>>“You are so stupid. That is the worst reason ever to get married. You're supposed to love someone first. You can't just take shortcuts to 'happily ever after'. It doesn't work that way.”

Effie looked up at the girl, mild disbelief showing through her tears. Was she for real? Love someone first? Happily ever after? Wasn't their term for fairy tales?
Seriously?

"Love is a ting you learn" she sniffed, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand "Dat I know. Fausto says he looks for someone who don't want him because he is famous and rich. I don't care that what is he. We want the same."

Kinda. Sorta. All right, so I don't mind that he is rich. Sue me...

“I don't want him...” because he's famous “...to marry someone he doesn't even love.” Katrina crossed her arms stubbornly and congratulated herself on a good save. Freud had almost made her almost say that she wanted Fausto, but she wasn't even really sure about that. She was sure that she didn't want Miss Mail Order to have him. Not unless they fell good and in love first.

Effie was settling down to sniffling now. And pouting, it would seem. Every word she said was full of pout. It was also full of untruths and half truths. The girl was deluding herself about a lot of things. Either that, or someone else was.

Katrina would set things straight, “He isn't rich. That's the chick in his band that pays for everything. And only famous in New York City so far,” and maybe, possibly on the internet. One never knew in the information age what the internet could do. (Hiss.)

What was the real reason he had ordered a bride? It couldn't be the reason Effie gave. It also was too far for Fausto to go to make a girl jealous. Why then? He was so young and had lots of time to find someone... or wait for someone to grow up a little bit. Unless... what if he didn't have as much time as she thought he did? What if he was sick?

For the first time that hour, Katrina felt the anger in her heart toward Fausto soften a little. Her brow crinkled with worry. She wished he was there right now, so he could dispel her sudden fears.

She'd ask the next best person who might know something. “Effie? Fausto didn't mention anything about being sick to you did he? Or why he decided to get married so young?”

>>“I don't want him...to marry someone he doesn't even love.”

Effie'y eyes narrowed again for a moment, as she looked up at the girl again. She looked stubborn now, like Bo when she was really set on doing something, and for a moment Effie thought she was going to say something else.

My fiancé is a mutant, and I've got competition who is as old as my little sister. Great. Anything else?

>>“He isn't rich. That's the chick in his band that pays for everything. And only famous in New York City so far.”

Yup, I'm screwed.

Effie shook her head; the news couldn't even shock her anymore. So she came here to marry someone who was not rich, or famous, whom she couldn't even kiss, and she had to find it all out from this girl.

"But... if dis place not is his, what is it?" that was the first question that came to her mind. Where was she? More importantly, how soon could she go home to murder a certain Matchmaker?

>>“Effie? Fausto didn't mention anything about being sick to you did he? Or why he decided to get married so young?”

Correction. Not rich, not famous, mutant, and probably dying.

Effie buried her face in her hands again.

"No" came the muffled answer a moment later "He did not say. You ask him."

Yup, the older girl really was clueless. Not in the usual sense that blonde girls are sometimes portrayed in the movies, but in the sense that she had been dragged to a new country where she knew just enough language to get by on a whole bunch of false pretenses.

She didn't even know that Fausto didn't own the whole mansion.

“You're at a school for mutants,” Katrina grumbled half heartedly. She kicked at the remaining laundry until it was safely within the confines of the closet then snapped shut the door. They had a lot of things that needed to get sorted out, and for most of them it was only Fausto that had the answers. It was getting frustrating to only have suspicions and no facts.

Also, the other girl was doing way more than her fair share of pouting; Katrina really felt like she could have used a little time to do that herself, but she couldn't when someone else was already using up the entire sulking budget. The only thing left to do was to get Effie cheered up a little. And perhaps out exploring other parts of the mansion that weren't Katrina's bedroo... their bedroom.

“Come on, let's get you unpacked at least. I don't have much stuff, so there is lots of room in the drawers still, though, the auxiliary storage under the bed might be a tad full,” Katrina reached toward the latches on Effie's suitcase.

>>“You're at a school for mutants”

Oh. That made sense. Duly noted. Great. Shiny. Perfect.
Let us move on to the next disaster.

>>“Come on, let's get you unpacked at least. I don't have much stuff, so there is lots of room in the drawers still, though, the auxiliary storage under the bed might be a tad full”

Effie had no idea what 'auxiliary storage' meant. Nor did she care.
Wait.
Did Katrina still want her to stay? That didn't make sense. She should be happy with the way things turned out for her, and let Effie go home. Or something. Instead, she was about to help her unpack her things.

"Tank you." she nodded, not really knowing how else she could react. Deep breath. Things are going to turn out just fine. It's all going to be all right.
After all, what else could possibly go wrong?

Reaching for the suitcase, her hand brushed against Katrina's.

Katrina had broken one of Calley's rules for safely interacting with mutants: don't touch a stranger's skin. It was an accident, but the second it happened, Katrina instinctively jerked her hand back as if she'd been shocked when they touched. The real shock, though, came after the skin-to-skin contact had been broken.

Energy jolted through her tiny frame. She fell backwards, her eyes wide open in surprise. Part of her landed on her rear on her own hard wood floor. The rest of her was still falling, tumbling endlessly through a dim darkness.

She panicked and flailed, trying to slow her descent, and eventually she had flattened herself out so she was kind of floating. As soon as she thought about landing, she did. The landscape was a blank canvas of grey-black, just waiting for someone to paint on it. As soon as she thought of it, she noticed several open buckets of paint, just beyond her reach. The little illusionist stepped forward and dipped her paintbrush into the purple bucket (for she already had a paintbrush in her hand). As she lifted it out...

“Cool,” she whispered to herself.

The paint from the brush hung shining and wet, suspended in the air wherever she moved the brush. The canvas world apparently allowed three dimensional painting. Grinning from ear to ear, Katrina dipped the brush back into the bucket. Her random swirl looked a little like a dragon already, so with the second brush stroke, she finished it's wings, with the third, the face.

She stepped back to survey her work. It was kind of a mischievous face, Katrina decided, and as soon as the thought existed, so too did the mischief. The half finished paint dragon grinned at her slyly and suddenly jumped backwards, splashing through the other buckets of paint. Other creatures emerged from the multicolored splashes: a fire orange bird flapped upward into the grey sky, a horse made of pure light trotted out of the white puddle, a light blue fairy grinned wickedly at her before it's tiny wings carried it up up and away. The purple dragon swished it's tail and a lime green walking tree was born, black shadow goblins crawled across the floor, and red kittens the size of tigers pounced and tumbled.

This was bad. If they weren't careful, they were going to ruin things, like the big grey city and the little grey people that were living in it.

...Oops.

In her bedroom, Katrina blinked, trying to stop the image, but like a bad dream it seemed destined to run its course. It was all happening so fast, and she couldn't stop it.

--

(Attention all: with 54 mutated strength, this affects the entire city of New York, plus a bit of the surrounding suburbs. This uber-illusion takes place in late January, and lasts approximately a minute.)

Effie watched the girl tumble backwards and for a moment she moved to help her... the next, she was backing away with a sound that on a better day could have been a squeal. The Bride landed on her backside and kept backing away until her back hit the wall.
Not like it mattered.

The visions that sprung to life seemed to cover everything around her, wall to wall, and probably beyond.

By the time the show was over, about a minute later that felt like eternity, Effie was curled up in the corner, knees to her chin, staring at Katrina with her eyes wide.

I knew coming here was a bad idea...

"Vat... vas dat?!"

As suddenly as it had entered her, the extra jolt of energy drained out again. Without it, Katrina felt like she hadn't slept for a week. Every part of her body felt as heavy as stone, her eyelids most of all. When she did manage to blink her eyes open long enough to focus on the ceiling, she wished that she had left them closed.

The ceiling, which normally had a pleasantly stationary speckled pattern, was swirling and shifting. The speckles drew together and apart forming pictures that never should have been there, pictures of oversize kittens chasing cars into mouse hole tunnels and shadow ghouls taking up residence in people's souls.

Dizzy from the swirling after images, Katrina turned her gaze away. The room dripped red paint from the corners and it ran down the walls from behind the picture frames. It oozed from the bed frame and puddled at the Russian girl's feet. Didn't she care that her socks were going to be ruined?

The older girl grinned at her with a mischievously purple grin,

>>>“Vat... vas dat?”

Green paint dripped from the girl's gums and dribbled down her chin. The little illusionist let her eyes close again. The images were only slightly less disturbing with a backdrop of black than they were superimposed on the unfortunate reality of the power-fubar-upping mutant that was sitting on her bed.

“Bad combination. Of mutations.” Katrina mumbled as best she could. Each word felt like a thousand white paint horses were trying to drag it back down her throat before she could utter it. She thought that she had gotten the words out, but to her ears, they only sounded like dragon hatchlings screeching.

“You need. Gloves.”

Talking was so not worth it. Neither was being awake for that matter. The unconsciousness that was eating at her like worms from her eyes inward finally won over her negligible will to stay awake.

The boy was alone with his thoughts, trying to put some order on his head and heart, but it was not easy. It was quite complicated to put these two to work in something together. The stairs were comfortable to just lay there and think, the hard stair was a good reminder that all of it was real. He had a lot of thoughts in his mind, most part of these usually escape for his mouth, but then he needed that silence to organize his feelings. What should he do with Kat and Effie?
He covered his eyes with his hands, with his sight annulled he could see just darkness. So quiet, just distant sounds came to him but these were just a background for his inner fight. Different ideas crawled from each neuron, just to annoy him 'cause most of them were doubts and fears. Just to start sucking his mental sanity, like a cold soda. How could it taste? His hands moved to his neck covering his ears for few seconds drowning sounds a bit. When his hands reached his shoulders, he opened his eyes slowly but even when his hands were not on his ears all the sounds were softened. The world he was expecting to see was not there. His elegant clothes lost all it's magic, all seemed dead.

He was painted gray, like everything else. Fausto could not see all the extension of the mansion grounds, just a part of it but he had the feeling that all the city changed. He had the feeling that all the world died and he was dead too. He was as gray as the world, everything seemed to be bigger than before. Why did he feel so tiny? Was it his imagination or he was becoming smaller each second? Perhaps it was just a illusion create by these slate colors. Who turn off the colors? Who killed the world?

A grizzled man in a monochromatic world, all the same boring color except by those giant monsters that wore the rainbow as clothes... The little gray man was terrorized but fascinated, he could not move his body nor take his eyes (ash colored) off these creatures that move dangerously near him, almost about to stomp on him. Walking around... most like dancing above the stone city. It was like they were dancing with him and over him, next to him. It was a party in his body, or outside it... These monsters were everywhere, closer and far away at the same time, it was difficult to say for the lack of color of the environment. The paint that made the monster was brilliant and full of life, he was sure they were made of paint, perhaps some in the texture of their fur told him about it... Why these lively colors seemed to be so tasty?

A giant foot descended toward him at a amazing speed, it was big enough to crash all his bones at once and big enough for him to run away in time. He could not dodge it, move away or duck... he did nothing. Several blinks later Fausto was seeing the world he wanted to see.
He was alone at the stairs that lead to the mansion. The sun was as bright as always, not like his other self. That gray, dull ball in the sky of that other world. Perhaps he fell in a wormhole... or perhaps...

Then he realize when he had felt the same sensation as that time, something like that happened on Katrina's room. That time it was different but the sensations could be very similar. It was like he lived everything but it was not true at all. Like her illusions.
His legs seemed like jelly, he was unable to move them well but he manage to enter the mansion. It was difficult to reach her room, but even dizzy as he was, he could find it. The closed door did not make any attempt to resist his desire to be in the room. It was impossible for the simple keyhole and lock system made of who know what weak metal to resist his deadly fluids...
There they were, where he left them but... Katrina was unconscious on the floor with her hair covering part of her face while his Russian bride was conscious in fetal position like a little child that saw a murder or perhaps a true monster coming from under the bed, those beautiful eyes wide open, scared, terrorized. That something was not there when he arrived.¨What happened? What did you do with Katrina?¨ He yelled at her without hope of an answer. He was not sure what happened but seeing Effie was not in a good condition either it was not fair to attack her... She was going to tell him what happened later. ¨Can you stand up and walk? Follow me to the infirmary...¨ He did not wait more, if she hear him or not, was her problem.
He lifted her body like if she was made of glass, with extreme caution trying to not break her fragile body. At least he could kiss her while she was in glass form... that though drew at smile on his worried face but he did not have time to smile, his legs recovered a little of it's strength. It was not the time to be weak, he could curl in a corner scared of the monsters later.
Worried faces stared at him as he moved to the infirmary, lot of them asked things that he could not understand. He did not care anyway.
His legs moved hastily until the three of them were at DocProf's doors.

>>“Bad combination. Of mutations. You need. Gloves.”

Effie kept staring. Katrina blacked out. It was not good. So very not good. Mutations? Wasn't that plural? Katrina was clearly a mutant, otherwise why would she be in a school for mutants, but what did she mean, combination...
Dammit. Dammit. Dammit.
Gloves? She needs gloves? For what?!

>>¨What happened? What did you do with Katrina?"

And it kept getting worse. Fausto returned, bringing with him all the memories of her recent discoveries about what and who he was, and more importantly, what and who he wasn't. If she hadn't been so scared, she would have been mighty pissed.
Fausto yelled.
Effie winced, and curled up even smaller. What did she do with Katrina?!

"Nothing!" she snapped "I not do nothing!"

She watched him lift he blonde girl up into his arms. Yup. He liked her. A lot. That much was clear even to a scared-to-half-death Efimia.
Maybe she could just run.

>>"Can you stand up and walk? Follow me to the infirmary...¨

Effie stood, and walked, as if in a dream. More like, a nightmare. A nightmare that kept getting worse every time she thought she would wake up.

What did she mean, combination?...

Continued in The Curious Case of the Shattered Dream.