2013.07.09 - Brief Interlude

Between Void and Illyana, Stormwatch is damned mobile. Most of the time the blonde sorceress can open portals damned near anywhere to save Void the resources. All the AI needs to do is get her a solid image of where to go, which isn't hard for Void.

There is that downside of having to travel through Limbo, though. Which happens to be where Illyana is at the moment. She's in her work room, standing before a large multi-faceted crystal that's about the size of the Dark Crystal. It hangs in the air and slowly rotates. In each facet is a different image. She's dressed in black leather and chains, arms crossed before her. A portal is open against one wall, the other side leading to Halo while portals open at various spots of the large room for the team that called in needing a lift home. The blonde continues to watch the crystal, though nothing of seeming note is happening in any of the facets.

Spartan stands at Illyana's side, having come through the portal himself, wearing the nice crisp white suit he's known for when he's not running about being all heroic, a curious expression on his face, "Shiny." he says of the crystal before glancing at Illyana, "Is there a reason a hell dimension portal sits open in the Towers? I was under the impression prolonged exposure of that nature could be detrimental."

Rose stayed at Halo last night, very rare occurance but it happened and she was waking up, having used the bot Reginald, or 'Reggie' as she mumbled at it when she demanded it show her how to use the Keurig, having made a mess of it on her own half awake attempt. Waking attire is worn, something she rolled out of bed and threw on as she ambled bare foot through the place with the steaming cup of coffee. A large shirt tattered horizontally accross the back in strips, shorts of lycra barely visible beneath the low hanging hem at her thighs. Pausing as she sees an open Limbo portal a finger taps the mug, her blank waking stare of 'overslept' appeal coorelating exactly /what/ she is staring at before she heads into the portal, raising the mug to her lips as blue eyes readjust...

Nate was wondering the same as Spartan. What is doing a glowing portal inside the Halo building. It can’t be anything too dangerous, since Void would be doing something about it if it was. So... probably one of Illyana’s. "Hey, Rose," he greets the white-haired girl, "back in a minute." And he steps through.

"Yana, Jack, anything interesting going on?" He sounds somewhat bored, never a good thing for Nate. Being bored seems to give him crazy ideas that he rarely hesitates to implement.

"No, it's fine." Illyana says without looking over to Jack. The images in the scrying crystal aren't static either. They shift and change. One always seems to show people on a beach. "Limbo's energies don't cross the portal, otherwise I'd be able to cast my spells on Earth just by opening a stepping disk next to me. I think Void called it an 'event horizon'. The biggest danger would be my demons wandering through. Besides." She finally looks over at Jack with a smirk. "It's just a *splinter* Hell dimension." The smirk doesn't quite touch her eyes though, that chilly cold blue.

As Nate and Rose step through she looks over her shoulder and nods to the pair of them. "Hey."

Spartan nods his head as she speaks and then turns back to eye the crystal, "So whats going on?" he asks, assured his tech isn't going to go hell monster now and his towers try to kill everyone inside them.

Nate, who is far more awake just passes on in, Rose steps aside to let him go first before following through and offering an upnod to Illy, a glance to Spartan as well as Nate all the while her lips barely seemed to escape the rim of the mug. Seems her question is the same as everyone elses, though she isn’t bored, just curious and too tired/lazy to even ask, the answer would reveal itself soon enough.

Nate grins at Rose, murmuring an amused ‘good morning’ just for her to hear, then turns to the other two. "I didn’t know you could do those portal things last for long," comments the young psion, walking closer to the blonde sorceress and the alien android. He looks at the crystal curious, too. Anyone he recognizes there? Spartan asked a good question, so he waits for an answer quietly.

Hey, Limbo is perfectly safe! OK, not really. Mostly. OK... not really. "I just haven't told it to close." Illyana says of the portal. "It'll close on its own eventually." But since she was here, she figured she'd just leave it open. Unlike Void, it doesn't cost her anything to do so.

Someone with an exceptionally keen eye (or facial recognition) might pick out that one of the people on the beach scene that's always on one of the 'screens' is Superboy. The others seem like random snapshots though some are of notable locations. Stonehenge. Macchu Picchu. The Pyramids of Giza. Others look like bookstores or just gatherings of people. "I'm just keeping an eye on things. Spikes or surges in mystical power." She looks over to Jack now. "What's our fallout on the Helspont encounter?"

Spartan's expression grows slightly more serious at that, "He has, of course, vanished from sight. I have Void scanning the debris of the dessert installation and from what I can tell we struck a blow though hardly a fatal one. It was a spawning facility, used to increase their numbers. They breed like-" he pauses considers, "rabbits I think is the proper Earth animal comparison. There was also a reactor of some kind down there that he was building, though it's unclear as to why, and why use nuclear technology to do it? It's so very... backward." he shakes his head, "We've answered a few questions and only received more for our troubles. Still... we equated ourselves well in the battle, injured him even, without losing any of our own. A win in anyone's eyes." he pauses, "So you're tracking magic energy signatures?" trying to equate her work with something he's more famliar with.

A word akin to 'morning' is grunted back at Nate while her eyes narrow and focus on the flickering imagery on the ball, blinking a couple times as if Rose is trying to clarify something she saw and then looked away to glance between Illyana and Spartan. "So to look for Helspont you're stalking diners, streets, monuments and images of Kon on a beach? It's like the Hallmark channel..." She trails off with a grumble and.. -sip-.

Nate blinks at Spartan’s assessment of the battle. That is better than he expected, all things considered. "Helspont faced us alone despite having hundreds of warriors close that could have assisted him, he was dumb. And yet he came close to beat us all. I guess next time he won’t be so arrogant. We gotta find a way to weaken him, why is he so different to the other Daemonites anyway? He had this blue flaming alien skull for a head."

"That would imply that I'm following particular people." Illyana tells Jack. "It's more... I'm looking for the concentrations and flares of magical energy, and checking to make sure that it's nothing to worry about." She nods over to the facet in her crystal that has Stonehenge in it. "There's enough oomph at Stonehenge that it always shows up so I just make sure no one's trying to tap into that power for the wrong reason. Others, people are doing spells of note, or just a confluence of magical energy... Most of it's nothing worrisome." Ravager gets a chuckle. "I'm not actually looking for Helspont. I leave that to Spartan and Void." She looks back to Jack again. "Sorry I wasn't there. I had another mess to deal with."

Spartan smiles a bit, "You don't think as he thinks. He faced us alone because he knew we were no threat to him, he knew there was no danger. He would no more have summoned his military then you would summon the Army should you find yourself faced with an angry class of school children you were willing to kill if it came down to a fight. We were beneath him. He came alone to send that message, to show those of you who'd never known him the hopelessness of fighting against his vision. It was a demoralizing tactic, and one that failed miserably in my opinion. He did teach us a lesson, but it was not the one he intended to, which will leave him off balance in the future. Because now he must fear what he does not know." He then waves Illyana's concerns away, "He's still around, you can be pummeled with the rest of us next time." he offers with a grin.

This... Was all over Rose's head, she just sat there, slowly lowering the coffee mug from her lips to have it rest in her clutches like a prize while blue gaze skips from one to the next. "So, Jack. Let me get this straight, you think we lost so poorly, yet you want to toss us back at him, just add Illy to the mix so she can get mind screwed too?" One hand rose to her head as she spun a couple joined fingers around an ear, shaking her head like it just was not coming through right or -someone- is fruit loops... Or she's stone deaf. "Please tell me we found a better way at least for round two of being mental roadkill?"

"No, but if he was so strong he would have taken over the Earth a long time ago," explains Nate. "He wasn’t that much stronger than us. I think we could have beaten him if he had not knocked Conner out with a psychic attack." Of course that was probably why Helspont did it. So yeah. Nate frowns.

"Don't underestimate how much Pride will save our asses." Illyana muses to the others. "And I wouldn't say that he thinks we 'lost so poorly'," Illyana says, glancing over to Rose. "With some opponents, holding them in check is the victory." Something that Illyana knows about in spades. "What would really help is if Nate were better on defense and put his energies into keeping us safe from psychic influence and attack over being a battering ram." At that, she looks over to their resident Psi. "We've got a few folks that hit hard. You're the only teep we've got."

Spartan shakes his head, "I told you, he wasn't trying to beat us, he was teaching us a lesson. You saw that as a great show down, a finale to something that's been going on since before human kind had developed the written word, Helspont saw our battle as a handshake, a greeting. If he was trying to kill us Nate he wouldn't have stopped the fight when we were already down. The radiation, the explosion, none of that would have effected him. We are to Helspont what an annoying song stuck in your head is to you. Annoying, but ultimately of no great importance. Not when compared to everything else you are doing in the course of your day. Our job will be to disrupt as many of his plans as we can while trying to see the larger picture." he grins a bit at Nate, "You have to remember, you are such a short lived race, you think everything must happen /now/ for it to be important. Why do you think he would have taken the planet over already? Already? What is five thousand years to someone who does not notice the passage of time?" he pauses, then continues, "He is different for various reasons, but not the least of which is because the body he possesses is not Daemonite in origin, it is Acurian. He's had it long enough to train it's latent psychic and pyrokinetic abilities far beyond any other Acurian's power. It is what makes him so strong, so invulnerable. Not unlike what would happen were he to possess a Kryptonian for thousands upon thousands of years, storing up it's power reserves, never aging, only growing."

Rose is adapted to solo work, not -team- work, so as Illyana speaks a form of realization flickers there and her shoulders rise in a hunch and then fall, forming a shrug of sorts while she resigns back to her coffee and listening intently, while thinking over the event. Kon was a threat taken out by his own mind, Nate can help mentally guarding to prevent from that happening again, perhaps keeping her from stabbing their own teammates again with what was put in her head... But brute force... She needed to pay a visit to dear old dad again. Maybe he had something for her aside from a buckshot to the 'knee'... As Spartan kept talking and seemingly put this.. Helspont on a pedastal while they were the ants beneath his boot, Rose's glare into her mug got a bit more narrowed. quicker anymore to answer in anger then anything more and trying to stave it off like the bitter taste of a lemon. "But it seems we aren't so easily brought to our knees, despite our short lived lives, it gives us more to fight for, whereas he thinks he has so much more time to toy with us, we have far less time to be treated like ants." Rose straightens then and stares at the three of them, her coffee cold and the flavor not-so-pleasant. Turning the mug mechanically she dumped the remains on Limbo's floor. "That's where we are stronger. We have everything to live for, and die for. At least that is /my/ edge. I forgot to give a crap." urning she heads for the portal, poking her head through. "Reginald! More coffee!"

Nate sighs at Illyana’s words. "Yeah, I thought that too. Maybe next time I should fight him from the Astral Plane and just disrupt his psychic powers. Hey, I am getting better with the telepathy, but it still feels slow and... cumbersome, it is just easier and faster to knock people out physically. Most of the time." He grins at Rose. "Yeah, so he is a million years old, and if he has that mindset he will change slowly, and not grow. I grow stronger every day, mutants power peak when we get into the late thirties. So Illyana is also going to be more powerful. Conner is still a teenager too, in five years he might be as strong as Superman. Helspont is a fool playing with us the games he plays with ancient Kheran warriors. No offense, Jack."

Spartan grins at Rose, "Perhaps not eloquently put but... not incorrect. Conner and I," he eyes Illyana, "and perhaps our magician here, will out live you all by centuries. We can afford to take this fight to future generations, to battle on through every defeat, every victory, until the final one is had. But you cannot," he looks from Nate to Rose and back again, "one of the many reasons I choose you for the team. Immortality breeds complacency, even in me. You force me to be vigilant, to never take time for granted. A sense of urgency is... nice." he looks around, "Now, if you're all done staring at Illyana's shiny ball, I had a meal prepared by a private chef, in honor of our victory, and large cash bonuses for our win the other day have been deposited in your accounts. Officially, you have a week's vacation should you wish to take it. I suggest you unwind, enjoy yourselves. The hard work starts when you get back." he then laughs a bit at Nate's words, "None taken... but when Majestros returns, remind me to have you give him that same speech. I believe he'll find it amusing." he claps Nate on the shoulder and then heads through the portal and back into his Towers. He was gone for some time, there remains a great deal for him to catch up on.

Drawing back in, in time to hear Spartan and Nate, Rose just stares. Somewhere in there is a determination that is outweighing the utter defeat of having the reminder at every turn of her lacking. Inability to please her dad, be a mutant, or be 'super'; but there is a time to be under and over it, and slowly it is just forging a new purpose and drive in Rose, one that has her following out of the portal after Spartan and speaking back to Nate. "You speak of your world, as it became. What mistakes did we make to bring that to fruition?" Rose asks as she takes the refill of hot coffee from Reginald, plopping the empty cup on his circular body to have the little round droid wavering back and dforth to keep it balanced lest it teeter and slide off before he got it back to the kitchen.

"He picked -us- for -his- team? As I remember, we found him in a buried spaceship in New Jersey." Nate rolls his eyes as Spartan leaves, but he is smiling too. Money? Little use for him, he will donate it to the Gifted Foundation. A party, though, might be good. "Hey!" He calls after Rose, following her. "My world? The good guys lost. I don’t know much. When I escaped the camps most of the world was already in ruins. I heard bits and details. But basically... well, I guess the heroes failed. They got killed. By the time I was free only a handful X-Men were left, and fighting against impossible odds."

"I think wires got crossed in Jack's head. It's one of the many reasons I didn't want him hard reset. i think he meant it is why he is funding us and covering our asses." Saying it though Rose's lips draw into a thin line of just... Muting herself as she glances back and pauses waiting on Nate. "There is no way to find out more? I mean, best laid plans go to waste, but not if they have a future of possibilities to reference and learn from right?"

"It was a different Earth, Rose," replies Nate. "Sure... Apocalypse killed the sorcerers and the aliens first. That was the First Culling. Then he outlawed telepaths, most were hunted down, but I think a few escaped. I... ugh, when the attacks on major nations started, they used nuclear weapons to defend themselves. That really destroyed the world. The fallout, the nuclear winter." He sighs. "The war started in the sixties or seventies, it is not applicable here. It is not the future." And he really doesn’t want to talk about it. "Lets get more coffee, alright?"