Lizzie did not go to sleep that night. But she pretended to. D.J., lying beside her, breathed evenly and peacefully for a time, as if asleep as well.
Then she stirred. "Lizzie?" she whispered.
Lizzie didn't answer.
Apparently satisfied, D.J. quietly arose from their bed and padded on bare feet into the outer office. After a minute, Lizzie arose herself, and followed.
There was no sign of D.J. in the outer office, but to Lizzie's sensitive perceptions, the route of her exit was clear. There were plain traces in the ambient orgone of a portal having been opened, used, and shut. To one of Lizzie's abilities it was simplicity itself to reactivate it and follow D.J. ... wherever she had gone.
It was, to all appearances, a normal AddVenture thread. Anytown, U.S.A. Yet it wasn't quite right. There was a dim, twilit quality about everything, even in the glare of the noonday sun. Colors seemed muted, and light itself had a sort of flickering quality, as if nothing was quite real. In the AddVenture, of course, nothing was quite real, but that was beside the point; it looked real, to those who called it home. That is ... normally it did.
D.J. was nowhere to be seen, but her mana trace was easily discernable by Lizzie. It led right to a young girl walking away along the sidewalk on the street ahead of her. With a shock of recognition, Lizzie realized. That young girl was D.J. Woohoo!
Has she taken her June form again? Lizzie wondered, only to dismiss the notion. June's hair was medium brown; this girl's hair was raven black, just as D.J.'s was, though wavy and bouncy rather than straight and controlled. And her clothing was typical of neither identity, but, by comparison, slovenly; normally careless teen attire. She was wearing a backpack, too, and carrying a brown bag in one hand. Moments after Lizzie caught sight of her, she stepped out into the street and around a beat-up old car, which she opened from the driver's side and, after throwing in her bag and pack, entered. Shortly afterwards the car started, eased out into the lane for traffic, and drove off.
Lizzie, outfitted with standard security equipment, was prepared. Activating a distorter to render herself invisible, she unfurled her dragon wings and took to the air, easily pacing the vehicle. Where is D.J. going? she wondered. She extended her senses....
The ley-lines of this world's mana appeared before her, a grid of energy weaving through the sky. A cluster of them came together in a knot somewhere in the middle distance, in the direction D.J.'s car was traveling. Odd, Lizzie thought, as she continued to soar after it. She tracked it a mile or two to a complex of buildings directly beneath the knot. A ... school?
D.J. pulled into the school parking lot and parked the car. She got out and walked slowly towards the school itself, a group of cinderblock buildings arranged in a sort of "D" pattern around a central courtyard. Other people, similar in age to D.J., passed this way and that. One or two called or waved to her, but she ignored them, seemingly intent only on her destination. Lizzie, landing, followed her invisibly into the middle of the courtyard. She was close to her quarry now. Close enough to hear her mutter, in a voice eerily unlike her normal one, "Yes, here it is. The nexus point I've been seeking, the point where reality can be distilled from dream..." She stood directly beneath the power knot and raised her hands.
A shout interrupted whatever it was she planned to do. "D.J.?"
D.J. whipped around. Her jaw dropped. "Lizzie?" she cried. "What are you doing here?"
Lizzie's jaw dropped, too. The speaker, the person running towards D.J. even as she looked on, wasn't her. Though it did look disconcertingly like Lizzie might have as an adolescent, assuming she had had an adolescence as a human, and as a girl....
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Mon Aug 23 15:19:23 2004
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