Electra
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"You should definitely send him the picture," Raina advised, "but that's not my phone." She reached into her other bathrobe pocket and took out another phone, this one in a case covered in stylized flame decals. "This one is mine, that one's yours. 'S why your picture and phone number is at the top. If you tap the little phone picture next to my name you call me, if you tap the speech bubble you can send a text. Like..." She fiddled with her own phone a minute, then frowned. "Well apparently I'm being punished for something, so I only have one emoji right now, but like this." A moment later Fred's phone chimed and a notification appeared on the screen, informing her that Raina had sent her a message consisting of a line of cartoon monkeys. "You can look at tutorials and stuff to figure out how to use it for fancier stuff, but that's the basics. And Merlin put a ton of games on there too, for next time you feel like you have to go sit by yourself for awhile."
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"No you're not, you look adorable," Raina assured her offhandedly, most of her attention still directed towards the phone. "And it's a waist-up pic, I didn't go for the full jammies effect. Lemme just put the filter on it so it's not so dark... there we go." The witch obviously lacked her familiar's effortless skill with electronics, but she seemed to know what she was doing as she punched buttons. "Okay, there we go." She tossed Fred the phone, which was open to a phone contacts screen. Fred's bedhead picture was at the top, with Raina's selfie next to her phone number and the picture of Fang next to Matt's. The other half-dozen numbers had names but no photos attached. "You're going to have to get pictures of everybody else on your own time."
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"Hey Fang," Raina told the dog with an absent wave. It wasn't totally clear what relationship Matt had with his dogs, but ignoring somebody's familiar was rude. Eschewing the chair, she leaned on Fred's desk, giving the alchemist a professional once-over. "You seem like you're doing okay now. Matt still keeping an eye on you?" She fished a phone out of the pocket of her robe and took a picture of the somnolent dog. "That's pretty cute. You know I don't do genuine sentiment, I was raised to be charming, not sincere." She looked at the phone and apparently approved of the photo, then took a selfie from an overhead angle and approved that one too. "Here, smile." She raised the phone and took a picture of Fred as well, the flash bright in the dim room.
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Raina was dressed for bed as well, though in her case it was more likely for plausible deniability if she were caught wandering the halls at this hour. Honestly she could've been wearing anything, given her powers, but it looked like her hair was pulled back in a french braid and her blue nightgown was covered by a matching chenille bathrobe. She grinned unrepentantly at Fred's state of disarray. "Yeah, that was the point," she said as though it were obvious. "Your friends need to be taken in small doses. Can I come in?"
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Just as Fred was drifting to sleep, there was a quiet knock on the door. It sounded carefully modulated, loud enough to be heard by someone who was awake, ignorable by the truly sleeping. The loud whispers outside the door were not quite so carefully calibrated. "No I'm not going to pop the lock, what are you, crazy? Even if that wasn't totally rude, that's a good way to get yourself murdered in a school full of cranky people with superpowers. If she's not awake we'll just give it to her some other time.... Yes, I know th- oh my god, of course I appreciate the work you went to! You are the absolute neediest- fine then, whatever! I'll see you later, maybe!" The soft knock sounded again.
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"Okay." Singularity nodded, not seeming disappointed or approving at Page's choice. Her voice didn't change even a little bit. "We'll talk to the warden and see what we can do for you. It's not really so bad down here. It's very safe." She unfolded and refolded her hands once. "We also need to talk to Owen, the one you came in with. They've told us he's hard to understand, even when he'll talk to people. Can you tell us anything about him that might make things go more smoothly?"
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"We haven't got any currency on Sanctuary," Stesha told Pharos, hoisting herself up a few feet on a platform of vines just so she could keep an eye on the tourists. "There's a basic barter system, but so many of our people are refugees still getting their lives organized that even that's a little slapdash. In most cases, people's valuables are that way because they have memories attached to them, which just makes them more irreplaceable." It was hard not to relax around Pharos; just being near him was turning Stesha's hair a distinctly darker shade of green. "Tell me more about your Ocholocracy. How did it form, what sort of government does it have? How many people are on your worlds?"
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Paige paid little attention to the rest of the group at first; her eyes were solely for her husband. As soon as he got within range she literally leapt into his arms, wrapping her legs around his and trusting him to catch her as they kissed. The skin-to-skin contact let all her buried emotions pour into his head, fear-relief-love-anger-joy, in a rush that would've been overwhelming if he hadn't been used to three decades of Paige running tame through his mind already. ~I missed you so much. I was so scared. Are you really all right?~ A brief mental tingle as she rifled his surface thoughts, checking for pain or undue stress. She wouldn't go any deeper without his permission, but the light touch was enough to reassure her. With a little bit of reluctance, she peeled herself off Richard and turned her attention to the rest of the "extended family." "Nice to meet you all," she said with distracted politeness. "We have no interest in attacking you, your dimension seems to have enough problems of its own, and getting involved with the internal politics in other dimensions is a really good way to drive yourself crazy. Just don't steal my husband again and we're fine." She tried her best not to look at the baby with its button-black eyes. Surely that didn't necessarily have to happen.
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"No," Jessie murmured, shaking her head. "No, I don't want to." She knew that the Lor had pods that could grow babies in them, and she knew that genetics would've been in short supply on a brand new accidental colony. Her "children" may well have been nothing more than biological descendents, which would make a lot more sense than the idea of her actually having some kind of family. If that were the case, there didn't seem much point to seeing which random strangers might look vaguely like her. And if the version of her who had landed here had somehow transcended Jessie and managed to form a bond with someone and raise a family, Jessie wasn't sure she wanted to know. She didn't need anything more dangled in front of her and then taken away again. "We should try and fight that monster again, before it comes back."
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ic From Beneath You It Devours: Atlantis Attacks
Electra replied to Brown Dynamite's topic in Lonely Point
Singularity didn't say much of anything on the way to the embassy, but she kept one careful eye on the shark and one on Aquaria. Both were imminent dangers, both were unpredictable, though at least Aquaria was unlikely to actually eat anyone. Jessie was pretty sure she could take out the shark if she needed to, had blurry muscle-memories of fighting in water and winning. That was probably Erin, though, and relying on those memories was chancy because Jessie was not as strong or skilled or smart as her superior doppelganger. Even so, she'd watched a television show that said a shark would retreat if punched hard enough in the nose or eye, and Jessie was a very good puncher of things. She was not, however, much of a diplomat. Instead she made a point of standing next to Aquaria, just in case she had to sit on the highly agitated Deep One to prevent the situation from deteriorating any further. -
Okay, gonna lean on Merlin's Skill Mastery to start with, he's got 28s in Craft Electronic and Know: Tech. What's going on with these compies?
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"Greetings to all of you," Stesha said, taking a few steps forward and wishing a little bit that she'd taken the time to at least change into her full uniform. "I am Fleur de Joie, and these are my friends Gaian Knight, Tiamat, and Gabriel. If you come in peace and friendship, then you are welcome to visit this place." She watched the antics of the people behind the leaders, seeing a definite pattern in the behavior that she recognized from her last trip to Disneyworld with Ammy. "I would ask that you make sure nobody wanders too far without supervision, there are some places that aren't safe, and of course the people here deserve the privacy of their homes." She gave them all a winning smile. "So you've come here just to see what the place is like these days?"
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Paige was not a frequent traveler between dimensions, and the transition was always something of a shock to her powers. The shock was even greater here, where the entire psychic atmosphere was strange, echoingly empty where there should've been noise, subdued and streamlined where there should've been chaos, and fear and despair hanging like a pall over everything. It took her a minute just to get her bearings. "No, honey, I'll look-" she began aloud, only to be cut off by the arrival of the young woman in red. For a minute, all Paige could do was stare. The girl could've been herself thirty-five years ago, or Holly five years from now. Or she could've been, except for the roiling temper visible in the taut lines of her body and the radiation she was freely displaying in a way Paige never would've allowed. Her daughter, she knew instantly, a daughter she'd never had in her world. She thought back to the difficulty they'd had conceiving Will, how she'd given up on the idea of another child when her father had sent them on the run once again. If she hadn't, if she'd kept trying despite the odds, maybe that would've meant another daughter, this daughter, in her world as well. But no point thinking about that, that way just lay madness. Once again she put a restraining hand on Will's shoulder. "Come on kids, play nice," she encouraged, a sardonic thread in her voice. "We're not looking to cause any trouble, and I don't think they're looking for any trouble from us, either," she insisted with a meaningful look in Not-Richard's direction. "I'd feel a lot more comfortable if you just went ahead and brought Richard back here, honestly. We need to transit from here anyway."
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"Oh for the love of-" Raina elbowed her way past Riley and into the server room, pushing his bow down and giving the techs her most ingratiating smile. "I am SO sorry about him," she simpered at the technicians. "This is his very first mission and he's really excited. I promise he wasn't really going to do anything bad, and he's very sorry for scaring you." She nudged Riley with her elbow, hoping to at least get a nod out of him. "I'm Sparkler and this is Woodsman. I wanted to get a look at the setup in here, and he insisted that he should come along and protect me. It looks like there was a lot of damage?"
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Raina had a quick whispered consultation with Merlin, then looked over to the others. "We're going to head straight up to the server room, see if we have better luck there than we did at the other place. Even if they've physically pulled the drives, we might get a better idea of what it is they were after." She jogged away lightly, too lightly, towards the stairs, the way her feet brushed the floor the best indication that she was using magic to avoid leaving footprints or disturbing anything. She caught up to Riley in the stairwell but didn't linger, looking for clues wasn't exactly her specialty.
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Singularity carefully entered the address into her phone; it wouldn't navigate in the depths of the prison, but at least she wouldn't forget the address that way. She jotted a few other notes as well, then gave Paige a level look. "If your information helps us find what we're looking for, we'll make sure you're rewarded for it. But we need to know what you're looking to do, first," she insisted, her voice quiet, matter of fact. "If you stay in prison, we can help you get access to things to make the time easier. An education program, nicer food, better entertainment. That's not very hard. If you actually want to get out, that's a lot more difficult." She tucked away the phone and folded her hands neatly on the table. "You have to want to change, be willing to change everything. And we have people who can tell if you are really willing, or just saying you are. I did worse things than you've ever done, and I had to give up most of what I had been, but now I'm out and I'm doing all right. What is it you want?"
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Stesha took a moment to make sure that Amaryllis was safely tucked away with the other children from the creche, then teleported over to the new landing field. "Oh no," she told Gaian Knight enthusiastically, "I think we should keep it. It's beautiful, and you never know when you need a big flat surface for things. Underneath the structure, the plants began flowing outwards and away, leaving the ground bare in the areas that would receive no sunlight. With that done, she found a spot on the edge of the platform and watched as the ship and its bee escort descended. Closer to the ground there were many more bees of the organic sort, but they were keeping their distance for now, keeping an eye on things from a quarter-mile's polite range. Stesha cocked her head at the others as the voice came over the radio. "Does that sound a litte ominous, or am I just getting cynical?"
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Jessie blinked, then stared at Velek in disbelief. "I had children? And died of old age?" If there was any conviction Jessie still shared with her more powerful doppelganger, it was that they were both unlikely to live long lives or die of natural causes. And while it did seem possible that one day Erin would have children, indeed likely given the stories she'd told Jessie about alternate universes and time travel, it seemed ridiculously unlikely for herself. The idea of dying wasn't disturbing at all, but the idea of living such an alien life was uncomfortable and strange. Would that Jessie be happy? Would that Jessie fit in on this weird world the way she never had back on Earth Prime? "A hundred twelve is pretty old," was all she ventured to say aloud.
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"Shhh, baby." Suddenly Paige's hands were on Will's shoulders, her mind brushing against his as it had all his life, soothing, comforting. Behind it he could feel the echoes of her own turmoil, but it wasn't the same as his. Paige wanted her husband back, but what disturbed her about this doppelganger was not his alienness, but how plausible his story might once have been. "We all want him back. We'll get him back, get this fixed up." She looked over to Phantom for confirmation, not quite able to look at the other Richard straight-on at the moment.
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"Copy that," Stesha replied to her friends on the radio, tilting her head way back to get a better view of the enormous ship. Around her, the village council of Mayberry was working to move the population toward the evacuation shelter, which was really a large, well-protected clearing on the outskirts of town where a big portal could be opened in a worst-case scenario. Stesha hoped the evacuation was just a needless precaution, but who could ever tell with these things? At least the ship had stopped, that was a good sign. But how did they know her name? As soon as her teammates arrived on the scene, Stesha tapped the robot bees for another update. "The ship isn't moving, and if it's pointing any weapons, the bees can't tell what they are," she reported to the others. "I think a landing platform away from town is probably the best way to go with this. If nothing else, they've got a big advantage over us if it does come to a fight so long as they're airborne." She smiled grimly, feeling a bit sad even as she said it that she'd learned to think that way instead of unreservedly hoping to welcome new friends. "If you throw one up, I'll wave them down onto it. Gabe, can you make sure everybody's in the shelter?"
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"It's a pleasure to meet both of you," Raina said politely, smoothing her dress and folding her hands as she got into the car. Somehow the dress not only made her look the way she used to look, but feel that way as well. There was a time when Raina had used party manners, and indeed been popular enough to go to a lot of parties. Most of them were childrens' parties, of course, but she'd just been starting to come into her own at adult soirees. This pair of Talya's associates seemed plucked from Central Casting for the part of "weird dude secondary characters" for whatever heist-movie antics were planned, but it didn't hurt to be nice. "And I can extract myself from trouble with no help, I'm sure." Well, maybe not entirely nice. But close.
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"You need capital if you're going to refine it and expand it," Raina countered. "You need an investor, or at least seed money. You know what they say, if you're good at something, never do it for free." She began closing pots and wiping brushes as efficiently as she'd set them out in the first place, tucking each one back into the little box. "And money is one big part of it, but if you can swing somebody who'll give you industry contacts too, that's way better. You should give it a try. And hey, if you need somebody with social skills, I'll even come along with you. I've got a trustworthy face." The fact that she could deliver such a proclamation without laughing spoke to her bluffing ability, if nothing else.
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There had been a time in her life when Stesha had spent a lot of time thinking about space. During the arduous years of her marriage, she'd watched the skies often, looking up on every clear night to wonder where Derrick was, how many lives he was saving, whether he was thinking of her, when he'd finally come home. After she'd finally cut that cord, she'd resolutely turned her face toward the land and the people there, leaving the sky and its mysteries to people for whom it didn't have so many bad memories. Hindsight might suggest that was why she didn't so much as look into placing a single satellite in orbit, but for whatever reason, she did not. That didn't mean she was totally unaware. The second the ship passed beyond the Earth's exosphere and began its descent, Stesha could feel it like a shiver down her spine. Something other, something that did not necessarily belong. Lots of things on Sanctuary felt that way, but she'd gotten used to all those over time. This, though, was new. Because it was coming from very high in the atmosphere, her first contact was to the bees. The organic bees had a fairly limited height range, but their robotic brethern were much more capable of high flight and reconnaisance, and they also had very helpful radios built in. By the time the ship came to a stop, a dozen robot bees were circling at a careful distance for a closer look. Down on the ground, Stesha had tossed her cloak on over her blue jeans and slightly tattered "Mommin' Ain't Easy" t-shirt and parked herself in Mayberry's town square to stave off panic and assess the situation. Not to mention get on the radio. "Hey GK, Tiamat, Gabe? We've got a bit of a situation shaping up here at Mayberry," she relayed tersely. "Some kind of UFO coming in warmish, no weapons yet, but I don't know what it wants. If you guys aren't busy, I wouldn't mind a little backup." The message came in before anybody could respond, so she answered that as well. "Greetings from Sanctuary," she replied, trying out her best Diplomatic Leader Voice. "Please stand by for landing instructions."
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Paige was tempted to say the hell with it, she just wanted her husband back and this other universe could go to hell for all she cared. But she'd been married to her Richard for a very long time, and this doppelganger with his face was just as completely lousy at keeping a poker face when he wanted to hide something from her. She fixed him with her steeliest gaze, the one that usually worked even with no mental mojo behind it. "Richard, what exactly are you trying to conceal about your world? What the hell is going on there that you don't want anybody messing with?"
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Merlin chirped with what sounded suspiciously like glee upon catching sight of the computer, racing down Raina's arm and hopping to the desk for a better look. "Don't worry," Raina told the scandalized tech with a smile that was surprisingly reassuring. "He's a highly enhanced sentient primate. Think of him as an expert diagnostic system in a weird casing." She was pretty sure the computer teacher at Claremont had been being sarcastic when he'd described Merlin that way, but it actually seemed to make the technician feel a little better. While Merlin worked, Raina began picking throgh the desk, looking at the paper files with the air of someone who totally knew what she was doing. The monkey worked quickly, though he didn't seem entirely satisfied with what he was finding. "He thinks you're right about the heavy-duty USB drive damaging the port," Raina reported helpfully. "No chunks of drive in it, though, so the thing they took probably survived intact. The whole thing is encrypted, but some of it's newly broken. The files aren't complete but they reference other files with... what the hell is a hexadecimal?" Merlin chirped irritably at her, and she rolled her eyes but continued, "with hexadecimal numbers. Hey flatface, are these them?" She raised one of the paper folders in Merlin's direction. Merlin indicated that these were indeed what he was looking for, and why hadn't she mentioned them earlier? It took a few more minutes for monkey and mage to digest the information from the files themselves. "Okay, there's one tech firm that owns both the warehouse and the office building, and these files are related to some components that company's making. Good news is, it doesn't look like something that's designed to blow up or spew poison or shoot bullets. Bad news is, Merlin can't make a guess at what they're actually for without getting physical access to the servers the files are on, which is probably located at the office building. If we know more about what these guys wanted, we might learn more about who they are."