i found myself in crowded rooms, feeling so alone

[numberthree]

WHO: Teen!Rumor + You
WHERE: Nonah (or wherever, we can handwave how)
WHEN: May 4th
WHAT: Allison is hit with Wild Fey Magic, and reverts back to being 13
WARNINGS: One super temper and a mass case of flippant, ruthless uses of powers



Number Three had no clue where she was when she woke up.

The bedroom was bare and unfamiliar, and someone had put her in some weird set of pajamas. While their father might be the end all be all a totalitarian dictator, he had prepared them, if not for every situation, then with skills that could be used wherever they might find themselves. If panic touched the edges of her thoughts, she brushed it away with all the dismissal of ants. She skivvied out of the strange bed, stole a tunic shirt, and belted it at the waist, making sure her every step was silent.

She'd been kidnapped and tortured before. That wasn't anything new. But she wasn't about to stick around and wait to see what the latest flavor whatever villain who got the drop on her had in mind. Weirdly. She couldn't remember how she'd been kidnapped at all, where her uniform was. But that could wait. They could have drugged her. She could focus on that once she was home.

Number Three crept out of the bedroom into ... a house? A house full of boxes? And one where the front door only had a knob lock and deadbolt? This was too weird. But she wasn't looking a gift-horse in the mouth. She slipped out from the house, closing the door carefully, slowly, and waiting for about fifteen more feet of silent steps from the door before she started sprinting down the street, still holding her breath.

It only gets weirder and weirder. She doesn't recognize any of the street signs, and she asks someone on a sidewalk where she is, and how far from home it is. But she doesn't know the name of this place. Or anywhere else they mentioned. Weirder still when she finally found someone with a phone (or whatever this was, that was the size of her hand???), and The Academy phone number didn't work.

It's a mistake the first time she mentions The Umbrella Academy because a crowd forms out of nowhere, screaming questions (about whether she's some love child from the future? And asking any number of things that seem crazily worse. She's pretty sure someone just asked if they went in for underwear or no underwear with costumes wherever she came from).

Eventually, with or without some help, Number Three does manage to wrench herself free of the teeming crowds, that are like the crowds from home and nothing like that at all. After getting a few blocks away, she dropped on a bench. She was racking her head. This wasn't her job. This was what Luther did. Or Five, if he was allowed to.

One barefoot, forlorn, if headstrong and temperamental,
child-hero for sale to any buyers who would like to find her.

Comments

[numberthree]

The people are scattered like the wind, looking adequately terrified.

Allison doesn't. Allison doesn't look anymore terrified or impressed than she would watching Space throw someone through a rough, or Kraken pinning someone to the wall by however many knives he had on him that day, or the Horror's many Eldric tentacles making pulling piece apart from every angle.

Neither the threat of violence nor the violence itself would make her that.
Even for the confusion of the place, she's still standing there calmly.

She is the one who stands there, while her siblings are doing such, or before they start doing it, properly and primly, in her black saddle shoes. Who skips her feet. Rocks on her toes. And then tells people to pull out their tongues. To shoot their partners. To jump out windows. All without losing that edge of her own smile.

"I could have done that." It's not a thank you.
But it's not not-a-thank-you either.
There's no edge to the words.

Not that the girl would know, but it's closer to the jostling all of them do in the Academy. Weakness is not allowed. Needing to be saved is not allowed. Competition and comparison have been their blood since they were bought.

(Plus. She could have. She could have stopped them all with a few words.
It's just a fact. Not even an arrogant piece of information.)

"Who are you? And what is this place?"

[bodilesswarrior]

She has no way to tell if it's teenage blustering or objective fact; either way, she inclines her head. "Glad I could save you the energy, then."

That kind of compromise and assurance comes easy - well, it does when it's a young girl and not a grown man who can't deal with being saved by a woman. Giving her some actual answers, that's trickier, and a frustrated grimace twists her lips.

"I'm Batgirl. I protect Gotham City, which doesn't actually exist here." It freaks her out more than a little. "As for what here is - I think it's a different version of Earth? But I don't know how we got here, or why. I've been trying to figure it out, in between..."

She gestures vaguely towards the empty space where the crowd had been. "Dealing with criminals and idiots."

She wants to ask the same thing - who are you, what can you do, what can I do - but that can wait.

[numberthree]

There's a lot she says, but Number Three doesn't listen to all of it entirely. There's something else that trumps the rest of it, making Allison's eyes narrow a little. Even as she's making sure the stragglers are all getting themselves to safe distance from them.

Anyone else might care that they were still staring, but people have been staring at her, in costume and out, since her earliest teens. It would be odder if no one cared at all.


"You're a hero?"

[bodilesswarrior]

Bats, by contrast, do most of their work in the shadows, flourishing as urban legends. Just patrolling out in daylight feels strange enough; standing around being stared at makes her want to crawl out of her skin.

But she can shove that discomfort down and focus on what's important.

"I am." A more confident answer than the one she gave Rex, because she wants to be reassuring. You're safe with me, I promise. "I've been doing it for about a year."