"Honored One, I need to talk to you about that M-Pox disease, do you have—"
Wong stopped mid-sentence as he looked around the room.
Wong's gaze drifted toward the sprawling mattress. The sheets were slightly crumpled. Right in the center of the bed, completely unguarded, sat the yellow Mind Stone and the golden Eye of Agamotto, reflecting the dim afternoon light.
'Sigh… Where did that guy go off to now.'
…
[ The Blackbird X-Jet - En Route to San Francisco ]
Logan sat in the pilot's seat, his cigar unlit as he kept his eyes on the navigation console. Beside him in the co-pilot seat, Scott Summers adjusted his ruby-quartz visor.
Logan glanced at the rearview monitor, grunting softly. He didn't need his heightened senses to know the vibe in the back was entirely… troublesome.
Wanda sat on the left side of the bay, her arms crossed tightly over her apprentice robes, her eyes fixed entirely on the shifting clouds outside the window. Across from her sat Illyana, her jaw rigid, her hands resting flat on the sheath of her Soulsword.
'Why. Just why.'
Rintrah was wedged into a center seat between them. He was sweating, his fingers twitching as he kept his eyes locked on his own hooves, trying his absolute best to pretend he was a piece of inanimate cargo.
He really wanted to scream at his Master and say something about fixing this. But, then again, human women are so confusing.
R'Vaalian cows are better.
Further up, Piotr sat near Jean Grey and Rogue. Rogue was looking back at the three Kamar-Taj apprentices, then leaned toward Jean, whispering under her breath. "Sugar. What's got those kids so wound up?"
Jean Grey rubbed her temples, offering a weary, sympathetic smile. As a telepath, she didn't need to read their minds to feel the absolute trainwreck of emotional energy vibrating from the back seats. "Just standard romantic rivalry drama, Rogue. Best let them sort it out themselves."
Suddenly, Wanda gasped.
She flinched, her hand flying straight to her collarbone as she gripped the crimson pendant Satoru had given her. The metal, which had been radiating a constant, comforting warmth since she put it on ever since, suddenly went… cold.
Across from her, Illyana stiffened. Her yellow eyes widened as she clutched her own black Uru pendant.
The two women looked up at the same time, their silent war instantly forgotten as their eyes met in shared, sudden panic.
"Satoru/Gojo?"
Rintrah looked up, his large ears perking up as he looked between the two girls, sensing the sudden terror that they were feeling.
He was about to ask what was up.
"Hey, back there," Logan called out over his shoulder, his gruff voice cutting through the panic. "We're five minutes out from the San Francisco docks. Strap in and get your heads in the game. Whatever you kids are fighting about, it waits until we clear out that warehouse."
Wanda and Illyana completely ignored Logan's gruff warning. Their eyes remained locked onto each other, the fierce rivalry that had consumed them only minutes ago completely wiped out by a shared confusion on what was happening to their espective pendant.
Rintrah leaned forward as far as his seatbelt would allow, his large green ears twitching as he looked between them.
"What is it?" he whispered. "Did something happen?"
"The energy," Wanda murmured. "The warmth from Master Gojo... it's completely gone."
Illyana's grip on her own black Uru pendant. "You know, that Cursed Energy that he has, it just cut off? I don't know. It's not there anymore."
"How? Maybe it's just… out of battery?" Rintrah said with a chuckle.
Wanda and Illyana glared at him and that made him zip his mouth.
Rintrah swallowed hard, his comedic relief completely dying out as he felt the genuine panic radiating from both women. "But he just left us in the lobby! He said he was going back to check on the data… you guys are worrying too much, don't worry."
"I hope you're right," Wanda after a moment.
Illyana said nothing, but her jaw remained rigid.
Before the silence could stretch any further, the heavy mechanical whine of the Blackbird's landing gear deploying cut through the cabin.
After a few minutes, the jet landed. Logan unbuckled his harness first and stood up. He threw a stern look at the three Kamar-Taj apprentices. "Alright, magic crew. We've got a warehouse full of fish oil supplements to dispose of. Move."
Wanda and Illyana stood up in perfect synchronization, their formal robes rustling as they moved toward the exit line.
Rintrah's gaze lingered on the two girls and then he sighed. 'I really hope you're fine master… Also, I hope you'll talk to these two women after we're done here.'
…
[ Meanwhile ]
Satoru spun erratically through a tunnel of blinding light.
Colorful lights flashed and strobed past him in violent streaks of neon blue, emerald green, and deep violet. He couldn't tell if he was falling, flying, or simply being stretched across dimensions.
He completely lost all tracking of direction, time, and gravity. For what felt like a few hours, his six-foot-three frame was just ruthlessly tossed and flipped around inside the chaotic vortex.
Then, without warning, the pressure violently dropped.
Pop!
Satoru was forcefully spat out of the air. He hit the ground… or sand, hard. Tumbling and rolling repeatedly down a steep sand dune before finally coming to a halt.
He lay flat on his back for a moment, staring straight up. The sky above wasn't the crisp, cloudy horizon of the Himalayas.
It was a scorching, cloudless, washed-out blue dome dominated by a blindingly harsh sun.
"Ugh... my head," Satoru groaned, pushing himself up on his elbows.
He shook his head to clear the dizziness, his white hair messy and covered in fine grains of sand. He looked around, his crystalline blue eyes blinking at the landscape. Vast, rolling waves of empty, golden-red sand dunes stretched out in every direction as far as his vision could reach. The heat rising from the ground was immense, warping the horizon in shimmering waves.
He discovered he was sitting in the middle of a massive, desolate desert.
Satoru instinctively reached down to his pockets, checking his sides. His hands came up empty. He reached instinctively toward his forehead.
'Not there.'
He reached to his chest—the Eye of Agamotto wasn't there either.
"Oh, great," Satoru muttered, a dry, sarcastic smile forming on his face as he ran a hand through his sandy hair. "Now, where the fuck am I?"
He stood up, brushing the heavy sand off his formal black sorcerer robes. Even without the stones, his Six Eyes immediately began analyzing the environment.
Suddenly, a sharp, blinding wave of agony ripped straight through his skull.
Satoru violently gasped, his knees instantly buckling under him as he collapsed right back onto the scorching sand.
He tightly clutched his head with both hands, his fingers digging into his scalp as the sheer, unadulterated weight of the universe began to crush his brain from the inside out.
"Ah—! Dammit...!" he choked out, his vision swimming violently as he rolled over onto his side, groaning in raw pain.
He concentrated inside of him to see what was wrong, only to find that—
His Cursed Energy was completely gone. The space-time distortion had ruthlessly siphoned his entire reservoir dry during those chaotic hours inside the tunnel. He didn't have a single drop of energy left to convert into Reversed Cursed Technique.
For the first time since he had mastered his powers, his brain wasn't being automatically refreshed.
The endless, infinite torrent of raw information from his Six Eyes — the atomic structure of every grain of sand, the radiation of the foreign sun, the thermal heat signatures of the desert — was violently overloading his nervous system with no automatic 'healing'.
"Stop... just... shut up for a second..." Satoru grunted, burying his face directly into the hot sand, his muscles and veins bulging across his neck from the pressure.
'Man, I really didn't miss this feeling…'
He curled into a tight, desperate ball on the side of the dune.
Because of the suddenness of it all, Satoru Gojo… passed out.
The heat from the desert sun continued to bake environment, shimmering in wavy lines over the vast expanse of emptiness. Satoru lay completely still, his breathing shallow, a lone figure in black fabric partially swallowed by the gold-red dunes.
A long, quiet stretch of time passed before the sound of trudging footsteps broke the silence.
Ten tall silhouettes slowly emerged over the crest of a nearby dune, riding smoothly on the backs of camels.
The individuals riding were swearing something like armor underneath a cover of traditional white and cream-colored kanduras. Lightweight keffiyehs were wrapped securely around their heads and faces, protecting them from the stinging wind and the harsh glare of the desert sun.
The rider leading the right flank suddenly pulled hard on his camel's reins, forcing the animal to halt.
He raised a gloved hand, squinting through the heat shimmer, and pointed a straight finger toward the base of the dip below.
"Look," he called out, his voice muffled by the linen covering his mouth. "There is someone out there."
The rest of the riders slowed their mounts to a stop, their eyes narrowing as they locked onto a figure on the sand.
A man… or teenager in dark robes with hair as white as salt, lay face-down and motionless.
They guided their camels down the slope in a quiet, single-file line, circling the unconscious Satoru Gojo.
None of them dismounted immediately. They merely sat atop their beasts, watching the stranger silently.
The rider who had first spotted Satoru turned his mount toward the center of the formation. He looked at the one in the center.
"He is still breathing, but barely," the rider murmured, awaiting instructions. "Should we save him, Ajak?"
The one named Ajak, a woman, gave a nod. "Bring him to Babylon. Phastos, mount him on your camel."
...
[ Author's Notes ]: Last chapter for the week. See you on Monday!
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