Labyrinth

[raptorcanaria]

Here's the thing about Milliways: It's not the Real World. Dinah has a very clear delineation in her mind: there're things that happen in the bar, and there are things that happen at home, and even if people visit from one to the other, they're very different places.

Justice League, supervillains, Oliver. Those things don't follow her in. Which is good and bad, because it becomes a place to escape. And escape becomes too safe, somewhere where actual threats aren't real. That's the problem with the place. It's not home, and it doesn't touch home, and if she wanted, she could stay in the bar, rent a room, and never have to worry about outside. And that's what's so dangerous.

Not that she's thinking of danger right now, even deep in the forest where there might be demon rabbits. She's just thinking of the run, and the exercise, and also where she wants to take Ollie for dinner tonight. That's how she manages to get lost.

And how she finds herself facing a rough hewn stone wall, with a door cut into it.

Dinah stands in front of it, stretching out her warm muscles, staring at the door. Has that always been here?

Comments

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo takes it before bandaging up his wound. The fuzzy-headedness isn't going away. Neither are the pins and needles.

He looks up at Dinah before pulling his Sig out of his chest holster and offering it to her, gripfirst.

"Here. Take it."

[raptorcanaria]

Dinah's reassuring smile vanishes and it replaced with a stubborn frown.

But she takes it anyway, tucking it into the front of her running shorts.

She's not going to use it, but it'll make him feel better to know she has it.

[boston_bruiser]

That it does.

Voodoo gets to his feet, fastening his helmet.

"You think this is just an extension of the rabbit hole?"

Because he wouldn't put it past whoever made this.

[raptorcanaria]

Dinah glances around, and pauses to pull her shirt off over her head, maneuvring it gently around her broken arm.

"I don't know," she says, when she's finally in her sports bra, arm held carefully in front of her, "I can't tell one forest from another, but I don't here any of the regular bar noise."

"Help me make a sling?"

[boston_bruiser]

"Yeah, okay," Voodoo says, slinging the gun behind his back. He takes Dinah's shirt and assists in the slingmaking, putting her arm and shoulder through it just so.

"Don't think we can count on any friendly faces 'round here. Anything moving gets one warning. After that, we blast it."

He looks her in the eye for comprehension - she's good with that, right?

[raptorcanaria]

She's - not good, and her unhappy face when she meets his eye proves it.

But she nods.

"Yeah, okay."

She tests the sling - it's pretty tight and it keeps her arm straight in front of her - and looks past him to the nearest thing in this forest to a path.

"I'm going to vote that way."

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo follows her gaze, shaking away the dizziness as best he can. The blood loss is staunched, but he's still lower, lower than he's ever been.

"Conquest via the democratic process. I dig it."

He steps out, his weapon raised.

"Stay behind me."

[raptorcanaria]

Dinah comes up beside him, placing her good hand on his shoulder lightly.

"Hey, big man. It's okay. I still have three quarters of my limbs working. I don't need protecting."

And if she sees another of those girls in armor, she'll scream at her.

"Come on."

A few yards away, she can see a tree with a triangle engraved on it.

[boston_bruiser]

"Three-quarters ain't four-fourths," Voodoo says, making his way over to the triangle. "But if you insist, then at least keep out of my nine-to-three."

He tugs on one knot of the bandage, grimacing as it tightens, then taps the triangle.

[raptorcanaria]

She obediently takes a half step back to come out past his three, and keeps her hand touching him as he presses, using a minor force of will not to tighten her grip.

The trunk of the tree swings open towards them, exposing a stairway down, below ground.

"Oh no, I was just enjoying the fresh air."

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo grunts, keeping his eyes forward. "You too?"

He starts down the stairway, one step at a time.

He's really starting to wish he brought some NODs.

[raptorcanaria]

"Yeah."

She lets him take the lead, and glances over her shoulder before following him down. There's a card she can play better outside.

The staircase is worn, wooden, and leads down into what looks like an old flower shop, lit by a dusty electric light in the ceiling, and a flickering streetlight through a shop window that doesn't have an associated door. Broken shelves of potted and cut plants line the walls, are littered in soil and water. And the cause of this destruction fills the center of the room. A large plant with a central bulbous leaf arrangement that stands taller that Voodoo, roots breaking out among shards of terracotta, looping and reaching into the shop floor.

[boston_bruiser]

"Oh, fuck me."

He keeps the submachine gun up, but keeps scanning the shop as he enters.

"Little Shop of Horrors. It's Little Shop of Horrors."


"Never seen the movie, though," he admits. "Get that fuckin' pistol ready."

[raptorcanaria]

Dinah stares at the plant with a puzzled frown on her face. She nods blankly and reluctantly reaches for the gun in her shorts...

...only to have to leap back as a green shoot rockets out of the broken floor beneath her, wrapping tentacle like around her wrist. Before Dinah can react, the plant has jerked violently, to the sound of bones cracking in her wrist, forcing her hand open and the gun to drop.

"Ah-ah-AH," a rich, male voice booms - from the large plant in the center. "That won't help you now, Sugar."

[boston_bruiser]

"Dinah!"

As the crack of bone echoes through the room, he grits his teeth and raises the MP5, centering the front sight post on the bulbous center.

"Pal, I am a long goddamn way from home. You get one warning: drop her or die."

[raptorcanaria]

Dinah was already pale from the last limb some monster broke. She's white from this, and the sprout wrapping around her forearm seems to be doing it just to lift her arm up, against the protests of the shoulder that's been dislocated and reset twice in as many hours.

The huge bulb of leaves moves, tilting down to a horizontal position, two of them peeling back in a way that looks like lips around what are definitely white teeth.

"Lotta tough talk, Son. How do you plan on following up on that?"

Another shoot, thin and tentacle like as the last, shoots up from the floor towards Voodoo, racing towards the barrel of his submachine gun.

[boston_bruiser]

It's a testament to Voodoo's fitness that he's able to roll out of the way of the shoot before it ever makes contact. It's a testament to his training that he's able to come out of the roll, lock the stock of the MP5 to his shoulder, and fire off five quick shots at the creature's mouth.

All of which ricochet off with thowcks and tings.

"Shit goddammit-"

[raptorcanaria]

"Voodoo!"

Not that he particularly needs Dinah snapping at him to stop, but she's in pain and fighting to get her arm back and she's getting rapidly angrier.

The plant keeps its mouth closed during the shooting, but as soon as it stops, it laughs again.

"Nice try, Son. but how about I just eat this little lady and then show you to the way out, hmmmmm?"

[boston_bruiser]

"Fuck you."

Voodoo keeps his eyes on the plant as he circles it, his weapon up - for whatever good that'll do.

"Here's my counteroffer: eat shit and die, freak."

[raptorcanaria]

"Wait."

Dinah's raised up on her toes now in an attempt to keep the strain off her shoulder, her eyes fixed steadily on the plant.

"Eat me, and you'll let him go?"

"Mmmmmmm," the plant seems to consider this. "Well, probably. That depends on how filling you are."

[boston_bruiser]

Wait, what. What.

His hearing must be going. His hearing's going, right?

"Nah, man," he says, keeping his gun trained on the plant, "she looks bony as fuck to me. Plus she's all hot 'n sweaty, 'n that's gotta muck up the taste. I wouldn't eat her."

He throws his best really not the time for heroics glare at Dinah in-between sentences.

"Tell you what: you let us go, and we promise to direct the next fat fuck we see to your little hidey-hole."

[raptorcanaria]

Dinah misses most of the glare, but catches the last of it as she shoots a look in his direction. One that tries to say I know what I'm doing but gets lost around shut up for now.

She kicks her feet pointlessly until a second shoot finds one of her feet.

"Now," says the plant, "how stupid do you think I am, boy?"

[boston_bruiser]

"I think you're pretty fuckin' stupid," Voodoo says. "Ugly as sin, too."

His grip around the MP5 tightens. "Now I won't say it again - drop her, or I will find a way to kill you."

[raptorcanaria]

"Aw, now I know you're just talking tough."

He sends another shoot rocketing towards Voodoo, crashing through the cash register as it does.

Dinah breathes in, taking a huge lungful of air, but then the shoot around her foot yanks her towards the plant, and she falls to the ground, the wind knocked out of her.

[boston_bruiser]

He's not as fast as he was before he dropped a pint, but Voodoo's still quick enough to drop the MP5 to let it hang by the sling as he unsheathes the tomahawk with a shick. The oncoming shoot gets hacked to bits, and he vaults over the counter, twirling the tomahawk in his hand as he sprints toward Dinah, the clomp of his boots on the aged concrete reverberating in the space.

She's not dying today. Not if he can help it.