We Will Make Our Plans

[Conduit]

"Noooo, I made it clear there's only so much I can do if you don't tell me what it's for and that you need my help to not explode the planet. And if I'm not getting Nuggies anyway then maybe I'll just let you do that."

[Will Stanton]

"It's for dimensional travel, of course," Will said. "Call it a...personal passion project of mine. I'm not from around these parts either, you know."

[Conduit]

"No wonder you've got such a stick up your butt about this. Fine, I'll make it all safe and boring and stupid so you can go visit home as much as you want or whatever. But only if you stop eating my Nuggies and hand them over!"

[Will Stanton]

"Oh, these? These are mine," Will said, mock-innocently. He reached back into the bag... and pulled out a separate box of ten chicken nuggets, as well as some sweet and sour sauce, and passed them through

[Conduit]

Conduit gasps at Will, making a face but it's a half-hearted attempt to convince herself she's mad when even she has to admit that's a pretty good prank.

"You're sneaky!" she grouches but is soon too busy shoving chickie nuggies into her mouth. Occasionally she spares a hand to pull the laptop out of the slow-that-exists, then prop it open, getting sauce smudged on it but then doesn't have to actually touch it anymore and just using her power to control it.

"Awrimght, mfo you mwamt to--" she swallows, "--have a safe back and forth with this one place only or what?"

[Will Stanton]

"No, we want it to be...modal," Will said, trying to hide some personal information. "Leaving the possibility open for...multiple destinations."

[Conduit]

"Modal. Alright, I'll give you modal and convenient." she says and though there's no sarcasm in her voice it somehow doesn't sound reassuring.

[Will Stanton]

"We also want the university to be intact when we're done! No blowing anything up, no murder, the usual caveats we don't have to give non-sociopaths."

[Conduit]

"Maybe a little bit of wanton destruction at the destination? Make an entrance?"

[Will Stanton]

"No! Zero destruction. A smooth, unnoticeable entrance would be best."

[Conduit]

"Pff! Fine but I'll need some of the components to tweak. The capture field array especially." she says, tapping on the right side of her 'blueprints'. "You've got kinetic photon emitters, so the robot probably knows how to set those up right. Hard-light stuff." She might be able to trick Will into giving her a piece of Antarctic Vibranium, though she's no longer as convinced of that, but if he's double-checking everything with the robot then they would definitely realize that they might as well just open the cell door.

[Will Stanton]

"And you're not planning to use this tech to stage a breakout that will have us chasing you up and down London trying to stop, right? You swear on your Nuggets?"

[Conduit]

"I swear on future nuggets..." she tries.

[Will Stanton]

"It'll have to do. Just remember -- I've got eyes everywhere," Will said, pointing to his eyes and then Conduit as he went to get whichever pieces of equipment ASHLIE thought would be least-likely to allow the goblin to invert space-time or whatever her ultimate plan was.

[Ashlie Minamida]

It takes a couple days for Ashlie to procure the necessary materials as well as checking over Conduit's work with Will serving as an intermediary. No matter how much Conduit claims to struggle to affect Ashlie in her new body, she's not going to take that risk. She doesn't show it much but she is deathly afraid of the little maniac. Still, the gremlin does follow through on her word, though she complains a lot about only being handed small components to program and tweak. No escape attempts are made despite her being allowed occasional access to actual tools. Meanwhile Ashlie is less vocal about it but perhaps equally as annoyed at the, according to her, Frankensteined pieces Conduit produces.

Finally the whole thing is assembled. A platform about five feet across with what can only be described as a greebled doorframe of electronics sat across it's width. On top a reconfigured hard-light emitter sits above a section with a currently open panel. Ashlie places a heavy suitcase on a workbench and opens it up, causing some kind of seal to disengage with a hiss. The inside is almost entirely shock-absorbent foam made from some kind of material that insulates against most wavelengths, from radio over electromagnetic to thermal. In the very center is a single piece of metal, no bigger than the tip of a pinkie finger, shimmering with a metallic sheen that seems to faintly ripple through rainbow hues. It took spending more favors and money than Ashlie would care to admit to get her hands on a rare form of an already rare metal found exclusively in the most remote location on the planet, safe perhaps the bottom of an ocean trench.

"I've checked her work as much as I could." Ashlie says as she looks at the piece of Vibranium. "I can't decipher all of her code but the physical pieces and assembly are sound, the test inputs I've run through come out the way they should. There's really not much left but to test it."

[Will Stanton]

"I'm still not entirely sure how it, uh, functions. Not like the science, I have no clue on how that's supposed to work. But like, how you...uh, use it. It's going to project some kind of portal?"

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Think of it as catching holes in reality. They'd normally lead to random places and dissipate before they could do anything but by catching enough of the same kind in one spot they'll merge into what you could call a portal in terms of practicality. In that you can walk through it. Well, not you specifically because we need you to be the proverbial key, by which I mean you need to sit in a separate chamber we use to parse the coordinates. It should only force the kind of... topological twisting when someone actively steps through it though."

[Will Stanton]

"So, were shooting strange energy at me until I rip a hole in time and space, huh? Well, I suppose been there, done that," Will said, wryly. "So long as the gravitational forces here don't rip the university in two, we'll call it a step up over the last time."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"I can't comment on how pleasant it will be, but it should be safe." Ashlie nods. "Not much different than what we did to get those coordinates in the first place."

[Will Stanton]

"Joy of joys. Well, let's test this out and make sure Conduit hasn't created a secret mind-control weapon. Or Chicken Nugget machine," Will smirked, heading towards the pod to sit down. There were straps? To strap himself in? Well, that boded just fine and dandy.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"I've checked it over five times. Only so much sense I can make out of her non-sense code. Ready for a test-run?"

[Will Stanton]

"Only way to be sure, after all."

Will headed into the pod-thing, sitting down on the chair provided. He paused for a moment, and then went and activated the restraints, locking himself into place. He was a shapeshifter, and cuffs around the arms and legs weren't likely to do much if he really wanted out anyway, but the design might have had them for a reason, and possibly a reason other than 'Conduit thought it would be funny', so better safe than sorry.

The energy in the room hummed, already building as the machine warmed up.

"I'm going to regret this, aren't I?"

[Ashlie Minamida]

"I hope not." she says and with a push of the button the 'navigator chair' as well as the archway activate. At first there's only a slight tingling sensation for Will as a vague heat-distortion like spot in the air beneath the doorway forms. Soon the tingling advances to that intense topological twisting and exponential increase of surface area as the heat haze increases and vague images of a brownish landscape become visible. Something about Ashlie's readouts must be telling her that the weakspot between realities has reached some kind of stable saturation and the forced topological shift releases Will for the most part, only occasionally rippling across his surface like a fractal wave.

"So far so good. How are you holding up?"

[Will Stanton]

"Iiiiii can seeeeeeee sttaaaaarrrrsss..." Will's voice vibrated out, echoing as if it wasn't quite coming from his vocal chords. "Iiiiiiit's.... pooona luuuukin muuttee......"

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Just hang in there. I'm going to test it really quick." she says and activates a small camera drone. It zips through the rift in reality and seemingly disappears. The camera view showing on a nearby screen almost immediately cuts to a garbled mess.

"I was worried about that. The difference in dimensional resonance is messing with the transmission. But on the upside, the drone made it through safely and is still there. I will be right back." she says as she unties the sleeves of her overalls from around her waist and pulls it on proper, putting on a tool-belt and stepping into the portal.

[Narrator]

Going through the portal induces a tingling sensation, like pins and needles -- everything asleep, and then sensation flooding back into them as the dimensional boundaries were pierced. Except it wasn't just on the skin; it was all throughout the body. Just like going from a cold room to a hot one produced a disorienting sensation of temperature, going from one dimension to another provided a disorienting sense of...well, we don't have words for this now, do we? Dimensional travel isn't common enough that it's entered language yet. Still -- one second you were here, and then you were being pulled, taffy-like, across the infinite boundaries of the multiverse, and the next second you were there. Not something to do on a full stomach, certainly -- disorienting to say the least, and one could imagine passing out if the shift was particularly brutal or severe.

((How had Will survived this with no safety equipment and no plan? Oh, that's right, he's made of nonsense and went insane. So, that's fun))

And yet, it seems to have worked, as when Ashlie was able to recover what senses were available to her, she'd find herself in the brownish landscape she had seen from the other side.

[Ashlie Minamida]

Ashlie's awareness of her body is mostly managed by what could reasonably be called her subconsciousness residing in the nanites within her. It's them who are throwing up pages and pages of warning and errors in response to the transition. It's not painful but the sensation is well outside any known parameters and the machine code simply doesn't know how to parse it properly. It's like her everything flickers into static noise for a moment.

And then she's back, disoriented and falling to her knees. She would have face-planted in the dirt if the autonomous function of her left arm hadn't kicked in to catch her fall, it's brassy digits firmly planted in the ground while the rest of her sways and tries to get it's bearings. Sunlight glints off her left hand as the dust settles and only now does it register that something is off. She sits up and looks down at herself. Her left hand is entirely metal, brass and silvery inlays, swirled decorative patterns etched into the surface, so is her forearm and elbow. Her normal (fleshy?) right hand moves to push up the sleeve of her leather duster. Two thirds of her upper arm are more metal, clamped onto the stump of the remaining third. Copper wires pierce into skin that is otherwise free of scars. Birth defect, not accidental.

She blinks and shakes her head. She's still herself, remembers stepping through the portal and yet she catches herself trying to piece together a history for her body like an amnesiac. A couple feet in front of her in the reddish dirt is the drone she sent through, except instead of a hovering camera unit it's a three-inch sphere with four spider-legs and a lens that physically moves in and out to focus, black accordion-folded fabric around it keeping dust out of the mechanism. A small hexagon of metal mesh forms a crude radio dish that has unfolded out of it's back. No wonder the signals she'd received didn't parse from whatever antiquated system the drone apparently got turned into.

"Well I'll be damned, that little devil did sneak--" she stops herself. "What in tarn--" She closes her eyes and purses her lips. Perhaps more than the average person, Ashlie's mind is interwoven with the hardware (or wetware) it is running on and that is the only thing Conduit's meddling could affect. She's still herself, she just needs to take control of some of the more ingrained muscle memory she's apparently inherited.

"Safe and inconspicuous. Damnit, Conduit!" It was one thing to be outdone by a technopath's power. As existentially terrifying as that may be, it's at least something she can't fault herself for. Unlike being tricked by a fourteen year-old, which is a definite blow to her ego. "It's fine. Theorize about how she did this later. She's just made it to transpose whatever passes through. Probably hooked into Will's context-sensitivity somehow and... got a comprehensive reading of the target universe? How does that even--no, stop. Later."

She gets up and shakes the dust off her pants and trenchcoat-ish jacket. The toolbelt around her hips hasn't changed too much safe for some of the more high-tech ones. The two mechanical limbs meant to unspool from her back are gone entirely though, in their place is a rifle slung over her shoulder. She takes a conscious look around the area for the first time and is met with sparse vegetation in what looks suspiciously like the American south-west. Behind her the heat-distortion haze of the portal hangs in the air, conveniently nestled between some rocky outcroppings. In the distance she can make out train tracks and following their path with her eyes she spots cattle and the occasional building, which means there's a nearby settlement, perhaps even a town. She'd told Will she'd be right back but she should at least gather some information first while she's here...

Shrugging the rifle into a more comfortable position she sets out towards the signs of civilization.

[Samantha McManus]

Sam's been having a rough time of things. She's large and more than a little hairy. She has a bit of an aroma that could charitably be described as 'musky,' in spite of keeping up with bathing. Her shifting powers aren't gone per se, but it's been decidedly easier to shift into large and violent things, and frustratingly elusive to get herself down to normal.

Part of that frustration, she's starting to suspect, is that this form agrees with her, to some degree.

And certainly some frustration is also that it doesn't agree with her girlfriend so much.

Or maybe it does. Dating Miriam is confusing.

Still, she can't keep away from teams business forever, so soon she shows up in a uniform. It looks rather like one designed for larger team members like Beast, with the sleeves ending above her elbows and the legs ending mid-thigh as she plods along barefoot, idly scratching herself before taking in the scene and blinking at what she sees.

"Oh. You already did the thing."

[Will Stanton]

Will, twisted into an inside-out pretzel, strapped into (or perhaps just 'to', at this point) a chair, hooked up to an unmentionable number of wires, rotated his 'face' enough to take in Sam.

"Ssssaaammmmm? HHheeeeeyyyyyyyyy..." they semi-slurred.

[Samantha McManus]

"Hey. Sorry I'm late. These things stretch if you shift in them, but for some reason you've got to find one that fits when you put it on. Go figure."

"I don't think Miriam's going to show. This kind of nonsense usually gives her hives, but I guess she's surprised us before."

[Will Stanton]

Will's speech continued to be drawn out, slurring over itself and doubling back. It has been transcribed as normal by our tireless editors.

"When we find the sulky goth dimension, we'll send her a message. She's mostly washed her hands of any of this nonsense, though, yeah."

[Samantha McManus]

"So let me guess, the headmistress didn't wait and just bloody went in."

[Will Stanton]

"She said she would be right back. That was..." Will paused.

"I can't...can't seem to tell time right now. Is six years too long? That feels too long."

[Samantha McManus]

"Yeah, I'm not that late."

"So we think there's a you there?"

[Will Stanton]

"I don't... understand all the physics of it. Or any of the physics of it. But I'm apparently homing in on something, and that's what all the lasers are for.

Whether it's a good, useful version of me? I couldn't possibly say."

[Samantha McManus]

"Wanna make sure I'm not just kidnapping a guy, you know?"

[Will Stanton]

"I suppose roundin' 'em all up and sorting them out later probably isn't the ~best~ plan, as easy as it seems."

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

Thrax probably wasn't supposed to in this part of the Point for any purpose than passing through on the way to his ship. Of course, he wasn't really the type to stick to the path so he found himself peeking into the first lab he saw. It just so happened there was something interesting to see through the door he definitely didn't have clearance to enter. But, hey, it wasn't currently locked.

With his head through the door, he asked, "Is that a new portal? Nice."

[Samantha McManus]

"Who's this guy?" Sam asks, tilting her head at Thrax.

[Will Stanton]

"A friend...a stranger from out of these parts. Probably...not someone who should be down here?

All of the above."