Serial Designation

Chapter 11

As we entered into the ball of Designation webbing, I remembered what happened to my hand when I touched Carl's webbing: how the strands came to life and bound me to the webbing, crushing my hand if I tried to move it.

We gotta be super careful.

The inside of the nest looked like a circus tent; there were hoops, platforms and other weird things you see in a circus, all made of the metal webbing woven very tightly. As we went deeper, it turned into a sort of funhouse, with the webbing woven so tight they formed perfect mirrors facing different angles in the shape of a maze.

There were a couple of times where we almost dropped the Cloaker disc, because three people were trying to hold onto it at once. It was difficult being in a six-legged race.

There was also the creepy feeling that, despite how silent it was, something was watching us.

Eve obviously had the same feeling, too. She looked really nervous.

We had just made it out of the weird funhouse mirror maze thing when a rather cheery voice up above said, "Hello!"

All three of us looked up, so startled that we dropped the disc; obviously it did NOT work against Designations, since we were still holding it when the voice spoke. There was a girl up there, hanging out on the ceiling. She looked like a jester; her hair was silver and in braids in an imitation of a jester's hat, with gold and violet strands here and there. Her clothing looked both snazzy and trashed, a black-and-white suit shirt with gold and purple gloves going all the way up her arms, torn at her upper arms and extremely frayed, like they were once one piece of clothing. She wore a loose, ripped shirt that fell below her knees, and her socks went all the way up to her thighs, as torn as her arm's-length gloves, also violet and gold. Despite all this, it was her eyes that first caught my attention: they were glowing purple X's.

She suddenly sprouted four giant, gold-and-purple painted metallic spider limbs and descended down on a line of web. The three of us on the ground bolted in the different directions; Eve went into the maze, Nix went to hide behind a big spinny wheel made of webbing, and I went to a stray mirror that wasn't part of the maze. The jester Designation said "Wait! Don't run!"

I defiantly stayed crouched behind the mirror. After a few minutes, I peeked out. The girl was just standing there, rocking back and forth on her feet. She looked sad, but also not surprised that we ran.

"What's happening?" I ask. I flinch back behind the mirror when the girl turned her head to face me.

"Well, I thought if I didn't chase ya, ya wouldn't think I was unfriendly," said the girl in a small, apologetic voice. She sounded remarkably like Harley Quinn.

I cast a look at the others' hiding places. Eve was simply half a face peeking out from behind one of the mirrors at the maze entrance, and Nix was more openly daring the girl to come at her from the spinning wheel. "Are you not unfriendly?" I ask.

"No!" The girl said, shocked. "No, no, no. I wouldn't hurt a fly. And trust me, there are LOTSA flies around here. I've even named some of 'em. There's Herbert, Willie, Mr. Finnigans..."

I stay behind the mirror, still unsure whether to trust this strange jester girl. The other two were looking at me. I thought about it, and figured that if this Designation wanted to kill us, she was fully capable of doing that already. I stepped out from my hiding place as the girl was still going on about the names she gives the flies ("Mimbly, Karen-- oh, but Karen's a meanie, I really gotta kick her out...") She stopped when all three of us were out in the open, and smiled brightly. "Hi!" she said to me, then turned to Eve. "Hi!" she said, then turned to Nix. "And hi!"