Lexi's vision was slow to come back at first, but it was far from the first time she'd felt such disorienting sensations, especially in recent months. In fact disorientation almost felt normal to her, but this was even something further than that. As Lexi's vision slowly returned to her light scorched eyes she'd see blurry triplicates of the floor ... wait, the floor?
Lexi's eyes went from a dull flicker to a sudden state of awareness as she realized she was somehow suspended from the ceiling... or maybe ... she WAS on the floor? The space she found herself in defied all logic, constructed of 4 walls that seemed to show no evident signs of a door or escape hatch. Furthermore the floors ... er ... ceilings? were decorated with maybe the most obnoxious craquelure mosaic pattern with jagged specks of green pink and white spread almost everywhere.
Lexi finally found herself in a state of more heightened awareness the longer she dwelled in the bizarre space.
"Um... hello?" her voice eeked out, not sure what she exactly hoped to accomplish or who she was addressing. The last thing she remembered was being in the mystic forest with her newfound troop of interdimensional warriors following her joyride on the highway made of plasma energy after narrowly escaping attacks from electrical flying bird creatures and one psycho sorceress all led by a seemingly well meaning but bit eccentric onyx clad man named Vector ... or was it Vektor?
Yeah the whole thing didn't make a lick of sense... but neither did what happened next.
Lexi's center of gravity changed on a dime as the surface she was clinging to, whether ceiling or floor seemed to be rotating. While she clung to it for a time, she found herself sliding off, landing a bit roughly on her knee, which thankfully was still protected by the advanced armor she was outfitted with. had she been in her normal attire from her home dimension (which usually exposed parts of her bare legs) she may have suffered a more substantial hit on her knees from hitting what felt like a sturdy piece of plywood.
In fact a quick examination of this areas floor revealed many different textures as she brought herself to walk around and explore it a bit more. Some steps felt more chunky, as if she were stepping on drywall or walking through a construction site littered with sawdust. Other steps still felt like she was stepping on pure steel or bulletproof glass, despite the fact that the floor appeared the same regardless of the perceived texture under her feet.
She also noticed an astonishing lack of sound. If she stomped her foot hard, there would arrive a slight clatter with a minor reverberation as one might expect but just normal footsteps seemed to produce no audible sound at all. It was about as inconsistent as anything else she had seen to this point.
"Hello...?" Lexi repeated again, feeling as though she were being watched despite seemingly in solitude, "Um... if anybody's in here ... I'm just wondering uh ... what time is breakfast? and how do I call for room service and ... oh yeah ... WHERE THE FUCK AM I?!"
While Lexi's words sounded almost as if she were speaking into an aquarium, her last outburst of profanity had the most "normal" sound to it as it echoed around her, finally prompting a response from an outside source, a deep and imposing female cackle that echoed all around her.
Lexi was already miffed, confused and well, quite frankly angry. Being mocked was not putting her in the best of moods so as she sought to find the source of the voice she looked around for any signs of life, seing only the mosaic tiled floors and a solid green wall in front of her.
Taking the time to notice that her armor hadn't been altered at all, she surmised she could at least strike the wall with her metal plated fist, if only to test its fortitude. Upon doing so, she'd watch in surprised as it shattered easily as if made of styrofoam. Even this prompted a laugh from the female voice though, as if this was all part of the plan.
"Hello?!" Lexi yelled again but this time she lacked the confusion in her voice. This time she had conviction, "Come out here, you coward!"
Again, her words would be met with decisive mockery and derision, although more than mere laughter this time.
Lexi watched on with astonishment as a pair of female eyes appeared on an adjacent wall to her left, the eyes appeared oblong in nature, almost to an exageratted degree, like it was more of a painting of a woman than an actual woman. Still, the voice sounded pretty damn real.
"Enjoying your time in the labyrinth, little one?" the voice asked
"Who the fuck are you?" Lexi snapped
"Oh you'll get to know me quite well, little one..." the figure on the outside gloated, speaking to Lexi although on the outside she was leaning over a green cube that was lodged in what looked like a large power source. From the outside the green cube just looked like a fancy light box, but the inside was of course much more intricate. "...in fact you'll be staying here for quite a long long time..."
"Whoever the hell you are ..." Lexi said, her voice fluctuating in volume as a result of the bizarre acoustics of her trapping, "I WILL find you and I will get out of here!"
"Oh that's darling!" the cackling mistress prattled on, able to hear Lexi crystal clear despite her size difference and the dimensional wall that seperated them. "Another challenger thinks they can escape Pandora's Inescapable Labyrinthian Cube!"
Lexi mouthed the words she just heard in confusion before raising an eyebrow,
"Wait, so you're ... Pandora?" Lexi asked, "...why not just call this ... Pandora's Box?"
"Pandora's ... BOX?" the wicked woman retorted, as if deeply offended, "what the hell kind of name is that? No! It's my Inescapable Labyrinthian Cube and all you need to know is in the title ... nobody has EVER escaped!"
"Well I'm not just anyone..." Lexi sneered, as if hoping to pose a threat somehow to the mystical and unseen Pandora as she loomed from the outside of Lexi's prison, "I'm ..."
"Yes yes I know..." Pandora sighed, rolling her eyes as she peered in on the box as if inspecting a music box, "you're Vektor's new champion, although I can't for the life of me imagine why ... you look like a little girl ... and I'm not saying that because of your relative size... you look young... out of place, unprepared and well... your current predicament kind of proves that..."
"We'll see about that!" Lexi snapped back
"Oh no need to get ... shaken up about it" Pandora teased, turning the cube roughly on it's side. It was a simply jerking motion to the right but to Lexi it felt like a violent shaking as if she WERE in a box and being shaken like a package for which the postal service had no regard.
Lexi would hit the wall hard and let out a groan, this particular wall deciding to be made of a super strong polymer of some sort as even her armor could only protect her so much from the slamming sensation. She fell on her side as Pandora continued to laugh.
"You can keep going as long as you'd like, little one" Pandora teased, tilting the box again and hearing a squeaky little scream as she delighted in the miniscule heroine's plight, "You may last longer than the others ... you may not..."
"The ... others?" Lexi asked with a skeptical tone in her voice.
"Yeah you know... the others" Pandora shrugged, snapping her fingers. Suddenly the bones of the fallen rained down around Lexi, momentarily littering the chamber with the remains of what could only be assumed to be "the others". Lexi let out a scream so shrill it even managed to pierce the sound proofing of the cube which only caused Pandora to laugh even louder.
"Okay okay ... so this isn't good..." Lexi thought to herself. All of her superhero quips and brave words weren't going to shrowd the fact that she was scared as all hell. Trapped and alone in this ... box (she refused to call it the other thing) and at the mercy of the maniacal Pandora.
Her only hope other than somehow escaping herself was that Vektor and the others would eventually find her ... heck, knowing Vektor he was probably so enraged that she was missing he would break down a million castle walls or something of the like to get to her. At least that's how Lexi imagined it.
----
Back in the Mystic Forest though, as Vektor and his cavalcade of Quartzarian warriors took their battle closer to the Citadel, that wasn't quite the case. In fact Vektor was quite content, and impressed even, at how well young Alexis Cole was holding up against the onslaught of enemies that approached as they were getting closer to the mountainside.
It was almost as if Lexi was learning the skills of Quartzarian combat in record time for somebody who wasn't native to such a thing. It was almost as if .. that wasn't the real Alexis Cole.
As Lexi shattered the head of another foe with skilled precision and a powerful grunt, Vektor joined her in slaying another foe, using his swift wrist dagger to take down another of the hulking crystal beasts. Emerald looked on ... seeing it but not quite believing it.
Emerald gazed over at Ruby with a quizzical look
"You ... don't find this at all unusual?" Emerald asked, throwing up her shield hastily to break the attack of an incoming foe.
"I... don't really HAVE a usual..." Ruby confessed, caught between a couple of enemies who were pressing her towards a corner of rocks. She thought quick on her feet and fired a plasma blast from a cannon affixed to her wrist before striking another at the legs to cut off its attack, and its legs.
"I mean the new girl ... Lexi..." Emerald said, once the coast was clear, "...she's suddenly an expert fighter? and she's barely said anything in a while..."
"Yeah ... well, she's usually quite the chatterbox, I suppose..." Ruby shrugged, again brandishing her blade but this time on a nearby tree which emitted sparks as she did so, "but whatever... we're winning the fight, right?"
"I ... suppose..." Emerald sighed, watching as her cohorts simply advanced through with little concern. "...it just seems too easy"
----
Lexi on the other hand was not finding anything too easy. In addition to the confines of the Pandora's Box being confusing for a number of reasons it was now introducing traps as panels below the precarious superheroine would drop at nearly each step to reveal either spikes or some kind of holographic vine that would whip at her boot and try to drag her down.
Lexi glanced up at the ceiling to notice there were no such traps, aside from the putrid wallpaper. She raised an eyebrow as she wondered why this place would be so well equipped to dispose of prisoners except for the ceiling. Then again ... what was the ceiling and what was the floor in a cube that seemed to constantly rotate?
Using that as her premise, Lexi took a shot in the dark running for a wall to attempt to wall kick off of it.
At least, that was the anxious Lexi's original plan, but in front of her stood a couple of menacing and pulsating holographic tentacle looking monsters that extended from the floor tiles ready to snap her up as if she were a bird flying into a gator's mouth.
They may have ensnared their prey successfully but Lexi was no average prey.
Lexi took a deep breath and as if by instinct she shrank between the two tentacles as they swiped for her in opposing directions. Maintaining her speed, Lexi unshrank herself in time to leap up onto a raised platform that protruded from the ever changing floor of the landscape and kicked off the wall like Mario noticing gravity didn't exactly work the same in this zone.
She was able to jump much much higher than anticipated and actually wasn't sure if she could stop her wayward ascent in time to prevent a collision course with the ceiling. She put her hands up in a futile defense, anticipating a hard meeting with a faceful of ceiling.
To her surprise, while she did strike the ceiling, her body just lay there as if she had landed on the floor instead, her entire view being flipped. She did take note though that now all the traps were above her. The ceiling had just become the floor and vice versa. Feeling as though she found some kind of loophole, she continued onward and prepared to strike the next wall in front of her without the threat of spikes, tentacles or whatever other non-sense the sinister Pandora had in store.
Lexi thrusted her steel plated fist hard but found nothing but resistance, and a loud clang as she struck the impenetrable surface, prompting another loud chuckle from the giant sorceress on the other side.
"Come now...." Pandora chuckled, looming menacingly over the box, Lexi able to preview the sight only briefly as the walls seemed to thin out for a moment, "did you really think it would be that easy?"
As Lexi gave the giant sorceress an angry sneer of a look, she noticed Pandora looking away although she couldn't tell why.
On the outside, the voice of her brother Paradox had interuppted the interaction.
"Pandora..." Paradox said in a stern tone, "you've already captured this one ... we have bigger fish to fry..."
"Interesting choice of words..." Pandora chuckled, flipping the cube on its side again and laughing cruelly at Lexi's fate as she heard the squeaking sound. "...but it's not like we didn't know Vektor and his gang would be heading here soon..."
Lexi wasn't able to hear this next part as she was ensnared in the cube which only seemed to let in sound when Pandora allowed it.
Outside the Cube, Pandora reluctantly stood up, heeding the words of her brother.
"Very well ... I'll prepare the troops ..." Pandora sighed, shaking her head and muttering something to the effect of "...I never get to have any fun"
---
"So you're telling me you recognize this strange creature?" Chris asked as Spark flew close up to the imposing firebird creature, seemingly unfazed by its massive size compared to the diminuitive young fairy lady herself, she almost looked as though she was greeting a mere house bird.
"Well yeah" Spark said with a giggle, gesturing to Mara herself, "this is Mara!"
Mara herself giggled, "you have to admit that was funny"
"...hilarious..." Chris sighed
"Oh calm down ..." Spark chuckled, "I've ... seen this kind of creature in history books, just never seen one in person before..."
"So uh ..." Mara stuttered, addressing the small red haired fairy, "Do you know anything else about these phoenix thingies, like ... what they eat or ... anything like that?"
Spark shrugged, "I suppose not, but you knew what you were getting into becoming a prospective pet owner"
"Please tell me that thing's not your pet..." Chris said, keeping a safe distance from Mara, Spark and the pyrohappy Penelope the Phoenix.
"Of course not..." Mara frowned, again scratching the seemingly delighted phoenix under the chin "Penelope's my friend!"
"Okay, that's pretty cute" Spark chimed in
"It's ... yeah ... it's strangely wholesome" Chris admitted
A few more moments of silent went by when the gang heard footsteps approaching ... low and distant at first but slowly getting closer.
"Were you ... expecting company?" Spark asked Chris who shook his head, she then looked at Mara who also shook her head no.
The gang suddenly turned defensively, not sure what to expect.
Standing in their view and getting closer still were a few more humans. A taller one named Trevor Hilfmann, a shorter male named Joshua James and the brunette woman Spark recognized as Leah Henderson, best friend of Alexis Cole.
"So uh ... nice night for a stroll in the woods, huh?" Leah said in an awkward tone trying to break the silence upon seeing the gathered party there unexpectedly, particularly the large firebird perched on Mara's shoulder. "Doesn't that ... hurt you?"
"We've already addressed that ..." an exhausted Chris exhaled.
----
"GAHH!!" Lexi grunted, slamming with all her might into the forgiving green wall.
At this point there were no physical obstacles to impede her save the wall itself but that proved to be more than a formidable foe as even her armor enhanced self was struggling to even make a dent.
The exhausted Lexi took a moment to lean back and think things through. She was basically in an environment that defied all logic and reality, and one that was controlled by a sadistic sorceress. Pandora was basically in control of how easy or difficult this plight would be and it wasn't exactly in the pink haired villainess' best interest to make it easy on Lexi.
Little did Lexi know however that on the outside, Pandora was no longer there to monitor the status of the inescapable labyrinthian cube. She was off with her brother to mobilize an offensive effort against Vektor and the approaching battle brigade.
That wouldn't make Lexi's quest too much easier but at least without Pandora actively there to add obstacles, tilt the box or provide added mockery she could focus on escaping on her own terms. But how? It was called inescapable for a reason...
Lexi turned to her immediate right to notice she was no longer walking on the floor, nor the ceiling, she was somehow glued to the side wall, seeing what appeared to be a fall that plunged to the right as if on an airplane that was going down but somehow gravity wasn't taking its effect. Lexi walked gingerly, her boots feeling as though magnetic to the surface but weary of the fact that the sensation could give out at any time. She looked down the drop to perceive it went on "forever"
Lexi squinted, watching the green wall furthest to her get further and further away.
"...it has to be an illusion..." Lexi pondered to herself watching the world around her stretch on and on as if in some kind of abstract painting. Maybe that was it ... was any of this technically "real"? Lexi knew despite how things appeared that she was basically in a box ... no bigger than a small UPS package. It may have APPEARED that it spanned on for miles but the fact was it didn't. Would that mere fact be enough to somehow push her through?
She was about to find out ...
Trying to produce some propulsion in her feet, Lexi would lunge forward ... er sideways, but to no avail.
Lexi narrowed her brow and take a deep breath
"This isn't real..." she thought to herself, trying to jump again, her feet seemingly glued to the floor but she was starting to feel a bit less resistance. She closed her eyes again and took a deep breath.
"It's impossible to walk on walls..." Lexi thought to herself, "this isn't real ... this isn't possible..."
Lexi took one more attempt at a leap and this time she did a backflip, landing on the floor standing rightside up (or what she assumed to be anyhow)
"You see that, Pandora?!" Lexi screamed with a bit of triumph in her voice, while not realizing that Pandora was no longer watching her exploits. Still, she had to press on.
The cautious Lexi took another step forward, hearing a click as if she stepped on a particularly special floor tile. It must've been the wrong one because she yelped and jumped back as two swirling pillars of fire leapt out in front of her, swirling back and forth like video game obstacles.
Lext looked to the left and right of the swirling fire, trying to cook up a strategy as quickly as she could before she saw the flames burn out for just a moment before firing off again. That may have been her opening if she could time it right. She took another step forward but she waited too long and the firewall greeted her yet again with a burst of heat that caused her to look away a bit frightened.
"I'm not going to get through this by standing around..." Lexi said to herself, watching as the flames went down and out again. She dashed as fast as she could, narrowly missing another incinerating blast as it emanated from the colorful floors before her. She let out several weak exhales as she caught her breath, having narrowly escaped death.
Whether it was illusion or not, the fire sure looked and felt real from the heat it radiated. It was very hard to tell what was real and what wasn't in this containment chamber and things went from bad to worse as Lexi looked down and noticed there was suddenly no floor under her feet.
"Are you kidding ... meeeeeeeeee?!" Lexi screamed, plunging what felt like miles in terms of time elapsed. She fell for what felt like minutes at a time, although she never felt in danger, she simply felt weightless and an incredible sense of vertigo but she sensed this too was some kind of illusion or mental trick. After all the cube itself wasn't bigger than a full sized disco ball, so the furthest she could fall was maybe a few feet. Even at her current size that fall wouldn't take long.
As if Lexi's logic was prevailing over the entropy of the cube, she found herself thudding down on a dark floor, letting out a pained groan as her body hitting the floor made a loud echoing thud, the result of her titanium alloy enforced armor. It's a good thing she was equipped as such because she would likely be as good as gone in her usual outfit.
Lexi stood up cautiously, noticing this quadrant was distinctly different from the last. It was still unusual but for a different reason. It was almost entirely lacking in light or color, instead being drowned in grays and sepia tones. Suddenly a blinding spotlight illuminated Lexi herself, and she shielded herself with her wrist, although it was hardly a help as the metal simply reflected the light even moreso into her sensitive eyes. She stumbled and her back collided with something hard, a pane of glass. She turned around to investigate and saw it was more than that ... not just glass but rather a mirror.
In the mirror stared back a reflection of the woman herself. She tilted her head but then shrugged, turning to notice the walls suddenly were lined with mirrors, all lined up in panels. As she made her way down the hallway to explore, she was fatally unaware of the mirror she had just deserted as the woman in the reflection was still facing forward despite the fact that Lexi was now turned away.
Lexi stared at the next mirror, noticing the reflection of herself was making a different expression than she was. This "Lexi" was grinning at her.
"Hi!" Lexi heard a voice say, turning around to notice that the mirror adjacent to her featured an animated reflection of herself speaking to her in her own voice. "I'm Lexi!"
"No, I'M Lexi!" another reflection chimed in, making an angry face.
Lexi looked around in utter confusion and then screamed to see that the original mirror was now devoid of a reflection, as if the reflection itself had personified and escaped the mere mirror. Lexi's fears were soon confirmed as she clocked in the head by the cruel Lexi clone who cackled.
Lexi lay in the ground in pain, on her side as she watched another set of purple boots hit the ground in front of her, then another, then another. The Lexis in the mirrors were all stepping outside of the boundaries of the mirror frame itself imposing towards her.
It was like something out of a horror movie as most of them didn't talk but rather had sinister grins on their faces.
Lexi shook her head, in disbelief that the challenge in front of her was literally her own reflection.
"Alright ..." Lexi sighed, "time to show these clowns why the original is the best1"
With a bit of a cocky sigh, Lexi charged towards "herself" and performed a skilled backflip to dodge the swift punch of her opponent, jumping over her and pushing against her back to meet the next Lexi with her pair of metal boots to the groin.
Although the Lexi fascimilies didn't seem to be in pain, Lexi's attacks were successful in repelling them as they would any other human.
"You want me? Come get me!" Lexi screamed, suddenly filled with rage as a trio of Lexi clones gave her their own cocky look, shaking their head and laying down their own challenge to fight.
Lexi soon found herself quickly forced to the ground as one of them swept her down with a quick sweeping kick. Lexi would slide out of the way just as another Lexi slammed her hand down on the floor hard. Unfortunately for THAT Lexi, she'd find her hand in literal shards, shaking her arm as pieces came off in tiny triangles resembling polygons.
Lexi raised an eyebrow at this sight.
Before she could further analyze the situation she was grabbed around the waist by a smirking mirror Lexi.
"Uhhh you mind?" Lexi smirked, elbowing her doppleganger and shrinking below her once she was free of her clutches, "don't go touching me like that, even if you ARE me!"
While shrunk, she noticed the other lumbering Lexis charging at her, including the one that was now missing a hand. She'd grow back and strike one of them with a swift upper cut that literally broke her "Glass jaw", sending pieces of her face fracturing into the infinite distance.
As Lexi prepared to deliver another blow she felt a familiar but uncomfortable sensation culminating in her balled up fist. It was that of electricity, similar to what she had felt back in her world, but then she was reminded of what Vektor had informed her back at the palace as 2 angry mirror Lexis closed in on her.
The atmosphere in Quartzaria was pulsating with constant electrical currents....
Lexi would let out a yell, striking one Lexi so hard that she literally burst into fragments that scattered like sparkling pieces of glass. She'd swing at another one but miss, getting tackled by one of the mirror Lexi's, then another and another. They seemed to be multiplying at an alarming rate and Lexi soon found herself at the bottom of a dog pile of her own reflections as they came pouring out of the mirror frames as if coming out of a clown car.
Lexi let out a painful groan as the combined weight was beginning to press against her armor and she'd feel it creak and whimper under the intense force as some of the Lexis punched and scratched at the armor and others still just pushed on her harder and harder, seeming to bend the very floor on which they all were pushed against.
Lexi felt it again but this time much stronger. The electricity coursing through her fists now felt as though it was coursing through her entire body. She let out a scream as the feeling was both painful and empowering at once. She felt momentarily invincible despite the paralyzing charge of electricity surging through her.
She found herself defying her own expectations and shattering the opposing nightmarish reflections simply by standing up, her body now a living battery as she sparked and crackled, eviscerating anything that got in her way, including herself.
A grin of satisfaction crossed her face as the electrical field died down for the moment but she found herself successful in vaporizing the onslaught of Lexis as the mirror room went momentarily dark.
"Fuck this place" Lexi muttered, again feeling the sparking as if originating within her heart and spreading throughout, she took a deep breath and felt herself growing and growing. She wasn't going to be stopped. Not this time.
On the outside, the power conduit containing the cube was sparking and overheating, as a warning message showed up on a panel just below the cube. Fortunately for Lexi, nobody was there to see this and so she continued her rage filled attempts to escape, simply by willing it and changing her size to match.
"COME OUT HERE AND FIGHT ME PANDORA!!" Lexi screamed, growing bigger and bigger until she found herself tearing through layers of the menacing cube, finally facing an adverse shock that brought her down a bit. She was struck with an array of green lightning that stunted her growth but also Lexi was somehow winning.
The power conduit containing the cube was near close to bursting before an exclamation point popped up on the screen.
Below it read a message stating :
"SEVERE POWER OVERLOAD. EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN INITIATED. PURGING ALL PRISONERS"
Lexi screamed as she felt the strangest sensation yet, her body literally transformed into electrical energy as she felt herself getting sucked downwards like a lightning bolt. The box would sputter and twist wildly as it sparked, finally turning a dim green once Lexi had been disposed of it.
Lexi herself meanwhile found herself evacuated into a chaotic network of tubes and pipes, as if she were traveling through a wire like a spark of electrical energy. Of course, all networks of wires had to have an end or an outlet at some point.
After what felt like a split second despite actually being a longer time, Lexi found herself regenerated in what appeared to be a dungeon, her breathing and heart rate clocking in well over their normal rate. She looked around to see that was in some kind of prison but this wasn't the cube anymore. This felt real. About as real as anything she had encountered in this dimension so far.
She looked down at her hands to notice they were no longer sparking but she also felt reinvigorated, as if her previous injuries hadn't happened. Whatever electrical power she had harnessed was likely possible due to the electrical atmosphere but also enhanced by the fact that her own body had a weird polarity imbalance caused by her exposure to the Enormo Enterprises Delta project.
Despite having shrunk in the past, meeting fairies, battling robotic mini lady supervillains and going up against crazy scientists, Lexi had never experienced anything quite as surreal as what had just happened to her.
The good news for her was she had apparently escaped (albeit on a technicality) and was now normal size again. The bad news is she still didn't know quite where she was but had a pretty safe bet that she was somewhere in Paradox's castle. She let out an exhausted sigh before noticing she wasn't alone. Somebody was watching her recovery with a stunned expression on her face.
The woman staring at her was a similar height to Lexi, wearing what appeared to be a white tank top covered in some areas with blue plated armor on her shoulders. Her eyes were a similar shade of blue, a rather striking azure color to match her short blue hair which hung down around her forlorn face. She was actually rather pretty but the look on her face and her body language suggested that she had been through a lot.
Lexi came up to the cell a bit closer and watched as the female backed away with some apprehension.
"N-No don't worry..." Lexi said reassuringly, "I'm on your side..."
The woman stared back, raising an eyebrow, not quite believing her but also not distrusting her.
"Let me guess..." Lexi said with a bit of a smirk, "you must be Sapphire..."
Giantess World
