Owner Pose
America Chavez     America was a busy body when it came to the hazards of dimensional disturbances. So the issue with Troia's emergence and Donna's disappearance was pretty high on her list of priorities these days. She decides to take a proper approach at the situation and arrives as usual, by opening a star portal in the main room of Titan's Tower. The five pointed star of golden light rips through reality and the woman emerges as usual with red high tops, black leggings, a loose crop top shirt and her signature star-spangled denim jacket.

    She waves a hand behind her dispersing the star portal and rolls her shoulders. "I really ought to look into finding a new place to stay. The Starling Highway isn't the most hospitable of places and sooner or later someone is going to think I'm some sort of dimsnional transient. Can't have that... I've got an image to protect, after all."

    She peers around the main room, taking in what scenery she's getting a view of today: is it The Tower or is it an overlay of this New Kronos planet she heard about last time?
Donna Troy     It should be clear to America where she's going to end up. She's /good/ at this. While punching holes in reality might sound to the uninitiated to be a primitive sort of way to negotiate paths between realities, it comes associated with what could be described as an excellent sense of direction.

    In short, she knows where she's punching.

    She shouldn't have any difficulty figuring out whether she's about to arrive in the main room of Titans Tower or the place that sometimes seems to replace it that has been named New Kronos. Yet for some reason she does.

    The star portal should have taken her to the main room of Titans Tower, but again she seems to have arrived at this strange parallel to that place. It's superficially similar in layout, approximately the same shape, with staircases where staircases are, windows where windows are, something vaguely screen-like where the giant screen should be, and a curved row of stone thrones that closely matches the curved sofa that normally dominates the Titan's main room.

    It's an oddity that the main room of Titans Tower and the main room of the palace of the Titans of myth should appear so similar; perhaps someone has a theory why, but if so it has yet to be voiced.

    For the moment, America has the place to herself. How long that will last is anyone's guess -- members of the team living at the Tower have a tendency to wander into here fairly regularly, sometimes on purpose, and sometimes in the hope they will find the /normal/ main room of the Tower, perhaps in the hopes of reaching the fridge. Of course there's also Troia, who tends to turn up fairly quickly if anyone else appears here.
Irie West     Irie pops in through one of the corridors leading off from the main hall. She blinks as she finds herself in the wrong one since she was hoping to raid the fridge for an evening snack. "Shoot!" She disappears and almost immediately appears from a /different/ opening. "Dangit!" Disappearing from that one she comes down from one of the stairways and stop, stomping her foot in frustration. "Gosh DARNIT!" Looks like no snackies for Irie.

    She stomps her way down the stairs until she's in the main room proper and throws herself onto one of the stone benches with a huff. "Hi, America," she says, sounding put off. Not by America's presence, but just being in the wrong Main Tower Room.
America Chavez     "New Kronos again..." America says smiling as Irie flops down on a stone bench. "Heya, Irie, nice to see you again. Sorry you can't raid the fridge this time around." She strolls around and takes note of the variations to the throne room. "It's so weird that it's trying to adjust to the layout of the Tower's mainroom."

    She pauses and makes a face. "Or maybe not so weird... I mean, if Donna had a say in they layout of the main room and Troia -is- Donna, Then their interior decorating ideas are probably pretty similar. Speaking of..."

    She places her hands on the back of the stone bench Irie is seated on. "Troia? You around?" she calls. "I was wondering if I could... well... take a look at you and ask a few questions if it's not too much trouble. This whole dimensional business is sort of my schtick after all."
Donna Troy     I'm always around.

    The voice is Donna's, though the accent isn't quite, and Donna doesn't normally speak with that strange resonance that gives the sound the impression it's echoing without an echo, that it is filling a space larger than the space it is heard within.

    Normally she's actually physically present when she speaks too.

    That omission is corrected a few moments after the words, when Troia seems to simply fade into existence, standing by the curved seats. She blinks a few times at the sight of Irie, sitting in one of them. Her eyes flicker to the side, and her head follows momentarily before looking back. "That was Hyperion's seat," she says.

    The first time Troia had put in an appearance, Gar had been occupying one of the seats and Troia had lifted him out of the seat and placed him on the ground in some magical fashion, apparently objecting to a mortal occupying a throne of a god. Perhaps there is a moment when she considers doing the same with Irie, but instead she sits down a few seats away, in her accustomed position, and doesn't seem to be about to admonish Irie for blasphemy or anything similar.

    She turns her gaze on America. "You all seem quite convinced that this is a matter of dimensional differences," she says. "I am less than convinced of that. But I will admit that this is all unclear to me to. I will do my best to answer your questions, but I cannot promise I have the answers."
Irie West     Irie meets Troia's gaze for a moment and looks like she's about to get up, but when it's obvious the demigod isn't about to unseat her she relaxes a bit. "Hi, Troia," she says delicately, as if her very words could rend her apart. It's been obvious that for the past week or so, since this began, that Irie has been avoiding New Kronos and Troia as much as possible, but if anybody ever asked her about it she would have just shaken her head and changed the subject.

    Now the fates seem to have conspired against her and forced her to be in the same room. Well. Not really forced. She /can/ leave, after all, but it seems like now is the time to talk to her. "I..." she hesitates. It's like she /wants/ to say something, but something is holding her back. "Yeah. Dimensional differences."
America Chavez     America looks between Irie and Troia. "Chica... relax. If she was going to make a fuss over you sitting on a bench slash throne she would've done it..." She peers at the Troia a little closer. "It's gotta be dimensional or something -much- worse is going on than anyone is thinking about. Starlings" she hooks a thumb at herself, the action showing off one of the star-shaped tattoes on the inside of her wrist, "get where they want to go without error. And I wanted to get to the Main Room of Titan's Tower and I ended up..." She gestures. "Here. Which means either you're a hell of lot bigger in the dimensional department than I am--which is possible. I mean, you're a literal legendary Titan so..." she shrugs. "Or something has made the location of New Kronos decide to have the same dimensional coordinates as the main room of Titan's Tower."

    "Either way... it's dimensional." She looks at the portal to Wonderland. "Not to mention that whole thing there..." she says, nodding to it. "I don't doubt you're this universe's Donna Troy slash Troia now. But I know for a -fact- that there was a different one before. So... swapped places, you overlayed her resonance. Something is going on. And... another thing of what I can do is... maybe get a sense of it by focusing on you. Deminsional GPS is only one of the perks that comes with what I am."
Donna Troy     "Oh not l'm not a legendary Titan," Troia disagrees, a look of discomfort crossing her features for a moment. "The Titans passed from memory to legend a long, long time before I was born."

    Her eyes flicker sideways to Irie for a moment before returning to America. "It's a very /vague/ word, 'dimension'." She gestures at the portal to Wonderland. "Is that a different 'dimension' than the one on which Earth can be found? There is no purely spatial connection between the two worlds if you are limited to the kind of movement that most mortals are limited to, and on that basis they could be said to be different dimensions. On the other hand they are not parallel; they both exist within the same parallel."

    "As far as I can tell, where you come from is in the same physical universe as the place you now stand. I believe that were I to give you a travel-sphere, it could take you from here to Earth without crossing any barriers. It could take you to the building you left when you came here. And you could traverse the labyrinth and return here again. "

    She gives a small shrug. "There is an in-folding in reality. A warping of what is into a labyrinth of possibility. Why? How? I do not know." Her eyes flicker towards Irie again. "I find the whole matter as confusing as you do. Perhaps more so. I see a lot. I have... I can sense things. I don't really understand them though. I don't have the experience to do so. I am the daughter of Phoebe Khrysostephanos, of golden-crowned Phoebe. From her I have inherited a part of Gaea's Truth. Yet it does me little good. I am a very /young/ immortal. And right now I am a very /confused/ immortal."

    She falls silent for a few moments, then turns more fully to Irie. "Something is causing you worry. Is it about Donna?" she tilts her head questioningly to the side. "People keep asking me about her. I... don't have answers."
Irie West     "That's because..." Irie begins and stops short, wincing. She starts to fidget in her seat the same way that she does whenever something comes up about her past... today's present.... that she's not supposed to say anything about. It's quite a tell.

    "I just..." she begins again, and shakes her head and runs her fingers through her coppery hair. "I know what's going on," she says. "This is the first Big Thing that I know the details about but can't do anything about." She looks between Troia and America helplessly. "I can't say anything other than things will turn out /okay/ and will /make sense/."

    "I just wish I could say more..." she says, softer.
America Chavez     America gives Irie a frown. The girl's connection to things is... complciated at best but not the reasons she's here. She moves around to stand in front of Troia and just looks at the woman for a bit. She can see errors. But... not as significant as she would've thought. "Hmm..." she says looking away (NOT AT THE WONDERLAND PORTAL) and tries to get a handle on what she's seeing. "I... that's... weird. First of all, yes Wonderland is another dimension in so far as getting there by means other than portals is pretty nonexistent. But I can cross dimsions regardless of space and sometimes time."

    "You're... not wrong. There is an overlay. What's going on is... this room and Titan's Tower are literally the same place right now. Which is the same for you. You and Donna are the same thing right now. Why you don't have her memories since this room is adapting just fine to being two rooms at once is a mystery to me but..." She smiles. "Figuring that one out is pretty easy."

    She moves away a bit. "I'd almost chock it up to mass hysteria and you've been Donna this whole damn time but..." she shakes her head. "Something is definitely wrong and something is definitely tampering with the fabric of reality. Whoever it is, is damn good and that's concerning. Because masking something this complex..." She shakes her head again and balls a hand into a fist, her knuckles cracking audibly. "I don't like it one bit."
Donna Troy     Troia's reaction to Irie's revelation is very much what DOnna's reaction would be -- a look of sympathy -- just without the instinctive offer to try to cheer Irie up with ice cream. "You are displaced in time," she says with a slight smile. "Interesting. We are both able to see the future, but you see it in memory and I see it in oracular revelation. Yours is certainly the clearer and more understandable way to see it." She leans closer to Irie. "This is a great secret... don't tell anyone. But the truth is, oracles aren't just confusing because they like to be annoying. Oracular truths just /are/ confusing, as much to the oracle as they are to the supplicant. Apollo was notorious for telling those who consulted the Oracle at Delphi truths so confusing they would never benefit from the revelation. The truth is he must have been as confused by it as they were, and I'm sure the words the priestesses of the Delphi revealed were as clear as he was able to manage. "

    Her smile widens a little and she sits back in her seat, giving Irie a quick wink, before turning back to America.

    "I have been shown a photo of Donna. She certainly looks like me. And she is a member of a group of people who have called themselves 'The Titans'. And apparently her real name is 'Troia' too. It would be foolish to believe that this is coincidence. I suspect that the synchronicity between myself and this other Troia was sufficient to create a resonance within the... uh... the substrate of the universe. Something or someone has perhaps utilized that resonance to create the labyrinth, folding aspects of the universe along the lines of that resonance. Finding a connection of that kind would be a way for someone attempting to manipulate reality to create a far subtler manipulation than could be achieved without such a natural resonance."
Irie West     Irie gives Troia a warm smile. She was so worried that Troia would be different from Donna, but, no, they're practically the same person. Just... a little different. That's good.

    "I've been doing a lot of research on time travel," she says. "Not just looking for ways to get back, but to kinda get an impression of how much wiggle room I have to keep my future intact."

    She shakes her head and puffs out her cheeks. "I know it's cliche to say this, but time is a little bit wibbly. The future isn't always set in stone, which is why the Oracles are so confusing. Which is why it's important for me to not do anything to the timeline. It makes logical sense. If the future isn't set in stone, then that means some futures pasts were some pasts futures, which means that the /present/ isn't written in stone, too. The past either. It's all a little wibbly, which gives you... me... a little wiggle room to act."
America Chavez     "I expect that if you did anything to augment the timeline here you'd just spin out another universe with your actions in order to keep things intact" America replies to Irie with a shrug. "But it's probably best not to test it." She frowns again at Troia. "Whoever is able to do that is an issue... and given enough time I might be able to find them just as well as I could find this place."

    She frowns. "I'm just worried that whatever they've done won't have greater consequences than a displaced overlapping Troia and a displaced overlapping Main Room." She starts to pace. "It's the localization that bothers me the most..." she mutters, mostly to herself as she contemplates next steps for her and for others.
Donna Troy     "The loom of the Moirai cannot be rewoven. Once Atrapos has cut a thread, it remains cut," Troia says. "But if you travel back along the stitching to a point before the thread has been measured and cut, do you compel Lachesis to measure the same length? Do you compel Atropos to cut at the same point? None can compel the Moirai."

    Troia shifts her gaze from Irie to America and back to Irie. "The oracles are confusing, because they see the pattern of warp and weft, and they see in that the plans of the weavers - but they do not see completed weaving. An oracle can reveal what is True, and what will be true. But understanding how that pattern makes the worlds, that is beyond any but the Three themselves. The greatest danger of seeing the future, whether you see it in patterns and forms, or if you see it in memory, is that you cannot know how the threads are wound, and you cannot know the consequences of your own knowledge."

    "When I was born, Lachesis spoke words of prophecy that spoke of my future, and the future of the Titans. In hopes of saving themselves, the Titans were guided by that prophecy to their doom." She sighs and lowers her eyes. "Perhaps it is always better to just let things play out as they must, and not try to alter what you believe to be the future. I wonder if trying to do so is itself a hubris the universe demands must be paid for. "
Irie West     "If I haven't already," mumbles Irie. Louder she says, "I wish I could tell what effect I'm having on the timeline. /If/ I'm even on the same timeline." She shakes her head, "It's even possible that /this/ timeline doesn't even lead to /my/ future."

    A small, pained whine escapes Irie as Troia and America keep talking. "I can't..." She suddenly stands up. "I have to go before I say something I shouldn't. Just..." she doesn't know what else she can safely say. "Time is wibbly. We're living in a wibbly moment." She looks desperately between the two, then disappears out of the room in a flash of red.
America Chavez     America opens her mouth to try and reassure Irie but the girl is gone before she gets a chance. She frowns after her for a moment and then looks to Troia. "If only 'letting things play out' was as easy to do with your situation" she says. "But I've gotta figure out how to fix it because like I said... it's shouldn't be this local. It's going to have ripples and those effects will probably be worse than just a simple overlay of two separate individuals."

    "But seeming as it hasn't been done," she steps forward and offers a hand to Troia. "In case it hasn't bee abundantly clear, my name is America Chavez and I'm from another dimension. It's nice to meet you, Troia and I look forward to working with you and the rest of the team in getting to the bottom of this... or if it's a labyrith... the middle, I guess."
Donna Troy     Troia watches Irie leave with a troubled expression. For a moment it looks like she's going to get up and go after Irie -- she starts to rise from her seat, but quickly settles back down again, blinking. She turns to America with a frown. "She's upset. Someone should... She's very young. Things..." She stops herself with a deep breath, half sigh.

    "My presence is hard on you people," she says. "Perhaps it would be easier if I wasn't here. But for me to simply go would not solve your problems. "

    She nods her head and takes America's hand, shaking it with a smile that looks slightly forced. "It is nice to meet you too, America. And... all of you. But that too troubles me. I tell myself I should stay and try to solve this problem for you. Locate your missing friend who's fate seems so wound up in my own. But perhaps I am just telling myself this because I don't... because I want to think that is true. I must admit there is something almost comforting in this."
America Chavez     "That's the rub of it all, really" America says moving forward and then gesturing to the bench. "May I?" she asks politely enough. Once given leave, she settles down on the bench and crosses one leg over the other. "You leaving wouldn't fix anything and you sticking around might not either. It could be that you are 'our Donna.' The universe seems to think so at the very least."

    "The Titans are a good bunch, but Donna was important to a lot of them... and she moved a lot of people. Maybe in the end you two will merge and you can be the same person." She frowns. "I don't think it'll be that simple, it never is." She eyes the woman for a moment. "But, you sticking around is a good show of faith, since it's what she would do were the situation reversed. I just wish we could provide you with answers as well." Her face scrunches into a frown. "Seems a bit lopsided to ask all these things of you and not give you anything in return."
Donna Troy     There is a moment's hesitation before the nod of agreement comes, but Troia does give the nod. "Perhaps it doesn't matter who sits there now," she says. "It... the rightful owner of that seat is gone. I have to accept that."

    She gazes off into the distance, looking at nothing. "That's what I meant by this resonance. Where there is sufficient synchronicity, it is easy for one thing to slot into the place the universe has allocated for another thing. I have wondered if it's all just a matter of perception. Perhaps, because of this infolding of potentialities, your friend Donna walks the halls of New Kronos alone, seeing nobody there, unseen even by me. Perhaps we are separated by a skein of tangled reality. "

    She nods her head in the direction of the portal to Wonderland. "When I asked the oracle within me, I knew that it has something to do with... with that. The Crown and Scepter. They are connected to what has happened. They should be returned to their owner, the Dreamer of Wonderland. But I do not believe that in itself will be enough to unthread this Labyrinth. Something else is involved too, something that is hidden from me. The words vouchsafed me by Gaia's Truth spoke of an unhappiness to be embraced. I do not know what that means, but there is a possibility... it may be me. Perhaps... perhaps I am wrong to stay here. Perhaps I am trying to avoid fixing this, because it is a... distraction."
America Chavez     America frowns. "You're home... this New Kronos... are you... the only one there?" she asks sounding concerned. "I mean... hmm... The Dreamer of Wonderland... Alice? Like... that's what the story is... Alice dreamed up all of that world. I don't know if that's the case with the reality of it though. Carroll was sort of putting his own OC--or well his memory of a little girl--into the story of that world."

    She sighs and uncrosses her legs and pushes herself to her feet. "Look, whatever is supposed to happen will happen and we'll get it fixed, because it needs to be fixed. But... I don't know if shoving you back on this planet all alone is the right way for it to go. It rubs me the wrong way. I hope..." she gives the Oracle a frown, "I hope that we can find a solution that ends well for both sides. Yours and Donna's."

    "I should be looking for a place to stay long term since this seems like it might take a while" she moves a bit away and casually kicks the air. A star shaped portal of silver-blue light appears in the place she kicked, as reality just gives way under her strike. She sets one foot inside the portal and turns to Troia. "I'll be in touch okay? And I give you my word, I'm going to do everything I can to see that this ends well for -all- parties involved."
Donna Troy     "I'm the last Titan," Troia responds, her voice flat. "They are all gone, because of me. New Kronos is a mausoleum. I cannot replace them, and in time this demesne will simply fade and be forgotten, absorbed back into the Source-of-All from which its power ultimately comes. "

    She shakes her head quickly, obviously not wanting to dwell on the topic. "No. I don't know a whole lot about Wonderland. But it is a region where things are very... pliable. The Dreamer is the Red King -- any Wonderlander will tell you this. He is sort of their god. The one thing all Wonderlanders fear is the Red King waking up, but that will probably never happen. Without his crown and scepter though -- what differentiates Wonderland from the realms around it will be weakened."

    She nods her head to America in farewell, looking distracted. "You have a room in th..." she starts to say, before cutting herself off with a frown. "The Tower... Caitlin Fairchild spoke of providing rooms for people who were uh... displaced, by all of this. If you speak to her I am sure she will be able to arrange something."