close enough? Or maybe they weren’t charged? She spun them all the time, maybe that’s how she charged them, like a crank flashlight.

He shook the thoughts out of his head and refocused. He’ll have time to ask her later.

“Will Izzy be okay?” Joe asked. “The freeze spell will wear off, right?”

Arkay’s face softened. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a playing card. “She’ll be fine. The time-freezing spell Jack put on everyone in the building should wear off in a couple minutes. I suggest you two leave before then.”

She ripped the card in half. From the torn halves, green light pooled out and formed a swirling portal in front of them.

“See you guys around,” Arkay said. “Ready, Will?”

Will smirked. “Right behind you.”

They stepped through the portal and vanished in a flash along with the portal.

Anna sighed dreamily and hugged The Book to her chest. “How cool are they?”

“Pretty cool,” Joe agreed. “How’d you find out about them?”

“I read it in The Book once when I… took it without permission.”

They fell into an awkward silence, not looking at each other. Anna taking The Book got them into this mess in the first place, but it also saved them in the end.

Maybe if Joe loosened his grip on The Book, she wouldn’t have felt like she needed to prove a point. Maybe she wouldn’t have tried to sneak it away from him.

Anna flipped open The Book and turned to the transporter page. “We should head back before everyone unfreezes and we warp in front of them.”

“Wait.” Joe put his hand on The Book. “Before we do…”

She frowned but closed The Book, looking at him apprehensively.

Joe thought about what to say and how to say it before giving up and deciding to go for the direct approach. “You know… I don’t hate you, right?”

She focused on a spot on the floor. “I guess so, but you sure do act like it sometimes.”

Guilt stabbed Joe in the chest. “I know, and I’m really sorry.”

“I guess I do kinda make you mad.” Anna fidgeted with The Book. “I spy on you a lot, I take The Book without asking.”

“Yeah, but that’s not an excuse for making you feel bad.” He placed a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll try not to treat you like a nuisance whenever you want to hang out with my friends around, alright? And I’ll let you look at The Book once in a while if you ask first. Deal?”

She nodded. “Deal, and I’ll try to keep out your business.”

They hugged. It was a little awkward, but at least they were moving in the right direction.

They pulled apart and Anna handed him The Book.

Joe shook his head. “Do the honors.”

She smiled. Anna typed in the coordinates, and The Book warped them home.

~*~

They landed with a thump on Joe’s bed.

Sam and Fred yelped and jumped back, Fred tossing the controller out of his hand. It bonked Sam on the head.

Joe waved. “Hey, guys.”

Izzy rolled off the bed and smacked face first on the floor.  They all winced. That was gonna hurt when she unfroze.

“We’re back,” he said.

Fred folded his arms, his face incredulous. “You guys went on an adventure without us?”

“It wasn’t exactly planned,” Anna said, standing Izzy back up. After making sure Izzy wouldn’t fall, she said, “I’ll be right back.”

She put The Book back in the box and left the room.

Sam looked at Izzy and frowned. “Uh, Joe? Is she okay?”

“Her time is frozen” Joe said. “It should wear off—”

“Wait a minute.” Fred interrupted. “She’s frozen? Seriously?”

He waved a hand in front of her face and laughed when he got no reaction. He started to move her arms and legs in place, like a kid posing an action figure.

“What are you doing?” Joe asked.

Fred said, “I think I saw it in a meme once,” like that answered his question.

When he was done, he presented his handiwork to them. Izzy stood in a ridiculous pose, her legs bent like she was in mid-sprint, her arms to the side like she was flapping her hands in a bizarre attempt to fly.

Joe couldn’t help it. He laughed out loud.

Sam just shook his head. “Fred, don’t mess with her.”

Fred wrapped an arm around Izzy’s shoulders. “C’mon, she doesn’t mind. Right, Izzy?” He moved her lips to match his word, doing his best impression of her: “No I don’t mind at all Fred! You’re so awesome and cool and funny. Ha ha ha ha ha.”

“That’s how you get your validation?” Joe quipped, his laugh dying out.

Fred rolled his eyes, about to retort back when Izzy shuddered. She inhaled so deeply, it came out more like a strangled cry, as if she hadn’t breathed oxygen in a thousand years. She wobbled and pitched forward. Joe caught her before she hit the ground.

“Joe?” Her eyes shot open and jumped up. “He’s here! We gotta—! Waaaaaait, this is your room. What’s going on? And why does my face hurt?”

He explained to them what happened on their warp right up to the point where Izzy shielded him and Anna from the time-freezing spell.

“Hold on,” Sam interjected. “You can do a shield spell?”

“Where was that when we were being chased by a nutjob with a gun?” Fred asked.

“The same reason I wasted energy making him and his henchmen laugh,” Izzy said. “I don’t think well under pressure.”

“Well, I’m glad you did today.” Joe patted her on the shoulder. “You saved us.”

Izzy blushed and looked away with a small smile. “I-it was nothing.”

Joe told them about him distracting Mad Jack, Anna calling the time agents, and them subduing Mad Jack and his time thief boss.

Every time he mentioned Mad Jack, Izzy cringed like she was about to be sick. He must have really spooked her.

Joe wasn’t expecting Fred and Sam’s to not be surprised by the mention of time agents. When he brought it up, Fred admitted they knew about time agents years back when Jodie warped them away on a mission to Istanbul. Joe knew about the trip, but that itty-bitty detail about time agent must have slipped their minds.

“You two knew about time agents and you never told me about it?”

“You were at the dentist,” Fred said.

“I wasn’t there for five years! Does everyone know but me?”

Izzy raised her hand. “I-I didn’t know.”

Fred hung upside down from Joe’s bed and pawed for the game controller. “What’s the big deal? With all the times we’ve messed with history and never got arrested, I figured why worry?”

Joe shot Sam a look. “What’s your excuse?”

“Uh…” He smiled nervously. “You were at the dentist?”

Joe groaned and facepalmed. Let it go, he thought. Let it go.

“So, the Monocle man,” Izzy said, spinning an earring. “I mean Mad Jack. He was arrested, right? So he’s gone for good?”

Joe scoffed. “Pfft, I wish. He was like twenty or something when we saw him at the museum. We’ve run into him plenty of time when he was older.”

Fred laughed. “Much older.”

“You guys know that man?” Izzy asked.

“Yeah.” Joe shifted on his feet. “He’s kind of my uncle.”

Izzy’s went from confused to stunned in a half a second, her jaw dropping. She leaned away from him, her arms coming in front of her, and when she looked at him… she was scared.

“He’s your uncle. How… what…”

Joe was about to ask her what was wrong when Anna burst through the door, grinning and holding a CD case.

“Hey, Izzy! I got the…”

She trailed off when she noticed Izzy’s expression. “You alright?”

“I’m… I…” Izzy looked around at everyone staring at her with concern. She clenched her fist and exhaled. “I should go.”

She grabbed her stuff and practically ran out of the room, not even bothering to say goodbye or grab the CD Anna got for her.

Anna watched her leave, confused and a little hurt. “Did you guys say something to her?”

“Why are you blaming us?” Fred asked.

“She was fine when I left the room.”

Sam folded his arms. “She was frozen when you left the room.”

“It’s Mad Jack,” Joe said. “She got that way when I brought him up.”

Anna put a hand on her hip. “Let me get this straight: So you told her our uncle is a psychotic, criminal, time-traveling wizard who threatened to kill us on several occasions and wants to conquer all of space and time? I’d leave too if you dumped all of that on me.”

“I didn’t even mention that stuff. She was spooked long before I said he was our uncle.”

Fred went back to video games. “She’ll be fine. It’s been a long day, she just needs time to absorb it all.”

Joe wasn’t so sure. The only other time she acted like this was the time when Mysterio whispered something to her that made her run out of the theater. Did that have anything to do with Mad Jack, too? Did Izzy somehow know about him?

He ditched this idea as soon as it entered his mind. He couldn’t imagine how she would. Before they met, Izzy didn’t even know about time travel. From what his uncle Joe told him, Mad Jack lived in an untraceable pocket dimension, so it’s unlikely that he and Izzy ever crossed paths before.

But then he remembered how her earrings shocked Mad Jack, and wondered why they never attacked any threat before him.

On top of that, there was also how those time agents reacted to seeing Izzy. For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why. A couple ideas came to his mind, but she scrapped them all. Was Izzy hiding something from him?

Of course not, he thought. Izzy had to be the most innocent person he knew. This girl never swore, didn’t get most sarcasms and innuendos, and once told him that she bites the heads off her gummy bears and animal crackers before she ate the rest of them because she didn’t want them to suffer. He doubted she had anything to hide. Still, the thought nagged at him.

Later that night while he worked on homework, he shot her a text, asking if she was alright. She texted back, saying she was fine. He started to type his next message, asking about her earrings and what bothered her so much earlier that day, but stopped. Would asking her be prying? He wondered if Izzy felt similar confliction when she tried to mediate between him and Anna.

He deleted the text and settled on sending her a meme he thought was kinda lame, but knew she’d laugh at before asking if they were still on for tomorrow for their trip to the Craft Shack. She sent back an affirmation. along with a couple smiling and thumbs up emojis. Izzy liked her emojis.

Joe smiled and went back to his homework, glad he didn’t scare her off.

[dumbledearme]

chapter two—a safe place

read Child of Land and Sea here

Act I — Storm At Sea

Part II — Look at this trove, treasures untold. How many wonders can one summer camp hold?

The gods existed. That's what they were trying to convince her of. The gods existed, they were out there watching over people. The gods were out there watching over people and yet none of them had lifted a finger to save Andy's mom. Sally was dead, gone, vaporized into smoke by a monster that couldn't be real. Andy's head was spinning and they just wouldn't stop talking about the damn gods!

Andy, her mother and Grover had been followed by an enormous beast, half bull half man. Sally had called it Pasiphae's son or whatever, but the only word going through Andy's mind had been Minotaur. Only they wouldn't let her say it out loud. Andy didn't know what to do, what to think. There was a mythical creature following them, trying to kill them, her best friend was a goat—okay, a satyr, as he patiently explained—and her mother seemed to find everything about that situation quite normal. Sally even admitted to have expected such an attack.

Then the bull-man grunted, pawing the ground and charged toward them. Andy could still feel the earth moving under her feet. She could still smell the rotten meat that exhaled from it. But the fear couldn't compare to the feeling of emptiness of when the monster grabbed her mother and turned her to dust.

Andy had lost her mind then. She had attacked the monster with all her might. And somehow, she had managed to destroy it.

After several days in some sort of coma, Andy woke up to find out that none of that had been a dream. It had all happened. Grover told her she was in Camp Half-Blood, a safe place, the place her father had wanted to send her to. The place Sally didn't want her to go to.

Grover took her to the Great House where Andy was introduced to none other than her former Latin teacher, Mr. Brunner, only now he was a centaur going by the name of Chiron.

As if that wasn't weird enough, Andy was forced to sit down for a game of pinochle with the camp's director, Mr. D, also known as Dionysus, son of Zeus, etc etc. Andy wanted to pass out to stop herself from hearing any more of their crazy-talk. They told her the gods existed, they kept repeating it, as if the more they said it the faster she would come to accept it. But Andy couldn't accept that, she found herself completely unable to. Too much craziness and not enough time to process it.

The god of wine apparently had been banished to care for Camp Half-Blood because of a wood nymph he hadn't been able to stay away from. Nothing new there. Boys will be (stupid) boys. His father had declared her off limits, but that wasn't enough to stop Dionysus who was now forced to stay here, forbidden to have a sip of wine.

Then they told her the gods of Olympus were now here in America. They gave her a perfectly good explanation that Andy barely heard. And after that, Chiron invited her for a tour which Andy thought was a terrible idea, since every single one of the other campers kept staring at her and whispering. Most of them were older than Andy and their satyr friends were bigger than Grover. They all wore the same orange CAMP HALF-BLOOD T-shirt. Andy wasn't shy, but the way they stared made her feel extremely uncomfortable. Trying to take off the edge she was feeling, she asked Chiron about Grover.

"He has big dreams," Chiron told her. "Perhaps bigger than are reasonable. To reach his goal, he must first demonstrate great courage by succeeding as a keeper, finding a new camper and bringing him safely to Half-Blood Hill."

"But he did that."

"I might agree with you," Chiron said. "But it is not my place to judge. Dionysus and the Council of Cloven Elders must decide. I'm afraid they might not see this assignment as a success. After all, Grover lost you in New York. Then there's the unfortunate... ah... fate of your mother. And the fact that Grover was unconscious when you dragged him over the property line. The Council might question whether this shows any courage on Grover's part."

"But... he'll get a second chance, won't he?"

Chiron winced. "I'm afraid that was Grover's second chance, Andy. The Council was not anxious to give him another, either, after what happened the first time, seven years ago. Olympus knows, I advised him to wait longer before trying again. He's still so small for his age..."

"How old is he?"

"Oh, twenty-eight."

"Whaaaat!"

"Satyrs mature half as fast as humans, Andy."

"Oh, that's unfortunate."

"Quite," Chiron agreed. "At any rate, Grover is a late bloomer, even by satyrs standards, and not yet very accomplished at woodland magic. Alas, he was anxious to pursue his dreams. Perhaps now he will find some other career..."

"That isn't fair. What happened the first time? Was it really so bad?"

Chiron looked away quickly and the matter was ended. He would not discuss it with Andy. It was none of her business.

Finally, Chiron showed Andy the cabins. There were twelve of them, nestled in the woods by the lake. They were arranged in a U, with two at the base and five in a row on either side. Chiron explained that each of the cabins represented one of the twelve Olympian gods but Andy was more preoccupied in wondering why some of them looked empty. But before she could ask Chiron that, a blond boy came their way. He was tall, probably Andy's age, and very athletic looking. With his deep tan and his smooth yellow hair, he was exactly the type of guy who'd never glance at Andy twice. When he got closer, Andy saw that his eyes were gray, like storm clouds; pretty but extremely intimidating.

"This is Anthony," Chiron told Andy. "He nursed you back to health."

Andy tried to smile. "Hey."

The boy glared at her, obviously unimpressed with what he was seeing. "You drool when you sleep," he felt the need to inform her. Andy felt the need to slap him.

"Anthony," Chiron said, "I have master's archery class at noon. Would you take Andy from here?"

"Yes, sir," the boy said very politely, as if he was a fifty year old ambassador instead of a hot teenage boy. Andy shook her head.

"We'll be putting her in cabin eleven for now," added Chiron before leaving them.

Out of all the cabins, eleven looked the most like a regular summer camp cabin and it was the most crowded one as well. There were boys and girls, more than there were beds, so there was sleeping bags spread all over the floor. Andy stood in the doorway, looking at the kids that stared at her in return.

"Well?" Anthony prompted. "Go on." So naturally, Andy tripped coming in the door and made a total fool of herself. Most of them laughed, but Anthony didn't seem to think it was funny at all. "Andy Jackson, meet cabin eleven."

"Regular or undetermined?" Somebody asked.

"Undetermined," he replied. Everyone groaned. A guy around Andy's age made his way through the crowd and if Andy had thought Anthony looked hot, it was nothing compared to this boy. He was much taller than everyone else, his muscles were impossible not to stare at and his short-cropped sandy hair went perfectly nicely with his charming smile. There was no other word to describe him but cool.

"Now, now, campers," he said, "that's what we're here for. Welcome, Andy. You can have that spot on the floor, right over there." He stopped right beside Andy and she noticed two things about him she hadn't seen from the distance. He had a unsettling thick white scar that ran from just beneath his right eye to his jaw—not that that made him any less hotter—and he wore a leather necklace with seven different-colored clay beads.

"This is Luke," Anthony said and this time his voice was full of pride. Andy wondered if she wasn't the only one charmed by the guy. "He's your counselor for now."

"For now?" Andy asked, disappointed.

"You're undetermined," explained Luke. "They don't know what cabin to put you in, so you're here. Cabin eleven takes all the newcomers, all visitors. Naturally, we would. Hermes, our patron, is the god of travelers."

"How long will I be here?"

"Until you're determined," he said.

"How long will that take?"

The campers laughed.

"Come on," said Anthony. "I'll show you the rest."

"Oh I'm pretty sure I've seen everything," Andy told him, wishing to stay with the other hot dude. Anthony grabbed her wrist and dragged her outside. Andy could hear the others still laughing.

"You have to do better than that," he told her, when they were outside.

"Excuse me?"

He rolled his eyes. Again, Andy's hand itched to hit him. "I can't believe I thought you were the one."

"What is your problem?" she snapped. "I just got here. I have absolutely no idea what is going on. My mother's dead and I killed this bull guy and—"

"You know how many of us wish they'd had your chance?" he interrupted. "To fight the Minotaur? That's what we train for."

Andy still wanted to hit him, but she thought of something she hadn't figured before. "If... If that thing I fought really was the Minotaur, the one in the stories..."

"Yes?"

"Then there's only one."

"Your point being?"

"He died, like, a gazillion years ago. Theseus or some other guy killed him in the labyrinth."

"Monsters don't die. They can be killed, but they don't die."

"Oh, yes. That makes perfect sense. Why didn't I see it before?"

Anthony sighed. "They don't have souls, like you and me. You can dispel them for a while, maybe even for a whole lifetime if you're lucky. But they are primal forces. Chiron calls them archetypes. Eventually, they reform."

Andy thought about Mrs. Dodds. "You mean, if I killed one... With a sword...?"

"The Fur—Your math teacher. Yes, she's still out there. You just made her very angry."

"How do you know about that?"

"When you're not drooling all over yourself, you talk a lot in your sleep."

Andy chose to ignore that. "You almost called her something. A Fury? They're Hades' torturers, right?"

"You shouldn't call them by name," he said nervously. "We call them the Kindly Ones, if we have to speak of them at all."

Andy scowled, "Is there anything we can say without it thundering? And why do I have to stay in cabin eleven? Why is everybody crowded there when there are several cabins empty?"

"You don't just choose a cabin. It depends on who your parents are. Or rather... parent."

"My mom is Sally Jackson," Andy heard herself say. "Or rather... was."

A shadow of sorrow crossed the boy's eyes. But only for a second. "I'm sorry about your mom, but that is not what I meant."

Andy shook her head. "I don't have... I never met him. I don't know who he is. He's probably dead."

"He's not dead."

"How do you know?"

"I know you. And you wouldn't be here if—"

"You don't know anything about me."

"No?" He raised an eyebrow. "I bet you moved around from school to school. You were kicked out of most of them. Diagnosed with dyslexia. Probably ADHD, too."

Andy tried to swallow. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Taken together, it's almost a sure sign. The letters float off the page when you read. That's because your brain is hardwired for ancient Greek. And the ADHD—you're impulsive, can't sit still in class. That's your battlefield reflexes. In a real fight, they'd keep you alive. As for the attention problems, that's because you see too much, not too little. Your senses are better than a regular mortal's. Of course the teachers want you medicated. Most of them are monsters. They don't want you seeing them for what they are."

"You sound like... like you went through the same thing?"

"All of us did. If you weren't like us, you couldn't have survived the Minotaur, much less the ambrosia and nectar."

"Ambrosia and nectar?"

"What I've been feeding you. The food and drink of the gods. I would've turned your blood to fire and your bones to sand if you were a regular kid. Face it. You're a half-blood."

Suddenly Andy realized she had a million questions to ask. But they would have to wait for a husky voice yelled, "Well! A newbie!"

Andy looked over. A big girl, twice Andy's size, walked over to them with an evil sneer. She had three other girls behind her, all big and ugly and mean looking like her, all wearing camo jackets.

"Clarisse," said Anthony. "Why don't you go polish your spear or something?"

"Sure, you nerd," the big girl said. "So I can run you through with it Friday night."

Anthony cursed her in ancient Greek. That would'd been weird enough if not for the fact that Andy understood him perfectly. "You don't stand a chance."

"We'll pulverize you," Clarisse said, but her eye twitched. "Now who's the little rat?"

Andy raised her head, though it made no difference, she was much shorter than the other girl.

"Andy Jackson," said Anthony, "meet Clarisse La Rue, daughter of Ares."

Andy blinked. "Like the war god?"

Clarisse sneered. "You got a problem with that?"

"No," Andy said, taking a step ahead. "It explains the smell."

Clarisse growled. "We got an initiation ceremony for newbies, little rat. Come on, I'll show you."

"Clarisse—" Anthony tried to say.

"Stay out of it, geek." Anthony looked unsure, but he did stay out of it. Clarisse grabbed Andy by the neck and dragged her towards a cinder-block building—the bathroom.

Andy kicked and punched but the giant girl had hands like iron. There was a line of toilets on one side and a line of shower stalls down the other. Clarisse's friends were all laughing and Anthony stood on the corner, watching. Clarisse bent Andy over her knees and started pushing her head toward the toilet bowl. It reeked. Andy strained to keep her head up. She was decided not to go into that disgusting water. Then she felt a tug in the pit of her stomach. The plumbing rumbled, the pipes shuddered. Clarisse's grip on her hair loosened.

Water shot out of the toilet, making an arc straight over her head, and the next thing she knew, Andy was sprawled on the bathroom tiles with Clarisse screaming behind her. The water hit her so hard she fell on her ass. She struggled, gasping, and ran after her friends out of there. The entire bathroom was flooded. Andy turned to find Anthony staring right at her with those stormy eyes. He seemed genuinely surprised.

Andy stood up, knees weak.

"How did you—"

"I don't know," she said, defensively.

Anthony simply stared. "I want you on my team for capture the flag," he said finally.

[d20-eggroll]

Sunday Game Highlights

So much fucking shit happened I apologize for this. I’ll put a break at a certain point.

Barnabus is a big warforged who wants to open a magic item shop and he made fast friends with the bard Valentino. So he gives Valentino a “free sample” which turns out to be an indestructible fantasy deathnote. The whole party is like UM. THAT’S SOME EVIL SHIT.

Bark climbed out on to the mast of the airship. And failed her dex roll spectacularly when she tried to do a fake wobble to scare Mango, ACTUALLY FALLING OFF THE FUCKING AIRSHIP. Mango dove after her but she’s a 90lb bird person so she was having a bit of a shit time actually getting a hold of Bark.

Hawk tied a rope to himself to go to the rescue and try to assist, diving off the side, and FAILED HIS ROLL HORRIBLY TOO so it turns out he forgot to actually tie the other end of the rope to the ship. So now we have 3 party members overboard and only one of them can fly. Since he was falling from above Hawk barely managed to grab on to Mango, and Mango finally catches Bark. Getting them to the ground safely is hard enough on her that she has an exhaustion point. They have landed in a totally featureless sea of grass.

A fucking faerie dragon shows up? We name it Bulb. It tries to charm all of us but somehow only Hawk (WHO IS A HALF-ELF) gets affected, but Mango snaps him out of it. Then some orcs show up and we actually wiggle out of that without violence but Bulb is just Gone. Like ok, 30 second faerie dragon why not.

MEANWHILE, THE CAPTAIN CRASHES THE FUCKING AIRSHIP. The other half of the party sets out looking for the three.

Mango is firing flares off in to the air with firebolt and control flame. They are finally spotted so Valentino casts major image to make a GIANT VERSION OF HIS HEAD IN THE SKY? and tries talking to them with it while also making it wink. Mango casts mirror image back but it is just a giant middle finger. She is still mad at Valentino.

After much major image shenanigans they do finally meet up. At this point they realize this storm they have been seeing isn’t a storm at all, it is the Dread Fleet, a group of slaver drow traveling in magical darkness. It is headed in the direction of the downed airship. They rush as hard as they can but they are hours away, and when they get there the entire crew is gone.

They spend the night in the empty ship. Hawk is starting to hear things and see shadows no one else does. A voice and the image of an elven woman try beckoning him in to the woods and he wisely refuses.

Mango takes watch with Valentino and finally has a chance to give him a piece of her mind. Resistant to admitting he did anything wrong, he tries to give Mango the book from Barnabus telling her to write his name in it. She immediately tries to set it on fire and it refuses to catch. She gives it back to him and in the end the conversation is good, he apologizes and admits he might have feelings for Bark, Mango admits she wants to like him and isn’t going to hold a grudge.

TURNS OUT BARK HAD STEALTHED UP BEHIND THEM WITH SOME SECRET ROLLS AND LISTENED TO THE ENTIRE CONVERSATION. THEY ARE BOTH MORTIFIED.

The next morning Hawk wakes up with a fucking DISPLACER BEAST on his chest and when he flips his shit it disappears.

While digging around for any of Barnabus’s stock that may have been missed in the raid they discover an urn. Everyone can tell it is enchanted and has something inside that could be amazing or super evil, and after that book everyone’s pretty fucking scared of the shit Barnabus was toting around. While everyone else argues Mango gets impatient and just pops it open with mage hand and everyone flips their shit.

It is a fucking djinn and now Mango has to be relied upon to make three responsible and well-worded wishes. So now hopefully we have a cure in plentiful amounts for this dragon cordyceps crystal disease, and the airship crew were rescued. The last wish was just for the djinn to take his home and go where he might be happy, to be free if that’s what he wanted. So he’s gone now. Waiting for that to bite us in the ass.

The crew, who were tortured during their captivity, are completely fucked up. Hardly any of them want to talk and they refuse to discuss anything that happened. Most of them are missing something. An eye, an ear, fingers, an entire limb, chunks of carefully carved flesh, that kind of thing.

Bark goes off in to the woods and Hawk tries to follow her. He ends up fighting Bark in her bear form and loses flat out, going unconscious after she tears him up... only he was fighting nothing. The real Bark watched him battle with the air then just fall to the ground, uninjured.

When Mango tries to help Hawk she realizes he’s hot to her touch, which is a difficult thing to do. He’s burning up and he can’t feel it, but everyone else can. They check his body for crystals and find none. Mango scouts from the air to find a river to take him to and cool him down in.

On the way to the river we are attacked by three fucking displacer beasts who were following us in the shadows of the trees until Mango spotted them and lit that tree the fuck up. For whatever reason they seem to be after Hawk specifically. Mango twins invisibility and casts it on Hawk and herself before initiative begins, confusing them.

Hawk is trying to fight back but this voice is talking to him from all around and making him hallucinate missing shots he actually hit with saying shit like “Aw c’mooon they have familiiiiies” it was weird

Mango missed a turn setting up for it, but on her next she vaporizes two and a half displacer beasts with two fireballs dropped from 150ft up, also setting a large portion of the forest on fire, while the DM played bonetrousle. It was beautiful.

Thirk decapitates the remaining one with a golf swing and that was some satisfying shit. Hawk is just stomping around in circles screaming GET OUT OF MY HEAD.

The party gets him to the river, Seladi cools it down and when he gets dunked in he is steaming water. Droplets hiss when they hit his skin. We can’t get him cooled down and he’s getting worse and worse, we’re stranded in the middle of nowhere, and we have a whole crew of traumatized people to worry about too. Shit looks bad.

We all go back to camp EXCEPT BARK WHO FUCKING SNEAKS OFF TO GO SEE SOME ELVEN RUINS??? We wouldn’t go bc as far as we know Hawk is dying but she really wanted to see them so off she went!

Trying to get Hawk rested up this High Elf shows up??? and is a racist knob to everyone he can possibly manage to be. He claims to be the protector of the ruins because of heritage or whatever, and gives us 12 hours to get out of “his forest.” Everyone is tired and in no mood to deal with him, but now we HAVE to go find Bark.

Also this elf dude admits the displacer beasts were his pets and listen. I’m not 100% sure but this guy is PROBABLY a green dragon. I don’t know. Just. Geeze I hate him.

That was the end of the session basically and then our DM was like “I didn’t have anything planned for someone falling off the airship. I thought none of you would be dumb enough to jump off the bloody airship.” o o p s

[raeseddon]

Baka-Tsuki is a gift. I've been tearing through the Ghost Hunt light movels and loving how much more insight and depth there is to the characters. It mskes the fact that the anime never really had time to focus on anyone but Mai, Naru and to a certain degree Masako a real shame. In the anime Hosho, Ayako and John have a lot of moments where they feel like set dressing instead of characters.

Interestingly, Hosho can come off as downright hostile towards Ayako in the novels where in the anime she's seen as the instigator of most of their arguments. His crictisms of her in the novel version of the anime finale case are a lot more harsh. Instead of just questioning her usefulness he questions her faith itself (which, he's one to talk, Mr. "I couldn't listen to music at the temple so I left.") And Ayako insists a lot more strongly earlier on that she can be useful because 'the conditions are right.' Her eventual explaination of her powers and her idea of faith is fascinating and deeply complex compared to the others, and gives a much better idea of why she puts up with the shit she does from Hosho (up to a point.) She's had no formal training; she's a doctor but still considers herself more of a miko anyway as she was 'taught from the source' so to speak. The woman is so used to being called a lair and a fake that she doesn't even try to really defend herself (though it still hurts and she'll still snap at people for it) instead, she waits to go all out for the times she knows she'll suceed. To his credit, once he does see her really work Hosho lets up on Ayako significantly.

John too is illuminated a lot more in the novels, mostly through exploring the limits and upper thresholds of his spiritualist powers. His primary usefulness in the novels is that he's the only one who can consistently and safely exorcize living things-- the others have some severe limitations where that's concerned (Ayako hasn't practiced it much, Hosho sticks in inanimate objects and directly exorcizing the spirits themselves, and Lin can only exorcize if he knows the identy of the posessing spirit.) John also falls into the role of team diplomat when things get a little to ugly between either Mai and Naru or Hosho and Ayako. Interestingly, he doesn't question Ayako's power as much as Hosho does, which alludes a lot to something they both have in common-- neither of them are formally trained. Whether John admits it or not, Hosho points out the litany of things that don't add up about John and put him more in Ayako's category than anything. First and foremost, the Church does not condone exorcisms lightly, if at all and there's a lot of paperwork involved in sanctioning one. Secondly, a single ritual exorcism takes several takes to prepare for-- there's a fasting period-- thirdly while he makes it sound very convincing, half the time John doesn't even read the right passages-- he gets most of his material from a 1978 translation of sections of the Gallacian Bible, not the King James. Another thing the anime comes close to totally overlooking about John is that he's really perceptive. He's the one, that-- after dancing around some more outlanish theories about what's going on in the Bloodstained Labyrinth-- is able to hit the nail on the head. Along with Yasu, he's the one to figure out just how complex the mansion really is. (Which, 90% of that novel is the SPR teams going around measuring shit but once they figure it out oi. There's a very House of Leaves feel to the place.) Although the novels never really tell John' whole story, it really jut makes it a shame that the anime barely scratched the surface.

Another character the novels dig a lot deeper into is Yasuhara, who due to his late introduction (compatively) barely gets a chance in the anime. (Although the few he gets are either comedy gold or leave you going ow.) Yasu's a hell of a lot more of an unapologetic nerd in the novels and while he can pull off that brazen self confidence rather naturally it has a very defined limit. He's also the one who, after the shit hits the fan in the finale case forces himself along to confront Okubo-sama because "there needs to be a rescue team." He was convinced (not wrongly) that things were going to go very, very badly and that they'd need someone there to drag the others to safety. (This backfires horrendously when he tries to be a hero and lands not only five broken ribs for his efforts but a mild case of septicimia that keeps him in the hospital almost as long as Naru-I-can-vaporize-a-deity-with-my-brain-Shibuya.) Yasu is also so smitten with Hosho in the novels it's stupid, and it makes for some exceeingly sweet moments between the two of them. (Yasu admitting the he wishes he were more mature, and being self concious of the fact that Hosho always seems to see through that unflappable megane fascade is one of the best moments in volume 7 of the light novels before things go to shit.)

There are also a number of sweet moments of him and Mai screwing around and acting like the teenagers/young adults they are that really counterpoint some of the very horrific things the two of them experience from case to case. The novels don't shy away from the fact that ghosts and spirit and the violence that often acompanies them are not the norm for Yasu and Mai, even though Mai has her foot more in the door than out, so to speak.