L.A. Confidential

[Miriam Bell]

"Don't take it personally. We're talking about a guy who method-acts furniture and has probably fooled more people in his life than I've ever met." she says as they file back into the elevator. "I'm guessing you folks have some kind of... monster corpse retrieval unit? Bigfoot wranglers?"

[Leo N. Eskandari]

"Yeah, I'll have the cleanup crew deal with this mess. Bigfoot retrieval is a separate department," he answered as he pushed the button, leaving out that he was intimately familiar with the latter.

Tosh thought for a moment. "How did you avoid that terror stare Ryn blasted us with anyway? That seems like useful information."

Leo exhaled slowly. "Let's just say I'm one bad day away from my corpse getting retrieved."

[Miriam Bell]

"Yeah, there's something banging on the walls in your mind. Let me guess... You turn into some kind of monster with a lion's mane, scorpion tail, quills, horns?"

[Leo N. Eskandari]

As much as man didn't want to talk about it more than necessary, at least with outsiders, her insight had him curious. He gave a surprised look. "You're pretty close for someone who doesn't know me. More of a lion lizard thing. If you read my mind, you'd know that. So, how...?"

Tosh chuckled. "We have a Leo Eskandari of our own. A mad scientist abducted him a changed his DNA."

Knowing his surname really got Leo's attention. "Great, I'm not human in any universe. Not sure how to feel about that."

[Miriam Bell]

"You learn to cope. Just because someone looks human doesn't mean they are, trust me, I've seen another version of me."

[Leo N. Eskandari]

Leo was about to say something else when the doors opened. "I appreciate the effort to make me feel better."

Crossing the lobby, he said, "Now, let's figure out where our quarry is headed. Do your abilities sense where your friends are or do they not work that way?"

[Miriam Bell]

"They're too far away already. Unless... Those doorways, is there one nearby?"

[Leo N. Eskandari]

"I..." Leo thought over his last mission in LA, referencing the map in his head as they hurried to the car. "Yes, there should be one in a convenience store a couple blocks away. It'll take some luck to get you in range, but it's doable."

Rather than drive, he decided it would be faster to run than to hunt down a closer place to park. Even trying to run slow enough for the others to keep up, he routinely had to stop and wait.

Tosh was huffing when they reached the store. "Dude... give us mere mortals a chance to breathe."

Leo chuckled. "Sorry. I'm still not that great at holding back."

[Miriam Bell]

Miriam, it seems, did not deign to run or even jog several blocks. Instead she stepped into the road and made the driver of the next best car relinquish his vehicle with a mix of claiming police business and a heavy dose of mental manipulation. The fact that it's a sleek black convertible is just a nice coincidence. She smugly pulls into the convenience store lot as Tosh catches up with Leo. "Our business is on official men-in-black level authority, right?" she grins and rummages through the glove compartment. "Hah, I knew he was nervous about something." She pops back up holding a suspicious necklace in one hand and a snubnose revolver in the other. This is probably fine.

"Alright, where's that magic doorway?"

[Leo N. Eskandari]

"Way to not draw any attention," the agent said sarcastically, smirking. He led them inside and, after some flashing of badges, gained access to the storeroom.

Moving to the back, he brought them to a section of brick wall that was suspiciously devoid of shelving. He felt along the mortar to remind himself of the shape of the door. "It's amazing to me that you people found your way into the Ghost Roads so easily, and ended up where you wanted to go safely to boot."

[Miriam Bell]

"You tell me, Magic-Boy. I could just... feel something off." she says, neglecting to mention the song that went along with it.

"It feels like the inbetween. Your mind, his mind, my own, they all blur at the edges but they all stop at some point. These doors feel the way the gaps between minds feel like. Liminal. Like they don't really exist and are only there because there are two points on either side that are real." she says and gives the brick wall a shove. It immediately folds in on itself to reveal the indistinct corridor of the ghost roads. "Or maybe I just have an invisible touch." she starts and music creeps into her voice only to be cut off with a pointed clearing of her throat.

[Leo N. Eskandari]

Leo whistled, too impressed to notice the musical reference. He preferred Land of Confusion anyway. "The Society could use someone like you. It's a shame you're from another universe."

Without further comment, he stepped through. He let instinct guide him to another door. "Good a guess as any." Opening it revealed a dark alleyway. "Anything?"

[Miriam Bell]

"Nothing." she shakes her head. "This is going to take forever if we have to check every bloody door. I need to be able to tell without going through... It's just a door, how far apart they are shouldn't matter if it's just a step away from... wherever the fuck we are right now. Hell if I could reach through one, as long as another one is close enough... Somewhere in this mess there's the shortest path from here to where they are, it's just convoluted and stupid and I can't sort it out. Unless... Don't try this at home, kids." she says and unscrews the little vial on the necklace she stole. She tips it onto the skin between thumb and index-finger and brings the white powder that spilled from it up to her nose.

"If anyone asks, these are official shadow-government drugs." she says before snorting the coke in two quick sniffs, throwing her head back like something just kicked her in the underside of the brainpan. "Ah wow... this was a terrible idea!" she laughs and blinks rapidly, wide pupils unfocused and staring into space. "There's way too many doors, holy fuck, is your homebase one of those TARDIS situations? This is ridiculous. Where even are we right now? Wooph... Okay, right, Sam and Will, Sam and Will, a thousand birds and the unbearable whimsy of existence, gotta be one of my favourite genders." she snickers. "Wait what? Right, yes." she seems to pre-empt any imminent comments of focusing up from Tosh and Leo just from their reactions taking shape in their minds.

"God damn, Tosh, tell your menagerie to shut up. Does everyone but me have some kind of split personality issues? Just be lonely and miserable inside your own minds like the rest of us, jeez. Alright, yes, bundle of neuroses, one flavoured green, the other the three-in-one special. Don't tell them I said that. Or do, not like I'm any less screwed up, am I right? That way!" she rambles right into pointing the way and running for a seemingly random door.

[Leo N. Eskandari]

The two males followed quickly. Tosh glanced to Leo and asked, "Are you the shadow government?"

Leo scoffed. "What? No, we're not part of any government."

The team passed through a dark alleyway where some stray cats watched Leo suspiciously from the shadows. They crossed through a Bodega in the process of being robbed. Leo unceremoniously punched out the robber and nodded to the owner before the group vanished between the aisles. They ran across a park that was empty save a few homeless that didn't pay the group much attention.

[Miriam Bell]

"Completely unregulated. Sounds like shadow government to me." Miriam grins as they run from door to door to music that seems to emanate from everywhere and nowhere. Into the utilities door of a public bathroom in the park and back into the non-descript corridor, diagonally across the hall into another door. They come out of the poolhouse of some Beverly Hills mansion, past the dazed and confused people lounging by the pool and into a shed.

Emerging back into the ghostroads they briefly cross paths with a group of agents hurrying across to a door opposite their direction only for both groups to emerge across the road from each other. Leo, Tosh and Miriam from an old abandoned car repair shop in the middle of the desert, the agents from the gas station across the road. Miriam looks confused for a moment, then turns back around and through the door they came from, ducking over to the one adjacent in the hallway. Moments later the group of agents emerges from their door again as well and jog after our intrepid heroes. They soon lose any and all sense of direction, running down a moonlit alley one moment, then coming out the back of a newsstand back in LA. At one point they could swear they can spot a six-legged manticore, something wrapped in a black funeral shroud and an oversized ferret crossing the corridors but that wouldn't make any sense, now would it?

After what feels like ages but was probably a couple minutes at most they burst out of a changing room in a Bloomingdales and Miriam points roughly in the direction of the doors leading out into the rest of the mall. Behind them the group of agents seems to have increased in size somewhere along the way and they now have a good dozen agents in tow who caught on to them knowing where to go. "They're coming in from that way!"

[Leo N. Eskandari]

Leo, knowing full well he was the most durable member of the group, took point. Despite his rookie status and reputation for recklessness, the rest of the agents were happy to let him continue to lead for the moment.

"Anyone without special abilities should fan out and make sure there are no civilians around. Because things are going to get very indiscreet," he told the assembled agents.

He looked to Tosh and asked. "How useful is what you can do in a fight?"

Tosh responded, "I'm not entirely sure I'd be much against whatever Agent Ryn is. But I'm strong enough to back you up if you need me to. Just make sure none of your fellow agents decide to take a shot at me when I transform."

"I'll do what I can to minimize the danger to you and your friends." Leo suddenly paused to listen--"I hear fighting!"--and rushed towards the sounds of violence.