#subspacesp

He looked to the silver-haired, bespectacled man that had stepped near them. He didn't recognize him. "Hey, Patel," he muttered to the Indian in his arms. "You know this guy?"

Matthew looked up at Lucas, then shifted his eyes over to glance at Mobile. "Uh...Yeah..." he murmured. "He was with the group to look for Scott Pilgrim..." He didn't know what connection he had to the missing person but knew that there had to be one there.

Lucas gave a nod of acknowledgement. This meant they all needed to stick together. "We need to keep going as a group, okay? You guys can all just... follow me. We'll get out of here soon, I'm sure of it," he lied. Of course he wasn't sure. How could he be? He had no sense of direction, no sense of where anyone was coming from, and judging by Matthew's repeated running the back of his head over his forehead, subspace was making them all feel something different. He felt like he could be their leader, taking it upon himself to make sure they all made it out. 

     As he stepped away from the door, the white space turned gray and the floor crackled a bit. Mobile gulped and took a deep breath. As he told himself to calm down, he held onto his chest. This ethereal place felt too real for him. He felt as if he ignored Scott's text, this all would've never happened. He wouldn't have gotten lost in Hong Kong and would have to sneak on a plane. He wouldn't be stuck in Subspace in front of the door to his mind, knowing he could face his inner demons, but trying to ignore it. He tried to ignore it due to the fact that Scott was his first priority now.

He couldn't give in again.

    As he turned away from the door, he heard familiar voices. Voices from the search party. Mobile's face lit up and he smiled with glee. He shouted out towards them:

     As he sauntered in, Subspace felt damp and hot. All he could hear was angered screeching which drove him crazy. Frightened of what he would see, he slowly opened his eyes. The walls flickered black and white. The tiny cracks in the floor became colossal. He felt as if the world was slightly off balance. As he tried to walked forward, it felt as if the floor was starting to crumble. This horrified him to the point of hyperventilating. He clutched onto his chest and took a huge breath. "Don't let this take you over." he whispered to himself. He swallowed a small gulp and closed his eyes.

"Don't look down Mobile. Don't look down."

He opened his eyes and took a few steps forward. More doors appeared around him than earlier. A part of him sparkled inside and he smirked. "Let's try to NOT mess up." Mobile exclaimed. The floor crackled more as he walked around a bit but less and less as he progressed. His confident air was coming back slowly and he started to feel like himself again. But at this point he was stuck. He didn't know what to do next. What door should he go in?

"Where would Scott hide?" he asked himself. "Where's the one place in subspace where he wouldn't think anyone would find him?" His mind couldn't wrap around this thought. He couldn't think of a reason of why Scott would hide. Then he remembers earlier: the tension from the search party and Ramona's tears from earlier.

A few doors appeared before him. He looked around to see what would be the most logical choice. What appeared before him made him freeze in disbelief.

Envy Adams stood before Scott Pilgrim, a beseeching look in her eyes. What did this mean? How did she get here?

"Scott," she intoned. "I never meant to hurt you. Let me make it up to you." And then her lips were on his, and, while Scott didn't think this could make up for a thousand gradual wrongs that ultimately ruined his life for a while, he was willing to give it a shot. Her hands slid underneath his belt, and Scott's body stiffened momentarily.

"What's the matter? You don't want me to stop, do you?" Envy said, teasing.

"I - I, uh..."

Then, out of the corner of his eye, Scott saw a flash of movement. He closed his eyes again in response to Envy's actions, and before he knew it-

He heard a scream, and felt a wave of dust splash against his body. Envy was gone. Scott opened his eyes, and in Envy's place stood Kim Pine. She was wearing her outfit from Julie's Halloween themed party. On her arm was mounted an exaggeratedly large mechanical gauntlet, with whirring gears and steam valves.

Scott fell backwards onto the ground, more out of shock than anything. "Wha... what the hell? Kim? What? Why? What?" he stammered.

Kim bent down and pinched Scott's cheeks. "Scott. Focus. Focus just for a minute. This will all start making... sense. Or something like sense. Whatever kind of sense you have in this place."

Kim sat down on the grass across from Scott. "Listen. You are still in your mind. Envy is out there in the real world somewhere. You just imagined her."

"Why would I do that, brain Kim?" said Scott. "I never do that. It sucks to do that."

"Because, Scott, you tried to face your problems. And you failed. Surprising no one. So you escaped. You used your imagination to engage in some nice escapism. Apparently for you that consists of hooking up with your evil ex-girlfriend. Which probably signals deeper problems," said Kim, twisting a blade of grass around her finger.

"I... what?" Scott said, incomprehension plain on his face. "How do you know any of that? Why are you here?"

Kim glared at Scott. "I'm your reason. Or something. Your reasoning abilities. The part of your brain that's actually good for something. It's amazing that I exist at all. And, in my opinion, it's totally badass that your subconscious pictures me as Kim Pine. I mean... I am Kim Pine. And I'm... badass?" She trailed off, looking off into the sky.

"But anyway! Look! You have control over the inside of your mind! You need to -"

Scott cut her off. "So what you're saying is... I don't reaaaaaallly have to deal with any of this right now, if I just -" He clapped his hands. The world around them shifted. Now - Scott was in a basement, that evidently had been transformed into someone's sweet rec room. He sat on a squishy leather couch. Opposite him, an enormous flat-screen TV. In his hands, a wireless controller of the next-generation video console - the one we don't have in our real world yet. To his left, on an end table: a plate of warm snickerdoodle cookies.

"Yeaaaah. Escapism. Why didn't I think of this before?" Scott said to himself, as he pressed the "on" button on the controller. Before he could begin playing, down the stairs into the basement walked a statuesque raven-haired beauty, completely naked. "You were the hottest girl in my English Lit class freshman year. I have no idea what your name is, and that just means that you can't tell me what to do." The girl smirked at this, and joined Scott on the couch. She draped herself around his shoulders, but made no movement to interrupt his video gaming. "You don't care if I want to play video games. You just want me to be happy." She nodded, and didn't speak.

"I wonder how long I can stretch this out. A million? A billion years?"

Out of the television stepped Kim Pine.

"SCOTT! God damn it! What is this? What are you doing? You are missing the point so hard!" she yelled.

"Screw you and your point!" Scott shot back, rising from the couch. "This is not making my life better! I don't wanna go back to the mud place!"

"That's not the issue!" Kim began, but before she could continue, Scott had disappeared through a hole in the floor. Kim followed, and when they emerged, it was in a giant arena, full to bursting with punkily-dressed young people. On the stage in the middle of it all stood Scott, in black face paint, wielding a double guitar, melting the faces of all he surveyed with a wailing solo. Kim couldn't yell to reach him; when she tried to climb up to the stage, she was held back by a wall of brawny security guards, all with the exact same body and face.

With a reality-defying leap, Kim Pine arced over this obstacle, and dropped one heel squarely on the crown of Scott's head. He flashed red a few times, and the arena disappeared, as did his costume.

They were now in an empty warehouse, the walls and ceiling hazy, the floor a uniform grey.

"Scott!" Kim yelled at the prone figure now stretched on the concrete. "If you won't face your problems, I'm going to give you worse ones. She flexed the fingers of her mechanical gauntlet."

"But... but it's haaaard," he replied, woozily. He waved his hand over himself, and a comforter appeared, and the floor softened into linen.

Kim screamed in frustration, and kicked Scott, hard, in the abdomen. "Get up!" But, following the example of abdomen-kicked people everywhere, he instead rolled around, groaning, in pain. Then he sank into the floor and disappeared.

Thistime, he materialized on a lawnchair, next to a impressively landscaped pool behind someone's mansion. Perhaps his own. All around were well-endowed women of all kinds, nebulous until he looked directly at them. He sipped from a glass of lemonade, and hoped that maybe if he concentrated hard enough, he could finally relax for a little while.

And, while his concentration failed to work, as it usually did, he could, indeed, remain here, unhindered, free to be touched by the sun and to hear the laughs of unfamiliar, unreal wenches. But, when he did try to concentrate, on relaxing, it was then that his relaxation was broken. He sat up, and there was Kim Pine again. He laughed as he noticed that, if nothing else, he'd made her appear in a bright red, very immodest string bikini.

But she still had her metal gauntlet, and she leaped onto Scott. The lawnchair broke beneath him. With the gauntlet, she held him down, and with her normal hand, she made a very convincing closed fist, and punched him in every sensitive part of the face.

Punctuated by blows, she shouted, "Scott - you have to face - your weaknesses - this is why - you're here - isn't it - but you're just - embracing them - and that's why - Ramona left you - and that's why you - are wasting your life - and that's why I - laugh at you behind your back!" She paused for a moment. "The real Kim! She doesn't secretly lust for you, you moron! She thinks you're pathetic!"

This last gave Scott an actual shock, and, as hard as he'd tried to avoid it, actual self-reflection occurred now - in a dark form. He'd always felt just a little superior to Kim, loner Kim, Kim who had belonged to him, who he turned away and could have back if he wanted to. And now he realized the very real probability that, when Kim had made fun of him all these months and years - it had been genuine. He really was nothing to her. When they all laughed about "Scott being Scott" - maybe it was because when he wasn't around, they allreallylaughed about Scott being Scott.

That was a problem.

His eyes flew alive with rage. "Oh yeah? Well,fuck you!" And Scott, from below, let fly with a right hook, faster than Kim or anyone else could react. It caught her in the bottom lip with an audible thudding sound, and was followed up with a straight left to the same spot that, metal gauntlet or no, knocked Kim back onto the stones, where she crumpled into a heap.

No one, not even Gideon, could see such a sight, and fail to realize how essentially sad it was. Kim Pine, usually all deadpan sarcasm or blustery anger, now bleeding from the mouth, one hand to her face, the other steadying her, weeping softly.

Scott immediately wished he could take it back. Wherever the real Kim Pine was, this was still Kim to him. It was no less vivid. It never would be. "Kim... Kim..." He crawled toward her, but she backed away.

"At least you get it now," she said, bitterly and wetly, slurring through blood and tears. "Do you see? You have problems. That's the only thing that would get you in a mess like this."

A tear fell from Scott's eyes, too, and was soon followed by more. "I... I didn't think... it was a fight..."

"Exactly. You have to think, Scott. You have to use reason. And you have to think about other people."

He looked down at the ground, at his hands. He couldn't bear to see Kim's face like this. In fact -

He lifted his hand toward her. A blue glow surrounded it, and there was a shimmer in the air. And Kim's face was healed, completely and totally.

"I can at least do that. It's still my mind."

Kim smiled at Scott, ever so slightly.

"You're starting to get it. Finally. I didn't know what it would take. Are you ready, then?" she asked, her eyes locked with his.

"For what?" he said, softly.

Lynette had probably spent a good chunk of time in subspace. She had been counting the seconds under her breath from when she re-entered and started running.'One thousand three hundred twenty two.....one thousand three hundred three...'she kept counting on even though she knew it'd be a great deal of time before she would meet any sort of sentient life or anyone really. She stopped for a second to think to herself the reasons she was doing this again.

"One it's for helping Julie....."that was pretty much the only reason she was here but then she remembered that day at the lake."Right...Scott....saved me."she knew this was cause Julie told Scott to but that still didn't change the fact that Scott had swam all the way in the middle of a fight to go and get a however she weighed chick with a bionic arm that weighed over 30 pounds.

The more she thought about it the more she thought Scott wasn't a jerk or so she thought he was. At the very least he was a good Samaritan who just wanted to take life easily. She could understand why he left now because people couldn't understand him. She'd make sure that the next time she saw him she'd say thanks. that is...if she ever did see him again.

Dwelling on these thoughts made her feel a bit guilty and mean so she just kept on walking when something white had melted on her coat and she noticed that it was snowing. Snowing in subspace. By now she had been able to gather that subspace surroundings change depending on what the person's thinking or feeling. Right now she had been thinking of how Scott wasn't such a bad guy after all, which could mean that she had finally realized she had been most likely looking for a way to redeem herself all her life.

"Alright now let's see what happens if I focus on that spot in front of me and...." she clasped her fist in her palm and teleported a good walking distance from where her original standing spot was and spun in place. "Woah still need to practice a bit." she said clutching her head still looking around. Only more doors here leading to cities. "Well this can't be right..." she mumbled only to teleport again.

This time however when she landed she fell over and rolled. "Owowowow ow!" she said in slight pain. When she had gotten up she looked around this time a few doors some to places some that had people's name. However she knew none of these people and ignored them. And then she started thinking something again.