Loop Two - Chapter Five - Biased

Amber held back a gasp as the bus moved through a shifting, watery sheen that hovered in the air. The world in the portal was a strange reflection of the warehouse the bus was driving through, as if the image was being projected through a dozen shifting funhouse mirrors.

For a moment it felt like something was tugging at her gut, a strange and uncomfortable feeling, but not one that was hard enough to be painful.

She heard Cassy squeaking next to her, the blonde’s hand grasping for Amber’s and squeezing tight until, finally, they were through and the bus turned into a parking space.

“Are you okay?” Amber asked Cassy. Jade was shaking her head, as if ridding herself of cobwebs, but seemed otherwise fine.

Cassy stared at her hand, then yanked it back as if she was burned. Her cheeks reddened. “Yeah, yeah, I’m good,” she said.

“Alright,” Amber said. She stood, the motion feeling... easier.

The air here is different. It wasn’t a smell or anything, it just felt warmer, more comforting. She poked at her magical core, the strange organ in her gut feeling contentedly full in a way it hadn’t on Earth.

She presumed that there was just a lot more magic in the air here, or that the bit of magic she had was working better on Agartha.

The magical girl at the front took in a deep breath, then grinned at the lot of them. “Welcome to your new home. Now with ten thousand percent more monsters, but also a whole heap more magic. If you’re feeling really sick, just speak up. The worst of it should pass in a minute. Crossing a portal is always a bit of a mess.”

A few of the other magicals were taking it worse than Amber, that much was obvious. Cassy shuddered a bit as she stood, and Amber reflexively swung an arm over her shoulders to keep her steady.

“I’m fine,” Cassy said.

“Let’s just get you on flat ground, then you can start flying circles around everyone,” Amber said.

“Flying? I can’t do much of that... oh, but we’re... oh, hell yeah!” Cassy said, her mood swinging all the way back to jubilant in an instant.

Amber held back a laugh as she guided Cassy into the corridor, then paused next to Jade. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, just made me a tiny bit dizzy, I guess,” Jade said.

“It’ll pass. I don’t think your magic would interact with portals or whatever.”

“You know my magic?” Jade asked. She already had her familiar scarf around her neck. Strangely enough, Amber thought it was a little brighter than it had been before. Maybe the scarf’s magic is better on Agartha?

“A little. Actually, you do have some... space compression stuff, right? Maybe that would mess with a portal?”

“I’m sure the people putting up the portal know what they’re doing,” Jade said.

“Come on, kiddos, I want to get this over with so that I can go grab second lunch!” the magical girl at the front of the bus called out.

“I’m sure,” Amber said to Jade.

They moved forward and out of the bus together, and found themselves standing on the side of the group of magicians that had arrived with them. “Alright everyone,” the magical girl leading them said as she stood before the group.

“It’s getting late, so I figure I’ll just leave the lot of you in the care of the army folk here. You’ll be housed in the barracks here overnight, and tomorrow morning your tour of the academy will start. Listen to the army people. Or don’t; I’m not responsible for what you do, and they don’t have the authority to tell you to do squat. So, enjoy that, I guess. Bye!”

Amber blinked at the girl’s back as she turned and strutted off back towards the portal.

A look around, now that she wasn’t being herded around, revealed that they were in a large, rather plain building. It had brick walls, with dividers splitting off parts of the building. There was a large section with people in hard hats next to a large bank of transformers, some foot-thick wires running into the portal at one end of the room. Some soldiers, fully equipped and armed, were waiting around to one side, and there were forklifts moving by with loads of plastic-wrapped stuff.

There had to be a lot of material moving in and out of the portal every hour, judging by the number of forklifts driving in through the warped space of the portal. Most of them were entirely unmanned.

A clipboard person came up before the group of new arrivals and guided them out of the building while assuring them that their luggage would be brought over shortly.

The moment they were outside, Amber looked up and took in the familiar sky of Agartha. It was much clearer, somehow, than the sky on Earth. Or, at least, than the sky around New York had been.

The buildings around them looked like prefabs, squat ugly things built in neat rows, but after moving across a block or two on their way to some barracks, they approached Norumbega proper, with its older stone and wood homes, all of them looking like they could belong on a postcard.

“Bet the barracks are crap,” Cassy said.

“Likely,” Amber agreed. “They can’t be too bad, but, well, yeah.”

“Boring,” Cassy said.

“We could go to the academy,” Amber said. “Nothing’s stopping us.”

“And then what?” Cassy asked. She seemed intrigued by the idea.

“I mean, I know where our dorms are. They should be prepared for us already. We might need to borrow some essentials from Morgan, but she’s very prepared for that kind of thing. And we can live without brushing our teeth for one day.”

“Hell yeah,” Cassy said. “Where’s the school?”

Amber looked around, then pointed to Norumbega Academy. Or rather, the one large cliffside next to the city. “Up there.”

“How would we get up there?” Jade asked.

Amber grinned over to Jade, happy that the smaller girl was joining in. “Cassy here can fly. I’m pretty sure all three of us can fit on her broom, no problem.”

“I’m not sure that’s a great idea,” Jade said.

Amber patted her on the shoulder. “It’s okay. Cassy’s a great flyer. And if you fall off and break your neck, I can rewind time and it’ll never have happened at all.”

“That’s... somewhat reassuring... but not as much as you might think,” Jade said.

“We could leave the pipsqueak here,” Cassy said.

Amber shook her head. “We’re a team. We don’t leave anyone behind. And I don’t think a night being bored in the barracks would be too bad. Probably.”

Cassy groaned, then turned to Jade with wide, pitiful eyes. “Please?”

Jade hesitated for a moment more, then sighed. “Okay, but we go up two at a time, and I’m not going to be first.”

Cassy laughed, and the moment they neared the next intersection, she darted off to the side, pulling Amber along with her as she grabbed her hand on the way.

Amber laughed, then cut herself off. We don’t need people knowing we’re running off, do we?

Jade followed after hesitating a little bit. They pulled out of the section of the city filled with prefabs and were soon on a narrow cobbled road, the homes close together, with the occasional clothesline between buildings. Shutters were being closed as night came on, and people were setting out little bowls next to their doors with bits of bread and what looked like milk.

Some were tossing sand outside in a wide spray before closing up for the night.

The people in Norumbega dressed strangely. For every home-made, handsewn outfit, there was someone wearing Nikes and a Yankees cap.

“We should change,” Amber said.

“Change? Our clothes?” Cassy asked. “Because, uh, my stuff’s in my luggage.”

“I have my things,” Jade said. “But, um, why?”

“We’re standing out,” Amber said as she saw someone glancing their way. The more they moved, the fewer people were on the street. “We’d stand out a lot less as magicals.”

“Huh. So the opposite of back on Earth, huh?” Cassy asked.

Amber nodded, then gestured to an alleyway. “We can change there?”

Cassy shrugged, and with a quick spinning step, she summoned her broom from out of midair. “Oh, that’s so much easier here,” she said as she spun around in mid-air, then hung onto her broom, one foot over the ring just over the bristles, and a hand over the shaft.

“You fly with a broom?” Jade asked.

“She has a witch’s hat too,” Amber said.

It was a little embarrassing to swing her arms and hips around in a clock-like motion, and Cassy did giggle a little before Amber was done, but soon enough, Amber’s clothes were replaced by her red magical girl costume. It felt far more familiar than the things she’d picked up with Cassy.

“That’s kinda cute,” Cassy said as she eyed Amber up and down. “Very red.”

“I know. It’s... yeah, a lot of red.”

“Pink is nicer,” Jade said as she stepped out of her scarf’s cocoon, her own costume settling around her in all of its pastel pink glory.

“Biased,” Amber accused.

“I don’t actually know why mine’s blue. I don’t think I have a favourite colour,” Cassy said as she tugged at the edge of her skirt.

Unsurprisingly, they talked about costumes on their way to the cliffs jutting up along one side of the city. There were fewer homes just under the cliff. The buildings there were more like warehouses and workshops. Amber assumed it was in part the lack of sunlight and the risk of a stone coming down that discouraged people from living too close to the nearly sheer wall.

“Are we going to get into trouble for this?” Jade asked.

“Nah,” Cassy said. “We can just blame Amber.”

“Please, I’ll just say it was you. You look way more like a punk than I do,” Amber said.

“I do not,” Cassy said. Her shoulder bumped against Amber’s.

Amber noticed Jade giving her and Cassy a look before she smiled slyly.

Why is that smile making me so nervous?

***