searchingfordistraction

The front door opens and Matilda steps through it, head up, walking fast, on the verge of tears but holding them off through sheer willpower.

When she sees that she's found Milliways she immediately looks around for Jim, and when she spots him she immediately races across the bar to throw her arms around him, saying as clearly as she can despite incipient sniffles: "Jenny's gone missing and it's been at least two hours, they sent us a substitute teacher and she only just admitted it's because nobody knows where Jenny is, and I bet it was Miss Trunchbull but I can't find her anywhere, either of them, and, and help."

He's been in Milliways for maybe about three minutes; he's still leaning against the Bar and idly contemplating the possibility of ordering something before he goes home when Matilda races toward him.

He's startled at first - he can't imagine Matilda has met anyone in Milliways less capable than he of offering comfort, and she must know that - but the first three words clarify the situation immediately.

"Where have you looked?"

The more information he has to work with, the better.

"I checked everything we looked at when we found the Trunchbull the first time, and there's nothing new - she might still be in England or not, I don't know. I couldn't find her on any flights into the States in the last week but that doesn't mean much. And I looked in the principal's office because that's the last place anybody saw her, but I don't know what to look for and I couldn't see anything obvious."

And then Milliways.

"I know what to look for."

He holds his hand out to Matilda.

"Let's go see what there is."

"Thanks, Jim," she says quietly, takes his hand, and pulls him toward the door.

"We'll find her."

It's not reassurance. It's a statement of fact. Even if Agatha Trunchbull had somehow known Jim Moriarty would be on her trail, she still couldn't possibly have covered her tracks well enough to escape him.

And because it is so very true, it actually gets a small smile out of her.

The most comforting thing Jim can do - and he can do it better than anyone - is help her get her Jenny back.

The Door opens into a hallway in Matilda's school. There's no one there to immediately challenge them as they step through, though Jim is already prepared with a persona to put on if they do.

They should, perhaps, have paused for him to clean up and change after his tour of Gotham, but at least he's long since swapped the Westwood t-shirt for something a bit less irreverent.

Matilda doesn't even pause; she leads him straight down the hall and around the corner to the principal's office.

(The sign that said HEADMISTRESS has been taken down and replaced by a much friendlier sign reading J. Honey - Prinicipal.)

There's another teacher standing by the office door, an older woman with a touch of grey in her straight black hair.

"Hi, Miss Li," Matilda says on her way past. She doesn't quite manage her usual ebullience, but under the circumstances, that's not a surprise.

Miss Li gives them both a slightly puzzled look, but stands aside with a murmured, "Hello, Matilda."

Matilda's companion projects the unmistakeable authority of a man of the law with such force that it's really quite easy to overlook his less-than-official attire. He must be undercover. And that thing he flashes as he says his name is of course a badge of some kind.

"Miss Li." His accent is almost generic, "neutral" Midwest, but not quite - there's a distinct hint of New York he's never managed to chase away. His tone is polite, but no-nonsense. "Detective James Campbell. I understand there's been a disappearance. Considering Jennifer and Matilda Honey's situation, we're looking to handle this with a certain amount of delicacy, so I'd appreciate it if you'd keep people out of the office while I examine it."

Well, that's much better. Miss Li relaxes.

"Good thinking." Her own accent is in a similar situation, except for New York substitute China. "Of course I will."

Notably absent from her demeanour is any question of where Matilda got a detective on such short notice. Working at Magnus Honey Memorial, formerly Crunchem Hall, you learn very quickly to stop being surprised when Matilda does something improbable.

Matilda, meanwhile, stops beside the desk and waits for Jim to catch up. (She appreciates how good he is at pulling on a lie. She couldn't have done that. She would have just said that Jim was here to help look for Jenny and left it at that - which, to be fair, would probably have worked just as well.)

He thanks Miss Li, then steps into the office and closes the door, letting James Campbell vanish the second it's shut.

"Mind where you step," he says. "There might still be some useful footprints left if they haven't been obliterated yet."

The carpeting is the typical thin variety found in schools across the globe and won't hold a footprint as well as thicker carpeting will, but it can still retain information for someone who knows how to look for it.

"There's been a few teachers through here," she says, "but I don't think they walked around a lot."

With the door shut, the scarring from years of heavy darts is obvious. Across the room is the empty space where the Chokey used to be. The relevant section of wall has been replaced, but there are still marks on the floor and ceiling, and a faint rusty smell lingers in that corner.

What there isn't is any obvious sign of Jennifer Honey having been in this room at all. The tracks of the few staff members who poked their heads in looking for her, yes—lingering fear ensured that none of them ever walked behind her desk, and the carpet there is pristine. The paperwork is mostly in order; a few folders have been knocked to the floor, and at least one was dropped and stepped on and then picked up again.

There are a few fibers of dark green wool caught on the corner of a wooden shelf high on the wall just behind the desk. It can't be from today, because whoever left them there must have been standing on the clean patch of carpet; it can't be from when this was Miss Trunchbull's actual office, because the shelf isn't that old.

It is not likely that anyone else would have been in this office in the past few months wearing precisely that colour.

Jim studies the room silently; unlike some people from his reality, he doesn't feel the need to monologue his every impression and deduction as he works.

He takes it all in as a whole first, finding what needs to be examined more closely and discarding the rest as safe to disturb.

He begins to frown just a few seconds into that initial glance, and the frown only deepens as he moves in to look at the few details there are to study. The entirely too few details, none of which match up with each other.

Nothing this room is telling him makes any sense.

Matilda watches Jim, and subsequently watches the things Jim looks twice at, and subsequently calls the bit of fluff to hover in the air in front of her.

"That's from one of Miss Trunchbull's outfits," she says definitively. "It even smells like Miss Trunchbull."

Jim looks from the fibers to the blank carpet and back to the fibers, watching them hover -

"Of course," he realizes aloud, "different universe, different rules."

He'd still been thinking like he was at home or in Gotham or some other reality where things like children spontaneously developing telekinesis don't happen. Stupid. He doesn't bother berating himself, though, it would take time and brainpower best suited for other uses.

"Someone tried to make it look like no one has been in here at all today," he says. "She got everything obvious but missed everything useful." By which he means everything ordinary detectives would have missed anyway.

She stares at him.

(The fluff, forgotten, escapes her grip and floats gently to the floor.)

"Miss Trunchbull has powers?"

"Looks like."

Jim's focus is back on the room, examining it anew with this fresh perspective.

"She's wiped away all the visible traces - no footprints, very likely no fingerprints, enough to stymie the police, but either she's still clumsy at it or she simply didn't think any further than that."

He doesn't see why she would have. Agatha Trunchbull is, at heart, a fairly simple soul.

"Unfortunately, that makes it difficult to work out how she got in or where they've gone."

How exciting.

"Of course she didn't; she's Miss Trunchbull," says Matilda. "I'm surprised she remembered about fingerprints. But we have to get Jenny back now."

She doesn't even want to think about what Miss Trunchbull might be doing to Jenny. She is anyway.

It's kind of making her mad.

Of course. This is one situation in which Matilda won't be sharing his enthusiasm over something new and different.

"We will," he says.

He looks the room over again, and finds his gaze being drawn toward the spot where the Chokey used to be. He moves toward it for a closer look, his hands ghosting over the wall.

"Do your powers work better when you're using them in a space that's yours?" he asks.

"No-o," she says thoughtfully, drawing out the word as she thinks it over, and then shakes her head and repeats more firmly: "No. Not even a little bit."

He hums distractedly as he takes this in, turning to look at the desk from this angle, including the fallen folders.

"A lightning rod, then," he murmurs. "She's a superstitious sort, isn't she? Likely to believe she'd have the greatest advantage in a place where she left her mark too deeply for it to be fully erased."

He taps the wall.

"True or not, it's what she aimed for. Where else might she consider hers? Aside from your house, even she's not that stupid."

"Aside from my house, and this school? I don't think there's anywhere," she says slowly. "If there is, I don't know about it."

No, he supposes she wouldn't.

He leans back against the wall, closes his eyes, and begins to sort through everything he knows about Agatha Trunchbull.

Matilda takes off her backpack, gets out her laptop, sets it on the desk, and hooks it up to the office phone.

There are a few more things she's thought of checking.

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