Why does the cantankerous old vampire keep getting stuck with the teen super friends squad? Or, Stevie wakes up in a cage and Carver and Billy are the
hunters that put her there.
⚠
Teen being drugged/sedated and caged.
“Guys, I think I was a hamsterrr. Now I’m in a hamsterrr cage, but there’s no wheel and the cage is kinda s-small….”
Stevie had never tasted alcohol before. She’d never been to the dentist and had visited the doctor once in her life. She had no real life experience or awareness for what she was experiencing now. Sedation was a completely foreign concept to her, even as her words were slurred together.
All she knew was that she woke up in a cage too small enough to stand in, or lay down completely flat. She had a weird kink in her neck because of it, and squirmed slightly. When she weakly kicked the bars of the cage, it didn’t budge and she felt uncharacteristically uncoordinated.
That might have been enough to frighten some people, but being captured or having her life threatened was not an abnormal occurrence for Stevie. Besides, the only people near her were Carver and Billy, so it never registered that she wasn’t safe. Thankfully they weren’t in cages, so, she reasoned in her altered state, it must have been the hamster thing. The weird part was that they hadn’t woken up in their rooms but what appeared to be a random classroom in one of the buildings.
Stevie continued to squirm ineffectually in the cage, the hem of her shirt lifting above her navel to reveal, well, a human navel.
“Guysss?” she spoke out loud again. “Don’t panic… but I have a belly button.”
Panic seemed like a reasonable response, but Stevie rationalized she was okay for now. It was hard not to imagine the horrified gasps of the gems, Connie’s barrage of worried questions, her dad doing that higher pitched trying-not-to-sound-scared dad voice he sometimes did when he tried his best to be supportive but had no idea what was happening.
“I think it’s an innie. Which is weirrrd. I thought I’d be more of an outie kind of person, you know?”
Stevie was very, very drugged.
When Carver slowly came to consciousness and blinked his eyes against the faint sunlight spilling in through the classroom window, his first thought was that he was hungover. His second thought was fear that his skin would start sizzling. He sat up, hand to forehead, and looked around. He was far from an expert on this place, but waking up in his bed in his assigned room had become typical after a reset. This wasn't a bedroom.
"What the fuck?" It was the only string of words he could manage. Carver wasn't drugged, but he felt a little disoriented all the same.
His gaze followed the sound of slurred babbling to a nearby cage and Stevie cramped within it. "What the fuck?" He might be a man of few words at the moment, but at least those words accurately conveyed his feelings in this situation.
As he got up from the floor, he caught sight of the blue denim and plaid shirt he was dressed in. "What am I wearing?" There was so much disdain in his voice. Then he touched his face. Gone was the nose ring from his right nostril. He ran his hands over his head. Instead of a mohawk, he could feel a pretty boring short haircut. He couldn't see, but he knew his hair was brown.
Well, it wasn't the weirdest change this place had made to his appearance.
He knelt down in front of the cage and jiggled the door, trying to open it. "Are you okay, Stevie?" He glanced around the room, looking for anything he might be able to pick the lock with.
Up until the very recent weeks, Billy's routine had been to stand from his bed upon waking and immediately begin to pry his super suit off to pull on the clothes he'd gathered in Florida. His roommates had grown to expect 'Pedro' at the reset so it was important that he dress his alter ego. However, in the last few weeks, with the truth out for those who cared to see it? Billy had shifted his routine to be waking and immediately declaring the name that granted him powers just so he could go back to being himself. Waking as 'Pedro' for the resets was tiring after a while. Sometimes a kid just really wanted to be himself, you know?
So when he woke, not in his customary bed and not as Shazam, he sat up fairly immediately with a confused expression on his face. Even on the island the week before, he'd spent the entire time as Shazam. Something about this week felt immediately different. He glanced down at the industrial work boots and the jeans that he'd have never willingly picked on his own. They looked like something out of Victor's closet. He made a face but glanced over to the side to look at Carver.
His appearance made Billy blink. "Dude, your hair," he said quietly but then he heard Stevie and his focus shifted towards her. Carver was to her first so Billy hung back, watching as he jiggled the lock. Hands moved to start patting down his pockets with curiosity as to whether he had anything that might be useful for the other man.
"Do you feel alright?" Billy asked towards Stevie, knowing that her missing her gem was a definite bad situation.
Stevie responded by holding a slightly wobbly thumbs up. Really, all things considered, no one was trying to kill her so by her own personal standard, she was fine. She’d even been depowered before, or had to struggle with new powers, so while the missing gem was weird, she also felt confident she could roll with it.
“I think I preferred being a hamster,” she remarked. At least as a hamster, she wasn’t literally in a cage. Stevie poked her belly button again, just to make sure it was real and not some kind of illusion. “Yeah, this is pretty weirrrd.”
When Stevie looked up at Carver, she narrowed her eyes. “When did you get a haircut?”
Nevermind Billy had just brought it up moments ago, or that Carver was the first to notice. From there, it was random observational time with Stevie Universe.
“My gem is missing. And your hair is missing. Maybe someone really likes the color pink? Quick, is anyone missing anything else pink?” This seemed like a very rational train of thought to the sedated teen.
“Does anyone have a key?” she asked a few seconds later, forgetting the pink line of questioning. It was a question so obvious, only Stevie would ask it.
"Everyone shut up about my hair!" Carver sighed and dropped his hands from the cage door. Normally, he'd be able to summon the brute force to pull the door off but he reasoned his powers were dampened yet again. He blew out another breath of air in exasperation.
Then he blinked and looked between Stevie and Billy with a shocked expression. "I…I'm breathing." He looked down at his chest as if he'd be able to see his ballooning lungs with each breath. He quickly slipped a hand between the buttons of his horrendous flannel and pressed it to his chest. There he could feel the steady beat of his heart.
"Shit. I'm alive." He didn't really have time for an existential moment, though. Stevie was still locked up. So Carver followed Billy's lead and patted down his pockets in search of something useful.
What he found, quite unexpectedly, was a key. He held it up to the thin stream of sunlight filtering into the room. Surely this couldn't be the key that opened the cage. That would've been a dumb plan. But he decided to try it anyway. The key slipped easily into the lock and when Carver turned it, the cage popped open.
"What the fuck?"
"Given the current state of things, I think being a hamster would definitely be more of a win," Billy commented as he pulled the edge of his flannel shirt upward, in an attempt to give himself better visibility to the inner layers of the garment. Spotting no hidden pockets on the one end, he dropped it and turned his head to look back to the other side. His gaze only lifted away from his own search, briefly, when Carver exclaimed the command.
He was just about to go back to patting himself down, hands moving to his pants, when Carver's tone shifted. Looking back to him, Billy's brows came together in confusion for the statement. How was it that Carver was alive? "Wait, what?"
No, nevermind. Billy knew that answer. It was the same answer as to how Stevie had been a hamster the week prior. Derleth.
A small frown began to form over Billy's features. He was still getting to know the other man, having been brought into his circle by Stevie, but he didn't think it could do someone good to have accepted that they were no longer living however many years ago he'd been turned and to be given a temporary reprieve. His eyes lingered on Carver for a moment longer, as the other man moved to search his pockets, before something close to a smile returned to his features.
"Oh, good. You've got a key." Billy's attention turned to watch the lock. "Well, that's a stroke of luck." And just a bit ominous, if he was honest. What were they missing about this new scenario?
Stevie struggled a little to get out of the cage. Mostly because it was slightly too small and she’d gone in (or been shoved in) head first. Exiting required her to sort of wriggle out feet first. Once she was out, she wobbled uneasily on her feet, grabbing whoever was nearest for balance.
“I think I’m going to go take a nap,” she said, yawning. “Are you both wearing cologne?” Stevie looked between Carver and Billy. They both smelled nice. Different, but nice. She hadn’t ever noticed either one of them having a particular smell before.
She was strangely unconcerned that she’d woken up in a cage, and completely missed the significance of Carver having a key or mentioning he was alive. Perhaps because she didn’t consider vampires unalive? Or she was just that drugged.
“Is anyone else tired? Also hungry? I could curl up with a pizza right now and sleep.” Stevie’s smile was mildly dopey as she imagined literally snuggling a pizza with a big, warm pillowy crust, taking in the garlicy, greasy scent.
But Carver didn’t look especially happy, so as if on a delayed reaction, Stevie frowned and glanced at Billy for some kind of clue or hint before asking, “You okay, Carver?”
Carver stared at Stevie for a brief moment before chalking up the fact that she didn't say anything about his newly beating heart to her being drugged. He offered a small smile and a reassuring nod.
"Yeah, I'm okay. And I could absolutely go for some pizza." He put a hand protectively on her shoulder and looked around the room. He couldn't see any indication of who did this or where they may have gone. Or, more importantly, when they might be back.
"We should get out of here," he added, looking between Billy and Stevie. "And we should probably keep a low profile. Something's clearly not right here. If there's someone after Stevie, we need to keep her safe."
Carver walked over to the classroom door and opened it just enough to peek both ways down the hall. "Coast is clear," he called back to them before slipping out of the room. Having a heartbeat no doubt meant that he didn't have superspeed so they would have to carefully stealth their way back to the dorms.
But going anywhere stealth with Stevie was going to be a challenge, at best.
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Stevie started. She was, perhaps in part because of the sedation, completely unphased starting the week in a cage. “People try to kill me all the time. At first because they thought I was my mom; like that time Jasper and Peridot abducted me into space, or when I did get ejected into space and Eyeball tried to murder me, or when I first met Lapis Lazuli and she was really upset about being trapped in a mirror for thousands of years even though I was the one that let her out, or Bizmuth when I first met her because my mom had secretly bubbled her and hid her in Lion’s mane and didn’t tell any of our friends, or Topaz and Aquamarine when they were on a mission from the Diamonds to bring me back to Homeworld, even Spinel who was here just a few weeks ago tried to kill me when I first met her and she didn’t even think I was my mom, she was just mad about all the things my mom did…”
Stevie took a breath and opened her mouth. Clearly this was just the start of the list of everyone who had tried to kill her. She had a Rogue’s Gallery that could rival Batman’s were it not for the fact that Stevie usually made friends with everyone that had tried to murder her. Usually.
“...Usually it’s just some kind of misunderstanding on the account my mom was actually Pink Diamond, pretending to be Rose Quartz and sort of led a rebellion against her own family which started a war and led to probably hundreds of thousands of gems being shattered or corrupted into monsters because I guess she couldn’t just talk to the other diamonds and thought lying to all of her friends was better but it all worked out in the end, except for Aquamarine and Eyeball, they still come back to try to kill me sometimes but I don’t think they have a lot of friends anyway…”
Billy kept his eyes glued on the cage as she began to free herself, with his brows coming together in mild concern. His thoughts went to the potential of her getting stuck upon exit and he didn't think they'd have enough luck to be able to quickly find anything that could cut around the entrance if it came to that. Thankfully, she managed alright even though she didn't quite seem herself. Still, he offered a smile. "We can do pizza. There's always pizza in the walk in."
That was, of course, if the walk in was on campus at the moment. He'd learned long ago not to rely on anything being consistent when it came to the Campus.
He slipped his arms into his hoodie's pockets and moved to be on the other side of Stevie. Carver's recommendation made sense. It would benefit them all if they figured out what was happening as soon as possible. As they walked, he took a peek over towards Stevie as she began relaying all her near death experiences. A frown set in deeper, not just because he was concerned about the possibility of others hearing them, but because he was actually listening to the accounts. Some of it he was aware of on some sort of level. He knew about her difficulties with her Mom.
But a lot of it was brand new information. When she finally had enough of a pause, "...Yeah, coming back to kill you doesn't seem like a way to make friends," he noted, before nudging her gently with his shoulder. "Where do you think we should lay low?" He presented this as a question to her, to get her feedback, but his gaze shifted to Carver too. "Dorms seem a bit obvious."
Carver pulled his head back into the classroom and looked at Stevie, eyebrow raised. Getting anywhere quietly with her this drugged up was definitely going to be a challenge. He breathed a sigh and looked at Billy. Somehow when shit hit the fan, he always ended up babysitting these two.
"Good point," he conceded. "The dorms are too obvious." He shut the door and leaned back against it. Clearly they needed to actually hash out a plan before they could leave the classroom. At least he and Billy would have to. He wasn't sure how well Stevie would actually be able to contribute to it in her state.
"There's sunlight coming in through the windows, so something is definitely different. Either we're not in the void, or the void isn't what we're used to." He maneuvered his way from the door to one of the windows and peeked out cautiously. He tried to determine if anything else was different about the campus from this vantage point, or if they had relocated to another world. He couldn't really see much past the trees in the Green, though.
"The Green isn't a forest anymore. That's really all I can tell." He turned back around to face Billy and Stevie. "So assuming not too much else about the campus is different, where should we hide?"
“Why don’t we just stay here?” Stevie said. Again, saying the most obvious thing that came to mind. She wasn’t exactly following on why they needed to hide, being too used to taking conflict head on, but she wasn’t of a mind to really question.
“We don’t know if anyone knows we’re here, and maybe if we check the network, other people will mention what’s going on or we could just sneak out later?”
Stevie patted down her pockets.
“Does one of you have my phone?”
Yes, in fact, one of them did.
Looking between the two of them, Billy turned over the suggestion. Stevie did have a point. Who were they to say if anyone knew exactly where they were? He glanced around the room some more as he moved to pat down the pockets he'd not searched yet, looking for his phone. "We could easily barricade the door," he noted as finger tips brushed across the top of two devices.
He pulled out both phones from his pocket. A quick glance over them and he shuffled Stevie's up further in his palm, holding it out for her.
"I like that plan. Gather intel and then sneak out."
Carver looked between the two of them like they were nuts. "You want to stay here? Someone knocked us out and brought us here and put Stevie in a cage and you don't think they're going to come back? That's literally why we were leaving to begin with." Carver could excuse this coming from Stevie since she was drugged, but he wasn't sure what would compel Billy to agree to it.
"Even if we barricade the door. We don't know who did this and if they have super strength." Carver raked a hand through his hair, only further annoyed by the shortness of it.
Stevie looked at Carver, squinting slightly as though she were trying very hard to listen to what he was saying, but more importantly how he was feeling, because this was Stevie. Of course she focused on his feelings. When she yawned, it was the sedative, but concerned she might have looked disinterested managed an apologetic, “Sorry.”
Right? Where were they?
Staying or leaving! Good, she remembered.
“Yeah, that makes sense, too,” was the brilliant observation she eventually came up with. “At least we didn’t wake up on a spaceship.” She yawned again. “I kind of tend to crash those.”
"I mean, you're right, we don't. But we don't know what we are going to run into out there, either. At least here, we can hunker down and get an idea and then go?"
But ultimately, Billy would end up going with whatever the group consensus was. He could see merits in either plan. The truth was that neither scenario was ideal given how they had woken. The main thing he wanted, above else, was to get an idea of what was going on this week.
He looked to them both.
"Nobody's going to have any answers. This is the morning of day one, we'll all be fucking clueless." Not that Carver ever really felt less clueless as the week went on.
"Check the network while we walk if you want to, but we shouldn't stay here." Carver was back at the door and opened it again to look out. Once he was sure the coast was clear, he slipped out into the hallway without another word to either Stevie or Billy. They could stay behind if they wanted, but he wasn't interested in being a sitting duck in whatever nightmare scenario they woke up in this time.
If only Carver were that lucky. Of course, Stevie followed him out. He was basically the vampire grandfather she always wanted. Maybe he wouldn’t have -- okay, probably wouldn’t have -- given her any more of a traditional upbringing than her dad had and she still wouldn’t have gone to a regular school as a kid or a doctor’s office.
But yeah, she’d totally imagined him as being part of her extended family.
Of course she fucking followed him.
At least she had enough sense to keep quiet.
Mostly quiet.
Her footfalls were a little bit on the shuffle-y side.