The meeting was going well, the intruders Dame and Lord had entered to find Li having a casual chat with Jack and ey watched smiling as they failed to ignore the Spider in the room.

It had been carefully planned since Charlie had let em know about the Queens agent’s arrival on the street, Al had given quite the breakdown on the duo's activities before it had left with eir husband. With that information to hand, and a suspicious recollection of a message hidden haphazardly in the lyrics of a song the day before, Li had been well prepared to take on the intruders in a uniquely British fashion.

Ey sipped on a cup of chai tea and watched the flustered couple, they seemed to be trying to accuse em of breaking some kind of law with regards to personal identification. It was an almost insultingly obvious ploy, and one ey and Charlie had dealt with many times before finding themselves on the police-free society of the street.

As ey watched, ey monitored the flow of conversation, waiting for the perfect moment to interject and break Lord’s flow. It was a practiced manoeuvre, but not one that Li particularly enjoyed. Ey’d much rather just be direct and honest with people, but ey knew from experience that there was no way to do so when people were acting in bad faith.

Li interrupted just as Lord was starting to prompt Dame to continue.

“Oh no, Lord was it? I am afraid that I have completely failed in my duties as host. Your conversation has been so captivating that I forgot to offer you any tea.”

Ey waited just long enough for Lord to process the question before continuing, cutting him off again.

“You can just wait there, do not concern yourself. I will go make you one each. You look like the type who would have Earl Grey with a splash of lemon, is that correct?”

Dame looked as though she was about to object, but a low hiss from Jack turned the complaint into a shudder followed by a sharp nod. At once, Li began rooting about in the cupboards for eir cast iron kettle, wilfully ignoring the faster electric one sat in the corner as ey filled the room with a persistent level of clatter just loud enough to justify ignoring each of Lord and Dames insistent accusations.

Lord attempted valiantly to bring the conversation back to the accusations he wished to level, but Li joyfully short circuited each attempt with innocent inquiries and comments timed just well enough to throw off the pompous official.

The “conversation” continued in more or less the same vein until, much to Li’s satisfaction, Lords patience snapped, and the dark-haired man slammed his cup of tea down on the table.

“Dame just give Mist..Miss?” He paused, face growing redder and angrier as he failed to find the correct honorific. “Fuck-whatever! Just give the fucking document to this jackass who has been wasting our damn time.”

Li cheerfully opened the door for the duo as they stormed out, a lone sheet of crisp white paper left upon the table. Pleased with how the interaction had gone, Li turned back to thank the giant spider lounging in the room only to see him leaning over the table, his many eyes scanning the document before him.

As Li tidied up around him, the spider pondered the paper, running a fibrous leg carefully along its surface as he chittered disconcertingly to himself, eventually slumping back into a sitting position.

“Are you aware of the eccentricities that are resident within this document? I have perused thousands of manuscripts in my time and have seen a slim few with pages as strange as this thin slip of paper which lies before us.”

Li frowned and took the paper from Jack, it seemed like paper at a first glance, thin white and flimsy, the vague hint of a crease bisecting the paragraph of trumped up accusations, which included falsifying an identity online amongst other such non-crimes and dubious misdemeanours.

Ey looked accusingly over at Jack for some hint or clue, only to find the implacable blank stare of a being who had followed a completely different evolutionary path. Li allowed emself a small smile, Jack had entered ‘Magic Tutor Mode’, which was probably a bit of a clue. It at least gave em an idea of what to try.

Li thought back to eir lessons and worked through the basic principles ey had learned. Step 1) Concentrate on the energy within and extend it out from your pores. Jack described it as a web of awareness, but Li liked to think of it as more of a swarm of phantasmal hands reaching out in all directions. Sweat streamed down eir brow as the effort of an expanded awareness began to take its toll, and Li quickly grabbed the paper before ey lost control of the loose net of magic.

The sensation was instantaneous, a flow of life faint and weak somewhere between a plant and nothing at all, but still intrinsically alive. Alive, but sickly. Li recoiled, dropping the paper to the floor as eir awareness snapped back into em.

“That is not paper, is it?”

The spider shook his head in an odd mimicry of the human behaviour he had learned.

Li locked eyes with a pair of Jack's as ey tried to explain the sensation that crawled through organs ey barely knew how to use.

"It almost feels…alive?"

Jack nodded and indicated for em to continue.

"But not, from magic, I think? - Some kind of scientific necromancy?"

The spider nodded once again, and Li gingerly picked up the sheet of paper. It was far from settled, but ey at least knew who might be able to help em, and after a short discussion, Jack agreed to leave it in Biz’s care whilst he searched his library for any information which might help.

The journey to the lab seemed short at first, but as the street moved around Li, twisting and elongating as it doubled and then tripled in length. Li’s leg began to struggle against the malicious randomness of the street, but eventually ey arrived at the dull clinical door of the lab and rang the bell with a distinct sense of relief.

Biz answered the door with a flustered expression, a lead apron and full protective gear. As Li stepped through, Biz glanced back and smiled nervously as a curious popping noise filtered in from behind xem. As Li watched, xe anxiously twisted a silvery button on the lapel of xyr coat, the bold "Xe/Xym'' lettering catching the light. "Errr, this is kinda a bad time. Do you mind staying here whilst I finish up?"

Li stood in the doorway for a moment as Biz dashed back towards the odd noise, ey considered following, but the walk had been quite long, and a familiar shooting pain had begun to climb up eir leg so ey elected to take a seat instead.

The cold plastic squeaked under eir weight as Li attempted to stretch out the screaming muscles and twisted tendons beneath eir skin. Li sighed and tapped a message to Charlie, walking back wouldn’t be much of an option, but at minimum a quick message to eir husband would at least let em get back home.

Li pondered the likelihood of eir husband both noticing and responding to the message in time, it took all of half a second to conclude that the likelihood was in fact extremely low. After a moment of quiet contemplation Li sighed and hit the rarely used call button and waited.

The phone rang for a moment and a familiar Scottish accent answered.

“Who the fuck is this, cos you sure as hell aren’t my bloody spouse as I can see em from here! Stop spoofing eir number ya bloody weirdo and leave me alone.” The phone call cut off abruptly as that London’s Charlie put the phone down on em.

Li frowned at eir phone and put it away, ey knew from past experience that a second phone call would just reconnect with the wrong charlie again. Irritated, but not surprised Li began tapping out a message to Red. She had promised to fix the issue previously, but they had yet to give Li an update on what they referred to as ‘a Slight Issue with Phone Call Misdirection’ or SIPCM for short.

The thought was cut off by an explosive thud from the other room accompanied by a burst of sulphurous smoke and a faint cry for help. Startled, Li jumped to eir feet, the sudden action transforming eir leg into a writhing mass of agony as ey leaned heavily against the wall.

Li took a deep breath and gritted eir teeth against the pain, braced one hand against the wall, while eir other clenched white knuckles against eir cane. Ey made torturously slow progress towards Biz’s faint voice, stumbling as ey tried to focus on the doorway. The room was flooded with smoke as whatever device Biz had been using continued to malfunction belching black smoke into the air, as Li made eir way towards Biz’s panicked cries.

Li cursed eir slowness as ey reached the doorway to see a spinning vortex of energy, bursting from a splintered metallic frame, and before it Biz’s prone body. Panicked and dazed by the heat and light surging from the vortex Li reached out with eir mind, forcing emself to expand the mist like awareness and protect Biz. Li didn’t know what ey expected to happen, ey had no plan or cunning scheme to save eir friend, but just an instinct to reach out towards the pulsing swirling energy destroying the lab.

Eir awareness was caught like a leaf in a storm, locked into the vicious chaotic whirlpool of lights and magic as eir mind connected to the unstable energies within. Li felt energy crackle through eir body as the vortex latched onto em and the machine dimmed and dipped as the power drained into em.

Li collapsed to the ground, light spilling from eir skin as ey tried to control the energy tearing through eir nervous system. As ey struggled, Li noticed Biz had crawled towards em, shielding xyr eyes with one hand as xe shouted something at em. Li struggled to focus, but a distracted distant part of eir mind noted that the boiling crackle of the energy was overwhelming the vibrations that marked Biz’s speech. After a second of struggle, the same distracted pain free section of thoughts offered a solution – Read xyr lips.

“GET THE ENERGY OUT OF YOU.”

Li attempted to nod eir agreement as ey focused eir energy infused awareness into a single point, desperately forcing the corrosive burning energy to a single smouldering point in eir hand and a tremendous effort of will slammed eir hand onto the thin sheet of paper ey had brought with em.

Ey felt the energy leave em as the paper flexed and glowed, its surface rippling with a rainbow of flowing energy as it burnt through Li’s pocket and dropped incandescent onto the floor, the worn tiles melting around it.

As Li struggled away from the scorched wreckage of eir coat, Biz grabbed a pair of long wrought iron tongs from a nearby table and gingerly picked up the paper. As it moved, Li noticed a ribbon of darkness trailing after it, a thin slice in the air through which Li could see the void beyond the street.

As pain overwhelmed em and consciousness faded, ey slipped into darkness. Eir last fervent hope before ey passed out, that the ribbon of void was no more than a trick of the light.