mysteryblurbs

[mysteryblurbs]

get the kids talking.

1) pick a thing they said. 2) between whom?

#i'm working on something much larger after having lost steam. #but i got challenged to these on my other blog and they've been so fun! #they could be fun for the mystery kids. #bonus: pairing y/n; how old would you like them? #let's build them lores #promptme #mk

[mysteryblurbs]

No one hears a thing for months.

No calls, no texts. Messages go unread. Postcards unreturned. (Usually, it’s the other way round – Raz and Lili sending the postcards, or a blurry, candid snap to chronicle their latest successful field mission.) The radio silence is mind-bending, but not one of them wants to admit they’re worried.

Lili and Raz are experienced, right? They’re professionals! They’re kids. Kids who wouldn’t be dropped into any overtly compromising situations. Least of all by the burly man who’d come to the Shack that one time to apprehend his daughter – and her criminal haul.

The last postcard they’d got was from somewhere in Indiana. None of them are close enough to reach in to Indiana and pluck them out, for better or worse. The one-sided conversation continues, waiting for the Psychonauts’ return.

Until one day, there they are. Norman doesn’t see Lili until he’s well upon his house from school that day, and wonders with some bemusement how he’d missed her standing by his mailbox. She looks… tired. Tense. Taller than where they’d last left off, but that’s to be expected. She’s in a deep green uniform that Norman has seen only once before.

There’s no question of where she’s been. What’s kept him awake is for how long.

“Lili?”

“We need you to come with us.” It’s not Lili who’s speaking. Norman whips around, his backpack sinking with a gentle thud into something solid behind him: Razputin Aquato. From thin air. Who looks just as beleaguered as Lili, I might add – but, like his little uniform, he doesn’t wear it quite as well.

Raz adjusts himself as Norman looks from one Psychonaut to the other. “What? Why? Did I do something wrong?” Crazy. They think I’m crazy, ghosts are crazy I’m crazy oh god oh no this is it I gotta get Courtney –

“Calm down, would you? You’re giving me a headache.” Lili massages her temples as she peels herself off the mailbox, and moves to take Norman by the arm. Raz has a hand on his shoulder… it sure feels like an arrest. “This isn’t an arrest. And we’ve already taken care of everything, don’t worry.”

Norman doesn’t get to look back, or call Neil, or ask Salma out, or tell Courtney to hide some of his more incriminating bedroom artefacts. Norman goes obligingly, and at the urge of telekinesis, into a waiting jet that’s parked conspicuously down the street.

Thankfully, he gets a little bit of de-briefing on the way. “Official Psychonauts business. We would’ve told you if we could, we swear…” A long look passes between Raz and Lili. It lingers. It’s solemn and soulful. But it’s been a time for the Psychonauts, it seems, not dissimilar to the time that’s passed in between these correspondences. Norman knows he’s not going to get anything more out of them, so he fills them in on what they missed.

Neil’s riff-off with the phantom bass player. The Pines twins’ YouTube channel, which is taking off. Coraline’s Halloween hellisode. And Norman doesn’t even have to illustrate the finer details, because he feels them being pulled from his mind like dancers on a string. Man, it feels good to talk with other extrasensories.

Then they’re there, just like that. The casual, almost normal affair is suddenly professional, and Raz and Lili are straightening their posture and offering a steady telepathic hand as their jet takes a running leap into a body of water. ( norman sees them flinch – commits to asking them why. raz pauses at this thought, and shakes his head with grit and grimness. )

A few moments pass in darkness, before they emerge in a chrome hangar. Norman, eyes wide, takes in the sheer magnitude of the operation: Raz and Lili hadn’t been kidding about being buried in their caseload. His first breath of air outside the jet is stale, and old, and slow, and it goes on as long as the evermore-ceilings and never-ending passages in the Psychonautical warren.

“Agents Aquato – Zanotto.” A tall guy ( norman’s seen him before… where? where has he… oh. ) apprehends the three of them as the jet is telepathically lifted by a ground team. The Psychonaut regards Norman as he pinches a cigarette between his teeth. It lights. “And the medium, I take it. Very well. If you’ll all follow me.”

To the elevator. Norman crams himself between Raz and Lili, who seem to be having a conversation with their eyes. The cramped compartment quickly fills up with cigarette smoke, but Norman doesn’t awfully mind the smell. In fact, it’s kind of soothing… the woozier he gets, the less Norman worries if his mind is going to be intact by the time he leaves today.

If he leaves today.

The elevator dings. The door slides open to reveal an enormous foyer above and a gangway below, with seemingly nothing supporting it. Norman’s heart almost leaves him then and there, but it’s Lili who takes him by the arm and calmly leaves him towards the center hub in this pit of a room.

“Welcome to the Think Tank. Pretty cool, huh?”

Cool? Not exactly the world Norman would use. “Um…”

“Do not be alarmed.” The superior Psychonaut, who had been behind them, steps through the children and powers ahead. “This is an experiment of my own design – a refinement of field data collected by the brain tumbler three-point-nein. Rigorous reverse engineering has allowed us to interpret psychic data as a simulation of a mental environment.”

As they draw closer, the apparatus begins to take shape: it really is a giant tank, like an aquarium, with a garish light ebbing between its shifting and sieving contents. Raz pulls is goggles down over his eyes to stem the sensory overload. “In other words, it projects the astral. Don’t worry…” Raz approaches the Think Tank and gives it a little tap – something hammers back before it shimmies out of focus. “Nothing in there can hurt you. It’s all theoretical. Right, Agent Nein?”

“Right. This is one of my finest achievements.” Norman watches on as this Agent Nein skirts the Think Tank and positions himself in front of a control panel, his gaze intent on its readings as he takes a drag from his cigarette. “We’re primarily using it to access critical information that arises from hostile mental psyches. It’s particularly useful from extracting abstract thoughts.”

Lili, at Norman’s left, steps to join her boyfriend in the speculating circle. “So basically, it’s like watching some German expressionist movie.”

Nein glances up from his computer screen, and snuffs out his cigarette. “Lili.”

Who returns the glance with an apologetic look, before redirecting her attention to Norman. “So far, we’ve actually got some pretty interesting stuff outta here. We’ve been able to indict some old offenders…”

“Commit new ones.”

“And watch some pretty wacky dreams.”

Norman follows the thread of the conversation between speakers, but not necessarily their logic. “That’s uh… that’s cool and all, guys. But… what does this have to do with me?”

“Aha!” All eyes turn to Agent Nein as he finishes a sequence, and the Think Tank hums lowly and lasciviously as its contents bloom. Everyone watches them take form, gain substance, press at the thick glass walls… a hand drags along the inside. A cheek presses close by, parting its lips.

The sound of voices fills Norman’s ear.

“Are… are they…”

Raz is the first to step up close. “Ghosts of the past. Uh-huh.” He turns to Norman, and gestures for him to come closer. “Peopl’re swimming with these old souls, and we never really got a handle of ‘em until Sasha developed the Think Tank.”

“They were too obscure, even for our best telepaths and clairvoyants. And I should know.” There’s a flicker of something behind Lili’s eyes as she follows the ghosts that Norman has seen once or twice. It lacks intensity, but he’s pretty sure Lili’s only looked like that at Coraline. “So that’s where you come in.”

“We’ve seen you in action, man. You’ve got a gift that no one else on the force can even touch on. As far as we know, there’s not a psychic in the world that can talk to the dead.”

“So… you wanted to see if I could talk to a… a mental ghost, guys.” And it’s the truth: as far as Norman knows, these things in the Tank aren’t ghosts at all. They’re… they’re concepts, or impressions of ghosts. And yet…

“Norman. Can you hear them?”

He listens. And it’s faint, but it’s there… the voices. The whispering. He nods. “Yeah… I can’t make it out, though.”

Raz gestures vaguely, and an office chair peaks out of the gloom. It comes to rest beside Raz – between him and Lili – right in front of the tank. “You wanna try?”

All eyes are on Norman. It feels like… like pressure. Like these three people are legion, and the legion is calling him. It doesn’t quite touch upon what he’s seen, and what he knows… in fact, Norman isn’t sure what he wants to know about the intricacies of this person’s mind.

But he steps forward, and sinks into the chair.

Lili and Raz stand behind him, and they have another one of those conversations that only they can hear. Then Lili presses two fingers to her temple, and places her other hand on Norman’s shoulder. “I’ll read you. You just talk to them, okay.”

“Okay.” Somewhere in his periphery, Norman’s vaguely aware of that prying sensation again, like Raz and Lili are peaking through the blinds that shroud his mind. He clears it – as best he can – and closes his eyes. Listens. “Hello?”

The voices stop.

#Raz #Lili #Norman #Mystery Kids #so what i'm thinking is that i might move in a circle? One thing kind of leads into the next. the connective tissue is the characters. #So if Norman was the bridger between this one and the first one; one of the psychonauts features with someone else in the next one. #make sense?

[mysteryblurbs]

Ghosts swarm around her.

Not always. And not always at the most opportune of times, either. It's been happening since he met her, however, when she dragged him around the streets of her sleepy Oregon hamlet on a warm summer evening.

( she's none the wiser, not even listening, talking about this and that and the summer shows're always the best for the festival, don'tcha know. you'd think she was the scottish thane himself for all the love she gets from the dead ----- she passes. they stop. they stare, because they've all the time in the world. it's not normal -----

'norm. norman.'

'huh?'

'you're staring.' )

What amazes Norman is that none of the others can see it. See her, he means. Not the ghosts. Not even the psychics have picked up on the irregular mark that pervades her. Nothing different. Nothing out of the ordinary. She's merely extraordinary to the others, and painfully, agonizingly normal.

Except now. When she's being dragged, kicking and screaming into a wereverine's den; screaming bloody murder, she'll have you know, until Lili swoops in with her mind on fire ----- reaches for Coraline's hand ------

Coraline doesn't need it. And Norman notes the trickle of ectoplasm, the rattle of the dead, as something down there links their chains around the wereverine and pulls it into the gloom.

"Did it ----- did it back off?"

Raz steps out of the air beside Coraline, and helps her to her feet. He pulls a twig out of her hair; tosses it into the den. "But it was looking at you like you were dinner... and leftovers."

Norman hears, far below them, when the stick lands. Coraline is rubbing her red-raw arms. Her shirt is ripped, all muddy and bloody. "And you guys... you didn't do anything?"

Raz and Lili shake their heads. "Can't take the credit for that. Aw, well... probably better to let it alone." Lili and Raz sling Coraline between them and help her limp her way to the edge of the forest, where they can hear the others congregating.

Norman... lingers. On the precipice of the den. He saw something. He knows he did. "... Hello?"

'not... another...'

His blood runs cold. Shouldn’t, because a ghost gave him directions today. But Norman braces himself, ready to call down into the gloom when -----

"Norman? Earth to Para-Norman. You coming?"

When he turns, Coraline is smiling wearily at him. She's being transferred into Wybie's arms as the twins bring the cart around.

Norman looks back, only for a moment, and then scampers from the stark unknown.

It's a day later when he remembers something important. When him and Neil and Coraline are sitting on the floor of their rented log cabin, and Coraline is showing off the gnarly scrape up her stomach. "My first proper war wound! Can you believe it? Man, it's gonna look killer come swimmer season..."

"M-maybe put somethin' on that, Jonesy." Wybie peels into the room and takes his place beside Coraline, his eyes trained on the floor. He picks at a loose thread on his shirt. "If it gets i-infected, you prob'ly won't be allowed in the play."

"Who says? Don't you know who I am?"

( 'don't you... know who she is?' a forlorn old soul, in britches and plumes, drifts idly behind coraline as she bounces at the pedestrian crossing. norman hangs back with the ghost.

'she's coraline... my friend... isn't she?'

something akin to recognition crosses the ghost's face for a moment, and then flickers back out of existence. 'coraline...' it sounds old and familiar from his mouth. 'yes... coraline... she's the one. the one who won the game.'

game? what game? 'i'm sorry, what..?' but the ghost is gone. the world is warm. and coraline is goading norman across the street. )

He looks at her. He looks at her shoulders, her arms, and how light and animated they are. Like there's nothing pressing in. Like there's nothing weighing her down. Yet Coraline wears ghosts like a cloak.

He’s thought about asking her who she is, what she’s played. Whether she’s played chess with the cosmos, or air hockey with a god. Norman knows better, though: you ask her for a straight answer, and she’ll give you something sly and cryptic. Like,

“Hey, Coraline?”

They’re on the porch. She’s wrapped in a sweater despite the heat, and her arms are folded around her middle. Equal parts dreamy and pensive, her eyes skim over the treetops. “Uh huh?”

“Do you ever feel like you’re... you know. Being watched?”

She leaves the sky for a moment to look at Norman. She’s still. And then she smiles. “All the time.”

#Mystery Kids #Coraline #Norman #and suddenly.