exsiliumlogs | MISSION: GRAB THE EYEBALLTAUR

Date & Time: March 7th, 1994
Location: The MICA campus: Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
Characters: Everyone
Summary: All transports are shipped back to 1994 to steal art from art students. Also, some of them arrive bodyswapped.

The Initiative has timed the incoming waves of Transports to the MICA campus for Freshmen Orientation, but even so, the flood of newcomers gets a few surprised glances. Looks like MICA's up for a major boom in attendance next year, wow. But do some of those freshman look a little old to you? …And do some of them seem to be freaking out a lot more than usual about being in Baltimore?

The cloaking devices, with holograms visible only to the natives, will be blending everyone in with the native 90s fashion senses, and all non-humans will find themselves getting much more tame curious glances than they might back on Exsilium, as they project a human appearance to natives around them. So at least there's that. Just try not to get arrested, hit by cars, or challenged to any break dance competitions as you grab and run off with bizarre works of art, alright? The weirder it looks, the more likely it probably is to be the power source the Initiative needs for the Transporter.

Oh, yeah, and sorry about the body-swap-around. Just deal with that as best you can, because the mission really must go on. Any harried and worried Initiative employee along on the mission that you might be able to find will just sputter a hasty not-really-explanative explanation and hurry away, trading frantic messages with the headquarters in Exsilium. They'll get this all sorted out by the time you get back, don't worry.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Wires run the machines that send us here.

( Collette grins. )

Not that I was being literal, but it is true!

But it was probably the machine overall, not just the wires, right?

Maybe. It's probably not that... simple? Part of the machine or the settings or something related got messed up. Think about it. How does it send us to the past in the first place? What if it's like Star Trek, only when they rearranged us again the mind-parts were put in the wrong bodies?

...I'm sorry, I have no idea what Star Trek is.

( Collette sighs. )

If only everyone were as pop-culture savvy as Al was...

( Al wasn't the only one, but she feels a pang when she mentions him. Collette glances away for a moment, gaze falling down. When she looks back up, it's with one hand fisting at her side. )

Star Trek's a series of sci-fi stuff. Totally geeky! Kind of fun, too, especially when you can't sleep at night. ANyway, they have this phasing system to move people from their space ship to the planet or to other ships! It's like they're broken down to atoms and those atoms are sent somewhere else and reconstructed!

Al? Who's that?

[She notices the fist balled up like that, and the shift in mood.]

It sounds interesting, but more importantly, are you alright?

( She doesn't actively realize what her hand is doing. Collette laughs at the question, shrugging and smiling again in reflex. )

Just worried about Caesar, that's all. He's got to be freaking out so badly!

( She says nothing about Al. The pain there's still too new, even if she knows it has to be natural. She's coming to grips so slowly with how stark the reality of this second life is, where people leave as fast as they come into your life.

It was just nice, for a while, to feel wanted. Desirable? Important. Knowing that he went home to die, in a different way than how her own death's assured, just hurts. At least he gets a chance to live again, bitter and angry as he'd seemed when he was older.

He was still Al. The same guy, somewhere underneath all the hurt and anger. )

Not being able to walk would drive anyone out of their mind!

Do you want me to help you find him?

[She can imagine that panic. She still hardly felt calm, and as she knew from the Port, fear like that could be disastrous when you were suddenly equipped with powers you didn't understand and couldn't control. She still remembers the light fixtures and mirrors shattering all around her that night.]

You don't, like, change the same way you did that one time if you're scared, do you?

[And then, there's a look of concern.]

Were you injured recently or something?

You probably want to find Oz, too, don't you?

( She smiles, shrugging her shoulders and taking a step to the side as she scans the area. )

Ha! No, morphing's voluntary. You have to choose to morph!

( Though she wonders sometimes if dreams can't be powerful enough to trigger the process. Ahiru's question pulls her up short. Collette looks back to her, focusing on Oz's face and feeling a moment of disorientation.

She smiles. )

No. I've been paralyzed from the waist down since I was born. It's no big deal for me, but for a guy who's always had total control of his body? I can imagine it'd be something a little like hell.

( It'd seemed that way to the people who were later in life paraplegics, for one reason or another. )

Yeah, but I can help you out first! Besides, I bet he's looking for me too, so maybe he'll catch up before I have a chance to go find him.

[And then there's a grin.]

That's good! Cloaking devices or not, I bet the students would be a little weirded out if they started hearing whinnying in a campus art gallery.

[And then there's a pause. Even if Collette says she's okay with it, she can't imagine the kind of strength it would take to accept something like that. She can't detect any bitterness or anger there, and she'd be lying if she said there wasn't a new level of respect for the girl now.]

Mm, we should probably find him as soon as we can, then. You know him better than I do, though, um... Will he be okay once we find him?

( Yes. No. Collette can't make that call -- the reality of the situation might not have sunk in. If he's in shock, then in a way, it's better for him. How he'd react to fully realizing what it meant to be paralyzed...

She pushes those thoughts to the side. No reason to worry about theoreticals. She would save worrying for once she found him. )

He'll be okay. Caesar's resilient for a guy who doesn't do a lot of fighting directly. He's a thinker. He can rationalize all of this, if he needs to.

( Rationalize that it's not permanent; deny what it doesn't feel like for now. )

Not that I wouldn't give money to see a horse trotting around campus all confused!

MISSION: GRAB THE EYEBALLTAUR

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