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 Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2014 6:20 pm
It was the work of minutes to empty most of the contents of the kitchen cabinets into an enormous duffel bag that Kent used for trips to the bulk warehouse he visited every month. Aquarius didn’t bother with the fridge, since whatever was there would spoil quickly. Instead, she stuck with canned goods: more ravioli, vegetables, beans, fruit cocktail. There were several cans of frosting that she tossed in, along with a few boxes of cake mix and cornmeal, and a container of oats. Kent had both powdered milk and powdered eggs, in case of emergency. There was even a canister of powdered mashed potatoes, though those were Tara’s, for when she was too lazy to make a real effort. Which was most of the time.
Then, the bedroom. Most of the things there would be useless where she was going, but she did take some of her equipment. Blood typing kit, plastic test tubes, a box of slides. The microscope was electrical, and so it wouldn’t do any good. She looked longingly at her telescope, but knew that it would never fit. The plants would probably die if she tried to bring them to space. The fish- no, Kent would take care of those. Her kit was important, though. Lying flat on her stomach, she reached under the bed and pulled out the messenger bag that she took on patrol with her, and put it on the top of the bag. As a last, almost unconscious thought, she grabbed the remains of her broken jewelry box and stuffed them down the side. The duffel zipped up, but only barely.
Exidor hovered behind her, evidently distressed. ”I cannot support this decision. You are taking my answer, without doing any of the work for it.”
“But if you are me, then I’ve already done the work.” Exidor had no answer to that, and Aquarius smiled, thrilled to have won for once. “Isn’t this what you were pushing me towards all along? So what does it matter how I got here?”
”No, I- I mean, yes, but- this is not what you should be doing!” He actually sounded frantic, and tried to seize Aquarius physically, but she simply stepped out of the way and continued packing. ”And what of your family? Are you just going to leave them in the dark as you disappear?”
Her smile faded. She didn’t like the idea of Kent thinking that he had driven her away. He had merely helped her stumble on the obvious conclusion. While it would have been nice to live in ignorance a while longer, he’d really helped her out. She did owe him an explanation. Not a full one- she still didn’t want him to get involved, if that was possible- but enough to ease his mind. Then he could explain to Tara’s family, and all would be well.
The desk in her room was still cluttered. Aquarius sat at it, pulling a notebook out from a stack of identical ones and opening to a clean sheet of paper. This would take delicate phrasing…
~*~
It was more than an hour after their altercation outside of HITS when Kent finally got home. He had no idea if Tara was going to be there. If she was, he didn’t want to scare her off, so he tested the doorknob. The front door was ajar, which was a worrying sign. As quietly as he could, he crept in.
The first thing he noticed was the total mess in the kitchen. Cabinets were open and half-empty. Some boxes had spilled, leaving powdery trails on the counters and floor. Tara was stocking up for something. Was she planning to hide in the wilderness? Was she afraid that he’d find her if she stayed nearby? Was she that afraid of him, now?
A familiar clattering noise came from Tara’s bedroom. The office chair, rolling on the plastic carpet cover. She was in there, for the moment. Kent let out the breath he had been holding. He wasn’t too late after all. As long as he explained, and listened, he could still fix this.
~*~
Three notes. One for Kent, one for the parents, and one for Evie and Dana. Each one fairly similar, offering apologies and assurances that she would be okay. Each one with a unique postscript. This was key for the last of the notes. Dana was a senshi, which meant that she would need all the help she could get. Aquarius couldn't abandon her, but she knew the notes would hardly be private. The best she could do was offer a clue as to her whereabouts. If Dana had been at the Surrounding, as she claimed, maybe it would be enough.
There was more that she wanted to write, people she felt she owed some sort of goodbye to. Laney- no, Laney would figure things out. Laney was a knight, and while that was a terrible thing, it meant that there was a chance they could still be friends. Yvette was another story. Tara had promised she would fix things and find her, and now that would never happen. But the thought of writing a final note to Yvette was painful, and so she put down the pen. Better for everyone else to have a clean break, she decided. And better for her as well.
Clutching the notes, Aquarius strode out of the room. She would leave them on the kitchen table, and that would be that.
“Tara? No, it’s- what are you doing here?”
Kent was there, standing in the middle of the living room, looking totally shocked. Aquarius couldn’t blame him. She was pretty surprised herself, and she wasn’t the one who came home to find a total stranger- and a terrorist to boot- in her house. She gaped at him for a moment, tempted to tell him everything. Then her resolve hardened, and she ran back into Tara’s room and locked the door.
~*~
It wasn’t Tara, unless Tara was hiding in her room. It was a terrorist. And not just any terrorist, but the one that had saved him a few weeks ago. He had clearly caught her by surprise, which didn’t do much to level the playing field. What on earth was she doing there? Did she know Tara?
That seemed to be the case, since she ran back into Tara’s room. Kent could hear the sound of the lock turning in the door. Without even thinking about it, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the key that he’d started to keep on him after their first argument. In a moment, the door was unlocked, and he was in.
The girl was sitting on the bed, the strap of a duffel bag- his duffel bag, he noticed dully- wound around her wrist. She had a cell phone in her hand, and was desperately trying to dial. Tara was nowhere to be seen. This room had been ransacked too, boxes turned on their sides, others missing altogether. The contents were probably in the bag. But why would a terrorist be taking Tara’s things?
“Do you know Tara?” he asked, taking a few steps into the room.
The girl looked up at him, panic-stricken features easing as she thought about his question. And why would she need to think about it? he wondered. “Tara asked me to give these to you,” she said finally, handing him a stack of folded papers. “And to tell you she’s sorry.”
~*~
The question gave Aquarius the perfect opening. She could claim to be sent by Tara to deliver a message, and fetch her things. Which wasn’t too far from the truth, really. While she could never blot out the knowledge that Kent had of terrorists and attacks, she could at least mask the fact that Aquarius and Tara Kavanaugh had been the same person.
”Is that all you’re going to tell him?” Exidor demanded angrily. ”If you’re trying to cut ties, you’re doing a terrible job of it. He’ll look for you, and then what?”
As usual, the past guy had a point. “Tara’s going to be fine,” she said, hoping to sound reassuring. It wasn’t a lie. Now that she was allowed to rest, Tara would finally be free from her nightmares. “I’ll take care of her. You don’t need to worry. But please, for your own sake, don’t get involved.” She gulped as she spoke. “Please.”
Kent’s head jerked up at that, but he didn’t speak. Probably, Aquarius thought, he was wondering what to say.
~*~
That phrase was so familiar. This girl had said something similar the first time they met. But more than that, Tara had said almost the exact same thing earlier. Their goal, both of them, was to keep Kent out of this. Why would a random terrorist care so much? Even if she was friends with Tara, it was unlikely that she would go to this extent, to reveal herself to a stranger just to deliver a message. The only one he could think of who would risk herself in this way, just to pass on a warning, was Tara herself.
Kent’s eyes widened. Of course. That would explain everything, if it was possible. If it had been her all along. That was how she kept disappearing whenever he tried to follow her. It was the reason she had attacked his doppelganger before it had a chance to attack him. If it was the truth, it solved all of the riddles, and introduced dozens more. How had this happened? What did it all mean?
He looked at her, as she was doing something with her phone. She didn’t look like Tara, not really. But she sat in the same way, with the balls of her feet on the floor and her heels lifted. And there- she tugged on her braid, just like Tara did when she was nervous. A terrorist would never know to copy that, even if they had reason to. How had he not noticed that before? What kind of guardian was he, to allow himself to be misled so fully?
In that moment, as crazy as it sounded, he felt that it really was Tara in front of him. That meant that he had one last chance to get this right.
~*~
It was hard to tune into the song of the Outpost with Kent staring at her. Exidor was staring too, but thankfully he wasn’t talking. She could almost hear the first notes-
“Please, wait.” Kent was speaking, clouding her focus. “I know that you- that Tara’s afraid. But maybe you and I can come to some kind of arrangement. We can work things out, I know we can.”
“No,” Aquarius replied, trying to tune him out. “This is the way it has to be.”
Kent pounded the desk with his fist. “The hell it is! If you think I’ll let it end this way, you’re wrong. I can fix this. I will fix this. I promise.”
There it was, calling her home. Aquarius spared one moment to look at Kent. She didn’t know if her note would help. Maybe nothing would. But staying would solve nothing. At least when she was gone, she wouldn’t endanger anyone anymore. Kent would get over Tara eventually, and go on to change the world in his own way. Everyone would move on. That was the way that things worked, for people other than her.
~*~
For a moment, Kent thought that his words had finally gotten through to her. At least, the girl- Tara, he reminded himself, that might be Tara in there- stopped fiddling with her phone. She stood, carefully, standing on her tiptoes. Her balance was better than Tara’s was. Maybe that was one of her superpowers. Funny, the things he noticed when he was near despair.
“Tara would want you to have this.” She leaned forward as far as she could, tethered as she was by the duffel’s strap, and quickly kissed him on the cheek. Even more quickly than Tara usually did, when she was moved enough to show her affection beyond a hi-five or a tackle. “I’m sorry.”
Kent reached out for her, as she withdrew, but something about her expression made him refrain from grabbing her just yet. “I won’t let you leave,” he warned. If she wouldn’t listen, he just needed to keep her there until he figured out how to get through to her. Not that he knew how to stop someone with superhuman strength from leaving. She could probably incapacitate him without an effort. He could only hope that she wouldn’t be able to bring herself to do that.
~*~
Her eyes were tearing up. Probably because she hadn’t be able to fully let Tara go just yet. And even if she had, it would be hard to watch impassively. He was so desperate to keep her from leaving, but that would only make matters worse. The song of the Outpost echoed in her ears, and she knew what she had to do.
“I’m sorry,” Aquarius repeated once more. Her thumb brushed against the “home” key on her phone. Before Kent could move, she was gone.
~*~
Kent blinked, to make sure his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him. Sure enough, he was the only one left in the room. Even the duffel bag was gone. He looked around while his brain processed this information. Finally, when he was convinced, he sat down on Tara’s bed, hard. He had completely failed. As a brother, as a guardian, as a friend. He crumpled the notes in his hand as he clenched his fists. He couldn’t even blame Tara for this. It was all his fault, stumbling through her life and making an even bigger mess of things.
What was he going to tell their parents? Their family? How would anyone forgive him for letting her go again? Not that he would ever be able to forgive himself. Tara was gone because of him.
“No!” he shouted, pounding the bed with both fists. “It’s not ending here. I won’t let it!”
Tara was still alive, somewhere, as someone. There was still a chance to fix things. And this time, Kent was determined to make good on his promise.
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Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2014 6:21 pm
Tara- if that was, in fact, Tara- was gone. It took Kent a while to process that fact, even though he'd half-expected it as he'd slogged through traffic, racing to intercept her. He still wasn't sure if he had or not. It made sense, but it also made no sense whatsoever. He didn't know what to think, or do. All he could feel was an overwhelming sense of failure.
This was his fault. Even if that girl wasn't his sister, he doubted that Tara would be returning home anytime soon. She had all but told him that she wouldn't, and most of her important belongings had been taken. He had compromised her position, whatever that was, and she no longer felt safe there. Or perhaps it was that he wasn't safe, as long as she was there. Which was not a conclusion he was willing to sit there and accept.
Somehow, he needed to find her. She wasn't suicidal, even now. Why would she bring her things, or have them brought to her, if she planned on killing herself? And if the terrorists turned out to be holding her captive, then she still had value to them, and wouldn't kill her. He hoped. His confidence in his deductions had caved under the weight of the grave mistake he had made.
"I can sit here and think about it all I want, but in the end, what do I do about it?"
The answer to that question was simple: he would find her, of course. Whether she had run off of her own volition or was being held prisoner, he would find her. The method for doing so was less simple. Kent didn't just lack a plan, he lacked a place to start making one. Going out and watching hadn't exactly gotten him the best results thus far. If the star-spangled terrorist really was Tara, he didn't want to attract the wrong kind of attention towards her. But she was the only lead he had. How could he look for her without drawing the attention of others?
She wasn't alone. Someone else was watching her. A him, possibly. That could be a lead. And if she was a terrorist, then finding out about other terrorists might help. If he couldn't single out the one he wanted, he could at least find out about the movements of the group. Whether Tara was one of them or not, he felt that finding out more about them would lead him to her.
And then there was the incident that started it all: the organ ring. Whatever had taken hold of Tara had started there. There was no way this latest development could be a coincidence. If they were behind her disappearance, he was going to unmask them. Even if they weren't, Kent had been wanting to discover the truth behind that incident since it had happened. After Tara's return, he lacked sufficient motivation to investigate. Now, he had all the initiative he needed.
That was a plan, almost. It was closer to one than he'd been mere moments ago, at least. And that gave Kent enough strength to get up, clenching the notes in his fist as he surveyed the room. It was a mess, even by Tara's standards. Boxes were half-opened, their contents spilling out. Clothes were strewn everywhere. It was hard to tell what was missing and what was just out of place.
Dully, he glanced down at his hand, opening his fingers to get a better look at the notes themselves. There were three pieces of paper, each folded in quarters. One had his name on it. The second was labelled 'Mom & Dad,' and the last one, 'Evie & Dana.' All were written in Tara's handwriting. He didn't want to read them, since that would confirm that she was gone. But maybe there was a clue.
It took several moments for him to work up the nerve to open the note addressed to him. He read it slowly, having to stop every few seconds to blink fresh tears out of his eyes. Once he finished, he went back to the beginning and read it again, and again. The message never changed.
Kent-
I want you to know that this isn't your fault. This is something I should have done a long time ago. Don't look for me, because you won't find me. I know it's going to be hard on you, and I'm sorry about that, but it's really okay. I'll be fine. Everything's fine. And you'll be fine too.
I love you.
PS- Thanks for everything. I'm sorry I wasn't a better sister.
The other notes were probably personal, but Kent found himself opening them anyway, just to have more to read. The one to his parents was pretty similar to his own, with a different postscript, apologizing for the times Tara had fought with them. The one for Dana and Evie was the same, and he nearly put it down before he was finished, unable to read the same words again. Something at the end made him look again. There were two postscripts:
PS- I'm glad we started talking again. That means a lot to me.
PPS- If you get lost, aim for the end of the rainbow.
Maybe it was some sort of personal joke Tara had with Evie or Dana, and maybe not. He could always ask. But that meant admitting he had read the note. No, more than that- it meant admitting it existed. Telling his parents that Tara had run rather than be with them. Letting her disappear, just as she planned.
Without the notes, the scene could be depicted as a kidnapping. Kent still wasn't convinced that it wasn't one, notes or no notes. The police would probably see things differently. If they knew of the notes, they would write her off as a troubled teen runaway, even if she was 21 now. She had a history of delinquency that would speak for her. Without the notes, they might suspect foul play. There would be more people looking for her. They might be able to connect the dots that he couldn't.
Tara had been vehemently against getting the police involved. But by leaving, she had ceased to have a say in how he handled this. Kent wasn't about to follow her instructions to not look for her. Anything that would help him was fair game, even if she wouldn't like it. They could argue it out when she got back. Because she would be coming back. No matter what it took, he would see to that.
Decision made, Kent folded the notes back up. His hands trembled as he slid the scraps of paper into his pocket, then pulled out a cell phone. At least the number was easy to dial.
"Hello?" His voice wavered with unfeigned panic. "Please, help! I think someone broke into our apartment!"
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Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2014 6:23 pm
The police came, not too long after he’d made the phone call. By that time, Kent had made a few alterations to what would soon be considered the scene of the crime. It was imperative that the police realize that something criminal had happened here. If they didn't take Tara's disappearance seriously, they wouldn't look into it, not really. And considering what had happened that day, he wasn't sure he could find her on his own.
Their first questions, when a pair of officers finally showed up, were about the house. Was the door open when he came home? Did he hear anyone in the house? Did he touch anything? He was surprised at how easily the lies flowed. No, no one was there. The door was open. He touched the phone, and checked on some of the valuables. A few things were missing- some of his sister's jewelry, some of his computer equipment, and a ton of food. Maybe more, he wasn't sure.
Then they finally asked who lived with him, and Kent was allowed to display his fear and anxiety. He was truly certain that something awful had happened to Tara. The officers nodded, as if they were used to this sort of reaction. Then, they asked whether Kent had tried to contact her. His skill at fudging the truth was shocked out of him, and he had to admit that no, he hadn't. At which point they assured him that she was probably fine, and gave him a number to call if she didn't turn up within 24 hours.
The rest of the interview passed in a blur. Kent barely noticed the questions he was asked, and wasn't even sure what answers he was giving. He kept replaying scenes in his head: his talk with Tara outside the school, his run-in with the terrorist several months earlier, and then again in the apartment. All of the clues pointed to those conversations being with the exact same person. Which made no sense. It felt like he was being pointed to the conclusion that two plus two equaled spaghetti, and yet somehow, that conclusion felt right. Like somehow, in the back of his mind, he had known it all along.
And hadn't he, in a way? There was a part of him that always suspected that Tara's troubles were directly related to the terrorist situation. It was rumored that they were connected to the organ ring that had kidnapped her. She tended to react oddly to terrorist activity on the news, when he bothered to have it on. And she kept coming home with strange injuries that she thought he didn't notice. Before, he'd just thought they were the result of her usual carelessness. When they were both living at home, she was always coming back bruised from her experiments with falling objects (and people), or from trying to match a cheetah's sprinting speed. Now, her goals were changed. She seemed less concerned with breaking barriers, and more concerned with building them.
It took him far too long to realize that. Far too long to see what the truth might be.
There were more police officers in the building now. Some were taking pictures of the apartment. Others were knocking on his neighbors' doors, trying to find out if anyone had seen anything unusual. The ones who had been interviewing him, sensing that his mind was elsewhere, advised him to go and contact his sister. They could keep working, and would get in touch if they needed anything, and did he have a place to stay? It was a relief to be allowed to leave. Kent stammered something about staying with family and practically ran out the door, taking his bulging backpack with him.
If the police weren't going to find Tara, it was all up to him now.
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Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2014 6:29 pm
Horror Vacui[Kent + Laney] The search for Tara begins with her best friend, who shares some information that Kent finds hard to believe- or dismiss.
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Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2014 6:31 pm
It was just as well that the lobby didn't have carpeting.
Kent kept pacing long after he had hung up with Laney. Every so often he'd get an idea. It would seem like a good one at the time. Enough to make him rush to the door and throw it open. But before he could step outside, some flaw would make itself apparent. Then he would close the door, turn around, and start to pace again. And review, for the umpteenth time, what he knew.
Tara was upset. That was abundantly clear from her actions over the past few months. She was also in some kind of trouble. Something that she didn't want other people to get involved in. And him in particular for some reason. So when he'd tried to force his way into that part of her life, she'd run off.
Under other circumstances, he probably wouldn't have thought much of it. When Tara was nine, she had gotten into a fight with their mother over not being allowed up past ten o'clock to watch a meteor shower. Her response was to pack a pair of binoculars and a bag of marshmallows into her school backpack and hid in a neighbor's doghouse. It was after midnight when they finally found her, fast asleep, using a schnauzer named Chewy as a pillow.
It was a nice memory, but this time Kent didn't think the answer was as simple as that. He had no difficulty believing that her problems were serious, and that she had no intention of coming back. The notes he'd been given indicated as much. Regardless of what he thought of the terrorist who had handed them to him, the notes themselves were unmistakably in Tara's handwriting, so he had to believe that she was the author.
But was that what she wanted? Or was she being coerced by the terrorists? Or was she a terrorist herself, like he'd suspected? The one in the apartment had been so familiar. The way she held herself, the braid behind her left ear that she tugged when she was anxious, the almost desperate desire to keep him out of whatever the situation was. It didn't look like Tara, and he wasn't about to believe it without proof, but it was possible. Maybe.
"Oh, who'm I kidding?" he groaned. "I don't know anything!"
And he was inches from barging outside and yelling at someone until they gave him answers, when he thought about what might happen if he did.
"Her name is Tara Kavanaugh," Kent said, showing the most recent picture he had of her. It was their family's latest Christmas card, showing all of them in ugly sweaters and matching fake smiles. They only bothered with the cards so they had something to send to his dad's side of the family, people who lived an ocean away that they barely knew. He never would have imagined using it for this.
Most of the people he showed the picture to shook their heads sympathetically. It was enough to make him want to tear it into tiny pieces, but then he'd be really stuck. "What about you?" he asked a tall man passing by. "Have you seen her?"
The man stopped, looked, and raised her eyebrows. "Is she missing?"
"Yeah. Have you-"
But he stopped as he saw the man smile. "How awful," he said, though he didn't sound particularly upset. "Thank you for letting us know."
And then he vanished without another word, leaving Kent wondering what exactly he'd just done.
If Tara had up and left out of fear, he couldn't go carelessly flashing her name and face around to strangers. Laney had basically told him as much. And if he couldn't talk about her, it would be really hard for him to find her. But there had to be another way. Kent turned and began to walk again, his footsteps falling heavier and faster as he tried to come up with something.
If he couldn't talk to people he suspected were out to get her, what about ones he knew were behind things? There had been a terrorist in his apartment. What if he found the one responsible for making his little sister a terrified head case? Then he could really say what he wanted to say. Kent clenched his fists and grinned savagely. He doubted many words would be needed for that conversation...
"Where is she?" Kent shoved the man against the wall again, relishing the cracking sound he heard. But no, he couldn't be too rough on the guy until he'd learned what he needed to know. There was plenty of time for revenge after he'd gotten the information.
The man gurgled, and Kent had to shake him to get him to look up. "Ughhhh... I don't know anything, man."
The only response that got was another shove, and the man spasmed as pain ran down his spine. "Okay, I get it, I get it. You want to know where the girl is, right? Well, I can show you."
Now that was more like it. Carefully, Kent released his captive, keeping his guard up. "No sudden movements. Just take me to her."
He should have known that something was wrong when the guy turned around. There was nothing that way but a dead end. "Where do you think you're going? I told you-"
"-to show you the girl. Don't worry, that's the whole idea." The man turned back around, a rather deadly looking blade in his hands. Kent barely had time to wonder where it had come from- there was nothing over there, and nothing on the man's person, so how?- and then there was a searing pain across his chest. He didn't even have to look down to know how bad his injury was. Already he could feel his strength, brought on by adrenaline and a lifetime spent protecting his kid sister from what the world had in store, flow away from him.
He fell back, howling in pain as the impact jarred his whole abdomen. Then he was too weak for speech, or even to scream for help. The last thing he could feel was a hot breath on his ear, which he couldn't even flinch away from.
"Now I've kept my end of the deal. Say hello to the girl for me."
These were terrorists he was dealing with. And ones with some kind of crazy technology on their side, judging from what that one girl had done to save him from his doppelganger. She wasn't a normal human. Maybe none of them were. And if they thought he was getting in their way, they wouldn't hesitate to remove him. All of his visions of pummeling the problem until it went away melted. Who was he kidding? He wasn't a match for people who could pulverize clones into oblivion.
But what if he changed his aim? Rather than going after Tara directly, which would probably bring her unwanted attention and could quite possibly end with both of their extremely gory deaths, he could go after that one terrorist. Or, if he was going to listen to Laney, that one hero. The one who warned him to stay out of it. Well, he wasn't listening to Tara in that respect, so he wasn't about to listen to someone he didn't know. Unless she was Tara after all, in which case, he'd just be ignoring her wishes twice instead of only once.
If they were heroes, they would want to help him. And if Tara was involved with them, they'd want to help her. He just had to find someone who was willing to talk. And if the ones in light costumes really were trying to save the city, there had to be someone who was willing to tell him what he wanted to know.
"Have you seen this person?" The picture he showed was crude, but it got the point across. A mantle covered with stars, a ridiculous aqua blue sash that dragged on the floor. Dark hair and eyes. He'd tried to give his drawing a menacing expression, but he wasn't an artist, so she just looked kind of frumpy. And well, the real thing hadn't been especially menacing anyway. Just really sort of sad.
Most people shook their heads. A couple gave nods of recognition, but had no more information. Whoever this person was, she didn't seem to run into many people. Which made Kent wonder how he'd managed to run into her twice. A third meeting was all but guaranteed. He just needed to orchestrate it.
"Are you the one looking for the terrorist?"
Or maybe he'd gotten lucky after all. "I am!" Kent replied excitedly, turning around. "Have you seen..." He trailed off, trying to process what he was looking at.
The street was full of people in bizarre costumes, each one flashier than the last. Some held weapons, swords and knives and clubs and things more unusual, whose purpose he couldn't quite figure out. Most were empty-handed, like the girl he'd been looking for. None of them looked too happy. The ones towards the front of the group were outright angry, and the few with weapons tapped them menacingly.
"We don't really like people looking for us," the leader said. He didn't have a weapon, but he looked pretty scary all the same. "It makes our jobs even harder."
This would be the time to be scared, but Kent was too curious to notice. "So you do something specific? Can you tell me? I really need to know what happened to-"
"This one's going to be trouble," a girl off to the side remarked. "Better get him out of the way."
That made the fear kick in, big time. "You don't want to do that," he said quickly. "My, uh... my friends know I'm here. If I don't come back, they'll come looking, with the whole police department!"
For some reason that sent a chuckle through the ranks of the terrorists (because what else could these people be but terrorists?) and they took a collective step forward. "Don't worry," the leader said. "I don't think this calls for anything that drastic." He reached out one hand, and Kent could see a strange symbol drawn on his palm. "It'll all be over in a moment."
Then, there was blackness. When Kent came to, he shook his head. What a weird place to fall asleep! And what a strange dream, that he was looking for a sister. Everyone knew he was an only child...
If he went after one hero-slash-terrorist, he might as well go after all of them. Kent was angry and scared and confused, but he wasn't suicidal. He couldn't challenge a whole organization of unknown numbers and power and motives, much as he wanted to. That would take him out of the picture, in one way or another. Though probably not in a scenario that was straight out of Men In Black. He shook his head at his own imagination, but the fact remained that he needed to stay alive (and in possession of all his faculties) if he had any chance of finding Tara.
It was starting to look like the only way to make that happen was to sit and wait. Not an option he was particularly keen on. He hated the thought of being able to do nothing while Tara was in trouble. But she was twenty-one years old, officially an adult, and technically capable of taking care of herself. It had been six years since she'd been kidnapped, and five since she'd been found. In that time she'd had problems, but was mostly okay.
So maybe in this case he just had to trust her. Maybe that was the message she'd been trying to send him all along. He would show her that he wouldn't try to interfere anymore by doing absolutely nothing and letting her come home on her own.
When the ransom note arrived, Kent knew that he'd been wrong to leave Tara to her own devices. Her outburst at the school had been a clear and desperate cry for help, despite pleas to the contrary. He had been an idiot for waiting until he could file a proper missing persons report. Now he couldn't get the police involved at all, according to the kidnappers. All he could do was show up at the location on the note to learn the terms, or he'd never see her again.
The meeting spot was a warehouse in a less-than-affluent part of town. Made of concrete, cold and dismal. Kent wasn't surprised that kidnappers would choose a place like this for negotiations. Though the fact that they were negotiating in person was kind of weird to begin with. Why didn't they lay out the terms in the note, or over the phone?
A hand came around, holding a wadded up cloth. Kent recognized the smell of chloroform from high school science lab, and cursed his own foolishness. Now the kidnappers had him too. But, he wondered as he lost consciousness, what purpose could that possibly serve?
He found out when he woke up, tied to a chair. His whole body felt like it was asleep, tingles running up his spine and down his legs. The kidnappers couldn't have looked like more stereotypical criminals if they tried. There were two of them that he could see, dressed in black, with ski masks hiding their faces. It looked like one was a woman, judging from her body shape, and she was tinkering with some sort of device. The other was a man, and was putting a phone down. "She took the bait. Should be here any minute."
Of course. These people had never had Tara to begin with. That was why she'd run. But now they had him, and she would come. Because she was that kind of person. Even if she was still furious at him, she was worried enough to warn him off, and she'd have to come for him now that he'd stumbled into the most obvious trap ever.
He spent the next several minutes alternating between giving himself a thorough mental chewing out and trying to break through his ties. Nothing worked. He was still stuck to the chair, and still despondent, by the time a very familiar figure entered the warehouse.
Tara looked frantic. She was still in her school uniform, minus the coat. Her hair was disheveled, and she wasn't wearing any makeup. After looking around in the dim lighting, she spotted Kent and began to run towards him.
"Uh-uh, I wouldn't do that, my dear." The man held up a remote control of some kind. Kent worked with electronics all the time, but he didn't recognize it.
"Is that..?" Apparently Tara did, and she was both furious and horrified. "Haven't you people used this trick already?"
"You know what they say." The man shrugged nonchalantly. "If it's not broken, don't fix it. Now then, you know the terms. You, in exchange for your brother."
That made Tara laugh, though Kent could tell she wasn't amused. "Because once you have what you want, you'll let him go. You guys are known for keeping promises, huh?" Her tone, rather than her words, issued a challenge.
The man shrugged again, as if he didn't care what anyone believed. "We've hidden our identities. Why bother, if we plan on killing you both?"
That was weak, and everyone in the room knew it. "Tara." Kent struggled to shake off his fear and self-loathing enough to speak. "Go. It's my fault that this happened. I'm okay, but you need to-"
"No, Kent." Tara's voice was strong and resolute. "This has always been the way it was meant to be. And who knows, maybe they'll even be honorable? There's a first time for everything."
She stepped forward and allowed the man to handcuff her to the woman. His sneer was visible even through his mask as he jangled the short chain. "Wonderful. A pleasure doing business with you. And now, the restraints-"
But what the man held up was the remote control, which only had one button. He pressed it, making it light up in red. The machine on the floor beeped. "Oh dear! Well, I guess you can die knowing you were right all along. And you, sir," he turned to Kent, "can be comforted by the fact that at least you have your sister here to share this with."
"You!" Tara took a swing with her free hand, but the man vanished without a trace. Recovering quickly, she reached forward and yanked the ski mask off of the woman she was cuffed to, then recoiled. The woman had no hair, or eyes, or features of any kind. Her head was an orange sphere, almost like a dodgeball. Then she opened a mouth that Kent had missed before, revealing three rows of extremely sharp-looking teeth.
The machine continued to beep insistently, making him really uncomfortable. "Tara-"
"It's okay." Tara looked oddly at peace with what was happening. She leaned over, managing get close enough to squeeze Kent's shoulder. It was a touching gesture, but he took no comfort from it, nor from her next words. "None of this was your fault, Kent. Really."
Kent wanted to say something. To fix things. But the machine kept beeping, and the dodgeball woman kept baring her teeth at him, and Tara just looked so sad. And when he finally knew what he wanted to say, the beeping had stopped.
There was an instant of pain, and then nothing.
"No!" Kent lunged forward, feeling the driving need to punch something. His fist met the wall, denting the plaster. A second punch punctured it, leaving scrapes and flakes of paint on his knuckles. He'd have to pay for that later, probably, but at the moment he didn't care. The pain in his hand brought him back to his senses a bit, and he stood back from the wall, panting.
Doing nothing was not an option. He'd left Tara to her own devices for too long. That was probably the reason the situation was as dire as it was. He wasn't about to compound his mistakes with more inaction. Even the 24 hours of waiting to file a police report was too much. True, he might mess up, but he had to do something. Anything.
"The library." Laney had suggested the library as a place to look. She'd also said a bunch of other things he wasn't sure he believed, but the library was a solid lead, and there were other places he could check too. They weren't likely, but they still needed to be crossed off the list. The more he could eliminate as possibilities, the more he would end up knowing. A path would reveal itself, as long as he went out and cut down whatever stood in his way.
This time, when Kent reached the door, he didn't turn back. He walked boldly out into the twilight, projecting a sense of confidence he didn't really feel. If he was going to be imagining things, he wasn't going to waste his time picturing his own demise. He would visualize victory, and shape events to form what he saw, even if he had to change the universe itself to make that happen.
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Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2014 6:41 pm
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Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 5:32 pm
Everything Kent thought he knew was wrong.
The day had been so physically and mentally exhausting- to say nothing of the emotional toll it had taken on him- that when he got into his car, he couldn't bring himself to start it up. That was an accident just waiting to happen. And it wasn't as though he had anyone waiting at home for him. Sure, Uncle Charles was probably wondering what was going on, but somehow that didn't seem as urgent as everything else that had happened.
Magic was real. The city was at war. And he, for some unknown reason, had been chosen to fight. These were all huge revelations, too huge to fully grasp after just one day. His brain was tired of trying, and the rest of him was just tired. And then there was still the whole thing with Tara, which to him was more important than the whole interstellar war stuff that he couldn't understand. Which she was somehow intrinsically tied to, and which seemed to rule her life in ways that he couldn't figure out.
As he tried to put the pieces together one more time, he found himself falling into a restless sleep, assaulted by scenes and voices of times better left to rest.
"I'm fine, Mom," Kent said when he answered the phone, glad to get the call between classes instead of during one. The home number had flashed on the screen before he picked up the call, so technically it could have been either of his parents, but his mother tended to check up on him, so he considered it a safe bet. "Eating right and doing all my work, just like yesterday and the day before."
"That's not why I'm calling, Kent." There was an anxiousness in Melanie Kavanaugh's voice that betrayed a deeper worry, something that was more important than broccoli and homework. Kent knew he'd heard it before, but couldn't quite remember when. "Have you heard from your sister lately?" she asked quickly, seeming to hold her breath to hear the answer. At least, he couldn't hear her breathing anymore, while before she'd sounded like she'd just run a marathon.
So he swallowed the humerous response he'd been planning and thought about the question seriously. He and Tara often exchanged emails, about simple things like how their day went, to complex questions about the universe. It startled him to realize how long it had been since he'd gotten the last one. "I guess it's been a couple weeks since her last email. I figured she was just busy at that new school of hers. And I've been kind of occupied; this new class is really-"
"Two weeks? Are you sure?"
Since when did his mom interrupt him like that, if she wasn't planning to scold him? "Not a hundred percent sure, but I can check my inbox when I get home. What, did you guys have another argument?" For some reason, Tara and their mother rarely saw eye to eye. "If she's giving you the silent treatment, it might be better to just let her cool off first. You know she doesn't mean what she says when she gets like that."
"It's not that either." He could hear his mother take a deep breath. "We haven't been able to contact her all week. At first I thought she was just having a tantrum, but when I called the school to make sure everything was okay, it said that the number was invalid."
That was odd, but not necessarily bad. "Maybe you dialed wrong. Or maybe they changed their number because they were getting too many calls from paranoid parents." Or any number of reasons.
"This is serious, Kent!" Melanie's voice, naturally high in pitch, was shrill. "When I went to check the school's website, it was down. I can't find any information anywhere to suggest it ever existed. Even the address in the car's GPS is gone! And it's not just me- I called another parent I met at the orientation, and she can't reach anyone either."
"So... what are you trying to say, Mom? That Tara's school just disappeared without a trace?" That would have sounded ridiculous if anyone had suggested it to him. That it was the conclusion he'd come to after listening to what his mother had to say was terrifying.
There was a moment of silence on the other end. Then, he could hear soft sniffling noises, which just bewildered him further. "Mom, are you crying?"
"I don't know what to do, Kent! Your father's trying to talk to the police, but they think we've just gotten the information wrong or something. It's more than that! Something's happened, and we need to do something, but... what can we do? Who knows how to handle something like this?"
She sounded desperate and lost. Kent wasn't sure which he found more worrying- the fact that she was so obviously scared, or the fact that she was showing it so clearly. Melanie often showed when she was angry or frustrated, but it was always harder to tell when she was happy or sad. And the last time he'd heard her sound scared was-
The pieces slid into place. The last time he'd heard her sound scared was five years ago, when they had gotten the call from Uncle Charles. When all they knew was that Aunt Kate had been shot.
There was still one more class that day, but Kent didn't care anymore. "I'm coming home, Mom. Don't worry. We'll figure this out together, okay?"
Except they hadn't. Weeks had gone past, and then months, with no news. Even when the police did get involved, they hadn't been able to do anything. When Tara finally had been found, and the truth became clear, it felt like a miracle. While he'd tried his best to keep his hopes up, there were times when he doubted that he would ever see her again.
And had he, really? When Tara had come home, he'd thought that everything would be okay. But she had proven him wrong, little by little, month after month. Whatever had happened to her ate away at her, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Unlike with the bullies that bothered her when she was a kid, he couldn't go and beat up the bad guys, if only to make himself feel better. So it ate away at him too.
Still, it was better than the way it had been. The pain of not knowing. Having to pretend to go about his daily life as though nothing had happened. And then, of course, there was the matter of hope.
"They want recent photos," Gregory Kavanaugh said slowly, bending over a list the police had given him. "We've got the ones for Mum's birthday; those are probably the most recent. Then there's family DNA- both parents, or a parent and a sibling."
"I want to give mine." Kent had dropped his classes and moved back home when it became clear that there was a problem, and it wouldn't be resolved quickly. Not that he'd done much but sit there. His requests to go out looking had been soundly denied, and his mother had even hidden the car keys when he'd threatened to do it anyway. If there was some small way to help, he wanted- needed- to do it.
Melanie put her hand on his shoulder, wincing as he pulled away from her touch. He was still angry about the keys. But he hadn't meant to upset her further when they were all on edge. "Mom, I'm sorry-"
"We'll all do the DNA." It was a bad attempt to derail an argument, and they all recognized hat it was, which was the only reason it worked. Gregory made a note on the list and moved on. "Next, um. Something with Tara's scent. Something she's worn or used a lot, but that hasn't been handled by other people."
Kent blinked. "What, for dogs?"
"I suppose. I want them using whatever means they have at their disposal-"
"We all want that, dear." Melanie patted her husband's arm, possibly to make herself feel better. "But what can we offer? Tara took most of her favorites with her, and the rest of her clothes have been washed since she... since she left." Nobody wanted to say the M-word, not if they could avoid it.
They sat in silence, thinking, while trying not to think too hard. "What about her winter coat?" Gregory suggested. "We were going to... going to send it with her, when she came home for Thanksgiving."
"It's hanging in the closet with everyone's coats," Kent reminded him.
Then, the silence again. Each of them thought twice about making suggestions, not wanting to raise everyone's hopes, only to be wrong. There was only so much of that a person could take.
"Wait wait wait." Kent's parents both looked at him as he spoke excitedly. "What about her winter boots? We put them back into the shoebox during spring cleaning, so they should be mostly uncontaminated. Would those work?"
It was the happiest any of them had been in three days. Melanie was actually smiling a little, and Gregory jerked a thumb towards the front hall. "Go and get the box, son. Let's see what we have to work with."
He didn't have to ask twice. Kent was already heading for the hall closet, where the family kept their outdoor gear. There were four bulky coats, a collection of blazers and sweaters, and some camping gear propped up in the corner. On the floor were several pairs of shoes, but he reached for the top shelf, which had more shoes in boxes. There, on top, was a large box with snowflakes on it. He had to stand on his tiptoes to get it down. Then, he had to keep himself from tearing the lid off to see what was inside, at the chance of ruining the one thing that might help.
Before he could take the box back to the living room, the doorbell rang. Kent raised his head and stared, not sure what to believe. If Tara was coming home, she wouldn't ring the bell. But what if she'd lost her keys? What if she needed help?
"Hello? Mr. and Mrs. Kavanaugh, it's Officer Jennings. We spoke on the phone."
Slowly, Kent turned away from the door. His parents would want to talk to the policeman, and he didn't at that particular moment. He felt a keen ache in his chest when the officer had spoke, the same pain he'd felt several times since coming home. Every time Tara didn't come home when he wanted her to, it felt like he lost a little more of himself.
It went against everything he'd been taught, but now he knew: hope hurt.
Kent hated what had happened to all of them while Tara had been missing. He hated the way his mother blamed everything she could think of, including herself. He hated the way his father seemed to withdraw into himself, rather than risk disappointment again. He hated everything it had done to Tara, and himself, for being unable to stop any of it. Even though she had come back and everyone had gone a long way towards healing, they would never be the same people they had been before.
Would they be able to survive her disappearing again?
He slept fitfully, waking up for a few seconds between frighteningly vivid dreams, and then drifting off again. He saw false alarms and confrontations, remembered the heights of fury and the depths of despair. When the sun just began to rise, he promised to stay awake, only to slip under again as it climbed the sky.
The city was dark and quiet.
Cities, by definition, were bright and bustling, vibrant and noisy. It wasn't a definition that would appear in any book, but one that Kent had made up after moving from a suburb to a college town to a busy place like Destiny City. It had been jarring at first, but eventually he became accustomed to the pace and the people. In fact, he thought he was more suited for city life than he had ever been to life in the 'burbs. The only thing that marked him as an out-of-towner was his stubborn reliance on his car, which he'd worked too hard to save up for to let rust in a garage somewhere.
This city was none of the things Kent had come to associate with cityness. It was cold and dismal and bleak. There were no people that he could see, no movement. The lights in the store windows he passed were all out. Even the neon signs that stayed on all night, bearing messages like "Pizza!" or "ATM Here" were dull and colorless. Shutters were closed, curtains were drawn. It was the most shut out he'd felt since he'd moved to the city four years earlier.
There was no traffic at all. The few cars he saw were parked, with a handful that seemed to be stranded in the streets. Kent peered in windows, but none of the cars had drivers, nor passengers. The cars themselves were gray and lifeless, though there were several white minivans and black sedans. He wondered if that was supposed to mean something, but he shrugged and moved on.
His first thought that something might be wrong when he walked past Big Niko's, Tara's favorite restaurant. It was as dark as everything else, and cold in spite of the pizza oven that always warmed the air in front of the entrance. Big Niko's never closed. It served pizza and burgers well into the night, and then the morning, feeding hungry college students and office workers and anyone who wanted a hearty meal. Kent suspected one of the reasons Tara liked it so much was because she knew she could go anytime- even at 4AM, if she was out at that hour. But now it was closed off, and Kent began to suspect that something was wrong.
It wasn't until he'd made it several blocks that he realized he wasn't wearing his usual work clothes. No slacks and blazers, or even t-shirts and jeans like he wore at home. Instead he was clad in white and gray and blue, in fur and metal and something that, embarrasingly, might have been spandex. It wasn't a costume he was at all familiar- or comfortable- with, at least not yet, but he knew in general terms what it meant.
He was a knight. He had to save the world. Or something like that.
As he got closer to the center of the city, his pace increased. His surroundings had the distinct feeling of being alien and unfamiliar, except that there were familiar landmarks everywhere. Not far past Big Niko's was the Southern Poultry he tended to shop at when he was coming home from work. There was the Horizon Institute, which Kent- or whoever he was now- was still glad he'd gotten Tara into. It suited her much better than Meadowview had. And a few blocks on from that campus, he ran into Destiny City University territory. When he'd started his master's degree, he'd never even heard of that school, much less imagined he'd graduate from there.
But these were all dark and quiet. There were no students rushing to class, or teachers exchanging friendly tips, or administrators shlepping papers from building to building. When he came upon the Hunt & Marshall Law Offices building, a high rise right near the center of the city, he was stunned to see it completely black. He knew from many all-nighters that it was always busy there, with lawyers preparing arguments or paralegals doing research- and that was just on the floors that Hunt & Marshall occupied.
Where was everybody?
Thoroughly bewildered, Kent tried the door. It wasn't locked, and he pushed his way into the lobby. Somehow it was darker inside than it was outside; though not pitch black, everything looked gray-on-black, as though he was looking through very poor night vision goggles. There was nobody in the lobby. The security desk was vacant, the elevator banks deserted. He wandered towards the elevators and pushed the button, not expecting it to respond. If the lights didn't work, it was probably because there was some kind of blackout.
To his surprise, the doors ground open with audible clanking, unusual in the state-of-the-art building. Kent had the distinct feeling that it was a bad idea to do what he was about to do, but that didn't stop him from entering the elevator. The doors shut behind him before he even turned around.
Hunt & Marshall had the top three floors of the building, as well as small parts of other floors. His office, shared with the other techies, was on the fifth floor; nobody cared if the repairmen had a view or not. But in the process of fixing everyone's computers, some of them many times over, he'd gotten a look at e offices of the lawyers and the paralegals and the secretaries and the research crew. He knew that the top floor with its panoramic views was reserved for the partners, the bigwigs who basically ran the firm. He rarely made it up there, and was somewhat startled to see that the button for the top floor was already lit. Or at least, it was a slightly lighter shade of gray than the other ones.
The elevator rose, and Kent had to wonder where it was taking him, and why. It took what felt like forever to reach the twenty-fifth floor, and he let out a sigh of relief when the doors finally opened. There was no "ding" to signal their arrival, but that was the least of his worries by that point. As with the lobby and the city around them, the place seemed deserted. The secretaries' desks were abandoned, and the few open doors only revealed offices that were plush, but empty.
The offices at the back belonged to Mr. Hunt and Ms. Marshall. They were somewhat mysterious figures, called eccentric by many of their employees. Kent had met them a couple of times at the company functions he was invited to attend, and wasn't sure what to make of them. Sure, they were a little odd, but their business was booming, so they had to be doing something right. And by having in-house tech support they were not only more productive, but helping him out by giving him a job, so he wasn't about to complain.
The door to Mr. Hunt's office was closed, but Ms. Marshall's was open. Feeling like an intruder, even though no one was there to see or object to what he was doing, Kent went inside. The quality of the furnishings went unnoticed as his gaze was drawn to the floor to ceiling window that was the opposite wall. This was why the bigwigs got the top floor offices. He'd always been curious about what these people did with all the space they got, but he knew it was more than idle curiosity that drew him towards the window. It was as though he was being compelled.
-darkness so deep that it was tangible. A pillar of black flames that consumed everything they touched, moving across the city like a tornado, swallowing all it came in contact with. People too scared to move, dots on the landscape that were sucked up like ants by a vacuum. Unmoving, but he could still feel, more than hear, their screams in his ears. Buildings crumbling, falling into each other. Shards of stone and glass flying everywhere. Total disaster, far worse than he'd ever dreamed, more than humanity could come back from-
He reeled back from the window, but the images followed him. The feelings, the sounds, everything. And then the column advanced on the building he was in, and it fell apart as easily as a sand castle. The luxurious desk, the mahogany bookshelves, the leather chairs- all of it gone, in an instant. His voice joined in with the sound of the screams and the concrete crunching and the metal tearing, until he thought his ears would bleed, if they still existed-
"Yo, buddy!"
Kent screamed as he woke up, hitting his head on the visor he'd pulled down to keep the rising sun out of his eyes. Sore and tired and totally confused, he rubbed his forehead and looked around for something to fight.
"Easy there." A traffic cop knocked on the driver's side window. "Look, you've gotta move your car, okay? Otherwise I'll have to give you a ticket, and you don't want that."
"What?" What did that have to do with anything? The darkness, and the flames, and the screaming that was fading into a sharp whine. He looked out the window and saw a street cleaning vehicle, which made an awful racket as it came around the corner. It gathered garbage and chewed it up in a way that reminded him of the carnage he'd been facing only moments before.
"The car, pal. Move it or I write you a ticket. You've got two minutes, and that's just 'cause I'm such a nice guy." The cop tapped the window once more and wandered off, muttering about crazy drunks.
It took Kent one of those minutes just to realize what he had to do, after the visions had cleared. Having a clearly defined mission, even if it was as simple as moving the car, helped him put things into perspective. He drove around the block and onto the street the cleaner had come from, parking by a hydrant for a moment so he could catch his breath.
The dream had been so real. But then, they had all been real. His dreams of the past were of things that really happened. What did that mean about his dream of the future, if anything?
And what about the events of the previous day? Everything came back to him at once, and his head rolled back as he tried to take it all in. The fight, the break-in, the terrorist, Tara's disappearance, Laney's warning, Noah's lesson. How much of that had been real, and how much had been his brain trying to find a way to cope with events he couldn't handle on his own?
There was only one way to find out. Holding his hand out in front of him, Kent thought about the book that had appeared to him. Leather-bound, with funny-looking words written in it, and on the spine. It sort of glowed in the dark when he held it, and it gave him power. He wasn't Kent Kavanaugh when he held it, but a knight. "Nazca," he whispered, and then shouted "holy s**t!"
There was the book, and the strange outfit that came with it. Yes, that probably was spandex. Kent squirmed uncomfortably and wished he was himself again- and suddenly he was, in a rumpled sweater and jeans. But he knew this time that he hadn't been imagining it. All of it was real.
Which meant he needed to handle it somehow. He had to contact the police- they would be wanting to follow up with him anyway- and his parents needed to know. And then he had to take what he knew and find a way to put it to use. Tara was out there somewhere, in some kind of trouble. Now he had the power to do something about it, and the knowledge that he did gave him a different kind of strength. The day before he'd practically been falling apart. While he didn't know much more today than he did yesterday, he still knew enough to make a difference.
"Okay," he said to himself in a more even tone. "Knights. Magic. Let's do this."
He shifted the car into drive and pulled out, ready to do what had to be done.
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Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 5:34 pm
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Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 5:36 pm
Three's a crowd[Nazca + Aludra + Astrophyllite] Nazca is beaten up by a teenage girl, part two.
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Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 5:38 pm
Part Of Your World[Kent + Laney] Kent asks some questions, meets a knight, and has an existential crisis.
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Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 5:40 pm
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Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 5:40 pm
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Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 5:44 pm
Lampshading[Nazca + Alfheim + Zia] Nazca gets to be on the other end of a stalking accusation.
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Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 5:45 pm
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Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 5:46 pm
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Reply
