2024-12-03 - Through the Looking Glass and Seeing Double

Enzo spent a good portion of the morning at his drafting table working on a sketch of a magical possibly suburban-ish neighborhood with mixed use buildings and apartments and even a stream encircling it all. It's one of those things that he actually does, or has been going to school for, when he's not here pretending to do PR work. Real Estate Development Architecture? City Planning? Whatever you might call it. Despite having some ill-will towards the park, it has given him some inspiration.

There's a moment when he looks towards his phone in the middle of his sketching as it sits on that drafting table. It remains silent.

He then showers and gets changed into his navy colored Hospitality blazer and slacks in the most unenthusiastic of ways possible. It's rarely an exciting work day and Enzo's had to find more and more creative ways to entertain himself during his shift.

Once again, he glances at his phone. No messages. Or no messages out of the ordinary.

The corner of his lips curve faintly at that before grabbing his phone to shove into his pocket, just as he spies at his reflection in the mirror for one last look over before he heads out. Lifting his chin, something seems to catch his eye as he straightens his tie. Something within the mirror. At first, he looks behind himself, to see if he notices anything in the room with him, before turning back to the mirror once more. It was like a shimmer of sorts on the surface of the glass.... maybe? And something entices him to reach out and try to touch... it.

The next thing that Enzo realizes is that he's been pulled into or through the mirror at some point and now he's just sitting on the floor in front of one of many, many mirrors in where exactly? He's trying to regain his bearings as he gets himself up and dusts himself off. He doesn't recognize that he's in Dante's shop at first, but oh yes, he's found himself in Dante's shop.

Not just Dante's shop, but Dante's own particular realm, The Atelier. It's designed to allow two of the designers to work with a client each at the same time, but as today's underbooked, it's only Dante scheduled there this shift. And his appointment must have been earlier, be later, or both, as it's only Dante here right now.

This being the case, one of Enzo's first hints where he is might be the dressmaker's dummy currently on the dais just in front of him and the curved bank of mirrors he's just tumbled out it. And a second might be Dante's voice, singing along with the upbeat pop music currently piped into the room. "California girls, we're undeniable; fine, fresh, fierce, we got it on lock..." He's at a long table, facing the other way from the mirrors -- there's an identical set at the opposite end of the room, but his attention is on the fabric he's pinning, dancing only so much as allows his hands to stay steady as they work. "West coast represent, now put your hands up!" which he does, the piece in one of them and the pin cushion on his other wrist as he turns, arms swaying back downward with the beat, "Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh, oh, oh-oh-oh-oh--" He breaks off, blinking and stopping still, as he spots Enzo standing there, the last, "--oh," coming out spoken.

A beat, and he reasonably smoothly shifts back into continuing to walk toward the mannequin, and thus Enzo. "If you're going to sneak into my workroom unannounced, I hope you at least brought me coffee."

Enzo only looks just a little bewildered about his situation. He even looks back behind him at the mirror where he only views his reflection for now. And for now, he keeps to his usual mostly deadpan tone when he states, "If I'd known this is where I'd end up, I would've brought a bottle of vodka. Hell, even tequila."

That's when he reaches out to touch his gateway mirror again, this time more warily. "I... don't know what happened exactly." He then turns back around to face Dante, "But one moment I'm in my room getting dressed and the next moment, I'm here." And obviously, he finished with the dressing because he did show up in full uniform.

He then wags a pointy finger towards the mirror, without turning towards it in full, "Almost like I walked through one mirror and out the other for some reason." There's definitely a heightened delirium found in his voice due to a mix of excitement and confusion.

"Even tequila? You must be thrilled to see me." Dante can mostly-deadpan too when he feels inclined. He drapes the fabric over the shoulder of the dummy, plucking a couple pins to swiftly settle it essentially in place.

There's a pause and the next pin he'd been pulling out sliding right back into the pincushion as Enzo continues and Dante turns to face him, as well. "Anywhere else," he says, glancing from Enzo to the mirror and then back, "I'd be asking what you took, and honestly I still kinda feel like I should be. 'cause either you somehow walked through a mirror, you somehow teleported, or you just finished getting dressed and came over here and blacked out that time." Another beat, and a head-tilt. "Or you're trying to fuck with me." His eyes narrow just slightly as he studies Enzo again, taking in the tone seeping into the voice, and concluding, "Mn. I know you're bored, but I don't think bored enough for that."

The work's abandoned for the moment as he moves closer, pausing to glances over Enzo again, then passes by him with a light touch to the arm on the way to lean in to look at and then experimentally poke the mirror. Once lightly on the glass, then a little more thoughtfully a couple points along its edge. "Almost like you walked through it or like you... did walk through it? Somehow." He sets his hand flat against the glass, then turns to look directly at Enzo again.

Even in his confused excitement, Enzo's brow creases at the returned response, "It's always a party when you're around, Dante." And here he just lets out a sigh. "I didn't mean it like that either. I just meant that if I knew that I was coming here, in particular, I would have come bearing gifts. And what better gifts than booze?"

When Dante brings it up, he just has to ask, "Is teleportation a thing here? Because if people have been known to teleport, maybe that's what I did." And it's almost as if he's trying to convince himself of this, but he's still uncertain. Though he will turn to look at the other when he mentions the whole fucking with him, his brow lifting. "That's exactly what I'm doing right now. I actually like that answer. It's better than feeling as if I've completely lost my mind."

The touch to his arm does help in soothing that troubled mind of his somewhat and it reminds Enzo to just take a deep breath. Okay... he can do this. While Dante could annoy Enzo at times, at times his presence also helped to keep him calm and this is one of those moments.

Looking at the reflection of them both staring back at them, he tries to think, his gaze wandering for a moment. "I might have walked through it... I remember doing a last minute quick check before heading out and I thought I saw a glint or something in the mirror. I looked behind me, nothing was there and then it was as if I were being drawn to touch the mirror. And so I did. And the next thing I knew, I was here. That's it. No journey. No nothing. It was pretty instantaneous."

It's a party? "It's a gala." One corner of Dante's mouth quirks up just a little, with that claim. There's a sense he might say something else, but perhaps it's the sigh that makes it end up as simply a light, "But I do like gifts."

Enzo earns a glimpse of Dante's spot-on imitation of the Unamused emoji for saying he likes the 'fucking with' answer. "I don't." Then it's his turn to sigh. "...no. I haven't heard about anyone teleporting here. But that doesn't mean it couldn't happen. You probably haven't lost your mind." That could likely have been put more reassuringly, but they've known each other long enough Enzo might well find it more sincere for not being.

After Enzo tries to think through what happened again, it's now Dante's turn to take a breath. "So there was a glint and an urge. And the last thing you remember before being here was touching the mirror, so there probably wasn't time for--" Breaking off, he looks more directly at Enzo again, "What time was it, when it happened? You were putting that on," a gesture at the uniform, "so I expect you know pretty exactly?"

As they're both now viewing their own reflections, Enzo doesn't even have to side glance over at Dante to catch the Unamused emoji face, but he does anyway, and something about it brings a grin to his lips.

"Exactly?" Here, there's a deep furrowing of his brow, "Approximately, maybe. It was approximately 12:35, because my shift starts at 1 and I figure it would give me enough time to grab a coffee on my way to clock in." Checking his watch now, the time was 12:37. "Do you think the time had something to do with it or... the amount of time that passed..." Now this has him thinking, "We've been discussing this for oh... a couple of minutes?"

When Enzo says what time he thinks it was, Dante too checks his watch. "Amount of time," he explains, "'cause unless you developed time travel," he's going to stick with not entertaining the 'fucking with' possibility for the moment, "there definitely wasn't enough for some kind of, I dunno, Ambien trance situation kind of thing. And if you did develop time travel that'd be two weird things happening at once, which, y'know, Occam's Razor." Considering that for a breath, he adds with a vague gesture, "Unless drugs unlock latent time travel magic, I guess. But just one weird thing is still more likely. So."

There's a pause, looking like he doesn't quite want to say it, or can't quite believe he's about to, but... the things he's experienced in the last few months here... "So. Teleportation. You were one place, then you were another." He crosses his arms, one set of fingers tapping against his opposite upper arm, and studies the mirrors, or their reflection in them, or possibly both. "Why the mirror thing, though?" A sidelong glance. "...and why here?"

Then drugs are brought up and Enzo has to ask incredulously, "Who said anything about drugs? Unless, you know something I don't. And I'm not talking Ambien." As they ponder this predicament, it has him wondering now, "So what do you do?" It doesn't hurt to ask. He knows that they all must have developed powers, but what can everyone do? It's not like they all shared! He can't be the only one!

When Dante's studying the mirror, Enzo looks in that direction too now, watching as their reflections stare back at themselves. Then comes that question and rather than stare at the mirror, he turns to look on the other directly with his hands outstretched at his side almost as if he's about to shrug, but he doesn't. "I don't even know why here. I wasn't even thinking about you. No offense." That part is quickly stated. "It just happened. And it's not like this was the last place that I'd been and it's some kind of recall, so I don't even know. I mean, I was looking forward to some coffee before my shift. Why didn't I show up in front of the coffee place that I like?"

"Though... now that I'm here, I kind of was in the market for a new shirt. Or maybe a new coat. Something cool." It's almost as if he forgot about the teleportation...

The incredulous tone gets an eyeroll out of Dante. "I did. Obviously. Any other reason you'd lose all memory of an entire trip over here'd be even worse, right?"

Incredulity turns out to be contagious, emerging in a bare breath of a laugh at 'so what do you do'. "I design and create clothing, Your Majesty," he replies with dry amusement. The question might need to be more specific to get the sort of answer it was looking for.

Enzo's 'no offense' can't have hurt, though it doesn't stop Dante giving him a sidelong look and replying, "Well, why not? Maybe you shoulda been." There's a hint of a smile in it, however. "And more people should bring me coffee. Were you thinking about how much you hate that uniform and want something better? Because I can't do anything about the fabric they chose, but I could make it fit you better. Which you know, so maybe subconsciously...?" A slight shrug.

When Dante states the obvious as they are standing in his clothing shop, Enzo just shakes his head slowly with his lips forming a near tight line. "Other than that, I meant." He then gives a half-assed shrug, "Like... magic." He even keeps his eyes on the whimsical fashion artist after that's asked, before revealing, "Because I can speak every single language imaginable suddenly, so what's your deal?" Okay, he doesn't know the extent of his language knowledge, but he knows that he's heard various foreign tongues which he shouldn't be able to understand nor speak, but he understands them at a conversational level at the very least.

"Because I was about to head to work." That's Enzo's response to the why he wasn't thinking about Dante at that moment. Though what the other brings up now has him nodding, "That could be it. Yeah. I mean, tailored or not, I rock this blazer, but even I notice that it could be brought in a little. I mean come on, one size does not fit all. So you could have something there."

Dante continues to look at least faintly amused at that tight-lipped look, and the slight lift of one brow 'other than that' gets does nothing to change that. He makes a soundless "ah" when the actual intended topic is specified, but answers are delayed by Enzo's revelation of his own recent knack. That gets both brows lifted. "...really, every language?" he asks, in Hungarian, which he knows perfectly well Enzo's never picked up over their families' fairly lengthy acquaintance.

He clicks his tongue once at the why, followed by a light, "Excuses." The hint of the smile that was in the tone before sneaks out to one corner of his lips. "It would make sense. 'cause I mean, no, even four or ten sizes don't fit all, and yeah," he turns his visual attention to the pair of them in the mirror, resting his elbow lightly on Enzo's shoulder and gesturing at the mirror image with his other hand, "you're doing it all the favours you can, but it could be working harder for you. But even more 'cause, when I accidentally found out what I could do--"

"--I was," come the next words, still in Dante's voice, without pause, but from just behind the less lightly-built Enzo, and in the space of a step there's an elbow resting on his other shoulder as well, leaving him bookended by a pair of identical Dantes watching the resulting trio in the mirror as the new one continues, "definitely thinking about problems it turns out useful for."

Enzo can tell when a foreign language is being spoken and his mind immediately processes it. So when the sudden Hungarian comes up, for the very first time in ever, he's finally able to respond to it, sounding very much like someone who was comfortable enough with the language. "Pretty much any language. I mean, if you prefer, I could converse in Hungarian with you all day." Though he does switch back to English, "How was that for a first timer?"

Then they get back to uniform blazer talk and he looks down at the thing which is tight in sections and loose in sections, but what's a man to do? Feeling Dante's elbow on his shoulder, he turns in that direction just briefly, before he looks to facing the mirror and their reflection, only to notice someone else there with them.

A second Dante was totally not what Enzo was expecting and it's very clear that just the appearance of the... would it really be a doppleganger?, anyway, with the other's appearance, it gives Enzo more than just a start as he practically leans further in to the first Dante. "Holy shi--" He catches himself. "Jesus... Wha--" He starts to say, before looking between the two now, then finally getting out what he meant to say earlier, "What is this even? Like how are you doing this?"

Huh. That Hungarian thing is-- what? Interesting? Impressive? Pleasing? Slightly worrying? Possibly all of the above. It makes Dante's expression a little difficult to read, but it does end up in a quick grin and, again in Hungarian, "Very skillful."

That reaction to dual Dantes, though? That gets a much easier to read expression -- two, actually, a pair of identical slightly-teasing grins either side of Enzo. "Yeah, that's pretty much what I said the first time it happened too," more or less original-flavour Dante says, other him agreeing, "And I was the one doing it." They both shrug. "Hey, could you...?" Dante the first says to his second self, gesturing back toward where he'd been working; self-two nods and heads that off that way, letting his hand brush down Enzo's back as he moves out of range. Possibly intended to be reassuring? Sometimes it's hard to know. Making Enzo only need to directly deal with one of him for the moment probably is, though.

"I had way too much to work that needed doing and not enough people around I could trust to hand things off to who weren't already also overbooked. Next thing I knew..." A gesture in the general direction of Dante-2. "Honestly? I still don't really know how I'm doing it. I just decide I will and... it works." He glances to the mirror, or their image in it, again. "Might be the same for you. Try to teleport to the other side of the room, maybe?"

Enzo is still not certain as to what touched him just seconds ago and for a time, he's pretty much plastered to Dante-1, until the other moves first. It's more than clear that he's at a loss for words right now and he's still trying to come to terms with the fact that, right now, there are two Dantes still.

His mind runs wild with memories of movies of ghosts first, but then they quickly move onto changelings and dopplegangers to AIs replacing people and taking over their lives. At this very moment, Enzo has a very active imagination.

"And that doesn't freak you out at all? I mean, still? Like what it is? What it could become?" He then looks at Dante, "What if he replaced you? And we wouldn't know. Doesn't that scare you a little?" As he asks this, he looks over to where Dante-2 went, in case the thing could hear him, before turning back to Dante-1 again.

At this moment, maybe he's not in the best mind to teleport....

Dante tilts his head a touch, watching Enzo's anxiety flare, and unfolds his arm to slide it lightly around the guy's shoulders. That one definitely is meant to be reassuring. Not exactly his default state, but genuine distress is for people he doesn't like.

"When it first happened, yeah. It freaked me out a lot. A lot," he admits. "But. What it is is, it's me. We're both me. I can do it for..." he considers, "...I think about a day is the longest I did, so far. If we don't join back up on purpose it just kinda happens automatically. Then single-me has the memories for both mes. But I'm always me. So replacing isn't really... a thing. If you went over there and talked with other-me, you'd still be talking with me, this me just wouldn't know what we talked about until later." This is not something he's tried to explain much as yet, and he wrinkles his nose at how it's coming out. "I feel like I need a good analogy here, but I don't really have one."

Does Enzo feel reassured by Dante's gentle hug? Perhaps, a little, but he's still a touch on edge about seeing the clone, and Dante can surely sense that much. Still, he tries his best to listen and take what the other says to heart. Drawing in a deep breath, he tries to process exactly what had been said.

"So... there is no hive mind." Breathe. "Okay... "And when some sort of timer runs out, you rejoin somehow and regain each other's memories..." His voice becomes a whisper the further he goes along.

"Oh God," Okay, that's said with more than a hint of stress to his tone, "What if you were absorbed into the original clone thing and he already absorbed everything that makes you, you and the real Dante no longer exists and..." He's quick to shrug his shoulders in an attempt to withdraw from Dante's light embrace around his shoulder to stare at the Kerekes now. "I can't even ask you a question that only Dante would know, because having absorbed him, you would know the answer to it!"

Dante doesn't try to keep Enzo there when his arm's shrugged off, but he does give the other man a Look. It's understandable, the discomfort, but Dante's main stores of patience are for beading and revenge, not other people's emotions. Still. He likes Enzo. An Effort Is Being Made, so the Look turns into a sigh, and a hand raking through his hair.

"There's no clone, okay? It's not him and me. It's me and me. We're both Real Dante. It's like... me in slightly different timelines that are going to match back up later, okay? I was me yesterday and I'm me today; yesterday-me isn't someone else and I'm not someone else pretending to be yesterday-me. I'm just me. Same thing. Just, right now I'm me who can still get work done over there while I'm telling you about this over here."

It's nice that Dante is patient with Enzo's emotional and mental trauma right now, because he's been influenced by one too many stories and they are all coming to mind at this very moment.

He'll listen to what Dante-1 says, but he still wonders if he should believe anything being said. It sort of made sense, but nothing in this park made sense. Not even how he ended up in Dante's shop to begin with.

"So does Angelo and Sin know you can do this then?" He just wants to make sure that they are okay with it.

"Yeah, they know. Like I said, first time it happened it freaked me the fuck out. Who else would I go to?" Dante shrugs. "But, I mean, Gelly's got wings when he wants them and can fly now; if I can accept that for him then is my thing really that much weirder?" There's a non-zero chance that might've been part of the argument used to calm him down at the time. "People here turn into animals. They move stuff with their minds. It's weird as hell but it's also kinda here-normal."

"Sprouting wings and being able to fly is a whole different..." Enzo is about to say, he even has one finger raised as if he's making a point, but then he just stops himself. Pointy finger hand is then lowered.

Another looks is then given Dante-2 as they work off in the distance, before he returns to look back on Dante-1 once more. "But you have to admit that yours takes the cake, right? Then again, I have no idea what everyone else can do. Hell, I still don't even know what I just did to get here."

Dante's eyebrow makes a slow rise as Enzo starts down that path, then drops back to normal when the line of protest is dropped. "Well, if you're offering cake I'll admit I'd take it." Half-smile. "Anyway, that's why we need to figure it out. I still think you should try doing it a short distance on purpose. If it works, then we basically know what you did. If it doesn't... then we need a different experiment."

Why did Enzo end up in Dante's shop? He was getting ready to go to, oh right. Well, he should be clocking in, but he's not. Or not yet.

"Okay..." He says as he lets out a breath, "I'm going to try and teleport to that corner of the room." This was something that Dante had brought up earlier before the whole freak-out thing.

Enzo then just stands there, staring at the corner of the room. Thinking about going there. He blinks at some point. Focuses some more. Takes a deep swallow when nothing is happening. "It's not happening." He states the obvious. "And that's a hell of a short distance compared to teleporting from my room to here, so..."

Dante watches, arms lightly crossed and head cocked a bit. No interruption while Enzo tries to focus.

"Okay," he says when his friend gives up, "Then we're missing something still. Let's recreate it. You said you were looking in the mirror, right? So look in that one." He indicates one of the many options with his chin. "Still think about going to the other side of the room, though. But you said you looked in the mirror, then reached out and touched it, right?"

At Dante's next set of instructions, Enzo nods slowly. "Yeah, I was giving myself a final lookover before heading out."

With that in mind, he looks at all of the mirrors within the room around him, before turning to look at the mirror before him now. Staring at his reflection, he has that same focused determination in his eyes as he did earlier, when he tried to teleport.

At some point, he starts to notice something within the mirror. The same movement or shimmer or shadow he'd seen earlier. "Do you see that?" He asks Dante, his attention drawn to the other man's reflection now. After a moment, he reaches out a hand to touch the mirror where he believes to have seem the shadow and that's when his hand begins to disappear into the mirror, leaning forward, he begins to step into and through the mirror, only to come out of a mirror on the side of the room that he was trying to teleport to.

Just like earlier, he's a little unsteady on his exit and he rests a hand against the wall to brace himself with. "That's it... So that's how it's done." Swallowing now, because it's as if he held his breath the entire time of that brief journey, he murmurs, "I don't know how I feel about any of that... or how it works. Or why the mirrors. But it's pretty incredible if it means getting into places with just a thought."

Dante gives a little shake of the head when asked if he saw 'that' -- small, as if he's aiming to answer the question while somehow also not being distracting. Enzo may or may not see the way Dante's eyes widen when that hand starts to disappear into the mirror. Yes, the potential for having walked through it before was discussed, but actually seeing it happen is another thing altogether. And then the rest of Enzo's stepping through as well, and Dante turns to look at the other side of the room.

"Oh, shit!" he exclaims -- he-at-the-table exclaims, that is, as Enzo steps out of the mirror in front of him. Meanwhile at the other end of the room, "You did it!" Table-Dante looks back over his shoulder at Conversation-Dante, then looks back to Enzo, and both of them grin identical grins.

The Dante who's working gets back to it, while the other one walks over to drop an arm across Enzo's shoulders again and give him a congratulatory squeeze. "Well, that was weird. But well done. Now we know. I wonder how far you can go with it? And how much you can take along. Still got everything in your pockets, right?" He didn't see anything fall to the floor, but then again if things didn't come along, they'd still be back at Enzo's place, right?

Okay, Enzo gets startled by the Dante at the desk still. It looks like Dante, but he knows that his Dante is by the other mirror still. Nevertheless, it does feel like an amazing feat and he's still coming to terms that he just walked through a mirror and got to the other side.

"Oh right. My pockets." Sticking his hand into his pockets, he feels around for his wallet, keys and anything else he may be carrying, shady or otherwise. "So far, yes. I believe I've got everything. "I almost kind of wish that I could travel through, whatever place that is, and find a mirror to exit. Otherwise," He explains, "I'll have to know, I think, where there's a mirror; but it's kind of hard remembering every single mirror that I've ever seen so..."

"Maybe it's enough to be pretty sure a mirror is somewhere, and it'll work if you're right? So, maybe you've never been in the bathroom nearest the animatronics workshop, but it exists and since it's a bathroom you can reasonably expect it to have a mirror. Could work." Dante goes quiet a moment. "What's it like? Do you feel anything when you go through? Is there anywhere in between or is it like two sides of the same piece of glass?"

When Dante brings up a particular hypothetical mirror in the bathroom nearest the animatronics workshop, Enzo gives him this look clearly stating I am not teleporting to that mirror. It's clearly written on his face the way his brow furrows more than slightly and he looks at the other as if he were crazy.

Though, when asked what it's like, this does make Enzo stop to think about the experience. "It's... There's definitely a place in-between, I would say. It's like you can see glimpses of it on your way through, but you move so quickly. The next thing you know, you're already stepping out. And it can be disorienting, especially with the bright lights when you step out of the mirror. More so when I came through the first time."

"But yeah, this is... " He starts to shake his head, "This is something I'll need to practice more with. Now which mirror would be the closest to where I need to clock in."