//------------------------------// // To Boldly Flee // Story: The Multiverse in a Nutshell // by Pennington Inkwell //------------------------------// Salem opened her eyes, taking in her new surroundings. She hadn't been expecting this. For once, her guest had surprised her. Ordinarily, this spell would allow her to pick apart another person's consciousness at her leisure, choosing which parts to address as she wished, picking them out like chapters in a book. However, this was not the case this time. Instead, she had come out in a fully realized world. She found herself standing in the center of a grassy field. Above her she could see a heavy blanket of dark clouds that refused to let the sun through, if it existed at all. Perhaps the greatest surprise was the signs of civilization in the distance, buildings and roads leading to different portions of his mind. Ordinarily, this level of visualization was something only achievable through years of practice in organizing one's thoughts, something that could only be mastered through explicit goals and specific means. She knelt down, running her hand through the blades of grass under her feet, then gripping them and tearing up the sod. Beneath the topsoil there was nothing but space, simply an empty drop down into a rolling sea of colors she recognized as the subconscious. It may be only surface level, but this is a complete dreamscape. Curious... "You made a mistake coming here, Salem!" Salem looked up, finding him standing opposite her several meters away. It was amusing to see him as he seemed to think of himself: the picture of health, standing taller than he actually was, dripping with confidence and completely uninjured. "This is MY mind, MY home turf!" He spread his arms wide, gesturing to the world around them. "Out there, I might just be an ordinary human, but in here I can be anything I want to be!" He tapped his chin in mocking thought. "Like, say, how about a fifth-tier Chiracian battle priest?" Salem watched as flames began to erupt from the skin of his hands, baking his arms until they had been reduced to charcoal. He grinned as he flexed the charred appendages, liquid bronze leaking out of the cracks and re-forming until they had created a pair of polished gauntlets wreathed in golden flame. Behind him, Salem could see more of the same flames emerging from his back in small jets. The grass around him withered away and dried up as the earth beneath his feet was scorched. "...wielding Angus McFife's Astral Hammer of Glory?" On cue, said warhammer appeared, massive and inscribed with complex runes. The golden flames spread, wrapping around the hammer and imbuing it with the same power. He turned back to her, his smile wide and sinister. "I think you underestimated me, and it's going to cost you, Salem! Finally, I get to be the one overpowering you!" He vanished in place, only to reappear a second later, bringing the hammer down directly onto her head. It made an amusing sound as it shattered into pieces. "W-what? How in the name of the Hootsman did you..." He hovered above her, still posed mid-strike with his hands wrapped around the now-hammerless handle. Salem simply looked up at him, a smirk of her own threatening to overtake her. "Even if your assumptions were correct, boy, I have millenia of experience and discipline over you. While this level of visualization is impressive for one your age, I have had the time in my life to study every school of thought mankind has invented, go mad, grow bored with madness and go sane again, and do the same ten more times before the iteration of humanity you have come to know in the present was any further than its infancy." She reached up and brushed a small amount of dust from the pulverized hammer off of her shoulder. "As it stands, none of that even matters. This spell acts upon your brain itself, not just your consciousness. I can rip you apart neuron by neuron until I find the memory I am looking for and you would be no more able to stop it through sheer willpower than you could stop a railway spike being pounded into your skull." His eyes widened, and Salem saw his dream self physically shrink by a wide margin as all of his confidence leaked out of him like air from a balloon. Just as hollow as this world he's created... "Now then..." She reached up and grabbed him by the shirt, yanking him down to eye-level. "Stay still, and this will be quick. If you cooperate, I may even only slightly lobotomize you." "Oh poop..." His eyes widened, and the two of them stared at one another for a moment. After a second, however, she watched him settle back into a confident smirk. "Then it's a good thing I've got one more secret technique. A last resort for desperate times such as these..." Suddenly, there was the sound of tearing fabric, and Salem found herself staring at his back as he sprinted in the opposite direction. "NIGERUNDAYOOOOO!" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Penn's eyes slowly opened. They flicked from side to side, taking in every detail of the room and processing it as fast as possible. Salem was still standing as still as a statue, her eyes shut as she kept her hand pressed against his head. Penn's head leaned back slightly, separating the point of contact between them. Salem didn't react, the spell apparently continuing on even without the physical contact. His body didn't like being under new management, and made that disapproval exceedingly clear with a loud cacophony of pain. It was almost completely overwhelming, a sensory overload that made the knees shake and collapse and sent blood roaring in the ears as his head started to spin. Pain. It was sharp, burning, unfamiliar to the point of being nearly overwhelming. It clouded the mind and sent waves of weakness through the body as it insisted that it could not do what caused it such pain. There was only one way forward: to draw focus and will to a sharpened point and cut through the haze. "No... no no no, this isn't acceptable... I have to do my part." Another attempt was made, this time pushing iron will into the veins and forcing the legs to obey. Getting into a standing position seemed to bring a rush of strength and confidence, and the body fell under proper control. "That's more like it..." There was an angry glare at Salem, a wish to attack her in his vulnerable position, but it would do no good. Her immortality would heal her of any wound that could be inflicted. There was a plan. A plan that had to be followed, or they would never make it out. Reason focused on putting one foot in front of the other, starting with a shuffle. She wasn't used to walking, or being in pain, or even existing like this. It felt... heavy, and amplified, as if every sense had been opened for the first time in ages, fresh and unaccustomed to getting input. But for the sake of her partner, she would force through it. It was no different than cutting through an intrusive thought or clearing the haze of Depression. It was just a physical task here, rather than a mental one. "Hang in there, partner... I'll do my part, I promise." Reason shuffled out the door of the cell, already escalating towards a full-stride walk with the practice of a few steps. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Wh- What?" "You heard me, Em." "N-no... That's not right! There's NO WAY Cinder would lose! She- she can't be-" "Emerald... she's gone. I couldn't move, but I watched the Fall Maiden waltz out of here myself. The robot brought her back, somehow. She got Cinder from behind before I could warn her." Emerald's strength left her body as her mind finally accepted the news she'd been hearing. She fell to her hands and knees, tears streaming down her face. "... Emerald?" "No... NOOOOOOOOOO!" The word ripped out of her throat, carrying all of the weight of her grief with it as she futilely pounded her fist against the floor over and over. "NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! I should have BEEN THERE! I SHOULD HAVE BEEN WITH HER!" "Emerald, listen to me! I don't know if I'm going to make it out of here discretely without my legs, but I can give you some info! That robot? It was looking for Evernight Castle! Apparently, she's a friend of our little GUEST..." Emerald's head continued to hang for several seconds. Finally, her eyes narrow and seething with rage. "I'm gonna kill him." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "You ever have one of those nightmares where you just run and run but you can't seem to get anywhere? Because I'm really feeling like that right now!" Salem continued pursuing at a leisurely pace, somewhat bemused watching him try to run from her inside of his own mind. "You know, you'd told me that you were willing to do ANYTHING to protect Sunset Shimmer. I'd had such high hopes for you..." she sighed. "Everyone wants to watch the world burn when they're angry or bitter. Even those who would destroy everything for a loved one think they are following some noble purpose like 'true love' or 'honor.' However, I could see in your eyes that you had no qualms about what actually doing it would make you into, no misconceptions about what it would mean to burn it all down..." She watched him reach into his pocket, fumbling with a set of golden keys. A golden door appeared out of thin air to match, inlaid with shimmering opal and intricate, lacey filigree inscribed across the surface and embedded with gemstones of every color. Rather grandiose. He seems to have a high opinion of himself in here. He urgently shoved the key into the lock, ramming his shoulder into the doors to push them open and slip through. Salem waved her hand, blasting the doors almost entirely off of their hinges. As she stepped through, she found herself in an entirely new environment: an ocean beach just on the edges of his consciousness. As she looked out, she could see a perpetually setting sun that tinted the entire ocean red. She noted that the ocean seemed to come and go in layers, waves of water and sand coming in equal measures as sandbars flowed freely in and out alongside the tides. It all seemed very therapeutic, a place where one could spend all day releasing one's woes, and she suspected that it served that exact purpose. While it looked peaceful, there was a point where the sandbars stopped, and Salem could tell that anything that went past that point would be lost for good. At the moment, he was standing on one of the outermost sandbars, waving to her as he surfed on the sand wave with his bare feet. Salem reached out, wrapping her power around the construct and forcing her will onto it. She closed her fist, and the landscape responded to her thoughts. The sand all pulled inwards suddenly and violently, instantly compacting itself into sandstone and pulling him straight to her. The sheer force and suddenness of the force pushed the ocean away, leaving the two of them now standing in the middle of an arid sandstone waste. He looked down at his feet, then back up at her several times, then at the terraformed landscape around them. "Oooooh, I really don't want to know what that metaphor is implying you just did to my mental state..." Salem narrowed her eyes, reaching to finally grab him by the throat. He ducked beneath her reach, just slipping out of her grip through another golden door that had opened in the ground beneath him. Rolling her eyes, she followed him through. He's proving resilient to the magic, moreso than I thought. It HAS been some time since I used this spell, perhaps I'm rusty... She glanced down at her hand, flexing her fingers in and out. I'll have to be careful. If I turn his brain to mush before I get the information I need, it could take years to find the portal by having my Grimm blindly fumble about in Forever Fall... Time in which Ozpin could find it easily if the boy lied about telling him the truth, or worse, if Sunset Shimmer already informed him, herself. I must remember to keep a gentle touch until I have what I need. This new area was some kind of nightclub, pulsing with music and constantly shifting lights. Creatures of all shapes and sizes were making themselves comfortable, some human and others decidedly not so. At first, she wondered how there could be so many entities contained in a single mind, but the answer soon made itself clear: they weren't real. They were all ghosts, apparitions walking not only past, but through one another and speaking in nonsense sentences with no meaning. It's an illusion, an image of a packed venue populated by fictional characters. This place has only ever had a party of one... The lights dimmed and began to pulse in time with a new, heavy beat that was playing over the loudspeakers. "AND NOW A SPECIAL REQUEST, THIS ONE GOES OUT TO EVERYONE CHASING THAT 'SPECIAL SOMEONE' TONIGHT!" This was met by a chorus of wild cheers and hollers from the crowd. For a moment, Salem caught sight of the boy: he was pushing and shoving his way through the crowd, bouncing off of them and muttering hasty apologies as his own mind forced him to play along with the "reality" of their guests. Salem began to advance on him, easily closing the distance as the apparitions dissolved away at her touch. Unlike him, I have no time for games and pretend... As she gave chase, the world around them seemed not to even notice her, the music beginning to play of its own accord. There's a fire going on but the party's just begun so keep your focus lookin' at me tonight... He turned back, his eyes widening as he spotted her advancing on him, and his motions grew more frantic, pushing and shoving through the crowd with the force of his shoulder. He drew up short, an idea seeming to strike him. He waved frantically to the stage as he changed direction, trying to get to the front of the club. Salem couldn't hear what exactly he was saying, but a moment later an object came flying down from the ceiling and snatched him up, carrying him all the way across the club and up onto the stage. It wasn't until the stage lights illuminated him properly that she realized he had swung up there on a microphone cord, which he was now holding up to his lips to sing. Salem almost was starting to admire his imagination. Unfortunately, her growing frustration far outweighed her amusement. She still refused to increase her pace, however. He literally couldn't outrun her or lose her here, all he was doing was causing more damage to his own mind by keeping her in there with him. Not to mention, there was much to be said for the fear that came with an implacable enemy that never needed to pick up the pace. It was an image plucked straight from a nightmare, and she would use it to her advantage. "And I kno-o-ow! Nothing's gonna stand in my way!" He sang as he nervously inched his way across the stage, his eyes locked directly on her. "No matter what the people may say! Just don't turn around and keep looking straight!" Salem continued advancing, only a few strides away from the front of the stage, now. He finally seemed to lose his nerve, leaping down and sprinting for one of the gigantic speakers at the front. He frantically pulled open the front, revealing it to be a hidden door before sprinting inside and slamming it shut again. Salem wasted no time, ripping the door off its hinges and striding through. -the world around you's going to hell! I'm here to tell you all it's just fate! I'M A DIS- She slammed the door shut behind her, cutting off the music before it gave her a headache. They were in the center of a forest, now, in a small circular clearing that was dead silent aside from the rustling of leaves and the singing of birds. In the center was a perfectly still pool of water and a pair of books, both bookmarked somewhere in the middle. She was almost at the heart of this place, she could feel it. Every time he ran from her, he instinctively retreated deeper and deeper into his mind, letting her through more and more barriers. "Oh, come on!" Penn cried, exasperated. "I mean, you can't even stop for five minutes for a shockingly appropriate power ballad? I thought for sure I could rope you into a musical number to buy time!" "Are you quite finished playing games?" "NOPE!" He cheerily replied, fitting another key into a door. He yanked it open, only to be met by a booming voice, instead. "GET OUTTA MY ROOM, I'M PLAYING MINECRAFT!" The sheer force of the shout pushed him back and towards the center, where he teetered precariously on the edge of the water, pinwheeling his arms wildly. "Geez, somedrake is grouchy- WOAH!" When he fell into the water, there was no splash, not so much as a ripple. He simply... passed inside. Salem walked up to the edge, waiting for him to emerge. She waited. And waited. And waited. She could feel that he was still there, but... It's not just water... it's another portal. Was the other door a feint? She looked up at the door that he had attempted to go through, only to see it swing shut on its own and disappear. Either way, she knew where to go to continue chasing him. She walked out onto the surface of the water, placing herself in the center before allowing gravity to take its course. Down, down, down she fell, passing through different stages in the cylindrical pool that seemed to go on forever. It grew wider and darker until she could see nothing around her but vague shapes and the occasional glowing light of some underwater predator. She wondered if they might have both accidentally descended into the subconscious, but she was soon reassured that was not the case when she felt herself being reoriented, now moving up, instead. A few seconds later, she emerged from the floor of a new space, one much smaller than the rest of the places she had chased him. "A great man once spoke about what to do when you're being interrogated... It was just before his advice about dying, actually." Penn's voice was low, calm, now. He was perched in a chair on one side of a large mahogany table, his feet propped up on its surface. "He said 'The first rule of being interrogated is that you are the most important person in the torture chamber... The room is yours, so work it.'" He spread his arms, gesturing to the room around them. "I think I've managed step one pretty well, don't you?" Salem looked around. The room wasn't actually that much larger than the table it housed, but all of the walls were painted a deep black, making it appear as though they were standing in the center of an empty void. "The only thing you've accomplished is letting my magic run rampant in your brain. I suspect you'll start feeling the effects soon. You've promised yourself a slow and agonizing death." "'If they're gonna threaten you with death, show them who's boss! Die faster!'" He chuckled at that, as if his own demise amused him. "Hate to say it, but the man who said that is a personal hero of mine. I may have taken it a little too much to heart." "He sounds like a great fool. I must say, you've followed in his footsteps quite well." He gasped, clutching his hand to his heart as he smiled with rapturous joy. "THANK YOU!" Salem stepped forward and into the light shining down on them from above. There were cards on the table, strange cards in multiple colors with art and words printed all over them. The ones on her side of the table were much more numerous, but aside from that she could hardly be bothered to try and interpret their individual meanings. The overall one was clear, though. He viewed what was happening between them as some kind of game, a battle of wits. She reached out, shifting her power to warp his metaphor into one much more universal: chess. She was clearly dominating the game, having far more pieces than him, and victory was almost certain. He seemed to take offense at this, his smile faltering for a second as she reached out, plunging her queen deep into the ranks of his few pieces, taking one of his two remaining pawns and readying herself to take his last knight. As she plucked the defeated piece from the board, a sensation washed over her. She saw a vision through Penn's eyes, a memory of their campsite in Forever Fall. She couldn't tell the location from that flash alone, but it told her everything she needed to know: for every piece she took, she would steal another of his memories related to what she wanted to know. She had a suspicion that when the game had ended and she had won, not only would he be broken beyond repair by the mind-flaying spell, but she would have all the information she needed to find the portal. All in all, it had been an outstanding move. It also had the added bonus of placing her directly diagonal to his king, meaning there was no way for him to save the knight. "Check." He leaned forward, his brow furrowing with frustration. "I was always lousy at chess..." he muttered, moving his sole bishop into the path between her queen and his king. "Anyway, do you want to know what he said about dying? When you're dying, you should go to the storm room inside of your mind, lock the door, and think..." He motioned to the black room around them. "This is my storm room, Salem. Well, considering how much planning I do in here, I like to call it the War Room. I guess I didn't lock the door properly... Right now, you're at the heart of me. You could do some serious damage in here." Salem smirked, moving her queen and taking the knight. This time, she saw images of their party, impressions of each of their members. "So that's why you were never intimidated by my threats to Sunset Shimmer... She had a guardian angel of mischief watching over her." She smiled. "As long as I didn't know about HER, it meant that I hadn't gotten close enough to actually hurt Sunset... is that what you were thinking?" He seemed to not notice her tease, focused entirely on the game even as his brain fell to pieces inside his skull. He gestured with his finger, mapping out different positions and moves, only to scowl and wipe the imaginary slate clean. "You're making an awful fuss for someone who can't win the game..." She reached over, placing the tip of her finger on his king and smiling as she made it rock back and forth. "Why not just topple this and let it all end? I'm no longer interested in keeping you alive, it's clear that my little experiment to make you my ally failed..." "What, you thought just because I was ALSO willing to burn the world for someone I loved, I was some kind of kindred spirit, or something?" He didn't bother to look at her, moving his remaining pawn forward. It was a desperate bid to try and cross the board with a pawn and get his queen back, one doomed to fail. She would have him in checkmate in fewer turns than it would take for the pawn to make it across. "PLEASE don't tell me you're going to hit me with some 'We're not so different' spiel... I think I'd throw up." She smiled and brought her queen over to the bishop, knocking it to the ground before gently raising it from its resting place and holding it in her hand. This time, she could see all of his time in Remnant. The invasion of Torchwick's operation, double-checking against the television show just to be certain that his information was right... and... "Seven? There are SEVEN volumes?" "Oops... probably shouldn't have let THAT slip..." he muttered. "And I'm in check again..." He pondered the board more than last time, to the point where Salem began tapping her nail against the table to mimic the ticking of a clock. "You had more than twice the amount of information I did about the future and you still lost." "Yup. Guess I just came up one card short..." he muttered. "Well, are you going to move, or not? The longer you wait, the closer we come to your brain-" "Yeah, yeah, I KNOW! Geez, lady, if you didn't want me to think this much you should've picked Connect Four! I'm GREAT at Connect Four!" Salem was about to ask him what Connect Four was when, much to her surprise, a third voice joined the conversation. "HEY, PENN! TIME TO DO YOUR THING! TAG OUT" He finally snapped out of his pondering with a grin, reaching over to the board and taking hold of two pieces at once: his king and his rook. Salem watched as he shifted the pieces around one another in his hand. It was a move known as "castling." If neither the king nor the rook had made a move for the entire game and there were no pieces between them, they could meet in the center of the spaces between them and settle on the opposite side of one another. It wasn't a move often used, but for all of his bemoaning his lack of skill she was surprised he knew about it. To her surprise, however, the hand that set the two pieces in their new place on the board was not the same hand that had picked them up. Her eyes snapped up and widened. Sitting across from her, similarly reclined, was a monster. Wide, leathery wings shifted uncomfortably against the back of the chair, and Salem could count at least four different eyes all trained on her. The thing radiated enmity and power, both on a level that matched her own. It looked surprised at its location, regarding the room with a low whistle. "Looks as if I made it just in time... You got further in than I thought you would." The voice was decidedly female, which was helpful considering her alien body did little to settle the debate of gender. Salem narrowed her eyes. This new foe was of an entirely different breed from Penn, both figuratively and literally. Even a brief moment to be acquainted with one another showed her something crucial to understanding the situation. "You... do not belong here." "Yeah? Look who's talking. At least I was invited. AND I actually earn my keep instead of just wrecking the place, unlike SOME guests!" Vicious talons flexed in and out, a clear display to instill a threatening undercurrent beneath the casual accusation. "Got a part-time job as his voice of reason. By the way, do you have any idea how much work it's going to take for me to fix all that damage you've done? You're lucky I don't jump across this table and-" Ladies, please! You can't fight in here, this is the War Room! Penn's voice echoed distantly above them. "You're a monster. Some kind of dark demon..." It was less of a concern and more of a fascinated observation. She would have never guessed that something like this was nestled inside of her prisoner. "I'd have to be to temper the enthusiasm of someone THIS well-meaning. Seriously, he's too NICE for his own good!" All the eyes rolled at once. "'No betraying Sunset Shimmer!' 'No killing people just for threatening me!' 'No using dark magic contained in children's trading cards to damn people to Hell unless they started it!' He's completely stifling!" She glanced down at the table. "Speaking of which..." She snapped her fingers, and the game returned to the form it had taken when Penn had been waiting for her. "I believe it's your move, Grimm-for-brains." Salem looked down at the board, the game she was supposed to be winning now completely alien to her. As she stared, however, another thought came to mind. This was wrong. It wasn't just the demon or the presence of a dreamscape in this child's mind. It was the whole situation, the smile plastered on his face while he was pontificating to her about purposefully dying faster, the convoluted path he had sprinted down to his innermost sanctum, only to sit and meditate on each of his moves in their chess game for longer than necessary, and now the almost-indecipherable game she was being asked to play after he had "tagged out." It was almost as if... He purposefully antagonized me into doing this just to keep me occupied chasing him down for answers! She felt her temper rising as she realized she'd been deceived into wasting so much of her time and energy. The demon, meanwhile, was humming the chorus of the song from the nightclub to herself. "I'm a distractiooon... Of pure satisfactiooooon... Keep your eyes all on me, for what you're gonna see..." Her numerous eyes gave Salem a sideways glance and a smug smile. "Will redefine the height of attraction. You know, you really SHOULD take the time to enjoy a little music now and then. Noir's an outstanding DJ." She shrugged slightly, glancing at the cards in her hand. "Still, I can understand getting frustrated enough with an idiot like Penn after this long that you might jump at the opportunity to get rid of him and make a rash decision..." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Salem's eyes snapped open as she released the spell. "You will regret wasting my-" Her growled threat was cut short as she realized that she was alone in the room, standing with her back to the open cell door. He had escaped. While he was supposed to be magically entranced so that she could enter his mind, it appeared he had just stood up and walked away. It should have been impossible. But then again, it also should have been impossible for him to have a card-playing demon living in his head. Salem was not too proud to admit that this was a setback. However, it was one that she would soon rectify. The fact that he had been able to even so much as escape his cell was proof enough that he was a threat to keep any longer. She would have to take the long and tedious way of finding the portal. At the least, Cinder could identify where they had first found him, that would narrow the area they would have to search. For the moment, it was time for their game to end. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "W-wow... okay, that's really high up. Like REALLY, REALLY HIGH UP..." Penn gripped the card in his hand a little more tightly, but it gave him little comfort. "Well I didn't see an elevator, did you?" "You know that feeling you get sometimes when you're standing in a high place? The sudden urge to jump?" Penn tried to ignore the weakness in his knees as he stared out of what had to be Evernight Castle's fiftieth-story window. "I don't have it." "Alright, Captain Jack, very funny. Listen, Heart of Clear Water will keep you safe, I promise! We use it all the time in our duels, right? If you don't have trust in it, the magic isn't going to work! It's a leap of faith!" "That's some leap!" he hissed under his breath. "Quit being such a scardey-cat for two seconds, would you? It takes two seconds to jump! Remember, fear is the mind killer! Fear is the little death that-" "YOU!" a voice called out. "MEEP!" Penn squeaked, spinning around on his heel. His eyes widened as he spotted Emerald advancing down the hall, both of her guns drawn and trained on him. "Did you know? You were the one calling the shots, right? Did you TELL THEM to do it?" she shouted, both guns clicking as she cocked them. "DID YOU TELL THEM TO KILL CINDER?" Penn's eyes widened. "Cinder's... dead? N-no! No, I wouldn't do that!" He glanced nervously up and down the hall, praying that her shouting wouldn't attract Salem to where they were. "Emerald, I'm sorry, but I had nothing to do with that! Speaking of death,though, we really should both get out of-" "You're SORRY? I owe Cinder EVERYTHING, and your little robot friend KILLED HER! It woke up the Fall Maiden and now Cinder is dead! All because it was trying to find out from Amber where it could find you! And you're just SORRY?" There was the explosive sound of a bullet being fired, and Penn clung to the spell card in his hand out of instinct, praying it could save him. He felt a heavy impact to his upper leg, one that had enough force to knock him backwards and, to his utter horror send him tumbling out the window. The whole world was spinning. His heart was pounding. Wind was whipping around him so fast that it drowned out any other possible noise. OhpleaseohpleaseIdon'twannadieIjustwanttogohomeandgetbacktoSunsetandgetoutofthisplace! His mind was racing for the first few seconds he was falling, but fear soon caused it to lock up entirely and come to a halt, only able to watch with terror and hold the equip spell tight against his chest as the ground rushed up to meet him. "We've done so much on our own, we've come so far! We're just asking for one little card to WORK for us!" Reason pleaded. The good news was that he didn't come to an end by colliding suddenly with the ground. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "And you're certain you killed him?" Emerald flinched at Salem's tone, unable to look her mistress straight in the eyes. "He fell out of that window after I shot him... There's no way any human could have survived that..." Salem strode to the window, looking down to the ground below. If he had landed on the ground, there would almost certainly be a body she could recover to confirm it. Instead, Salem found herself looking down into one of the pools of Grimm, lakes of the raw destructive energy from which Grimm monsters were born. If he had landed in one of them, there would be nothing left of him to recover. If they found a body, it meant they had proof he was dead. If they didn't, there was only the smallest of chances that he was still alive. But still a chance. "I can't believe he managed to escape after all of this time... I would have thought his will would break in the first week." Watts muttered. "While he certainly made a mess of my workshop, I can confirm that he didn't take anything while he was there. Everything is accounted for, including the quantum tunneling device." He snorted dismissively. "If that was his attempt at sabotage, he certainly didn't make good use of his time. It seems he was too weak to even break anything." "Check again, Arthur. He wouldn't have given away the nature of his distraction so freely if he hadn't managed to get what he wanted. Emerald, I want you to walk down and look for a body. If you don't find one, start checking the beowulf dens for bones." "Y-yes, ma'am..." Salem continued to stand in the window, staring down at where the troublesome boy had supposedly fallen. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It was excruciating. The pain covered him, permeated him until there was nothing left, trying to eat at him, boil him, drown him and beat him to a pulp. But still he endured. In spite of it all, he somehow continued to exist when it felt as if the universe were crushing down on him and trying to press him into nothing. There was screaming. He screamed. Reason screamed. Something snapped inside of them. Physically, emotionally, it was all the same agony they shared. It was dark outside when he finally found himself back on the surface. He didn't remember climbing out. There were shredded, soaked and blackened remains of a card clenched in his fist. He tried to remember what had happened, what he was supposed to be doing. His hand absentmindedly drifted to his pocket. Inside, he found a small disc-shaped object. He pulled it out, squinting to see it in the moonlight. There was a gap allowing him to see numbers on a second disc inside. 0.78 miles - 36 hours His brain was in a fog, but he remembered it was important. A distance and a time. Speed... is distance over time... No, that's not it. "We have to GO!" a voice screamed in the back of his mind. "If we're not that far away in THAT amount of time, we'll be caught in the event horizon!" He agreed. Something was wrong here. It was time to go. He could remember one thing, one job he was supposed to do. He needed to find Sunset. "Find Sunset..." he mumbled as he slipped the disc back into his pocket. "Find Sunset..." "Find Sunset..." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It had been more than a full twenty-four hours since Penn had been killed, and Salem's life had not been made any easier for it. She had sent as many Grimm as she could spare to Forever Fall, but the forest was huge, and she didn't expect to hear of any results any time soon. Cinder, her aspiring Fall Maiden and one of the most driven of her acolytes, had perished beneath Beacon, and the true Fall had vanished into hiding with no more need to eat, sleep, or visit civilization for any necessities unless she desired to. She would be almost impossible to find as long as she knew she was being hunted. Their plans to destroy Amity Arena had failed in every respect. Their bomb had been defused, their sabotage of the anti-gravity had been safely guided to the sea, and the machine that Arthur had been unable to defeat for the last months had stepped up and claimed responsibility for the whole attack, rendering the kingdoms more united than ever against a common foe. This "Isis" had threatened human and faunus alike, claiming that both were inferior to the might and logic of her machines, which meant that even the divide between the two races was narrowing. Even Tyrian had come back to the castle with his tail between his legs, claiming that the children had bested him through sheer numbers of nine-against-one. Now she had assembled what remained of her cabinet, along with Mercury and Emerald, in their meeting hall. No one dared to speak first. "I understand that this... did not go according to plan." Salem narrowed her eyes. "I blame myself, frankly." "My lady, please! You are without fault!" Tyrian cried. He raised a hand to stop him. "I became caught up in the idea that the information I had come across rendered me in control of the future. I thought that one of our unaccounted for variables could be controlled with another. I was... incorrect." "None of us could have predicted that two visitors, both of whom were mere children, from another world would prove to be so effective at ruining our plans. The very idea is absurd." "And yet here we are, Arthur. Tasting the sour taste of failure." She sighed. "For now, we will need to fall back. Recuperate our lost assets. Create a new plan on a fresh, longer timetable." She reached down into her pocket, retrieving the item that had started all of this. She sighed and placed it on the table before setting it ablaze with a spell. "Attempting to use this information led us to a rushed plan that came to no fruition. The timeline is now so drastically altered that trying to use it now could only do more harm to us than good. As such, I will learn from the example of our adversaries... and throw out the script." Everyone present watched as the discs all went up in flames, soon reduced to nothing more than a bubbling puddle on the table. Salem couldn't help noticing a small smile of relief on Hazel's face, while Watts seemed to be only barely restraining himself from objecting to the action. "Now, with that finished, we must attend to the matter of-" And then... There was nothing. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Resurrection was a part of Salem's curse of immortality. No matter how thorough, no matter how devastating the damage to her body, she would be repaired in a matter of seconds and restored to her full, intact self once more. So it was little surprise to her when she awakened, fully healed from whatever attack had been launched on their castle. What did surprise her, however, was the lack of a castle when she woke up. She was laying in the center of a massive crater where her castle used to be. Looking around, she could only imagine that the diameter was just over a kilometer, and the earth around the edges had been pulled into massive domed walls around her, hemming her inside. She could feel the tingle of heat from the land around her radiating terrifying energy left over from the cataclysm. She didn't know how, but her entire castle, her allies, and a titanic chunk of land had all been ripped out from underneath her. All conveniently just after Elijah Bakersfield's escape. Salem screamed. She screamed to the heavens, she screamed with a wrath that shattered the scorched earth beneath her feet. He was out there. She knew it. She could FEEL it. And he had done this. And she would have her revenge. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "An observation drone is approaching the given coordinates, Sunset Shimmer." Everyone in the room instantly crowded around Sunset, peering over her to try and get a look at her phone. Ruby somehow managed to squirm up between Sunset and her phone, her head popping up just under Sunset's chin. Yang and Weiss each picked a shoulder to watch from, and Blake leaned over as best she could from the hammock. "Go ahead with the live feed, Isis, we're all set here." "Wait, where's Missy? She's going to want to see this!" Ruby cried. "I think she went back to the car, right? She said she was going to go look through some cards to find something that could help with a rescue mission!" "Missy has her own feed being projected by the drone assigned to repairing the Oldsmobile." There was a pause as everyone stared at Sunset's phone, the screen remaining black. "Something is wrong." "Uh, yeah? We're not getting any picture on our end." Yang reached over and tapped on Sunset's phone. "Hello? Is this thing on?" "This is not Evernight Castle." "Isis, what are you talking about? Did Ozpin give you the wrong coordinates?" Sunset asked. "I do not believe so..." The screen finally cut to a live video feed, and all of the girls gasped in shock. It looked as if a meteor had struck the planet, vaporizing anything and everything beneath it. The crater was larger than anything Sunset had ever seen, barren and glassy. "What... happened?" Weiss whispered. "You don't think Penn did this... do you?" Ruby added. "I mean... he's just one guy, right? This looks like some kind of weapon of mass destruction..." Blake muttered. "If he pulled THIS off, I wanna meet him myself more than ever!" Yang snickered to herself. "Damage is consistent with the formation and rapid decay of a miniature black hole in the area. Conjecture: it is possible that the power core of the Aperture Science Handheld Quantum Tunneling Device was allowed to reach a critical state, causing the micro-sized black hole to rapidly expand as containment in the power cell failed, then decay into Hawking Radiation. Probable causes: ignorance when tampering with the device... or deliberate sabotage." Sunset felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. "Is... is there any sign of Penn? Did he make it out of there?" "Negative. No signs." In the corner of the display, a small window overlapped with the video feed displaying Missy's face. "Don't worry, Sunset! If Penn did this, there's NO WAY he didn't get out of there in time!" "Quantum tunneling devices ARE equipped with a removable Event Horizon Estimation Wheel. Provided that this was deliberate, he would almost certainly have used such a device to determine the minimum safe distance." "But, if he isn't there... where is he?" Ruby whispered.