Mutants & Masterminds: Harmony City - Red Team: The Visitor

[Rorx]

Dwarfstar wanders over to look at athe symbol that XXXI indicates to Vixen, then pats Vixen on the shoulder, "I guess the balls in your court, since you are the only one of us with powers that might be magic based. Good luck."

With that he smiles to Eight in her tube and goes over to the over occupied tube to try to get some idea of who or what might be in that one.

[Jaime Lowery]

"Oh!" XXXI broke in, "and..." he gestured to Tesseract at a entryway behind the tube opposite Eight's. "I've heard talk that there's some knowledge kept in there. Scrolls, and you'd need some proper incantation for the very secret stuff. They didn't want intruders to get into those in specific."

[Vixen]

"Oh yay. Magic ball's in my magic court." Vixen sounded like the opposite of enthusiasm would sound. "So we want to open this? Anyone who's gonna say no, say it now."

If no one said no, then Vixen tried to activate the release.

[Vixen]

Vixen activated the sigil, and the tube wavered, becoming permeable. She waved for Eight to come through, then checked to see if anyone else in the tubes was conscious.

[Joani]

The naked blonde with the uncanny resemblance to Lady Harmony smiled briefly before she left her tube. She looked around smiling happily at XXXI and back to his friends.

"What is going on?", she asked him her eyes wandering curiously around. There was no hint of distrust in her voice and obviously no shame for her nakedness.

[Rorx]

After pausing to let someone else speak Dwarfstar step closer and says, "Thirty one here managed to get free of his tube and came to Harmony city looking for help. We returned here with him to release any others that were being held here and found the place to be uninhabited so far. Although it was guarded by a monstrous sea-creature."

He glances at the others before he continues, "Can you remember anything about how you came to be here, or your life before being in that tube?"

[Joani]

There was glint of recognition in Eight's eyes, as if she remembered something. She smiled at Dwarfstar wanting to answer his question but then it was suddenly gone. Her brow furrowed deeply as she struggled to hold on to the glimpse of memory she had then it got replaced by panic. She had no idea but just a second ago she was sure she knew.

"I... I don't know.", she stuttered looking helplessly to thirtyone. "I live here?", she tried to explain not sure what that actually meant. Her eyes searched for something that she recognised but she only drew blanks. Thirtyone was the only familiar face. She didn't know anything about a monstrous sea-creature or the reason for her being here.

[Vixen]

Vixen let Dwarfstar engage with "Eight," choosing instead to examine the contents of the other tubes.

[Rorx]

Dwarfstar nodded at Eight's confusion, "We don't think you belong here, kept in a tube. If you don't mind we think you would be better off coming with us back to Harmony City. Do you recognise that name at all?"

[Joani]

There was another flash of memory that crossed her mind. The name sounded too familiar almost as if she had been there before. Opening her mouth to answer confidently the young skyclad woman with the uncanny resemblance to Lady Harmony answered with a low voice, "I... I don't know. It sounds familiar, though. No one has ever asked these questions before."

She made a hesitant step forward and asked, "Who are you? Why are you here?", her eyes jumped back to XXXI hoping he would have an answer that she would understand.

[Rorx]

Dwarfstar turns and points to each of his team mates as he introduces them, "I'm known as Dwarfstar, the ladies are Vixen and Tesseract and the guy over there goes by Ditto. We are part of the licensed superhero team engaged to help protect the citizens of Harmony City from superpowered criminals and other dangers beyond the remit of the normal emergency services."

Facing her squarely he continues, "We are here to rescue anyone we find and also to try to find out who and why this place was built."

[Joani]

"Rescue?", now that was something that sparked an idea in her. "Rescue! Who needs to be rescued? I can help!", she eagerly added finally having something she could relate to. Eight suddenly beamed happily tiptoeing from one foot to the other bursting to get into action and do something good.

She completely forget the second part of his question or she simply had no answer - it was obviously not important to her.

[Jaime Lowery]

XXXI seemed a little nervous, as if he was bringing seven years bad luck on himself as he said, "We're the ones being rescued Eight. Did you want to be stuck with THEM forever?"

[SalmonMax]

Tessaract examines her device, then looks again at the door to the storeroom.

"I've collected what data I can from here. I have to enter the storeroom."

She hesitates for a moment, then says, "I...feel that I should thank you all for bringing me with you this far. Between the data I gathered up until now, and the collected data from this place, I may have enough to return for now. That means I will not be returning."

"Thank you for helping me. It's likely none of you will ever know the consequences of what I learned here, but there are realms where this information could reshape what has been believed about the origins and nature of consciousness and intelligence."

She frowns slightly then. "I...felt you should know, even if you do not understand, how important this is. Goodbye."

And with a hollow 'pop,' she was gone.

------------

Within the storeroom, there was another 'pop' as Tesseract appeared. It was a roughly octagonal room, fairly large, where each wall was shelves lined with scrolls and tablets and other archaic forms of keeping written records. There were stranger things as well...crystal sphere with glowing runes slowly revolving within them and stones of different shapes that each gleamed with unnatural inner light. There were shrunken, preserved heads that would whisper or moan the secrets recorded inside them, and a stuffed raven that nonetheless fixed the intruder with a beady black eye. A jar of fireflies that would swarm in the shape of letters. A young dragon chained to a perch. A stoppered glass jug with a demon's head inside. Candles everywhere, of different sizes and shapes and colors. Tessaract looked around the room, at the variety and wonder of it all...

And then it was gone. The shelves were bare. The room empty of all but its plunderer. From some of the shelves, darts whickered out, tipped with noxious gelatinous poison. From another blossomed an explosion of white fire. The sudden absence of precious objects triggered traps, but they hadn't been taken by human hands, and the various nasty inventions triggered in vain.

Tesseract then stepped into her own closed space...and found herself suspended in a seemingly infinite black space. Everything was here. Floating serenely in rows around her, as if the shelves were still there. More too...books and magazines and newspapers that she'd taken in her travels. DVD's and videotapes. Anything that seemed relevant. To that she added the black device that she'd been given. Its memory contained the readings she'd taken on everyone, friend and foe, since she'd arrived.

It was her raison d'etre. She was made to collect information. Here was the information she'd collected. She waited.

A girl appeared across from Tessaract, looking at her from the opposite end of the collection. She and Tess were identical to the eye, but the new one felt different somehow. A human being looking at her would have had the creepy feeling that there was something else just behind her, or even inside her, moving just out of sync. To someone with Tesseract's senses, the distinction was even more plain. This was a projection...an extrusion of a higher-order being, expressed in three dimensions. Even in the 'roomier' environs of the closed space, it must be cramped, Tess thought.

The new girl didn't speak. She simply looked around at the trove Tess had gathered, and then looked at Tess. What followed was an expression of satisfaction that incorporated information that would dwarf the Library of Congress, expressions of equations that would be simplified and solved, theoretical projections, supergeometric predictions of paradigm shifts...data that even Tesseract's mind could only interpret as: Good.

And then the closed space vanished; its purpose served. Matter and energy dissolved into pure information; unable to exist outside of space and time. Tesseract knew something like satisfaction in the instant that she ceased to exist, leaving behind only pure information that described who and what she'd been. In that non-space, the entity that had created her; a sprawling intelligence of pure, unfettered consciousness, took all that she'd been, and all that she'd learned, into itself and pondered the ramifications as it measured the pinprick that was the universe as seen from outside.

[Jaime Lowery]

Sorrowing as it was that Tesseract was gone, the team soon gathered up themselves, plus Eight and XXXI, and the group headed out to the waters, and from there, to Harmony City...

[OOC: 5 pp for all. Chapter closed.]