16206/Dangers of Cellphone Usage!

Dangers of Cellphone Usage!
Date of Scene:	29 October 2023
Location:	Greenwich Village
Synopsis:	The Atom leaps before he looks... and meets the new Spider on the streets!
Cast of Characters:	Ray Palmer, Julia Carpenter

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Ray Palmer has posed:
Ray has been up a while, first grading papers for his Advanced Physics class, then working long into the night with a new algorithm he wrote to scan local EM frequencies to find signals he can ride. He would really like it if non-hard line signals like radio, microwave, or cellular would be less traumatic and exhausting. "Of course..." Yes, he's talking to himself in his ESU lab. "...since I'm most familiar with phone lines, Cellular would be the most logical place to start." Also, he's done that before, which is why he knows it is possible and how difficult it generally proves.

A signal pings on his scopes, and he frowns. "Well.../that/ is interesting..." The signal? The signal is in a bandwidth well outside the ones that cellular networks use. "...oh, this is REALLY neat!"

Impulsively, he makes sure there's nobody in his lab, it is quite late, well into the night. A grin then, imagination engaged, he stands, and then activates his suit as he shrinks /upwards/ so he manifests at his former head height, then glides smoothly to the desktop in front of the now iMax sized screen showing the wave form. "Here we GO!" He breathes as he shrinks further, and jumps into that data stream, not sure where it is going, but curious to find out.

Julia Carpenter has posed:
Julia is swinging through the air in Greenwich, chasing down a lead on a mission, when she gets a familiar buzz in the encrypted comms that comes from her employer. Groaning, she finds a convenient rooftop to land on and taps the bud in her ear. "I'm in the middle of a lead chase here, so please make it fast or this mission could take even longer. And none of us want that." She doesn't especially want to be on this mission in the first place, but that's a whole other kettle of fish.

She sighs at the updated parameters of the mission and mutters, "I swear, you guys are purposely making this more difficult." A pause, "Look, you guys are the ones that wanted to chase down a mark in New York City. I just suggested that living here would be a better cover for the suit and mask since there's so many." Another, longer pause. "HA! I did NOT ask for this job, you made it seem like it was my 'civic duty' to do it after the accident! Yeah, yeah, whatever. I'll let you know what I find out, if I haven't lost the lead completely." She signs off the comm and grumbles under her breath, preparing to swing back into action...

Ray Palmer has posed:
The signal is VERY different from phones, or normal cellular signals, to his micronized senses he's inside a tube of energy, the boundaries defined very firmly by a wall of shimmering green and white light, whorls and every shifting splotches of an infinity of hues of the two main colors corkscrewing in a VERY unique pattern. "!" He makes a sound of pure wonder.

In the stream that sound pings on a security program, an AI subroutine launched.

From out of a wall a vaguely spider-like construct emerges, black as pitch, crackling with malevolent red energy as it skitters towards the anomalous signal in the stream.

The Atom blinks as he sees the thing emerge where he'd been moments before, eyes then widening as he sees the construct - scaled to the size of a bus relative to his own size. "That is NOT good." He mutters, which draws the things immediate attention and starts it chasing after him. "EEP!" Nope, no dignity there at all, the polygon construct semi-spider thing skitters for him with a maw opened wide and lurid red energy crackling inside as it does.

They call it a data stream for a reason! Ray goes into gliding mode, angling to catch rides of data packets, pushing off and degrading the signal a bit, so there is likely a bit of static on the call that's atypical. For a little bit Ray makes some ground, but then the security program starts calling for help, and others start to spawn from the walls, the Atom having to dodge swipes of mathematically precise limbs, and a couple times some energy streams, one of which burns his side. Just as the first one gets nearly within reach, a solid sun-bright core of red in its maw herald to a bolt, the call ends, and The Atom tumbles out of Arachne's earpiece as he rapidly resumes his six inch size, and flops onto the rooftop with all the grace of a rock-slide, bouncing off an air vent with a soft 'bong'.

Dazed, he sits up, arm cradling his side.

Julia Carpenter has posed:
Unlike some of the other Spiders, Julia doesn't have crazy awesome eyes or ears or nose. What she does have is a sort of tremorsense, a very finely tuned one! So when she feels Ray bounce off the rooftop and ping into the air vent, then crash back to the roof... she halts. Turning, she throws a hand out, sending a small web of lightly glowing psionic energy towards Ray.

Turning, she moves towards him and crouches down smoothly to peer at the six inch man. "...huh..." Not something she sees every day! Dissipating the webbing, she cants her head to one side.

"Uhhhhhhh... are you okay? Do you need... I don't know. Anything?" It feels weird to be talking to someone the size of one of her daughter's Pokemon figures.

She's in the usual black and white costume with the typical spider mark on the chest that wraps around. THe mas is open around the mouth and chin, and at the top of the head, letting a long ponytail of gingery hair wave free.

Ray Palmer has posed:
In this case that tremorsense of hers is probably far more useful in a lot of ways, because she could sense him even were he smaller still, though eventually he'd slip from the material world which might pose a few problems even for the tremorsense. The pinkish energy webs glue him to the side of the air vent - fun fact - he dented it where he'd hit before. Another 'Eep' muffled by the energy until he shakes off that daze, and she dissipates the psi-webbing.

The Atom has made the news a few times, enough that he might be on the RSA's radar, he looks up (and up and UP) at the crouching, costumed form of of the as yet unknown woman in the black and white costume with a spider motif, but definitely not any of the Spiders he's heard of, and man, that hair could probably qualify as a super power in its own right.

His own costume bares his mouth area but not his hair, and he's wearing his red rimmed goggles with yellow lenses masking his eye color so they appear black.

The smile he offers is hopeful, and a tad lopsided. "Oh, I'll take all the help I can get." He says in a tiny voice. Standing to his towering Pokemon figurine height, he dusts himself off, the material of his costume charred at his right side, and a moderately ugly burn there. "Excuse me." He hops clear to land a few feet away, not truly flying, more a controlled glide, and then he concentrates, his finger controls altering his size, so he expands up to a comfortable six feet, and sits down on the ledge of the rooftop, facing inwards towards the costumed woman with the amazing hair. "Hello, I'm The Atom, pleasure to meet you, miss." He even offers his hand /not/ cradling the much more visible injury now that he's twelve times taller.

Julia Carpenter has posed:
Julia watches Ray with a bemused expression on her mouth, though the sight of the burn has her frowning briefly. He moves around and then... grows? Oh, good, a six-inch man was just a little more weird than she was prepared to deal with.

Shifting her crouch to stay facing him, she rises up when he expands to a more normal size, giving him a nods of greeting. "Hey. I'm Arachne. Pleasure's mine." She moves forward and motions to his side, "You should let that air a bit, don't cover it until you have to move."

Her head cants to one side, hands resting lightly on her hips, "So.. I don't mean to be rude but... how did you get here? I'm pretty good at knowing when people are around me." She isn't generally a rude person, or even a mean person. But she's learned to be cautious. Very cautious.

Ray Palmer has posed:
Hey! Six inch supers are probably not all that common, bemusement is hardly an inappropriate response to one! "Arachne? Great name, though hopefully your life and times won't be a cautionary tale someday like your namesake." His words are almost a deluge, the smile warm and somehow even through the lenses of his goggles, his eyes warm.

He checks the wound, and sighs. "I'll probably have to debride the blackened tissue along the edges, and apply a topical disinfectant and take oral meds to be sure there's no infection." He nods. "Burns are nasty."

Julia's last question has him looking a little shamefaced, the man is pretty much an open book, can't even look her in the eyes at first. "Oh, well, I found a really EXOTIC frequency in use..." His tones wax enthused. "...so I jumped into the data stream to see where they lead." He points to the ear her comms are in. "And jumped out there." A pause. "My compliments though, the encryption and countermeasures were VERY impressive, and a mite..." He indicates the burn. "...aggressive."

Julia Carpenter has posed:
Julia snorts softly and shakes her head, "No gods are interested in me, and I certainly don't have to worry about jealous goddesses. I'm just me, and there's plenty of others with the same-ish powers as mine." SHe lifts a shrug, "My boss wanted me to use Spider-Woman and I refused. One, I'm pretty sure someone else is already using it. And two, I don't want anything I do to fall on the other Spiders. They get enough fo a rap without me."

She crouches to get a better look at the burn, lips pursing up as she smells the burn. "That's... almost electrical in nature. You might want to get that looked at by a professional. Those can be nasty."

She blinks behind her eyelenses at his sudden shift in expression, rocking back on her heels to look at him. "...huh..." Julia gives a small shake of her head, "Not*the* weirdest thing I've heard but... close enough. Alright! Well. I'm going to hope that you heard nothing of the actual conversation because that would violate all manner of federal laws. Also, my boss is pretty... vindictive."

Ray Palmer has posed:
"'Just' you?" He asks, he can't help it, Atom can't help but think there's no 'just' about her at all. "Well, I'm pretty sure that none of them use energy webs like you did, which by the way is VERY cool! How do they work? Mental constructs? New glands that generate energy forms you can manipulate and control? OH! Or do you have a tie to another dimension that lets you shunt the webs into existence? Can you create energy constructs like a member of one of the Lantern Corps?" Realizing his flooding her with questions, he actually blushes a bit, and rubs the back of his neck. "Okay, sorry, I'm a scientist, supers are fascinating."

Her assessment. "I think it was ionized plasma, so I'll also be checking for radiation damage too, never worry." He smiles. "I'm not an MD, but I've a lot of medical knowledge, I'll be okay...but if I find I'm out of my depth I absolutely will, promise." Clearly he gets how bad burns can be. He'll be a while healing too, especially if there's radioactivity involved.

He laughs, white teeth bared, and a genuine smile, a bit lopsided forming at her declaration. "Believe me, microverses get /really/ weird sometimes. You have NO idea." The smile fades a bit. "No, I wasn't able to hear the conversation, I just followed the datastream, so I don't think any laws were broken. I really didn't expect to end up on a rooftoop in Greenwich Village, however. Glad it wasn't on a moving train or the like though, that gets awkward sometimes, personally I suggest hard lines, cellular transits are VERY taxing."

Eyes shift to meet her gaze and he nods slowly. "I can believe he or she IS vindictive, the defenses that were activated were." He cants his head to the side. "Can you say who you work for? They don't sound very nice."

Julia Carpenter has posed:
Half-smiling at the barrage of questions around her webbing, Julia rests her forearms on her knees and waits for him to finish. "That is a LOT of questions, but... you're in luck. I can answer at least one of them." She lifts a hand and conjures up a lightly glowing webline that attaches to the dented air vent, the other end in her hand. "Psionics. Or psychokinetic, if you prefer. I use psychokinetic energy to bind the ambient, free-floating molecules into strands of solid force. I can use them in the same manner that most normal webbing can be used, but with some extra bonuses. My webs don't have to originate from me, and I can control them mentally, so they can move on their own."

Letting go of the one end that was in her hand, Julia gives the line a mental tug until the vent pops free, flying towards them. Then tugging the strand up to halt the vent from smacking into the back of her head. "Like so!" Because it IS cool.

She frowns as he mentions that the burn could be even worse. "I really do hope that this means you won't just go leaping into more 'exotic' frequencies without checking them out a little more."

She just shakes her head at the mention of a microverse and chuckles, "I will take your word for it. I am weird enough for me. Still not the weirdest thing I've heard, but again... very close." Julia gives a nod, "Good. The absolute last thing you want is to end up on a list in my boss' office. Not a great time. And to be fair, you didn't really know where you were going to end up. Be glad my comm isn't disposable or it could have ended up in the river... and you along with it."

"The Commission. It's a multi-branch federal task force. We're sent after threats to the US... not apocalyptic stuff, but... city-threatening? Yeah, that could be us." Julia lifts a shrug and offers, "Most of the people that end up on my boss' desk tend to be listed as terrorists."

Ray Palmer has posed:
"Oh WOW, that's /super/ cool!" Grown man, six feet, and rather buff, but he's so excited by her powers that he seems like a kid turned loose ina candy store with carte blanche. His attention focuses on the energy web and he can't help but shrink again, and then hop up to stand on it, even kneeling down to rap at it with his fist. "Amazing. Psionics! I've read about psychokinesis, though not at any great depth, fascinating stuff. I'm more of a physicist though. Well, and I know about microbiology and engineering too, though physics is my focus."

He hops off when she snaps the vent back towards them, resuming his human size again in transit, landing gracefully, clapping as she finishes her demonstration as he does.

"That's truly an incredibly useful thing. So...like the other Spiders are you super strong, and agile? Can you cling to walls, do you sense danger too? Are your senses keener?" Man, Enthusiasm: Thy Name Be Atom!

He can't prevent the laugh at Julia's hope. "Well, I will try, but...sometimes my curiosity gets the best of me. THIS was definitely a learning experience, but really, ALL experiences are!"

He grins. "Weird is the new normal." He declares with good will and bright cheer. Dude is assuredly in pain, but he doesn't let that harsh his mellow any. "Duly noted about your boss, and I'm very grateful not to have been tossed into a river! They're FILTHY." Which would not have been good for an open burn, those get infected really easily.

'The Commission', okay, that's a new one to Ray, one he'll be looking into for sure. "So...as you're in costume, and were on the comms with your boss, am I interrupting your work?" Chewing his lower lip, he looks thoughtful. "Is it anything I could help with? I /do/ fight crime and even some supervillains!"

Julia Carpenter has posed:
Julia can't help but smile at Ray's enthusiasm. It reminds her of Rachel and her own excitement over the powers her mom has gained. She gives a nod and offers, "I'm not actually any sort of... doctor or physicist or anything. Other people who are much smarter figured it out and let me know." She lifts a small shrug and a half-smile, "I'm just a field agent."

Watching his acrobatics and re-growth, she smiles faintly and gives a nod, "You're not bad yourself. That's a really neat power you have there."

Then he's asking all the other questions and she can't help but chuckle, "I have most of the same powers. The wall-crawling for me works the same way as the webbing. I don't have sticky extremities, I use the same psychokinetic energy to bond to walls, ceilings... anything, really. There's the potential that I could use the same ability to make a melcular bond to.. gasses, liquids... but I haven't gotten there."

She chuckles lightly and adds, "Also, I don't have the usual danger sense and heightened senses... I have something more... spidery. A form of tremorsense... my sense of touch is VERY heightened. I can feel the most minute vibrations around me. And I can expand it with effort and concentration."

She glances in the direction she was initially heading, then looks back to the Atom and smiles, shaking her head, "Nah. I mean, yeah, it was interrupted, but by the phone call, not you. I'll have to pick up the lead later, it's fine."

Ray Palmer has posed:
Ray is many things, grim-dark and jaded are not on the list. He still feels the sheer wonder of a world where superheroes are real, he's still amazed every single day by the gifts he's been given - the mutations that allow him to survive the rigors of size-shifting, the intellectual ability to understand the science behind how his powers work, how his inventions work. "Oh, I only have the one doctorate." He says like it is no big deal. "And there's no 'just' about being a field agent, I think you're focusing on what you believe you CAN'T do. So what if you're not a physicist! I'm not a chef! You have amazing powers, and you work to try and protect people, make the world a better and safer place." He grins hugely. "The size of the problems, and believe me, as a shrinker size is near and dear to my heart - isn't what's important, really. You do what you CAN, and /that/ is heroic."

He grins in boyish glee. "Thanks. I made it myself!" Which explains the claimed skill in engineering, if he's tech based he's a little beyond convention science and engineering too. "It really does have some amazing applications." He agrees.

He absolutely does listen intently about her powers, and how they differ from the other Spiders. That could well be important someday!

"Say, um, would you like to meet again sometime and talk more? I have a secure email I can give you, if were so minded, I haven't any fancy comms yet, though I suppose I could come up with something..." A firm nod. "...in fact I /will/ come up with something. But for now, as I don't think we want to exchange phone numbers just yet." This with a truly boyish grin.

He nods about her work, and then sighs, softly, covering his side again. "I do think I need to get back to Hom-e-base. My Home Base, secret lair and all that." Nope, he doesn't have a secret lair, but he didn't want to sound lame! "It was great to meet you, Arachne! Here...my email...atom@matterdoessize.net." Yes, the email is a pun, but also apt.

With that, he runs and jumps off the building full size, gliding and then shrinking from sight to vanish into the micro realm as he phones HIMSELF home. ET gots nothin' on The Atom, yo!