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Former Hyperion Dig Site, the Unexplored Wooded Area, Tuesday Morning

Jeff, followed by any of the researchers who were crazy enough to go out and brave the dinosaurs and trolls with him, edged up to the clearing in the woods cautiously. There, sitting on top of the bare dirt where the hole had been refilled, was the weather machine. It didn't look all that broken from here.

"Hang on, I'm going to scan it for radiation," Jeff said. He stretched out his hand and a solid glow surrounded it as his omnitool went into action. He tapped a few things and a three-dimensional image of the weather machine appeared in the air over his wrist, annotated with a few numbers.

"Let's see, I've got the distance from us to it, its length and width, and... not much else." He tapped a few more things. "Hang on, I've got its temperature -- that's at least something... No, never mind, that's today's weather report."

He looked around at everyone else. "So... Anyone got any hi-tech equipment that's actually useful? If not, I'm gonna go ahead with the stick-poking."

[Open for those who followed]

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Yeah, like Elsa was going to sit this one out. She was standing back with her arms crossed over her chest and a grim expression on her face. There were things running around out here, and yes, she was well aware that people were going to insist that she stay in where it was safe while all of that mess was going on in town... but that really wasn't her style.

"I'm really not standing in camp poke-with-a-stick," she noted, "but if that's the best that can be done with it..."

Maybe it would go better than poking it with her finger had gone yesterday? Maybe?

Edited 2014-03-25 18:23 (UTC)

"It's a figure of speech," Jeff insisted. "It's just, you know, in movies or whatever, when a something strange and mysterious is found by a primitive culture, they tend to stand around grunting at each other until one of 'em works up the courage to poke it with a stick. I wasn't going to actually..."

Ignore the fact that he was, in fact, crouching down to find a suitable stick.

Elsa watched him rummage around for a moment, one eyebrow raised.

"You're looking for a literal stick, aren't you?"

There was a moment's pause, and then she was holding out a surprisingly sturdy length of ice that might, in fact, have somewhat resembled a stick.

... Were it not ice.

"Will this do?"

Where did she get it? Who knows!

"No, I'm not. Well, okay, maybe, but only because it makes sense to push the buttons on the thing from as far away as...." Jeff looked at the ice-stick. "Uh."

He took it, and tried not to show on his face how much the cold ice was stinging his hand. "Uh, thanks." He blinked at it a bit more, and the raised an eyebrow at Elsa. "Is this you?" he asked. "I mean, did you...?"

Elsa just gave Joker a little grin at that, something a little playful and altogether more relaxed than she generally was.

Why wouldn't she be? It wasn't like she had any reason to be afraid, or anything.

"I'm sorry, did you want a different stick? Is my ice stick not up to a certain stick-standard?"

Jeff looked at her, looked at the ice stick, and grinned the wicked grin of someone ready to get this party STARTED. "How much ice you got? Think you could freeze solid a charging dino?"

Edited 2014-03-26 01:55 (UTC)

"Only one?" Elsa laughed a little, shaking her head. "I'm pretty sure I could handle an entire herd."

They did travel in herds, right? He had likened the plant eating ones to reindeer, it only made sense.

"We'll be safe. I made a promise, didn't I?"

"Damn." Jeff looked her over appreciatively, smiling. "This? Is so not something to hide. Any baddies come at us, you just... let it go, 'kay?"

"Just stay behind me if they do," Elsa replied, wondering when hiding had ever been a concern. "I don't know what might happen if somebody gets in the way, but I would really rather never find out."

Celia was exhausted and terrified, but she was here all the same, her skirt dragging in the mud carelessly. On the way here, she'd already accidentally thrown a park bench at a great scaly beast (a dinosaur?) without meaning to -- she'd been a bit startled, all right? -- but for once she didn't feel bad about the use of her powers. For once, it had seemed right -- beneficial, even -- to use them, however unconsciously.

"You know me," she offered in response to the question, crossing her arms around herself. "Luddite to the very last, so...poke it with a stick. Unless you want someone to poke it with a stick without actually touching the stick, which I could...try."

[i'm on super-sp until i'm home around like, 8 EST, sorry.]

"Thanks for the offer," Jeff told her, "but that sounds like it might take a lot of concentration. You need to be watching out for dinosaurs and Vikings and tr--" -- he looked over at Elsa -- "...And monsters-that-are-not-trolls. If anything looks scary, hit it with a rock."

Jeff crept toward the machine, clutching Elsa's ice stick and trying to ignore the flickers of battle around the edges of his vision.

"Wow, these people never heard of user interface design, did they?" he asked, once he got a good look at the controls. "I mean, some decent labels, even, would be really nice."

Well, some things were universal, right? There was one button that could only really be the power button. Probably.

"I think I found the off switch," he called to his companions. "I'm gonna press it."

He reached out the ice stick and pressed the button with it. For a moment nothing happened, and then suddenly Jeff was in the middle of the fight that had taken place here. Or maybe it was just an illusion? Regardless, there were shots being fired all around, and a large metal foot from one of the construction workers coming down right on his head. Jeff cringed, curling up on the ground, and whimpered.

The vision passed, and he looked around warily. "I don't think I want to be a soldier anymore."

"They're just images," Elsa offered, making her way over once the visions had cleared. "Echoes of something that's been gone for months and months, now."

She offered him her hand.

"Are you okay? They're harmless, but they're no less terrifying for it."

Jeff took her hand and scrambled to his feet. "Yeah, I knew that. I totally knew that. And I wasn't just crying like a little girl -- if you saw anything like that, that was also an illusion." Boy, did he feel stupid. He brushed some of the dirt off his clothes and looked at the weather machine. "Soooo... that wasn't the off button, then. Damn thing needs a manual."

"If it makes you feel any better at all, I fell flat on my bottom yesterday, too."

In fact, she'd slipped on her own ice, which really was a measure of how much the whole mess had startled her. She had far better control over her powers than that. She'd had that control for years.

"I didn't even touch anything that looked remotely like a button." She pointed at the perfectly smooth part of the machine that her fingers had brushed against yesterday, though she didn't dare repeat the experience. "Right there. That was all it took."

"Well, it wasn't so much the falling down that I feel bad about, but we'll pretend it was. Yes, I feel better."

He peered at the spot on the machine she indicated. "Hmmm. And I didn't actually touch it -- I just used the ice stick. So maybe it's more of a 'getting too close' that's bad?"

"Or just disturbing it at all," Elsa offered. "We could back away and throw a snowball at it from a distance, if we want to test that theory. That way, if something happens directly around it again, nobody has to be caught in it."

Nobody had to cower on the ground and lose all inclination they ever had to become a soldier, for example.

"I... think we're good," Jeff told her. "No reason to provoke it any more than we have to. The question is, is this something where we have to put the machine in reverse in order to fix everything, or do we just have to shut it off? 'Cause if it's the latter, all we need to do is smash it to pieces, but if it's the former, then smashing it dooms us all."

"Not exactly something we want to take a gamble on," Elsa allowed with a little frown. "Back to the library, then? Maybe with some luck we'll find out a little more about this thing."

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Former Hyperion Dig Site, the Unexplored Wooded Area, Tuesday Morning

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