Logs:Levelling Sideways

Levelling Sideways
Dramatis Personae Hive, Lily, Skye
In Absentia	2021-11-08 <<The hell does that mean, though? Their shit's faulty? You're like an alien? Got your powers from the Powers Fairy?>>
Location <PRV> VL 403 {Geekhaus} - East Village
This is a small, two-bedroom apartment, the living room semi-open to the kitchen and dining area, a single bathroom situated between the doors to the bedrooms. The common areas are beautifully appointed with solid, matching handmade wooden furniture in intricate geometric mosaics. The kitchen table is ringed with coordinated but not identical chairs, two of them modular with low scooped backs, designed with winged bodies in mind. The wide, low coffee table fits neatly into the corner of a modular sectional couch, and the immense television is enthroned in an entertainment center that also houses various consoles and video games. The walls are lined with bookshelves laden with comics, roleplaying supplements, board games, speculative fiction, and a grab-bag of technical texts. The walls in between are adorned with some framed posters of classical science fiction and fantasy media along with a few pieces of gorgeous if unusual original art. It's a glorious day outside, and the windows have been thrown wide open to let in the sunlight, the bustling noise of Tompkins Square Park, and the not-exactly-fresh Manhattan air. Tired but sleepless, Skye is stretched out on the long side of the couch in blue pajamas covered with cartoon penguins, under a soft weighted blanket and (also soft, also weighted) Cat. Her biggest, most ludicrous custom laptop is open on the coffee table, displaying several overlapping windows monitoring local network activity, CCTV feeds, police scanners, and, of course, Twitter. There's also a mostly full bowl of Honeycomb cereal gone mushy and bloated, having soaked up all of its milk, and half a pot of coarse Yunnan black tea gone cold. The Haunting of Hill House is playing with the volume turned just low enough for the jump-scare noises to come out all the more startling. Knock-knock-knock! Outside, Lily is tapping on the Geekhaus door, loud and just out of sync with the next jump-scare. She's dressed in a long sleeve grey crop top, high waisted barrel cut jeans, and a brown chore jacket, black daypack tossed over one shoulder. There's a urgency in her thoughts, mixed with guilt for not getting here sooner, guilt for being here and not at Riverdale, a lot of uncategorized guilt. "It's Lily," she says to the door. "Let a cleric in?" << ugh, >> the soft whisper of Hive's voices rising up from all around them would constitute a jump scare of its own if it didn't feel so much like a part of them right now, like a thought they're each having in the back of their minds, << let our honeycomb go gross. >> He's VERY DISAPPOINTED in himselfs. Equally disappointed in the Honeycomb-free cupboards at the (extremely cutesy) (beachy-vibes) bungalow surrounding him right now. No food but a lot of coffee, there, which they can feel in a secondhand jitter -- who knows how many times the mug at his hand has been refilled by now. More than a few. There's a rustle of skepticism that comes through at Lily's self-descriptor: << mmm you are definitely multi-classing. >> Skye doesn't actually jump at the knock, but she does "aah!" and set all the windows and glassware in the apartment rattling. Cat cracks open one eye and closes it again, unimpressed. << Fuck, why don't we have electronic locks? >> She wiggles out from under blanket and feline both and hobbles carefully to the door. << Hell, why don't we have food? >> She open the door and flashes Lily a tired smile. "Heeey. You didn't have to hike all the way over here for my gimp ass. My lab buddies doing ok over there?" She's working her slow way back to scoop up the neglected bowl of cereal, and despite her complaint about the absence of food asks, "Want some coffee/tea/Honeycomb/whatever?" << Does switching classes at will count as "multi-classing"? >> "It's not a problem -- I'm sorry I don't have a key or something." She cringes internally -- <<don't need a key or anything it's not like I'm a common guest.>> Lily glances over the apartment quickly. "I'm okay --" <<oh I should have brought boba she likes boba -- Hive if you drink coffee do we get to taste it?>> "--but maybe I can start new hot water for you? You should sit." She's definitely a cleric right now -- her healing stretches out around Skye's leg, feeling out the damage but not getting to work until Skye sits down. "Allan is a piece of work, but in one piece. Lot less damage, this time." <> The question of food puts a different kind of rustle through their mind, like a wind sighing soft and cold through the canopy Hive spreads over all of them. << ... could be more on the ball about grocery orders, >> is all he says. Somewhere far away, they are picking up a cup of coffee -- hot and strong and unsweetened, savoring it as it rolls across all their palates. << Should've left him in pieces. >> Hive is enjoying the coffee but grousing about the news of their newly rescued bigot. << Must've got some XP this weekend, at least. Level up in... fuck. >> There's a distinctly disgruntled feeling prickling through them. << -- actually I hope you never have to do this shit again. >> Skye surrenders bowl and teapot both to Lily, not nearly as reluctant or anxious about letting a guest wait on her as she really expects to be. << I don't think going from healer to whatever the hell that was is leveling up. >> She eases herself back down to the couch and tries to shimmy back under the blanket without upsetting either her injury or Cat. "Man, I was only gone for like..." << Two weeks? Three? A month? >> She doesn't seem too fussed about either food or drink now, satisfied with vicarious coffee. "It's kinda scary how many of them think Allan is a great leader." << Him, or any white dude who yells loud enough. >> She's trying not to imagine another raid, gunfire and darkness and pain. << No one should ever have to do this shit. But. They can't suppress me. >> <<Leveling sideways, maybe.>> Lily is taking the bowl and teapot to the kitchen, setting the bowl to one side while she figures out the hot water. <<Kettle? Stove?>> There isn't a lot of urgency on this front -- there is phantom coffee to enjoy. "Twenty-one days. Twenty if you don't count Saturday." Her thoughts run to the first raid, of the one bus full of injured people and everyone they left behind. Her healing kicks in, then, coaxing threads of bone to grow a little bit faster around the break. << What, you think the other labs are going to give up?>> Her next thought -- << told you so >> is a bit smug. From the kitchen, Lily has the decency to look embarrassed. "Sorry. It's not just you, though, if that helps." Lily turns, finds at the end of one counter the Zojirushi water boiler that she suddenly already-knew was there. << Never know. They're a government project, shit gets mothballed all the time. >> A mental shrug, though somewhere underneath thoughts just out of reach are being sequestered away beneath a thickly knotted tangle of roots. << The hell does that mean, though? Their shit's faulty? You're like an alien? Got your powers from the Powers Fairy? I don't get it. >> Skye looses a breathy and slightly hysterical laugh. "Twenty-one days." << What's really fucked is I can't even tell you if it felt like more than that or less. >> She gathers Cat to her chest, an indignity drowsily endured. << Yeah, but I'd known you for all of 15 minutes, and Occam's Razor said you were full of shit. >> "Well, Occam's Razor really shat the bed on this one." Though she speaks this last aloud, her voice is so quiet that even Lily hears it more clearly through the hive than her ears. << I would so take "aliens" over what probably happened. >> She closes her eyes, riffling through memories of another lab made hazy and disjointed by time and trauma. << My dad was one of the researchers who locked my mom up, and I think he did genetic experiments on me when I was a kid. >> The thought feels odd, resonating with the sleepless nights she'd already spent grappling with this particular bit of existential horror. <<Felt longer to me.>> This thought is quiet, one that wouldn’t be shared out loud and Lily is slightly embarrassed to let slip into the hive. She shrugs, small, <<Occam was a weird monk>> before adding water to the teapot. <<They don’t seem in danger of losing funds, is all.>> New tea is found, added to the water. Lily’s thoughts drift over data, over literature, to her own research at Prometheus with a curl of the stomach. “What your dad’s name?” is said out loud. << I did that,>> betrays her thoughts, though memories clarify — Lily in goggles bent over tubes and Petri dishes of cells, no lab rats in sight. << Joshua can still work with you, though? Matt? So you'd be like, one of those boring unimaginative aliens that's just humans with some apostrophes thrown into their names. S'kye. >> Despite the jest Hive's stomach has clenched further at the others' memories; they can feel his tightened grip on his mug, the harder clench of his teeth; below it, old and worn, an echoing twist of guilt. << Wow, uh, if you ever want to borrow some family -- a lot of people's X-Gene seem to come like a package deal with a shitty parent or two but I did not sign up for that special so -- >> << I don't think a little lobbying is going to cut it. >> Skye finally opens her eyes again, though she is looking through rather than at the show on the screen. << Calvin Laramie Johnson, MD-PhD. I don't know if the fucker still works for Prometheus, but he hired a PI to find me last year. With or without him, Prometheus knew who I was as soon as they ran my DNA. >> She shudders, nestling deeper into the couch. << Boss is real excited about you, >> pipes a cheerful voice from the terrifying whirlwind of her last few weeks. << Joshua can copy me, Matt can -- >> She mimes a puppeteering gesture, << -- do his thing. But they ran a lot of tests. I don't have an X-gene. I'm not a mutant. >> Her breathing speeds, her sense of space teeters, and her vibration sense jangles with the background noise she'd long ago learned to ignore. "Not much chance I can just pretend it's aliens, huh?" Lily’s jaw tightens too, hands curling tighter around the teapot when she brings it back out and sets it on the coffee table. <<Joshua and Matt — I’m not sure how, but their powers aren’t X-gene specific. Far as I can tell, mine is.>> There are theories bouncing around — interactions at the protein level, at the cellular level, in the nervous system — that are quickly dismissed by the clanging of recognition. “Wait, Cal Johnson?” A pile of papers on a messy lab bench with his name on it, a enthusiastic conversation after Lily’s midterm presentation. “Shit. He was there in 2019, still.” She pauses, trying to focus back on Skye’s leg. “He could be an alien. You never know.” << You want to claim aliens, I'll back you up. >> There's a simmering of protective anger somewhere under Hive's words. << Don't think that motherfucker's got much claim to your life story, anyway. May as well write a new one. Jesus, you knew him? >> This is trapped somewhere between incredulity and disgust. << Wonder if they let him know. What would that memo look like. >> Skye bristles inwardly. << Use his full name, like he's a mass murderer (he probably is). >> She reaches for the tea automatically and refills her mug (black with green text that reads ":~$ sudo apt-get install caffeine"). << Thank the gods he wasn't at Dirac. I bet they were so fucking smug. "Oh hey we found your kid and the procedure worked! But she did a terrorism on us so we got dibs lol." >> She scrunches her fingers into the velvety cover of her blanket. << Do you think you could find out where he is (or what the fuck he did to me)? (she's risked enough) (there's more important things) >> Somewhere far beneath that, tangled with a heavy sinking fear she's been trying to ignore since arriving home, she knows they want their experiment back and they'll try to do it again. << Yeah. To hell with his goddamn science project. Let's go with aliens. >> More memories float up in their head -- a nice email, signed Cal, a flutter of pride in their stomachs at a science well done. Layers over Skye's memories and distorts as Lily scowls. "Laramie is a stupid middle name." Hive's disgust mixes in with her churning self-loathing -- Lily tries to push it down, aware of how self-centered she must seem to the rest of their mind but unable to hide it. <<when you're back can we do a crash course in being telepathproof>> Lily settles on an open bit of couch and reaches for Skye's leg, hand hovering <<is this okay/makes it easier if i just>> the same moment consent comes -- she touches her then, lightly, as she scales up from Lesser to Greater Restoration. "You're definitely the coolest alien," she says out loud. There's a cascade of doubts << (will Takeshi do me one more favour) (fuck should I have worn a ski mask, do they know what I'm doing) (can we even get that off-site) (I got Polaris's, we can do this) >> that slowly settle into determination. <<Yeah. Yeah, I can. I will.>>