Chapter Text
Monday's child is fair of face,
Tuesday's child is full of grace,
Wednesday's child is full of woe,
Thursday's child has far to go,
Friday's child is loving and giving,
Saturday's child works hard for a living,
And the child born on the Sabbath day,
Is bonny and blithe and good and gay.
-- Nursery Rhyme
Larry knew something was wrong the moment his alarm went off.
It was Wednesday. His alarm never woke him on Wednesdays. Jane always did; well, not on purpose. It was a Wednesday when the shitshow in the town went down and the Chief disappeared later that night, a Wednesday when Jane had left the manor in a fit of rage for the first time all those years ago, and probably a Wednesday (or several Wednesdays) when whatever happened to make her… well, when that happened to her. Jane started every Wednesday bright and early with plates smashed against the walls of her room as she sobbed and screamed, waking up the whole manor. But apparently not this Wednesday.
Somewhere inside him, the negative spirit stirred. It must have noticed too.
“You want to get this one or should I?” Larry asked, silently praying for another hour of sleep.
The spirit stopped stirring.
Well then, fuck you too, Larry thought as he got out of bed and started to wind his bandages. 15 minutes later he peeped his head into the hallway. Cliff was already at Jane’s door with a plate full of peanut butter sandwiches, and Vic was standing next to him in nothing but his pajama bottoms. Rita was doing the same thing Larry was - peeping from behind her door to watch the scene, her nightly face mask still applied. It wasn’t pleasant waking up to breaking china every Wednesday at dawn but it turned out not waking up to breaking china was even more unnerving for everyone in the manor.
“Jane?” said Cliff, “I’m back, and I’ve got peanut butter sandwiches. And they even come on a plate you can smash if you want to. All you have to do is unjam the slot so we can get them to you.”
“Or unlock the door,” added Vic.
“She’s not gonna unlock the door, you idiot,” said Cliff.
“What are you, the Jane whisperer?” retorted Vic.
Rita gave an exasperated sigh from her doorway. “Maybe this is all much ado about nothing. Perhaps she simply… forgot to get new plates this week.”
“Mrs. Potts always comes out and supplies the plates for her to smash, so whatever’s wrong could be preventing Jane from switching people,” said Larry as he stepped out to join them.
“Wait, she has a personality that just… makes plates?” asked Vic.
“Well, not just plates,” said Larry. “Mugs, sugar bowls, ceramics in general.”
“She has a personality whose only superpower is to create ceramics she can smash, and she named it Mrs. Potts?” said Vic incredulously.
“Look, the plates aren’t the important thing right now, ok?” said Cliff angrily. “Right now what’s important is she’s not smashing them and way more important, the door is locked and the slot’s jammed so whatever she’s doing she doesn’t want the people that give a shit about her to know about it.”
“Well if you’re truly that concerned, Cliff, why haven’t you simply punched through whatever’s sealing the slot?” asked Rita. “Or you, Vic - couldn’t you, I don’t know, laser vision the hinges or something?”
Vic and Cliff glanced at each other.
“You don’t want to violate her privacy.” said Larry, who took advantage of his bandages to give them all an unseen eye roll. “Look, Vic, I know you have good reasons to value privacy, and Cliff, you don’t want to alienate Jane, but when someone’s acting like a child you treat them like a child.”
“Well then it’s a good thing Jane’s not a fucking child then, huh Larry.” spat Cliff, who started hammering on the door and shouting, “Jane! Jane for fuck’s sake just open the goddamned door!”
Larry passed out. When he came too, Rita had joined the others and all of them were staring through an open doorway.
Larry got up, dusted off his jacket, said a private “thank you” to the negative spirit and joined them. Inside the room was a neat circle of runes burned onto the floor. Everything that overlapped with the circle, from the bed to the rug to the small stack of plates, had been cut clean through, and the part of it that would have been inside the circle had vanished completely. This also applied to the ceiling. It was as if some sort of cosmic hole punch had cut into the room and stopped at the floor.
“Well fuck.” said Cliff.
“Copy that,” said Vic as he crouched down next to the runes.
“Better not touch them,” said Larry, “don’t want what happened to the plates to happen to you.”
“Grid just needed a closer look at the symbols on the outside. Looks like they’re old Norse runes.”
“Ah fuck, did she piss off Thor or something?” asked Cliff.
“You’re not far off.” said Vic, “Most of them look like some kind of coordinates but the big text here says, ‘Your challenge is accepted, daughter of Odin’s day.’”
Something stirred in Larry’s memory. A night school undergraduate class a million years ago. A drawing of a snake eating its tail on the chalkboard. A grad student gesticulating wildly, chalk in his hand, dangerously cute dimple on his cheek. Larry shook his head and said, “Or she was born on a Wednesday, but either way we might be dealing with Norse gods here. This must be what it looks like when someone’s been taken across the bifrost.”
“What on earth are you talking about, Larry?” huffed Rita.
“A college degree looked really good on an application to the space program, once upon a time. The only thing that fit the liberal arts requirement and my schedule was Norse mythology 101.”
“Great, I dropped out in eleventh grade. Wanna fill us in on whatever this bifrost shit is, Larry?” said Cliff.
“It’s how the gods got between Asgard where they lived and Midgard where we live. It’s what the ancient Norse thought rainbows were.”
“Thought correctly, apparently,” said Rita. “Well then. Anyone have any bright ideas on how we might… open another pifrost and go fetch her back?”
“Bifrost,” said Larry. “Vic, anything else going on with those runes?”
“They’re definitely radiating some kind of magic. Not a type that’s been catalogued by the Justice League yet, though, so I couldn’t tell you what it does. But it’s also fading. It’ll be gone in an hour or two.”
Cliff crumpled up a piece of paper from the dresser and tossed it in the circle. It bounced and rolled before it settled on the ground inside it. He put one foot inside the runes, then his whole body.
“Must be a one-time thing,” said Vic.
“Or,” said Rita, her finger on her chin, her eyes on the hole in the ceiling, “it’s missing a crucial ingredient.”
Cliff and Larry realized what she meant simultaneously. Cliff turned to Vic.
“Got a sprinkler in there somewhere, Inspector Gadget? We need a rainbow.”