8162/A Dreamed a Dream within a Dream

A Dreamed a Dream within a Dream
Date of Scene:	07 October 2021
Location:	Addams Estate
Synopsis:	May is either on very good drugs or she really did go to alternate timelines. Bobbi's not sure, but the story is -great-.
Cast of Characters:	Bobbi Morse, Melinda May

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Bobbi Morse has posed:
    Bobbi took more leave. She has plenty stored up. After it was discovered that she was the source of an Inhuman viral outbreak. Simply by being her, with her 'gift' and touching the people she cares about. Lesson learned, but it still rattles you to the core.

    No surprise then that she didn't really want to be around her colleagues too much for a bit. Some time off was in order. It seems that as time goes by she's been doing that more and more lately. She is, however, very happy to see Melinda May's face at her door. "Come in," she says with a smile.

    Wearing slacks and a t-shirt that says "Eat, Sleep, Terrigenesis, Repeat" on, her hair tied back in a simple ponytail. She has a bottle of wine open because.. why not. "I'll get you a glass." And so she does.

Melinda May has posed:
May comes in, thinking its past time they checked on the other senior agent. She understands being shaken -- could feel it in Bobbi's demeanor right before she left. And she knows the value of providing a little space, a little breathing room. But she still wants to make sure her friend is okay.

"Nice to see you," she says, offering a rare smile. Her own ensemble is a fairly typical pair of dark jeans and, as a change, a button-down blouse in medium blue colour rather than something dark and forboding. Hey, it's a day off. Even she can lighten up on occasion.

She looks around automatically for the dogs... and the husband. "How you doing?"

Bobbi Morse has posed:
    A small shrug of her shoulder as she hands over a filled glass to May. "Could be better," she says. The only real fix for a problem like hers is to be right back in the action. She hates that it's true about her - no one else in her family is like that. Adrenaline junkie? or worse? it's a condition understood by most Agents.

    "Lance has the dogs, they're out for a walk I believe." She explains when she notices May looking/listening around for them. Evidence of her restlessness can be seen on the big screen tv - paused mid chaotic jazz solo and a punching bag on a stand that was moved in to the living room from the exercise room. The punching gloves rest on top of it.

    "Are you finally going to tell me where you got those lightsabers from and when I can have one?" Bobbi says with a playful smirk to her colleague and friend.

Melinda May has posed:
"Are you going to come back any time soon and help us finish kicking Maelstrom's ass?" May counters. She's not above goading the other agent, if it will get her to react. Her tests are usually a lot more violent and suprising than the 'official' tests the shrinks and docs like to give. Her job, after all, is to both save other agents' asses and kick their asses... all depending on what's needed.

She takes the wine that's offered her, eyes noting the details of the living room and its recent additions. "I shelves are still standing. I think I'm impressed."

In the end, though, she sips her wine and snirks softly. "To be honest? I have *no* idea where I got them. Or, rather, I have a working theory, but no details to back it up." She smirks faintly. "If you want one, though, you'll have to fight me for it."

Bobbi Morse has posed:
    She gives May a slightly amused look, "So that's what this visit is." She takes a sip of her wine. It's not like May hasn't spontaneously attacked her out of no where in the past to make sure she'd properly recovered from her injuries. Now May's even worse about it - because she can feel the emotional injuries too and poke and prod at them. The cavalry is unstoppable in her role as The Caretaker.

    "And have to deal with colonel brushtouche with the idiot stick on the Ops floor?" A long gulp of wine is taken and she gives May a slightly sly look. She can't hide her emotions from her. She's holding something back though. Staycation usually means she's working on something.

    "You've been acting strange ever since you turned up to that Secret Warriors mission wearing a costume. I didn't start something when I let you borrow my wings did I?"

    She casually side steps the question of whether or not she'd actually fight May for a lightsaber.. no doubt news of them has made it to Fury's ears though. As the only other owner of said light based burny sword in SHIELD he likely has opinions on this development.

Melinda May has posed:
At least May is consistent? She'd hate to think she's predictable, but... to those that know her well? It is what it is.

She gives Bobbi a mild shrug. "Part of it," she admits. "You know as well as I do that you won't really shake this off until you're back doing what you love to do." She gives a small smirk. "I'd take you back to Nepal, but I'd sooner get stranded somewhere that doesn't involved avalanches."

If Fury has opinions about May's twin plasma blades, he hasn't voiced them to her. And she's just fine with that. "Nothing says you have to hang out at the Trisk," she notes. "You could always relocate to the Playground." A beat. She channels her inner Phil. "It really is more fun there." She misses it.

She cants her head faintly. "Yeah, so I'll tell you about the Star Wars get up, if you tell me what you're working on. 'Cause you never stay in one place this long without there being something to distract you." A beat. "And Hunter's never been *that* distracting for you for *that* long."

Bobbi Morse has posed:
    "Nepal was nice. Cold. But nice. Mostly because of the company.. and we needed to talk." Bobbi says with a nod. Her lips press together as her eyebrows raise. The truth is the truth. "I like the Trisk. It's home.. also it's a lot closer than Delaware."

    There's a pause and she sets her glass down, "Hm. Okay.. it's a little something I've been poking around the edges at." Because she wants to know about the Star Wars getup. How could she resist the chance to get some truth illuminated.

    Bobbi steps away from the dining table and heads to a storage closet. She opens it up and a hidden iris scanner sweeps over her eye and the floor breaks apart in to steps leading down in to a basement. "Come in to the secret headquarters of the Mockingbird," she says with waggling fingers trying on a spooky voice for amusement.

    Her lair is clearly a work in progress. A holotable that isn't even plugged in, her Mockingbird suit on a side table and on the wall - a crazy board. Not too crazy yet but she turns on the lights to reveal the interior.

    "They call themselves the Cabal of Glorious Thieves... and if you're expecting to know much more about them than that... sadly, they're extremely good at staying secret. These are the people who pull of the heists that go unnoticed for months.. years.. until suddenly someone realises they own a fake instead of the real thing." And by 'these are the people'.. she has lots of silhouettes with question marks on them.

    There are two solid leads though. A report from Daisy about her encounter with one in Nepal and a report from Peggy about her encounter with one on the illegal arms market ship. The third lead has a big question mark on it. The anti-gravity gloves used by the mercenaries in the whole Saudi Diplomat incident over a year ago.

Melinda May has posed:
"Cabal..." May's eyes narrow faintly. "I know that name." She just has to dredge up where she heard it. Her brows dip as she wracks her brain for a moment or two. Then, she snaps. "That kid on the boat. The one that threw me into the wall and nearly broke my skull. Burch said something about the Cabal. And so did Huttz." And, in so saying, she just might be revealing another link in the chain to those anti-gravity gloves. Because they do fit what threw her across the room, for sure.

She looks around the little lair and smiles faintly at the suit. "Impressive setup, though." She raises her left hand, that thin black band around her wrist like a sleeker version of a fitbit. "I like my new armor better than the cosplay thing, though."

She shakes her head faintly, continuing to study the leads board. "To be honest, my best guess as to the whole Star Wars get up is that it comes from an alternate timeline." She glances sidelong at Bobbi for her reaction. "I traded it away, though, for this thing." She means the band on her wrists. "Kept the swords though. And the sniper rifle." A beat. "It's a cool gun."

Bobbi Morse has posed:
    Bobbi nods her head and hmms, "HYDRA heads have a grudge against the Cabal, but it seems like the Cabal isn't that interested in playing games with HYDRA.. unless the game is 'steal the thing HYDRA wants and laugh from a distance'. They aren't our usual kind of quarry and I'm not sure they fall under SHIELD purview.. yet."

    "But that's what SPOT is for.. taking the time to look at the bigger picture, see the threats before they turn in to Ultron." She frowns a moment. Bad memories there. She says, "The gloves are ... a bit of a mystery."

    And then it's her turn to stare at May for a long moment, "Alternate timeline?" So far the alternate realities they've run in to have been filled with giant tentacle monsters, shadow monsters, and insane fanatics who want to kill us all.

    "So we've got the back and forth, the sideways, the up and down. Which part of The Twilight Zone are we missing now?" She smirks a moment and says, "Okay you've got my hooked.. tell me more and I'll tell you my plan for flushing out the Cabal."

    She eyes the bracer and says, "Interesting. What do they do? I've got bracers for my Mockingbird suit now too.." she wanders over to it and picks them up, clipping one on to each wrist, walks back to May and then holds out her hands. The ICERS from her suit fly across the room and in to her hand with a snap.. just like the alternate reality Mockingbird's did. "Cool huh?"

Melinda May has posed:
May flexes her hand briefly. A subtle blue energy ripples out from the band on her wrist. The armor that she used during the Inhuman infection scare at the Triskelion materializes over her body. Only the helmet is missing. "It's some sort of 31st century tech, I'm told. Mostly, it's just armour with a fancy HUD in the helmet. So far, it's proven pretty effective against standard ballistics and energy attacks -- though I haven't tested its limits yet." She should do that.

She smirks slightly. "But it does let me do this." Flexing her body slightly, she ends up levitating. "Some sort of anti-grav tech. It feels pretty similar to yours, honestly. So, I'm guessing it's just a variation."

She drops back to the ground and flexes her hand again. The armor disappears.

She watches those ICERs fly into Bobbi's hand. Her head cants. "I've... seen those before," she says slowly now. She chuffs out a breath. "I've seen you do that before." Then shakes her head. "No. I've seen a *version* of you do that before." She grimaces and flips her hand. "Alternate timeline." A beat. A sigh. "I blame Daniel."

Bobbi Morse has posed:
    Bobbi's expression becomes that of amazement and then a broad smile, "My wings are stolen alien tech. 31st century Humanity can do anti-grav ourselves? Nice." She nods and walks back over to her table and puts the guns down and takes off the bracelets.

    Bobbi pauses as May says she's seen those before, "That's.. not possible. They're brand new." She peers at May as she elaborates and it clicks in her brain, "Another me?" She raises her eyebrows, "That'd be numbe three. What was this one called. Better not have been another Babs," she says with a smirk.

    "What does Sousa have to do with this? ..." she has a look of expecting answers and details because you can't drop a bomb like 'I've seen another you in an alternate timeline' and walk away without spilling everything.

Melinda May has posed:
"Mockingbird," May shrugs in answer to the question about the other Bobbi's identity. She gets an odd look on her face. "That's what Captain Carter called her, anyway. She was definitely an Avenger. The only one wearing SHIELD iconography that we met was..." A beat. "Me." She snirks. "I think. It's still kind of hazy."

She circles the table and sips on her wine. "What do you know about Sousa's arrival here?" she asks. "There's a lot of details we've kept on the downlow, but I'd be surprised if you didn't have most of them."

Bobbi Morse has posed:
    "Just... Mockingbird." Bobbi looks slightly amused at that. A loner version of herself? It's when May says Captain Carter she blinks a few times and stares, "Captain Carter?? what happened to Director?" and then Avenger. She was about to sip her wine and stops herself just at the last moment.

    A small laugh, "You're saying there's a version of me out in another timeline who calls herself Mockingbird and is an Avenger? Wow... what went wrong in her life. Sounds lonely. We know the lives of Avengers, they aren't ...great."

    Can 'great' really be used to describe the lives of a SHIELD agent. Then again, it's a life they worked for and achieved themselves - not one thrust upon them. "Another Melinda May. And SHIELD." She lifts up her wine glass in salute and takes a looong gulp.

    "Sure. Chief Sousa. First Agent of SHIELD to die in the line of duty. Not the first Agent of SHIELD to cheat death. Sorry Daniel. Some young Witch from West Virginia did some magic and brought him here for.. reasons? Timey Whimey wibbly wobbly." It's quite clear Bobbi has done her level best NOT to learn too much about what's been going on there. "...Magic. Thus. WAND stuff."

Melinda May has posed:
"Mm." May grunts softly at the summary. "Yeah, that roughly sums it up. Though, I don't think it was the witch that powered that spell. I think it was another entity entirely." She flips a hand dismissively. "The result is the same. Except you're missing a detail."

She glances around until she finds a seat to settle into. If she has to tell a story, she wants to be comfortable.

"Daniel's arrival was linked with that of a bastard named Arturo Malevolo. The guy claims -- claimed -- to have founded HYDRA back when Christopher Columbus was still thinking about sailing the globe." She sips her wine to avoid another sigh. "I think Malevolo is the guy who is or was pulling Malick's strings."

She gives a small shrug. "Regardless, we figured out that as long as Daniel is here, Malevolo is here. So we needed to find a way to sever the weird magical link between them." Again her hand flips dismissively. "Don't ask. I don't understand it. You want to know, ask Precelta. Point is, you can't have one without the other. Some sort of cosmic balance shit. I don't know."

She places the wine glass on her knee, holding it lightly. "Thing is, I remember that we tried some sort of ritual to try to sever the connection. We started it... and when it was over, we were all standing around the same room in completely different places than where we started, all dressed completely differently. I was wearing the Star Wars get up. Peggy looked like something out of Orange is the New Black. Daniel was doing his best Fury impersonation. And Prescelta looked like she's been to a Harry Potter convention."

She doesn't quite get to the meat of the story, yet.

Bobbi Morse has posed:
    Bobbi blinks her eyelashes rapidly a few times and chuckles, "The founder of HYDRA come through time with Sousa?" She smirks a moment and then listens to the rest of the strangeness. "Right. So. You invite a witch to do weird magic and weird stuff happens."

    She lifts up her glass and takes another sip, "Just desserts and all that?" She looks more amused than anything else at the story so far. "Hey remember that time you fell through a hole in time and Fitz invented a time phone.."

    "I'm seriously interested in what happens next.. because this is the best 'no shit there I was' story you've ever told..."

Melinda May has posed:
May actually laughs, now. "It really is," she has to agree. And she can't even remember most of it. An odd look washes some of the mirth away. "I just wish I could remember it all."

She shakes her head and sweeps her hair back. "It took several days before I started remembering anything at all. If it hadn't been for Lily, I think we'd all have been a lot more alarmed when we first... got back, I suppose." Has Bobbi ever even met Lily?

"I remember, now, that the ritual was interrupted somehow." She snirks. "Turns out, there are are bunch of jackbooted timecops out there in the multiverse who like to step in and put a stop to people meddling with 'The Sacred Timeline'." She doesn't sound like she much likes them. "They interrupted the ritual and grabbed Daniel." The scoffing sound catches in the back of her throat. "You can imagine how well *that* went over." She shakes her head and sighs. "Prescelta held their portal open with her magic, Peggy dove through after Daniel without even thinking about it, which meant I ended up after all of them to make sure we all got back in one piece." Because, *of course* she did.

"We ended up in this weird city/base/something. I have no idea where. But none of our weapons worked and we ended up in a fight. Met an agent there who decided we could help. He sent us, and Daniel, off to try to stop Malevolo."

Again, that sharp, dry smile and a snirk. "No surprise HYDRA was apparently mucking with timelines all over the multiverse. The first one we ended up in, we landed on some space station in orbit. Red Skull was there, trying to blow up New York. Captain Carter -- seriously, you should have seen her. 6-feet tall, muscled like Wonder Woman, and carrying Rogers's shield, but painted with a union jack." She sounds vaguely impressed.

"Captain Carter, Mockingbird, and some short-haired version of me showed up as well, to try to stop him. So, we teamed up. The Captain, Lily, and I went to the power core to shut it down, while Peggy, Daniel, and Prescelta went to confront the Red Skull."

She wrinkles her nose. "I'm not exactly sure how they took him out. I was too busy trying to remember what little I knew of FORTRAN. I swear the damned station was built in the 70's."

Bobbi Morse has posed:
    There is a lot going on in this retelling a story. So much so it sounds more like a fever dream than something would experience for real. She supposes Daniel and Peggy would back up this account though and the bewildered look on her face is met with another sip of the wine, then her arms folding.

    "Huh" Is what she says to all of that. "Ya don't say..." It's no comfort to May working through that bizarre set of experiences she had with Peggy, Daniel, and the witch, but she opens up her tablet and starts to check on a few things.

    "Arturo Malevolo you say..." Because the founder of HYDRA running around _now_ and _here_ sounds like a pretty big concern. Died in the renaissance. The official account of Daniel's arrival makes no mention of any Arturo arriving with him.

    She presses her lips together. Either her friend is losing it.. or they really did help time cops stop the head of HYDRA coming back from the dead. "I see."

    "And you're sure you weren't on some extra specially good drugs or something recently?"

Melinda May has posed:
"I wish," May says dryly. "You're not going to find any of this in an official report, you realize." She shrugs. "I know it sounds crazy. Hell, I'm pretty sure I lived it, and it sounds crazy."

She sips her wine. "Look, 'official' history says Sousa died in '55. So, the fact the same history says Malevolo died in the late 15th century isn't any different. The timecop stuff?" A small, dry smile. "You'll just have to take my word for it. Peggy could tell you better how Red Skull was taken out. But I do know he ended up floating outside the hull. And I *think* Mockingbird had something to do with it."

Bobbi Morse has posed:
    Bobbi can't help but look amused, but she does trust May. Implicitly. "Mockingbird took out Red Skull?," she repeats as if that consolation to the story is all she really needs to accept it hook line and sinker. She casually dusts her shoulders and says, "Yeeeep, still got it, even in an alternate timeline."

    A grin spreads over her face and she points to her wall, "Here's the plan." She picks up a manilla folder and slides it over the holotable to May. "Martin St. Frasier, grifter extraordinaire. He's London based. Has a crew of four other people sometimes more. They had an M.O. - they only con people they think can afford it."

    "I'm going to hire St. Frasier to steal something for me. Real money, real theft.. it all has to be real because I want the Cabal to be watching. Before the heist takes place we will take out one of his crew and insert an agent of our own in his path to join his team."

    "They'll vet him but he'll pass muster.. because I'm going to be sending in Lance. I need to play this one carefully. The heist will succeed and if I've moved me pieces on the board right, the Cabal will offer St. Frasier a chance to join them. We make sure they succeed - which puts Lance right in the thick of the Cabal and we can finally find out who they are and how they do what they do."

Melinda May has posed:
Sounds good on paper. May leans forward to pick up the folder, sets her glass aside, and leafs through it. "Hunter will love that," she opines. He does seem to enjoy that sort of undercover work. She's never been exceptionally fond of Lance, but she does concede he's got his own tendencies to agression therapy on occasion. He likes the messy stuff.

"Both Huttz and Vogel mentioned the Cabal, now that I think about it. That suggests HYDRA is well aware of them. But they've not popped up on our radar before now? Are they generally Robin Hood sorts or is there some other pattern we're missing?"

Bobbi Morse has posed:
    "The Cabal? No Robinhooding there. They keep all their spoils. St. Frasier and his crew at the same. I think from the trail I've found of unexplained thefts that the Cabal has a bit of a flair, so anyone with style is a potential candidate. St. Frasier seems like just the kind of man they'd be after."

    "The Cabal is so slippery they've managed to avoid falling on our radar. Mostly because they like to do their crime in the shadow of something bigger and badder. While we're busy stopping, say, a prototype Ironman Stealth suit developed by AIM from escaping the jungle of Borneo, they're just around the corner draining the bank accounts."

    "Plainly.. they're better than us. We're professional spies - they're professional grifters. We can't out-grift them, so we'll just have to out-spy them." A small shrug of her shoulders. "But at the of the day - we'll get them. One way or another. Now that we know their name they won't be able to shake us."

Melinda May has posed:
May knows the truth of that. She gives a faint nod. The Cabal's days are numbered. Perhaps less so than HYDRA's, however. Though, even that she won't swear to. She's not convinced they'll ever truly eradicate the squids. Not if HYDRA has been around for so many centuries. There's always a new incarnation out there.

But she knows that as long as there's HYDRA there will be SHIELD or people like them stepping up to stop them. She can live with that.

"See," she says, giving Bobbi a small smirk, now. "All the more reason for you to get your ass back into work. Phil's threatening to steal Barton from you, you know..."

Bobbi Morse has posed:
    She smirks a moment and says, "Uh huh. Steal Barton?" This amuses her significantly, "The man is a cat, you can't grab him without getting the claws. He and I go way back, but if Phil needs him, well, that's different." She glances over at her suit and then back to May, "Fine. I'll come back. But if I give everyone a nasty Inhuman cold again I'm quitting for good."

Melinda May has posed:
May snirks softly, though not without some sympathy. "What? You mean you need to learn how to control your gift somehow? Just like the rest of us?" There's no harshness to her tone. Her rebuke is fairly gentle for once. Because she gets it. She can *feel* it. "There's no evidence that anyone has shown me to prove that you *caused* it, you know. So, if that's out there and you've been sitting on it, by all means, share it."

She gives Bobbi a direct look. "I felt the anger pass through you when you touched Dante. I think you were infected with it then and that your gift changed its effects. So, okay. Shit happened. But that virus was designed to hit Inhumans. What we really need to do is find out by whom, when, and how. So we can stop it from happening again."

She shakes her head. "We've got enough problems without worrying about someone turning Inhumans into unwilling weapons or walking time bombs. But that's not your fault."

Bobbi Morse has posed:
    Her lips press together indignantly as she's given 'the speech' by May. She's heard something similar many times before. Perhaps because she's particularly good at carrying guilt around. A small nod is given, "Yeah. I know. You haven't figured it out yet but that echo of Daisy's was right..."

    "My abilities are too dangerous." She motions to you, "With a single touch I could take away your abilities, or make them a million times worse. What if, one day, I'm out of my mind and I do just that? I wonder if may be Jacob didn't come to the same conclusion."

Melinda May has posed:
May has discovered that guilt is a motivating factor for a *lot* of SHIELD's top agents. It's quite the revelation. Probably has something to do with the hero complex they all share. Save the day no matter what. Feel like shit when you can't. She's slowly beginning to realize that mindset might sometimes do more harm than good.

"You do realize there are Inhumans out there who would beg you do take their abilities away, right?" May arches a brow faintly. "Not so long ago, I would have been among them." She shakes her head again. "You and I have seen enough in this world, experienced enough as agents to know that there are any number of horror-filled apocalypses just waiting to happen. There are any number of reasons any of us could lose our minds, lose control, and make the world a living hell."

She ticks off on her fingers. "What happens if Captain Marvel goes insane and decides to turn the sun into groundzero for a supernova? What happens if the Amazons decide they're tired of listening to mansplainers and decide to do something about it? Or if Atlantis gets tired of the oil slicks and garbage patches? Suped up Inhumans exploding all over the world is only one of many possibilities out there."

She meets Bobbi's eyes. "So, yeah. Maybe that could happen. You go nuts and amp me up until I send everyone on the planet into emotional catatonia so I don't have to *feel* them all the time and you don't have to listen to them bitch. Social fabric breaks down and the chipmunks are left to pick up the pieces." A brow arches. "Or maybe some asshole HYDRA head gets it into his brain to try to turn Inhumans into his own personal army, but you're the one with the key to making sure he can't. Because you can block those things the rest of us can't. Sure, you're dangerous, Bobbi. But we're all dangerous. And we were both dangerous well before either of us got any superpowers."

Bobbi Morse has posed:
    She folds her arms more tightly, "Sure. But I was never up there in the top one hundred ways the world could end before." She huffs, "Now I am." She lifts up a finger, "Also, the Amazons getting sick of mansplaining could be considered a win for Earth." A grin, "Just sayin'"

Melinda May has posed:
"Please," May snirks. "You're a senior level SHIELD agent. *Of course,* you were in the top 100 ways the world could end. Did the Framework teach us nothing about our own capacity for stupid mistakes?"

She does, however, have to chuckles some about the Amazons. "Yeah. Though, *we* still need the guys around, even if they don't."