The whole thing was kind of a stunning, peculiar moment, and there were more than a few instances where Li Fang very nearly squeezed that trigger. When it was all said and done, though, the mirror was put away, and the gun holstered.

Unfazed, or perhaps simply refusing to allow himself to be fazed, the lizard crept slowly forward at a slow, but perfectly-erect walk, his eyes focused on the back of the feline's head.

He stopped.

"That's the one," he mouthed with barely any air applied to his words--only enough to be understood in the relative silence. But, he also added: "Stay alert."

He and Dian continued forward; the latter kept his shotgun in-hand, but did not train it on the off-kilter-looking representation of Ace ahead.

And suddenly the answer was all too clear. It was Ace. Age 9.

He sat with a sigh on his face, holding his arms together in his baseball tee in what must've been an attempt to protect himself from the cold. How long had it been snowing there, anyway?

The mouse was met with little more than a glance over his shoulder, before setting them back at his feet with a quiet "Hey." As if he knew him like an old friend.

Somewhere outside the mirror though, the real Ace was gritting his teeth.

As it was, not a soul was able to tell. But should Li Fang have cared to take a second look at his handy dandy pocket mirror, Ace... the real-world Ace, was starting to bear a stronger resemblance to the habits displayed by the monster they were being chased by not long ago. He wasn't burnt, or deformed, or cackling in a craze, but his breaths all the same were panicked-- even afraid. It looked like he was trapped under an invisible layer of glass, so tightly wrapped around him he could hardly breathe... but he was desperate to get out. And it almost seemed like he'd have his way...

On the other side of the looking glass, things suddenly didn't seem quite so contained.

---

All that time Ace's tiny subconscious was gazing into the dark waters, it made sense, even in this world of literal make-believe, that the proverbial abyss gazed also. The only odd thing about it was that when he turned away-- his reflection didn't. And in fact with every passing second, it began to look less like a reflection, and more like something submerged... and rapidly rising up.

SP-PLASH

"NO!"

A figure spat itself out of the water like a bat out of Hell, sending a long trail of ice-cold water behind it. As if everyone hadn't seen enough Ace-- let alone Ace naked, there he was again. Or at least, his active consciousness. Judging by the way he charged himself over the docks in the mouse's direction with a fist wound at his side, it was clear that he didn't care for the behavior of his guests.

"You stay the HELL-- OUTTA MY HEAD!"

It was the first time anyone present likely saw Li Fang surprised, and genuinely so. He had been so intently watching the interaction between Ace and his associate that he relaxed and got lost in the moment, just... observing, taking the bizarre experience in. So when the avatar of Ace's conscious mind exploded from the water like that, his eyes actually snapped those crucial few tell-tale millimeters wider, and he stumbled back.

Dian wasn't the kind to flinch, though.

Correction: He was the kind to flinch, but when he did, he had a gun in his hand, and it was his trigger finger that flinched.

Dian yanked the weapon up to eye level and steadied its sights on the rapidly-incoming cat. There was a strange instant, perhaps a distortion of time or reality itself within the confines of the mirror's world, where everything seemed to blink once, and the gun seemed to go off in silence, or perhaps not go off at all. Then, without warning or explanation, it did fire, and with a report that boomed and resonated ominously, hollowly across the beautiful landscape.

An overwhelming sense of... horror stabbed through Ace's synapses. He'd never considered that man a friend... Hell, from what he knew of him, he was just another punk with a gun. But why did he seem so involved in his story? Why would he... take a shotgun blast for him? All these thoughts wriggled through his mind as he watched through his stunned expression. Then suddenly, with the splash of water, time came rushing back. And so did he.

Anger bubbled within him as he made a mad dash in Dian's direction. Imprisonment, interrogation, seclusion, playing with his head. This was only the latest in a long string of offenses. It felt like... even as he ran, there were some kind of restraint, some kind of invisible chains strapped from his wrists to an unseen force. And in the strange, slow-motion dilution of time only available in dreams, the bonds of reality itself seemed to shatter through sheer force of will.

Snap.

---

It was a blistering flash of colors and sounds, almost like he was caught in a vacuum tube, but Ace eventually found himself back in the real world. Bound to the very same chair. In the very same room... only a whole lot more awake than he was a few minutes ago. His mind felt like it was on fire. His veins felt like they were flowing with liquid steel. Seemingly out of nowhere, he was met with the realization that he was not putting up with this anymore, and he had the strength to meet the ends.

And just like that, his right hand snapped free of his bond. Once the shock from that occurrence passed, he hurled it to the left in the hopes of a similar result.

It seemed the Norden Circle's effects had either worn off or been broken entirely; at once, the mirror ejected its occupants, haphazardly spilling Li Fang, Dian, and their mysterious (and now wounded) associate out onto the floor in an unceremonious pile, before shrinking back to its normal, inert size.

Li and Dian were both horribly disoriented by the whole affair. It seemed neither had any concept of just quite what had happened, but, after untangling themselves from the impromptu dogpile, they both quickly clambered to their feet. Somewhere in the torrent of confusion, Dian had lost his weapon, but Li still had his.

Li Fang was not by any means slow, even as disoriented as he was. He deftly ducked the chair—but, in the process, inadvertently caused it to smash straight into the mirror behind him.

The mirror had become small, and was no longer a portal to any bizarre dimension of the mind. It was now just a very peculiar, ornate artifact. And, with the addition of a chair, it became a very warped, broken, and destroyed artifact, all in the blink of an eye.

Before the lizard could even conjure a curse at what had happened, he was struck soundly and sent sliding, rolling and flailing to a stop some many meters away. Dian barreled straight at Ace in retaliation, but if the cat kept up that momentum, it'd be unlikely the henchman would be able to keep up.

That was threat number one. Here came threat number two. Ace almost surprised himself by just how capably he was handling them so far, but it made sense-- he was probably running on an adrenaline high himself from the very moment they had entered his mind. So it wasn't a far stretch to imagine that, when Dian came charging in his direction, Ace could go charging himself, scoop the old cat up at the waist, and fling him over his head and at the wall behind him. Maybe it was a long shot, but for whatever reason, Ace felt either angry or invincible enough to give it a shot.

As unlikely and unlucky as it was, Dian, the soldier of fortune, seemed unprepared for Ace to even noticed him, let alone attack him. It all happened in a matter of seconds-- one moment, the henchcat was ready to put the serval in a stranglehold until incapacitated. The next, his head collided fatefully against the wall.

Ace didn't even spend the time to register what it was he'd just done. It was all going on auto-pilot now, almost as though he wasn't even in control of his own actions. But ironically, in that lack of control came a total control over everything. As he marched ruthlessly to Li Fang's fallen form, he bent over just long enough to scoop up a piece of the chair he'd broken. A leg or something, with a heavy piece of metal at the end. He didn't know what it was supposed to be used for, but he sure as Hell knew what it was going to be used for.

As he approached Li Fang's fallen form, he thought, for a moment, about saying something. But he soon realized that he had nothing to say. In fact, he wasn't sure himself whether or not he'd been screaming like a madman this whole time. This wasn't about justice, or righting a wrong. This was about payback-- about sharing every last bit of pain that he'd inflicted, on Ace, and anyone else he'd hurt on his climb to power.

The alleycat would be lying if he said he didn't plan on relishing every swift and brutal blow delivered, but it was only ten seconds in that he actually realized he was already-- and still-- doing the deed.

Maybe Ace had just caught him that off-guard. Stunned as he was, Li Fang was not able to react or fight back in time; the beatdown would only stop when Ace decided it stopped. And, that was well after the criminal mastermind had long stopped moving, or... doing much of anything—breathing included.

It was peculiarly silent in that dark, echoing, cavernous room. Where was the crook's backup?

The shouts began to come into earshot. There sounded like there were a lot—a lot—of people coming, more than even Ace in his rage could have possibly hoped to struggle against. The room was too dim-lit to see much in, but not far away was a window on one of the corrugated metal walls. Beyond its square-paned glass was a drop out into the dark night, but how far, one could not tell at a glance.

It seemed like the only way to get out for sure.