{"Stand proud. You are strong for making it this far. Leave your comment below, or be cleaved along with the rest of the fodder."}
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"The next thing I remember…" Khatri continued, turning away from Boyd. "I was standing on a bridge, holding that fucking bottle in my hand. It was the first time in my entire life that I actually heard the voice of God. He told me to get back in the car... that there was another path for me to follow. So I did. I got back in the car, I drove, and two hours later, I was here." Though Father Khatri's confession was mildly interrupted by the sound of an approaching car.
Sheriff Boyd hurridely moved toward the glass window of the sheriff's station and peered through the blinds.
"Shit, it's almost dark," Boyd spoke as he noticed a bronze Acura roadster coming down the main road.
However, something highly unusual happened. Normally, people trapped in their cars would drive straight through, completing multiple frantic circles around the town before finally stopping.
"That's the worst part... believing there is still hope. Believing that you will eventually get out if you just keep going straight down the road," Boyd thought with a grimacing face. "But there is no hope here. No one is coming to save us."
He watched silently as the driver of the vehicle stepped out. The man was facing the opposite direction, so Boyd didn't get a clear view of his face at first. But when the driver finally turned around—
"Holy shit... is that Tony Stark?" Father Khatri cursed under his breath.
"It is. Let's go," Boyd replied immediately as he moved to unlock and open the front door of the sheriff's station.
"Hello there... Don't shoot me. I am unarmed," Tony declared, looking toward the sheriff's station as he walked around his car. In his right hand, he was carrying the Mark 43 briefcase, and in his left, a wooden box—both weapons of mass destruction, if used correctly.
"Aye, come inside! Hurry up," Boyd called out urgently as he held the front door open wide.
Stark didn't need to be told twice. He quickened his pace and made his way into the main room of the sheriff's station, immediately placing the wooden box on the center table.
Boyd, however, was closely eyeing the iconic red and silver briefcase. "Do you have an Iron Man suit with you?" he asked. A look of pure, unadulterated relief passed over both Boyd and Khatri.
"Yes, I do but This place is looping, isn't it?" Stark asked directly, and just like that, Boyd and Khatri's hopeful expressions vanished. "A geometric circle with no escape," Stark concluded grimly.
"No... but you can fly straight up with your suit," Khatri argued, trying to find a loophole.
"Yeah, the roads don't lead anywhere, but we haven't tried navigating the sky yet," Boyd added, leaning in.
"Well, I just tried it," Stark provided flatly.
"The sky doesn't lead to outer space."
"You did? Then What did you see up there?" Boyd asked dreadfully.
"A dense, white circle of fog surrounding the forest in all directions," Stark answered quietly. "I tried pushing right through it. I just came out through the exact opposite side."
Without even waiting for Boyd or Khatri to respond, Tony spoke again as he made his way to the glass side window.
"My guess is... the geometry here is completely broken. There is no North, no South, East, or West," Tony said, pointing to the presumed directions. "We're dealing with a localized spatial anomaly. It's a Möbius strip masquerading as a dilapidated fixer-upper," he hypothesized. "This has to be the work of a cursed spirit—a cursed technique that actively messes with space..." he murmured the last part under his breath.
Gone was the panicked demeanor of Fromville's latest prisoner, and what took its place was the raw intrigue of a scientist.
"Umm... everybody who has ever been trapped here has had a theory about this place," Boyd said sympathetically. "What I want to ask you, Stark... are you absolutely sure you have tried everything else to call for help? Is there truly no way to contact someone from the outside?"
Tony immediately turned in Boyd's direction and looked him dead in the eyes, then gave a subtle side glance toward the wooden box kept on the main table—the one that contained Ethan's teleportation kunai.
"I have tried. But give me a day. Tomorrow... by the end of tomorrow, I..." Tony gulped. "I will find a way to get you people out of here."
' Everyone thinks there are gonna be the one, to get everyone home,' Boyd thought, There was no need to break the man's mentality just yet, this place will do that on itself.
"Hmm..Something still doesn't make sense," Khatri spoke from the opposite side of the sheriff's station. "Why are you so calm about all of this?"
"Buddy, I fought aliens pouring out of a wormhole three hundred feet above the New York skyline. Nothing has been too weird for me since," Tony replied, looking directly at Khatri. "Besides... I was actually intending to come here," he spoke in a low voice.
"Wait, wait, wait... back up. Did you just say you were intending to come here?" Boyd asked, clearly baffled.
"Yes. I presume there is a Matthews family here?" Tony asked.
"Jim and Tabitha? You know them?" Khatri asked, walking hurriedly toward them.
"Not Personally, no. A friend asked me to look into their disappearance. I was investigating, and now I'm here. Let's go find them," Tony said as he moved to open the front door.
Boyd and Khatri immediately ran toward the exit. "No, no, no, no! It's dark already. We can't go out," Boyd warned, blocking Tony's path as Khatri flanked him.
"What do you mean we can't go out? What exactly is out there?" Stark asked. A cursed spirit? Tony thought to himself.
As if to answer his question, a sharp knock rattled the glass window.
A man in a cowboy hat and a blonde woman wearing a black hair scarf could be seen standing on the other side of the window.
"Why don't you come outside, Tony? And we will tell you... that's what you want, right? To learn all about us," the man in the cowboy hat said, maintaining a sinister smile, mirrored perfectly by the woman beside him.
"That... is what's out there," Boyd said, pointing at the figures outside. "Monsters taking human form that hunt down anyone caught outside after dark."
"You know us so well, Boyd. But monsters? You hurt my feeling, At least I didn't shoot my wife in the face," the man in the cowboy hat replied, placing a mocking arm around the woman.
"What did you just say to me?" Boyd roared, pushing past Tony and slamming against the window. Father Khatri had to physically pull him back.
"You know what they do! They get inside your head," Khatri shouted, trying to calm the fuming sheriff.
Stark, being true to his nature, quickly understood the gravity of the situation and asked, "Why can't they just break inside?"
"Because of the talisman," Khatri explained, pointing at the carved stone hanging securely from the wall. "We don't know why, but they can't enter an enclosed space protected by the talisman."
Tony looked closely at the aforementioned talisman, then back at the couple outside. But his expression was completely devoid of fear; it was the exact same look of clinical detachment a biologist gives to a helpless lab rat.
As if understanding what Tony was Thinking, the Cowboy and the Women lost their smile for a second.
" We will meet again soon, Mr.Stark." The man removed his hat, and did a mocking bow and the women curtsied.
"That's the plan," Stark muttered as he looked inside the room where his Mark 43 briefcase lay.
"I know what you're thinking," Boyd said, looking closely at Stark. "And as much as I would love to see you blow these bastards to absolute pieces... bullets don't work against these things. As for your repulsors, they might work, or they might not. What we need is a coordinated plan of attack. Something outside of town, maybe tomorrow?"
Tony looked back at Boyd and sighed.
"I should probably call Ethan at this point... But I have learned more about cursed spirits and cursed energy in the last half hour than I have learned from Banner in weeks. One extra day wouldn't hurt anyone," Tony justified in his own mind.
"Are you absolutely sure these things cannot get inside? That everyone in this town is safe?" Tony asked, turning directly to Boyd, just in case.
"Yeah..." Boyd replied, noting the slight shake in Stark's voice. "Yeah... Everyone is safe, at least for now. Why exactly do you ask?"
"It's nothing," Stark replied simply. Still looking at the creatures outside, he brought out his modified cursed glasses from his pocket. Normally, he would be able to operate his entire arsenal of suits with these glasses alone, but with Jarvis completely offline, the tech had reverted to functioning as mere, normal cursed glasses.
But as he slid them on, he noticed something highly unusual from the corner of his vision—specifically, the glowing light bulb illuminating the sheriff's station.
Seeing Stark hyper-focused on the light fixture, Boyd asked, "What is it? What do you see?"
"Where exactly is the electricity coming from?" Tony asked, his eyes locked on the bulb as he moved closer to inspect it.
Khatri and Boyd shared a knowing, weary look at his sudden line of questioning.
"We don't know," Boyd sighed, shaking his head. "The wires just go straight down, directly below the house. According to Jim—he's an engineer—there are no copper coils inside the wires at all. It's only rubber. So, it doesn't make any damn sense how they're pulling power."
"Oh, shit..." Tony muttered, a genuine smile breaking across his face as a look of sheer realization washed over him. He turned back toward Boyd and Khatri with renewed energy. "Your Enginner couldn't make any sense of it because he didn't have the whole picture. Sit down, gentlemen. Let me tell about Cursed energy…"
In Colony House:
Kevin, one of the residents of Colony House, could be seen entering the main bathroom. He was a complicated man. He was raised as a young boy by deeply conservative parents who didn't love each other and had married solely because that was what was expected of them in an arranged marriage.
"If I had another chance, I would have never married your father," his mother used to say to him.
"Look at me, Kevin. You have ruined my entire life... This is all your fault. The best years of my life are completely gone, all spent raising an ungrateful wretch." Those were the exact last words his mother ever told him before he ultimately ended up here.
They highly disapproved of Kevin even talking to a girl over the telephone. After he freeloaded off them for a while after highschool, his father finally got fed up and threatened to throw him out if he didn't get a job within 24 hours.
Kevin was on his way to a crucial job interview when he suddenly found himself trapped in Fromville.
Kevin was a 23-year-old virgin who had never felt a woman's touch. So, when Jasmine, from beyond the glass window promised him exactly that how could he possibly refuse?
He made his way inside the bathroom, walked directly to the glass window, and opened its blinds.
And there she was... The women of his dreams, Jasmine, standing just outside the window on the terrace.
"Jasmine?" Kevin called out. But she wouldn't answer right away. She just stood there, her back facing the window, clearly upset.
He knocked softly on the glass window. "Jasmine? What's wrong?" Kevin asked anxiously.
"I only came to say goodbye..." Jasmine replied, her voice filled with a heavy sadness.
"What? Wait. Wait... wait, I don't understand. Just please, talk to me..." Kevin pleaded desperately.
"Why won't you let me in?" Jasmine asked quietly, and Kevin sighed deeply as he sat down against the wall.
"You know why. I can't. Please, just stay and talk with me..." Kevin pleaded again, his eyes searching hers.
"You said you liked me..." Jasmine argued, turning slightly toward him.
"I do," Kevin replied instantly, as he moved much closer to the window.
"I can't keep coming here... knowing I will see you, but never get to truly feel you. Knowing that you are afraid of me... that you are disgusted by me," Jasmine made her definitive last stand.
"No..." Kevin tried to speak, but his words fell short. He had hurt Jasmine, the one single person who had ever offered him such unconditional love. He finally realized that truth.
"You always said you were so lonely in there... you have no idea how lonely it is out here," Jasmine too moved closer to the glass. "It wasn't my choice to be this way. Goodbye, Kevin."
"Please, wait! Wait..." Kevin said. He and Jasmine looked deep into each other's eyes, and in that exact moment, Kevin knew. Jasmine was his true soulmate.
"You know, there is a massive party going on downstairs... everyone is having a really good time. But you are the only one I want to be with. You are the only one I can really talk to," Kevin declared passionately. "That's how I know I love you, Jasmine... I love you. I will...I will Open the window for you."
And Jasmine smiled brightly :)
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A/N: So how was the chapter?
In my view, Stark not calling Ethan immediately, in favor of learning more about cursed energy, is completely in character. What are your thoughts?
The Multiverse Arc will include the multiverse cluster of ASOIAF. What are your thoughts?
How many of you haven't watched GOT?