2014.03.09 - The Eyes Have It

The relative peace in the sky above the Nevada desert is broken by the howl of two labouring G-5 class engines propelling the sleek shape of an ordinarily unobtrusive deep space pursuit craft through the atmosphere. At the helm, teeth gritted, a man with glowing eyes is trying to ignore the deluge of critical failure warnings sprinting across his heads up display. "Come on you beauty. Just a little further." A small explosion sends something metallic and scorched pinging off of his helmet. "Sneck it! Come on, we've been through worse than this. Just a little further."
The distraught vessel drops a few feet as the engines cough and splutter, but finally the craft levels out, landing struts extruding from the vessels underside. An alarm blares through the cockpit as tolerances for landing velocity are broken by a considerable amount. The craft ploughs a patten of three deep furrows into the desert sand before coming to a stop, the whine of reverse thrusters eventually stalling its forward velocity.
A hatch bangs open towards midships, to disgorge the pilot and a generous amount of smoke into the local area. "What is it they used to say? Any landing you walk away from? *kaff*." The figure pulls his helmet off and gazes forlornly into the desert sky. "I probably left a snecking ion trail about ten miles wide." With that, he busies himself putting out a couple of small fires and locating his tools, before any of the locals come looking.
Since they decided to work together, Adam has been in semi-constant communication with Phyla. Which means he tells her things he believes she should know, and little more. Adam is not good with casual chatting, to say the truth. But he told Phyla about Rachel, a time-displaced human woman connected to the oh-so-volatile Phoenix Force. The Phoenix is an entity that makes even Epoch nervous. For good reasons. Epoch is all about survival instincts, Phoenix is death and resurrection. Related, maybe distant cousins. Hardly the same thing.
Still, having an Avatar of the Phoenix as an ally is doubtlessly a good thing. Adam has an affinity for resurrection (and it is rumored, the survival instincts of a mad lemming - nobody is perfect). The idea this morning was to get Rachel to Knowhere and give her a planetary range communicator and a passport bracelet. But there was also this problem with a time-jumping starship that landed in Nevada. It was decided some investigation came before Knowhere. And so Adam teleported the trio to Nevada, to the general area where the ship must have landed. This close Phyla can use her Quantum bands to find the starship quickly.
The best way Phyla's come up with explaining how the Quantum Bands work in terms of energy detecting is likening them to a metal detector: she moves her arms around to find the signature she needs or wants, she hears a beep, moves on. The closer they get, the louder the beep. Then again, this might just be how Phyla is interpreting the bands' power. They're... odd that way.
And indeed, Adam's quite right about Epoch and the Phoenix, whether he knows it or not. Just looking at Rachel fills Phyla's head with all kinds of murmurings. Most of it she can't really make heads or tails of, let alone recognize specific words. It's speech but... Damned cosmic awareness. She nods her polite greetings and take a moment, once they've teleported, to decide what direction is best.
"This way." And she starts flying, the golden glow of the bracers leaving a trail of gold light behind her that exists briefly before fizzling out. Never ask Phyla to fly stealthily.
 
Rachel's meetings with Adam Warlock haven't been getting any less confusing - if anything, it's been the reverse, with the mysterious being having announced that they were to travel to 'nowhere' at some point after they've dealt with whatever's presently occupying his attention. If not for the presence of Phyla, who gets an answering nod and even a quick "Hey.", Rachel might have dug her heels in and tried to get an explanation. She's faintly suspicious that she's the victim of some kind of initiation rite, here. Still, she was right about one thing: Adam can find her when he wants to.
She's not sure how reassured she is by that.
On arrival, Rachel makes sure she's dressed for the occasion, telekinetically rearranging her clothes into the form of her red and yellow uniform, with a spiked leather jacket over the top. Looking around, she begins to reach out telepathically to get the lay of the land when Phyla takes to the air, and takes the lead. "After you, then." Rachel offers with a mental shrug, and lifts off the ground to follow her.
The dirty grey smoke emanating from the space craft is finally snuffed out, but enough of it has escaped into the air to act as a beacon to anyone who might be looking in the right direction. Not to mention the energy signature of the sputtering engines as it made its less than graceful landing.
An empty fire extinguisher is flung on to the sand, while the ships pilot stands back, a rueful expression on his face. "May as well paint a bullseye on my back while I'm at it," he growls. The ships onboard tool kit is finally located and repairs start proper.
While the spaceman labours, half in and half out of the stricken vessel, the computer on his wrist starts bleeping plaintively. He straightens up, flinging the multitool in his hand on to the desert floor, before giving the device a stormy look. "Okay, I'll bite. What could /possibly/ make this situation worse?" He jabs a few buttons on the display, the error message springing into a three dimensional display. "I'm in a hurry, just give me the highlights." 'TEMPORAL EVENT WARNING'. 'APPROX -183YR CHRONOLOGICAL DISCREPANCY.' 'APPROX 17 PERCENT DIMENSIONAL DISCREPANCY.' 'DOGHOUSE HQ LINK LOST.' The glowing red letters whirl and rotate, like a merry go round of bad news. "Just snecking peachy," he grumbles.
It's then that he feels it. The strange crawling sensation between his shoulder blades that's kept him alive through a lifelong danger filled career. He loosens the weapon holstered at his right hip and gives the surrounding horizon a quick sweep, his eyes glowing as his Alpha waves penetrate the nearby area for any hidden threat, not that the area provides that much cover. "Maybe that shot to the head was harder than I thought," he muses, running a hand through the mess of curly hair atop his head, unsure what he's supposed to be looking for.
But Adam did explain. It is not his fault he is accidentally cryptic sometimes, his mind is usually dealing with several problems at once and clarity of speech suffers. (At least he is not as bad as Mantis).
Meanwhile, Johnny should be looking up. His spaceship is pretty easy to spot. Crash-landing? It is actually a good thing, since it means the arrival was by accident and not by design. "I only sense one humanoid, but he is active in the psychic plane. Super-human." comments Adam. "The ship has suffered damage, but I believe it remains operational, Quasar?" Maybe Phyla would want to add something.
Inwardly, the daughter of Mar-Vell cringes. She's still not completely comfortable with that name. But she's going to have to get used to it. The bands aren't going anywhere. She frowns. "Energy signature is... odd." She frowns again, as if that's going to fix things, and 'looks' over the data via one of the gems in her right band. "Power's fluctuating. Engines are down. But that signature..." She's seen energy signatures of varying kinds before, but this one? "Out of phase and highly unusual. I don't think the bands have seen anything like this before."
 
Rachel would probably find Adam's explanations more useful if she /was/ the cosmic being he seems to think she is, or thinks she might become. Poorly-understood link to the Phoenix Force aside, she's just a mutant. It's going to take a while for her to get up to speed with the kind of stuff that Adam, and apparently Phyla, take for granted.
Pushing all that aside in favour of dealing with their current problem, Rachel accelerates to draw level with Quasar as she gives her report. "Odd?" She asks, curious, although it rapidly becomes clear that Quasar's not holding out on her. "'Fluctuating' as in 'liable to blow up'?" Rachel asks, glass half empty today. Deciding to be useful, Rachel looks back in the direction they're traveling and reaches out with her mind. "I've got him." She says after a moment. "I'm not reading any pain or distress." She looks back at the others with a bit of a smirk. "Time to drop in on him?"
"Space works in three dimensions Alpha, you idiot," Johnny curses inwardly, his nervous system still a little jangly from the chronal/dimensional hop and subsequent robust landing. Glancing upwards, he sees the skeletal structures of three individuals simply hovering in the air. Blinking his eyes, his vision returns to normal, beholding the rather unique outfits that they each wear, to say nothing of the visible power one of the women appears to be radiating. "Dammit," he rasps, plucking his helmet from the ground and jamming it on to his head, before diving back through the open hatch of the spacecraft, unshipping his sidearm from it's holster, which powers up with a high pitched whine.
Johnny peers round the edge of the hatch frame, his all-white eyes taking in the trio carefully. His gun is held off to one side, not pointing at anyone just yet. "Sorry about the mess. If you give me twenty minutes I'll probably be able to get out of your hair," he yells. *Sneck. They could be anyone. All I need is for someone to yell 'dirty mutie' and that would make my goddamn day.* He runs several scenarios through his head for a couple of seconds. "I...don't suppose you could tell me what planet this is?" Johnny has his suspicions based on the star fields he saw on his hasty arrival, but it doesn't hurt to ask.
Adam lands a few yards from the ship's hatch, examining carefully the unfamiliar design of the space craft. A glance is spared to Rachel, "we will try talking first", he mutters. "You are in Sol-3, Earth," he replies to Johnny. "Since you are speaking the local language, I'd assume you are a human. However, you have crossed through time in a rather violent way. We noticed the disruption from the other far coast of this continental mass. Are you here by accident or design?"
Phyla-Vell has by now decided that the readings are reliable enough to deduce no explosions. "Just coming on and off," she replies to Rachel. Nothing to worry about. For the moment. "Luckily you seem to have crashed fast enough and far enough away from anything that could have detected your arrival. And you all right?" she asks of Johnny, as she drops downwards. There's a brief golden aura around her body as she does so, the bracers slowing her descent. "Nothing broken other than your ship?" she asks, nodding to the downed craft.
 
Rachel accepts Quasar's reassurance with a quick nod, then shoots Adam a faintly indignant glance, although there's no real heat behind it. She hadn't been suggesting attacking the guy, after all! She's a little slower than the others to land, her eyes running over the unfamiliar shape of the space ship curiously. Her practical experience of things like this is a lot more limited than her companions', after all. A little belatedly, she lowers herself toward the ground, cutting her powers about a foot in the air and dropping down lightly, her boots crunching into the dirt. She hangs a half-step back from the others, letting them do the talking, but keeping her eyes on the space ship's owner. Not least because he's got that gun. Rachel keeps a light touch on his mind, hoping for some early warning in case he decides to use it.
Johnny let's out a sigh. *Earth. Great.* Then his brow furrows. *Wait. Earth /before/ the war.* He struggles to recall any details from the few battered vid-slugs and pictures he saw of Earth before the nuclear war of 2150AD. Alpha adjusts his grip on his blaster before replying to the first question. "Buddy, if we're even going to start on anything resembling the right foot, don't compare me to a snecking norm. I'm a mutant. Just luckier than most." He shifts slightly, trying to keep the trio in view. "Trust me, it was an accident. I'm a Stront...I'm a bounty hunter. Took some heavy damage in a legit pursuit. I couldn't tell you how the physics of it work, but my engine core spiked just as I was trying to use my time dro...my time displacement device. Must have been some damage to my teleportation rig too. So here I am."
Johnny eases himself out of the hatch, scrutinising the three strangers, gun held down and away. The two women could certainly pass for human, but the other guy...
He looks at Phyla as she speaks. "You sure? The three of you found me easily enough." Johnny shrugs dismissively at Phyla's enquiry about his health. "I'm fine. Thanks. Taken harder knocks in my line of work." He peers at the redhead keeping a circumspect distance, unsure of her intent. "I'm Johnny Alpha. Search/Destroy Agent." That's usually enough to send most sensible people running for the hills, but he's almost two centuries removed from that infamy. Johnny takes a short breath. "So what happens now? You taking me in? Impounding my ship?" He squares his shoulders, the glow of his eyes intensifying as his Alpha waves attempt to seek out any deception on the part of the trio.
A mutant? Well, this is where John receives a blank look from Adam's glowing red eyes. But wait, is it important to him? "I am Adam Warlock, native from this word myself, but my genetic divergences from baseline homo sapiens are far more extreme than your own, Johnny Alpha. With me are Phyla, who bears the title of Quasar, and Rachel, who has been chosen by the Phoenix. Perhaps you will find some common ground with Rachel." But that is for the young woman to decide. As for the starship, Adam studies it for a few seconds, "we are not representatives of any of Earth's small nation-states, our concern is the damage you might have caused to space-time. It is true they might want to impound your vessel if they find it here, you would do well to hide it if you are going to remain in the planet for long."
 
Rachel's light mental touch allows her to skim Johnny's surface thoughts without effort. In fact, it'd be more difficult for her not to do so, as long as she's attached to his mind. It's not particularly polite, it's not particularly ethical, and Rachel's so far out of her comfort zone that she doesn't much care. So she gets flashes - his concern for being identified as a mutant she scan understand, but then there's more, images of war, the idea that this world is only known through historical recordings... Rachel might be standing outside a genuine space ship, but it's the mental contact that proves it for her. "You really /aren't/ from around here..." Rachel says under her breath, then goes silent as she feels a spike of irritation from the man. "Hey, the two aren't mutually exclusive!" Rachel replies, a bit testily, before settling down to let Adam provide the introductions.
She's done with hanging back, though, and steps forward alongside Adam as he introduces her, giving him a sharp nod before turning to meet Johnny's usual gaze. She smiles, and just for the hell of it, she lets enough of her power out so that her eyes go blank white, too. "Like Adam didn't quite say, I'm a mutant. Human, too." She lets the glow die down, her eyes shifting back to green. "Nice to meet you, Johnny Alpha." She's doing her best to sound friendly enough.
Rachel's eyes are drawn back to Johnny's ship when Adam suggests hiding it. "Trust me, even with all the weirdness going on in the world right now, people are going to be interested in that." She glances back at Adam and shrugs a bit helplessly. She didn't come prepared to hide a spaceship today.
Johnny quirks an eyebrow as Adam introduces himself. *There weren't any mutants before the war,* he muses silently. *But then this isn't /my/ Earth.* Johnny's Alpha waves return some bizarre peripheral results from Adam's brain, but the bounty hunter is fairly certain he's telling the truth. Still, the very fact that Adam is upfront about not being human seems to relax the grizzled man further. He slowly stows his blaster back into it's holster, though he pointedly leaves the hilt flap open. "Adam," he says neatly, nodding towards the strange man. "I'm going to be honest with you, I don't think Quasar is a proper title for anyone and I have no snecking idea what the Phoenix is. But thank you all for not filling me full of holes when I stuck my neck out. As for the damage to space and time...I'll bill my target when I get back. /If/ I can get back."
Johnny peers at Rachel, as she seems to draw on something outside his perception to confirm his story. As she reveals her own mutation, the bounty hunter even cracks a smile. "Maybe I should get these trademarked," he quips, tapping an index finger against the side of his head. "Likewise," he responds cordially to her greeting.
When the possible interest of this worlds governments regarding his vessel are mentioned, Johnny shrugs. "You wouldn't know it to look at her right now, but the Bloodhound is a stealth ship." He rests a gloved hand on the ships outer hull. "She's just had a rough time of it lately. Once I've fixed her up no one will find her unless I want them to, trust me. I've got enough supplies to keep me going for a good long while. I can keep on the move if I have to."
Adam isn't up to date in all the current human/mutant conflicts. They do seem small, local matters outside Earth. However, he does know human mutants are fairly common and have been for decades. "I am afraid you are not even from the current timeline, Johnny Alpha. This would complicate considerable returning you to where you belong." Perhaps it is why Phyla saw him out of phase. That woman needs to learn to use the Quantum Bands sensors better. "I suppose we can help you hide the ship to prevent conflicts with locals, and perhaps Rachel can tell you about the world."
 
Rachel can't help buy be faintly amused by Johnny's reaction to the titles and honours Adam provides for Phyla-Vell and herself. "That makes two of us." She says under her breath, when he admits to his ignorance of the Phoenix Force, and snorts a bit when he coolly mentions who's going to be paying the bill for the damage. Considering the dire way that Adam's talked about things like that, Rachel gets the feeling that there might not BE anyone to bill!
She smirks back at Johnny as he takes her little display of her own talents in his stride. "Too late." She tells him lightly, thought she's clearly amused by his suggestion, and gives him a nod when he takes her greeting in good part, too.
Adam gets another questioning look when he offers to hide Johnny's ship. "I hope your idea for that isn't for me to make everyone in the state look the other way until the repairs are done?" She says hopefully, then looks surprised when Adam reveals that he has a different plan in mind. Introduce a mutant from the future to a completely different world? Actually... that's something she should be good at. Time to prove she's learned something since she's been here, she guesses. "Sure." She agrees with a shrug, then looks over at Johnny again. "Feel like a crash course in the twenty first century?"
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