Aberrant: Children of Quantum Fire - Phase 1: Unsettled Children [QF plot]

[Dawn OOC]

Gabe Walters was a patient man. It was one of the reasons his mentor, Dr. Abraham Nightside, had selected the young man as an aide all those years ago. Walters had learned much in his tenure in the Directive, but no skill had proven quite as vital as his ability to learn which ass to kiss and for how long. It was an art, and combined with Gabe’s natural talent for reading human behavior, had gotten him into some pretty high places in the world. All of those talents had helped shape him for the future he was shaping.

Today, he was debating his Plan again. He’d come up with it ten years ago and had worked on it since that day. Staring out the windows of his modest cabin in the Catskills, he considered the Plan once again. He’d run it over and over; torn it apart in his mind and rebuilt it hundreds of times. It was the first thing he thought of when he woke up, the thing he was thinking about when he went to sleep and the thoughts that he pondered while in the shower, eating or on the toilet. Any time his brain wasn’t occupied with something else, it was going over the Plan.

One of his earliest conclusions about the Plan was this: the most irritating thing about the Plan was that no one had done it years ago. They’d just followed Thetis blindly, letting her make all the calls and decisions, even when they were morally repugnant – even when they were just awful. Gabe laid all the blame for Proteus’s current predicament at her feet.

But today, he was going to change that. It was time for the Plan to be started.

Drawing a deep breath, he checked to be sure that the voice scrambler was active and that his signal shredder was working. It was the standard kind of precautions one took when dealing with excessively powerful, paranoid and impulsive novas. Then he teleported to Wapusk National Park in Canada. As the cold waters of Hudson bay lapped at the shore at his feet, he dialed the number he’d looked so long for.

Three rings; then it picked up. “Coraline Boehm, please listen. Proteus needs to stop. Tomorrow at 2:00 p.m. Mountain Standard Time, you can find Thetis at 40° 23' North and 105° 45' West. That’s her getaway cabin at Arrowhead Lake.” With that, he hung up, quickly.

For a heartbeat time, he stood on the bank, wondering what Cora was doing. He hoped she'd take the steps he'd foreseen. Then he teleported away, preparing for the next step.

[Karren Gaunt]

Coraline pulled her com device away from her ear and throat as soon as the connection was cut, clenching it in one hand as she hovered two miles above Antartica's gleaming ice sheets, mirroring the sky above in a reflexive dance of pigment and hue. Two thoughts chased one another through her skull. One, this was a trap, a lie. It had to be. To rise to it would be suicide. Two, what if it wasn't? At least in the sense that they had just been handed the person responsible for murdering almost her entire generation. How could she live with herself if she did ignore it?

Near perfect lips pressed together bloodlessly, a thin angry line as a new thought beat down the first two. Don't make a choice now. They had time. 22 hours, 36 minutes, and 15 seconds of it in fact. She'd put together more or less successful operations with even less leeway. Get home. Drag Alex out of her lab and get her to put eyes and ears on the location to spot so much as an ant out of place. Bring in Stargaizer if she wanted in, too. Warping back up if the intell was good. Cora liked the other girl, dependable in a crisis and a good ear. Figure out what to do if this was *her*.

She squeezed her hands to fists in anger if this was Thetis, if she had the chance to strike a blow against the mother of Motherhunting in a way that had been so frustratingly impossible so far. There was a slight crunch and the metamorph paused in her ruminations as she opened on hand to blink at a slightly crushed coms device. Oh, and get her phone fixed, number changed and security reset to prevent whoever had called her from tracing her future calls. That, too.

[Stargazer]

Yokiko was laid out on the couch of the Tokyo Condo she owned, bored, and more than anything anxious. She'd been having amazingly vivid dreams lately, yet she couldn't remember the exact contents. All involved danger, and she woke sweating more than once. It had become annoying, and been the source of some destroyed furniture.

Then her exclusive private cell rang,The call was terse, and only Cora sounded like that... "Yokiko, someone is offering us thetis' head on a stick. meet me on top of ayer's rock in an hour if you're interested."

She'd hung up fbefore Yokiko could respond, and nodded. "Alright, I'll bite."

She prepared some things, and left a note should something happen, directing whoever came to Ayers rock. Then there was a flash as she reappeared near Ayers Rock, electing to spend the next hour admiring the largest monolith on the surface.

[Karren Gaunt]

Coraline arrived five minutes before her deadline, undetectable in her sky-mirroring blur of light form by all but the luckiest of observers. She spotted Yokiko almost imediately, a white-and-black furred figure faintly glowing with stray quantum energies in her vision. A mental chuckle and she spiraled off to confirm they were alone as possible, senses opening wide to the world above and below. Nothing and no one. It was possible to hide from her, but she'd just have to hope no one who could was here now.

The metamorph dropped out full speed and to the ground a mere yard from her friend, converting from light into flesh with a big smile on her face. Despite the seriousness of the situation, it was good someone was aviable on short notice to consider this with her. Darrik's refusal to come hurt. Yeah, it sounded like a trap, but if it was true... Well, she had left a message on the Primus for Alex to find with her new phone number. Alex could come up with something clever.

"Yokiko," she opened with a happy nod, darting in for a quick hug of greeting, "You have no idea how good it is to see you here. Someone called me to give me a place and a time where Director Thetis of Proteus is supposed to be tommorow. The person behind Motherhunting and the Sterility Cocktail aparently offered on a platter to us by someone close enough to know her. It's probably a trap, but on the chance that it isn't..? It's too good to pass up. Too good to not at least look at."

[Stargazer]

Yokiko returned the hug, almost without blushing as the beautiful metamorph outlined why she'd called her. "It's most definitely a trap Cora. Still I agree it's worth looking into."

She nodded, "I can look into it, but not here. a picture of thetis would help immensely too, and somewhere truly private."

"Any ideas?"

[Karren Gaunt]

Coraline chuckled self-conciously, "Well... I was hoping to get at least one other member of my, our, group here today. I'm not the smartest Nova to ever fly the planet, but given it's just us so far... No one I've talked to about it seems to have a picture or even a real name to go with Thetis' title. This would be our first chance to see them, track them, get a handle on who or what they are. *If* we're not being offered false bait."

She exhaled and looked away, white on black eyes studying the stars, "A very large part of me wants to just blast the site tommorow if it looks safe. Or drop a familar at the site and tell whoever's there that they've been sold out just to watch Proteus quietly tear itself apart. Something simple and blunt in a world of complications where our parents and peers are the ones who pay for them."

[Stargazer]

"The second idea is a pretty smart one. No attacks, just serve to make them the paranoid ones for a change. Going there with intent to do har isn't a good idea." she shook her head. "I'll stand by your choice, but it may be a good idea to get at least one more brain working on this. Did you talk to Norman?"

[Karren Gaunt]

"I wouldn't be human if I wasn't tempted to wipe them off the map given the chance with all the harm they've done to us. But you're probably right," Cora conceded with a polytonic grunt, arms crossing over her chest, "I haven't talked to Norman yet, my usual trying to keep to keep business seperate from pleasure around him. Too much of my life revolves from stopping Motherhunting and taking care of the children we've rescued. It would be nice to have one corner of it free completely free of that taint."

"Still..," the metamorph smiled and tapped in Norman's number on her com, waiting as it rung and rung and then picked up to a familar breathing and pulse she could identify even over the call, "Norman? Someone told me they know where Director Thetis is going to be tommorow, a potential trap but too big a payoff to ignore. My family is kind of being no shows at a meeting I've arranged right now on Ayer's rock, and I really need some more.... your input on what to do. For all that I can see, you've always been able to think deeper than me. If you're free... I need you to help me not screw this up."

There was honest want in Cora's voices as she spoke, utter happy absorbtion that that shifted to mild embarassment as she glanced at Stargazer and recovered herself, "Oh. And Yokiko is here, too. She says hi."

[Dawn OOC]

Norman’s voice was full of warmth as he spoke to his beloved. “I’m free.” The next moment, he was standing behind her, closing his phone. He grinned at her, his impossibly handsome face reflecting the depth of affection that he had for her. “And I’m always ready to help you not screw up.” He bent down and kissed her lightly, then smiled at Yokiko. “Hello again.” He became a touch somber and asked, “What details do you have about this trap?”

Cora filled him in on the information; his dark face was thoughtful as he considered the facts. “I can see many possibilities and outcomes to this. This could very well be a trap, but if they have to know that you’re not going to come alone. You’ll bring other second gens. Can they know how many? Can they honestly believe that they have the firepower to take out an unknown number of exceptionally powerful novas?”

“Yokiko encouraged me to warn Thetis.” Cora gazed up into those perfect eyes and asked, “What do you think about that?”

Norman smiled slightly. “It’s a good plan. Tell her she has traitors in her network. She’ll likely find them and root them out of her organization, then carry on as before. Do you think you’ll get another chance to stop her from motherhunting? Which do you want? To tear Proteus apart or cut off its head? What is your gut telling you, your instincts?”

[Stargazer]

Yokiko looked at Norman and nodded. "You've got a point, but with next to no information on who else is within the Proteus power structure, we could end up with someone worse than Thetis if we strike this particular head from the serpent." She closed her eyes and the stellar patterns in the black areas of her fur and hair seemed to shift, as she looked forward.

Pretercognition roll

Long6 *rolls* 14d10: 10+4+1+7+2+5+3+8+5+9+9+4+2+4: 73

Long6 *rolls* 1d10: 8: 8 6 successes

[Karren Gaunt]

"We can't stop Motherhunting by killing Thetis or even wiping Proteus off the map. The disease has already escaped and everyone with a stake in the status quo is infected," quietly exhaled the metamorph with a sad quirk to her lips, "But my gut, once I get past my inner ten-year-old screaming for blood and urging me to pin Thetis to a wall for the purpose of breeding an entire generation of Novas to replace all the ones killed... Says they're more valuable to us alive, assuming we can find a way to track them and keep them tracked. We're winning the war; we just need information to finish it once and for all."

She plastered herself against Norman's chest, finishing with a muffled chuckle, "Even if my inner ten-year-old's idea feels so much more satisfying."

Coraline kept one ear on Stargazer, waiting for whatever the younger girl was doing to bare fruit.

[Dawn OOC]

The threads of the future swirled before Stargazer's closed eyes, each person’s thread contributing to the whole. There were billions of them, each choice making another thread. Some were thick threads, full of people making the same choice and living similar lives, or their lives being forever altered by one choice. Some were threads as thin as hair, their choices impacting one life that floated off into the unknowable dark, alone. These threads all knotted together in one insane tapestry and Stargazer could not see them all if she spent the rest of her long life looking at them.

Some would be flustered by the sight, but the tigeress nova had seen this before and knew what to do. Stargazer focused on Proteus and Thetis, letting threads not related to them fade away from her perception. In the void between Present and Future, the lines clarified for her. They were still billions of individual threads, though only two massive ones.

Yokiko focused first on Cora killing Thetis. She saw the woman’s death, and her thread ended. Beyond her death, Proteus’s thread went wild, branching again and again as hundreds of possibilities opened up. There were too many to see, but Yokiko understood one thing – Proteus stopped motherhunting.

Next, Yokiko went the other way. She saw Cora’s thread which delivered the warning – and Thetis’s thread branching wildly immediately, indicating all the paths she could take. In some, she destroyed the internal Proteus infrastructure to various degrees, but like a weed, it came back and resumed motherhunting. In some of them, Thetis ignored Cora, refusing to believe a warning from a child she wanted nothing more than to see dead. In those cases, the motherhunting continued. In a few, Thetis dared to attack Cora, which ended in various ways, sometimes in Thetis’s death, sometimes with Cora leaving and sparing her, and even in one thread where Cora was killed by the enraged, paranoid nova. And only when Cora didn’t warn her, only when Thetis was left in ignorance about the threat someone in her organization had leveled at her, did the motherhunting stop immediately on her death.

But in all of those lines, even when Cora passed on killing her, Thetis died not long after that day. Her thread always ended, in one way or another. The question became what happened after she died.

Long, you suck.

[Stargazer]

When Yokiko opened her eyes, They still shone with actinic azure light, before fading to their normal almost imperceptible color. "My God. She's a nova."

That revelation alone nearly made her sick. "She's done this to her own people..."

She looked at the other two novas and launched into a detailed description of what she'd seen once she turned her powers on Thetis, and the general gist of what the outcomes would be. The entire discussion was over thirty five minutes, and she looked at them both.

She rocked back on her heels and her tail lashed about furiously. Norman knew this to be a sign of severe agitation on Yokiko's part, and she almost seemed to growl as she spoke. "She deserves death for her betrayal, and at the same time, but at what cost do we blanche? it may not end with her if we tell her, or if you kill her... This sort of thing, finding the one thread that is most possible, is always so difficult, I only wonder if I'm making a mistake my mother would have when i use this power..."

She waited to hear the replies to her vision from her companions, hoping they would have better luck understanding things.

[Karren Gaunt]

Coraline, trying to keep her own unrest from making her wash through every color of the spectrum, kept a very tight lid on her emotions, listening to the ever-more-familar woes of a nova prophet. Node, this is what was driving Uncle Shen crazy. "Don't worry about it," she offered genuinely, striding forward to look Stargazer in the eye and nod, "Seriously. It's not worthy driving yourself crazy. That you were able to find out Thetis is female, going to actually be there, and a traitor leading the genocide of her own people is miracle enough. The rest... It makes sense whoever wants her dead and called me would have... different plans for Proteus and have back up plans, making our choice trying to destroy him or make a deal with the devil in the hope of a better imediate future for Nova families now."

The metamorph inhaled deeply, clearly not on the verge of making a rational choice herself, "Still with the potential end of at least one group's Motherhunting, I can't see myself telling Thetis what's coming now. The question is... Do we kill her or let him do his own dirty work? Norman?"

[Dawn OOC]

Her beau stepped forward and gently clasped her arms. “This was given to you.” His smile filled her with warmth, even as she wished he’d tell her what to do. “What do you want to do, hon? Do you want to kill her or make this stranger who contacted you do it? Why did he pick you, Cora? That’s the foremost question in my mind. There was a reason he chose you to give this information to, and if we learn why, we can learn what his ultimate plan is.”

Norman shrugged a beat later. “But since we don’t have that… what does your instinct tell you? Not your overly-logical head, or your overly-emotional heart, but your sense of what is best?”

[Karren Gaunt]

Coraline looks up at Norman, looks sidelong at conflicted Yokiko, and then nods, "We need to end Thetis with our own hands. Quickly. Cleanly. Safely. Because it's our generation she's trying to destroy, so it's our generation that should destroy her. Action and reaction. Feels right that way."

She nodded again, resolve filling her features, "Especially if it'll actually help. Especially if I can count on you two to help me pull it off in case I was picked because I'm not completely bullet proof most of the time."

[Stargazer]

Yokiko nodded. "Few deserve death as she does." She held a hand out to each of them. "I will stand beside you both in this endeavor."

[Dawn OOC]

“Sounds like we have a crew then.” Norman smiled at Coraline even as he took Yokiko’s hand. “You think I’d let you do this alone? Unless,” he added quickly, “you wanted to do this alone because of some girl-thing. Then I’ll leave you to it.”

“No, I want your help.” Cora grinned up at him before rising on her tiptoes and kissing him lightly.

Norman released her long enough to brush some hair away from her eyes, his fingertips leaving tingles of sensation as he corralled the errant strands behind her ear. “And I’m glad to give it. Now and anytime you want it.” Cora sensed a slightly deeper undercurrent to those words, an unspoken promise. Their eyes held one another’s gaze for a long minute. Yokiko shifted minutely, breaking the moment they were having unintentionally. Looking slightly abashed that he’d ignored Yokiko, Norman cleared his throat and said, “I’d like to suggest that we do some recon on the location right now.”

[Karren Gaunt]

"It makes sense to do a sweep before the morning," Coraline allowed, stepping back from Norman to fully face the two Terat, expression deadly serious as her thoughts raced into planning mode, "Have to keep up a vigil through the night somewhere discrete and sweep again when Thetis arrives. Disable any electronic defenses she has..."

Norman got tentative smile at that idea, the metamorph's thoughts turning inward again, "And in the next heartbeat, I drop like the wrath of god to finish her in as close to one blow as I can manage against her without nuking the entire area. Thoughts before we warp our way there to take a look?"

[Stargazer]

Yokiko nodded. "We can go some distance away, and send in a homunculus of some fashion to take the lay of the land, and my ability is more accurate closer to the target." She sighed. "I still think it's a trap of some sort, but I can't put my finger on the how of it."

[Dawn OOC]

Norman smiled, his back of his fingers trailing down Cora’s cheek. “I think you’re beautiful,” he told her with that expression that was just for her. Glancing at Yokiko, he added, “If there’s a trap, we’ll find it. But I think we’re done with the talking part of this adventure. I think it’s time for action.”

The two lovelies agreed with him, and the three of them made their way through various means to the spot they’d agreed to meet. They were six miles from the coordinates they’d been given; using their inhuman perceptions, they began to scout out the lands around the cabin. It was a quiet, quaint area in the Rockies, isolated and relaxing. Just the place for a tyrant attempting genocide to go to get away from it all.

The cabin was located in a thick stand of pine on top of a steep hill; a cleared area by the large lake just down the hill had a rough helicopter pad. There were paths lacing the area, some of them quite long, several miles, but all coming back to the cabin. A massive satellite dish testified that there was a source of power and that whoever was out here was using a lot of juice.

[Karren Gaunt]

So far, so good. No one home. Just one alarm on the satelite system. Thetis's home away her private war and nothing more. Still... This was the head of Project Proteus. She had murdered an entire generation of children. Set off wars for her own gain. Tried to reprogram three of the children she had missed. She had to have more security than this. The metamorph opened her awareness to everything she could drink in, thoughts compressing to a pinprick as she searched harder for anything that could make tommorow more difficult. Pupils dilated and breathing halted, Coraline became less a young woman and more a pervasive awareness vaguely anchored to her body.

[envoy] 7:30 am: okay, perception+awareness with H-E hearing on the roll, last eight mega.

envoy *rolls* 21d10: 6+9+7+2+1+7+9+8+9+5+8+6+3+9+5+4+2+7+7+10+6: 130

[envoy] 7:31 am: so sixteen plus six auto for 22 successes on hearing.

[envoy] 7:32 am: perception+awareness with EM vision on this roll, last eight mega.

envoy *rolls* 21d10: 4+6+10+3+3+7+10+8+2+9+6+3+9+4+1+9+4+6+2+6+8: 120

[envoy] 7:33 am: so 10 plus six for sixteen on that roll.

[Dawn OOC]

There were quantum dampeners. They weren’t active, but Cora could see the wires running to them, and could see their structures in the electromagnetic field they produced. Their potential to remove her potential was troubling. It also didn’t make sense to her for a moment; why would Thetis limit her own powers this way? A moment later, she understood: if a nova was more powerful than Thetis, she could shut down all their powers and force them to fight at a lower, possibly more equal level.

There were other machines there, but Cora hadn’t see anything like them before and wasn’t sure what they were. They were built into the house certainly, as were the bombs. Perhaps Thetis had a way of surviving a bomb blast and assumed others wouldn’t? Cora wasn’t sure, but this was all she saw and heard.

[Karren Gaunt]

"Norman, there are quantum dampeners, explosives, and other machines I don't know around the cabin," Her chorus mused tensely, "If you can't fry them from a distance as I close with Thetis tommorow, I may need to get less discriminate tommorow, not give her a chance to use them. You can, right?"

[Dawn OOC]

Norman could have swallowed the house into the earth, dropping it directly into a magma pit. Everyone here knew that he possessed that kind of power. “I can try,” he said, “and if they’re not shielded, they’d work. But I think it’s a long shot that they wouldn’t be shielded, and then until I know how they’re shielded and how well…” He shrugged. This was Cora’s kill, and her call. Norman could have taken care of it easily, but it was not his task.

“I can try, or you can just go in with overwhelming force. Your choice, darling.”