ic Kiss Me and Smile for Me

[Gizmo]

"Mattresses do have some functional advantages," Trevor opined, a little slower to get back to his feet than Erin as he cast about for his coveralls. He'd managed to get his second arm into its sleeve while nodding agreeably along with dinner plans when he caught the change in Erin's expression. Any lethargy in his body language disappeared as he quickly buttoned up with lean, nimble fingers and walked swiftly over to the largest of the tool cases in the garage. Sliding out the middle shelf on its tracks he tripped a hidden toggle inside the case which allowed the shelf to flip over, revealing an abbreviated assortment of his Midnight equipment, including a Liberty League communicator.

 

Looking back over to Erin with a sober expression he silently waited for her to finish listening to the message and let him know what needed to be done.

[Electra]

The instant the voicemail finished, Erin was scrolling through her phone, punching in the numbers to call Jessie back. She was dumped straight to the generic computerized voicemail. "Jessie, when you get this, call me back right away," she demanded, then hung up and looked at Trevor. "She's not answering. The call's not even ringing all the way through. But this is the message she left." Erin thumbed on the speakerphone, and a moment later the slightly-crackly recording played into the silence. 

 

"It's Jessie." Her voice was nervous, tense, excited or afraid, maybe both. In the background, there was an odd, low-pitched croaking noise. "There's something weird in the apartment. Something-" There was a loud squeal of electronic feedback, and the call suddenly dropped.

 

Erin held up the screen she'd been fiddling with. "Her tracker's not registering, and neither is Aquaria's," Erin reported. "Either they've stopped functioning, they've gone out of range, or both.: Can you call over to Eve's place and get somebody to go down and check on them? I'm going to call Project Freedom, they've got better software for finding lost trackers." Her voice was all business, but her face and posture were a study in miserable guilt already. If she hadn't let herself get distracted, maybe none of this would be happening. 

[Gizmo]

Trevor had his phone in hand immediately, pulling up the landline number to the castle atop the Dutempts Building while simultaneously forming a pointed thought directed toward the telepathic link he shared with the the petite Frenchwoman. --Eve. Calling now, something happened to Jessie and Aquaria-- It was a little different for him contacting her that way than the other way around since the Martel heiress wasn't always 'listening' as closely as other times but the urgency of the sending should have gotten her attention.

 

While the phone rang he said aloud, "Happened quickly. Wouldn't have mattered if you'd picked up immediately." Like Erin he kept his voice calm and rational but the tightness in his shoulders agreed more with her expression. "We'll find them."

[Electra]

"But we would've known!" Erin snapped back, not angry at him but furious with herself. It was easier to be furious than terrified. The DuTemps building had excellent security, it was incredibly unlikely that any mundane threat might have presented itself, much less one that Jessie would've felt incapable of handling herself. She'd heard it clearly during the brief message, Jessie had been confused, yes, but she'd been afraid too. As though she'd seen something she didn't understand, but knew was bad. Maybe something she'd forgotten...

 

Abandoning the Project Freedom idea, Erin jabbed her speed dial nearly hard enough to break the heavy-duty phone. "Alex, Jessie's missing. Can you feel her anywhere near... can you feel her anywhere?" 

[alderwitch]

Alex picked up quickly as she was rarely out of contact with her phone and Erin's ringtone prompted an immediate response. Distantly, Erin could hear the background noise of other people. As she picked up the phone, gesturing to the employees she'd been speaking with to wait, she pressed the phone to her ear. It didn't take a psychic, or even the advantage of a long time friend, to know that Erin's tight, angry voice was worried, "Looking," was the one word Alex provided in response as she turned her attention outward to look over the apartment that Jessie had not far away. Closing her eyes, her features smoothed out as Alex let her shields drop, sending her senses out through the city. It took less than a moment before Alex said with utter confidence, "She is nowhere inside the boundaries of Freedom City from sewer to skyscraper. It will take me about five hours to search globally. I shall call you back when that's done." There is the briefest of pauses before Alex adds, "Mike's on stand-by should you need him."

 

She paused again, this time longer before promising, "We'll find her, Erin."

[Electra]

Erin clumsily pushed to the front of her mind all the information she had and all the hypotheses circulating, the abbreviated phone message, the phone and tracker dropped off the map, her overwhelming concern that somehow they had not been able to detect and stop an incursion from Anti-Earth. She knew Alex would pick it out and sort through it faster than she could say it aloud. "I promised her she'd be safe here," she murmured into the phone. "I don't know what'll happen if they've taken her. I don't know if we could fix her again." 

[alderwitch]

Alex's voice didn't miss a beat as she absorbed the information to include in her thoughts and plans, "Jessie is strong - not just physically - but she survived everything you did as a child." Alex said, offering the reassurances honestly. She might soften the truth but Alex didn't lie. Especially not to her friends, "And while it IS easier to break something than put it back together, what we did - what I did - it'll take time to pick apart. Days at the very least, especially since her mind has had time to heal, to add new memories over the framework I put in place."

 

Alex paused, rubbing her fingertips over the bridge of her nose. Her voice was soft as she finally answered the question behind Erin's worries, "It was very difficult the first time and any new trauma would make things harder but I am by and large reluctant to say anything is impossible. You know I'll do everything I can to help. Even if Anti-Earth has her  - even if Pathos has her, we're not without hope. First thing's first, though, and that's testing the hypothesis. Most dimensional transference leaves behind markers. I'd look for technological - science is how I, and therefore, Pathos would look to breach the barrier. My backup plan to cross over would be Mark's abilities. Less certain but lower overhead. I'd have Trevor look over their apartment with that in mind while I search for her telepathically. We will find her, Erin. I promise."

[Fox]

It took a moment for someone to pick up Trevor's phone call, and between the subtle change in background noise as the line redirected and the sound of the voice that answered, it didn't take a detective to realize why. "This is not Eve," answered the voice - somewhat unnecessarily, really, but it was an opening line intended to be both informative and polite, in that order of importance. "She has asked me to inspect the apartment while she reviews security footage."

Indira hung from the ceiling of the apartment like something out of a cheap science fiction film, feet spread wide and soft to distribute her weight as she stretched down to inspect the floor. "Aquaria and Jessie are not here," she supplied, shifting her cell phone to keep up with her head as she snaked her neck out to peer around the too-perfect circle of dirt and dust surrounding a too-clean center. "There is little damage, but not much, and not none - the television has been broken by a thrown object. I...."

 

She frowned; she wasn't entirely sure what she wanted to share, but Eve seemed to trust them, and her own secrets would just have to take a back seat for a moment. "....I suspect they have been abducted. There is a...you do not have the word. A...physical disturbance pattern...common to spaceship teleporters, though I cannot guarantee they weren't simply taken elsewhere on the planet."

[Gizmo]

Trevor had a grateful if brusque grunt for the voice on the other end of the line - the familiar, inhuman vibration suggested the metallic shapeshifter he'd met once before and whom he understood was one of Eve's most trusted people living in the Dutempts Building these days. The response he got from the Frenchwoman came simultaneously, not formed into words but conveying both that he could take Wraith at her word and that she was very, very unhappy about someone being attacked right under her nose. "Suggest searching whole building. Reason to think Jessie was targeted, could still be other disappearances. Keep us informed." He was about to hang up but after a beat he added, "...be careful. May be dealing with extremely dangerous interdimensional doubles. Eve should be able to verify identities telepathically."

 

Turning back to Erin he caught her eye even as she continued to talk to Alex on her own phone. "Some signs of struggle but not as much as if Jessie had been able to fight back. Evidence of teleportation." His expression was grim; they were all thinking Anti-Earth and while he expected Alex was most worried about Pathos looking to reclaim her 'project' he was not surprisingly more worried about his own counterpart.

[Electra]

"We'll find her," Erin agreed, "I just hope it's soon enough." She looked over to Trevor, nodded at his words. "Trevor's talking to the people at the DuTemps building, he says they found signs she and her roommate might have been teleported. No real signs of a struggle, so she didn't fight." Jessie didn't have Erin's training or many of the same instincts, but she would fight like a demon if she knew someone was trying to kidnap her. "She might be unconscious, so, um, look for that, I guess?" Erin rubbed her forehead and squeezed her eyes shut. "I'm gonna... I think we should get over to the DuTemps building and take a look for ourselves, maybe there's something that'll give us another clue." It was the only thing she could think of to do. "Let me know if you find anything, even a little hint of something, okay?" 

[alderwitch]

"Of course," Alex said simply, "I should be able to answer the question of whether she's anywhere on earth in about five hours. It won't matter if she's conscious or not with how I'm looking." Alex's tone was confident. If there were any holes in Alex's search, she'd volunteer them without prompting. It would be a strain to push her senses so far, so fast but time was very likely of the essence if the worst case scenario was true. "I'm sure getting Trevor's eyes over there will only help. Although anti-earth is a concern, we shouldn't ignore the possibility that it was someone looking for you. Or intending to use her against you. Her identity has you as her sister, after all, even if they didn't mistake her identity. I'll be insensible while I look so if you need me urgently before five hours are up, contact Mike. He can roust me."

 

Alex paused and then added after a moment's thought, "Actually, you might have use for him. Mike's super-vision has gotten stronger since high-school. He can see through just about anything."

 

[Electra]

"I'll keep you both in the loop," Erin promised. "Call me as soon as you have anything." She hung up the phone and looked over at Trevor. "She's nowhere in the city. Alex is looking further now, but it'll take hours. We need some better clues to what happened, who took her and how. Is there anything around here that might let us get, I dunno, traces or something, from the teleporter or whatever it was? Or should we start calling in favors? I can call work and ask if they have some tools we could use." She subsumed the urge to pace by putting on the rest of her clothes and finger-combing her hair. "If we know where they went, maybe we can find a way to follow. It looks like they took Aquaria too, or at least her tracker and phone are dead as well. Maybe that's a clue right there, or maybe it was just more convenient that way, a surprise attack? I thought I heard her voice in the background, or somebody's voice, in the message." She gave up and paced anyway, running her fingers through her hair and disordering what little good she'd just done. 

[Gizmo]

"Trying to track the signal is a good idea," Trevor agreed, crossing the garage floor to stand within arm's reach of Erin but without reaching out or getting in the way of her fidgeting. "Sure Hallomen will want to help." If nothing else he expected Erin's employer would be sympathetic to the cause of tracking down a pair of abductees. Between that and his own equipment they would have the technological side of things covered and Eve had collected a few mystical experts at the Dutemps Building the last he'd heard. "Should head over there now, make up for lost time. Trail may not stay hot for long."

[Avenger Assembled]

They spoke with Wraith briefly on their way there, that worthy having gone upstairs to consult the building's sensor equipment. This was a familiar enough trip for Erin, who had had several uncomfortable visits with Jessie since the latter's release in the middle of summer, but never with feelings like this! She and Trevor entered the apartment and found it just as Wraith had described it. There were a few marks of something strange happening; the broken screen on the old CRT television, the perversely regular circle of dust on the floor, and even the golden orb sitting on the living room floor, but for the most part the place strongly resembled the apartment that Erin remembered - right down to Aquaria's visible footprints on the walls and ceiling. 

 

There was no sign of a struggle. Aquaria and Jessie's clothes were still there; more ominously, the hydration gel that Aquaria used when she had to take long trips away from the ocean was also still there in the bathroom, as was Jessie's half-finished painting of a peaceful bayou (obviously drawn from the magazine picture taped up next to it). But as Erin and Trevor began their investigation, they began to realize something else was amiss...

[Electra]

Erin went completely still in the middle of the living room, raising one hand to signal Trevor to the possible danger. She held her breath, listening past the hum of ventilation, noise from other apartments, the heartbeat in her own ears. Then she was moving, a blur of speed as she leapt straight into the air, her bat flashing silver as she extended it to its full five-foot length. With the bat for a prybar, she caught hold of the invisible figure on the ceiling, flipped over with it, and slammed it to the ground with her knees on its chest and her bat across its throat. The invisibility effect vanished, to reveal a Deep One similar in size to Aquaria, but much scalier and reptilian than the amphibious girl. 

 

The reveal didn't seem to faze Erin in the slightest. "What the hell did you do to my sister?" she demanded of her helpless captive, giving the bat a little wiggle across his throat for emphasis. "I swear to God, if anything's happened to her, you are going to regret ever being hatched." 

[Avenger Assembled]

"Whaat?" The Deep One burbled, its big bulging eyes flickering up briefly towards the ceiling before gazing back at Wander. "We didn't want your degenerate twin, ape! We came to destroy the apostate and retake what was ours as true sons of Lemuria. When the flash of light took the apostate and your twin, we came to take what was ours and lie in wait for their return." It fixed those big eyes right on Wander - a look that looked much less cute on this fellow than it did on Aquaria. "Go ahead, kill me then! Send me to join my brothers and sisters in Dagon's maw, to speed his return and your own fell destruction!" 

[Gizmo]

"Not going to kill you," Midnight promised, the words echoing chillingly through the filter in his featureless black mask, red lens like glowing embers set in gaping void. "No such mercy." Whether the similarity to the terrible, half-hidden predators of the depths the Deep Ones were familiar with made him more intimidating to them or whether he was frightening in spite of that familiarity was difficult to guess without a better understanding of their culture but the look on the face of the one Wander had pinned needed no translation. He glared upward at the second intruder, making no immediate move to attack but letting it know it was marked. "Know how to treat prisoners on the surface. Start talking. Will tell you when to stop."

[Avenger Assembled]

The invisible Deep One didn't reveal itself upon Midnight's glance - but it didn't try running, either. Perhaps it was the smarter of the two, or else the more cowardly. 

 

The Deep One, which revealed itself as a priest of Dagon and Hydra, hissed out its story - one it seemed proud to tell despite the terror it felt so close to Midnight and Wander. Aquaria had become something of a notorious figure in certain Deep One communities who lived near Freedom City; the apostate who lived among Surfacers and consorted with Atlanteans, the traitress who had fought against a Chosen of Hydra and had guided Surfacers to a sacred Deep One ritual site. "When she stole the Star Orb and kept it for her own, Dagon and Hydra gave us the command to destroy her in the name of the gods she blasphemed. When she and her Surfacer mate were taken by the trident, we knew it must have been a sign that They had acted. We waited until the other Surfacer was gone, then we came for the orb."

[Electra]

Erin blinked, her vengeful expression replaced for a moment with a vaguely horrified one before she shook it off. "You are wrong about so many things, it's not even funny." She rapped the Deep One's head smartly against the floor once for emphasis. "I've got no interest in killing you, I'm sure the smell would be terrible. You'll have a nice long, extremely dry stretch in Blackstone Prison where you can think about the error of your ways." Turning to Midnight, she nodded meaningfully towards the glow ball in the middle of the floor, then addressed her captive again. "Unless, possibly, you can give me some clues as to how to find my sister, plus an assurance that you'll leave her and Aquaria alone from now on. First off, what's the deal with the Star Orb?" 

[Gizmo]

Midnight took the Deep One's assumption impassively; Jessie and Aquaria were codependent enough that clarifying the lack of a romantic element didn't seem like a priority. Instead he focused his attention on the 'Star Orb'. From context he gathered that it was an artifact of some cultural significance but he certainly wasn't going to rule out actual supernatural properties. Reluctant to pick the thing up without proper examination he instead let a trickle of midnight mist roll from around his ankles and out the cuffs of his pants, blanketing the apartment floor in a disconcerting cloud of inky darkness. The mist hid the orb from the intruders and reached far enough to start licking against the Deep One Wander had pinned. The visual effect was perhaps more impressive than the actual advantage it provided but he was counting on the amphibians to be as superstitious as they seemed and fill in the implied show of shadowy might for themselves.

[Avenger Assembled]

"The Star Orb was left us by the Chosen of Dagon and Hydra - those you blaspheme as the Serpent People. It would mean nothing to you, woman," the Deep One hissed up at Erin. "I doubt one as ignorant as the apostate could have seen it as anything more than a pretty jewel for her new masters." It looked up at Erin, blinking those big, bulging eyes that were so like Aquaria's - and yet so not. "Our promises mean nothing, ape. Our ranks beneath the seas are numberless. If you cut off our heads, two more will rise to take their place!" 

 

Suddenly, the other Deep One made itself visible - raising its hands in an attitude of surrender that seemed a sharp contrast with its fellow. "Void thisss out my cloaca! I don't want to die because of some wretch of a-" he said something in Lemurian that would have translated as "Shallow One" in English. It turned to face Midnight, still on the ceiling, and declared, "But I want protection from the priestsss! They're the onesss that lost the Orb in the first place and they're the ones that-" He was interrupted by the angry thrashing of the Deep One Wander still held pinned, who seemed to be shouting dire oaths from what the two of them had heard of Lemurian from Aquaria. 

[Electra]

Wander gave the Deep One she was pinning another quick shake, bouncing its head off the floor hard enough to make it take a nap for a little while, then dropped it bonelessly to the ground. "We can give you protection," she told the more talkative Deep One, turning in its direction, "if the information you give us is any good. What's the Orb and what does it do? And what did he mean, taken by the Trident? Who are the Trident?" She was working hard to keep her voice even and at a normal volume, but the edge to it was impossible to hide. It was obvious she was itching for a fight. 

[Avenger Assembled]

The Deep One blinked both its sets of eyelids, looking edgily from Wander to Midnight and back again. "It...a trident. A ssspear with three blades, ssshowing Dagon, Hydra, and their children." It waved its long fingered arms and for a moment looked very much like Aquaria before it spoke in a tone unlike hers - Aquaria was never quite so conniving in her speech and manner. "The glowing trident appeared, the apossstate took it in her handsss, and she and the one that looks that you vanished. The priessst thought it wasss Dagon and Hydra banishing them, but, ha-ha, what are the odds that would happen while we were right here?" He looked at the Orb in Midnight's hand, then admitted, "The priestsss say it can open a doorway to Dagon and Hydra, but they ssssay that about every pretty bauble we common folk bring them." 

[Gizmo]

Outwardly Midnight's impassive gave bore into the more talkative Deep One, silently demanding any scrap of withheld information and implying the consequences of any falsehood. Inwardly he was cursing himself for jumping to the conclusion that the disappearance had been centered around Jessie, with Aquaria caught up in the danger, rather than considering the possibility that it had happened the other way around. They still didn't have the complete picture - the signs of a radius of teleportation didn't feel right for a mystical summoning - but the iconography of the trident made it clear that their abductor had been targeting Aquaria specifically. He wasn't ruling out a attack by the denizens of Anti-Earth yet but clearly they needed to widen their search.

 

He didn't want to divulge too much in front of their surprisingly skeptical prisoner but a minute gesture for Wander was enough to tell her that they'd gotten all they would from the interrogation. Eve had mystical specialists who could follow up on that lead while Erin's colleagues from HAX examined the scene for technological clues. In the mean time they needed someone more familiar with the mythologies of the deep, ideally someone more forthcoming then the unconscious Deep One priest. Nereid seemed like a good place to start.

[Avenger Assembled]

The consultant Eve sent down was a woman neither Trevor nor Erin knew - an extremely tall, strongly-built figure in a tight, low-cut black dress that nonetheless moved perfectly with her body as she took in the room and studied the mystic orb in question. She seemed tense, almost frightened - not of the Deep Ones or the magic, but of Wander and Midnight themselves! Of course, inspiring such emotions was not entirely an alien thing for either of them. She walked the corners of the room, muttering to herself, and then studied the orb with eyes that gaped a strange shade of black that nearly mirrored Trevor's costume. 

 

"This is definitely an eldritch artifact of Those Who Lie Below," commented the witch, "but there's no sign it's been used here. For something like this to be used," she said, still gesturing with the artifact in hand, shadowy mist coming from beneath her sleeve as she waved one long arm, "you would need to either crack the artifact itself open, or build a ritual chamber that just isn't here. Whatever happened to your loves, it was not magic. I'm so sorry," she apologized quickly "I promise I will do _everything_ I can to make this better."