2.7 Post-Apocalyptic

"You're awake." Meela found Junpei staring despondently at a granola bar wrapper. "Your sister told me about your dreaming issues. Do you think perhaps a different vampire's mental powers could be of use to you?"

He stares at her, clueless. "What different vampire?"

She gestures towards herself. "I could be able to make your nightmares stop."

"I'd rather you didn't."

"Why not?"

Junpei scratches distractedly at his sleeves. "I'm still trying to figure them out. There's no reason for me not to, is there? What else am I doing? I'm stuck in a hole underground."

"You want to help someone," Meela says quietly, "but your sister thinks that want is misguided."

"After living through some of Chet's memories, what I've gathered is she thinks we are the only people capable of preventing something bad from happening. But from my point of view, we're nobody, and I don't know how to reconcile that yet."

"Mesmerism victims always think their desire comes from within. It's hard for them to see that what they want  — in your case, to help — is a need someone else implanted in them."

"I'm not mesmerized. I'm just... busy sorting through an infodump."

Meela smiles sadly. "Misguided or not, something about you is very sweet."

Junpei is exhausted, despite the appearance of sleeping all day, but still notices Meela's subtle distress.

"What's wrong?"

"Your sister hasn't come back," she answers.

"Finley's alright. I'd know if something happened to her."

"I see. That's good to hear. I've noticed you two are very close. I thought twins were supposed to fight."

"We do that, too." Junpei's eyes drop closed. "If she thinks I'm being the idealist... she's a hypocrite. Because what's she doing here? She's expecting she can make the world a better place? She expects so much out of life, and out of people... and everything keeps letting her down. I hate that."

He's asleep again.

She's shocked at how cartoonish it is; he just sort of slumps over, with no warning.

"This is not the time or place for this," Meela grumbles. She's already made up her mind to peer into his dreams, whether or not he granted permission. It's a trippy experience, to spy psychically on a human's dreams. Vampires have no dreams or nightmares of their own, at least not in the literal sense.

On a hunch, Meela picks up Junpei's left arm and peels the sleeve back. As she suspected, she finds two small holes. Bite marks. "Dammit." This must have happened before Finley even left. Meela is certain it did not happen under her watch. 

Meela is left wondering if any of Junpei's lengthy periods of unconsciousness are the result of blood loss.

The dryad moves to embrace and comfort the teen, but Chet backs away from her.

"You're not you," Chet whines. "You're a lot of things, but you're not this. You wouldn't help him do this."

"You don't have to be afraid. He told me where you would be safe from it."

"I don't want to be safe!" Chet sniffs. "You tried to heal him, didn't you? I don't see the corruption marks on your skin, but I bet they're inside you somewhere."

"Kid, listen-"

Chet runs away from Setra before Riko can be informed of her threat to do so.

She runs... far.

She wishes it was memory guiding her back to this spot, but it isn't.

How could it be?

She was here only once before, and it was through teleportation. 

 

She's carried to these woods not by the past, but by the future. She's given herself over to visions and feelings; the go this way, go that way. It's what Riko taught her to do...

 

And then Chet runs into an invisible wall.

She's knocked back and falls into the grass. 

"What are you doing in my forest?" The speaker glares at her, but even as she feels her strength fading and her eyelids drooping, her energy sapped away by touching the force field for only a fraction of a second... she isn't intimidated.

Chet struggles to get up. She's just too tired. "Are you Zoke? Do you remember me?"

"Should I?"

Chet gives up, and falls flat on her back. "How's your brother?"

Zoke's eyes widen. "You!"

Well.. he's never been as heartless as Riko made him out to be.

 

 Chet is deposited in one of the chairs, where she can barely sit up. "Welllll," her speech slurs, "this place hasn't changed. Neither've you."

"My people age slowly." He begins mixing a drink that looks unappealing. "I'll make you some tea to counteract the spell that drained you."

"Why did you bring me here? You were so paranoid last time."

"It's my job to be paranoid. It's also my job to hear people out."

She takes the glass offered to her, and stares at it intently.

Zoke watches her unsteady hands. "Well don't spill it."

She drinks it. "Wanted to make sure it was safe."

He didn't sense any hints of magery from the teenager. She didn't cast any spells. "Is your precognition that good?"

"It's how I got here." She folds her arms on the table and buries her face in them. "I need help. My Da-..." She stops. She's never called him that to his face, how could she almost say that word to a near-stranger? "Riko wants to do something awful."

"How is he still alive? The disease should have destroyed him by now."

"How should I know! He's always keeping secrets. He's become some kind of eco-terrorist now, he wants to take apart the Control Grid. He's got the means. It's a credible threat. I was hoping other mages could stop him, and you know where to find other mages."

Zoke pats her on the arm. "The grid is worldwide, and has hundreds of thousands of well-guarded failsafes. Blowing up a few of them isn't going to do much."

"What if I told you he could burn the damn thing right out of the biosphere with a reality warping magic amplification device?"

"I'd ask you to clarify."

"He calls it the Mosaic. He's been hunting all the parts to it down. I saw a future where he succeeded. He ends life on this world. Everything falls because everything is interconnected. Everything. If I don't get help, this vision isn't going to change... it's going to come true."

Chet stands up, intent on stumbling out of this place just as abruptly as she stumbled into it. "No one's ever going to believe me."

"Hold on." Zoke says cautiously. "I don't have any experience with visions. I only remembered you were a precog because you and Riko... uh... there have been rumors about you. You've been making a lot of waves. Doesn't mean I don't believe you, per se."

"Riko and I would go around finding different supernatural communities... we'd make friends... he'd try to teach me stuff. We'd carry messages back and forth for people too scared to leave their hiding places. Then he'd use our combined powers to steal artifacts. He'd tell me it was because he didn't want the S.C. to get hold of them." Chet punches the back of a chair. "I believed him for a long time."

"Yes, I know some people you've stolen from."

Chet frowns, harder than she already was. "What other 'waves' have we caused?" 

Zoke drapes a chilly arm around the teenager, steadying her before she falls. "Just settle down. I'm going to ask one of the healers to examine your head."

The healer, introduced as Doctor Wilson, has a kind smile when she tells Zoke nothing's wrong with Chet. It's okay to allow her into their town.

"You'll be safe in Moonlight Falls," she says, turning back to address the teenager. "And perhaps a more educated scholar there can put your mind at ease. Professor MacDuff's specialty is ancient cursed objects. He's off on an archaeology expedition right now, but we could recall him."

Chet says nothing. She's heard empty promises before.

"Thanks, Doc."

"I'm sure one of the vampire families will have a spare room for her," Wilson says.

Riko backs away from the enraged sorceress.

Her name is Finley! Junpei wants the dream to know.

But this isn't a memory; it's a fleeting vision Chet had, and Junpei cannot explore it.

"Do you know what this is?" Riko asks.

"Hideous."

"Besides that."

"That's the thingie you took from werewolf guy's house. It dispels pockets of unreality."

"Are you sure?"

She nods confidently. She won't be tricked. "It looks different, but that's because you changed its shape. I've seen you messing with it before."

"Wrong. This is the other one's twin." Riko holds out his other hand, palm-up. The true object retrieved from Faraday appears in that hand. "These two are unique among their siblings. They are always connected. As soon as I had the first one, I was able to summon this one."

"Sooo don't tell me. That's the one you let Supernatural Control take from you."

"You remember! They did not have it for long."

"Bet you think you're so clever!" Chet teases. 

"You'll probably need one of these someday."

"To protect me from djinni?"

"Faraday and I explained the artifacts to you for a reason. Now I could easily make this into jewellery for you. No? You're not into jewellery. Okay. Most of these pieces have been turned into jewellery or other frivolities. People thought they were just so pretty. Little did they know what they'd discovered with their grave robbery."

"Who puts that kind of thing in someone's grave?"

"Well, when everyone's dying off, and I mean EVERYONE, the entire elven civilization, you kind of run out of places to put things. Sort of an apocalyptic situation. We are living. On the ashes. Of so many fallen civilizations."

Chet pats Riko's closest arm. "I know. But you're here now, in this civilization."

"I've never seen a vampire mourn sunlight so much as you," Zoke comments.

Chet entered the adult stage in her life quite some time ago. She misses the ability to leave buildings during the day. She feels trapped. "Thank you for hexing these windows for me," she murmurs. "So I can at least see the world I cannot venture into."

"I wouldn't have, if I knew you'd sit here all day sulking."

"Five years from today," she says, when he sits with her and moves to kiss her neck. "I still don't know how I'm supposed to find this girl. I only know that when she and her brother come looking for me, we've already met."

"Your visions haven't changed. There's every reason to believe you've chosen the right path to find them, even if you don't know how you managed it."

"But if I don't find them..."

He turns her around to face him, and squeezes her hand. "Nothing is certain."

"I want to believe what you're trying to say." She wants to say all the things that would make him happy. "But that's the reason I worry. If everything were certain... I wouldn't see more than one future. I wouldn't have to try to find the one I want."

Zoke doesn't let go of her hand. "I'm sorry, Cheese Puff. I wish I could be with you when you're like this. But I can only live in the now."

"It's my fault." She bursts into tears. Possibly one of the most unsettling things a vampire can do. "I caused this."

"You didn't," Zoke tries to shush her.

"You don't understand..."

"You helped Riko escape his cell. I understand. Did you ever think they might have ended up doing even worse damage with him, if you hadn't set him loose?"

"Not that. I don't regret that." Chet continues to sob. "When I was young, I had a vision. His niece, Alex, killed him. She did it out of love. Out of mercy. But I refused to understand that or accept it, and I went to her with my stupid little girl tears and begged her not to ever do it. I averted that future. I steered us into a worse one."

"The decisions of adults are never a child's fault."

While the adults poke around at the various junk in this room and make comments about where it was obtained, Chet finds a toy yeti to amuse herself with.

Riko has found a toy also. "Well, this is neat."

"It's also loaded," Faraday warns.

"Why?"

"What?"

"You couldn't aim this to save your life. Why is it loaded?"

"Well, I don't like touching it..."

"Even to take the bullets out?"

"It's a valuable antique!" Faraday wrings his hands together irritably. "You got what you came for. Now leave me and my collection and my tail alone."

Riko ignores him, and goes on to explain guns to Chet. She has never seen one.

"I had to save it," Faraday remarks. Chet is not interested at all in what he's saying, in what makes this model interesting. She's too busy feeling fear because Riko has told her that some agents carry these.

 

The memory cuts out. Skips like a record. Suddenly objects aren't following the rules of gravity.

 

"Telekinesis?" Faraday questions. "That is really fascinating. I'm guessing it places a lot of stress on your mind and is very painful."

 

"Sorry for the mess." Riko indicates the jumbled mass floating behind him. It's all slowly gravitating together, into some impossible ball of lamps and and lawn ornaments and desks and is that a tractor? 

 

"Put the gun down," Faraday tries to make his voice sound gentle, but it's awkward and forced. "You're probably picking up all kinds of bad vibes from it."

 

Riko pinches the tip of his left ear between his left index finger and thumb, and pulls, stretching the ear as far as it will go out. Then with his right hand, he points the gun at it.Is he going to—?

Junpei felt the sudden need to run. Luckily, this isn't one of those dreams where one's legs don't work. Unluckily, no matter how many walls he runs through, he can't find an exit.

"Who are you?" Winona asks fearfully. "How did you get in here?"

"You can't stop me." Riko points the gun at Junpei's nose. 

"And you can't hurt me in a dream..."

"If you cast magic around me, you will die," Riko says, slowly, patiently. "All this time Chet spent searching for you two, and she didn't realize you shared ancestry with her. Her vampiric nature protects her elven genetics from the corruption. Nothing will protect you."

"No!" Chet screams. "They are human mages! They can stand up to you!"

"Could a human mage return from the dead?" Riko glares at her. "You knew they weren't human as soon as you touched him, but did you even care? As long as they get rid of me and smash the machine, so you never have to have your dream again?"

"No!" She covers her ears. "No!"

Riko holds up a hand. Chet disappears, neatly dispelled.

"Why are you letting me do this, Junpei?"

"You just said I couldn't stop you!"

"You can't stop the flesh and blood me. But this is your mind. I'm just a figment of your imagination." Riko snaps his fingers. "Why are you letting me run all over it? Learn control!"

Suddenly-clothesless nightmares are the worst!

Especially when a maniac has decided this is a good time to rant.

"It's an infection and it spreads, you won't die as you," Riko says. "You'll die shivering on the floor, splattered with the blood of anyone who dared think they could save you. Time stands still on our world, but it's only an illusion, because the world is dead, stagnant, a fabrication. Inside we're all the same, it never changes. The cycle continues. We live it again and again, making the same mistakes over and over, telling the same lies generation after generation, on the layers and layers of destruction that came before us. But no more! I'll change the ending. I'll put us out of our misery once and for all. I did use Chet's dreams. Of course I did. I had to know what things would be like after I destroy the grid. I had to know if it would be enough destruction to get the attention of the false gods."

"W-what?"

"I've seen there are survivors! Just not enough. A perfect number, which will eventually be zero, a perfect number. I'm not destroying the biosphere, I'm saving it from those who have hijacked it. We should never have lived this long!"

"You're... insane!"

"Sure I am! Stay away from me and you won't end up this way."

"Yeah! Got it!"

Riko shoves Junpei. "I said stay away!"

Junpei's eyes snap open.

"Wake up!" Little Tariq, someone-or-other's son, has been trying to shake Junpei awake. "They're fighting!" he whispers. "We hafta hide somewhere! I'm sorry I bit you! Don't die! Stupid human!"

Junpei tears his arm out of the child's grasp. Not in the mood to be touched. "Who's fighting?"

"Someone found us down here! The grown-ups are all fighting..."

Yup. They're all fighting.

This is a real fight. Nobody's talking, nobody's pulling any punches. Nobody's stalling for backup, or trying to figure anybody else out, or hoping to not have to hurt their sibling. It's fast and chaotic and Junpei couldn't tell you how he went from terrified, to terrified and trying to save Meela Feld.

Florissa Chique saw the man jumping at her, but didn't have time to stop him. She snapped her teeth and braced for impact. Then impact didn't happen. Junpei sailed right through her, like a ghost, landed on the grating behind her (almost twisted his ankle in doing so), then his hands glowed, and Florissa felt like there was a four-alarm fire in her veins.

Florissa faints.

Unable to move her limbs, Meela can only stare in unthinking horror at the light Junpei has weaved into the air. She's heard about sunlight charms, and how deadly they are to vampires.

Junpei holds the spell there, not directing it on anyone. He stopped inflicting it on Florissa as soon as she fainted.

Curious about the spell on Meela, Junpei begins trying to undo it. He knew some powerful vampires could cast magic, but he's never encountered it until now...

Meela rescues him from his foolishness with two rasped words: "Look out."
 

When it's all over, Junpei hurts in more places than before.

"You could have stopped the rest of them from getting away!" Brigit accuses. "You could have destroyed them! With your horrible sun magic! Now they've run off, and they know where we are!"

"Then we move!" Junpei shouts back at her.

"Traitor," the vampire with her wrists bound, one of the intruders, spits at Brigit from her undignified position on the floor. "Harboring Supernatural Control agents here..."

Brigit stalks over to her. "Why would agents need to hide here with us, you fool?"

Meela turns Junpei away from the confrontation. Junpei feels numb as he lets this happen. Part of him wants to scream in protest, but he doesn't. It's a peculiar kind of paralysis. To not know what to do, and so do nothing. To have a suspicion about what's going to happen, and do nothing to stop it.

Brigit is going to kill that woman.

"We'll go further into the catacombs," Meela says, intentionally distracting him, her voice shaking. "If we can make it look like a tunnel has collapsed behind us, maybe, if they come running through here at top-speed looking for us, they'll think it's been collapsed for a long time, and they won't try to clear out the debris in their way, they'll think we couldn't have gone that way..."

A wet snap sounds behind them.

"They're not here." Tara's voice is hard. She has no expression.

She's scared out of her mind.

"Don't worry," Finley says. "They've just gone deeper into the tunnels."

"You're sure you can find them? I can't sense my son. They can't be close."

"I can feel my twin's presence at any distance. I know where they are."

"Just put her anywhere," Winona instructs. 

Wogan has impressed her, having the strength to carry their one remaining hostage this far. Florissa herself may not be good as a bargaining chip, but if they can get her to talk, they might know more about the terrorists' movements and plans, and those could be valuable bargaining chips.

The sound of rocks falling onto other rocks echoes through the tunnels, uncomfortably loud. The group made their way to a less well maintained section of the catacombs. They've passed many ironwork gates, but this one led to a dead end, so here they stop. Vladimir and a couple of the other guys work to partially collapse the tunnels behind them, making sure to leave spots where someone could crawl through, albeit with difficulty.

"That looks good, Vlad!" Brigit calls out.

Tariq complains about not wanting to stay here. There's a skeleton.

Junpei tries to ask Vladimir if he's alright. For a guy in dress shoes and a smarmy-looking scarf, he certainly picked an undignified way to flop down on the ground and scowl at everyone.

"Get away from me!" Vladimir shoos Junpei before he can offer to help.

Junpei has no idea how uncomfortable the blood on his face is making all these hungry vampires.

Wogan is happy to still have his guitar.

Junpei decides to ask Winona about her uncle Faraday.

She crosses her arms. "How dare you?" Her tone is hushed, her eyes are narrowed. "My bloodline is pure. What filthy liar insinuated otherwise?"

Junpei shrinks backwards. He expected her to be suspicious, he didn't expect this. 

"Chet told me, I guess is fair to say..."

"You have no idea what you're talking about, human, and I don't need to explain myself to you. And I won't have you bothering the old man. I know what this is, you think we could use his place to hide us. No."

They really seem to enjoy labeling him as a human. They're mostly magic-stupid, he's concluded. Junpei's fine with being perceived as human, though. He still counts himself as one. "You don't have to take me to him. You could bring him here. I need to talk to him."

"Where is this coming from?! Why would you want to?"

"I don't want to explain. But this is important."

"If it's important, you'll explain."

"You're okay." Finley hugs Junpei tight.

"We have this conversation a lot," he says nonchalantly, right before the facade falls apart and he has to choke down a sob.

He doesn't have to tell her what happened. They have the creepy psychic twins thing going on; when Junpei had to use the offensive magic he'd learn for self defense, Finley knew about it; when Brigit killed someone behind him, Finley knew about it. "That wasn't your fault," she soothes. She can see Brigit leaning against the wall on the other side of the room, and glowers at her. "These terrorists would have killed you, Junpei. Don't lose sleep over it."

Over Junpei's shoulder, Finley and Tara make eye contact for a second. 

Get the blood off his face, Tara mouths.

"So now we are stuck in this hole?" Tara challenges.

Brigit snorts. "Don't look at me. I'm not the appointed leader." If only they had an appointed leader, Tara would know whom exactly to yell at.

"Who's decision was this, then?"

Brigit doesn't answer because she doesn't even remember.

"We can't wait this out down here. We don't know how long it will last." There's no question in Tara's mind that the military will prevail. The problem is only when, and how she and the other vampires will be viewed afterwards.

"Do you have a better idea?"

Florissa rolls her glowing eyes, wishing she were unconscious again. Watching these pathetic fools bicker and starve to death isn't how she wants to spend her last days alive.

"There were hidden stairs a ways back," Brigit says finally. "We sent Lou and Chris to see where they lead." It's not uncommon to find older structures were connected to the catacombs. What would be uncommon would be to find an exit still usable. Brigit has hope, though; if they find someplace bricked up, they can send the magic-users to act as a wrecking crew. 

  

Forced to sleep in the dirt, Winona's mood only deteriorated further when she saw the witch use a spell to alter her clothing and freshen up. Magic sparkles. Damn magic sparkles. "You two are unnaturally close, that's all I'm saying."

Finley doesn't bother taking offense. "We're psychic."

"Vampires are psychic. You don't see Wogan and Brigit cuddling up."

"My brother is easily traumatized. Because he's psychic. You can't just kill people near him."

 "You two are just weird. That's all I'm saying."

Riko insisted he's listening for something, someone lives around here and their roots are in deep, and he's listening for those, whatever that means. Chet wonders if it means he just wants to lay there in the sand until they die from the heat.

"Are we really in Egypt?" she asks, after too long of a silence.

"Setra," Riko confirms.

She turns her head to look at him. "So, at some point you teleported us across a whole ocean."

Riko's ears tilt back, like an angry cat's. "Hush."

Riko follows the river.

It will eventually lead into the city, but he doesn't have to go quite that far...

"Who are you?" The woman demands. Riko's searching alerted her to his presence on her territory, and she is waiting for him at a tall white-painted gate.

"I'm disappointed my own niece doesn't recognize me," Riko says.

"If this is some trick," she warns, "I won't take it well..."

"A bit elaborate to be a trick, don't you think?"

"Impersonating someone I love is an insult to their memory." She turns and opens the gate. "Well! Come in and tell me what you've done to yourself this time." She glances questioningly at the child.

"I'm thirsty," Chet complains.

Once they're inside the gate, the woman locks it and sends Chet to the kitchen. She and Riko walk out onto the back porch.

"You're looking lovely for your age, Alex."

"Talk!" she barks. "You were captured, how are you here now?"

"It is me. You don't have to be so paranoid about that."



After drinking what was left of a pitcher of ice water, Chet climbs onto the counter and listens to the exchange. Once Riko proves his identity, Alex expresses some heartfelt distress about what's happened to him, and then the whole backstory about being experimented on spills out, as is necessary to explain his current state.

Alex then expresses horror that Riko would show up here, when he's being tracked by Supernatural Control. Chet has seen these same reactions many times now, to varying degrees.

This is the first time Riko has had an emotional response to it. "I've lived under fake names, I've had no home and I've been alone, for decades, until this small girl decided I was her best chance at avoiding recapture. None of that may seem like much to you, but it was a lot for me, and it was all to protect my family. To protect you. I stayed away to protect you. So do you really think I'd ever be sick enough to risk leading them to you?"

"Then why have you sought me?"

"For the child's sake. You will understand, when you get to know her."

Alex relents, and hugs Riko. "But you are ill," she says. Chet can hear the tears in her voice.

With no place else to go, and certain they've shaken off their pursuers, Riko and Chet stay with Alex. It's a four-letter-name party!

"I am sorry about the harsh way I greeted you. He's the only family I have left. My parents are long gone, and even my sister has passed away now, but I remain alive and young because of the magic my uncle taught me to unlock from within." Alex frowns. "Techniques he can't even use himself."

"Teaching people magic must be his hobby," Chet mumbles.

"Lexie's father had some interesting ancestry." Riko drums his fingers against the floor. Incessantly. "She had just enough dryad genetics to coax that part of her out."

"I had none of my kind to learn from, but since my uncle has a very strange relationship with time, all he needed to do was look for where a dryad colony had at one time been. Then he could see everything they got up to."

Alex sacrificed a lot to become devoted to the dryad magic, and in the end it granted her agelessness through a regeneration technique, as well as the ability to rapidly manipulate flora, as seen when she caused bamboo to sprout from the sand and stab through Chet's midsection, in what is presumably one possible future.

"I knew someone was coming from miles away," she says wearily. "The desert may look dead, but it's not, and I can talk to it in a sense. But you should be dead, so... I didn't recognize you. I was frightened."

Riko tilts his head. "In all the time you've been out here, no one's found you?"

"Sometimes I think Sofia had the right idea, closing herself off from magic instead of off from society. Once people knew what we were, we weren't safe. Not from normal people. Not from other supernaturals. Not from the government. Someone tried to kill us for being what we were, so she decided she'd be something else. Just like that. She even surgically altered her ears."

Riko's ears duck down again. "Well this is a depressing confessional. I didn't intend to ruin your life."

"I had children," Alex says, "and they were human. I had to watch them grow old and die."

Chet steps over Riko's legs so she can sit on the couch, next to Alex. "I guess everything will be okay now. The government was chasing us, and we left that country. Brilliant, right?"

Alex shakes her head. "The S.C. operated internationally."

"Oh." Chet can't think of much to say. "That sucks."

Hesitantly, Alex places her arm around the child. "But it is going to be okay."

For a while, it was.

"You okay?" she wants to know. "I'm here. Don't push me away."

"Go outside and play," he mumbles.

"Not if you'll hurt less if I'm here with you."

"I'm alright." 

"Alex says you might not be here a long time..."

"If I die, she'll take care of you. You trust her, don't you? I finally found you someone you'll trust?"

"I guess," Chet admits. "I don't want you to go though. They hurt you, and you should get a chance to heal."

"You know, you scare me, when you talk like a middle-aged adult who has processed trauma."

"It's because I was psychic from such a young age. Duh. I think like a grown-up."

"You don't at all. You just parrot them well enough. Alex is a good influence on you; bringing you here was one of my better ideas."

"I don't want you to go," she says again. "Can't you research a cure?"

Chet sees someone in Riko's thoughts.

Riko told Zoke the scientists 'provoked' him into 'tearing a hole in the fabric of life'. He didn't say he was tortured, and not allowed to die, to the point where he attempted to cross over without dying.

He concentrated on the detail of seeing someone in what should have been nothingness, and, in the insanity of the moment, forgot what he was doing and tried to rescue her. 

Chet has to wonder... is she seeing Riko try to pull someone into the realm of the living, or is she seeing the fragments of a ghost trying to pull him into death?

"Every time I tried to read his mind, it was an impossible tangled snarl." Chet, adult version, laughs her short derisive laugh. "There's a reason he knows so much, and it's something called psychometry."

"Ah, I know what that is." Junpei is having trouble formulating a sentence. He's seeing what the child saw: a flood of experiences.

"Huh. Most people don't. And according to everything I've read, most psychometrics pick up an object, see if anything impactful left an impression on it. Little scenes might play out in their heads. An advanced psychometric will see lots and lots of these scenes. They may forget what's real and what's just an echo. But as long as I've known him, Riko is stronger than even that. He taught himself to go mentally back into focused points in the past using the people he saw there as a gateway. Like using empathic powers, but on people who don't exist anymore."

"Impressive," Junpei admits.

"It's some kind of elvish spirit magic, I guess," Chet elaborates further, "He didn't just see things happening, he felt them and lived them happening, and he could go anywhere they went, without moving. It's one thing to talk about it. It's one thing for someone to say, I can see into the past, and I can see forever. It's another to get in their head and see it."

Junpei can't see the past like Riko...

...or see the future like Chet...

...and even they, he realizes, don't consciously know all that they really know.

"I know what Riko's real name is," Junpei says slowly.

"Love has made you blind to what Aravisne and Milnddare are capable of. They are not themselves. I must find them, and end their suffering. I did not ask you to come with me, Selra'. I never asked anything of you," the elf insists.

"I'm not Selrandisra. I'm from the future. That's how I know if I let you leave, you'll just get yourself killed," Riko's voice responds, pleading.

"Loki." Someone touches his arm, anchoring him back to the present. "You okay?"

"We're never going to get enough data if you keep interrupting him," Faraday complains.

Faraday notices Parsley is glaring at him, and shrinks away instinctively. "...What?"

"Do you want Ripley to fix your hand?" Parsley asks. 

She is the sister Faraday mentioned 'Riko' as having. The cause of the syrup incident. 

The blond man is her husband.

They're Alex's parents.

"No, I'm fine now." Loki examines the glyph on his right hand. Junpei has seen it before; when properly charged, it's supposed to have the power to keep the marked person from experiencing any psychic perceptions. The scratches through it have rendered it useless, however. "I need to get used to not relying on it."

Loki blinks several times. "How long was I lost?"

His brother-in-law is all smiles. "Over five hours. New record. Ripley warned us you were starting to panic, though, so I figured we'd best snap you out of it."

Loki winces, realizing why he is suddenly so hungry. "Tell Ripley to stay out of my head."

"Tell me yourself! Not like I can see much through that acid trip."

"Screw you."

"You're not my type."

"Guys!" Faraday tries to interrupt. "You're both pretty. Settle down. Loki, what did you find out?"

"I... actually forgot I was after anything," Loki says.

Faraday pulls his tail in front of him and starts pulling out black furs. "Damn, I thought we were close."

"Give him a minute," Ripley requests. "He experiences time differently. He may have found it in hour one. Leaving hour two through five to wander after distracting thing..."

"I told you to stay out of my head!" Loki snaps.

Ripley lowers his voice. "I'll leave you alone when you stop trying to change the timeline. You cannot change the timeline, Loki... it is not possible."

"I wasn't trying to."

"The sane response is 'I can't'."

"So what's the problem?"

"You have a useful gift. One that could benefit all of mankind. No one's ever seen someone with your kind of talent. Don't waste it by harming yourself."

"If I ever... try to hurt you..."

"You wouldn't do that..." Alex says.

"You remember what happened to Ripley," he whines.

"I remember." Alex flinches at the memory.

"Don't just watch it play out, this time. Promise me you'll do what you've got to, to protect yourselves."

She hesitates. The last person she saw like this was consumed by the corruption completely. She's been pretending the same won't happen here. But, if it does, she could do something about it. She could give her uncle a quick death. "I promise," she whispers.








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Etc.: Those who read my previous legacy may recognize Riko and Alex as Loki and Alexandria. Loki was the twin sibling of Mab's grandfather's grandmother, and Alex was the daughter of their elder sister, Parsley.

So non-readers of my last legacy won't feel at a disadvantage: Alex's father belonged to an organization researching the supernatural (they were not bad guys), and when he learned about Loki's psychometric abilities, he couldn't resist recruiting Loki to help.

Loki hates his name. The reason he has it can be different depending on the [spoiler] in question, but since names have power in this universe he must keep some connection to it, hence the anagrams.

Some pictures were taken in Prato di Livori. Setra can be found here.