Welcome to Gaia! ::

More doors.

So many doors.

The jubilation she'd known when they'd discovered the secret of the cheese sandwich and finally -finally- managed to open the door was spoiled by what lay beyond it. There was no telling what she had expected. Vanessa knew that it wasn't this.

"Well," she made a habit out of speaking her mind, "that's disappointing."

She'd half expected their kidnappers, who she suspected had watched them the whole time through the window like that creep on SAW, to be on the other side. Vanessa couldn't help but feel like she was supposed to be threatened by a handgun or something right now, and listening to somebody shout things like; 'GET BACK IN YOUR ROOM,' or 'YOU OWE ME HALF A CHEESE SANDWICH, HOE.'

But there was no gun. Nor was there any shouting.

She and Polaris seemed to be quite alone. For now. With this in mind, Super Van held a hand out to her fellow hero to stop her from going further, mindful of the way their captors had neglected to also kidnap her handy-dandy crowbar.

"Wait a second," she said and then slipped off the piano and onto the floor. "We may need to protect ourselves. 'Better safe than sorry,' my dad always says."

Mr. Rae would have been so proud to know that she'd actually retained this advice. Vanessa would have told him that of course she had. She didn't wear a helmet and carry around a crowbar for nothing, you know. Except that neither of these things were with her now. She needed to make allowances for their absence.

A rusty and aged baseball bat lay among the debris. Super Van collected it, as well as a chair leg and some hanger wire. "Do you want to keep a look out while I do this? I'll be fast. I swear."

"Thanks," Super Van looked up from her task and at her companion. There was a sloppy, sideways smile on her face. She looked a little surprised, but also very grateful. "I've got your back too."

Hers was a mostly independent soul. In her way, Vanessa had been looking after John Jr and Mr. Rae since the death of her mother. She was used to being the big sister, and her take-charge personality reflected this. It was good to know that she could count on someone in this place. It was good to feel like she was a part of a team.

While Polaris stood guard Super Van, who had the baseball bat clamped under arm pit, was busily twisting the hanger wire around one end of the chair leg. It was difficult work. Her brow furrowed with the effort of her job. Tongue stuck out, as it always did, of the corner of her mouth as she concentrated.

"Almost done," she reassured Polaris and then started collecting large shards of mirror-glass. These she shoved in-between the wire rings that coiled around what had become the top of the chair leg. Three times her hands slipped. Five fingers bled.

In the end, she had a rusty baseball bat and a crudely crafted club. The mirror shards were securely in place, angled dangerously outwards. They would slice like knives into the flesh of anybody that opposed them. Both bat and club would also be handy for bludgeoning.

The second trip up the furniture was more difficult than the first. She had to go slowly, with both weapons tucked under her arm-pits now, for fear of falling or cutting herself. Super Van was slightly out of breath when she reached the top, but there was a satisfied -almost smug- expression on her face.

"Which one do you want?"

Skinny fingers throbbed tellingly with the pulse of blood. They hurt, but Vanessa, who was proud of herself for not crying, was determined to keep this a secret. It was not an unbearable pain. They had more important things to focus on. The concern etched into Polaris's face as she returned to the top of the piano made something inside Super Van twinge strangely. It was nice to think that, when her brother and father were undoubtedly sick without her at home, somebody here cared.

"Sure," Super Van nodded in agreement, appreciating the way that Polaris was looking out for her, "I'd like to get cleaned up. Blood's sticky when it dries. I've tried to wipe both it and the jam off my hand with my cape- but I just kinda got it all over the place, didn't I?"

She had.

It pleased her when Polaris took the bat, and she smiled. Super Van had wanted the meaner looking weapon. She brandished her chair leg-turned-club like a sword, and looked very comfortable with it in her hands. Hours upon hours spent with her crowbar, as well as a childhood full of playing sports, had prepared Super Van for this. She was good to go.

Polaris, it seemed, was not. Vanessa giggled good-naturedly at her, and reached out to rearrange the other girl's hands on the bat. "Hold it like this," she said, "and relax your shoulders. It'll feel more natural that way."

"The door?" She glanced backwards at it, "I dunno- maybe we should leave it open? In case we want to come back. Who knows."

The hallway loomed before them like the belly of a giant snake. While they gave off light, the candles that hung on the walls did little to heat the place. She shivered visibly, pupils dilated with adrenaline, and prodded a stack of what looked like A-track tapes with the end of her club. She both looked and sounded curious. "I wonder who used to live here."

If anybody had at all. This place looked more like a trashed and abandoned museum than a home. It had the distinct, lonely and depressing feeling of being forgotten.

"Let them come," Super Van said, because it sounded like something a super hero would say. Bloody fingers tightened visibly around the chair leg she held. Vanessa both looked and sounded braver than she actually felt. "I'll knock their lights out when they get here."

This was not exactly an empty threat. While she paled a little at thought of what might have to be done, Vanessa was prepared to do whatever she could to get back home. Mr. Rae and John Jr would be lost without her. It was imperative that she return to them.

She listened thoughtfully to Polaris's concerns about the door locking, and then collected an aged and wrinkly piece of paper from the floor. This was a trick Hairy Pete had taught her, in case she ever needed to leave a locked room without the key and wanted to get back in again. Vanessa tore off a square from the paper, folded it once and then, as she closed the door, slipped it between the latch on the frame and the place where the handle would usually catch. The paper created a sort of blockage, and made it possible for them to close the door without having to worry about it locking behind them.

The problem with this is that it would only last until somebody -or something- opened the door. Then, the strip of folded paper would float uselessly to the floor.

This only took a couple of seconds, and Super Van turned around just int time to see Polaris push the the old washing tub out of the way with her foot. She heard the other girl's warning, and her brow furrowed in confusion. "There's metal everywhere-

It seemed very clear that something was supposed to happen, but Super Van couldn't tell if anything had changed. She had no super powers of her own, but she knew that the sailor senshi did. It pained her to be so weak and normal, when they were all so strong.

"Did it work?" she asked, hopeful, one eyebrow cocked over top of her sunglasses.

Reactive. This was a good word with which to describe Vanessa. The look of confusion and anger woven into Polaris's features sparked Vanessa's own temper, and she was seconds away from saying something like; 'Don't look at ME like that! It isn't my fault your powers aren't working.'

But then the other girl continued to rage and to swear, and Super Van watched her with a dumbstruck expression on her face. Polaris was right. Vanessa did not have any powers to lose, but she did not need them to figure out that there was something abnormal going on here. They had been kidnapped. There were doorknobs made of jelly. A dresser and a cheese sandwich seemed to be entangled in some sort of passionate love affair. Now, by all accounts, this Sailor Senshi's super powers were… constipated, or something.

Maybe Polaris needed to eat more fibre.

She watched as Polaris sent the washtub sliding down the hallway, and could only sympathize with her newfound friend. They had escaped from the room with the elevated door into another, mustier sort of labyrinth. Every door that they tried (Vanessa jiggled the knob of one nearby) was either stuck or locked fast. It seemed like they might never get free.

Super Van hollered after Polaris; "THAT'S THE IDEA!"

Lips curled upwards into an indignant snarl and, with a cry that was born both from frustration and from anger, Super Van swung her haphazard club at an old globe that sat upon a small school desk. A couple bits of mirror, which she'd so unwisely fashioned into her weapon, shattered upon contact. Glass flew everywhere and glittered like diamonds in the candlelight. The globe was sent soaring down the hall with a telltale thwap. It bounced violently off the ceiling and landed in a laundry basket full of forgotten doll's heads.

"LET'S GET MAD!"

This was how Super Van dealt with her rage. Golden eyes had been protected by sunglasses, but there were tiny pieces of glass imbedded all over her face. Every now and then, the light would catch and make them sparkle. It hurt, a little, to move the muscles in her face. For such a visually expressive girl this was a bad thing.

This was Super Van's style. It was easy to forget her fury and frustration in the wake of such sweet destruction. There was a satisfied smirk on her lips, despite the way the glass prickled in her face, and she swung her club with all the reckless abandon of a child whose had way too much soda. She played tennis with an old coffee mug. She played golf with a decrepit grandfather clock; hockey with a television that only had one button. More glass shattered. There was, fortunately, no electric shock.

Vanessa's own chest heaved with the effort of her breathing- with the satisfactory release of Super Van's temper unto the world. She was calming down. Slowly, but surely, and several things were coming to light.

1) The weapon she'd fashioned for herself was a little beat up. Most of the glass that hadn't shattered had fallen out instead. Only a couple stubborn shards remained.
2) This vandalism thing was pretty awesome, but a waste of time. Her father would have been ashamed.
3) Polaris was coming towards her with a piece of something in outstretched hands, and her face stung- but only a little.

"My cuts?" she cocked an eyebrow at Polaris, confused, and then, remembering vaguely, looked at her hands. "OH- my cuts."

Only two of the five still bled. They were the deepest. The other three had been kinda like paper cuts in comparison.

"I'm not really worried about it." Here, she smiled sheepishly. "They'll heal. Probably."

She watched Polaris curiously and, without really knowing why she did it, tucked her club under her armpit and held her hands out for this other girl to inspect. Vanessa thought she understood what Polaris was up to. She had seen similar expressions on the faces of her brother and father whenever she'd needed some wound cleaned up.

Spit-shaking. It was how she rolled. Super Van was no stranger to foreign saliva, and did not pull away when Polaris grabbed her hands. She was, in fact, impressed. Vanessa did not like to make assumptions about people, but, for some reason or another, she'd subconsciously catalogued this Senshi as an impassioned wielder of Purell. Golden eyes, hidden behind her sunglasses, danced over the other girl's face and Vanessa chewed thoughtfully on the inside of her cheek as she considered all of this.

It wasn't like Super Van to be so contemplative but, as her new friend attempted to clean the blood from her hands, she could not help thinking of her mother. There were some women in Vanessa's life; aunts who meant well, but who were either too pushy or too absent. Mostly, she was surrounded by men. It had been a long time since she'd been able to appreciate this sort of motherly attention. For this, Super Van was very grateful.

The smile on her face was genuine. "You know something-

Over Polaris's shoulder, Vanessa watched as the candles in their sconces started to contort. Flames flickered, but did not go out. Wax morphed into narrow faces with screaming mouths, but no sound passed from between those melting lips. Theirs were expressions of torture- of indescribable suffering.

Super Van bristled instinctively, horrified and confused by what she saw, and tore her hands out of Polaris's grip. In one swift movement she had stepped between the Senshi and the candles, and stood there with her club held out like a batter preparing to take her first swing at home plate. She wanted to be prepared for anything.

But the candles had returned to normal. They sat harmlessly on the wall.

Vanessa's pulse raced. Whatever she'd been about to say to Polaris was forgotten. "What is this place?"

Maybe she'd gone crazy. Maybe the kidnappers had drugged them and she was hallucinating.

The candles would not move again no matter how she glared at them. She straightened when Polaris stepped forward and nodded with approval at her fellow hero, but did not lower her guard. Vanessa was generally comfortable pretty much anywhere, but it was difficult to relax in this place. The furniture had proved itself capable of animation. Something seemed to have stolen Polaris's powers away. The candles both had and did not have faces mangled with silent screams and waxen tears. Every door that they tried refused to open. And the wallpaper-

"Oh, I'll be diligent alright," Super Van declared, even though she had no idea what the word meant, and reached out to a strip of peeling wallpaper that had just transformed from a simple, solid navy blue to a red and yellow plaid. With her free hand she tore it from the wall, and a fair-sized section of the aged wallpaper came away with a sickening tear. She stomped on it for good measure.

This place reminded Vanessa, rather vividly, of one of those walk-through haunted houses sometimes seen at amusement parks. Only this felt more real- more serious. She was not consciously aware of the way their surroundings manipulated their actions, but Super Van felt the oppression all the same.

The doors were all locked tightly. They were trapped in a maze of mystery and ever-looming danger. Her choices were limited. There was nowhere to go but forwards, and this upset her more than the thought of being kidnapped ever had. She could only physically go one way, but Vanessa would have liked options. Super Van did not like being contained or, for that matter, controlled.

Adrenaline coursed through her veins. She nodded, agreeing with Polaris, and then, without looking at the candles on the wall, continued on the hunt for their freedom. She jiggled every doorknob, and kicked every other door. Nothing worked.

Now and then she'd whack something with her chair leg, to spend some of the frustration that built up over and over again in her lanky frame, and smirked with satisfaction when it either cracked or chipped or crashed to the floor.