The Last Daughter of Krypton - IC

[Superman1496]

It was late, and Bruce was finished. Alfred had gone back to bed a while ago, and it was time for Bruce to do the same thing.

Upstairs, Bruce undressed, and put on his sleep pants, and crawled into bed. His dreams were of nothing he had ever seen before. An explosion of colors, red, blue, yellow, and mass clouds of bats. He saw huge buildings, as tall as the Daily Planet in Metropolis, and Wayne Tower, in Gotham.

He saw clowns, birds, and cats. He saw the epitamy of evil, wrapped in darkness. But overhead, the bats flew down with a shower of nuetral colors, and opened the city once again.

Then he saw his own parents, smiling at him, as he stood next to a strange blonde haired girl, wearing bright tights. He saw two other adults, smiling at this stranger.

He turned to the stranger to see her face. But at the instant he saw her face, he woke up.

KARA!!! Bruce screamed, as Alfred sat at his side, holding him down. Bruce was sweating bullets, and he couldn't stop himself from freaking out. His memory of the dream started to fade, as reality set in.

Bruce, Bruce, it's ok. Alfred said, calmly, fatherly like. It was only a bad dream Bruce. Shh, it's ok. Settle down now. Alfred added. Bruce calmed down, and sat up. The only thing he could remember was the flash of colors, the bats, and his parents.

Before anything else could enter his conscience memory, he faded out again.

 

[ChasNicollette]

"If you'd like you can come inside and I'll fix you some coffee while you wait." Jonathan offered.

Jamie nodded gratefully, his grin shifting seamlessly into a gentle smile.

He'd been right, he decided, about Jonathan. The man could take things in stride.

That little Shadowlands fiasco had been enough to take the wind out of Jamie's sails, and he'd even had experience with this sort of thing!

Midwesterners were made of impressively sterner stuff than most, and Kents apparently even more so.

"Actually, coffee would be brilliant!" Jamie declared exuberantly, hands shoved into his pockets. "Nectar of the gods, that stuff is. Ambrosia. Aqua vitae! Gets your blood pumping and puts hair on your chest. Better than watered-down Darjeeling any day of the week."

He hesitated, and made a funny face. "Though, I'm sure you'll understand that I'll want a good dollop of cream in mine. Don't jolly well fancy it black, not after..."

But that was when an unutterably adorable young woman jogged into the barn looking worried, and Jamie shut up in a hurry.

Jamie was positive, once she grew up, that he himself would hardly be the last man rendered speechless by her beauty.

He stood quietly as father and daughter conversed, hands in pockets, eyes gazing nowhere, distracting himself with other things so as not to be a bother to these two.

He couldn't help noting, though, with his observer's brain, that even in the terse sentences they'd just exchanged, there was that selfsame thing Ceri and Rose had but which he lacked: that rapport. That knowing what the other was thinking.

He envied The Kents, just a little bit, right then, and he hoped to be forgiven that envy in the long run.

But then Rose McCrimmon, she who was all he held dear on this or any other Earth, appeared in the doorway looking more than a little nervous, and Jamie's envy was replaced by pride. Because as many times as grown-up Kara would take men's breath away in future, his Rose would be able to take that many away and then some.

He grinned at her madly.

She waved at him, but her eyes darted quickly over to Jonathan and Kara.

"Hey, uh, Double-K," she grinned lopsidedly. "Um, and, uh, Mr. K. Sorry to bother y'all this evening."

Those pale blues flickered back across to Jamie's chocolate browns, and she beckoned earnestly to him. "C'mon, Dad. We should go. Mum's in the car, and she's getting... stroppy."

(Perhaps it was a strange thing to hear Britishisms pronounced by a voice so throughly American-sounding, but this was one of those things that Jamie could take in stride.)

"Oh, well, wave her in then," Jamie decided, still grinning more than a bit like a madman. "Jonathan here's invited me in for coffee and--"

He stopped, and blinked twice, and swung his eyes around to look once more at the elder Kent.

"--ooh. Uh. D'you mind if my Rosy and her mum join us for that coffee? Only if you don't mind. I hate to be obtuse about such a thing."

He whirled once more to face Rose. "Coffee, eh, kiddo? Nectar of th--"

Rose winced, and kind of half-covered her mouth with one hand, feeling not a little bit like she was toe-kicking an overly expressive puppy. (At the same time though, she hated hated hated the idea that her dad would have asked something of The Kents that would have inconvenienced them, and though this might embarrass her dad to remind him in front of them, it would also give them a way out, to say, "see, she doesn't want any coffee, both y'all best be on your way.")

"Dad. I don't... I don't drink coffee. Ever? Cocoa sometimes, but never... you know that."

Jamie looked, for a picosecond, like he had in fact been toe-kicked in the stomach. But to his credit, he recovered quickly.

"Lord, yes," he nodded, gesturing emphatically to the affirmative. "Quite right, too! Terrible concoction. Bad for your heart, messes up your sleep patterns, makes your tummy feel poorly. Heartburn. Liver and kidneys...! The Devil's swill, that stuff."

And then he hesitated again, and he covered his eyes with one hand, and he realised he might well have terribly offended The Kents, not with his insinuating the other two members of his family into Jonathan's invitation...

...but with his fairly rancid description of the proffered beverage.

"Cor," he whispered to himself, "blind me."

 

[Tymeless]

Lex Luthor.

Lex comes storming into the lab that Dr. Hamilton is supposed to be working in when he arrived. "What the hell do you mean he isn't here yet. This is urgent that young girl needs her father back, not to mention he is one of the few people on this planet I trust. Get Dr. Hamilton here now or you'll regret it." Lex slammed his fist on the table. If Misty ever saw this side of Lex she would freak out but being able to get Randal back to normal would increase his chances of being able to use Misty for his own purposes.

"Randal are you out there?"

A green mist began to swirl around and materialized slightly in a human form to look directly at Alexander Luthor. "Yes I am here, are you going to be able to help me?"

"We will do our best to get you back to your family quickly Randal but don't worry I'll take good care of them. We will get started on getting you fixed as soon as Emil gets here should be anytime." Lex said with a truth in his tone of voice.

 

[Tymeless]

Misty Graves.

Misty awoke to the smell of bacon and eggs in the air. She looked around the room and realized she wasn't in her bedroom. She wiped the sleep from her eyes and then she remembered why she was in this room. She got up and ran to the kitchen. Her mother had just finished making breakfast. "Morning Mommy." she said with a sleepy voice.

"Morning sweetheart would you like some breakfast. I made your favorite bacon eggs and pancakes." Misty's mother said with a happier tone then yesterday.

"Sure Mother, you seem better today." Misty said with a chipperness in her voice. Both women had realized worrying about Randal right now would only make things worse that Lex would fix everything and that if he gave them bad news then they would worry again.

 

[ChasNicollette]

And, true to Lex's word, Emil Hamilton was on his way.

He strolled through the corridors to Lex's laboratories like he owned the place, his eyes gazing straight ahead and yet seemingly seeing everything around him. His shoes propelled him unerringly across the metallic tile.

Emil had changed clothes before they'd left, and he'd shaved in the car. No longer was he the tattered, bedraggled obsessive working out of a rundown family garage. He had shed his ruined labcoat, and donned a light-blue button-down shirt, as well as a tie and slacks that were a matching slate grey.

As he walked, he rolled up his sleeves.

His arm had suffered only superficial damage, fortunately, just the surface misshaping of the handprint. Microservos and relays seemed unhampered by the abuse, though the tendons in his wrist were still a little stiff.

(The "pain" issue had been dealt with: he'd only had to reboot the core drive of the arm and the neural feedback resolved itself; the cybernetic interlinks automatically recalibrated.)

"Studious" (whose real name had eventually turned out to be Meyer) had had detailed files waiting in the car on this Randal Graves.

Well, one takes the term "detailed" with a grain of salt.

They had plenty of data (reams and reams and reams of it) on Randal Graves and his career before the accident, and they had a host of hastily-collated descriptions of the occurrence itself. But after?

Almost nothing. Barely a figurative nanogram of hard data on the man after he had become mist.

As he walked, as he rolled up his blue sleeve around his left arm, he glanced over at "Implacable" (whose real name had eventually turned out to be Boyajian).

"I'll need samples," he stated briskly, "dating back to before he began these experiments. Not just before this particular date (though I suppose these could prove useful), but before he embarked upon this series of projects. I need to establish a biological baseline. Blood, sputum--"

Emil hesitated.

Boyajian was staring at him blankly.

Emil swiftly turned to Meyer, who was walking on the opposite side of him.

"I'll need samples," he stated briskly.

Meyer had already begun writing this down. "Got it. Blood, sputum, anything else?"

Emil's lip quirked. "Skin samples, if you have them. And I know it's highly unlikely, but bone marrow? And a collection of similar samples from his daughter and other close relatives, if such are available, would likely prove informative."

Meyer nodded his assent firmly. "I'll see what I can do."

"God save the competent," Emil nodded, then slowed to a pause outside the laboratory room whose number had been indicated by the receptionist.

The windows were tinted, he could not see inside.

"Apparently, it falls to me to save the incompetent," he remarked, and opened the door to stride in and leave Meyer and Boyajian standing in the hall.

Meyer and Boyajian looked at each other.

Meyer scowled. Boyajian shrugged helplessly, and shook his head.

"C'mon," Meyer grunted.

And off they went.

Inside the room, Doctor Hamilton stood gazing at the young billionaire and the familiar green hue of the cloud.

"Mister Luthor," Hamilton nodded-- not respectfully, as such, the nod of equals, from one elitist to another --to his new boss. (And that was as far as that went.)

"Mister Graves," Hamilton greeted the lamented monstrosity, walking a bit closer. "Forgive me if I don't shake hands, hm? Your approximation of bipedal symmetry, such as it is, is quite remarkable. But I've decided not to shake your hand until I give you back hands to shake.

"This is my promise to you," he explained. "I will shake your hand. I will. Once I've restored your corporeal form. And that? You can take as certainty."

 

[TearsoftheWorld]

Jonathan gave a polite smile at Jamie as he accepted his offer. It was the least he could do, after all. (Besides, Mr. Kent wanted to get everyone out of the barn as soon as possible. There were a few things in there... that he preferred to remain hidden from the public eye) Turning back to Kara he asked her to go inside and tell Martha to start making some coffee.

As Kara was about to go she saw Rose waving a hand. A smile came across the young Kryptonian's face as she darted over to her red haired friend. As young and as free-spirited as Kara was, she sometimes wondered what it would be like to live as she did. (This isn't to say, however, that Kara wanted to abandon her parents. She just had the strangest feeling that she never quite fit in with those around her. Like something that set her apart... as if she was unique)

Jonathan gave Rose a warming smile as she entered the barn. He didn't get to see her that often, and he was glad that Kara had at least a few friends.

"Um yeah, of course." Jonathan said after Jamie inquired as to whether his family could come inside. "It's perfectly alright. I'll head inside and let Martha know we're having guests." he said.

Kara walked up to Rose and smirked upon being referred to as K.K.

"I don't like coffee either." she said, sticking her tongue out in disgust. Kara would much rather drink iced tea or water before having coffee.

 

[Tymeless]

Randal Graves

"Its quite alright Dr. Hamilton I don't think i could shake your hand right now anyhow. It takes all my concentration just to be able to manifest myself like this." Randal says in a defeated tone. "I appreciate the help though."

Lex nods his head at Dr. Hamilton and then begins to speak. "We will help you with anything you need pertaining to this experiment Dr. Hamilton just don't upset the Graves Family to much please." Lex then turned to leave. "My assistants will take care of the rest just ask them for anything you need."

 

[ChasNicollette]

"Thank you very kindly, Lex," Emil replied, managing through no small effort to keep even the tiniest hint of irony or sarcasm out of his tone. "I have already made some small requests of the ever-so-capable gentlemen whom you dispatched to fetch me. I hope that my doing so prior to your permission was not... untoward? They had given me the impression that this task was of utmost urgency, and I may have therefore presumed that this conferred upon me powers which were entirely baseless. For that, I can only be sorry. In the interest of repentence, I shall promise to never ever ask anything of The Family Graves that is unnecessary."

However, just as Lex was leaving, just as Lex was in the doorway, just as Lex was going, going, gone, Emil spoke up once more, with the voice of a man who has just had an epiphany and for whom politeness was something of an afterthought.

"Could you have them send me over a Geiger counter, Mister Luthor?" Emil drawled. "For analytical purposes. Make sure it's one you don't mind seeing disassembled."

Shortly thereafter, when Emil and Randal found themselves alone in the lab, Emil let out a long, slow sigh and settled down into a chair.

He faced Randal, the swirling meteoric fog that had once been Randal, and he scratched his chin with the analogue fingernails of his cybernetic hand.

"There's no need to sound so beaten, Randal," he suggested, an eager, ferocious gleam gathering in his scholarly eyes, "not by this. (May I call you Randal?) Certainly, it's a terrible thing that you be so cast apart from them whom you love, but at the same time? There's the stuff of miracles in this.

"For instance, Randal," he continued, "there's the apparent fact that you can alter your density with sheer force of will. Your density. That... shouldn't be possible. Molecular-level telekinesis is not unheard-of, but in all recorded incidences of this ability (at least so far as I know of), the molecules manipulated by these psychokinetic energies were not molecules belonging to the person manipulating. Plus! Plus, they all had an organic brain from which to transmit said psychokinesis.

"Your mind, meanwhile," Emil explained, pointing an organic finger at the general region of Randal's "head," "discorporated as it is, seems to be imprinted on every last mote of your new form, binding them and shaping them in unexpected ways. Self-sustaining psionic molecular telepresence? Subatomic self-migratory sentience? This is unexplored territory, Randal. And it is spectacular. As I said... the stuff of miracles.

"Werner Heisenberg would roll over in his tomb," Doctor Hamilton suggested, "were he to encounter you. You're using your mind to shape matter, and that implies that you're tracking both the velocity and the location of subatomic particles, simultaneously! (This shouldn't be possible, either, need I remind you. Stuff of miracles.)

"Make no mistake," the scientist gestured reassuringly, "I will restore you to yourself. I will restore you to your wife and your daughter. But on the way? On the way, we just might stumble across one or two Profound Secrets of The Universe. I hope, perhaps-- in fair exchange for my help --you do not mind letting me keep some of these Secrets for myself?

"'Fair exchange,' as they say, after all, 'is no robbery.'"

 

[ChasNicollette]

As Jonathan went to enquire after Martha, and to fill her in on the fresh influx of guests, Jamie grinned gratefully. Apparently, one of those things that Jonathan had no trouble taking in stride were the faux pas of frazzle-brained Englishmen.

Thus, once Jonathan walked off, Jamie did also, departing the barn and jogging down the driveway to find Ceri's waiting car (little knowing or suspecting that he had been within yards of something truly otherworldly, something ever-so-splendidly extraterrestrial -- something and someone).

Which left Kara, and left Rose.

The grass, it has been said, is greener on the other side.

(It then would not be entirely out of the question to suggest, with a bit of wicked meta-humour, that the same could be true of meteor rocks.)

When Rose looked at Kara, she felt immediately more than a little bit intimidated.

The neighbour girl was such a beauty, after all. And so confident! So sure of her footing and of her strength. It would be easy to love someone like that.

Rose herself had never been a creature of great confidence, to the point that even though her own beauty was nothing to shake a stick at (so to speak), she had no idea of that beauty. She didn't know she was pretty; she hadn't a clue.

Kara was brave; Rose was chicken. Rose wondered what it would be like to be brave.

Here Rose was, superhuman. She could light a candle by winking at it, turn droplets to icicles, make fireworks in the sky, ride the wind and take a blow from a swinging baseball bat while remaining completely unhurt. And yet she was afraid. So much of the time, she was afraid.

Life had so much damned uncertainty in it.

And yet? Kara was perfectly wonderfully human, and she seemed so certain of everything. So certain of herself.

Rose wondered what that felt like. She wondered very much.

Rose also wondered what it would be like to live on the microcosm that was a farm... to have one's own little world to live in, apart from The Real World.

But most of all? Rose wondered what it would be like to have parents who loved each other. Parents who got along more often than not, and had reasons besides dire practicality to spend time with each other.

Rose wondered what it would be like to grow up in the house of Mr. and Mrs. K.

All of these wonderings and wanderings bounced through Rose's brain in the time it took for her to smile back at Kara.

And smile Rose did.

Because really? All these thoughts were secondary in the face of a true friend. Kara had a way of making things seem more okay.

"Seriously! Blech!" Rose delighted in mustering the most turned-off face she could imagine. "Have you noticed how the most popular drinks in the world are all the yuckiest, too? Coffee, beer (not that I know what beer tastes like), even cocoa was the biggest fad ever even before folks started sweetening it. It's dumb! We have all these fantastic crazy taste-buds, and the best thing we can think of to do is to take bitter-tasting gunky fluids and douse those tastebuds in the stuff? People are so weird."

===

Ceri wound down her window, wide-eyed and wondering, as Jamie circled the car to come find her.

He was grinning that grin. That crazy-faced grin that meant he had done something absolutely nitwitted and it was going to come back and bite the family in the collective arse--

"Come on," Jamie grinned, hunching a bit to gaze at Ceri through that window. "We're being had over for coffee, the lot of us."

Ceri blinked. "You mean, socially?"

"Yeah!" Jamie exulted. "Tupping brilliant, ennit?"

Ceri arched a dubious eyebrow, a wince in her eyes. "D'yeh think we can remain civil for long enough?"

This brought Jamie up short a bit. Just a bit. "I think we could. Couldn't we? I mean, if we can't be nice to each other around nice people, we might as well give up, yeah?"

Ceri pondered this, tongue exploring her teeth, fingers tapping the steering-wheel.

"I don't want to give up," she decided.

"Me neither," Jamie agreed, and held out a hand, indicating that she might take that hand and walk with him. "Let's give it a go, instead."

Ceri nodded, nodded firmly, and held up an index finger to indicate that he should hold on a tick while she pulled the car off of the road and into the mouth of the driveway proper. Then she wound up the window and climbed out and then, only then, did she take Jamie's hand.

He felt cool to the touch. She'd forgotten that about him, that he was cooler to the touch than most.

They walked down the driveway back towards the red barn and the yellow house in the gloaming night and they held hands.

Ceri took comfort in the cool of Jamie's touch. Good memories could still be found among so many unhappy ones. Certainly, not enough good memories to delete the unhappy ones from existence... but enough good to keep the unhappy at bay for a while.

Jamie, meanwhile, was smiling a soft little smile. A soft little mysterious smile.

It felt good to not want to give up.

It felt good to not want to give up a glimmer of friendship-- with other people, with each other --despite the overwhelming pitch-black turmoil of love that had once gone wrong.

'It is something to have wept as we have wept,' Chesterton explained, whispering into Jamie's mind's ear.
'It is something to have done as we have done,
It is something to have watched when all men slept,
And seen the stars which never see the sun.
It is something to have smelt the mystic rose,
Although it break and leave the thorny rods,
It is something to have hungered once as those
Must hunger who have ate the bread of gods.'

 

[Tymeless]

Randal Graves

Randal listened to Dr. Hamilton closely. He really did not understand most of the babble coming out of this mans mouth but he couldn't stop but think there was hope. If he could be with his family like this then he would truly be a miracle but right now he was nothing more then a curse. He heard the man ask him a question and he looked directly at him and smiled slightly which looked weird on the green mist. "If you can get me back to my family you can keep whatever you want Dr. Hamilton."

 

[ChasNicollette]

Doctor Emil Hamilton smiled in no small triumph.

Not like The Devil, having successfully purchased a soul.

Not like The Clown from Bruce Wayne's nightmares.

It was a subtler smile than that, but no less victorious in its more hidden goals.

"Very well, Randal," Emil murmured, eyes glinting. "Then let us begin."

 

[Tymeless]

Randal Graves

He looked nervously at the doctor. While he may want to be restored to normal his fear for his life and family was still great. He knew they would be lost without him and right now Lex had given them hope that they would need to continue on. Randal made it a point to not get involved in any of Lex's secrets again if he could help it.

The doctor said that they should begin so Randal stared at him with his blank green eyes and said. "What am I to do first Doctor?"

 

[ChasNicollette]

Emil made a good show of mulling this over for a long, long moment.

"We should perform some exercises, I think," he suggested, steepling his fingers in front of him. "See how tightly you can contract, see how easily you can disperse, see how effectively you can reintegrate yourself once you've been dispersed. Just a little bit at first. Once Lex's hired help returns with more instruments and such, I'll need to see if I can't extricate a bit of your fabric for independent examination. Hopefully, doing so will not cause you overmuch discomfort.

"I need to attempt to determine your overall mass," he explained, "see if you still possess all the sum total matter you did when you were human. I'll attempt to extrapolate that by first determining your molarity. If it happens that you don't have exactly the same mass as you did when you first dispersed, I'll have to figure out where that mass went, whether you've lost any of yourself whilst larking about as a meteorological phenomenon. If that's the case, I'll need to invent a way for you to accept external mass into your reconversion process.

"There's little point in making you human again if when we do so you materialise without a heart, or a cranium, or," and there's that touch of irony, with a flex of his left hand's fingers, "or even without one of your arms."

"(Of course,)" he continued more quietly, thinking aloud, "(if it later becomes evident that we can't actually reconvert your current form back into human flesh, it may be that we can clone you a new body from available undamaged tissue, and then transition your consciousness from your mist form to this new body. Bears thinking about.)"

"For now, though?" he cleared his throat, and made a little circular motion with one metal finger. "Let's see about establishing your control and the limitations thereof. Expand and contract. Give it a try."

 

[Tymeless]

Randal Graves

Randal Graves listened intently and did everything the doctor asked him to do. He contracted his hands with little or no effort but the amount of pressure he could apply was very little. He then materialized and dematerialized quite easily moving his mass over a scale he awaited the doctor to check his molelarity.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Emil blinked, and it took him a moment to realise that Graves was waiting on him.

Waiting over a scale. (Doubtless his brother would make some inane pun involving the homophonic correlation between 'wait' and 'weight,' but Emil Hamilton was not James Hamilton. Jamie, for instance, for all his idiosyncratic foibles, was at least halfway good with people.)

Emil rubbed his face with one hand.

"No, right, I'm sorry," he tsked, and shook his head. "My fault. That fellow Meyer referred to you as 'a colleague,' so naturally I assumed you were one of my colleagues, until I read your file. Easy mistake to make, yes? I don't make mistakes.

"(Often.)

"So of course when I do make them, they tend to discombobulate me. You are not one of my colleagues. You are not a scientist, not versed in basic maths and physics. You are, in fact, one of Lex's colleagues. Real estate and farmland. I read this.

"But still, I keep thinking of you as a scientist. Perhaps the nature of the incident that brought this change upon you? You were up close and personal with an experiment involving gaseous meteor rock.

"You understand that it's unusual for a non-scientist to be so involved with such a thing? So between studious Meyer calling you a 'colleague' and my own presumptions about who should be in laboratories when, I keep repeating my rare mistake."

He stood, and he smiled faintly, tightly.

"I'm sorry," he murmured, "I'm so sorry."

He walked closer to the ghost of green mist and to the scale over which that ghost hovered. He kicked off his shoe, and, with a demonstrative look on his face, picked up that shoe and placed it on the scale. The scale tilted ever-so-slightly.

"Here we are," he murmured gently. "Solid, contiguous object. You measure its weight in Earth's gravity, you can calculate its mass from there. Because only gravity is pulling on it. Only gravity is exerting force upon it.

"Accelerating it downward towards the centre of The Earth, at an average of 9.8 metres per second per second. (On average.) Based on the near-constant of that force, one can make basic assumptions of mass based on weight.

"Unfortunately," he murmured, and the wincing spread from his eyes to just around his eyes. "I cannot measure your mass this way. For a pair of reasons."

He held up a finger.

"First of all, you may be a mixture," he explained, "the gaseous equivalent of a solution. Other gases, like water vapour, may be dissolved within you. Like humidity throwing off the weight of porous woods, the mass of yourself may be altered by the presence of other elements."

He held up a second finger.

"Second of all?" he described, and with those two extended fingers pushed down on the shoe that sat on the scale, causing the scale to tilt further. "Gravity is not the only force acting upon you. Your own mind moves you about, like-- and forgive the simile --a vampire of legend seeping, protean, through the cracks in his own coffin. That selfsame self-telekinesis could move you down onto the scale too hard, or not hard enough. Thus, weighing you would not provide us with a sufficiently accurate approximation of your mass."

He sat back down again in that chair, and put his shoe back on.

"That's why," he murmured, and shrugged his shoulders, "I can't determine your mass by standard means. We need a sample, just a handful of molecules will do. I'll pop that sample in a mass spectrometer, ascertain your physical makeup, and we'll proceed from there."

He arched an eyebrow. "Is that something you can do, Randal? Can you cast off a tiny packet of yourself, or do you have to remain in relative proximity?"

He gestured again. "Give that a try. Waft a small tendril of yourself into the air between the two of us. Can you do that?"

 

[Tymeless]

Randal Graves

Randal listened to the scientist ramble on and Randal was clearly lost. This man was too smart for his own good he thought but at least he might be able to make me human again.

Randal did as the Dr. suggested and quickly whipped out a tendril and separated it from himself.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Emil's lip curled, quirking up in the corner in a distant, distant smile.

"Excellent," he nodded firmly. "Well done."

Here we are, Emil pondered to himself. Out on the frontier, pushing back the horizon.

Uncharted waters.

My heart's even beating quickly, now. When's the last time that happened?

Not since I was sitting in S.T.A.R.Labs in Metropolis and the courier set a sample of Smallville meteor on my desk. Not since that moment, has my heart beat this fast.

And right at that moment, the door swung open and a pair of lab techs wandered in, carrying trays of equipment.

Emil arched an eyebrow. "Ah, perfect timing. Your punctuality is all but precognitive."

He reached out with organic fingers and plucked an ampoule-shaped phial off of one of those trays and, with a swift, surgical movement, captured that lost little tendril out of the air. Just as quickly, he capped the tiny clear-plastic bottle, and he held it up to the light, gazing at the luminescent translucent emerald wafting about inside the container.

"Bendigedig," he murmured.

He pondered the shape of the bottle, reflecting upon the burial tradition of bottling samples of the deceased's blood beside them in Christian catacombs.

There it was again, that imagery.

Tombs and coffins and catacombs.

All while talking to a man named Graves.

(Maybe he wasn't as immune to the making of puns as he'd thought. Nonsense.)

He glanced back over at Randal Graves. "What do you think, Randal? Are you feeling any claustrophobia from this? Any... physical discomfort? Psychosomatic or otherwise?"

 

[Tymeless]

"Nothing at all Doctor. I haven't felt anything other then emotions since I was reduced to a mist." Randal looked around the room.

 

[Ravenloft]

Lex left the good doctor to his work, returning to his personal study where he could sit and monitor the man on secret cameras in the lab. He watched the two interact, smiling to himself. "Emil, I could start to like you..." He said to himself as he followed the man's line of thinking with moderate understanding. He would give the good doctor another hour before sending Meyer to bring him to the study, for a private consultation.

 

[Tymeless]

Misty Graves

Misty felt weird she should be in school that day but instead she was sitting at home with her mother sipping on coffee that she really didn't like much but a mix with hot chocolate made it pretty good. She had to try her hardest not to read her mother's mind but she caught herself doing it without trying a lot of times her mother's thoughts were so loud.

Finally Misty cracked "Mother would you quit thinking so loud I can hear you all the way over here." Misty couldn't believe she snapped at her mother. Her mother just dropped her jaw in astonishment at her daughter speaking to her that way and saying she could hear her thinking.

 

[TearsoftheWorld]

OOC: Sorry for the delay, busy getting myself unpacked at home and scrambling around a bit. ^_^;
---

Kara giggled at Rose's antics, her friends face immediately returning the same look of displeasure that she herself had given.

"Yeah, people are weird. I don't know, maybe it's just a grown-up thing." she mused. After all, Kara and Rose were still in their teens. Who knows what sort of food or drinks they would like as they grew older?

"We should probably go inside." Kara said after a moment. Her father and mother were most likely already getting things ready, and Kara was sure that Jamie and Rose's mother would head inside too.

---

"Who are we having over?" Martha asked, looking at her husband curiously. Jonathan told her about his encounter with Jamie Hamilton and the mysterious man outside before saying that he had invited he and his family over.

"Alright, I'll get some coffee ready. But tonight we should probably sit down and talk with Kara." she said, looking at Jonathan sternly. He dreaded the day he'd have to have that conversation.

 

[ChasNicollette]

"Grown-ups," Rose snorted softly, shaking her head and casting about her ruby-infused tresses, "are apparently refused fun on so many levels as to be ridiculous. They can't even have fun foods? Fun drink? (I know they're allowed to have fun drinks, otherwise there'd be no such thing as the banana daiquiri)."

She walked towards the doors of the barn, the way out to the farmyard, and shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans, watching the toes of her sneakers as they scuffed through the straw and the dirt.

(Rose rarely watched where she was going while she walked. Her mother often complained that such poor posture would damage her neck. She'd been made fun of for it fairly frequently throughout junior high... but she couldn't bring herself to stop. It was so much harder to daydream and walk at the same time if one looked where one was going, and what was the point of walking everywhere if one couldn't take time to daydream as one went?)

"Maybe fun is so tempting," she pondered, "that they have to intentionally do things that are not fun to remind themselves that they are grown-ups. Otherwise, maybe they'd act just like us. Maybe they'd never grow up, if they didn't have coffee to bitter them back into place?"

She paused at the edge of the doorway, and ran her hand, pale pink fingers, up and down the red-painted surface.

"Adults use nasty drinks to self-medicate adulthood," she murmured contemplatively as she pushed off of the doorway and out into the drive, beginning the short trek across to the house. "No wonder they're all so sad all the time."

But then Rose's mum and dad, Ceri and Jamie, wandered into view out of the twilight, grinning beatifically and laughing hard enough that they were pink around the edges. They were holding hands.

Rose stopped. And she stared. Her mouth hung open a little.

"Well," Ceri was saying, "what you have there's a perfect example of poor First Contact protocol, isn't it? 'I mean you no harm?' That's the dark-shadowy-creature equivalent of a bad chat-up line. 'Nice shoes, wanna shag?' No-one'd buy it for a moment!"

"Not unless they were really good shoes," Jamie nodded thoughtfully. "I mean really good shoes. Steve Madden. (Is Steve Madden still fashionable?)"

Ceri rolled her eyes, laughing, and rested her head on Jamie's shoulder, giving his slender arm a squeeze with both of her own hands.

"Nawh, he was well enough," Jamie mused. "Seemed his heart was in the right place, at any rate. Looking to help a fellow in spot of bother, that's hardly Evil Deed material. Trouble was, his method was a bit rubbish. Very Jackie Estacado, the whole thing. And those eyes!"

Ceri grinned from ear to ear, tossing black fringe out of her face as she locked her gaze on their daughter. "What's the matter, Rosy? Seen a ghost, have you?"

Rose shut her mouth, and shook her head, though her eyes were still as big as dinner plates.

Ceri grinned wider, if even that were possible, and gestured for the two girls to get a move on. "Don't just stand there, ladies, with your knickers in a twist. Shift! Nothing ruins a good laugh like an unexpected traffic jam, and I'd rather not dig me way out of a four-person pile-up at the front door!"

Rose shot Kara a very bewildered look, and then hurried up, reaching the front steps and ascending them with surprisingly quick, light movements. (This time, she was watching where she was going.)

"(Okay)," she whispered, incredulous, to herself, "(so maybe they're not so sad all the time.)"

 

[ChasNicollette]

And this? This was perhaps the most interesting news yet.

Emil tucked the phial into the front pocket of his blue shirt, and nudged his glasses onto his nose more properly, scrutinising Randal with a practised eye.

"And which emotions would those be, hmm? (If you don't mind my asking,)" he wondered. "Given that it seems to be mental energy keeping you somewhat functional in your current state, it might behoove us to examine which mental energies are benefiting you the most. Practitioners of the psychic have often claimed to me that mind-energies have their own spectrum, from 'infra-sombre' to, eh, 'ultra-joy,' or something along those lines. (Fear, apparently, is yellow in colour.)

"Maybe the 'frequency' of your emotions," he considered, "or perhaps just their amplitude, effect the excitation of your molecules?"

He retrieved the Geiger counter the techs had brought, and held the wand aloft towards Randal's cloud-form.

"Please, Randal," he coaxed, "tell me how you feel. And I implore you, don't feel compelled to spare anyone's blushes."

 

[AmenRa]

The article he retrieved on line was speculative, but it was obvious that it's writer intended to be conclusive:

"It has been noted by scientists, even though most of them will not go on record, that meteor rocks contain an inherent energy that can be measured with mass spectrography and particle analysis. Although the rocks are indeed granular and igneous in formation, their crystalline structure remains uncategorized by geological formations seen within Earth."

Var-Sen, known as John Smith, sat back in his chair, staring in near disbelief at the laptop's display.

Crystalline structure.

A non-terrestial, energy bearing crystal.

No. It couldn't be....

 

[Tymeless]

Randal looked at the doctor and smiled again. "Well I'm excited that someone as good as you has been brought in to fix my condition. I'm sad I can't be with my wonderful family. I'm scared no down right frightened that you won't be able to fix this. I'm also lonely missing the ability to lay next to my wife and sleep with her."