Richie put on the biggest sustained burst of speed he had since Coral Road, whose subconscious phantom memory tickled Richie's sense of deja by as he sprinted for his life, swimming beneath the shadows of great trees. If the manticore hadn't been so worn down and had its legs damaged beforehand, it surely would have caught him regardless. Not leaving things to chance, Richie zigzagged intermittently through the copses.
Then, a guiding light swooped in on him - Bob.
The drone buzzed and chittered, keeping pace in front of him.
"Now's not a great time!" Richie barked at the retrofitted insect.
Then, Holly's ragged voice came through the speaker.
"Kid, follow the dragonfly. Just floor it. Tailgate his thorax and don't look back." Holly grunted.
Off in the area where she had been sniped off her perch, Holly slumped her back against a thick trunk, talking into her wristcom with one hand as she tugged at the barb lodged in her chest with the other.
"Why?!" Richie demanded, a pair of young trees snapping right in half as the manticore burst out of them in its mad dash.
"Don't talk, just do it!" Holly commanded.
The manticore fired shotgun spread bursts from its tail, the stingers lodging themselves in trees as Richie continually outpaced him. One spike flew right over his shoulder, grazing it.
Now's not the time for weak knees. If I don't run - I die.
So what? his dragons said, forked tongues flickering curiously toward Bob. It's not the first time. When it comes to running away, you're a seasoned veteran.
Was that their attempt at being encouraging?
Richie felt another spike graze his heel, and thought he could feel the volcanic burst of hot, fetid meat breath on the back of his neck, and somehow found the capacity to run even faster. He kept his draconic eyes locked resolutely on Bob.
Then -
"What the?!" - Richie's ankle was lashed by a loop of wire that yanked his feet out from under him, drawing tight like a noose, and then he was flailing in the air, hanging upside down from a tree.
It was a snare trap. Cuppy's fault, no doubt.
Damn you and your area denial weapons! I told you to put your toys away when you're done playing with them! Richie raged internally.
He was cat meat. Inverted, he saw the manticore sprinting, ready to leap and snag him out of the air.
Crash!
...Richie, who had squeezed his eyes shut in anticipation of getting torn apart, forced them open. He saw the monster trapped in a net of fine gleaming wire, razor sharp, snugged so tightly around the manticore that the metallic strings were embedded into the flesh, drawing cube formation gouts of blood all over its body. Wires dug into and through the bridge of its nose, and another was lodged partway through its throat. The monster's burning eyes, full of hatred, scorched Richie's soul.
A microwave shot severed the snare trap holding Richie, dropping him inelegantly on his back.
"Ow!" he growled, rubbing his tailbone as Holly strut up to the trapped beast.
She withdrew her microwave pistol - and a second one, training both on the manticore.
"Checkmate."
When she spoke to Cuppy through Bob, Holly engineered a backup plan, one that Richie had unknowingly been assigned a starring role in. The monster might have anticipated a boobytrap, may have evaded or broken one before it could spring itself on him. Better to let the beast think its prey's ineptitude had been their own undoing, and that poor coordination led one of their dumber lambs into the very trap meant for the manticore. This served double as bait and a decoy. The intersecting network of preprogrammed garotte threads Cuppy had remotely stitched while visibly confronting the manticore directly was set to pull itself taut only after the intended bait had been snagged. Richie's very stumbling into the snare immediately triggered the net to draw tight across the trees like a giant edged spiderweb.
Their gamble paid off, their plan bearing the fruit of victory.
How careless. the manticore thought. Do I really have to fall in such a disgraceful way? Bound like common livestock to be corralled and bled? Who and what do you think I am? I am an apex predator, a pinnacle of natural selection! I can't be permitted to die this way! If I'm to fall, it must be in battle! That is the law of the jungle, and what it means to be king of the beasts! Please, don't let my story end to these hairless monkeys!
Richie rubbed the back of his head as he stood up, then approached the captured beast and folded his arms.
"I can get a guess what you're thinking. Yeah, we're weak and sentimental creatures. But ganging up on a stronger opponent is fair play too, since you're so keen on throwing honor out the window when it suits you. Trust is a gamble that's just as likely to get you stabbed in the back or kicked when you're down as it is to earn you any basic kindness. But army ants are a swathe of destruction composed of millions of tiny, inconsequential individual insects. Bonds are good for one thing. You pick a fight with one - you pick a fight with all."
"You cheated." the manticore growled. "How dare you rob me of a glorious fight?"
Richie flicked its nose. "Shut your faux-viking mouth. I couldn't care less about you or your fixation on being king. I'm a thief. I bow to no laws, man's - or nature's. You tried to murder innocent people to feed your ego as much as your belly. That's why you will never - be as good as that freaky incest cat."
Elsewhere, the wampus cat sneezed.
Here though, the manticore became a quiet, subdued personification of tranquil fury. "Are you saying that I am inferior to that misplaced southern fried redneck trash of a felid? I, a mighty lion?!" it roared.
"That's right." Richie said.
"Tell me, monkey - what does my retarded ancestral cousin have that I don't? Claws? Teeth? Skin like iron? How exactly is it better than me?!"
Richie smirked.
"He made the right friends. All other life to you is something to be killed or devoured. You have no foresight. Empathy evolved for a reason, so weaker animals could hold on closer together and endure a cruel world. You may be strong, but you have no allies. When you fall, no one mourns you. And, much to my surprise, I care about being valued. If I died, I'd like to think people would miss me. That's why people risk their lives and souls trying to become close, even if our quills grate against each other. We are one. We transcend you. You aren't the one -" Richie heard himself saying without understanding what he was rambling about, "-that Darwin was waiting for."
Holly stepped in.
"Stand aside, Richie. Let me finish this." Holly trained her pistols on the manticore's face.
"You're going to gun him down in cold blood, cook him to death from the inside out while he's already beaten?" Richie said.
Let her do it, Richie. his dragons said.
"He isn't like the other ferals, Richie. He won't stop hunting citizens even if there are alternatives to sustain his need for mass quantities of meat. He's arrogant and narcissistic, a concentrated textbook case of the warrior gene you find cited in human psychopathy research. Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin - these guys all have the same traits in common. Don't waste your precious reserves of pity and mercy on the irredeemable warmongers and murderers."
Richie sighed, threw his hands up in the air, and shrugged. "Do what you want." he walked away. "I don't like finishing off an enemy who's already on the ground, flooded with pain and shame. You must have been a kitten once, suckling at your mother's nips. I bet you had a nice purr. It's tragic. But if I wash my hands of it and someone else finishes you off - I guess you'd call that nature running its course, wouldn't you?"
Richie ambled off, leaving it to fate.
The manticore buried its head in its paws.
"Well then. The weak don't decide how they die. I didn't have evolution's favor. That is all."
"Are those your last words?" Holly asked, pushing the muzzle of each microwave pistol to either side of the manticore's head, at the ears.
"No. I had a question."
Holly raised an eyebrow.
"Why would anyone take on the pain of another? It must be a heavy burden."
Holly saw a blood-drenched altar flash before her mind in a far off time when the stars lit up the sky like dancing spectral orbs.
"It is. I'm not entirely human. My inclinations are at war with each other. But we just do things. We set sail because we could. There was nothing rational about going, as far as the ancients were concerned, over the edge of the world. Yet we spread and learned many skills across the continents. Diversified. Evolved. Idiosyncrasies are what make us human. Beautiful, flawed, humans. That's why we put mercy and kindness on a pedestal."
"But you won't?" the manticore asked.
"I might have." Holly confessed. "If you didn't shoot me in the fucking tits."
The manticore chuckled. "It must be enlightening. To have so much extra room in your hearts."
It laid down as if curling up to take a nap.
Holly cocked her guns - then fired.
Richie collapsed against a tree, holding his face.
When he returned to the apartment, Chikita was sprawled out on her back, sleeping soundly but not silently. She was snoring up a crackling storm of thunder, midriff exposed as her bloodied t shirt was bunched and pulled open, exposing a belly button that even seemed to be bleeding. Her hair was a frizzy, sweat-slicked mess splayed in all directions. She had no pillow, laying spread out on bare carpet, but Cuppy had draped a patchwork quilt over her.
"Dead girl walking here till she crashed for a little siesta. I'd say she could really use it. Same for the rest of us, really. Give me the maiming headcount, who's ailed by what." Cuppy said.
"Hematoma bruising all over, torn muscles, broken knee ligament, cracked ribs, ballistics penetrating trauma with those falling spikes. Nerve damage from venom and unnerving blood loss." Richie rattled off.
"Hacked and slashed to high hell, muscles gashed along with flesh. Heavy blood loss, some internal trauma from friendly fire explosion." Freyja glared at Richie.
"Cracked ribs, vertebrae, and concussion, some crush damage, flattened nose from Freyja being slammed into me, through a fence. Got some splinters, see?" Cuppy showed his invaded finger pads.
"And the train wreck?" Richie pointed to Chikita.
"Just throw the whole chick out, fam." Freyja chuckled weakly, then hissed sharply, clutching her stomach.
"Anyone getting sick of getting the shit kicked out of us?" Richie cracked his neck out.
Cuppy and Freyja raised their hands.
"I'll agree to that." Holly said, inviting herself in, clutching her chest wound and cracking her hip back into place.
"Well look at that, the wards didn't keep her out after all." Freyja whistled.
"He ha. Look, we all just saved each other's lives, so let's drop the rocky starts, ok? I'll tell you everything you want to know. But first, that pond of black gunk is cause for concern."
Richie jumped bolt up right. "That's right! I totally forgot about that crud."
"I actually saw you and the bitchsicle not too long ago. The one called Luchesi was planning an ambush. I pulled a gun on him. He made things personal when he attacked a coworker and killed one of her friends in cold blood. The Institute's methods may make us he who fights monsters, but when this all started, our priority was and has always been to protect the innocent. But when I pulled my gun on the slasher, I didn't expect to get The Faceless Man in my crosshairs."
The room went silent.
"He imposed an air of silence over us. I couldn't call out, couldn't warn you. I tried my best, but I was absolutely infantilized and thrown aside. Far, far aside, crashing in the bay. My suit enhancements saved me by a hair. Just the latest transgression against me. As I said, the Faceless Man stole something precious from me, and left me trapped in an unfamiliar world."
"You're some kind of an alien, right? First contact and shit?" Freyja raised an eyebrow.
"It's a long, sordid story. But it can wait. My history is secondary to why we're even talking. You want to know about the Institute, and what it knows. I'll be your whistleblower. The Institute and that mad Director no longer have anything to offer me. I have some questions for you all as well."
Cuppy led the rest of the gang back to the house, shutting the door once everyone was inside and scribbling a few extra sigils on scrap papers to stick to the walls for good measure. Holly took a seat on the kitchen counter and slid her microwave pistol from its holster, swapping out its battery with a fresh one from a pouch on her hip before setting it down beside her. "Alright. Whistleblowing time." She says. Cuppy's strings waft past her, plucking a hot chocolate pod from the cupboards and a few mugs. Cuppy's tongue stuck out slightly as he began whipping up enough of the stuff to render everyone cozy.
The sweet aroma that quickly filled the room set Holly's mind at ease. "I suppose I'll start with the institute itself, and what its intentions are. From what I was made aware of while inside with my security clearance, the institute has little solid knowledge on what the anomalies are or where they're coming from, just how to capture and destroy them. Our methods have been largely successful so far, deploying the tracers to deal with the threats hasn't failed us yet, but we're coming under budget cuts and the tracers are expensive. Work is ongoing to find out what the cause of the anomalies cropping up everywhere could be, but there's little that makes sense about them. They appear at random, essentially patternless. Or, well, they did until we built the tunnel." Holly says.
Cuppy's strings hover a steaming mug towards her, and she takes it, sipping the hot cocoa within. "Thanks kiddo. The purpose of the tunnel is to create effectively a gateway for the anomalies. From scans captured by these little guys-" She says, pointing at the dragonfly drone perched on her shoulder. "We've been able to replicate the frequency emitted when the anomalies begin to manifest in our realm."
"We broadcast that signal 24/7 inside that tunnel. It isn't audible to the human ear, but it does have some odd properties to it, ones which have deeper implications..." She says. Those watching Holly directly might notice goosebumps begin to trail up her forearms. "You've all heard of 'liminal spaces' right?" She asks.
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"Location equivalents of the uncanny valley effect. Spooky places. But, more generally, I'm guessing you're including any place that looks caught between mundane and otherworldly." Richie ventured.
"Yeah, that. It turns out that most areas which could fit that definition naturally emit the same frequency, albeit much less powerfully than the area around a spawning anomaly. Even still, the ambient presence of the frequency seems to magnify the probability that anomalies will spawn there. The tunnel makes full use of that phenomena. The idea is to try and create a point of least resistance for things to come through, so that our extensive network of tracers can take them down quickly. A killzone." Holly says, sipping her mug with narrowed eyes as she scans the listening audience. "If you were to see the sewer system on a map, you'd notice our tunnel is dead center in the most closely-clustered area of cell towers in the city, which gives the holographic tracers the strongest possible signal." She continues.
"The tunnel itself is built differently than most of the sewer network. The inner tunnel is still concrete, as you'd expect, but it's very thin. A simple veneer really. Coiled around that section of the tunnels are miles worth of copper wire, and there's several of those hex-shaped tracer cells we talked about earlier embedded in the walls. It's a high tech thing that draws a considerable amount of power from the city's municipal grid, hence the blackouts here and elsewhere in town. The good news is it isn't invincible. I'd have to try and get the exact blueprints, but I'm confident we could power the tunnel off if we can get to the thing's primary power cable. After that, it's a simple matter of sniping all those cell towers and the tracer network will be offline for a long damn time." Holly says. "The only question is, is that a good idea? There's no telling what could come through from the other side, wherever that is, and be too much for the local police and military to deal with."
Richie sighed.
"The Backyards. That's the common denominator between everyone and everything, right? Luchesi called it his garden, and it's how he's been kidnapping his victims. But the gateway is selective. The Faceless Man told me back then, before we warded the apartment, that only a select few can perceive the openings. We're all missing gaps in our memory too."
"Not all of us." Holly said. "When I fell in from the rabbit pen, to where Chikita-" she gestured to the snoring blue-haired woman - "was, I didn't lose anything, aside from time and a few weeks off my lifespan from a cavalcade of scares." she held her forehead.
"I only just remembered some kind of waking daydream from two years ago." Freyja said. "I think Richie was there. We all were, in a way. I got hurt really badly, and I sank deeper into that place to restore my body. I lost track of who I was, got mode-locked in dog form. When I finally came out, it was because I heard the fading voices of Richie and Cuppy."
"That was when we drowned, right?" Richie asked. "We got split up. I don't remember the details. It's fuzzy. But I can feel bits and pieces. This knife-" Richie held up Leon's dagger. "It feels special to me. I didn't have it when I went in, I know that much."
Holly drew a huge swig of her hot chocolate. "There may be different layers to the Backyards. Liminality is the gate and the key. No one has been able to consciously find entrance. That's likely why the Institute, built on the timeless bastions of rationality, can't find the subtle openings. And also why the fog emissions are visible to all. I think both are connected. There were ribbons of ether fog before I fell into Chikita's dreamscape, through which I could see and feel another world. The entire reason we crafted our dragonflies in the first place was because anything, man or machine, that tried to enter the fog clouds was overloaded. Like trying to cram infinite information into one meat lump. Kind of like how some hypothesize white holes are the exit and inverse of black holes, perpetually spewing out matter. Things come out of the fog, but can't go in. It's a force of pure expulsion."
"Maybe the fog is just settling dust." Freyja said. "Like tectonic plates, tiers of existence are shifting, but now they're settling, and more stable pathways have aligned. Your network's been missing a lot of invaders, and we've seen that 'ferals' can move through the Backyards too. The Faceless Man wants them here so he can fatten them up for the feast. But you guys were so focused on the visible smokescreen that you didn't see the back door. Maybe he has enough meat for now though. Maybe he's tested and aligned all of the tunnels he needs."
"What are you getting at?" Holly asked.
"My point is that, whether we disable your network or not, it's not going to significantly impact the flow of otherworlders into this reality. The smart ones can manipulate liminal spaces just like people can, and people can also call others in with them. I did when Richie appeared in the past with me. And your network doesn't detect shades."
Richie nodded. "No souls. No energy. No true 'being' to lock onto."
"We don't even know if they're bound by the same rules of the Backyards."
Richie drank deeply, giving himself a chocolate mustache.
"I'm going to simplify all of this right now though. We don't have time for guesswork, let's do what we can with what's in front of us. The Backyards drift through specific 'currents' crisscrossing Station Bay, like the major ocean gyres connect the seas of the planet. With one major exception, that being the gate at our backs." Richie thumbed behind them, to the torn lawn and splintered pickets. "Cup says the Faceless Man ate some keystone kid and fused his phantom pain into the wandering corridor in this zone, in order to anchor it down. And I only found this place to begin with because I was in a panicked spell and guided by something that was half instinct, and half mystic voice. Some kind of presence." he said. "I know now that it at least wasn't my runes. But I digress. If Luchesi could pop up wherever, he'd be cutting through the citizenry like grass. He can do whatever he likes inside, but he still has to enter and exit from a specific range of flickering gateways. When I first went in, I was thinking about some dumb urban legend, and it spawned a monster. Then, later, when I needed help beating a phantom pain, I conjured Excalibur. When we went into the skank's version of the Backyards, it was remote Japanese countryside. I think this place reflects the minds of whoever's in there, for better or worse."
What had Chikita said?
-
"Luchesi-kun, I take it." Chikita chuckled.
"You know him?" Cuppy asked.
"You could say that. The little brat likes to play games, like a child burning ants." Chikita said.
"Can you tell us how he uses the Backyards to warp? How you do it?" Freyja asked.
"What's in it for me?" Chikita asked.
"You can borrow Richie." Cuppy offered.
Richie appeared from out of frame to dropkick Cuppy into a rock. "I LEAVE FOR TWO MINUTES AND YOU TRY TO PIMP ME OUT?!?"
"Couldn't find the exit?" Freyja asked conversationally.
"No! This place just loops, like video game wrap-around physics!" Richie said.
"That's cause I closed the exits." Chikita said.
"Why?!" Richie barked.
Chikita closed her eyes and took a contemplative draw from her pipe. "You're quite loud." she said. "Lesson 1 - the master of a given domain within the Backyards holds sway over its shape and nature. The uninitiated have zero chance of beating a territory holder on their own field. They become little more than bit roles woven into the narrative of that person's dreamscape. First prerequisite to challenge a territory holder is to break away from that control. Weak wills perish." she exhaled into Richie's face.
-
"Once you're inside the Backyards, you're part of a dream - either your own, or somebody else's." Richie said. "Whoever can exert the most influence effectively warps reality like writing a book. A book where hapless gimps are characters bound by their narrative. Luchesi holds power in the Backyards. So does the shameless hussy. They both figured out how to tame the Backyards... or at least, individual backyards."
"That name," Freyja said. "It's very specific. Just like the shades, or the phantom pains. It can't be a coincidence we all thought of the same titles before we ever met. Anyway, the name just gives this sense that all these dreams from this world and others are comingled in one big labyrinth, separated but adjoined by endless miles of fencing. Cosmic suburbia as designed by Kafka." Freyja surmised. "Hard to tell where one lawn ends and another begins. And zoning laws are out the window. You can knock down and rebuild fences to your liking. Re-sculpt the flower beds and patios, put in pools,"
"Set fires." Cuppy added.
"And watch the other yards burn." Richie thought of Luchesi.
"My point," he said, "Is that the only way we're going to effectively stop any threats - foreign monsters, psychopaths with control over the Backyards, spirits - is if we learn how to control and navigate the Backyards too."
Holly held her chin for a moment. "How does one...acquire a parcel of this dreamy real estate?" She asks.
They all looked at the sleeping Chikita.
Richie rolled up a random cars magazine Cuppy'd brought home a few days ago, as one would to kill a fly, and smacked Chikita in the face with it.
After a few seconds, the snores stopped, and Chikita opened a single grouchy eye.
"I hope you're prepared for the consequences, boy." she grumbled, an excited glint in her devious eye.
She stood up to her full height, brushing herself off, and seemed to tower over Richie, her eyes thunderclouds.
Richie held his fists up, in spite of the fact that both of them were exhausted.
"You wanna fuckin' fight?!" he growled.
Chikita grinned. "No. You don't fear beatings, that much is clear."
Moving quickly and calmly, Chikita grabbed Richie's hands and pinned them at his sides. He was too flabbergasted to resist until he drew in a hiss of breath as a waist shackle and handcuff combination set of ice froze around him. By then, he was already trapped. She curled a leg under his, taking him off his feet, and clutched him to her tightly, inescapable. Richie began blushing furiously.
"Hey, what do you think you're doing, you shitty swordsman, get the hell off-"
"Save your breath." Chikita licked her lips.
Then, clutching Richie by the back of his head, she locked lips with him.
Quite literally. She froze their lips together to enforce the vengeful kiss.
Richie mentally screamed, eyes shot open wide. Too much! Soft, cold, alcoholic - sensory overload, fight or flight! Escape! Escape!
Escape wasn't possible.
Cuppy blinked and tilted his head, Cuppet covered Cuppy's eyes, Holly's jaw dropped, and Freyja, initially stunned, soon began cackling her ass off.
After ten seconds of Hell, Chikita broke the kiss with an exaggerated Mhha!
Richie, limp, had evidently fainted, his face frozen in a blushing expression of terror. Even unconscious, he was stammering.
"...cooties..."
Foaming at the mouth, he fell over in a pile as the ice bonds dissolved.
Chikita held her hands on her hips and kicked Richie lightly.
"That's your punishment for headbutting and kicking me earlier, you got that, you little shit?" she chuckled victoriously. "Strike 2 will get you tongue. Hope we're clear."
Cuppy moved Cuppet's hand. "What's the big deal? They just wrestled with their mouths. I guess Richie lost."
Freyja burst into another spat of laughter, the dying embers rekindled by Cuppy's commentary.
Holly was speechless until she wasn't.
"Pedophile." she said plainly.
"That's slander." Chikita pouted. "I'm an ephebophile, thank you very much."
Holly hummed. "How does one...stake a claim of their own? Unless..." she paused, looking around. "Y'know it's odd, my cell service doesn't work in here. Is it possible..."
She muttered, walking outside with sudden intrigue. Chikita followed her out, Freyja staying put to guzzle down the last of her hot cocoa. Upon being stomped on the foot by the exiting swordswoman, Freyja let out a sudden yelp, a small plume of fire sparking out her nose that would've blasted Chikita in the face had she not bent backwards with lithe flexibility, her smoking pipe catching the brunt of the flames instead and lighting it. Chikita took a long draw.
"Thanks pumpkin. Sorry for your tootsies."
Freyja's glare was cut short by a tug on her arm. She looked to Holly, standing slackjawed in awe, and heard Cuppy whistle.
"What the..."
The lawn, which had been totally upturned and eviscerated, and the fencing which had been smashed to splinters, were all perfectly in order and pristine as though nothing had ever happened.
The grounds had healed themselves like a living being.
"That settles it." Freyja said. "This place really did burn down, and Cuppy's vision was dead-on. This complex, the garage, and the greenhouse too - they're all some kind of overlap between the Backyards and Station Bay. That's why no one else even knows this place exists, much less found it."
"And why Mason forgot about it." Holly held her chin.
"I knew it." Cuppy smiled happily. "This place has a will of its own, and we found each other for a reason. My charms have physical potency here, enriched by the power of dreams made reality. This is a free zone between the frames of reality. We're already in a foothold. The psychic named Dares left behind a phantom pain, stuffed with memories of home. The pajamas jerk merged it with the burnt ruins to regenerate them in the form of a backdoor to the city, so he could extend his sphere of influence. But it's a double edged sword. That was what Dares meant about having the last laugh. He knew, someday, somehow, successors would find this microcosm. And he had faith they would surpass the Faceless Man."
Chikita smirked.
"Now you've got my interest. So the key to beating that bastard is here? Nice and simple. I've felt fuckin' clueless since you all started talking about technobabble and metaphysics." she blew smoke in Holly's face again.
"Hey!" Holly coughed.
Freyja tilted her head, her inner confused dog peaking out again. "The acid trip logic confuses you? You were the one who explained the Backyards to us in the first place."
Chikita chuckled. "I can look up and tell you I see stars in the night sky. That doesn't make me an astrologer."
"Astronomer." Holly corrected.
"Whatever." Chikita blew more smoke in her face, the liquid hydrogen-like cloud freezing the alien's lips closed. Frantic mmm!s ensued.
"So, you come from somewhere beyond the Backyards? Another world linked to this one?" Freyja asked Chikita.
"You could say that." Chikita mused, taking a contemplative draw. She exhaled a cloud in the shape of cherry blossom petals. "What century is this?" she asked.
"21st." Freyja said.
"Then we are separated by a great gulf. A sea of time. By your frame of reference, I belong to feudal Japan. I believe you call my era that of the Tokugawa Shogunate." Chikita said.
"Wow!" Cuppy clapped. "What's that?"
"And why are you taking all this future shit in such stride?" Freyja scratched her head. "You're remarkably chill about being centuries in the future with no frame of reference. Heh. Chill." Freyja smiled, proud of herself.
"How do you put it? This ain't my first rodeo?" Chikita grinned. "I've been a stranger in a few strange lands for a while now, tracking the Faceless Man across time and space. I've circumvented a lot of cosmic red tape by using the same doors he left open, but I lost track of my way back home. It doesn't matter. There's nothing left for me in the past. Dead and buried." she looked down.
For just a flicker of a moment, she seemed... sad.
"Anyway, I told you before that stronger wills ultimately win. I claimed a backyard by killing its previous tenant and inheriting his claim."
Holly was still grunting through her ice gag the whole while, and grabbed Chikita by the collar, shaking her.
"Fiiiinnnee." Chikita rolled her eyes, and dissolved the ice with a snap of her fingers.
Holly gave Chikita a death glare, but composed herself.
"Awful nonchalant about that, eh?"
"Look who's talking, secret police." Chikita stuck her tongue out at Holly.
"Samurai?" Freyja asked, implicitly about Chikita's background.
"Assassin. Common birth, no one master. Violence and murder have been my whole life since... well, have been my whole life." she sighed. "Anyway, it doesn't matter. The monster was right about one thing - it's survival of the fittest. If you guys are serious about probing the multiverse, you may have to dirty your hands from time to time."
"What about you, Miss Yule?" Cuppy tugged on Holly's skirt.
"I thought we already went over this." Holly pushed her glasses up. "I'm an extraterrestrial."
"Ohhhh. How much terrestrial do you have?" Cuppy asked.
Holly blinked a few times. "After so many classes, I still can't tell when you're paying attention or not. I mean I'm an alien. You know, from outer space?"
Cuppy cocked his head. "So, did you get pooped out by a comet, or something?"
"No, goddammit, listen to me. Not literally outer space itself, I just mean from outside your solar system. You know, another planet. I was born and grew just like you did. Presumably. I'm not sure what you are." Holly said, posing Cuppy's arm at the elbow joint as if he were an action figure.
Freyja looked skeptical. "That would mean you had to cross literal light years to get here. How? Does that mean your race created faster than light technology?"
Holly shook her head. "Not quite. We used an ark a long time ago. Even though we knew how to use it, even we don't understand how it works. Its fuel source is the proverbial black box. Based on how the first culture we made contact with immortalized their dreamy visions as gods and idols though, I'd hazard a guess the ship wasn't unlike a machine that could channel the Backyards. Space is an infinite sea. You could send generations upon generations across that sea on a colony ship and never get anywhere relevant. So, we just... took a shortcut."
Freyja raised an eyebrow. "This first culture you contacted. Who were they, pray tell?"
"They were what's known to you as the Mayan peoples, the ones who built great megaliths and made ornate carvings of their snakelike gods before up and disappearing without a trace. Your history books will tell you it's likely they caught smallpox or died of some other natural cause, but in truth..." Holly gazed upward to the sky. "They left the world. With our technological gifts and genetic modification allowing them enhanced understanding of the cosmos, they left the comfort of their stoneworks and crafted space worthy vessels of their own to seek broader fields." Her tone was nostalgic, as if she spoke of a relative she hadn't seen in centuries. In many ways, she was.
"What does that make you?" Cuppy asked.
Holly seemed to bask a while more in the warmth of nostalgia. "A child of two worlds, and an archivist of our shared history. My caste were renowned psychics, with my family in particular possessing inherent psychometric ability. I was practically born for archaeology. For you, the past can only be pieced together with fragments and educated guesses. But I can live and breathe it, as long as I have a sample." she smiled.
Then, she frowned. "Or at least, I could. Until the Faceless Man stole the part of me that sustained this power. What I have left is in limited supply, and every use brings me closer to losing who I am. Not to mention stranding me with no leads on how to reunite with my people. This, on the heels of repairing a great rift, no less. For ages, the Maya I share ancestry with appeased their gods with ritual sacrifice, a practice shared by other Mesoamerican societies of the time."
"Like the Inca and the Aztec." Cuppy chimed in, raising his hand.
"Ding ding." Holly smiled. "Guess you have been listening to my lectures." she said.
"Why would you want to trap the Maya in a cycle of blood tolls if your goal was to lift them up?" Freyja asked.
"We didn't. At least, not all of us did. A select few came to believe the Maya's misinterpretations, and thought we literally were gods, destined for dominance. Those vicious warlords are in exile now, but we were never a unified people again. I've passed through such a rift that I don't even know if any of us are left. I can't even tell you if the Maya we merged with are the same that lived on this version of your planet."
"Assuming the Backyards can leak ideas from a greater collective unconscious though, that would go a long way to explain why ideas like that keep finding themselves taking root in different parts of the world, regardless of era and culture. The world tree? The great flood? Fallen angels? Sky's the limit." Freyja said. "Actually, scratch that. Sky's not the limit. You're proof of that." Freyja thumped Holly's shoulder. "Infinity's the limit. Far beyond this azure sky." she mused, waxing an uncharacteristic poetic.
There was logic to Holly now. There was humanity. With that, unspoken tensions eased.