2242/Anomaly Investigation

Anomaly Investigation
Date of Scene:	27 June 2020
Location:	Secret Lab
Synopsis:	Franklin finds Felicity in one of his father's underground labs and...rescues her?
Cast of Characters:	Felicity Felix, Franklin Richards

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Felicity Felix has posed:
The research all lead here. The precognitive fracturing, the financial black-hole, the Jupiter satellite. Reed Richards was covering something up underneath a small, uninhabited island in the middle of the Hudson River. Right in the middle of New York.

The facility itself has no ferry service. The entrance is a little shack. And the elevator goes deep. This is a Class-4 lab. Says so right on the elevator panel. But when the doors ding and slide open...

No one is here. The guard post and guard station are both abandoned. The receptionist desk is unmanned. This is a facility large enough for an entire research team, and no one seems to be home. Overhead, the lighting flickers, dims, and goes out for a moment. Completely. The entire underground facility is dark for about three seconds before the lights uncertainly come back on. The air filters whirr back to life.

It is far, far too quiet.

Franklin Richards has posed:
    Franklin is used to being in the dark when it comes to his father's experiments. A great many of them only affect him via the occasional explosion, and the others, he literally cannot comprehend. Usually, he's pretty content to let his dad and sister mess around with unstable molecules or time-space continuum if they don't enter his room without knocking.

    The visions are horrifying, though, so much so that the dark-haired youth looked like he hadn't slept well in days. At first, there were dismissed as part of Brainiac's invasion and the attack on Mutant Town, but how does that explain the Hulk destroying New York City? And the flood that consumed Californa? And the asteroids impacts?

    Yeah, no. Whenever his power fluctuates, Reed Richards isn't usually too far behind, so he did his own digging and followed his father's trail.

    He's dressed in his white, trimmed black, FF uniform. "Helllloooo," he calls, hands cupped around his mouth.

Felicity Felix has posed:
There's an explosive snap, a spray of sparks from above, and the lab goes dark again. The fans of the air filters begin to wind down.

It is very quiet.

Then a deep, ragged gasp of air being forcibly sucked through a ventilator cuts though the thick darkness. "Doctor... Reed...?" The voice is distorted, garbled, and the heavy thump of a padded boot (or appendage) hits the flooring. Then another. "Reeeed...?"

Then the lights flicker back on as a small, back-up nuclear generator kicks in, and a thick white radiation suit is standing in the room with Franklin, reaching out toward him with large white fingers. The figure recoils its hand almost as soon as the lights flicker back on and reach for the helmet, looking all the world like its trying to remove the protective seals and cannot. The visor is mirrored and the ventilator rasps heavily. "You... aren't..." is all it says.

Through the mind's eye of pre-cognition, future reality seems to fracture like a pane of glass, leaving the real, current world unharmed. Probability is broken here.

Franklin Richards has posed:
    Some of the sparks bounce off an invisible platform directly above Franklin's head, instinct kicking in the second he hears what sounds like a threat...oh no, just the lights going out. "Damn..." Maybe this isn't his father's lab. After all, this place isn't really up to the standards the scientist usually meets.

    A horrible voice cuts through the dark and chases away his doubts. Reed. In the dark, he cannot see the figure but senses a mind approaching, and with every step comes a haunting image of possible futures, ranging from attacks from the unknown being to improbable lab explosions. In a normal individual, this could be dismissed as intense paranoia, but there are so vivid that the fear in Franklin's eyes is palpable.

    He flinches away from the hand. "What are you?"

Felicity Felix has posed:
"Can't..."

A clasp finally releases and green air hisses away from the neck. The suit deflates, and the helmet pops off. "Ugh, couldn't hardly breathe. That was awful." Shaking her brown hair out, she has visible red-and-white roots near the scalp, like she dyed her hair some weeks ago.

"Oh hey!"

Felicity Felix starts unclasping and tossing gloves, followed by unzipping the suit down her front, revealing a short white tanktop. "You aren't Doctor Reed! Richards. Doctor Reed Richards." The suit is shrugged off her shoulders and she tries working the bulky apparatus down her sides, "Um, sorry, anti-chroniton suit... Give me a second here."

The woman squirms, twists, and turns, ending up facing away as she continues to talk, "It has been, like, weeks since I've actually had a visitor here." Hooking her thumbs in at the waist, she starts to force the suit over her rounded hips, bending down to push it down her legs to her shins. "Felicity Felix, by the way! Welcome to Lab Six!"

She's wearing blue short-shorts, partially tugged down on one side, but mostly staying in place. Also, though it may take a few moments to notice, the fractures in the future have suddenly stopped. The generator dies away as main power comes back online, taking over.

Franklin Richards has posed:
    Franklin may have been expecting something horrible like a withering alien or an oozing living experiment. "Huh..." He blinks owlishly and finally lets out a breath, deep and relived. Really, he ought to think better of his father, but there's always lingering doubts. He mentally kicks himself, as his mind strangely clears.

    "No, I'm not Reed Richards," The resemblance is sort of there though? Frankie takes after his mother to be honest. "I'm his son. You said you've been here for weeks? My dad hid you in this bunker for weeks?" He crosses his arms, suspicious, and gives the young woman a one-over. An affair's unlikely but..."You know my mother's the Invisible Woman, right?"

    "What's Lab Six? And what are you doing in it?"

Felicity Felix has posed:
Felicity blinks, "Hid? I work here." She looks a little confused as she steps out of the chrono-suit. "I'm trying to isolate tachyons for an FTL drive." She waves her hand like trying to clear smoke. "Started getting a lot of chronitons built up, though." She beams at him, eyes briefly closed, "Want some tea? There's lots of tea here. My shift is almost over, too."

Looking around, Felicity seems to remember that she's got a visitor and starts hunting for her lab coat. "So you're a researcher like your dad? That's pretty cool!" She pulls on her labcoat, hands in pockets.

Franklin Richards has posed:
    "Not really," Franklin answers, sighing and raking a quick hand through his hair. His nerves are still a little shot, but he seems to be coming down from his fright. The tea might help. "Sure, thanks."

    "I actually have no clue what you're talking about," Not exactly true, but he's conditioned to be more humble about his own intellect since he's a dummy compared to his family. "What's the FTL driver for?"

Felicity Felix has posed:
"Faster Than Light--space travel." She wanders off with a lazy saunter of her lab coat's flared tail. "The tachyons are actually for the communications system, not the drive itself." She heads into the living area and uses a plasma forge to flash-boil some water.

Glancing back, Felicity adds quietly, "I don't *really* understand the details, but I know enough to capture tachyons." She sighs, getting tea bags. "If the power would stop going out for *five minutes*!" She eyes the ceiling suspiciously. Two boxes of light bulbs are sitting on the couch. They are mostly empty.

Franklin Richards has posed:
    "What...a moment ago, I--I felt some...I dunno, bad vibes coming from here," Franklin roots through the boxes of lightbulbs while Felicity handles the tea. "I don't really know how to explain it." Or if he should even explain it.

    "How long have you worked for my dad," asks Frankie, testing a lightbulb with a spark of self-generated energy. He glances at the woman with brows raised,

Felicity Felix has posed:
The lightbulb pops and cracks. Nothing a little reflexive shield won't stop. But the glittering shards dance away through the light, embedding in the couch, hitting the floor, and...

Bouncing.

The shards go into wall sockets, causing sparks, splash into the two tea cups Felicity is bringing over, cause her to flinch and throw the tea, which shorts out a blender, the plasma forge, and crashes across the energy shield.

Felicity just stands there, blinking in shock and dismay, turning at the waist slightly to look around at the destruction. "What...what just happened?! Oh no!" Bustling, she starts to examine the forge.

It's probably not supposed to even be in here.

Franklin Richards has posed:
    Franklin curses, a shard cutting into his finger as it's blasted by...way more energy than he thought he put into it, and he recoils away from the energized shards. "Dammit!" He reaches out with his hand to contain some of them in a telekinetic grip. "That--I didn't try that! I swear, I--" Though he isn't exactly new to power mishaps.

    He follows Felicity's attention to the forge. "Are we going to be okay?"

Felicity Felix has posed:
Felicity Felix's lab coat swish-swishes at the hips as she examines the plasma forge, quickly popping off a side panel. "Um... That really depends on how much your dad liked this plasma forge." She shakes her head a bit, grabbing some paper towels from above the sink. "...Not that he seems to mind, given how much his stuff breaks down." She glances back over her shoulder, "I honestly kinda expected better quality from Mr. Fantastic. It's always scary when the power goes out during a tachyon capture."

Franklin Richards has posed:
    "Yeah, me too. He's usually more careful than this," Franklin gestures vaguely to the underground lab at large. "You sure this is my dad's project?" His eyes sorta narrow again. It wouldn't be the first time his folks had their bodies and minds controlled.

    "My name's Franklin, by the way," he adds after some consideration. She may be a villain, but then again, she would probably already knew his name. "I didn't mean to break anything," He sucks on the broken skin at his finger a bit and waves the hand in the air. "Sometimes, I'm not great at control.

Felicity Felix has posed:
"Yup. Richards offered me this lab and said I could hire a science team, but..." She suddenly looks off to the side, holding one arm with the other self-consciously. "I'm just an engineer. I'm not really a brilliant scientist." She looks around the facility warily, and the ground shakes a bit. Just a minor earthquake, barely registering.

But in precognitive space...

Felicity shakes her head with a light rock of her chest. "I can't just...generate a science project to run. I don't know why your father gave me this lab, and he won't elaborate when he visits. I'm free to leave whenever, but my schedule makes it difficult."

Franklin Richards has posed:
    Franklin is on a knee when the ground shakes, picking up the broken pieces of glass with little telekinetic spheres and discarding them in the trash. He has to brace himself against a wall to keep steady, and he frowns, the visions flooding in after the brief moment of respite.

    "We shouldn't be here," He stands suddenly, letting the remaining shards drop to the floor. "You said you're free to leave whenever? How about now. This place doesn't seem safe at all." He isn't quite looking at Fel, more around her at the various ways in which the foundations of this structure could impossibly collapse on them or worse.

Felicity Felix has posed:
Felicity Felix blinks at Franklin, "Are...you sure? These tremors happen pretty often." She looks around, frowns, and shrugs. "Well, like I said, my shift basically just ended. So sure." She beams with a tilt of her head and a close of her eyes. Wandering over to the pressure hatch, she stops and glances back, "Are we coming back? I--" She thinks, shrugs, and shakes her head. "Well, I guess I don't need to change. Maybe I'll actually go check on my apartment for a change."

Franklin Richards has posed:
    "What I'm saying is I don't think there should be regular tremors here," says Franklin. He'll have to look through the data on seismic activity in the area, but it feels off. They aren't near a tectonic plate, after all. "Your apartment is probably safer than here. I can do this thing..." He starts to explain, pinches his nose a bit.

    "Well, it's basically like seeing the future. Anyway, I'm getting a lot of reads from this location, and they range from mildly inconvenient to disastrous. I'll talk to my dad about the lab, but in the meantime, I don't think it's safe to be around."

Felicity Felix has posed:
Felicity Felix ohs, her eyes widening a bit. "Mutant, maybe?" She flashes a nervous, innocent grin, holding her hands up, "Not judging or anything! But if you say we should go, lets go!" Ducking out of the lounge, she reappears in some jeans, a Booster Gold t-shirt, and has a purse with her. She also has a keycard on a lanyard around her neck. Heading to the security checkpoint, a nearby screen logs the time she walks by, reading the RFID chip in her keycard.

Reaching for the chemical decontamination room's door handle, however, it snaps off in her hand and Felicity blinks at it. The door is several inches of reinforced steel and alloys.

Franklin Richards has posed:
    "Cosmic radiation actually," Frank responds dryly, sparing a glance for Fel before moving towards the exit and waiting for her. It isn't //technically// a lie. Only that said cosmic radiation altered his genetic structure as a fetus and effectively gave him an X-gene. But that's neither here nor there, and Frank's not sure how comfortable he is revealing that sort of thing to someone who for all intents and purposes is still very much a stranger.

    Fel returns, the door handle snaps, and Franklin inhales sharply. "Please tell me there's another exit," he says, pleading note in his voice.

Felicity Felix has posed:
Felicity Felix offers very slowly, "Nnnnoooooo...?" She winces a bit, looks down at the handle guiltily, and tries in vain to reattach it. "...Sorry."

Franklin Richards has posed:
    Franklin looks a little frustrated at first but can't help the short burst of laughter that escapes his lips. Everything's going wrong, but maybe there's some amusement to be found in it. "I'm telling you, this place is full of bad juju. It's fine," he offers her a tired smile. "Just step back."

    Once/if she does, he holds out a hand, which pulses with blinding energies, green, white, and black, and points it towards the door. Steel meets cosmic blast. Guess who wins.

    As reinforced steel melts away and is then blasted open by another bolt, Franklin bows slightly and makes room for Felicity to leave the bunker. "After you, milady."