This is a little something that I worked on last year. One day while talking with Scorpiofreak about different shippings, I was inspired to write this, a crossover between "InFamous: Second Son" and "Alice: Madness Returns." After discussing it at length with Scorp and coming up with multiple ideas for how it would work, I sat down, wrote it out, and sent it off to be proofread. I would have preferred to have posted it last year, since I think that 2016 was the year Second Son was set in, but things got busy for the both of us.

This part of "The Good, the Mad, and the Infamous" is set soon after the True Hero ending of Second Son. I hope you all enjoy this crossover, and the new pairing that comes with it.

The Good, the Mad, and the Infamous

True Hero

Six years ago, people thought me odd.

The girl who spent ten years in a mental institute following the deaths of her family in a house fire, whose imaginary world and friends, the only friends she had, leaked out into the real world as hallucinations. No matter how strong the medicine or perceptive the therapist, there was no help for my mental state. I was, as a hallucination of Rutledge Mental Institute's head doctor termed me, "a bad penny."

People didn't treat me badly because of my condition, but they could never really hide it, that fake mask of acceptance that they all wore. The one they wear because they have been taught that treating the mentally ill with malice and disgust was an abhorrence born of a darker age. But they could never hide the fact that deep down, they looked upon me and wondered why I couldn't be normal.

Normal. As if that word has any true meaning in this reality, where there is no one who is truly normal. The true pity is that we are told to "be yourself" and that "everyone is unique." If they truly believed that, I wouldn't be on the run simply because of a gene that I cannot help possessing!

I digress. After a year of attempting to improve my mental state, I learned that my psychiatrist's true intentions. He was slowly driving me mad, making me forget what little remained of my memories, and turning me into the crème de la crème of his true business. Confronting him, I accused him of his crimes against my sister, my family, the children at his "Research Center", and myself.

All he did was laugh, and mock me, assured that with his place in London's society and his connections with high society, especially within the medical and legal fields, it would be "my madness" that would be punished! I can say only that when I pushed him in front of that oncoming subway, I was acting on a mixture of righteous fury and impulse. I did the right thing; he never would have stopped on his own, the perverted monster.

Leaving the tube station, I thanked my lucky stars that no one had been there to witness Doctor Angus Bumby's death at my hands. If only I had known of the presence of several hidden security cameras in the station.

Not an hour later, I was on the run from Scotland Yard for murder. Either none of those cameras were equipped with microphones, or the person or persons on the other end were on Bumby's payroll. If the latter, I may still have unfinished business in London.

After slipping by the police, I stayed in London long enough to sneak into my room at Houndsditch, take as many of my clothes and belongings as I could hold, grab a large kitchen knife for self-defense, and say a heartfelt goodbye to Nanny.

I stowed away on a cargo ship headed to New York City. Cliché? Perhaps, but my options were few and staying in London was not one of them. My arrival to New York was hidden by refugees from the interior of the country, where the Empire Threat had destroyed their homes. New York was one of the many cities being used as refugee camps due to the Empire Threat despite its proximity to the destroyed Empire City.

I had heard of Cole MacGrath, the Electric Man, and had seen the footage of him destroying an aircraft carrier with a bolt of lightning. Leave it to the Americans to create the first superhumans. The Empire Event, the destruction of the second largest city in the US, and most of the Eastern coast of the US had taken place roughly a week before I had awoken in Rutledge.

Part of me, a childish sliver left over from the aftermath of the fire, wished that the superhumans, the "Conduits," weren't gone, that the novelty and excitement of proving that superpowers were real hadn't disappeared before I could even witness a Conduit in action. A few days after arriving in New York, I got my wish.

A gang of hoodlums cornered me in a back alley. When they made it clear that they wanted more from me than just my meager supply of money and food, I drew my knife to defend myself. One of them drew a gun and shot me point blank in the chest. Laying there on the blood-soaked concrete, listening to them squabble about killing me, I was aware of the crimson-tinged cracks and splinters that appeared in the corners of my vision like a shattered mirror, just before the world turned red.

I came to moments later, standing upright amidst a scene of carnage. The hoodlums lay around me in various attitudes of death, some thrown by a powerful force, others slashed to ribbons, the weapon used dripping red in my hand and the hole in my chest closed. Screams filled the air as those who had witnessed my rampage against my would-be rapists and murderers ran for their lives. I was gone long before the police arrived.

My Hysteria ability had come into the real world. I was a Conduit with a power that no one understood, and that I barely did. I thought I was the only one. And then the world decided to prove me wrong again.

Conduits began springing up all over the United States, their powers turned loose on a world that had believed them gone. Lynch mobs appeared to massacre the newly-manifested Conduits before their powers could develop, Conduits with developed abilities massacred the lynch mobs and others, and the military killed both Conduit and Human in a gruesome attempt to restore order.

The mask that people wear in order to prove that they are tolerant, kind creatures had fallen away at last, revealing the horrid monsters underneath. Six years ago, they looked at me and called me a monster. Freak. "Bio-terrorist."

It was in the midst of this chaos that the Department of Unified Protection arose. Yes, they took down rogue Conduits before they could hurt people. Yes, they restored the peace in a nation rife with chaos. And they did it with a brutality that almost equaled that of the Samurai Wasps. Knowing that I was no match for Augustine, let alone one of her foot soldiers, I went into hiding, staying in one city for a few weeks leaving fleeing to the next, always keeping a tight lid on my new powers while working to expand and strengthen them.

After six years of running from the DUP, I began to realize that I may be the last free Prime Conduit on the North American continent. The thought is both lonely and gratifying; the latter in that everyone who identifies with me and my powers is locked up in Curdun Cay, the former in that I may be the only Conduit to have evaded Augustine and her DUP brutes.

When I believed myself ready to face the "Queen of Spades", I headed straight towards her newest conquest, Seattle. With the media's focus on the escaped Conduits and on the military's failure to contain them, I intended to sneak into the city and take down Augustine in one fell swoop. Before I could even reach Seattle however, another Conduit made himself known: a Native American man by the name of Delsin Rowe.

From what I could gather, he was either the stereotypical, rampaging Bio-terrorist, or another Cole MacGrath. And as the TV news showed just an hour ago when he defeated Augustine one-on-one and with her own concrete-based abilities, he is exactly what we Conduits need to show the world that we are not terrorists, not monsters, just people with an extraordinary gift.

Delsin Rowe is a brash, reckless, and impulsive "punk" with powers very similar to my own, but he seems to have a good heart and a strong moral compass. I know that as soon as the DUP are kicked out of Seattle, he and his allies, Eugene Sims and Abigail Walker, will be headed to Curdun Cay to free the imprisoned Conduits. I may have missed the fight for Seattle, but I will not fail to participate in the battle to free my fellow Conduits!

GM&I~~GM&I~~GM&I

Getting shot really hurt.

Even when you had the ability to shrug off handgun bullets like they were rubberbands.

And especially if the guns were automatic turrets.

Peeking out from behind the wrecked remains of a helicopter while waiting for his fast-healing to kick in, Delsin Rowe, member of the Akomish Native American tribe, graffiti artist, Conduit, and the man who (almost) singlehandedly kicked the Department of Unified Defense out of Seattle, glared at the row of DUP APCs arrayed against him and wondered why it was now that the Dupes had decided to grow a few brain cells.

Only a week ago, he had succeeded in driving out the last of the DUP forces from Seattle. Listening to the cheers of the crowds as they chanted his name and those of his friends, Fetch and Eugene, Delsin had felt absolutely invincible. He had, after all, become an insanely powerful Conduit, taken down hundreds of DUP soldiers, beat Brooke Augustine in two consecutive fights and exposed her corruption to the world, kicked the collectives butts of the DUP out of Seattle, solved a murder mystery, and saved his tribe from a painful death. All within a week, not to brag.

After "commandeering" a DUP APC and giving it one hell of a paint job, he and the others had struck out for Curdun Cay Station, certain that after the massive beatdown they had handed to Augustine and her Dupes in Seattle, taking on the garrison at the Conduit version of Alcatraz would be a piece of cake.

Right now, Delsin wanted nothing more than to go back in time and punch his younger self in the nose for thinking it would be so easy.

The first lines of defense for Curdun Cay had been just like Seattle; a few APCs spilling out their cargos of lead-spitting, concrete-throwing goons, a couple of helicopters attempting to blow them up with missiles, some Bishops, a few Super Pawns and Rooks, nothing that he and his merry band had to worry about.

And seriously, was Augustine some kind of chess fanatic, naming her soldiers after chess pieces? Because if he found a chess set in her office featuring herself as one or both of the Queens, that would be so messed up.

Approaching the main ground of the prison, he had jumped up onto a destroyed Armored Personnel Carrier (APC) and launched himself into the air, intending to fly up into the view of any Dupes in the prison yard, yell out a line from Die Hard, fire off a few Cinder Missiles, and then finish up his dramatic entrance with an Orbital Drop. The automatic turrets of the dozen or so APCs parked in the yard had quickly killed that plan.

It had been a good plan too.

He had smoked dashed back down as quickly as he had come up, barely surviving the onslaught of lead that had riddled his body. If there was a Lead Conduit locked up in Curdun Cay, he was so absorbing that guy's powers. That is, if he, Fetch, and Eugene survived long enough to free the Lead Conduit and the others. And the odds of that happening weren't favoring them right now.

Speaking of right now, he was currently pinned behind the wreckage of a helicopter, with about a dozen automatic turrets and some snipers keeping him from smoke dashing away. He had to rematerialize after going a certain distance; he couldn't stay a cloud of smoke particles indefinitely, especially with the strain he was putting his fast-healing through with every connecting shot.

"Hey, D!" his phone suddenly yelled at him with a Jersey accent. "You got a plan B or something!? And if you say 'Get 'em', I will personally laze your-"

Whatever part of his anatomy that she was planning on "lazing" was cut off by gunshots and cursing. Fetch was weaving in and out of a thicket of bullet-riddled and scorched trees, trying desperately to get some neon shots off, only to be forced back by missiles and snipers. For the former junkie, sniping was her thing. Counter-sniping? Not so much. She also couldn't get close enough for her other abilities to be effective.

"Delsin, we need to get out of here!" Eugene's panic was very clear in his voice, even through the phone's speakers. "Nobody said we had to take Curdun Cay in one day! If we retreat now, we can come back again tomorrow! Tomorrow night! If we don't, nobody will be able to free any of the Conduits in there!"

Eugene's Angel form, He-Who-Dwells, was very powerful, incredibly intimidating, and a big, fat target. He had been able to blow up a couple of the APCs in the yard before a hailstorm of air-to-air missiles had downed him and his angels in mere seconds. Delsin had no idea where he was right now, but judging from the sounds in the background, Eugene didn't sound like he was doing too hot.

"I'd consider that if I wasn't being shot at every time I move!" he yelled into the phone. "Let's give them a few minutes to get cocky, and then we can try that!" At this point, Delsin would have broken out into a traditional Akomish rain dance (yes, his tribe has those) if he thought it would have helped. Though if the dusting of snow falling around them and getting in his eyes was any indication, that wouldn't help at all. He wondered for a few milliseconds if there was an Akomish fire-and-brimstone-from-the-sky dance he had overlooked out of boredom. That would come in handy right now.

"D, look out!" Fetch's voice screeched out of his phone's speakers. "One of those really big guys is headed your way! Get out-!"

Before Delsin could smoke dash away, the chopper was suddenly flipped over, landing on him before rolling away. He lay there, pressed into the snow like an action figure smashed into a glob of Play-Doh, his entire body aching and his heartbeat thudding like a drum in his brain. Through the haze of the concussion and the snow blurring the vision in his left eye, he could hear Fetch and Eugene's voices screaming at him to move and see a big blob creating a bigger blob, the entire world losing its color to various hues of gray.

Lifting his head and blinking, his vision cleared, revealing the first blob to be a Concrete King and the second to be a massive block of concrete with his name on it. The world seemed to freeze: the concrete-armored King levitating over him in a swirling cloud of rocks, the glow of his powers shining off the flakes of snow ghosting by, the huge chunk of concrete blocking the late-morning sun, and his healing factor trying desperately to heal him. For a brief instant, all of Delsin's twenty plus years flashed in front of him.

The next flashes were from the barrage of missiles striking the King's back and head. The surprise of the attack enabled Delsin to move out of the way of the five-ton chunk of falling concrete, just barely avoiding being crushed underneath. The forced Conduit looked like he was fighting a massive internal struggle before his powers overloaded and he exploded in a shower of concrete.

Wiping the dust and snow from his eyes, Delsin looked in the direction the missiles had come from to find a DUP chopper flying right over him and towards the yard. Dropping abruptly, it unleashed a salvo of missiles into the yard, sending the burning husks of APCs, auto turrets, and Dupe soldiers flying. The attention of the DUP forces was now on the helicopter and its traitorous pilot. Tracer bullets and RPG contrails whizzed overhead with chunks of concrete, all in-bound for the chopper. Delsin saw the opening it gave as his fast-healing finally finished its work.

"Fetch, Eugene, that chopper's got them distracted!" he yelled into the cell. "Get in there and put the hurt on them!"

Running towards another APC and dodging the sparser gunfire, Delsin car boosted again and fired a cinder missile right into a group of pawns. Landing in the yard, he began dashing around and disabling the occupied turrets.

"Who's the idiot in the chopper?" Fetch asked as she darted forward and shot at the DUP snipers who had been keeping her down.

"It matters not," boomed Eugene in his He-Who-Dwells voice. About a dozen angels joined him in raining down video lasers on the remaining turrets. "Only an ally would dare risk their own life in such straits. We must stand with that brave soul!"

Before anyone could even think of an answer, a final missile struck the helicopter, blowing it from the sky and sending the debris raining down on the yard. Dashing through a falling rotor blade that would have cut him in two, Delsin was the first to see it; a human-shaped figure dropping down amongst the flaming ruins of the chopper. For a fleeting instant, he thought it was Augustine, back from whatever military prison she had been shipped off to and apparently out of her mind.

Then again, he was pretty sure that Augustine didn't wear a blue sundress underneath that trench coat. And he definitely knew that she didn't wear thigh-length, black-and-white striped stockings.

The figure executed a perfect superhero landing, confirming that she (he could confirm it was a she now) was a Conduit. He couldn't get a better impression other than she was female, a Conduit, had very dark brunette hair, and wore a sundress with striped stockings and calf-length boots underneath her open coat. A Rook opened fire upon her with his mini-gun just before Delsin was distracted by more gunfire.

As he finished up with the squad that had opened fire on him, a resounding crunch rang out through the yard. Glancing back towards the new Conduit, Delsin saw the Rook stumbling backwards with huge cracks in his armor, the barrels of his minigun crushed, and the girl still standing, sizing up her weakened opponent.

"Holy crap," he thought, "what kind of powers does she have?" Another burst of gunfire prompted him to take cover behind a wrecked APC and absorb the smoke pouring out of it. That question could wait.

The battle only heated up from there on out. Fetch was running and jumping all over the place, neon energy leaping from her hands to find its unfortunate targets in the form of rapid-fire lasers or heat-seeking mini-missiles. He-Who-Talks-Like-a-Medieval-Dork and his angels provided aerial cover and support, blowing choppers out of the sky and frying the big-bads headed their way. Smoke dashing and car boosting all over the yard, Delsin fired his cinder missiles to take out larger enemies and used his sulfur bombs to flush out those behind cover and subdue them. The stranger moved even more quickly than he did, never affording him the chance to identify what her powers were. Whatever they were, she used them very effectively. The bodies of both living and dead Dupes he came across could attest to that.

Machine-gun bullets, smoke shots, and lasers filled the air. The contrails of RPGs and air-to-air missiles arced across the sky. Between the powers of the four Prime Conduits and those of Augustine's Forced soldiers and their conventional weapons, it was no real contest anymore. DUP agents struggled against their restraints on the ground while others just sat there, accepting the terms of their surrender. As the battle continued, more and more of the Dupes began to lay down their weapons and hold up their arms, giving up. Held down by smoke, neon, and video energy, they could only watch as their cause, once so powerful and righteous, collapse to the ground underneath the combined might of the "Savior of Seattle" and his allies.

The fight climaxed with Fetch yelling for all of them to grab onto something before launching a ball of light directly above the remaining DUP forces. It quickly expanded into a swirling vortex of pink neon light, sucking in everything and everyone who wasn't nailed down. Clinging to a steel girder, Delsin caught sight of Fetch, levitating over the battlefield and grinning manically, her body wrapped in tendrils of neon. A moment later, he was thrown to the ground as the vortex exploded outward, throwing everything it had captured. Fetch landed on her feet, still smiling like an absolute maniac.

"Fetch, what the hell was that?" Delsin weakly called out from his prone position on top of a smoking APC. After nearly being pulled in two by a mini black hole (or was it a pink hole?) and then being smashed against the girder and falling on top of the burning hot vehicle, he didn't feel like moving.

"Neon singularity," she answered breathlessly. "Been a while since I let one of those rip."

"Such a powerful offensive attack," boomed He-Who-Dwells-in-the-Basement, who had been flying in place to avoid getting sucked in. He landed with a boom on the ground. "Why did you not unleash that power against our foes at the Battle of Seattle?"

"Cause you two yahoos never gave me the chance," was her response. "That, and you're obviously handling it real well."

"Oh." Eugene's normal body landed on the ground as He-Who-Dwells dissolved. "Well, that was very cool, Fetch," he said in his ordinary voice.

"And very painful," Delsin groaned. He craned his head towards the entrance to Curdun Cay, just in time to see the fourth Conduit disappear inside with a flash of blue. "Okay, break's over." He dashed from the APC to the ground and jogged towards the entrance, the others right on his heels. "You guys know who Miss Brunette Trench-Coat is? Because if Augustine had any kids, I'd rather not get in a fight with anyone with the mommy issues she would make."

"Tell me about it," Eugene snorted.

"Ya never know," Fetch muttered. "Someone like that might really want to help us tear her little empire down."

"First, let's find the controls for those cuffs," Delsin growled. The thought of someone shoving those cuffs onto him and keeping him from feeding himself or even wiping, let alone from using his powers, was revolting. Hank was many things, but he was right about one thing: that was no way for anyone to live.

Entering the now-smashed doors of Curdun Cay, they all stopped to look around, Fetch and Eugene with a swell of unpleasant memories, Delsin with a morbid curiosity. It reminded him of the concrete structures that Augustine had erected in Seattle, only on a much larger scale. They all reminded of her in a way; oppressive, foreboding, cutting, dark.

He shook his head and turned to the others. "Ok, here's the plan: we'll spilt up, look around, and call for back-up if we get cornered by reinforcements. See anything that looks like a control for the cuffs or the doors, break it."

"Or hack it," Eugene piped up.

"Yeah, you do that," Fetch snarked as she disappeared into the dark, concrete halls of Curdun Cay while Eugene turned invisible and chose the opposite hall. Spying a vent, Delsin grinned as he dashed through it. Things were looking good, though he'd like to know who their helpful friend was, and maybe shake her hand. Whatever her powers were, they were certainly effective. The downed and groaning soldiers that they hadn't taken down were proof enough of that.

Exiting the vents deep within the prison, Delsin began his search, a sulfur bomb waiting in his hand. In close quarters, those proved very effective against the Dupes running around the halls, trying to find the four attacking Conduits.

Brushing his hands off after restraining a squad of agents, Delsin looked around the hall where he found himself and nearly had to suppress a shudder. Looking at the concrete and metal that made up the massive structure, Delsin could see Augustine's handiwork: cold, impersonal, hard, and with an interest in only the functional and none in the aesthetic. A nightmare to someone with his sense of art.

Riding up the air currents in the ventilation system, Delsin thought about the former director of the DUP and her Conduit powers. Had she always been like this? One of the theories about Conduits out there was that their powers were a reflection of their personality. It made sense; Eugene had been a gamer before his powers developed, Fetch's speed and precision fit her impulsive and straightforward attitude, and Hank's smoke powers made getting out of bad situations easy.

There was also the fact that a Conduit's abilities seemed to adapt themselves to their owner's goals. Every time he had spared a surrendering DUP soldier, healed a wounded civilian, or made an on-the-spot decision, Delsin had felt something in him grow and grow until it reached some sort of threshold and broke through, filling him with a sense of empowerment and invulnerability. New powers had always become available to him following one of those.

Thinking back on those lives he had spared and saved and the decisions he had made following his "transformation", he couldn't help but wonder what he would have become and how his powers would have developed if he had taken the path most Conduits found themselves taking as their powers corrupted them. If he had given in to his darker impulses, then his powers would have followed suit, making him a monster instead of a hero.

And there was also the theory that whatever powers they got were random, and that as they learned to use their powers, their personalities changed to reflect their powers. And there was that whole thing of "power corrupts." Had Augustine been a decent person before her Conduit gene activated? Had her powers allowed the worst facets of her personality, her sadistic, cold, hard side, to come forth?

Delsin was so busy theorizing about the relationship between a Conduit's personality and powers as he rounded a corner that he nearly tripped over the downed DUP agent in front of him.

Righting himself before his face could kiss the concrete floor, Delsin found himself in an intersection filled with the bodies of dead DUP agents and a few restrained, living ones. Bullet holes littered the walls and ceiling of the intersecting corridors, huge cracks showed where a heavy object had impacted against the floor, a few Dupes laying feet away. What was really disturbing were the ones with what looked like playing cards sticking out of them; none of those were alive.

Delsin flicked his phone open and tapped in the commands for a conference call. "Hey Fetch, Eugene, remember that paper Conduit I told you guys about, Celia?"

"The same one who tried framing us while playing as Augustine's little hitgirl?" Fetch snapped. Delsin remembered that one of Celia's clues had shown her and Fetch to be friends while in Curdun Cay; he wondered what would happen if they ever met up again and if he would have to play mediator. And he still had unfinished business with the girl herself.

"Yeah, just came across a bunch of Dupes, most of them dead." He reached over a dead agent and pulled out a card, grimacing at the blood-stained ace of spades. "Either she's here, or the Joker's decided to join the party. I've heard of paper cuts getting nasty, but this is ridiculous."

"How's that?" Eugene asked. When he and Fetch received pictures from Delsin's phone of the card-inflicted injuries, Delsin could him hear him suppressing his gag reflex. "Now that's messed up."

"Tell me about it," Delsin muttered. Glancing back at the blood-soaked card, he thought back to the dead scientist he had found in Celia's apartment, and frowned in thought. Celia had filled the man with shards of origami, pinning him to the wall like a sick poster. Whoever had killed these guys hadn't bothered with folding the projectiles into birds, or anything else. Just simple playing cards. He was about to mention this when he noticed something about one of the survivors.

The guy was restrained just like his buddies a few halls back, but it wasn't smoke, neon, video, or paper that kept him down. The stuff pinning him was blue in color, not the electric, flickering pixels of video, but a light, baby blue with darker shades streaking thought it. A closer look revealed that instead of one solid mass, it was a bunch of fibers crisscrossing and interweaving through each other, wrapping the downed agent as tightly as a fly in a web and fastening him to the floor. Tracing the darker shade of blue, Delsin noticed that it formed patterns throughout the whole, resembling a stained-glass window. Oddly enough, it was rather eye-catching.

"Hey guys, I'm not so sure this is Celia's handiwork. She's into origami, not playing cards, and she's definitely not going to spare lives. Plus, there's this." He took a picture of the blue, almost web-like material and sent it to their phones. "Any idea what this stuff is? It's restraining the guys who are still breathing down here."

"Looks like some kind of cloth," Eugene answered.

"It's lace," Fetch interjected. "Spend any amount of time as a girl and you'll wear something made of lace."

"So our unknown friend is a Lace Conduit," Delsin said thoughtfully, studying the lace restraints with renewed interest and imagining the possibilities. He wasn't sure what lace would be able to do as a Conduit power, but it would be intriguing to find out. "Not the most manly power, but definitely one they'd never see coming," he added out loud.

"D, no," Fetch said flatly. "You can go hold her hand after we've busted the cuffs off and kicked the doors down."

"Yeah, Delsin," Eugene chimed in. "We need to get the Conduits out first. Besides, don't you have enough powers?"

"Eugene, I'm going to pretend you did not just say that, and I'll hold off on getting her powers." Delsin flicked his phone off and looked down at one of the agents. "Hey, the girl who did this to you? Where'd she go?"

The man's visor lay broken a few feet away, allowing his eyes to look down the opposite hall, which showed signs of more damage further in.

"Thanks!" Delsin said as he vaulted over the agent and down the hall.

"Fetch and Eugene didn't say anything about following her," he thought to himself, grinning.

Judging from the trail of living and dead agents the girl left behind her, she was getting close to something important, something which the DUP was desperate to protect, if the increasing body count was anything to go by. Running by the downed agents, he caught glimpses of the marks that Conduit powers left when they were used to shoot something, and they didn't look like paper or lace. Instead of investigating, he kept running. He would figure out the girl's powers when he caught up.

It was the sound of gunfire on the floor above that shortened his chase. Dashing again through the vents, Delsin found himself in front of a couple of heavy-duty security doors, which didn't look heavy-duty or secure in their current, smashed-in state. Stepping over an agent lying in the doorway, Delsin took a look around and snorted.

"Looks like a gamer's fallout bunker in here," he said out loud. The room was filled with desks that sported some of the most streamlined computers he had ever seen. Eugene would pass out in a dead faint if he ever came across this room; hell, if the guy ever did find the room, he'd probably never come out.

Delsin found about a dozen DUP personnel huddled in a corner. From the lack of armor and guns, it looked like they were tech support.

"Hey," he called, ignoring their collective flinch, "did a girl wearing a trenchcoat who wasn't Augustine come in here?"

They didn't say a word, their eyes alternating between him and the floor. For crying out loud, these people worked with the Forced Conduits who made up the bulk of the DUP forces, and their old boss was a Prime Conduit! The next time he did his artist thing, he was going to point that out that little hypocrisy.

Rolling his eyes, he took a second look around. This time his eyes locked on the impressive piece of computer hardware in the center of the room. The desk was built into its side, lights blinking while it whirred and hummed like it was about to take off. He walked up to the desk and studied what passed for its keyboard and mouse.

"Must be the computer that keeps everything running around here. Of course it is, it looks like one of those supercomputers in a villain's lair. Sheesh Augustine, how much more cliché can you get? What did you do, take notes from movie supervillains?"

If he could somehow access the controls for the cuffs and the doors, freeing his fellow Conduits would be a cinch. Now if only he had some serious hacking skills. Or any hacking skills for that matter.

Delsin glanced at the swirling vortex of colors that made the screen saver. It was really pretty to look at, a brilliant whirlpool that almost hurt his eyes, but he wasn't here for the DUP's screen savers. His mind wandered back to the mysterious girl as he reached over to touch the mouse and interrupt the saver.

"She's been helping us so far. She must want to free the Conduits too, but what are her powers? Lace used to restrain Dupe agents and playing cards killing others. Maybe there are two new Conduits here? And another thing, if Trenchoat's a Conduit, how come the DUP didn't report her escape? Unless they covered that up, of course. Or she was never captured in the first-"

With a loud buzz, Delsin's world was engulfed in a blaze of light and the sensation of a thousand discharges of static electricity all over his body. He belatedly remembered what had happened in Eugene's hideout the first time he had barged in. Instead of finding himself on a platform in the middle of a lake of lava worthy of Dante's Inferno, however, he was falling through open, unhindered sky.

Letting out a surprised yell, Delsin did his best to right himself in the air. Most of the time, he wasn't too worried about heights. He did have Conduit stamina and durability, and had landed unharmed after jumping from heights that would have broken both his legs before he became a Conduit. Right now though, all he could see was blue sky, clouds, and snatches of green far below. Way far below.

Before he could start panicking, several large objects shot past him. He caught a glimpse of a lot of them, flying, floating, or falling around him, just before he landed hard on something.

Delsin stumbled forward as the kinetic energy from the fall dissipated through his legs. He stood there in a half crouch for a moment, breathing hard as his heart rate settled back down. He was about to make a smart mouth remark ("That wasn't so bad.") when he caught sight of a very large club, the one from a card deck, right by his foot. He stood up, and as his eyes took in the incredible sight, his mouth dropped open in silent amazement.

"Holy crap! Eugene, you there, buddy? Eugene, this isn't funny man!"

When Eugene didn't show up as either himself or as He Who Dwells, Delsin looked around at his new surroundings before letting his arms fall to his side.

"Well, at least there's no lava to fall into this time. Or giant angels shooting at me."

There weren't either of these things. Instead, Delsin was standing on a platform, three gigantic playing cards (2 twos of clubs and 1 five of clubs), which was somehow hanging in the middle of the sky. All around him, groups (flocks?) of playing cards flew or floated serenely through the air, their slow graceful movements like large, languid birds. Whether they were flying under their own power or gliding on strong air currents, he couldn't tell. In the distance, just visible through a fine sheet of cloud, was a massive open card house, suspended in mid-air, ignoring gravity in its entirety. When it came to floating structures, this place was much like that game world Eugene had been hiding in.

Hopefully, this one and any others he came across wouldn't drop from the sky the same way Eugene's had dropped into that lake of lava. Less burning, lot more breaking.

Approaching the edge of the platform, Delsin jumped when a card came out of nowhere and stuck itself to the platform.

"Whoa! Ok, that didn't happen before." He gingerly tested the new card with a toe before stepping onto it. He then jumped up and down a few times to find that it didn't even budge beneath his denser mass.

"Conduit-proof. Nice." A whirring noise started up as a tube made of cards appeared in front of him, blowing a large volume of air and smaller cards, the latter disappearing as the force lifting them dissipated. Eyeing the tube and another, higher platform, Delsin thought for a second before smoke dashing into the "card vent."

A few moments later, he landed on the higher platform in a crouch, grinning at the familiar sensation of traveling through a ventilation shaft. Rising, he looked ahead at the newly discovered playground in front of him and grinned even wider.

"This is going to be EPIC!"

Using a combination of running, jumping, smoke and vent dashing, with some thrusters, Delsin began to make headway across this world of cards and clouds. He laughed at the thought of Reggie's face when he told him about this. Then he remembered that he couldn't tell Reggie about this, couldn't tell boast to him about any of the awesome things he could do just to see him get flustered. His laugh was cut off.

He stayed quiet for the next few minutes. HIs silence was only broken when the ever-lengthening slide he found himself on ended in a pack of cards, launching him skyward.

"WHHOOOAAAA!"

Landing on the platform of the card house after being launched like that, Delsin thanked his lucky stars that Fetch hadn't been around to hear him yell. Looking around the floating house of cards, he was just in time to see a trenchcoat vanish behind a corner. Darting forward as a cloud of embers and ash, Delsin came to a stop just before the corner. Best to play it cool; he was getting real tired of every Conduit he met running from and fighting him. Why were they so against sharing their powers with him? It wasn't like he was hurting them. It was more of a weird "zinging" sensation, rather than a painful one.

"Hey lady," he called out, "Uh, nice work out there in the yard, bet the Dupes never thought that one of their own choppers would—whoa!"

Delsin was both cut off and knocked over by the swarm of blue smoke particles and…butterflies, that swarmed right into him. Clambering to his feet, he looked up to see the smoke/butterfly cloud coalesce into Trenchcoat-and-Stockings Girl, who was running straight towards the edge.

"Wait, stop, don't do it!" Delsin yelled as he dashed to his feet. Conduits were incredibly hard to kill, but there had to be miles of empty air underneath them, and he didn't want to see the limits of Conduit stamina and healing tested like that. Even if it was inside a computer.

Unheeding, the girl kept running and leapt out into open space. The world froze for an instant as the girl reached the apex of her leap and began to fall downwards. Then she stopped falling, right in mid-air.

The girl was standing up, perfectly fine and not falling to her death, with nothing underneath her.

"What the…" Delsin trailed off. When the girl began to somehow float upward, he dashed forward and leapt. He felt his hands grasp the very edge of some invisible platform and held on tight as he pulled himself up. "How are you doing that?" he grunted out.

The girl turned to him, and he got a good look at her face for the first time. She was gorgeous. An oval face with glowing, peach skin framed with long, dark hair, and two emerald-green eyes regarded him with a mixture of amusement and surprise. Delsin felt his brain short-circuit and his grip begin to give out, forcing him to focus on not falling to his death. Gravity was such a buzzkill.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Rowe," she said, her voice tinted with a faint British accent, "but I have important business to attend to, and there's no time at all." They stopped rising and the girl turned towards another card house. "Perhaps another time," she added just before she smoke/butterfly dashed in a straight line, with nothing underneath her again, towards a closing door in the structure.

"Wait, I wasn't done—oh come on!" Delsin phased the rest of the way onto the invisible platform and began running after the girl, only to step off into empty air. After a millisecond of panic from looking straight down through a dozen miles, he was really glad that smoke let him fly for short distances.

Landing, Delsin was just able to phase through the remaining one-inch gap left by the descending card door. Just in time to see Stockings exit the opposite end of the card house. He briefly noted that she had perfected a technique with her skirt that was almost hypnotic. Unfortunately, he didn't have time to gawk like a teenage boy.

"Ok, now I've had it," Delsin muttered. He began dashing forward as fast as his powers would let him. Closing the gap between them, he was about to reach and grab her shoulder when she began doing the same thing, keeping ahead of him. "There's no point in running you know," he called out after her, "I'm a master at chasing skirts!"

"I'm sure your crowning achievement was catching Sims in the throes of a video game," the girl replied in a derisive tone as she jumped onto a card pack and soared upward, with Delsin following in close pursuit.

She had also mastered the ancient art of Caustic Tongue.

Another card pack later and Delsin was no closer to catching her. He had just tried using a sulfur bomb and she had just held her breath and closed her eyes before phasing away. Apparently, smoke wasn't going to cut it. Glancing around the newest card house, Delsin noticed the card that was glowing neon. Reaching out to it, the attempt to absorb its energy was a success.

"Let's see you outrun light!" Delsin grinned as he ran over to the edge and looked up at the much-smaller group of cards where she was. Spying her, Delsin narrowed his eyes and focused laser insight. One shot to the legs, and this chase would be over.

Catching sight of the purple glow coming off of her legs, Delsin was about to let one fly when he saw what she was doing. Raising a hand, Stockings shot a beam of neon energy into the sky, but instead of burning a hole in a cloud, the beam stopped and formed a platform, alongside a few others. Unlike the cards, these platforms looked like crayon-drawn squares that had been lifted off a page and fixed in midair. A few of them were even moving around in simple patterns like in some video game.

Switching out of laser insight, Delsin watched the new "Crayon Platforms" disappear from sight.

"Ok," he thought aloud, "that is the strangest use of neon I have ever seen in my life. And maybe the most awesome."

Getting to the platform was as easy as a photon jump. If only the girl wasn't running along her newly made, invisible platforms. Delsin was about to run after her (too dangerous to shoot while she was suspended in the air like that) when he noticed the block of ice sitting on some kind of weird dais, like it was holding it down or something. He stared at it for a moment before using laser insight to find the crayon platforms and jumping up onto them. He raced over to the edge closest to the girl in lightspeed, stopping short of going over.

"Hey!" he yelled, putting his hands to his mouth. "I don't know what your powers are, but to a power-absorption guy like me, they look really interesting. Can you please stop so we can talk about this?"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Rowe," the girl replied, raising her voice so he could hear her and her annoyance, "but I have more important and productive things to do right now than sate your appetite for powers." He swore that was she rolling her eyes at him. "Now why don't you get yourself out of this digital domain, and just jump off. You'll find yourself back in Curdun Cay."

Delsin looked down at the miles and miles of empty air between him and the ground, and then back up at her. "No way," he said flatly. "You can't keep your powers from me," he added as he brought his arm up, both it and his eyes glowing with neon. "You can run, but you cannot hide!"

Her flight from the barrage of lasers he shot at her almost outstripped the speed of the cards that flew in to guide her path, Delsin moving constantly to keep her in sight. That didn't keep her from saying what she thought of him though.

"Of all the stupid-." She dashed right through a laser beam.

"Pigheaded-." She leapt to the next card as the one before had a hole drilled through it.

"Idiots!" she yelled as she hit a card pack and soared into the air. "I swear if you ruin this, I'll turn both the Jabberwock and the Red Queen on you!"

"Jabberwock?" Delsin said as he ran down the path she had taken. This girl was both beautiful and strange, and that wasn't just considering her very weird assortment of abilities.

A photon jump and a card pack later, and he was hovering straight towards yet another floating house of cards. He landed on it and began to run at lightspeed towards the girl. "Let's see you outrun this!" he yelled.

Just as he stopped and was about to trap her in a stasis bubble, the girl jumped onto a weird, blue mushroom and shot straight up into the sky, a sarcastic laugh on her lips. "Why run when I can fly?" she called out in a taunting tone just before she vanished into the clouds above.

Delsin stood there for a few moments, craning his neck to look straight up, his expression stupefied. When his neck began to complain, he turned his gaze back down until it came to the mushroom. Stuffing his hands into his pockets, he sauntered over to it, crouched down and studied the fungus.

It was very large for a mushroom, and it was a periwinkle shade of blue. It looked somewhat like a layer cake that Betty had baked a while back: layers of different sizes, getting new one getting smaller as it grew taller, ending with a tiny nub of pastry. Only Betty's cake had been chocolate brown instead of blue, and there hadn't a spring underneath it powerful enough to shoot someone into the sky. If he had tried stepping on the cake (and that had never once occurred to him), the only thing launching him would have been Betty, throwing him into the bay. With half the tribe's help. Including Reggie.

Forcing that thought away, Delsin pulled himself back into reality, if this land of flying spades and floating aces could be called that. He let out a short laugh before walking a short distance back and then running full speed at the mushroom. "Let's go for a ride!"

A few minutes later, Delsin landed on a ruined bridge, laughing. He glanced back at the gigantic slide that he had just slid down and shook his head. "That would violate so many safety regulations in the real world," he added breathlessly.

Turning back, Delsin looked beyond the bridge where he had landed. "Now this looks more like something you'd find in Heaven's Hellfire. Just needs a touch of lava, or something else nasty, and less green to make it creepy."

The castle was something else; high walls with turrets that were only topped by the tower that bore a massive heart-shaped symbol at its summit. The massive canyon served as a buttress against any intruders, save for the cobblestone bridge whose supports vanished into the mist below. It was a ruin without a doubt, with the vines and moss growing on and around the walls and heart-based architecture. In some places, the vines were the only thing holding up sections of the castle, fitting into grooves made before the plants grew into them. And speaking of hearts, just as the massive doors of the entrance closed up ahead, he caught sight of a now-familiar trenchcoat vanishing behind them.

Delsin shot forward as a streak of light, intent on catching up with the British conduit. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw an odd little railroad, like one of those Victorian locomotives puffing away on a railroad track situated high above the mist like a bridge. The huge head of a really strange animal protruded from the engine's window, but he had other things to do right now than investigate weird animals. Maybe another time.

Coming up on the massive heart-shaped gates of the castle, which remained closed to him, Delsin simply ran up them before coming to a stop at the top the wall. Looking down into the courtyard below, he turned on laser insight in case the girl was in his line of sight.

She wasn't, but a bunch of other things were. Scattered around the courtyard were statues that looked like massive chess pieces, some of them red, others white, towering over the grass and flowers. Imposing horse-headed knights armed with swords and shields, rooks built like massive bouncers, and weird, little cyclops things that he assumed were pawns dotted the grounds, presided over by a solemn-faced King statue who stood by yet another entrance.

"Looks like I just found Augustine's favorite computer game," Delsin quipped, smirking at the chess statues. On a ledge opposite him, almost hidden by a red bishop with a massive nose, was a large, lavender drawing. Looking like something that a kid would draw on a wall in crayon, it depicted a girl standing triumphant over a bunch of…cards with skeleton heads and blobs with doll heads?

Delsin shook his head as the drawing vanished into streaks of barely-noticeable lavender sparkles after he turned off his insight vision. "This place can't get any weirder," he muttered as he jumped down into the courtyard.

No sooner did he land that the universe decided to prove him wrong.

Scrabbling out of the flowers near the base of the bishop statue, a huge playing card with arms, legs, and a head rose to its feet, loudly cracking its shoulders and neck. The joints at which its limbs joined to its body were blood red, like someone had sewn them on; the head was a skull covered by a black hood, its one big eye socket the shape of a club, same as the massive, bloody hole that dominated its chest. Straightening its back with a final grinding crack, the card/skeleton/zombie/whatever-the-heck-it-was threw its head back and roared, a deep, throaty, challenging noise.

"What the hell!?" Delsin shot the thing in its spindly legs, subduing it in neon bounds. Before he could get a chance to get a better look at it, more of them shot up from the ground nearby, all four of the different suits grinning at him with lipless mouths, their fingers twitching to rip into his flesh.

Delsin quickly learned a few things about fight the "card zombies"; one, don't get within their arm's reach, they were much stronger than they looked. Two, it was very hard to hit them in their narrow legs, especially when they were running towards you. And three, they would get right back up after being downed by body shots.

Head shots it was.

As the last one exploded outwards in a shower of red neon particles, something else began coming up out of the ground. A big grease stain coalesced and then just bubbled straight up, forming itself into a blob. The blob grew two long, gooey arms that almost brushed the ground next to its four, stubby legs. Pipes that emitted a foul stench protruded from its back, its black consistency belying the white, porcelain doll face that served as its head. It somehow opened its mouth and let out a sound that was between a deafening roar and a sickening gurgle.

Delsin stared at the thing with a deadpan expression. "Nope," he finally said.

Its doll face was shattered a second later by a phosphor beam, the rest of its body exploding outward in a wave of disgusting muck. Delsin instinctively jumped away from the goo, yelping when a drop of the stuff landed on his hand, burning him. The ooze scorched the ground as it seeped through the grass, sending up a disgusting odor of burned plants and inorganic chemicals, while the body of pipes rolled away. The doll face was nothing but shattered pieces speckled with black.

"Ow, ow, ow!" Delsin wiped furiously at the spot on his hand with a sleeve until the burning sensation wore off, leaving a burn mark on his hand and a nasty stain on the sleeve. As his fast healing got to work on the burn, he looked at the remains of the creature in disgust.

"Ok, either that girl has got the most twisted imagination in all of mankind's history, or Augustine's a fan of the most twisted game of all time," he said, kicking at the pipes and then groaning as he caught a whiff of the stuff burning the rubber on his shoe, leaving a nasty-looking and smelling stain. "Oh gross. Either way, it doesn't bode well for these guys."

He began racing through the castle's rooms and over its walls, searching for the girl. He came across more drawings, most of them depicting the girl fighting the card zombies, the goo monsters, and other things. The worst of them was the giant, long-fingered puppet and the tentacle monster with two more heads—inside its mouth. If these things were in this place with him, he'd stick with the zombies and the goo monsters, thank you very much.

The drawings also warned him of ambushes by the zombies (who far outnumbered the goo creatures), which proved especially helpful when the "big brother" versions of the things showed up. Card zombies with armor and massive maces, and one big, three-headed goo monster that liked chucking fire balls at him.

That last one had been a real pain in the butt, along with all of the other areas it had managed to hit. The smoke it produced was plentiful enough to be absorbed, except it had felt different from normal smoke. Running through it during the fight, Delsin had gotten a good whiff of it. Somehow, it oozed of a corruption and filth that belied the lies Augustine had told Seattle, a corruption that promised to seep into every pore of his being and twist him into something monstrous. He stuck with neon throughout that fight.

It didn't look like he was making any progress in finding the girl (elusive little thing), until he began finding the same thing back at Curdun Cay that had led him to the computer: bodies, or rather, what little the cards and goo creatures left behind when they died. The creatures seemed to be attacking them at different intervals and places, and like him, she was kicking their keisters back into what computer-generated hole that they had crawled out of. Definitely an attractive quality, especially with that British accent.

The remains from the girl's battles became fresher and fresher until he came across a tower after getting out of the overgrown hedge maze. At its very base was a tunnel, its mouth strewn with the armored card zombies' maces and the goo monsters' porcelain faces. Cocking an ear towards the cave, Delsin heard something that sounded very much like the usage of Conduit power. He was on the right track.

Glancing down the tunnel, Delsin looked at the new slide that led down into the darkness and shook his head.

"Nah, I think one super suicide slide is enough for one day." Off to one side of the tunnel was a weird pillar of something. Delsin had noticed various pillars spread throughout the castle and its grounds, and they had proven to be like the pillars of neon and smoke that had been in He-Who-Dwell's lair. Only a few of them had been his elements, however. He had no idea what most of them were, but judging from the static he was getting from this one, his upcoming spelunking expedition would be a breeze.

Raising his hand and willing the stuff to flow into it, Delsin grinned as he felt the energetic buzz of video replace his almost-depleted neon reserve. Flying over that slide and down into the depths would be interesting, and better than trying to keep from falling off the slide edge and into oblivion.

Skimming over the slide's gleaming surface, he noticed two things about this area of the castle: one, it was much newer than the rest of the place, like someone had done some renovating. The marble wasn't as aged or cracked, and there was nowhere near as much plant life growing over everything. The second thing was the smell. It was very faint, but horrendous once you got a whiff of it. Like something had rotted in there for years and then died.

"Ok," Delsin muttered to himself as he came to a landing at the end of the slide, "this place could not get any weirder." A few moments later. "Crap! I should not have said that," Delsin burst out, swinging his arms and letting them collapse to his sides. "Let me guess, a Yoda-like character is going to appear and start giving cryptic advice."

A deep laugh cackled behind him, prompting Delsin to shoot around, his chain turning into his giant video sword and ready for action.

"Ok, I can hear you! Come out with your hands up, and I won't introduce you to my big friend!"

When nothing, feline or otherwise presented itself, he backed away slowly into the center of the room and began looking around for the exit. It took him a few moments to notice the paper tag hanging from the blue heart decoration on the wall. Taking it, he read 'Shoot me.'

"Shoot what, or who?"

Flipping the tag over, he found the words 'The heart, you fool' on the back.

"Oh…hey!" he added indignantly, glaring down at the offending snip of paper.

Igniting it with a burst of video, he turned back to the heart and blasted it until it broke into marble shards. A door slid up, revealing a passageway beyond it. Giving the room one last searching glare, Delsin turned and hurried down the passage.

Using video to light his way, he jogged down the darkened hallways, blasting apart the hearts whenever he came across them. Seriously, what was with this place and hearts? Or with the flying cards and the card zombies? And what on Earth had the guy (or girl) who made this place been smoking when they came up with it? Cocaine? Marijuana? Opium for crying out loud?

It didn't help that the smell was getting stronger as he continued deeper and deeper in.

"Hopefully, absorbing this girl's power and memories will give me some answers," he thought to himself. "And judging from all the Dupes and freaks she's been taking down, she must have one heck of a power!" He quickened his pace on that thought.

Coming to the end of a staircase, Delsin found himself entering one of the largest caverns he had ever seen. The bottom was shrouded in mist, the light coming from chandeliers hanging down from an almost invisible ceiling. The smell was strongest here, enough to make him gag if he took a deep sniff. A large, narrow marble outcropping led out into the middle of the cavern, coming to meet some sort of dais. And right there on the dais, shifting and rotating a thick cylinder of interlocking segments, was the girl, her back facing him as she pushed and pulled at the cylinder, growling at it in a low, threatening voice.

Delsin was about fifteen yards away from her when she spoke.

"I have to admit, Mr. Rowe," she said, causing him to jump, "I wasn't expecting you here so soon. I thought for sure that you would find our present location too disorientating." The cylinder suddenly clicked together and she nodded in satisfaction. "I take it the Card Guards and the Ruin didn't prove too challenging?"

Delsin went for the nonchalant approach. "The card zombies and the goo creeps? Naw, those guys were total push-overs." He clapped his hands together, shifting his feet. "I, uh, take it you're not mad about what happened out there in the place with the flying cards." He cleared his throat. "Anymore, that is."

"To the contrary, Mr. Rowe, I'm furious." The girl finally turned to look at him, her emerald green eyes blazing so hard that he took a step back. "How can you be so stupid? Pursuing me in hopes of gaining my powers when the Conduits imprisoned in Curdun Cay are dreaming of freedom?" She cocked her head to one side and gave him a searching/accusing look. "Are you even here to rescue them, or is this all just a power play?"

"Of course I'm here to rescue them!" Delsin all but yelled at her, poking himself in the chest. "I just thought that, you know, I could do that and get your powers at the same time."

Saying it out loud, he realized how dumb it sounded. Before she could capitalize on that, he pointed an accusing finger at her and added, "And just what have you been doing since you got here, huh? Running around this freakshow of a computer game, killing a bunch of B-grade horror monsters? Yeah, I can see how that would better the lives of our fellow Conduits."

She looked at him, her gaze unwavering, before she reached back to the cylinder and clapped a hand down on it. It shot down into the dais with a whoosh, followed by a loud humming. Her eyes never once left his while the entire place began to vibrate. He held it as well as he could with the platform trembling beneath his feet.

Finally, she opened her mouth. "Mr. Rowe, I am going to boot your nethers. Anything you'd like to say before I get started?"

Delsin brought his sword back and hefted in front of him. "Yeah," he answered, "what's your name?"

The girl reached into her coat and took out a large kitchen knife, ornate carvings set into the blade and the handle. She swung it to one side and it lit up with neon energy, streaks of red and blue flowing along its length with black particles dancing on its razor-sharp edge. Her face set into a smirk, her green eyes gleaming with an almost mad joy, she answered.

"My name, Delsin Rowe of the Akomish, is Alice Liddell."

Delsin took that as his signal to charge. Shooting forward in a blaze of digital angel wings, he brought his sword up and swung it down. Before the sword hit the ground, he was enveloped in a cloud of blue butterflies and smoke particles.

Coughing, he turned around just in time to deflect her neon-enhanced knife. Video clashed with neon as Delsin countered her quick strikes with his monster of a blade that was far better for bashing opponents and sending them flying as opposed to actual sword fighting (the neon blade would be better for this).

Showers of blue video sparks flew alongside neon red, blue, and black, the glow of each weapon reflecting off their opponent's eyes, Delsin's wary and watchful, the girl's focused and shining. Delsin felt sweat forming on his forehead as he struggled to keep the neon blade at bay, his breathing labored from fighting someone with just as much strength and far more skill than he (not that he would ever admit the last bit). The weapons emitted a buzz like a lightsaber whenever they contacted, emitting a quick burst of light at each strike.

"Alice" finally got an opening and sheared off one of the buttons on his vest, which bounced off the edge and vanished into the fog below. The smell of burnt cloth filling his nostrils, Delsin deactivated his sword and shot away on his wings. Bringing himself to a stop and hovering in midair, his arms and legs buzzing with gravity-defying video energy, he raised his right hand, aimed, and unleashed a torrent of pixels right at Alice.

She countered by dodging the stream of projectiles, zipping all over the dais in butterfly form. As soon as he stopped shooting, she returned fire, with smoke shots. Surging away from the offending ember-charged shots, he let out a laugh. When Alice finally had to stop shooting at him to recharge, he began hovering again by one of the chandeliers.

"So you're a smoke Conduit, huh?" he called out. "If I had known that, I would have just let you run around this carnival house. I already got that power in spades!"

"Does your hand happen to include any aces from other suits?" She raised her hand again, but this time, a ball of electricity shot from her fingers and right towards him.

"Holy crap!" Surging again, Delsin felt every hair on his head and fiber in his beanie stand up on end just before the electricity ball hit the chandelier that had been behind him not a second earlier and explode. The blast was enough to send him flying back onto the marble outcropping. Jumping to his feet, he turned invisible, generating a digital angel to help him. He began to hurry towards her on the balls of his feet, quick and nimble, counting on his wingman and his laser to distract her.

Before the poor angel could fire, Alice chucked another electricity ball at him, disintegrating it into pixelated pieces. Delsin broke out into a dash, hoping to disable her before she could do the same to him.

Instead of shooting electricity at his advancing footsteps, a fine mist began pouring out of Alice's hands, coating the area in front of her in ice. When the spray hit Delsin, he cried out at the sensation of ice forming on his skin, so cold it burned. Shivering beyond control and trying to wrench himself out of the ice that was rapidly forming at his feet, he remembered a second too late he was in a fight and looked up just in time to see the incoming electricity ball.

He learned right there that there were few contrasts greater than almost being frozen alive and then getting electrocuted and blown up at once.

From his new position on the floor, he wondered what his hair would look like if he wasn't wearing his signature beanie. Probably like one of those old movie versions of Dr. Frankenstein, or maybe Einstein? Did the real scientist ever get teased for having a surname like Shelley's character? What had he been doing before getting shocked and concussed? Oh yeah, he had been in a fight with a trenchcoat-wearing girl named Alice with one big kitchen knife and one weird Conduit power.

"Wait a minute. Power, or powers?"

Before he could begin to struggle to his feet, someone planted a small booted foot on his chest. Opening his eyes, Delsin saw the neon blade of the kitchen knife just a few inches away from his neck, its owner smirking down at him.

His brain thought, "Dang, I didn't know someone could make a condescending grin like that look good." His mouth said, "You an absorbing Conduit?"

"Yes," Alice replied, an eyebrow going up. "I do absorb the powers of other Conduits, though not quite the way you do. Your supporters have been calling you a 'powerhouse' Conduit on the web ever since you demonstrated your true power on Augustine. I suppose that I would be called a…" she rubbed her chin and squinted in thought for a moment, "a 'Stitch' Conduit. Yes, I quite like the sound of that."

"No wonder you don't want me absorbing your powers," he wheezed out, the foot on his heaving chest not doing him any favors. "All that power from one drain."

"Assuming you could absorb my powers at all," she replied, looking back down at him. "I take it that you look inside the minds of the Conduits you leech your powers from as well?"

"Yeah," he answered, "so what?"

"Well, it just so happens that I have no desire whatsoever to have anyone poking around in my head." A haunted look crept into her eyes before it quickly left. "Now, I'm going to give you one chance to walk away. When the dais stops that infernal humming, we'll find ourselves back in the Curdun Cay Control Room, where we can go about getting our fellow Conduits out of this hellhole." She lowered the blade and moved her foot to a more comfortable position (barely). "Does that sound acceptable?"

Delsin looked up into her calculating gaze and pretended to give it some thought. Oh, he was definitely going to try and get her powers; no way was he passing up this opportunity. He didn't see why she was so concerned about him getting into her head. It wasn't like he was going to learn about any weird kinks she might have. Hopefully not.

He could feel the energy of a Karma Bomb surging through him from his fights through the castle and his battle with her, ready to be unleashed. And since Hellfire Swarm couldn't be used indoors unless there was a really high ceiling, he needed to get her outside where he could rain down angels on her head. Easy enough.

"I'm all for getting the Conduits out of here, but should that really ruin the good thing we've got going?" He grinned up at her and winked.

Alice's momentary surprise at his pathetic flirting was all he needed. He raised both hands before she could react and unleashed twin torrents of energy right into her center of mass, sending her flying back to the dais. He was on his feet in an instant, running back towards the stairs and surging forward with video whenever he got the space. The scream of anger that echoed behind him only served to fuel his flight.

Getting to the surface, Delsin shot over to the other end of the courtyard. A video Karma Bomb usually worked best with some distance.

Alice shot out of the tunnel and turned straight towards him, her eyes flashing with video energy.

"Here's a well-known fact, Mr. Rowe," she growled out through clenched teeth. "In Wonderland, I rule supreme."

And then she began to grow. Within seconds she was easily a hundred feet tall, her green eyes smirking down at him, her form flickering around like a video game boss being played on a computer that could barely handle the game. If Delsin had been holding anything, he would have dropped it in awe. He-Who-Dwells had just been knocked down to second place by She-Who-Grows.

He moved out of the way of the giant foot that almost squashed him just in time. He shot up the wall and into the sky on blue angel wings, desperately ducking and weaving to avoid the swipes of the angry giantess. Delsin turned around and shot by her face to startle her, give him a few much-needed seconds. He got an eyeful of two flared nostrils and an eye full of green fire, her hot breath almost nudging him off course. Behind her, he stopped in midair and shot torrents of video energy at her. She brushed off the impacting energy and swiped at him, finally knocking him out of the sky.

Delsin was sent flying through the air, finally crashing into the side of a castle turret. Groaning from the double impacts and just managing to hold on to the surrounding stone to keep from falling, he looked up to find her stalking right towards him, her form flickering but very solid, as his aching front could attest. How come he always running into giants that wanted to clobber him?

Then again, she was a much bigger target now.

Surging to the top of the turret, he faced her and yelled, "Thanks for giving my angels something to aim at, ya B-movie reject!"

Raising his arms, he tapped into the wellspring of power that was begging to be let out and sent a burst of energy at Alice. His entire body buzzing like static from an old TV monitor, he formed the angels and sent them flying upward, the sky darkening as they multiplied, signaling them all to come crashing down into the giant with a downward sweep of his arms.

He had been grinning when he fired off the Swarm, but that left as he watched Alice shrink down to normal size, his angels crashing into the ground as they attempted to hit her. A normal-size girl again, she dodged and phased, the remaining angels failing to hit her and impacting on the ground instead. As the last angel bit the dust, Delsin realized what had just happened: she had anticipated his next move and made him waste an entire karma bomb. Ok, it was time to bring the heat.

Shooting up into the air, he caught sight of her just beyond the spattering of blue pixels that signaled where the last angel had hit. He aimed, and then hit her with a tracer. The next instant the Bloodthirsty Blades shot through the air towards her. And this time, his attack caught her off guard. Thanking himself for saving them, he kept sending the Blades to pummel her, the vring sound of their flight a familiar and welcome sound, the odd ozone smell they left in their wake also familiar, and not so welcome.

He had to dodge the last set of blades (she had somehow deflected them with what looked like an umbrella). He could see her, hunched over and gasping for breath, particles of various elements swirling around her body to heal her. He came to a landing a few feet away from her and called out.

"Ok," he clapped his hand for effect, "now that we've established who's winning this fight, how about we shake hands and call it good?" He held out his right hand, wondering if he was about to lose it.

She looked up at him, her eyes now flickering between emerald green and a really freaky red. By the time Delsin had taken a step back out of surprise, she was charging towards him, her mouth open in a soundless roar and her eyes blazing blood red.

She leapt into the air and phased at the same time, avoiding his fire. As she rematerialized above him, a gigantic, white hobby horse appeared in her outstretched arms, a unicorn horn atop its head. Delsin blinked, it was the only action he was capable of at that exact instant.

It was enough for Alice to bring the gigantic-toy-turned-weapon and clock him on the side of the head with it with a loud crack, loosening every tooth in his head and sending him flying into a wall.

Crashing to the ground, a massive headache coming on, he groaned loudly before spitting something small and white onto the ground. With his vision blurring and refocusing again and again, it took him a few moments to identify the white thing as a chunk of stone or something, and not one of his teeth. From how smooth it felt against his cheek before the full force of the blow had impacted, he would guess it was marble.

Getting to his feet for the second time, he was suddenly aware of the heavy breathing only a few feet away. Looking up, he found himself staring straight into Alice's acid-green irises, which weren't flickering red anymore, but were still angry. She was also holding that huge toy in her hands, hefting it as if it wasn't taller than her and many times her weight.

"Mr. Rowe," she ground out, "you have no idea how much of a bullet you just dodged."

Before he could laugh and point out that she had just brained him with a freaking hobby horse made out of marble, the world shuddered. They glanced back towards the tunnel, where a massive white light throbbed and grew just before it exploded outward, swallowing the world around them. Delsin felt the ground drop out from beneath them, only there was no gravity to make them fall. The intense white of the void made him squint and focus on the only thing that wasn't blinding him, and she blinded him in a different way.

The two of them just existed there for a moment, her hobby horse vanishing with the world. She smiled a genuine smile, not one of those jaded smirks he had seen so far, just before she vanished without a sound or light to accompany her going.

Delsin hung there alone in the white oblivion before he too disappeared.

Reality came back with a jolt as they landed in front of the Curdun Cay Master Computer, gravity forcing the two to their hands and knees. Barely registering the collective gasps and yells of the Curdun Cay staff, Delsin stumbled forward and grabbed Alice's hands before she could attack or phase away. Power flowed from her arms and into his, the process of draining power familiar to him by now. Only this time, he could feel power rushing from his arm and down into hers, like she was doing the same thing to him.

Her expression morphed into a one of indignation just before it blurred with the surroundings in a swirling whirlwind of color and shadow. The series of images accompanying a power drain began, but something was wrong. Instead of the full-on absorption that he had done with Eugene and Augustine, this felt more like the first times with Hank and Fetch, incomplete and partial. And this time, he knew what it was like to have someone poking around in his head.

A photo with a bearded man, two women by his side, and a little girl whose eyes were almost too large for her face. A burning house overshadowed by a giant lizard. Two large men in striped shirts trying to hold a teenaged girl in a straitjacket down. A cat with mad eyes and a wide smile. The same girl wielding a knife and facing some monstrous thing. The girl on a couch talking to a centaur with wire-rim glasses. A toy rabbit whose head exploded in a geyser of blood and black goo. A monstrous train spewing out armies of the goo creatures from its smokestack. The same centaur, the goo oozing from his eyes and down into his beard, his mouth full of fangs. Rows upon rows of dolls on hooks like a sick assembly line. A key with a strange symbol. The girl fighting the centaur and pushing him into the path of the train. The girl running from new enemies, only to turn into a white, red-eyed demon.

At the same time, Delsin could feel Alice looking through his mind, but instead of looking at his life's story, she was looking at his…motivations. At his character traits, both the good and the bad, and how they had evolved over time. The only memories that she seemed interested in were the ones of the choices he had made ever since becoming a Conduit: Deciding to turn himself in at the fishery. Sparing that looter's life in the tunnel. Healing the downed civilians. Stopping drug deals. Choosing not to strike at the Lifeline rally. Convincing Fetch to spare the lives of the drug dealers. Helping Eugene to save the suspected Conduits from DUP custody. Sparing Hank's life. And deciding to expose Augustine. All of those choices, and their horrendous alternatives, only considered for mere moments, but still there.

He came to as suddenly as it had begun, sore and disorientated like he always was after a power drain. Alice seemed to be suffering from the same symptoms. Using a desk to pull herself up, she glanced towards him and said, "Did you get anything?"

Delsin held up his hand and video energy swirled around it to his surprise. "What the…I went through the power drain thing with you and I didn't get a thing out of it?!" He grabbed a chair to pull himself up, but since it was one of those roller chairs, it rolled away before he could get a good grip.

"We're both power absorbers," Alice grunted as she pulled herself to her full height and almost fell back down. "Our powers cancelled each other out. And by the way, your mind reading technique was easy to rebuff, like setting up a steel wall to keep a woodpecker out."

"Hey, I learned Eugene and Augustine's stories in one go," Delsin protested, finally getting to his feet. "I got Hank and Fetch's in two, but I was still getting the whole power leeching thing down."

"They had never trained to protect their minds," Alice said, glancing towards the DUP personnel who were watching them like hawks from the corner. "They never considered that they might need to, while I did. May we continue this conversation in the hall?" She motioned towards tech support. "I don't care for eavesdroppers, even unintentional ones."

Out in the hall, they settled into a quick walk. Delsin had no idea where they were going and after a long silence asked, "Uh, where are we going, and why haven't you brought out the giant toy horse to kick my butt?"

"We're going to the main prison yard, where we will find that those abominable cuffs have fallen off and the doors to the outside open with a mere press of a button," she answered, a smug tone in her voice.

"Wait a minute," Delsin said, realizing something. "That whole thing back there with the computer, that was you hacking into the controls for the cuffs and turning them off?"

"Yes," Alice said, half of her mouth quirking up in a smile, "and as to not giving you the pounding that you deserve for interfering," she glared at him for a moment, "your intentions weren't malicious, though the attempt as a whole was rather stupid."

"Hey!"

"It was!" she insisted. "Did you not once consider the fact that you lose all your powers after absorbing a new one, including that very one? And that you have no idea where they keep the Conduit trackers?"

"I…" Delsin trailed off as he realized she was right. If it hadn't been for Eugene back at Augustine's tower, she would have wiped the floor with him sooner or later. She had been toying with him! All the time expecting her experience to win out over his hit-and-run tactics. And if he had managed to absorb even one of Alice's powers, he'd be helpless right then.

"Crap," he finally got out.

"That sounds about right," Alice said, a prim smile on her face. Before Delsin could get off a smart remark, his phone rang.

"Yo, D!" Fetch's voice rang out of the speakers. "You're never gonna believe this, but the cuffs just came off all the Conduits a few minutes ago, and they're handin' the Dupes one hell of a smackdown! You wanna kick some Dupe keister and give that 'Conduits-and-Normals-can-coexist' speech, you better get down here fast!"

"I'll see you in just a moment," he answered. "I'll be bringing some backup, so leave a few for us, ok?" He disconnected before turning to Alice just in time to get another face full of paper butterflies and blue smoke.

"Better hurry, Mr. Rowe," she called out from up ahead. "I have no intention of leaving any for you!"

Delsin grinned and shot forward on digitized angel wings. Whoever this "Alice Liddell" was, it didn't look like things would get boring with her around.

Well, I hope you all enjoyed that. The events of "Alice: Madness Returns" takes place about six years before Second Son (making Alice about 25 years old). And yes, this story introduces the shipping of Delsin Rowe and Alice Liddell, which so far has the name "British Cigar."

Alice's absorption powers work by absorbing portions of a Conduit's power instead of all of them like Delsin's. While Delsin has access to an entire range of abilities using one element, he has to absorb that particular element in order to use it, this losing a previous, different element's energy. Alice on the other hand can have every element in her arsenal in her body at once, allowing her to access every ability she has. Using her Wonderland abilities as templates, she's stitched together a patchwork of powers, earning her the moniker of "Stitch" Conduit. This part was all Scorp's idea I might add.

This fic is going to be a series of three one-shots. The first is the True Hero Ending of InFamous: Second Son. Who can guess what the second and third ones are going to be based off of? Feel free to leave a review below or PM me with your thoughts. Have a good one!