“You’re starting to sound very suspicious, you know. Not that you weren’t very suspicious to begin with.†Sure, he wasn’t going to make friends like this, but he didn’t really want much of anything to do with her. He’d get the thread and then get out of her life, and that would be it.
Why couldn't he have been an idiot? Alice lamented. She had a love hate relationship with stupidity. On one hand, it pissed her off. On the other hand, it was so much fun to watch as people messed up their own lives for her.
To Sasha's suspicions, she merely shrugged. The gesture might look like an apology if somebody chose to interpret it that way but really, it was just for some resemblance of this being a normal encounter. "I've met people with animation powers," the girl said, choosing to omit the fact that she was specifically speaking about necromancy. "Sometimes they need to use special materials or else things become weird. I was just wondering if you had that restriction, too."
She could see the shop coming ahead at the end of the block so she pointed at it. "That's it over there, the last one before the intersection." A good, clean middle class sort of establishment, not really upper crust localities that Alice tended to frequent. As much as she had to turn her nose up at the perceived blandness of The Looking Glass, they did have to blend in with the general populace. If SPECTER had a big fancy shop that ninety-nine percent of the people couldn't afford anyways, then anybody going in would automatically gander unwanted attention.
“Królik is her own person. There is no reason for you to pry any further.â€Â
He looked over the shop incredulously. It looked nice enough, but not exactly this girl’s style. She really didn’t act fourteen, did she? He wondered if it was a lie, or if she was just naturally a creepy little girl.
He stepped inside and looked around, quickly becoming comfortable with his surroundings. He’d become used to the world of cloth over time, and he knew exactly what he was looking for. A spool of thread, a length of cloth, a few needles… in a short time he’d assembled himself a whole sewing kit’s worth of things. He set down everything on a shelf, reached into his pocket and took out a few old bills, muttering to himself as he tried to figure out if he could afford everything.
In my defense, I am a realistic person. This is realistic, okay? I swear it is. I am so sorry but I am a realistic person and not doing this realistically feels like it's degrading the reality of this.
Alice Mordrake
Stupid paranoid people. The girl followed him straight into the shop, hanging about a pile of mediocre manufactured lace. It was an utter disgrace that she had to stand for such poor quality. She couldn't even bear to touch it, knowing that it would have felt scratchily cheap against her skin.
From the lace, however, Alice could watch Sasha discretely from the corner of her eye. There were other people in the shop right then so she mind hacked them all. The woman sitting at the cashier yawned even as the line of customers formed in a quick but not sudden manner. As the last customer payed for her materials, the employee put down her head on the counter and fell into a deep sleep. Satisfied that there would be no witnesses, Alice promptly initiated a more thorough mind hack on the Russian man as he counted his money unsuspectingly.
Immediately, she felt as if nails were being hammered into her head, as her consciousness was redirected in what had to be hundreds of different directions. That's impossible! she shrieked in her own mind. How can somebody be in multiple places at once? Thinking that it was some kind of mental guard, Alice pressed on, determined to break through it, only to find the pressure increase exponentially. Her consciousness screamed out silently as the pain of the mind hack seemed to reverse itself on her. Not the effects of it, just the horrible sensations of being torn and twisted apart mentally.
As she struggled in the Russian monster's mind, the girl's body collapsed, temporarily rendered brain dead by the absence of her consciousness. It did not breathe but it didn't need to either. A fight on the mental plane that seemed to span for hours only amounted to a handful of seconds in the real world.
What kind of disgusting person is this?! The thought only became truly coherent once she momentarily gave up struggling against the tide that was dragging her along. She had to get out of this mind. It was a vile place, on the level of being drowned in a sewer. Alice threw herself back into struggling against Sasha's mind, no longer fighting for control, only for survival. She gathered the bits of her mind that were being shredded and held them close, guarding them against the frenzied vortex. I'll kill him! But the thought couldn't hold any real conviction behind it right now because she was too busy with other more important things.
Finally, she found the gap that she had entered Sasha's mind from, bursting through it to get back to her own body. She choked on the first few breathes as her lungs and heart got back working, so disoriented that the urge to vomit overcame her weakened senses. There was no time to think of how disgusting that was, how humiliating it was to be lowered in this way. Alice didn't even notice the wetness running down her legs or the disgusting shade of brown that was starting to seep through her skirt and smell.
Now what was that about drowning in a sewer? She stood in a mixed puddle of her own fluids and that certainly looked like where she had just come from.
Alice stumbled to her feet, steadying herself with her hands in a pile of that awful, terrible lace. "What! Wath! That!" The words on her tongue were clumsy, spilling the anger and confusion behind them. Her legs wobbled a bit and Alice had just enough control left to lock them straight. Hate was starting to catch up with her but genuine hostility would have to wait until she could sew back up her mind.
Behind her, their was a loud sniffing sound, followed by a audible grimace. "Miss," the woman at the cashier was saying now, "if you needed to use the bathroom, you should have just asked."
Sasha hadn’t come to this part of town before, so he was effectively blind, and he hated it. He quickly noticed the line forming unusually quickly by the cashier. Was this Ali –
Oh, it was definitely Alice. Sasha froze as he felt the contact in his mind, standing still as he watched the creep struggle in his mind, then falter and fall to the ground.
Nobody had noticed this. Clearly there was something wrong with them, which meant that if he was still here when they woke up, they might think Alice’s… condition was because of him. How long would they be out? He wasn’t sure, but he gathered up the things he’d planned to buy as quickly as they could, wrapping them all up in a roll of high quality fabric and storming right out the door with Królik on his shoulder.
Sure, the police might be out for him later, but he’d deal with that when it came. He’d always been pretty good at making things disappear.
As soon as those words left that woman's lips, Alice promptly crushed her mind in anger. There wasn't even a scream to signify what had happened; a look of horror came over the woman's face as her memories and personality were wiped away but the expression was replaced the very next moment with total blankness. A perfect doll and a perfect victim. Both of SPECTER's different facets enjoyed employing down on their luck vagrants without families. With any luck, nobody would miss this one but that was a problem which would have to wait for later.
"THATHA!" Alice shrieked at the man as he hurried out of the shop with his bundle of stolen goods. "Get back here! Do you have idea who I am you little pithant piethe of thhit!" She watched him furiously as he raced out of the shop without a second look at her, as if aware of the fact that if she followed him, she would be ridiculed.
I'll kill him! I'll kill him so dead that not even a god can bring him back! She fumed as she mind hacked a random passerby into calling in some SPECTER agents to take care of the shop situation for her. Before they could arrive there and see her in such a state, the girl activated a portal right under her and fell through it to her private room in the SPECTER headquarters.
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