Fanfic’s voice filled my ears the moment I dove into the mist. It felt nothing like Mrs. N’s power, and yet, it was overwhelming, pushing into my head like…like narration. I wasn’t sure I wanted to play along with whatever her plan was.
“You’re walking through the marsh. There’s no one around. The black mist swirls around you as you push further through it. Somewhere ahead of you, according to the maps, there should be a village. But there’s no sign of one. No roads, no signs, no nothing. The lantern in your hand gutters and flickers as a cold wind brushes against your back.”
I looked down. Sure enough, a metal-framed lantern hung where my wand had a second ago. My outfit had changed, too; instead of the pink-and-blue costume of Small Town Super Understudy or Lab Assistant Panic’s labcoat, I wore a wool dress, boots that seemed handmade, and a light blue cloak. I waved the…lantern…seeing if it would act as my wand, but no dice. I was powerless.
Worse, Fanfic’s Episodes were all-hands-on-deck. Every major leaguer usually worked together to stop her, and right now, no one else was around. This whole mess had gone from bad to worse to, somehow, even worse.
Still, if my choices were to flee through the mist, powerless, or to fight The Agent without a chance of winning, one choice felt better than the others. He’d shot Dr. Jackson, after all, and probably done the same with Stella-Lunar.
The mist did swirl around me as I pushed further into it, and the lantern flared as sulfur and rot-smelling wind gusted past me. Then it went out.
“As you walk through the marsh, the skeletal hands of dead trees loom over you. Out of the corner of your eye, you see something. Then, as suddenly as you saw it, it’s gone. Was it ever there? You gather your cloak around you and hurry—somewhere up ahead is Craighead. You’ll be safe there, at the lodge.”
Well, if Fanfic thought I’d be safe somewhere, the best thing to do was follow her narration. After all, it wasn’t like I could go against her narration now. The moment I started walking, though, something flashed in the corner of my eye. It was tall. And short at the same time. I couldn’t quite describe it, but it looked metallic and scaley at the same time. Fursona probably could have identified it, or maybe Su-Bin, but they weren’t here.
And then, suddenly, it was gone. I looked left and right, but it seemed to have vanished into thin air. Whatever it was, it wasn’t anymore.
Now that I thought about it, the lodge in Craighead sounded lovely. It couldn’t be more than another mile—or perhaps two. And somewhere in this dreadful bog, there’d be a road leading to it. I simply had to—
Wait. No. Something was wrong here. I never thought like that. Was Fanfic in my head? Was she narrating my thoughts? How could that be? Was her narration that strong? Was that why they always overloaded her Episodes? I had to be careful if I wanted to survive this without losing my mind to her.
“Okay. The Agent and those three Vs could be in here,” I whispered. “If they are, they’ll help split Fanfic’s attention.”
“It takes you an hour of walking, and you never do find the road, but just as the clouds open in a pouring rain that soaks your clothes right down to your skin, the lights of Craighead finally appear through the dark, fetid mist. The thing you saw appears again, this time lasting no longer than a single blink.”
As I trudged through the swamp toward the warm, safe lodge in Craighead, I couldn’t help thinking about my sister. She’d moved here with her new husband two years ago, and only lasted—
What. The. Hell. I was better than this. This wasn’t real; it was all just Fanfic’s imagination, and I had to stay focused in case one of The Agent’s temps was the thing following me. I stumbled through the swamp until, sure enough, the village’s lanterns started pushing weakly against the fog. My thoughts drifted toward my nonexistent sister again, and I slapped myself across the face before I could finish even a single sentence.
And that’s when I saw it again.
This time, I held my eyes open as long as I could. The thing might’ve been dragon-shaped once, but swamp muck had coated it so thickly I couldn’t be sure. Was there a person stuck to its back? When my sister had visited, she’d told me tales of the nuckalavee, a horse-and-man abomination that haunted battlefields. Was that…this?
“You hurry toward the lights, slipping into Craighead’s nearly-empty streets. The village is little more than a handful of homes, a tinker’s shack, and the lodge. It looms over the other buildings, its three floors seeming somehow out of place—it’s too tall, too thin, to be here in the middle of the marsh. Even so, its windows are lit, and its door’s unlocked and open, beckoning you inside.”
Sure. Why not?
I followed my sister’s advice. She’d always said that the tinker was not to be trusted, and as I passed the man’s shack, he shot me a glare that could have bowled me over. The device he was popping dents out of looked like some sort of musket the men in the village must have used to hunt, but three times as large, with a black rubber hose trailing behind it.
I shivered. Something about that man was wrong. Why did he despise me? Had I done something to offend him? I bundled my cloak and hurried toward the lodge, where I’d be safe.
I breathed a sigh of relief as I slipped through the door, though I couldn’t precisely explain why. The only other occupant of the floor was a man who appeared to be a barkeep, at least by his positioning in the room. However, his clothes were far too fancy to be the inn’s proprietor. His bowtie and jacket were impeccable, and his blonde hair parted perfectly.
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A name popped into my head unbidden. The Agent.
For a second or two, I pushed Fanfic’s narration out of my mind to see if I could still do it. It was harder than it had been before; as I approached whatever she wanted me to find, it got harder and harder to fight her. But I could do it. And that meant The Agent could, too.
“Understudy, this is a setback, but it doesn’t change anything. Fanfic’s already declared her neutrality. She’s irrelevant to my plans,” The Agent hissed at me. The grin on his face shifted from slick to sinister.
I could feel Fanfic’s power pressing in on me, but I glared back. “She seems…relevant to me,” I hissed through clenched teeth.
“In the immediate term, it would seem so. But not for long. She never stays for long.” The Agent winced, and suddenly, his voice shifted from the slick, slimy salesman’s tone to something deeper, almost dead inside. “You’re in luck, miss. A single room remains unoccupied—the tower chamber. It’s twenty pence for the night, and should I assume you’ll move on in the morning?”
“Yes, that will do nicely.” Whoever The Agent was and whatever he represented, I wanted as little to do with him as possible.
“The journey up the stairs to the tower room taxes you more than you thought possible, but eventually, you slip through the oak door into a room that smells faintly of lye, and less faintly of damp cloth and rot. The bed seems adequate, though, and you settle down for a restful night’s sleep. Tomorrow’s journey will be longer, with no village at its end.”
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“You awaken suddenly. Something is in your room.”
I jumped from my bed, reaching for the hooded lantern and opening its aperture until I could see—faintly—the silhouette looming over me. It stepped forward. It wore the same suit I’d seen The Agent wear before, but now, it seemed covered in something bright scarlet, and the man’s grin had shifted from sinister to empty. Worse, in his hand, he held a pistol. As the gun rose, the man’s eyes flickered with a sudden hatred.
“Understudy, this fog-bound hell changes nothing.”
My mind cleared. Right. The Episode. As the gun fired, I tore out of my bed and threw myself to the side. The pistol ball slammed into my arm, sending searing pain rippling across the flesh below my bone. I screamed, but some instinct, perhaps, took over, and I lunged at the inn’s proprietor before he could finish the job.
We grappled for the gun, though it wouldn’t be good as anything but a bludgeon. Still, I needed a weapon. When he threw me off of him, I changed plans. The lantern hung from a hook. I grabbed it with my good arm, foot sliding in something sticky and warm on the floor. Then I spun.
The glass-and-iron lantern slammed into his head, shattering and spewing flaming oil across the right side of his face.
I wasted no time. As he roared in agony, I ducked toward the door. My hand closed on the handle.
Locked.
Behind me, the rotten wood burst into flames. I needed a way out—but there was none. The mirror on the door reflected the horrific form of The Agent, standing and ablaze. He staggered toward me, and I screamed as I spun to fight him.
Something grabbed me by the shoulder from behind and pulled me toward the mirror.
I screamed.
----------------------------------------
[Episode Finished!]
[Episode: Power War: The Battle of Mid-Town - R]
[Penalties: 0x Rating Warnings - No Penalty]
[Episode Finished! +3 of each Style Point]
[The Agony of Defeat! +1 of each Style Point]
[Role Focus: Grit + Drama - Goal Partially Met: +10 to Drama]
[Alias - Understudy] [Archetype - Magical Girl] [Community Rank - 85/523]
[HP 1/15]
[Styles and Skills]
►Archetype Skill - Transformation Sequence
►Combo Skills - Power-Weaving
►Badass (20)
►Cunning (16)
►Drama (46)
► Limelight Barrage 2
► Starlance 2
►Flamboyance (52) (Skill Roll Available)
►Signature Skill - Adaptive Armoire 3
►Stored Costumes: (Rainy Day, Copy Cat, Lab Assistant Panic)
►Solar Wing 2
► Quick-Time Change 3
► Improvised Ovation 1
►Grit (28)
► Freeze Frame 2
The door slammed shut.
“What the hell?” I asked. Everything hurt. But especially my arm. The pain cut through even my fog-filled headache.
I lay on the floor of the Council of Heroes’ chamber, a woman who looked super-familiar looming over me. My memories felt disjointed, and it took me almost a minute to place her. “Mrs. N?”
“No.” The single word sent a chill through my spine, the first clarity I’d had since I stepped into the black mist. Even though the Episode was over, she was the one…villain? I wasn’t sure. The one super everyone feared. “I’m here because she asked me to be here, and because this way, she’ll owe me.”
I nodded as if it made sense. It didn’t. This close, I could see the differences. Mrs. N’s hair was a shade grayer, and her face a little more worn. Fanfic’s skin was a half-shade darker, a deep brown bordering on black. Her eyes were wilder, too. They looked like something was burning inside of them beneath her glasses.
“She wanted me to get you out of there. I’ve done that. Now, get out of here. This tower’s mine now, until I decide to go somewhere else.” In person, Fanfic sounded almost…boring. It contrasted with the fire in her eyes. But under that emptiness, there was something else. I knew she’d been in my head and painted a reality that neither The Agent nor I could escape. For all I knew, his henches couldn’t get out, either.
As I nodded shakily, my arm sending pulses of pain across my body, she looked away from me. “Your face burns and melts, but you’ll live—so long as you run. The villagers, awoken by the gunshot, swarm into your lodge, torches in hand. As the tower burns, you have no choice but to attempt to flee into the marsh, leaving the life you’ve built in Craighead behind. It’s two days to the next village. If the horrors in the swamp or the angry citizens of Craighead don’t find you first; you realize you’ve left your gun behind.”
We’d lost.
We’d definitely lost. I checked the watch, but I hadn’t gotten a single message on it. My phone had a few—all from Bee. I sent her a quick one back, letting her know I was on the way. I wanted to call her or Mom. Or someone. But I didn’t stop walking until I’d found the gaping hole she’d torn in the Council of Heroes building’s side. Then I took a deep, shaky breath and stepped into the air.
I used [Solar Wing], tears welling as every flap pulled at the wound in my arm, and flew shakily away from Mid-Town toward the Green Room. Bianca would be there. She’d know what to do. That wasn’t a promise. It was more of a thin hope.
[Skill Upgrade! Adaptive Armoire 3 > Wondrous Wardrobe: Allows access to all Costumes]