Character Island

"Fair enough," Prisha admitted Bianca was right on not trusting him as he jumped off the lake. "Though I was willing to work with someone who was bashing my head in with a wrench you know?"

"So where's the Mushroom Planet?" asked Vincent. The group entered the elevator and started heading down. "Do you have FTL travel or is it in the Solar System and we just missed it?

"And I'm a bit curious: how are you an AP teacher and a soldier at the same time? I don't think that it'd be easy to juggle those two jobs, especially if a war breaks out."

Cthylla looked at Bianca as she patted her head and nodded, "Okay..."

Donovan groaned as he woke up, light-headed, but alive at least. He thankfully heard Bianca's question, "It's called an Elder Form, it's a way to tap into the tiny fraction of power Nyarlathotep gave me," He shifted his weight to lean upward, "Thing is, I don't normally exhaust myself, I think the island is really taking an effect on me this time."

I do wish to stress this: The power Nyarlathotep gave Donovan and his friends, is an extremely tiny fraction, anymore then what they received would kill them

"Well, most of my students are actually fellow soldiers," Klaus says, searching his pockets. All weapons are present, along with a full pack of cigarettes. "We have a deal: their grade in the class depends on the quality of their service to Leah. Believe it or not, there is a realistic rate of failure. High stakes, you see. We're still figuring out how to fake AP test results and STAR, but Leah thinks it'll work out fine in the end."

"High school students as soldiers?" asked Vincent in surprise. The elevator dinged open on the cubicle farm level. "Did the age restriction for joining the military drop, or did everyone just get held back a lot? Or are they aliens?" He started walking back to the checkpoint.

"And where is the Mushroom Planet? As I said before, is it in the Solar System or is FTL possible? Come to think of it, FTL might be possible any way, if not needed for certain types of interplanetary travel. Sorry for all the questions," he said, "but I like to know stuff."

"Mushroom Planet is on another layer entirely. And the students are aliens. Shoulda mentioned that earlier. Asaorted species. Leah is an equal opportunity employer."

"Hmm," said Vincent. "Okay." By this time, they were out of the checkpoint and in the cave in front of the door. "When you say another layer, do you mean of the earth's crust? Like two or three miles down or so? And what's its relationship with Earth? You say the students are aliens. Is that extraterrestrials, or non-human terrestrials? Going by the second definition, I'm an alien to you, and you're an alien to me."

"Do they have flying saucers? What about laser guns?" Lilith pestered this new man. She liked him. A lot more than those other meanies. She wondered why. He did look a lot like her Uncle Fredric...

"Er, they're not humans, I mean. And they're from Mushroom Planet." Klaus is visibly flustered by the amount of questions. "And a layer, is, uhm... a layer of existence. So this layer is separate from Mushroom Planet, but with the right machine, you can get to the other layer. I mean, we're technically in the same spot as a corresponding area of Mushroom Planet, but, well, we don't have that stupid machine. Damn, for a teacher, I suck at explaining things, don't I?"

Klaus smiles uneasily at Lilith. "Some people have laser guns. I have a blaster. And no flying saucers. They're weirder."

edited 9th Oct '11 6:31:31 PM by SnowyFoxes

"So this Mushroom Pizza place is an overlapping parallel universe?" Lilith said.

What followed was total silence. "... What?"

edited 9th Oct '11 6:32:27 PM by KSPAM

"Well, it overlaps, but it's not... parallel. Uh... yeah, I've only been doing this shit for two weeks, and Leah's still explaining it. And I still haven't gotten over the shock that my ex-wife is a tentacle monster. So. Yeah. Sorry." Klaus grins painfully.

"Well, I get what you're saying," said Vincent. "It's kind of like a dot in the same place on two pieces of paper, right? Only this paper, our universe, is an ordinary white sheet, and that paper, their universe, is a blue piece of construction paper. Or, wait, wait, they're technically only a millimeter away from us, but that direction is orthogonal to all of the axes in three dimensions, so the machine takes us through the fourth dimension - in Euclidean space, that is, not Minkowskian spacetime."

He grinned. "It is kind of hard to describe, but this is working on trans-universal wave functions within the multiverse of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory. By the way, do you happen to have any of your blasters or lasers? I'd kind of like to take a look at it."

"Here. Don't push any buttons. I don't know what all of them do yet." Klaus takes something resembling a hand pistol out of his pocket, except it has several buttons on the finger ridges.

"No, really, be careful."

"Don't worry," said Vincent. "I know the stupidity of going, 'Ooooo, what does this button do?'"

He turned the pistol over in his hands. It was surprisingly light, and seemed to be strong, but he didn't want to try bending it or bashing it with a rock. He looked closely at the buttons; they were unmarked, and as they were on the finger ridges, could be used ambidextrously. Vincent hoped they had some kind of pressure mechanism in them, so that they couldn't go off if someone simply squeezed the gun too tightly. It didn't make any humming or whirring sound, but that didn't mean it wasn't dangerous.

"Interesting," said Vincent, handing the gun back to him. "If I had a good lab here, and you had an extra gun, I'd want to take it apart and study it. But," he sighed, "no labs for me. Bummer."

Klaus puts the gun back in his pocket and scratches his head, surveying the cave with mild interest. "So, did you guys figure out anything about this place? I'm guessing you don't live here."

"I'm not from here," said Vincent, shaking his head. "I got here in an experiment involving teleportation from the DARPA laysarium. Don't know what went wrong yet, though. I live around Anvik, Alaska.

"But this place in general? We don't know much about it, besides the fact that it attracts weird shit. A bunch of people from different worlds came here - some crashing, some just popping in. Either way, I've got a bit of a theory that this island is drawing us in somehow.

"And then there's the matter of that facility," he said, waving his hand behind him. "We didn't get much of a chance to find out what it does, but there was a PDA in there that put it from a date more than a decade in the future, so there's that."

That last comment by Vincent caught Grimm's attention. "The future? What are you-" He stopped, and something clicked. He conspicuously turned back away, covering the group, and said nothing.

"Well, shit. I'm not sure how I got here. I think I was drunk, and Leah got mad, so I figured she'd punish me somehow, but I didn't know it was going to be, ya know, this." Klaus jerks his head in the direction of the cave's mouth. "Anything really dangerous happening, or is it just playing games? Or how about nothing weird at all? That would be awesome. But judging by what you said about the future, I'm not going to be happy, am I?"

edited 9th Oct '11 7:36:47 PM by SnowyFoxes

Vincent shrugged. "I have no clue. For all I know, once we get off the island, we'll all go back to our respective time periods. Maybe, here, it is the future, and I came from the past. Maybe the facility got warped into the past in some way. Who knows?"

They reached the cave mouth, and Vincent froze. The group was gone; the entire area was surrounded by tiny paw prints and littered with animal parts. He leaned down to inspect them. "It looks like rats," he said. "Big ones. I think our people fought back, based on these..." His voice trailed off as he waved a vague hand at the rat bodies.

"They're not here, and there aren't any bloodstains large enough to be non-rat - I don't think so, anyway - so I doubt that they were overwhelmed and eaten. What do you think happened to them?"

"Uhm... I would say that they ran. So... we look for them. I guess." Klaus tentatively goes forward.

"Who cares? They're mean. Like these guys here!" Lilith stuck up her lower lip, pointing to Vincent, Grimm and Prisha.

"Let's go!" She said, grabbing him by the arm, "This place is biiiiig! I bet there's a lot to see! I wonder if they have any rockets or those atom-smashy thingies! Do you think they have a food court?"

Isn't Prisha somewhere else?

What is wrong with this chick?

"Uhm... I doubt there's very much, but we can... uhm, look. But are you sure you don't care about the other people?" Klaus gloomily rubs his stubble. He's probably not going to get his hands on a razor for a while. She's like Leo when he was a kid, except Leo wasn't quite so... spastic. Eh, Leo had always been kind of chill for a kid, so maybe Lilith is the normal one. Except she doesn't seem to be a kid.

Oh what the hell. "Let's go look for atom-smashing things," Klaus says as cheerfully as possible.

I hate my life.

"Yaaaaaay!" Lilith yelled, her exuberance almost stifling.

And then, they were gone. She'd done it again. No one knew how or why, but every goddamn time you took your eyes off of her, she vanished. And this time, she'd taken someone along for the ride. No matter how you looked at it, that wasn't good. Who knew what the poor bastard would go through in transit alone.

As they looked to the empty space that had, until a second ago, been occupied, they all thought the exact same thing.

Oh shit.

edited 9th Oct '11 9:40:17 PM by KSPAM

edited 9th Oct '11 9:45:09 PM by SnowyFoxes

She took Klaus with her.