"This is 'not bad'?!" Alley asked, sounding just a touch like she might freak out at any moment.

Nothing looked familiar! She was just going to stand here as far out of the way as she could, singular hand grabbing onto the back of a seat hard enough that, had she been wearing her usual gauntlet, she would have aerated the furniture.

If this was the Fade, it was really pulling out some stops in terms of weirdness. That it might not even be the Fade--