[Plot] Trinity

[Narrator]

As the scientists started going over their science works, two guards from Muir entered to escort Will to a more permanent observation room. They took him by the arm, though he yanked himself free, and instead allowed himself to be led deeper into the facility.

As they're walking the guard that had tried to grab Will suddenly stops dead in his tracks while the other one keeps on moving, seeming to pay it no mind that his colleague is falling behind.

"Belittled and insulted the forlorn disciple yet walks with his head held high." the guard intones with a quiet intensity ill-befitting his frame.

[Will Stanton]

"I am no-one's disciple," Will said, as he was marched along. "I renounce, reject and repudiate."

[Narrator]

"For all her bluster she is so very small. Dipping her toes in the ocean that forever beckons and terrified of those of us that would dive to it's depths." the guard responds in hushed tones.

[Will Stanton]

"Is this what passes for therapy in this universe? Trying to break down someone's psyche with nonsense and garbage, before recrafting them in your own image?"

[Narrator]

"Therapy..." the guard muses. "No. It's them who wish to see you molded into something that better befits their narrow minds."

"You; you understand what it means to be. To follow your nature. To not cling to being human."

[Will Stanton]

"I am not human. I haven't been for some time.

I have more in common with that beautiful rock creature they killed than I do with them."

[Narrator]

"And for that they would lock you away as they did me."

[Will Stanton]

That stopped Will for a moment in his tracks.

"You are a guard. You're not locked in here. Yes?"

[Cailleach]

"Not anymore." the guard says with a sly wink, then leans in close to whisper in a familiar but hoarse and raspy voice. "I slipped their bonds and if you so desire, so could you."

[Will Stanton]

"I'm glad you have your retirement plan all squared away," Will said. "A good 401K and a Roth IRA and all those useful things.

And you're right -- if I wanted to get out of here, really really wanted to get out of here, I could do it in a blink of a heartbeat. I can taste the flow of the air around me. Every footstep brings with it thousands of...thousand of ideas and sensations and plans.

But as for you, whoever you are? Allow me to cordially invite you to kiss my creamy clay ass."

[Cailleach]

"You prefer their derision and scorn? I know you've betrayed their trust before for naught but a glimpse of happiness in little Conduit's playhouse." the guard steps back, looking almost a bit confused before his feature slide and shift into the spitting image of Sam. If Sam had eyes that are a little too wide and teeth that are a little too sharp.

[Will Stanton]

"I don't know what the hell you're supposed to be, but it looks like the dollar-store Morrigan costumes are even worse here than I thought.

Conduit had something to offer me, as false and fleeting as it were. What can you give other than a referral for significant dental work?"

[Cailleach]

Cailleach actually looks a bit taken aback.

"I'm not some... pale imitation of someone else!" she snarls but even drugged up Will can tell there's insecurity behind that bark. "I'm the Cailleach of the Winter, Collector of the Lost and Lurker in the Dark." she blusters. "And little Conduit may have build the stage but t'was I who cast a glamour of truth upon it all."

[Will Stanton]

"Ah, you were the director.

It's no wonder you never got a second gig; you had plotholes big enough to drive a semi through. Word for the wise, Leach -- if you let people go off script, your show goes off the rails."

[Cailleach]

"I had... other priorities! Such as this pretender to the mantle of the Raven Queen back there!" she gestures back down the hallway.

[Will Stanton]

"And you figured making her into my little housewives would keep her from spreading her black wings? Good lord, it's an unending staircase, just getting stupider and stupider as I go down. Two or three more alternate versions, and I'll find one of you dead, having forgotten to breathe," Will scoffed.

[Cailleach]

"I split her so she'd be less likely to take note when I joined her flesh. I had to know who this... other me is! If she holds the same Spark, the same purpose, why she wears the Morrigu's feathers when she's so derelict in her duties."

[Will Stanton]

"Take it from someone with a little more experience in these matters.

You split someone strong enough up, and you're just planting seeds that will grow stronger than their original stock. Your actions probably hastened her awakening here, ironically enough. Boy, you are terrible at your job, aren't you?"

[Cailleach]

"You still don't understand. How could you, you're The Implement. Or do you prefer the Hearth? No matter... I learned much and I can see them so much clearer now. Your 'powers', your 'mutations'."

[Will Stanton]

"You'd be lucky if you had a gnat's eyebrow worth of my mutation, Leach.

You're just three people. You face billions. The Implement? The Hearth? Gwion? Plasticine? John Dough?

Every cell of my body is taking in more information than I ever thought possible. I can feel what passes for my brain making new pathways, new connections, new everything, as I pump my cells full of life-giving MGH.

You think you know me. But you know only the reflection off of one facet.

I am Legion."

[Cailleach]

Cailleach's eyes light up.

"Yes! That is a good name. Though mayhap you misunderstood me. I did not come to free you or lay claim. I felt the surge of a kindred spirit, awake and awash in their potential. You are burning bright and it is glorious to behold."

[Will Stanton]

"From what little I've seen of you, calling yourself kindred to me is an exceptional insult, Leach. You offer me nothing. I don't understand? I'll have you know I understand more about this world and everything in it than you ever will; I've lived it from all angles, and I have loved it from all directions."

[Cailleach]

"And yet..." she says, placing a finger on Will's forehead and he can feel his power wane. The fizzing awareness and self-fueling fire of MGH dulls and it takes so much effort to keep it going, like trying to breathe through an ever narrowing straw.

"I do not question your mastery of this world. But never. Ever. Question mine over the next." she hisses before yanking her finger back and Will's Legion's power floods back into him.

[Will Stanton]

Will gasped, falling to his knees, as he quickly went through a withdrawl and fix cycle, the drugs coursing back through his system.

"G...go fuck yourself," he said, in what was quickly becoming his Hit New Catchphrase!

[Cailleach]

"So much we could have learned from each other..." Cailleach sighs. "But I shan't stand in your path, wherever it may lead."

[Will Stanton]

"As..I said," Will said, drawing himself back to his feet. "You have nothing to offer me. The only thing I could learn from you is how to imitate some of the rankest breath I've ever come across.

Now, let's take you back where you belong, shall we? Everything in its proper place..."

[Cailleach]

"I have rather spend enough time in that horribly sterile bottle and I will not be returned to it." she snarls and her arm elongates into a spindly limb to tear the cover off a nearby duct, chucking the cover at Legion as she disappears into the duct-work with a couple of sudden, unnatural movements.

[Will Stanton]

Will did not dodge out of the way of the duct.

Instead, the duct ended up passing through the cloud of yellowish mist that replaced him; a mist that took a half-second to gather itself before flowing up towards the ducts after the Sam-wannabe.

[Cailleach]

By the time the gas cloud reaches Cailleach she no longer has a nose or a mouth and while the chlorine gas burns her skin it also can't actually hold her without turning solid itself, which in turn invites clawed hands and feet to strike at it and so the two go tumbling and fighting through the ducts of Muir's research facilities. Dents and blows appear where the duct crosses between walls, snarls and the scratch of nails on metal mixing with splorches of handfuls of Will-goop that Cailleach tears out of the cloud.

Finally one of the ducts gives out and deposits the two shapeshifters into a utility tunnel somewhere, filled with ducts and plumbing lines and flickering lights every twenty feet or so. Instead of getting up Cailleach simply rearranges her several lanky limbs until she's perched partway up the wall, snapping at the cloud with malformed teeth that protrude way too much and distort the otherwise mostly human face.

[Will Stanton]

Will did not dodge out of the way of the snapping teeth.

Callileach wants to provide a mouth again? Well, that's just perfect, as the cloud rushed forwards, attempting to fill the Godling's lungs and burn her from the inside-out.

[Cailleach]

Will's pretty clever, so it doesn't take him long to realize what happened. The sack of flesh and skin he's flooding aren't lungs or stomach but some kind of aquatic air bladder. One that's pinched shut by muscles and then rocked by retching. Cailleach's whole body jerks and arches as she regurgitates the gas-filled bladder in a wet splorch or tissue hitting the concrete floor.

[Will Stanton]

The bladder burst on impact, as Will shot back to regular size and composition as he hit the floor.

"Clever girl. You must be a hit with all the men back home." he said, pulling himself to his feet -- the trick had dazed him just long enough to keep him from countering with an immediate second attack.

[Cailleach]

Cailleach snaps her mouth closed and severs the connection she still had to her Will-trap. Then she grabs one of the pipes and with arms swelling with muscles starts tearing it out of it's anchoring until the weight of it does the rest and it comes crashing down, breaking open and spilling water into the tunnel. Cailleach shoots Will one more glare before slithering into the pipe.

[Will Stanton]

Will, not to be deterred, slipped into the pipe after the Leach, streamlining and narrowing himself into something mechanical, not biological -- a sort of torpedo, buzzing it's way and picking up speed through the pipe system.

[Cailleach]

Will slowly but surely catches up the the shape slithering ahead of him in the darkness, growing thinner and more agile. The torpedo's almost caught up when they reach the end of the pipe and with it the heavy metal grate welded to it. Cailleach squeezes through one of the openings past the algae covered bars as Will slams into them with enough force to bend them outwards. Just on the other side of the bars Cailleach's shape fills back out, fins and streamlined muscles enveloping her lower body and with a flick of her new tail she disappears into the darkness of the open ocean...

[Will Stanton]

Will slammed himself into the bars once again...but then turned around and headed back, letting Callileach swim away.

After all, he had been committed to Muir for observation, and leaving the facility would have broken that. Everything in it's proper place, afterall.