8960/Welcome back to Earth, TRAITOR!

Welcome back to Earth, TRAITOR!
Date of Scene:	06 December 2021
Location:	The Wick
Synopsis:	Colette admits the WHOLE truth to Carol, tells her to check the moons of Saturn for solutions to the Thanos problem, and tries to get her drunk.
Cast of Characters:	Colette O'Connail, Carol Danvers

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Colette O'Connail has posed:
    One of the problems of traveling in space is the number of messages you end up getting on your phone all at once. In Carol's case, after her recent return home, a bunch of them had been from Colette. The first had been a contextless 'WTF Carol'. The second a few minutes later, 'Srsly WTF. You find out I have one of these murder doppelgangers and don't fucking tell me? Nice Carol. Real nice.' The third, the next day says 'Okay. Not mad any more but I'd like to talk about it'. The fourth, a couple more days later is simply 'Carol?', while the fifth, about a week after that says 'Oh apparently you're in space. Can we get together when you're back?'

    How she found out that Carol was in space is a question that it's probably best not to know the answer to.

    However Carol is now back from space, and has dealt with passing on her intelligence about Thanos. As a bonus Colette has probably calmed down by now, and it might be an idea to deal with /that/. Who knows, she might even know something useful about Thanos - she seems to be reasonably knowledgeable about space stuff. So the arrangements were made to meet up, and Colette suggested a place in Manhattan, nice and convenient for Carol to get to.

    The bar is an old-fashioned and atmospherically gloomy sort of place, one of the oldest in Manhattan, the kind of place that gets a certain amount of tourist traffic and attracts the kind of people who like taking photographs of themselves in cool places they've visited, but it's pretty quiet right now. Colette, arriving early as always, has located a booth close to the bar and claimed it as her personal domain, lounging across the bench seat against the wall with a bottle of beer in hand as she waits Carol's arrival. She is dressed in her now familiar mix of casual and expensive clothing, a pair of black jeans of little note with expensive-looking calf boots, a hoodie, and a gold-embroidered black jacket draped casually over the table that's a Van Dyne original that probably costs as much as a cheap car. Thankfully she looks rather relaxed.

Carol Danvers has posed:
    Technically just about anywhere is pretty convenient for Carol to meet up for a drink and a conversation. It is extra nice that it is a bar though because Carol has been inclined to do a bit more drinking since Phyla-Vell died messy like that. Damned Thanos.

    She is dressed in her usual civvies, flight jacket, an imagine dragons concert t-shirt, jeans, and a ballcap. Low profile. Easily overlooked. Learned it from Rodgers.

    The door to the bar is pushed in and she looks around slowly. Colette isn't hard to spot and well she seems relaxed with the bottle so that is good. Carol stops at the bar on the way to the booth, orders a whiskey sour, points to the booth, and then closes the distance to slide in across from Colette. "Sorry about the space emergency." she notes calmly though there is some sadness tinged in her voice.

Colette O'Connail has posed:
    "Put it on my tab," Colette calls out to the barman when Carol makes her order at the bar, but otherwise greets Carol only with a nod until she's seated. "Hey Carol. That's space for you. Full of emergencies. Must kind of make a change having they /stay/ in space for once though, huh?" She takes her jacket off the table to make room, but doesn't sit up from her definite posture of lounging.

    She tilts her head, studying Carol for a few moments before shrugging her shoulders. "It's what you do," she says. "See an emergency, rush towards it. I'm not going to hold that against you, seems like a lot of people I hang out with like to do that. Getting to be a popular lifestyle choice these days. Future cultural anthropologists will find this era of Human history fascinating and probably very educational. The interesting question is whether any of those future anthropologists will be human or if this marks the beginning of the end of the species. I'd say..." she gives a hand-wobble with her beer bottle. "About fifty-fifty, right now. In a few hundred years Earth will either be at the center of the galactic affairs or a smoking ruin."

    She puts her bottle down on the table with exaggerated care and sits up a little, looking closely at Carol again. "Looks like this was a rough one," she comments. "You okay?"

Carol Danvers has posed:
    "I'm desperately hoping this emergency does not come to earth." she notes softly and curls in against the end of the booth watching the room and Colette in equal parts. "In this case someone came to ask me for help. Well came hoping to find their mother whom I was very fond of for help and I offered in her place since her mother died years ago." fond of sounds like an epic understatement based on tone and bodylanguage

    She glances over at Colette "Things went to shit though, person who asked me for help was atomized by Thanos.. I got everyone else out alive but it was not what I would call a successful mission. I failed Phyla.. and didn't kill Thanos. Now I need to make sure he doesn't succeed at his longer term plan."

Colette O'Connail has posed:
    Colette watches Carol very carefully through her explanation, a study of Carol's body language that's a bit intense even by Colette's normal standards as if something in her story is piquing her interest, but when Carol finishes her retelling Colette's leaning back comfortably and swigging at her beer again. "Thanos. As in deranged galactic conqueror Thanos, always-causing-trouble Thanos, he'll be back in a few decades with his latest rent-an-army Thanos? Well. Doesn't surprise me that he'd still be causing trouble. He's been up to that a very long time by all accounts. You're hardly the first person who didn't manage to kill him. People have been trying for millennia. Does he have a longer term plan other than 'me conquer?'"

    She frowns a little and rests her bottle back down on the table, her fingers resting lightly on the neck and her eyes fixed on it. "Sounds like you've had a rough time Carol. I'm... not going to make it rougher. I was pretty mad at you when I found out I had a doppelganger and you knew but didn't tell me, but I'm kind of over that. Seems like everyone knew and nobody thought it would be a good idea to tell me, so..." Her shoulders rise and fall slightly, barely a conscious gesture. "Honestly at this point I'm more interested in knowing what she told you about me than any recriminations. I have a reputation to preserve, even if it's a bad one."

Carol Danvers has posed:
    "Thanos has a new plan.. or maybe it is an old plan.. but yeah we've learned of a new plan that honestly involves some stuff I thought was fairy tales but isn't evidently."

    That is shelved for a moment as she looks to Colette. "She lured me to the moon to have a meeting because she was worried you.." points at Colette "Were going to hurt me. She was worried you were evil. You aren't despite your love of your bad reputation and neither was she." her drink arrives and she snags the glass and takes a sip. "I don't advertise it very much but my cosmic abilities actually gives me a ... sort of mm I call it a seventh sense. IF something actually will bring me personally harm or has bad intent towards me. I know it. Won't save the people three buildings over but it keeps my skin intact surprisingly well Colette."

    "She also supplied a lot of intelligence to SHIELD to prove her good intentions, it led to a lot of rounded up dopplegangers who were evil and intended great harm on this dimension. In exchange... as I was convinced she wasn't evil I agreed to keep it quiet until she was ready .. if ever.. to reveal herself to you or others."

Colette O'Connail has posed:
    Colette nods her head slowly. "That pretty much fits with what she told me," Colette concedes. She takes a deep breath and blows it out all at once in something approximating a sigh. "If you'd met me a while back you'd probably describe me as evil, though that would have been unfair," she says. "And also not really me. What I told you about the Martian thing was only part of the story. A long time ago... a very, very, long time ago, there was a war in which trillions died. One side were some of the most knowledgeable scientists the universe has know, the other some of the most powerful sorcerers. Towards the end of that war the sorcerers attempted to create a conscious magical weapon. They were... desperate beings. It was not a nice spell. The spell was interrupted before it was complete, and the results of that spell drifted in space, unfinished, until just a few centuries ago it consumed a Martian mind. That mind knew things that allowed the remnants of that spell to know how to complete itself. But it also raised questions as to how it should complete itself. The Martian mind and the... magical construct... they had very different views. The two sides compromised on an experiment designed to arbitrate between ideas. To eliminate the biases that each side brought, the combined mentality hid its own memories from itself, and caused itself to be born on a primitive world, as one of the life-forms that lived on that world.

    She shrugs her shoulders and looks up, holding Carol's gaze. "So there you go. No more secrets. I was born here. But I lived two separate lives long before I was ever born. Or one life and one... something."

    She falls silent for a few moments. "What plan?" she asks. "Thanos, I mean. Fairly tales have a nasty tendency to turn out to be real. I mean you've met Vorpal."

Carol Danvers has posed:
    "I've ... learned over my time so far that a lot of desperate species have tried a lot of desperate things and unleashed a lot of uncontrolled weapons into the fabric of creation. So... I can't say this is the most unusual thing I've run into." she is studying Colette in return thoughtfully as she takes another sip of her whiskey sour.

    "I wonder what would have happened though if I had ever managed to pin the Martian Manhunter down for you to talk to him... I imagine this is something he might be able to eventually suss out." yeah she said suss. "It also explains how depending on the upbringing and mind eaten, in a multiverse of options, you could have turned out to be incredibly dangerous instead of genuinely trying to make friends and be... who you are." she trails off with that thought. "I appreciate the sharing and no secrets."

    "Thanos as far as I can tell is closing in on the Infinity Stones, which are evidently real, and intends to ... I think purge half of all life in creation based on what Gamora and Nebula have said... not just conquer creation. I mean probably both but..."

Colette O'Connail has posed:
    "Infinity stones..." Colette repeats. "I can think of a few things that might be translated that way." She tilts her head thoughtfully. "Though few that would be sufficiently powerful to purge half of all life in creation. " She swings her legs down from the seat and onto the floor, sitting normally at last to face Carol. "Elements of reality sometimes accrete into... structures that may appear as something quite simple to mortal eyes. Crystalline structures, or agglomerations of energy that appear like small stars. Dimensional extrusions that encompass the universe but at the same time appear to be relatively tiny structures when perceived in a simple four-dimensional understanding of the universe."

    She blinks thoughtfully, staring into the distance for a few moments before her attention snaps back to Carol. "I've met him a few times. We haven't talked. Not about... any of that, anyway. It's best that way, believe me. He would hope to communicate with a Martian. The death of his race... this isn't something you can understand, but to be a Martian... he's not. Not really, any more. You can't be a lone Martian. To be a Martian is to commune with the Great Voice, but without there being many Martians, there can be no Great Voice. I would be a terrible disappointment to him. I'm not the weapon my original creators made in a desperate last-ditch attempt to destroy a race of tyrants, but nor am I a Martian. I'm Colette. I'm... well, I'm probably about as human as you are."

    She wraps her fingers around the neck of her bottle, and starts carefully peeling the label from it. "So... you were dragged into this thing because you met the daughter of someone from your past? And now feeling guilty because this was someone you cared about, and couldn't protect her daughter?"

Carol Danvers has posed:
    "Well I am glad that your meeting with J'onn wasn't fraught then... and yeah probably about as much as I am... that reminds me... according to Phyla there is no chance I am fully human even from before the experiments. Which isn't something I dwelled on really since Mar'Vell's power flowed too easy into me... and the Psyche Magnitron... ugn." which is about all she has to say about that. She really should go visit her mom and dad and suss that out, but avoidant behavior. Been so busy.

    As for the stones "Yeah that would be them. Turns out the Power Stone at least is real, which means the other ones might be too. Fundamental building blocks of htre universe... some of the stories say left over from previous big bangs and entire universes. Still if one were to collect enough of them... or cosmic cubes I suppose... and harness the power all together." she just frowns at her whiskey sour. "I know now where one of them is being guarded, it was prevented from ending up into his hands. I've removed one of the Black Order... I will probably start removing other members of his elite minions and slow him down when I get a chance. Even if they are all myths it is personal now."

    "And.. yeah I got dragged into this mess because my old lover who sacrificed her life to save mines kid showed up and was hoping to find her mom... and then I failed and now the universe has lost it'd Guardian Qauser... though it picked a new Quasar .. like it does..." she finishes off whiskey sour number one. "I'm allowed to feel guilty Colette."

Colette O'Connail has posed:
    Colette reaches a hand out to rest it briefly on Carol's arm. "Yeah, you're allowed to feel guilty Carol. Just try not to blame yourself too much, yeah? It's not like you turned her daughter away. You tried."

    The hand doesn't linger. It's quickly snatched away, and Colette raises it to gesture with a pair of fingers to the bartender. Carol will not be allowed to be without a whiskey sour for long -- number two is soon enough on its way, along with another beer for Colette.

    "So. You're worrying that one or more of them might be here on Earth," Colette concludes. "And that he might turn his attention in this direction looking for it. It's possible. Earth... or rather this solar system... seems to be a very important place. I'm not entirely clear why, but the sheer concentration of power that has been present here over the millennia is... exceptional. All these mutants and superpowers cropping up around the place these days, this isn't exactly a new thing. This system has been home to some of the most powerful beings in the universe for a long time." She smirks suddenly. "Honestly if I'd had a bit of foresight, I would have picked a quieter planet to be born on. You see yourself as protector of this system, but you're just the latest in a very long line, and in the past there were a lot /more/."

    "Have you ever been to Saturn lately?" Colette asks. It seems rather out of the blue. "I mean... if you're going to talk about myths and legends, it might be worth your while to play close attention to Saturn's moons, if... if all this turns out to be a thing."

Carol Danvers has posed:
    "I mean. It crossed my mind that one of them could be on earth and I've started to put out feelers to that effect. Fro all the reasons you have just mentioned." she sighs a bit. "I am desperately hoping I am wrong about that though." she eyes the bartender who is not moving fast enough.

    "It's a big all of creation though so the other stones could be anywhere." fingers mentally crossed. "Actually I see myself as a protector of a lot more than this system these days... I mean especially this blue marble as it were but I've waded into a lot more in the last few years." for better or worse.

    That last bit does make her squint. "Okay. Why Saturn and it's moons Colette?" she is only squinting a little. Both her SWORD hat and general curiousity suddenly very keyed in.

Colette O'Connail has posed:
    Colette leans back and makes a wide-armed shrug, a kind of 'it's no big deal' gesture. The barman comes to their table with beer and whiskey sour, and she waits for the drink delivery to be done and barman gone before she explains herself.

    "Because Titan isn't really a moon," Colette replies eventually. "It's hollow. Look, I'm not giving you any great secret here, though that's not exactly a fact you'll learn on Wikipedia. Back when I... I mean the Martian part of me... when she was traversing the system in her bioship, she visited there but nobody answered. It might be nobody lives there any more. Or they might be keeping quiet. If you want to explore legends, well this was a /Martian/ legend. About the beings who lived inside that world. But this is... a long time ago. When Martians were not what they became, and were not exactly friendly to our neighbors."

    Colette finishes her first bottle of beer with a quick swig and moves over to the new bottle. "I don't know what you'll find if you go there. But if the problem is Thanos, you may find something you can use against him. Or allies. Or a whole lot of danger. It's probably not something you should do lightly, and if there's no answer I would think very hard indeed about breaking in for a look around."

Carol Danvers has posed:
    "Hm." she notes thoughtfully. "Not really a moon.

    She picks up the drink and sips the new one now. "I ... huh. I'll admit I just keep thinking about the Star Wars line. That isn't a moon, it is a space station." she smiles brightly at the thought.

    "I'll ... do some digging. Figurative not literal. We may need some serious help with our Thanos problem. Well the Thanos problem." thoughtful look. "You are definitely not totally past your secret mysterious phase Colette. For the record." a smile.

Colette O'Connail has posed:
    Colette returns the smile. "It's a bit big to be a space station," she replies, the smile curling up into a grin. "Size of a small planet. But it's what's inside that's interesting. It's an artificial habitat. I'd imagine the reason that humanity has not yet figured out that it's hollow is because the small artificial star at its center has kind of a big impact on the total mass."

    "I'm not trying to be mysterious," she counters. "It's just something that's a mystery anyway. We had legends about the beings that inhabited Titan. Depending on how much truth there is in those legends..." she gives another shrug. "They may have been at war with Thanos in the past. "

    "As for being secretive, I have a good reason. I'm not something that many people would understand. I intend on keeping my secrets, I'm just making an exception or two for people who are... people who I trust. I'm human, Carol. It's important to me that people don't lose sight of that because they know I was something else in the past. I mean... I'm not exactly human, but I'm close enough. It's not like it's normal for human beings to create their own bodies like I did, but it's a human body I created. It's a human life I have lived. And it's vital that I do that. The whole reason I exist, that I'm Colette, not Kal'at Var of Mars, or... the thing I was before then, the reason for that is to /be/ human. If that's undermined, if people stop treating me as human, that's lost."

Carol Danvers has posed:
    "Colette. Your right. Your as human as I am and I don't want people to lose sight of the fact I'm human either." she sips her drink studying Colette again. "Like I told the other you. Your not evil. Your a person. I do trust your intentions." she wiggles her glass at The Meddler "You care too much about people even if it bothers you... and you have a whole lot of human baggage too despite your best attitude to be above it all." yeah she is totally teasing the other woman now.

    "Thanos harnessed Hyperspace energy on Sanctuary II his command ship... figured out a way to channel the deadspace of hyperspace into a tremendous weapon. I won't be fighting him there again that is for sure... and maybe Titan will hold some secrets that will be useful if they fought him in the past."

Colette O'Connail has posed:
    "The old me wasn't 'evil' either. But it's a distinction that might easily be lost on people. Good and evil are kind of relative concepts, Generally when people use the word evil, they mean 'opposed to my belief system'. But I... the oldest part of me was born in a genocidal war. The other side had wiped out an entire sector of space. Thousands of worlds. The side that created me was... desperate. They used magics that a lot of people now would find very disturbing. If I embraced that part of me..."

    Colette sits back with her bottle, lapsing into a few moments of gloomy silence. Eventually she looks up again to Carol. "To become what I am rather than what I was, I locked a lot of what I am away. So that I could grow into it again, in a new form. Make it something new. I want to help you Carol, but I... if I embraced what I was, what I could have been, I could help. But I'd also be something I don't want to be. And I don't think you'd want me to be that either. "

    She lapses into another thoughtful and gloomy silence, before taking another long swig at her bottle, and gesturing to the barkeeper to bring more drinks.

Carol Danvers has posed:
    "Well. I know it isn't an easy statement. What you should do is not do any more than you want or feel comfortable doing. I'm not asking you to go off and punch Thanos or anything Colette." she eyes the wave for more drinks and takes a big drink of her own now since another is already coming. She may have an issue there.

    "I won't conscript or draft people into a war, not the way it should be approached. Especially if it risks their identity or being. So .. seriously don't let anyone pressure you to go faster or harder than you can." she waves her nearly empty glass. "That being said, the fact you want to help but are worried... probably is more telling than anything. Take small steps. Help in small ways. Move at your speed Meddler and don't fear yourself too much. Your heart is in the right place Colette."

Colette O'Connail has posed:
    Colette breaks into a sudden smirk. "It's ironic really, that your nickname for me is 'meddler' and you're trying to tell me it's okay not to meddle. You meddle in galactic affairs. The Titans meddle in criminal matters. And sometimes galactic affairs. I occasionally give a bit of advice to friends. Who's the 'Meddler' here really?"

    She downs the last of her bottle, perhaps mostly to give her a moment to stop smirking. "Honestly, my policy is very much one of light touch. I have different perspectives than people who've only experienced being brought up on Earth. Any meddling I did would be colored by that. A society needs to discover its own way of solving its problems rather than importing one. There is a part of me that thinks that the sensible way to defend a world like Earth would be to follow the model I know works. To encourage Earth to follow the path Mars took. But that was something that arose because of Mars' history. Earth's history is different. It needs to develop its own way. I encouraged the Titans to get back together, because theirs is the kind of environment in which the kind of decisions that will shape a world can be made, and if Earth is going to survive the next few centuries it's going to have to get off it's ass and make those decisions. It would be wrong for me to participate in that decision making process."

    Colette's quick to claim the new bottle when the next round of drinks arrives, and she wets her lips with a small drink before continuing. "My speed is... different. Carol, I've lived, in one form or another, for a very long time." She breaks into another grin. "You're not the only one who's older than she looks, you know. In five hundred years, Humanity will be dead, or these decisions that will shape its future path will have been made. And that will be the ticking of the second hand of a clock to me."

    She takes a longer drink. "And that's another perspective I have on things that I try to keep away from influencing... anything. If Earth is destroyed... how many species have been wiped out during my life time? It would just be one more. I have seen /stars/ be born and die again. That's why I shouldn't try to help /Earth/. I don't fear myself, Carol. But I don't believe I should impose myself on this world I have adopted either. But there's a contradiction. Because I'm that... but I am also this. I am also Colette, who lives here in America in the 21st century, surrounded by people. And that's why... so... I don't want to be helping /Earth/, to be doing the kind of crazy nonsense you get up to. But that doesn't mean I don't want to help /you/."

    She shrugs her shoulders again and takes another drink, speaking a few muffled words around the mouth of the bottle that might be "And those idiots at the Titans like Kian and Vorpal."

Carol Danvers has posed:
    "To be fair I gave you the nickname when I thoght you were a meddling scooby doo-er of a normal person getting in over your head Colette." she smirks. "I know the irony of the bigger picture.. superheros by nature are meddlers. Hopefully to do better."

    "I find it funny .... you live here... your human... you get to make decisions too. Not enforce them... but you are allowed to have an opinion and share your thoughts on why it is a good idea or bad idea." her drink's third replacement is snagged. "Also be careful with that age thing.. though you as far as I can tell I stopped aging when I gained the power cosmic." she muses about that. "Maybe I should be asking you for advice. Not that I plan to stop meddling with the universe and trying to make it better one day at aa time.. but there is a good chance I'll be kicking around in five hundred years. That will be .. strange." she thinks about it for a moment then just shakes her head and takes a deep drink. "Well I appreciate the help. I am sure the Titans do as well Colette."

Colette O'Connail has posed:
    "You've probably noticed I don't shy away from sharing my opinions," Colette says. "Who knows, one day I might meet people smart enough to listen. I'm just being careful."

    She shifts back, lifting one leg back onto the bench besides her, resting the elbow of her bottle-holding arm on the table, and nestling comfortably into the corner of the booth. "I don't think it's very different, living a hundred years or a billion. Time still goes at the same rate. Things still happen one after the other. You don't exist, then you do, and at some point in the future you won't again. Eventually the universe itself will end. Individuals experience more or less of that span of time, but you don't experience individual days any differently for it."

    "On the other hand, things might be different if you're not the only one. I mean if you're still alive in five hundred years, there will be other people around you'll have known most of your life. I'll probably still be around. Some of your Avenger friends will still be around. I don't know what it's like to have known people for that kind of length of time. I've lived a very long time, but the concept of /company/ is something I've only got a few centuries of experience to reflect on, and most of that is just borrowed memories.

    She swings her bottle around to gently chink the base of the bottle against Carol's glass. "Here's to the next five hundred years then. But if you want to survive it, you might want some food to go with all that alcohol. Want to hit a restaurant?"

Carol Danvers has posed:
    "I do listen to you smartass. I'm sure the Titans do too." she laughs though.

    "I imagine Thor may still be around. Some of the mystics. Those sorts. Pretty sure there is an upper limit on the super soldier serums slow down and god knows Tony will probably be a sentient Tony Jarvis AI or something." she shudders. It is mostly good natured.

    "To the next five hundred years." she lifts her third whisky sour of the night then finishes it off. "To food. Now. Thank god I metabolize things really well." she slides back out of the booth to get to her feet. "I know a good schwarma place near here." as she starts to head to the door.