In UE, Valentines Day celebrates YOU.

[initiates]

Date & Time: Feb 14th, 2742
Location: Vandrova, the UE Capitol
Characters: Anyone willing to follow the origin of the broadcast.
Summary: The broadcast corrupting the AI is decoded, and Transports are able to travel to the source if they wish. OOC info here.
Warnings: n/a, tell a mod if a warning is needed.

The Transporter drops you in the middle of the street. It wasn’t supposed to, it was going to be a secluded field on the outskirts of Vandrova, but… well, time isn’t exactly behaving lately, if you hadn’t noticed. Luckily, no one around you seems to notice anything out of the ordinary. Everyone on the street around you — and it is tightly packed — is celebrating. Candies get tossed out of windows and fall into the crowds, bakers hand out free confections from their storefronts, children run and play through the crowd, even teenagers look a little less sullen today. Flower crowns have made a comeback, and you might just find yourself wearing one (or several) as you make your way through the crowd. The celebration seems to center on one grandiose building, the new headquarters of the United Earth’s council.

But, sometimes… things begin to look a little strange. Sometimes time seems to slow down around you, coming to rest in jerky fits and starts. You can still move, but everything around you is playing back like a glitching VHS. And when it comes back, all in a rush of motion and time, things are different. What had just been a celebration is now a riot. People shove through the crowd, shouting angrily, waving any improvised weapon they’d been able to get their hands on. There are still decorations and regalia in the United Earth theme, but now people are ripping them angrily down, tearing them apart. The crowd surges against a line of well-armored men in black who strain to keep them back; they seem to trying to be rush that same grandiose building, and now and then a homemade firebomb might shatter against one of its stone walls, scorching the white into black but otherwise doing little else.

But then time crumples one more time, and the celebrations are back.

Huh. Weird, isn’t it?

The new UE Council’s base of operations would be a good place to search for the signal broadcast point of origin, but characters are welcome to go anywhere in Vandrova they’d like to. And try not to get caught up in any of those sometimes-riots, those look nasty.

[[ ooc: Feel free to let Liz (buttadventure) know if you have any specific questions about this setting or what you can find in it! There will be a second OOC info post up tomorrow about furthering this mission, so keep an eye out for that, and feel free to incorporate its information into threads here. ]]

Comments

[khajidont]

[Jaime rarely goes on missions as Blue Beetle anymore these days. He's too bright, too conspicuous when so many of their missions rely on the simple act of blending in, and without knowing what awaited them, he assumed the same for this one. In theory, it would have worked well; in the midst of a cheering crowd, he's nothing more than one more reveler. He can see Batwoman close by, just out of the corner of his eye, but nobody seems to notice or mind her strange attire. What he wants to do is turn to say hello, or perhaps just keep an eye on her to see what she's planning on doing here.

What he doesn't count on is everything shifting on him first. In an instant, someone swings a small knife at him, looking for nothing more than another target to take their anger out on. A year ago, Jaime could have gotten seriously hurt with that sort of attack coming out of left field. Now, after all the training he's done with Nathan, it's instinct that has him veering out of the way before grabbing and twisting at the person's arm until the knife clatters to the ground.

He snatches it up, mostly so nobody else gets at it, and the next moment, it's a horn with a cheery little streamer attached to the end of it. Jaime squeezes it, and it wheezes a merry little squeak. Jaime turns his head to see Batwoman there, still present, and he regards her with wide eyes, unsure of just about everything that's happened.] Did you see that?

[Did that all really happen?]

[gevurah]

[ She needs to get out of this crowd and fast. She knows how to blend in, but being transported into the middle of the streets has thrown her off guard and she's almost swept up as the celebrations kick up again.

Jaime's emergence mildly shocks her. She wastes no time moving toward him, a hand clamping down on his shoulder to direct him away from this crowd. It's not safe, she realizes. The timeline must be unstable. ]

We have to move. Something's not right.

[khajidont]

[So he really had seen that. A part of him wishes that he was just going a little bit crazy, because he has some idea of what must be happening, and it's not a good thing.]

No kidding.

[He tosses the horn aside - something he'll later regret as he realizes it'd be good to see if that changes too once the riots start up again - and follows her lead. It's impossible to get away from the crowd that overwhelms the street, but at the very least they can skirt the buildings to avoid getting assaulted from every direction.] It's like the timelines just folded in on each other.

[That must be what's happening. He hasn't sat around reasoning out how time travel works for the last god knows how long for nothing. The only question is, will it happen again?]

[gevurah]

Take my hand, Jaime.

[ It slips out before she realizes it and when she finally does, she knows it's too late to take it back. The knot in her stomach goes as quickly as it comes and she offers her arm, reaching into her belt for her grappling hook. Get to a vantage point, might help them temporarily to figure out where to go from here, get a good lay of the capital. She recognizes bits and parts, not all of it. ]

I don't think our exact destination was intended.

[khajidont]

[Jaime gives her a strange look as she addresses him by name, but he leaves it at that. There's a time and a place to talk about the obvious elephant in the room, and that place is not the capital of the UE, and the time certainly isn't in the middle of a celebration-riot.]

Yeah, all right, [he says, looking at her in assessment for a moment longer, then takes her hand as instructed. He looks up towards the nearest rooftop, well aware that wherever they're going, they're certainly going up.] I think I can see where we're headed.

[It's the biggest building in the area, of course, the same as it would be in any video game or movie. There's some truth in fiction after all.]

[gevurah]

[ Just before she can pull them closer to the edge of the roof, the air around them begins to shift and then the clouds in the sky pull in opposite ends like they can't make up their mind in which direction to go. The blue, clean sky is quickly replaced with a greyish fumes and the smell of something burning. The cheering below overtaken by screaming and rushed footsteps, things being smashed and people getting hurt.

Something explodes outside the building, with enough force to knock the hook out of its place and send Kate and Jaime plummeting. ]

No!

[khajidont]

Crap!

[Jaime's free arm flails for a moment before he remembers the fact that luckily, he can fly. Not for the first time - and hopefully not for the last time - he's thankful that his suit lurks just underneath his skin for moments just like these.]

I got you! [He lets the armour on his back transform first and his translucent wings spring for in short notice. He flaps them a few times to stop their downward momentum, the rest of his armour trickling out from underneath his skin as a viscous liquid before hardening into its usual carapace. With a grunt, he reaches around to support the rest of Batwoman's body so he's not just dangling her in the air by one arm and makes his way towards a building that's not currently on fire.]

Well, so much for secret identities.

[gevurah]

Wha —

[ The whirlwind of events that sweep them has her distracted for a fleeting moment, from the chaos that's erupted in this timeline to the boy she was holding suddenly donning familiar blue armor. She clings tightly before he's able to support the rest of her. As they approach the stabler building she pulls herself free, dropping down to land on her own. Her boots scrape the building and she turns back to look at Jaime — Blue Beetle, her surprise evident, even behind a mask. ]

It was you the whole time.

[khajidont]

Surprise.

[Superheroes probably aren't supposed to use jazz hands, but Jaime never did receive any sort of superhero training, so that's exactly what he does. They are, admittedly, pretty shoddy jazz hands.

He takes a step closer to the edge of the building, staring past Batwoman and down into the crowd with dismay, unable to see any rhyme nor reason in the mob below. He looks back over his shoulder at her, as if remembering the obligatory discussion to be had in situations like these.]

You'll keep it a secret, right?

[gevurah]

[ She should smack herself for not realizing it earlier, but unmasking her allies has never been her priority. As long as they are competent and not getting in her way, or anyone else's, she sees very little issue with not knowing who they are beyond the mask.

Her surprises fades finally. ]

It's not mine to tell.

[ She dusts off her knees and thighs as she rises. ]

[khajidont]

So... that's a yes. Cool. I'd tell you my actual name - [he did the same with Helena, way back when] - but it looks like you already know it.

[It's not as if he would have just let the both of them fall anyway. Still, Batwoman has practice in keeping secrets, and luckily, the secret identity of the Blue Beetle is the furthest thing from a hot button to the public of Exsilium.]

Did you see Peter's report of what the AI was saying? That it wanted to die?

[gevurah]

[ Her lips pursed together and she nodded, slow and almost reluctantly. Almost. Something about all of it left her with a tight, anxious feeling in her chest. ]

The AI's not usually that morbid.

[khajidont]

I don't think it's learned enough to know how to be suicidal.

[It's an educated guess from the few times that they've spoken, but Jaime more or less knows his way around AIs. Artificial or not, Jaime considers Khaji to be alive, and he knows that it can feel sadness and anger and joy, albeit muted versions of them. He doesn't think Khaji is able to go against its programming enough to be suicidal, which is fair enough; it's not as if Jaime has gone so far down to reach that emotion either.]

So something's gone seriously hinky here, and I wanna figure out what that is. Apparently the AI's signal's been coming from here, but I don't think we're gonna find it down there. We'll probably be finding it there. [He points to the palace.]

You in?