[LN] Escape from Planet 9West! (for Raph and Nico)

[lightoffyoursails]

Jim had been solar-surfing through the industrial canyons of Montressor when the pull caught him, and his solar surfer with it.

Montressor didn't have malls, so Jim didn't recognize the building that had suddenly appeared around him in place of all the dangerous machinery, or the large mercantile displays within, or why this place was populated by only one species.

He also didn't know that the Terrans milling around couldn't see him yet, or that he was insubstantial to them, which is why he panicked.

"Ahh! Get out of the way!"

He jerked his solar surfer through the crowd, blazing by too fast to notice that the people he was narrowly missing didn't notice his passing at all. He was on fire, though, piloting the recreational machine better than he ever had in his life, and he'd always been a good surfer. The board and sail responded as if they were reading his mind for commands.

He skidded to a stop - right in front of a Terran who, with heavy headphones covering his ears and his eyes fixed firmly on the small flat computer in his hands, didn't see Jim in his way.

"Look out!"

Jim tried to move aside, but the guy walked through him. Right through him. The warmth of the guy's body passed through his, seemed to take all the air out of Jim's lungs with it, and left him gasping in shock as people continued to mill around as if a guy hadn't nearly crashed his solar surfer into a bunch of them at all. A few more even walked through him, as if he was a hologram. Or they were.

Holograms. Okay. Jim began waving his hands at the people around him and, when no one continued to acknowledge him, through them.

Holograms too. And they were all Terran. The homogeneity of the species in this program was freaking Jim out as much as having stumbled into a massive hologram in the first place. Who was behind this thing?

Jim shouldered his board and walked straight through the wall back into the main crowd of the mall, looking for anyone who seemed to be real in the crowd.

Comments

[othersdestructive]

A shopping mall. A strange, completely alien landscape Raph had never been to before. He'd only seen them on TV.

While he and Nico could be seen by adults - now that Jack had gotten his little human friend and his little sister to believe in them by saying they were there at the Pole - it was, fortunately, optional. Which was why people weren't freaking out and running away, as they couldn't see him.

"It looks like Christmas threw up on the place," said Raph, looking around at the overabundant decorations.

So far he didn't see the guy Manny had tipped them off about. He had to be here somewhere.

[lightoffyoursails]

Jim was easy enough to find, wandering brazenly as he was through people in the Sharper Image, flying one of the remote-control helicopters and - FINALLY - attracting some attention as bewildered and astonished hologram-people pointed at the bizarre floating helicopter controller, not the toy helicopter itself.

Even though Jim was already making it do some ultra-sweet tricks that was leaving the employees - who insisted that the remote controller was not supposed to float around like that - bewildered and a little jealous.

Jim side-eyed them as he messed with the toy, because this introduced the idea that he might just be invisible and insubstantial, or that the holograms were AIs programmed to interact only with things in their environment.

[staff_and_wielder]

"It can get more Christmas-y than this," Nico assured Raph, looking around the mall for anyone who looked confused and out of place -- or anyone who was walking through other people.

Confused, out of place, and intangible wasn't really making an appearance though.

"Do you think maybe they're hunkered down somewhere panicking?"

[lightoffyoursails]

Jim wasn't hunkered down or panicking anywhere. In fact, he strolled out of the Sharper Image just then, briefly preceded by the remote-control helicopter. Sharper Image employees followed him, along with a lot of yelling, bewildered people, but they all seemed afraid to approach him, and a lot of the people were screaming about ghosts.

Jim had just wanted to see if anyone would stop him if he actually took the merchandise from the store. Since this was the most blatantly he'd ever shoplifted (actually the first time he HAD shoplifted - his mom had drilled respect for the struggling shopkeep making ends meet into his head far too well for him to rebel against that particular law), he was pretty amused by the lack of direct conflict he was getting from the holographic people.

[othersdestructive]

"Nope," he said to Nico, spotting the people reacting to the invisible teenager. He clasped a hand over his face. "Making it so other people are panicking, apparently."

Raph dragged his hand down his face, took a deep breath, and jogged on over.

"Hey, ponytail! You need to stop that, right now!"

[lightoffyoursails]

Jim looked up at the shout, and far from being surprised or scared by Raph's appearance, he just rolled his eyes with relief.

"Finally, somebody real."

He made an immediate beeline for Raph, tossing the remote for the helicopter at an employee, who shrieked, but caught it.

The look on Jim's face was not one of Raph was likely to have seen on a stranger before. Jim's beeline for Raph was the beeline of someone who needed directions to the subway, not the beeline of someone in the grips of celebrity worship. There wasn't a trace of fear or surprise at Raph's appearance in his expression.

"What's the deal with all the holograms? I don't think I've seen this many Terrans in my life, much less all in one place. What are they supposed to be simulating?" He glanced at Nico, giving her a quick nod, trying to look cool for a pretty, possibly-real Terran female. "You real too?"

[staff_and_wielder]

"Nope." Nico's tone was dry, but her expression as she glanced between Raph and the new guy was more confused than anything. "I'm the subconscious manifestation of your poor decision-making process in the form a Goth girl toting a giant magic wand. Friend from home?"

The last was directed at Raph with a hopeful lilt and a cocked eyebrow. Maybe he could translate all the "hologram" and "Terran" stuff coming out of this guy's mouth.

[lightoffyoursails]

"Now you sound like a cy-cop, in which case, you might wanna let a psychanic take a look at your AI 'cause your cover is slipping. Keep up that level of preachiness and all the other delinquents will see right through you, too."

Jim concluded this nearly incomprehensible sentence with, "what's a goth?"

[othersdestructive]

"I've never met this guy in my life," said Raph, just as confused as Nico was. "But I think he thinks you're a hologram. Or something. For some reason."

Why would he think the normal human girl was imaginary and not the giant walking turtle?

"I'm not a hologram, she's not a hologram, all of these people aren't holograms, but none of them can see you. That's why they were freaking out over you playing with toys. To them, it looked like they were moving on their own."

He went on, "As for why they can't see you, where you are, and what a goth is, you need to come with us, and we can explain - after you're safe. There's someone - something - coming for you, just like it tried to come for us."

Until he got one of those anti-tracing spells Dipper and the other eggheads had worked out, he'd be a much easier target for Kuk.

[lightoffyoursails]

Jim snorted. "You want me to come with you, total strangers, because we're Invisible Buddies, soooomething's -" he added in the spooky fingers for good, sarcastic measure, "coming for me, and I'm the one you can't understand?"

He laughed at them, shaking his head. "I haven't done anything illegal in, like . . . days. If the cops were gonna come for me, they'dve come already."

[staff_and_wielder]

Nico was beginning to regret having offered to tag along with Raph for new myth retrieval. Granted, this guy wasn't anywhere near as stand-offish as she'd been to Jack and Bunny, but she'd at least had the sense to realize that something was deeply wrong when she found herself passing through people. Oh for the days when bringing a boy home just meant kicking him in the head and loading him into the Leapfrog before the super-truant officers got there.

"We're being vague because the situation sounds completely ridiculous when we go into any more detail, and it's a little easier to swallow when you can actually poke the ridiculous parts of it," she said. "But you're right, the cops aren't coming for you. You being invisible and intangible and not actually existing on their plane of reality will do that. Something that wants to either eat you or turn you over to creeps who don't believe in things like your rights as a person? That is definitely coming.

"As we're personally against both of those options, we figured that we ought to extend a third to you before the screaming and the fighting started." She gestured back at the confused employees and smirked. "Granted, we're a little late to the screaming, but that seems to have died down already. I'd really prefer to get out of here before it started up again, though."

[lightoffyoursails]

It still sounded ridiculous, but the two other teens were pretty serious and as much as being in danger and going with them sounded like a story to be picked the heck apart, it also sounded much more interesting than going to look for a way back to the Benbow.

It kinda sounded like the start of an adventure story, the kind Jim would have read a couple years back as a kid. He'd be lying if he said he didn't want to find out what kind of adventure it was.

"Ok, but if we're going anywhere, I need to grab my solar surfer first."

He turned away from them, prepped to head back to the Sharper Image to grab his board, but stopped short when it materialized immediately under his arm.

"That's not normal," he said, slowly, as he inspected the nicks and scuffs to make sure it was his.

The solar surfer at least presented more evidence to Nico and Raph that Jim was not from around here. "Here" being a planet that didn't have functional - and very steampunk - personal flying machines.

[othersdestructive]

"Get used to it," said Raph. "Now that you're here, you're not even normal anymore."

After all, it was Jim's power that had summoned the surfer, not the surfer itself.

Raph reached for a little pouch attached to his belt and pulled out a snowglobe. Before he had the chance to use it, one of the skylights broke in a wild downward spray of glass, fearlings surging through the opening.

Children - who could see them - screamed, as parents reacted with instinctual alarm, not seeing the threat but reacting to the glass mysteriously breaking.

"The Pole!" Raph cried into the globe, throwing it just over the edge of the nearby railing so no random people accidentally wandered in.

"They'll leave once we're gone. Move!" He grabbed Jim with a firm hand on his upper arm, climbing up on the railing, planning on bodily tossing him through the portal.

[lightoffyoursails]

The fearlings immediately descended, not on the adults who could see them, but on the kids. Their appearance wasn't enough to make them monstrous in Jim's eyes, but that action was.

"Oh, they'll leave all right!"

Before Raph could object, Jim had dropped the surfer and kicked it into gear, trusting on the strength of the rockets thrusters to break Raph's grip on his arm as he zoomed at the black shreds of nightmare.

[othersdestructive]

Problem was? Raph had a really strong grip. Which was why he went whizzing off dangling from Jim's arm. To keep from being flung away, he had to pull himself up and get his feet properly on the surfer.

"Oh for the love of - turn around!" he shouted in Jim's ear.

[staff_and_wielder]

Ugh, boys.

"Come back here!" she shouted, biting down on the inside of her cheek in search of the blood she'd need to cast a spell to either defend herself or to tow the two boys back to the portal herself.