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❛ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘ. ᴘᴀɴ ᴇғғᴇᴄᴛ​​​​​​​​​​. ❜ ° . ༄
- ͙۪۪˚   ▎❛ 𝐓𝐄𝐍 ❜   ▎˚ ͙۪۪̥◌
»»————- ꒰ ᴘᴜʀᴇ ᴜɴʙʀɪᴅʟᴇᴅ ʀᴀɢᴇ ꒱


❝ THAT IDIOT MAY
ACTUALLY LOVE YOU ❞

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Five and Alexa located Lila on one of the upper floors and together, they sought out an unoccupied janitor's closet. The blonde was already feeling anxious about working with the British woman— she'd already tried to hurt her family once, who was to say that she wouldn't again? Not to mention the prickles that were currently racing across her skin as Five set up the briefcase with jumper cables. She did her best to ignore the feeling as she watched him; of course they weren't safe— they were trying to save the world!

She leaned against the door, out of the way while Lila held the other end of the cables. The short-haired woman watched the boy skeptically. "Nice suit."

He gave her a nod for the compliment. "Thanks. The tailor in the lobby is a master craftsman."

"Still, I will miss those pasty knees."

"I dunno," Alexa chimed in. She gave her boyfriend a smile. "It's kind of a tie for me— between the suit and the uniform, that is."

Five busied himself with the task at hand to help hide his red-tipped ears at how he was affected by her suggestive comment. Lila grimaced with disgust. "Well, I wouldn't go that far." She handed the jumper cables to the boy. "For you."

"Yeah," he said with a sigh. He took them from her, one in each hand.

She picked up the box. "Ready to hot-wire this briefcase?"

The boy shook out his arms to prepare himself and let out a steadying breath. "Let's do this."

The second he started to use his powers, light sparked from each intersection of cable to illuminate the room with golden flares. He let out a yell of discomfort as the volts of electricity zipped through his nervous system, making the hairs on his arms stand on end. "Ah, shit!"

The prickles that Alexa had felt earlier turned into a similar shock-reaction. After only a moment of trying to fight her instinct to protect— because Five was in danger— she leapt forward and yanked the cables out of his hands. The energy transferred to her nervous system, causing the dull headache to return full force as her powers flared up in an effort to shield her. A faint blue aura burst into life around her form as she struggled to fight the waves of energy that swept through her.

"Shit!" Five shouted above the noise. "Lila! Turn it off!"

Despite her laughter, the British woman did as he instructed. The boy sank down to the floor to be eye-level with his girlfriend as he put a comforting arm around her. Alexa panted heavily as the static feeling vanished, leaving the cold jumper cables dead in her hands. She squeezed her eyes shut. "Fuck that hurts. This was a terrible idea."

He let out a huff of air. "Well, you weren't supposed to interfere—"

"I couldn't help it," the blonde shot back as she recovered. "I could feel the danger even before we started. I couldn't-I couldn't let you keep. . ." Keep hurting yourself.

"I know," Five said in a softer tone. "I just wish I could've made it work."

Lila chuckled as she put out the fire that had started on the briefcase. "Yeah, I was ninety-nine percent sure that that wasn't gonna happen."

The boy helped the other teen up and they made their way out of the smoky room. Lila jumped up on the table across the hall to watch the pair recuperate from their efforts.

"Well, I'm glad that our pain amuses you."

The British woman smiled as she kicked her legs under the table. "You have no idea. It's like my therapy."

"Well, now, we are down to one half-dead briefcase and my jumps are only accurate up to a couple of minutes," he said while he shut the door behind him. "So essentially, we're screwed."

"Maybe. Maybe not." A mischievous grin appeared on Lila's face.

Five sighed. "Oh, I hate that smile."

She wasn't easily deterred by his unenthusiastic reaction. "Listen. On your own, your little jumps are rather pathetic." The boy scoffed at her insult. "But, if we powered up together with you blinking, me mimicking that blink, and Alexa using her power to keep the electricity at bay, I think that we could create some kind of feedback loop and get enough juice to jumpstart the briefcase."

"All of us, together?"

"We'd have to trust each other."

"Lila, you just spent the better part of the last ten days trying to end my life. Besides, Lexa's powers aren't acting like they normally should—"

"I'm fine," the blonde cut in. While she didn't necessarily understand how the briefcases worked, she did know that she couldn't be the weak link. No matter how much discomfort she'd be in using her powers, she'd be willing to stand it if it meant sparing her boyfriend that pain. "Really. I can manage it."

"See?" Lila said happily. She clapped her hands to close their discussion. "Why can't you be as easy to convince as your girlfriend? Besides, I was only trying to kill you because you killed my parents."

"Fair enough," he allowed. "But Lexa's not known for making great life decisions—" The girl in question tried to splutter out a response in her defense but he plowed on: "so I wouldn't take her word that doing this wouldn't hurt her more."

The British woman jumped off the table to pace the hallway. "Well, that's a running theme for your family, isn't it? It was their decision to stand by and let that greasy Swede put a cap in the woman who raised me."

"The Handler was trying to kill you, Lila!" he exclaimed in exasperation. "In fact, she did kill you. Then I rolled back time and let the meatball do his work. Oh— and by the way, if you're leading Diego on as payback for what happened in Texas, you're pissing up the wrong ladder there 'cause that idiot may actually love you. The Handler never did."

Tears glistened in the woman's eyes as the boy turned away from her. "What do you know about love? You skipped through time and left your little blonde sidepiece behind without a thought!"

Instead of being hurt by her words, Alexa felt anger spark within her. Everyone made Five's time in the apocalypse out to be a cakewalk. They never took the years of isolation into consideration, or the fact that he'd been separated from his family for decades or anything else that he'd experienced to get back to them. All they saw was a cold-hearted asshole who kept dragging them through hell. Alexa knew better than that. While she didn't know exactly what it had been like for him, she saw more than the surface that he presented— she always had.

Before the boy could leap to her defense— which he had begun to do by whirling around with a furious scowl on his face— the blonde was already glaring at Lila. She stepped up close to the other woman and pointed a fierce finger in her face. "Shut up," she hissed quietly. "You have no idea what he's— we've— been through. I watched my brother die right in front of me. You're lucky that you have no memory of him killing your parents. I'd give anything to forget about that mission. You can't invalidate our trauma just because you can't handle my brother's love for you."

The pair stared at her in surprise; Alexa was usually the most even-tempered out of all of the Hargreeves, even Allison. She was the one to put a stop to fights without choosing a side. There were only a few things that could set her off and insulting the people she cared about was definitely one of them. She dropped her hand, turned away and crossed her arms. Her shoulders were tense and unyielding as she stared at the wall. No one said anything for a moment.

Then, Lila sighed. "This is insane. There's no way we're gonna get past this to make it to the Commission."

Five retraced his steps to put a calming hand on his girlfriend's shoulder. (It was ironic, really, since she was usually the one who appeased him.) "Okay. Perhaps we can't get to trust but there is a certain honesty in white-hot hatred."

She brushed past them and opened the door. "Then get over here, you god-awful little shits and hold my hands." She extended her arms towards the teens.

☂︎ ☂︎ ☂︎

After several minutes of all three of them straining to get the right frequency, the trio disappeared from the janitor's closet with a zap of blue. Alexa couldn't describe what travelling through time using a hijacked briefcase was like, but the closest adjective that she could come up with was unpleasant. Thankfully, it only took seconds for them to arrive at their destination.

Cold winds whipped around them as snow blew almost vertically across the empty plain. The blonde immediately tucked her hands underneath her arms to ward off the chill as the throbbing of her headache settled down. Five and Lila weren't better off as they struggled to see through the wall of flurries.

"Oh, brilliant idea, Lila. Welcome to the Ice Age."

An idea sparked in Alexa's mind. "Wait!"

Only a moment later, they were just experiencing a slight chill; the wind and snow had been cut out by the shield she'd formed around them. The effort to keep the dome in working order caused her to drop towards the ground until the boy caught her. He gently helped her up and secured an arm around her waist to keep her steady.

Lila looked around at the force field. "Well, that's handy." The break from the elements allowed her to make a better observation of her surroundings. "Look— over there!"

They followed her direction to where a building stood out against the gray skies. Five let out a relieved breath. "The Commission."

☂︎ ☂︎ ☂︎

The moment they stepped through the door, Alexa's dome fell away as the prickles intensified on her skin. Neither Five nor Lila noticed her pause at the threshold as they went further into the main entrance. The British woman laughed with shock at the sight of what greeted them. "Holy shit. I was just here. How long was I bloody gone?"

"It seems that the Grandfather Paradox is affecting everything," Five remarked as he put the briefcase down. He massaged his wrist to relieve it of the stress from the weight. "It's affecting everything— even places out of time."

"Is that possible?"

"I stopped tracking what was possible a long time ago." They turned back to the way they came and it was then that the boy noticed the blonde hadn't followed them. "Lexa? Are you alright?"

He stepped towards her with a look of concern on his face. She met his eyes with a frown. In a voice not much louder than a whisper, she breathed out: "this place. . . it feels. . . wrong."

"Well of course it bloody does," Lila scoffed. "It looks like World War Two was fought in here."

Five shot the woman a look that said 'you're not helping' before he turned back to his girlfriend. He tried to ignore the way the hairs on the back of his neck stood up from her answer. Instead, he kept his voice calm as he asked, "what do you mean, Lexa?"

The girl fiddled with the hem of his blue plaid shirt as she tried to come up with an explanation that he could understand. "Um. . . well. . . it's like this. When I share my power, it's as if your molecular structure is aligning with mine. Everyone has their own frequency but when I give you some of my protection, it rearranges your cells so that they have my fingerprint rather than yours. Well. . . this building, it-it feels like I've been here. All of the framework around us— the wood, the metal, everything— I can feel the echo of my power. But. . . it's not mine-mine." She shook her head with confusion. "I know it doesn't make sense since I've never been here but—"

Five reached out a hand to grasp hers, effectively cutting off her rambling reasoning. "Actually, it does make sense. This place, it's supposed to be protected from time, untouched by the events of the past or present. I think it's only natural that you could feel something like that—"

"That's not what I mean," she cut him off gently. "It's not some random protection spell or something. It's my protection. My shield. My power. I was here, but probably from another timeline. It's just—" She let out an uncomfortable breath. "It just feels wrong. I can't describe it. It's like-like someone peeled off your skin and put it on an exact copy of yourself but nothing fits quite right. Or like how you wash clothes for the first time and some of them shrink." Alexa let go of the boy's hand and rubbed her own against the sleeves of the flannel shirt to get rid of the ants-on-skin feeling.

"That doesn't sound like any symptoms of Paradox Psychosis that I know of," the boy admitted. "But you said it felt like you, right?"

"Like an echo of me," she said with a nod. "It's definitely not Paradox Psychosis."

He frowned. "Well, I suppose the best we can do is keep an eye on it for now. Let me know if it gets worse, yeah?" He fixed her with a stern look.

"Of course!" Alexa agreed, though her easy acquiescence didn't fool him.

The trio took a few steps forward to begin their search but before they could get very far, the ceiling above them lost its integrity. As the plaster crumbled to the ground in large chunks, the group jumped out of the way. The blonde stared at the fallen pieces with wide eyes. "Why didn't I sense that?"

☂︎ ☂︎ ☂︎

"Are you okay?" Five questioned the girl as they walked down the broken hallway.

Alexa sighed. "You don't have to ask me that every three minutes, you know. If I feel worse, I'll tell you."

"Sure," he agreed in a disbelieving tone. "First you get headaches every time you use your powers but you don't tell anyone. Then you sensed something wrong with this place but only spoke up after I asked you. You don't exactly have a great track record with this kind of thing, Lexa."

The blonde sighed again. "Fine, you're right. Happy?"

"I'd be happier if you'd be honest with me," he scolded her. They paused so that he could push the door open to the room they'd been looking for.

As they stepped over the threshold, they saw that the room hadn't escaped the treatment that the rest of the building had gotten. The floor was uneven with fallen debris and the glass windows were completely broken except for a few shards that stayed intact around the edge. Five put the briefcase down next to them and moved to one of the monitors. Alexa watched him curiously as he expertly switched on certain dials and activated plugs. The screen glowed brightly with his success; soon, Herb's familiar face appeared in grainy image.

Panic was laced through his tone as he spoke: "'there's been a rip in the space-time continuum. It's swallowing everything. Oh, my sweet Dot, Iris, Josh from accounting, they're all gone.'" The boy reached forward and turned the dial forward a little more, garbling the audio until it cleared again. "'I've tried everything! I don't know what else to do. The timeline is collapsing. This is. . . the end.'" He vanished from the screen with a pained yell as a wave of energy zapped through him.

Alexa took in a sharp breath at the dreadful message. She turned to look at the boy, her blue eyes filled with concern— both for him and what this meant for them— but before either of them could speak, Lila's voice sounded nearby: "I could kill for some scrambled eggs right now."

"This is bigger than the timeline," Five said, ignoring her comment.

"What's bigger than the timeline?"

"The entire universe. The missing dogs, people. . . it's the opposite of the Big Bang."

The blonde thought for a moment. "So. . . the Big Suck?"

"More like the Big Collapse," he corrected her with a nod. "But along those same lines, yes. Instead of the universe expanding, it's now folding in on itself."

"Like a prolapsing rectum?" Lila offered.

They both looked at her with 'really?' expressions. "That's a weird analogy, but yeah."

She handed him a thick volume. "Here, then. This might give us some answers."

He took it from her and Alexa leaned against his arm to read the cover: The Commission's Paradox Protocol. Five obviously recognized the title. "Master handbook."

"The one and only."

The boy opened it and began to flip through the pages. "Here we are. Okay, protocol 'in the unlikely case of the grandfather paradox—'"

"Apparently it's a lot more likely than they thought," Alexa commented dryly.

Five glanced in her direction but continued to read: "'the founder and all other personnel should—'"

Lila hopped off the desk that she'd taken a seat on and joined them to read the last lines: "'be immediately remanded to the operations bunker.' The founder. . . What founder?"

"Well, The Commission had to be started by someone," the blonde pointed out.

The British woman rolled her eyes. "I figured that much out by myself, thanks."

Without warning, the ceiling plaster gave way and crumbled to the floor. Alexa yanked the boy out of the way seconds before it landed right where they'd been standing. The wrong feeling shivered down her spine.

"We need to find that bunker. . ."

"ASAP," he and Lila finished in unison. The woman continued: "Jinx. ABC. 1-2-3, personal padlock."

"Can you not—" Five protested as they left the room.

"You can't speak!"

Alexa gave him a little smirk on their way out. "I kind of like this rule. Maybe I should start using it more often."

She received a half-hearted glare in response.