2.14 Sabotage

Content warning: descriptions of extreme violence and gore.

White Mountain Haikus contains a line about a wonderful dream.

"What are real dreams like?" Chet questions.

Alexandria thinks about it for a moment. "Well... they can seem very random. They don't make very much sense. Only once in a while I have a dream influenced by a worry that's on my mind. If I think about a scenario a lot, I'll probably have a dream where it happens."

Chet has more than once wished for a dream that wasn't either an unalterable memory from the past played back to her, or a premonition of what one day shall be. Now, she begins to ponder the consequences of such a wish. "If I were human... would I have trouble knowing dreams from visions?"

"You always have very interesting concerns," Alex chuckles.

Chet nips at Zoke's ear. "So the rock troll is... a giant gnome."

"Yup."

"Is it watching us?"

"Hmm. Who can say?"

"Well," she lowers her voice in an attempt to be seductive, "it's important..."

The longer they stay in one spot, the more the grass frosts over. Chet is amused by the sensation. But even as she is content and happy, the back of her mind continues to churn. "Why is this place called Moonlight Falls?"

"Because the moon fell down." Zoke grins. "Right here, in fact. The djinn are truly frightening."

She gazes into his eyes, as he in turn studies hers. "Did you see it happen?"

"Not personally, no. Maybe it was... the djinn only pulled down the moon's light? Either way, it's a long epic story. An old one. I always fell asleep in the middle of the telling, so, I can only repeat the beginning and the end."

She squeezes his cold hand. "What if it's a story where knowing the middle changes the meaning?"

It's the end of the line of dominoes.

Found you.

"Riko!" Chet calls out to him, and he looks at her, his unofficially adopted daughter. The other two, he ignores.

"And there you are," he says, as if he was expecting her. The smile he's wearing isn't warm but it's not sadistic or cruel either. It's just empty. "You need to get out of the sun."

With that, he turns and runs into the building.

She'll follow, of course.

And Finley, the psychic, her mother's daughter, has finally sensed, in person, the complete wrongness that has overtaken this man. Every synapse and pore is screaming and all she knows in the whole world is there's something cosmically wrong here and it's got to be stopped.

It seems irrational. It's a reaction born of senses the young woman barely understands.

And it's the kind of reaction Chet was hoping for.

By accident or tactics, they've split up.

When Chet sees the painting, she remembers being here before. She was lost. It was frightening. She was a child. But then she found where Riko had gone to, and her fears of abandonment vanished. All was right again.

This is the building with the odd ceiling.

This is where Finley kills Riko in her visions.

From the floor below, Chet hears the breaking of glass and the crunch of bone against wall. Moments later, she can smell the blood.

She smells it in the way a predator does. It's intoxicating. But she is also sentient, and that part of her feels sad, and comprehends the senselessness.

Junpei died differently, since Chet followed the twins here, but he still died.

Even in the vision before this, where she influenced a different path and stuck by his side, trying to protect him, he was torn apart in front of her. Torn apart to make a point. The same may apply here—the death occurred so close to her, she could hear it, and she can taste it in the air.

She was meant to hear it.

Riko is punishing her, for bringing strangers here.

The blood pool is thick and dark. Anything separated from a body before it dies doesn't turn ghostly. Part of Junpei's ribcage is smashed into one of the shattered display cases, sitting there with vases and little bronze statues that must be culturally important to someone. Internal organs, too mangled to identify at first glance, are on the floor where they slid down from the wall. It looks like a salad slathered in too much red dressing. Though it's spreading, like any good spill, the blood looks to have initially been strewn in zig-zags across the floor, indicating the directions Junpei was flung about in his last second of life, as his chest was emptied. The rest of his body must have gone incorporeal. The dazed soul is still lingering somewhere.

Riko probably teleported into existence behind the young mage, then one lazy grab and twist with telekinesis and it was all over before Junpei could say a word.

Snapped the spine, ripped the rib cage right out. As easy as taking apart a toy.

To Riko, it must not really matter. Everyone's going to die. Now or in an hour. What's the difference.

Finley trembles, but doesn't cry. "We knew this was stupid. We knew this was stupid but we came here anyway." Her tone indicates she's angry with Junpei, blaming him for his death, but given time she'll know the truth is she's angry with herself, blaming herself. Sensing Riko somewhere above, now, Finley stands up, turns away from the bloody scene, and begins to climb the stairs. Each step is deliberate, slow, filled with murderous intent.

Chet stands in place, contemplating. Finley never reaches the temple without Junpei. And yet, Junpei is always killed, leaving his sister to fight alone.

"I taught you how the game is played," Riko told her, last time she had the vision. "Have you forgotten?"

"I do not play games," Chet responded, eyes shut tight. Riko had made a mess of things. Some of Junpei's blood had splashed on her. It was warm, warm like a grassy meadow in the summer afternoons when Chet could still run and play in the sun without turning to ash...

...warm like delicious soup. Warm like a drug kicking in.

Chet pushed those thoughts away and opened her eyes again when she could, but in those few seconds Riko had disappeared.

The Chet in this version not splashed with blood follows Finley up the staircase. The scene she finds is the expected one. Finley is slowly walking towards Riko, or Loki, as the twins call him. The name his parents actually gave him.

"You're mad at me," Riko is saying, as he backs away.

The wand is in Finley's hand, glowing bright. "Mad doesn't even scratch the surface..."

Chet does not understand. Why is Riko cowering from a witch who is not a threat? A woman he could dispose of just as easily as he murdered her brother? All these years, Chet assumed Finley was a very powerful and dangerous witch. Now she knows she is not. Junpei's death made Finley angrier, but no stronger.

Perhaps it's the depth of the psychic's loss that's spooked him? She's losing a part of her soul, as he lost a part of his. Could that be it? Sudden sympathy for another chimerical person?

Chet turns and descends the steps. No need to watch this.

The sun is out, and Chet feels... waxy.

Finley cannot trust herself to use magic on Riko, but since he allows her to get so close, she tackles him and stabs him to death with the wand. The instrument is pointy but not sharp. Causing it to pierce takes some force. Riko doesn't protest. He just looks at her. So she stabs him again. In the throat. And again. And again. In the eye. By the fourth puncture Finley is screaming, not screaming words, just screaming.

"Plumbobs, the heat," Finley makes small talk. "I'll be happy when we get to the next city and its cooling system."

 Junpei fidgets uncomfortably. The heat was, indeed, so bad even he had to ditch long sleeves. He feels too exposed.

Chet snaps out of her trance and sits up. The sun is low on the horizon. It's been a while since she took a moment to watch the sunset through hexed windows.

Junpei turns to look at her. "Doing okay back there?"

"Yes," she says slowly. 

"See anything useful in our future?" Finley asks her.

"I couldn't find any new information," Chet says carefully.

"Maybe Riko put some kind of mental block on you," Junpei theorizes, "so you can't see the solution."

"I would notice..."

"Would you? With weird artifacts in play like the Infractus Mens?"

Chet stares at him for a moment, then drops her gaze to her feet. "You have such green eyes."

"Uhhh... thank you?"

Finley glances at them. "What is it with you and vampire women, Junpei?"

"Maybe they can sense I'm undead."

Chet's upper lip curls back in confusion. "Undead?"

"He's not undead," Finley groans.

"My sister and I were innocent bystanders when a fairy showed up to take away a fugitive djinn named Sarala." Junpei's face is drawn tight and serious; he's prepared to judge Chet's reaction, and she's already shocked by the name-drop. "We pissed the fairy off, and she cast a spell to disperse my soul. And since after dispersal I didn't have a consciousness to resist it, I was instantly just a part of the universe's backdrop energy again. Grim didn't need to come for me. The next thing I knew, my parents put me back together. I guess it was possible because while I did die, I didn't die... correctly."

Chet draws in a sharp breath. "When did this happen?"

Junpei tells her roughly how long ago it was.

"That's when my visions of Finley stopping Riko became so much stronger." Chet stares out the window. This was Sarala's role. Somehow, what Chet said to the djinn led to her turning on the S.C., escaping with her master's son, settling in Hidden Springs, having a child, a child who befriended Finley, who happened to be present when Foxglove showed up to drag Sarala away. Chet never understood the link between Sarala and the Archers before. She still doesn't completely understand it now. "But... why..."

"If that hadn't happened, we might not have become mages," Finley surprises them by speaking up. "Sure, we were going to do our best to develop our psychic abilities, but without the accident we may not have found all of our father's books and notes."

Chet tilts her head.

"Warlocking notes," Junpei says, as if this clarifies things.

"I see," Chet says. One odd detail is sticking out in her mind: this man is practically a stranger to her, and she's managed to set the universe on a path that causes him to die... twice.

Only, the second time, he won't be coming back.

Junpei is unaware of Chet's inner turmoil. At least, unaware of the exact thought process she's going through right now. "In one of the dreams, I saw you talking to Sarala. Without knowing it, you must have ensured she'd run away, and I'd end up in that accident."

Chet frowns. "I did not know that would happen. Are you upset with me?"

"Nah," he says.

"I am," Finley pipes up.

"Gonna find this fake Norse god," Finley drones, in a state of near highway-hypnosis, "gonna hit him with this car. Then go home. Ah! What did that sign say?"

"265 to Al Simhara," Junpei reports.

"We'll reach Setra in the morning," Chet predicts.

"I'm surprised Zoke didn't come with us," Finley says. "He was very protective of you."

"There are perks to sleeping with the guardian," Chet says, monotone. "He cannot follow me. But I don't need his protection. I've left Moonlight Falls many times before." Always with the same goal. Stop Riko. Find someone who can.

"Huh. Do you just use everyone you meet?"

"I was only being blunt. I love Zoke." Another car passes them on the road. "In any case, he couldn't have come with us. He is bound by magic to a certain radius within the mountains surrounding the town. It's a generous radius, but it does not reach to Egypt."

The tops of those snowy mountains... probably a more hospitable place for Zoke's kind to live than in the valleys below, but they were no place to build a village.

In the morning, the trio arrive to what should be a sprawling city. But instead of being greeted with skyscrapers on the skyline, they see... nothing but an empty desert.

"Setra is supposed to be here," Chet insists.

"Well it isn't," Finley growls.

Junpei takes a look at the multitab 6000. "She's right. Setra should be here."

"It is here," Chet says suddenly. "But we're in the midst of an illusion. I can sense the people."

"Oh... yeah." Finley suddenly feels foolish. "I can too." She stops the car. "But if I can't see anyone... it's not safe to drive downtown to where the museum should be."

"Go that way," Junpei instructs, pointing. "Follow that branch of the river."

"Isn't that the opposite of where we want to go?"

Chet shrinks back in her seat, horrified, but silent. She knows where they're going.

"Sometimes you have to go backwards to go forwards," Junpei answers his sister. He sets the tablet down on the cup holders between them as she starts the car again, psychic senses on high alert for others driving. She's worried that if she can't see them, they can't see her either.

Finley glances at the multitab screen. Junpei left it set on the the same simplistic presentation program she used on her phone to show Junpei that Carlo Kehri and Riko Chelar were anagrams.  

Chet and Ceth are anagrams too.

So what?

Tell your sister to ask him if it's the third letter or the second letter which is five, Junpei reminds her, recalling Cayenne's request. E is the fifth letter in the alphabet.

WHAT the heck are you on about? You think Loki somehow confused Chet with Ceth?

He told Chet he liked those letters. 

So?

I think... Cayenne has been a part of his mind.

"What are you two telepath-babbling about?" Chet can feel them conversing, and is annoyed to have information kept from her.

"Stupid stuff," Finley answers.

Junpei glances back at the vampire. "Chet, if I may ask, why didn't you use your psychic attack against Alex? In your visions of the future, I mean. Do you know why you didn't?"

"She has a thing that blocks me." Chet confirms Junpei's suspicions that she should normally be a powerful enough psychic to overtake Alexandria, if not Loki.

"Okay." Junpei wrings his hands together, frowning. "Then we take it from her. Working together, we should be able to do it."

"Whereas I fail alone." Chet's anxiety is not lessened. This could well be one of the futures she saw. The future where she ends up in the temple, with these two, instead of dead by impalement.

One structure was left out of the invisibility spell. It's a ruined one, though.

The white fence, the whole house, destroyed.

Finley stands here, pondering. The illusion put a sort of fuzzyness in her head, and she didn't notice it much until they left it. What they're seeing now must be reality.

Chet's skin begins to spark in the sun. "Civilization pissed you off so much you tore down your own house," she growls. "Where are you, Lex?"

"Get ouuut," the female voice comes from somewhere behind Junpei. Goosebumps prickle up his spine. "This is my place... mine... get away from me..."

Chet stumbles backwards awkwardly when the attack begins, but Finley and Junpei are ready. Working together, in perfect mental sync, they counter all of their distant cousin's attempts to use the grass and trees and shrubs to harm them.

Stick to what Accalia taught us, Junpei reminds Finley.

I know, I know! she telepathically shoots back.

It's a though fight. If only one of the twins were here, it would have been over already.

"Lex, calm down!" Chet pleads. "It's me!"

Alexandria is sick, and visibly tiring from the fight. Mage battles aren't known for their length. "Here, in daylight!? That's stupid! But if it's you I know what you're here for! Leave now!"

"Not until you take this illusion down."

"I will relish tearing your friends' heads off in front of you..." Alexandria hisses.

"Oh, I don't THINK so," Finley says, panting. Her heart is beating so fast she fears it might explode, and a high-stakes fight is no time for chatter, but she just can't help herself. "I did NOT come all this way to be stopped by a lackey."

Junpei hoped to find Alexandria and Loki not nearly as insane in real life as Chet was leading him to believe they were. But so far, reality is looking every bit as unhinged as the nightmare.

Chet had to wait for a good moment to present itself: a moment when Alexandria is not only distracted, but in a vulnerable position, with no way to see the pounce coming or change tactics and dodge when Chet uses a burst of her vampiric speed to tackle her to the ground.

Chet isn't sure which of Alexandria's bangles is keeping her psychic abilities from affecting her, but once she's wrestled them all off of the dryad's arm, Alexandria's presence registers, familiar and yet so crushingly different and twisted.

Alexandria struggles, but her brain is quickly overloaded with psychic static, and she passes out. Chet allows the dryad woman to fall limply to the ground, then remains crouched on her hands and knees, tense.

"Don't!" Junpei protests, when he sees Chet poised to snap Alexandria's neck.

"Can't you see she's suffering?!" Chet snarls.

"We got what we came here for." Junpei motions to the river behind them. "Look."

The illusion has lifted. In the distance, Chet can see the city.

They are free to proceed.

"You two... did well," Chet decides to say.

"And you smell burned," Finley points out.

"My necklace disappeared," Chet says, after reaching into her pocket to check on it. She was wearing the inconspicuous thing when she met Finley and Junpei in Bridgeport, but normally it's hidden, safe from view. "That's the artifact," she clarifies. "My half of it. Riko has it now."

Finley's hands tighten around the steering wheel. "I'm going as fast as this thing will go..."

"Will Setra disintegrate around us?" Junpei wonders.

"It will burn, and us with it," Chet answers.

And there it is. Remodeled a thousand times in its existence, the structure does not currently look as though it could be the center from which an apocalypse springs.

Finley doesn't bother to park the car properly.

Let me guess, Finley speaks telepathically as they run, Loki's in the middle tall tower thing.

Abruptly, the sound of Chet's footsteps behind them stop. "I can't go with you."

The Archers turn around. "Are you okay?" Junpei asks, fearing too much sun exposure.

She's not physically okay, but this isn't the detail she gives a shit about. She stares warily at the gardens. The second she sets foot in them, it seems, Riko is alerted to her presence. "You changed my fate," Chet says. "Now I will change yours."

"Whaaaat?!" Finley screeches. "If anyone's got a chance at distracting Loki, it's you! You're like his daughter!"

"Exactly. I'm too distracting." Chet chews on her lower lip for a moment. There's no time to explain. She can only hope her sudden suspicion is correct. "Whatever happens, don't get separated."

Finley takes a step towards her, but Chet turns and runs.

Junpei's attention is already back on the tower, from which a blue light now emanates.

The museum is a maze of stairs. And when Finley and Junpei reach the top of the stairs, they see the source of the light from earlier. Every few seconds, the inscriptions on the ceiling pulse with it, and make whispering noises heard not through the ears, but through the twins' spirits.

The odd-shaped indentions Junpei saw in his nightmare were slots for the artifacts. The fading writing may be instructions in a language lost to time. 

The artifacts themselves have been altered. The bits of unreality they contained have been reworked, taken out of their modified states. They are no longer parts of jewellery or weapons or miscellaneous decorations. They're just shapes, and though the shapes probably have meaning... it's another guessing game that only wastes time.

"It's beautiful," Finley breathes. Its magic resonates with something in the core of her being. "It's not an evil machine... it's not supposed to be used to hurt anyone..."

"But that's what it's going to be used for," Junpei says.

There is so much raw power here, but the twins have no idea how to use it.

And there's Loki. Chillin'.

It takes a certain kind of madness to try ending 'the world as we know it', and another level of madness to want to do so alone, in silence, with no witnesses or fanfare.

Loki is dead serious about what he wants to do. Junpei and Finley look at each other, though they didn't need to, to know they sensed the same thing.

Then Loki stands up.

"You kids lost?" he asks.

The Archers have a visceral negative reaction. Nails on a chalkboard, vibrating through their bone marrow. The way this man registers to their psychic senses is a billion miles away from what they can perceive by simple eyesight. They can sense the depth of wrongness he somehow has fused with.

Loki looks at his watch. "She'll have left now," he whispers, then he jerks his thumb out towards the river and calls out to the twins again, "Well then. Get lost, or I will get you lost."

"Loki, what do you think you're doing?" Junpei calls out.

Loki disappears from the precarious ledge, is nowhere for a second, then reappears in front of Junpei, demanding to know how he knows his name.

Finley panics. The wand shows up. She can't think of anything that would be safe to cast on Loki, however. There must be something she can do, something that won't allow the corruption a path to infect her as well, but what is it?

The air begins to grow heavy. Junpei's skin gets too tight. He can see his right arm in front of him slowly splitting, bleeding... Finley! Say it! FINLEY!

Finley gasps at the jolt of pain she experiences when she watches Junpei's arm peel, quickly exposing more and more of what lies beneath the skin, and after a few seconds bone, and the next arm, no no no no no, it's starting there too, as if Junpei were made of very soft material and someone stuck him in front of a high-pressure fan.

 "LOKI!" she yells, piercing the near-silence. There's no other noise but the wind playing through the arches. Finley punctuates her anger by throwing the wand at him. It smacks into Loki's face, then falls to the stone floor. Tink. "Is it the third letter or the second letter which is five?"

And for the first time, Loki turns his full attention to Finley. Really looks at her.

He sees something slightly different from reality.

Just... slightly.

The eyes are the same, the 'freckles' are in the same place, the nose has the same little upturn. She speaks in code. She's afraid for her twin brother.

"Cayenne," Loki whines mournfully. "Don't be disappointed in me. You know why I have to do this. Our universe is broken, there is no fixing it."




I knew it! Junpei is too busy trying to stop his worse-off arm from gushing blood to seem too smug. He mistakes you for his sister! He'll listen to you!

The last letter of one sentence would be the first letter of the next. "T-to what end," Finley stammers. This can't seriously be happening. This can't seriously be the reason she had to be here. "Gaia needs no avenger."

"Revenge?" Loki considers the word. "In a way. But you can't say this isn't for the best." He looks at his watch again. "Ceth was yours... Chet isn't really mine. I lost my daughter a long time ago. Yet this girl, she treated me like I had to be something to her, and. And. And. I thought of you often, Cayenne. You're the only unaltered piece of me, now. The rest has been twisted. I am not who I was."

It hurts it hurts it hurts. Ow! So hard to concentrate! 

"So what? You need to turn this contraption off. I don't want you to use it."

Junpei fights through the owwies and slowly closes up his arm. The blood flows back into where it's supposed to be. He tries not to wonder if this is the best use of his time.

"This is our heritage," Loki is saying, absently, dull. "It's not just 'a contraption'. Can't you feel it calling to you? It can give us power to reshape this broken existence. And I know how. I have spent... lifetimes... gathering information. Learning about our false reality." He places his hands on the wall, convinced he's hallucinating ghosts and there's no physical threat in the room. There's nobody in the room. There never is. Cayenne can't be here. The plaster begins to crack. Once buried lettering, now glowing, begins to show through. "If I'm broken... I know who to blame. And when I destroy the grid, he will come here, and I will kill him."

"Stop!" Finley and Junpei cry out, to no avail.

The glow bleeds out of the writing, overtaking the entire structure. This is not a temple to worship a god, but a place of focus and amplification, where a mortal can become a god. This machine could save the world in the right hands. In another's, it can a world wrecking wave. 

"And the maddening thing is..." Loki frowns. "I feel like this has happened before."

Junpei takes advantage of how Loki doesn't even think he exists... by grabbing those long ears and pulling really hard.

"Be careful!" Finley screams.

Loki's ears duck backwards and he makes a noise like a cat with its tail stepped on. It burns, it burns like nothing else can burn. He can't move. All of Loki's brain functions are overridden with pain.

I already died once, Junpei tries to explain to a terrified Finley. That makes me part of the same cosmic energy that warped him. Maybe I'm too one with it to be hurt. Maybe I can also undo what it's done. In the past it's let me see how things are supposed to be, and heal people...

Supposed to be?

Yes. It's... regeneration. I'd say I'm looking at his genetic code, but it's so much more complicated than that... there's other... code... here. I can't... describe it. Mind and soul, it's all... just... programming.

As the marks on Loki's body recede, the glowing light collected in front of his eyes also fades away.

"So," Junpei observes, "blue eyes, behind there."

Finley is dumbfounded. "Did... did you find a reset button or something?"

Junpei tilts his head. "I dunno?"

The chaos is purged, or however they'll tell this story in the generations to come. The experience leaves Loki mentally fried, as he tries to come to grips with what's happened.

Junpei stares curiously at what's left behind. The ears of course, and the eyes. The eyes are the same color as they were before the experiments altered this man, but something about them is just so inhuman now. Junpei finds them horribly unsettling. "Sorry... I apparently don't know how to fix those."

Junpei tilts Loki's face up a bit. "Hello? You're not corruption insane anymore, right? You're not compelled to destroy civilization anymore, right?"

"Uhmmm. Maybe we should just not touch him." Finley crouches down. "Wow... his eyes are creepy. But his face is humanish otherwise."

"Maybe elves don't look that much different. Or the scientists didn't get everything right. Anyway I don't think he has telekinesis anymore. It should be back to being, uh, latent."

"Please turn back to normal now, Junpei. Please."

Junpei returns to normal and smiles brightly. "Better?"

The temple of barely-fathomable power continues to glow around them, and the villain of the story is just laying there, unrestrained, but Finley takes the time to smile back. "Much."

"So what do we do with Loki?"

"Do you think he's still dangerous?"

"Relative to how he was ten minutes ago, or relative to normal people?"

"Forget it. Let's leave this to Chet."

"Sounds like a plan."

At once, both Archers look at the ceiling.

"...Yeah. Not leaving that to Chet," Finley amends.

"At least not all of it," Junpei agrees.

"Alright then." Finley stands up, preparing to blow the artifacts in the ceiling to hell. "Sorry, heritage."

A section of the surreal shapes on the ceiling explode into a bunch of little pieces! They make a noise when they're broken. A hopelessly mixed up, indecipherable noise. Finley's blast radius didn't catch all of them at once, but a good lot of them fall down like sharp, chunky confetti.

Then, just as quickly, they liquify and reform. And reaffix themselves to the ceiling.

Finley's nose scrunches up. "Yeah... why did I think that would work?"

Junpei hops up on the banister, carefully plucks two out of place, and pockets them. "Guess this is the best we can do."

"Guard them with our lives? Find someone who can?"

 "Or make sure no one knows we stole them?"

"Hey... that's the one, isn't it?"

"Infractus Mens," Junpei confirms. "We should give it... a nickname."

After a moment, the machine recognizes that a piece has been taken, and the walls cease to glow. Finley feels the surge of power wash over her like a wave, then it's gone, returned to the universe. "Let's not and say we did?"

"I kind of wish I knew how to use it." Junpei doesn't feel like they can take any of the other artifacts, because they simply don't know how dangerous they are.

"Yeah. I know." Finley plants her hands on her hips. "Guess there's no way we can make him forget we took it, if we don't know how to use it."

Junpei steps down from the bannister and begins casually walking down the stairs.

"Wait!" Finley cries out, too loud in the stillness.

Her brother looks at her.

"Can... I mean... should we really just leave him here? With all these other presumably dangerous artifacts?"

Junpei glances at Loki, who hasn't moved, then stares past him at the sands on the horizon. Perhaps this would be easier if Loki shook himself awake and said 'where am I?', but Junpei knows that's not going to happen. Loki knows where he is, why he's here, and what he's done to get here. How much of it was the illness, and how much of it was the person behind the illness? It could be incredibly naive, to simply walk away. On the other hand, what are they supposed to do? "Letting Chet take over from here was your idea," Junpei reminds Finley. "We should go fetch her."

Finley nods weakly. Despite their psychic bond, she's on a different page, struggling with how the intense anger, or fear, or whatever Loki made her feel, hit her like a truck out of thin air the second she saw him, and now it's just gone. Junpei fixed it. Junpei cured the corruption. Somehow. "He's not moving."

"Do you want him to?"

Finley joins him on the stairs. "I guess not..."

They've done what they were asked to do. They stopped the end of the world. They flee the scene, now.

They find Chet collapsed in some imperfect shade. Her eyes are wide and wild, and with one hand she's clawing at the sandy dirt. Raking it, slowly, repetitively. Five lines, one for each finger, grow deeper in the earth with each passing moment. She's shaking. "It was right here," she mumbles. "It was right here. I couldn't have lost it."

"Looking for this?" Junpei takes the time machine prototype out from one of his cargo pants pockets.

Chet sits up quickly, jaw dropped. She reaches for it, only for Junpei to hold it just out of her reach. Her expression, now... she looks like she might just kill him. "Give it to me," she rasps.

"I thought so." Junpei presses his left fist against a different pocket, the one Finley saw him place the Infractus Mens in, only hard enough to break it. It makes a peculiar noise when it breaks and reforms.

The important thing is, the artifact shattered, even if it didn't stay shattered, and the spell was broken.

Chet blinks. She immediately looks more like herself. "Junpei? Are you really here?"

Junpei smiles. "I took the device from you when you were sleeping in the back seat."

Chet tilts her head. Even this small movement causes her whole body to wobble. "This is why I normally don't let anyone know about it." She tries to ask if they stopped Riko, but they must have. Riko must be dead. She can't ask. Her mouth won't work, it won't let her ask.

Junpei holds the time machine out to her. It's so simplistic, he marvels. Like a little hockey puck. Chet snatches it out of his hand.

"What date is it set to?" he asks calmly.

Chet quirks an eyebrow, and examines it. What she finds disturbs her. "Did you change this?"

"No."

Chet cusses.

"I remembered what Alexandria told you," Junpei explains. "She said he knew where you'd be safe. But at some point I realized it wasn't a where, it was a when. Loki didn't have it in him to kill you. But this would have been a fate worse than death. Far into the future, you would have been the last survivor on an empty world."

"He had this all planned out then!" Finley shudders. "Right to the second. We saw him up there, checking his watch." She'll have left now, Loki said, referring to Chet. But Chet hadn't actually left, she wasn't able to time-jump because Junpei had stolen her means to do so. Unable to complete the commanded action, Chet was slipping into psychosis. "And you had no idea you were gonna use it, huh? At some point, Loki used the Infractus Mens on you, to command you to use it."

Chet lowers her head. "I don't know why he hated me so much."

"I don't think it was hatred," Junpei says. "I think he was... warped."

If Chet hadn't come to Setra in the car with them, Junpei would not have had the chance to steal the time machine. "Did you want me to come with you two... because you wanted to save me?"

Junpei blinks. "Well, yeah," he says, as if it should be obvious. "It would have been messed up let you be taken away from everyone you love."

Chet stands up without warning and pulls Junpei into a hug. "You're alive."

"Yeah, no thanks to you," Finley growls.

Junpei isn't sure if he wants to return the hug or not, but after a moment he pats Chet's back. "Why did you run away?"

"Because in every vision I had, you died." Chet is toneless. It doesn't matter. There was no way to share that information without it sounding callous. "Then, just before we entered the building, I realized why. You see, I was there, even when I wasn't." Her voice becomes more emphasized, more emotional. "There was no way I could let this play out on its own! In every scenario, I was spying on you two, wondering if there would be a point I could step in and help. Every time you two made it to the temple... that meant I was alive. You fought Lex instead of me. Whether I was with you or hiding somewhere safe, where you couldn't see me. I was there. And as soon as I stepped onto temple grounds, Loki knew I was there. He killed you, Junpei, just to... just to send me a message."

"So you thought he'd pay less attention to us, if you weren't there?" Junpei muses.

 Finley looks sick. "There goes my theory that Junpei healing him was actually just one of Loki's contingency plans."

Chet releases Junpei. "What?"

Finley shrugs. "The win-win scenario? It's what your power IS. The key isn't to choose a path that leads to winning, the key is to choose a path from which every possible outcome is a win. You didn't realize Junpei had this rule-breaking healing power, but maybe Loki saw it, when he was manipulating your visions and observing them for his own end."

"I don't think Loki wanted to be healed." Junpei picks a stray lock of hair away from his eyes. He has, thus far, not appeared bothered by his murder that didn't happen. "And if it's true, why would he kill me? You're not supposed to let your healer die."

"Remember, Chet showed us to Zoke once, and Zoke still forgot what we looked like and crystallized the fluid in your kidney?"

 "Oh. Yeah. I guess Loki wouldn't have recognized me after so long."

"He was also more insane as time progressed," Finley points out. 

"I really don't think I was ever part of his plan," Junpei insists.

"What do you mean, you healed him?" Chet demands. "Finley was supposed to kill him."

Junpei turns to Chet and begins the explanation of how he was able to remove the corruption.

Chet can sense Junpei's sincerity. Not only that, he's left his mind open to her, so she's getting psychic images of exactly what went down in the temple. Junpei is innocently transparent, or at least that's what she thought, until he stole the time device. Apparently he's just as capable of being sneaky as she is. Still, his intentions didn't change. He was only trying to help. And he saved her. "That's... that's..." After stammering stupidly for a moment, the vampire recomposes herself, and stares seriously into his eyes. He frowns and looks away. "Listen, Junpei. Don't ever let anyone know you did this."

"Then how are you going to explain Loki being healed?" Junpei worries. "To the others, I mean."

"Do not worry about that." Chet looks terrible. Her lips are cracked and dry. "I've... I've got to go."

Finley folds her arms. "You mean in the car, right? Because one more dash through the desert, and I think you'll crumble to dust."

The Archers drive Chet to the temple, and do not follow her when she goes inside. In fact, as soon as the vampire is safely indoors, Finley insists they drive away. Immediately.

Chet doesn't care. She watches the vehicle take off down the road, then begins searching for Riko, or Loki, or whoever he really is. He is Riko to her.

She doesn't find him.

Chet sighs. "Where have you gone now?"

The ceiling, she notices, is empty.

"But my dreams, they aren't as empty, as my conscience seems to be," Junpei sings along to the radio while Finley puts as much distance between them and Chet and Setra as possible.

"I guess this stupid car is ours now," Finley says. "We can't exactly take it back to Moonlight Falls."

Junpei shrugs. He's examining Alexandria's bracelet. When they left Chet at the temple, this was all he asked for. It's a psychic-blocker, and very specialized, attuned to just one person. Perhaps studying it would be a good idea. 

"So you foiled my destiny," Finley says. "I was supposed to push Loki off the building. Right?"

"I don't know, maybe? Loki can teleport. Would pushing him off a building inconvenience him all that much?"

"Good point!" Her tone is light-hearted. The seriousness of that scenario has refused to sink in. "Now stop thinking about it, because you're making me think about it."

"It wasn't your destiny, anyway. It was just a 'maybe'."

"I know that! I just like the word 'destiny'. It's very dramatic."

"We have to go back," Junpei says quietly.

"What?" Finley frowns. "Oh... oh... aw, dammit..."

They went back to heal Alexandria.

They found her still unconscious, and were gone by the time she woke.

In the following days, Chet recovers from the sun exposure.

"I'm fine," she insists. "Really."

Kyra ignores the lies. "Zoke, my job would be a lot easier if you weren't hovering."

"I'm starting to think we're cursed," Finley sighs. From where she leans against the side of a building, she watches people cross the street at the crosswalk nearby.

Kyra's bulky car sputtered and died a slow death before they could get all the way home. Finley and Junpei checked the engine... only to find it was most definitely not a traditional engine.

"I think it runs on magic," is Junpei's analysis. He noticed some odd, smooth panels, placed his right hand over one of them, and recalled the sparks Kyra generated between her fingers.

"So nobody around here is going to know how to fix it."

It was just psychokinetic energy making Loki's hair stand up every which way. It's flat and listless now.

"I thought I would find you here, if I waited long enough." Chet holds his wrist in a crushing grip. He isn't concerned about being caught, but why would he be? Escape is always easy for him. There are some words she wants to have with him, but they all slip her mind, momentarily, as she studies his face. It is him, isn't it? Cleaned up? Unscarred? He looks so different. Her psychic senses tell her it's Riko, but it's not the same wildly unstable Riko she knew. "You haven't aged a day," she growls. "You look younger than me."

Loki meets her gaze easily. "Don't let appearances fool you. I'm not young or innocent."

"What did you do with the artifacts?" she demands.

"Don't worry about them." He smiles awkwardly. "How are you? This probably means nothing to you, but I'm proud of you. Thank you, for stopping me. I... I had some messed up ideas."

Chet releases him, disgusted. "Yes. I know. That's why I had to fucking stop you."

"Good thing you did. Now that I have the benefit of clarity, I don't think my plan was going to work."

"You used me, forced me to have visions, read my mind to come up with your plan, then wiped it..."

"Yes."

"Did you know I would try to stop you?"

"Yes, and I took precautions. You got around them, though. You sent someone else after me."

"You didn't know about Junpei or Finley?"

He doesn't say anything, but looks a little confused.

"What about the time machine, then? Why did you mind-control me to use it? Were you trying to punish me?!"

That's possible. The memory of using the Infractus Mens on Chet is there, but looking at it as like staring at something submerged underwater. The image is distorted. There's a lot of anger in it. Maybe it was some sick punishment for failure. Loki winces. "At some point, when you were still small, I knew it'd be a good idea to keep you close. I knew that with the corruption doing things to my mind, and what with my psychometric knowledge, I'd be very dangerous. And a disagreeing precog would be unlikely to let me get away with anything too bad."

Chet glare softens into merely a frown. "I was... your self-sabotage?"

Loki appears genuinely sad. "If it makes you feel any better, I love you like a daughter." 

"...I know that..."

"But your real father's still a better role model. Are you too old for role models now? Yes, of course you are. What I mean is, your real father was an alright person, meanwhile I should be on trial for war crimes. But people like me don't get trials. We get executed in secret by fairies. So if it's all the same to you-"

"You'll be teleporting away like a jackass," she finishes his sentence for him. "So why were you here in the first place?"

"To see you."

Chet keeps her arms folded. She fights to keep the tears from welling up in her eyes, to keep her face neutral or, failing that, angry. She considers attacking him, dragging him back to the mages in the town. She has the feeling she would fail. "You don't have to run. You'd be safe here, in Moonlight Falls."

Loki's ears tilt backwards for a moment. Disapproving. "Oh, Chet. All the effort you put into understanding me and stopping me, and you never did actually understand what I was trying to do. I can't make you understand. It would be too cruel."

Chet's cheeks feel warm. She must be crying. It's unsettling and strange. It's like losing containment in the eyes. "Please..."

"No." Loki hugs her gently. "You stay here."

Like I told you to, when you were little, she can hear him almost say it but he doesn't say it, he leaves it unsaid in the silence that divides them.

If she'd have stayed with Zoke when Loki first brought her here, none of this would have happened. Alexandria would have killed Loki, without the small child there to protest. Chet would have been taken in by a vampire family. Finley and Junpei would not have been sought out to prevent mass destruction.

"Some things are predestined," Loki says cryptically. "And this is where you belong." 

Then he lets go of the redheaded vampire and disappears. 

Finley and Junpei take trains until they reach Hidden Springs. Junpei pauses in the front lawn to throw his arms up in the air happily. "Yeeeah home!"

Finley runs for the door. "Woo!"

"Mom's gonna slap us across the face!"

"Stop ruining it!"










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Etc.: This is the song that was playing in the car.

This story arc is complete, but for better or for worse this blog hasn't seen the last of Loki, or the Setran artifacts. I'm editing in a note here to mention that the meaning behind some of Loki / Riko's dialogue is less fuzzy if you've read my Goldbeards RLC.