"Or claws and teeth," Charles replies. "Just to give you an idea of what this client's like, the only name he ever gave me was 'PhDestruction'."
He grimmaces. "That alone tells you about all I know about him. Crazy, plays up the mad scientist bit until you don't know if he's playing or being dead serious about it."
"World V has its share of overly dramatic heroes and villains," says Sillinammus. "Theirs is a world of stories. Everyone wants to be a character. A scientist naming himself PhDestruction would not even stand out on V."
Nissa opens her eyes, takes in the aroma of the dawnflower she’s seated upon, then looks up at the statue, studying the elven features. She looks up at Gilladhand and says, “My name, Nissa, means ’a friendly elf.’
“Apparently my adoptive parents didn’t know elves are tall. And I didn’t know the Dawnflower is an elf.
“Which world is under Her rule?”
"The Dawnflower is a Celestial," replies Gilladhand with a smile, "The artist is an elf."
"The Celestials do not rule worlds," replies Silinammus, taking Nissa literally about 'ruling'.
"Unfortunately," adds Gilladhand.
"Nah, they're reclusive; not like our family," adds Enyo catching up. She's been laughing with Adon about Master Ees face when he came up from a pile of dirt. Adon is nodding but not laughing.
Gilladhand continues, "But, the Dawnflower's presence is felt most often on World 19. It was the 5th World visited by the elves during the time of the Great Shuffle. This was about 3000 years ago-"
Enyo cuts him off, "World 19? Everyone is so nice there!"
Nissa says, “Maybe someday I can go to World 19. If her influence is strongest there, maybe one of those nice people can help me understand my powers.”
She actually doesn’t want to leave this peaceful spot just yet, but L.C. is in close proximity to a very dangerous person. So she begins to flutter until she is at eye-level with the elves.
“Gilladhand, thanks so much for bringing me here. Whether the Dawnflower looks like this, or different, it doesn’t matter. The artist’s depiction is really beautiful, and it’s nice to put a face to Her. I’ve always prayed by baring myself under the noon sun—with none of that lotion like I’ve done ads for—I don’t burn, even with sea salt clinging to my skin!”
She studies the marble face, the floral arrangement, the patterns formed by the hedges…
“Is there more you wanna show us?” she asks her elven guide.
"Are you one of the Sun cultists I was hearing talk of at school Nissa?" Verve asked, a bit surprised.
She studies the marble face, the floral arrangement, the patterns formed by the hedges…“Is there more you wanna show us?” she asks her elven guide.
"There are many wonderful things I would like to show you and several of them here, but I think it is better if I leave you here. Perhaps you have decisions to make and this is a private place. No one can hear you, unless the Celestials are listening. If you need to talk, this is a good place to do it."
Unless you indicate otherwise, Gilladhand and the others leave you in the garden to discuss any plans. If you don't need privacy and time to talk or plan, they take you back inside.
Nissa replies to Verve, “I never heard of a Sun cult. Like I said, my habit’s always been to pray at a private beach, or any other place I can be under the Sun, alone.” Given Theo a smile, she adds, “Or with bodyguards around.”
As for what Gilladhand offers, Nissa asks, “Do you guys wanna plan our return trip here and now, or just head inside?”
"We still have the problem of walking into an obvious trap" Theo mused. "I personally like the kick-the-doors-in approach, but if intel is to be believed, fire bad!!"
"Right. And who knows? Maybe those were installed specifically in case we came back without what they wanted," Charles muses. "We definitely need to go back, but landing right where we came from is a bad idea. They mentioned other ways to get back, maybe we should ask more about them?"
"So I see 3 possible outcomes. 1) we should back up and they try to set us on fire. If they do, we have a fight on our hands, and we see about getting some protection here against fire from here before we go back. 2) We show back up and nothing happens immediately. If that happens, we make everything public. Nissa and I both have contacts with the major super hero groups, so that should keep them from overtly coming after us, but we'll still have to be careful as they will probably try and come at us sideways. 3) We show back up and everything is gone, relocated to some other underground bunker or decommissioned missile silo. I say in that case we leak the information to the infosphere, excluding our own involvement. We'll still have to worry about shadowy retaliation, but to be honest I think that's going to happen regardless."
Verve takes a deep breath and says "Here is what I know: we can't give them the ship. That is 100% off the table. If possible, I'd like them not to get Valerie's head either. With that in mind, since her people gather knowledge from across dimensions, maybe they know about this dimension and we can meet with a representative to return the head and maybe check on Valerie's whereabouts? Regardless, I don't think this power should be left in their hands. Portly has proven himself wholely incapable of using such power, and Moore is no better."
Nissa says, “I agree, Verve, we should get fire protection first and not be the first to attack.
“There is another possibility though… L.C. said the flamethrowers are on the flight deck. She also was quick to take over the presetting the return trip when Moore was sulking. That might mean she preset my ship so we won’t end up in the trap—kinda like how we were miles away from the crash site.”
She considers Moore too, and says, “If the flamethrowers are meant for us, it’s probably not to punish failure. We were gonna return with a fireproof baby. We’re loose ends. So are L.C., Greer and Moore. Moore was acting like a petulant child when Verve insisted he ain’t gonna lead the mission. So he couldn’t‘be known what Portly was up to, it at least not entirely.”
Nissa says to Verve, “Thanks for that, by the way.”
She goes on, “Here’s what I think we need to do while we’re here. 1. What Verve said, arrange for fire protection—just in case L.C. wasn’t able to divert us as I’m hoping. She did the preset before she wrote the warning, so she may have found out too late.
“2. Ask more about FATE. Maybe we can meet the World 12 guys. I wanna know if Portly fits a pattern, or is even maybe from their world.
“And 3… aren’t ya guys curious as to why we couldn’t gate back? I mean, I wouldn’t’ve after what the chalice revealed, but… there was a force stopping us.”
Nissa looks to the Dawnflower statue, but doesn’t suggest divine intervention. “It could be that all these TAROT people stopped us.”
"You're welcome. Never trust anyone who thinks that they are alright with God."
Verve pondered Nissa's thoughts about the TAROT people and said "See what I just said."
“Yeah, but you don’t trust people who don’t think they’re alright with God,” Nissa replies. “These TAROT people thought we were criminals, so I don’t have a problem with it if they did stop us from gating outta Superman.
“Anyway, I wanna learn all we can before we try gating back. We don’t know where we’ll appear or if we’ll actually get attacked—it’s not like they can read a comic book to figure out when we’ll show up.
“Plus, Portly did warn us the world would be a barren wasteland. Maybe Superman’s really supposed to save the Earth from that. Maybe our world is just World 12 before temporal intervention, or something like that.”
Nissa reverts to her human-ish form and adds with a shrug, “You know what I wanna put less trust in?
“My own assumptions.”
Unless the others have more to discuss as a team, Nissa would like to:
• go back to the Marshall
• and arrange to meet the World 12 team
• (preferably with the World 3 & 7 teams present).
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
"You're learning, grasshopper." Verve said, then realized who she said it to and blushed.
When you re-enter the building Gilladhand is waiting for you. He hopes that you found wisdom while standing in the shadows of the Celestials or something like that. He brings you upstairs into a large oval room. The walls are lined with couches, over which hang paintings of landscapes. You recognize most of them, including the Grand Canyon and the Amazon. Others are more fantastic. Some include buildings of odd design.
Enyo and Adon are sprawled on a couch, over which hangs a painting of Mount Olympus. Istari and Silinammus are sitting several couches down under paintings of a forest. The Marshall is standing near them.
The World 12 TAROT is easily summoned, as they live in Tarokh. Charles caught a glimpse of one of them, when there were three in the car. Now you see five of them. Three of them are human. One is an uplifted bear. As for the fifth, you are not sure it has a classification, but it is furry and fanged. You were warned before they came that gene tampering is common on their world.
They enter the room with a chip on their shoulders as if one of you has filed an official complaint or perhaps they are still mad about losing the race. They walk in pissed, but you were warned that about that as well. "They're not nice people," Adon had warned you. No one else seems to take notice of their growling and grumbling.
Nissa smiles pleasantly at the Grumpy Gusses. “You boys know how to show a girl a good time. Seriously, that car chase was exhilarating! I’m glad nobody got hurt, though.
“And, I assure you it was all a misunderstanding. I took the wheel ’cause I thought you were agents of FATE.”
She lets that word sink in, then says, “You’re the experts on those villains, right? I’m really sorry about what happened to your world, but if you could save another world from becoming a barren wasteland, you would… wouldn’t you?”
Nissa smiles pleasantly at the Grumpy Gusses. “You boys know how to show a girl a good time. Seriously, that car chase was exhilarating! I’m glad nobody got hurt, though.
“And, I assure you it was all a misunderstanding. I took the wheel ’cause I thought you were agents of FATE.”
They stop grumbling and pay full attention to Nissa.
She lets that word sink in, then says, “You’re the experts on those villains, right? I’m really sorry about what happened to your world, but if you could save another world from becoming a barren wasteland, you would… wouldn’t you?”
One of the five wears a mask, glasses, a baseball cap, and a necklace that seems designed to confuse facial detection software. He slowly says, "Never let a government agency 'fix' the timeline." He jabs a finger in the air to emphasize each word.
"What can we do to help?" asks the one that looks like a lab experiment.
Nissa says, “For starters, I was thinking if I tell you what events led to us being in the Superman story—tricked into that—maybe you’ll notice some similarities. Particularly from Mr. Portly’s words.
“He’s the FATE agent, in case his name happens to be familiar to you. Is it?”
"If he is from here, that name is probably an alias. Here's what he looks like..." Verve then proceeds to describe him.
The TAROT team from World 12 discuss it for a bit, but then come to the conclusion Portly isn't one of theirs. The FATE they know has only just discovered transdimensional travel after having spent decades (and centuries) playing with time travel.
"This world does sound very much like ours," says the masked man, "but, then again, we've found TAROT on multiple worlds too, and they usually have only the loosest of connections to each other at best. Still, it is ominous."
"Perhaps they are a temporal cousin of ours," suggests the awakened bear. "An alternate timeline that continued to exist after the tampering of FATE."
"Perhaps," says Gilladhand dryly, "that would conveniently fit your theory of the Tarotverse."
The bear explains, "The elves believe that 22 Celestials came from a dimension more spirtually advanced than ours and created the Tarotverse for some mysterious and as-yet-undisclosed reason. We believe that the Tarotverse are simply worlds that are similar to ours sometimes but that diverged at some point in history."
"And, yet, at no point in your Earth's history were there any elves," replies Gilladhand, "And, therefore, Worlds 1, 2, and 3 cannot be 'cousins' of your world. If they were created by the Celestia-"
The Marshall raises her hand to stop the debate. "Mr. Portly does not fit the description of any transdimensional fugitives that TAROT is aware of, including members of FATE."
Now Nissa’s sure she made the right move dating a scientist. She’s actually excited by the different theories.
“That sounds so like what I was thinking in the garden. You can’t erase people from existence, so what happens when you mess with the timeline!” To baseball-cap guy, she says, “And I totally said to Mr. Portly, you can’t go back and kill Hitler without erasing the lesson learned—and people! How do these idiots not accidentally wipe themselves from existence? Or maybe some do and nobody knows.
“Time travel shouldn’t be!”
With a sigh, she adds, “But...”
She then tells the lie that convinced them to go back. Find the alien; remove him. Just one less lie for the government to hide. And the timeline’s robust, “—like that Twilight Zone episode where the guy tries to kill Hitler and his gun jams. My favorite class had a unit on Time Travel Themed Fiction.
“Still can’t believe they thought flying cars would precede self-driving. I mean, like, duh.
“So anyway…” She then tells the other detail that compelled them to gate to what they thought was the past. And what would cause the earth to become a barren wasteland: “Aliens.”
"There were legends of Elves in our history; the Vikings had stories of them."
"There were legends of Elves in our history; the Vikings had stories of them."
"But do the legends say they were from your world, or visitors?" asks Gilladhand. "The elves visited many worlds, but are only native to three."
“...You can’t erase people from existence, so what happens when you mess with the timeline!... How do these idiots not accidentally wipe themselves from existence? Or maybe some do and nobody knows.
Most of the TAROT from World 12 look upset at the talk about erasing people from existence; the subject is clearly painful and personal for them.
"I never really studied mythology all that well, but I believe they were part of the Aesir, so they would be in Valhalla? I'm not sure."
Light and dark norse elves each have their own lands in the Nine Worlds", The Olympian mentions. "As a whole, elves are not apart of the Aesir. Valhalla is the Land of the Victorious Dead."
"There you go. I was never one for video games myself."
"There you go. I was never one for video games myself."
The TAROTs from both 3 (the elves) and 7 (the Greeks) seem offended by Verve's implication.
Nissa sees the look on the World 12 Teams’ faces.
But… that can’t be! Or anyone with a time machine could just erase the world.
“Oh… I am so sorry.”
Nissa’s sure that, if she ever meets the Dawnflower, there is one question she will ask. But for now, she can only get answers from the team whose feelings she just deeply hurt.
“So, I realize this is painful—I can’t even imagine…” Here Nissa was worried that L.C. might be in danger. What if she was never born? Her adoptive parents, her sisters, just a memory? Do their souls still…??? “—but what was the cause of your world becoming a barren wasteland? Was there an alien attack? Or is that just another of Mr. Portly’s lies? He definitely lied to manipulate us, so it’s not that I’m naive—just wondering what the ounce of truth is.”
The four other TAROT members from World 12 let the masked man speak. "None of them remember what it was like before the beginning of the temporal interference. I was outside of the timeline when it happened and unaffected. By 2100, 90% of the biodiversity on our Earth had been lost. We were killing our planet. Wars through the 22nd century had destroyed the nation states as we knew them. Our superpowers had crumbled and been replaced with regional authorities. By 2200, we were starting to pull it together again. That's when we discovered time travel."
The situations he is describing do not match up with your world's history. Superheroes prevented much of this from happening on your world.
"The government sent a group of people back to change one thing, and then change another. Of course, it was top secret and no one knew what was happening at the time. No one knew after it happened either, because once you change the past, you erase anyone's recollection of the past that was. I wasn't there at the time. I knew what I had to do though. I started finding people who could help stop FATE and I started hiding them outside of the timeline until it was time to strike."
This wasn't the question you asked. You asked what caused the destruction.
"Things got worse. Those who controlled the timeline tried to ensure that all the power flowed into their bloodlines, their families. It started small ... they just protected themselves as they 'fixed' the past. Soon, they were building a world in their image. They became a secret society behind a much more public group called the Corporation, members of their bloodlines who ran the world for them. We played cat and mouse games with them throughout history, trying to stop them, trying to set things back the way they were... They eliminated our ancestors when they found out our identities, but we kept out of the continuity."
The one that looks like an experiment gone wrong finishes, "One day, we came back from the past, and there was hardly anything left. The North American Regional Authority was gone. Most of the cities were gone or had never even been there ... It's not completely barren. We have some cities, but they are controlled by the Corporation. Most people live in camps in the wastelands. Some terraforming collectives are trying to get things going again. If FATE still exists, we have no way of tracking them anymore. I don't even know if time travel still exists in our world. They may have broken it along with everything else. The Corporation survives, so I guess they got what they wanted in the end."
This does not fit with the lies Portly told you about an alien attack.
"Greed. Lies. Lust for power. Fear," says another of the humans from World 12. "These are the things that killed our world."
Nissa nods. “I get it. It’s not a single event, it’s like Biff and the sports almanac. A time traveler looks out for himself, next thing you know he’s rich and powerful, and the world around him is all motorcycles and shotgun-wielding principals and killing your dad to marry your mom.
“Yeah, the timeline isn’t robust. It shouldn’t be possible to know that.”
She definitely catches one detail in particular. “So wait… you’re saying time travel on World 12 might not be possible. Anymore.
“That’s funny, ’cause when I told Portly time travel’s impossible, he said it is for him… but not us.
“And your would had supers on it. Any chance there’s a super tied to time travel? And what Celestial ru—ummmm… has influence on your world. Y’know, like how World 19’s the Dawnflower world?”
Gilladhand happily volunteers the information that World 12 seemed most aligned with the Celestial known as The Hanged Man, who represents surrender, sacrifice, and suspension in time.
The World 12 TAROT members consider the rest of what Nissa is saying, although they are clearly confused by some of it. One of them explains, "Look, a man like you're describing is dangerous, but he doesn't sound like the type that gets put in charge of anything on his own. Find out who is running him, and, if they're anything like our FATE, the thing they are afraid of most is our finding out their names. When you start playing around with time travel, your ancestors need bodyguards."
The masked man concurs and then addresses one of Nissa's other questions, "We've had freedom fighters with super powers, but the last three iterations of the timeline, FATE had managed to co-opt most of them. None of these supers had any power over time travel. Of course, when you're travelling interdimensionally, you're outside your own timeline ... it's possible to punch back into your timeline before you left. We've had to do that far too many times."
You hear a cough and see that a nervous looking young man stands at the doorway. He has shaggy hair and wears a loose green outfit. On his shoulder sits an imp. The imp carries a leather pouch.
The Marshall greets the man and brings him into the room. "This is Spencer Teuling, Cauldron for the TAROT from Witchworld. Gilladhand told me what you needed in terms of protection from fire and I asked Spencer if he could provide us with something."
He takes the pouch from the imp and opens it. There are four glass vials full of red liquid, "I had to split one dose into four. They'll only have a minute, but they could withstand the fires of Hell for that time. Clothes would still burn, of course. It's better if you don't ask what's in it."
The Olympian gets up from his couch and takes the offered vials. "Thanks", the godling says to the Witchworld inhabitant. Looking at the imp on Spencer's shoulder, Theo asks, "Any adverse effects we should know about? Anything soul-effecting?"
"Is there a way that we can contact you to turn over Portly, his superiors, and Moore to you?"
Nissa turns to Enyo. “I’d love it if you could come, and I know you want to. But… if we do end up in a fire trap, there’s only four doses.”
Nissa fluffs the feather boa that in fact extends from her shoulder blades. “Well… this won’t burn off. Not sure about my physical armor.” Nissa crosses her legs, then pinches her fingers over a seemingly bare knee. When she pulls, her Clearweave stretches until she lets go. It snaps back into place, and fades from clingwrappy-clear to completely-invisible.
She turns to the World 12 team again. “That’s right. The whole organization is corrupt. Or at least if they do travel time—or did already, since how would I even know, right?—FATE shouldn’t be.
“But something I still don’t get. If Portly is acting under orders, why take us to fake 1938? Why have us kidnap baby Superman?” She doesn’t bother telling the World 12 team she’s already formed an opinion on this and everyone else in the room surely heard it by now. But the World 12 people know FATE better than anyone. So what do the experts make of this?
The Olympian gets up from his couch and takes the offered vials. "Thanks", the godling says to the Witchworld inhabitant. Looking at the imp on Spencer's shoulder, Theo asks, "Any adverse effects we should know about? Anything soul-effecting?"
The young man appreciates the thoughtful question. "There shouldn't be. I've rendered the infernal aspect inert."
"Is there a way that we can contact you to turn over Portly, his superiors, and Moore to you?"
There's a bit of a pause and people look around. Finally one of them shrugs and says, "World 2 it is then."
The others nod and someone brings a pair of matching mirrors in wooden boxes. The Marshall says, "World 2 has a great many magical devices used for watching and listening to its people. No doubt someone is listening to this conversation right now."
She shows you how what is reflected into one mirror is revealed on the other and then returns them to their boxes. She hands Verve one of the boxes.
"I wouldn't have any private discussions around these. Take one and we will monitor the other."
Nissa turns to Enyo. “I’d love it if you could come, and I know you want to. But… if we do end up in a fire trap, there’s only four doses.”
Enyo smiles and says, "I've got a few thousand days off coming up; maybe I'll pay you all a visit soon."
“But something I still don’t get. If Portly is acting under orders, why take us to fake 1938? Why have us kidnap baby Superman?”[/b] She doesn’t bother telling the World 12 team she’s already formed an opinion on this and everyone else in the room surely heard it by now. But the World 12 people know FATE better than anyone. So what do the experts make of this?
Before the World 12 group weighs in, the nervous young man says, "Alien blood? For rituals?"
People look disgusted and he quickly says something along the lines of "...the type of rituals I would never do."
The uplifted bear offers, "I wouldn't be worried about magic rituals. It doesn't sound like that kind of world. Our FATE co-opted a number of superheroes by appearing repeatedly throughout their lives and grooming them. Perhaps it is simply that. But, we don't really know why these sub-dimensions exist, except, when FATE when back in time and tried to change some of our founding myths, they failed. The stories would reset. So much of our timeline they could change, but certain stories always came back. Perhaps your Mr. Portly wanted to erase Superman. Did he know the story would reset the protagonist?"
"The Celestials, in their Wisdom," says Galladhand, "Have ensured that certain bits of history cannot be tampered with. Somewhere is a world in which Superman is or was real. The Smallville you saw is how the Celestials' protect that world from temporal interference. World 12 has proven this."
"Or," says the bear again, "These subdimensions are fragments of lost timelines, left behind after temporal manipulation. Maybe Superman was real, but FATE or some other similar organization, destroyed that timeline, and all that remains is this tiny surviving bit of it."
"Which somehow leaks out into the imagination of writers on other worlds?" asks Silinammus who normally stays out of discussions of religion.
"Right, so..." Charles begins, struggling to keep up with everything. "Seems like there's a lot we don't know, but... with the fire protection, we can at least go back to our own world. Then we figure out what to do about Portly, try to follow him back to his superiors..."
He trails off uncertainly. This is big. He'd known, getting involved in all of this, that he was getting into something much bigger than zookeeping, but... he'd never imagined the fate of the world might get involved. Of course, he hadn't imagined he'd be visiting other versions of Earth, either.
Nissa turns to Enyo. “I’d love it if you could come, and I know you want to. But… if we do end up in a fire trap, there’s only four doses.”Enyo smiles and says, "I've got a few thousand days off coming up; maybe I'll pay you all a visit soon."
Theo smiled. "I'd like that, sis. I have so many questions."
Nissa replies, “Moore knows. I imagine he’da told Portly. But there is the Mandela Effect.
“Like, when we went to Beowulf—and don’t forger we thought it was a real world! In fact, I was afraid we’d spent our entire lives there. So I tried to make friends with two shieldmaidens. Twins! They were adorable! Reminded me of my teenage sisters, so I thought I’d make friends. I even game them my horse, and they rode around…
“Well, anyway, Moore said there was an old TV show about the twins. My name came up as a Valkyrie in the story, students failed a Beowulf exam, and Moore thought it was hilarious.”
Knowing her audience will see no humor, Nissa makes a serious face.
“Maybe removing the wholesome Superman from the fiction world would have the temporary effect that Portly needed to influence superheroes. We were all inspired by Superman more than……… well. Really, I’m a Wonder Woman gal. But still, the Man of Steel set the standard for why we use our powers, and what we don’t do just ’cause we can.
“Maybe that’s how FATE corrupts supers. Maybe they didn’t fail on World 12. They just needed the tampering to have an effect that lasts just long enough to manipulate certain people.”
"Perhaps," says the masked man. "It is true that our stories became darker and darker the more FATE tampered with our timeline. Our monsters became more monstrous and our heroes' virtues became more unquestionable. Everything FATE did worked towards those ends--to make everything that is not us more and more frightening until the only safe space was in the loving embrace of the Corporation."
One of the other humans says, "But, there was also the constant uncertainty when they kept messing with these same moments in history again and again. You never knew what was true because the stories kept changing. Even when they were fixed there was the--what did you call it?--the Mandela Effect? When you don't know what's real and what's fake you can't plan or strategize or anything really."
"Right, so..." Charles begins, struggling to keep up with everything. "Seems like there's a lot we don't know, but... with the fire protection, we can at least go back to our own world. Then we figure out what to do about Portly, try to follow him back to his superiors..."
The fanged and fur-covered human says, "Whatever you do when you go back, do not let any government agency have control over the timeline."
He jabs his finger in the air when he says this and jabs too close to the imp who hisses.
Verve accepts the mirror and has Nissa shrink it before she stows it in one of her belt pouches.
At Nissa's mention of being inspired by Superman, Verve says "I...actually don't know who that is. I more or less became a sidekick because I took a job to steal something that belonged to my mentor. I know quite a few superheroes, but I've never heard of Superman, or the Man of Steel or Wonderous Woman either."
Nissa says, “I, uh… can’t shrink the mirror. I can’t even shrink my clothes. See, watch.”
Nissa becomes a fairy like stellar mote. Her outfit is mostly a stellar manifestation, but her clear weave and gun belt are physical. They seemingly dissolve as a spiral of orange sparks.
Nissa glows so brightly, she doesn’t exactly look naked, but more like a glowing silhouette of a winged woman, mere inches tall. She says, “Don’t ask me where my guns and stuff go. I have absolutely no idea.”
As for not knowing of Superman, she says, “Well, he’s like 300 years old. Maybe it’s more like the superhero business is influenced by him, and people our age just kinda go along with it.“
She doesn’t dwell on this though, but turns to the TAROT people.
”Speaking of going along, I should warn you about our gating equipment before I forget. When I fly my ship, my friends get pulled through whatever rift I open. So do chunks of the floor and ceiling. So will any of you, if you’re too close.
“Is there, like, a desert or something so we don’t make a mess of your beautiful building?”
After Nissa explains, Verve wordlessly hands her the mirror.
Nissa reverts to her normal size so she can actually lift the mirror. She tries checking her hair in it, and is amused to see a different face.
“Cool! But someone bigger than me should hold this. Anything I can’t wear on my belt or slip in my purse just falls down when I change forms.”
She then says to the Marshall, “Unless there’s something one of us forgot to ask, I think we’re about all set. Um… maybe.”
She removes the chalice and says, “I guess the chalice’s magic is restored after sunrise. Does going to a new world, like… count? Or do we gotta spend the night and wait’ll tomorrow to use its magic?”
Enyo and Silinammus both step forth. Enyo pours some wine into her drinking cup and whispers something in Greek before pouring the wine into Silinammus's chalice. Silinammus then offers the wine to Nissa.
"We don't often get to do this," Silinammus says. "You will find it a more effective draught. As for a location, the roof is coated with black omnisium. It will not be pulled into the breech no matter how poor you are at controlling it."
It probably only sounds a little insulting because she's speaking her fifth language.
"But," asks the Marshall, "If you don't have a wand how are you going to open a gate?"
Nissa says, “I pilot a nearly-microscopic ship called The Bombshell. Verve telekinetically launches it into a data stream. We had an android friend, but don’t know where she went. She was replaced by a broken robot. I’m not crazy about using it, but… yeah. Moore and Portly gave us a robot head to replace Uncanny Valerie.”
As for the lack of control, Nissa says, “I really don’t have control. So, if not the ceiling, there’s still the furniture and people. We ended up gating bicycles and light fixtures and a huge concrete slab into Superman. I mean, if you’re sure we won’t mess up your office, okay. But… none of the scientists are in the same room when we do this.
“Just make sure you’re all, like, taking every precaution and then some.”