7336/In Erebos: Outside Looking In

In Erebos: Outside Looking In
Date of Scene:	12 August 2021
Location:	Diana's Office: Themysciran Embassy
Synopsis:	Kate and Cassie take not-Pandora's box to Diana for safekeeping, and to discuss the Titans who've managed YET AGAIN to get trapped in some crazy dimension. It is decided that a trip to Themyscira is in order. More importantly, Ferdinand is catering the journey.
Cast of Characters:	Colette O'Connail, Kate Bishop, Diana Prince, Cassie Sandsmark

---

Colette O'Connail has posed:
    It had all seemed like a relatively simple job. A bust on an underground auction, a few supposedly magical artifacts that probably weren't, and a star attraction that Donna had ensured the Titans was definitely not what it claimed to be. A fortunate thing; had someone really been selling Pandora's box to the highest bidder, the world might be in trouble.

    Of course Pandora never had a box, it was more of an amphora. The box in question, a 4th century BC pyxis of Athenian design, was clearly something else. Unfortunatrely it had turned out to be something else that really shouldn't fall into the wrong hands. The Titans had prevented that, but they had not prevented the box from being opened - with the result that the Titans had discovered it contained a portal to Tartarus.

    Several of the Titans had been caught in that initial opening of the box, and promptly vanished, before the lid could be put back on. Raven had been able to easily identify that the missing Titans had been sent to Tartarus, and had explained the problem this posed: Tartarus was the prison of the Gods. Attempting to teleport people out of Tartarus was likely to rouse the attention of the prison guards, and those are beings you don't want to rouse. Raven's response had been to teleport herself, Nightwing, Nadia and Robin to Tartarus to help the others escape.

    Which leaves the box. The box needs to be put into safe hands. The obvious place to go for that is Diana, and this comes with the added advantage that she probably knows quite a lot about Tartarus.

Kate Bishop has posed:
Honestly Kate wasn't even remotely sure that Raven needed to send reinforcements. I mean some serious Titan firepower was down in Tartarus already and Donna knew how to get them out right.

Well that was Kate's understanding at least.

Still she wasn't about to argue about the plan with Raven and especially not with Nightwing and Robin on team lets go to hell in a handbasket.

Which yes right now with them all gone is totally the name of this incident in the Titan Tower servers thanks to Kate.

Anyways, she would have definitely filled Cassie in and called ahead to Diana to say they had something that needed to be dealt with and would be coming over to serious talk. She figures she and Cass can probably escort one box from the Tower to the Themyscira embassy.

Diana Prince has posed:
Diana had been just returning from the Hall of Justice out of Metropolis when she'd been told she was going to be brought some visitors to her office. In fact she's standing in front of the niche in the bookshelf where she keeps her armor and is using a few caretaking tools to tend to it. The shining gladiator armor that has become iconic for her persona rests on a stand specifically for it, bathed in some soft white lights shining down upon it.

Kate is brought to the office by one of the Embassy employees and shown to where Diana is. The Princess will turn to face her, lowering the tool she had in her hand down to the case on her desk beside the stand to put it away, she's currently dressed casually in fine attire. "Kate." Diana says with a smile. "It is good to see you. Please, come in and... well..." She can see it clealry. "What has gone on now?" Is she getting cynical? Maybe!

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
Cassie's schedule involves a lot of back and forth between the Tower and the Embassy anyway, so it's kind of a no-brainer that she tag along. It does seem like the thing you might want backup for, what with it already having eaten a good portion of her teamates.

It's also finally her turn to supply the wheels. So she's waiting for Kate down in the garage, leaning against the hood of her little red sports car, doing her very very best to look like she's hot shit. When she had the Toyota, she would not have put on such a display and would probably have been embarassed in the face of Kate's mob-princess tastes! But now? Now she's playin' it way cool. Well, until they have to figure out the logistics.

"I uh, we really ought to have like, a special packing crate or something, like they usually do for this kind of stuff." As a kid, she spent a lot of hours in the parts of museums that most kids don't get to see, and watching them unpack things for her mom was a common occurence. "But... uh, I guess you can just like sit with it in your lap and hold it carefully? I won't drive too fast." Promises!

She only drives medium-fast, but to her credit there's not much traffic. Zoom!

Soon enough, they're parked outside the Embassy, and thereafter making their way in, Cassie offering friendly greetings to a variety of familiar AMazons. In fact, she gets held up briefly sharing something from her phone with one of them, and ends up jogging to catch up as Kate reaches Di's office.

"Kate and /me/!" she adds, grinning. "Isn't this thing crazy?"

Kate Bishop has posed:
"Looking good Cass." Kate will note about the car and Cassie leaning against it.

I mean. It is a sports car. With Wondergirl. It is pretty much hot shit.

She will get into the passanger seat with the box. "I thought about putting it into a pelican case but I couldn't find any in the Tower... so I guess lap and not dropping it. I did secure the top really tightly."

It is intricately ziptied closed.

"Don't need to suck I-95 into Hell... it is already hellish..."

Kate holds up the ziptied box for Diana to see. "Well.. villanious magic art auction actually.. they had an item marked Pandora's box which is obviously or so I was told impossible because it wasn't a box.. Pandora's thing. Anyhow.... during the fight with all the bad wizards bad things happened and it was opened.... shot out a beam of light."

Deep breath. "Long story short... Donna... Cyborg... Vorpal.. Caitlin all got sucked to hell.. well Tarturus... Raven took Nightwing.. Nadia.. Robin.. and went after them...." thoughtful noise "Which left Cassie and I.. and a bunch of the newbs, so we brought it here so it can be locked up safe at Themyscira...?"

Diana Prince has posed:
Cassie's arrival with Kate has Diana showing a smile to her young sister. "Nice to see you, too, Cassie." The Princess says with a slight grin before she looks back to Kate. She stands up from the chair beside the armor stand and walks toward them both, though her eyes go to the item in question. She quickly takes it in with a visual once-over before she reaches for it with her fingertips. "How do they always manage to find these kind of little dangerous trinkets...." Diana quietly says as she turns the item around to get a better look.

""Truthfully, I feel a sense of kinship with Pandora, as I believe I was brought in to existence in similar ways, for potentially similar reasons, though things diverged down much different paths as our lives unfolded..."

Diana takes the item to her desk. "And there has been no word on their condition or status?" Diana asks as she sits dow nin her office chair and lifts up the lid of her laptop. A glance is given to Cassie. "How do youa void all these ... shenanigans that they all fall face in to, Cass?" She asks her sister with a faint smile as her eyes go to the laptop and she starts to type something now. "And to confirm, no, this is not of Pandora's legacy." She says of the item itself.

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
"I mean it figures it'd be fake. Well, not fake-fake like obviously it works but, well, not what they're claiming it is." And here's where Cassie flexes a bit, showing off... is it some women's studies courses? Just osmosis'd info from her mom? "For starters, isn't the whole Pandora thing basically just like... some 8th century hit-job by some ancient proto-MRA dickhead? Pandora was an older goddess, really powerful, but they wanted to lessen her, so they created a tale where she's responsible for all this bad shit? Blah blah, blame original sin on the women, standard patriarchical religious bullshit."

There's a big pause here, as Cassie realizes what she's saying, and that 90% of her life she spent in secular normalacy collides with more recent events in her head. It can be hard, sometimes, even with everything she's experienced, to square away all the cognitive dissonance of hiving a life hand-in-hand with ancient 'myth.' When this meeting is over, she's going to get a sandwich from a dude with a bull's head, for instance. Because his sandwiches are amazing.

Anyway it jerks her back to confirm with Diana:

"Or like, I guess you'd know how it all went down? Anyway, even if it's not real-real it's real magic, clearly. Lots of reasons a person might want a gate to a hell-prison, though how they'd make one, I got no clue. The... gods would have to be down with it, right? Some kind of deal? Or they'd have to have some real powerful magic, I guess."

As for how she's avoided their terrible fate, the young woman gives a shrug. "I was down here and no one told me they were playing with a box! I get back, and boom, it's like, where'd they go?!"

Kate Bishop has posed:
"That confirms what Donna said about the providence.... also my theory is things like this want to be found. Not like... that it is intelligent per say but people who make junk like this don't want them lost forever in a volcano or on the sea floor never to be found. Which sort of means they ... want to be used too."

There is a bit of a shrug from Kate.

"Proto-MRA dickhead... hah... I mean I'm pretty sure powerful men have reworked history countless times true..." which yeah she basically agrees with Cassie's assessment there.

"I mean.. I dodged the beam of light myself. Some of the Titans are just trouble magnets though. Like I said about items wanting to be used... well in this case I think some of them just have the whole curse of living in interesting times.... like seriously throw glitter and it just poof gloms onto Donna and Vorpal.."

Diana Prince has posed:
Diana finds what she is looking for and she turns her laptop around to show off similar containers to both Cassie and Kate as they respond to her. "Well, yes, this little fellow is far from fake, it is just being mis labeled. It happens sometimes, as saying 'Pandora's Box' can make the dollar value rise far higher than saying an obscure name that is the true identity of this particular vessel."

Diana gathers it up again after showing the images of all the similar boxes on her laptop and she turns it over in her hands.

"Well. The positive news in all of this is that I believe this has sent them... to a place Donna has been before, at least somewhat. They are all very capable, and experienced fighters now at this poitn too..." She's trying not to worry, nor show visible worry, as the Titans ARE capable.

"But yes, this does need to go to Themyscira at once. I cannot identify it, but if I'm right its somewhere around fourtyeen hundred years older than I am, so we have resources on the island that can likely identify it."

Diana stands up then and carries the box across her office toward the bookshelves there where she gathers up a small silken bag off of a shelf to slide the container in to before tying it off.

"I would like to know where you came across this, specifically, though." Diana says, glancing up to both of them. "I might like to have words with those who were attempting to peddle this off as Pandora's..."

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
"Always someone out to keep a goddess down!" Cassie declares, with overexaggerated exasperation. With the problem they're presently facing, a little 'artistic licence' in myth-telling is probably far from their most immediate concern.

She's ambled close to Di to peeeeeer at the box some more, not that she hadn't had ample opportunity when Kate brought it down in the first place. This leads her to kind of shadow her mentor over to the bookshelf, stopping just short of bumping into her, and then backing up a couple quick steps to pretend like she wasn't so close in the first place.

"Well, transporting it shouldn't be a big deal. It... didn't really do anything when we drove over. Just sat there, like a box, you know." As boxes do. "Unless, I don't know, maybe it'd react to barrier or something." Once Diana has stepped away, she regards it on the shelf. "When they make it out do you think they'll... like pop back out the top? Or maybe will they come out some other way? Doesn't the doorway lead down there or something?"

Kate Bishop has posed:
Kate nods. "Artifact auction. We got word that they were selling magical providence goods to underworld figures. Bunch of known criminals. Some 'business' folk like Cobblepot. Lots of rabble. The main item for the night was the pandora's box... to up the money it would draw. There was like one serious bad guy wizard there but the real threat turned out to be the box falling open."

She sighs. "I dodged it like I said... cops rounded up all the underworld folks and villains... we took it to the tower. Raven said it was Tartarus..."

"Oh and the auction runners.. I'll send over all of Nightwing's files on that for you to review... may be connected to another organization or something bigger I guess. Maybe occult smuggler rings."

"So Donna can get them out of Tartatus no worry then?"

She nods over to Cassie "Transport should be easy enough... it is only dangerous if you open it up... so we keep it sealed and firmly tied shut and should be good to go. Then we try the whole shoving it in a whole... even if it probably wants to be opened?"

Diana Prince has posed:
Diana moves back toward her desk and readjusts her laptop so its facing her again. She closes out that search and then looks over to the two of them once more. "Yes, that is indeed where it leads to, according to the etchings along its surface. And no, I would not say there is no concern in the safety of those that were pulled inside of it... there is always concern in that place...." She softly shakes her head as she sits for a moment in thought.

"Donna knows one sure-fire way of getting out, and though if they had the knowledge they could get out the same way they got in... I am sure that Donna is going for the route that she is most comfortable with in getting back out." A glance is given to Cassie before Diana looks back to Kate.

"Are you coming with us then?" She asks of the Hawkeyed archer. "I think I'll clear some of my schedule and set out tonight..."

It sounds possibly more important than she's trying to let it sound.

"After Ferdinand's sandwiches are finished, of course." Or maybe not...

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
Although it's weird to be blase about otherworldly realms, Cassie does have a great deal of confidence in her sisters. And Donna, of course, pales as an icon and role-model only in comparison to Diana herself. Thus even as Diana urges a certain sense of perspective in the danger involved, Cassie all confidence. "Oh, they'll be fine. Like if they got sucked down there without her, that'd be a bit more to worry about. And they've got Raven too. Probably half of what's down there'd be afraid of her!" Whether or not this is strictly true, her good cheer persists. Well, for all but one momentary consideration, a brief caveat: "Though with her down there, do they have any way of letting us know if there's trouble? In case, you know, we need to pop that sucker open and go in to help?"

Even this she raises as if it were hardly much more than a flight across the city.

Then it's Diana's brisk schedule that catches her notice. "Ooh, are we going now? Like, now now?" Maybe she figured it was safe sitting on a shelf for at least a little while. The real loss here is the potential for a missed meal, but she has this covered: "I'm sure he can make us a plate to go." Truly, there is no task too great for Ferdinand, no cullinary craving he cannot answer, no midnight snack nor sudden meal on-the-go he cannot provide. "I'll just run to the kitchen real fast and let him know, then we can all meet up, yeah? You guys got any special orders?"

Kate Bishop has posed:
"Well... I imagine Rae may be able to send a message if they are in deep danger Cassie. It isn't like the last time they all got lost and they were unreachable by magical communication." she thinks about it. "Still you are probably right.. Rae probably should have stayed with us instead of heading off after her. To be honest I wasn't about to tell her not to go to hell after her girlfriend though."

"I'd hoped to go yeah. I like the trips there and probably means I can get some more archery work in with the General." a grin at that.

"As for to go sandwhiches.. gods anything Ferdinand wants to whip up I'll eat... that minotaur's cooking is fantastic."

She looks back to Diana "Where does the Route Donna will take out of Tartarus dump them all?"

Diana Prince has posed:
Diana's eyes go to Cassie who gets a moments look as the Princess gathers her thoughts inside her own head. "If they are not out soon we will consider going in after them, but I would not really wish to enter the same way they did, they are likely further from that point of entrance than they are from the other option...." The Princess takes a breath then and stands up form her chair once more. "We will take the counsel of our Sisters on the island, their wisdom in this will be greatly received in this case."

"But yes, Cassie, please let Ferdi and the others know of this change of plans, we will prepare the Jet at once."She walks back around the desk toward where she had been when they first found her in the office, toward her armor on its illuminated stand. The Princess eyes her attire on its rack and reaches out for it.

But she pauses, her eyes go ovr to Kate again at her last question there.

"They are headed, to Themyscira." The Princess simply answers as to where the exit they're likely headed toward will directly take them...

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
"-Kithotaur!" calls Cassie as she runs out, making the usual correction when it comes to Ferdinand's mythic categorization.

She is gone some minute or two and returns. Too fast to actually be bringing the sandwiches, one would think, even for Ferdinand. The tauric fellow is a legend in the kitchen, but he's not a speedster! ... that anyone knows.

But she comes back carrying her own set of gear, hastily packed and slung over her shoulder. "Said he'll meet us at the jet with a lunchbox."