12726/Retrieving The Lost

Retrieving The Lost
Date of Scene:	08 September 2022
Location:	Cairo - Egypt
Synopsis:	Cassie and Diana travel to Cairo to retrieve the lost World Eater Heart from the besieged city of Siwa! They meet Napi, an old demi-God Native American, and the last living member of the 'Wonder Men' from Diana's past.
Cast of Characters:	Diana Prince, Cassie Sandsmark

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Diana Prince has posed:
CAIRO - EGYPT

It's early afternoon, Diana had brought Cassie here specifically for help to meet with someone that she described as an 'old friend'. She'd said that he was a smuggler, once upon a time, and had reached out to the Themysciran Embassy to say that he had something he wanted Diana to take from him, less it end up in the wrong hands.

Here and now, Diana is dressed in a royal blue robe, with a multi colored wrap around her head, and a pair of sunglasses over her eyes, shielding out the sun from above. She's leading Cassie through a busy market street, and pausing a moment to look back at the young blonde girl. "His home is just up ahead." Diana says. "Or, at least, the address that he provided me." She notes before turning forward again to pass through the busy marketplace and weave her way between the bustling pedestrian traffic, as well as people trying to roll carts, bikes, and small vehicles through the madness of it all...

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
"I still say this whole thing sounds super sus," opines Cassie, in her ever-present youthful vernacular. "Like, it's totally something out of a movie. Meeting shady dudes in foreign cities to exchange some secret, uh, whatever it is? Next thing you know there's gonna be a poisoned monkey."

Although the pair are often closely aligned in how they do things, there are gaps. Notably, Cassandra is not one to adopt the native dress-code. Because it's equatorial and HOT, she's in more teen summer-wear. That may not be as effective long-term in keeping out the heat, and it MAY rile the local sensibilities, but... that's possibly somewhat the point. Sometimes, she's just gotta troll. Still, it's Cairo, not Kabul. There are tourists, and perhaps to her silent annoyance, no one -really- cares. "I haven't been here since I was a kid," she remarks, offhandedly, as they amble down the street. Of course it's a place Helena would have traveled, perhaps often, doing anything from her field excavations to inter-museum work.

"So what is this thing, anyway? Or did he not say? It's hard to imagine that it would require you to pick it up and not be, like, a super big deal."

Diana Prince has posed:
Diana was much more keen on not making herself a visible, identifiable, presence here this afternoon. It would cause a ruckus, which is the exact opposite of what her contact would want from her in this.

A small smile crosses her red lips as she gives Cassie another glance, "He did not say." She states between the sounds of horns honking, people chattering, merchants bartering.

A merchant even goes so far as to thrust a chicken in Cassie's face! It's wings flapping, as it cries out in despair at this treatment!

This causes Diana to get ahead a little distance, where she finds herself near a alleyway lined with doors, and archways of the natural sandstone blocks that make up the homes in this region of town.

Diana steps further in to the alley, but then stops, and waits for Cassie to catch up. "Your mother was wise to bring you around the globe with her, it's made you comfortable in such settings..." She spares a glance over the young woman. "Maybe too comfortable though." The Princess notes as she steps further down the alleyway, until she reaches the door she's come for, it's then that she steps to it, and knocks her knuckles gently against its surface, while adjusting her hood, and glancing back to the mouth of the alley where all the traffic is yet bustling...

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
Cassie catches up a few minutes and a couple Egyptian piastre later. She also now has a chicken.

"What? It... I don't know, I felt bad for it." She's holding on to the bird, stroking it in an attempt to calm things down, although the success of this effort is... dubious. "Is this gonna be too much of a distraction? C'mon now, cluckers, behave..." She looks back and forth up and down the alley, although to be frank, a chicken is probably the least noticable thing about them, so the amount it has changed their level of obviousness may not be significant!

"Yeah, it was fun, at least sometimes," Cassie admits, thinking back to her youthful travels. There's always a balance there, a see-saw. Sometimes she complains loudly of her hectic upbringing with her busy, world-hopping single mother, and the way it denied her the 'usual' childhood. Other times? There's a clear nostalgia for it. Certainly, it was good training for her eventual superheroing lifestyle and her introduction to Themysciran culture.

Regardless, she and the chicken stand guard as Diana knocks, looking up and down the alley, and even once briefly up to the rooftops above. That's training: you gotta look up, too!

Diana Prince has posed:
Of course, the sudden chickening gets a small smirk from Diana, as she knows that feeling of wanting to save them all too well herself... But, such is the way of things in this world. "I see you are taking on new responsibilities. That's admirable." She chides her younger friend while they wait.

While Cassie searches for a ambush, the door suddenly shifts, and opens up, a dark interior creeping out the open edge before a young local man somewhere around Cassie's age peers out at the two women, and the chicken.

"Miss Prince?" He asks, and Diana smiles toward him. "Yes, and this is my assistant, Cassandra." She notes of the girl and her new pet.

The young man nods his head once, then opens the door up further. "Please, come in." He says in a thickly native accent to this region.

Diana does just-so, stepping up and in to the darker interior of the home. She moves within, and glances back over her shoulder before she hears a familiar voice....

"Diana..." The aged voice says from an adjacent room. A sitting room. The man stands up from a comfortable old chair, strewn over in blankets. He's elderly, but still spry enough to get up to his feet with mostly ease...

He speaks again, but this time he speaks in a Native American tongue as he walks toward Diana, a smile huge upon his aged face. Diana responds by moving to him, until the two of them are lightly embracing one another fondly. He seems utterly enthusiastic about the presence of the Princess here now.

The young man who let them inside, glances toward Cassie, and her chicken, then offers to take it to the kitchen for her.

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
"Don't you have some kinda animal friendship thing, too? You gotta teach me that one next." Obviously, the chicken makes for a fearsome guardian, and no one seems inclined to give them any trouble! So once the door is open, Cassie takes one last look around before stepping in after Diana.

Inside the dwelling, she again takes stock of things, alert despite the fairly innocuous seeming surroundings. Yet as Diana displays an obviously greater degree of familiarity with this contact, her guard comes down a bit. This isn't some random suspicious contact at all, clearly. "Oh, nono, that's OK," she assures the younger man when he steps closer, lifting one hand from the chicken to wave him off. "We're uh, saving this for later. You know? Hard to get ones this uh, healthy and fresh back home in the city, you know?" It's not particularly true, but he doesn't know that!

Eventually, Cassie steps a little closer to the other two, although not intruding on their little moment. "Hey. You're one of the guys from the picture, right?"

Diana Prince has posed:
The two old friends continue their embrace for a moment longer before they separate and the older man looks to Cassie,a nd her chicken with a smile on his visage. "Who are your friends, Diana?" He asks in a smooth, calm voice.

"Napi, this is Cassandra, my protege. She's taken on the public persona of 'Wonder Girl'."

"Wonder Girl?" He asks with a little laugh following his words. "I am sure of that..." He tells her. "Did you bring us dinner, Cassandra?" He asks, motioning to the chicken. But, of course, he laughs again before motioning the two of them in to the room as he heads back toward his chair.

"Napi is the last living member of the Wonder Men." Diana tells Cassie with a soft smile as well, while she motions to the unoccupied sofa, before moving in that direction herself.

Once settled, Diana adjusts her garments, and regards the old man in his chair.

"The Wonder Men... yes, yes." Napi says. "I would say it was a life time ago, but it was likely more than that by now..."

From the hallway, the young man had gone to the kitchen and retrieved some glasses of ice tea for their two new guests, carrying the glasses toward them, he sets them down on the small coffee table in front of the sofa.

"'Chief!', as they liked to call me." Napi adds with a little huffing chortle then. "Probably would not go over quite as well today, to do that, hmmm?" He asks of the two women, playfully.

Diana just grins as she pushes her sunglasses up to her hair, and settles her scarf back off of her head. "Times are ever changing..." She says back to him then.

"Indeed they are." Napi responds to Diana. "Yet your beauty remains ever the same as I first beheld it." He says to her, upon seeing her scarf down and glasses pushed aside. Diana just smiles at this compliment, and Napi returns it, before he looks to Cassie.

"Would you believe it if I told you that Diana here was as green as summer grass when I first met her?" He asks of Cassie. "She had never experienced a snow fall, or knew what beef jerky was." He says again, laughing once more.

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
At first, it's almost like the chicken KNOWS everyone else wants to take her away for dinner! Or maybe she has no idea and this is just how chickens are. But at this point, Cassie just kind of has her tucked beneath one arm and, with the occasional gentle touch, calmed down enough that she seems to go along with her current circumstances. It probably isn't that much of a feat, considering that they probably spend a lot of time around even more people in their short lives!

"Yep, that's me," she confirms, when it comes to all their respective code-names, although she gives a little laugh when Diana points out that her old gang had a matching name. "Did you really call them that? Haha, awesome." It's not like the photograph has a label for them, and so even if she's seen it countless times, sitting in that hallowed spot in Diana's office, there are new things to discover about her mentor's old gang. "So wait..." Now her eyes do this thing they do when she's thinking EXTRA hard, crossing ever so slightly. "Wasn't that in World War I? And you weren't exactly a kid back then. So you've gotta be..." Math is hard, but this one even Cassie can manage.

"... a little bit magical, or something." Her eyes shoot back and forth between the pair, like she's cleverly caught on to something, although eventually she gives up on needling them for information and goes to claim the spot on the couch that Diana directs her towards.

"Well, them doing it might be a little... yeah," Cassie muses, "but -you're- allowed," she continues, sharing her rather thorough familiarity with such social matters in the always-embattled online world. "If you like it, anyway. Believe me, I hang out with super people and a lot of them have some pretty weird names that are kinda questionable but, you know, we just kinda let slide."

She shifts on the couch, trying different positions with the chicken in her lap, or next to her, until it finally settles down a bit. However, it's the last thing Napi asks that really causes her to grin, both for the fact that he's sharing some embarassing secret tales of 'young'-Diana, like a parent out to embarass their kids, and because... "Oh I for sure believe it. She acts like she's the wisest, most worldy person, you know? 'Cause she's lived through everything and seen it all? But she's sooooo out of touch, even now. I think she's -still- catching on to how things work, after all this time."

Diana Prince has posed:
Diana quietly thanks the young man who had brought those drinks for them, as she pulls her scarf off of her shoulders, and rolls it up upon her lap. She takes up the glass while Cassie speaks, sipping from the drink before resting it upon her right palm. She just smirks softly throughout what Cassie says, before speaking on Napi's age. "He is a member of the Blackfoot tribe, and like you, and I, he is the off-spring of a Human, and a God." She softly explains to the young Chicken caretaker.

Napi speaks up then, his hands hanging from over his knees now, elbows upon his thighs. "I choose to look this old, as it reflects how I feel. Perhaps some day, I will change my feelings, but... not today..." He speaks with that serene kindness to his accented English.

"The Wonder Men... came from the local newspaper in Belgium." Diana quietly reminds Cassie. "But, yes, Napi has been a very reliable shipment source for me for a very long time now."

"A smuggler." Napi says then with a light laugh, as he leans back in the chair. "And I brought you both here today, to see something that I can feel within my bones... is bad magic."

The man leans back in his chair and reaches to the floor to the left side of it, a moment later and he brings up a box made of wood, that he flips a latch upon, then pushes the lid open. "This came to me from some of my colleagues... out of a town not too far from here.." The elder demi-God says as he sets the box down on the coffee table and begins to turn it to face Diana, and Cassie, and the chicken.

Inside, the form of a large glass oblong orb can be seen. Covered in rock-like branches that sweep around it, like unnatural fingers clutching the glass orb from its base. It is glowing pink from its inside, gently pulsing with some kind of power within.

"I knew this had to go to you, Diana..." Napi says. "The people in Siwa have had enough trouble, of late, to deal with more dark energies..."

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
"Oh." Another Demigod club(tm) member! "Well... yep, that'd do it," Cassie declares, with a matter-of-factness that could ONLY come from someone who's grown up in that same strange club. She's grinning a little too, giving off a sense of self-satisfaction of having figured a bit of it out herself before they had to tell her! The power of basic math!

She, too, will accept the tea with a grateful smile and, with some maneuvering, find way to hold it without disturbing the now resting Wonder Chicken. The idea of age being a feeling versus a number definitely has her thinking, though, and glancing at Diana, smirking just a little. She's chosen to look much younger despite being soooooo old! How vain!

But would Cassie do any different? She's probably going to look like a tiktok refugee in the distant sci-fi future.

Then it's on to business. What's in the box? Well, as it turns out... "Oh great, your typical cursed magical relic, huh?" Typical, huh? Cassie does like to project a certain nonchalance, perhaps owing to that same unusual childhood, and her youthful start to the superhero game. She's seen a lot... relative to her age, at least. But compared to these too? She's definitely putting on a big act! When it opens, she leens forward to peer inside.

"They look kinda like a hand," she observes, impulsively, obvious though the comparison may be. "Ooh, and it glows ominously. That's never good!"

However, with the idea that Diana needs to care for it repeated, she has to break into the whole thing to clarify. "So is this more a 'safely transport this to lock it away, far from those who would use it for their own purposes' kind of deal or more of a toss it into Mount Doom situation?" Now the chicken seems enraptured by the light, too. "And are we gonna have weird cultists chasing us the whole way?"

Diana Prince has posed:
While the box is settled down on to the table, Diana reaches out to set her glass of tea back down on to the coaster that it had first been placed upon. She eyes the interior of the box, the large egg-like glass construct. Chief leans back as the two women inspect it. "It was calling to my colleagues pack animals." He quietly informs them both.

Diana glances over to Cassie then, as the young girl gets her quips out, and then leans toward the box too... with that chicken. The Princess gently pushes the chicken back when it starts to lean itself closer to the magical item. "It is one of the World Eater Hearts, as we have come to call them." She says. "Remember the one that we lost over Siwa?" Diana asks of Cassie. She then averts her eyes to look upon Napi. "It would seem that you, and yours, have found something that we misplaced when we fought that creature many months back."

"I heard about that fight." Napi says. "My people have words for what was described then... very bad words." He says, rubbing his fingertips together.

Diana's left hand keeps the chicken back from the box, as she looks back to Cassie. "These ... things ... seem to lure in animals, even insects, and grotesquely transform the creatures in to ... well, the monsters that we have fought on two occasions now."

The Princess lifts up her scarf, and begins to unfurl it again. She drapes it over the glass sphere within said wooden box, until the glowing energy is mostly concealed away, then she settles the lid back down over it.

"We are keeping these Hearts upon the Moon base. After we discovered the allure that they have for unsuspecting animals... it became obvious we needed to find a safer place for them, then even a facility here on Earth."

Diana spares a look over to Cassie then. "I would welcome cultists at this stage, as we have not yet discovered where these... things, are coming from." She replies before eyeing the wooden container warily.

"If they are coming from a group of people..." Napi adds. "Then these people wish nothing but clear harm upon the world. I will keep my eyes, ears, and more, searching for any information on this, Diana." He tells the two women. "And I for one am glad you still look the same age.. do not let your young friend here convince you to be as silly as I am." He then tells them with a grin.

"You, and Cassandra should stay for dinner. The chicken can as well." Napi says as he starts to stand up again. "I promise, we will even find some feed for him, not the other way around." He tells Cass with a big grin for her.

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
"Oh... Oh!" Yep. Now Cassie has done the complex MATH again. Two plus two equals oh right, we dropped something. "Right, when we... threw that one into space, or whatever." It was a pretty epic moment, and causes her to puff her chest out a little... until the realization sinks in that their overall carelessness left this thing to cause trouble. She frowns!

"They have a bunch of these, right? Everyone was trying to hack open different spots on the creature, to dig 'em out," she muses, not quite noticing the fact that her pet is being entranced by the object until Diana reaches out to restrain it, and the words about them transforming local wildlife sinks in. "Oh crap. Uh! Sorry, lemme..." She looks around, as if deciding if there's somewhere safe to store said clucking creature, before deciding just to sit back, once again more firmly holding the bird in her lap so it can't leap out and get up to any trouble with the strange orb, at least until they get it covered up.

"Sure, right, makes sense we'd want to store 'em somewhere nothing normal can live, then," she agrees. And the moon is pretty inhospitable!

"True, yeah, if it is a cult, I guess them coming after us would be a good way to get some info. Grab one, give it a bit of the trusty lasso, and we'd have our answers." Presumably, she means Diana's lasso, although in theory, hers MIGHT be able to extract an answer as well... no, bad thought! "Which means it's probably not going to be that easy. Never an evil cult when you NEED one, you know?" The hard life of a superhero!

Still, the combination of the man's flattery for Diana and his offer of feeding them (chicken and all) has her grinning widely again. "I'm sure we're not in any rush, right Di?"

Diana Prince has posed:
"We are not in any rush, to be certain." Diana replies to Cassie with a smile before reaching over to pat the chicken's head gently a pair of times.

Napi says something positive in his Native American tongue, and then motions to the two women. "Come then, I will take you to our grand dining hall." He jokingly says before putting his arm around Cassie's shoulders. "I need to bore this one with some stories of the days gone by too." He says with a little chuckle as he leads in to another section of the house. "I am sure you have heard of Steve Trevor, but have you heard of our dear friends Samir, or Charlie?" He asks whilst on his guiding tour.

Diana is right behind the pair, smiling warmly, and sorting out her flowing garments, while she pauses for just a moment to stare at some of the photos hanging from the walls in the corner of the living area. There are many photos of Napi's life, throughout the decades. She spies a few of interest to her, including some of Steve that she'd never seen before.

'May we get what we want.'
'May we get what we need.'
'But, may we never get what we deserve.'

Diana can hear the voices of the group clearly in her mind, like she'd just heard them say it together only seconds ago. It makes a distant smile cross her features, while her eyes slowly move over the grainy images of the group's faces.

After a few moments, though, with Napi telling a story to Cassie as he leads her to the dining room, the elder man speaks back. "Diana? Did you tell Cassandra about how I showed you how to spot landmines?"

Diana takes her eyes from the photos, smiles again, and moves to join them in the dining hall. "Did I? Why, I taught her how to do the very same, and showed her how to clear an entire field of them!"