"Call me paranoid, but I really don't like the fact that the whiteout wood is having a temper tantrum at the same time that someone's using the Cinderella story to kill people. It's too big to be a coincidence."
"Lady, I'd defy the Brothers Grimm if it would save the world."
Previous chapter here.
The ATI gang gets interrupted in the middle of paperwork (except for Sloane, who apparently burns hers and is spending time online instead, look in Quote Corner) when Deputy Director Brewer comes looking for Henry personally. Ruh-roh, what did we do now? Brewer tries asking if anything unusual is going on with her team, and Henry is basically all, "that's all the time, how should we know?" Anyway, he's got bad news to break: that infectious glass from the prison is still traumatizing and killing people, and someone managed to transmute a windowless room of a nameless 310 (Rapunzel), and now she and Birdie are out and free. Henry's team is on desk duty until Birdie is recovered. Especially since someone left an apple in the middle of the glass mess. Which is presumably a message of some sort for Henry, though Sloane posits it could have been one to her as well to join Elise. So far, Sloane resists.
"A reminder that I don't have to end in poison, if I'm willing to give up on everyonet who's ever given a damn about me and go to join her. ... I don't give up that easily. What's a terrible narrative that will eventually destroy everything I love compared to the sheer joy of a government pension? She can't have me. I'm too fucking stubborn to go to work for someone like her."
Naturally, that means that at least 3/5 of the team (Andy and Demi will remain safe at work) suddenly decide to use a month's worth of vacation time to go after Birdie. Brewer figures this out real quick when the requests come in, but he can't afford to tell them no. So Henry gets the idea that there must be other woods out there for other fairy tales such as her own in Snow White Land, and she needs to find the Cinderella wood to ask people there about the situation. After taking an apple from Sloane (honeycrisp? go big or go home! did you poison it? does it matter?), Henry gets herself back into the whiteout wood. She has difficulty in the snow and finding her various mentors. Looking into the clearings they hide out in at times, Henry finds her mentor Tanya...or not, as it turns out. It's the voice of the wood talking, and the wood's afraid of losing Henry and would rather let a Cinderella run free than lose Henry. So could you not go on this quest, please? Nah, Henry books it and finds her other mentors Ayane and Judi, who warn her of the dangers and say that right now the Cinderella story is testing their borders and that's why the wood is in self-defense mode. Ayane tells her to go east, because that's where Cinderellas go. Henry heads out...and then gets knocked out in the back of the head.
Uh-oh.
This one gets four stars for being hella gripping and chilling. Uh, literally, what with all that snow. Things are getting juicy like a big ol' honeycrisp apple! Mmm, apples... I also love the idea of there being other woods to go to. Good luck, Henry!
Quote Corner:
- "How is it that we have a form for "you got a gingerbread house dropped on your head"? How do we have a job where that's something you'd need a form for?" -Andy
- "If there was one thing we shared, thanks to our upbringing in an ATI-aware household, it was the knowledge that the sudden smell of mysterious baked goods never meant anything good for anybody." -Henry
- Sloane is collecting pie recipes off the Internet and nobody is saying anything about it: "...and if collecting a large stack of what were, for her, potential murder weapons could help, then we were going to let her go ahead. We just weren't going to eat anything she baked."
- "There was no escaping for me now. There was just enduring, until I reached whatever botched mission or poisoned fruit pie spelled the end of my happy ever after."
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