WHO: Meg McCaffrey & Richie Tozier WHEN: Room 3, Day 3 WHERE: The general out of doors by the border WHAT: First arriving and a lot of confusion TRIGGERS: Mentions of past abusive parentage, an attack on poetry
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Normally Meg didn’t show up in places that she wasn’t expecting to. Not counting the Labyrinth. She still felt weird about walking in on the cyclops in the bathroom. But this was different. She didn’t recognize this at all and the cellphone and key she found herself in possession of seemed stupid and pointless. She couldn’t use a phone anyway. They always exploded. She dropped the key and the cellphone on the ground, the annoyance obvious on her face. She needed to find Apollo. He had to be around here somewhere and she was cold now. Her rings were suspiciously missing and so were her seeds.
Everything was stupid.
Part of her - a very quiet part of her - was worried that this was a punishment, that Nero had found her and decided to punish her by putting her in a weird place away from Apollo, to make Apollo weaker, more vulnerable. Her heart jumped up in her chest and into her throat at the idea of the Beast - Nero, a voice that sounded strangely like Apollo’s noted - killing him and she paused in the middle of searching. She frowned, hands clasped. She was going to find him. She just had to find the way to the Labyrinth or wherever it was. She was going to find him before anything could happen.
“AP-” She frowned. “LESTER!” Yes, in a strange place, shout for Lester. Not Apollo. She frowned when no one even bothered to look at her for more than a fleeting second. “HAIKUS ARE THE BEST POEMS TO EVER EXIST!” That would probably get Apollo to come to her if he wasn’t kidnapped somewhere.
No Apollo.
She kept walking, opening doors. She couldn’t even feel the trees or the plants around her. She felt cut off. Something was off. She frowned before walking further. There was a border. There were a lot of people there, some were being stopped. She frowned. “This is dumb.”
She glanced over at one of the adults nearby before looking back at the border. "Everyone's mothers are ugly!" She needed to know if there were any Blemmyae around. If she said something impolite, they were more likely to get upset, so she'd know. "Your whole system sucks and the police are dumb!" Nothing. Maybe some slightly agitated looks, but no frenzied level of concern for the lack of politeness.
Where was Apollo? Where was she?
It was colder than a frozen penguin corpse out here, and Richie really yearned for a cigarette - of course. But for one thing, he knew that it was only psychologically warmth the cigarettes provided and for another, he had to go reeeeeeal easy on them since the supply was limited. And they were shitty cigarettes anyway, all filter and little substance.
However, for a nicotine addict, it would do.
The air was chilled, grass was pale and stiffened with frost, icicles hung from buildings and looked like jeweled daggers. There was still an aura of darkness and dreariness though, just thanks to their surroundings and current location - he couldn’t really appreciate the atmosphere and...
Everyone’s mothers are ugly!
Wow, for a second, it was like he was thirteen again, and listening to recording of himself before his voice changed. “The fuck?” he mumbled, shuffling on ahead and encountering a screaming kid, a little girl who looked confused and was clearly expressing that with her words of experiencing a Tourette’s flare-up.
“Hey, hey,” he stepped closer, carefully. Don’t make any sudden moves, Tozier. It may bite. “You might want to lower the volume. This isn’t a place where you can just...scream like a bat out of hell.”
Meg jumped, clearly startled before fixing her expression into something angrier and more serious. She threw down her hands, forgetting her rings weren’t there, which meant her blades weren’t there. She glanced down at her hands, frowning and then up at the man that was talking to her.
She stepped back, staring at him and eyes narrowing. “Who are you? Who sent you?” Because he could have sent himself, but someone could have sent him. Someone could have told him to come over. And she was wary of people she didn’t know. She still needed to find out where Apollo was and where she was and then she needed to get them both out of here.
“Where are we?” There were other things to ask, but she didn’t want to ask too many questions.
Aw, so cute. She was like a little ball of fire, complete with coke-bottle glasses. Richie held a kinship for his people (those who couldn’t see shit without corrective eyewear) but he could tell that she’d obviously been dumped into snowy Soviet hell from...wherever. The situation was jarring for anyone.
“Name’s Richie,” he introduced himself. “No one sent me, I’m just stuck here same as everyone else. We’re in a place called Kolechia now and it’s, uh. Kind of like Russia?” Too young to know what the USSR was - Richie had been a teenager when the Iron Curtain fell. This one hadn’t even been a glimmer in the eyes of her parents yet or whatever.
So, leaving her out in the snow and arctic tundra wasn’t an option. Think fast, how did someone talk to a kid? How do you speak the language of the tiny people? It wasn’t like he could promise hot chocolate and sprinkles and crap like that.
“Look, I know this is weird, but if you tell me your name I can help you figure all of this out.” Surely there was an apartment with her name on it.
She eyed him for a moment before leaning down to grab a stick and stepping forward to poke him in the chest. If he was a Blemmyae then he would be hurt cause that’s where his eyes would be. He didn’t talk like they did, but that didn’t mean that he might not be one of them. Once she’d poked him, she shuffled back and away.
Somewhere kind of like Russia. She wasn’t sure how she’d gotten that far. She didn’t think the Labyrinth went that far. She was pretty sure it didn’t stretch all the way to Russia.
“I’m Meg.” She didn’t elaborate on where she was from or who she was looking for. It was very straight and to the point because she didn’t really want to explain herself to a stranger. She wanted to know if he was a prisoner, if he was a demigod. Did he know Nero, too? Were they going to be forced to fight each other?
Was that a stick? Just like, poking him in the chest? Richie lifted an eyebrow, it poked up over the edge of his glasses - but he had layers on, and his coat was pretty thick, so it wasn’t like he felt it much. “Did I pass the test?” he asked, because what other reason to poke someone would there be. Unless she was the type of kid to hang out on sidewalks, burning ants with a ray of sunlight and a magnifying glass. Cool.
“Nice to meet you, Meg. It’s fucking freezing, do you want to go inside?” Baby steps, sure. He didn’t need to know her life story - he just needed her to not freeze to death in the Motherland. “There’s probably an apartment for you, and a note that will answer most of the questions you have.”
“So far.” She didn’t know if he would continue to pass. Just cause he wasn’t a Blemmyae didn’t mean he couldn’t be something else. Only usually she could see if they were a monster or something. He just looked like a regular person. Could have been a demigod.
“You’re a stranger,” she said after a moment, but she was cold. She didn’t have a jacket. Just her dress, her tights and her sneakers. Winter was over. It was supposed to be April. “Why an apartment? I don’t live here.” A pause. “Is that what the key was for?”
How in the hell was he supposed to explain this? It was difficult when Richie didn’t fully understand it himself. Sure, he could babble about ‘other universes’ and ‘doors’ and yadayada but that was nothing concrete. All they had was speculation.
Still, maybe he could just inch toward the clusterfuck of apartments - the building looked like a Jenga tower right before it fell, but for the next however many days, it was home. “Yeah, the key goes to your apartment,” he said, holding up his - which was red. That didn’t seem to mean good things. “Yours is just a different color. I guess I’m technically a stranger but we’re also technically neighbors so we won’t be strangers for long?”
As for the kid now living here, well. Welcome to the jungle. Richie exhaled, his breath curling in the freezing air like a ghost, fading off. “You got pulled here the same as we all did - everyone who lives in that building. We’re not sure how or why yet, but we’ve been trying to work together and figure it out.”
He’d like to say they were making progress, but why lie this soon?
She looked off to the side, wondering where the key was now. “I dropped it on the ground. I didn’t think I needed it.” She wanted Apollo. She didn’t want to think this had anything to do with Nero, but she did. Maybe everyone here was someone that had wronged Nero. Caligula had taken her home and forced her father and her out. They were all capable of these things. She wasn’t sure how he’d have done it, though. “I can’t use the phone. They always explode.”
“Do you know Nero?” She eyed him, but took a couple steps towards the apartments. She didn’t trust that place any more than anywhere else, but she didn’t know what choice she had. She frowned and took a few more steps. “Or someone named Lester?”
She needed to know what was going on. If Apollo was here, people probably thought he was Lester. All of his paperwork said Lester. If Apollo was here than at least they were together. She could still find a way to protect him. They’d be okay. If she was alone then so was he and there was nothing either of them could do.
This place was still dumb.
She dropped the key on the ground, Jesus Christ on a minibike. Richie doubted that the powers-that-be would just give her a new one, so, best to just find it. “It’s gotta be around here somewhere, right?” he guessed, tracing his steps back toward the apartments, boots shuffling through the snow flurries to find a little trinket that was - probably - glowing green. Luckily it was basically just a dusting on the ground, they weren’t waist-deep in piles of white.
“And, uh - I don’t know why you can’t use a phone, but it won’t be an issue here. Nobody has their...extra powers. If that’s what you call yours,” he said (or regretfully informed). “I also don’t know any of those people. Sorry, Meg. But we’ll get you inside and warmed up, how about that? It’s easier to think straight when you’re not an ice popsicle.”
She glanced around as she walked. She figured the key was somewhere. She didn’t really spend much time anywhere and she could see her footsteps. Her sneakers were starting to get a little damp from the snow. She wished she’d brought different shoes, but she couldn’t do that now. She didn’t think wet cellphones worked either way.
No powers. No wonder she couldn’t feel the plants. She didn’t like it any more than she did before. Now she was stuck here. Did that mean that all the plants were without powers, too? She hoped that the Dryads were okay. Also not knowing either of them was probably good? Confusing, but okay. “Triumvirate Holdings?” She studied him. If he didn’t know any of this, then she didn’t know what that meant.
“I can think fine.” She stopped, bending over to pick up a key and cellphone. She studied them, waiting for the phone to explode. When it didn’t, she looked up at Richie. “Found them.”
“Still a no on the Holdings,” Richie confirmed (or again, regretfully informed). “Oh good, you can get into your apartment now. Come on, let’s find where it is.” Where Meg would likely find a box of sugar waiting for her - but kids liked that sort of thing, right? Candy canes in swirling colors and gingerbread cookies?
Except this was more like buttercream frosting you had to lick off a spoon, and call it dinner. Then again, maybe that still wasn’t terrible to a tiny person.
He headed into the apartment building, stamping the snow off his boots, then went up to see if he could spot her name on any of the doors. It wasn’t on the lower floors, but he went up, checking to see if she was still with him - until finally he found it, room 43. “Looks like this one’s you, Nutmeg.” Yeah, he was great at nicknames, just ask Eddie Spaghetti.
Then she was out of understanding for how this happened. She fidgeted with her key, frowning a little as she did. This place was new and she was scared. Even if she wouldn’t say it. She didn’t know who was controlling it and she didn’t have Apollo with her. At least with him, she’d have had someone who knew her. Here she just had people who wanted to know her. But she wasn’t sure she wanted to be known by people here.
Meg, strange as she was, actually didn’t mind cooking or eating fresh vegetables and fruits. She’d still eat sugar, but it wasn’t exactly the same. Her nose scrunched up slightly and she stared up at him. Nutmeg. She wasn’t sure she liked it, but it was better than Chia Girl. Probably. Then again, at least Chia Girl meant someone who knew her.
She opened the door, frowning as she looked inside before stepping in. It was nothing like Nero’s place in New York and even less like her childhood home. It was dead. She preferred the tree that formed her childhood home. “Bye, I guess.”
“Do you want me to stay with you for a little bit?” Richie asked. He wasn’t what he could call paternal, but she was a kid and she was literally dropped into a new universe and was probably terrified, even if at that age the last thing you wanted to do was admit to an adult that your knees were knockin’ in fear. “We can just like, hang out. I can tell you more about the setup we’ve got going on here. This is actually our third...room. The whole winter Russia thing, I mean. We’ve all been traveling together for awhile.”
He wouldn’t force his way in, but even his beginning-to-resemble-spam heart twisted a little at the thought of just fucking off and leaving her.
Meg just stared at him while he talked, debating whether or not to just shut the door in his face. In the end, she just stared and waited for him to stop talking. Once he was done, she was no closer to knowing how to react and she almost shut the door in his face just to avoid having to say anything at all. “We’re not friends,” she said awkwardly. She was absolutely a natural at this.
Her face screwed up, lips twisting to the side. “Thanks.” Cause she hadn’t said it, so she guessed she should. She looked down. “Whatever it is, I’m not doing it. I’m going home. This place is dumb.” Annoyance worked its way into her. “So you can’t make me and neither can anyone else.”
Yeah, this place was dumb, but Richie didn’t want to be the bearer of bad news - they couldn’t go home. Not yet. Not until presented with the next door options and, even then, no one was certain if the door marked ‘exit’ even lead to home at all.
It could lead to a pit of lobsters and dead kittens, who the fuck knew.
“I’m not gonna make you do anything,” he assured. “But - just so you’re caught up? Whichever place we’re in, we always have a new task to do. In the first place it was solving a murder mystery. The second it was...pranking people. This one, it’s to make toys at Santa’s workshop. So. The note inside should explain it better. If you need anything though, just let me know? You can reach me on the network.”
The kid was cute, like a little ball of grimaces and discontent, but he doubted she wanted him to point that out.
Making toys. Meg wanted to find Apollo and tell him to destroy whoever brought her here. Only they’d have to bring him here first and he’d have to be able to do it. She’d want to help him, too. It wasn’t worse than Caligula, but it was bad enough.
“I’m not making toys,” she said after a minute. “Or anything else for whoever’s running this.” But she’d keep it in mind that she had someone to ask about if necessary. Only she hoped it wouldn’t be necessary because she was hoping to go home. Anywhere but this place. Or Nero’s. Unless Apollo was there. Cause then they’d be fighting. But she wasn’t ready for that yet. She needed to be, though. “I’m inside now, so you can probably go.”
“Alright, well - “ Like Richie said, he wasn’t going to make her do anything. Wasn’t his job to force child slave labor the way the powers-that-be seemed to be doing. “I better get going anyway.” John needed medication, since he was sick as a dog, and there wasn’t a pharmacy around to pop into and grab something, which only meant one thing.
He’d be using the black market again. Yay. Fun.
“Like I said, let me know if you need anything - and try not to get into too much trouble, okay?” he added, backing away from the door and turning to go. Weird kid, but cute. He’d check on her later, make sure she was still alive.
She frowned slightly. “No promises.” Because she’d been getting into trouble for the last year especially. So she wasn’t sure she could say otherwise. Apollo would probably hate it if he was here. Human. Powers off. Maybe he’d find a girl to embarrass himself with.
Sighing, she shut the door and turned to look through her things. They weren’t hers, but they were here anyway. Most of the food was sugar. It was disappointing, but at least she could try to figure it out. She’d have to. She was one god shy of a friend and she didn’t yet trust anyone enough to rely on them. Even with Richie’s assurances.
“Still dumb,” she muttered to herself before picking up a candy cigarette and eating it. Gross.