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CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE night at the movies
⋆*✧･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ:
KADENCE HARGREEVES, otherwise known as Number Eight, the Magician, or 'that asshole', woke up on the ground of a black-and-white world. This wasn't an exaggeration, analogy, or metaphor for her current situation, either—no, the world literally didn't have any colour. When Kadence blinked up at the sky, she found it gray as an elephant's skin. When she sat up on the stony path she found herself on and brushed leaves out of her hair, each was the shade of skipping stones. Around her, there wasn't a single hint of colour—except, strangely, for the red shirt she had on.
"What the fuck?" she murmured.
Obviously, the whole colourless world was the first thing she noticed upon opening her eyes. But the second thing she found herself wondering about was her location. Instead of the Sparrow Academy, where she swore she'd been five minutes ago, she was instead sitting on what appeared to be a forest trail, with trees hemming her in on both sides. A picket fence sectioned off part of the area to her left, the occasional weed sprouted from the ground, and the air was thick and muggy. Most of all, it was all intact. There was no sign of the damage that had so devastated the world during these past few days.
"Am I tripping right now?" she asked herself, getting to her feet. To her surprise, she found herself struggling with this process—her legs were so shaky that it took at least three tries to actually stand up to her full height. Once she did, she looked down at her hands, gray as everything else. "Did someone lace my fucking champagne?"
Seriously, what was going on? The last thing Kadence remembered... she'd been in the bathroom, puking her guts out. Then Nadine had come in to talk to her, and they'd just been beginning to warm up to each other when everything got fuzzy. Yeah, that was it. Then Kadence's world had just... blurred out, and now she was here. In a place that shouldn't exist.
Or maybe...
"Hey, Nadine!" she called, her voice echoing through the trees. A few startled birds took off, black wings cutting through the cloudy sky. "Nice illusion. Real hilarious. I mean, I get that you can make things feel real now, but this is just going a bit too far." She looked down at her shirt again. "I do like the touches you've made, though."
No answer. Distantly, a squirrel darted through the branches of a tree.
"Hey!" she yelled again, waving her arms. "Nadine!"
Again, nothing. Kadence sniffed.
Huh. Come to think of it, she was feeling really... normal. A lot better than she'd felt when the kugelblitz had begun to affect her. In fact, she was more clear-headed than she'd been in a while. And her nose, which had been kind of throbbing since Diego had assaulted her, was as good as new.
