[ open ]

[brisance]

Who| Agent Carolina & Agent North, Agent Connecticut, Theta, and open to others
What| Arrival/recovery/training
Where| The medbay, and then the training rooms.
When| After “The Reject Pile” and “An Eye for an Eye”
Warnings/Notes| to be added

[ CLOSED TO THETA AND NORTH ]

It had been a hell of an arrival. She’d just wanted a moment to catch her breath, to gather her strength so they could get the hell out of that hell hole of a base, only she didn’t have the chance. She’d arrived with warnings flashing on her HUD, unable to really comprehend what was knocking her out before she was knocked out.

And then, waking up in this medical ward. They’d at least answered her questions as soon as she started demanding answers. Shvaughn is quick to appear, to explain what’s going on. Carolina might be dehydrated and hurting, but she takes advantage of someone willingly answering questions to keep asking them.

And when she’s done, and rests, the next time she wakes up, Brande is there. Even though she’s not done recuperating, she’s quick to agree to become a Legionnaire. Even with everything going back home - but Shvaughn had assured her they wouldn’t be in danger.

Which is what leads to this - her having the ring nearby her hospital bed, turning over the omnicom in her hand. She’s still relegated to bed rest, and she thinks she’ll catch up on any information she can get a hold of, while she’s figuring out what the hell kind of outfit she’s going to have.

Unbeknownst to her, though, agreeing means she’s registered - means she pops up in a scannable database.

[ CLOSED TO CONNIE ]

Carolina’s been in the recovery wing for another day when they bring someone else new in. She’s looking at the omnicom when they bring her in, and so she misses it at first, until she hears the voice of a nurse checking her over. It’s the name that catches her.

That drags her gaze away, locking on the other hospital bed. That’s someone she didn’t quite realize was here, the literal definition of seeing is believing.

“CT?”

[ HOSPITAL (OPEN) ]

Carolina will be in the hospital for a few days, from her arrival to her release. She’ll easily accept visitors… no matter who they are, or why they’re coming by.

[ TRAINING GYM (OPEN) ]

She knows she’s developed powers - discovered the use of some of them in the hospital. Accidentally phasing through her bed had been one of them, and they’d been lucky she hadn’t ended up with a metal wheel through her body before she phased back.

She’s been having training lessons, but even though she was stuck for days on end in her own armor - she’s not going to take it easy. Even though she’s only cleared for light duty and training, here she is in the training gym.

She might be spending some time kicking and boxing a punching bag - but she’s also stopping to test out her new powers. She’ll move forward to move through the punching bag, or give it a hard hit and then brace herself against it coming back, seemingly becoming as hard as rock given that it bounces back without her giving an inch.

Comments

Training Gym

[hallaifyouherd]

She comes here often enough, these days. And if the recent battle has taught her anything, she could stand some improvement. Letting her staff get away from her like that...

Having one arm is no excuse. Now, perhaps, is the time to set pride aside and see about having it replaced. Others have done similarly. There's no reason why not. But pride wants to see her learn to wield it perfectly without it, first.

So she arrives, and sees someone already making use of the facilities. Marjara stands watch for a moment, watching as the woman tests her powers. A newcomer. Must be. They all have that look about them, when they have these gifts for the first time.

[brisance]

Carolina can't argue that comparison - this is all new to her. The space part not so much, but the powers? It couldn't even be powers similar to things she's used before. No shield, no speed - no, she has the ability to pass through things and stop them. At least, so far as she's discovered.

Case in point - she's discovered she can stay intangible, but as soon as she wonders how she's still walking she starts sinking through the floor. And as soon as she realizes that she pulls herself back, turning solid and falling backwards onto her ass.

She gives an annoyed huff, resting her arms on her knees and then looking up at the woman watching her.

"...Hi?" Her tone seems to ask why she's watching her.

[hallaifyouherd]

Ah. Well that's one way of testing things. At least with her powers nothing will be set aflame in the testing of it. She offers a small smile as she makes her way forward, bare feet padding against the floor.

"It wasn't my intention to disturb you," she offers in return. "It all must seem rather strange at the start. Finding your feet."

And she offers her a hand up, with the one hand she does have.

[brisance]

There's a part of Carolina that bristles, assumes that she's being patronized somehow by the woman's words... but it's a momentary thing, something that passes quickly. People here aren't here to compete, they're here to help. Saving the galaxy from evil.

So she reaches up, taking the hand and pulling herself up - and then having to look down at the smaller woman.

"It's definitely taking some getting used to," Carolina acknowledges after a moment. She takes the moment to really look her over - the arm, the ears - before accepting it as somehow alien. "Don't have anything like this back home."

hospital

[whyarewehere]

It's a good day to be Grif, mostly because he managed to squirm his way out of his monitor duty shift and has been free to do nothing and work on some training while no one's looking. He notices the new name on the comm's roster, but it still takes him an hour or two to actually bother looking at it.

Huh. That's Carolina, isn't it? He can't even be surprised.

He's... not sure how he feels about this, honestly. Is he mad at Carolina? Yeah, he supposes, just like he's mad at Tucker and he was mad at Wash. He probably shouldn't even go. What good is a monitor duty shift you traded out of if you waste it pissing yourself off? (And someone else, sure, but Grif knows what matters here.)

Why is she still in medical, though? Most new Legionnaires are over the shock of Phelolu pretty quickly, unless they come in with something preexisting and serious.

Something must have happened.

It's not that Grif cares about if something bad happened to her, he's very firm on that thought. ...But maybe he should at least go see?

For curiosity's sake?

Yeah.

"...Hey," is the greeting she gets when she elects to let him through, and maybe that's the first admission of weakness giving a shit. No quippy potshots, just hey.

Grif's uniform doesn't include his armor, it doesn't play well with his powerset, but the suit's bold, geometric black-and-orange appears to have been an homage. The voice is right. The seldom-seen face is right.

this is an email tag, so apologies

[brisance]

It does take her a long moment when Grif's request pops up. She knows he came to help them, but he also chose to stay behind to begin with.

And yet... she's not as irritated as she was. She gets it, in a way. They do keep getting dragged into Freelancer problems that aren't actually their problems.

In the end, that he's visiting at all is what gets her to approve the request. He's He'd alone, which is more the novelty too.

"Hey," She replies in kind, sitting up a little. She's still connected to a bag of saline to help her rehydrate, and the very light amount of food they gave her is still only picked over at.

She gives his suit a once over, quirking her lips up, but she's quiet. Awkward silence, anyone?

[whyarewehere]

Now Grif's here, he has to say something. It turns out that's even harder than showing up in the first place. What can he say that isn't just going to sound stupid? 'Hey Carolina, sorry about before, turns out I actually just have a lot of feelings'?

Jesus, he doesn't even know when Carolina's from. This is only the second time he's had to figure out The Time Thing™ with someone he actually knows from home. Wash and Locus had been complete strangers when they met here, they don't count. It's just been Tucker.

And if Grif's current footing with Tucker is anything to judge by, this is going to go great.

Fuck, why did he come down here at all?

"What happened to you, they leave you out on Phelolu too long?"

Apparently that's where he's going with this for starters. Good job, Grif.

[brisance]

"I can see why you'd think that, but I suspect they have a handle on treating that now," Carolina tells him with a very dry tone. She's still looking him over before she lets her head fall back against the pillows.

"Just the kind of thing that comes as a result of being locked in a maniac's basement for a few days," she elaborates after a moment. "Looks like you've had more time to get adjusted than I have."

[nofortunateson]

[Theta's picked up a few things from North, and one of them is the comfort of going back to usual routines after a stressful event. He's also picked up the habit of trying to look after people, which is why he runs regular scans of the new arrivals, checking to see if South is back. He knows that North misses her, and if she shows up again, he'll want to be the first one to know.

He doesn't spot South, this time through the roster. But he does recognize one of the faces, even years older than he'd last seen it, and lights up with a sudden happiness that he doesn't question the reason of when he puts together who's joined them now. A quick few pings across the network to Eta and Iota come back empty - which is weird, he'd have thought they'd hook up to the local datastreams as soon as possible - but he doesn't waste time trying to dig deeper into that before going for the agent herself, sending a hail to her omnicomm that comes through as a familiar brightly-colored, faintly bouncing hologram of an armored figure.]

Wow, Agent Carolina, hi! It's me, Theta! Agent North's AI!

[brisance]

[ carolina's barely scraped the surface of the omnicom and what it can do before the hologram pops up. she almost drops it when she does see theta, not out of fear but surprise.

theta. theta's here, which means - what, exactly? that north is here as well? they said there'd been all kinds of people from different universes and times, but what were the odds?

there's also a small part of her that can't help but think of epsilon, and his fondness for his own version of theta. ]

Theta, hey. [ it comes after too long of a period of her staring at him, disbelief painted clearly on her face. ] I'm sorry, I... didn't know you were here.

[nofortunateson]

[Theta thinks maybe she doesn't remember him. She doesn't look a lot older, but it looks like it's been a little while. Maybe. Faces and aging aren't really in his skillset beyond his base programming. But no, she looks like she recognizes him. Just like she's confused.]

It's okay. North and I were really surprised to find other members of Project Freelancer here too. [He hesitates, used to Carolina being more direct, nearly unshakable from what he'd seen of her.] Um. Is it okay if I tell him you're here?

[brisance]

[ north is here too. she should have expected as much - she's not sure theta would have contacted her if north wasn't here, and she lets her head fall back against the pillow. she still looks a little disbelieving but she takes a deep breath. ]

Yes, it's okay, Theta. Can you tell me who else is here from Freelancer, too?

[ an easy question to ask, and more confidence in her voice when she does ask. she has the omnicom cupped in her hands, though, looking down at the little projection of the ai. ]

Training Gym

[truefaceofthelaw]

Rico makes it a point to go to the training gym regularly. He gets impatient sitting still for too long, and it's a safer way of letting off steam that won't get him reprimanded again. But this time he finds somebody not only already there, but also using his punching bag. He stands for a while, arms crossed, watching her fist phase through it.

He'd been trying to control his own intangibility since he'd discovered it, but it didn't come very easily, and not always when he'd called. But the woman in front of him seems to have a finer control over her powers than him, and while he doesn't march up to her, he doesn't like the idea that she might know something about her powers he doesn't. So when he finally speaks up, his voice is a low, brusque impatience masked by casual conversation.

"How are you doing that?"

yells its rico

[brisance]

She's trying to get the hang of even using her powers period. It's the same power, just with opposite effects - at least, that's how her trainer had explained it to her. Considering she's almost fallen through the floor a few times, though, she's more focused on getting the intangibility together first.

She knows someone is watching, but - she's stubborn. She's not moving from this punching bag for now.

The marching up, though, gets her surprised. She gets solid again, puts out a hand to stop the swing of the bag and looks at him with a faint expression of confusion.

"I'm focusing on it?" She says after a moment, quirking an eyebrow up.

[truefaceofthelaw]

Rico stares at her and makes a sound of disapproval, like it's the most inane answer to a question he's ever been given.

"That's a drokking given. What I mean is, what else are you doing?" he demands. Because he's been focusing plenty, and the implication that he hasn't while she somehow has is patronizing and insulting. He's on the verge of putting in the addendum you stupid simphead, but then pauses and reigns it in a bit. That would probably lead to a fight, and wouldn't give him any helpful answers other than how he'd match up. And that's something his confidence already knows.

"That can't be all to it," he elaborates grudgingly, tapping his hip.

[brisance]

The demand only gets her looking at him with narrowed eyes - but when he elaborates, she can feel a little bit of sympathy for the frustration. It's not a frustration she's sharing at the moment, but she's felt it before.

"... I'm still learning how to use it," she tells him by way of explanation. "So far, it really has just been thinking on to make it do what I want. Or not thinking about it, in the case of 'why am I not falling through the floor'," she continues.

"It's kind of like touching a switch in my brain," she shrugs.

Training Gym

[captainbuzzkill]

A kid walks into the gym like it's perfectly normal for him to be there. He's wearing a work out outfit just like other people in the gym are, one of the official training uniforms, with a Legion logo on it, which communicates pretty clearly that he's a Legionnaire. He's got a flight ring, too.

He's easy to miss at first. He walks in pretty quietly.

His workout routine is usually a light one. The Legion's fitness trainers have made it very clear that due to his age and size, there's really only so much muscle his frame can carry, so most of his exercises are in the vein of a school fitness test. Pull ups (that he's still very bad at, but he can do a few now), sit-ups (he's much better at those), push-ups (terrible, curse his noodle arms), that sort of thing.

He starts with the sit ups today, using a sit up bench to even do them slightly inverted. As he comes up for one of the sit-ups, he notices the new lady, and her phasing powers, and decides to say hello.

"'Sup," he says, and then falls back again.

"Cool power," he says on the next sit up, and then falls back again.

[brisance]

Carolina is pretty observant on a normal day. But the kid doesn't register at first - she's training, and that has a way of tuning everyone else around her out when she throws herself into it.

Sloppy, she'll chide herself later - it's the reason you ended up in trouble in the first place.

But, when someone says sup to her, she legs the bag swing through her and then back before she phases back to normal, putting an arm up to stop and looking to the side, where Dipper is.

Cool power, he says, but her brain is still catching up and staring. She knows some of the Legionnaires are teenagers, but Dipper? He looks like he barely qualifies as a teenager. What the hell kind of guy is Brande?

"Thanks," she says after a long moment, watching Dipper do another sit up. She almost asks if he's a Legionnaire but - he has the ring, the semi-familiar exercise suit. "So - are you a new legionnaire too?"

[captainbuzzkill]

"Nah. Not new."

The words keep coming in between sit ups.

Up. "I've been at this --"

And down.

Up again. "-- for close to nine months."

Since he was a fetus, er, turned 13 14. Since he turned 14 because that's what he totally is. 14. Yep.

Dipper decides sit ups can wait, since they're hard to do while having a conversation, and after the last one, he unhooks his feet and climbs up to perch himself on the high point of the sit up bench.

"Considering that the Time Trapper tends to bring people in send them home a lot, so that only a few of us displacee Legionnaires have even been here for that long, I'm basically like a seasoned veteran."

But a self-aware one, at least.

"...Which kiiiind of gives you an idea about the state of things."

The team is an ever-shifting thing, constantly changing, which means everything they face is a constant challenge, and yes, some of them aren't exactly who you'd consider ideal as far as superheroics go.

Hospital

[lovernotafighter]

Carolina... It shouldn't have surprised him anymore considering who else was here from their world, some folks he knew, a bunch he didn't. But Carolina arriving was like having a sister here, was like having more of his family, and when North told him, well...it had been a no brainer. Sure, he told people it was because he had a load of questions, a need to know about who was watching Caboose if they were all here, but really?

Really, he just liked having another piece of home, especially since he and Grif were shaky at best and that last mission had been robot zombies. WTheF, right?

Still in that familiar aqua armor, Tucker leaned against the doorway after it was opened for him, wondering what the hell had landed her here in this hospital bed; it took something big to take a Freelancer down, and it took something even bigger to take her down. Shit. But even more vital was when was she from? Wasn't that the first thing they all needed to know? Especially considering their own precarious balance of knowledge.

What if he fucked up and told her about Epsilon when she didn't know?

Whatever, Worry about it later. He pushed off the doorframe and started to walk in, easy, relaxed, bullshitting like they all did. "Missed me so bad that you followed me all the way here? I always knew you had a thing for me."

[brisance]

Carolina hadn't realized Tucker was here. It's a surprise when the little request pops up, that he wants to see her. Of course, she accepts, but she really hadn't expected it, for some reason.

And when he walks in, she's immediately rolling her eyes a little bit. She's looking a lot less worse for wear overall, but still not up to par to join the fight just yet.

"Yes, I couldn't stay away," she says flatly, but she is looking him over, trying to see any injuries or visible differences on Tucker. "You seem to be just fine."

She hadn't seen Tucker yet, back home.

[lovernotafighter]

You seem to be just fine.

That was the problem with these traded timelines, the tentative tightrope and never knowing where to step: what was he going to learn about his future? Hell, was she even from the future, even? Maybe she meant because of the robozombies. Maybe she meant when he had been stabbed. Maybe she meant just being brought here.

Fuck. What could he ever say?

"Of course I am; we all had out zombie plans worked out for years before you guys showed up." He walked in the rest of the way, moving to the bedside and nodding at it before he sat down; move it or lose it. "Plus, Wash was in charge."

There it was, that subtle praise without coming out and praising him. It's what they did.

"How are you feeling? What kicked your ass this time?"

[short_changed]

Well this was an uncomfortable instance of deja vu with an extra dash of nightmares. The last time Connie woke up in the medbay had been seconds before she should have rightfully died. Technically if the right facilities and people were around back home that first time, she might've been able to pull through. But she'd been conscious long enough to watch a friend put her out of her misery when she'd first been infected, there wasn't supposed to be any waking up after that; never mind waking up in suffocating darkness and then clawing her way out of some sort of shell. There may or may not have been an attempt to break away from the nurses and out of the room, even with her limbs feeling sluggish she can teleport those few, jumping zips across the room before a sedative hits her system and she's eased back into a cot by unfamiliar hands.

As she's wheeled out into a larger, partitioned room her head tilts slowly this way and that, trying to find something off, something wrong, something that proves this is all just a trick and this is all fake. Her vision still swims, even after her cot's come to a stop and the nurse has left. It feels like she's sinking, falling back into that cold, familiar darkness of when she'd been bleeding out. She wants to scream, wants to run, to fight, anything- and that's when she hears her name.

Blinking hard her head turns towards the familiar voice, and for a good minute all she can do is stare at the woman seated in the cot beside hers. The voice is the same but her face...Carolina's just as shockingly different as Wash when Connie had first seen him. When Connie finally finds her voice, it comes out rough and a little slurred.

"Carolina...?"

[brisance]

CT doesn't look good. North had mentioned that CT was around, but Carolina had assumed that meant 'okay', not confused and probably drugged, if the way she slurred her words was any indication.

Carolina pulls herself up into a fully sitting position, ignoring the protest of her body. She needs to be able to see Connie, to make sure she's - okay?

"It's me," she ends up saying, because - it is. "Holy shit, Connie, what happened?"

She hasn't heard how those infected recover, yet.

[short_changed]

Disoriented is a word for what she is. If she were more present she'd be grateful that her armour seems to have made it out of the ordeal without too much trouble, minus the tears where the techno-zombie had got her.

"Mission went south. Caught me in a bad way and...I died. Again."

Connie frowns as she watches the other Freelancer move to sit up. Why was Carolina in here? How- When did she get here? If here is really anything at all and not just some elaborate hallucination.

"Why are you here?"

Here being a fluid term. Why the medbay? Why here right now?