3 Star Story: Sleeve

Part 1: Tower Rising

It spiraled out of the ground mere minutes after the plane took off, carrying almost every available team with it. Sleeve stood at the lounge window staring off into the distance.

“Fucksocks,” she breathed.

“Someone’s going to have to go out there.” Iliana was sitting on the arm of the sofa swinging her feet a little. Sleeve shook her head.

“That someone’s not going to be you, Ily Bean. I have a feeling about this one. Trust me?” Sleeve asked.

Iliana gave her a dejected look, but she nodded. They had an understanding. If Iliana went, so would Chris and Jayden, and Sleeve couldn’t have that. They were strong, she knew that, but this…this was a whole other level of crazy.

“Go to them, keep them here for now. I’m going to put out an alarm, assemble some of the higher ranking deathscythes,” Sleeve said. “Hold down the fort here, try to keep your peers from running out there.”

“Got it,” Iliana said, and she disappeared like she had never been there. Sleeve stood in that room for a long time on her own, heart pounding. It was a fraction of a minute, but it felt like an eternity. Too long, in either case.

Sleeve had people she needed to call. This should be dealt with.

Part 2: Staff Meeting

They stood and sat around the table, some of them pacing like Sleeve and Katrina were both doing now. Clarice sat on a chair with wheels, her claymore in her hand. Ms. Alice and Blink sat on opposite ends of the table with intense looks on their faces.

“We seem to all be so unanimously agreed that this is not a situation unto which our younger students ought to be sent thusly,” Ms. Alice said.

“What?” Kat asked, twitching a little bit.

“She’s saying this is a higher level mission,” Sleeve said, “and to keep the kids out of it. And for once I agree. We sent almost everyone to investigate that other tower and now this one pops up? It’s too soon, there’s no way that’s a coincidence.”

“So let’s go!” Kat roared, slamming her fist into the table.

“Let’s not be hasty,” Dru said, raising a hand. “I don’t trust this, the entire structure is shrouded to me. Things like that don’t tend to mean anything good.”

Kat looked like she was going to flip the table.

“Ve can’t just leave it zere,” Clarice said.

“I’m inclined to agree, things like that don’t tend to remain benign for very long either,” Maverick said, leaning back in his seat.

“Then we’ll send a scouting party,” Blink said. “Your objectives are to gather information primarily, but if you can detain whatever is inside there causing all of this, and bring whatever it’s doing in there to a halt, don’t hesitate.”

“Yeah!” Kat screamed.

“Katrina.”

Kat slunk back down to her seat and gave Blink a sidelong look.

“Use your inside voice when you’re inside,” Blink deadpanned. “You have twenty minutes to prepare. Now go.”

Part 3: Prophecy

Sleeve was throwing on her mission clothes. She hadn’t worn her red motley in a very long time, but she felt like, right now at least, it was appropriate. She smoothed herself out and nodded, starting for her office door, only to find Dru standing there waiting for her.

“Sleeve, we have to talk,” she said.

“What is it?” Sleeve asked, leaning back on her desk.

“I can’t make out much about any of this. It’s unsettling. I only got precious little, but you need to understand what all of this means for you,” Dru said.

“It means I have to go out and help my friends seal this place,” Sleeve said. “We have a duty. But you aren’t going, are you?”

“The material it’s made of is jacking with my sanity, I’m afraid I would do more harm than good,” Dru said. She sounded apologetic at least, not afraid only sensible. “But Sleeve, this is about you. If you go in there…”

“What?” Sleeve asked.

“You can turn the tide. You can save a lot of lives, if you go in there and do this. But if you do you won’t be coming back out,” Dru said. “Knowing that, do you still want to go?”

Sleeve stared at her. Dru had always been an odd girl. Ever since she first got to SNP, all she’d ever been was weird, and then even weirder. But Sleeve knew she was serious about this, as serious as Drusilla had ever been about anything.

And Sleeve knew, too, that when Dru came up to you and told you something random, that she couldn’t possibly know, it meant she did know. She could trust her council.

“Why would you tell me?” Sleeve asked. She could feel the blood draining from her face.

“You have the right to know what you are really getting into,” Dru said. She’d gone back to her normal tranquility, but Sleeve couldn’t follow.

“That doesn’t make it a choice, Druzy,” Sleeve said, smiling a little. It didn’t reach her eyes, she knew that, but she had to make the attempt. She could have said more, could have thanked her, but Sleeve knew in that moment that if she didn’t just go she was going to lose her nerve.

She couldn’t afford that.

Many lives couldn’t afford that either.

Part 4: Briars and Thorns

They came up on the tower at full speed, Katrina using Pain to propel herself and Sleeve speeding along through the wind. She cut the air like a knife, but there was no drag for her, not like Katrina.

There should have been friction against the air, but this was Sleeve’s element. She could move through it as easily as some other elementals could their own.

And then it happened. The briar rose like a winding snake, uncurling and lashing at her. Sleeve rolled off to the side and kept pushing forward, but Katrina hadn’t been so lucky.

Sleeve could hear her swearing as she rolled into the tower door. She scrambled to her feet, but as she turned around the light was abruptly cut off. Sleeve could see the briars shifting and knitting together to form a tight barrier in front of the door.

Was there another entrance? Could Kat get in or was she stuck inside of this place alone?

Was this what Dru had meant?

You won’t be coming out again.

It must have been. But there was still farther in to go. The lobby was dark and Sleeve could see the stairs.

She used wind to lift herself into the air. Whatever happened here, she was sure she might still have the element of surprise on her hands. She wanted to keep it.

Part 5: Through the Garden

It was completely dark as Sleeve floated through the chamber. The plants appeared to be just plants, but she knew better. Through her soul perception she could hear them, their reedy whispers with that dissonant edge that marked corruption.

Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was just alien. That wouldn’t be the only thing here that was completely otherworldly. It wouldn’t be the only thing about this that Sleeve couldn’t understand.

But one way or another, as she floated over the tops of these plants, none of them reacted to her. They stretched out through the ground, that alien hum a soft undercurrent as Sleeve’s feet touched down on the other side and she began to climb the stairs.

Part 6: Pollen

The moment she stepped into the next room there was a hissing sound and it began to fill with dust.

Sleeve pulled for wind as a reflex, purging the air around her and keeping her from inhaling the…what was it? Dust? Pollen? She bet it was the latter, this place was full of plants it would only make sense.

She couldn’t be completely sure she was filtering all of it out unless she focused all of her elemental ability on it. So she walked. Sleeve kept the air around herself clean and the dust and pollen from touching her.

The plants whispered, they were aware, but Sleeve was silent. The panpipes that were her soul played a soft tune, calm as she tread untouched through the overgrown chamber.

So far so good, she thought, but there was only more up ahead.

Part 7: Lashes and Vines

The next room had more plants, and Sleeve could hear the root system under the ground. She tried to fly through, thinking the plants wouldn’t know she was there if she didn’t touch the ground, but a tendril wrapped her leg and pulled her in.

Sleeve slashed and tried to pull away, the blade of her partial spinning on its axis in her twisted metal forearm. She scored a cut in the vine, but it wasn’t enough. She felt herself slam into the grass.

More vines came up, wrapping her, pinning her arms. The vines whipped, and she felt the force of them cut into her back, deep. She grit her teeth and struggled against them, but they were too strong for her.

She felt another lash cut into her back. Deep pain. Her vision swam.

These plants were going to tear her apart unless she did something. She couldn’t give in to plain, she couldn’t give in and let herself die. She had been in this place before. She had been in do or die straights and she had come out of it every time.

Maybe she didn’t always win. Maybe sometimes she crawled out of them battered and bleeding.

“No,” she whispered, and the wind picked up.

Yes.

“So you are listening,” Sleeve breathed. The wind began to whip and she pushed herself up off the ground, arms and legs still bound by the vines, the lashes still biting into her back and sides. “I am Sleeve C. Donovan. Catalyst of chaos. Instigator of insanity. Harbinger of Armageddon.”

She took a sharp breath as a vine hit her hard and a stitch flared to life in her chest.

“I don’t know who you think you are,” she whispered, “but I know you can’t know who I am. Otherwise you would know…”

Rocks began to lift from the ground, flaring up around Sleeve as the wind propelled them forward. There were ripping sounds, each stone hitting the mark dead on as they tore through vines and green tissue.

Chloroform spattered the walls and floor, even getting on Sleeve’s arms and face.

“…I don’t stay down.”

She pushed out with a blast of wind and the vines that held her unraveled and fell to the ground. Sleeve flashed partial.

Her body burned as she spun into action, cutting the plantlike creatures to ribbons. They scored hits, they even gripped her with their tendrils, but they didn’t pull her down again. They couldn’t.

Part 8: The Wild Blooming Rose

The door was heavy stone. Sleeve leaned forward and pressed her hands against it, shoving it open with a massive strain of her arms and back. She almost stumbled through, but held herself upright with a current of air.

When she walked into the room, it was slow and calm. The woman sat on a slab of a table, her red dress glinting in the low light. She seemed far away right now, her focus somewhere else.

“Hey, Jessica Rabbit,” Sleeve said, “eyes on me.”

“Just a moment,” the woman said, holding up a hand with gently curling fingers.

She was long of body with dark red hair and eyes the color of blood, but her face, those cheekbones, the shape of her bloody eyes…

“That’s not what you really look like, is it?” Sleeve asked, folding her arms.

“Of course not,” the woman responded. She sounded distracted. Behind her, there was an empty socket in the wall and a glimmering breach beginning to spread.

Sleeve stepped forward. The socket was small. So was the emerald in the woman’s necklace. She was distracted like someone that was talking on the phone. Her mind wasn’t all here, but her body was.

She could have strode forward and attacked. It was activating her soul perception though, that became Sleeve’s saving grace. This woman’s power was immense and it washed over her like a wave.

Sleeve shut her soul perception down and it left her ears ringing. She could wait. She could wait and watch for a moment, get her bearings. She was already so hurt from fighting those elemental creatures, and yet Sleeve had a horrible feeling that this was going to come down to a fight.

It wasn’t a fight Sleeve was sure she could win.

The woman blinked a couple of times and looked up at Sleeve, then.

“I’m sorry, I had visitors somewhere else,” she said, and answered with an easy smile. “I am Rose Red.”

“Sleeve—“

“C. Donovan, catalyst of chaos, instigator, blah, blah,” Rose Red said, gesturing with a hand.

Sleeve raised a brow at her.

“That doesn’t mean you know me,” Sleeve said.

“Not directly,” Rose Red admitted. “I know your family though. And in a way I do know you, just not as you are. It’s a long and sordid story, Greensleeves.”

Sleeve stared at her. She had no reason to draw that conclusion.

“Your friends are coming home. They’re going to return to a smoking crater. It doesn’t have to happen, though,” Rose Red said. “I’ve been having a grand old time. I’d like to see them again, but it’s more fun if I give you a chance to stop me.”

This woman was immensely powerful. This woman was a sorceress. Sleeve had just come out of a massive battle, she was injured. Not quite on death’s door this time, but she didn’t have another fight like that in her, not with someone like this.

You can turn the tide. You can save a lot of lives, if you go in there and do this. But if you do you won’t be coming back out.

Sleeve took a deep breath and let it out again. She wasn’t going to be able to write a letter about this, was she?

No.

She lifted her gaze. If a swarm of plant monsters couldn’t keep her down, she wasn’t going to let a prophecy do it either.

“Thinking about what your little friend said?” Rose Red asked. “She’s a smart cookie that Dru. She knows what’s going on here, all of what’s going on here. She didn’t have to warn you. But for every one thing she has said there have been ten that she hasn’t. You could say you’re pretty screwed Sleeve C. Donovan. Your fate is already sealed.”

“But the tundra’s hasn’t? Is that what you’re saying?” Sleeve asked.

“You have a presence in this world, a huge chunk of it,” Rose Red said. “And I can use you to make a mark on it as big as I could if I just destroyed things. I could wipe out a city, but they will miss you more.”

“What happens if I fight you?” Sleeve asked.

“You die.”

“What happens if I don’t?”

“You still die,” Rose Red said. “And so do they.”

“Cute,” Sleeve breathed. “Okay, sorceress, I’ll bite. I’ll fight. Because you asked me for this.”

“I plotted this course for you and gave you no choice,” Rose Red said, getting to her feet. “Don’t pretend it ever could have ended any other way.”

“We’ll see about that. You keep saying it’s inevitable, but I say I’m going to kick your ass, and then I’m going to get up and walk out of here.” Sleeve shook her head. “I am the catalyst. I write my own fate.”

Sleeve ripped the air out of Rose Red’s lungs, and the sorceress must not have expected it because she gasped and it gave Sleeve enough time to lunge forward and cut the chain from around her throat. The green stone clattered to the ground.

With a push of force, Sleeve was thrown across the room. She hit the wall hard and briars began to writhe out of the walls and snake around her. Flashing blades sheared them as they came.

Sleeve came at her again, wind enhancing her lunge as she came flying at Rose Red. The sorceress sidestepped her effortlessly and put a hand against Sleeve’s back, another blow erupting from her fingertips.

Sleeve hit the ground and went rolling. For a moment, her whole body hurt, far too much to move. She couldn’t make herself get up, there was no will, like it had all gone out of her.

Sleeve, stop. Senji’s voice crept into her mind. It was soft, it was distant, but it broke through. You can’t let this happen, get back up.

She was right, Sleeve thought, this is impossible.

But you do impossible things, Sleeve. Remember when I had you dead to rights, when I took your memories and turned them on their head? I looked into your eyes and I started to mess with you, and you stepped back through my gaze. No one can do that, Sleeve, no one but you. Get up.

Rose Red was already upon her, her hand held back and ready to slap Sleeve with another blow of force. Sleeve called wind, launching herself into the air and over Rose Red’s head.

The air passed over her skin. For just a moment in her head she was in mid-leap between trapeze swings, and she landed with a sweeping motion of her foot. Sleeve scored a deep hit along the back of Rose Red’s slinky dress and did a back handspring to get herself some distance.

Sleeve’s chest rose and fell and she kept her eyes on the sorceress.

What now?

Sleeve?

This time the voice was Havok’s. Her heart sunk. When it was Senji it made sense, she really heard him sometimes, but Havok either meant Senji was playing head games with her or she was only hearing things. A hallucination brought on by blood loss and fatigue.

Rose charged her. Sleeve flipped into the air again. It was all she knew how to do. She had to keep moving. Another vine wrapped her arm and she severed it before hitting the ground in a three point landing.

Listen, Sleeve. I never meant to lie to you. I worry about you all the time. I know you’re still watching, Havok’s voice said. You were right with us up until the end. I haven’t forgotten that. Keep fighting. Do you remember Nanook? He was huge. It seemed like we just couldn’t stop him, and then you took his head. Is this bitch really so fucking big and bad?

Another vine swept in and caught her arm, then another. She couldn’t pull in and cut them, she was being torn in two different directions and Rose Red started at her.

She didn’t even look hurt. She was walking. She was calm. She had a tiny smirk on her face as she walked closer, her eyes glinting in the lowlight.

With a single gesture, Rose Red called a blade to her hand. Sleeve’s eyes fell on it.

Neh, Sleeve?

That one hit her like a punch in the gut. Tears sprang to her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. Her arms struggled against the vines, but her body had just taken too much. She couldn’t break them.

You didn’t give up on me. Don’t give up on you. Don’t die here.

Part 9: Second Wind

The push came from inside her soul it felt like. A torrent of wind so harsh it whipped at her skin. There were tearing sounds, the vines rended from their anchor points on the walls as she filled the whole room with wind.

She forced it into her, down into her lungs. She forced her breathing, pushed the oxygen through her. When she got to her feet, it was the air keeping her in motion. She dragged herself across the floor like a marionette and pushed her partial at the sorceress.

Rose Red darted back, but not far enough. Sleeve’s partial scored into her chest, then across her stomach. She whipped her around, drove her back and back.

Sleeve’s muscles refused to cooperate. Her arms wouldn’t move on their own, so every movement she made was all wind. All flight. All her element, using herself as a puppet as she and the sorceress went back and back toward the breach point.

Rose Red’s knife bit into Sleeve’s shoulder. She didn’t even feel it. Deep down inside Sleeve knew that was a bad sign, but she had to keep moving and keep fighting.

She drove the points of both blades into Rose Red’s collarbone. She pried and there was a cracking sound and a moment later both of Sleeve’s arms were limp at her sides. She found what she was looking for with the air and lifted it.

For a moment, Sleeve saw herself reflected in Rose Red’s eyes, her whole body limp and floating there in front of her, head turned down, a look of pure fury on her face. And then the emerald came floating up behind her.

Sleeve pressed forward, both blades coming out with a gust of wind to push the sorceress back into the breach.

“You lose,” Sleeve said.

“Not quite.”

Rose Red stumbled back but even as she moved she was reaching forward, something black glinting in her hand. Her palm pressed against Sleeve’s chest and even through her numbness she felt a searing pain engulf her from that spot outward.

The sorceress laughed madly as she fell backward into the abyss, her arms outstretched as if waiting for an embrace.

Sleeve shifted the air and planted the emerald into the socket above. The abyss blinked out. It was the only thing she could do before her world blackened, all she could do before she lost consciousness.