Chapter 5
Ambrose:
Well, you still feel like shit, but you're not dead. Kind of surprising, you know, but you're not here to be fucking predictable. You're not sure why you're here at all, actually—it only took two rounds of you flatly refusing to entertain the idea of going to the hospital for Dirk 'n Hal to give up on it, which ain't anywhere near the normal number. They've compromised by sitting you down next to the remains of the car, telling you not to move, and then having Davesprite perch on the fence next to you and watch you like a hawk.
(You guess he has enough feathers to make that fitting.)
No, you're not sure why Davesprite's here. You're not sure he should be here, any more than you should—but then again, Dirk 'n Hal are here, Roxy's here, Sollux is here for some fucking reason, you're here even though you're not totally sure you're capable of protecting anyone from anything. Here is as safe as anywhere else, probably.
Probably.
God, you hope wherever Dave is is half as safe. You close your eyes, try not to think about that shit, open them some indefinite length of time later when someone touches your shoulder.
D. It's your brother, it's D, you have no fucking clue when he got here but you're gonna just. Close your eyes again, not look at the expression of pain and fear and confusion on his face even though that shit's gonna be branded into your mental landscape for roughly ever. Mostly 'cause it's your fault—you didn't protect him, you didn't do anything—
"Ambrose, holy shit." D settles in front of you, both hands cupping your face. From the feeling of his grip shifting, you come to the conclusion that you're mumbling to yourself, plenty loud enough for him to hear. Aw, fuck. "Nothing about this is your fault, bro."
"Shut up." That, however, is a totally conscious sentence. You're proud of yourself. "I di'n't—"
"You didn't fucking die, which is good enough for me, okay?" D strokes your cheek with one thumb until you give up and give him what he wants, cracking your eyes open. Shit's kinda blurry and the light hurts; neither of those things are a surprise. The pity on his face kind of is, though. "Hey."
"Hey."
"Dirk 'n Hal, they're getting him back right now."
"Kids said they couldn't get a fix on his phone, D." You know those four, Hal and Roxy and Dirk and Sollux—alone, they're each a fucking genius, but if they're working together (which they are right now) there shouldn't be a problem that takes more than seven minutes to solve. And you're pretty sure it's been more than ten minutes. Which means—
Shit. You're too fried to think about what it means. You don't wanna think about what anything means, you're just gonna close your eyes again and—
"Scoot over, D," Davesprite says, and the hands on your face abruptly disappear. You have time to start to feel bad about that; then someone smaller and feathery-er curls beside you, settling across your lap like he's more liquid than solid, more feline than avian, like he's got the power of melting his bones to nothing when he needs to or wants to.
It's Davesprite. It's your baby, your lil' man because Dave's got hangups over the nickname and Davepeta's gender don't line up quite right with it, and as much as you want to shut down right now the kid in your lap gets priority brain function. Thankfully smoothing down the soft orange down of his wings takes minimal brainpower anyway, which means you still get to tune out.
For a second, anyway. Then Roxy snaps, "Got him," something (Sollux or Hal) hums and crackles like a snapped powerline, and Davesprite shoots off your lap like a snapped rubber band.
The only reason you don't open your eyes right off is that one wing hits you in the face. You always kind of wondered if it was true that a swan could break a man's arm with a targeted wing-slap; based on what Davesprite can do accidentally, you're pretty sure that it is. Jesus fucking christ there is blood in your mouth now.
Never mind that, though. When you get your eyes open Dirk has Davesprite in some kind of wrestling hold (where the hell did he learn that, exactly? You remember teaching that kind of fighting to D when the two of you were teenagers but did he really teach his own kids? Already?) and D's reaching for your shoulder to shake you until you look at him.
You're not sure where the fuck Rox is. Sollux is absorbed in a laptop, red and blue crackling around his head. Hal's gone, which is actually a good thing.
"Ambrose," D says in that voice that still surprises you every time—dad voice? Yeah, dad voice— "—stay. Fucking. Here."
"Dave's—"
"You almost died."
"I didn't almost die, you overdramatic fuck—"
"Ambrose."
Fuck. Fuck. "It's Dave," and god do you sound like you're begging because maybe you fucking are, "D, it's my kid, I gotta—"
"I'll knock you the fuck out if you try and put yourself in the goddamn line of fire again right now," he warns you, and you can hear his voice waver and not quite break halfway through the sentence—it's not an empty threat, he totally will kick your ass for your own safety right now. "You're staying right fuckin' here with Davesprite, do you understand me? You're—"
Behind him, Davesprite screeches in obvious outrage at the idea of being left behind, and is abruptly cut off as Dirk flattens one hand over his mouth. You feel like screaming too—there's no way you'll be fast enough to get past D, not with—
Wait.
Thinking about the collar means you reach up to touch the collar, a habit that's firmly ingrained in your mind at this point—except you find tender, painful skin instead. The collar's gone for the moment at least, Dirk or Hal or somebody took it off.
You're faster than D right now and you knows it. From the way you see him start to open his mouth, he knows you know it, and maybe he could actually do something about it if you gave him time but he doesn't get the time—somewhere just out of your sight, Roxy shouts something wordless and truimphant and you see a flat black void that only exists from one side flicker into existence.
Dave's on the other side. You roll up to your feet and you're gone before D has time to take a breath.
Hal:
Getting into Dave's phone is...weird. It's still stuck in its restart/reboot cycle for some reason; for a second you're not sure how Roxy and Dirk managed to get a lock on the signal at all. The pings should still be too far apart.
Ah. Nevermind. Dave's not on normal time, that's all. That means that you can't actually use his phone as a corridor to physically join him in his current location, but that's okay; there's all kinds of shit that you can flow into. If your haste means a couple shattered lightbulbs, who the fuck gives a shit?
(Yes, that is a direct transcription of your thought process as you literally explode out of the lamp on the stylish bedside table. Maybe there's a little more spite in the action than you're putting into the transcript, but you don't intend to consciously admit that.)
Okay. Priorities.
Number one, pick a wall to focus on. Roxy's been practicing lowering the time they need to get a fix and open a portal, but you'll still need to get a steady camera shot for at least thirty seconds or so. Thankfully there's a wall across from you that you can get a clear shot of; you stare for three seconds, blink twice to cut the video and set it to loop, and send it to her. Three seconds is almost too long to stand still, too, because two of the four people in the room who aren't Dave are already heading towards you.
Since they're the ones providing the overt threat, you assume that the real danger here is from the two who aren't moving towards you. The fact that those two are older bears out that hypothesis; age doesn't always correlate with power, but something about this whole dynamic makes you fairly certain that you're right. Plus, they're on the side of the room that you need to be on anyway—further from the hot chick and the blue dude closing in on you, closer to Dave.
You're worried about Dave. Despite the fact that all signs point to him being faster than the rest of reality, he hasn't moved from his spot on the floor with his hands over his ears since you popped in. Not good.
So. You should be closer, and everyone else should be incapacitated. Let's fucking go.
The bulb's shattered, but power still runs through the lamp; you backstep and melt into the electricity there, dart from socket to wall plug to main light on the other side of the room, quite nearly right above the man in a wheelchair. As tempting as it is to try, you don't shatter this lightbulb (no showering people with mercury-laden fluorescent glass shards, at least not when one of those people is Dave) or to land on anyone's head. (No killing anyone, either. At least not until you figure out how bad off your bro is.)
So you drop down behind the two men, noting that the blue dude, at least, is already in the middle of whirling to face you. You also notice that he has a goddamn tail, mostly because the arrow-shaped tip is lashing like an angry cat's. Interesting; most people can't track you that well when you're in-system. But you still have a few seconds at least to—
Shit. No you don't, because sulphur-yellow eyes lock onto yours and suddenly he's not over there, he's here, inches from you, weirdly proportioned hands gripping a double handful of your shirt. Oh, shit, fuck, shit—
Luckily your main fear reaction is not unlike that of the famed electric eel's. Dark blue fingers only have to barely brush against your skin and he's staggering back with a pained yelp. Still, he's going to grab you again. You need to get shit under control.
...or maybe you don't, because here comes the cavalry. On the opposite wall, one of Roxy's portals blurs into existence, and it's only open half a second before someone pops through it.
That someone is moving too fast to be anyone expected. You confirm that it's Ambrose when he misjudges his own speed and slams into the wall; he may have knocked himself out. No, he definitely knocked himself out.
"Dirk, goddamnit—" Oh, you probably should be acting instead of speaking, but on the other hand everyone else is currently occupied with staring at the newly-unconsious man on the floor. First stop once you get this sorted is the nearest hospital with an MRI, jesus fucking shit.
Uh-oh. Blue guy's looking at you. Hell, he doesn't even need to do that weird teleport thing this time, he's close enough to just fucking pounce.
Fortunately for you, someone slightly more competent than Ambrose decides to use the portal before the guy can actually do anything more than start to turn. The fact that it's Davesprite—a very obviously indignant and pissed-off Davesprite—isn't optimal, but then again no one you've ever met can withstand a hundred pounds of orange feathery mutant to the chest. With the kinetic energy added to his actual mass, it's enough to knock the blue guy off his feet.
They're both gone before they hit the floor. This is an entirely new level of problem added onto the already-existing one.
Fuck it. You're sure Dirk and Roxy can help you sort it out once they get their shit together and through that fucking portal.