Chapter One - Bothered

Alice stared at her hand for a moment. Her fingers were trembling. Not much, but just enough that she could pick it up.

It bothered her.

A lot was bothering her at the moment. Not because such a trembling was unnatural, but because it was. Humans shook a little all the time. They didn't have perfect control over themselves.

She did.

Or she had, once.

Now she wasn't so sure.

"Alice?"

She looked up and found Crystal staring at her, so Alice straightened her spine and stood with more confidence. She was, in many ways, the leader of their little team. Not the team-mom (that role was definitely Shanti's) but often the person that others turned to when they needed directions. It was something about being the first.

"Sorry," she said before smiling in a self-deprecating manner. "Just a little distracted."

"Is something wrong?" Crystal asked. She had very distracting eyes. Big and bright blue and terribly innocent.

"No, I think I'm just trying to get to grips with... whatever happened."

"Do you remember anything?" Crystal asked.

Alice frowned, but shook her head. "Being on the moon, then nothing. Just a big blank. Honestly, I'd liken it to going to sleep. Time passed, and I don't recall anything happening in that period."

"Weird," Crystal said. "I think it was the same for me, but I kinda woke up on my own... while falling. Anyway! I'm glad you're back."

"Yeah, of course," Alice said. "We should move out. The others will need saving too."

"Yeah!" Crystal said, all of her worry disappearing in a blink and turning into good cheer. Alice smiled a little. It was hard to remain in a poor mood with Crystal around.

Glancing around, Alice took in their surroundings. They were still in that trailer park. The space looked... not local. She couldn't quite put a finger on it, but something about the design of the homes didn't feel like what she might have seen around her home.

There were videos on the news, sometimes, of favelas and other places where the poor congregated, and they certainly lived in similar homes, but the style of these was different.

So, at a guess, she figured that they weren't in South America. "Before we head out, I think... spend a few minutes discovering where we are?"

"The cars are weird," Crystal said.

"How so?" Alice asked. There were a few rotting in backyards. Nothing very fancy, just plain little boxy cars.

"I dunno, they look like a kid drew a car then someone built that. They're not... curvy," Crystal said as she walked over to one of them. She tried the door, but it was predictably locked.

"I can—" Alice began. She could do a neat trick with some shadows, slipping into locks and opening them up without much fuss.

Crystal punched the window, then pulled on the lock tab. "I got it," she said.

"Of course," Alice replied. She didn't dislike Crystal, by any means, but her lack of subtlety was... glaring.

Crystal sat in the car, then realized she was on the passenger side. "Weird," she said again before tugging the glovebox open. She pulled out a few water-logged papers that stank of mould. One had a monochrome picture of the car she'd broken into on the front, the ink a little runny, but still legible. "Looks... Russian?"

"The letters are Cyrillic, yes," Alice said. It took a fraction of a second of focus to not just 'understand' what she was seeing, but to actually see the letters on the cover. "I guess this car is a Lada?" She had never heard of the brand, but the writing did give her an approximate location.

"Eastern Europe?" Crystal asked as she looked up.

"The weather's a bit chilly, but the plant life suggests late fall or early spring," Alice said as she looked about. "I think that's about right."

"Does that help us?"

"It gives us some context," Alice said. She took the user's manual from Crystal as it was passed over and flipped it open. "The world you were in, what was it like?"

"Uh... it was a fantasy world," Crystal said.

Alice raised an eyebrow. "Could you clarify?"

"It had magic and wizards, kinda, and like, people fighting with swords and spears," Crystal said. "No cars, no technology, no internet."

"Right, a fantasy world," Alice muttered. "Well, this isn't." The car accepted petrol, and it had a jury-rigged radio under the dashboard with a few wires trailing beneath. Radio, electricity, petrol, and an obvious consumer base for the purchasing and manufacturing of cars. This was an industrialised, modern world they were in.

One with magic time-warping storms.

"I don't even know where to begin from here," Alice admitted.

"There's a road that way," Crystal said, pointing through the stained windshield. "We could get to a highway or something, then figure things out from there."

Alice considered it, then nodded. "That's acceptable," she said.

Crystal pulled herself out of the car, then grumbled as she wiped her rear clean of old dust, which of course got onto her hands. She bent over double and rubbed her hands off of some grass to clean them off.

Alice rolled her eyes, but put on a straight face as Crystal looked her way with a goofy smile. "Come on," Alice said.

She was still worried, but the walk helped. She felt... uncentred. Still... she raised a hand towards a rusty minivan, then closed the hand into a fist.

Tendrils of darkness ripped out of the earth around the car and speared upwards. The car tipped to one side as the all-consuming black started to eat at the earth beneath it. Then the tendrils crashed into each other, engulfing the car with a loud rending scream of metal being compressed.

Letting go of the spell, Alice watched as the half-melted blob of the minivan crashed down onto the grass.

"Wow, you really didn't like that car," Crystal said.

"Something like that," Alice replied.

Her magic was still responsive. Still... unbelievably powerful. But it felt... off.

"So, what was that for?" Crystal asked as she flounced along next to Alice.

"It's nothing," Alice said.

"Oh... is this the kind of 'nothing' where you're keeping a secret from me because you're worried and-slash-or ashamed and you don't want to bother me with the information you have until it inevitably comes out later and makes everything worse?" Crystal asked.

Alice gave her a look. "Where did that come from?" she asked.

"Hypertense said that it's the number one way for our group to break apart," Crystal said. "Since we're all so strong and awesome, the only way for things to really go bad is for us not to communicate or work together."

Alice held back a sigh. "Fine. My magic feels... off?"

"Off how?" Crystal asked. She reached towards Alice, paused, blushed, then touched Alice's shoulder anyway. "Does it hurt?"

"No, it's just not as responsive. I don't know exactly how to describe it. It feels... at once weaker and less close? It's like trying to write with mittens on. I can hold the pen well enough, but there's a barrier that I'm not used to having in the way."

"Oh," Crystal said. "It's hard to tell if that's because of the other-world stuff or if it's just normal magic stuff. Maybe the feeling will fade? Or maybe... maybe you haven't used your magic in a long time, so it's less like wearing mittens and more like you slept wrong and now your arm's all tingly and asleep?"

Alice considered it, glanced at her empty palm again, then nodded. "That's possible. I'll monitor things."

"And we'll move slowly," Crystal said.

"Meagan is waiting on us to save her," Alice pointed out.

"And we will, because we won't be charging in blind and hurting ourselves because we ignored something big and important."

"That's... a fair point. We can take it slow," Alice agreed. She wasn't sure what to think of the silent 'yes' Crystal gave herself along with a fist pumping motion, but she decided not to comment. Crystal was... like that, sometimes.

The trailer park's roads all seemed to lead to one slightly-less awful road. It was asphalt covered in a thin layer of gravel, with weeds poking out from below, but it was intact enough to travel on.

They started down the road, walking at a brisk, steady pace. They could have run, but Alice didn't want to, not just yet. She extended her senses ahead, and could feel something small some ways down the road.

It could be interesting, and it might run away if they approached it too quickly.

So they walked, past a few more homes, mobile or otherwise, and past an ancient park that was almost entirely overgrown, only the bright children's playthings within hinting at what it was.

Finally, they reached a road.

Four lanes, with a boundary guard in the middle.

"Oh," Crystal said. "Well, that's not a good sign."

***