3771/(Intermezzo) Cat on a Hot Titanium Spaceship.

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(Intermezzo) Cat on a Hot Titanium Spaceship.
Date of Scene: 11 October 2020
Location: Caminask orbit, SPAAAACE.
Synopsis: Vorpal attempts to disappear, but it's Donna who ends up grinning.
Cast of Characters: Donna Troy, Terry O'Neil




Donna Troy has posed:
    The room had probably been a conference room of some kind; perhaps intended for pre-battle planning. It used to have a large table dominating the middle of the floor, but that has been taken out to give the stranded Titans one room among the inhabited parts of the wrecked Dreadnought with a good bit of space in it. The chairs have been moved to the edges of the room and there's floorspace enough for training to be done, though at the moment it's being used for quieter pursuits.

     One wall of the room is dominated by a large window of some impressively strong and thick transparent material. It doesn't feel like glass to the touch, retaining warmth pretty well and having a slightly more forgiving smoothness, like polished wood. Through the window the shuttlecraft can be seen a few hundred feet from the Dreadnought, being put through its paces by Victor and Caitlin as they test it to see how well it has stood up to the stresses of towing the hulk for the last day. Beyond the shuttlecraft the blue-green orb of Caminask fills half the sky, clouds scurrying across the disc. It looks like a peaceful world, but planets generally do seem to look peaceful from orbit.

    Several hours ago a communication had been received from the planet, a synthesized voice asking the visitors if they had Caminask IDs, and when the negative response had been given the voice had given them co-ordinates for a landing pad and strict instructions not to leave their ship after landing until they had been issued IDs. That would be the next step on the Titans mission to find a way home, but not until after the shuttlecraft had passed the Titan's tech crew's tests. Planetary landings place a lot of stresses on a spaceship and a Rabbit Hole down to the surface would be the safe method, but that apparently was not compatible with Caminask's entry policies for non-citizens.

    Donna is impatient, but she's doing a good job of hiding it. For now she seems content to sit at the window, watching the shuttle going through its paces, and wait.

    "How are you holding up, Terry?" she asks the other occupant of the room, not shifting her gaze from the Dreadnought. "I mean... this is new for all of us, but the rest of us are pretty used to new experiences. You get them a lot as a Titan."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
"Feeling kind of stupid, in a way," the human redhead replies, pacing slowly with his hands in his pockets, "I thought going into outer space would be an incredible adventure, but it seems rather fitting that my maiden voyage is two parts fighting for your life, one part getting marooned in outer /outer/ space..." he smirks a little, and shrugs. "I dunno. I'm anxious, I guess. I want to go back before... I mean, I've been thinking about the thing- about how people who existed after us somehow arrived here before us, and I'm just asking myself not whether we'll manage to go back home... but /when/ we'd be coming back, you know?"

He frowns, "I keep seeing myself coming back and getting Rip Van Winkled the fuck out of my life."

Donna Troy has posed:
    "I've been thinking about that too," Donna admits. "I was wondering if - well, if people who entered after us arrived before us, wouldn't that mean that when we leave, we'd return to our universe before we left? But that raises a paradox. Suppose someone enters, leaves, and then stops themselves from having entered? Time travel is not something you really want to mess with."

    She grins at the window and shakes her head slightly. "On the other hand, Endovar is supposed to have left, and then come back after he left. Say he stayed in our universe a year, before returning. Then he would have returned here a year before he left. That doesn't appear to be the case. So I think we're okay. The white hole is a mirror of the wormhole we fell into... whatever folding of space-time happens on the way in, it's unfolded on the way out. That's actually part of what bothers me about the thought of Rae getting us out. If we don't follow the reverse path out, we might return to our universe with our own passage through time reversed to the normal one. Everything would appear to be moving backwards. I don't even want to try to figure out the consequences of that."

    Donna turns and grins at Terry. "Reality can be messy enough at the best of times. We should probably make an effort not to make it any messier, hmm? I think even a Cheshire Cat would find backwards time a bit too confusing to deal with."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
Terry peers at Donna and smirks, finally deciding to stop pacing in order to sit down on the ground near her, legs crossed under him. "That's what happens in Looking Glass Land, you know. Over there, you have to serve the cake before it's parted. Omelets are made before the egg even gets laid. Even by Wonderland standards, people who live in Looking Glass Land are considered to be Unsane."
He glances over at the shuttle, there beyond the window, and he exhales, "We gotta do something /real/ nice for Vic and Cait when we get back. I'm honestly glad we got /two/ people with us who know how tech works, because... imagine if it had just been us? We'd be adrift forever."

He chuckles, and then grows quiet for a second. "You mentioned Raven a few days ago... about how we didn't really know what she was..." he raises an eyebrow, "Just... how is it that she could basically up-end time and space just to get you out of here? She's... scary when she focuses, but I had no idea she could..."

Donna Troy has posed:
    "We'd have figured something out. There are people here like Lucan who could have helped us. And a lot of this - it's logic. I mean fixing things, rather than inventing them. You look at what's there and you're patient and follow things carefully, you can often figure them out. Whatever Cait likes to claim about me, I'm a fast learner. " She grins an amused grin, thinking about something Caitlin had said earlier. "I needed her help getting my computer virus-free /one time/. I hadn't used computers before, it was new to me. She doesn't seem to have noticed I'm pretty tech-savvy now. You know, I can fly the T-Jet too."

    Donna turns from the window to study Terry a while, looking thoughtful. "Us, not me. If you haven't figured out how important the Titans are to Rae, you haven't been paying attention. She cares about all the Titans. Individually and as - as a concept. It's hard to explain and if you asked Cait or Vic, they don't really understand her either. You got a glimpse of it though, when we entered her mind. Her father is bad news, but it kind of goes beyond him. What he wants her to be, what he made her to be, is a key. To let him in. She tries very hard not to be a key, and being a Titan, being one of us, part of the family - that's the alternative, the thing that she has instead of being a key."

    She shrugs and looks back to the window. "So she loses us, and she loses a lot of what she has that helps her from embracing her nature. Or she can get us back, by embracing her nature. It's a lose-lose situation for her. Because embracing her nature isn't a good thing. Not just because of Trigon, but because what Trigon wants her to do, to weaken the barriers between worlds - is inherently a really bad idea. Nobody even knows what /else/ there is that might take advantage of that."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
After a few moments of silence, the redhead lets out a sound. "Huh. You know, this is completely not at all even remotely in the same league, but I've come to notice that if I embrace too much of my ... other side, some things start happening. I get funny ideas. And at times, I feel reality isn't as... strict? Strict as it should be. I haven't really waited to see what happens if I stay being the cat longer than that, but I am guessing it's not a good idea. So in an infinitesimal way, by means of comparison, I sort of kind of understand."

Resting his chin on hands, he smirks. "What kind of websites were you looking at when you got that virus, by the way?"

Donna Troy has posed:
    "Hardcore porn." Donna keeps watching the shuttlecraft going through its paces outside, and is able to keep a straight face for several seconds before snorting with laughter. "Gods, imagine if it had been. Cait would probably have gone catatonic. Actually it wasn't a website, it was a pirated copy of Photoshop that someone at school gave me."

    "I wonder if that sense that reality isn't as strict is something inherent to the Cheshire side of you, or if it's just that from...his? From that perspective, the reality that you are in just doesn't feel all that real. When I first came to America, it took a while for it to really feal like it was an /actual place/, if you know what I mean. It just felt unreal. Something out of myth, believe it or not. It seemed like the normal rules didn't apply, and everything was possible. I imagine there must be an element of that for you just because... well, it is all new to you. This time last year, you must have been thinking about a future writing for newspapers like it was the most exciting thing that could possibly happen to you. Now you regularly turn into a cat, and can do - do you even /known/ what you can do? I mean there's rabbit holes, yeah. But how about vanishing? That's what the Cheshire Cat was noted for in the book. Have you figured out how to go invisible yet?"

Terry O'Neil has posed:
Terry's eyes go wide until Donna cracks, and then he exhales, "I was going to say- I wouldn't think you'd ask Cait to check your comp if it had -that- sort of stuff in it..." And then a particular look comes across Terry's face. He wonders, briefly, for a moment, if Donna has ever come across... those websites. They exist. They've existed ever since mention of Themyscira hit man's world. There were costumes. For a moment, he is tempted to ask for the sake of teasing, but decides not to. He doesn't want to see if surviving a vacuum is one of his powers.

"I... well, I can do the thing with the, the glowing hand? I can bring objects to life as long as I can touch them. I've discovered that if I give them instructions, they'll obey, too. But as far as disappearing... how on earth do you do that?" he shrugs and shakes his head, "I mean, I could give it a try right now if you'd be willing to bounce things off me to try and see if I can do it."

Should Donna reply in the positive, the transformation would take place in an instant and the Cheshire Cat would be ready to experiment.

Donna Troy has posed:
    "You want me to bounce things off you?" Donna says, looking amused. "I could always just /tell/ you if you've gone invisible rather than throwing things at you. " She gives him a 'go head' gesture all the same.

    "You seem to be magical," she says, "but you're not casting spells. Magical creatures do magic instinctively, so my advice would be to not try too hard. Don't sit there concentrating, instead just kind of... picture it in your head. Imagine the change you are trying to bring about, but do it kind of casually. Think of it like flexing a muscle rather than performing some complicated task - if it's something that's inherent to you, the muscle may be weak from lack of excercise, but it's something wired to your brain."

    "Don't think about how to do what you're trying to do, instead just kind of reach out and do it. Confidence is important, just as it is with any kind of inherent activity. How much thought do you put into balance? None at all. If you tried, you'd fall over. Yet you are able to retain balance when you're having to make a lot of complicated calculations about mass and angle and so on. Don't let yourself doubt, or let yourself think it through. Just do it."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
The Cheshire cat stands, careful to keep the weight off his injured ankle, and exhales slowly after Donna's litany on what to do, and what not to do. "Geez, now you're gonna make me all self conscious here. Telling me not to overthink something is like telling me not to think of pink elephants or Gar in a speedo."

He crosses his arms and starts pacing, in his limping gait, "Alright... let's see... how to disappear completely."

He stops for a second and then puts his hands up to his face, hiding his view of Donna on the perfectly Wonderlandy logic that if he can't see her, she can't see him either. He waits for a few seconds. "... anything?"

Donna Troy has posed:
    "Well, you've figured out how not to be able to see me, but that's not exactly the point of the exercise," Donna says with amusement. "Try again. Hmm. Maybe we need to figure out how a Cheshire Cat would view this. Okay, let's try... close your eyes, then take your hands from your face. "

    She waits a few moments for him to follow those instructions, then continues. "Right. So, Vorpal. We are both here, and you can hear my voice. But you can't see me. I can see you though. We need to flip that around. Now if you just open your eyes, then you would be able to see me too, right? But that's no good. That's only half of what we want to achieve. So what I want you to do is open your eyes... not yet, wait for it... open your eyes so you can see me, and when you open your eyes I'll be able to see your eyes. Right? Following me? But at the same time that you're opening your eyes, you want to be closing the rest of you. Like... hiding. If you hid yourself, I couldn't see you, right? So the trick is to hide yourself, but instead of hiding yourself behind something, hide yourself behind nothing. Go on, give it a try."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
"That... doesn't make any sense." The Cheshire cat pauses, "... then why does it actually make sense?"

Donna's voice is easy to follow, once he allows himself to not hold on so much to his rational side. It wasn't that he flipped a switch and suddenly he was fully human or fully Cheshire- rather, it was more about predominance than anything else. He was very conscious of the fact that, at will, he /could/ push one part of him away, stifle it so to speak. He could stifle the Cheshire part of him that wanted to make nonsense out of everything... unless it got too strong. Then, there was pushback, and he started losing ground every hour he spent without changing back to his human shape.

It seemed that, right now, though, he needed that heavy dose of nonsense. Magic, ultimately, was born from nonsense- or so a mystic once said.

Donna's words at first appear to be a labyinth, but as his perspective switches they align themselves to look more like a corridor, pointing the way.

"Aaaah..." he says, starting to grin as his hands leave his eyes. They don't open, not yet, but already his toes are beginning to vanish. By the time the Cheshire opens his eyes, half of him is visible, his lower half completely gone, but from the waist up, he's still there.

He glances down. "Well..."

Donna Troy has posed:
    "Well? What are you 'well'ing for, Vorpal?" The amusement in her voice is still obvious - the partial disappearance might be a victory, but she's not celebrating. "Leaving the job half done? That's nothing to 'well' about. Now if you'd left your grin visible, I'd understand that. I mean you'd want people to know you'd turned invisible and what better way to let them know that they are now facing the presence of an /invisible cat/ than to grin at them? But the whole of your upper body - no. No point in it! You might as well sit behind a desk for all the good that does anyone!"

    Donna rolls a hand in an impatient 'get on with it' gesture. "Come on now, Vorpal! How can I see you disappearing if I can still see you? That makes so little sense it isn't even nonsense. Imagine trying to play a trick on Caitlin looking like that. It's just not going to work. She's so tall she'd barely even notice if your legs are hidden. Keep going!"

Terry O'Neil has posed:
"Is this how Hippolyta trained you? I bet it is and now you're taking it out on me!" Still, he concedes that it isn't much of a trick, "You're right. She's so tall she wouldn't see my legs, and all I usually see are her legs anyways so we're like, half and half."

He tries to focus again and get back into the flow of where he was. However, there comes a moment where a giggle escapes him when his mind goes back to Donna's quip about Cait, and he opens his eyes again. "Am I gone?"

And then he looks down.

"Oh."

His lower body is no longer invisible. In fact, it seems to have gotten replaced with Caitlin's legs, although much smaller, to fit his frame.

He raises a hand and points at Donna, looking stern, "You do NOT breathe a word of this to Gar."

Donna Troy has posed:
    Donna's still smirking, so she doesn't have to smirk any more and Vorpal's new legs. "Hippolyta mostly trained me by handing me over to Philippus. You are very lucky that you are not being trained by her, she wouldn't go so easy on you. She is relentless, and she demands perfection. Once she told me I was almost adequate. This is not adequate, Vorpal! I can see you quite clearly, though to be honest I wish I couldn't."

    She looks at him for a few more moments, then nods her head and stand. "Right. I shall not breath a word of it to Gar. However I will show him a photograph. Hold right there, I'm going to go get my phone so I can take a photo. No going invisible now, I need to capture this for posterity."

    Donna stands and starts walking to the door, presumbaly to go and fetch her phone. She seems quite serious about this!

Terry O'Neil has posed:
"What- wait, Donna, you can't-" he starts to take a step in her direction, but then thinks better of it. He can't hold an Amazon back. Instead, he decides to put his mind to the matter and find a way to solve this mess before Vic and Caitlin come back and see him like /this/.

"kay... okay. The trick is not to think about it too hard..." he says to himself, and starts thinking hard about it. It wasn't his fault, he says to himself, that he can't properly focus like he normally would- they were out in the middle of nowhere and nowhen, with no immediate way to get back, far from everyone they loved. He missed Gar, he missed seeing his green eyes lighting up and that goofy grin. He missed-

Focus, goddamnit! Legs go away!

He missed Kori and her exuberant mane of hair, orange skin and irrepressible love for food. And he missed Karolina, of course, and Kate, and-

THIS IS NOT HOW YOU DO IT!

He wonders how Donatello is doing. That dream he had with him in it has worried him for a bit, now. But he wasn't focusing right now! And soon Donna would come in and-

He wondered if Harley was still dating Power Gir-NOT HELPING...

======================================================

What greets Donna's return is... certainly something. Caitlin's legs are still there. To them, though, has been added Koriand'rs monumental hair, one of Harley's signature halter tops, and what is clearly a variant of Power Girl's decolletage. Giving Donna a rather venomous glare, he says "Don't. Say. A. Word." One of Gar's snaggle teeth peeking out from his mouth.

Donna Troy has posed:
    *click*

    Donna stares at the screen of her phone and nods to herself. She's not laughing. She's not even smirking any more. That possibly makes it worse.

    She steps over to the... thing that Vorpal has become and pokes at his voluminous Tamaranean hair, then gives another nod, and goes back to her chair to sit and look out the window at the shuttlecraft, where Caitlin and Victor are running though a few extra maneuvers.

    "Illusion," Donna says after a few moments. "As you get better at it, you'll probably be able to make it harder to detect that it's an illusion. You'll need to think more about all the aspects of the thing you are creating an illusion of. You're thinking visually and forgetting about other things. How something feels, for example. Also you're letting your mind wander, and that's not in itself a problem. Remember what I said about how you don't think about something inherent? Like moving a muscle? You were doing fine until you stopped trusting your ability to just do it, and started thinking about it. Then you learned just how difficult it is to think about how to move a muscle. All the other thoughts in your head interfered."

    She turns back from the window. "Like I told you, it's all about confidence. Having confidence in your ability to do something means you don't second-guess how you are doing it. Confidence is everything. In battle I am confident that I know what I'm doing, and that makes me much better at doing it. I am equally confident that Victor and Caitlin are excellent engineers, and from the looks of it they have finished their tests. So the question is - are you confident that you can get yourself out of that mess before they return and make their way back up to see us? Because it looks like they're returning now."

    She turns back to the window, and the smirk returns where Vorpal can't see it. "So, Mister Cheshire Cat. Are you prepared to stop thinking about it and just switch that illusion off, now that you know you're capable of doing this? Flexing a muscle just needs a little confidence, but /not/ flexing a muscle? That's easy. Anyone can do that. But I am very confident that if you don't stop messing around, Vic and Cait are going to laugh their heads off when they see you in a few minutes."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
Vorpal grows serious and clenches his fists, "Right. Right, then."

It had to be a Zen thing, right? Do without thinking, don't think about doing, don't think about thinking. You had to Wu-Wei or else you would lose your way.

Deep breath, and trust. Simply trust.

It came to him as if it were simple second nature, like wiping a fogged-up window to see through it. Vorpal vanishes completely before Donna's eyes and then, a second later, slowly reappears, all of his original parts seemingly in place.

"Well. Then." He allows himself a cocky grin as he puts his hands on his hips, "Guess you were right after all. I'm going to have to practice some more, but... I think it'll be easier."

"I'll go greet Vic and Cait. Remember, you promised not to say a word," he admonishes Donna... but then he smiles. "And.. thanks."

Then he turns around to limp out the door and get Vic and Cait.

Everything looks normal. Except for the fact that, from behind, it looks like he is wearing one of Harley's patent multicolored Daisy Dukes- they are the last thing Donna sees as the door closes behind him.

Donna Troy has posed:
    Donna waits until the door is closed behind Vorpal and his hotpants, and gives him a few more moments to get out of earshot before giving a soft laugh.

    "Not a word?" she says to herself, shaking her head. "Oh Vorpal. I'm not sure I can do that to you."

    "But I'll try!"