***GABE***

"I got a legit question for you guys!" I call down the corridor as TJ and Kensi keep approaching me. "Where the hell is Harris?"

They stop short of coming into range of my light blade, then each raise one of their own. Being more at home with their own light elementals, both their blades are longer than mine. They look like they're working in eerie enough unison as it is, both playing a sort of mirror game with each other - Kensi's wielding left-handed, while TJ's wielding right-handed. Then comes their simultaneous response in almost the same cadence as this one ghost in Dark Shadows: "He's coming. He's coming."

As my blade twitches, pointing at them one after the other, I groan and grunt as loudly and fakely as I can. "Ohhhhhh...uhhhhhhh...I know. I feel him masturbating as we speak. Don't you know we boyfriends can sense that shit?"

"Aww, you're cute when you're gross," Kensi says. Admittedly, that does sound really in character for her, even when she's not under mind control. But that dead tone of voice is so out of character, it's out of this bloody solar system, even.

"Definitely related to me," TJ comments. Okay, that's also in character, and also super dead-sounding.

I let my blade twitch again. "Okaaaaaaaaay...so just so we're clear, someone here is filling your mouths with garbage to spew back out. Who is it? Whose ass do I kick?"

"You're the one pretending you just felt him jackin' it," says Kensi with a squeaky-toy laugh that sounds so wrong coming from her.

"You're not answering my question." I train my light blade on her. No offense, Fionna, but my connection to Kensi is a lot less personal than to TJ, so if I have to nick anyone with this blade, I'd rather it be her. Wait, do I even have to nick her? Can I make it so this blade is less solid and more sparky?

There's so much I haven't even begun to figure out about this new power, and I'm already trying to use it as a weapon. How boneheaded am I? Well, those I love are involved, so...very. Extremely. More than I ought to be anytime, ever.

I focus my thoughts on the end of my blade in hopes that that alone could get a spark to happen. It doesn't, not right away. Any sparks that come off the blade right now, they're coming off naturally, I think. And they're small enough that Kensi isn't even reacting in the slightest.

Other than to say, "Harris. He's controlling-" And then she stops, as if whoever's really controlling her just forced her to.

"Yeah, you're lying." I turn to TJ, and he actually twitches away from my blade, even though it doesn't come anywhere close to touching him. Hell, the blade hasn't even moved.

"I'm not lying," Kensi says. "Harris is running this show."

"Congratulations, you got to complete your lie this time."

"It's not a lie." This time, it's TJ saying it on her behalf. "Harris is in our heads."

"In our hearts," Kensi chimes in.

"In our souls," TJ adds.

I roll my eyes so far back, I'm afraid they're going to get stuck and then I won't be able to aim my blade at anyone. "In my ass, though."

"You're not supposed to tell us that!" cries TJ as Kensi covers her ears.

I smile at them as dangerously as I can. If only Harris could see through their eyes. "Is that your weakness?" I ask them. "TMI?"

Kensi recovers from her disgust and teases, "You'll never find out."

I hope I can keep them out of my head, because I've just had an unexpected brainwave. For all the energy I'm using up pointing my light blade at my friends' heads, what if I targeted another portion of their anatomies instead? For all the Peppermint mind-control program likes to, you know, infect the brain, why is it that they always make their plants glow at the wrists? Is it just corporate product placement? Or a secret vulnerability to exploit?

Taking a chance, I lower my blade just enough to bring it within range of TJ's wrist. He knows right away what I've got in mind, and backs away, parrying me with a blade of his own.

Sorry, Kensi. I guess you'll be my first guinea pig for this experiment.

Throwing ice into TJ's face, I turn to Kensi and point my blade directly at her wrist. Then I fill it with a pulse of energy that makes the whole thing explode, and the lightning it creates arcs out and impacts right on one of her green-glowing Peppermint logos.

Her scream pierces my ears, but I shake my head and clear out the disorientation she gives me. Then I run up to her, hitting TJ with a powerful ice blast along the way to immobilize him. "Kens?" I ask, kneeling next to her as she clutches her lightning burn. "Are you okay?"

She looks up at me with dead eyes for a second, but then she blinks and hits her other Peppermint logo with a light blast of her own. The scream she gives this time is smaller and shorter, though still enough to hurt my ears a bit because I'm at closer range.

"How long have we known about these guys' secret weapon and not actually tried this?" she asks.

"They've been banking on our good natures."

Kensi looks up at TJ, who's already trying to break free of my ice with his own elemental. "But even those good natures break eventually. Some more sooner than others. Then again..." She hits both my wrists with light shots just to make us match in burns and screams, and it works. "Some of us are innocent as Eevees, and some of us are smelly-ass fuckboys."

"What?"

"You're a boy, and you fuck." She jumps to her feet and offers a hand to help me up, which I take. "As far as I'm concerned..."

"Remind me to advise Fionna to break up with you ASAP."

Ever the sweet sapphic, Kensi flips me off, then turns to TJ again. "Speaking of fuckboys, what do we do with this straight?"

"You're calling my blood a fuckboy?" I cup one hand around my biceps and raise my fist at Kensi. Yes, we Maltese do the Italian salute too.

"Yes, I am, Rosie the Riveter." I guess it shouldn't surprise me that Kensi, not having any Southern Euro blood as far as I know, has no idea what I just did. Or she's just being a jerk to cope with her mental hijacking. Note to self: sit and talk with her later, after we're all out of here. TJ and Harris too. And Jae, who's still not made his presence known down here in the basement.

"Where's Jae?" I ask as I freeze TJ up one more time. I hate to do this to him, because it won't be long until it actually causes him some damage. But it'll allow me and Kensi to talk about what to do next.

"He's with Harris, last I remember seeing him," Kensi says. "They sent us out to intercept you, me and Fuckboy." She snickers to herself, but then sobers up immediately. "Me and TJ," she corrects herself. "They tried to make me say Harris was in charge of everything, right?"

"So you maintain some level of awareness of what's going on?" With that in mind, I unfreeze TJ's head, then lock eyes with Kensi before we hit both his wrists at once with light blasts. It takes a little time to break through the layer of ice, but break through we do.

"Yeah, but it's hella fucking scary," TJ says after he screams his way through his own spellbreaking, then rotates his jaw experimentally. "We see and hear all, but we can't do shit to stop it."

"Bloody hell..." I should count myself lucky they didn't know I would have light elementals too, otherwise they might have put their little pods in my Second 'Verse body's wrists just like all the other light elementals in our circle. Then again, how did they know to put the mind-control pods on anybody? And something else has been bothering me - how could they infect Harris? He's not even a light elemental. Either they've developed a way to attack dark scrivs this way too, or they've got him forced into the mission-control chair at gunpoint.

Which might make sense if they've really got him running lines into Kensi's and TJ's ears. But at the same time, those lines don't sound like him talking, like, at all. Even if Harris were playing parrot at Peppermint's command, I'd like to think he's well-trained enough to slip some secret messages of his own in there somewhere.

"Where is he?" I ask them. "Harris and Jae. Do you remember?"

"This place is a damn maze," Kensi says.

Of course, the second those words leave her mouth, all the lights go out.

"Now it's even more so," I mutter as Kensi and TJ turn their own light powers on to navigate the corridors.

"I saw something like this on 3% once," TJ says as he places his lit-up hand on the wall. "That Causa girl, Michele, she built a maze of green lights and glass-"

"Yeah, well, it ain't working now." I add my own light, but it's hella weak, likely because I wasted a lot of that energy making that blade for almost two whole minutes. Kensi's trying to do the same as TJ, and now, I add my own light to the wall, but to no avail. "Where are those little anti-gravity light sticks we had before? Those were super bright, from what I remember."

"Probably hiding in one of these rooms," TJ says.

Kensi scratches her head with her free hand, barely visible in the dark. "What are you talking about? Anti-gravity? You know, that might actually help us stay out of reach if more people come after us."

"I dunno." TJ uses his own free hand to point up. "Look how low this ceiling is."

"Those anti-gravity sticks won't work on us, anyway." I think by now I've reached the door through which TJ and Kensi just came out to find me. "I don't think."

"Yeah," Kensi says. "Have you tried lifting yourself or anyone else?"

"I...haven't," I admit.

"Right," TJ says. "The one time we tried this, we were too busy..." His voice trails off, then he carefully opens up a door and shines his light through it. Inside the room beyond is a table on which the light sticks sit. "Should we try it now?" he asks.

I shrug, then stride in and pick up a stick myself. "Nothing for it but to try. Kensi, you game?"

"Yes, I'm gay," she says. "Why do you ask?" Winking and laughing at the same time, she stands in the doorway and snaps her fingers. "Fire away, fuckboys!"

TJ picks up a stick and points it at Kensi. "You sure?"

"Bloody fucking hell yeah, I am!"

"You know what? You gotta stop learning to cuss from Fionna." I send some light energy into my gravity stick, which glows blue for me. TJ's glows yellow as he fires it up, and together, the beams meet in green as they lift Kensi off the floor. For good measure, she uses her own powers to boost and stabilize herself, lightning pouring like liquid all over the floor.

It doesn't last, though. She falls to the ground, flat on her ass. When she gets up, she looks at us grumpily before saying, "Bad idea."

"Why are you saying it like it was ours?" TJ asks.

"Shh!" I pull Kensi bodily through the door and shut it behind her.

"What?" she asks in a low voice.

Telepathically, I respond, I heard something. Or someone.

Both Kensi and TJ fall instantly silent and press their ears to the door, listening for anyone who might be coming our way.

Nobody comes by in the next thirty seconds, suggesting to me that I might have been imagining things all along. So we open the door and smack some assbutt in the face. When he's on the ground, clutching his nose and moaning in pain, I lean over him and give him a good dose of ice.

"You sure that was a good idea?" Kensi asks me.

"He didn't look important enough to give us any info we needed."

"And who's to say you know enough to judge that?" But rather than wait for an answer, Kensi pushes ahead, lighting the way with TJ by her side. I hang back, the better for them to not see me blush. She's right, I fucked up just now. I'm going to be kicking myself for a while over it.

"Next one we find," I say, "let's stop and interrogate him."

"If we find one before we find the place where..." TJ's voice trails off.

"What is it?" I ask.

TJ knocks on a door. "Mmm..." He knocks again. "Shit, they're coming!"

"What?" Kensi and I cry out before getting to either side of him, all of us ready to strike.

The door opens, and a couple of peeps in Peppermint lab coats - the logo is stitched in bright green on their chests, and one of them has the glow dots on his wrists - burst out, wielding their own antigravity light sticks.

They hit me with the sticks first, only because I push both Kensi and TJ out of the way.

I float, and not pleasantly either. The whole time, they've got white lightning pouring into me, and while I'm able to resist for a moment, it soon builds to an aggravating, agonizing numbness. Alex has been electrocuted before, but for me, this is all new.

Somehow, though, I'm able to speak. "A little help here!" I yell at Kensi and TJ.

It's TJ who gives me the help I need, actually running in to grab the lightning holding me up and throwing it right back at the lab techs. As the lightning stops supporting my weight, I'm almost ready to hit the ground, but then TJ actually catches me. Which...holy shit. I mean, the guy is ripped as balls, but I had no idea he was that strong.

"Can we do that?" I ask Kensi. "Can light elementals just-"

"No." Kensi sits rooted to the spot as if paralyzed herself. Did I accidentally transfer some lightning into her body when I pushed her and TJ aside? And did TJ get some kind of supercharge while she got nothing? "No," she repeats as she climbs to her feet again. "I've never heard of anyone doing that unless they're hella powerful, and this guy's never been..."

"Don't question it too long," TJ says in an odd-sounding voice. Oddly deep, more so than his own. "I don't wanna hurt any teenage heads. Let's just get the job done."

Oh shit. "Who possessed you now?"

"Intros later, kids." TJ muscles his way through the door, spraying more lightning all over the place and frying the nearest lab-coat types. "For now, you can just call me Elliot. And the first person to quote Supernatural at me gets a lightning bolt straight up their ass."

Kensi and I follow TJ into the room, where there's nobody else in an upright position except he who sits at the computer terminal. He's not one of the Park brothers, but he does remind me of Kira's dad from Teen Wolf. He could be Korean, too. The point is, though, he's not any of our group. But as TJ-possessed-by-this-Elliot-character trains his deadly, well-enhanced hands on him, the man in the lab coat proves far more compliant than the vast majority of his compatriots.

No words pass between any of us four for the longest time until the man in the chair looks Elliot-slash-TJ in the eyes and says, "My God-"

Lightning up the ass, as promised. "I told you," Elliot growls. "No fucking Supernatural quotes. I just lost someone near and dear to my heart, so I'm in no mood for levity."

"Great," Kensi says. "This guy could've helped us, and look-"

"He wouldn't have." Elliot pushes the guy out of the seat, where he flops to the floor, twitching but barely conscious. While he gets to work, typing away on the keyboard, Kensi and I pick up the man by each of his hands and pull him aside. We lay him back against the wall, still seated, then add his friends - the ones who levitated me earlier - to either side of him.

"Where do we go to find the rest of our friends?" Kensi asks after she and I are done with this artful arrangement.

"According to this," says Elliot, "another floor down." Pause. "Yeah, they did a good job hiding TJ's memories of the time when they possessed him, but not good enough to hide them from me."

I eyeball Elliot's hands. TJ's hands, more accurately. Light flies from his fingertips to the keyboard, and also to the external drives on the front of the computer itself. For once, Peppermint's not using this method to fuck with my cousin's head. Still, though, the sooner we can get TJ back, the better. Our TJ, I mean. The real one, whose brain, by now, must be more twice-baked than any potato I've ever seen in my life.

"Let's just move," I say. "And can we..." I swallow for a second, not wanting to come off too demanding in case this Elliot person gets even more dickish. "Can we get TJ back? Please?"

"That'd be nice, but I'm working in the heads of both twins now. And I got more important work where the other twin is, so..." Elliot, through TJ, shrugs, then gets up from his chair and storms through the door. Literally and figuratively, to the point where the lightning he makes helps him glide over the hallway floor.

"Daaaaaaaaaaaaamn," Kensi drawls.

I tilt my head and send her a thought. Next order of business, do something about this Elliot dude. He smells like a shit-ton of bad news.