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xp_logsA new resident makes her appearance via dimensional portal. Communication is attempted, but a game of charades leads to a bit of a misunderstanding.
'Dad and May are out, Goblin Queen's cuffed and in the back of a cruiser.. time to see if a few minutes of relative quiet can get me out of this form and back to my normal spidey-blue self,' April thought, moving to the back of the warehouse where she'd left her backpack and parked the Vespa. A humming noise and eerie flashes of light caught her attention as she grabbed her bag, hair tendrils flying wildly as a large portal snapped into place in front of her. "What the hell," she breathed out, stepping closer to examine it.
A prickle in her neck was the only warning she got before she was enveloped in a blast of heat and light that sent her face first into the portal. The sudden darkness didn't help her disorientation as she was hurled through time and space, proprioception useless when she couldn't see a solid object to focus on. An interminable amount of time later—probably hours, definitely not days—her knees met rock in a skidding stop as the portal spat her out. A staggering step had the klaxons of an alarm blaring, April dropping back to her knees with her hands over her ears as she struggled to figure out where she was and what was happening.
***
It was still cold.
Sure, part of that could be blamed on it being December in New York, but the deep, gnawing chill in her bones despite being wrapped in a sweatshirt, jacket, and blanket, with a space heater right next to her, couldn't be blamed on the weather. Hell, she was even in one of the enclosed patios.
"No heavy lifting, alternating days on desk duty only, no magic unless absolutely necessary, but go sit outside and bloody freeze to death, that's probably good for you," she muttered to herself, checking the camera feed on her laptop. She knew it was stupid to be afraid of the portal - it couldn't hurt her if she didn't go in it - but no one had pushed it. Doug just set up her computer to receive the live feed so she could babysit the damn thing from the mansion instead of having to go down there.
"You'll have to get over it eventually," she muttered, taking a sip of tea. Eventually, yes. But not today.
An alarm blared on her laptop; she jumped, hastily setting the tea aside, and grabbed the computer, pulling it into her lap. And for a moment, she froze. The wiggling mass of goo was only slightly humanoid, on the ground and writhing, tentacles flailing about.
Her breathing quickened. Her hands trembled. And this is why you're on desk duty.
Topaz ignored the voice in her head, grabbing her phone to write out a hasty message.
Doug's phone was highly customized so that he generally had some idea as to the content of an incoming message even before he picked up his phone. Different people had different alert noises (Kyle's was currently set to 'What Does The Fox Say' as a minor bit of retaliation for the 'robots in your dick' comment, for example), but certain situational contexts also carried their own priorities. So when Jean-Luc Picard announced 'red alert shields up' with the classic klaxon blaring behind it, it meant that Doug should set down whatever he was doing (in this case a barbell in the gym) and take it. He pulled up the message, and announced a quick 'en route' via voice-to-text as he dashed for the door.
Maya’s set up was completely different, given one the fact that she was deaf and two, the fact she’d used some of her ‘Wade money’ to splurge on the latest Google phone, modified by the mansion to make sure it met their stringent security protocols.
She didn’t hear the klaxon going off given that she currently had her cochlear implant turned off and had been enjoying her fifteen minute meditation practice. That didn’t mean she wasn’t immediately alerted however given the buzzing vibration currently going off on the watch she wore.
On my way she texted to let the X-men know she was headed toward the danger.
She was the closest given that she was almost immediately outside the old church in a small Japanese sand garden some ancestor of Xavier’s had set up and then let go to seed. She’d been spending time getting it back to its original design during moments when she really needed outside time.
April was still getting her bearings when the other woman appeared. "Where am I?" she tried to ask as she staggered to her feet, cringing at the distorted sound the mouth in her current form released instead. Her hair tendrils were undulating wildly, blue swirls sliding over wet black with every shift in her movement.
Doug was already trying to figure out who was around and available as backup for whatever had come through the portal, even as he vaulted a low retaining wall to take a more direct path across the back walkways and shrubs. "Page Wanda," he told his phone as the building came into sight.
When in doubt, play the odds.
Wanda’s phone buzzed in her pocket, interrupting a peaceful walk around the grounds. Digging it out, she quickly read the page from Doug and cursed. Stripping out of her warm, but not designed for whatever she might find in the old church. She sent a quick acknowledgment, shoved the phone back in her pocket and broke into a run.
Doug and Wanda both arrived at the building at about the same time, panting slightly but not out of breath. As they entered and saw Maya and the...whatever it was form, he frowned. Not immediately hostile, but... "What do we know?" he asked as he turned to face Maya, ensuring she could see his mouth if she needed. "Any attempt at communication?"
Maya had been keeping a cautious eye on the creature but while her cochlear implants allowed her to hear many things, she hadn’t been able to catch whatever it was trying to say.
“Maybe? I’m still adjusting.” Maya both spoke and signed, wondering if the creature would understand. “You might be better trying?”
"Fair. I am fluent in over three billion forms of communication," Doug intoned in C3PO's clipped affect, breaking the ice a bit. He'd just very carefully avoid thinking about the 'human-cyborg relations' piece. "Hello?" he said to the swirling blue figure. "Can you understand me?" He stood close but out of reach, hands to the side in a nonthreatening pose. "Can you tell us who you are?"
April had finally got most of her bearings back, and was making slow movements away from the portal when the other two showed up and sent her spidey-sense haywire. She took a cautious step forward, relieved that she could understand the male directing questions at her. "Who are you? Where am I?" It came out as a sort of hissing gargle, her plaintive follow-up of "Why am I here?" adding a bit of screech to the end.
There was definite communication within the warbles and hisses and screeches, Doug could ascertain that much. It was difficult to tell if the sounds were some kind of language, or if they were something preventing the being underneath from speaking in a more typical voice. Rising intonation suggested questions. Sense of self was one of the first signs of sentience, so there was almost certainly an 'I' in there somewhere. "I'm Doug, this is Maya and Wanda," he went with his hunch that trying to introduce yourself and establish location was the first instinct when confused. "You're at the Xaviers Institute."
Well, that answered some of her questions, at least. She wasn't familiar with a Xavier's Institute, but she also didn't interact with as wide of a variety of other supers the way her dad and sister had, preferring to mostly keep to herself. "I'm April," she settled on, wondering if her creature form was normal here, to have someone able to mostly answer her questions. "Why did... How.. your portal?" Her tendrils twisted in confused agitation as she gestured at the portal, a broad, sweeping motion that looked almost like inviting someone across a threshold.
Their interactions so far changed things for Wanda. Whatever was happening with the entity in front of them, they weren't looking to fight them, at least. She'd take the wins where she could. Holding out her hands in a calm manner, she asked, through Doug, "Are you injured? We can try to help."
April took stock of what she could feel, shaking her head in the negative when she didn't find anything worse than some light scrapes and burns. She shook her body carefully to double-check, a bit of webbing flying free and landing with a splat at the man--no--Doug's feet and making her laugh, an involuntary explosion of sound at losing control of her webs like that. "Mostly fatigue. Why did your portal bring me here?" She gestured at it again, an emphatic full body movement that had her tendrils waving around her.
The head shake was clear as day, simple gestures were very easy to get. "The portal?" he asked as she gestured toward it. "Yeah, hell if any of us know why or how it does what it does," he admitted. "We've got science people still studying it." He toed the bit of webbing at his feet. "Huh. Spider-person?" he asked, miming the distinctive webshooter wrist movements that Miles and his other spider-friend used.
A tendril was already in motion as April felt the prickly sensation she associated with her danger sense, wrapping around Doug's wrist firmly as her eyes narrowed. She didn't want to fight, and she had thought these people weren't hostile, but if her spidey-sense thought they were a threat she wasn't planning on ignoring it.
“Whoa, no touchy,” Maya said, pulling out one of the shock batons she’d taken to wearing on her back these days. Since Natasha and Kyle had started training her with them, she’d gone almost nowhere without them.
She moved to Doug’s side and pushed the tendril with the lit end of the baton, sending a spark of electricity through it.
“Get off.”
April hissed in pain as the tendril retracted, shooting a web at the girl and her baton even as she leapt toward the wall. She clung just out of reach, claws scraping lines into the walls as she looked for an escape.
The doorway was fairly tall. Maybe if she stayed out of reach she could get out of the building and find somewhere safe.
Wanda's vision shifted into a myriad of shifting strings of various colors as the situation turned decidedly south. Her breath caught in her throat slightly as she watched the creature scuttle across the wall. It was filled with small breaking points, something she'd never seen, but they were constantly moving and shifting.
"Very unusual," she murmured, eyes unfocusing slightly as she nursed the strings she needed. "Distract and corral," she said shortly to the other two, trying to keep a hold of everything.
Perhaps the web-shooter motion had been the wrong pantomime, Doug decided. While this was clearly a spider-person, she had obviously taken his motion as a threat instead of an attempt to communicate. The perils of gesture-based communication. An overactive danger sense probably explained the mayhem, but even as she moved around, it was evasion rather than attacking.
Another strand of webbing wrapped around his right forearm, and the nanites rippled in response. "Easy, friendos," Doug murmured. "There's a misunderstanding, no need for that." As the dimension-hopper pulled the web, he set his feet and lowered his center of gravity to keep from moving.
April gave the web another tug, then abruptly let go. As Doug overbalanced, she shot a web closer to the door and leaped, only to crash to the floor in a dizzying heap as the material disintegrated in her hands. She tried to scramble to a crouching position, but a firm pair of hands kept her in place.
Maya had noticed the direction of the intruder's gaze even as she'd dropped one of her batons to concentrate on using the other. She leapt to cut her off from the exit, trusting the others to have everything else in hand.
Good, Maya had them, for the moment, still and down. Wanda had been busy the entire time gathering what she needed, trying to anticipate where the breaking points would shift to. Sweat trickled down the back of her neck as she concentrated, eyes unfocused but seeing all. She filled her lungs with cold air and then sharply let it out, pulling just so on those fragile points.
April was hit by a wave of exhaustion as she was force-pushed out of the form she'd gotten stuck in. She made a last desperate scrabble for freedom but wasn't able to break the hold she was in, and the day's events and travels finally overwhelmed her. She slumped forward, unconscious, backpack sliding off her shoulder to rest beside her.
Well, that answered whether their 'guest' was human or not. "Shit," Doug muttered, looking at the athletic twenty-something woman sprawled out on the floor. He pulled out his phone and swiped a finger across it. "Page Medlab," he said in a clear voice. "Unconscious dimensional traveler, could someone please come teleport her or something."
He'd really rather not have to fireman's carry her all the way into the mansion, after all.
As the group dispersed, the portal reverted to its quieter state, readings calm and the path for dimensional travel shut once again.
'Dad and May are out, Goblin Queen's cuffed and in the back of a cruiser.. time to see if a few minutes of relative quiet can get me out of this form and back to my normal spidey-blue self,' April thought, moving to the back of the warehouse where she'd left her backpack and parked the Vespa. A humming noise and eerie flashes of light caught her attention as she grabbed her bag, hair tendrils flying wildly as a large portal snapped into place in front of her. "What the hell," she breathed out, stepping closer to examine it.
A prickle in her neck was the only warning she got before she was enveloped in a blast of heat and light that sent her face first into the portal. The sudden darkness didn't help her disorientation as she was hurled through time and space, proprioception useless when she couldn't see a solid object to focus on. An interminable amount of time later—probably hours, definitely not days—her knees met rock in a skidding stop as the portal spat her out. A staggering step had the klaxons of an alarm blaring, April dropping back to her knees with her hands over her ears as she struggled to figure out where she was and what was happening.
It was still cold.
Sure, part of that could be blamed on it being December in New York, but the deep, gnawing chill in her bones despite being wrapped in a sweatshirt, jacket, and blanket, with a space heater right next to her, couldn't be blamed on the weather. Hell, she was even in one of the enclosed patios.
"No heavy lifting, alternating days on desk duty only, no magic unless absolutely necessary, but go sit outside and bloody freeze to death, that's probably good for you," she muttered to herself, checking the camera feed on her laptop. She knew it was stupid to be afraid of the portal - it couldn't hurt her if she didn't go in it - but no one had pushed it. Doug just set up her computer to receive the live feed so she could babysit the damn thing from the mansion instead of having to go down there.
"You'll have to get over it eventually," she muttered, taking a sip of tea. Eventually, yes. But not today.
An alarm blared on her laptop; she jumped, hastily setting the tea aside, and grabbed the computer, pulling it into her lap. And for a moment, she froze. The wiggling mass of goo was only slightly humanoid, on the ground and writhing, tentacles flailing about.
Her breathing quickened. Her hands trembled. And this is why you're on desk duty.
Topaz ignored the voice in her head, grabbing her phone to write out a hasty message.
Doug's phone was highly customized so that he generally had some idea as to the content of an incoming message even before he picked up his phone. Different people had different alert noises (Kyle's was currently set to 'What Does The Fox Say' as a minor bit of retaliation for the 'robots in your dick' comment, for example), but certain situational contexts also carried their own priorities. So when Jean-Luc Picard announced 'red alert shields up' with the classic klaxon blaring behind it, it meant that Doug should set down whatever he was doing (in this case a barbell in the gym) and take it. He pulled up the message, and announced a quick 'en route' via voice-to-text as he dashed for the door.
Maya’s set up was completely different, given one the fact that she was deaf and two, the fact she’d used some of her ‘Wade money’ to splurge on the latest Google phone, modified by the mansion to make sure it met their stringent security protocols.
She didn’t hear the klaxon going off given that she currently had her cochlear implant turned off and had been enjoying her fifteen minute meditation practice. That didn’t mean she wasn’t immediately alerted however given the buzzing vibration currently going off on the watch she wore.
On my way she texted to let the X-men know she was headed toward the danger.
She was the closest given that she was almost immediately outside the old church in a small Japanese sand garden some ancestor of Xavier’s had set up and then let go to seed. She’d been spending time getting it back to its original design during moments when she really needed outside time.
April was still getting her bearings when the other woman appeared. "Where am I?" she tried to ask as she staggered to her feet, cringing at the distorted sound the mouth in her current form released instead. Her hair tendrils were undulating wildly, blue swirls sliding over wet black with every shift in her movement.
Doug was already trying to figure out who was around and available as backup for whatever had come through the portal, even as he vaulted a low retaining wall to take a more direct path across the back walkways and shrubs. "Page Wanda," he told his phone as the building came into sight.
When in doubt, play the odds.
Wanda’s phone buzzed in her pocket, interrupting a peaceful walk around the grounds. Digging it out, she quickly read the page from Doug and cursed. Stripping out of her warm, but not designed for whatever she might find in the old church. She sent a quick acknowledgment, shoved the phone back in her pocket and broke into a run.
Doug and Wanda both arrived at the building at about the same time, panting slightly but not out of breath. As they entered and saw Maya and the...whatever it was form, he frowned. Not immediately hostile, but... "What do we know?" he asked as he turned to face Maya, ensuring she could see his mouth if she needed. "Any attempt at communication?"
Maya had been keeping a cautious eye on the creature but while her cochlear implants allowed her to hear many things, she hadn’t been able to catch whatever it was trying to say.
“Maybe? I’m still adjusting.” Maya both spoke and signed, wondering if the creature would understand. “You might be better trying?”
"Fair. I am fluent in over three billion forms of communication," Doug intoned in C3PO's clipped affect, breaking the ice a bit. He'd just very carefully avoid thinking about the 'human-cyborg relations' piece. "Hello?" he said to the swirling blue figure. "Can you understand me?" He stood close but out of reach, hands to the side in a nonthreatening pose. "Can you tell us who you are?"
April had finally got most of her bearings back, and was making slow movements away from the portal when the other two showed up and sent her spidey-sense haywire. She took a cautious step forward, relieved that she could understand the male directing questions at her. "Who are you? Where am I?" It came out as a sort of hissing gargle, her plaintive follow-up of "Why am I here?" adding a bit of screech to the end.
There was definite communication within the warbles and hisses and screeches, Doug could ascertain that much. It was difficult to tell if the sounds were some kind of language, or if they were something preventing the being underneath from speaking in a more typical voice. Rising intonation suggested questions. Sense of self was one of the first signs of sentience, so there was almost certainly an 'I' in there somewhere. "I'm Doug, this is Maya and Wanda," he went with his hunch that trying to introduce yourself and establish location was the first instinct when confused. "You're at the Xaviers Institute."
Well, that answered some of her questions, at least. She wasn't familiar with a Xavier's Institute, but she also didn't interact with as wide of a variety of other supers the way her dad and sister had, preferring to mostly keep to herself. "I'm April," she settled on, wondering if her creature form was normal here, to have someone able to mostly answer her questions. "Why did... How.. your portal?" Her tendrils twisted in confused agitation as she gestured at the portal, a broad, sweeping motion that looked almost like inviting someone across a threshold.
Their interactions so far changed things for Wanda. Whatever was happening with the entity in front of them, they weren't looking to fight them, at least. She'd take the wins where she could. Holding out her hands in a calm manner, she asked, through Doug, "Are you injured? We can try to help."
April took stock of what she could feel, shaking her head in the negative when she didn't find anything worse than some light scrapes and burns. She shook her body carefully to double-check, a bit of webbing flying free and landing with a splat at the man--no--Doug's feet and making her laugh, an involuntary explosion of sound at losing control of her webs like that. "Mostly fatigue. Why did your portal bring me here?" She gestured at it again, an emphatic full body movement that had her tendrils waving around her.
The head shake was clear as day, simple gestures were very easy to get. "The portal?" he asked as she gestured toward it. "Yeah, hell if any of us know why or how it does what it does," he admitted. "We've got science people still studying it." He toed the bit of webbing at his feet. "Huh. Spider-person?" he asked, miming the distinctive webshooter wrist movements that Miles and his other spider-friend used.
A tendril was already in motion as April felt the prickly sensation she associated with her danger sense, wrapping around Doug's wrist firmly as her eyes narrowed. She didn't want to fight, and she had thought these people weren't hostile, but if her spidey-sense thought they were a threat she wasn't planning on ignoring it.
“Whoa, no touchy,” Maya said, pulling out one of the shock batons she’d taken to wearing on her back these days. Since Natasha and Kyle had started training her with them, she’d gone almost nowhere without them.
She moved to Doug’s side and pushed the tendril with the lit end of the baton, sending a spark of electricity through it.
“Get off.”
April hissed in pain as the tendril retracted, shooting a web at the girl and her baton even as she leapt toward the wall. She clung just out of reach, claws scraping lines into the walls as she looked for an escape.
The doorway was fairly tall. Maybe if she stayed out of reach she could get out of the building and find somewhere safe.
Wanda's vision shifted into a myriad of shifting strings of various colors as the situation turned decidedly south. Her breath caught in her throat slightly as she watched the creature scuttle across the wall. It was filled with small breaking points, something she'd never seen, but they were constantly moving and shifting.
"Very unusual," she murmured, eyes unfocusing slightly as she nursed the strings she needed. "Distract and corral," she said shortly to the other two, trying to keep a hold of everything.
Perhaps the web-shooter motion had been the wrong pantomime, Doug decided. While this was clearly a spider-person, she had obviously taken his motion as a threat instead of an attempt to communicate. The perils of gesture-based communication. An overactive danger sense probably explained the mayhem, but even as she moved around, it was evasion rather than attacking.
Another strand of webbing wrapped around his right forearm, and the nanites rippled in response. "Easy, friendos," Doug murmured. "There's a misunderstanding, no need for that." As the dimension-hopper pulled the web, he set his feet and lowered his center of gravity to keep from moving.
April gave the web another tug, then abruptly let go. As Doug overbalanced, she shot a web closer to the door and leaped, only to crash to the floor in a dizzying heap as the material disintegrated in her hands. She tried to scramble to a crouching position, but a firm pair of hands kept her in place.
Maya had noticed the direction of the intruder's gaze even as she'd dropped one of her batons to concentrate on using the other. She leapt to cut her off from the exit, trusting the others to have everything else in hand.
Good, Maya had them, for the moment, still and down. Wanda had been busy the entire time gathering what she needed, trying to anticipate where the breaking points would shift to. Sweat trickled down the back of her neck as she concentrated, eyes unfocused but seeing all. She filled her lungs with cold air and then sharply let it out, pulling just so on those fragile points.
April was hit by a wave of exhaustion as she was force-pushed out of the form she'd gotten stuck in. She made a last desperate scrabble for freedom but wasn't able to break the hold she was in, and the day's events and travels finally overwhelmed her. She slumped forward, unconscious, backpack sliding off her shoulder to rest beside her.
Well, that answered whether their 'guest' was human or not. "Shit," Doug muttered, looking at the athletic twenty-something woman sprawled out on the floor. He pulled out his phone and swiped a finger across it. "Page Medlab," he said in a clear voice. "Unconscious dimensional traveler, could someone please come teleport her or something."
He'd really rather not have to fireman's carry her all the way into the mansion, after all.
As the group dispersed, the portal reverted to its quieter state, readings calm and the path for dimensional travel shut once again.
