A Murder of Murders

THARJA IS BIRB TOO

[ You wonder what Tavros brought, then shake yourself, angry at your subconscious for even suggesting theft from someone like that. You’ve already gone weeks without talking to him, something that’s wearing on you. To mark your reunion by stealing from him would be the biggest slap in the face ever. ]

[ Eventually, it dawns on you that Henry probably doesn’t keep his eyeball-in-a-jar on his person at all times. You’re already in Eori, visiting Nico; you decide to pay his apartment a visit. ]

[ You sneak in through the window easily enough, and there it is, on his nightstand: that creepy eyeball in a jar. You praise yourself internally for finding it so quickly, slip it into your bag, and make to leave the room again — when someone opens the door behind you, turning on the oil lamp. ]

[ Shit. ]

[ You turn to see Henry standing in the doorway, and do the first thing your panicked brain comes up with: ]

DAVE: surprise! 

Humming a Plegian funeral song, he paused outside his room for a moment, sure that there was someone inside his room that shouldn't have been...brushing the feeling aside, he threw the door open and sent a stray wisp of fire out to the lamp to illuminate...

"Oh!" Henry said, somehow blinking without opening his eyes. "Weird Kid! This is a surprise! I was sure I wasn't going to see you for another week or two at the very least!"

Henry set his parcel down on the table, glancing the fellow corvid enthusiast up and down thoughtfully. 

His whistling brought a smile to her face. If music existed then she may just be able to survive until she figured out how to get back. She would simply dance back through but multiple gut feelings warned her against it. Raising her head to inhale the fresh country air, she hummed a few bars of one of her songs, just to see if she remembered it. Her voice carried easily across the vicinity, coasting on the breeze and downhills.

"Lots o'people forgot lots o'things on the way over, it seems," Henry said, nodding sagely. "Least I still remember how to talk to birds...and how to throw fireballs...and how to transmutate my own suffering into a destructive force of nature...so it's not all bad."

Henry paused at a crossroads, turning on the boy with a toothy grin.

"I'm outie!" Henry said, turning and sprinting down the side path. "Have fun with the zombies Mr. Combat Man! Maybe they'll appreciate the difference between "wrestling" and "fighting with your hands!"

"A pleasure," she greeted, taking a step away from the swirling rift, uncomfortable with the way it made her stomach churn, "I’m Red."

"I can see that!" Henry said cheerfully. "...Oh, wait, is that your name too? Wow, lucky that your hair matched your name or things would have been awk-ward~"

"But I'm not from around here either," Henry said with a shrug. "I got tugged through an Outrealm Gate same as you! Been here for a couple of weeks now; seeing the sights, sampling the food, throwing fire at bad guys...typical tourist stuff!"

The question about music was an odd one and Henry whistled a few bars of a Plegian nursery rhyme to test it out. 

  The muse looked down to the jacket. “Doggies? This was generated from tender carbon fibre and refined diodes.” Though, some pooches were also created from the same materials so the stranger’s qualms weren’t completely outrageous. Though she had a feeling they did not share the same conception of ‘dog’.

Red raised a hand to clutch her aching forehead. There was something so jarring about the way this person spoke. Something so alien about it. Not just him, the entire landscape around her was foreign, sweeping hills, green pastures for days and silhouettes of other cities off the edge of their sector. She wondered what kind of architect designed these these grids in a way that she wasn’t able to examine its topology. Unless…

This was a lie, of course...Henry could only turn people's blood into boiling lead and he wasn't so sure he could do that anymore; not with all his magic going all wonky. 

"Well, this is a country!" Henry said. "A pretty big one too! Though something tells me that you're looking for one in particular! 'Fraid I can't help you there; I'm not exactly an expert on world geology!"

””Not at home anymore?” You mean…?” Red turned around at the towering gateway, hues swirling together to the tune of an ethereal humming. Particles and dust sometimes found itself caught in the rippling matter and disappeared.

The last thing she remembered was The Camerata attacking her and… She looked down to the material she suddenly was aware of in her hands. A black jacket with a gold prism on the back. That jacket. His jacket. Her fingers gripped the material, crimson eyebrows pinching.

"I mean, unless you have some sort of freaky amnesia thing going on and you actually live a couple houses up the road, you're probably not anywhere you think you are!"

Henry liked to think of himself as something of an expert on being tumbled through weird rifts and waking up without an earthly idea of where he was. After the incident with the vegetarian zombies and the one time he went to a universe built around a hotspring, he could understand how screwy the whole Outrealm thing was for so many people. 

"Here!" Henry said simply, tearing off a piece of his dinner roll and passing it to Frederick who fluttered down from the rafters to peck at Henry's lunch. "Middle of the street to be more specific. Existing somewhere on an undefined physical plane to be more vague!"

My current favorite Fire Emblem: Awakening pairings: