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The amoeba? The kraken? Maxine wrinkled that area between her eyebrows that she tried not to wrinkle because it was like ironing lines into your forehead. And you couldn’t just smooth those away, no matter what her facial treatments said.

“No no no, those—“ Maxine pointed down at the little swirls. “Those are trying to kill us. So we kill them first. Survival of the fittest. That’s… evolution, right?” Right. “I’m a mutant. I should know.”

She began a thorough investigation of their area and armaments. Stock boxes on the shelf below—check. Dust—check. Octoclip progressively and systematically snarling Allison’s hair, check. Sprinkler system directly overhead—

Oooo. Ooooo. Check.

“I don’t think we need a lighter, or head fire,” the red head said, her eyes locked on target. “Just an extra foot or two of height. Do you have something for smashing?”

Sprinklers got set off by having that little red thingie in their center break. It didn’t really take a fire. Just a little outside help.

“Sam, Sam…” The black pen knew that tone: it tapped itself against her pad twice in an I’m thinking manner, before she could do it herself. She gave it a little scritch behind the cap for being cute. “Code name Cold Steel, right? Just making sure I’ve got everyone straight. It’s so confusing, all this ‘code name, real name’ stuff… Do you have a code name?”

That would be adorable. Maybe Maxine should come up with one for herself. Better yet: maybe she should run a blog contest to name her. A blog contest for charity, even. She’d been trying to bank brownie points with the city, with all her ‘ten percent of the sales go to this, that, and the NYPD.’

>> ”Oh! We’re starting?”

Maxine jumped a little at the exclamation, startling out of her thoughts to smile sheepishly over her notepad. “Sorry. I just want to make sure I get everything down right. I haven’t done too many face-to-face interviews.”

She followed the woman back to the living room area, and took both the offered seat and her cup of sweet tea. Mmm. “Did you make this yourself? It’s good.”

>> “What else?”

“Let’s see… Some background questions first, I think; give our viewers a chance to know you. It’s the personal angle that really sticks with people.” She flipped a few pages, and found what she was looking for. “You’re from Ireland originally, right? What brought you to the States?”

His mom. Went missing. Five years ago. Maxine had known that Gawain was on his own, but she hadn’t heard any details. This…

>> “…and a few weeks ago I saw her on TV. In the news. I mean, not on the news. In the background."

…Was something she could work from.

“What day, what time, and what station?” She asked, sliding off the couch. Sliding and flouncy skirt aside, her voice was all professionalism. She went to her bookcase, and pushed aside the few books that were on there to uncover the much more plentiful VHS tapes that hid behind them. The sides were hand-labeled; a date, a station, and a post-it note here and there on the cases to mark something of especial interest.

“You should have come sooner,” she muttered to herself. Most of these tapes got recycled back into the stack by her TV, once she’d had time to watch them; the average life-span of a recording in her place was about a week. Not a few weeks. Still: she was a bit behind lately, with interviews and hospital trips. It might still be in here. If it wasn’t… there were other ways. But lord, did she hate searching for specific segments on station websites. The resolution alone was shudder-worthy.

…Yes, Maxine recorded daily news programs. Yes, she recorded on VHS. Yes, she in fact had four VHS players hooked up to her televisions—two in the living room, and two in the bedroom. Maxine was serious about her competitor research. And up until a few weeks ago, she’d been too broke for better equipment. If Mirror Mirror had anything to say to that, now would be the time for him to shove it.

“I’m a supply animator, dear Prince, not a manipulator.” This was clearly a distinction she’d had to explain before. She couldn’t remember if she’d explained it to him, specifically: all the irked explanations tended to blend together, after awhile.

If she were a manipulator, she wouldn’t have any trouble with Rex.

(Rex, meanwhile, was still having magnet troubles. It had gotten one tentacle free… but using that tentacle to peel at its others quickly proved counter-productive.)

As the growing boy listed off his globe-trotting itinerary, the red head carefully gathered together every shred of her jealousy, and shoved it down. Far down. When she was a real reporter, she’d get to travel to England, too. And Germany.

Oooh, that smirk was back. Mirror Mirror didn’t know how close he came to a hair-ruffling, with that one little backwards glance.

She settled, instead, for dramatically swooning against his shoulder.

“Of course. Verily hath I pined away for thee, Sir Gawain, Prince of Orkney.” Bat bat, eyelash bat. “So. What brings you to my tower?”

The teen hadn’t stopped by for months. The red head had little illusions about boys dropping by unannounced: it was always for a reason.

The shelves weren’t swaying at all: they’d never been. Just the floor. It was being as silly as Allison. Hmph. Well, they simply wouldn’t keep company with it any longer.

Maxine climbed. A foot here, a hand there, and whoop!—on to the next shelf. It was actually sort of fun. Way easier than a rock climbing wall. More like… a vertical set of stairs. A vertical set of stairs, where she occasionally had to knock things to the floor to clear space for herself.

Rex helped, by climbing over to Allison, and trying to latch onto her back.

“Here?” Maxine murmured. “I don’t know... What do you want to happen here?” She wiggled a leg over the pillow, a smile stretching over her face. One pale green eye lazily blinked opened.

And blinked again.

And lightning-scooted up to the headboard with a little shrill, clutching the pillow in front of her for modesty’s sake. It probably didn’t help, that the pillow was actually bigger than the clothes she was wearing.

“Gawain. My, ah, Knight. I... wasn’t expecting you.” The red head ran a hand through her tangled morning hair, her freckles standing out darkly against her blush. “To what do I owe this pleasure?” She tucked her legs up next to her body; they disappeared behind the pillow, so that she was just a flushed face peering over its fluffy-stuffed top.

On the floor, Rex had discovered the mirror-walkers feet. There seemed to be some recognition, there: pat, pat, scratch, the tentacles greeted the teen’s shoes, before they began methodically entangling the bed sheet with his shoelaces.

The wet paper hit the ground and skidded, with a sound like a whimper. It didn’t go far enough to hit the other packs: nonetheless, they froze.

Maxine hurried to catch the girl as she fell back. She hopped off the shelf she’d started climbing, arms extended. The catch was a success. But she didn’t exactly stick the landing. Maxine’s foot touched down on a slippery patch, and—

Crack, the floor kindly greeted her. At least it was a softer landing for Allison, this time...

At the end of the aisle, the paper packs became even more still: a shiver seemed to run through their packaging. Maxine groaned on the floor: the packs burst wide open, their sheets pouring out in a torrent of individual whirlwinds about three feet tall.

A paperclip tentacle snaked over Maxine’s forehead from her wiry kraken hat. The red head groaned again, and slid up on her elbows. She blearily blinked at the mini-tornados.

“Huh,” she said eloquently. “So, does your hair really do... fire? Because... water. We might need some.” And she’d already left her reality behind...