Dancing to Oblivion

"Karma happened."  In the wake of destruction, Elaine reached down to pick up the rods belonging to her companion.  "These are brown haired girl's Harry Potter things..."  Holding the rods in one hand and her chin in the other, Elaine went into detective mode.  "Why would you have them?  You're not nine year olds with bad attitudes and over protective mothers..."

Unable to escape from the stickiness of Elaine's webbing, conditional surrender felt good.  "If we tell you will you let us go?"  

"Hold on..."  Elaine brushed off the plea.  "I need to figure out what you did to Hermoine."

Bracing his hand against a very sore chest, the man who took the rubber bullet regained his poor breathing.  "I need to go to a hospital."

"Yeah, Jeff needs to go to a hospital."  His partner chimed in.

"That could be a clue.  Did you put her in a hospital?!"  Elaine decided to ask questions instead of seek out the void.  "She doesn't have health insurance and people who use the emergency room as a first response are a drain on society!"

"She's at the music shop."  The man identified as Jeff tried to stand up, offering more information as a trade.  "In the backroom."

"The backroom is a hospital?"  Logic led Elaine to take a stance for all the wrong reasons.  "You can't sell drugs out of a hospital.  It's counter intuitive."

"No one is selling drugs."  Confusion overwhelmed the man.  "We were investigating a series of anomalies in..."

"Oh my God, you guys are some kind of weird, dumb, lame paranormal detectives."

"There is something pulling energy towards this spot..."

"It's racism."  Elaine cut off what she assumed was an explanation needing to be capped with her observation.  "Racism is down here; we thought we found it in the Thanksgiving bin, but Doctor King isn't helping."

As the debate continued, the quiet in the darkness began to stir.  Lights disappeared under the quickly encroaching darkness.  Materializing sparks of dark purple electricity shot around the warehouse.  While the pressure of the room began to increase with a deafening noise, Elaine reloaded her pistols in preparation for whatever may come.  "Princess..."  Another odd looking girl now stood before her.  "...get these guys out of here and find brown haired girl.  I'll stay here and fight racism."

For the past few ten minutes, Amethyst battle valiantly to escape from the closet she found herself locked in.  She knew how she got in there, and she knew shoving her shoulder into the door would eventually give way to her departure.  She however did not know how sore her shoulder would be, nor how little balance she would have, or have not, when the door finally gave way and gravity called her to the ground.  When dressed in a manner not conforming to the regular fashion of those around you, it is always important to make sure nothing about the outfit is out of place.  

During her pat down of her corset's lacing, a loud voice cried across the store back to gain her attention.  Responding to 'Hermione' made her sadder than not fluffing out the wrinkles in her skirt before turning to catch the attention of Tyuki and her new entourage.  "You can tell Elaine..."  Coming full circle in a poor day for her keeping up with her possessions, Ame spotted the belongings and the men who incarcerated her for them.  "My rods!"  In the past few hours, others performed the actions of finding the dowsing rods more frequently than the rods had found the anomaly of the mall.  "You don't even know how to use them.  The spirit font is probably all skewed with positive and negative energy flows and..."  Ame took her rods, feeling the normal energy and knowing nothing she just actually bore any truth.  "...It feels pretty fine."

Getting back to the matters at hand, what was this girl talking about?  She looked absolutely a sight, but somewhat familiar.  Confounding the confusion already perplexing Ame, another bomb fell pertaining to Elaine fighting something in the sublevels.  Blowing past any of the basic reasons, Ame immediately went to one of the most base questions.  "Why is racism purple?"

"Oh God..."  Too many times today these rods fell from Ame's grip for her to let anything other than a firm grasp wrap around each rod.  "This is a step in the wrong direction."  No steps factored in between them as they fell downward towards the sublevels of the mall.  The rushed movements and lack of control of Tyuki held over Ame made for a very uncomfortable and troubling trip.  

"You need to slow down..."  A tension shot through the rods and into Ame's palms.  "I don't like anything about where we are going..."  Once she found the ride ending and a place for her footing to take hold, she took all due liberties to settle down.  While Tyuki pointed to the odd energy signature, Ame found herself at odds with another noise.

"Turn around!"  Purple energy violently flung itself around the store room, sending bins flying around a central energy point.  A tendril crawled up through a vortex in the center of the room, reaching out for the crane fixated in the corner of the room.  Pushing past the new duo, Elaine made her way into the hallway and did not stop.  "This thing is the Michael Jordon of evil!"  As she made her way out, the crane flew through the air to impact at the doorway.  

The arm of the crane broke under the weight of pressure of the ground acting against it.  Metallic splints flung into the walls on either side of Ame.  Energy tore violently through the crane, animating the rope and hook to fling itself towards the trapped Ame.  As death traipsed through the air with full momentum, so did Elaine through the metal deathtrap, grabbing Ame and pulling her out of the path of destruction.  "Do magic!"

"I just got here..."  With so many blows to her ego, Ame tried to make an excuse for her ineffectiveness against this evil.  "...In no certain ways might I add."  Beginning to channel a few incantations into the air, Ame began to pull together a warding circle to hold back the energy pulsing towards her.  

"Okay..."  Elaine started loading rounds back into the chamber of her pistol.  "So there is some weird guy shrouded in everything trying to kill us right now.  We should probably shoot him, but there is too much stuff trying to kill us."  Flipping her chambers back into place, Elaine returned to see Amethyst warding off the path against the possessed crane and Tyuki standing with wings.  "Plan.  You fly me without getting us killed, and I shoot whatever is in there."

The violent ruptures of violet disturbances continued to assault the wards placed by Amethyst.  She braced the edges of the hall, but could feel the animosity of the impact through the displaced vibrations in the air.  Every blow of the tendrils caressed in the dark heat of whatever dimensional rift these creatures poured through constantly barraged a message of certain doom should her wards fail.  

Flying through the air with a resolution for an emanate resolution to end this inter-dimensional break down in relations, Elaine readied two explosion shots to try and blow up multidimensional anomalies-- with fire!  She readied her aim and began to squeeze off a shot.  In the last moment of steady aim she could muster, she felt herself plummet into a free fall.  Each of her bullets flew haphazardly through the air and broke into the lining of the wall.  Just below her stood the figure of a man draped in pulsating energy.  He gazed up and directed more of the vortex beneath him to manifest as barbs and shoot to impale Elaine.  

Before either could pierce her, Tyuki reached down and grabbed Elaine form the air.  With some renewed stability, Elaine reloaded two explosive rounds into her chamber.  Bursts of energy continued to rain around them, illuminating the room in electric glow of absolute destruction.  "Hold stiller!"  Elaine yelled back as they flew precariously close to dying at every turn.  

Finally she got her shot.  Two rounds flashed from her muzzle and blew with all tenacity towards the ground around the energetic enigma of a man.  Both rounds burst with enough impact to throw the being's bearings off and tumble him towards the ground.  In his moment of lapse, his tendrils reached to destroy the girls flying around the room before they could cause him any more harm.

With all eyes on the popstar, Amethyst charged forward into the fluctuating energy levels around the room.  Letting loose a slip of magical energies, Ame sent forth a binding flash of light to wrap around the fallen creature.  Binding the light to a heavy looking bin, Ame tossed one of her patented... "Again, Elaine literally wrote 'Shut up' on the paperwork to get this patented, so have a free gift anyone smart enough to put plasma in a bottle"  ...Plasma bombs under the bin and ignited it.  Imparting yet another violent explosion upon the room, the bin plummeted into the raging vortex.  Dragging behind the inescapable momentum, the dark energy found itself back within the maelstrom within the floor.  

"Woah..."  Elaine watched in amazement as the energy retreated into the swirl of energy.  "You Sailor Mooned that guy."  

Amethyst hid under the protection of her wards.  In a matter of moments the tendrils and barbs would recede from the room, but they left with a brutal and maleficent nature.  Rampant destruction reaped through the room like a scythe through wheat, casting the room in complete wreckage.  

"It destroyed the black history month bin..."  Along with the rest of the utility lifts and cranes, most of the bins laid smashed and dismembered.  "It was racism!"

Standing back to admire her handy work, Amethyst could not help but feel a swell of pride come over her.  Nothing like dismissing some archaic evil back to its own dimension to make someone feel a little pep in their step.  "So with that..."  Maybe too much as the tendrils relapsing motion blew by her and flung her to the ground.  

Each little glimmer of distilled light flashing through the rafters of the wrecked storage center still surged with electricity.  The wide mouth of the spiraling dimensional gate began to erupt forth an unstable amount of heat and lightning.  Elaine grabbed Tyuki and ran over to make contact with Ame to jump them away from the vicious suction and overwhelming violence of the inter-dimensional storm.  "I need a catchphrase.  Being super badass and saving everyone just doesn't finish everything...."  Elaine wandered off into a ponderous state mulling over things she either once heard or just heard or in no way mattered to the fact something began crawling out of the vortex.  

Amethyst jumped to her feet as the storm dwindled down to a lull.  "Something's coming out of the vortex..."  

"Doesn't even make sense."  Elaine moved back to her thought as a woman dressed like the Victorian era's version of the male gaze with a blue dress running down past her ankles with an inset moving up her left leg pulled herself out of the vortex.  "Am I the vortex in this analogy?"  The blonde woman's hair fell just at the length of her shoulder with a glowing blue flower holding strands out of her face.

"You're the analogy, Elaine."  No movement came from the new woman, but Amethyst wanted to be cautious.  

"I am the analogy of the corgi in the night..."  While Elaine carried on her ramblings, Amethyst checked to see if any noticeable injuries could be found across the blonde woman's body.  

"I think she's alive..."  Amethyst picked her up and began to pull her away from the still visible vortex.  "I don't know why this thing is still here."

"Isn't dumb stuff like getting rid of devil holes your job?"  In between mutterings of new catch phrases, Elaine examined the situation with an eagerness to get out of here and try to find that guy who said he would do under the shirt stuff if she had a good enough body.  She knew she had the body.

"I don't exactly know what this is..."  Her foray laid in the study of arcane and then the action.  When flipping it around, she performed less than stellar.  "Maybe this woman knows something about how we shut this thing down.  I mean we can't just leave this gaping hole in reality here."

"Why is she dressed like you?"  While looking down on the pale woman with rose painted cheeks, the resemblance of fashion sense became obvious to Elaine.  

"It is entirely possible..."  Keeping up with her overall skill set of not really knowing things outside of her studious background, Ame drew a blank.  An odd series of noises came from Ame's mouth ranging in pitch from alley cat to truck backing up.  

"Where am I?"  The elegant tone of her sultry Londonian accent felt as smooth as the silk of lining her corset.

"Holy crap her accent is awesome."  The xenophobe found some understanding for other cultures.  

"It is pretty nice..."  Feeling threatened as the group's Victorian clad superheroine, Ame acknowledged the sheer power hearing that accent did.  

"Why are you dressed so oddly?"  Her attention turned to Tyuki and her oddly assorted arrangements.  

"Yeah..."  The perplexed comment caught the attention of Elaine and carried more weight because of the accent attached to it.  "Why are you dressed so weird?"

"Where did you come from?"  Breaking the ice with a girl who magically appeared from a spiraling mass of energy seemed far more constructive than addressing Tyuki's wardrobe.

"I'm not entirely sure where I am..."  Lifting herself to a sitting position with her arms positioned behind her, the loopy girl thought of the voyage through the purple stream she went through.  "I came from a place where it was all purple.  I was stuck there for some time, but also no time..."  She gazed off into the distance while bringing her hand to her head.  "But, I guess before that I was in London, investigating a series of cult meetings going through the trade companies coming in and out of the colonies in Africa..."

"Woah cowgirl..."  Spoke the cowgirl.  

"There haven't been colonies in Africa in a couple of minutes."  The more things made sense, the more things really did not make sense.  

"And Africa is just doing super right now because of..."  

"What year is it?"  With some understanding of the what came from the brief relay of information, the blonde looked to stand up.  

"Do you mean when year is it?"  

"No, she means what and it's definitely not the nineteenth century."


"The portal is still open!"  A surge of spunk brought the blue clad woman to her feet.  "The only way to close it is for someone to go through it."

"I know exactly who should go through..."  Thinking back to the previous transgressions levied against her, Ame thought of the perfect way to close the gate.  “We should wait for his mom to leave, then we can get him alone…”

“You’re really good at plotting violent crimes against small children, but we have suspicions to confirm.”  The spirals began to motion in absolute tranquility, but leaving an open portal to alternate dimensions would probably do something of the bad sorts.

“You’re the one who thinks it’s legal to beat up a kid if he takes something.”  Amethyst horrified the time traveler with her subtle appeal unprovoked violence.  

“I’m not a paralegal, but I would recommend you not to act on that, because one, it isn’t a law..."

"Law of the jungle."

"And two would be everything else wrong with what you just said.”

“Don’t get me wrong, violence against children is almost never acceptable—but this is an exception.”  It was an oddity, sure, but an exception to attacking a child?  Ame would need a bit more peer review to get that one to hold up in court.

"What are you two talking about?"  Bringing the motion of the conversation back to the important issues, a few  points needed addressing.  "I can't go back through, but I know how to get someone inside and then pull them out..."  Casting some condescension on the terrible group, the Victorian Vanity went off point.  "Maybe you should hear me out before you start talking about crimes you would like to commit.  But, someone needs to make the plunge in there wearing this charm..."  Holding up a locket made of silver, she presented it as the means of escape from the terrible aspect of time.  "Who goes in?"

Seeing the time for action, Elaine tossed her gun onto the floor to distract Tyuki.  With her attention drawn, Elaine would press her finger to her nose.  Following suit, Ame immediately brought her finger to the tip of her nose.  Even in the spirit world, the small corgi lifted his paw to touch his soft nose.

"Quit being a baby and jump into the oblivion."  Confident in her victory, Elaine pointed over to the still spiraling anomaly.  

"It will be fine dear..."  Imena stepped forward to hind Tyuki the locket.  Stepping through the vortex of time would be easy; everything outside of Tyuki's control would take some careful handling.  "Just jump into the gaping hole and it will be fine as long as you don't..."

"Hey yellow hair..."  Seeing a new test subject, Elaine took the time to place her helmet on the preoccupied Imena's head.  "Can you see a ghost corgi?"

"What is the meaning of this and why is everything blurry?"  The sudden shock of the invasion caused her to swing her arms up to try and take the helmet off, bumping Tyuki a little too close to the vortex for Tyuki's availability to take her time and here the rest of Imena's instructions.  "Oh, yes I can see a little dog." Unfortunately for the sake of scientific progress coming at the expense of the well being of a pop-star, Elaine merely attached a hologram of a corgi video into the helmet, and not the actual spirit corgi.

But, Tyuki will be fine...

An odd absence sat in the air.  "Okay, well you can still bring her..."  Amethyst thought for a moment as the young girl cried out and the swirl of energy closed behind her.  

"Not here."  Pulling the helmet off her head and tossing it into Elaine's chest, Imena began to look around the rafters for something unseen.  "I was going to tell her to put the locket on to keep her from drifting too far from the main stream of this frequency."

"Why can't we do that?"  Asking questions minutes too late, Elaine brought herself from one conversation with Imena to a more pertinent one.

Irritated, Imena addressed the question.  "Because someone pushed her into the vortex..."

"That was you."  A strong gaze kept the accountability off of Elaine.  "Good job on that."  

"You startled me with this contraption, though interesting I might add, and I directed my motion into a general area..."  It did not bear well for Imena.  She tired coming up with a strong reasoning, but could only fall back into Elaine's justification.  

A steady tone balanced Elaine in her convictions.  "You pushed her in."  

"Because of you!"  Distraught and confused, Imena thought about how she could bring up the minor fact of problems with getting Tyuki back.

"She was going into the vortex no matter what..."  

Wanting to break the circular arguing, Amethyst tried to steer the conversation from Elaine's death grip on reason.  "How do we get her back?"

"Well..."  Imena stuttered trying to figure out how to tell the others.  "I don't exactly know where the next line is going to be."

Something felt odd.  Amethyst let the thought roll across her furrowed brow for a moment before allowing a comment to caress off of her tongue.  "It kind of sounds like you where going to leave that part out."  

"I thought not telling her that would help speed up the situation."  It took some work to make Elaine's terrible decision making take a back seat to sinister planning, but Imena took charge of it.  "The vortex needed to be closed, and someone needed to go through it."

"Why couldn't you go through it again?"  A judging tremble shook with Ame's words.  

Imena began to ramble a series of words meant to be an excuse.  "Sometimes when you've been in there for so long--well, muscles and brains need to readjust..."  

"Why couldn't you go through it again?"

Imena decided to bashfully give up the truth.  "I didn't want to."

"I get the feeling we would be more angry if it weren't for the accent."  Some truth hung in Elaine's words.  "Here..."  Pulling out a pen and paper from her jacket pocket.  "Write down what you just said and let me read it back."

"I find this highly unnecessary..."  Pen pressing to pen, Imena wrote out the few sentences she just uttered.  "But, if it will clear my good name..."

"Your name isn't that good."  An unamused Amethyst remained weary of the newcomer.  

Reading the vendetta, Elaine came to her conclusion.  "Doesn't work.  I'm still reading it in her voice."

"It's not that difficult to find the other end of this time stream..."  Making up for earlier transgressions became a pivotal point for Imena at this point.  

"You got lost in there in the 1880s..."  Little hope came from Amethyst's assessment.  "And we found you by accident."

"And I thank you, but the group I belonged to earlier were dismantled by a sinister foe..."

Elaine chuckled.  "You sound like Harry Potter."

"So, my time was delayed.  But the lines of this place run down south to a font of energy for hundreds of miles."  Before she wound up spinning through time for almost two hundred years, she had never traveled to America, but did take time to familiarize herself with the occult bearings of the nation.  "I remember New Orleans having a good number of occult practices basing themselves around energy wells."

Not exactly her realm of expertise, but the magician could always add some new reading material to her retinue.  "And energy wells stay active for long periods of time or do they fluctuate?"

"Millenniums..."  Moving across the country did not feel like the best situation on such short notice with such misinformation between the group, but Imena needed to get Tyuki back.  "The odds are fairly high and depend on Louisiana being almost exactly the same after one hundred and fifty years..."

Amethyst sighed in relief and sorrow all at once.  "In that case the odds are pretty much one to one."