Oddties, Part 21 - Sentry

After a moment Ronja shook her head slowly.

"Fine, so maybe Marqués wasn't lying about everything," she admitted. "That doesn't mean he told us the whole truth."

"You went to talk to Marqués again?" mist-Tove spoke again.

Alaia was sensing a headache coming on. This day was a little much. She decided to just ignore it, and go with the flow, and assume Tove was really there, since Ronja said she saw her too. Then again, she might be imagining Ronja too, so who knows. But for now she would go with it. So she summarised to her everything that had happened that day, and what Marqués and told them.

"You should have seen Alaia," Ronja told Tove as Alaia was ending her explanation. "She was all fire and determination and badassery. Remind me to never get her angry."

Alaia felt herself blushing, but Tove seemed distracted by the other things she had heard.

"Yeah, that's the Planar Imp he saw," Tove said. "It's the thing that's been causing the oddities. Like I said, I was trying to catch it the other day, and somehow ended up jumping planes--"

"What does that even mean?" Alaia interrupted her. It was good to know Tove was mostly okay, but there was okay as in not in immediate danger and okay as in safe and home. She was still worried.

"I honestly don't quite know," Tove admitted. "I think I'm in some other kind of, uh... reality now? I don't have much time to explain, but there are a few of these parallel realities or whatever, I'm told. It's just that the Imp is the only thing the people here know about that can jump between the planes. And yes, the people here are wonderfully helpful, and I'm perfectly fine. I just want to come back home. There's just no way to do that, except hopefully with the Imp."

"So we need to catch it," Ronja said. Alaia was glad Ronja was able to grasp what was happening. She was starting to seriously lose it. None of what Tove was saying made any sense. It didn't fit even a little bit into anything she knew about anything.

"Yeah, that seems to be the only option," Tove agreed. "But it's easier said than done. The people here have been trying to catch it for a long time, but it keeps jumping between the planes when it's chased, and there's no way to follow it, so it always gets away. Sometimes it takes someone with them. They tell me there are consulate members stuck on basically all the planes except ours, because they got dragged there with the Imp and don't have a way to get back. It only started to do its mischief on our plane a few months back, so it hasn't been long enough for someone to accidentally end up there. It's lucky they've been able to figure out how to contact the other planes, though."

"Can we do something to help catch the thing to get you home?" Alaia asked. She was feeling a new wave of determination taking over her.

"We don't know how to catch it," Tove said. There was a hint of desperation in her voice.

"Are the planes identical?" Ronja asked. She had a thoughtful look on her face.

"No," Tove said. "Not even a little. Everyone here..." she glanced at something they couldn't see. "You know what, I'll tell you about it if I ever get back from here. But no, not really."

"Not even geographically? Is there a city there, a seashore the same shape as here?"

"I... I think it might be. I'm not sure. There is a city with a seashore, but it's very different-looking city."

"But maybe the area used to look the same before the cities were built?" Ronja continued.

"Maybe," Tove said, with doubt and curiosity in her voice. "What are you getting at, Ronja, you should know by now your thoughts are hard to follow if you don't explain them."

"I was thinking, maybe it would be possible to follow the Imp through all the planes at the same time? Is the layout of the places is kinda similar. Even if it did jump planes..."

"Someone would always be on the other side waiting for it," Tove's face lit up, with realisation spreading through it. "Maybe? If the layout of the cities is kinda the same, and if we have people on all the planes, it could work..."

Tove turned away from them, clearly listening to something someone they couldn't see.

"Follow it through all the cities at the same time, if the geographies of the planes line up," she said to that someone. "Yeah. U-huh. There are people on all of them? But my people are there, they can do it. Well, that makes it even easier. How many places? Okay. Okay. Sure."

She turned to look at Ronja and Alaia again.

"Right, so we have some arranging to do here. But they think it might work. There are apparently only a few places where the Imp can pass through to the other planes. Or at least only a few places where it does. So if we put a sentry at each, someone should always be waiting for it if it jumps planes, and we should be able to catch it. They say they thought of it some time ago, but it doesn't work if there's an unmanned plane. Apparently ours was the last one, on all the others there are at least a couple people from the Interplanar Consulate. Oh, yeah, there's an Interplanar Consulate here. Anyway, ours has been the only unmanned one that they know of anyway. But now we have you two there. So it should work. But like I said, we have some arranging to do here, to coordinate time and place over multiple planes of existence, and all that. I'm able to contact Ronja when I need to, so you'll have to tell Alaia what's going on. Or you two have to stick together. Either way, I gotta go now. I'll get back to you as soon as I can."

"Bye," Alaia started, but the mist-Tove was already fading from view. Both she and Ronja stood there quietly for a moment after there was nothing more to look at.

"So now what?" Alaia said.

"Now I suppose there's nothing more to do but wait," Ronja answered. "And get some real work done in the meantime."
_________________________________________________________

There's only a few parts left. I hope we can get this neatly together before the end.

The topic for tomorrow is Coordination.

~matu