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It was rare for Mikoto to visit the Nexus. Once, those visits had been to travel from one reality to another, exploring, and futilely trying to find a world she could feel at home on. That had changed with a portal that had dropped a sopping wet and very-nearly-dead wizard on her.

These days her trips were more often restricted to visiting the Nexus Mall for supplies, or the Nexus Library to research subjects to aid in devising a cure for her oldest brother's condition. She was en-route from the former to the latter when the sounds of yelling, slightly distorted, alerted her to the appearance of a new portal nearby. Curiosity prompted her to investigate, one of the Desert Palace's small portable magitek computers quickly readied to scan the disturbance and the bag containing her shopping left propped against a random table as she approached the source of the sounds.

The portal appeared, even on first glance, to be one of the more unusual ones - a stone archway, with a tattered curtain hanging within it. Mikoto could hear voices from the other side, yet when she tried to cautiously touch the fabric she met with resistance as if an invisible wall filled the archway. She placed the spherical portion of the computer in the air nearby to extract the viewscreen, noting that scans confirmed that the portal was one-way. It would not allow travel from the Nexus, something she found unusual but not completely unheard of. She had the computer begin a more in-depth analysis of the energy patterns of this particular rift to see if it was strange in any other ways.

She continued to listen to the sounds of what certainly seemed to be combat, as she examined the portal itself more closely. She could hear laughter on the other side, and someone yelling, "Come on, you can do better than that!" The sound had an echo to it. She wondered if the effect was due to the portal, or if the other side of the portal might be in a cavern or stone room. She tried to find an angle that would let her peer around the edge of the veil to and see what was happening on the other side... when she was suddenly knocked to the ground by something coming out of the portal.

Or, rather, someone. She frowned to herself as she pushed the strange man off. What was it with Nexus portals dropping people on her? Though, at least this one was breathing and had a pulse. He still seemed unconscious, and she cast Scan to see if it could identify why. Someone from the other side of the portal was yelling now... and she frowned to herself. Sirius? She took a closer look at the stranger as the Scan spell confirmed he'd been hit with a stunning spell of a kind she recognized. The counter for that was simple enough, though the presence of that particular spell effect only strengthened her suspicions. "Rennervate." She needed no wand to cast spells, even the ones she'd learned from Regulus during their studies so far.

Mikoto found it difficult to divide her attention between the strange wizard and the portal, and her first warning that the latter was fading was an odd catch in the sounds from it. Like a poorly streamed video, there had been complete silence for a beat before sound had resumed. Risking a glance, she noticed the portal itself flicker. The sudden vanishing and reappearing coincided with another small 'pause' in the sound.

Taking her attention away from the recovering wizard proved to be a mistake, however. As soon as he could get back on his feet he rushed towards the portal. There was no time for Mikoto to warn him, so she just watched as he bounced off the invisible barrier. She doubted he'd even noticed her, and was relieved that at least he hadn't knocked her over again.

Mikoto thought for a moment of telling the new arrival that it was unlikely his friends could hear him or that his attempts would have any effect on the portal's one-way nature, but given his current panic she didn't think attracting his attention was the best of ideas. She continued to quietly monitor the portal, making sure the computer ran every analysis test she could think of. She noticed that it already looked faded around the edges. It would vanish soon. It was interesting that it had already remained quite a while longer than the one that had dropped Regulus into the Nexus, given her suspicions about this particular new arrival.


As far as Sirius was concerned, the question of exactly what the hell was going on could be dealt with after he figured out how to get back through the veil archway.

"Get him, save him, he’s only just gone through!"

Sirius could hear Harry yelling, just on the other side of the thing, but for some reason he couldn't even touch the curtain. He pounded on it and even tried to find an edge to pry at. "Harry! I'm here!"

"It’s too late, Harry -"

"... The hell it is, Remus!" Sirius yelled back, and tried to break whatever was in his way with a blasting curse. The result knocked him off his feet again.

"We can still reach him -"

"There’s nothing you can do, Harry... nothing... He’s gone."

Sirius was back on his feet again, and back at the archway. "I'M RIGHT HERE!" he yelled back. "I'M NOT GONE!"

"He hasn’t gone! SIRIUS! SIRIUS!"

Harry's voice had sounded more distant that time, and while Sirius could still feel the stone archway he was horrified to find he could also almost see through it. It was fading away in front of him. He'd tried both sides of the arch, finding both equally impenetrable.

"He can’t come back, Harry. He can’t come back, because he’s d -"

"HE - IS - NOT - DEAD! SIRIUS!"

No... That wasn't true. He wasn't... "I'M NOT DEAD! I'm right here! Harry! Remus! I'm right here! Come on, Moony! Don't give up on me." He tried to pound on the barrier keeping him from the veil again, and this time his blows met with no resistance. Not because he'd finally broken through, but because the archway was no longer there.

"They couldn't hear you," said a calm female voice, and he turned to see a blond girl about Harry's age pluck a strange silver sphere out of the air and tuck it in a pouch attached to her belt. "That particular portal seemed restricted to one-way access. A different method will be needed to return, if it's possible."

"What 'method'?" Sirius asked. He didn't know who this girl was, and just then he really didn't care. He had to get back, everything else was secondary to that, and he refused to believe there was any chance it wouldn't be possible.

"The most common in this place would be the PINPoint teleportation devices," she answered. "However, I suspect they may not work for you."

"Why not?" Sirius asked, watching as the girl grabbed an odd rectangular thing from a bowl on a nearby table. And he stared a moment longer when he realized that, unless it was some part of her strange clothes, it really looked like she had a tail. Something very strange was going on here.

"A coordinate string is used to specify the world and location. Luckily, I was able to scan for that before the portal vanished," she said, typing them into the device before handing it over to Sirius. "But there are some instances in which PINPoints cannot return someone to their world."

Sirius looked the device over. It seemed to be some strange muggle thing, but it wasn't that hard to figure out which button to press. All it did, though, was give him some sort of message about 'no signal'. He frowned at it and tried again, with the same result, before tossing the useless thing back in the bowl it had come from. "What's the next way?" There had to be something else.

"You should keep that," the girl warned, frowning slightly as she retrieved the PINPoint and held it out to him. "Even if it does not work to return you to your world of origin, PINPoints can be useful in other situations. And it is extremely unwise to discard an item with your world's coordinates on it so carelessly, particularly in this place. It may not work for you, but there are creatures here that you would not want to find their way back to your home should the same not be true for them."

Sirius stuffed the PINPoint in a pocket instead. He had the feeling that getting back right now wasn't going to be possible, and he didn't like that at all.

The girl - and he was right, she DID have a tail - nodded as if she'd guessed what he was thinking. "Since there isn't stable portal access, and the PINPoint does not work for you, the situation becomes more problematic. It is not unheard of for some people to be unable to return, particularly in cases of unstable access or where their timeline seems to consider them dead and therefore will not allow access."

"I can't accept that," Sirius said. "There has to be a way back."

The girl seemed to consider this for a moment before replying. "I can have Valia Pira analyze the scans I made of the portal before it vanished. Perhaps there is some way to force it to re-manifest and allow for return travel. I will need to return to the Desert Palace, and I think you should come with me. It is inadvisable to wander this place alone until you've learned more about it."

That might have prompted Sirius to have more of a look around if it weren't for the situation. Harry and Remus were still in danger. He might miss the rest of the battle, but there was a war going on even if the Ministry was too stupid to admit it. Since it didn't seem like waiting around here would do anything useful, he might as well go along with this for now. At least until he had a better plan. "Let's go, then."

"It's also inadvisable to relay PINpoint coordinates out loud in a public location, so we'll use mine. This will be reasonably similar to what your world refers to as 'side-along apparition'," the girl explained, retrieving a shopping bag that had been left propped against a nearby table. If he still had any doubts the tail was real, he lost them when she wrapped it around the bag's handles in order to have a hand free to use the PINPoint. She held out her other arm for him.

"I hope you're planning to explain all this 'other world' stuff," Sirius said, reaching to hold onto her arm. In an instant, they were somewhere else. Despite what was said it wasn't really that much like apparition at all, and he wasn't going to miss that 'squeezed through a straw' feeling one bit. Sirius was already reevaluating the possible usefulness of the PINPoint he'd shoved in a pocket as he looked around the room they were in. It was round, with metal paneled walls and a metal floor. The floor had an odd pattern of wedges, like pizza slices, as well as an ornate textured design on each wedge. The walls were less decorated, but nearer the top was a gilded pattern with inset blue stones. The single door didn't have a knob or any other obvious way of opening it.

"I will," the girl said, continuing the conversation as if the location hadn't changed at all. She put her PINPoint away to pick her shopping bag up, and then reached for the door's archway. For one shocked moment, Sirius thought she'd cut herself on the metal decoration as her fingers left behind crimson streaks. Then he realized the color seemed to be below the surface of the metal. At the same moment, the door to the small room slid open and the girl stepped out.

Sirius followed, finding the rest of the building even more surreal. Above the door they'd just exited was a decoration that looked like a giant eye. The floor had a pattern of rose and purple curves like stylized vines. The gilded metal trim continued in varying patterns on most of the surfaces, and some of the statues in the huge structure seemed downright demonic in nature. The further they went, the stranger it seemed to get. Parts of it seemed constructed primarily of stained glass and metal filigree, in shades of blues, purples, and reds. The checkerboard floors past the first area were the sanest part of the whole mess, and Sirius thought even the Malfoys would find this place just a bit overdone.

"There are multiple realities, of which your world is only one," the girl explained as they made their way through the building. "The place you arrived in is a crossroads of sorts between some, but not all, of those realities. It is most commonly referred to as a Nexus. Your world, as an example, does not have a stable connection. This reality, and this world of Gaia to be specific, however, does have a stable connection and thus it isn't difficult to travel from here to the Nexus and back again."

"What did you do to the wall back there?" Because that had been very strange and a bit unsettling, and he wanted to make sure she hadn't really had to bleed into a wall somehow to get the door open. That kind of lock never said anything good about whoever made the door.

She paused, looking almost puzzled for a moment, before replying. "This place is the Desert Palace. It is my older brother's home, though he is currently indisposed. Many of the control systems of the Desert Palace will only react to those with magic. Some time ago I had reason to modify the Desert Palace's security to redirect all incoming PINPoint teleportation to the holding cells for prisoners in order to prevent unwelcome intruders. What you saw was simply the visual display reaction to my accessing the controls in order to open the door of the cell we arrived in."

That over-gilded cage was this world's idea of a prison cell? This just kept getting stranger. Sirius thought listening to this girl for long might drive him starkers, if he wasn't half mad already. She talked like a Ravenclaw quoting an old textbook written by someone who'd read one too many dictionaries.

She stopped again near a particularly silvery patch of wall, reaching to touch the surface. "Valia Pira."

"Yes, Mikoto?" replied a nearly-androgynous but more likely female voice that seemed to have no definable source at all.

Sirius wondered if maybe this was something like those two-way mirrors. Or maybe Valia Pira was a ghost. The girl had mentioned the name before, but he didn't see who she could be talking to.

"I have data on an unstable nexus portal that requires analysis. Placing portable computer unit into the main systems now."

Sirius watched as the girl took the metal sphere from earlier back out of the pouch, and removed a matching silver bracelet she was wearing. And then he saw her stick both of them inside the wall, reaching through it as if it wasn't even there despite that it certainly looked solid enough.

"Beginning analysis," said the disembodied voice.

"Additionally, add Sirius Black to limited guest access for security."

Sirius started, distracted from the strange wall panel, as he realized she knew his name. He was sure he hadn't told her. She could have heard his first name from Harry's yelling earlier, but to know the rest she'd still have had to know enough to have identified him from what she'd heard. He wasn't sure what to think of it. Whatever she knew didn't seem to include the 'escaped murdering lunatic' parts, or she wouldn't have calmly invited him home... would she? Unless this was a trap...

"Acknowledged," Valia Pira replied.

"Well, you seem to know who I am, but you haven't mentioned your name yet."

She turned from the wall to look at Sirius. "I am called Mikoto." There was a pause before she added, "And, I did recognize your name from the portal, if that is what you were wondering. It's uncertain whether I would have recognized you otherwise, although I had heard of you and your world's coordinates are also familiar to me.

"Familiar how? You've been there?"

"No, I have not. But your reputation isn't all that has preceded you, Sirius Black."

"I wonder just what you've heard." She didn't seem to react like someone would if they knew a lot of the things people thought about him. But then, she acted strangely anyway. He paused for a moment, distracted from that train of thought, because he'd thought he'd heard music coming from the direction they were heading. It sounded like someone playing a piano.

"Enough to be aware of your tendency to find or cause trouble, and your predisposition towards pranks," Mikoto said.

Sirius kept following, certain he'd heard a piano now. And was that lava way down there? What was this crazy place, really?

"I will have Valia Pira assign rooms to you while the portal data is being analyzed. In order to prevent problems, I should warn you of certain things," Mikoto said.

"You're not the only one here," Sirius guessed. Someone had to be playing that piano, after all, unless it was a recording. And it didn't sound like a recording.

"No, I am not. There have been three people in residence here until now, although the structure was originally designed for much larger numbers. My oldest brother is very ill. Because of this he is currently in stasis in a sealed room. I do not mind if you explore this place, but do not unseal that room or it could prove fatal to him at this point. This room is located in one of the labs, and is both locked and magically warded with a barrier that manifests in the same color as what you saw when I touched the cell wall earlier. I know if I do not tell you this, or simply tell you to stay out of a sealed room, you might attempt to access it out of curiosity or simply because you were told not to do so. I have been warned of that aspect of your nature."

Sirius couldn't help a snerk at that. "Okay, I'll admit, if you had just told me about a locked door I couldn't open... I'd have trouble resisting for long. But I won't do anything to hurt your brother." They were close enough now to hear the tune being played. It wasn't any song Sirius recognized, the unfamiliar tune paired with a counter-melody of notes played up and down the scale. He wondered briefly if that part was meant for a harp instead.

Mikoto paused briefly at a hallway intersection before she started walking in the direction of the music again.

"Who's the third person here?" Sirius asked. He could guess the hesitation was because she was deciding whether to show her housemate that she'd brought an unexpected guest home or save it for later. The rooms she'd mentioned must have been the other way.

"Someone from your world," Mikoto replied. She was frowning slightly, and Sirius couldn't help feeling uneasy. He was guessing she wasn't sure how he'd react to whoever the other person was. Or, maybe, wasn't sure how they'd react to him, given his history. That would make sense. Most people wouldn't like their 'roommates'
bringing home escaped felons without even a warning. He followed anyway as she approached a large stained glass archway. Sirius had seen a few of those on the way here and had thought they were very strangely placed windows, but the music seemed to be coming from the other side of it. The music stopped just before Mikoto
reached to touch the 'glass'. The colorful panel seemed to dissolve, leaving behind an empty doorway.

When Mikoto walked into the room and stepped to the side as she spoke to the person at the piano, the place took a turn from strange to unbelievably surreal. "Regulus. We have company."

Sirius just stared as the person at the piano bench looked over. A person that couldn't possibly be there. This had to be some kind of trap. Without even thinking, he reacted, sending a stunner at the piano player and then quickly trying the same with Mikoto.

Mikoto, however, had had time to cast Reflect. Sirius Black was knocked out with a stunner for the second time that evening, this time his own.


Mikoto took a moment to consider the situation as she checked both unconscious wizards for any other injuries. She had expected some show of hostility, given what she knew of past events between the two, but she had to admit immediate spell use was an extreme in her analysis of the situation. Still, it hadn't been enough of a statistical outlier for her to have not been ready to cast Reflect, which had turned out to be a good thing.

Despite the attack, which at least was admittedly non-lethal, leaving Sirius Black to wander the Nexus would not have been an option. Especially not after she'd recognized the coordinate string for his reality of origin. The possibility of Regulus's brother being infested by a Yeerk and becoming a severe security risk was too dangerous to be ignored.

At least she had been able to convince him to come quietly. Well, mostly quietly.

After some consideration, she decided it best to just put them both to bed so she could return to her research.
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