Getting out was easy. Too easy. It felt wrong to Kipo, how they just walked through the garden trail, and then there it was: another brick wall with a swirling portal on it at the end of the trail. No tricks. No monsters. No one wandering off of the past. It was amazing. The group had actually finished something in record time.
Kipo gulped. She knew they didn't have the time to mess around, but she couldn't help but look back around the small garden, with the gentle sunlight filtering in, and the nice looking bushes on either side of the trail reaching up towards the blue sky Kipo could only see in the gapes. It definitely was nice here, as nice as the clearing, but Kipo couldn't help but feel like there was something else here. Something more sinister, or at least more mysterious. That seemed to be the status quo for everything around here.
But, again, they did not have time. The others had already filtered through the swirling portal, and now, Kipo was only holding them back.
With that reminder, Kipo shook her head, stepping through the portal with the rest of them and leaving the garden behind.
The friendly and peaceful garden was quickly replaced by the familiar cold and dark tunnels, only illuminated by the soft gem light above them. Already, Tulip was waving them forward as Kipo stepped through.
"Hurry, hurry!" she cried. "I know where we are, and I already talked to the ghosts. Come on, it's this way!"
Hardly pausing to get her own bearings (not that she thought she could), Kipo quickly followed Tulip through the confusing tunnels, the others soon following after. They ran through the tunnels efficiently, past things that Kipo thought were almost familiar, but she wasn't going to stop to check. Her attention was completely focused on Tulip in front of her, eyes locked on Tulip's back, and Kipo barely heard anything other than the beating of her own heart, like a drum. Kipo ran to the steady beat of it, feeling more than hearing her rapidly beating heart match the sound of her footsteps on the rock as she ran.
Boom, boom, boom, boom... it reminded Kipo of a marching song, and for a moment, Kipo felt herself a soldier marching into battle. It was not a thought she relished.
Suddenly, Tulip stopped. So suddenly that Kipo only got a fraction of a warning before she nearly ran face-first into her friend's back. Luckily, Kipo stopped just in time, digging her shoes into the rock floor to come to a stop. Luz... was not so lucky. Kipo only got a small squeak of warning before Luz barrelled into her, knocking Kipo over. Together, they crashed awkwardly to the hard floor, knocking the wind out of Kipo. She gasped, but was not able to get any breath back before the others, Kai, Mabel, Fei Fei and Coraline, also joined the pile-up.
Tulip whirled around, and her eyes widened.
"Are... you all okay?" she asked awkwardly, gawking at them. Wheezing, Kipo nodded, and tried to push herself back up. Getting the hint, the others quickly rolled off.
"That was..." Mabel gasped, clearly not only having lost breath from the unfortunate accident. "SO fun... Are we there yet?"
Tulip winced, rubbing at her arm. She was still breathing deeply as well, but she looked much better off than the rest of them, for obvious reasons. "Well... no. But we're close, though."
"We took a break?!" Coraline cried, and then doubled over, still getting her breath back. "Why?"
"He's going to get us!" Kai screamed, looking around as if hands were already reaching out for them from the darkness. And Kipo couldn't be one hundred percent sure that they weren't, so she looked around, too.
"We don't have time for this..." Kipo muttered, not accusing, but urgently.
"I stopped for a good reason," Tulip defended, she stepped aside, and despite the danger of the situation, she was immediately forgiven by everyone."We need this, don't we?"
Kai gasped. "Isn't that my machine?" he asked. "In my basement?"
At the same time, Luz stepped forward. "A wish flower," she cried, her voice grateful. But as she came up towards the red flower, and the machine it was resting on, she froze.
Kipo blinked at her. "Is something wrong?" she asked. Despite trying to be as kind as possible, an edge of panic crept into her voice.
It took a while for Luz to answer, but when she did, her voice was strained. "This flower..." she replied, turning around. In her hands, she held out a piece of paper and a glowing blue crystal, safely held in her hand with the fabric of her sleeves wrapped protectively around it. Kipo sucked in a breath. "...I think it's from Six."
"It's a trap," Coraline told her, immediately. "Just take the flower and let's go."
"But we don't even know why my machine is here," Kai pointed out, but as Coraline glared at him, he quickly changed his answer. "But we can go. We should go."
"Six is... helping us?" Mabel asked, confused. "Is she having a redemption arc?"
"Why wouldn't she just give us the flower herself then?" Tulip asked. At that, Luz's eyes widened, looking at the paper, then to the flower uncertainly.
"We should go," Fei Fei insisted, even though her eyes were straying to the crystal, and Kipo didn't think she was imagining that Fei Fei was interested. Kipo was, too, but...
As Kipo stepped forward, towards Luz, she was finally herself able to read the note, which had been too faint for her to have read at a distance. It wasn't words exactly, but one big symbol: the number six.
"It's your choice," Kipo said gently, tearing her eyes away from the note. She tried to meet Luz's eyes, but they were downcast, caught up in her own worries. Still, Kipo could tell she was listening, so she continued. "We don't have a lot of time, but I can tell this is worrying you. If you want to find out what this flower means, and what happened to Six, why she's doing this... then I won't stop you. None of us will."
Luz's fingers tightened on the crystal. "What if it's a trap?"
"You knew Six better than any of us did," Kipo told her. "It's your choice. You can throw it away, if you want. We won't stop you from doing that, either."
Luz thought about that, and, though Kipo could tell it was killing them, the rest of their friends forced themselves to be quiet. Kipo couldn't blame them, she had started jumping at shadows, too. Claustrophobia was closing in around them, and Kipo's mind was filled with all the ways this cave could kill them. How easy it could be. How quick... But it hadn't happened yet, and Luz looked like she needed this. Kipo tightened her fists, and waited.
Finally, Luz lifted the crystal, peering at it. "I don't trust her," Luz said, her expression grim. "But I need to know. Please, just give me a couple of minutes, but if I take too long... you all have to leave me behind, alright?"
Inwardly, Kipo recoiled at the very thought of that, and instantly knew that if she did, she hate herself for the rest of her life. But Kipo forced her thoughts down, and outwardly, she only gave Luz a wry smile.
"We're not doing that," Kipo told her, light-heartedly, but firm. "I can carry you, if need be."
"I can't believe you would even THINK we would let you stay here in Nightmare Tunnel," Mabel gasped, her face twisted in disbelief.
Luz smiled, but she still looked uncertain. "But what if I don't come back?"
"You will," Tulip spoke up, and her voice was so certain that Luz's worry was wiped off her face as soon as she heard that.
"You're stronger than Six is," Coraline added. "Six may know more than you, but from what I saw, she's pretty lazy."
"And," Kai added, grinning widely, like he always did when he was about to tell a joke that was almost certainly only going to entertain himself "You have the power of friendship behind you! Just think of us and you'll go super, or something. So don't even worry about it."
Kipo gave him a bewildered look, and Coraline rolled her eyes. But Luz looked reassured, by Kai, and everyone else, and now, instead of a worried look, she was beaming from ear to ear.
Finally, Fei Fei stepped forward, too. Kipo saw her give a glance down the way that had been going before their sudden stop before turning her attention back to the group. She gave Luz a determined look. Fei Fei might not have been able to grasp entirely what they were talking about, but she knew enough now to give her own reassurance.
"We'll protect you," Fei Fei told Luz, raising her crossbow, and, Kipo realized with a wince, Anne's sword. When had Fei Fei picked it up? Could she use it as well as Anne could? What would Anne have thought about this?
...Actually, Kipo already knew the answer to that. She remembered once, when she, Fei Fei and Anne had been traveling together, and Anne had remarked that it was weird that Fei Fei, the one dressed in armor, had a crossbow, and her, who looked kind of like... well, Kipo couldn't remember what she called it, but Anne had explained it as an archer type thing, had a sword.
Kipo and Fei Fei hadn't really understood, but when Fei Fei offered to switch weapons, Anne had refused, saying that she just thought it was kind of funny.
Kipo wondered if Anne still thought it was funny, if she was watching as a ghost right now.
Luz took a deep breath, thankfully forcing Kipo away from her slightly morbid thoughts.
"Alright," Luz decided. "I'll do it. I want... I want to know what Six is doing."
Kipo nodded, wanting to say something, but she didn't want to say anything too negative or too positive, so she stayed quiet. After a small second of slight hesitation, Luz finally pulled back her sleeve, gripping the crystal with her bare skin.
Kipo hadn't seen anyone else get pulled into a crystal's vision before, so when a glaze came over Luz's eyes, she almost panicked, before reminding herself to stay still, and to leave Luz alone. She didn't think that Luz would feel much anyway, based on prior experience, but it seemed mean to do that to a person stuck in a limbo.
Well, for the moment at least.
Luz looked around the whitespace, hugging herself even though it wasn't cold. She could still feel the crystal in her hand, and she clutched it like a lifeline. The infinite space in every direction, even down, made Luz nervous, and that only mounted with every second that passed.
Before Luz could really panic, though, wondering if she made a bad gamble, Six finally appeared in front of her out of thin air, and Luz backed up, startled.
"Six!" Lux gasped. A million questions raced through her head, but she wasn't able to properly formulate any of them from the storm of confusion in her mind. "Wh-What-?"
Six sighed, as if she were already tired of this. "Hello, Luz," she said, her voice weary, but otherwise void of real emotion. "You're probably confused right now..."
"You have NO idea," Luz replied, chuckling dryly. She knelt down, getting on Six's level. Of course, Luz still didn't trust her, but it was so easy to slip into that old, comfortable dynamic... sort of. The revelation, still fresh after all this time, kept Luz from looking Six in the eye, or getting close to her old friends. "Six, what's going on? Why is this happening? What-?"
"Just to get it out of the way," Six interrupted, and Luz paused, her mouth hanging open. "I should probably tell you this first: this message isn't me talking directly to you. It's more of a... prerecording."
Luz blinked. For the first time, she looked closely at her friend. Six's eyes apparently weren't focused on her, exactly. They were staring straight ahead, focused on a point in the distance. "What...?"
"I am well aware you're short on time," Six continued, once again interrupting Luz. "So I'll try to make this quick. I just wanted to explain some things before... before your plan comes to fruition."
Luz opened her mouth again, prepared to ask more questions, and then closed it. She was well aware that it wouldn't get her anywhere. Six couldn't hear her, anyway.
"I suppose I should start from the beginning," Six sighed. "Before all of this. I know you know a little bit about that, but here's my version, and where I fit in all of this. Well, in the super abridged version, anyway.
"I was... a little bit like you, Luz. Always eager to please. Always easy to help someone else, one, because I care, and two, because it helped me escape from my own problems. You get that, don't you? My home life, at the time, was not great, and, well... escapism and validation were the only things that were keeping me sane at the time.
"I know it doesn't much look like it, to all of you, but that... trait of mine persisted, even past the end of my world. I was one of the lucky ones that wasn't harvested, based on my closeness with the destroyer, and he knew I was a person who liked helping others for... less than altruistic reasons."
Six paused, tapping her little foot and looking around the small space, an irritated expression on her face. "We don't have the time for me to go into detail," she said, sounding frustrated. "I don't have the time to make you understand completely. But listen!
"When the World asked me to come in, and become a guide for the last unfortunate souls, there was no way I could say no! I wanted to please, I wanted a distraction, and what is this world than the highest form of escapism?! In a way, I can understand the World and what he did... but that's not important. The point is... I grew to care about those kids, all of them, even the ones that didn't make it to the end. I grew... close with them, too close, and when they nearly got out, it broke my heart to have to stop them.
"But I did need to stop them, because in the end, I serve this World, and I have no choice but to do what it says, to follow its orders.
"Or... that's what I thought," Six paused, emotions Luz couldn't decipher crossing over her face. "Maybe I did need to... maybe I didn't. Maybe I should have risen up, maybe I shouldn't have. I have too many regrets to count from back then, and I still don't know the right answer, all I know is that I was a coward, and that I still am.
"But... I want you to succeed, Luz. I want you to live. I tried so hard to not care, to stay aloof, to protect myself... but in the end, it didn't matter. I still grew to care about you, and I want you to live."
Six looked down at the ground, unable to look forward anymore. It seemed like the weight of the world was suddenly weighing on her shoulders... and maybe it was, Luz realized.
"I'm still a coward," Six admitted. "I'm still afraid of the consequences of the World. But there's a way to get what we all want, and it's all thanks to that machine. It takes the flower out of a person, and makes it so the flower has to be picked up manually. It what we used in the old days, before the World found that it could just absorb flowers into itself. So... I'll use the machine to take my own flower, and my own life, and you'll be able to get your flower.
"But please, Luz... do not take this lightly. Even with my flower, you will fail. You can't be the World, so just take my flower, and get you and everyone else home. Please, I don't want you to die here, not like this. Just... go home. Please. Save yourself."
Six was pleading with her now, still looking at the ground with her fox head bowed, and though her voice was filled with desperate hope, Luz could also hear something else in her voice: resignation.
Six... already knew what Luz was going to choose, but that didn't stop her from asking anyway. Luz blinked, her eyes hot and wet, and tears already streaming down her face. She covered her mouth with her hand, unable to hold in sobs.
Of course, she wasn't going to listen to Six's request, but she couldn't deny that it hurt to do so, just a little bit.