A part of Sunyoung was really hoping that when she woke up again, she would find that everything she’d experienced had been a really weird dream. Nothing more and nothing less and she could go back to being her overworked and not wholly satisfied self. A much smaller part of her she desperately wanted to squash hoped it was real.

                “Oh look. I think she’s coming around.”

                That was a familiar voice. Sunyoung wasn’t aware enough to tell if it was Amber or Ren though, so she stayed put, comfortable in the temporary limbo of uncertainty. Was it all a dream or was it reality?

                “Sunyoung?” A gentle touch on her shoulder let her know for sure that was Amber.

                Taking a small breath, she bit her lip and steeled herself to confirm which part of her was going to win. Okay. The wall in front of her wasn’t particularly telling, but when she rolled over… damn. The small part won. “Oh…” she exhaled, focusing on Amber’s face, so glad that it was back to normal. Whatever that meant anymore.

                “Hey. You okay?” Amber smiled, brushing her fingers against Sunyoung’s forehead as she moved errant bangs out of the way.

                Sunyoung declined to answer. She did enjoy the attention she was getting but… there was too much she didn’t know. And Amber promised her answers. With that in mind, she labored to sit up, glancing at Ren uncertainly. He looked like his original self too. Well, the one she knew him as anyway. Taking her time, and well aware they were watching her, Sunyoung looked around the room. The panic of everything happening at once had faded and she was back in a state of almost surreal calm. This was real. She didn’t know what was happening. And nothing made sense, but for the moment, everything felt… acceptable.

                She put her feet on the ground and realized her shoes were missing. Searching the floor, she saw them at the door and shrugged. Really, for all intents and purposes, the inside of this home looked like an old fashioned hut. It was quaint and surprisingly comfortable, if old fashioned. Taking a deep breath, she smoothed her hair back and finally worked up the resolve to ask and listen appropriately. “So, you guys are… not human?” she turned her statement into a question.

                “Right,” Amber confirmed, taking a cross legged seat on the floor in front of her. “I imagine you’d call us something like mirror people, if you knew we existed,” she explained, shrugging at the name with a bemused smirk.

                “We call ourselves imagos,” Ren supplied, comfortably seated on a wooden chair at the table across the room. “Well, originally, we called you guys imagos but eventually the name stopped fitting and we switched it to apply to us. After all, we play the reflection,” he explained, one hand gesturing as if it couldn’t be helped.

                “Yeah. About that…” Sunyoung started, her lips. She opened to ask something but didn’t even know how to approach it. “What…? How…? Why…?” she tried various times and then sighed with a groan, gesturing both hands at them.

                “It’s kind of a long story,” Amber started to say. At Sunyoung’s slight glare, she held up her hands in surrender and laughed, “But I promised you answers and as long as we’ve got the time…” she looked at Ren.

                He tilted his head and looked up as if he was listening for something. Satisfied, he nodded. “No sign of them yet. Should be good for at least a little bit,” he confirmed, crossing his arms over his chest.

                “Okay. So let’s see if I can at least give a shorter version,” Amber murmured, rubbing her hands together and shifting where she sat. “So, right now, you’re in a parallel dimension to your world. As you might expect, we’re connected through things like mirrors. A long time ago, it wasn’t a problem. The only way you guys could get over here would have been through water that was basically a mirror. And people don’t usually fall into those.”

                Sunyoung raised her hand and asked, “But how are we connected at all?”

                “Magic,” she answered, as if that was obvious. Sunyoung frowned with a perplexed look, though it shifted a bit when she thought about it. “You saw the crystal right? In Metropolis Three?”

                “Yeah. I just figured science had a hand in that,” she admitted, choosing to ignore the unicorn she’d seen earlier. Among other things that her personal knowledge of science would have a very hard time explaining as well.

                “You’ve got it backwards. Miras has magic. Our magic helped us create and shape technology, which we mostly got from you guys,” she explained. “Your society developed one way and ours developed another, shadowing you of a sort. But when you started to create mirrors, we began to have an influx-”

                “Invasion,” Ren interjected dryly.

                “Problem,” Amber finished with a grumble, glaring at her friend. “At first, people fell through on accident and then as word started to spread, more began to try out of curiosity. Then your people started to get worried about what we might do and they started to send attack forces against our people.”

                “It was a bit more complicated than that but that’s pretty much what ended up happening,” Ren threw in from his side, pretending he didn’t say anything when he got another glare from Amber. Sunyoung couldn’t help but laugh just a little at the pair. They might not have been human but they certainly acted like it.

                “We started to retaliate but as you probably noticed, we don’t have reflections in your world. Or at all really. Probably because mirrors are just doorways for us, but also because we literally don’t need them. We can change at will to whatever we want. On the other hand, you’ve always had reflections because that is the nature of your world. But when we sent people over, it was too easy for them to notice us if they knew what to look for. I’m pretty sure we started a couple of the vampire rumors in the older days. And doppelgangers for that matter,” she laughed, amused by the possibility. “We’d pick a person to look like and go over, but if that person or their friends or family ran into us, it was a deception we couldn’t really maintain.”

                “So the Royals decided to make a change,” Ren explained with a fluid gesture.

                “Royals?” Sunyoung asked. “Like Kings and Queens and such?”

                “Yep. They’re the only ones that can really use the Crystals. Effectively,” she clarified with an uncertain gesture. “And they’re where the magic comes from. They were much smaller back then too, by the way. But anyway,” she waved, drawing the story back to the main point. “The Royals wove a spell. Of a sort. Magic here isn’t quite like what you’d see in something like Harry Potter or some of your other magic movies.”

                “Oh?” Sunyoung prompted, quite curious now.

                “Yeah. It’s not even really words so much as intent or strength of will, but there’s always a pretty large price. Depending on the magic you’re working. Little things… not so much. World changing things. Sometimes death,” she explained with a cringe.

                “Wow,” her human companion murmured, blinking in surprise. “That doesn’t sound so good.”

                “Nope. So you might see why they wouldn’t be so eager to throw the baby out with the bathwater,” she laughed.

                “What does that even mean?” Ren asked in real confusion.

                “You haven’t heard that in the Earth dimension yet?” Amber blinked in surprise.

                “No.”

                “Oh. It means-”

                “Amber,” Sunyoung called, trying to draw the conversation back to what she needed to know right now.

                “Oh. Sorry. I’ll tell you later, Ren,” she promised, settling back into her original narrative. “So the Royals didn’t want to completely shut the world out because we had learned quite a bit from you. But we just wanted you to stop coming over. Since we’ve always had the ability to take on the appearance of others, it became easy to tie our very nature into being able to become literal reflections to keep your kind out. We could still cross over freely, if we wanted, but it worked. More or less,” she amended hesitantly.

                Ren laughed and nodded in slow agreement. “The problem came when you kept making mirrors. The original few were easy. And small ones didn’t matter. It wasn’t as if you could come through anyway. But every new mirror created a new doorway all across our world. It became increasingly difficult to keep tabs on them. Many a human had previously crossed over and just gotten lost or died at some point.”

                “Some of your unsolved missing persons cases are definitely instances of humans coming to Miras and not being able or not wanting to go back,” Amber explained honestly. There wasn’t a shred of conspiracy evident in her statement either.

                That was not what Sunyoung expected. At all really. “So… how did Metropolis come about?” The floating city was something else for sure. And it seemed to be the answer they needed.

                “One of our few pieces of ingenuity. A vision really,” Ren grinned, excited about that part. “You humans had nothing like it so we had to come up with a concept that would make it feasible to reach every new mirror and be sure an imago was close enough to block the path as it were.”

                “Metropolis was our answer, though it’s been a work in progress for some time,” Ren added. “The first one was ground bound and only moderately effective.”

                Sunyoung tried to process that and she started slowly, “So the outer ring in Metropolis Three has access to all the mirrors in my world?”

                Both Ren and Amber snorted at that. “No. Only in three or four time zones,” Amber explained. “We can cover more than one person in a short period of time, but we don’t have enough people here to guard the entire world.”

                “There are more Metropolis cities?” Sunyoung asked before she realized that was probably why Three had sounded strange in isolation.

                “Yep. There are nine. This area only covers three time zones, just like two, because of the sheer number of people in places like India and China,” Ren explained with a shake of his head. “So many…”

                “What about windows or reflective surfaces?” Sunyoung asked, leaning forward to rest her elbows on her knees. She was still a bit confused and a lot of it seemed crazy, but it at least made a weird sort of sense.

                “Eh,” Amber scoffed. “They’re not the same. Your standard reflection applies. There’s no danger of crossing over there. The connection isn’t anywhere near strong enough. But we do have background programs – thank the advent of your technology for that one – watching and processing with composite or rehashed imagery.”

                “So who gets chosen to guard the mirrors?” Sunyoung wondered, raising her hand to tap her at bottom lip thoughtfully.

                “Chosen?” Ren laughed.

                “Oh Sunyoung,” Amber chuckled with a shake of her head. “No one’s chosen anymore. That resulted in a near on world wide revolt and the Royals were forced to compensate people for watching. Now we have the Metropolises. Everyone that lives in the cities helps with that. Some more than others. Every time you enter the outer ring, you are scanned and recognized. We might all have the ability to look like anybody, but on a genetic level, there are differences,” she explained.

                “So imagos are free to work as much as they want and gain as much or as little pay as they want,” Ren snorted once.

                “Which is why they’ll know I’m back because I had to mirror your friend,” Amber grimaced, chewing on her bottom lip at the memory.

                “Coworker,” Sunyoung clarified. When she got curious looks from the two, she shrugged. “We’re not the best of friends. I think it’s the work environment. I’d probably like her outside of work actually,” she admitted. Stress made people do weird things. “Though speaking of mirrors, you punched my reflection,” she stated, pointing at Amber.

                “Nojam,” she nodded in agreement, nose wrinkled in mild regret.

                “Could I punch my reflection?” she wondered curiously.

                Ren and Amber both laughed at the thought, but they also shook their heads. “Not unless you want to break the mirror. If an imago isn’t there, you’d swing through the mirror. If an imago is, the barrier holds and you break the mirror,” Amber explained deftly.

                “Damn. There are some days,” she muttered, obtusely wishing she could. It made Ren and Amber chuckle. Then Sunyoung’s expression turned pensive and she looked between the two. “Okay. I’m still not entirely sure I understand everything. It’s a lot. But… imagos,” she murmured, pointing at them both. They waited patiently for her to continue. “How do you choose what to look like?” she asked, honestly curious.

                Ren and Amber exchanged looks and shrugged. “We’re basically… composite images,” Amber started.

                “Playing the reflection or watching your world, we get a lot of ideas about what we can look like,” Ren added on. “I mean, I could literally be Hugh Jackman if I wanted,” he grinned, turning into the considerably more grizzled appearance of a Wolverine Jackman. Sunyoung gasped and sat upright in complete surprise.

                “Ren!” Amber snapped, waving her hand at him in irritation. He changed back immediately. “Though… he’s right. We can honestly be anyone. While I identify as more female and Ren identifies as more male, we could literally switch with no problem.” At a glance, they did just that. Amber became Ren and vice versa. Sunyoung’s eyes grew round and she inhaled sharply. “Or you for that matter.”

                “Stop that!” Sunyoung yelped, throwing the pillow at them when she was faced with two exact replicas of her. Oh that was creepy.

                “Sorry,” they cringed in quiet apology, reverting immediately.

                “Ugh,” she shuddered, closing her eyes hard to try and banish the imagery. “So what do you actually look like?” she wondered slowly, not entirely sure she wanted to know.

                “Hmm…” Amber trailed off with a questioning look at Ren. “I guess, maybe like an unfinished dummy or a doll?” she offered uncertainly.

                “That’s mildly insulting,” Ren laughed once.

                “Well how would you describe us?” she countered, waiting.

                “Eh…” he responded, frowning when nothing else came to mind. “Nothing we particularly like to run around as,” he explained instead.

                “Can you change in my world?” Sunyoung wondered.

                “Nope. What you see is what you get when you cross over. No magic in your world,” Amber murmured seriously. “At least not the kind that allows us to change anyway.”

                “Right…” the human sighed, rubbing her hands together and placing her fingers against her lips. So everything was still quite crazy. Another dimension and magic were a far cry from logical, but again, they were making some kind of sense at least. Mostly. “So let me get this straight. There are two dimensions, connected by magic, through mirrors.”

                “Yes,” the pair nodded in agreement.

                “Imagos guard the mirrors to make sure humans can’t get through. They can also literally look like any human at any time,” she added.

                “Correct.”

                “And you chose these perfect,” embarrassment hit. “ly,” she added to try and salvage the situation. “Perfect.” Mental face palm. There went the salvage. Her flush deepened as they both seemed pleased and amused by the description. “Faces. On your own.”

                “Yes,” they agreed while trying to hide their laughter.

                “So what about your names,” she muttered quickly, trying to hide her face.

                “Ah,” Amber hummed, apparently well aware of how odd hers sounded.

                “We get a lot of… inspiration from your world,” Ren explained slowly. “Ren is a normal name here and there, if only because it sounds like a bird. The wren. I don’t like wrens, but I do like the name Ren. Not that I don’t like birds. I just…”

                “It’s alright,” Amber laughed, waving at him. “On the other hand, a name like Llama wouldn’t work in your world. Here, it fits because I like llamas. And Nojam works because she says she falls apart when she tries to sing or play music so… she has no jams. It’s a lie, but we go along with it,” she added with a laugh.

                “So Nojam is a friend?”

                “Of sorts. We’re not enemies and we’ve definitely seen each other from time to time. I was just sad she was on duty for your mirror today,” Amber confirmed. “Wouldn’t have minded punching someone like Shoe.”

                “Yeah,” Ren nodded in confirmation, confusing Sunyoung when she thought Amber was joking. “He can be a real jerk sometimes,” he clarified, rolling his eyes.

                “Ah.”

                “Amber,” Ren called quietly, glancing towards the door with a concentrated look on his face. “We should probably think about moving again.”

                “Right,” she groaned, glancing down at her person and then at Sunyoung. “Neither you nor I… nor you,” she added looking directly at Ren, “are going to be safe anytime soon.”

                “I thought you said we were going to a safe place?” Sunyoung questioned, frowning in confusion.

                “And it was when I said that,” Amber answered honestly. “But when we stay in one place too long, it gives the Royalty-”

                “Their guards and search parties anyway,” Ren added.

                “A chance to find us,” Amber finished with a disgruntled sigh as she stood up slowly.

                “Why are they after me?” Sunyoung asked, taking that chance to get up too. Her legs felt stiff from being seated but she didn’t see Amber reacting so she chose not to either.

                “Because they know you’re my friend and since my friends on this side are harder to track and pin down-”

                “Especially because we can go through mirrors where they can’t easily find us.”

                “They will go after you to try and force my hand.”

                “But why are they after you? And how would having me force your hand?” Sunyoung wondered, curious about the first question and confused about the second.

                “You…” Amber hesitated, pointing a finger a finger at Sunyoung without saying anything more about it. “Are my friend,” she finished lamely. “And that’s enough. For them anyway. Especially because I do spend a lot of time around you. As for why they’re after me…”

                “She sort of almost got a Royal killed,” Ren explained quickly, moving to hide behind his chair when Amber rounded on him.

                “Ren!”

                “Amber?”

                “It’s not like that,” Amber promised, holding both hands up to try and stall any other thoughts from cropping up.

                “Uh huh,” Ren hummed, to her obvious annoyance.

                “One of the Royals was being a to one of my… what you’d call cousins, and I sort of punched him,” Amber explained, her tone reluctant but her expression justified.

                “That doesn’t sound so bad,” Sunyoung comforted, knowing there had to be some misunderstanding somewhere.

                “Normally, no. Except… he sort of fell down the stairs after I punched him,” she added in frustration. “It wasn’t intentional,” she promised instantly, shaking her head.

                “Just a helluva hit,” Ren confirmed with a nod. “And he was so not ready for it.”

                Sunyoung understood that. Defending a friend from a made sense. But part of it didn’t. “Why were you near a Royal?” she asked, picking up on that detail rather quickly. It was kind of a big deal after all.

                Amber laughed uncertainly and hummed first. “My cousin is a Royal so I’m… sort of a distant Royal…” she trailed off, face scrunched in distaste.

                “Seriously?!” Sunyoung gasped, blinking in surprise. “You’re royalty?”

                “Only technically,” Amber clarified as fast as possible. “And definitely not enough to protect me from an actual Royal who seems to think I was out to kill him. And while corporal punishment might be a thing of the past for your world… not so much here,” she explained dramatically.

                “Wait, wait, wait!” Sunyoung flailed, certain she had misheard. “Your government,” she questioned, not sure what they would call the ruling body, “would kill you for accidentally almost killing another Royal?”

                “Absolutely,” both Ren and Amber replied in unison.

                “What? Why?!” Sunyoung demanded, confused again. That didn’t make sense.

                Amber took a breath and answered quickly, “Because Royals are the only ones that can use magic effectively but doing so usually costs them time or their life so most people don’t want to be Royals and we have a very limited number so when one dies or comes close to dying, it’s a big deal.”

                “Oh…” Sunyoung trailed off, feeling like she was still missing something here.

                “But with that being said, we really do need to move,” Amber added, glancing at Ren apologetically.

                “Yeah. I’ll see about getting a carriage,” he explained, ducking out quickly.

                That left Sunyoung and Amber alone in the same space rather abruptly. Sunyoung wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Nor was she even remotely sure about what to say. Fortunately, Amber wasn’t so shy about it.

                “So… how you holding up now that you know about all this?” she asked, gesturing towards the room at large.

                Sunyoung hummed to herself and nodded. “I still think I’m kind of crazy or having a really weird dream, but… it also makes strange sort of sense,” she answered. “So alright I suppose. I mean, I never imagined any of this as being possible but some things just really catch you off guard. Like giant centipedes and unicorns and whatever that huge chicken was,” she added, laughing.

                “Chocobo,” Amber grinned, nodding in agreement. “One of the Royals likes video games so he opted to create an actual chocobo on this side.”

                “So all of those things are made?” Sunyoung asked to clarify.

                “Yep. With magic. By Royals usually. We can do small things, which is part of how we’re all able to change at will but I could probably technically make like a house pet or possibly an outfit if I really tried,” Amber explained, though she hardly sounded confident about it.

                “I see,” she responded softly, holding off on any further questions. She still had dozens of them that were bouncing around in her head, but she wanted to go over what she did know first. Adding more fuel to that fire wasn’t going to help at all. “You know… I was worried about you.”

                Amber ducked her head. “Sorry about that. Didn’t mean to disappear on you,” she murmured.

                “What happened?”

                “Eh…” she trailed off hesitantly, not really looking at her companion. “I just had a feeling after our last get together,” she muttered. “At the burger joint and all. Needed to check things out to make sure I wasn’t missing something. When I got wind of what they were up to, it was damn near impossible to find a mirror to get me to you where people wouldn’t also see me. And not at your apartment. That would have been watched too closely,” she supplied before Sunyoung could ask.

                Curious though, she had to ask. “What would they have done if they did get me?”

                Amber’s grimace was hardly reassuring. “They’d have kept you prisoner for sure. Maybe threatened you to make me show up. Maybe killed you after a point,” she added darkly, not happy about the thought. “It’s hard to say what a Royal might do. They kind of have a lot of freedom to do what they want. The whole magic situation and whatnot,” she added, one hand motioning as if to help explain.

                “Oh,” Sunyoung murmured, blinking in dumbfounded surprise. “So… um… would you have come if they did capture me?” she asked hesitantly, not entirely sure she wanted to know the answer.

                Even worse, Amber didn’t respond immediately. A pained expression crossed her face while she looked at Sunyoung for a long moment. “I would have figured something out,” she admitted eventually.

                “I see,” Sunyoung whispered with a slow nod. It wasn’t a yes exactly but it wasn’t a no and that gray area really didn’t make her feel that confident.

                “Hey,” Amber soothed, reaching out to grab Sunyoung’s hands in hers. “You are very important to me. I assure you. It’s just not easy thinking about maybe being willing to die for someone. That’s all,” she tried to explain. “The Royals – and their parents – aren’t exactly know for being lenient,” she cringed, still holding to the shorter woman’s hands.

                Logically, that made sense to Sunyoung. And as a friend, the ‘figuring something out’ response was perfectly acceptable. And she also knew it was incredibly stupid but part of her wanted to be worth dying for like in a cliché movie. Mental face palm. It certainly didn’t help that she’d had a crush on Amber pretty much since the moment they’d met. And that was also a tiny point of contention right now, because her face wasn’t really her face but she was so attractive. But more than that, she was just genuinely interesting. And Sunyoung gave herself another mental face palm.

                “No I get it,” she reassured her friend, giving a squeeze back. “For what it’s worth, thank you. I’m glad you came to make sure I was okay,” she smiled, mentally stepping back but physically stepping forward so she could hug the taller woman.

                Of course that was when Ren decided to come back and he stopped in the doorway with a surprised sound. “Oh. So we’re hugging now? I want a hug too,” he grumbled with a mild frown at the doorway.

                “Ren!” both Amber and Sunyoung laughed. But then they waved him over and brought him into the fold.

                “This is nice,” he nodded, his head resting on Amber’s while her head rested on Sunyoung’s and she rested her head against Amber’s shoulder. “Also, I got a unicorn carriage. Figured you might like that,” he grinned, directing his comment at Sunyoung.

                “Really?” she grinned, looking up enough to break the circle.

                “Really,” he confirmed, giving a little bow when Sunyoung did a tiny happy dance. “So what’s the plan then?” he wondered though, looking at Amber.

                “Well. We should probably head into the forest more. They’ll have a harder time tracking us there. And hopefully it’ll give us more time to come up with a better plan,” Amber answered, a bit lost.

                “You have no idea do you?” Ren asked in a deadpan tone.

                “Not a clue,” she admitted just as quickly.

                “If nothing else, we can think while we move,” Sunyoung offered, heading for the door to get them started.

                “Hey!” her companions yelped as they rushed to follow.

                She waited for them to lead because in part, she needed her shoes, but also because they knew how things worked here. And really, as far as her and Amber went, they honestly had bigger things to worry about than whatever kind of crush she was still nurturing for the other woman. With her life on the line and maybe Sunyoung’s too, whatever weird fairy tale romance or drama inspired absurdity she would normally probably scoff at (though secretly flail over) could wait for calmer times. Besides, she had an entire dimension to worry about. Seriously. A whole parallel dimension!

                That should be enough to keep her distracted for quite some time…

(a/n: So there was a lot of information this chapter and I was hoping to answer the majority of the big questions. Feel free to ask any new ones you might have, though hopefully I'll be getting to those in due time. Regardless, thank you for reading and I hope you look forward to the next update!)