17386/HUNGER: Hell From The Outside

HUNGER: Hell From The Outside
Date of Scene:	17 March 2024
Location:	Reed's Labs - Four Freedom Plaza
Synopsis:	Babs and Darcy visit Sue and Reed to discuss strange alien weaponry from off-planet showing up on the streets only to discover it may be from even further afield ...
Cast of Characters:	Reed Richards, Barbara Gordon, Darcy Lewis, Susan Richards
Tinyplot:	Hunger

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Reed Richards has posed:
The loosely-organized group of vigilantes and their allies are called 'the Defenders' - or they would be, if the media reported on them instead of which ski resort the Avengers were vacationing at. The price of being a vigilante working at the street level, however, is that one usually has a day job. In the case of Daredevil, he has found the court system does not bend to the whims of costumed hijinx and so the independently wealthy Batgirl has been politely asked to bring the strange alien tech the Defenders recovered to the one person who might make heads or tails of it.

Being a conscientious scientist and researcher, Doctor Reed Richards put out the call to the only other academic he knows of with a similar grasp of the wider and weirder world of the cosmos and dimensions beyond. A meeting was arranged, and upon arrival the guests of the Fantastic Four are shown to a vast laboratory that takes up almost an entire floor of the Four Freedoms Plaza building. They are directed there by a small, floating white robot with an animated smiley face on a digital screen in place of a face.

- Doctor Richards is just through here, - the robot, HERBIE, explains in an electronically synthesized voice, - I believe Mrs. Richards will also be joining you. Would you care for refreshments? -

Barbara Gordon has posed:
Barbara had collect every bit of the alien technology that she was aware of existing. She even managed to gather up the stuff that Catwoman had taken, and eventually voluntarily brought back to Babs after an internal change of heart, at just how deadly this stuff could be in the wrong hands...

As it stands, today, Babs arrived via a black SUV, where she was met and lead to the meeting point here and now. Dressed in a black bodysuit, adorned in very light armor padding, with a dark bat symbol emblazened upon her chest, the redhead has her hair tied back in a tight French braid, that pokes out of the back of a simple head adornment, black, and covering the upper part of her face, leaving her pale skinned mouth and chin exposed. Her green eyes peer out from behind the sculpted mask's features, and aside from her red braid, her green eyes and the pale of her partially visible face, the Batgirl is dressed all in black, form fit to her athletic frame.

She carries a duffle bag at her side, it loaded with all of the weapons, and tech, a small smirk is shown to the robot with the digital display screen. "Water would be nice. It's hot in this thing." She admits, even if she chose to wear it. It isn't that she doesn't trust Reed or Sue, but she doesn't trust anyone else she'd meet in this situation.

Darcy Lewis has posed:
The incident, as much as it was reported on the news (or not), was already on SHIELD's radar. In fact, SHIELD has been running a program for at least a year now focused entirely on this particular profile of criminal activity, the unfortunately 'booming' criminal trade in off-world technology as Earth becomes more and more exposed to it. Not every case is related, but patterns do start to emerge. And recently, with the Avengers and SHIELD themselves being targeted for unusual thefts, the Fantastic Four probably got a bulletin about it as well. Inter-agency cooperation, isn't it nice?

Of course, cooperation tends to come with ulterior motives, at least when it comes to spy agencies. No doubt they want to get their hands on this stuff as well. So, after whatever back-and-forths between Fury and Reed, Darcy is here to help!

She arrives in a suitably unmarked agency vehicle, does whatever check-in she needs to (including some scans of a case she brings with her), and is presumably there when the robot comes to fetch them. It's probably weird sitting in a waiting room with a costumed Batgirl. What's the etiquette? Do you just... read a magazine?

"Oh, uh, sure, yeah, water would be great." As they walk, despite whatever attempts at looking all official government lady for this outing (Darcy in a pantsuit?! gasp), she still can't help but look around in a bit of awe as they go. The fangirl urge is strong...

Susan Richards has posed:
It would be incredibly easy to fall into a position of social bystander in this collective of highly intelligent individuals come together to discuss matters that are well outside Sue's area of expertise... and she probably will do that to some degree, but this 'impromptu meeting' happened to fall directly on her alotted 'Reed Time'. Obviously she is very understanding, because she is a very understanding woman, but if the precious little face time she actually shares with her husband is going to be interrupted by matters of the 'weird and wild' she will be absolutely damned if she wont be present for it.

They have very busy lives, the Richards. Through events of oddity and questionable natural selection, Sue is on the Board of Directors of the Hellfire Club. A can of worms worth an entire A&E documentary, which she may or may not already be in talks with the company over, but also has work at the Foundation itself. They day to day operations at Four Freedoms Plaza may run themself, but she still has to show face at board meetings. Put the whip, metaphorically speaking, to those crotchety old money bag lawyers to keep things angled in the Fantastic vision of the Four.

Which is why, and no other reason at all, Sue is there to meet Darcy and Batgirl when they are escorted towards the labs. While she was hardly dressed in anything fancy, not in the lab anyways, it is undoubtly over the protective F4 costume that is almost mandatory when spending time in Reed's lab. Also a smile, "I'll take it from here, HERBIE." Comes her quiet voice, stepping out to greet their guests so the automaton can set off to fetch refreshments and she can escort them the rest of the way to where Reed is waiting. "Agent Lewis, Batgirl." Extending hands, pleasantries, and moving them right along. "I'm Susan Richards, Reed is waiting for you both just this way."

Reed Richards has posed:
- Certainly, Mrs. Richards. Have a wonderful day. -

That said, HERBIE excuses himself and floats out of the lab to do whatever it is an all-purpose artificial lifeform with one of the earliest working examples of an AGI does. Probably plug into an outlet and recharge.

The lab might look like a mess to the uninitiated, but there is order to the chaos. Despite the floorplan changing almost daily, Sue knows her way through it all and leads the way with ease. There are towering devices of all kinds, many seeming to beep and whir as they go about their inscrutable tasks. Something long, blue, and vaguely rubbery appears to be wound back and forth across the ceiling almost like streamers. Occasionally, the group need to duck to not run into them.

Arriving in what serves as the 'nerve center' of the laboratory for today, the group will find Reed. Or a part of him. His upper body stretches down from the ceiling, a long-fingered hand tapping away at a keyboard to his right while the other scribbles a note with pen on graph paper like the oldest of the old school. Following the line of his unnaturally stretched torso, it becomes apparent that the strange blue streamers strung from the ceiling are in fact a very stretched out Doctor Richards.

"Sorry, I got distracted. I think I've stumbled upon a phenomenom with what I thought was a quantum singularity but might intersect with M-theory. The energy patterns don't align with conventional three-dee space-time fabric interactions. I thought it might be just be a fluctuation in the quantum foam, or exotic matter exerting gravitational effects but it can't be. See these? They're Calabi-Yau manifolds undergoing topological change, perhaps a transition from one complex shape to another which would mean a shift in fundamental constants within our local brane ... "

Uh oh, he's rambling ...

Barbara Gordon has posed:
In the waiting area, Darcy had received a look from Batgirl, followed by a soft smile so as to curb some of the oddity of being near a person dressed in a lightly armored battlesuit of pure black shade, but the bulk of her waiting time was spent looking at a wrist mounted computer screen, that glowed softly against the dark hue of Babs' attire. Her eyes were watching the readout of various alert systems, including the status of her Bat-drones which were resting on the ledges of buildings surrounding the Four Freedoms plaza area. Not in flight, the drones are idly monitoring the area, just casually parked on the corners of other complexes, watching and waiting, just in case.

When Sue arrived, Batgirl offered her gloved hand to the woman, along with another smile. "A pleasure to meet you." She says to her, holding back some of her own inner-youth butterflies at meeting one of the original famous super heroes. She was all business here, and trained by Bruce Wayne, right? Behave. Be professional.

When they reached the lab, Babs had been quite curious by that robot, as she was dabbling in robotics herself these days. After learning how to build her own Batmobile, and more recently, put to flight her own Bat-wing jet plane, she was quickly advancing as an engineer, and obviously already a pro at designing AGI software. She's in a rather exciting place here, at the home of the Fantastic Four.

Her green eyes wander, curiously taking in what she sees, as she carries the duffle bag of alien tech at her side. She finally spies Reed, and her head slightly tilts to the side, her red braid dangling to one side behind her shoulders.

"Mr. Richards." She softly says, following his scientific musings. "I brought you a few gifts."

She holds up the black leather duffle bag, and gives it a little shake.

Darcy Lewis has posed:
Echoing Batgirl's pleased introduction (though Darcy continues to seem a little more starstruck in her current environs), she follows along as they're transfered from the robot's care and ushered along into the chaotic lab. It's clearly good they have Susan here to guide them, because one could really get lost in the wild jungle of science.

Especially if you're Darcy and everything looks so interesting. It's not spy work when she briefly wanders away, "Oh is that a- oh, sorry!" And right back on track.

Eventually, they're brought to see the man himself, although it soon becomes apparent they've been walking under him for quite a while. It is, well, a LITTLE strange if you're not used to it, and Darcy's eyes go a little wide at the whole thing, as he stretches around to greet them. Professionalism, Darcy! She straightens up a bit.

However it's all that science rambling that really gets her. "You're going against the assumption that we're confined to an intersection with the D-brane, then?" See! She knows those words. This probably isn't helpful if you're trying to get him to STOP with the rambling science musings, however.

Fortunately, Batgirl is here to help! And to draw the focus away from the obscure and theoretical realms of superstring theory... and back to the more pragmatic reality of what is presumably a bag full of alien guns. Nerdery aside, jobwise, she's here for those, not to chat about other dimensions. "You were able to recover other weapons, then? Do you have further intelligence on how they're moving them? Here- hold on."

And now she takes the case SHE came with, looks around for the nearest surface that isn't strewn with notes or spare parts, sets it down, and opens it. The foam-cushioned interior has a lot of extra space, but built into it is also a laptop computer, hinged to open with the case. This may seem excessive in the age of 'I have a whole computer on my phone,' but as she starts tapping keys and the SHIELD secure login shows up, it's clear why it has some extra security.

Susan Richards has posed:
Because she's an impressively skilled hostess, Sue even points out some of the machinary that is more well known amongst the endless collection of scientific wonders scattered around the controlled chaos of Reed Richards lab. Any tech questions are spoken as if she read them off a que card, because she has about as much knowledge on what they actually do as she has knowledge of whether or not God has feet. Specifically, she targets some of the technology which would interest Darcy and Batgirl. Does she read minds? Always very formulaic, she knows what she's saying, but any questions (of which there is hopefully few), she artfully diverts with a 'there will be time enough for that after we meet with Reed'. Giving her time to become an expert on that particular thing.

Or enough of one to engage in conversation, anyways.

Ducking when appropriate, she takes the shortest path that leads the group directly by wonderful inventions that would, if her research on the pair was accurate, tickle their particular fancy. Until they come upon her elongated husband dangling from the rafters to continue his work in rambling fashion. Her smile goes from pleasant, but demure, to slightly wider and affectionate when he praddles on in words she understands, though not in that particular order.

"Reed, dear." A hand rests on his stretched left forearm. A safeword. She'd never outright call him out on rambling, and his excitement over the abstract has always been one of his most endearing qualities, but they're speaking to the nice normal people, darling. Darcy likely derails Sue's attempts to reel her husband in, but if the nerds want to talk in NERD LANGUAGE, she'll busy herself in the spare time to clear a section of the counter. Organizing all those stacks of papers so they're close enough that Reed can scatter them around easily once he returns to work.

Reed Richards has posed:
The strange, elastic sound of Reed moving with a bodysuit made of unstable molecules might only add to the strange din of the laboratory floor. He seems to be retracting in on himself, his upper body momentarily disappears behind a towering ARM server that must supplement the impressive computational technology in the building. A second later, he steps out looking entirely normal and not at all stretched out nor strange. The hand on his arm stops his rambling in its tracks, and he gives Sue an almost sheepish side-on look. Another look, given to Darcy, seems to convey: 'Put a pin in that, we'll get back to it.'

"Right, your strange weapons ... "

As the duffel bag is laid out on the bench for him to see, he immediately steps up to it. He's not wary, quickly picking things out and looking over them curiously before setting them aside and looking at the next thing.

One hand reaches to the side, then keeps reaching, stretching out of the sleeves of his lab-coat several feet before picking up what looks like a set of goggles from a shelf and depositing them on his head. He taps them on, prompting them to hum almost menacingly as he peers through the lens.

"Portable gamma-ray spectroscopy," he explains, lifting up what looks like a glove from the duffel bag and turning it over in his hands, "Hm."

He sets the glove down, moving instead to the oddly-shaped battery of sorts attached to it. His mild interest quickly becomes intense focus as he leans in closer.

"High-energy photons might suggest ... hmm ... annihilation events? Yes, annihilation events. Electron-positron annihilation is producing gamma rays of ... five ... five eleven kay-e-vee."

That's kiloelectronvolts for those playing at home.

"Sue, honey," he calls maybe too loudly, turning to stare directly into his wife's face through the bizarre pair of goggles he wears, "Can you get the box from the table over there? The grey one. No, no, the one with the orange handles - yes!"

As Sue looks, he glances up at the two visitors once more.

"At the very least, this uses antimatter as a power source which is ... decades beyond anything on Earth. At least anything broadly available. Even the Kree can't produce it in quantities sufficient for weaponry, if Director Fury's security briefings are anything to go by."

Barbara Gordon has posed:
With another smile given to Sue, as the famous woman passes by her again, Batgirl turns her attention toward Darcy. "Not just weapons, but personal cloaking devices also." She tells the SHIELD agent, as a moment is taken to watch the woman setup her attache case. She spies the SHIELD logo within it, and for a moment she considers the agency. They don't have much of a presence in Gotham, that Barbara is aware of... and she fancies herself aware of a lot within her city.

It is Reed's return to a state of normalcy that has her looking toward him, and offering him the leather duffle. As he takes it, she steps around him so as not to stare at his back, over his shoulder, as he sorts through the items tucked in to it. She stands across the table that he begins to lay them out upon, and as she listens, she nods her head softly inside of that black helmet mask, not all that unlike Daredevil's own, with just a few sculpt changes that maintain the Bat theme over that of the Devil.

"That," Babs states, when the glove is focused upon. "is of particular interest. I've gone over it with my own scanning equipment, and come to the same conclusion. I... can show you? What it does?" She questions, as she steps toward it. She reaches for it, and takes a step back as she slips it over her much more slim gauntlet.

With a look around, to judge her surroundings, Batgirl decides there is more than enough room. "This is safe, I promise. I've... played around with it a bit already." She states with a smirk.

The redhead's right arm raises up, gauntlet adorned on her right hand. The glove's edges glow brightly, as Batgirl stares at the other 3 in the room with her.

Suddenly, a blindingly bright lightning bolt snaps out of Babs' hand, spreading out from either sides of her fist, like jagged white blades of a Star Wars lightsaber. It equally growls, hums, and shimmers, not unlike those fabled weapons from a galaxy far, far away. Batgirl allows it to simply hum, as she holds it up on display.

"If I open my fist, I can throw it at a target... But, I'll refrain from that here." She says, as she deactivates the glove, causing the bolt to snap back in upon itself. As she steps toward Reed again, to deposit the glove back on the table where he had it, she glances toward Darcy... considering something, before she raises her own glack gloves up to her helmet mask. She pulls it up and off her head, giving her tied-back hair a little swipe with her left hand, as her right lowers the helmet to her side. "I'm Barbara Gordon. I am the founder of a Green Energy company out of Gotham. That... power source, interests me, a great deal."

Darcy Lewis has posed:
The computer in an armored case speaks to the security concerns that feature foremost in SHIELD business. Especially this business. On the screen, a big SHIELD logo (actual shield with stars and stripes pattern, Eagle background, all the patrioitic hits) comes up with a login box underneath. Darcy tappa-tappas on the keyboard, then leans closer to the screen, while putting her hand on another spot on the case. Retina, fingerprint... maybe DNA scan?

Credentials accepted, the logo shrinks back toward one corner of the screen, revealing a large multi-window view scheme, displaying a variety of information. A few things are obvious, maps and GPS. Some show raw numeric output. Others statistical charting, possibly of that same data. At the top, it reads Project WATCHFUL.

"Miss, uh, Bat...woman? Lady? Girl?" There's a bunch of them, and it's not like Darcy is familiar with them up close. "Apart from the location in Hells Kitchen, do you have any intelligence on the arms trading operation you interrupted? We already pulled what the suspects in custody told police," they are SHIELD, after all, "but I just want to make sure I'm feeding the most accurate and up-to-date stuff into my model."

A few more taps, and she looks back over her shoulder to where Reed is examining the guns. "The Shi'ar use it in their ships. Engines, heavy anti-planetary weapons, and in some larger warheads. But miniaturization for hand-held weapons? Not in what we've seen. Fusion cells are more typical, although there's some variations in equipment between the core fleet troops, the regional auxiliaries, and the Imperial Guard." She can ramble too!

"Optical cloaks we've seen. But that's not hard. The tech's existed on Earth for a while, it's just miniaturization problems, power supply, et cetera. That's a theme, as tech goes. Power, at scale, is often the limiting factor."

The rambling chit-chat is derailed a bit by the lightsaber glove. "Well that's cool." Very professional. "...and not one I've seen in our databases. Shi'ar use quite a bit of hard light holography, but I've never heard of a throwable version." She turns back to start tapping again, presumably updating her database, model, whatever it is exactly.

"So yeah, I'd say it's not anything we have in the database already, which suggests a new route of supply. Activity has picked up a LOT recently, at the Starport, but they're very tight on Customs control. No death rays without a permit, y'know?"

After her stumbling uncertainty on how to refer to Barbara earlier, the reveal is dramatic. She looks around, and then whispers, "... I won't tell SHIELD!"

Susan Richards has posed:
There are arenas where Sue can speak in ways that befuddle the mind, but Reed's lab just isn't one of them. Suffice that she's suitably acclimated to his weirdness to a point that it's amusingly juxtoposition. With her hands neatly folded down against her abdomen, she too peers into the bag when it's open, but whatever her husband retrieves from inside may as well be a brick phone... or science fiction nonsense for the look as each item is then placed aside after begin carefully considered by the scientifically observant Richards.

His explanations help, to some degree.

Sue is not stupid and she's been around him quite long enough to follow the basics. Science by osmosis. Exposure enough that she can, at the very least, pick her way through the important parts. I.E.: Annihilation events. Which tracks, since these were taken from arms dealers peddling in alien arms. It'd be easy to assume they're weapons of mass destruction, but for the way Reed explains it. There are a trillion different ways things can be annihilated and for a trillion different reasons. Enlightenment for those paying attention to the blonde beside the genius.

Who almost snorts into laughter when she peers into the green illuminating his goggled eyes upon his peering into her face. "Of course." Artfully covering her struggle to keep from smiling with a hand laid upon her chin and a turn to retrieve the requested box from the shelf. Which she sets down beside him, though he needn't have sent anyone to grab it, she can appreciate him keeping her involved.

Returning just in time for Babs demonstration of the gauntlet device, the subtle shimmer around her own hand suggesting she's projecting a forcefield immediately around the outter edges of the glowing energy blade. She said it's safe, and it's not out of distrust that she's done this. It's out of caution. To her, this is all amazing, but also functionally unpredictable. Reed might understand how that all comes together, Babs may have played with it at home, but Susan isn't taking any chances that it suddenly decides today is the day it wakes up and choses mass destruction.

"Barbara Gordon... ah, yes. Gordon Green Energy. Your energy blimp caught stockholder attention, pressure from the board being what it is, we made sizable donations through one of our shell companies.." Likely to keep an eye on it. Anything coming out of Gotham has to have eyes kept on it. Her grin widens slightly, "It's good to know that it's not a psychopath behind the wheel. I'd love to organize a tour of your facilities, perhaps work on some kind of 'official' funding through the Four Foundation?" Linking her fingers together. "Sorry..." Hands uncurl, one comes down to pat Reed's arm.

"Later." Motioning with the other hand between her own and Babs cowl covered green eyes.

BUSINESS SHIT PLOT HOOKS

Hands on her hips, looking between SHIELD Agent, Gotham Vigilante, and Super Scientist. Casual, curious, professional smile. "I've always suggested that opening Earth to the greater galaxy was going to come with a noticable uptick in the technologies of those other worlds finding their way here... We've seen it a hundred, a thousand even, times historically. Bits of weaponry find their way into the hands of 'savages', I use the term loosely of course, who then screw around and find out. My concern, and I hope all of your concern, is less about 'what' these things are... and 'why' they're here. Specifically, we don't share any currency, that I know of, with the civilization that created that-" pointing to Babs energy blade, then some of the other items. "-So what do they gain by it being here."

Reed Richards has posed:
"The Shi'ar?" Reed asks Darcy, running his thumb and forefinger over his chin curiously, "I'd love to get a closer look at them. Did any come with the flotilla that arrived at the Spaceport? I suppose not. They don't seem the sort to have refugees. At least not refugees who would come to Earth."

As Batgirl starts demonstrating the use of the strange glove, Reed tilts his head to watch thoughtfully. When the lightning bolt is 'summoned', he immediately reaches for the device handed to him by Sue and holds it up. Unafraid of the powerful energies radiating from the bolt, he stretches close to pass the device through the air near it. The forcefield prevents anything dangerous from passing through, but he is still getting readings. A small glass panel on the outside glows faint blue, and the number on it begins to increase.

"Exactly what I thought," he says excitedly, holding the device up for the group to see, "It's a bit slap-dash, but it's a portable ring-imaging cherenkov detection. The speed measurement is a little finicky, but the particle identification is perfect. This is antimatter technology."

Even as Barbara reveals her secret identity, Reed does what Reed is well-known for and fails to understand the gravity of the news. Instead, he continues to science at her excitedly.

"I'll need to keep a sample, Barbara, if that's alright with you? I want to run some MEF mapping and cross-reference this with technologies in our database. It might be alien, but I have a different theory."

Sue's business talk seems to prompt his brow to furl thoughtfully. It's almost like showing a handgun to a chimpanzee. It may recognize, through context, that there is something special and unusual about it but it has no idea what.

"That's the thing," he says, grabbing onto something Sue says that he must feel he can actually contribute to, "I don't think these are alien at all. The design, the energy source? Far, far too convuluted - too difficult to manage - for a civilization in a baryonic universe. There are so many simpler alternatives that would achieve the same result on a miniaturized scale ... "

He claps his hands together, gleeful at the notion.

"The Negative Zone."

Barbara Gordon has posed:
Barbara attaches her helmeted mask to the side of her right hip, over the edge of her black utility belt that is cinched around her form. She uses her freed right hand to finger-out a small device from a pouch upon said belt, and as she steps around the table to walk toward Darcy, she shows a soft smile toward the agent. "Thank you." She says quietly at the indication Darcy plans to keep her name redacted from any SHIELD reports. She offers the small thumb drive to Darcy. "The arrested members from the arms deal were all members of the Gotham side of said deal. The ones who got away, however, were the Manhattan side. I've managed to track down a number of their names, and done a few background checks on them. They really... don't hold much for me to benefit from, as I doubt they have intentions to follow up on any of this..." She notes. "But, their boss, a Russian named chesenko, originated the deal through connections in Gotham. They brought the weapons in on semi trucks, all of which the NYPD has in their custody now."

Barbara offered the drive, and sent her eyes over to Sue. Sue gets a smile as well, along with a light nod. "The Blimp is a bit of a theatric advertisement, a fun project, but we know what it is is geared more toward theatrics than practicality. That said, I'd love to have you by any time you'd like. It'd be a nice boon to the company, to have Susan Richards take a tour."

Babs glances at the devices, at Reed, and then between the husband and wife duo. "From what I've gathered, it seems that the more Earth's intergalactic heroes make a name for themselves abroad, the more other worlds are taking notice, and tracking them back here. I don't think we're going to see anything but a continued escalation of this..." She motions toward the alien tech. "Type of hardware finding its way in to our hands. Worse yet, though, in to the hands of the kind of nefarious types that we claimed this haul from. In short, I think we have our work cut out for us."

She looks toward Reed specifically. "My hope is that you'll share your findings with me directly. I don't foresee my company entering in to anti-matter technology sales any time soon, but the goal of my copany is to better the world through innovation, and there are few better ways to provide that than revolutionary advancements in power storage, and distribution."

Darcy Lewis has posed:
"Normally, I'd be extremely interested in how it works," Darcy admits, albeit with the sense of a 'but' coming. "But in this case, it's not what SHIELD is most concerned with. This kind of black market activity, theft, arms trading - the source isn't ultimately all that important. Well, it is for fingerprinting, tracking, that sort of thing."

And here she glances over at Sue, who has hopped in with a variety of interesting metaphors related to the impact of technology on less-advanced people. "Those are really the questions we're looking to ask, to figure out. The who, why, how of all of this. Because that's where the rubber hits the road, one of these things ends up in the wrong hands, and people start getting killed." Once, Darcy was a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed young grad student working for Jane Foster, and all of this stuff was cool and fascinating. She wanted to study the grand mysteries of the universe. Now? Now she's very cognizant of the damage this stuff can do, _does_ do as it's put into the world and used by people with less scientific interests.

She turns to Barbara, grins at their little pledge of secrecy, and reaches for the USB drive, turns and inserts it into the side of the little hardened laptop. "I'm not really working at the traditional law enforcement level here," she explains, while loading up the data provided, figuring out what file formats everything is in and how to feed it into her system. "Or even, well, your 'extralegal' level. This software is designed to work big-picture. Heuristic analysis, fed into a custom-trained neural network. Probably not quite as fancy as your butler, but it's really only designed to do this one thing. Basically, I'm looking for the big picture in all this stuff."

"As for the why, circling back... money, you're right, obviously that doesn't mean much to aliens. Or to mad scientists, for that matter - if they just wanted to get rich, they'd just do what everyone does, and sell out to Google or Stark Industries. No, most of these people are looking for more nebulous benefits. Influence, intelligence." She gestures over at Barbara as she talks about Earth's rising stature and fame. "Outside powers do what all great powers do: they send spies. The psychological profile on Earth-based supercriminals is a little different, but still, there's similarities. Feeding weapons, goods to these organizations, it's usually a way of buying influence, manpower. Building out the organization."

Now maybe it's Reed who's the one left out as they pivot from tech to realpolitik, but she turns back as he makes his great revelation. "Admittedly, I'm not an expert, but that would explain relatively easy acces to antimatter power without some of the underlying prerequisites."

Susan Richards has posed:
There is a bolderdash compliment betwixt Reed and Sue. The pair have been together for as long as there have been Superheroes on Earth, an orchestra of the same controlled chaos as Reed's lab around them. Where one faulters, the other florishes, a perfect synergy circling in a sphere of constantly expanding positive energy that encapsulates the needs of both. She smiles preciously at her husbands hand waving the device before the glowing beam of the energy knife extending from Barbara's hand, but does little to stop him aside from her constructed forcefield.

Her own hands return to clasping together infront of her. Samples, she nods to this. Of course he'd need samples. Understandably. Must run them through MEF mapping and cross-references.

Her attention is temporarily diverted from the subject at hand when she again nods to Barbara, "Energy conversion on a mobile platform is no small matter. The implications at the micro level could change the business model for 'power companies'." She clearly doesn't have a great deal of affection for said companies monopoly over energy, as it stands today anyways. Though she smiles and speaks in very practical, professional, tone, her eyes speak a different story.

If it shakes up the wealthy elite by simplifying distribution to the masses? She's all for it.

Wealthy as the Foundation may be, Susan is anything if greedy.

Back to the subject at hand, she's pulled from her business speak by the mention of the Negative zone... A perk of one fine blonde brow and a glance towards her musing husband. The fact that all of these impressively dangerous weapons are classified as 'convuluted' aside.. "How delightful." Quiet. She does not think anything happening in the negative zone is, in fact, delightful.

When the subject changes to something more politically inclined, Sue dips her head in agreement with Darcy. Hands remain fixed at her waist, "In my experience, meager as it might be, with the Negative zone... if Reed is correct that this technology originates from there.. I'd argue that the annihilation event intimate to the function of the weaponry is the ultimate goal..." She unfolds her hands and motions, broadly, "The kind of individuals there hardly seek power or influence... At least not over a single planet, and certainly not for anything fundamental to what we would understand. They'll destroy the farm just so nobody eats corn." Metaphors are fun. "They're not building anything, except chaos, with the likeliest goal being mutually assured destruction. If not directly, than indirectly, by sowing enough chaos that we're sniffing around the tree instead of looking inside it."

Reed Richards has posed:
"Sue is right, most likely," Reed speculates, although the realm of political reasoning seems to be a bit beyond his level of interest, "There are beings there who are interested in little more than wholesale destruction. It seems a little unlike them to manufacture and distribute weapons, though, and if I'm correct these won't function the same way in a non-baryonic universe. So they're being made for use here."

Barbara's request for information puzzles him, as though the idea of not sharing his research had not occurred to him.

"Of course, I'll keep you aprised."

He takes a deep breath, putting away the strange devices he had used on the weaponry.

"There's still more tests I need to run. I want a full picture of how these work before I make any concrete declarations. But ... if you want to gather your friends, I think a transdimensional visit may be in order."

He turns his head, slowly, to look at the bizarre gate-like device that sits half-covered in a sheet on the other side of the lab.

Barbara Gordon has posed:
"There is even more to it, than intergalactic political spies, and intrigue too, I'm afraid. "Babs says back to Darcy. "From some of the stories I've gathered, there is a number of incidents where alien contact has taken place, simply where an alien species is looking to challenge a hero on Earth to a fight. Somewhat like that old Predator film, I suppose you could compare it too. These simple minded beings, interested only in combat against worthy foes, hear-tale of this backwater world called 'Earth' that holds the mightiest of powerful beings? Well, they seem to be hopping in to their FTL pickup trucks, and blazing a trail here to throw-down versus our heavy hitters. It seems we're seeing all types of interested parties, coming to poke at us little Earthlings..."

Babs sweeps her stare back toward Susan, while affording her a smile laced with admiration. "the dream is everyone in control of their own home's power source. I believe companies holding power over other's heads is a thing of the past, or should be. The solar panels on the GGE blimp are a testiment to our goal there-in. Should the family ever wish a simple little tour around in a method of air travel long since abandoned, well... we would be happy to provide it any time. We have a lovely sitting area, lounge, so forth, within the blimp's gondola. It may not be quite as fancy as you're used to here," she states with a simple look around the high tech lab. "But we do aim to make it a plesant ride, and a nice view of a beautiful city..." She lowers her voice a pitch or two. "It is beautiful, ignore the bad press."

With what Reed says, and with his look toward that covered machine afar, Babs takes it in, before her green eyes regard the man behind all the fancy tech. "I'll send out the word. I think they'll be reluctantly excited..." She is not a veteran of the Defenders, but she believes she's learned a lot in short order from what she has seen.

Darcy Lewis has posed:
"Oh, I'm sure there are individual reasons as diverse as the cosmos," Darcy echoes back at Barbara. "Explorers, conquerors, scientists, they'll all have different sorts of interests in the planet. Or just inexplicable ones - like we're not sure what the Greys want." Yeah those are real! "But think about it. When you hear the phrase 'supplying weapons to the locals,' what pops into your head? Not to be reductive, but this is all right out of the CIA handbook. And I know, because we had to study it in basic. The money side of that stuff is usually secondary, or even part of the cover-up. The goal is exactly what we've seen so many times on our own planet, and what we've had to nip in the bud before it gets too far here. Destabilization, terrorism, accelerationism - some of it quite nihilistic."

This provokes a brief aside: "Did you know I started out as a poli-sci major in undergrad?" Quite the switch.

"Also, we -know- it's what the Shi'ar were doing, because we caught them doing it, and we have a former Imperial Intelligence agent on the payroll." She notices something, one of the dataforms on her screen changing, and her brow scrunches up a bit "Hrm." Then on she goes. "The current group of refugees are a far more mixed body. Their situations wouldn't suggest pre-meditated intent, but they're also on the run, and desperate, and just think about it. If you've lost your home, what's your first priority?"

She doesn't say 'find a new one' out loud. It's a room full of smart people. They'll get it.

"Regardless, for me, for us? It's not a supply-side issue. A We can't really stop things from getting here. Planetary quarantine isn't plausible. But we can disrupt the buyers, the demand. That -is- a well-practiced law enforcement strategy." One last tap, then she looks back up to Sue. "I definitely can't speak to the motivations behind an actual anti-matter species, but doomsday cults are taught as terror scenarios. Still seems that the easiest way to sort things out is track backwards up the hierarchy."

Seemingly ready to go, she starts to close her case, but pauses, and turns what are suddenly rather big puppy dog eyes on Barbara. "If you're just handing those out, I wouldn't mind one to take back to the lab." And once that's sorted, she clasps the case shut.

Susan Richards has posed:
The intricacies of precarious alien ideologies aside, Susan dips her head to both Darcy and Babs when they both come to roughly the same conclusion as she has with regards to the presence of this technology. Which, without the flowers of her words, comes down to: It bad. Which seems suitable given the press of a tight smile when Reed mentions the transdimensional portal generator. Fun. Given it will likely require a forcefield generation to protect the travelers from any harmful effects said traveling may induce,

Darcy's assessment of supplying weapons, again, draws Sue's attention and a brisk nod. "Wars have been fought since time recorded over the spread of weapons to under-developed civilizations for the purpose of personal agenda. The concept is as human as it is... whatever species is doing it in this particular case." Motioning to the weapons laid out around the duffel bag brought by Barbara. "Suffice to say, it is worth delving deeper."

By transdimentional travel, as Reed suggests. "Which is why I will, of course, accompany."

Besides, Reed will need to remain behind for whatever reason we'll use so that SOMEONE ELSE can go. Don't look at the person behind the curtain too closely. Things are steering towards a conclusion, with Reed already starting to gloss over as the concept of running tests on the energy source is obvious, at least to Susan, she smiles to both Darcy and Babs.

Not quite ushering them away, but for how artfully she does so.

"While he's running tests I can give you both a more thorough tour of the facilities. I know that you came for something specific, but... may as well visit the gift shop on the way out, hmm?" A little humor. There's plenty to do at Four Freedom Plaza and even more to see. All of which might bare some interest to both of the visitors. Who better than Susan Richards to show them around, right?

She holds out her hands and motions for them to follow her, that Reed can return to analyzing all the data, and she might have a scant few hours with him at some later point in the night to salvage some of their scheduled 'date night'. Dutiful wife, exceptional host. "We can stop by the cafeteria for food, if either of you are hungry." As they make their way.