Re: Intense Struggle! (Round 6 - Frozen Destinies)
02-10-2012, 02:22 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.
It was a good three minutes before Aegis recognized the irony. Had he really said “nothing is set in stone?” He took a look around him. The world he’d just been, uh, brought to had been fairly simple, so it stood to reason that that hundred-story insectoid edifice rising out of the earth came from one of the other... destiny... whatevers. The delicacy of the structure’s integrity had clearly suffered a bit from being petrified, so there was a bit of a worrying lean to the whole building, but if he could make it near enough to the top he could get a better view of the whole area, and maybe find...
Well, that was the question. If Clara was Bae and Aph was still Aph, Aegis supposed he was on his own now. If he saw one of them, should he go down there and take a shot at negotiating? Or should he go down there and pick a fight? Or should he just hide up atop the building and hope the females killed each other before he starved to death? He supposed he could figure that out when the time came, but he’d rather be the one in the position to make the choice.
The door to the building had no apparent knob or handle (one would guess that some technology or magic in the door would have caused it to slide open automatically) but with a couple of well-placed punches Aegis was able to create a couple. The lobby, inside, looked... composed somehow, like all the statue-people had been placed for pure aesthetic purposes. The mother was pulling on her daughter’s hand, the exasperation of the one locked in battle against the temper tantrum of the other; the receptionist covered in wires, connected by the arteries in his wrists to the desk and by the base of his spine to the device behind him; he felt as though through this series of still images he could deduce everything there was to know about this world, given enough time. The troll throwing a princess over its shoulder over by the water cooler, he assumed to be incidental.
Aegis, dimly aware of the foreign thoughts flitting through his head, wished he had ever picked up some sort of meditative trick that would shut him out. As it was, they called out for him to finish the things they had started so long ago: he at once felt the urge to figure out these last four clues to today’s cryptic cubeword, was assured that if he were to give Shiel from down the hall a friendly slap on the ass just once she would be too embarrassed or flattered to call him out on it, and was directed to the nearest men’s room if you would be so kind. The booming voice of a mechanical spirit down the hall begged him in a language with two letters for a little help crunching these numbers, error code infinity minus one. Luckily, these outliers were drowned out by a cacophony of simpler thoughts: everyone had to get to work, and work was upstairs.
Aided by the spirits, Aegis figured out what and where the elevators were and that they wouldn’t do him a whole lot of good. The old-fashioned stairwell was a vestigial organ, a steep and claustrophobic vertical tunnel for use only in gravitational emergencies, whatever that entailed (even the spirits weren’t sure) but it was his only way to get upstairs and find Clara and Aph and his cubicle and the hell away from this horribly impolite troll.
There was a man frozen on the staircase, a tear perpetually halfway down his cheek. His spirit was more coy than the others, who, sensing its shyness, fled back to their own bodies for the time being. Aegis, feeling a moment of kinship with the statue and tired as hell from dragging these gauntlets up twenty-three flights of stairs, sat down next to him. The neglected staircase could barely hold the two of them side-by-side, and the moment was oddly intimate.
Aegis knew the drill by now and expected that any moment he would be sharing his mind with this man, but after a few seconds of catching his breath he only felt more alone than ever. At least Sora had Karel to, if not to talk with than at least to be with, but Aegis was all on his own, and how can I hold this information all to myself? He decided to visit Mom in the hospital—no, she had enough on her plate, and she was so innocent and optimistic in spite of everything and shouldn’t have to go through this—no, he needed to talk to Sora, really talk to him, they shouldn’t have parted ways the way they had. They were two of maybe ten people in the world who had any idea what was coming, that didn’t think this was just going to be another day—he needed to talk to Sora. Would they even let him in on the top floor, looking the way he did? Well, if they told him he couldn’t come in he’d come in anyway and if they called security, he had his gauntlets.
The top floor was cold and breezy—because even the air was still here, the rest of the building had retained a comfortable room temperature, but a single open window near the exit to the stairwell had brought a chill in here. The window was large enough for a man to squeeze through and lo, a man in a bronze jumpsuit was frozen halfway through the act of crawling out onto the ledge outside.
Aegis maneuvered past the statue out onto the ledge, being careful not to upset his position. He was quite certain he didn’t want to knock the man back into the office, and he certainly didn’t want to... Aegis looked down below. The three competing skylines were nauseating to look at, like a bad casserole, and the absolute stillness made it worse. Aegis scanned for the slightest sign of movement, and found one.
“Clara!” he shouted. There was no real wind to carry the words away—only a faint afterthought of a wind, as though the elements themselves had spirits (and in one of the other worlds, maybe they did), so they carried straight to their destination, prompting the distant witch (or was it only Bae, pretending to be the witch? did it matter?) to look up at him.
”...Aegis?” came the uncertain reply. ”What are you doing up there?”
Aegis almost told her. He almost told her everything he had seen the night previous, but he knew she’d think he was just possessed by a spirit and none of it would matter anyway. She was better off not knowing. And whether her concern was genuine or not, all that matters was that someone was here with him. Someone was there to bear witness. That made it better somehow.
“Clara, I’m sorry,” he said, taking a step towards the edge.
* * * * *
Well, it would not do to let Aegis go jumping off of buildings; the boy was the only hope for companionship or alliance Clara could hope to find in this battle. Besides, his heart seemed to be in the right place, although it seemed likely that he was currently renting that place out to something restless and, to play on words a bit, possessive.
Unfortunately, Clara had never been very good at talking people down when they had worked themselves up into a state; though most of the people who knew her regarded her as wise and kindly and all that, they were also dimly aware that she was not technically alive and therefore distrusted her capacity for empathy. And when malevolent spirits get involved of course that complicates things even further. Still, she had to give it a go. “Don’t jump,” she commanded, having heard somewhere that in these situations it was best to be firm and unambiguous, “Back off the ledge. When you back down off the ledge, these feelings will pass.” Clara was having difficulties skirting the line between making herself heard and shouting, so she mumbled a quick voice-amplification incantation, well aware of the dangers of attracting Aph’s attention at a moment like this.
Aegis didn’t seem to have any qualms with shouting off the rooftops at the top of his lungs. ”It never passes,” he cried. ”I’ve always felt like this. My heart is frozen.”
”Oh, don’t you worry about that,” urged Clara. “It’s half-likely that we’ll find a way to fix this world, if you don’t kill Aegis here.”
”Don’t talk about me like I’m not here!” shouted Aegis, taking another step towards the edge.
This wasn’t going well. Clara leaned on the arm of a frozen woman who, apparently, had noticed the man on the ledge and was pointing at him when... when whatever happened had happened. She’d been walking towards the building, and in her other hand she held two sandwich bags... hmm. Maybe it was time for a shot in the dark.
“Stay up there just one minute, Aegis! There’s something I need to take care of first.” Clara slipped the silver wedding band off of the woman’s finger and looked on the inside for an inscription. No luck. She’d need to risk another spell, a more intimate one, and risk a pretty high chance of another painful backfire.
”Ma’am, the population of my world alone is nine billion sapients. The average human breath is about half a liter of air... imagine 4.5 gigaliters of inhaled breaths that will never be released.” The poor boy simply was not himself. Clara struck the ring with the tip of her fingernail and began to hum, hoping with her meager vocal talents to harmonize with the ringing sound the ring was making. I need to die, Clara. It’s my destiny.”
The ring began to whisper to Clara. “Yes, well,” do you sora oxford-knott take “What would Karel think of this?”
That shut him up for a few seconds. When Aegis spoke next, it was faintly enough that Clara couldn’t hear. “You’re going to have to speak up!” she called back up to him.
”I asked: What. The fuck! Do you know about Karel!?”
”What? You mean you haven’t seen her down here the whole time? It looks like she was bringing you a spot of luncheon.”
Aegis leaned over the edge—more than made Clara comfortable, especially with those big gauntlets of his weighing him down—and, though unable to see clearly, she imagined him squinting. ”My wife,” he said. ”Let me talk to her. Let me talk to Karel.”
Clara considered this. “Alright,” she said. You come down here—using the stairs, of course—and we’ll work out some way to make that happen. I’m a magician of some ability, er, as you well know, Aegis, and have some experience in these matters. Just don’t do anything rash.” Clara was beginning to wonder if this was really the best use of her time. She felt sorry for the poor ghost—not to mention Aegis, who hadn’t wanted any of this—but knew that she didn’t have the time or resources to help all these spirits on a case-by-case basis.
”Don’t be thick,” said Aegis. ”There’s no such thing as magic.” This was probably about the silliest, stupidest thing Clara had ever heard, but hey, different strokes for different planes of existence. ”Just cut out whatever it is you’re doing that’s keeping my wife out of your mind. I need to talk to her. Please.”
Clara made a dissatisfied clicking noise. There was a line, after all. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t do that, Aegis.”
Aegis knelt down and gripped the ledge with his gauntlets. ”Let me talk to my wife now,” he screamed, ”Or I will throw your friend right off this roof and try to hit you when I land! Do you understand me, hag?”
Clara took a step back from the building and considered her options. They were few. “Oh, dear,” she mumbled to herself, reluctantly gesturing away her spirit ward.
All of a sudden, the world got a whole lot more crowded for Clara Jungfrau.
* * * * *
Aph was learning.
Amongst the visitors to the frozen world, the nymph was becoming the most popular amongst the restless spirits, likely because she experienced things more... intensely than the jaded Aegis or the weathered Clara. Designed body and soul to be a receptor of pure love, inverted into hate and disgust and filtered through the mind of a slightly deranged Gothloli twilight sprite, she became the perfect receptor for dozens of vengeful poltergeists with a bone to pick.
The end result was the same; Aph killed a lot of statues. The difference was what was going on inside her head, where her usual litany of death death death was becoming a little more elaborate. Death, she thought, To the stuck-up asshole in the suit-and-tie that probably cost more than my car. Death! to the dwarf looking at me out of the corner of his eye, like we don’t all know what you’re up to, and death to you, Marla, I wish Aust were still here because he’d love to see this. Empowered by the spirits, by their hate, by the vivid imagination of every murderous fantasy these poor bastards had ever held, Aph found new joy in cutting up these obstensibly-lifeless statues. Death, bitch, you used to love it when I got rough with you; death to the prick in the hovercycle, you think you own the road? Death to everyone in the post office, just on principle. The postal service lasted the nymph a good long while, and she savored the kills; she loved the way her tentacles felt around their throats and she loved the sound they made when they dropped to the floor. For a brief moment she found herself alone. She felt giddy, she felt dizzy, she felt hungover, she felt angelically guilty, she felt everything at once for about fifteen seconds before it all subsided to a comfortable, familiar, dull rage. She didn’t throw up.
Withdrawal symptoms were already kicking in by the time she fled the post office and sought out somewhere with a higher population density. There were two apartment buildings coexisting in the same space, and Aph figured that would have to do; as soon as she opened the door the feelings resumed, dozens of them at once, grudges and itches and secrets and cancers, and she resumed her unholy communion. Death death death, we had a moment there for a minute by the laundry machines but you never called, death to you for considering it acceptable behavior to blast Accidentally In Love at three in the morning and I have a meeting the next day, and death to both of us because I used to love you so damn much before you got involved with those fucking Virtuals, death because it’s easier to possess an evil fairy woman to kill you than it is to make rent this month, death to everyone on this floor because nobody loves me so why the hell should I keep you around? And a very special death to Mr. Tall-Dark-and-Handsome lives-across-the-hall shares-my-tastes-in-music subscribes-to-six-newspapers never-noticed-me will-never-notice-me, I love you, please die. When they were all dead Aph went out a window instead of throwing up and she felt fine.
Outside the window was a statue of something Aph had never seen before or anything like it and it had a lot of heads and she didn’t know where she should start when it came to killing it. It had lion bits and eagle bits and snake bits and goat bits and she assumed the correct word was “chimera” or some variant thereof. Standing frozen before it there was a half-dressed maybe-ten-year-old boy, patting it lightly on the nose.
Aph felt their spirits enter her and the first spirit said I love you and the other spirit said I love you and Aph threw up and passed out.
There was a few seconds of comfortable silence before spacetime suddenly rose from its seat, ran into the bathroom and puked up seven mysterious figures in spacesuits. Without any conscious and sentient organisms around to appreciate the weirdness of the moment, it seemed almost calm.
The shortest figure, his spacesuit stretched to accomodate the shape of a top hat, broke the calm by examining his instruments and exclaiming, “Faith ‘n buggery, Non-Infringers! Our return coordinates’ve been scrambled in transit! Looks like the luck o’ the Irish has finally run out fer us!”
“Maybe not, Iota McTaggart,” said the tallest figure, whose spacesuit’s long arms led to strangely-misshapen gloves. “There’s always hope. Are we clear to take off our helmets?”
“Hang on, Crazyman Dragonarms,” said the four identical figures, in perfect synchronicity. “X. is picking up some unusual spectral activity.” One of the four quadruplets stepped out of line and spoke by himself, gesturing portentiously. “By condensing the spectrons in the air, I should be able to make the disturbance visible.” As he spoke, the hundreds of spirits floating through the air began emitting a faint light in the visible spectrum. Crazyman Dragonarms recoiled.
The last figure stepped forwards and took off his helmet, revealing a clunky metal fascimile of a human head. “Thanks, PAX/Tom,” emanated the static-filled voice from the robot’s large, gaping mouth-opening. “But these souls are no match for XMO, the Robot Who Sucks!” XMO proved the truth of his words with a single mighty inhalation, which sucked all of the nearby ghosts through his mouth-opening into his iron lung. The mouth clamped shut.
“What happened here?” asked PAX/Tom, all of them looking around as though expecting an answer from each other.
“I’ll tell you what happened,” grumbled Crazyman Dragonarms, looking at the chimera, the boy, and Aph lying on the ground. “Someone—or something—has been infringing on the multiverse. And it’s up to us to find out who... or whom.”
Aph coughed and sputtered a bit, giving Iota McTaggart quite the shock. “Well wouldja look at that?” exclaimed the leprechaun. “I’d hazard a guess this one isn’t one of the natives. And here she is unconscious at our feet! Maybe me luck’s gone ‘round the horseshoe yet again!”
PAX/Tom lifted the nymph up, each taking one arm. “When she awakens, we can interrogate her,” they all agreed. “We’ll want to tie her up beforehand.”
“Be careful,” cautioned XMO. “We have no idea what she’s capable of. I’m processing data from all the souls I inhaled, but none of them have any idea what caused this. For all we know, it could be her.”
Nodding sagely as a group, the Non-Infringers took their prisoner and their equipment and walked off towards what looked to be the most populated area within sight, each mentally preparing himself for what was sure to be their greatest adventure yet.
It was a good three minutes before Aegis recognized the irony. Had he really said “nothing is set in stone?” He took a look around him. The world he’d just been, uh, brought to had been fairly simple, so it stood to reason that that hundred-story insectoid edifice rising out of the earth came from one of the other... destiny... whatevers. The delicacy of the structure’s integrity had clearly suffered a bit from being petrified, so there was a bit of a worrying lean to the whole building, but if he could make it near enough to the top he could get a better view of the whole area, and maybe find...
Well, that was the question. If Clara was Bae and Aph was still Aph, Aegis supposed he was on his own now. If he saw one of them, should he go down there and take a shot at negotiating? Or should he go down there and pick a fight? Or should he just hide up atop the building and hope the females killed each other before he starved to death? He supposed he could figure that out when the time came, but he’d rather be the one in the position to make the choice.
The door to the building had no apparent knob or handle (one would guess that some technology or magic in the door would have caused it to slide open automatically) but with a couple of well-placed punches Aegis was able to create a couple. The lobby, inside, looked... composed somehow, like all the statue-people had been placed for pure aesthetic purposes. The mother was pulling on her daughter’s hand, the exasperation of the one locked in battle against the temper tantrum of the other; the receptionist covered in wires, connected by the arteries in his wrists to the desk and by the base of his spine to the device behind him; he felt as though through this series of still images he could deduce everything there was to know about this world, given enough time. The troll throwing a princess over its shoulder over by the water cooler, he assumed to be incidental.
Aegis, dimly aware of the foreign thoughts flitting through his head, wished he had ever picked up some sort of meditative trick that would shut him out. As it was, they called out for him to finish the things they had started so long ago: he at once felt the urge to figure out these last four clues to today’s cryptic cubeword, was assured that if he were to give Shiel from down the hall a friendly slap on the ass just once she would be too embarrassed or flattered to call him out on it, and was directed to the nearest men’s room if you would be so kind. The booming voice of a mechanical spirit down the hall begged him in a language with two letters for a little help crunching these numbers, error code infinity minus one. Luckily, these outliers were drowned out by a cacophony of simpler thoughts: everyone had to get to work, and work was upstairs.
Aided by the spirits, Aegis figured out what and where the elevators were and that they wouldn’t do him a whole lot of good. The old-fashioned stairwell was a vestigial organ, a steep and claustrophobic vertical tunnel for use only in gravitational emergencies, whatever that entailed (even the spirits weren’t sure) but it was his only way to get upstairs and find Clara and Aph and his cubicle and the hell away from this horribly impolite troll.
There was a man frozen on the staircase, a tear perpetually halfway down his cheek. His spirit was more coy than the others, who, sensing its shyness, fled back to their own bodies for the time being. Aegis, feeling a moment of kinship with the statue and tired as hell from dragging these gauntlets up twenty-three flights of stairs, sat down next to him. The neglected staircase could barely hold the two of them side-by-side, and the moment was oddly intimate.
Aegis knew the drill by now and expected that any moment he would be sharing his mind with this man, but after a few seconds of catching his breath he only felt more alone than ever. At least Sora had Karel to, if not to talk with than at least to be with, but Aegis was all on his own, and how can I hold this information all to myself? He decided to visit Mom in the hospital—no, she had enough on her plate, and she was so innocent and optimistic in spite of everything and shouldn’t have to go through this—no, he needed to talk to Sora, really talk to him, they shouldn’t have parted ways the way they had. They were two of maybe ten people in the world who had any idea what was coming, that didn’t think this was just going to be another day—he needed to talk to Sora. Would they even let him in on the top floor, looking the way he did? Well, if they told him he couldn’t come in he’d come in anyway and if they called security, he had his gauntlets.
The top floor was cold and breezy—because even the air was still here, the rest of the building had retained a comfortable room temperature, but a single open window near the exit to the stairwell had brought a chill in here. The window was large enough for a man to squeeze through and lo, a man in a bronze jumpsuit was frozen halfway through the act of crawling out onto the ledge outside.
Aegis maneuvered past the statue out onto the ledge, being careful not to upset his position. He was quite certain he didn’t want to knock the man back into the office, and he certainly didn’t want to... Aegis looked down below. The three competing skylines were nauseating to look at, like a bad casserole, and the absolute stillness made it worse. Aegis scanned for the slightest sign of movement, and found one.
“Clara!” he shouted. There was no real wind to carry the words away—only a faint afterthought of a wind, as though the elements themselves had spirits (and in one of the other worlds, maybe they did), so they carried straight to their destination, prompting the distant witch (or was it only Bae, pretending to be the witch? did it matter?) to look up at him.
”...Aegis?” came the uncertain reply. ”What are you doing up there?”
Aegis almost told her. He almost told her everything he had seen the night previous, but he knew she’d think he was just possessed by a spirit and none of it would matter anyway. She was better off not knowing. And whether her concern was genuine or not, all that matters was that someone was here with him. Someone was there to bear witness. That made it better somehow.
“Clara, I’m sorry,” he said, taking a step towards the edge.
* * * * *
Well, it would not do to let Aegis go jumping off of buildings; the boy was the only hope for companionship or alliance Clara could hope to find in this battle. Besides, his heart seemed to be in the right place, although it seemed likely that he was currently renting that place out to something restless and, to play on words a bit, possessive.
Unfortunately, Clara had never been very good at talking people down when they had worked themselves up into a state; though most of the people who knew her regarded her as wise and kindly and all that, they were also dimly aware that she was not technically alive and therefore distrusted her capacity for empathy. And when malevolent spirits get involved of course that complicates things even further. Still, she had to give it a go. “Don’t jump,” she commanded, having heard somewhere that in these situations it was best to be firm and unambiguous, “Back off the ledge. When you back down off the ledge, these feelings will pass.” Clara was having difficulties skirting the line between making herself heard and shouting, so she mumbled a quick voice-amplification incantation, well aware of the dangers of attracting Aph’s attention at a moment like this.
Aegis didn’t seem to have any qualms with shouting off the rooftops at the top of his lungs. ”It never passes,” he cried. ”I’ve always felt like this. My heart is frozen.”
”Oh, don’t you worry about that,” urged Clara. “It’s half-likely that we’ll find a way to fix this world, if you don’t kill Aegis here.”
”Don’t talk about me like I’m not here!” shouted Aegis, taking another step towards the edge.
This wasn’t going well. Clara leaned on the arm of a frozen woman who, apparently, had noticed the man on the ledge and was pointing at him when... when whatever happened had happened. She’d been walking towards the building, and in her other hand she held two sandwich bags... hmm. Maybe it was time for a shot in the dark.
“Stay up there just one minute, Aegis! There’s something I need to take care of first.” Clara slipped the silver wedding band off of the woman’s finger and looked on the inside for an inscription. No luck. She’d need to risk another spell, a more intimate one, and risk a pretty high chance of another painful backfire.
”Ma’am, the population of my world alone is nine billion sapients. The average human breath is about half a liter of air... imagine 4.5 gigaliters of inhaled breaths that will never be released.” The poor boy simply was not himself. Clara struck the ring with the tip of her fingernail and began to hum, hoping with her meager vocal talents to harmonize with the ringing sound the ring was making. I need to die, Clara. It’s my destiny.”
The ring began to whisper to Clara. “Yes, well,” do you sora oxford-knott take “What would Karel think of this?”
That shut him up for a few seconds. When Aegis spoke next, it was faintly enough that Clara couldn’t hear. “You’re going to have to speak up!” she called back up to him.
”I asked: What. The fuck! Do you know about Karel!?”
”What? You mean you haven’t seen her down here the whole time? It looks like she was bringing you a spot of luncheon.”
Aegis leaned over the edge—more than made Clara comfortable, especially with those big gauntlets of his weighing him down—and, though unable to see clearly, she imagined him squinting. ”My wife,” he said. ”Let me talk to her. Let me talk to Karel.”
Clara considered this. “Alright,” she said. You come down here—using the stairs, of course—and we’ll work out some way to make that happen. I’m a magician of some ability, er, as you well know, Aegis, and have some experience in these matters. Just don’t do anything rash.” Clara was beginning to wonder if this was really the best use of her time. She felt sorry for the poor ghost—not to mention Aegis, who hadn’t wanted any of this—but knew that she didn’t have the time or resources to help all these spirits on a case-by-case basis.
”Don’t be thick,” said Aegis. ”There’s no such thing as magic.” This was probably about the silliest, stupidest thing Clara had ever heard, but hey, different strokes for different planes of existence. ”Just cut out whatever it is you’re doing that’s keeping my wife out of your mind. I need to talk to her. Please.”
Clara made a dissatisfied clicking noise. There was a line, after all. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t do that, Aegis.”
Aegis knelt down and gripped the ledge with his gauntlets. ”Let me talk to my wife now,” he screamed, ”Or I will throw your friend right off this roof and try to hit you when I land! Do you understand me, hag?”
Clara took a step back from the building and considered her options. They were few. “Oh, dear,” she mumbled to herself, reluctantly gesturing away her spirit ward.
All of a sudden, the world got a whole lot more crowded for Clara Jungfrau.
* * * * *
Aph was learning.
Amongst the visitors to the frozen world, the nymph was becoming the most popular amongst the restless spirits, likely because she experienced things more... intensely than the jaded Aegis or the weathered Clara. Designed body and soul to be a receptor of pure love, inverted into hate and disgust and filtered through the mind of a slightly deranged Gothloli twilight sprite, she became the perfect receptor for dozens of vengeful poltergeists with a bone to pick.
The end result was the same; Aph killed a lot of statues. The difference was what was going on inside her head, where her usual litany of death death death was becoming a little more elaborate. Death, she thought, To the stuck-up asshole in the suit-and-tie that probably cost more than my car. Death! to the dwarf looking at me out of the corner of his eye, like we don’t all know what you’re up to, and death to you, Marla, I wish Aust were still here because he’d love to see this. Empowered by the spirits, by their hate, by the vivid imagination of every murderous fantasy these poor bastards had ever held, Aph found new joy in cutting up these obstensibly-lifeless statues. Death, bitch, you used to love it when I got rough with you; death to the prick in the hovercycle, you think you own the road? Death to everyone in the post office, just on principle. The postal service lasted the nymph a good long while, and she savored the kills; she loved the way her tentacles felt around their throats and she loved the sound they made when they dropped to the floor. For a brief moment she found herself alone. She felt giddy, she felt dizzy, she felt hungover, she felt angelically guilty, she felt everything at once for about fifteen seconds before it all subsided to a comfortable, familiar, dull rage. She didn’t throw up.
Withdrawal symptoms were already kicking in by the time she fled the post office and sought out somewhere with a higher population density. There were two apartment buildings coexisting in the same space, and Aph figured that would have to do; as soon as she opened the door the feelings resumed, dozens of them at once, grudges and itches and secrets and cancers, and she resumed her unholy communion. Death death death, we had a moment there for a minute by the laundry machines but you never called, death to you for considering it acceptable behavior to blast Accidentally In Love at three in the morning and I have a meeting the next day, and death to both of us because I used to love you so damn much before you got involved with those fucking Virtuals, death because it’s easier to possess an evil fairy woman to kill you than it is to make rent this month, death to everyone on this floor because nobody loves me so why the hell should I keep you around? And a very special death to Mr. Tall-Dark-and-Handsome lives-across-the-hall shares-my-tastes-in-music subscribes-to-six-newspapers never-noticed-me will-never-notice-me, I love you, please die. When they were all dead Aph went out a window instead of throwing up and she felt fine.
Outside the window was a statue of something Aph had never seen before or anything like it and it had a lot of heads and she didn’t know where she should start when it came to killing it. It had lion bits and eagle bits and snake bits and goat bits and she assumed the correct word was “chimera” or some variant thereof. Standing frozen before it there was a half-dressed maybe-ten-year-old boy, patting it lightly on the nose.
Aph felt their spirits enter her and the first spirit said I love you and the other spirit said I love you and Aph threw up and passed out.
There was a few seconds of comfortable silence before spacetime suddenly rose from its seat, ran into the bathroom and puked up seven mysterious figures in spacesuits. Without any conscious and sentient organisms around to appreciate the weirdness of the moment, it seemed almost calm.
The shortest figure, his spacesuit stretched to accomodate the shape of a top hat, broke the calm by examining his instruments and exclaiming, “Faith ‘n buggery, Non-Infringers! Our return coordinates’ve been scrambled in transit! Looks like the luck o’ the Irish has finally run out fer us!”
“Maybe not, Iota McTaggart,” said the tallest figure, whose spacesuit’s long arms led to strangely-misshapen gloves. “There’s always hope. Are we clear to take off our helmets?”
“Hang on, Crazyman Dragonarms,” said the four identical figures, in perfect synchronicity. “X. is picking up some unusual spectral activity.” One of the four quadruplets stepped out of line and spoke by himself, gesturing portentiously. “By condensing the spectrons in the air, I should be able to make the disturbance visible.” As he spoke, the hundreds of spirits floating through the air began emitting a faint light in the visible spectrum. Crazyman Dragonarms recoiled.
The last figure stepped forwards and took off his helmet, revealing a clunky metal fascimile of a human head. “Thanks, PAX/Tom,” emanated the static-filled voice from the robot’s large, gaping mouth-opening. “But these souls are no match for XMO, the Robot Who Sucks!” XMO proved the truth of his words with a single mighty inhalation, which sucked all of the nearby ghosts through his mouth-opening into his iron lung. The mouth clamped shut.
“What happened here?” asked PAX/Tom, all of them looking around as though expecting an answer from each other.
“I’ll tell you what happened,” grumbled Crazyman Dragonarms, looking at the chimera, the boy, and Aph lying on the ground. “Someone—or something—has been infringing on the multiverse. And it’s up to us to find out who... or whom.”
Aph coughed and sputtered a bit, giving Iota McTaggart quite the shock. “Well wouldja look at that?” exclaimed the leprechaun. “I’d hazard a guess this one isn’t one of the natives. And here she is unconscious at our feet! Maybe me luck’s gone ‘round the horseshoe yet again!”
PAX/Tom lifted the nymph up, each taking one arm. “When she awakens, we can interrogate her,” they all agreed. “We’ll want to tie her up beforehand.”
“Be careful,” cautioned XMO. “We have no idea what she’s capable of. I’m processing data from all the souls I inhaled, but none of them have any idea what caused this. For all we know, it could be her.”
Nodding sagely as a group, the Non-Infringers took their prisoner and their equipment and walked off towards what looked to be the most populated area within sight, each mentally preparing himself for what was sure to be their greatest adventure yet.