Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The last of the seals slammed shut on the Shadow Realm, cementing the second victory of the Chan family over the Oni, and Tarakudo roared with rage.

His eight generals were quick to flee, eager to save themselves from the sonic blast of their lord's telekinetic powers – and whatever other destruction would fall in their King's wake.

Their Queen, a mirror spirit and a powerful sorceress, had already shut herself away in a silver sphere, safe from whatever her husband wrought on his surroundings. Ikazuki, his second-in-command, envied her as he witnessed the molten glass and metal encasing her at her command – she now had the honor of being closest to their king, and she didn't have even have to suffer the brunt of his wrath, as Ikazuki once had.

~

Hours, perhaps days later, found Tarakudo leaning on the sphere, tapping on it with his claws as the generals peered cautiously from a distance.

“Yuu-tan,” he whispered into the sphere with a sing-song voice. “Oh Yuu-tan, my shin'ainaru joō, won't you come out? I need your help.”

A moment passed, and then Kagami Yuu, Queen of the Shadowkhan and bride of Tarakudo, appeared in the reflective surface of the sphere.

Her body was white and shiny as porcelain, but the robes she wore were an unreflective black, signifying where her loyalties lay. Her hair, too, was black, but it shone like polished jet, done up in an elaborate coiled bun, save for her bangs.

But her eyes had no whites, and no pupils; they were simply small, rounded mirrors, set into her face. One was cracked and shattered from where Jade Chan had punched her in the face, after the Queen's penultimate attempt to end the young woman's life.

“I'm not coming out until you've had some time to calm down,” Kagami Yuu said with a frown, putting her hands in her sleeves, “and until you get that psychotic look off your face.”

Tarakudo blinked, and moved his head to see his reflection over Yuu's shoulder. Sure enough, his eyes were hollow and baggy – his clothes looked disheveled, rumpled from wear, a five-o'clock shadow dotting his jaw like snowflakes, and even in his mild surprise, a manic grin was still fixed to his face. “I'll take that, I guess. But this is important – it was you who broke us out of the Shadow Realm last time, when my mask was destroyed. Can you do it again?”

“That's not how it works,” Yuu said flatly. “In the Mirrorside, I had links to both this place and the Netherworld strengthening the spell – when I broke out of my own prison, the Shadow Realm opening was a side effect. I can't do that again now.”

“You're in the Mirrorside right now,” Tarakudo pointed out, leaning in so close to Yuu's face that his breath was visible on the glass. “So what do you see?”

“It's not the same Mirrorside. It's limited to the reflective surfaces here, in the Shadow Realm, with no links to any outside dimensions.” A sneer crossed Yuu's face. “The Chans were unfortunately thorough.”

Tarakudo snarled, slamming his fist into the mirror and leaving cracks. His generals quickly hid once more as he stomped off, and Yuu vanished from the surface of the mirror, the cracks slowly melting away and smoothing it once more into a flawless sphere.

~

Days, or perhaps weeks later, Tarakudo was at the sphere again, tapping with his claws. His generals were nowhere to be found, having been sent away to search the ruins of the Shadow Realm for anything that might be useful.

“I know you probably thought it was a bad idea to mention it in front of the generals,” he said quietly into his own reflection, “but I know that last time, you captured and sacrificed one of them to break free. Could it work again?”

Yuu did not appear, but her voice could be heard, not from the reflection on the surface, but from inside the sphere itself. “Same story. The sacrifice only opened the way to allow me to use other powers to break free – it gave me the strength to open the floodgate, and the flood broke the door, if an analogy helps. I would still need the chi of at least one other realm to break this seal – trust me, I've done the math. It's pretty much all I've been able to do, so far.” The muffled turning of pages could be heard behind the glass.

Tarakudo hissed in irritation, but destroyed nothing. He sat down, leaning his back against the sphere and looking out into the formless dark that surrounded them. “So, what's our best hope? We're awake this time, at least – not like we were when my generals were sealed in the masks, so that's a resource we have at our disposal.”

A sigh of frustration could be heard, along with the closing of a book. “Well... Probably, our best bet would be to look for flaws. Not in the Chans' work – in the Realm itself. If this is the same Shadow Realm that you were imprisoned in before... Then it's an ancient world. There's a remote possibility that there could be more links to other realms, a tear we could exploit.”

He turned to glance at the sphere over his shoulder. “And we could use it to break the seal?”

“That... depends.”

“On what?” he growled.

“On where this hypothetical tear would lead. If it's a strong link to a single place, sure, we could break the seal. If it's weak, could lead anywhere? Well...” the thoughtful tapping of nails against the hard cover of a book could be heard by Tarakudo's keen ears, “We wouldn't get our revenge; we couldn't beat the Chans, which would be ideal. But if someone locks one side of a cage and forgets the other side is open and leading to somewhere else...?”

“I like it!” Tarakudo clapped his hands, the manic grin returning to his face. “I'll have them scour the Realm.”

“It could take centuries,” the voice in the sphere warned.

His expression turned dark with hateful resolve as he stared into space with a cold, calculating glare. “I've waited before. I'll wait again.”

~

Weeks, perhaps months later, the sphere was rolled away from its place, near the original seal where it was made. Soon after, it was carried up the steps to the ruins of a Japanese castle, made entirely from jet-black stone.

Kagami Yuu appeared in the outer surface of the sphere as it was carried by Shadowkhan, and turned to face Tarakudo, now perfectly serene and impeccably groomed, waiting at the door to the palace. “What the hell are you doing?” she asked.

“Since you refuse to come out of your hamster ball, I'm moving you up to the throne room,” Tarakudo said, casually inspecting his claws. “It'll save me the effort of going to give you updates – you'll hear them right there while you're rolling around to nibble carrots.”

Yuu responded to this with a derisive snort, and the surface of the sphere warped. Soon, the mirror was gone, and Kagami Yuu stood alone in it's place.

Tarakudo sauntered forward to greet her, banishing the Shadowkhan as he did so. “Good to actually see you again in the flesh,” he purred, leaning over her with a smirk.

Yuu smacked his chest with her palm, pushing past him into the courtyard – it could only be seen in the one that was cracked, but she rolled her eyes. “Later. You said there were updates?”

“We've scoured this entire aspect of the Realm,” Tarakudo replied, sidling forward to match her stride as she ventured further into his old castle. “The generals have all reached the edges of the seal, and found nothing. At least, nothing we could detect at first glance. I don't suppose you have a handy little spell to go searching for what we're looking for?”

“How big is the aspect we're stuck in?”

“In terms of literal space, about ten thousand cubic miles. Metaphysically speaking, it's nearly infinite. It's a much bigger disparity than it was before; I've lost almost everything I actually built on. I think the old man shrank it on purpose.”

Yuu sucked in a breath through her teeth as they came into the throne room, where some of the generals were already gathered, passing around a bottle of sake. “A lot of potential tears we've been cut off from accessing. But its reduced size means a seeker spell will be more effective – if we still had access to all the aspects, it might've taken centuries to get the results back.”

“And how long will it take us now?”

“Five to seven years, tops.” Tarakudo tsked with disappointment as he knelt down on the cushioned throne at the head of the table. “Oh don't be such a baby. That's nothing to you. I may be immortal now, but that's a long time for me still.”

“It's still seven years in this wretched place. Every time I leave it, I hope I never have to see it again, and every time, my hopes are dashed.” With a wave of his hand, Tarakudo produced a second throne at his right, and gestured for Yuu to sit. She did so, and a Shadowkhan appeared with a set of cups and a pitcher of sake. “The only thing to eat or drink that survived all these years is wine, so I hope you like drinking.”

“I wouldn't know,” Yuu said wryly as the Shadowkhan poured them both the rice wine.

“You don't? Didn't we have sake at our wedding feast?”

“We were about to have the feast, but then we got a lead on the seventh Vessel, and we had to cut it short before the Chans could get a head start.” Yuu took a sip of her sake, and smacked her lips thoughtfully. “And then there was that whole three-week back-and-forth chase through Berlin, and we just forgot to have the feast after that.”

“Damn.” Tarakudo knocked his drink back in one gulp. “I'd offer to have it now, but it wouldn't be much of a feast with just sake.”

“When we get out.”

“If we get out.”

“I thought you weren't a pessimist?”

“This is just being realistic, baby.”

“....Never call me 'baby' again. Ever.”

“Not even in bed?”

“If you call me that in bed, I'll make you a eunuch.”

“Point taken, darling.”

“Hmm.... I like that one better, actually.”

~

Months, perhaps years later, Kagami Yuu sat in her laboratory (formerly the castle library) resting her head against her desk, drumming her silver nails into the surface of her grimoire.

Taptaptaptap. Taptaptaptap.

She had read it a thousand times, edited sections of it, added more spells and rituals to it after some research, edited those, and read it a thousand times more, even though she knew it by heart and didn't have to look anymore. The scrolls in the library were all annoyingly backwards (from her perspective – years living in the Mirrorside changed how you looked at writing) and she was losing patience with what little else there was to do here. In the Shadow Realm.

Where she'd followed Tarakudo. The demon she'd married for the sake of a convenient alliance.

Taptaptaptap. Taptaptaptap. Taptaptaptap. Taptaptaptap.

“You knew it was going to take years,” her husband pointed out as he searched the shelves behind her for some historical text.

Yuu was silent, her gaze boring into the side of the wall.

Taptaptaptap. Taptaptaptap.

From one prison, to another. From her own version of Hell, to his. She could hear the blood roaring in her ears.

Taptaptaptap. Taptaptaptap. Taptaptaptap. Taptaptaptap. Taptaptaptap. TAPTAPTAPTAP –

Ikazuki phased through the wall, and Yuu's hand stilled as she witnessed the first interesting thing happen in a while. “Lord Tarakudo, my lady, there's an escaped prisoner in the palace!”

Yuu sat straight up with an eager snarl, and Tarakudo whirled around with a glare, his scroll forgotten.

“WHAT?!”

~

An eleven-year-old Jade Chan fled through the halls of the strange black palace, breathing hard and fast.

What was this place? There were those ninjas of Valmont's here, did this have something to do with the Dark Hand? But this place seemed way too magical, even for them...

Jade had been walking to school one moment, wishing she could just use the Rabbit talisman to get there faster, and then the next thing she knew, she'd felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise, a shiver run down her spine, she'd blinked - and here she was, in this dark, cold world, being chased by red-eyed shadow ninjas and real monsters. It wasn't exactly anything new, Jade supposed, but she always had Jackie with her when she encountered something this weird and dangerous! How was she supposed to get out? What would Jackie do if it was him?

Suddenly, a massive shard of glass flew straight into the wall beside her. “YOU,” a strange voice hissed in her ear, and Jade found herself unable to breathe, lifted up into the air by her throat, sharp metal fingernails digging into the skin of her neck and making her bleed.

Kagami Yuu held the little girl aloft like a tiny stuffed animal, closing her fist tighter and tighter around Jade's throat, until a Shadowkhan barreled into the Queen's side.

As she lost her grip on the child, Jade, seeing stars and gasping for air, was quickly bound in strange black ropes by a blue monster in samurai armor.

Shards of glass began flying as Yuu roared with fury, destroying the Khan that had held her down, and Ikazuki winced and held up his arms to protect his face. “What is the meaning of this?!”

Tarakudo flowed up from the shadows of the floor, and caught his queen's arms by the wrists. Though not physically strong enough to break free of his grip, Yuu sent long shards of metal and glass towards the terrified girl, pinning her against the wall and holding the glass against her throat. “Let me go, Tarakudo!” Yuu shrieked. “You know I want my revenge, just let me have it! I don't care that it's not really her, that's another version of her, I still hate her! Now let me kill her!”

“Don't you mean another version of you?” Tarakudo said coolly, looking down dispassionately at Yuu's enraged face, a woman twisted and driven mad by isolation and dark magic, her hair mussed and cracked eye weeping red blood. “If this is a real Jade Chan, and not an imitator, then she's you.”

“You're the one who said it doesn't matter what's true anymore, and I don't care! She has everything that should've been mine, everything that was stolen from me! I WILL see her DEAD!” Yuu, who had indeed once considered herself Jade Chan, tried with all her might to twist out of Tarakudo's grip, snarling like a vicious, wild animal, her voice already hoarse from furious screaming.

“Believe me, I understand perfectly,” said Tarakudo, his voice perfectly calm as he restrained her with ease. “But I can't let you do that just yet.”

“WHY?!”

“Because, darling, she came here. She is not from here. And if she's not from here,” and he turned his wife's chin to face the terrified form of the girl pinned to the wall, “then she's from somewhere else.”

The crazed look melted from Yuu's face as the realization dawned on her. The blood in her cracked eye faded away, and Tarakudo released her wrists as she straightened up and put her hands in her sleeves, the shards of glass retracting away from the bound Jade and letting her fall limply to the stone floor.

“Where was she first discovered?” Yuu asked Ikazuki as he clicked his heels together and made an effort to pretend she hadn't just flown into a lethal rage.

“Off the west path, by the old dojo. She just appeared out of thin air. I had the Khan apprehend her and bring her here, but she somehow managed to slip away when she arrived.”

“A tear!” the King exclaimed, “So close, wouldn't the seeker spell have detected it?”

“Not necessarily,” Yuu replied, biting her silver thumbnail in thought. “Some tears can only be detected from a specific side, essentially because they don't exist going in the other direction. The spell might've passed through it, and then years from now, when it ricochets off the edge of the aspect and back onto the tear from the other side, it would ping us.”

“Who are you guys?!” the wide-eyed girl on the floor, finally, foolishly brave enough to speak, cried out. “Why does she look like me?! How did I get here?!”

Yuu clenched her fists. “Gag. Her,” was her hissed command, and a Shadowkhan's arms came up from the floor and tied a black cloth around Jade's mouth, muffling her demands to know what was going on.

“This is a good lead, better than I was actually hoping for,” Yuu continued, stroking her chin. “It's a strong enough connection to allow a person to just walk through; if it's stable, this may just mean we can break the seal and open a pathway to the other side where she came from...”

“So we could have two realms to conquer?” Tarakudo purred, rubbing his hands together.

“Down, boy. One thing at a time. Take off the gag,” she ordered, it was done.

“You won't get away with it!” was the first thing Jade said, but it was spoken with the trembling uncertainty and fear of a mere girl, who hadn't yet seen more than twenty would-be world conquerors fall, as her capable and confident adult self had. “Captain Black and Section Thirteen will stop you!”

“Where were you in your universe when you came through to our side?” asked Yuu, ignoring her younger self's weak threat.

“What's it to you?” Jade demanded, jutting her chin with a sense of daring she clearly didn't entirely feel.

Yuu's cracked eye twitched. She leaned in, slowly wrapped her fingers around Jade's throat and growled, “Where. Were. You?”

Jade whimpered. “I-I was on my way to school.”

“What streets?”

“P-Pacific and Battery.”

“Wrong. I know the route I took to middle school – so where. Were. You?” Yuu's grip tightened around Jade's throat.

“Pine! Pine and Larkin!”

“That's better. What happened just before you came here? What did you see?”

“N-Nothing! One minute I was walking, the next I was here! I didn't see anything happen - I just blinked, and everything changed!”

Yuu released her, and almost pitied her as Jade collapsed into herself and cried. She could remember when she was that inexperienced and helpless – barely.

She turned away, putting her hands back in her sleeves. “Let's go check it out. Bring the girl.”

~

The ancient dojo was torn in half, the rest of the complex seemingly sheared away into the ether by the sealing of the aspect. Beyond it, the void had the appearance of extending infinitely, but anyone who tried to venture beyond it would surely find themselves lost forever, in every sense they could imagine.

On the path to the dojo's entrance, the Oni generals gathered around their King and Queen, a tiny prisoner bound and gagged at their feet. The Queen flipped through her grimoire, skimming over backwards characters in nearly a hundred languages, and then shut the book closed. Folding it neatly back into her robes, she outstretched her arms, and began to circle the spot around which they were gathered, chanting: “Jiē, Kāi, Dàmén, Jiē, Kāi, Dàmén.”

Soon, a glittering light began to shine from a crack in the air. It was bright, and flickered with a rainbow of a thousand different colors. Tarakudo and his generals leaned forward eagerly; Yuu tsked, and waved a hand over Jade's head before making a grasping motion. Green light poured from the girl's eyes and into Yuu's palm, settling into a small glowing orb as the gag muffled Jade's cries of alarm.

Holding the swirling orb up before the column of light to compare them, Yuu scoffed. “Damn it. It's not stable.”

“But?” Tarakudo prompted, having noted his wife's lack of frustrated rage.

“We can probably use it to escape somewhere else. It's unpredictable, though – like it's constantly flipping through an infinite number of pages in an infinitely massive book. There's almost no telling what kind of universe we'll land in – everyone could be squid, the world could be flat, some other demon could be ruling over Earth. Or we could just end up somewhere normal, where the only difference to our world is that a leaf falling off a tree in Iowa landed a few inches further to the left. We can briefly stop it from moving, but there's no way to determine exactly what place we stop it at, and that'll need to be the one we walk into. No turning back.”

“No matter what happens, that sounds excellent!” Ikazuki cried joyfully, slamming his fist into his palm. The other generals clearly heartily concurred, joining together in a raucous cheer. They had been imprisoned here for centuries, and what respite they had gotten from it was incredibly brief. Few could understand the desperation they felt, and their Queen was among those few.

“It's certainly better than we ever expected,” said Tarakudo, clapping his hands together with a wicked grin. “Well then, my queen? What are we waiting for?”

Revenge aside, if there was one silver lining she could find in being married to Tarakudo, it was that his positive moods were strangely infectious. Yuu allowed herself a smirk, and turned to the prisoner.

“Sorry, kiddo,” and she almost meant it, if this wasn't going to be so, so satisfying, “but your world's portal is long gone, you're never getting back there.” Jade's eyes widened in realization, the prick of tears starting. “And frankly, well,” Yuu tossed the orb back into Jade, hitting her in the chest and knocking her backward, “there's no longer a reason we should keep you around.”

And the last thing that version of Jade Chan ever saw was the flickering of rainbow light in the darkness, reflected off a shard of silver-bright mirror.

~

Fourteen years ago...

Jade had gotten lost.

She wasn't too concerned – she'd heard Jackie and the university crew's voices just five minutes ago, so they couldn't be far away, and Tohru and Uncle were going to be staying on the second floor to translate those books, so she knew where they were. Sort of. They could do a locator spell if they got worried.

The thirteen-year-old was pretty bored by the ruin so far – Jade found herself almost wishing she'd stayed with Tohru and Uncle while they went through the archives.

The ruin was a castle in Pakistan, built and then abandoned by the Mongol Empire – Jackie's university had secured it as an archaeological site, to prevent it from experiencing further decay, and Tohru had said that it was reportedly used to gather and store magical objects found all over the world, during the conquests of Genghis Khan. Uncle and Tohru were translating the catalogs, to see if Section Thirteen needed to get involved.

Jade had gone exploring, hoping for trouble, but so far there was only dust, moldy rugs, and broken furniture. Nothing that indicated a locked-up artifact, or a trapdoor, or a secret passage – not even a hidden room.

It had been months since they got rid of Drago – it was about time something happened, for them to get sent on their next big adventure! But so far, this place was Dullsville, it was the most boring thing she'd seen since that fake haunted house with the stupid doorknob collection. Jackie said she would find these places more interesting when she got older, for different reasons, but Jade just couldn't see that happening.

She entered a room with a balcony. This part was the most intact she'd seen so far – only one chair without legs, and only half a piece of graffiti on the broken ceiling. Standing by the wall, next to what looked like a moth-eaten scroll hanging, was a rectangular shape covered by a sheet.

The sheet looked weirdly new, Jade noticed as she pulled it off. Some vagrant must have put it here – strange of them to be so conscientious.

Beneath the sheet was a flat, standing mirror. Its frame was gold, delicately decorated with carnelian and mother-of-pearl in geometric patterns. (Jade only knew to look for these things because Jackie talked about them all the time, and it sometimes helped her out on history tests.)

It was probably a silver mirror – Jade could see Latin characters carved into the metal behind the glass. She couldn't read them, it was literally Latin , but she did notice something strange. In the reflection, the room behind her was slightly dim and out of focus, taking on the the colors and qualities of the silver. But her own reflection? It was clear as day, perfect, like what you'd expect in a modern aluminum mirror.

Her reflection's brows creased and her hand stroked her chin as Jade thought about this.

She leaned in closer, trying to get a better look – her knuckles brushed up against the glass -

And her reflection's hand shot out, snatching her wrist, pulling her forwards, an expression of dark glee on her face.

Before she could even process what was happening, Jade found herself thrown against a hard stone floor. Her vision refused to clear for a few moments, leaving her blindly groping against the ground, sputtering cries of shock and indignation.

Once Jade could finally see, she found herself alone in a vast, gray landscape, littered with junk – primarily, more mirrors. Some were floating in midair, like a photograph taken of something falling, others were stacked and piled high in huge mountains of stone rubble and glass shards, and right in front of Jade was the edge of a cliff, overlooking a sea of what looked like shimmering mercury. The place immediately struck her as being similar to the Netherworld, minus all the colors, and this quickly filled her with a sense of wary dread.

Against all possibility, Jade heard her own voice call out behind her: “Tohruuuuuuuu! Uncle! I found something weird!”

She spun around, and before her stood the same mirror as before – the frame now tarnished silver, the Latin characters in the mirror now backwards, and on the other side of the glass was Jade's own reflection, moving independently and looking puzzled.

Realizing what must have happened, Jade ran up to the mirror and tried to force her way through. To her dismay, it behaved just like normal glass, and the evil spirit that had pulled her into the mirror and replaced her simply folded her arms and raised a skeptical brow as Tohru and Jackie came up behind her. “What is it, Jade?”

“Jackie, that's not me!” Jade screamed, pounding against the glass, praying he could hear her.

And apparently he could – his head shot up to look at her, and then at the fake Jade. The mirror spirit did a great job of looking shocked and nervous. “Uh,” Fake Jade began, eyes darting worriedly to Jade in the glass, “What she said.”

Tohru pulled out his blowfish in alarm, but seemed hesitant to pick a target. Jackie opened his mouth, closed it, and motioned for Tohru to put it away as he covered his eyes with his hand. “Jade,” Jackie asked, careful not to look at either of them, “did you touch the mirror?”

“Of course not!” Fake Jade replied quickly, before Jade could say anything. “I'm not that dumb!”

“It was an accident! I was just trying to get a closer look!”

Tohru put away his blowfish decisively. “Jackie, I don't think we should waste time trying to resolve this here and now. Let's take the mirror and...er, Jade, back to Sensei, and we'll find a diagnostic spell to tell which one is real – if there is, in fact, a fake one.”

“How could there not be a fake one? There's two of us!” Ironically enough, it was Fake Jade who pointed this out.

Tohru simply held up his hands. “Let's not rule anything out just yet.” He then went over to the mirror, and he disappeared from Jade's view as he went behind it. Jade braced herself for the mirror to start moving on its own as Tohru lifted it, but the moment never came. Instead, the view inside the mirror simply changed, like a camera shifting positions. Given how high up it was now and the fact she (thankfully for him) couldn't see Tohru's fingertips, Jade guessed he was holding it by the stand, so he wouldn't touch the glass by accident.

As they moved through the corridors (or rather, the other three did, Jade just stood there as they took the mirror with them) Fake Jade anxiously asked Jackie, “I mean, you believe me, right Jackie? That I'm really me? You can't let her trick you into letting her escape – I mean, just look at her.”

“Oh, please!” Jade scoffed, “Seriously, when is it ever the real person in these situations who asks that kind of question?” Then the rest of the sentence caught up to her. “Wait, what do you mean, look at me?”

She looked down at herself, hoping she wasn't covered in blood or something, and discovered, to her horror, that her skin and clothes were now dull, pale shades of gray, taking on the qualities of the silver in the mirror. “What did you do to me?!”

Fake Jade was walking ahead of her, and Jade couldn't see her expression, but she was making the head-rolling motion that she knew she did when she was rolling her eyes.

“Like Tohru said, we can't rule anything out,” Jackie replied, not looking Jade in the eyes or acknowledging that she'd even spoken, “but for the moment, yes, I believe you.”

And Fake Jade had the audacity to sigh in relief and start running ahead as they came into the archive room. Jade's view dipped and then rose again as Tohru ducked under the doorframe, and she clenched her fists as her own voice rang out outside the mirror: “Hey Uncle! I found a cursed mirror with a creepy doppelganger of me inside.”

Jade had rarely ever been too hurt or angry to speak – Hsi Wu's deception had brought her close, but the last time it had really happened to her was when her parents had first shipped her off to America, so she'd be someone else's problem. Jackie's welcoming attitude and affection had made her feel less alone, more willing to try harder to be able to call the strange country home, to call her stranger (and downright strange) relatives her real family.

He had never, ever rejected her so carelessly before. That he could so easily pick the wrong version of her out of just two, that he could so quickly choose the Jade that looked more familiar and take that one's side, it hurt , like a knife to the chest.

But Jade was resilient – she prided herself on this. If Jackie wouldn't defend her, she'd defend herself, the best way she knew how.

“Uh, excuse me, you're the creepy doppelganger. I'm the one you dragged in here to replace you or whatever. So let's get this over with so Uncle and Tohru can shove you back in here!” Jade finished her retort just as Tohru set the mirror back down on the ground.

Uncle adjusted his glasses as he looked from Fake Jade to Jade. “Uncle already see problem. Jade, did you touch mirror?”

Both of them answered at once. “ No, duh! ” - “ Well, yeah, but it was an accident! ”

Uncle closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. “One of you! Ask something only Jade knows.”

Jackie's silence was telling, (even though he couldn't see her, Jade crossed her arms to hide her hurt feelings) and so Tohru moved to face the two of them. “Which one of the Oni masks did you end up putting on, even though Jackie told you not to?”

“Too easy! Trick question, it was just half a mask, and it was the one with the lobster claws!” This would've been a great test, if the both of them hadn't answered with the exact same words, confidence, and tone of voice.

Uncle stroked his chin in thought. “So both Jades have same memories. Jackie! My eyesight is terrible, and my Latin is rusty. Come read inscription!”

Jackie reluctantly came forth, peering at the letters in the silver, careful not to get too close. “There's no coherent sentences – just a bunch of nouns strung together in random order.”

“Rudimentary magic – clumsy, uneducated work.” Uncle clucked his tongue. “Say what they say anyway!”

“There's 'Carcarem,' or 'to imprison,' and there's 'Animo,' or 'mind.' 'Imago,' which means 'likeness,' and – oh, there's 'Argentum Sanctus,' for 'holy silver.' 'Relligo,' which I think in this case means 'to bind,'” and then Jackie glanced at her, gulped, and looked hastily away, “And-and there's 'Adsimulo,' 'to copy.' 'Maledictum;' I think that's fairly self-explanatory. 'Vitreus,' which is 'glass.' 'Perditum Hominem...'” He paused. “Without context, that's kind of vague – something to do with not having humanity, or not being human.”

“Well she's obviously – Mmmph!” Fake Jade found herself cut off by Tohru covering her mouth and shaking his head. Jade couldn't quite see them, but she did her best to flash him a grateful look; still, like Jackie, he refused to look her in the eye. Her heart sank to her knees.

“There's three more. 'Inter' which just means 'between,' and that's also meaningless without context. Finally, there's 'Invorto' for 'reverse,' and Lucilius, which is just a name.”

Uncle tutted. “Inscriptions are useless, except for name. We must do research! Find out what two-bit Roman hedge wizard thought this was good idea. We take mirror home with us, do tests if we can't get answer!”

And so it was done. Jade sat on the cold, gray rubble before the mirror, as on the other side, it was wrapped with plastic and boxed in to prevent anyone touching it. Jade had attempted to say 'goodbye' or 'see you on the other side' before they packed it away, but no one responded with more than a nod, and Jade was left alone as the mirror went dark.

Jade had hoped she would be able to at least pretend she wasn't lost, far away from home, that her family would keep her company while she was stuck here, but they all seemed skeptical at best. Jackie, apparently, had already decided.

She shook herself, and stood up with a stomp. Well, she'd show them! A diagnostic spell would prove she was the real Jade, and the other was the impostor! If the Fake Jade tried to delay the spell, that would only cast suspicion on her, and prove Jade right. Just because she looked all gray now, it was no excuse for them to brush her off like that! They'd regret it when this was all over!

(This wasn't exactly comforting, but it was the only part of this situation she could fixate on without crying.)

In the meantime, she was stuck here, with nothing to do and no one to talk to. At least, she hoped no one to talk to. Jade found herself glancing nervously over her shoulder as she picked up a nearby metal rod in a pile of sand.

To her surprise, the rod weighed almost nothing. It was pretty much a short sliver of rebar, and looked quite heavy, but in her hand it felt more like a stick. She'd hoped she could use it as a weapon in case there was something bad in this place, but it could probably at least still serve to mark a line in the dust, to lead her back here after she went exploring.

So Jade set off. Might as well look around – it wasn't every day you got stuck inside a mirror after all.

Chapter Text

When Yuu emerged on the other side of the tear, it quickly sealed shut behind her, leaving the crack to go be exposed in some other dimension. But as she landed roughly on the ground in the middle of a bamboo forest, this wasn't the thing she noticed first.

“Tarakudo?”

As she stood, brushing herself off, she saw that no one who had come with her was there. “Shadowkhan!”

Two of the Khan emerged from the shadows, kneeling before her. So she still had command of the Khan, which meant her husband wasn't dead or in another universe. “Where are the Oni?”

The Khan stood and silently took her by the elbows. Yuu felt a rising sense of panic, and quickly suppressed it as they sank into this new universe's Shadow Realm. She ought to be used to this by now – it was stupid that she still had this reaction.

They emerged, and Yuu released a breath, shaking herself free of the Khan, banishing them. And then she saw what lay before her.

It was an unsealed version of the Shadow Realm, that much was clear – in all directions, there was black void, nothing giving an impression of solidity, save for the invisible surface upon which she stood. In a circle upon a raised obsidian dais, as still as stone, lay the nine Oni generals, eyes closed and arms clasped over their chests. In the center was Tarakudo, legs folded as he sat in apparent meditation. Yuu went forward, opening her mouth to ask what they thought they were doing, and then something gave her pause.

There were nine generals, the full nine. The one she had killed to escape the Mirrorside lay sleeping there too.

“What the hell?” she muttered.

“Freaky, isn't it?” A flippant voice spoke behind her, and Yuu spun around, a sharp silver spike forming in her hand – Tarakudo caught her wrist, and nodded at the circle.

She looked back. Tarakudo still sat there, asleep. Tarakudo was also holding her arm.

“Dammit.”

“Yeah,” her husband said as he released her hand. “Looks like their curse is still applicable to us.” His entire form flickered purple, and he winced, doubling over with a hiss. “I don't think this old place is taking it well. Half the generals say they feel like they're dying.”

No demon would say that if they didn't mean it. After thinking quickly, Yuu snapped her fingers in inspiration.

“You'll have to replace them. Destroy them and take their place in the curse under the masks.”

Tarakudo threw her a sharp look. “You're kidding, right? You'd better be kidding.”

“Do you want to be crushed into nonexistence? This is far from ideal, but being cursed again will be better than being dead. Besides,” and Yuu leaned in closer, putting her hands on his chest, “you have me now. The curse isn't applicable to me – I manifested out on Earth, I can still move freely. I'll find the masks and bring them together.”

Even as his form flickered, clearly causing him pain, Tarakudo looked doubtful, dark mistrust creeping over his expression.

Yuu knew what he feared, the expectation that every dark ruler had, of one day being betrayed. She took one of the pins from her hair (they were silver, each topped with a sphere of dark green jade; all thirteen of them had been a betrothal gift from him) and she pricked her thumb, drawing a little bit of crimson blood. She took his hand, and did the same to his, a drop of black ichor beading on the pad of his thumb.

“For the good of us both, or not at all. Mutually assured destruction, remember? I'm not stupid enough to leave my biggest asset behind.” She laced their fingers together, touching her thumb to his, the blood and ichor mixing.

Tarakudo was silent for a moment, looking to their interlaced hands, and then to Yuu's eyes; though he couldn't see her pupils, she met his gaze firmly and hoped he would see what she needed him to see.

Finally, he nodded. “It's the curse trying to destroy us, yes? It was only meant to hold the ten of them, not a bunch of doubles as well. We kill them, it'll recognize the remaining doubles as the ones to contain.” Yuu nodded, and he turned to look contemplatively at his sleeping counterpart. “I'm not sure whether to hope this is a universe where I was sealed under a mask or not.”

“Only one way to find out.”

The other Oni emerged from the shadows at Tarakudo's beckoning, weapons at the ready. Yuu stood back, arms raised to cast a spell if something got out of hand.

Ikazuki went first, striding forward with bold intention, to stand at the head of his sleeping counterpart.

He raised a sword above his twin's neck, and with one swift stroke it was over. The body vanished into smoke, and Ikazuki gasped for breath, falling to his knees, before finally lying down and succumbing to the curse, his eyes drooping shut.

One by one, the rest did the same, until it was only Tarakudo and Yuu, standing over his double and the general she had killed before.

Yuu tsked as she looked down at the sleeping servant of darkness, waffling over whether they ought to keep him as a general. “I've grown accustomed to having command of his Khan.”

“So kill him,” Tarakudo replied flippantly. “I don't care either way. Mind you, you'll have to eat his heart to be sure.”

Yuu threw him a dirty look, which he only answered with a cheeky (insolent) grin at what passed for a joke among demons.

“See you on the other side, my dear.” And he reached out with his hands for his double's neck.

The other Tarakudo awoke as he throttled him, clearly not having been sealed. He choked and coughed, lashing out wildly, claws extended.

It was a brief, but vicious struggle; the element of surprise eventually won out, as her husband plunged his clawed thumbs into his own windpipe and choked the life out of his other self, snarling like an animal as claws raked across his face, drawing ichor, but grip holding fast.

Gradually, gasping for air and drowning in the ichor bleeding from his punctured throat, Tarakudo's counterpart finally collapsed, eyes glazing over and turning sightless.

The victor released his grip as the body dissolved into black mist, rising to his feet and shaking the ichor from his hands with a monstrous snarl. In times past, Yuu would have been disgusted by this gruesome display, but these days such things didn't faze her.

As the curse slowly took hold, and Tarakudo knelt, struggling to keep his eyes open, she laid a hand on his ichor-stained shoulder. He turned to look warily up at her, and she gazed impassively down at him. An eternity seemed to pass as, wordlessly, they reached an understanding, and Tarakudo laid down on his side to rest, the curse washing over him even as he was left unsealed.

He could be woken and brought to Earth again without the aid of the masks, perhaps, unlike his generals, but it would take tremendous effort and repeated attempts at summoning. It would take the work of decades, even for such an accomplished sorceress as his wife.

And that left Yuu alone.

She breathed a sigh. Whether it was one of relief or resignation, even she couldn't tell.

She turned her attention to the last remaining general. If she wished to still retain full control of his Khan after the Oni woke, he would have to die.

A shard of glass made short work of the obstacle.

With a wave of her hand, Yuu returned to where she had first manifested. Time to do some reconnaissance.

~

The bamboo forest seemed to stretch on for miles in every direction, so Yuu decided to make a quick trip to the Mirrorside – there would be less ground to cover that way, and a higher likelihood of observing civilization.

The landscape in the new Mirrorside wasn't noticeably different at first – it had the same monochrome lack of color, the same ocean of quicksilver that represented the reflective waters of the real world, but something was off, and it took her a few minutes to figure out what it was.

The place was just too clean. The endless piles of rubble were gone, the massive iron bars and twisted, inverted skyscrapers – the landscape was flat, the mirrors that littered the landscape and air being the only landmarks.

Every item in the Mirrorside represented a potentially reflective surface on Earth, whether light was currently shining on said object or not. If, say, a burnished copper pot were tarnished, but could be polished to a shine again, its counterpart would remain in the Mirrorside, blackened until it gained the shine that turned it into a window to the outside world. The moment the object deteriorated to the point that it would never be able to reflect light again, its counterpart vanished. The things that Yuu had always observed as ruins and trash all, in fact, corresponded to things in the real world – such as, say, the steel columns hidden inside the concrete of a building.

But there were no reflective buildings here, in this new universe. No shards of glass, no mass-produced plastic, no steel rebar. And that meant one of two things: either this universe had never developed a modern world, or all of civilization was utterly destroyed beyond repair.

Neither of these options especially appealed to her, but the idea of the latter made her frantic, as, if it was true, it would mean that the masks might be destroyed in such a way that left the Oni bound to the Shadow Realm, and without her allies, there was no telling how weak she might be compared to the possible threats this place posed. As powerful as she was herself now, Yuu still felt more comfortable with nine armies of Shadowkhan between her and the unknown.

(Of course, there were other reasons to hope civilization was still intact, but she pushed those sentiments deep down and locked them up before she could truly think of them.)

So, with no other way of finding answers, she did what she had always done best – she explored.

~

Eventually, she found what she was looking for, in a window looking into the study of a Dutch bishop.

The year, in this universe, was AD 1708, by the Western Gregorian calendar, and Yuu felt simultaneously relieved and frustrated.

This was an environment she had no experience in – being made to study the past was one thing, searching the globe for cursed artifacts while in a time period she had only read about was another. There were a few aspects to consider – her use of magic and command over the Mirrorside lent her an edge over any so-called 'heroes' who might end up interfering. Modern technology had been one of her own greatest tools as a world savior, after all, and that wouldn't be a problem for now. However, her lack of knowledge about history, and in particular, the history of the Oni masks, could be problematic.

Yuu could at least be reasonably certain of the location of one, if this universe was anything like her own – the mask of the general who controlled the Ninja Khan, locked in the ruins of Shendu's palace.

Yuu emerged from the reflection of the sea, near the city that would probably one day come to be known as Hong Kong. As she looked toward the island that held Shendu's palace, backlit by the rising moon, she felt a wave of nostalgia wash over her before she could rein it in. It was roughly still the same – the thought occurred to her that her old enemy might not have existed in this universe, and it was truly strange that she now hoped that this was the case.

She made her way to the island, skipping her way across the moonlit water. There was no one to see her at this time of night, which made passage easier.

The ruins were there – buried, as they had been before, beneath centuries of landslides and grime. Her first impulse was to charge in and start looking immediately – years of experience told her to practice caution. Yuu held her hands palm-outward. “Ogaanshaha, Caqabadda.”

A wall of green light spread out from her fingertips, the edges reaching out to touch everything on the island. It was a similar spell to what she had used to detect tears while in the Shadow Realm, only this one was meant for threats and magical wards.

Once the spell reached the edges of the island, most of the light dissipated – the light that lingered stayed clinging to various objects, particularly around a line that seemed to run below the ground. No doubt there were traps tied to the walls of the buried palace. How to break through...?

She sent a Shadowkhan over the boundary to test it. The puppet disintegrated the moment it crossed the line. Yuu growled in irritation, and prepared to circle the ruin, looking for gaps.

~

The biggest was less than an inch wide, barely big enough to send a spell through. Certainly not big enough to get the mask. She would need to wait for the wards to erode further, and that could take centuries. And even if she could find him, Yuu could hardly trust Shendu to open the gates for her. A frontal assault to the walls might only trigger a worse trap lying in wait. It wasn't worth the risk, for now.

She had then sent her Khan across the globe, following every lead on a mask that she could remember. All turned up with very little.

Yuu entered the Shadow Realm and performed a summoning ritual to wake and inform Tarakudo. The idea of letting him continue sleeping indefinitely when the work might take so much longer didn't sit right with her. (That, and she didn't want him to wake up on his own and think she'd just been sitting on her ass the whole time.)

“Well – fuck,” Tarakudo barely managed to spit out, struggling to stay awake. He looked up at her with narrowed eyes – the effect was somewhat ruined due to the fact he was resting his head in her lap. “Save waking me up for when something actually happens, then.”

“Centuries,” she warned him, “again.”

“We'll manage. We haven't got much of a choice, anymore. Besides, like, like you said,” he muttered, his eyes starting to close again, “better this than dead.”

~

Years, perhaps decades passed.

There were times when Yuu could almost swear she'd found one of the masks, only for it to be another dead end, another red herring, another fake. She went through what felt like a thousand minions and disappointing mortal contacts.

Little changed. The fortress defenses did not decay.

She found the imprisoned Shendu. She did not go to meet him, or make herself known to him, or to any of the humans unknowingly purchasing his statue prison. But she kept an eye on him nonetheless. She made no attempts to alter history, but familiar events turned out differently all the same, and Yuu suspected that it would always have been thus.

There were heroes, now and then, merely curious, seeking out the answers to mysteries she left in her wake. Yuu found the safest way to fight them was to avoid them altogether. After all, she had no quarrel with them, yet, and why make enemies of those who had nothing against her? Few even knew for certain she existed, save for a glimpse, now and then, in a mirror.

She wondered, at times, if she was still going to be born someday, in the future. If another Jade Chan came into being, she swore to kill the child with her name, her life, if she ever found them. Any version of herself who had kept what she had lost was to meet the death she had never been able to give her double.

A year or so after this conclusion, to safeguard against potential complications, she began to regularly cast a disguising spell that flattened her face into a a simple, silver mirror. Irritatingly, the cracks in her eye remained in its surface, like a scar that simply could not be hidden. But her face was concealed, and it was still a mirror. When she killed the girl, the last thing Jade Chan saw wouldn't be the wretched parody of a human appearance Yuu wore now, but her own, true face. The crack was far from the worst wound the Other ever dealt her, anyway.

Decades, perhaps centuries, passed. There some minor successes, and many failures. A haunting legend slowly grew in countries all across Asia, of a woman with a cracked mirror for a face and a husband lost, seeking something that couldn't be found.

~

Long, long ago, in another dimension...

Jade had managed to find a pile of rubble tall enough that she could climb it and get a good look at her surroundings.

Jade had made sure not to go too far from the mirror - she didn't trust Fake Jade not to try and trick her family into locking the mirror in Section Thirteen if she went missing for too long. Stepping carefully so she didn't put her foot through a shard of glass, she finally reached the top, and looked out over the landscape.

If she had to put it into a short description, Jade would probably have called it the biggest and shiniest vacant lot she'd ever seen. Like the Netherworld, she couldn't quite pinpoint where the light was coming from, but it looked a lot colder and bluer. There was no wind, and Jade couldn't really feel the temperature of the place – it was like standing in one of Section Thirteen's windowless, climate-controlled isolation cells, only it looked a like an entire big, cluttered world.

She pushed that thought to the back of her mind immediately. Ever since getting stuck in the Netherworld, being trapped and lost somewhere else like this was one of her biggest fears, and Jade was still suppressing panic.

Jade could still see the mirror down below, still dark, near a cliff overlooking a silver sea. At least there were actual landmarks and not floating, moving islands, and there was no danger of her tripping and falling forever. Whether or not she was alone was still a mystery; there was no sound aside from her own voice and footsteps that Jade could detect, but anything living here could just be very quiet.

She'd been here for a few hours now, and she hadn't gotten hungry, even though it had been almost lunchtime when she went into the mirror. Small mercies, maybe.

Jade made another step, and her foot made a hollow clunking sound against whatever she stepped on. She looked down.

It looked kind of like an old antique steamer trunk. Jade leaned down to lift it, and found it just as light as the rebar stick. It was locked, though, so she left it where it sat.

Time was difficult to tell in that place – her watch had turned backwards, and she couldn't read it anymore. Jade knew the return flights would be long, but she still held out the hope that they would unwrap the mirror during one of their stopovers in Delhi or Hong Kong.

But it didn't happen. Jade would go back to the mirror often, pressing her ear against the darkened glass, hoping she could hear someone talking, but there was nothing but the rumbling of plane engines, the squeaking of wheels on carts.

She tried to bash open the steamer trunk a few times, to no avail. The rebar stick did nothing, of course, and dropping it from a great height didn't even dent it. Finally, out of frustration, Jade threw it into the silver ocean, and stared as it stayed stuck in midair, suspended ten feet above the water's surface, motionless.

She was afraid, Jade finally admitted to herself after an unknown period of trying and failing to sleep on the cold dirt. She was afraid that Jackie, Uncle and Tohru had just accepted the Fake Jade as real, and locked her away in one of Section Thirteen's vaults. That she'd just been abandoned – again.

Finally, after God knows how long, Jade heard the squeaking of plastic and bubble wrap. She jumped to her feet.

“You couldn't check on me even once? The flight we took to Pakistan was a full twenty-four hours!” Jade exclaimed on seeing the walls of Uncle's lab in the shop through the mirror. Jackie at least had the decency to look apologetic, giving her some hope.

“We had to keep you in storage, you were with the other artifacts we recovered from the castle, and there were ingredients for the investigation we had to pick up.” Tohru emerged from behind the curtain leading to the library. Uncle came right behind him, carrying an armful of smoking potions.

“If it is the real Jade, we apologize later, research now!” Uncle snapped.

“Where's the fake me, anyway? You're not letting her have free run of the place, are you?”

“They're not that dumb, creep,” the Fake Jade's voice sounded from somewhere else in the lab, “I'm in here, getting tested too.”

“Oh. Well, good!” Jade wasn't sure what the impostor planned to do when she was found out – at least, she was going to be found out, right? A seed of doubt sprouted. The Fake Jade hadn't seemed very afraid, and she was going along with this...

“Tohru! The sutras!”

“Already done, sensei.” Tohru laid the last of the thin paper sheafs on the glass, careful to only touch the mirror through the paper. Jade noticed that with the light shining through them from the other side, they were actually flipped the right way. If she had ever learned how to read sutras, she could've known what they said.

“Is detection spell ready?”

“Nearly, sensei.”

Captain Black emerged from the library as well. “So this is the mirror?”

“Hi, Captain Black,” Jade and the impostor chorused dejectedly.

“Interesting.” And Captain Black stared up at her in the mirror, a frown on his face and hands folded behind his back, like she was just another one of the monsters they'd locked up in the vaults. Jade crossed her arms uncomfortably, and he whistled. “Just like Jade.”

Uncle's two-fingered smack struck faster than Jade could see, and the slap against Captain Black's bald head was guiltily gratifying. “Could be Jade! No more talking until Uncle ask for your opinion!”

Captain Black rubbed his head, but at least looked a little contrite. Jade felt much better. Everything was gonna turn out okay.

~

“What do you mean, she's human?!”

“Jade with body is human, but no guarantee. Spirit could have stolen Jade body.” All the same, the Fake Jade was walking around free, and looking insufferably smug. Did she look like that when things went her way? Jade hoped not.

Jade shifted to sitting cross-legged on the dirt, wishing she had a blanket or something. “Well what about me, then?”

“The results are... inconclusive,” Tohru spoke reluctantly. “The spells only seem to see the mirror, not any entities inside it.”

A lightbulb went off in Jade's head. “There's an awful lot of stuff on my side, a whole landscape – I don't know if you can see it. Maybe the mirror is just a portal to somewhere else?”

Uncle and Tohru exchanged a thoughtful look. “Not bad idea. We do research there, as well. May take time, a few days.”

“Can you wait that long?” asked Jackie, as the Fake Jade rolled her eyes.

Jade shrugged. “I haven't gotten hungry yet, and I'm pretty sure I'm alone here, so, I guess I can. It's not like I brought my GameBoy in here with me, so it'll be pretty boring, but I can manage.”

“Well in that case,” and Fake Jade started heading up the stairs, “I'm going to bed. I barely got any sleep on the plane. I'll catch up with you all tomorrow.”

“Absolutely not!” Jade slammed her fists against the immovable glass. “If I'm not getting to sleep in my own room tonight, neither do you! Don't you guys dare let her touch my stuff!”

Fake Jade crossed her arms. “Oh, will you take a chill pill? If you are the real me, which you are not , I'm exactly the same as you, and I know exactly how you like everything, so don't worry about it getting moved. Deal?”

“No deal! Get back down here!” But the Fake Jade had already raced up the stairs, so Jade turned instinctively to Jackie. “You're seriously just gonna let her go?”

Jackie shrugged helplessly. “She is the one who's actually here, Jade, she might as well.”

“And if she gets up to anything suspicious, we'll know she's not human,” Captain Black added. “We're not letting her in Section Thirteen until the wizards have had a chance to – what was it again?”

“Chi sample of both Jades!” Uncle answered. “Must be done at same time – cannot be done through mirror, yet. We figure something out.”

~

Eventually, Captain Black left, Jackie went up to bed himself, and Uncle and Tohru settled in for an all-nighter. Jade was left silent, and sullen, as her only family awake turned pages, marked references, and made notes.

What was with the lack of urgency? Last time, they had been working hard and fast to get her back, so why -

But she was gone , last time, wasn't she? Here and now, they still had her. A fake so good they couldn't tell the difference. They might never miss her.

Just like her parents.

Hot, silent tears spilled onto her shirt. The liquid darkened the once bright orange fabric to a darker gray. At least that still worked the way she expected it to.