2.5 Tinderbox

Content warning: violence.

"So my telepathy can be really strong because, when I'm sleeping, my brain forgets about my safety and consciously-imposed limitations, and connects to the underlying fabric of reality." Chet picks a ladybug off of her arm. "But... why? Why me?"

"You are cursed with knowledge for the same reason I am. Bad genetics." Riko doesn't move from the spot where he plopped down. He gets dizzy and nauseous like this sometimes, and will stay still until the feeling goes away. "There must have been an elf somewhere in your ancestry."

"That's what those experiments tried to turn you into, right? An elf?"

"More or less."

"Zoke warned me that elves have strange and valuable magic."

"They had a unique place in the ecosystem of this world. A role to play, if you will. They could interact with reality in ways other creatures couldn't, and not everybody was happy about that."

"Zoke said your own magic tried to kill you, and that's why you have those scars that hurt you."

"I don't like that phrasing," Riko replies. "'Tried to kill you.' That implies agency on its part. Would the the ocean try to kill me if I were held under its water? No. Physics would play out, that's all. There are consequences to things. It's all quantifiable. Us creatures that are meant to commune with the deep magic or whatever are not supposed to try to use the same sorcery techniques as a creature of dark magic. There are rules for us to bend, and there are rules for them to bend. It's all very orderly. Tidy. I went against my nature and that's why I became sick and corrupted."

Chet picks at her shoelaces. "Are you going to die?"

Riko touches one of his index fingers against the magical scarring on his face. "Eventually it's going to eat through all my mind... and into the core of my spirit... and there won't be anything left but the destructive energy itself, puppeting my body around. I've seen it happen to others."

"How long?" The little girl finds another ladybug in the grass, and places it in Riko's messy hair.

Riko blinks slowly. "I don't know. You're the precog." He pauses, then adds, "I'm not giving up. I have things to do. While I was captive in that cell, I learned I'd been there before... and sometime between then and then, I'd forgotten I was on a mission."

"Mission?" Chet perks up.

"Yes. I have to change the end."

"You're going to find a cure?"

"Not my end. THE end."

"...The end of what?"

"The end of everything."

In the real world, Finley and Junpei managed to get into Bridgeport.

Finley documents the violence as closely as she can.




She doesn't know what she expected to see, other than the military taking on some vampires. 

What she found was the military had failed to even enter the city. 

The terrorist faction did three things ostensibly well: repelling the military that was poorly equipped to handle them in the first place, killing humans, and making demands. But once inside the city, Finley could see these vampires had no control over it; chaos ruled the streets and their biggest opposition was other Bridgeport vampires. At least, that's what she was told and what she believed, until she heard something about a winged purple devil... 

Foxglove is here somewhere. The thought sends a chill down Finley's spine.

The twins wouldn't have made it inside the city at all if not for Finley's contact Meela Feld. Meela has taken it upon herself to watch over them and so brings them to a catacomb network stretching for miles under Bridgeport's graveyard. The resistance to the 'resistance' is hiding out down in this labyrinthine area.

"It pretty much sucks!" she tells them. "Vampires are trying to kill other vampires now! And I thought we had enough problems without turning on each other!"

"You think the winged devil is a vampire?" Finley asks, between gasping for air. It's hard to keep up with Meela's pace.

"I don't know! Wogan says she's from the feds! She attacks indiscriminately! She seems to think we all know something! Wogan thinks she's the military's way of killing us all..."

"Why are we running?" Junpei complains.

"We have a lot of ground to cover before we're safe!"

"Sorry you're going to have to sleep on the ground." Meela smiles sheepishly at the young mage guy, while his sister has slipped away to question others. "We're working on scrounging up more blankets."

"Don't worry about it. Are your parents here?"

"I'm not a teenager anymore. I don't need my parents here."

Junpei has no clue what to make of the expression she's wearing. "Are they okay?"

She looks away. "My family's been in Bridgeport for a long time. My ancestors came from Shang-Simla. They killed everyone they fed from. Took a few hundred years, but it caught up to them, and they were forced to leave their home, change their names, and change their traditions. I'm not ignorant to how cruel up my people can be. But we're not all like that... we don't all have to be like that. But my parents couldn't take how we were treated here. They said enduring the racism was beneath them."

"They're with the terrorists?" Junpei guesses.

"Yes," Meela chokes out.

"I'm... I'm sorry," Junpei stammers. "I don't know why I asked that. Please don't cry..."

She sniffs. "It's okay, Mr. Archer. You saw right through me."

"No, I didn't! Or I wouldn't have asked."

Meela laughs, despite herself. "I'm an adult now, but I still feel like a child, because I want my mommy here."

"I don't think there's an age limit on that kind of thing," Junpei says gently.

"I'm still treated like a child, by all these older vampires. You're not the first to ask where my parents are."

"I'm sure it's not easy to escape being seen as a child when everybody around you is hundreds of years old..."

"Even Finley treats me like a child! She met me literally one day before my adult birthday, and she just thinks of me as a kid!"

"I'm not comfortable with how my sister was not above pressuring a child for information... for the record..."

Winona Fangmann thinks this revolution business is a load of insanity and completely against nature. What's natural and right, according to Winona, is for her kind to be hated and feared. Not coddled and treated as equals... because vampires, she says, are clearly superior. And if Bridgeport gets rid of its humans, where will she get fresh blood? No substitutes are to her liking, and seducing her prey is the only fun she ever has!

Anyway, Winona has something she wants the human mages to see. "The tools and books belong to a man named Faraday. He's not a vampire, but he's not normal either."

Finley flips open one of the books. "What is this?"

"It's human witchcraft stuff. If you can find something in there that will save us, please save us."

Finley stares at the odd text. "Huh."

So, Meela told her friends Finley's a witch. Finley has to appreciate that none of them actually seem surprised by the concept of a human witch.

"These catacombs used to be a hub of supernatural activity," Winona explains. "Faraday's folks needed to hide, so they had an entire estate down here. The entrance is closed off now and he won't see visitors."

"What are his books doing here, then?" 

"He didn't write them, he just acquired them. This is going to sound strange, but he's a hoarder, and given what he is, he was drawn to magical objects. There's no room in his home for all of this, so, a few hundred years ago, it started spilling out. He's using these passageways as extra storage space, because they are usually abandoned."

"Meela said you brought the group here, for safety."

"Yes. Faraday and I go far back."

"Is he not... with... you guys?"

"It's complicated."

Finley sits next to her brother. "This is crazier than I thought it was going to be. I thought it would be over quickly. I didn't think we'd have to hide."

"Meela believes she has a lot to atone for," Junpei says drearily. "I told her she's not responsible for what her ancestors have done."

Finley doesn't know what to say to that. "I think I know who the purple devil is."

"Supernatural Control is here," Junpei agrees. "It makes sense."

"I won't let anything happen to you, Junpei."

"It's not me I'm worried about, Finley."

"His name isn't Agent 1," Zoke points out. "Stop calling him that. It's Serril. He was my little brother, until the suits kidnapped him. Now he's one of them."

"I'm sorry." Junpei feels awkward, expressing sympathy to someone who isn't real, but the words fell out before he could consider them. "What about the other guy?"

"The vampire? Probably indoctrinated since birth. No shortage of vampires, really. They had to go out of their way to get an elemental under their sway, and access to our abilities for study, but vampires... to be honest his parents probably sold him to them."

It makes some twisted sense that the ice creatures would attack each other with fire.

"I'LL KI-... SERIOUSLY WOUND YOU!" Zoke yells.

"Settle down," Serril sneers. "We're not here for you. We're here for the elf."

"You've led the S.C. here!" Zoke cries. "Here!"

"They already knew where he was. I was forced to lead them here a loooonnng time ago. Not like we can infiltrate any further than this room. Or. Can we?"

"I'm still not letting you leave with captives."

"The person you're defending is beyond help. Can't you see he's afflicted with the corruption sickness?"

Riko sinks to the floor and clutches his forehead. Serril's attempts to hurt him via freezing him solid didn't work, as it never has before, because as fast as Serril's concentration can produce results, Riko can teleport faster. In the past, Riko was also together enough to use magic to counter such attacks.

Today, though, the negative energy inside Riko has been disturbed too much by all the magic being slung around by these various supernatural creatures, and it's taking all his strength to hold it back.

This whole room is a tinderbox. Too much magic in one place. Serril is relentless. He hasn't forgotten his target, he's just leaving it to the vampire. Zoke's having a lot of trouble defending himself and Riko, who's being useless. In another few seconds, the guy holding Chet hostage will have activated a gas grenade. A magic gas grenade. Its dispersal in the room will be unavoidable. Chet, Zoke and Riko will fall unconscious. The gas is uncomfortably warm; Zoke's lungs will collapse and he'll die.

"I gave you your chance to immunize him," the vampire will say. "You were taking too long. The situation was getting out of hand."

Serril will look down at his black shoes. "Did my best," he'll reply, and his voice will waver just slightly.

"Do you want tea? 39 always wanted tea after things like this."

Serril will find the mention of a dead agent rather tactless. "Just pick up our two escapees and let's go?"

Chet cannot let this happen. She cannot go back with them. Her fangs are still buried in the older vampire's arm. She twists and bites harder, ruining his sleeve and tearing his flesh without managing to draw much blood. He acts like it's not even happening, withdraws the grenade...

With difficulty, Chet tries to get the shredded sleeve out of her mouth so she can scream a warning. But she knows she's not going to be fast enough, and they're not going to listen to her anyway. No! 

And at this moment, Riko's words echo back to her. Her telepathy is a sledgehammer, not a fine tool.

So she uses the sledgehammer.

After what was surely an enjoyable sound effect for psychic attack, Junpei gets to witness a very my-head-really-f***ing-hurts reaction shot from Zoke and Serril.

The older vampire flinches and drops the grenade; it rolls across the floor, unactivated.

Serril is not impressed with Agent 2's failure to subdue a small child.

Vampire man retaliates by smacking Chet's head against the wall, dropping her, and scrambling after the grenade. Chet curls into a ball on the floor.

Hurting children isn't Riko's berserk button or anything. The psychic scream merely broke his concentration, opening the floodgates for some telekinetic rage to pour out.

Agent Vampire is smashed around like a ragdoll, and Serril can't do much about it because Zoke's in the way, blocking every move he makes. The man doesn't die as quickly as the security persons Riko's telekinesis crushed into bloody pulps. Junpei notices vampires can take an extra amount of punishment before they die.

The vampire ability to run super fast is useless when one's feet are being held above the floor.

And then Agent Vampire is tossed through the portal because why not. Junpei doesn't see it happen, but knows he's going to land on the other side in a bunch of bloody chunks. Yuck.

Serril switches to purely defensive mode once his partner is killed off, once Riko's periphery telekinesis begins prying at him, a sickening sensation like little fingers tugging. Serril makes for the door. "I'm out. You should be too. Riko was an important experiment. They will come after him."

Chet manages to sit up, leaning heavily on the wall. By the end of the day she'll have learned a new word: concussion.

Serril tries to escape. The telekinesis stops him, slams him into the ceiling. His skin begins splitting, up against immense and invisible pressure. This is followed by cracking noises, and the surreal sight of some of Serril's skin being pulled off. Serril gnashes his teeth against the pain. His cracked ribs begin to slide out of his body, as if they had a will of their own. Splashes of purple blood try to work their way to the floor, but trickle upwards and paint the ceiling. 

Ice elementals bleed purple, hypo-oxygenated blood.

Zoke drops any attempt to block his brother's magic. In a panic, he turns his cryokinesis on Riko, dropping the temperature around him at an alarming rate. "By the gods! Stop!"

For a moment, there's silence. A particularly ominous, dreamlike sort of silence. In the corner, Chet writhes in agony, scraping her shoes against the floor. The headache is almost unbearable. She yowls.

"Gods?" Riko drops his now-unconscious victim to the floor and stumbles backwards. He dissipated and pushed away Zoke's elemental attack just as easily as if it were a physical one. "I have seen back through time and I've looked into the abyss beyond death and there are no gods to pray to, and never have been."

Zoke hurries to prevent Serril from bleeding to death. "Shut up! You shouldn't do this to people who are running away! Even if it's gonna bite you in the ass later, it just not right!"

"I spent my mortal life running away from conflict," Riko says quietly. "Now look at me."

Zoke takes a deep, unsteady breath. "I can't let you kill Serril."

"If you fix him up, he'll go right back to them. Agents don't have a choice."

That smell again. Chet wills herself not to move, not to react to it. And, above all, not to look at it.

The grenade rises from the floor, hovering in front of Riko's face. "Only two. They only sent two?"

"Two agents is more than enough," Zoke mutters.

"Not for me. They know that."

Zoke stares, exasperated, at the destruction around them. "So you think this was a ruse?" 

"Oh, no. Now I'm thinking clearly... I think your brother wanted a chance to get in here first, before I could possibly hurt you."

"So you... smashed him against my ceiling. Thanks."

"I wasn't thinking about it until just now. Do you know what this is?"

Zoke eyes the grenade skeptically. "No. What is it?"

"Would have killed you. Doesn't hurt them. They've got hexes on themselves." Riko passes the grenade to Zoke, then squats down to examine the purple mess of a broken humanoid form on the floor.

"I put a stasis spell on him." Zoke begins to pace. "I wanted the healer to take a look at you and the girl but now I think you ought to just leave."

 Riko causes Serril's parts to reconnect. Blood flows back into where it's supposed to be. Muscle, bone, and even the threads of his ripped clothing bind themselves back together. It looks impossible. Like a tape in rewind. Riko is manipulating matter on the submolecular level. "I don't want a healer anywhere near me. I've been fused with chaos magic. If they come into contact with it, I don't know what will happen to them."

Unable to watch what Riko's doing to Serril, Zoke looks away. "Did they do this to you on purpose?"

"They kept comparing me to someone called Eris. I need to find out who that is. It's bothering me." Riko begins to claw his fingers across his forehead distressingly. He leaves Serril now-intact and wanders around to the other side of the counter; Zoke hears the clink, clink of bottles and jars being sifted through. In the end, Riko doesn't take anything. Nothing's going to do him any good. "They altered my genetics, destroyed me, remade me, trying to get a less human version. Sounds unbelievable, but just look at me."

Junpei has to wonder, what did Riko look like before?

"I see you. Still working on comprehending." Zoke approaches Serril warily, half expecting his brother to jump up and attack. There's not a trace of blood or damage anywhere. "How'd you do this?"

"I can see how things are put together, now," Riko replies, "and I'm going to use this knowledge to tear everything apart. You'll see."

"I'll see, huh?" Zoke rolls his eyes. "I'll see... or you'll see... nothing ever changes."

"You don't know how true that is." Riko glares. "You just don't know."

"Looking at you, not sure if I want to know."

"They provoked me into tearing a hole in the fabric of life, sending its energy rushing out. They couldn't contain it, though..."

"And it messed you right up," Zoke finishes the sentence, since Riko will not. "I guess even with the genetic restructuring, you aren't enough of an elf to be a conduit to the other planes."

"The math wasn't flawed. I was flawed."

"Mum told me to look after Serril," Zoke sulks, after the lengthy silence. "I failed."

"I saw someone," Riko says. "In the space between life and nothingness."

Zoke glances at the door, growing steadily more tense as he waits for help.

"I acted without thinking. I tried to pull her out of there." Riko narrows his eyes; this detail is important to him. "But she wasn't whole anymore. She had no place among the living. Therefore... the universe determined I was in the wrong."

"That infection will kill you. We never found a way to treat it."

"I'm leaving now. Look after this kid better than you looked after your baby brother, would you?"

"No-o-o-o!" Chet screams. Both men look towards her. "You can't leave me here! They'll get me! I know they will! I stopped that guy from killing Zoke and taking us back to the lab so you owe me! Please don't leave me here!"

"Zoke guards a gateway to somewhere safe," Riko tells her.

Chet shakes her head. "No. I won't be safe there. I know I won't."

Finley asks if Meela is familiar with any redheaded vampires named Chet.

"I know who you're talking about," Meela says. "But I can't tell you much about her. She's not part of the Bridgeport community."

"Where is she registered to?"

"She's not registered."

 Junpei's reaction to Brigit Hemlock is more to her liking than Finley's was.

"The news stations were spinning Brigit as the mastermind behind the massacres at city hall," Meela says, almost cheerily. "Obviously we think she was framed. Possibly because of her connection to Wogan. It makes a good story."

"Leave my brother alone," Finley warns. "I want to talk to you."

Brigit's scary face goes slack. "What could we possibly have to talk about?"

"Finley is a reporter," Meela says. "Maybe she could help us."

"No one's going to help us," Brigit snaps. "We're all going to die down here."

Finley lets Brigit know she wants to talk about exactly what they talked about before: the Moonlight Falls movement. Thanks to Junpei's dreams, Finley is certain Brigit was hiding something. Something to the tune of it being a place name, and not just a song lyric.

Asking for Brigit's theories on why she was set up? That's important too. Finley just wants to find the truth!

Above ground...

...the pigeons aren't rattled at all by this scene.

After out-magic'ing and beating a couple of vampires senseless, Foxglove drags them out into the sun in front of the courthouse, tells them why they suck and demands that they tell her who their ringleader really is. She uses the word 'justice' four times, and the word 'evildoers' twice.

What a shame. Even after Foxglove has shown them how badass she is, they don't roll over and comply. All Foxglove wants to do is end this insurrection and bring peace to all! Why do they have to be so contrary?

Why do they prefer being reduced to dust? 

Foxglove just can't understand.

Chet blinks back tears. "If they catch me they'll poke at my brain but first they must catch me."

Riko kneels down to stare at the child. "Don't be ridiculous. They're not after you."

"How do you know?"

"You're from another time. They don't know anything about you."

"I'm scared..." Chet looks back at Serril. "What if he wakes up?"

"It'll be a lot safer for you in Moonlight Falls than anywhere else, I promise," Zoke speaks up, if only because it seems unwise to leave a child with Riko.

"You can't leave me," she insists. 

"This is sounding like a precog thing," Riko says. "Maybe we should heed the warning."

Against better judgment, Riko allowed the child to follow him.

"Riko... who are the people chasing us?"

"You're so afraid of them you'd rather stick with me, and you have to ask something like that?"

"All I know is what they tell me!" Pause. "And what they do to me."

"They are 'them'. They are 'they'. They're the solution and we're the problem. Allegedly, they exist to protect the humans from us. Some of us have power humans can't fight. So they found a way around that. If they can control a small number of us, they can use those few against the many. And it works, because they have resources no one of us has on their own. They have a mage of every skill, a representative of every species they can find. There should be nothing they can't handle. What you saw today was an anomaly. Does that answer your question?"

"No..."

"Why did I let you follow me again?"

"I dunno. Vampire mind control?"

"Not likely!"

"Because I'm a little girl and you'd feel real bad if I get experimented on even more?"

"You're leaving the comfortable world where there was only one odd race—yours. Whether you follow me or run back to Zoke, from now on your truth will be stranger than fiction, because fiction has to make sense."

"Right..."

"What's your name?"

"Chet. C... H... E... T."

Riko gives her a look Junpei can't decipher. As if he's seeing someone else. "I like those letters."

Chet reaches into her jacket's left pocket, reassuring herself that the time travel device is still on her person. "All I care about is we're going somewhere safe."

"What gave you the impression I was going somewhere safe?"

She doesn't answer.

"Fine. For your sake, I'll take us somewhere safe."

She didn't know how much she was changing the future, just by being there.

________________________________________________
Etc.: "All the world will be your enemy, O Prince with a Thousand Enemies. And if they catch you, they will kill you. But first, they must catch you." — Frith to El-ahrairah, Watership Down

I would like to take the time to thank all creators of the poses I've used. I can't very well keep track of what I have and haven't used, though, so I'll just present a nice big list of creators my mods folder claims I've downloaded stuff from: Zhippidy, traelia, IMHO, Skylar, Berry, CloudwalkerNZ, Nigalkins, Pamy, Doylegirl, tws, ArtistKate, Kahleeko, MsAdrienne, spladoum, Rae, Morphead, Maximum, Emmy, Lili09, Dsimse, buhudain, Jamee, k2m1too, HarukoMitsu, alistair, JuBa_0o, SeeMyu, and Sylvanes.