Heritage

Now safely outside, Lynn can finally release the nervous laughter that was building in her belly during the entire encounter; she clutches her head and just stands there. "Pwhahahahaha! Oh my god, dude, your mother's terrifying! How do you not pee your pants every time she says 'good morning'? Oh man!" After a few moments she finally recovers herself; as she wipes the tears of joyful release from her eyes she looks this way and that, as though she were a stranger who was new in town. "Oh, ah, which way, which way...oh, maybe we should catch the monorail! Though I'd have to leave my bike locked up here for a while, which is cool, I guess; I can swing by later tonight and pick it up, no sweat." She starts digging in the pockets of her snug jeans. "Do you have any tokens? I think I might have a transit card with some money on it, if I can just...waitaminute." Suddenly her pockets widen by themselves until she can stick her whole hand inside, and she grins sheepishly. "Sorry; believe it or not, I forget I can do that all the time." :roll: She holds up an FCTA card in triumph. "Ah-ha! Now we're cookin' with gas!"

"What the hell..." :shock: Grim half-rises from her seated position, her eyes wide with dread, but then her face grows dark and determined. "What the heck am I so scared of? I'm the scariest thing out here tonight!" She stops to consider that statement. "Well, one of the scariest, at least." Suddenly her body is surrounded by a familiar pale mist; when it drifts away, she is transformed into a disturbing long-limbed thing with pointed ears and slick blue-black skin. Her eyes glow like jack-o-lanterns as she scans the street below, her body taught with both fear and determination, and when she speaks her voice is a hollow rasp. "Whatever that was, I'll help you find it." In a flash, the transformed girl scrambles in the direction of the scream; when she gets to the edge of the roof, she hurls herself across the chasm like some twisted howler monkey from hell, and for a moment, the shape is briefly silhouetted by the moon before it lands on the opposite side.

Lynn tries very, very hard not to smile. Boy, looks like someone is gonna be in the doghouse for a while. She does the same goofy curtsy she did before, and bows her head. "I accept your wisdom, ma'am, and hope to use it well." The petite brunette looks over at Sirius, then back at his scary mom. "I would, uh, take leave of you, ma'am, and head to the place we talked about, the alley of my rebirth; I kinda like to get going and just get this over with, if you know what I mean. Sirius, you wanna come, too? Or y'know, at least walk me to the portal thing?"

Oh great, 'Officer Friendly' is here. :roll: Grim turns, ready to tear into the dimensional cop with a well-chosen snotty comment, but then she gets a good look at her; she looks like something the cat dragged in, and the young shapeshifter just can't bear make what most be a truly rotten evening even worse. With a furtive look a round, she makes herself visible out of courtesy. "Hey, Phantom. Uh, do you need something?"

Lots of things had changed since Grimalkin had joined the Knights of Freedom, but many things had not; for one thing, she still loved to patrol the Fens at night, watching out for folks and doing her bit. Another thing she still enjoyed was a bit of good old-fashioned investigation. There had been a recent wave of anti-Semitic hate crimes in the West End, especially targeting synagogues; graffiti and other defacement, as well as a few assaults. Grim decided it would be a good idea to stakeout a different schul each night, starting with Temple Ben David, in hopes of catching the bastards in the act. Across the street on the roof, Grim kept her vigil, invisible to the untrained eye; she sat with her legs crossed, idly tracing the outlines of the shingles with her fingertips. C'mon, you stupid skinheads; come out where I can see ya.

Estelle puts away her compact, smiles and gently takes Archeville's hand in hers and gives it a little squeeze. "I'm sorry you have so little family to share this with, and forgive me for prattling on about my own." Her hand lingers for a few seconds more, then releases his as she reflexively checks her hair (like it would ever be out of place!) and smooths out her dress. "I suppose I'm in a similar boat as that man in Vancouver, though I'm lucky enough that my transformation is a bit more cosmetic; I'm now an 'exotic beauty', according to the press." She winks as the limo slowly pulls to a halt. "Ah, I believe we've arrived, Herr Doktor!"

Grim's eyes go wide when the transdimensionals seem to recognize her; 'sabra' refers to the prickly pear cactus, Hebrew slang for a native-born Israeli for purportedly being thorny on the outside but sweet on the inside. Typical humor for a tenacious people surrounded by their enemies. Is there a version of me on the other side? What are her powers? What does she do? The Jewish heroine, stunned by these revelations, quietly steps to one side to contemplate the ramifications of this.

Lynn nodded vigorously. "Yeah, I learned that from reading Greek Mythology in junior high, when Persephone ate the pomegranate: don't eat the food and don't drink the wine." She turns and gives Sirius an eager grin and a thumbs up, but then her face becomes more serious. "Uh, I know the rule of this is nothing is free, everything with magic has a cost. I offered to help your son with something, and I agreed with no hesitation; does that constitute a contract, y'know, between me and him?"

Grim nods curtly. "Thank you." The military uniform dissolves into a party dress, this time in emerald green, and the rifle drifts off into vapor. The young heroine runs a hand through her hair and yawns. "Oh man, I think it might be starting to get late, or at least that's what all the booze I drank is telling me." Her dark brown eyes scan the room, and she frowns a little bit as she scratches the back of her head. "Hmm, looks like some of the folks I still wanted to talk to seem to have gone; maybe it's time for me to hit the showers and head on home." Grim playfully jabs a finger in Scarab's direction. "If I have weird Egyptian-themed dreams tonight, I am so blaming you." Then she looks thoughtful and smiles. "Unless Brendan Fraser is in them; then I give you a free pass." She yawns again, much louder and with her mouth wide open before she manages to cover it. "Sorry! Okay, I need to get going. Good to see you as always, Scarab; I'm really glad we had this little chat thing." She turns to walk away, then stops herself. "Oh by the way, I think I found an apartment in Riverside; if it all works out, I'll be moving out July 1st." Grim smiles and does an odd little bow, "G'night!" In a matter of seconds, she's lost in the crowd.

The lock coils around the good doctor's finger with surprising strength, but only for a moment; Estelle is still looking out the window, and for a second a smile flickers across her lips, but otherwise she offers no comment on the gesture, and her expression is once again thoughtful and rather sad. "If it was just the powers, it might be different, but my transformation brought certain illegal business practices my brother was involved in out into the open, which has 'shamed the family', as my father says." The beautiful blonde scientist shrugs. "My mother and older sister Sunny have been wonderfully supportive, but the rest of the family has gotten rather cold. I've just come back from Japan, where Sunny lives with her family; her husband works for the embassy in Tokyo." Gossamer turns to face her companion for the evening, and even though her eyes are moist, she's beaming with familial pride. "My niece Emily loves it; we play together for hours." The carpet of gold shifts and forms into a sort of landscape, gently rolling hills that rise into jagged peaks dotted with mysterious caves; Estelle places her empty glass on a rise, and then the landscape melts into an amber sea, the gleaming waves carrying the glass to and fro throughout the limo like a tiny ship bobbing up and down in a storm. She sighs contentedly as the glass returns to her fingers when the 'tide' retreats, her hair pulling itself back into her earlier braid, and she fetches a small compact out of her purse to check her mascara. "We're almost there."

It'll be gone in her next post.

Grim, who has also joined the group in the teleport room, approaches the two frightened transdimensionals with her hands up in a (hopefully) calming gesture. "Hi, uh, I'm Grimalkin. Are you guys hungry or thirsty? Can I get you anything? Here-" She snaps her hands down, and a thin woolen blanket appears. "I'm just gonna drape this...carefully...over your shoulders, so you can huddle in a bit more comfort, okay? Hey, can we get them a chair or something, a beanbag? They look exhausted."

Grim's doing her Create Object thing, as usual.

Just for clarification's sake, the assault rifle Grim made is a non-functioning prop that could never fire, but could well get her in trouble with security guards... :?

It takes Grim a few seconds to recover from the guided tour of Scarab's past; at first all she can do is stand there and blink, but finally the swirling images flicker away, and she shakes her head to clear out the last of them. "Wow, that was...wow." :shock: She gently slaps her face a few times, then gives Scarab a cockeyed smile. "So, yeah! Quite the life you've lived there, or I guess 'lives' is more accurate." A thought flashes across her mind, and her face brightens. "Hey, y'know if you ever need-" She leans in a bit closer. "Elena to show up at the same time as Scarab, we could work that out; I'd have to practice a lot, but I'm sure I could it do it, no sweat." She gives the much-older heroine a conspiratorial wink, then shifts gears as she defiantly crosses her arms across her chest. "So wait, this Kantor guy was like a Nazi wizard, and he's still alive? In a flash, the young shapeshifter is wearing an IDF uniform, complete with glamour-made assault rifle! "Where is he and how do I kill him?" :evil:

Ever since becoming...whatever the heck she was, Lynn hadn't felt a bit of cold; the very night she was reborn, she ran stark naked down an alley in the middle of February, and all she felt was freaked out and deeply embarrassed. But when Gwen looked at her with those cold blue eyes, a dagger of ice slid down her spine, cold as the grave. Despite this, she still tried to focus on what the incredibly creepy old woman said. "Well, I suppose...uh, the place to start would be when I woke up, that alley in the Fens." She looks over at Sirius, her eyes wide with wonder. "I haven't been back there since then; I was too scared to go back there, but logically I guess..." She chews her lower lip in thought as she strokes her chin with a single finger, slowly turning the events of that fateful night over and over in her head; she remembers feeling unsteady and disoriented, like her legs, heck her whole body was asleep and gone all pins and needles. "So that's where...if I came from Avalon, that's where I would have come out, right?" Her eyes dart between Sirius, Alexia and Gwen. "That would make the most sense, wouldn't it?"

Estelle smiled as the amazing vehicle glided smoothly down the streets of Hanover. "I'll be honest, I have no idea what you just said, but it sounded like to was from the heart and rather poetic." She sighs as she watches the Friday night crowd roll past, the men and women holding hands as they meander down the crowded streets, in and out of stores and bars. As she gets more comfortable, her hair majestically spreads and drapes itself across the limo's seating area, never coming closer than three or four inches away from Archeville, but still falling on every possible side of the handsome scientist. "Mmm. Life was so much simpler before-" Her hair rises up en masse before it once again sinks back down. "All of this, but I think I'm finally starting to see the possibilities. And it's not just having the bizarre powers; it's being seen differently by the rest of the world, and belonging to a singular new community." She stokes a cascade of shimmering hair like a beloved Persian cat, and it ripples at her touch like a pond at sunset. "Because the people to whom the extraordinary is the ordinary...are the sort of people I want to know." The blonde chemist gives him a playful wink as she takes another sip of beer. "I know this place doesn't accept reservations, but I hope we can use a little 'pull' to find some quiet corner. I get my share of gawkers now, and the occasional bored paparazzo."

Crud, I was hoping to post here tonight, bit now it's gotten late; you're first up tomorrow night, Doc! :D

The petite brunette waves a hand dismisvely. "Hey, I pinged you, so it's cool; wasn't actually sure if that would work." She looks a bit more thoughtful. "So, how's that work exactly, and what's the range? Like if I was in say Greenbank gettin' my ass kicked, and I thought 'Scarab, help!' like in a loud...thought, would you hear it?" "Oh, really?" She gets a little pink in the cheeks and turns to watch Ace move through the crowd. "Well that's...nice to know. Guess I still got it, huh?" She makes an exaggerated sultry expression, then laughs and runs a hand through her short hair. "Ah, jeez, what a night! So, anyway, reason I came over her does in a way relate back to Mr. Dangerman back there." She takes a deep breath and sighs. "Okay, so true confession time: you kinda scare the crap outta me." Grim hold up her hands in a preemptive warding gesture. "Not in a horrible 'ah mommy mommy!' way, but more like...I dunno, that feeling when you're walking through a spook house, and you let go of your dad's hand, and then you think you find it again but it's not...his hand?" She scrunches up her face. "Does that make any sense? I only made it through freshman English, so I think my metaphors get kinda weird. It's like...safe but not quite safe, or...I dunno, having a pet bear to keep burglars away or something. You don't know if the thing you have to keep you safe is worse than the thing you're afraid of; there, I think I finally said it." The shapeshifter locks her fingers together and rests her chin on them. "So I need to understand you a little better; not like how your powers work or how well you knew Imhotep or anything like that, though that would be cool and all. I need to know what makes you tick, what keeps you fighting the good fight." She actually smiles. "I need us to trust each other...and once we do that, then I need to, like, suck everything you know about fighting bad guys out of your head. Y'know, like how they pulled a mummy's brains out his nose, only much less gross." Grim laughs, shaking her hands as though trying to fling water from them. "Man, I suck at the talkin' thing sometimes, and you make me nervous; I just wanna learn, that's all!" :P

Despite her sometimes prickly and combative nature, at her heart Grim is a good kid who hates to see people suffer; when she sees the brother and sister holding each other, she feels a sharp pang in her gut, and suddenly misses her own family very much. I really need to call home :cry: But then Avenger just starts talking crazy. "Dyah-what?" Suddenly her eyes go wide and her mouth hangs open "Wait, you want me to operate the teleport thing? Based on what, my advanced degree in particle physics? I'll moosh 'em into liver pâte!" The young heroine looks around for the intercom and jabs what looks like the talk button with her thumb. "Uh, hi Scarab, Grim here. I'm not...I'm not so sure we have the technical know-how out here to work the teleporter, or at least I don't; is there some kind of manual or a training video like they have at McDonald's we can watch, 'cause that might help, actually."

Once again, Lynn thinks back to the Oz books she devoured as a child, and the sort of stilted and formal speech Dorothy Gale might use while addressing someone like the Gnome King. "I, um, seek passage into the realm of Avalon, m'am, so I can, uh, so that I can better learn to master my magic...well, my magical nature, I guess." Her brown eyes flick from between all the strange folks present in the room, and she licks her lips nervously. "I believe I am now, somehow, of the Good Folk, and that, um, since my power comes from Fae, that I must return to Fae to master it. I hope that in your power and wisdom, you can, like, help me find a gateway to that...noble realm. M'am." She looks down at her feet and squeezes her eyes shut in nervous anticipation. Just don't turn me into like a frog or a milking stool or something.

Sorry about my recent lack of posting; lack of sleep was really starting to catch up with me, so I took a bit of break from the internet, which tends to keep me up until all hours. I will be a whirling dervish of posty goodness tonight, however :D

Lynn gives Torrance a nod; if there's one thing she'd learned for sneaking into bars, it was to respect the bouncer. She has no plans of pulling any funny business anywhere near this guy. And then there's 'Mombi'; everything about her screams 'witch', so the slightly-built shapeshifter decides it's best to treat her like Great Aunt Mo, kinda deferential, like you're meeting the Queen of England. "Nice to meet you, m'am; my name is Lynn Epstein, and I seek your counsel." She does a cross-legged curtsy right out of the Ren Faire :bow:

So are we ever gonna finish this one up? ;)

Estele indicates she's like to start the evening with a nice weissbier ("The Hacker-Pschorr, please.") and makes herself comfortable as she gives the doctor her undivided attention; not only was she brought up to do this out of courtesy, but the German scientist is a particularly captivating speaker :love: The joke catches Estelle off-guard, and when that happens you hear her real laugh, not the polite chuckle she normally offers the world; no, this is loud pure belly laugh, and a good deal of foam flies off the top of her glass. "Hah-hah-ha! Oh my! A-hah! Mmm, excuse me!" She dabs gently at her face with a tissue extracted from her purse by a helpful golden strand. Beaming, she raises her glass in salute. "Zum Wohl! And yes, I did have to look that up." ;)