Fandom Distorted Mirror [IC]

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

Emerald's response was immediate, and while given her delightful self and apparent intention of doubling, quadrupling, and octupling down on the hostility she was showing Watts of late long before she even considered issuing an apology of any kind it would've been fair to assume his state was liable to provoke a scoffed remark or two even if there was a nugget of concern to them. The voice that came, however, was a long way from a scoff, and put any such notions to rest the second it reached his ears.

"No."

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Nearly a minute was more than enough time for Emerald to have shifted from one immediate crisis to the other, arguably more immediate one, and judging from the way her shoulders sagged at her sides and her lungs heaved for breath it had not been a minute spent idle. She was kneeling by Cinder, having beaten her own record for how frantically someone could drag another person from the depths set just a few minutes earlier, and if the gravity of the situation wasn't clear from the growing look of agitated horror on her face and how thick with overwhelmed dread her voice was getting then another glaring sight when Watts sat up cinched it.

Cinder was as still as a corpse.

"I can't get her to breathe, I keep trying but she's not—"

This wasn't what she needed to be using breath for. She cut herself off with a groan so miserable it fizzled out as little more than a shudder, and the first chest compression she flung her hands down into was far harder than necessary before she settled into a more steady cadence as she counted under her breath in a trembling whisper. When she hit 30 she stooped down for her lips, almost fumbling the act of pinching her nose and tilting her head back as they made contact with her own and she huffed out two rescue breaths before switching back to the chest. This was exactly how you were supposed to do it, she was sure, no one training to be a huntress didn't know CPR but it wasn't working, it should've worked by now, Cinder wasn't, Cinder was...

Cinder was going to die.

Because Cinder couldn't swim.

And Emerald had dragged everyone to the underground mineshaft that turned out to be completely submerged.

The compressions were happening so quickly and desperately now there was no way her count could possibly have been accurate, the jerks of her wrists made sloppy and erratic by how badly her hands were shaking as her teeth chattered together. She got to 30 again, probably, she didn't fucking know, and transferred back to the lips to again try for an impromptu lung-to-lung air transplant.​

His head lolled to the side at Emerald's first words, and whatever his own pain or discomfort was at, it evaporated the instant he saw what she was doing, and he immediately tried to roll to the side out of his armor and begin to stumble across the shore with a shaky step-

It took a little while, a few rounds of repeated attempts, but the panicked desperate pushes against her chest and the sharing of worried breaths did what it was meant to. Cinder moved of her own volition for the first time since she started drowning, her body twitching after the next couple thuds against her chest. Then her head followed, an even more clear twitch of movement in her pale face. She wasn't going to die here. She hadn't come this far just to drown to death in some long buried city. If there was anything she knew with complete certainty, deep down, it was that. Even subconsciously. She didn't want it to end like that, for her or for her team, and her friends. Then before anything else could be done, her eye shot open in an instant. Opened wider than it had ever been in her entire life. She shot straight up so fast herself too, so swift that she bonked heads with Emerald. Cinder sputtered, some of the excess water expelled from within and splashing right into Em's face.

Yet before the pain from that totally accidental headbutt could even start to settle in, the teenage maiden turned to the side and leaned down, horrible sounding coughs and retches escaping her mouth as she did.

Her lungs felt like they were literally on fire, so starved of air and so full of so much water. She spent several minutes just pathetically struggling, trying to get it all out. It hurt so much...too much. But she managed, and she dropped back like she was made of stone, the back of her head smacking onto the shore with a rough thud, but she didn't care. She wasn't ready to move quite yet, and she just lied there for another minute, the maiden utterly silent save for the repeated heavy breaths as she took in as much oxygen as possible.

Her insides were still burning by the time her eye moved to settle on Emerald. She didn't say anything for a few seconds, just studying her former classmate's face. Her mouth slowly opened after that, though, and her voice came out, albeit very weak. "Hey, Em. What...happened? I mean.............." It took a second or two pause, and some of her focus drifting away from the burning sensation to let her register the faint sweet taste on her lips, though she couldn't tell exactly what it was, and her eyebrow raised ever so slightly. Emerald had been close enough for that purely unintentional headbutt. Not for no reason. She continued on, a little stronger than before. "...You...did you...save me?" ​

- only to collapse into the sand with a wet thud when Cinder started to breath again.

The double adrenaline crash was deeply apparent, and whatever was happening next to him was ignored in favor of getting his breathing under control, before he grunted and slowly pushed himself back up onto his knees with a snarl that died the instant he looked up and saw the state Emerald was in.

Emerald gave a strangled yelp when Cinder's teeth, then skull, knocked against her own, and though she jerked back it wasn't fast enough to avoid the torrent of water the maiden coughed up in her face as the thief half-toppled onto her back with eyes pinched shut and a muted shudder of revulsion. She let her muscles sort of just go limp to take her the rest of the way down, staring up at the stalactites high above and doing her best to process this latest development where she had, in fact, not killed Cinder, having more or less already accepted that she had. She seemed dead-set on looking anywhere but the other girl's face, for the most part, hands settling over her eyes to give her thumbs easy access to her temples as she tried to think, tried to jump tracks back to the other crisis unfolding.

She couldn't. She would after, she needed a minute, she just... god, it wasn't supposed to be like this. She wasn't expecting coming back here to be easy or anything but this was just messed up, it had to be the worst possible way their first five minutes in Gneiss could possibly have gone, and the only people who knew how hard just being here was for her weren't here. She didn't even know if they were...

But she knew Cinder was. At least there was that.

She didn't take her hands from her eyes. Just continued rubbing circles around her temples, her response coming out worn and scratchy despite its shaky attempt to affect her customary indifferent aplomb.

"...I-it was more a group effort by like, five or six different people actually, so... you might wanna go check on Robocop. Think his suit's cooking him alive." She swallowed. "I just need to... just... just let me... think, Cinder, okay, I gotta think through where we're going, I need to figure out what we're gonna do—"

Her voice cracked suddenly on the 'do', but she caught the whimper it turned into on her hands and forced it back inside to eventually work itself out as another shiver. She wasn't gonna let them see her cry. Following that the thief more or less just became dead to the world, finally taking the time to just catch her breath after that nightmare start to the mission. At least, that was what Cinder saw.

What actually happened was Emerald sat up, pulled her knees to her chest, buried her face in her arms and started to sob.

This was so bad, wasn't it?​

Ah.

He stopped bothering trying to get up, instead twisting so that his back hit the sand as he let his muscles relax again and took a few deep breaths.

"I'm fine." He finally croaked out in answer to Blanche. "We're lucky to be alive, but we are. Can you two take a look around, see if you can spot the others without going to far? We..." He glanced back at Emerald and Cinder, both in their own versions of dissarray to complement his own.

"We're going to need a minute"

 

[MidwayLives]

Ah.

He stopped bothering trying to get up, instead twisting so that his back hit the sand as he let his muscles relax again and took a few deep breaths.

"I'm fine." He finally croaked out in answer to Blanche. "We're lucky to be alive, but we are. Can you two take a look around, see if you can spot the others without going to far? We..." He glanced back at Emerald and Cinder, both in their own versions of dissarray to complement his own.

"With all due respect..." Blanche was blanking. Ah well, the kid's name would come back later. When they weren't all feeling like shit. "Wouldn't it make more sense for the two of us to stick by your side until the three of you get it together-"

Char nudged him.

It was a conclusion the two men had already come to earlier. Some of this was just business they didn't have a role in.
​

"We're going to need a minute"

"Yeah, of course. Take all the time you guys need."

The two started off and Blanche snorted. "How far do you plan on us going, Char? We don't know this place from a hole in the ground."

"Quit bellyachin. Let the kids get their heads on straight. They did almost just die."

"Alright, alright. But if you don't mind me asking, Char..." Blanche shook some more water out of his hair.

"How do I look?"

Char gave him a once-over and then kept on moving.

"Char? Char, that silence doesn't count as an answer. Char!"​

 

[Gus Gungus]

"We're going to need a minute"

And what a minute it was

The thought that so many jumped in to help her was a nice and relieving one, but that also...it meant that all those people knew now that she didn't have the faintest clue about how to swim. So that feeling of relief and of appreciation, was matched only by some perhaps childish embarrassment, but she managed to keep any of it from showing on her face. She didn't smile in relief, didn't blush in embarrassment. She only frowned, the corner of her mouth turning down as she listened. That was...rough to hear. She'd only just come back to consciousness, had barely avoided a pretty bad way to die, but in that moment, she wasn't thinking about herself. Yeah, she was not really doing too good right now, and yeah, Arthur didn't sound like he was in much better condition...but Cinder didn't just continue to lie there and take a breather. She didn't go over to check on Watts yet either. She pushed herself up shakily and slowly slid over until she was seated right next to where she perceived Emerald to be.

Cinder didn't wrap an arm around her(or try to) yet, she didn't even really look over at her directly just yet. She just sat there, staring straight ahead for a few seconds until: "You know...it's okay if you're not okay. You don't have to be Miss Cool all the time, to not let people in and to keep them from seeing you when you're...vulnerable. I know I wasn't....wasn't there before, after Haven, but if you need me...need anything...well...I'm here to help however I can." Her gaze remained staring forward​

Only after an absurdly, excruciatingly long period of time did Cinder receive her reply, measured and with enough water having vacated Emerald's lungs by then for her to distill every last drop of her prodigious moody streak into the sardonic retort.

"Gee, doc, you really get me. Too bad our time's up this week."

Her back was resolute in its continued angling towards the fall maiden even as she got up and strode away, strategically done to make sure the shift in her expression went unnoticed when she melded with her own illusion and continued heading for a rocky slope leading up to the nearest cluster of houses for a lay of the land.

These heartwarming little moments could wait until she knew they were okay. Right now she would've loved to have been born that peppy, chirpy, agonizingly blonde variation of Miss Cool who could take the glass-half-full, never-say-die approach in the face of bleak outlooks like this one, always find time for a soft word or a hug.

But she wasn't.

She was the pessimist. The realist. As far as she was concerned every bad thing she could conceive of in a given scenario had already happened, because the times in her life when she hadn't felt that way, when—god forbid—she actually had the audacity to feel hopeful, or content, or like the world wasn't winding up to knock all her teeth out... Those, apparently, were the moments fate dictated tragedy make her its bitch.

And they were the only times Emerald Sustrai ever felt like a mark.

Still, she had to stop following this train of thought. Focus on what was in front of her, one footstep at a time. She'd totally be insulted if either of them ever assumed she was capable of going out in as inglorious a method as 'death by drowning' anyway.

And as silver linings went, she could at least say that of everyone who presumably washed out wherever Mercury and Neo ended up she had the utmost confidence in...

...

...one of them.

​

Neo nigh jumped out of her skin at the sudden appearance of the very one who presence she'd been missing the most, and nigh instantly pivoted with a look of nigh giddy relief as she threw up her hand for a hi five for their successful team maneuver of 'not dying in a horrible vortex'

...

...

...

She slowly lowered her hand as she cracked her eyes back open, initially more than a little flummoxed at the distinct lack of sound of hands slapping against hands. It wasn't like she forgot how stressful and awful this must've been for Emerald, being back here, and their first few minutes going like that to boot, but that little bit of silliness was meant to try to break down some of that weight.

She supposed she couldn't really blame Em for not being super enthused about even that, especially given how a chunk of their group wasn't even here. She sheepishly lowered her arm all the way and padded off in step with Emerald, snapping her fingers and pointing into the air next to her where a tiny little Cinder and a dark green toaster were floating in the air next to a question mark.

Mercury had been hanging back a bit, seemingly oblivious to any sort of frosty reception from Tyrian or Trifa as he trailed among them while studying the illusionists, but fell in step with the two at the front just in time to push the 'eject toast' button (which he did not know a better name for) and input his thoughts.

"Piggybacking off Neo's eloquent, vocabularily robust point, where exactly might those particular itsy bitsy spiders've washed out? Sorry. Racist."

He spun, winked, and sent faux apologetic fingerguns towards the two of their number with arachnid DNA so swiftly and seamlessly they couldn't even get a response in before he was turning back. 'Emerald', on the other hand, didn't turn, strolling ahead with curious intrigue tempered only by perspicacious caution of what might lurk around any given corner, but they could all hear the eyeroll in her tone as she half-glanced back over her shoulder. It was evident from the scoffing laugh she gave that she was apparently deriving some form of quaint amusement from all this.



"I have no idea, dude."

"No more underground lakes, reservoirs the runoff could lead to...?"

"See above."

"Where even are we?"

"Wow, are all the answers on this test the same?"

"Crappy tour guide much?"

"Crappy friend much? I'm like, totally reliving my trauma right now."

He put his hands up in mock surrender, offering up a flat out callous response to that even for as off-the-cuff as Emerald made it sound. "Weeeeeeeeell. Don't let me interrupt."

"Or just don't interrupt."

She gave another soft, pitying, yet undeniably fondly indulgent snort and went back to focusing on pathfinding, leaving Mercury to stare thoughtfully at her back as his own mechanical footfall slowed. This time he tugged Neo's shoulder to encourage her to drift behind too, and with a sudden flare of steely intensity the likes of which hadn't been seen since the few of MTEN's field missions that had been hairy enough for their eminent leader to sit up and actually start applying himelf flashed her a meaningful look as his hands started whisking through a complex sequence of signals and patterns. But not just any old signals and patterns. Those formations, that rhythm, this could only be—

Gibberish. Pure and utter gibberish, something employed by neither military or mute communities in spite of how practiced the movements themselves appeared to be. Some of the more intricate motions sort of suggested their meanings, but...

The first real inkling of his intent came when he jerked his head at Emerald's back, redoubling his skeptical look from before as his eyebrow traveled higher than eyebrows were meant to go.​

 

[MyrtenRose]

Only after an absurdly, excruciatingly long period of time did Cinder receive her reply, measured and with enough water having vacated Emerald's lungs by then for her to distill every last drop of her prodigious moody streak into the sardonic retort.

"Gee, doc, you really get me. Too bad our time's up this week."

Her back was resolute in its continued angling towards the fall maiden even as she got up and strode away, strategically done to make sure the shift in her expression went unnoticed when she melded with her own illusion and continued heading for a rocky slope leading up to the nearest cluster of houses for a lay of the land.

These heartwarming little moments could wait until she knew they were okay. Right now she would've loved to have been born that peppy, chirpy, agonizingly blonde variation of Miss Cool who could take the glass-half-full, never-say-die approach in the face of bleak outlooks like this one, always find time for a soft word or a hug.

But she wasn't.

She was the pessimist. The realist. As far as she was concerned every bad thing she could conceive of in a given scenario had already happened, because the times in her life when she hadn't felt that way, when—god forbid—she actually had the audacity to feel hopeful, or content, or like the world wasn't winding up to knock all her teeth out... Those, apparently, were the moments fate dictated tragedy make her its bitch.

And they were the only times Emerald Sustrai ever felt like a mark.

Still, she had to stop following this train of thought. Focus on what was in front of her, one footstep at a time. She'd totally be insulted if either of them ever assumed she was capable of going out in as inglorious a method as 'death by drowning' anyway.

And as silver linings went, she could at least say that of everyone who presumably washed out wherever Mercury and Neo ended up she had the utmost confidence in...

...

...one of them.

She was silent for that whole lengthy wait, in no rush for any reply as she simply sat and took in the sight before her. Even after Emerald did come back with some oh-so-classic Emerald style mocking sarcasm, Cinder's response was subdued. Just a quiet, brief and contemplative "Hmmmmm." Her one good eye stared at Emerald's back for a couple of seconds before turning away to face straight ahead again for a few more. Whatever she was thinking, she didn't share but she was up again by the time Emerald neared the rocky slope, the young maiden casually floating through the air behind her rather thank walking.​