15394/Into the Jinxie-Verse

Into the Jinxie-Verse
Date of Scene:	16 July 2023
Location:	Alt-Earth
Synopsis:	Nadia reconstructs her fathers totally-not-a-stargate so that Jinx can travel to the alternate reality paradoxically linked to her; there they hope to find a living Kel Fountaine but first they encounter La Ligue d'Heroisme.
Cast of Characters:	Jinx, Donna Troy, Nadia Pym-van Dyne

---

Jinx has posed:
Jinx raises an eyebrow at what Nadia has put together. Based on her fathers previous work. It's a Stargate. Let's not mince words. "Should we call Cheyenne Mountain before we turn this thing on or are good with an Goa'uld invasion?" Still this is kind of amazing and the only super science she'd ever been around before involved attempted weapons of mass destruction.

The trip was, in theory, going to be straight forward. Track down the with Kel Fountaine, whom in this alternative timeline survived the encounter with Jinx's mother and father due to this timeline's Jinx interfering and creating said timeline. What could be simpler?

"May be this other version of me will be an Avenger or something exciting. She grew up without anywhere near as much dark baggage as me. Then again, orphan... but she did get adopted in to a nice family."

Wearing blue jeans and a black hoodie, her hands get stuffed in to her pockets. Pink hair is braided back and the appreciation she has for Nadia growing by the second. "Dial up JNX-002, Nadia. It's time to James Spader this shit."

Donna Troy has posed:
    Donna is taking no precautions. Trips into sideloops of spacetime possibly caused by temporal paradoxes are unpredictable things, and you never know just how far that divergent timeline has diverged. She is prepared.

    That means arms and armor of course. This is Donna. She has on her fancy part Themysiran part American high technology body armor. She has a sword, a lasso and a shield. Aware there's a high chance that credit cards won't work in that world she's brought a lot of cash, and on the off chance the dollar is no longer legal tender (or now has Keanu Reeves' head on it or something) she has a pocket full of gold Philip II of Macedon staters. They were real and valuable antiques before the point of divergence of this paradox, that probably hasn't changed. She has a lot of data on local storage she can plug her t-com into in case the normal databases aren't available, and a survival pack. She has also left instructions with Raven to extract the team if they're not back in a timely manner.

    "The other version of you won't have powers," she points out to Jinx. "So unless she's really into archery, probably not." She arches an eyebrow at Jinx. "Insurance. That's my guess. The other you works in insurance. Got a job explaining to people why their policy didn't cover whatever it was that they're claiming on. Probably a real capitalist stooge."

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    Nadia is dressed in her usual fashionable attire, today a pleasted black and red plaid skirt that reaches just above her knees and her favorite 'Just a GIRL who loves Wasps!' T-Shirt, with her labcoat draped loosely about her shoulders like a cape. She stands not far from the control console of what really does look an awful lot like a Stargate, there aren't really many other ways to describe it. "Cheyanne Mountain? Why would we call NORAD? I really don't think they need to know... they usually just get annoyed at me... Wait R'as Al'Gould?" Nadia has never seen Stargate, she has however had several conversations with irate US officials about GIRL's spaceship, its armaments, and the use of US airspace.

    "So, just stand here." Nadia gestures Jinx over to a SCIENCE pedestal to stand on. "Then the machine can use your resonance linked to the other Earth to dial in on its particular parallel timeline." She says as she punches some final calculations into her tablet and begins bringing the systems online.

    "She might have powers." Nadia asides to Donna, "Or rather she might have gained them best on what Jinx said. Since Jinx has lost her powers and the other her she is linked to didn't have them, I wouldn't rule out other Jinx now having Jinx's powers through some kind of transfer overlap. Also that armor is awesome." Nadia can appreciate it not only on the level of fusing various disparate technologies, but also aesthetics.

Jinx has posed:
Jinx dutifully steps on science platform to be scanned. "The armor does look awesome. Also, rude. Insurance? really?" She scoffs and once the scan is complete she steps off. As the gate springs to life, "I bet you $20 i'm not in insurance..."

She grins back at Nadia, who clearly has her back on this. With little to no evidence that there will be any powers in alt-Jinx. The notion is nice. She is getting used to having Donna tug on her chain a bit like that.

As the totally not a stargate comes to life she looks at the shimmering surface and shrugs her shoulders, "Last one to alternate reality me is a square." Then, turns and hops backward through the portal.

Linked through her resonance the gateway opens up amidst an office space. People in their cubicles jump up in surprise and especially a slightly terrified looking Jinx whose hair is decided not pink but brown. The placard on her desk says 'Jane Farthing, CCAB'

Jinx turns around and is confronted with her doppel.. or she supposes in this case she's the doppel. "An accountant? Really??" Then again, not an insurance denier.

Accountant-Jinx jumps back out of her chair, "What the fuck" as someone hits an alarm. The siren is unfamiliar to Titan ears. No sprinklers go off, but amber lights begin to flash near the exits and people are running for it. Accountant-Jinx included.

Donna Troy has posed:
    Donna breaks into a wide smirk at Jinx. Chain successfully pulled. "I'm not taking that bet. Once you start messing with timelines anything can happen. It's just as likely the other you sells dreamcatchers at a weekend craft market in Seattle. Actually that one sounds fairly likely, to be honest."

    "It is awesome," Donna agrees with Nadia as she waits for the system to synchronize with Jinx's resonance and locate the appropriate dimensional target. "We do metallurgy better than anyone else on the planet, but Themyscira doesn't do polymers. Concluded they were too toxic to the environment and gave up on them centuries ago. I was keen to see what Pallas could make out of some armorweave, and this is pretty much it. It's a heavily modified version of our heavy training armor built onto an armorweave substrate, with a few little innovations. It's not as protective as my old armor was, but honestly even if the weight of all that steel isn't an issue for me, I kinda figured a less rigid armor was a worthwhile trade-off for having a bit less protection. And it's really comfortable."

    Then there's a portal and people running. Donna's through the gate straight after Jinx. "Hey!" she calls out in the direction of people running. "We come in peace! Don't panic, we're just here to talk!"

    She tilts her head at Jinx. "That was you, right? I guess that means pink isn't your natural coloring. Want me to catch up to her and see if I can persuade her to stop running?"

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    Usually Nadia is the first through a portal like this, others always getting caught up on things like caution. So it is an interesting change of pace when Jinx is already off and dashing through the portal ahead of her and Donna not far behind. For her part, after securing her tablet that interfaces with the portal technology in one of her pockets, she follows after Jinx through the portal.

    "Typical." Nadia sighs as she emerges from the portal to the sound of alarms. "We're not here to hurt you, we just want to talk. Why do they always either panic and run or attack?" Nadia glances around at the flashing amber lights as the strange siren blares. "I think we're going to be dealing with whatever passes for Police on this Earth soon. Please don't be creepy cyborg relatives." Nadia has had some bad experiences on parallel Earths in the past.

Jinx has posed:
"You seriously thought I didn't dye my hair?" Jinx laughs amidst the chaos of people evacuating the building. "That alarm better not be for a gas leak..." It's almost certainly to do with their arrival. "I really don't think we need to mess with her. She's an accountant, not a dreamcatcher merchant. Besides, we're here to find Kel."

And there's computers everywhere, so she might as well do a google. She sits down at 'her' desk and sees it's locked. Thumb to the thumb reader and it unlocks again. A smirk, "Nice." She looks up at Nadia, "Creepy cyborg relatives. Yeah I wasn't really listening when you brought that up last time with your dad...."

www.google.com -- 404

"Ah geez. They don't have google in this timeline. Hm, what was it called before that? .. altavista nono.. yahoo." She tries that and gets up a search engine. Typing in Kel Fountaine yields a whole heap of results. "Whoa... popular. I guess Nettie wasn't exaggerating." Her eyes scan over the news articles including 'First Contact' with aliens in New York - a picture of Loki shaking hands with Kel. "What kinda bollocks is this shit..."

It is that that the air outside the sky scraper shimmers and three quinjets painted blue appear. They have the European Union stars upon them surrounded by a SHIELD. With a pulse, the glass winds shatter and a team of people leap in to the room.

Dark blue armored SHIELD agents come up from their leap-rolls. One has a weapon out and fires it at -- the portal entrance. It starts to shudder and shimmer as the portal collapses behind them. Its o-o-o-o rays somehow counter-acting Nadia's portal back on the Titan's Earth.

Standing in a gown of red with armoured pauldrons and gaunlets carrying a big sword, Guillotine considers the interlopers before saying, "Lay down your weapons and surrender to La Ligue d'Heroisme, if you truly are here in peace."

Outlaw wearing a peaky cap and a black shirt with a golden heart on it cracks his knuckles, "Or we can do this the fun way." What looks like the Iron Patriot armor lands in to the room next and the head snaps back revealing Toni Ho, "There's no where for you to run Interlopers. Give it up before we make you."

Jinx stares, mouth dropped open in absolute confusion and surprise. "Uh." She raises up her hands. No magic means no fight. There is of course Wasp and Donna but who knows just how tough these alt-heroes are.

Guillotine rests the flat of her sword on her shoulder and then peers at Donna more closely, "Diana... you're alive?"

Donna Troy has posed:
    "Oh yeah, I totally thought it was natural," Donna tells Jinx, smirking a little. "I've been meaning for ages to ask why you dye your eyebrows... always thought that was a strange choice."

    Donna's very relaxed about all of this, and when Jinx indicates that there's no need to chase after her opposite number, she leans comfortably on the desk to watch Jinx's googling, or rather not-googling. There are no comments about the differences revealed, she's too busy speed-reading the text as it scrolls past, trying to get as much insight into this alternative world as she can in the brief time that is likely to be available before something happens.

    And happen it does, in a fairly spectacular manner. SHIELD, or some variant thereof. That's not necessarily a good thing, especially as any given incarnation of SHIELD is about fifty percent likely to be secretly HYDRA. The EU stars is a curiosity though. And 'La Ligue D'Heroisme?' Well at least it's not 'der Bund der Gerechtigkeit' or something, so maybe not HYDRA.

    Donna reacts very calmly to the whole thing, giving both Nadia and Jinx a nod of reassurance, and a little 'stay back' hand gesture. She waits until the immediate drama is over, then raises a finger. "So, one. You guys are kind of over-eager. Windows aren't cheap, you could have used the doors. We weren't going anywhere." A second finger. "Two, we don't have our weapons out, we're being non-threatening. See, sword, lasso, neither at the ready. We come in peace and all that." A third finger. "Three, we are here in peace, and the nice thing to do is welcome peaceful visitors in a friendly fashion, not demand their surrender." Fourth finger. "Four, shooting people's portals is rude."

    Finally the thumb, accompanied by a smile and a small shake of the head. "Four, no. I get that a lot though. She's taller and her nose is bigger. Also, eyes. We have different colored eyes. That's a real giveaway. I'm Troia, Diana is my sister. However as we are visitors from a different dimension, she won't be quite the Diana you know. Or knew. If the version of my sister who is native here has died, I'm very sorry to hear that. Now can we talk sensibly? Something has happened that seems to have caused a crossover of causality between your dimension and our dimension, and I'm sure La Ligue has experience of such matters and knows they are best resolved."

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    "SHIELD, I should have figured they'd show up. Though SHIELD is an improvement over murderous cyborg relatives, still I swear our SHIELD is way nicer when people show up from other dimensions. Every time I do it they're all angry and police brutality style wanting to haul you into interrogation rooms."

    And then the glass is breaking and weird heroes are swarming in. "We're not even holding any weapons guys," Nadia raises her hands. "I mean she has a sword but that's part of her religion. Unless a lab coat counts as a weapon.. Does a lab coat count as a weapon? I can take it off I guess..." And then they're shooting and disrupting her portal. "Hey! I didn't break your stuff, what the heck?!"

Jinx has posed:
One of the SHIELD agents, she has long flowing red hair, lowers her weapon and holsters it. "Pleasantries come after securing the location. Doctor Selvig, how bad is it."

As one of the quinjets turns around and extends its ramp down to window level, an older man in a white lab coat steps out. With instruments in hand he begins to scan the room and frowns, "Level 6 - we're going to need to amber the whole floor. Everybody out now. We don't have much time." Two Agents rush past him with canisters and position them beneath where Nadia's portal was.

"Scratch that," Selvig announces, "It's a level 7. We've got causal fraying. Like in New York 8 years ago." The heroes of La Ligue suddenly look very alarmed. Guillotine motions a circle in the air, "Everybody out now." She looks at the three interlopers and says, "You three with us or you get the amber. That's not a threat, it's just the way things are - then we can talk about your causality breach." The heroes all back out of the room back on to the quinjets and in to the air.

Jinx rises up from the desk and looks worriedly, "May be a Lab coat is a weapon here... but I think we should go with them. I, personally, am not interested in finding out what amber is." Still with her hands in the air she starts walking to one of the quinjets.

Left on the computer screen, probably the last thing Donna read, was that Kel Fountaine was one of the founding members of La Ligue d'Heroisme.

Donna Troy has posed:
Donna raises an eyebrow at the interplay between the agents and scientists, and turns to Jinx. "See, causal fraying. I mean the very phrase just seems so unsurprising, all things considered. Know what I mean? I suspect the universe these people live in is uh... less stable than they're hoping." Let's not scare the natives and actually /say/ anything about how fragile their existence must be if it's based on a single temporal paradox for its entire causative basis. Might as well construct the foundations of your house out of old newspapers.

    Donna's not arguing though, and with a nod to Nadia she too heads towards the quinjet hovering outside the now rather broken window. It's acceptably close to an invitation that she doesn't feel the need to admonish Guillotine for not being nicer to strangers any more. Instead it's time to try to get information. She speeds up slightly until she's walking alongside Guillotine, and asks her in a casual and familiar fashion, almost as if she was no stranger, "Kel Fountaine helped found La Ligue in your world, right? We need to speak to her on a matter of great importance. Which I strongly suspect is connected to your level 8 causal disruption. Can you bring us to her?"

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    Nadia's hands are already up. She's used to this, allowing yourself to be captured for the purposes of infiltration is part of basic Red Room training. "I mean... maybe we could help stabilize it." Nadia's eyes linger for a moment on the woman who is definitely not the same lethal dour sourpus whom she holds great affection for, but she smiles a bit nonetheless in spite of herself.

    At the mention of 8 years ago, Nadia has some new questions for Jinx about what she did to cause all of this and the timeframe, but now doesn't seem to be the best time to voice them. So, instead she follows everyone towards the waiting Quinjets. "Amber? Like Amber Alert? Have children been kidnapped?"

Jinx has posed:
Erik Selvig is last on to the quinjets behind them. With a touch to his wrist watch there is an explosion from the two canisters. Yellow gas spreads out rapidly. In a haze like fractures in a pane of glass spreading cracks become visible. Then, the gas solidifies making the entire floor inaccessible.

"We're good," Erik says and takes a seat. His job done for now. Jinx stares back out at the 'amber' and had a similar question on the tip of her tongue as Nadia's. "I guess that answers that question Nadia. They just made amber out of a gas." And apparently it's holding cracks in their reality from shattering further.

Jinx gives a nod to Donna at the conjecture about this reality. Being only 27 years old, it must be as thin as an egg. Their travel here inadvertently cracked it. But clearly they weren't the first to do it.

Guillotine raises an eyebrow at the way Donna invites herself to stand next to her. She places the magical sword in to a specialised holder on the wall of the quinjet. The ramp closes behind them and the quinjets turn away from the building.

"You're in luck then," Jeannine Sauvage aka Guillotine says, "Because this is pretty unusual. Operational security means we're not taking our eyes off of you."

There's an uneasiness with the SHIELD agents sitting there watching the three that just appeared. Like they feel the Titan's are far more dangerous than they appear. That they harbour an ulterior motive. May be -they're- HYDRA.

The air before the quinjets shimmers and as they pass through it they fly out in to the blue skies of Brussels. Rivers and castles and tall spired buildings interspersed with glass skyscrapers. Standing at the edge of the canal is a tall building in the shape of a H. The quinjets head to that.

"Is this Belgium?," Jinx asks and one of the SHIELD agents merely grunts a yes in response. "Awesome."

Erik looks over to Nadia, "May be you can. Since you and your friends nearly broke the world perhaps you'd be interested in helping fix it." There's a cocky little smile with that accusation, but it's a welcoming face not a hostile one. Scientist to scientist. Nadia is wearing a labcoat after all.

Donna Troy has posed:
    "Jurassic mosquitos, Nadia," Donna says with one side of her mouth curling up into a half-smile. "Amber for preserving things, freezing them in time. It fits. I bet they're aware of just how much that's just plastering over the cracks, though."

    Of course it's all conjecture, but it fits the guesswork and it's always better to sound like you're the people who know what's going on if you want people to waste as little of your time as possible.

    Donna leans casually against a bulkhead, watching Guillotine. "You notice we're not making it hard for you to keep your eyes on us," she points out. Nadia in particular could make that very hard indeed, but never tip your hand. "That's because we came here to try to fix the problems you guys are having, we're exactly where we want to be. If you knew my sister, you'd know there's a kind of... family tradition. We're not here to fight you. 'Never raise your hand in anger before you have tried offering it in friendship'. Sound familiar?"

    Donna has passed through Brussels a few times on UN business before, but never for long -- and this Brussels has a few differences. "H for Heroisme, I suppose?" she asks. "We've got a T back home. Perhaps you've got one in this world, but it has been empty for the past six years or so?"

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    "In our defense," Nadia holds up a hand. "Opening that kind of portal usually doesn't break most worlds." She makes a 'ohhhh' expression at Donna before returning her focus to Erik. She really should have thought of that, too much time studying outside world common knowledge. She'll get a demerit on her Mad Scientist card for that. "But," She continues. "I'm sorry it almost broke yours and if I can help you fix the cause, I would love to do so. I'm pretty good with theoretical physics and quantum mechanics." Good enough to open a portal between parallel Earths at any rate.

    "Have you isolated the root cause of those negative interactions with causality breaches? What is that Amber you were using? I mean reality isn't a mosquito. But you seem to have made progress towards a solution with that stuff, although if you can't use those areas anymore..." She doesn't finish the sentence that eventyally they'll run out of space, it just feels like the sort of thing that's a bit delicate, that this entire reality seems to be operating on borrowed time.

Jinx has posed:
Nigel Higgens aka Outlaw laughs and says to Guillotine, "I think she's flirting with you Jeannine." Jeannine raises an eyebrow and looks back at Nigel. "Puhlease. She's flirting with my sword. Everyone likes the sword." Jinx glances over at the sword hanging on the wall. A small shrug.

Jeannine looks back to Donna. "The Titans tower?" Her eyes are calculating as she looks at Nadia and then Jinx. There is no analogue to those two, but Donna's claim about Diana certainly strikes a chord. "You're Titans."

Erik points to the H as they approach it and explains, "One side is SHIELD, the other side is The League." No La Ligue for Erik. "And in the middle we keep all our flying vehicles."

Nigel taps on his comms and says, "London incursion cleared. Three incoming. Tell superstar, Kel's got fans." As Nadia starts rattling off questions it's Nigel who pipes up again, "Cool your jets love. Most of what you're talking about is beyond classified. Wait until we get to the mission room - then we'll talk shop right?"

Jinx shouldn't be surprised as she is that there's yet another letter shaped building. But she is. It's very silly. They fly in to the middle of the H, the horizontal beam. It's circa old SHIELD style with lots of quinjets and people working about fixing them, loading and unloading them. This place is busy with lots of personnel. They're very well funded.

The ramp at the back of the quinjet drops down and the SHIELD agents start to file out. So do the heroes. Toni Ho, aka Rescue, in her Iron Patriot suit lands down next to the quinjets. The armor peels away from her and she is revealed to be quite a small woman without the technology.

Jinx glances at Donna and Nadia. Jinx is feeling her palms get sweaty. The vibes Donna is putting out is making her feel very nervous. Did she really make this reality or did it just get linked to her in some way? Surely she's not the -goddess- of this world. Or perhaps since it's falling apart, more accurately its devil??

Standing before the quinjet is a woman wearing white robes with golden belt and pauldrons. A golden necklace and silver hair falling down behind her. Her smile shatters the moment her eyes fall upon the pink haired Jinx.

"YOU!"


... to be continued