Nissa decides that any of these places are as good as another. She goes to the flight deck, shrinking to subatomic size first. She wants to see the electron that’s in two realities at once!
But after that, it’s time to become ‘human.’
Nissa does so. Her body grows from nothing to speck to fairy to woman. The sunlight around her is a soft glow containing her full-sized shape. Feathers fall from her bare back as a bikini covers her, then the familiar sundress unfurls over her body. Metal plates seem to converge from nothing, covering Nissa in her Valkyrie armor. It looks different now, as if forged in the belly of the sun herself.
Finally orange sparks return Nissa’s gear, most notably the crystal. Molten gold tears well in Nissa’s glowing eyes. The power of this strange material scares the hell out of her.
Kai brings the box containing the rest of the wand, still keeping it a fair distance from the flight deck. Once it starts to spark, Kai backs away. Over comms, Nissa can hear, "Alright, leave the shard on the desk, Wensforth will take care of it."
'Wensforth' is a rough construction of an upright robot with four manipulator arms, with a very old-fashioned formal suit painted in black and white on its trunk and a real bowtie around its neck articulation. Another robot, this one a squat construction on tracks with only one manipulator arm, will carry the box to the flight deck.
Nissa nods slowly. She’s glad to get the crystal out of her hands!
She wipes her eyes, not wanting to talk about what scares her so much about the crystal.
She perks up at the sight of the dapper robot. “Good luck, Wentsforth,” she says to ‘him’ as she vacates the flight deck.
Wensforth makes its way towards its squat companion carrying a now sparking piece of shard. The Flight Deck vacated, you get to discover what it looks on the other side of the omnisium door. The control room is full of monitors, watching the Flight Deck from every angle. The cameras are no longer visible in the Flight Deck as they kept getting sucked into the Shuffle when you jumped. The dozens of cameras they use now are tucked into the wall and mostly shielded by omnisium.
Wensforth and the other robot are nearly touching. The sparks leap between the shards and begin to intensify. The sparks become a crackling bolt of energy and then a current of energy and, when the robots finally are within a couple feet of each other, a great big ball of white light.
Only one of the cameras on the Flight Deck filters out enough light to still detect the two robots. When they finally touch, they are entirely engulfed in the bright white light.
Unlike every other trip you took exiting this place, the ball of light stays.
Ron, is sitting under a small sign he clearly made himself that says, 'Air Traffic.' "The readings ... L.C., are you seeing this?"
"Does that mean what I think it means?" asks L.C. incredulous.
Nissa dims her aura, changing her Valkyrie armor to a sundress. She takes L.C.’s hand, not really understanding the meaning of the light, but pretty sure her guess is the same as L.C.’s.
“If you’re right, I’m gonna miss flying the Bombshell.”
She will miss her little ship, but still, Nissa says this with a smile.
The Prince is downstairs in the medical labs flirting with nurses of all genders. He seems to have learned to take the doctors a little more seriously. The one who is checking on him when Theo gets there clearly won't take any s@&$ from him and he doesn't give her any.
"This is amazing... a stable transdimensional gate. And the power seems to be coming from the wand itself." Kai looks at the readings, then at L.C.
Nissa says to Kai, “I drank from Theo’s chalice when I last flew through a gate. I don’t know if we passed the celestial’s test yet, or if the real test is not just assembling the wand, but using it.”
Charles, as he had stated, is staying far away from the whole thing right now. At least, that had been his intention. Somehow he'd ended up back in the cafeteria, debating about getting a snack.
Now, though, his fur is standing on end and a shiver is going down his spine. "Ummm... maybe I'll come back later," he mutters to himself as he walks in what he's pretty sure is the opposite direction of the flight deck.
The gate remains open. You've always tuned gates in the past, aiming Nissa at a specific point in the Shuffle, but the readings in the control room suggest this gate is fluctuating wildly.
"So.... Anyone know how to turn that off? Zellgato opines the hanging question.
Nissa whips out her comm and make a video call to Theo. “Big O! It’s me, Fun Size. Kai’s dapper robot assembled the wand. We have no idea how to control it, but I’ll bet a sip from your chalice’ll do the trick?
“Do you wanna come here and drink it yourself, or do ya need to babysit Prince Dick?”
During this call, the portal to Goddess-knows-where can be seen in the background.
Nissa manages to frame the shot so Theo can see the portal well, and also a hint of cleavage at the bottom of the screen. Her glowing eyes meet the camera eye, as if she’s staring into Theo’s soul.
Theo looks back at The Prince, chatting up a nurse with a generous backside. "I don't think our guest is going anywhere. Be right there."
Nissa saves a still image to use as her wallpaper. She forwards it to L.C.
“See ya in a bit,” she says to Theo before she puts her comm away... after admiring her own image a little longer.
Charles doesn't get far before he started feeling uneasy. What if there was trouble, and he was leaving when the others needed help? Shouldn't he go back?
Then he remembers the wonders of modern technology. Pulling out his comm, he types out a quick text to Nissa. Everything okay? I can tell something happened.
When Nissa picks up, she is back in her ‘human’ form. Behind her is an unstable—nope, just a wall—ceiling—okay, there’s the portal. Nissa’s head is blocking the portal and her dress is showing more cleavage than it did back in the Superman comic. For a moment, it seems like she’s putting more effort in getting her curves in the shot than the whirling phenomenon in the (now blurry!) background.
Nissa’s making sort of a pouty face. “Everything is not alright. I just took the perfect selfie in my last video call, and now I can’t get the angle right.
“Oh well.” She aims her camera to the portal. “But the good news is that we sorta got the wand working. As soon as Theo gets a glass of water, he can hopefully tell us where it leads!”
Nissa makes no attempt to explain the relevance of Theo getting a glass of water.
Kai looks alarmed at the idea of going through the portal. "If I still had Legion I could send it to scout ahead and get some data, are you seriously thinking of just entering the portal to see where it leads?"
This is not scientific method, and it upsets Kai.
Nissa says, “I’m not... though that’s an understandable interpretation since I kinda have a history of blindly rocketing into portals.
“But my last jump l, I drank from Theo’s chalice. It was like... like being in space, looking at every star in the galaxy and, at a glance, knowing exactly which star is your sun.
“I don’t know how familiar Theo is with that chalice, but I think if he drinks from it, he just needs to look into the portal.”
Theo looks back at The Prince, chatting up a nurse with a generous backside. "I don't think our guest is going anywhere. Be right there."
Theo's Atlantean is getting better. He's pretty sure the Prince just suggested that the nurse had the voice of a siren. The nurse has no idea what he said, of course, but could tell it was flirtatious in tone.
Charles doesn't get far before he started feeling uneasy. What if there was trouble, and he was leaving when the others needed help? Shouldn't he go back?
Then he remembers the wonders of modern technology. Pulling out his comm, he types out a quick text to Nissa. Everything okay? I can tell something happened.
Looking at the portal in the video call, Charles can't help but shiver a bit. "And the portal's just... sitting there? You're not trying to close it or control it or anything? I mean yeah, you're getting Theo to get the chalice but... what if we just dailed Ms. Gray or something and don't know it yet?"
Theo enters the room, holding two cups. One is the Chalice, the other a instant coffee cup filled with water. Pouring the water into the chalice, the godling asks, "Okay. Where's the patient?"
Nissa stops angling her comm. She replies to Charles, “Well... I, uh... ummm.”
She then has this look, like she’s about to become a fairy and send the wand to Neverland. But Theo is here just in time!
Fumbling for words, Nissa points to the portal. “Y’know, y’know… the thing!”
"Where da fu<k that come from?" Theo asks.
Nissa replies, “That. The...”
In a blink, Nissa shrinks to nothing.
And in another blink, a spark in the flight deck becomes a fairy. She picks up the wand.
“This! The robots fixed it—the wand! And now there’s a portal but it’s like, to everywhere.”
She then asks Theo, “Think you can guzzle some water and figure out where it goes?”
If she can safely hold it, Nissa tries operating it. I’m a fairy. This should work... except it’s so damn big!
Nissa thinks of the garden in Tarokh, where she meditated by the Dawnflower statue.
"Alright. Cheers everybody!" The godling drinks about half the contents of the chalice, peering inside.
Zellgato simply plantively watching, tensed but appaarently most are surprisingly blase about the whole thing. "Yep, I asked that earlier Charles. I don't think there is a plan yet."
The sphere expands a bit, filling the entire Flight Deck; everyone on the Flight Deck disappears in a flash.
Charles loses sight of what's going on as Theo arrives and Nissa quits pointing her comm for his benefit. "Hey, I... think I should come up there," he says, though he doesn't think anyone's listening. He puts his comm away in a pocket of his (very custom-made) shorts and starts jogging through the halls of Boston Theoretical, his long legs propelling him swiftly down the corridors, his claws clicking on the floor.
There's a bright flash as he nears the Flight Deck, and so Charles turns his jog into a sprint. But by the time he arrives, he finds the deck empty. Skidding to a stop, all four arms spread, he looks around for any clue of what happened.
Kai runs a hand over Kai's face, sighing deeply. "They went through the portal. Nissa and Theo. And my robots, I guess."
If L.C. hasn't been observing the whole thing, Kai reports to her first before poring over every scrap of data recorded on the Flight Deck. "No idea how we can follow them or bring them back yet. But this reminds me - hey Ron, if you're not too busy, think you and EIG can work on Legion Mk II? I'll upload the specs to you."
Twisting his head, in a fashion not unlike a confused puppy dog; despite the mask hiding his facial features."So, I know its dumb coming from me. but. Are people often Portal-napped here?" Shouldering his firearm and noting the relative low panic "Kind of guessing you aren't going to get your robots back."
"Hello? Anyone here?" The godling asks.
“I am,” she replies to Theo. “Y’know, I was thinking of the Dawnflower’s garden, which is clearly not this place. So... if this wand works anything like I guessed, it’s the chalice-drinker who steers. Then we’re in your family’s world, right? If we’re in the baths of Artemis, my friend Addison will be like so jealous.”
Nissa lowers her flight ever so slightly, feeling around for water. She adjusts her glow, wondering if she will discover maiden nymphs beyond the curtain of steam.
“I am,” she replies to Theo. “Y’know, I was thinking of the Dawnflower’s garden, which is clearly not this place. So... if this wand works anything like I guessed, it’s the chalice-drinker who steers. Then we’re in your family’s world, right? If we’re in the baths of Artemis, my friend Addison will be like so jealous.”
"Nissa? Thank goodness! I was thinking of Enyo's World, but the since you said you were thinking of the Dawnflower garden, who knows where we are? Regardless, we have to get out of here or melt!"
Theo follows Nissa's glow, trying to figure out where they are.
Nissa happens to know about the baths of Artemis.
“Okay... Big O, I don’t know much about your family, honestly, except Artemis. My fashionista friend’s like her number one fan. I stayed at her house a lot, and we’ve talked about the pictures,” one of which Nissa describes if Theo’s interested.
“The Bath of Artemis,” by Francesca Baerald
This is the bath of Artemis, a scene from Actaeon's Myth, where she surprises Actaeon spying on her and her nymphs. Watercolours on paper.
“So if that’s where we are, you might wanna avert your eyes, like to the back of your eyelids.” Nissa calls out, “Any chance we’re surrounded by nymph huntresses? I’m a friend of Enyo’s, if that helps, and with me is one of Artemis’ half-siblings. A guy, but he didn’t see anything.”
Nissa is well aware that her guess could be very wrong.
Theo nods and holds his hand just over his eyebrows so he can quickly block his view if needed.
There are male voices. They are yelling in Greek.
Theo understands the words, "Intruders!"
There is a female voice. She's the one yelling at the other's to stop.
In Greek, Theo shouts, "Hey! Knock it off!!"
You seem to be surrounded by muscular men in towels or less.
You hear a familiar female voice yelling for illumination.
A door opens and you feel some of the steam and air rush in that direction.
Nissa is a light source, so she happily flies toward the one voice that doesn’t come with dangly parts.
“Enyo,” she chances. “It’s Nissa and Theo!”
She tries to fly as gracefully as possible, weaving above or around the men, hovering before the goddess... and kinda putting on a bit of a show.
"Hey! Enyo!" Theo said with a large smile. "Where are we?"
The steam begins to clear. You're in a sauna, but probably one of the nicer ones you've ever been in. There are pools and boulders and benches and about 20 men wrapped in towels or less and Enyo.
"Theo! Nissa! Welcome to the PARTY " screams an enthusiastic Enyo.
Theo looks around, impressed by the grandeur. "Yep, Enyo. This could be no one's house but yours." Both godling siblings give either other a warm embrace.