Salle, Tuesday Afternoon

[glacial_queen]

Okay...after the trip home and what she and Raven had discovered about the disappearance of the island of Zuul--pardon, Zuulaman--Karla had some very complex emotions to work through. On the one hand, she was pretty certain that whatever was going on with other people's worlds was not at all related to what happened to Zuulaman. So, that was a plus. She didn't know what she would have done if Uncle Sae--if the High Lord had somehow been responsible for Priestly and Valentine and Jak and Dujae and whoever else had gone missing. On the other hand, now she had no ideas or clues or anything else to go on. Her tangled web hadn't been particularly helpful, her dreams remained vague and unsettling, no one seemed to know what to do and her one lead had fizzled out completely.

So, yeah. Stick practice. A lot of it. Even if it didn't actually help her sort out her problems, she could practice until she was ready to drop. That should make for a few hours at least when she wasn't fretting over something she couldn't change. She threw herself into the forms Lucivar had drilled into her, moving from one to the other, faster and faster until she could get them flawless.

She was going to be here for awhile.

[Expecting one, but open!]

Comments

[harpy-daughter.livejournal.com]

Sadi was a right bastard. Surreal had gotten a package from him, and upon opening it found the beautifully crafted sticks. As well as a note saying, 'Happy possible name-day, witchling. Start practicing.'

Tersa had, apparently, included a rock. Surreal was sure there was a message in there somewhere, but she was not inclined to decode it.

She was, however, standing in the doorway of the salle with the sticks casually slung over one shoulder, looking mildly disgruntled as she saw Karla.

"Hells."

[glacial_queen]

The rock wasn't for her. Obviously.

Karla glanced back at the doorway and grimaced. "Mother Night," she supplied, careful not to miss a single step. The last thing she needed was Surreal's amusement because she'd surprised Karla enough to make her stumble.

Besides, the salle was plenty big enough for both of them. She could continue as she was and Surreal could go do whatever she was planning to do...over there. Somewhere.

And that was when Karla saw the sticks. "Bloody Hell."

They were getting along marvelously!

[harpy-daughter.livejournal.com]

"Mother Night and bloody Hell? My, what a mouth you have on you, Queen Bluebell," Surreal laughed. "An aristo education, to be sure."

The Queenling had sticks like hers. Surreal smelled one of Sadi's Ideas, and those rarely ended well for anyone except the Sadist himself.

[glacial_queen]

Okay, first of all, Surreal had sticks like hers. Karla had them first, dammit. Second of all?

...She was probably right about that bit about the Sadist and his Ideas.

"Kiss kiss," Karla said, giving the other witch a sunny and insincere smile. "I was tempted to start cursing in Eyrien, but I didn't want you to feel left out."

[harpy-daughter.livejournal.com]

"A curse is a curse; the details don't matter and they all mean the same thing," Surreal replied, equally sunny as she dropped one stick to her side and swung it lazily.

[glacial_queen]

Karla watched Surreal as she handled the stick. "You have no idea how to use that, do you?" she asked.

Decent instincts, but no training. Karla could see that much.

"Did your Warlord Prince send them to you?"

[harpy-daughter.livejournal.com]

"Sadi showed me how to hold them," she answered with a shrug. "You use them to kill people. I know how to do that."

Of course Sadi sent them to her; Surreal could never afford something like this on her own.

[glacial_queen]

Karla snorted. "That would be like me saying that I'm good with a dagger because I know to stick the pointy end into someone first."

[harpy-daughter.livejournal.com]

"Didn't say I was good with them, just that I had some basic idea," Surreal pointed out. "...you sure you know which end of the dagger is the pointy one?"

Look, the girl was an aristo. Surreal had to ask.

[momslilassassin]

Ben needed something to hit and his eyes lit up when he saw the weapons Karla had chosen today. "Oooh. I should get out the ones Lucivar gave me."

Ben loved the sticks.

...not dirty.

[glacial_queen]

"Have you been practicing?" Karla asked, pausing to wipe the sweat off her forehead. "He'll be hurt if he didn't think you were enjoying his presents."

[momslilassassin]

"Not as much when we were out in my galaxy, but since I got back, yes," Ben said, spinning the sticks and getting familiar with their feel again. "I don't want to end up in Kaeleer and get my ass handed to me."

[glacial_queen]

"And by that, you mean you want to go back to Kaeleer and show up Julian if he's around," Karla translated. "And also make Lucivar proud, what with you and Warren practically starting a fanclub."

[momslilassassin]

"He's astral, okay?" Ben replied with a tiny smile. "Want to spar? I could use the exercise."

[glacial_queen]

Karla nodded, hefting her sticks again. "Yeah. I could kind of use the exercise."

She twirled them around, stretching a bit as she did. "Went to the Keep today with Raven. It's not the same as Zuulaman. Don't know what it is, but it's not that."

[momslilassassin]

"Stang," Ben cursed.

He'd put a little too much hope into that being the solution.

"We'll just have to keep looking, then."

[glacial_queen]

So had Karla. And the answers she'd gotten had only made things worse.

"Momoko's going to be sending me her notes. And I'm going to see if I can't get something similar from Dinah. Those might be useful."

[wwiii]

See, Warren didn't come down to the Salle often, usually opting to practice his sticks outside. The sky over his head was nice, and all. But today, he was totally playing the wimp, who cared what Lucivar thought, and consenting to the island that it was probably starting to get on to 'practicing indoors' weather by now.

He smiled a little as he stepped into the Salle, sticks in hand, and realized that he wasn't alone.

"Great minds, huh?"

[glacial_queen]

Karla shook herself out of her concentration daze and offered Warren a small smile of greeting in return. "Yeah," she said, managing to shrug a little without missing a beat. "Guess so."

[wwiii]

Or... not.

That little smile turned pretty quickly into a somewhat worried frown. A response like that seemed to warrant one, really.

"Something up, Karla?" Sticks could wait for a moment. 'Guess so' was not really a Karla sort of greeting.

... Warren had been a little sheltered this weekend.

[glacial_queen]

Karla gave a wry chuckle. "Yeah, you could say that," she said, shifting into the next form. "You've heard about the disappearances, right? They've gotten worse."

Someone was making a few major assumptions about just what her boyfriend knew.

"Today didn't make it any better, either."

[wwiii]

No, really! Warren's weekend had been very sheltered!

"Uh... disappearances?"

See? Really, a lot! He'd heard about Portalocity's fail. He knew that he still hadn't heard from Bobby since he'd left to be with his dad, but he figured that was more a matter of Bobby needing space. And he had no idea what was up with Kennedy being impossible to contact these days. But beyond that?

Warren didn't really have anyone back home that he kept in touch with, on a regular basis.

[glacial_queen]

"People are vanishing," Karla said quietly, finishing up the form and pausing before starting the next. "All over the multiverse. Banard and Dujae from my world. Valentine, Ender's sister. Parks and streets in Momoko's world. Villains and metas from Dinah's. Priestly's entire world. He's gone. Jak's too, I think. Silent Jak, Dinah's ex?" She wasn't sure if Warren had ever met either of them. "Sebastian, from Jack Priest's world. The Warren from Jono's world along with his Bobby and Paige, too. Just being erased from reality and everyone else can't even remember."

[wwiii]

So many of those names meant almost nothing to Warren, beyond being a terrifying tally that seemed to just keep stacking up, one on top of the next, until it built a wall that had him feeling like the world was closing in on him, too.

He'd known that other Warren. He'd had a long talk with the man, about what it meant to be a mutant, what it meant to be a Worthington. What it meant to just be.

He swallowed a lump in his throat.

"Oh..." That was... that was bad. "And... nobody knows what's... causing it? Or where people are going?"

Obviously they had to be going somewhere, right? Like when reality had ripped a while back and he'd wound up in Rapture? That was what this was like? Only... maybe less... Rapturey.

[glacial_queen]

"No," Karla said, shaking her head. "No one knows what's happening or what's causing it or how to fix it. There's a Reserves meeting tomorrow in the community center. We're hoping someone has an idea--or maybe if we put enough heads together and facts together, we can figure something out."