The Spectacular Exhibition (S3G2) [Round 2: Space - Abridged]

"Ok," sighed Trenton, ignoring the interposing chainsaw blade and (however pointless the motion) shifting into a midair reclining position. "What did you want to know?"

Brooklyn adjusted her altitude like a cigar between her teeth, and (would've) grimaced in a not-dissimilar fashion. She'd been an on-again off-again cigaretteer in life, if you'd pick her by any particular poison. It was a simple enough question, but one she could gear her brain towards in a particular way. Feel productive. Take her mind off other things.

"Right. When that Counsellor lady introduced your brother, she only said he saw dead people. Was that just referring to you, or an actual real thing he can do?"

Trenton glanced down through the roof shingle. "Just me. Although if you hang out with him long enough I'm pretty sure you die on the inside."

"Heh. Right. So, if it's not too personal - why are you haunting him?"

The ghost frowned, sat up, gave Brooklyn a quizzical look. "If it's not too personal," he said, mimicking the poltergeist's kid-gloves tone, "why would that be too personal?"

"Wait, what?"

"Why should the circumstances of my post-moterm posting in the constant corner of my brother's eye be-" he dropped his tone again to mockingly gentle "-too personal?"

"I- I can't tell whether I struck a nerve there or not." Trenton groaned so hard his friction-exempt apparition did a full midair rotation. He slowly groaned the full three-sixty degrees, ignoring Brooklyn's growling. The look he gave Brooklyn when he was properly oriented again was scathing.

"He didn't poison my wine and run off with my wife, if that's what you're too scared to ask. Heck, he was half a continent away when that cultist finally did me in!"

"Then why did you-"

Trenton just shrugged. "I've kept an eye on all my family since I died. Norm's just been the best sport about it, by which I guess I mean he was the most entertaining."

"Good God, you are an ass," Brooklyn finally managed. She didn't have time for this.

"I'm the only real magic Norman's ever made happen. As well as an ass." The ghost frowned and stared down through the roof again like someone had turned an ocean perpendicular and let him gaze across that. "The only truth big enough for him to hold on and make something out of was his guilt, which-"

"Manifested into you, and you'll either make him face it or drive him to an early grave." Brooklyn glanced into the heavens. Dusk was falling in the starscape.

"I was going to say it said a lot about him, but I guess it says more about you."

She snorted; he raised an eyebrow, pre-emptively poised to deal clarification like snakebite. "How's that?"

Trenton grinned, a game-set-match smirk right out of Brooklyn's worst memories.

"You're talking to me, aren't you?"

"I - I,"

"I think I need to leave."

It wasn't said with disdain or dismissal; if anything, Brooklyn sounded scared. She spun slowly to make sure the jetfire wouldn't ignite anything, and spent half a minute just clacking with increasing frequency as something failed to ignite.

She was suffocating. Breathing. Why weren't her lungs working? Nothing was broken, nothing was wrong, she'd fixed it. She'd fix it. She could fix it.

When was the last time she fixed anything?

She had no jaw to clench or breath to slow or fists to ball and open, ball and open, until perspectives shifted enough that she could see the problem. Her heartbeat didn't slow. Her stomach didn't unclench. Her hands didn't loosen, didn't shift from violent fists to reliable tools, ready to pick and probe and repair.

It came back to her like a dream. Her sources. Her circumstances. She didn't look at Trenton when she finally spoke.

"Actually. I have an idea. It hinges on that Counsellor lady not being a complete nutjob, but it's probably worth a shot."

Without giving Trenton a chance to comment, she pressed on. "What I'm proposing to test is... if your brother properly comes to terms with things, does he get sent back to his universe? Do you get sent back? Right, yeah, sorry, I know you've got as much a clue as I do. I'm just thinking aloud, because if there's a solution that'd let us just leave, rather than running around wrecking- fighting each other, yeah, fighting each other, that's probably the best course of action."

Brooklyn spun around. "He does want to go home, right?"

"I guess?" shrugged Trenton. "If you're sure this'd work, why wouldn't you just sort your own problems out?"

"I don't have a problem." Brooklyn said it a little too quickly. "Ok, fine, I've got bits about my past that bother me, but who doesn't? I'm not a ghost because of unfinished business or anything. Just... things happened, alright? Things happened- You let them get away -other things happened- Gepetto is dead -and now, now I'd be happier if nobody else died on my watch."

Brooklyn still didn't feel especially convinced, so decided to monologue a little longer.

"On top of that, he's the least well-equipped to survive this thing. The fighting side, at least - it'd be him or Tria. Yeah. I mean, worst comes to worst and this is just some trumped-up cage match, He'll be in a better state of affairs to survive. Or help me. I think Norman's issues would be easiest to overcome, at that. He's got you, right?"

Trenton might've offered a noncommittal note, but Brooklyn wasn't really listening. She ghost-gripped the chainsaw's internal mechanisms, thrumming with purpose.

She had a plan. She could pull this off.

She could pull this off, because there was nothing stopping Trenton from getting on track, having a proper sit-down with his brother and calmly explaining the state affairs, why Trenton was a ghost and haunting his brother, and bring Norman round to the urgency of the situation, to quicksmart acknowledge whatever facets of personality needed some solid introspection. Bring them to the front, wipe off the dust and grime and find a perfectly servicable set of worldviews glinting underneath.

Nothing to it. Nothing but no-one.

With a hiss and a roar, Brooklyn leapt for the stars.

---

Drifting for time immemorial. Immaterial.

The present and his presence in it returned to Creptians not with a snap, but more a grovelling slink to his side. It registered first as a dull drone, sharpening as the source approached into a more complex rhythm of metal on metal on metal. It made the sap in his limbs tense, and it came back to Crepitans that the sap tensed now, and the sound wasn't there before and now it was growing louder. Closer.

Brooklyn hollered as she flew past; it was twigs cracking in a woodland idyll.

"Woah! Hey. Hi. Have we met!?"

Crepitans distantly recognised the... machine? weapon? creature? No word he knew quite seemed to encompass the abomination in its biazzare whole; it was so far removed from anything he'd experienced. A more instinctual part screamed "murderer", "clearcutter"; the ancestral fear was an unprecedented emotion for the Dorukardia to actually experience for himself. He knew fear. He could be incapable of sharing a single word with some beast and still distinguish its cries of fear and pain, anger and anguish.

Crepitans only knew fear through other creatures. That, and the... thing's surreal appearance made him pause. Lower his fist.

"I'd have remembered something like you," growled the barkskin.

"Could've said the same," said the chainsaw. Her laugh was the boiling point of sap, crackling and snapping. "It's a relief that you seem fine - that you're fine. Yeah." She darted about him like a half-blind seagull looking for a landing, coughing up flames and generally upsetting Crepitans' shrike. "Do you, uh, need a hand? I've actually got a plan I'd like to discuss, though you might want to get your feet- uh, roots, on solid ground first."

It was dangerous, if only because Crepitans couldn't be sure how to kill it. And yet, it wasn't hostile. And it wished to parley? His first thought was to hit it once and see what was left of it, but it looked sturdy. Metal did that.

Metal had other uses, too. As tools, for instance.

"Yes," creaked the treant. "I'd accept assistance."

Brooklyn flipped the safety on her blade, before taxiing round to the small of Crepitans' back. "Good good. So, do you want to know the plan now, or later?"

With a bit of concerted flame-spewing, the tree juddered into motion. "A plan to kill our captor, I hope."

"Um, yeah, sure! Kill her plans, yeah. I need to test her rules, though. Find out if this is just a battle to the death with a dumb, psychoanalyst theme slapped on, or if she actually cares and wants us to get over our problems."

Crepitans didn't hold much hope for the latter option, but he'd already discerned that this machine was unwilling to kill. Noted, but one bit stuck in his craw. "I've got no 'problems'" -the word was punctuated with a shake of the head and the discordant rattling of talismans and bone- "that require the help of someone like her." Brooklyn laughed.

"Tell me about it. Actually, you know, maybe she picked a bunch of humans - bogstandard premorterm ones, anyway - and a bunch of other creatures. So it's actually both psychotherapy and cockfighting, and Norm and Tria and such get an easy escape card if they solve their personal problems. As for us, she just tacked on some arbitrary diagnoses so it wasn't so obvious. I mean, you can't put "mood swings" on the same scale as whatever she lumped you with! It just makes me think she's making stuff up, but I'd still rather test my pet theory before we discount that. I mean, you seem nice enough, didn't try killing me when I bumped into you. Crepitans, was it?"

Crepitans made a noise that might've been agreement. Maybe. Brooklyn's chatter smoothed itself into the noise of her rockets as she speculated away about the Counsellor's motives and where or maybe even when they were in the grander scheme of things.

"So, what's with all the bones and accessories?"

The treant would've sneered down his nose, were Brooklyn not right out of view in the small of his back. It was a satisfying explanation for the spirit's lack of fear - maybe it'd show him some respect if it actually knew what it was dealing with.

"Poisons. Potions. Reagents and spell components essential for the shamanic arts. It surprises me that you don't recognise them, spirit."

Brooklyn would've frowned. "The Counsellor never mentioned - I mean, look, we don't really do magic where I come from, so..."

Crepitans boggled as a planet began to expand across his vision. What kind of technological backwater did this thing spring from?

"Look, whatever. We're here!"

The blade burrowed into a gouge in his bark, springing gently away as the treant found solid ground. Crepitans stared across row by regimental rocky row.

"These stones... this entire planet is a graveyard?" he asked, the answer and its implications already ticking over.

"Yeah. I suppose folk like you don't have cemeteries?"

"I'm familiar with the concept," scoffed the treant, already reaching for an iron rod and bushel of something pungent. "This is exactly what I need to... to further our plans of escape. Yes."

Brooklyn rumbled as non-threateningly as she could; Crepitans ignored her and lumbered straight for the biggest tombstone. "I, um, don't know what you're up to, but I haven't seen so much as a whiff of a ghost - I mean, a local ghost! It just confirms what I was thinking, that-"

A ghost popped into existence. Crepitans did something with his face that conveyed satisfaction, then did something with the iron rod that cut off the scream it was working on. He turned to the chainsaw and smirked.

"Observe, spirit. My magic rouses the spectres, commands they bid my will. This beacon-" he jammed the rod into the loam, before splashing half a bottle of something that almost definitely wasn't red wine on it "-will summon them in droves."

"And then?"

"And then, spirit, I'll have them scour every inch of this reality for flaws. Clues to its architecture so I may better exploit it."

"And find us an exit?"

"Indeed."

Brooklyn nearly sagged with relief, even as more ghosts either popped into existence or drifted in from what appeared to be all corners of the starscape. He'd help her. Thank god. She zoomed a little closer, tried getting a better sense of whatever Crepitans was inscribing into the ground, but she wasn't having much luck, whatever it was hurt to look at. The ghosts weren't much better, and they kept materialising and vanishing with each completed paragraph or sentence. Was Brooklyn's interpretation. She couldn't quite be sure. "Crepitans."

No response.

"Crepitans, hey."

Nothing but a sad vloop as another spectre responded to the summons. Brooklyn wondered where they were all coming from, and why they hadn't shown themselves earlier.

"Cr-"

"What." Brooklyn flinched a bit at his tone, before telling herself to stop being stupid. She was about to ask what she could do beyond sitting here admiring his shamanry, when a raft of ghosts swarmed back. "Hold it," he growled, scooping up the spirits in a recently-dyed hand. He swilled them round a little, gouged a few more indecipherable scars at the foot of a tombstone, then looked to the stars.

"I require an eclipse." Pre-empting the inevitable pepperings of 'why', he waved a limb and gestured to the heavens. "Shamanry taps the land - the world's - undercurrents of magical potential. My initial survey confirmed my suspicions - this world is hollow. An artifice. It borrows such grand designs, but it lacks the richness and context of a "real" world."

"I was picking up on that with this graveyard - it's, like, I can feel these gravestones. It's like someone made them to feel old, but that intent comes through." Crepitans glared at his companion for interrupting, but she just hummed pensively. "It's weird. Sorry, keep going. Please."

"As. I. Was saying," glowered the treant. "The reduced magical potential in this world limits my power. The alignment of cosmic currents during an eclipse, however, amplifies magic and makes more powerful spellwork possible. Thus-"

"So. I push the planets in a line, and you can punch through the gaps in this place instead of finding them?"

Crepitans knew, in that one moment, that he'd make this spirit suffer. He furrowed his brow-bark as though closing his eyes, counted ten different ways he'd make the Counsellor beg for mercy, and could finally deign to look at Brooklyn.

"Yes. I'd suggest you get on with it; the longer you dawdle the worse the odds one of our fellow contestants are killed."

"R-right. Yeah. There was actually a control centre on that city-planet; if I had someone with a pair of eyes I could push everything into place faster. I'll find someone and set it up."

Crepitans, having heard all he needed, had already returned to his horde of ghosts.

"I'll find the others, too. Make sure they look after themselves until we're good to go, it'll go faster if we're not worried about them, yeah?" Crepitans groaned non-committaly. "Cool. Yeah. Good. Norm's here-"

"On this rock?"

"Yeah, there's a wreck of a house beyond those trees, I'm pretty sure he's there, so that's one down. Red's in the city, and hopefully Tria and that wolf-guy are ok... Dunno about the armadillo. Yeah. Ok. I'll do what I can. Good luck, Crepitans."

Brooklyn hovered backwards, giving herself some wriggle room, then took off with a roar.

Crepitans amused himself with the spectres for a further minute, wrapping further abjurations around the iron stake until the construct screamed its way out of earshot.

Brooklyn hooned off into the stars. He chuckled, ripped the stake from the ground, and stood. Shrike-cries and silver knives trilled through his crown.