Mutants & Masterminds Mutants & Masterminds: The Unlikely Prophets - Issue #2: The Man Who Built Yesterday

[IndyPendant]

"Hey Bodhie, this is good! Thanks!" Sharatur has almost finished eating, when she suddenly stands up. "Oh hell, I completely forgot!" She dashes out of the room, moving much faster than normal--but nowhere near as fast as CyCo can manage. You hear her rustling about with her boxes and bags, and then she walks back in at normal speed again.

She takes a large, heavy-looking bundle wrapped in a fleece blanket from under her arm and sets it down in the middle of the table with a momentous air. The bundle settles with a solid thunk that vibrates through the table for a moment. She then unwraps it, tucking the edges of the blanket in under it to reveal...a rock.

A large irregular chunk of some sort of quartz, to be specific. She then sits back down, glaring at the rock and almost absently scooping up the last of her meal.

[CyCo]

Originally Posted By: Mike OOC

"And Cyco - "

Jack opened up his wallet, and took out a sheaf of Order currency. He held it up. "I dunno if this is how you fed yourself before, but long as you're living in my house you are not stealing from anyone who doesn't deserve it. You take this and go back and put it in that shopkeeper's possession. Even if you think you're sticking it to Archon, you're really sticking it to them, and if they've done anything to deserve it I don't know about it. Am I clear?"

Cyco looked up from her plate that had just been cleared at an alarming rate and frowned. Her features drawing down in a definite look of displeasure.

"Crystal." she snapped, and then she was gone, along with her bags and the money he had been holding up.

Bloody Wanker

However, she had no intentions of paying anyone with the cash and instead ran to the one thing that dominated the view, Ayers Rock.

[SalmonMax]

"Well that went well," Larissa said dryly as she picked at her food. The pasta was excellent, but her mind was a million miles away.

"She's the daughter of an angel?"

[z-Gloom]

Gloom watched the exchange as she took the last scraps of food for herself. When Cyco took off, the four-armed freak cleared her empty plate and then took her seat. At Larissa's question, she shrugged, a movement that looked complex yet was carried off simply. "That's what Bodhie told me," Gloom said hollowly.

Glancing around the table, she asked, "So who's life story is next? Someone else's turn to share."

[Charlotte]

Originally Posted By: SalmonMax

"She's the daughter of an angel?"

"Hhh. Apple fell far from the tree, if she is. So what just landed on the table? It felt heavy."

* * *

Outside, not far away, loomed Ayers Rock. Cyco was close enough to touch it, and climb it as well. There was a sense of weight to it, as if it didn't quite fit into the world.

[Radiance]

Hikari Ate in silence, not speaking till she was done. "Yes, doesn't strike me as very angelic."

[SalmonMax]

"I'll go next," Larissa said, turning away from the window abruptly to face the others.

"I teach grade school in the Boston Central Unified School District. First and second grade usually, but different years I'll do different grades depending on the teacher distribution and so on..." she waves a hand, dismissing it as unimportant. "Anyway, the day all this happened..." she laughs in surprise. "Yesterday. I was sort of strung up between the school work and taking care of affairs after my father passed on. In particular, his house was being reclaimed by the Magistrate, so I had to get all his things out. Then on top of all that, the principal comes to me after class and says I have to go through the textbooks and strike out references to..." she frowns and shakes her head, "Some person. I don't even remember who now. Just black them out and tell the kids to ignore it...just a mistake in the books."

She sighed. "And I remember thinking that it wasn't a big deal, just one name out of a huge sea of information, but it still outraged me. It meant that I was basically being told to lie to my kids. And I could see the principal didn't like it either. He was hedging and embarrassed and kept apologizing... But what else could we do?"

"Anyway, that night I was cleaning out the house, getting everything sorted and either thrown away or packed into boxes. I'd just finished the attic and I was doing the kitchen when the television program I had on in the background was interrupted by the weirdest music. I went to look, and then I saw...well, you know what I saw. It was bizarre and unsettling, but I figured it was some viral ad or glitch, so I was about to get back to work when I saw my necklace was glowing."

Larissa holds up the necklace in question. It's made of dull iron by the looks of it, a loop of fine chain with a pendant shaped like a five-point star in a circle. No jewelry or embellishment, it's actually kind of ugly.

"It was a present from my grandmother on dad's side, so I guess I was wearing it in memory," Larissa goes on. "But it had this green glow...and the glow sort of reached out as I watched. I was so stunned, I wasn't thinking, I just followed it. And it led me upstairs into the attic. And there in one of the piles I'd left for disposal was a bright light shining out from behind the papers and old books and boxes."

She holds up the grim, leathery book that she's been carrying all this time.

"It was this. It was actually locked at first, but my necklace fits into the lock, and lets it turn. Like a key. When I opened it...it was like a door opened in my brain and things I'd never known, or even considered, came spilling out. And now it's like I've been studying this stuff for ages, even though I know I haven't. It's just THERE. I don't know what to call it besides magic."

[IndyPendant]

"Magic." Sharatur shakes her head ruefully and a little sadly.

She looks up at Jack, then back to the rainbow-coloured, vaguely fist-shaped quartz embedded in the rock. "Oh right. This thing is the reason I'm here with you all. --Besides that woman, I mean. It's a rare crystal--in fact, it may be unique; geologists are still arguing precisely what type it is. As you can see, not only does this crystal consist of a variety of unusually bright colours, it is also significantly larger than most such crystals, and the distinctive shape is certainly evocative of a clenched fi--"

She cuts off abruptly and clears her throat, a little embarrassed. "Sorry, I got into Tour Guide Mode there for a moment. Anyways. We were just setting it up to be the centerpiece of our new geological display, when a couple of Order goons burst in and demanded it, waving weapons around and babbling about it being on some banned list or something. I heard that stupid music, stumbled back against the rock--no, wait, that came after when they shot me with those taser things. I was just asking them why they wanted it, and they shot me!"

"Anyway, things started happening real fast after that. I couldn't process what was happening, just kept acting on instinct. They were threatening my friends, so I had to take them out. I tied them up, then knocked out my friends so they wouldn't look like they were in on it, grabbed the damned thing and ran. Went home, packed my essentials, and got a phone call from Norman here. And jumped straight out of the frying pan and merrily into the fire, apparently."

She pauses. "Oh! And I know this thing had something to do with it because I could feel it invading my mind, shoving things around, doing some kind of...I don't know, data dump. Right after that was when I could do all this freaky stuff. --Oh, and they said something about it having been lying underneath some fighting dojo up on some distant mountain somewhere for ages."

She pauses again, and says softly, "I didn't think I should leave it behind, whatever the fuck it is."

[SalmonMax]

"No," Larissa agrees, peering down at the stone with new interest.

"It's glowing...like my necklace does. Like the book. Just a little bit, but I think this rock has had a spell on it, or maybe it's just been around magic for a long time and soaked some up."

"It's definitely not ordinary though."

[Necronaut]

The Necronaut did a double take at the stone. He reached up to adjust his goggles, remembered that they were on his forehead instead of his eyes at the moment, and settled for squinting at the crystal. "It got a bit of a presence in the Netherworld too, I think." he stood back and massaged his eyes. "Either that or I need glasses."

"Hey, wait, so this thing actually edited your brain?" He frowned. "Do you know if you know anything you didn't know before besides knowing how to beat people up real well? It didn't adjust your personality, did it? I mean, you might not even be Ms. De Vasch, you might just think you are!"

He waited a moment for the portent of this realization to sink in. This was long enough for his brain to bubble up with one of a number of available objections to his paranoid ranting.

"Except your dad seemed to recognize you. Er. False alarm."

[Bodhie Armstrong]

Bodhie chuckled occasionally as she heard the others’ stories and was actually glad that Larissa seemed to have a somewhat normal background like she did. A school teacher was nice – someone who loved children must’ve had a good heart. The supersized bodybuilder smiled warmly at Larissa and nodded in agreement to what she said.

Cyco’s quick departure just made her laugh again – she may have been an angel’s daughter but her virtue wasn’t patience. Bodhie took out the rest of the pasta after making sure everyone had at least a good share of their own and finished it off. Whatever had happened to her and her body it most definitely demanded more energy now and she mentally started to rework her diet plan. She was also wondering how much she had to work out to maintain her physique… but those thoughts seemed banal compared to the issues at hand.

Bodhie shook her head to clear her thoughts and tried to catch up with the conversation. “So we’ve got several options to chase? Anyone care to make priorities? What seems reasonable to do given our resources and abilities? Oh… and some help with cleaning up would be appreciated.”, she stood up and took the huge pot and carried it back to the kitchen expecting the others to bring their plates so she could do the dishes.

[The Scarlet Samurai]

Kenshin picked at the meal. Lost in thought he ate absentmindedly as though he forget the food was even in front of him. As people began to finish he rose and took his plate to the kitchen, cleaned it and put it away. Returning to the dining area he said, "Thank you for the food. I am going now to the city." He offered a quick bow before he headed toward the door.

[CyCo]

Cyco found herself at the top of Ayer's rock, the wind stronger than she would have thought, the gusts nearly pushing her around as she sought to untangle herself from the messenger bags she had quickly grabbed on the way out from Jack's. The temperature was slightly cooler than below, but the outstanding view had numbed Cyan's physical senses as she gaped in awe at her surroundings. The flat plains unrolled around her for miles.

So beautiful...if a little barren, like an empty tic-tac-toe board.

Her bags and their locked contents forgotten, she zipped to the edge, almost losing her balance and teetering off the edge as an updraft knocked her to her knees.

Whoa, that was close.

Scolding herself for even thinking something so blatantly obvious, she stepped away from the edge, as her back started to itch furiously.

"Alright, alright, I get it." she mumbled.

Mentally preparing herself for the jolt of pain, she slowly flexed what she instinctively felt and the wings emerged. It wasn't as painful, the process much slower this time, but the tearing flesh and blood running down her back still wasn't pleasant.

Taking a moment to flex her wings and test them out like a newly emerged butterfly, again, she was almost whisked away on the wind, the large feathery wings acting like schooner's sail. Quickly folding them in, she scrambled to find purchase with her boots and only her heel getting caught on a slight ledge kept her from becoming a human kite, though this time, her ass did connect with Mother Nature's bone spur.

Bloody hell, Cyan, you leave your mind at AssJack's?

Huffing as she fumed at herself and brushed off, she zip-stomped back near her previous edge and glared out into the open air, "Bet you can't do that crap again!" she yelled, shaking a threatening fist.

When nothing but gentle breezes answered her, she nodded in satisfaction and zipped back a few feet for takeoff. Starting off like a gymnast heading for the pommel horse, she finished like a long jumper and launched herself off, throwing her wings wide. The wind gusted and a warm updraft carried her nearly 200 meters up before she could even process that she was flying...well gliding, but close enough.

Like an eagle, she floated on the currents, circling around Ayer's rock, admiring the carvings, while also trying to keep from slamming into the cliff face.

Hang gliding is so much easier.

Her time in the air nearly finished as she came closer to the ground, she maneuvered dangerously close to the Rock in the hopes of catching another updraft, which she did, but at the cost of a large gash to her left arm and wing.

Wincing in pain and blinking away muddy tears, she concentrated on where she was going to ensure it wasn't down.

Need to get some goggles.

The last bit of fun having been knocked out of her, she veered to land back on top, aiming for center to give herself the best chance. Trying to slow herself down without turning into a tumbleweed, she brought herself in and landed hard face first.

Puffing out a cloud of red dust, she wondered if being an Angel was all it was cracked up to be.

Think I'll stick to running.

She lifted her head and noticed a hole, a scant few inches away. Using her toes to push herself, her head peered into the hole as her hands grasped the smooth edge of the eighteen inch well.

Cyco go down the hooole......Not in your fondest dreams are you that thin, girl.

Taking a small rock, she dropped it down and made a wish. Then stuck her head in out of the wind so she could maybe hear it hit bottom.

[Charlotte]

If the rock hit bottom, Cyco didn't hear it - either the bottom was too far down, or...

Well, it didn't bear thinking about.

* * *

"Well, first priority, of course, is getting rid of the Order's super-powered contingent."

Jack leaned back, steepling his fingers. "Without them, normal people can be free to make their own way again. Of course, the problem is getting rid of them - they're super-tough, and have a lot of security, and live in a giant space station orbiting the Earth. V.I.P.s in public wear that damned thing that looks like a giant ruby gem, AEGIS-1, and I'm told that the same kind of thing protects the space station. I heard rumors of someone getting ahold of a space-capable missile and pointing it and firing it, and all it did was bounce. So finding a way through AEGIS-1 is what we need first and foremost. If there isn't, then we need to figure out how they get to and from the station, so that we can either isolate them up there, or take them out of play down here."

"Radiance, you said you were heading back to Seattle for clothes and to take care of your commitments. If you can, I'd ask you to sniff around a little bit. See what that building is, and why it's going to be removed soon. As for this thing - " Jack waves at the table, in the general direction of the mineral sample. "Larissa, Necronaut, you both say you're getting something odd off of it. Would you like to try and figure out what, along with our resident geologist Sharatur?"

* * *

Kenshin walked out into a town full of ghosts.

Not ghosts in the same sense as what the Necronaut could conjure up, or ghosts in the sense of what the mask or the sword conjured in his thoughts. But a town full of ghosts in that everywhere he turned, he saw a place where people used to be. A swingset with one broken chain. An abandoned car covered in dust. It was quiet out here.

It wasn't a long walk to the town library, an unimpressive building with a faded sign and a locked door. Through the glass he saw a faded sign encouraging literacy in children, Project R.E.D. (Read Every Day.)

[Necronaut]

It sounded quite reasonable when Jack put it like that. The Order might hold all the cards, and all the guns, and all the logistics, but cards and guns and logistics weren't everything. He found himself wondering if AEGIS had been designed to be ghost-proof...

Baby steps, he reminded himself as the discussion turned to more immediate matters. He took another look at the crystal and his eyes watered as they showed him both its physical form in the solid living reality he was used to... and the rest of it, in the faded lifeless realm which he was also used to but not used to seeing directly.

"I'd be happy to help look into it." he nodded politely at the educator-arcanist and the martial-archeologist. "Miss De Vasch, what else do we know about this thing anyway? Is it cut, or is this how it grew?"

[CyCo]

Cyco left her head in the hole long enough to be positive that she wasn't gonna hear anything. She pulled her noggin out, folding her wings around her like a blanket as she sat up, tapping her chin in thought.

Hmm, what now?

She sat there, red dust covering her like an overabundance of makeup, musing as to her next action.

"Need a flashlight, one of those super-bright ones...And some food, bloody cripple running his mouth like that."

Cyco stood up and brushed herself off, glancing at the now remembered bags to mentally place them for recovery later.

No one's gonna grab my loot up here.

Willing her wings away as she retied her laces, she raced off.

It took a bit of wandering to find a decent sized town that would have what she wanted, but for someone that could lap the oversized island within seconds, wandering still only encompassed the span of a few blinks. In the end, she ended up back in the same town she got the shrimp from.

Using the money that she had taken from Jack, she procurred a package of four LED flashlights and some batteries. They had the brightest candle power of those at the hardware store, she then used the leftover change to buy some hotdogs from the neighboring restaurant. It wasn't shrimp by any means, but there was probably shrimp tails in the 'dogs. So in a vague way, but not really, it was the same.

Stop fooling yourself, it's shite and you know it.

She sat on the first bench she saw in the ghost town's park, and took the time to savor her 'food', the bag with the flashlights sitting in her lap.

She was just tossing the end of the buns to the birds that had formed in a mass around her when she noticed Scary Armor Dude's, not-so-scary version of himself walking down the street.

Feeling Destiny's pull, which was really just her desire to share 'the hole' with someone that could keep up with her, she zipped over to stand in front of him.

"Hey, wanna see a hole?" Cyco asked, her eyes sparkling like a kid who'd found a lizard as she rocked back on her heels.

She also looked like she'd been crawling in the hole, what with all the dirt staining her dress and caked in her hair.

[SalmonMax]

Larissa nodded at Jack. "I'm sure if I can study it, I'll be able to tell more. I haven't really had time to sit down and learn how this magical sight thing works. But I guess this is as good a time as any."

An idea comes to her, and she adds, "About the AEGIS...I may have something that will hurt it. I guess I can't be SURE, but if what I read was true, then nothing should be able to resist it for long."

[The Scarlet Samurai]

Originally Posted By: CyCo

"Hey, wanna see a hole?" Cyco asked, her eyes sparkling like a kid who'd found a lizard as she rocked back on her heels.

"Ah!" the town was well and truly dead and walking into it and then standing before the library had been like walking into a tomb. Kenshin had found himself moving with a purpose to keep quiet so as to not disturb the kami of this place with his intrusion. When Cyco rushed up behind him and asked her question Kenshin had been staring into the town's library intently as though trying to decide if he could really go through with it and enter. Stepping across that threshold was symbolic to him. Unlike before the sword had no interest here, it didn't ask him to read books like it asked him to kill. If Kenshin stepped into this library with the intent to find out what the order was hiding then it meant that he had made a choice of his own free will, a choice to defy the Order on his own, without pressure for circumstances or destiny, or the blood soaked blade.

And so, surprised out of his thoughts Kenshin gave a startled yell. Luckily it didn't sound girly ... much. With a resigned sigh he turned and observed that the apparently spastic young woman had joined him, or perhaps come looking for him. The first question on his lips died there, he didn't think that the others would have asked her to find him. The question died on his lips because he wasn't sure if the reason he believed that was because of her or because of him. The second question that came to his lips tumbled out in Japanese first. Cyco's confused look brought Kenshin's mind to a more cogent state and he repeated in English, "Hole? What Hole?"

[Radiance]

Hikari nods. "I can do that."

She turns to Larissa and smiles. "I'll need you to use that transportation spell if possible to send me home. It's a very long flight, and with no record of me having left the country I don't think things will go well when I try to go back a mundane way."

[CyCo]

Originally Posted By: Scary Armor Dude

nd so, surprised out of his thoughts Kenshin gave a startled yell. Luckily it didn't sound girly ... much. With a resigned sigh he turned and observed that the apparently spastic young woman had joined him, or perhaps come looking for him. The first question on his lips died there, he didn't think that the others would have asked her to find him. The question died on his lips because he wasn't sure if the reason he believed that was because of her or because of him. The second question that came to his lips tumbled out in Japanese first. Cyco's confused look brought Kenshin's mind to a more cogent state and he repeated in English, "Hole? What Hole?"

Cyco laughed a single burst yelp at his startlement which faded to a confused look at the strange language. She shook her head when it finally came out in English. "The one on top of that big rock, makes it look like a giant widget, or bagel or somethin'. Wanna see? I got some flashlights to drop down, see how far it goes...we could...race?"

There was a mad look of glee on her face, which only added to the psychotic look she was sporting at the moment.

[The Scarlet Samurai]

"Rock? Bagel? I ... I'm not, I don't understand. What are you talking about?" Kenshin was starting to wonder if this young woman wasn't coming as unraveled as he was, only on the outside instead of the inside. He was glad he wasn't holding the sword, he knew what it would say, he knew what it would have wanted to do. "Can you slow down and start from the, um, start?"

[CyCo]

Cyco supressed a giggle, "In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth...it was dark and scary then, what with it being all formless like unsculpted clay, at that time, that rock was made." she said, pointing at Ayer's, "and someone or something made it the world's worst par 5. And I was wondering if you wanted to go spelunking for golfballs."

She pulled out the package of flashlights from her bag and waved them in front of him.

[The Scarlet Samurai]

Kenshin looked in the direction Cyco was pointing and saw the large hill that stood out from the surrounding badlands. "Perhaps my English is wrong but is that not a hill? Regardless, is there something amiss about this hole you have found? Is it not supposed to be there?" Kenshin wasn't sure he understood what she was so excited about, if it was just a hole in a hill then it was hardly worth making a big deal about.

[SalmonMax]

Larissa looked over and nodded, smiling to be of use.

"I can do that. Uh, let me think...your door was...okay, right, I remember now. Just a second."

She started scribbling on Jack's door, and a moment later it was Hikari's door, opening into Hikari's room.

"How are we going to keep in touch? Phone calls are probably not a good idea."

[IndyPendant]

Sharatur gazes in slow horror at Norman as he drones about her not being...her anymore. She considers the idea, and then visibly dismisses it. "I feel like me, and that's good enough for now." He turns to Jack. "Whoa, I'm not a geologist! I'm just an amateur who likes rocks. I...suppose I should figure out what I can about this thing. If it zaps me again though, I'm sm...I'll sh..." she sighs, unable to quite get the though past her automatic horror at the idea of destroying a precious geological artifact! "...Fine. How do we start?" she asks Norman and Larissa.

[SalmonMax]

Larissa glanced over at the stone and shrugged.

"I only know the basics of geology...enough to teach elementary school kids. But there are spells in the book I could use that might tell us more about it's past, and what it is. Give me a few minutes to look it up. This thing isn't indexed very well."

[Necronaut]

"I know a thing or two about rocks, but I kind of doubt that's the information we're looking for here. Where was this thing before you got your hands on it Ms. De Vasch? I think tracing it back to its source is the way to go. I probably won't be much, er, special help with that unless we find some folks who've passed on along the way though."

He stepped back to surreptitiously look over Larissa's shoulder.

"...Or we could use magic." he conceded with some hope.

[CyCo]

Originally Posted By: The Scarlet Samurai

Kenshin looked in the direction Cyco was pointing and saw the large hill that stood out from the surrounding badlands. "Perhaps my English is wrong but is that not a hill? Regardless, is there something amiss about this hole you have found? Is it not supposed to be there?" Kenshin wasn't sure he understood what she was so excited about, if it was just a hole in a hill then it was hardly worth making a big deal about.

Cyco wiped down her face with her hand in exasperation, smearing lines in the dust. "It is a really big rock, and no, giant rocks generally don't have holes that go straight down the middle with smooth sides, sheesh, give a girl a break, would ya? Do you wanna see it or not? Cuz we're like, burning daylight and I don't know about you, but I'm not exactly keen on being in Creepington at night."

[The Scarlet Samurai]

"Alright, sure. I guess I can come back tomorrow." Kenshin looked out at the rock, "How far is it?" He dreaded the idea of donning the armor again, of hearing the sword whispering into his mind again. Some part of him knew that it was going to happen but he hoped to avoid it.

[CyCo]

"Um...well, yeah, um, not far, maybe a minute. Not too good at judging distances anymore, what with the hot feet." she said, scratching her head, "Just call that fine beast of yours, we'll be there in no time."

Cyco absent-mindedly bent down and started retying her laces, giving Kenshin a good look at both her tattoo and down the front of her dress.

[Charlotte]

Cyan and Kenshin made their way to the top of Ayers Rock, and made their way to the center of the plateau. Kenshin could see that there was, in fact, a hole and he had no idea how deep it went.

Cyco dropped a flashlight down the hole. It tumbled end over end and then it was gone. It was either too far down to see, or something was blocking the beam. After determining that there was no way either of them could get down there without making the hole bigger, it occurred to them that solid objects and darkness were far less of an obstacle to someone like Gloom...

* * *

Larissa poured through the book by candlelight. It seemed more appropriate. Norman and Sharatur poked at the rock, Norman unsure what the "nether-aura" signified, to Sharatur's chagrin.

Sharatur explained that the museum had acquired it from an antiquities dealer, who'd claimed that it had been found underneath a ruined martial arts temple in the middle of China. It had an unusual natural formation, but as far as she knew, that was it - it was just an unusual quartz deposit, found in the middle of a rock.

Larissa finally explained what she'd found - something called the Ritual of Conjured Thought. It would basically pull up whatever memories had 'stuck' to something, and display them for her. After a brief argument over whether or not memories were 'sticky' or not, Larissa finally cast the ritual...

And things got a little weird.

Norman saw the nether-aura ripple slightly, as it was extending itself beyond where his sight could see. Sharatur noticed that the multi-colored formation seemed to ripple. Larissa got an impression of total blackness, as if a huge jar of ink had been spilt over the memories attached to the rock, and then an inert sensation, as if the rock were unseen for years. Then the impression of discovery as someone in a vest and graying hair handled it, and then...

Then Larissa and Norman got the impression of someone whose world had been upended, a sinking sensation that nothing would ever make sense again, that nothing could be measured or relied upon.

Sharatur and Larissa got the impression of someone who felt small, only comfortable around people who were gone and forgotten - and someone who felt angry that they were forgotten, and that no one seemed to care but him.

Lastly, Norman and Sharatur were hit with a wave of grief and loss, a loved one who had slipped away, a loved place which was slipping away, and the worst feeling of all, that it was nothing new - that cherished things had slipping away, as long as they could remember...

Then the ritual was broken.

Larissa exhaled, somehow knowing that this ritual was meant for a world where there wasn't a hole in history, and especially not meant for this stone somehow.

Norman watched the nether-aura retreat back in on itself, back from wherever it had gone.

And Sharatur noticed that the configuration of quartz had changed color.

* * *

Hikari was back in Seattle, in less time than it took to tell. Larissa and Hikari had worked out a means of contact - simply popping online in an instant-messaging account would be the signal, rather than any kind of message being sent.

With that out of the way, Hikari showered and changed her clothes, and her appearance. She went out after a few hours, looking for Steven Klein of Order Cultural Governance, and specifically whatever Steven Klein or Order Cultural Governance knew about the 'ghost building.'

Klein's office wasn't as big as she thought it would be. A few motivational posters, including one she'd painted. A picture of his kids. A stress ball and a computer with sticky notes on it. And Steven himself, surprised to see Hikari so early in the morning.

They talked for a bit. Hikari gently pried and Steven gradually opened up. Apparently the building was owned by the Order and was lent out to no one. Its exterior was maintained. Its interior was empty. It didn't have running water or electricity, which struck Steven as odd because he swore he'd seen lights on the top few floors a couple of times. Apparently it was going to be demolished because something that they'd been working on for forever was coming to a close. When asked which 'they' Steven meant, he clammed up.

She'd left a while later, having talked about paintings and the local gossip and news - and, while he'd gone to the bathroom, she'd looked over his sticky notes and noted one that was about "double-checking with Fitzgerald about Cardinal," and a flip through his Rolodex gave her a phone number for Mister Fitzgerald.

A trip to the local library gave her some history. Newspapers were notoriously unreliable, with the editing that went on to filter out the pre-Rise history, and with the propaganda arm of the Order controlling the levers. But she found something, tucked away in the classifieds from decades ago - a funeral announcement about a man named Marcus Gold, who had been a local jeweler and whose business had, at one time, owned the Cardinal building.

The phone number was much easier to track.

It belonged to the Seattle branch of Argus - the Order's intelligence service.

[Necronaut]

Norman devoted a fair amount of energy to thinking about things unrelated to his own issues. Exposure to the emotional fallout of other people's issues felt like a slap in the face from the uncaring hand of reality. He groaned.

He glanced between Sharatur and Larissa. "Okay then. Wow. That was not fun for me. Larissa, did you know your spell would be effecting us?" His face nearly betrayed irritation. His mouth nearly asserted 'Don't ever do anything like that to me again.' but his brain, reasoning that Larissa could do basically whatever she wanted regardless of his request, took over at the last possible moment, "Maybe we should be more careful with the mind-rewriting rock." He smiled entreatingly.

"Anyway, I thought we were just in a fact-finding phase here. I hadn't realized that actually messing with stuff was on the table. If we're messing with stuff, there's something I can try. But not indoors."

[Bodhie Armstrong]

Bodhie quietly watched the ritual and felt a bit misplaced suddenly. Everyone was getting into action and talking about their next move but she somehow had missed the opportunity to get herself up to date with things. Cyco was gone, Scarlet, too and after she finished cleaning up the kitchen the others were already making new plans.

Only Gloom was still doing what she always did – she sat there and looked like she was brooding over something. Obviously she didn’t like her situation much and the large woman could sympathize with the dark four armed ex-knight although her own transformation wasn’t as dramatic as Glooms – in terms of extra limbs.

Bodhie took another can of beer and put it next to Gloom hoping the woman would come out of her reclusive mood and open up a little.

“Hey – are you ok?”, she asked her cursing herself for asking such a stupid question. These kind of situations weren’t her strong suit but she tried.

[SalmonMax]

Flustered, Larissa replied, "Okay, first...I had no idea that would happen. It was not supposed to happen. Everything I read...well, nothing suggested that would happen."

She shook her head and flapped a hand at the rock.

"It started to work...but it seemed like the spell suddenly bounced off and back onto us at the end. It's like, it was looking for something that wasn't there, so it latched onto us instead. I don't know exactly."

With a deep breath to calm herself, she added, "And sometimes you have to -do- things to get information. I'm sorry this didn't work out, but you have to remember I'm still really new at this. Maybe there's other spells that I haven't seen yet. Or maybe this is something that magic can't affect for some reason. What are you going to do?"

[Guest Anonymous]

"Ah, don't worry about it. We're all new at this stuff."

"Sorry I snapped." He added contritely, forgetting that he hadn't.

"As for my plan..."

Norman removed his goggles, holding them up for Larissa and Sharatur to examine. The lenses were scratched and caked with grime around the edges. They smelled of rotting rubber and damp earth. They were not the sort of things a stable person would be found wearing on his head.

"See, these are dead. This is a dead gas-mask, no question about it. But it remembers what it was, and that memory still exists in the netherworld so..."

He flipped the goggles around in his hand as if turning them inside out in a direction that wasn't there, and suddenly he was holding the vaguely translucent, eerily perfect, gas-mask he had worn earlier.

"...I can pull, well, for lack of a better word, its ghost over here and use it. Not just any bit of old ruined stuff has a nether-aura attached to it. But that rock has something similar. It's possible I could pull whatever parts of it exist in the netherworld over here so we could take a look. It might not work at all because, as far as I can tell, whatever this thing is it isn't exactly 'dead'. And if it does work, I've got no idea what it might be attached to. I could pull up the ghost of the dojo where it was buried or the ghost of the cliff where it was quarried." he chuckled nervously. "...hence outdoors."

[The Scarlet Samurai]

Kenshin reached into his pocket and held the little pocket knife and looked at Cyco. They stood over the hole and stared into the darkness that had swallowed the last of the flashlights. "Perhaps one of the others, maybe the lady of darkness, perhaps they can figure out how to determine what this is and what is down below.

Kill her! Run me through her body, allow me to dismember her corpse, this hole will swallow her up and none would be the wiser. Kenshin ignored the voice but he pulled the knife out and looked at it. "You are far faster than I, you should go and see if they will come. I'll wait here."

[IndyPendant]

Sharatur shakes her head and grins. "Wow. Thanks you two. I'm suddenly feeling quite a bit more mundane again. All I can do is teleport, walk on air, and fight better and harder than anyone should be able to." Her words are ironic; her tone...is not. And she genuinely seems a little better.

"I must admit, I feel a little like we're a group of bronze age primitives here, passing a modern land mine back and forth trying to open it to figure out how it works." She shrugs. "I don't really know what else to do though. Let's let Norman do his thing--outside, of course--and then I'll do some research. I never did have a chance to see what I could find about this quartz, and maybe that library Jack mentioned will have something now that I think about it. Maybe I can get Speed Demon to take me there--and not just my arms!--when she gets back..."

[Guest Anonymous]

Norman bit his lip thoughtfully at Sharatur's analogy. "I prefer to think of us as old-timey suit-wearing business-people who just got handed our first PDAs. It's a new way of doing business, but we cracked that newfangled Dictaphone back in the day and by gum we'll crack this!"

He coughed. "Not literally, of course. That'd be awful."

He picked up the rock gingerly, trying to gauge its netherworldly heft. He gazed out the window and tried to judge how far into the desert-scape he ought to go to avoid risking damage to Jack's property without looking absurd if nothing happened.

"Before I get started, there's one thing we should do. I'd appreciate it if you would register your opinions on the likely outcome of this experiment. 'Nothing' is our null hypothesis, so that's off limits."

"I'm going out on a limb and saying I will inadvertently release the irate and boredom-crazed spirits of everyone who has ever died in proximity to this thing, anchored to the shallow reaches of the netherworld by its paranormal memory-trapping power."

He paused and frowned for a moment. "Okay, maybe it's a land-mine attached to a PDA."

[SalmonMax]

"I don't think anything's going to happen," Larissa says, folding her arms. "I think you're going to try, and find that it won't budge...like trying to open a locked door."

"The past of this thing has been...altered. Erased. I can't imagine that it doesn't extend to this 'necro-aura'."

[IndyPendant]

"Norman, I don't even understand what you just said, let alone what you're doing. Something about this thing having a connection to the dead and you drawing it out, if I had to guess. So. Let's see." She thinks for a long moment. "Maybe this thing uses magic to transfer the memories and skills of the dead directly into people's heads?"

She pauses, her mouth still open, then scowls a bit and mutters wryly "I cannot believe I just uttered that shit."