@Blizz@PatientBean: Carlie shrieked as the butterfly knife hit her in the stomach, her rage only deepening as she caught her other brother, Carl, snickering. “CARLOS! DON’T TELL ME YOU DIDN’T SEE THAT!” And as Sabine approached, she shot the most popular girl in school a scathing look, her veins prominent and about ready to burst as Sabine read her the riot act, chastising her for how she’d treated someone she didn’t even know. She opened her mouth, about to cuss Sabine out, to tell her that she was a spoiled princess and there was no pain she could do to her that her mother hadn’t already done - but Carl shook his head.
“It’s not worth it,” he cautioned. “And I don’t need to be psychic to know you wouldn’t walk away from that fight remembering how to tie your shoes.”
A little bit away, Carlos was pondering the questions from Marlena and Sabine. His visions were never clear, always covered in a haze of possibility. The future was never set in stone, always in flux, so it was like looking through a kaleidoscope and trying to identify the real image from the possible. There were some things that were clear - Sabine’s appearance, the bear, the swords, the million other blonde girls, the rest of Excelsior. And others… others were less so.
Sometimes, you were dangling upside down with a rope around your ankle, he told Marlena.
I wish I could tell you if you were happy or if you were fighting - I don’t just see one future, I see dozens of them, all overlapping. It makes picking out the smaller details hard. The only other thing I remember is that you were dancing - all of Excelsior. Not the way we dance, though, it was older - more elegant. Like Bridgerton, but gay. Does that help?
April gasped as Danni tried to pin the bad sibling card on them.
“Danni! No way! I’m the one who agreed to not tell everyone the big news yet to not ruin his boyfriend’s birthday!” they protested. Of course, they suspected that Percy probably felt his birthday had been ruined already with Chase and everything that had happened - but maybe a mysterious visitor from… April had no idea where Glimpse was from… would be just what he needed to turn things around? Or maybe the mysterious dream Dorian had had?
“Pa is gonna kill you if he finds out you’re hiding this stuff from them all. Appa and Pops too. And not even Papa will be able to get you out of this one, he can’t distract all of them with a new slutty pose.” But whereas Danni had gone for the dramatics on this, April’s rambling was more concerned - they didn’t want to see their brother get in trouble. They’d finally gotten all the Kingston-Gray kids no longer grounded and this would
definitely get Dorian thrown in anti-astral jail. Or worse, the dads would maybe decide enough was enough, the kids couldn’t be trusted, and pull them from school!
As much as they were still uneasy about the idea of leaving Andy alone, she had Gideon with her - and now Chase and Vicky - and at the end of the day, she could take care of herself. She didn’t doubt that Andy could wipe the floor with anyone who dared to try her. She probably could have won the Contest of Champions all by herself - and she’d only needed help against Arcade since he’d cheated and stuck her in a simulation.
So April headed over to the little green space Dorian had indicated. It was the only patch of grass not covered in snow for the festival, which begged questions that they didn’t have the time to be distracted by. They needed to figure out Dorian’s dream - all while keeping an eye on Glimpse and Andy from a distance.
“Okay, so to recap you saw Nemo, and he saw you, and he said your name - and then you woke up?” April confirmed, before frowning. They wished Sabine was there. Sabine could probably just shunt around Dorian’s memory of the dream better than he could describe it - provided he consented to her looking around in his head.
“D’you know what the place looked like? Like was he in some creepy sci-fi lab? On a boat to a far away land filled with magic and fun? At a coffee shop? And, like, was he happy to see you? Was he all Dorian, my bestie! My fav student! Yay! or more like Dorian, shit, you weren’t supposed to know I’d committed insurance fraud?” “We obvi have to go find him, and if he faked his death on purpose, I think he owes us all gelato - for pain and suffering,” they added. They’d cried their eyes out when they’d heard the news of Nemo’s death and they hadn’t even been super close with the professor. Granted, they’d been crying a lot at the end of the fall semester for a lot of reasons, and they’d always been a crier, but
still. It’d been a lot to deal with! Not that April wanted Nemo to be suffering or having a terrible time, just a… slightly bad time, an inconvenient and annoying and mildly stressful time, one not so bad that it would give him lasting trauma, but enough that he hadn’t been completely callous and abandoned them before the most important fight of their lives.
They gave Leah a hug as she came over and joined them all.
“And yeah, totally fine! My voice might be, like, dead tomorrow ‘cause of all the screaming but I’m good! What about you?” They realized a second too late that of course Leah was fine. Leah hadn’t strapped themselves to Danni and a baby dragon and shot across the school ground.
Percy Novikov
Location: Margaret Carter - Near Fortune Telling Tent
Magic Items: Mystery watch from Agatha Harkness, Dorian sex bracelet
First Day Fit: Black Hoodie, Jeans, and Vans
Despite having been the one to text Chase and ask him to come offer his perspective on the question of Glimpse’s legitimacy, Percy’s stomach was in knots as his former best friend and middle school bully stepped out of his shadow. It was strangely intimate, almost violating - he curled his toes and he stepped closer to Dorian, halfway behind his boyfriend as his heart pounded.
“Erm, the Holy See of Ishgard, it’s… It’s a theocratic city-state from the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy 14.” The only video game Percy had ever really played, lured in by the extensive lore and heavy amount of text coupled with inspiration drawn from several mythologies. He swallowed slightly.
It had been challenging to hear Chase call him Percival. It was no easier to hear B’elle.
He had his answer, however. The girl’s clothes were not from any historical period Chase was familiar with, but they were high quality. The odds of a random student pulling a prank on them all were low. It was possible she’d acquired the gear from a tailor specializing in high quality items, perhaps it was even meant to be a superhero costume design with inspiration from medieval and fantasy garb, but still… It was a mystery to be solved, one that they would make no progress with if they continued to crowd her. Andy had bade them all to give them space, so Percy withdrew with Dorian to the grassy area, still holding onto his boyfriend and shaking ever so slightly, so little no one else would be able to see but enough that Dorian could feel the tremors.
He did pause for a moment though, looking at Chase - Chase who had now inserted himself in the way of conflict between Gideon and the newcomer on his behalf.
“... The information is appreciated,” he forced out, the closest he could get himself to say to
thank you.
“What do you remember from your dream? Any details could be helpful. Perhaps you could recall from the beginning?” And then, he frowned again. Dorian’s powers were unique in their ability to allow him to dreamwalk. He knew very little of how that ability functioned.
“Have you seen things like this before when you became astral in sleep? Is this typical?” They knew, of course, that it was possible Nemo was still alive. Dorian’s father had failed to summon his spirit, something he knew ought to have been impossible for the omega level mutant. Unless, of course, Ser Nemo had never died.
“Do you think if you were to sleep again, you could intentionally revisit him, using techniques similar to lucid dreaming?”
