"If it was a student or protege, I escaped as the only survivor. That may not be enough testimony but seldom did Carl and I run into a situation like that." Lina said weakly. She paused again to compose herself. A teardrop fell from both her eyes. Lina wiped them before adding, "The vibe of the enviroment changed when their so called "Patient Zero" woke up. My partner's death was her fault. I don't know what direction they are planning on taking this new "group" but I do believe they have stepped up their security if they're in the same spot. Also, what Carl and I saw was only a fraction of the area. It was huge. There were plenty of "locked" rooms. I couldn't get near them because of the security. They were guarding the lab and those rooms, not the outskirts. Maybe the reason why there wasn't was because they were trying to capture those who may have journeyed to close, like lead them into a trap? It smelled like one for sure! IMO, the setup looked confusing. Normally, tight security means guards everywhere, right? Why only have one layer of it? We got in easily but not out. On the mental front, Some of the guards on the inside detail knew there was an outer layer of security but they all doubled up on the inside minutes before Carl and I arrived. That had me to believe that someone or something was getting out of hand or another event occured that needed more of them. Those on the inside had heavily shielded minds with some kind of tech or psychic defense. I couldn't fully know what was behind those locked doors except that percieved "something" was an evil taking place. Whatever was blocking me from digging deeper into their minds didn't want me to know what was going on in that area. Not even the ones in the lab knew. Their minds were clean beyond knowing that their current subject, Patient Zero, needed a host. The head honcho's mind was the only one in that bunch that was heavily shielded. He was constantly going to and fro the restricted area and the lab."
This message was last edited by the player at 23:07, Sun 16 July 2017.

  Seer nodded, and said simply "Given that, definitely not Him."  She tilted her head slightly, toward Ethan, and said "Did you ever find out more about his 'little student'?  I remember him referencing them, but I never personally got near a student.  Not that he was likely to share me.  It is possible that any proteges he had might have picked up his passion for trying to figure out how parahumans work, like we're all some sort of lab animals to be dissected and analyzed.  You recall that there was clear evidence of someone giving other normal, or formerly normal, humans powers in that last lab."  What she didn't say, leaving unsaid for Ethan to choose or not, was clear to Ethan and Jack both.

"Nothing more than some spent casings, but any student of the builder would likely have some form of mental enhancement and thinker class paras can be very good at covering their tracks, it's just most of the time they don't want to." Ethan leaned forward, clasping his hands atop his desk. "I cannot stress the potential for danger this has. The government abandoned all super soldier experiments after the first dozen or so attempts resulted in 1 or 2 successes per experiment, if that. And the fact that there is a para with hyper-intelligence that can manage to stay in the shadows only exacerbates the situation. I'm assigning the three of you to look into this, I need this taken care of quickly and quietly."

While they were talking she ran through her mind all the time that the "nightmare" took over. Yet she could only remember the death and destruction she woke up in around her or heard about in her apt setup by the DPA. Then it dawned on her. What if the Anomaly finally found where their "child" was in the multiverse? Seeing that she defected, they probably chose a third party to resurrect their "doomsday weapon" but seeing that it lacked a host. They were a highly advanced technological race so recreating what they put in Lina would be a walk in the park.

"I uhh..." Lina began. Her voice was shaky. She cleared her throat and continued. "Have a theory, I don't know if it could be true or not. I hope it's not but the reason why that hyper-intelligent para got as far as it did was because the builder's protege had help from someone from another dimension. I'm talking about the not so benevolent race that raised me. I don't want to bring up the past of when I stuck with that godforsaken monster in my conscious but if I ignore this possibilty, it'll prove detrimental. What I only know is that IF that hyper-intelligent para is my alter ego in a different body, this world... no universe is in danger. I know why the Anomaly did what they did to me. _{frikn meglomaniacs...}. They probably knew where I was the whole time and followed me here. They just stayed in the shadows until now. Since from their point of view I've 'defected', their original plan of universal conquest doesn't involve me anymore. So their answer to 'dealing with' a defector is to destroy it with their doomsday weapon. That bieng the Nightmare Anomaly."

  Penny said quietly "Ethan . . . you know I can find things, but I need something to go on.  People, more than things, but sometimes things.  Right now it's too vague to do that .
 . . "

"I'm aware Seer, and I doubt the Nightmare is involved, our world is better protected from extra-dimensional invasion than most. Of course there is an easy way to find out." Ethan checked the time briefly before speaking into the open air. "Lin, when you have a moment I need to ask you about your dimensional wards." He didn't touch his watch or earpiece, so he obviously wasn't on any sort of call, but merely talking out loud to someone not in the room.

  His office door swung open as a woman answered him "Indeed, you must have something work related and worrisome to actually ask, you old Pirate."  The woman entering the room was tiny, a petite Chinese woman of indeterminate age, although she looked pretty young, really.  She had a commanding presence though, that made one want to sit up straight and present one's best.  Her midnight emerald eyes were bright with intelligence, and the jeans and hand-embroidered silk shirt were clearly of excellent make.  She had a big bag of some sort, clearly having been shopping at the Chinese Market very recently, and her ebon hair was piled atop her head in an elaborate style and pinned with real jade haircombs in green, white, and red jade.  Her height of five foot two was almost an afterthought, given her commanding and very much larger presence.

Ethan chuckled. The intelligence director leaned back in his chair, some of his proffesional manner dropping. "Of course, I'm a pirate. We don't ask unless necessary. And who are you to call me old? I'm a quarter your age!" He let out another chuckle before turning more serious. "Lin we need to know if you've detected a dimensional incursion in the past 4-8 months, and if they fit the description Agent Anomaly here will provide." Ethan turned to Lina. "Lina this is Lin Kattalakis, The Dragon's Mistress, and the most powerful sorceress on the planet. Please tell her what we're looking for, in as much detail as possible, and don't limit yourself to the standard five senses. Energy emmisions, mental or spiritual presence, anything that can be used to identify her on a mystical or scientific scale.

"Please to meet you!" She greeted. "The Anomaly are a race who come from an alternate reality of Thestias in the Gemini system on the Pollux star side. I don't know what dimension this is but from what I was told, in mine, Thestias is a blue gas giant. In the dimension the Anomaly come from, Thestias is the size of Jupiter but inhabitable like Earth. They're a technologically advanced raced who've combined technology with the cosmic substance Dark Matter. With it, they've invented DPF, known as Diamond Power Forging. In layman's terms, diamond minerals combined with Dark Matter and advanced tech can do the same things you do but with a different medium. Other discoveries besides that were Dark Matter Infused Super Soldier Experiments. I was the first. Nightmare was a distant second.

If they somehow achieved dimensional travel, we would be looking for a Dark Matter Signature, more cosmic and advanced tech than mystical. If they haven't done any traveling lately, you probably won't detect anything. Then again, if they've been doing this for a while and knew the portal could be traceble, the process could be refined to having a faster risidual signature decay rate. The latter in turn making it harder to trace. Keep in mind also, a year here is a century there. And I spent what seemed like over 20 in that dimension. So, if the Anomaly had that long to perfect their Dimensional Travel Tech, in... let's say... 5 or 6 Earth years, that's at least 500 in their dimension. But that's if they did the refining on their Thestias. If they did it all here, then it's just a min of 5 years, no more than 6. Based on the latter, the DMS should light up on your scanners like a diamondlight... erm... neonlight! *giggles*"

On the subject of age when the other two brought it up, Lina thought to herself, "To be honest, compared to me, you're children. Still, I chose to look young."
This message was last edited by the player at 14:36, Fri 28 July 2017.

  Lin gave Ethan an amused smile, and said "A quarter would be overly generous to grant you, Ethan.  But as to your Anomaly, miss Lina, there have been no dimensional incursions of that degree or in those regions within the last five hundred years.  I would know, I've been watching for longer than that.  My job is to guard this dimension from incursions  that could threaten it.  Generally, if I do my job, which I do a very good job of it, you never have need to know I exist.  Ethan and I are old friends, which is why he knows me both personally and professionally."

Lina thought about what she said for a moment. Then she wondered allowed, "Maybe there was some who followed me here around the same time I arrived. If they did, it must have been between opening the portal from my world to yours. If it didn't close right away like I believed or if I wasn't "myself" during that time the portal was opened, then we have a breach. My signature is purely cosmic. Check for that type of signature. My signature is different from DiamondTech because it's not as bleh... Cosmic Energy is FAR richer. Compared to spices, DT is a red pepper, Cosmic Energy is a ghost.

But here's a wild guess. Dimensional Travel may be new to them but Time Travel isn't. If anything, they copied what I could already do from a blood sample but with technology or emulated my time traveling feats with their inventions. If they knew Gate Keepers like you existed within the last 500 or so years or more on this Earth, they could've setup camp before you came to be. If not, had a VERY precise way of hiding their entries if it's on a level Gate Keepers of this world have yet to reach. Don't get me wrong, I have confidence in that you've protected this realm. We have to explore the possibilty that someone may have been watching the Gate Keepers to avoid detection. If these ones have ran into this world's Gate Keepers in your life time or before, creating a system of invisibility would become a TOP priority from the first failed invasion."
This message was last edited by the player at 20:04, Sat 29 July 2017.

  Lin shrugged, and said "They would find that even if they were here before me, that messing with my home dimension is a very bad idea.  And in my lifetime, I am sure I would have noticed them messing around if they were here.  I am very good at what I do, and unless I have need of revealing myself, most never know I exist, much less what I do, unless I have to kill them or they meet me in a professional circumstance."  Clearly, there was more to it, but she was not going to just tell someone everything the first time she met them.  And Lina was meeting her for the first time.

Lina sensed the non verbal cues Lin gave. Doesn't take a telepath to know she was holding back information. For someone who's lived that long should know about several threats either vanquished or retreated from this dimension. If the Anomaly was at the top of that list, it wouldn't be likely that they would stop after one failed mission. If they couldn't beat a foe in the immediate, because of how advanced the Anomaly were, Lina believed they could've traveled so far back in the past that the current guardians existed. If they kept on encountering resistence, the process would be repeated until the Anomaly recieved none. What if the society was too primitive? Hmmm... Lina was stomped on that one. Then again, the Anomaly was all about messing up stuff. For several years, they did just that to her. Lina felt this rage inside of her but hid it. It was a sense of distaste that the Anomaly left in the girl's mind.

"They must be this bold thinking they can mess with this dimension then." She stammed. Lina folded her arms. She closed her eyes and exhaled. After opening her eyes, she continued, "Even bolder to make a girl share a conscious with a doomsday weapon against her wishes. If they've been here before, it should've been subtle things throughout history. On that I remember vaguely some punk on Thestias bragged about messing with the weather system with a series of underwater pyramids in an area known as the Bermuda Triangle. I don't know what Earth they did that on."

Lina paused for a moment. Remembering every mission that went south because of some unknown trigger that made the Nightmare show herself. Lina may not know Lin but it's hard to believe Nightmare didn't. Maybe there were secrets Lin didn't want to tell Lina in this initial meeting. Granted, if this Earth believed Lina wasn't redeemable, she wouldn't be in the DPA right now and probably wouldn't be alive today either. Lina smirked at believing it was primarily Lin that showed her mercy. If Lin was in on the Nightmare's defeat and was there when they removed the Nightmare from Lina's mind, it probably was Lin's suggestion that the extraction to take place and Ethan used his resources to make it happen. That bit didn't surprise Lina at all.

"Back to the detection, the only thing I can say is that if you find a Cosmic signature similar to mine, then I'll know that its them. Even temporal signatures could be in the mix. That's if the trace is recent. How far can your detection go back or do we need to go back in time to sense their presence?"
This message was last edited by the player at 04:19, Sun 30 July 2017.

"Regardless I am assigning the three of you to look into this. Follow the facts and see where they lead, whether that be to The Anomaly, the Builder's apprentice, or some new threat. Now if you'll excuse me, I have another appointment to get to." Ethan summoned another door and stepped through it, leaving the four in his office.

>>To Safehouse 17>>

  Lin said gently to Lina "If they were here, I would know.  They are not.  But being aware of a potential threat permits me to take actions to prevent it from becoming an issue in the future."  She glanced at her sleeve, where one of the Dragons on it had moved, and then said "With that in mind, I do have a couple other things to do yet, so I can't hang around here, but I will keep my senses sharp.  It gets easier with more practice for those like me."  Giving them all a nod, she strolled back out of the office and off to elsewhere.

----------->> Apokryphos Cafe

Lina pondered over what Lin told her. She still didn't quite believe it. Of all the times she blanked out and the Nightmare took over, there wasn't one time where it could happen that the latter reached out to her alien masters?

"I call bullcrap." Lina thought to herself. While Lin's motives seemed pure, it did seem like she was hiding something. "There's a clear and present danger here and the Nightmare was the beginning. If someone did give the Nightmare a host body and the DPA doesn't want to let me in on the specifics lest it would cause me to worry or something else, I'm not going to roll over and let this be a dead end. It's not like this Earth is the only one that has done something like this before. This Earth's Lin seems to hide more than what she leads on in the others but still the non-verbal coms are just as easy to decipher. All of them were laxed about the Anomaly's arrival by telling Lina something similar to what this Lin just did. In the end, it took a dance with death to make the other Lins be serious about this major threat to their dimension. Yet I'm done telling people about their alternate world's self. They miss the purpose on why I did. So if they don't wanna know, I'm not going to volunteer. People be on that anti-social shennanigans nowadays when you try to help them. I experienced seeing over 99 Lin deaths... But I just wanna save one! If all of them act like this, why should I bother helping them? Graah..."

Lina sat there deep in thought before the other two still there after Lin left.

"There's more to it. I can't leave this as a dead end. There is a potential threat, like Lin said but I feel the severity of it is bieng overlooked. I know for a fact that this isn't the only Earth the Anomaly has tried to conquer but this is the first one the Nightmare was defeated. And if the Anomaly are still the meglomaniacs I once knew, the Nightmare isn't their only ace in the hole."

"It's as if almost every world I've visited got their own version of secrecy. IMO and based on my experience, the latter seems like to be nonchalantness and carefree. If they only knew all the once inhabited worlds who had a similar attitude, they wouldn't be acting like this. Then again, I hate to say it but this Earth is the most "feeble-minded" I've every visited." She thought to herself after a hopeless sigh.
This message was last edited by the player at 15:04, Sun 20 Aug 2017.

  Penny tilted her head, and said "Nobody said this was a dead end.  We're all supposed to investigate this more.  We are just saying that at this time, nobody sees a familiar pattern, and it does not match any currently known behavioral profiles to be able to be positively identified yet."

"I agree. And based on what I tried to explain to Lin about the Anomaly's "signature", in hindsight, the Nightmare would've told them to change their signature to avoid detection from any and all people like Lin and sad to say, she isn't the only one I knew with her skillset. So me trying to give an obsolete key to someone who can sense dimensional disturbances doesn't help much." Lina explained. She looked a bit dejected from what now could've been the case. If the Anomaly has encountered people like Lin before (which infact they probably have), they would've masked their entries so that any version Lin or similar "gatekeeper" couldn't detect them. "On your note about behavior profile matches, if the Anomaly has changed their tactics, then Lin wouldn't be able to detect them no matter what I told her. The only thing we can do is try to find out where they'll try to be next."
This message was last edited by the player at 19:23, Sun 20 Aug 2017.

"Theorizing now is pointless. The fact is we don't have enough information to come to any conclusions yet. At this point it could be anyone either already known or a new player no ones heard about. So we go out and we get some facts, we search and we watch and we listen. We learn what we can, then we worry about who these bastards are after find them and take them down hard." Jack spoke up, till then content to sit and listen. "And I trust Lin when she says she knows what she's talking about, her and the director aren't just good at their jobs, they were born for them."
This message was last edited by the GM at 03:59, Mon 21 Aug 2017.

"Born for them?" Lina ran over what Rebound said over in her mind, almost mockingly. "And the Nightmare was born to be a herald to prepare a world for an Anomaly invasion. If they only knew how many Lins and Danes died in the other dimensions trying to stop one... Eh... Nope... I'm keeping that to myself. They wanna think their the bees knees, go right ahead. Won't help them in the end since no one on this Earth wants to know what I experienced in other realities now."

"Where do you suggest we start? Lina asked.
This message was last edited by the player at 16:18, Mon 21 Aug 2017.

  Penny said simply "We start by checking out that lab."

Okay, we'll do that then. Gather what we need, notify Ethan where we're going and head on out." Lina answered surely. "I can teleport us there to a safe distance from the lab."

  Penny nodded, and said "I think Ethan expects us to begin at the lab and pursue leads we find, and fill him in when we find any lead.  Do you need any special equipment?"

Lina shook her head but hid a grin in her lips as she said, "We may need mom's camera to record but other than that, nothining unless you have anything to add."

----------->> illegal Lab
This message was last edited by the player at 15:26, Sat 16 Sept 2017.

  With the question of gear settled, they snagged what they needed and headed for the doors, intending to begin investigating this lab for clues.  They really did need to know who was experimenting on paras again.

----------->> illegal Lab