16289/Distaff Counterparts

Distaff Counterparts
Date of Scene:	09 November 2023
Location:	The Mental Void
Synopsis:	Strangeness and Dinosaurs.
Cast of Characters:	Jane Foster, Natasha Romanoff

---

Jane Foster has posed:
Here is not . Not as most people know "here."

Worlds can exist beside the one everyone knows and inhabits, some possessing subtle differences. Lives alter a little but remain recognizable. Some veer into wildly different aspects. Maybe Doom swept through the Eastern Bloc. HYDRA developed their own serum, or mutantkind left their strongholds on a Pacific island and a New York school for the Red Planet. Maybe humanity fails to exist at all, replaced by zombies, dinosaurs, or great apes.

As "here" goes, it falls much closer to the subtle end of the spectrum. She stands in a classroom, surrounded by stepped seats. Some of the students are alert, others lost to listening to music, thumbing through the smart devices that project holographic information onto the glasses many wear. Whatever lesson in progress has taken an interesting enough turn, the presentation around them a scrollwork of genetic codes and now.
Now? Noise.

Noise of a crackling hiss and labouring growl. Something at the very lower reach of hearing and the upper. The kind of thing used so dramatically in the Exorcist hums in the background, and the few people able to pull their attention away from the latest diversion -- a game, a social media feed, footage of weird four-armed beings assaulting a city and being repulsed by whatever heroic squad of the moment is nearby -- soon find themselves staring blankly. Glassy eyed, blinking slowly.

Jane pauses, looking at the small remote in her hand. Pressing the battered buttons doesn't actually halt the monotonous drone, the sighing wail.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Like the bottom of an old trolleycar, scraping along as it nears the next stop. The screeching when the brakes kick in and the train starts to slow.. And slow as it gets nearer the platform.. But never quite gets there. Just that slow scraping into nothingness, like claws taken over a chalkboard for eternity. A dull static that one learned to tune out, to embrace, to revel in.. And the dull monotone of being in the background of everything and nothing..

Now there is a something. Something scaled moreso beyond the esoteric, the exotic. Something that to normalcy was to chaos and calamity as to here was the droning surreality.. To take that perspective and twist it about again so that ennui had to break, for just a moment.

And something towers over Jane. Bulky. Rusted. Caked in flame. Metallic. A huge looking, huge steaming leviathan going along through the world of introspection with it's -stomps- seeming to break through the tedium of entropy. Coming through on two monstrous legs at a steady stomp.

Jane Foster has posed:
The classroom serves as a monotonous, safe space to convey information and knowledge to a younger generation. Clear touches to soften the institutional lines and rough, unwelcome edges lend spots of colour. Stained glass positioned in the window throws bright teal and gold sparkles. Student diagrams of complex views into nanotechnology that would be deemed well beyond the average junior or senior's grasp, even in an AP class, dance between holiday cards.

Sound building up in a loud murmur grates wrongly against the lizard brain. Whatever happens, the sound is unsettling in a way that makes someone stomach probably turn. Good cause to halt with fussing with the technology and shift, her weight distributed on sensible shoes to help feet already aching from a long day of fighting the good academic fight. Her desk is too far to reach, and the students staring forward or lost in a morass seem to be unable to move at any sort of reasonable pace.

To make sense of the shapes that appear through bands of strobing light and evidence for making genetic repairs to DNA, as the projector wants to show. It has nothing to do with the neat little filaments being trimmed or examined.

For long moments she stares, dark eyes looking up. Up, up higher still. Her classroom ceiling presumably doesn't stand intact over legs that *big*?

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
In the eternity of the classroom, perspective is constant. Perspective is consistent. The layout efficient. Uninspiring. Separate students by rows, give them space. Center of room for teacher to present. Dim lights. Pale flooring. Leading out to identical corridors through the rest of the building, with the occasional breaks for office-space and other things. All very, very static. Until it isn't.

The classroom is a place for consistency. That has all gone out the metaphorical window. And that lizard-like bit of a brain that some might have is very, very much triggered. Less of a 'fight or flight' style, but more of a.. Sense of kindred spark.

A huge, beast of a lizard forged by fire, metallic frame seeming to burn with ember. A king lizard, if such a thing could be identified by the brain and acknowledged. King tyrant. King beast. Metallic. Almost robotic.

There is a shift in things as where Jane is/was suddenly has her up at eye level with the goliath. Face to.. Faceplate? With an angry, acidic frame of serrated teeth and a constantly burning furnace.

Jane Foster has posed:
Circled desks and chairs promote an attitude of cooperation and engagement. Muted tones don't detract from the learning experience, while comfortable soft textiles and natural light belong to children's classrooms and not those for people on the cusp of adulthood. On the cusp of release into the big wide sterile corporate world.

Even if this world does involve a lot more holographic projection and light than does the one everyone else might know. Earth-661 is a strange place to be.

The woman to her credit doesn't scream. She moves back, tossing the remote onto the small rolling cart adorned by several diodes and a device that tracks motion. Her presentation frozen, the strands of DNA spilled out in a ribbon, provide a rather pretty green and white line separating her from the huge... thing. Beast. Being.

When she tilts her head back slightly, her body language torn between retreat and twisting around to confront an interloper, things are all too strange. A huge robotic-like being of metal has no place here. No bearing. The students stare, stock frozen, if they notice at all.

"What..." A soft sound. Then louder as she has to find her voice, past the grinding of her molars, the clenched jaw. "What are you doing in here?"

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Existence is very much a fulcrum of strangeness. Where life had taken it upon itself to take even this most uninteresting venue and somehow render it something cacophonic. Jane is up there at the eye level with the beast/lizard. He goes to gaze down at her over - is she even with it? Is it even with her? But somehow she's looking at it directly. As the King Tyrant Lizard, seemingly forged of bone and carapace goes to speak down to her.

It's voice breaking the distortion. Fire dripping from it's muzzle almost like acid, smoke about it like a demonic effigy from another world. The thing goes to let out a roar, more flame streaking from it as if a living furnace was it's natural state. Breaking the delirium of the dimension. I twas real.

Very, very real. "Me want know why me GRIM locked in here with you." The huge tail slashing through the air with the power tha tin another world could have toppled over a building. Here, in whatever here was.. It would just be dramatic. A beast, a monster from another age. A relic.

Jane Foster has posed:
Those wide blue eyes of hers shift; one darkening, smudged against the shock dark lashes. Might just be an issue of pupils irregularly dilating, something otherwise. She keeps her hands to her sides rather than raising her arms in a protective cross or an unnecessary waving. What would the point be against something with legs the size of tree trunks and the respective girth to match?

No, it's just not worth fighting over that. Especially not with a maw of razor-sharp teeth. Her question is out and the creature finds a means to respond that she understands, almost as jarring as anything else.

Teeth set lightly together, ground again. No, she will not...

...the laugh comes, sharp and edged, jagged. "I was showing them," idiots, frozen, stuck, NO! "About the basics of bioengineering."

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Jane is up in the air over with the King Tyrant, the Thunder Lizard sheathed in fire and it would meet her gaze. Or she would meet it? Teeth gnashing, slashing against themselves over like a shark's. The beast-frame sheathed in fire and smoke. Something the size of a large building that could just as easily smash through one. And yet here it was, talking with Jane.

With the scenario implicitly just as strange for -it- as it was for -Jane-. Something to find some semblance of familiarity in the surreality of it.

As Jane goes to laugh, the beast goes to chortle along with her. Almost.. Sympathetically? Walls quaking. "They fail." The beast would hiss over in an amused laugh.

"You fail."

Jane Foster has posed:
The fact that she isn't trampled underfoot or devoured fully says volumes, really. That perhaps this too is someone's prank, although the sensations projected at her -- smell and heat, metal and fire -- seem much too real. How does it fit in the building registers as a matter, but then there must be more, so much more to go on than that.

Her shoulders lift and she squares off, considering, her chin up to face... the toothy thing. "You are not their educator. It is not reasonable for you to suggest that."

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
The huge beast would chortle over. Fire burning off it, flaming into the air to keep the muzzle constantly burning over the metallic frame. Onyx-laid black, with streaks of gold upon it in a contrasting array. The beast seems to consider, tail lashing for just a moment.

"Me say you cannot TEACH what you not love." Bait.