10927/Witchcraft

Witchcraft
Date of Scene:	27 April 2022
Location:	Diana's Office: Themysciran Embassy
Synopsis:	Terry has a talk with Diana, where some important things are confirmed. Also, Raven will probably kill him.
Cast of Characters:	Terry O'Neil, Diana Prince

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Terry O'Neil has posed:
The Cheshire Cat was showed to Diana's office by Greta, once his presence had been announced and it was confirmed that the Princess was ready to see him. He's only really been in Diana's office once before, when Clark came by. It still leaves him incredibly impressed at how cozy, classy and... well... /big/ it is.

"Dear gods, Di, what on Earth have you been doing? You look like you just played an extra in Game of Thrones," the Cheshire cat observes as he is let in. As a rule he usually doesn't like to get dirty. Getting stuff off fur is a lot harder than skin, after all.

Diana Prince has posed:
Diana stands in front of the alcove where her armor and weapons are normally kept. Right now she's just hanging up her sword, the shield already there, and the lasso still at her hip. Her sword and shield were cleaned and put away, but the armor she's wearing, and the rest of her, is utterly filthy.

She smells like the ocean too, mixed with, well... blood and such also.

She turns to look at Terry, her hair a mess and matted down behind her shoulders. She smirks at him. "It has been... a very long day." She says in a arguably tired voice. Though is she actually capable of being tired?

"Come in, sit, have you had anything to eat today? We could order anything you would like." She says as she takes the lasso and hangs it up, that rope somehow always looking clean no matter what it goes through.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
Vorpal's nose twitches, "That's ok, I already had lunch. Jimmy insisted in buying me Greasy Lou's hot dogs, I may never be able to taste anything for a few hours after that lunch."

The Cheshire cat tilts his head, "What exactly did you go up against? You smell like Sea World." He fetches himself a place to sit- and ends up sitting on the armchair of a chair instead of the chair itself for reasons. "I had a few thoughts about... the current situation. Troia's settling in well. As well as it can be, anyways. I watched Priscilla, Queen of the Desert with her last night. Have you had a chance to... confer with the Queen yet?"

Diana Prince has posed:
As Terry speaks, Diana walks over to the small sink basin in the little kitchen area of the office. She smirks at what he says of her state of being. "A 'hydra'." She says in return to him. "Four heads. All removed from their necks now. It was bearing down upon the Starport. All of the construction in that area, has awoken some of the sea's more... horrendous elements. I believe some parts of them are associated to this involving me as well. The Gods... they are ever-challenging." She wets a towel and uses it to wipe off her hands, and then her face. Her tiara is set down upon the counter as she walks back toward Terry and sits down on the edge of the leather sofa with the hand towel still wiping at the sides of her face.

"The Starport has kept me from speaking to the Queen. Though I need to do that as soon as possible. If only we had that teleportation device setup..." She states with a smirk.

"So... Troia. It seemed like a memory loss issue, to me, but with a bit more magic involved. What are your thoughts on it?" Diana asks.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
Terry shakes his head, "Loss of memory wouldn't bring an entire different reality's throne room into the Tower. This is some sort of reality tampering going on- the way she put it mentioned probabilities..." The Cheshire Cat brings up one knee and wraps his arms around it, expertly balanced on the chair arm.

"Imagine if you will two different probabilities. On this side, you've got outcome A. On this other, you have Outcome B. The difference between each actualized probability is merely the choice made at the fork- but not just /a/ choice, often the cascading consequences of an innumerable number of choices, a large number of them easily altering the course of the ultimate result. You'd think that once you choose B, A would be in the past..."

He shrugs his shoulders, "And that's usually the case. A goes off to that side, B to that side, a partition in between separating Is and Would Have Been..."

"But what if something were powerful enough to make the partition transparent enough that you could see outcome B while astride outcome A?" He purses his lips, "Or what if you removed the partition altogether and A and B become entwined, and suddenly you have a mish-mash of both?"

"But there are some things that need to make sense, before /that/ makes sense... and I think it all rests with words I heard from Hekate while in Tartarus..."

Diana Prince has posed:
Diana continues to dab at the sides of her face before she sets the hand towel down on the table in front of her armored knees. She nods softly to what Terry is saying while she peals the leather gloves off of her palms and the back of her hands. She sets them down as well before the bracers on her foarerms are twisted one by one, then removed from her arms. This leaves her wrists in smaller 'bracelets' that she rarely ever shows off, that appear to be made of the same kind of metal as the larger bracers.

"Well." She says quietly to that. "I am more curious about what happened just before this ... took place." She notes to him. "Consider the box that we had to take to Themyscira that involved the ... whole 'lot' of you being taken beyond the Doomgate."

Diana reaches for the towel again, before she starts to use it to clean off the bracer for her left forearm.

"Did any such magical ... element come in to play prior to all of this?" She asks with her eyes down on her cleaning efforts now.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
"Nothing," Terry says, shaking his head, "Outside of the Red King's Staff and Scepter..." suddenly, a memory comes to him, and he sits up ramrod-straight.

He suddenly recalls Donna's voice, crackling with that chaos reverberation as she started to say 'Well done everyone,' the echoes fading almost as soon as they started. "Which she touched. The scepter," he muses, and then he fixes his eyes on Diana. "She touched the scepter. But the scepter wouldn't turn her into a goddess. It doesn't have the power to do /that/ outside of Wonderland..." he briefly becomes distracted at the smaller bracelets, which he had never seen before. For a moment, his train of thought almost derails into a dozen other questions...

But it comes back to track. "... I mean, it wouldn't make her into a goddess. Unless she -"

Another abrupt cutoff, and Terry re-aligns himself.

"When we were in Taratarus, Hekate called Donna 'little cousin.' Donna shrugged it off at the time, explaining that it was just a familial way of addressing the Amazons..."

Diana Prince has posed:
As Diana cleans the larger bracer off with her hand towel, and the brush kit she had on the table, she looks to Terry for a second as he explaisn what he's thinking a bit more.

"Magical sceptors often have more power than any of us could imagine. Sometimes I have dealt with magic users in posession of such devices that have more power than even /they/ realize." She notes before pausing some in thought.

She purses her lips before she looks back to Terry. "I would like to bring Zatanna Zatara in on this." She says to him next.

"I know that Wonderland is personal to you, but she is a master of these affairs. If nothing else, she could at least be helpful. You know her well, do you not?" She asks him then as she sets the polished bracer down now before picking up its counterpart.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
"I don't know her at all. I have seen her twice and she was not terribly impressed by me- Raven is already working on research in any case, but Diana..."

He gives her a little smirk, "I may not have a lasso of truth, and I may not be as bright as some of my Titan co-workers, but I /have/ learned a few things from Lois, you know. If Wonder Woman is straying from a topic, it means it's probably something... pretty huge."

He tilts his head, "But it is kind of huge. Troia is like the big sister I never had and constantly disappoint, just like she is your little sister." His voice goes quiet. "The Titans have lost our center. We feel lost without her. I feel scared and I'm cracking up trying to pretend I'm not so others don't start freaking out too... don't we have a right to know?"

Diana Prince has posed:
Diana picks up the other dirty bracer and begins to tend to it while Terry speaks. She does glance over at him where she shows a small frown. "I am not sure how much I have the right to tell you. It could alter things, when we get her back." She states before pausing then. "And we will get her back."

She sets the bracer down on her lap then as she looks to Terry more evenly. "You have to be strong, all of you do. You live together, train together, fight together. You are all a chain, and you must all be just as individually strong in each link, as you are as a whole length. Troia knows this. Donna knows this. She will find her way back, and we will do everything in our part to help her return." The Princess says with confidence.

While arguably still dodging his question.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
It's like an interview. Lois used to say that every interview was a game of chess, and you had to gauge whether you wanted to play aggressively, or you wanted to play so that your opponent ended up boxing herself into an unwinnable situation. Diana is not an enemy, so she doesn't get the Murphy Brown direct tackle. Instead, she gets the Hercule Poirot roundabout.

"It makes me think about something... you know. Let's say that we are trying to calculate the probability space of a coin toss. You've got two alternatives- and so we can imagine that the probability of the set of outcomes /must/ be equal to one, because it is /certain/ that the outcome will be either head OR tails in a single coin toss." An illusory coin flips from his fingers, landing heads up, with a depiction of Donna Troy's face. "But that's for a simple scenario. For a very complex set of circumstances, you might have a dizzying gamut of probabilities."

He stands up, stretching a little. "So wouldn't you say that when we speak of that wide range of combinations, when we look at those spaces, isn't it only natural to assume that two adjacent spaces, no matter how apparently different, must only be a minute variable away?"

Diana Prince has posed:
Diana gets the bracer mostly cleaned up as Terry makes his speech. She does pause before she's fully finished though, and just lays it across her thighs again. She looks over to him with a plain expression.

"Terry." She says quietly. "Our Donna has a complicated history. It is a history that I do not think she has ... had a chance to explore. It is a history that should have been explored already though. This is why I have to speak to the Queen about her, about this situation. It is highly -probable- that I do not even have all the possible outcomes to this 'coin flip'."

She stands up then and picks up both of the bracers, taking them to the display to mount them on their stands beneath the small lights that shine down within the alcove.

"From what I gathered, there is no impending danger, however. But that does not mean we should not act in haste to resolve this either."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
The Cheshire cat raises his eyebrows. "But that's the thing. Stories may be incomplete, but you can't fuzz probability. A snag in the loom of the Moireae. Two probability spaces so close together that they could easily spill into each other."

He walks slowly to the display case. "And to glean things you have to look at which variables would need to change the least for the two outcomes to share adjacent spaces. This Troia says she's a Titan. An actual-to-goodess Titan, not dress-up superhero Titans. So if we assume that /that/ is the variable that is different, and this other Donna..." he gestures to his right, "our Donna is /not/ a Titan... then the two probability spaces are no longer adjacent, because that's a /big/ variable. Divine and Mortal, two massive differences that would put /this/ Troia and /that/ Donna on two entirely different spaces, potentially an entire field across the probability field."

"... so that's not what has changed," He concludes, "Hekate... wasn't being figurative, wasn't she? Hekie is a Titan of myth-"

A sudden pause, and a quick glance around him, "And I am /so/ so sorry if calling her that offended her, I'm really the biggest fan of Hekate ever, I think she is absolutely cool and mysterious and I hope she doesn't decide to turn me into something ghastly..."

He waits for a second, and then he glances at Diana. "... look, I'm already on Eris' shit list, I don't need the mistress of all magic getting miffed at me for a momentary indiscretion."

Diana Prince has posed:
With the display further setup properly, Diana turns to face Terry then from the shelves along the wall. She smirks at his last few words there before she shakes her head gently. "Terry..." Diana says then as she walks slowly back toward the leather sofa where she takes a sitting lean back against the side of it. Her hands come together in front of her lap as she eyes him.

"Donna, our Donna, is a Titan." She tells him in a somber voice. "She is the child of the Titans. The Queen adopted her to keep her safe amongst the people of Themyscira."

A breath is taken then as she raises her right hand up to fuss with her filthy hair, draping it over her right shoulder then before taking her hand from it again.

"I do not know why ... she is in this confused state currently. It seems like you have said, that different 'probables' have switched place in her mind. This... is why I need to confer with the Queen on the matter."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
Terry lets out a breath, like a quiet hiss. It's one thing to suspect, but having your suspicions confirmed?

Terry O'Neil speechless is a rare thing. But he is, for several long moments, at least.

"Her mind... or the world?" he says quietly, "Because I might wake up one morning thinking I am Jovita Feijoo Queen of Cali, but that doesn't mean my living room is going to turn into a throne room when I wake up. This is where I suspect Wonderland may have had something to do... because Wonderland is chaos magic, and chaos magic does things to reality."

He purses his lips, "... and we might need to go there to find out how we can fix things back..."

Diana Prince has posed:
Diana stands up once more as Terry continues. She walks over to her tiara on the counter where she gathers it up to take it back to the sofa. "Wonderland is obviously a big part of this. It could be similar to how the lasso effects you, that the sceptor effected Donna." Diana states while sitting down again. She proceeds to clean the tiara off next as she continues to speak.

"Donna's presence on Themyscira was a carefully arranged agreement between our people, and the Titans. She was delivered to the island under the assumption that we would raise her as one of ours, which our people did do. I did not learn of this until my return to Themyscira. I still believe there is likely a lot that I do not even know, still to do this day."

She gently scrubs the tiara with a cleaning solution, and the towel she had dabbed her face clean(er) with.

"But yes, a solution could potentially be found within Wonderland..." Then she stops and looks over at him. "Though it could also just make things... worse..." Which she says with a grim undertone.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
Terry frowns.

"... Hekate knew. And the Titans know." He steps closer, his voice almost a whisper. "... do the /gods of Olympus/ know? Troia says that there was a war when her birth was discovered... are the gods part of this agreement, or is this agreement done without their knowledge? I can't imagine your mother would defy the Olympians..." And then he remembers his mother, shooting an angel in the face to save him. Mothers were mothers. "... would she?"

Diana Prince has posed:
The Tiara does not take too long to clean off, and Diana stands up to walk toward the alcove again. She pauses though to reach up and put the Tiara on Terry's head. Once she has it resting there, she puts her hands upon his shoulders. "It was at the behest of the Gods." She explains to him. "Aphorodite delivered Donna to the island. She told the Queen that her name was Troia. The Titans were not to procreate, as per the rules laid down after the Titans were defeated so long ago. But... that is a difficult rule to enforce. Rather than harm a child, however, the Gods decided on the plan that they enacted. Being the caring woman that she is, the Queen accepted the child from the Oceanids, which are known to bring lost children to the island... from time to time. Not when /I/ was a child, mind you, no... I could not possibly have a friend to play with when I was little."

She smirks then as she picks up some of her tools off the table, leaving the tiara on Terry for now.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
There are some fairy tales that require you to place an item of clothing, or salt, or something similar upon a mythical creature in order to render it completely immobile and harmless. Imagine, if you will, the Cheshire Cat standing perfectly still, eyes turned up to stare at the tiara he doesn't even dare dislodge by moving his head. He is, effectively, nailed to the place.

"... wh-wha... what did you say?"

A few seconds later, he catches up to what his ears heard. "O... oh! So the gods were in on it..."

he glances back up at the tiara, again.

Another blink, he glances down. "... so the gods were in on it, then."

Terry.exe has encountered a fatal error, please reboot your Cheshire.

Diana Prince has posed:
"Yes, they were in on it." Diana confirms as she picks up her leather gloves, then drops them on the counter beside where the alcove with the weapons and armor are. "As you can see, this is all very complicated. When I suspected the worst from the Troia at the Tower, I thought she was an imposter, having come here to play games like the doppleganger Cassie. But once I talked to her more, I began to sense something else. Plus, with the realm ... merged with the tower like it is... things started to seem a bit off. At least for that arrangement, or option." She looks back to the Cat then an dsmiles at him.

She steps back toward him then and plucks the Tiara from his head once more after she gets its place cleared off.

"Wonderland is a good option. In fact, I volunteer to go with you. The starport project has a bit more time to go before it is fully open, so I have some time to spare.. though, that is barring we knock on wood, of course."

The Tiara is positioned within its place under the lights, gleaming 'happily' now where it is.

"Go and prepare your people, or at least discuss with them the option of going there, for answers. Troia included, obviously."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
"Of course, Di... I need to tell everybody-" he pauses. "And Raven."

Dear god he had to talk to Raven again. "... just between us, she might kill me."

The Cheshire rubs his forehead, and chuckles a little, "But then again, what else is new?"

Diana Prince has posed:
Diana smirks at this. "Indeed." She replies to him before she walks to the table to clean up a bit. "Okay. I have to de-gross myself. So, please let me know what you find out." She states after closing up the box of brushes and cleaning solutions. She's used to using it, she has to every day essentially.

"And Terry." Diana says to him, walking back over to him. She gives his arms a squeeze. "You are strong. You are capable. You are an inspiration to Donna, as much as she is to you. Be strong, maintain your wits. This will be figured out, and we will be better off on the other side there-after." She says before giving him a soft hug.

She smells funny. Like ocean water and dead hydra.

"Now then." She pulls back. "I go and get cleaned up." She adds as she turns toward the double doors that lead to her personal quarters. "Good luck, and keep me in the loop."