15877/Ex Umbra: Knocking on Forbidden Doors

Ex Umbra: Knocking on Forbidden Doors
Date of Scene:	27 September 2023
Location:	6C - Matt Murdock
Synopsis:	Daisy descends, and after passing the River, breaks shit.
Cast of Characters:	Daisy Johnson, Jane Foster
Tinyplot:	Praxidike

---

Daisy Johnson has posed:
"Stay still..."

More water flies all about as Daisy tries to keep the 'beast' wrangled down. A desperate meow is heard, "Oh, quiet down you aren't dying. In fact you have been filthy last few days but no more..."

The struggle is real as Daisy faces one of her toughest opponents yet, that being Boxer during washing day. But at least the claws hadn't come out yet and she was on the rinsing part by now. Perhaps she would get out of this whole ordeal without a new scar! She could only hope. Boxer, for his part, looks as miserable as it gets with all the water and the washing product and that look of absolute dread that Daisy is making him go through. Humans can be so evil!

Jane Foster has posed:
Boxer, of course, treads near to death as he is pushed into the dreaded box large enough for two fully grown humans. Even everyday animals recognize the threshold into another place, some vestigial part of their sentience recoiling from proximity to that dreadful boundary.

His plaintive warnings and protests must fall on deaf round ears. The old wives' tale to stare between his ears might reveal glimpses of an invisible realm between splashes of water and curls of mist.

He doesn't go quietly into that wet goodnight or any towel, perhaps. The sounds ricochet off hard surfaces, distorted into a blurry mass. Echoes of Boxer's sounds meld into Daisy's, making washing day a slightly more enthusiastic, loud affair than it might normally be.

Still, the cat's usual response is on point and trying to haul himself out of her grip and out of the water comes on a hasty moment when he thinks she isn't paying attention. Splatters run off his damp coat, and there's some mad scrabbling of back paws for purchase, adding to puddles scattered on the floor.

The low, affronted noise at least indicates he wants to scram, even if *she* doesn't.

Daisy Johnson has posed:
Daisy knows all about those escape attempts. She was born in it after all. Shaped by a lifetime on an orphanage where she wanted nothing more than to discover the truth about her parents and who she was. So when Boxer struggles and gets those little paws in an attempt to jump? Daisy is there to catch him, letting out a tsk. No feline gets the better of the original escape artist!

Yet the worst part is done and now what's left is to clean up the little rascal, Daisy proceeding on doing it with a towel. Undignified? Perhaps in a way, but also necessary. "There ..., did we really need to make such a fuss?"

True enough that Boxer really is putting up a fight today, more than the norm even. "I will get you an extra treat tonight." this said in that way as if Boxer understood all she was saying. Because every cat owner knows their cats understand all they say. It is known.

Jane Foster has posed:
Boxer twists in all his wet glory, driven by a preternatural dislike of water and feline agility. His damp coat drips onto the floor and his swishing tail, reduced to a narrow needlepoint instead of its usual stately sleek floof, whips slashes of water against the wall. Beads form a glittering arc of diamonds, slowly warped by gravity to drag down the flat surface. His ears flatten as he swivels to look up at her, eyes dominating his pointed little face. Affront written large on his cat face must be even more bruising to the ego when his pupils are huge gaping black holes.

A loud mew gone guttural rolls out in the last note. This isn't the appeased mew of a happy boy or a sharp reminder to his slow servant to fill the empty food dish.

The low 'Mrooooooooooooooowr' forms a queerly hollow echo, reverberating on itself, and he stares. Sort of at her and the evil towel, but almost past Daisy. The kind of sound that makes hair on the nape stand up keeps rolling out from him.

Daisy Johnson has posed:
That feeling on the back of her neck doesn't go ignored, specially with Daisy having the kind of training she has had in SHIELD. Always trust your gut.

And would any enemy dare to strike at her at her own place? Perhaps. Or could even be one of Matt's enemies. What happens next is that she turns her head sharply, one hand extending and ready to rumble in case there's someone there, the vibrations already starting.

"Who's out there?" she asks.

Jane Foster has posed:
*Trust your gut*. Or Boxer the cat, who isn't squirming so much as staring fixed at a point. Attempts to move him or shift him merely earn a headbob as he won't turn his back to some point. That point so happens to be sidelong.

No vibrations other than the ones generated by her, the cat, and the water in the bathtub greet that extension of her senses. Rumbling movements barely provide a cause for concern as the hot air stirs to a fan, blown in slow oscillating cycles.

Humidity leaves shimmering trails of condensation on the floor and the mirror. A patina of champagne silver blurs any vestiges of her reflection, the words warped and bubbly in muted echoes around the room.

Boxer keeps lowing that strange, unearthly noise. He's no happier.

Gilt light warps the mirror's edges like looking through the bottom of a pint of beer. Her reflection extends an arm, hand poised to act. A momentary pause.

Herself, suspended in amber.

Daisy Johnson has posed:
No one out there. Figment of her imagination?

Daisy blinks once and then frowns. "I am starting to get paranoid like Bobbi.." even if she still keeps her arm extended, feeling the vibrations in the air and surroundings. Nothing. No one.

"Enough with your attempts to get out of a bath, Boxer.." Even if her gaze is drawn to the mirror for a moment and her reflection there.

Jane Foster has posed:
The cat flattens his ears into a triangular pattern, ready for take-off as soon as he can find some runway. His whiskers bristle as he slowly soaks into the towel or Daisy's arms, whatever can wick up the water.

Daisy's vibrations lick up the walls and sink through the floor. All is normal from that aspect.

Gilding streaks across the mirror frame, warping the manufactured silver background. Her reflection blinks and lifts a hand.

Where Daisy herself does not move.

Daisy Johnson has posed:
Daisy freezes. The cat is forgotten momentarily, specially as the reflection actually moves when she didn't. Was that actually real? Daisy stays those couple of seconds in the limbo where she is trying to process something she knows should be impossible, no matter how much proof she has got that magic does exist.

It's right then that Boxer may find an escape route out of the bathroom to go find a hiding spot to dry off and feel angry at the world for mandatory baths.

As for Daisy? She eventually lowers her hand and gets back up to her feet. "What is going on?" great, now she is talking to a mirror, "Who are you?"

Jane Foster has posed:
Boxer's reflection shows his staring eyes, the black pupils huge. His whiskers twitch, and his low yowl through a slightly open mouth is echoed there against the foggy pane covered in condensation and a sheen of copper. He swishes his tail as a good cat should. Silly naked two-legs, they never act even when he breaks stealth and shouts at them! Mrrooooowr.

He hasn't turned tail and run, but shouting at Other Daisy and His Daisy amounts to a low warble as the only source of sound.

Except for Daisy's own question, hanging there in the thickened, foggy air. In the heated room, the wet cat adding a wet-fur smell, the atmosphere is almost cloying.

The reflected Daisy repeats the question, lips moving in the same shapes, like someone in a mirror would. Until she puts her finger to the glass and runs it down in a stick. She draws a crossbar, another connecting like. H.

An upside down arc. U.

A stick with a backward bubble and a slanty line poking down. Okay, that one is a bit harder to imagine.

Daisy Johnson has posed:
Daisy slides up to her feet once the reflection starts drawing something on the mirror? Trying to write something? Again she attempts to read through the vibrations in the air, to figure out for something, or someone on the other side, a small frown coming to her features once she finds nothing. An illusion? Hardly so..

The letters start being written but so far they appear to make little sense. H U ..., maybe a R. She shakes her head as if she did not understand.

Hand goes to rest atop Boxer in an appeasing gesture, finally remembering the poor cat who's most likely having to suffer through something it can barely understand. But then again it's not like Boxer understands the need for a bath. With water, that is. Tongues are just fine for having a bath.

Jane Foster has posed:
The mirror does not vibrate, at least any more than it would when she sends a delicate wash of energy up against the pane. Nonetheless, through the growing condensation dripping down, another shape takes form, the same as the last as Daisy, that *other* Daisy, draws it.

Then her finger streaks in a U with a curly tail, looping around. Then three sharp lines drawn beneath for emphasis. She stands back, her eyes blazing and expectant. Briefly she looks over her shoulder, and back again.

Boxer is no fool. He bares his teeth, sharp and pointy, and then squirms to get the heck out of dodge. Not that he really has far to go, but his fear sparkles in the air.

The room grows increasingly copper-tinted, and for an instant there is a cat on the ground.

Then no cat.

Then a cat appearing in the mirror.

Then Boxer *yowling* in front of the wall.

Daisy Johnson has posed:
Daisy was never the best at crosswords. Nor Scrabble. Or what the kids play nowadays. Wordle? so when what the figure starts drawing on the glass? It's pretty much a blank for Daisy. What she does know is that this is no normal occurrence and while she isn't sure what's going on there's a certain feeling of connection here.

No matter how much Boxer may feel against it.

So perhaps against her better judgement she reaches out to touch the mirror, fingertips reaching.

Jane Foster has posed:
HURR-and some other letter.

She probably could guess from there. One extra letter, written backwards, and it's a mystery painted on the mirror flashing silver to flame. The dance of possibilities is there to be registered as her reflection stares at her.

She copies the gesture Daisy makes, but when her hand touches the mirror, Boxer *hisses*, arching his back.

Shapes blur as the surface of the glass remains solid... As much as glass is solid. Technically, it's an amorphous solid that behaves so strangely it might seem like a supercooled liquid. What matters to her unusual elemental abilities is the pinging note that rings out on contact *feels* more like pressing into a gelatinous solid or a very dense liquid. It has the same tensile give as hitting a trampoline or poking into the belly of a Jell-O figurine. Or a gelatinous cube, come to think...

Copper ripples wash up strongest against the edge of the mirror. Raindrops patter from the ceiling to the floor, water displaced by the vibration thrumming through her like a bell. Her attempt to push her way through won't come in any sort of gradual process. The membrane pressed against her is there, like a flexing parachute or dipping lens, and then it's not, a popped bubble.

And the world eerily tilts forward, or maybe she's straightening up, but in either way, the momentum is a shove *into* where the glass was.

Leaving behind one angry cat aggressively bristling.

Daisy Johnson has posed:
Gelatinous cube. Definitely. Daisy's mind goes to the nerd afternoons playing D&D while at the orphanage while trying to escape a nun's wrath. Yet whatever this is it certainly has nothing on what physics and reality is! She expected to be touching solid but now here they are, with Daisy poking into her own mirror and towards...

Does she really want to think where it leads?

But would she not venture into a new adventure head on?

To Boxer she says, "Tell Matt I will be right...." and she doesn't finish the sentence as she fully steps through the portal in front of her.

Jane Foster has posed:
The cat flattens his ears and does the shuffle dance as rain continues to splotch his fur in great splashes. He dances across the puddle-strewn floor in another mad dash effort to get out the door. Not having much luck at that, while skittering around in a demented fugue.

Matt will have his work cut out calming down a beast ready to shred him to ribbons, or to hiss and dive under the nearest place he can hide from the condensation dripping all over him.

Daisy steps in--

--and the raindrops stop falling.

Copper fire and the silver-foil backing of the glass scrape over her limbs, stretched out in a long tunnel that thins out until it snaps. Bits of broken glass twinkle in the background, their popping breaks registering at a vestigial level. But the fundamental crack, that exceeds even her capacity to quite sense.

It's simply too big, beyond stars fusing elements or great wobbles in the dense, cloudy atmosphere of planets. For a moment, there is something impossibly vast -- on a scale of seeing galaxies strung in their filaments, the local super-cluster imposed on the ever evolving and expanding web of space. Shivering threads of superheated matter stand out in the glimmering abyss, a dark too deep to comprehend. Something big shakes, truly wobbling, and if she looks up, it's a galaxy-spattered leaf of some kind.

One of multitudes suspended on an enormous branch of cosmic radiance and spectral purpose, which puts her footing on a bough of some kind. One that's wood and not wood.

An instant later, for it's only a split second this is visible at all, she comes crashing to a total, perfect halt in a space most annoyingly dark. Any light is refracting off a wobbly lean-to.

Daisy Johnson has posed:
You are not in Kansas anymore, Daisy. Or in this case Manhattan.

The impact of that change of scenery and feeling hits her like a freight train, the SHIELD agent letting out a loud gasp as her eyes widen to the impossibly vast surroundings all about her, mouth left ajar as she is unable to process all that is happening once she took a step into the mirror.

It all comes to an end when she finds herself in that empty space. Dark. She remembers to breath again and tempers herself, heart still thundering hard inside her chest as she finally starts casting a look here and there. Searching. Even if she only finds emptiness. "Curiosity killed the cat.." she murmurs, focusing, hand up as she lets her vibrational waves expand, looking for something or someone in that encompassing darkness.

"Anyone out there?"

Jane Foster has posed:
Rotten cloth lies at an angle, suspended from a broken spar. Closer inspection would reveal it not to be wood but a broken length of bone. Aged yellow bone, gored deep enough to reveal the interior. Any marrow is long gone.

Her sense for vibrations reveals a small niche threaded through dense, hard rock. Jagged, toothy stalactites rim the ceiling above her some seven to ten meters up, and the crooked path stretches about the same length before opening into a vast space. One much larger than the one she's in, with a high set of stony walls reaching in irregular waves *up*. Up being possibly the height of the Triskelion at some point, though the sheer twisty-turn shape of the space exceeds Daisy's perceptions.

Because she's definitely in some kind of cave, a subterranean chamber, or an impressively large building constructed of bedrock and shaped stone. Her voice vibrates in the night, distorted in the weird way tunnels have.

Water drips down the stone. Puddles lie ahead, a slick film on the walls and the ground. Treacherous to move too fast, but present. If her hands slide over the walls, she might find the evidence for scratches and gouges, the rusting bits of nails or weapons scattered as she goes. Evidence of *someone* being here, once. Someones.

The response to her takes time to hear: a low huff. A fluttering groan, like a very old Citroën engine wheezing to life. Sputtering, and metal swaying to and fro.

Beyond that, the definite sound of water, but muffled, in the cold stillness of winter.

Daisy Johnson has posed:
Regret might start to be sinking in now that Daisy has gone through, specially as she didn't come prepared for winter no matter how much her inhuman physique helps with it. There's really no beating sub zero temps if it gets to that. Yet it's not bad so far and she is deep down in a cave so how worst can it get? Not wanting to find -that- out she starts walking forward, making sure to not step in anything jagged or sharp because the home sneakers she is wearing right now have nothing on the usual SHIELD boots she wears for her uniform.

The Inhuman takes in the surroundings slowly with her powers, the bone examined more attentively, along with what's around it as if she is searching for any clue on what's here but once that search ends she begins to walk ahead to where the sound of running water is coming from. If there's a subterranean river perhaps there's a way out.

Or someone alive. Hopefully the 'not-going-to-eat-you' kind.

One can only hope.

Jane Foster has posed:
How bad can a cave be? The ground takes on a dull patina of frost threatening Daisy's traction and balance, though certainly sneakers are up for the challenge for the moment. Boots and a warm sweater or coat might not be so bad an idea, provided she can even locate any of them. Alas, mostly what she finds ahead of her, sounding it out or vibrating, seems to be bone or metal -- and old at that. Rusty metal. Worn bone. Broken arrowheads, pitted nails still sharp enough to cut. Flattened ammunition tinkles when she passes, kicking them along. Cave dripwater forms a monotonous metronomic beat compared to the dull, thumping roar from moving water.

Navigating her way around the myriad hazards of a cave, from fallen boulders to pointy spires, takes her time. Worse yet, the incredibly dim conditions prevent her from seeing much into the distance. Perhaps that's a blessing. Metallic notes scrape across her hearing much like someone trying to very slowly light a fire-starter, the striker dragged at a glacial pace and throwing no sparks. Glossy surfaces reflect something back, hints of movement, and shadow. Her own talents at reading invisible currents of movement reveal a few things once she picks her path through the tunnel into the grand chamber.

Metallic jingles come from strings of rusty metal hung between broken structures, fallen arches and natural outcroppings. Left spangled there along with the occasional vertebra or finger, they're awful and melodic. The metallic *scraping*, however, comes from the snakes. Serpents of many kinds, none longer than half a meter, weave between the rocks and curl up along the bank. In some places they form whole knotted balls, iron scales and flinty eyes.

She can detect the rooftop is a jagged cathedral vault high overhead, almost inconceivably far. The near bank isn't much more appealing, full of battered lean-tos made from slabs of rock or piled up walls. Occasional fluttering caught at the corner of her eye belongs mostly to iron-sided snakes or a moving shadow that gives off no vibration. Faded bits of cloth resemble long-forgotten laundry or prayer flags bleached by time. The dropoff into the water is a cliff, about ten feet down at the lowest, straight onto an icy channel. That's where the light comes from on account of all that snow and the grinding slurry.

She can spot signs of craft, mostly skinny canoes that seem unfit to take to the wintry river. Gouged punts and partly-smashed aluminum rowboats have seen better days. Off in the distance lies the decaying hulk of an iron-clad steamer, and much further, a cigar-shaped bow and impressive fin of a sub. A Russian sub -- *Soviet* if she can tell -- marked by a dulled K-2 on her hull. Presumably, any of these could be reached by walking right out across the frozen surface. The sputtering Citroën engine noise comes from the tailfin of an AX ostensibly that's still a car... except it looks like a ramshackle boat, with doors and a hood and headlights, but extra parts welded to the front and back, somehow to make her vaguely seaworthy. It can fit probably three people with difficulty. Some*thing* is already in there, slumped over.

The river's far wall is beyond her senses. Instead, an array of hoodoos and weird, pointed spires act like a sickly forest in the gloom on the opposite side. The riverbed is deceptively shallow too, less than twenty feet, though it falls away almost immediately from the sloped bank. More peculiar is the river itself, registering as a grinding mass of thick ice under chilly foam. Water flows at irregular speeds beneath the heaving, buckled icy cap until reaching a swirling open space where the chaotic mass spirals around itself in a great, bubbling hot tub. Cold tub? Winter jacuzzi?

Daisy Johnson has posed:
This is the kind of place where a fight happened. Most likely a long time ago considering it's arrowheads that she finds. And bones. So she really doesn't expect to find anything useful against the cold. Damn her heated place that makes it so she doesn't wear some nice warm sweater at home!

Eyes turn here and there in the darkness, the Agent occasionally shooting some 'pings' through the air to sense what may be around her. Or at least any danger. Though with a steady vibrational shield around her she keeps going, some measure of comfort in that it may be hard for anyone to pierce through and hurt her. At least until she can find a way out of here.

The canoes and ships she finds make her blink. Soviet build? What would those be doing here? Yet it's the call of that Citroen that gets her attention in the end. And the figure within. So she starts on her way towards it, doing her best to stay out of the frozen section and remain on the banks. No need for a cold shower. She isn't Boxer, she doesn't need one.

Jane Foster has posed:
Junk litters the ground and may well hide in jumbled caches erected along the shoreline or other crude lean-tos made here or there. Sometimes a glint of metal peeks out of a puddle, depending on how close she gets. The lack of proper flashlights or even a torch impacts how far she can see and what stands out among the spiky gloom.

As Daisy steps foot onto the ice, the surface proves dangerously irregular and extraordinarily slick. Jammed chunks welded together at drunken angles make the path anything but smooth. Fine crystals might make her skid and hide the fissures and cracks. No fine moments of skating here, unless it's skating over a crumpled rug.

The first minute of getting her balance and proceeding goes unbothered, but then one of those knots of writhing snakes decides to descend the bank after her. Not having legs is an advantage when they can slither or flop and roll after her. Not one, not two... The iron-sided snakes number a knotted ball from hell with far more tails and hungry mouths than they have any right to possess.

The sad French-inspired boat might have had ideas of racing, once. Funny welding gives it a pointed bow, the crooked panels in yellow and orange on the back giving a spot to sit. As she nears, the slumped over figure doesn't much stir except for ripples forming *under* the ice, some disturbance forcing the boat up and down. Groans accompany ice cracking, and the person -- it is a person -- buries their face into the crook of their arm. "Nnnnngoooo...."

Whether she gets there before a hungry snake dripping acid from pointy teeth reaches *her* first is a significant question. Since they're the vanguard of little snakes. The *big* one...

It's under her.

Daisy Johnson has posed:
Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes? Those true words of one Indiana Jones ring true to Daisy when she spots those creatures descending to pursue. And NOPE, she isn't going to stick around to check if they are friendly or not. Because she bets they aren't. The acid-dripping fangs give it away.

So no time to be artistic, meaning that Daisy will start scooting right over to where that human form is, uncaring if she looks artistic or not. No matter how Skye Starr the superstar still lives in her and would love nothing else to dance it's way over.

"Hey, hope that thing works, we need to get out of here!" she says with a matter of urgency towards whoever that is inside the boat/ship/car? She isn't too sure in the gloom just yet but will soon enough.

Jane Foster has posed:
The hungry, little iron-sided serpents work in coordinated chaos to reach the icy river. What normally offends ophidian sensibilities doesn't slow them from sidewinding and rolling in frigid pursuit of the woman. Slush coating those sharp scales somehow contributes to the serpentine bodies growing longer and broader, the knot of horrors larger.

Her sneakers stick and slide, the cold biting into her toes as fierce as any serpent's tooth. Skye Starr's dancing days may be over if she tumbles the wrong way. Ice gives way beneath her, rotting into chunks that reveal hints of wicked red and deeper black scales each larger than her head. Something old, terrible, and horrifying speeds to her and the little Citroën bobbing around like a toy.

If she falls through, the outcome is likely to end with a hungry maw of that awful shape speeding under the water. She manages to stumble and crash into the Citroën's side as the ice crumbles and the humps of the serpent rise and fall furiously. The driver blinks awake groggily, cursing, and slapping at the cracked acrylic back windscreen.

"Bride's bloom, stop! Ye can't just haul thy bloody carcass up 'ere like a bloody seal." The little yellow and grey boat heaves around like a demented top, slewing dangerously close to the water level. Its engine gargles and sputters hopelessly. "Get off! Bout to swamp mine poor coracle." If they had an oar, they'd be slapping her with it.

They being someone with blue skin from nearly head to toe, woad tattoos brandished in amazing detail against pale blue skin. Their garments are a mishmash of some horrendous plaid pants, a football jersey covered in odd matches over a mustard-yellow scarf, and the kind of wrapped bracers and soft-skinned boots usually considered required gear for a D&D ranger or barbarian. The colourful attire matches the Citroën in a weird fashion, and all of it's quite splendid in a world without colour.

"Unless," they spit out, lips curling, peering back while throwing knobs and twisting things. Too many teeth, ivory and fine, show. "Thou art of a mind to *pay*?"

Daisy Johnson has posed:
The creature under the lake is clearly bad news but luckily Daisy doesn't have to engage with her powers to finally reach that boat. Salvation? Apparently not as the rowman clearly is no rowman but more of a row-creature. That makes Daisy frown.

"In case you ain't noticed there's a big serpent down there ready to eat us both." Emphasis on the both. A brief look over her shoulder then back to the creature, "Look, I didn't bring much with myself, so how about..." she fetches inside her pockets and ... she brings out some candy she had been hiding from Matt to eat later. "This is all I got, if it ain't enough you better decide fast on what would be good payment!" a sense of urgency to her voice.

The candy is set on the dashboard of the car-ship. "Strawberry flavor. Let's just get the heck out of here!"

Jane Foster has posed:
The pilot to that boat grabs the weathered steering wheel. A pair of matted fuzzy dice swing from the rearview as the Citroën heaves side to side. More ice thrown into the air coats the jagged sides and there, between the cracks, Daisy can catch a glimpse of the glacial flow. An astonishingly bright teal flecked by silver slush makes for a beautiful sight, if it didn't promise nearly instant shock from the cold. Water parts in wild ripples for the scaly serpent down there.

The driver's gaunt face is largely humanoid, though its geometric glasses hide glowing eyes set in deep, emaciated sockets. Their mouth opens in a wide, too wide growl and the boat ends up rearing out of the river. Daisy better hold on tight if she doesn't care to go for a swim and end up hauled to that enormous whirlpool that's the only ice-free spot.

"Thou think that *I* have troubles? 'Tis *thy* mortality that proves most grievous, woman!" The engine no longer manages to advance anywhere as a vast, steely coil gets under the perilously thin frame and heaves the car-boat a few meters into the air.

The monster's head hasn't lifted. Shudders wrack the poor car-boat's frame, perilously close to plunging in or crashing off the ice.

The driver hisses through their teeth again. "Stay with me now, ye blighted barnacle goose. We have had our day, I shan't lose thee now!" Switching back and forth in vernacular is weird; he sounds at once vaguely Scottish or Welsh, and then Shakespearean English, and back again. "The engine needs fuel. Thy feelings are enough. Something that gives you joy. It's a final trade and that won't please you ever again. A cup of thine blood to get you safe through the other side. Done?"

The river shoves them all -- car, pilot, woman, ball of growing snakes -- ever onward to the frothy maw of a vast whirlpool.

They have a name for it, in Norway.

*Maelstrom*.

Daisy Johnson has posed:
Daisy's mind is running 200 mph now even if the pilot's ship doesn't really want to go anywhere but she manages to catch a few things. Like mortality. Is she in some other dimension? A realm of the dead? She imagined this had something to do with Moli but from there to being in some kind of version of the Styx? She wasn't ready to handle such a thing!

"Really, man? The strawberry candy isn't enough?" So much for that. But that's -his- loss because she snatches them back and pops one into her mouth, nervous as she is about this all. For a moment she considers blasting at the big spider coming but something tells her that wouldn't do...

Besides, they are too busy getting sucked into a maelstrom right now!

The driver asks for some feeling and she frowns some, "How would the car even take what I gave ...?" her frown just gets deeper, "Okay, something that gives me joy. Strawberry candy?" she asks tentatively. Look, she is on a bit of a one-track mind with all the maelstrom and serpents around and after her! "Fine, fine." She holds on to the dashboard as they continue getting shoved down river, "Something meaningful, I will give up my favorite from the Royal Dragon. The chicken chao mien." it's a big ask. It's what she normally gets during takeout at the lab.

Jane Foster has posed:
The river probably isn't the Styx, as Charon would not be caught dead in a Citroën car-boat. He also presumably prefers gold oboluses in payment for the crossing, if the story holds true.

"No!" they shout to the serpent rearing up or the boat crashing into the water or the payment of a strawberry candy. One of the dented panels sends sparks shearing along those gigantic scales, and for a brief moment the unpleasant gloom bears some actual light. Nothing much to see by except for the awful conditions and cold water sloshing in over the sides.

They jams the brakes and spins the wheel, trying to redirect the nose of the battered yellow mini-car upwave. "Stick shift," an instruction comes to Daisy quick and sharp. "She shalt do the rest. One mayst use the JC bar to bleed." That JC bar -- or Jesus Chris bar -- is the worn vinyl handle mounted above the open passenger side window with its big chrome clips, a dull brownish-red so common for interior colours in the 80s and early 90s. An unprecedented opportunity to slice open her skin in very unconventional ways on man-made materials.

The boat smashes through a wave and water runs over them, while the serpent's coil tries to crush them entirely under its weight. The motor putters and gags. "Food of China will taste foul as a pestilence in your mouth, and you shall suffer illness and bile as a man rejects poison." They harrumph, while the boat squeezes and water floods in the sides, shockingly cold. They snarl. "Fairly and done as a mortal. *Pay her*, she cannot perform without--."

*Glug*. Underwater.

Daisy Johnson has posed:
"Wait ... No no no no..!" Panic! Daisy's eyes go wide when the driver talks about her losing her interest in chinese food. This cannot be! Woe and damnation! What will happen now during her lab lunch takeout? Will she have to just .., choose different food? Details that they are about to be eaten by a giant snake so maybe she should focus in surviving this.

"I meant, just the chow--" but she doesn't finish that sentence because the next moment all she knows is being underwater.

Yet through it all she is getting the gist of it. She needs to bleed to fuel the car? Fine. She cuts her palm over the bar to get some of that red liquid dripping in. "I hope this car is a submarine...!" just as their heads start going underwater. This is going to be tight.

Jane Foster has posed:
Panic heats and quickens the blood. Not as good as fear, but sufficient all the same to the same end. The ichor running in Daisy's veins, rarefied by Kree arts and generations of breeding, works just as well for the Citroen as anything more plebeian and foul. Red is red.

Even in the slurry of ice and slush flooding through the car's ajar windows, blood will tell. Smears rush over the vinyl interior and coat the handle, though the river soon enough washes it away along with every vestige of warmth and light. Water made astonishingly blue by the glacial flour and sheer cold proves no more friendly inundating a swimmer than the browner, siltier kind. Light, what little there was, simply winks out in a stygian gloom punctuated by steel scales, the madcap patterns of the pilot, and darkness. The current hauls the sinking car and its occupants towards the hungry whirlpool that bores deep, deep down.

No escape from it. Pressure sets in when they sink, but the Citroen at least offers a steel shell to hide inside. Bit better than the huge serpent trying to squash it and her. She may possess vitality superior to humanity, but that doesn't extend to growing gills or immunity to cold. No pleasant numbness sets in. Lungs burn. Skin aches. Extremities cramp as the body struggles for survival here, in a pitiless place where life might not find a way. The car starts to tumble helter-skelter, a record played backwards by a violent DJ. The pilot can only puff out their cheeks and cling to the wheel. The maelstrom is not a gentle swirl but a violent, frenzied gyre of water yanked down by immense hydraulic forces and gravity. Tides shear off loose debris, ranging from trees to the keel of a suspicious large warship -- World War Two era, German, a battlecruiser or destroyer. Down through the muck and mire are they pulled, a journey that will very much seem to last the entirety of how long Daisy can hold her breath and then some.

Fuzzy dice thrown around on the rearview come up snake eyes.

And when she's finally beyond her limits, sucking in the water into her aching lungs, only then does the car plunge straight into the black heart of the whirlpool. All becomes silent. Still. Dead.

For an instant. For a lifetime. A plunge into...

Daisy Johnson has posed:
It's all rather unfair with the blood flowing out and they still continuing to sink in. Or maybe it's all part of the process? Daisy's always been a glass half-full kind of woman so she has hope. Even if right now this is getting into a car-full kinda situation which isn't as nice. Granted, the cold and lack of breath join in what's being quite a dreadful experience since Daisy decided to step through that mirror.

Yet she has a hunch this is where she is supposed to be.

They plunge further into the maelstrom and Daisy holds on tight as they go straight down to the center of the whirlpool, a scream caught in her mouth that is filling with water.

Jane Foster has posed:
Blood is thicker than water, as they say. Globs of it aren't washing past Daisy in streamers and her grip on the JC bar leaves a suspicious lack of a stain on the vinyl. Little red to be seen in the dark.

It's so dark and psychically noisy to an elementalist like her that her head may be absolutely thrumming. The serpent roars, squeezing its coils in an effort to squash her, the pilot, and the little car.

"Blast, take it thee great lout! She paid fair and square, thou knowst it! You cannot deny thine godsforsaken mother's oath!" the pilot crows, bubbles pouring out of his mouth, the sounds more interpretive than heard by her vibrational abilities.

The Citroën groans and the outboard motor at the back starts to turn harder, the big one in the hood rattling awake. Sputtering pistons throw bubbles and the whole car-boat shudders, throwing off its lassitude. Darkness reels--steely scales fill the void, unable to quite smoosh Daisy into a crumpled pancake. The door dents in, and the rasp will tear any clothes she has by proximity. Water freezes into a gelid block, entombing her and the car, and the laughing driver who hurls their body against the steering wheel with an awful lurch.

Then the Citroën, complete with plasma-fueled thrusters, swivels the pod around in a flash of marigold-orange fire. Shields engage and the struggling wings form a delta, shifting back to narrow their profile. The pilot taps several spots on a holographic HUD, giving them a light speed rush through a hexagonal aperture wavering out of existence in the slushy wall of the River.

She's in a Citroën spacecraft and not for overly *long* of a journey. Hard to tell given the stygian uniform darkness around them.

"You drop-off is ahead." The Citroën announces this in a cheerful voice, feminine, and a bit weirdly familiar. It sounds just a smidge like Thor, like the next town over. "Please be advised of the customs. A Class 5 quarantine is in effeect. You may only carry out what you carried in, your companion included. Transport of objects or denizens is strictly prohibited. Failure to declare truthful intent may lead to your permanent incarceration. Do not provide blood or wood to any denizen. It is *verboten* to address the wolves by their names or mention current politics in the realms to denizens." A bright addition, "Failure to comply may lead to obliteration. Have a wonderful stay!"

Daisy Johnson has posed:
The mix of panic along with the plunge into the unknown is taking it's toll on the young Inhuman, expression one of terror until ....

They start plodding through. And is it a HUD? That distracts her from all the horror and has her focus on the tech. That she understands, and can handle. "How did you get all this into a Citroen?" she inquires. To the car or to the driver? It's clear the driver seems to be more of a stand-in than an actual driver. "And why do you sound like you came from Asgard?" though a moment later she mmms, "Ah, we are in Hel?" she looks at the driver, then at the car. She frowns. Maybe she shouldn't had gone around poking portals opening up in her mirror. And a talk with Moli will need to be had in regards to what happened.

If she survives!

"Wait..." Daisy then says when the Citroen announces all the rules, "What if I am not certain what I am doing here?" she asks. "Is there anyone I can ask for directions?" there's always hope of course. But then comes the important words, "You sound a lot like those shows my friend likes to watch. Doctor Who.." a beat, "But at least you are polite." she looks out the window to check where they may be.

Jane Foster has posed:
Technology that turns a boat-car into a vehicle fully capable of interspatial travel probably exists beyond the norm. The space-Citroën chuckles at Daisy's question, a rather effeminate giggle sparkling with delight. "Surprised about things larger on the inside?"

The pilot beams broadly and shakes their head, flicking several spinning light disks across the HUD and settling in a stable position. "Thee mistake me--"

"Vanaheim," the Citroën supplies. "The Vestfold Vanir dia--"

"Oh, hush! Uppity when you get a dose of--" The pilot harumphs. He waves a hand, dismissing a litany of red dots and pinged warnings. "No time to tarry! Off with thee, as promised. There is no map, it's never the same. Ciao!"

The Citroën pings, and a bubble of orangish energy rolls over Daisy, barely palpable, vibrations of plasma at least sealing in her head and her sopping, cold clothes for a moment. In a blink, the ship is off, hurtling her out the proverbial window -- front screen? -- to drop about three meters. It might feel muuuuch further.

But that puts her in a disarmingly familiar space. An office she has been in many times, right down to the blessed teapot and desk full of chopsticks. Yes, is regret setting in? The scent on the air might be a tad stomach-turning. It's accurate right down to stacks of paper, the computer terminals, a comfy chair. Jemma might come around the corner at any moment, Fitz with a new fancy item in tow. Fury might yell at all of them with a new order an instant later.

The only point of wrong is a flashing upload bar, system errors spinning out on every visible tablet or computer. Network data spikes and flashes in projected graphs that speak to something not going right, not at all.

**File corrupted**. It's only 28% done of a 34 gegobyte file.

**Network location not found. Resync protocol fail.**

**Security breach in Tri05 network. Please advise?**

**.... Searching. 9 forks located in alternate branches. Confirm download. Overwrite local files? **

Daisy Johnson has posed:
"Oh, Vanaheim!" Daisy should had paid more attention in class about all the realms really. But she gets the gist at least. Related to Asgard. The resting place of the Vanir. So her hunch that this is related to Moli and Jane isn't too far fetched. "Well, I will be seeing you, space-Citroen--"

Of course that the next moment she is getting 'dumped' into a room that looks dreadfully similar to the lab where she spends hours with FitzSimmons and Jane. "Uhhh, Fitz? Jemma?" she looks around. But no one is around that she can see right now and then her attention is getting pulled to those blinking indications on the monitors. That doesn't look good. Yet curious that she is she approaches. Overwrite local files? That never soundds good without knowing what's going on. And what these branches are. Eyes narrow.

*Lets put a hold on that.... She murmurs to herself, cracking her knuckles to take a look on what's going on with these corrupt files. Network location not found? She starts typing on the computer, looking for what's turned this system upside down.

Jane Foster has posed:
Jemma doesn't round the corner and uncharacteristically, Fitz isn't leaning out to hush Daisy for interrupting his flow by calling out. Shouty voices have no place in R&D except when R&D shouts!

Navigating through the familiar desks -- and there, in place of honour, is the dreaded coffeepot -- gives an incredibly accurate sense of the Triskelion. Maybe it *is* the Triskelion, simply at an odd hour. The program notifications spilling over the monitors look somewhat familiar, though added complexities that aren't the norm in the hacking fishbowl that Daisy usually cruises through.

Nonetheless, putting hands to keyboard is probably as familiar as walking. Servers in the farm dance to her tune, populating screens that spatter residue of code, file paths, and queries in unblinking monochrome distinctions among the more colourful outputs.

The file transfer frozen midway experiences two main problems. File corruption originates very early on, practically near the beginning of the process, though basic security algorithms (read: eye-wateringly complex) tried to repair the damaged content immediately. Corruption with 'source unknown' bears all the signs of a malware attack. Just that: malware. Something beyond the recognition of any database or protocol she's familiar with, the results maddeningly spitting out nothing more than 2023.network.malware.

The network location not found relates to the files being transferred; they simply aren't there anymore and searches to find the directory at all prove alarmingly difficult as the pathways are utterly non-SHIELD compliant in any way, shape or form, and malleable. They hide from her. Jumping up one folder inevitably leads to some confusing sprawl of ghost folders no longer there, or files that refuse to open, like temp or backups long since gone to dust. Scrounging around ultimately reveals her to be a in *personnel* file in SHIELD's massive database, with everything else password locked. Including her own file (and Jemma's and anyone else she can think of). And no, the password isn't *her* password to unlock it, with no doubt 8 tries leading to shrilling lock-out messages and that guy from Jurassic Park waving his fat finger, going, "No, no, no, you don't have permission to do that!"

The files that need to transfer are missing. 75% of them do not exist in the folder where they should be. Searches reveal no obvious source - no master recycle bin, as it were, or scattered into another server. While many servers probably exist in the cluster, no network traffic indicates the totality went anywhere. Which begs the question...

*Where are they*?

Trust someone who uses vibrations and hacking to understand at some awful level. Data shattered and splintered into 0s and 1s.

And those alternate forks? They don't point to existing locations on a drive she's aware of.... If anything, their IP address or file locations are absolutely bizarre strings that resolve to 'not at SHIELD' unless this network is far, far stranger than she ever gathered.

Daisy Johnson has posed:
It's curious how the human mind usually focuses on a task when confronted with something they can't explain or fully understand. Like Daisy is now with the computers, focusing on it. No matter how weird it feels that there is no Fitz or Jemma, the silence becoming too loud for a few moments and she having to drown it out by focusing even further on the work ahead. Indeed it is like walking, or crawling, as if something she could do since she was a babe (if only she had been given a computer when she was 2!).

Malware. A corrupt database. Those terms she can understand though even if the algorithms and the way this is done isn't SHIELD, or like the things she has worked on in the past. "Definitely not in Kansas no more, Daizee..." she says to herself while working.

A pause when she gets to the end of her inspection and finally leans back on her chair, knuckles to her chin and she looking thoughtful. "Aren't you a mystery, mmm? I love those.." she grins.

Now to figure out what was being transferred though, or what the idea was, she leaning forward to dig deeper into the mystery. No need to start overwriting just yet.

Jane Foster has posed:
The computer operates mostly as expected. Strings of code or commands punched in produce chunks of information that require Daisy to diligently chip away the unneeded pieces to reveal the true form. Something of a digital sculptor gives form to the formless. At least in her own imagination.

Bits and pieces might lead to dead ends, and those are plentiful. Prompts that don't work, resources that don't exist. Chasing around the malware in particular proves problematic, like it changes in *response* to her prodding at it. Not entirely unknown but indicative of something far from primitive. Ghost trails left behind hint at bits and bobs it changed, tiny files in that massive swarm of them being transmitted from there to here. Or 'where.'

That's the funny part, the transfer doesn't seem to be specific to a Triskelion-based server or even one that's wholly within SHIELD's network. She can see the end result of the string -- **ARCHIVE** -- and a complex string of numbers prior to that. At least 9 digits within 9 digits. Even *trying* to access the folder three up earns a slew of "Access denied. You do not have sufficient privileges." messages that are the bane of IT administrators everywhere.

<<You won't get in.>> *That* grumpy voice comes from over her shoulder. Sort of. <<Too much of a mess to get through. No point wasting your time.>>

The other avenues would imply, with a big grain of salt needed, that a personnel file was being copied or transferred.

That's a lot of records.

Daisy Johnson has posed:
Personnel files being transferred. Hrm. That has Daisy lean back on her chair to give it careful consideration. So far she had figured she was in Vanaheim, but at the same time this seemed to be some kind of mind construct, of a familiar place. To both herself and Jane. And the computer? A way for Daisy to understand what was happening or at least to have her mind interpret all this.

"Shut up, I am trying to think over here." She casts back over her shoulder without looking back, absorbed in her thoughts, "But so .., if this is a place where Jane was..." a pause, "... or is. And there is a block in the 'personnel' transfer it means her info wasn't processed which is why she is stuck wherever." at least to her brain. "So ..., she must be around here, or at least.."

Now Daisy starts to look for specific info on Jane Foster to confirm her theory, using all her wit and knowledge to circumvent those pesky access privileges. No one likes those!

"It's not a mess when I know what I am looking for.." she says again to the 'voice'. And then figures out she doesn't know who's out there. So she turns sharply to see if there's anyone in the room with her!

Jane Foster has posed:
"Boxer is better behaved than *you*," fires back the response, sulky and pointed, very surely an interruption to whatever flow Daisy seeks to attain. "We understand one another."

Boxer expects service from all mortals, and the flame-bathed presence hiding in his catbed is prickly and pointed enough to be rather feline itself. Herself. Theirselves?

Turning doesn't reveal anyone in the office, at least not beyond a sad plant or the beloved kettle or a coffeepot that others duel over. Copper fire dances off her shoulder and glints in the corner of her vision. Boxer's collected bestie, in one chorus of voices. Sulky teen?

Researching specific information on Jane Foster seems straightforward, but proves anything but. Standard methods fail more often than not with the maddening failures falling most regularly on 'item not found' or 'no search results.' Missing data or corrupted information often trails off in a slew of random characters, or details that make absolutely no sense. Files that aren't there should contain facts... Whatever those facts are.

When she can pry open a file to begin with, it takes a maddeningly long time to load. What appears is a slew of sheer madness, strafing Daisy with *sounds*. Colours that radiate in furious symphonic abandon, the flavours of lemon gelato and summer air on the woman's face, sparks and impressions crystallized from a moment in time. There's the manic rush of purpose, the idea to *turn down that street, up ahead, bookshop* orienting on a mental map of some kind that simply shows. Immense imagery splattered in details, some sparkling in colour and others blurry, figuratively overwritten by black-and-white shades that chop out a chunk of a busy European streetscape projected around them.

A memory.

A corrupted memory.

One moment in time, in a massive personnel file, with *all* that one experiences in that one brief blink.

Daisy Johnson has posed:
"Well, Moli. Maybe you should come out and tell me what's up.." Daisy's fingers continuing to flow through the keyboard, the little hacker that could unfazed with the catty personality on Moli. "I mean, I do love a good mystery but I can't help but think time is limited here. Call it my sixth sense. My cat sense?" she grins a bit at herself just till she starts getting deep down the rabbit hole and finds those colors and sounds. She covers her face a moment before looking again.

Memories. That's what those were. Jane's memories.

"So she is in the in-between. Blocked?" she gets up to her feet.

"Get me some answers Moli."

Jane Foster has posed:
Had Moli eyes, she would roll them. Seeing she does not, Daisy will need to imagine the exaggerated expression on her own. Copper fire slithers across the peripheral edges of her vision, dampened and sulking as flames clearly cannot.

"Time is a matter of perception for people with limited..." A brief pause as she chooses her words. "...senses. Guesswork isn't an actual sense. You lack the inherent intuition of the Sibelians or certain Kree lineages." So matter-of-fact!

The fact one explosive memory occupies space would imply the enormous file dump -- and its missing fragments -- probably include a ton of such impressions. And how much has *Daisy* experienced in her life, how big is *her* personnel file?

What happens when memories get corrupted? When the personnel file is, since the slow intangible dust of shattered data hangs in the proverbial air.

"We *lost* us," hiss the flames, a weak pulse building up in banked irritation. "How would *you* expect us to find *her* when all is so *broken*? The cat suggested you would be some use so here you are. Perhaps they meant the man. Awkward given the impairment but not without a workaround."

Poor Matt!

Daisy Johnson has posed:
Daisy has a cat, she can imagine it quite well. And that sulkiness certainly doesn't dishearten the young Inhuman. Though she certainly rolls her eyes in return when Moli starts droning on about Kree lineages. "I will let you know that I am an actual Inhuman." she points out, "I am sure I must have some of that inherent intuition you speak of." she gestures her hand in a vague manner, "Cat sense just sounds better though." she smirks and her attention is back to the work at hand.

Fragments. Memories. She is on the right track but the problem now is how to make her whole again. "Wait ..., So I am here because of all people you listen to a cat?" that makes her shake her head, "And they call me crazy."

"Yet to answer on how you find her? Well, one piece at a time. Or in this case one piece of yours at a time. If I am here and you brought me does that mean your other fragments are here too? Is Jemma here? Or Blackagar?" she inquires, "Maybe you could join with your other fragments if that's so, can you sense them?" some hopeful tone to her voice.

Jane Foster has posed:
Moli isn't a fool, and the fire banks to a sullen glow at the edges of Daisy's vision. "You do not carry that lineage. Obviously." Drawing out the connection for the Inhuman hacker seems a necessity.

Somewhere, Boxer must be affronted his mortal servants look so poorly upon his esteemed judgment.

The file transfer hasn't moved along. Among the many other points of data beyond file names and sizes, or ghost file residue, are meaningless slews of metadata that makes little sense, other than possibly confirming whatever synapse or system produced results. Immensely long and detailed location names can be found for nearly everything that at least *has* a transfer point. Again, they all point to personnel archival. Not a spot she usually needs to visit, but presumably *somewhere* in the Triskelion. For at least one side. The other might as well be on the Moon.

*A* moon. Maybe not the one she has a personal invite to.

Moli's sulking darkens a shade, suspicion a wave that comes strongly enough here to bowl over the unsuspecting. Louder by anger, or proximity or something else? "*Why?*" comes her accusation. It's just like a teenager, it really is. Look up insufferable in a dictionary and 'synonym: teenager' is there, and should have 'see also: Moli.' "They'd be that dumb? Meh. Didn't she have more sense? You make her sound sensible. He sounds grumpy enough he'd go anywhere to spite a sign saying he can't. Maybe. But how loud is the old guy? You see how many doors there are? Not like you can hear through doors and hallways."

Poking around in certain areas produces some effect. Open the oddball file here or there, more commonly the erased ones, and the keys seem to turn icy under her fingers and *bite* her.

Daisy Johnson has posed:
"Well, you don't know everything." Is what Daisy replies to the voice. The Inhuman then leans back on her chair, thoughtful at what she sees on the screen. Personnel files, corrupt files. But no way to recover them that she can see just yet. There's always the reset, of course.

The 'why' has her look over again with a sigh. "Because we care, Moli. And while she may be a lot more sensible than I it doesn't mean she wouldn't jump a cliff if it meant helping out frien. So that's your why. It's not being dumb, it's being brave."

All the talk about doors and hearing things does give her an idea. "Well, actually ..., I can hear through doors and halls.." and she starts trying to do just that, expanding her powers to sense any vibrations. Familiar ones.

Jane Foster has posed:
"Brave and stupid go together," observed the disembodied voice somewhere directly over Daisy's shoulder. Trying to look too directly is a fine way to get a nasty headache, but Moli remains there.

If she could roll her eyes, she probably would.

The attempt to feel vibrations beyond the labs requires effort. They exist, of course, a quiet white noise of machinery operating in networked lines. HVAC systems. Coffeemakers. Flitters of motion, fans oscillating and the definite presence of a server rack. A room of utter, frosted cold without surcease where movement is barely tangible. The stillness can only be that or a huge honking hole to space, not very likely.

No one familiar exists out there, but *something* does, sending shivers through the vastness. Small, subtle tremors ring to softly that they barely seem to reach her.

But the woman might notice they're coming from....

.... The *server room?*

Daisy Johnson has posed:
"In the words of someone who knows a lot more about being brave than I do ..." And Daisy gives it a properly dramatic pause, " ... Because that's what heroes do." being brave? Or stupid?

"Sometimes you just got to have faith, Moli. In your friends if nothing else. That's why I am here." Oh yes, Daisy can feel that eyeroll out of the fragment but she doesn't care! Though as slivers of tremors reach her from the server room she gets up to her feet.

"Let's go Moli." she starts walking towards the door, "Time for a field trip." steps starting to bring her towards the server room. She moves carefully though, making sure to not make too much a noise.

Jane Foster has posed:
What *do* heroes do? The stories of bards and poets carry all manner of descriptions, some of them realistic and others nonsense. How often do they involve submersion in a freezing river, a Citroën to the stars, and now hacking into work databases? Daisy might wake up at any moment, maybe. Except her fingertips are cold, bitten by the keys; her clothes, damp and a bit musty from the plunge into the River; her hair wild from the whirlpool.

Her path to the server room follows the same protocols as the Triskelion, using the same layered security. Retinal scans, keycard swipes, and recorded entry-exit stamps in some computer await. She spots very few people in her prowl, other than silhouettes behind frosted glass, a person in a grey suit hurrying away.

More significant is the keycard issue. Whatever she brought with her from bathing Boxer is still mostly with her. Surviving the whirlpool probably emptied her pockets. Getting *through* the securely locked door, then, remains her foremost consideration.

It has a normal lock, electronically reinforced, along with the contact pad for the Stark-esque tech to get her through. Her retinal scan prickles in a weird way as light rolls over her, glitching, flashing too bright as it struggles to match patterns to whatever database.

The absurdly long string of numbers identifying said server room is peculiar, though, not just the absent "Room 1058B" or whatever SHIELD uses to hide the racks of servers in a Bladerunner-esque, hyper-futuristic setting cooled by that peculiar icebox room free of vibrations below her feet by a floor or two.

Now to get through...

Daisy Johnson has posed:
"Ah, the cat ate your tongue..." Daisy comments back at Moli when there's no answer, "I hope not literally." because she imagines there's a Boxer still back at her apartment, along with the fragments. Not Moli has an actual 'tongue' no matter how sharp it feels. Or sulky.

True enough that she doesn't have much in terms of anything in this venture. She had the candy that she left back in the Citroen but other than that? Empty pockets. But she has always been able to do much with little so when she gets to that locked door she doesn't get disheartened.

Certainly not a Stark-esque tech that they already use at SHIELD. She helped get it up and running after all, and knows all the weaknesses. Fingers dig at the panel, vibrating it away if needed to reveal the wires and console beneath, checking connections. And depending on how similar it is to the actual SHIELD tech they have running at the REAL Shield she will start doing a little jury-rigging to get her through.

Like she has done so many times! "Look away now Moli, I am committing a felony."

Jane Foster has posed:
Boxer would discover trying to bite a fragment ends up with very sore teeth. Atmospherically warped metal pieces do not play nice with pink feline mouths.

SHIELD may have used Daisy's assistance to install the Stark Tech systems. Whatever modifications came from Tony -- or Happy -- and Fury's instructions might not be fully known to her. Vibrations find resistance beyond the Ohms coursing through the system, a dull green glow emanating from a pair of energy "seeds" buried deep in the console. Tough glass encloses the gently thrumming power sources, though nothing seems to be wired into the suspiciously bright cradle.

Connections run on a platform less controlled by wires than by conduits. They move without need for metal, though that invites the possibility of being stung by a running current that she blocks. Feeling the energy is difficult given the tiny fluctuations don't exactly throw off vibrations, but she can work around the fields.

Just get zap-shocked twice for good measure and then she can feel the system briefly fuzz into a state that will probably let her through.

But for each of those stings, it feels like a viper biting into her hand, swells of black shadow rippling over her vision. It's not blindness; she sees the world in fine-tuned gradients that go deeply into greyscale and see far, far further than the visible spectrum allows. Yet something is cold and unmoving in this shadowy overlay of her vision. Each jolt also leaves cold threading under her skin. Maybe being Inhuman is a blessing here. The inkstain lines briefly visible spreading up her wrist move eagerly, but slow, a swirl of corrupt entropy glazing over her. It feels filthy, depraved. A wrongness, lurking where it has no business being.

"Thrilling to break the rules, is it?" Moli mutters.

Daisy Johnson has posed:
The zapping makes her grit her teeth but it doesn't deter Daisy, the vibrational hacker getting that hand in and making sure to cut through the fields keeping the doors locked. It's a different kind of hacking but she's fine with it, no matter how dark her skin is becoming near the zap.

"So, could use your help here I think. What's this..?" she asks Moli, "It feels ..., wrong.." a frown. "What's trying to stop me?"

She opens and closes her hand, stepping closer to the door that should now let her through.

"It's actually quite thrilling to break the rules." she replies.

Jane Foster has posed:
Her skin carries the wriggling black lines, hands and fingers stained. At least their mobility doesn't seem impaired, though Daisy might flinch away from bright lights or flames for a while. Even a moderate glow of a light bulb hurts the eyes, leaving them watering and full of dazzling after-images.

The door waits to be opened, her efforts only a stopgap. Waiting too long will undoubtedly trigger the locks or a cascade of other more sensitive protocols waiting for any sign something is off. Smart design says not to hold doors open very long. She can practically hear the absence becoming a dull buzz. Drifting energy runs amok through the channels, looking for the path of least resistance. Sooner than later, her window of opportunity will pass.

If she opens the door, the server room within looks essentially how she might expect a cool server room to look. Maybe a bit on the fancier side for Stark or SHIELD, definitely beyond the norms for most government agencies. Green and blue lights flash in the cool mist, the air here significantly colder to compensate for the heat thrown off by machines. Lots of glossy glass and chrome finishes mark where each rack contributes enormous amounts of data. Infrastructure stands twelve feet tall, each block large enough to dwarf the typical European flat. Metal grated floors stretch between the spaces, suspended over a matrix of ice-rimed pipes and tubes that help to convey the necessary cold to prevent everything from overheating.

The few panels anywhere tick with numbers, attesting to busy consumption of energy or information, constantly moving back and forth. How the information gets there is presumably through wires, but she can't see them.

Moli in all of this is largely silent, a dull shimmer at the corner of her eyes. "What do you want *me* to do, anyway?"

A long beat, and then she adds, "You're the one who likes breaking rules. You think they like that around here? Isn't your whole job breaking into things?"

Daisy Johnson has posed:
The intense lights have Daisy lifting one hand to cover her face, frowning at how it feels but there's no time to lose. She moves into the server room and observes the large machines at work. No wires though? That will make it harder to hack in.

"You know what Moli? I wonder what will happen if I just broke these servers."

Jane Foster has posed:
Silence out of Moli could be many things, disapproval and snarkiness a constant to live by. The sheen of copper plays across the far edges of Daisy's perception, distorting the chrome in a new overlay. "What would Jemma think?"

The various machines are particularly large, functioning through a vast networked interchange of information. It feels and looks familiar enough. Racks make solid blocks with all the machines positioned to face outward, no hollow core in the centre that she can feel with her abilities. Quite the contrary, the arrangement gives new meaning to 'solid state drive.' Everything is solidly pressed together like Lego blocks. Fans and cold air moving around generate a chill that probably feels outright Mediterranean after falling through the River, one capable of numbing even the dead.

"How fast can you run?" She can probably *hear* the smirk. Moli probably doesn't care. Or maybe that's the point! Can grumpy fire who trusts cats use reverse psychology?

Daisy Johnson has posed:
"Jemma would think that sometimes you just need to rock the world in order to get the answers we need."

Yes, Daisy thinks Jemma would say something like that. Maybe when a little tipsy.

Focusing, Daisy opens her hands to the sides, the /WOOOM/ of her powers coming to life heralding the build up in vibrations that are felt throughout that room the server is in. Solid blocks like Lego pieces? Just ideal for her powers to start disrupting it, each wave that she sends out growing in a crescendo even if it's starting low, the dismantling methodic, using both her own mastery of powers but also her knowledge on technology to know where to /strike/.

No matter how much these servers may not follow the normal procedures. But Daisy knows how to think outside the box too. And now it's time to rock.

Jane Foster has posed:
The vibrations soak into the great block of servers. Noise thunders imperceptibly through the racks at first, waves pinging into the flowing energy conduits that power the block.

Mist rumbles and shifts in visible pulses, emphasizing her actions. Blue lights blink and brighten. Somewhere, a claxon howls in mechanical protest for her behaviour. Wavering force grids crash down around the undamaged server blocks to withstand her efforts, but the attacked box rocks with power surges and failures.

The equipment doesn't immediately fail. A sense of urgency nonetheless gathers as the recoiling pool of power flails around like a blind snake from within, following the path of least resistance. She risks trouble if turns back on her.

"Maybe a little *faster*?" Moli's irritation and alarm blend into a visible crackle in audible form.

If she pushes, Daisy causes one of the servers to crack open, a seam barely wide enough for the dark plasma to seep through in a star-speckled black river. It throbs in time to her vibrations, spilling *out* into a pool or rolling back like a wave. It's much, much larger on the inside, complete with blocks of floating stone she might even stand on.

Daisy Johnson has posed:
"Thought you'd never ask." Daisy retorts back at Moli's irritation.

And then she indulges the request, her powers coming to full bloom as she unleashes her vibrations across the server room to begin a thorough dismantle of all that surrounds her, breaking through the construct that seems to be keeping something else under.

Something alien. And unnatural.

Feet lift from the ground as her whole body sends waves all around to break through, digging into what's underneath.

Jane Foster has posed:
Digital data is effectively nothing more than a 0 or 1. On, off. This, that. Black and white choices in a Technicolor world,

The explosive crash of chrome fixtures and metal sheets as Daisy tears them asunder puts a lie to such simple, singular formalities. Something can be and unbe simultaneously. Data forms streams, waves of light, a molten blob.

The holes show a floating series of islands in space, overseen by great nebulas and swirling galaxies that shouldn't be so big and close. Fragments of crystal rainbow hang midair. Streamers don't adequately bridge all the islands, some trailing off into blackened nothingness. Others thrash around like they're looking for something.

The shattered heart of the archipelago in dark radiant space looks something like the British Museum crossed with an old style observatory, peculiarly polyhedronal with multiple stained glass windows on every facet of the exterior. Nine total, though the last one is partly covered by molten black slag.

Nine windows. Nine doors. A central dome marked by nine stars and a central oculus at the top.

Daisy Johnson has posed:
As the servers break and give way to what is beyond there's a grin out of the destroyer of worlds, the vibrational waves making her hair float about her even as she approaches one of the larger holes that give way to the various doors.

"Sometimes you just need to destroy in order to find the way, Moli.." she whispers, looking around the various doors, looking for any signs of where they may lead. "You know ..., while I zoned out some when Jane was talking to me about Asgard I -think- I know the meaning of these doors. 9 doors, 9 realms?" she glances over for confirmation and then back.

"So now we need to choose the right one ..., mmmm." she steps past the debris and towards the middle where the dome is, approaching the oculus.

Jane Foster has posed:
Daisy enters a peculiar freefall toward the floating islands where gravity disobeys typical laws of physics. She falls faster than she ought to while not quite feeling anywhere near as heavy as she normally is, moving faster diagonally through starlit void, hurtling onward. Friction and heat build around her, detonating more small vibrations or at least adding to the waves all around her. (Otherwise she might be free-falling for an hour or two, waiting for things to get there. How dull that should be.)

Ghostly shimmers fade in and out around her as she approaches the central island, the sense of the domed building warping and rematerializing in semisolid form. Translucent walls become solid stone and glittering stained glass once more as she lands.

A casual scan determines none wait for her here, or none emitting enough of a vibrational signature to recognize. Neither doors or windows show activity or damage, though she causes the doors to hum softly in their frames.

The dome rising smoothly overhead requires some clever way to get up there, the glass-smooth lapis surface certain to be slippery.

"Collect $200 dollars," Moli mutters. "Maybe you'll stay out of jail at this rate."

Someone plays Monopoly!

Daisy Johnson has posed:
Now would probably be a bad time to start singing Free Fallin yet that's what comes to Daisy's mind as she is 'falling' down to that isle in the middle. Funny as our mind focuses on the most weird things when they come to face the unnatural. Moli may get an inkling of that music if she's actively in her mind though.

"Who taught you Monopoly Moli?"

Her senses take in the surroundings, both with her human and inhuman ones, the vibrational signatures not something she recognizes.

"Also, last time I was arrested I began the greatest adventure of my life. Sometimes good things come out of bad ones." when she was taken by SHIELD. She still remembers the black bag in her head. She approaches the doors to the domed building, reaching to open the door. Either by a handle or if not she may just use her powers to 'break in'.

Jane Foster has posed:
Moli is mum on how she knows about classic board games invented to demonstrate the inherent flaws in plutocratic societies and capitalism in general. She might be the sort to silently amass a few properties, smile about the car and boot trotting around the board, and then pounce on a foreclosed hotel on Atlantic Avenue to win the game. Wicked, naughty collective conscience, isn't she?

"Getting away with your *life* might be the best you can hope for," she points out.

The cool sky spreads in violet to blackened plum oblivion, galaxies strung out in vast lanes speckled by glowing motes and deeply riveted patches of interstellar dust. Shapes sweep through the glimmering filaments above the lapis lazuli dome shining with faint celestial patterns of its own. Further below, Daisy gets a prime opportunity to see the bas relief of forested slopes stamped onto the deep, verdigris door. Curling boughs form an arched frame for the flat surface, a lake or sea perhaps. They don't have an obvious handle, though a solid push sustained for a couple seconds encourages the doors to swing open.

A corridor stretches before her, suffused by warm light and the shifting rainbows of the stained glass window mounted high overhead. The reflection on the floor vaguely resembles the much clearer image on the wall. Green and aqua shards spiral around a sleek-hulled ship beneath a stylized crescent of five stars. Shadows dim the shape of closed doors at the far end of the hallway, presumably leading deeper into the building.

Daisy Johnson has posed:
"And that is fine too." Is what Daisy says back at Moli as she steps down onto that corridor after pushing the door open. She has put her feet down on the ground by now and her vibrations dim just so.

"Let's see where this leads." A step into that corridor, then another and before she knows it she's striding into the unknown place, determination in her gaze.

Jane Foster has posed:
Behind her is the sparkling ship that rides upon the star-speckled waves, the wavering colours painted on the floor dancing off her skin and clothes. Coolness brushes the nape of her neck; a faint breeze ruffles her hair, for only a moment. So short, she could easily overlook its presence, if not for a curious scent of raspberries and crisp air.

Daisy's path brings her to the end of the wide corridor. Lamps mounted to the wall weakly spring to life as she draws close to the doors, sputtering sparks that gain in strength and achieve a frosty blue glow. A compass rose in bas relief stands on both doors. When she pushes one open, the sound travels as a sigh through a pointed archway that leads into another chamber. This room is considerably larger than the one she left, awash in ambient light from the globes scattered about the round walls. Other arches pierce the walls, leading off presumably into other parts of the building she saw from outside. Glittering shards sparkle under the palest starshine light, a heap of tiny crystals or flecks of glass poured in a wide spray across the mosaic floor.

More substantial might be the figure spotted standing over the irregular mounds of glass. A man with dark hair and his arms folded across his chest makes a sound -- a grunt -- and this alone might be cause for terror in his dominions. Then a faint smile starts to pass over his lips, one not infused by any sort of warmth, and the wavering sheen of copper around him roils at a finger's distance from his skin.

Blackagar Boltagon.