MISSION: GRAB THE EYEBALLTAUR

[initiates]

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.

Comments

[akillingfrost]

She likes when Steph's voice has that proudness to it. It sounds better than when she sounds tired or sad or self-deprecating. Steph's like a wild cat, and wild cats were never meant to be sad. (Sometimes, Ellie wondered if her thoughts would make more sense if she wasn't so tired. Others, she rather liked their strange turns.) "You're getting sentimental on me." She liked it. Sentimental was good.

"Mental fatigue is as real as real as muscle fatigue," she drones in the manner of someone who has been lectured repeatedly. Did therapy count as lecturing? No, mostly it was listening, but there were some things Andrea really loved to hard on about. And never mind that she just admitted to her general state of fatigue, probably not helped by all the energy she burned wrestling with things in her mind. "Hey, you don't think-- no, that'd make no sense," she adds in a quiet mutter. It'd make zero sense for Snow to get caught up with her nightmares, but she worries at her lip with her teeth. "Christ. It's a worry." She's grateful for the hand helping her up, even if she'd have liked to just tug Steph back down to the ground with her.

[controlledvariable]

"I'm always sentimental," That's something of an exaggeration, said with amusement, though there's some truth in it, too. For all that she's generally kept herself distant from people here, once someone gets under her skin she does get sentimental. She might not show it all the time, but she cares deeply about Ellie.

"Even if it's not even your brain?" It's meant to be a bit of a joke, but comes out more like speculation. She's never been particularly religious, but she comes from a world where gods and resurrection are common things, she's not sure how she feels about things like souls. Did the transporter switch peple's souls, or change the imprint, the impulses in the brain that make up a person. Or was it something else entirely? It's hard to think about.

Which is why, once Ellie is up, Steph takes the distraction in the form asking, "What's a worry?"

[akillingfrost]

"Yeah, yeah." Please. If she's really honest, she enjoys the sentimentality, and being able to indulge her own around Steph. If she were being honest... which is is, most of the time, but not when she's enjoying being contrary.

"Just, uh. I mean, obviously my mind is over here, but you know there's always that stuff about muscle memory and reflexes and stuff like that." There's certain things she doesn't talk about, much; none of them do. She's not sure she even really has a word for them. She just tries to ignore they happen. "The terrors. If she smells plastic burning, or something." On a bad day, that can be enough to send her into shut down. "Nevermind. That wouldn't make any sense."

Perhaps not that far from the things Steph had found hard to think about, after all.