003 || text; info pile confirmation/sharing/idefk?

[shuckit]

[ after several long talks with Kitty, Loki and Kanaya, Thomas finally feels like he's scoured as much of what's available on the network to him as he can, and picked the brains of the people around him who would let him.

Well, figuratively picked their brains. He could literally dig around in their minds, given that his telepathy has gotten better recently, but that's pretty rude, tbh. Only going to do that to people he doesn't like, and even then, only if he thinks he needs to. But either way, he has something that's actually presentable, and in a kind of organization that people outside of him (and Teresa) alone could actually be able to comprehend. So now it's show and tell time. ]

i know there's been a few posts like this already, so it's probably old news to most of you here, but i'm mostly wanting to get my notes double checked. though, if you're new, this might answer some questions you have.

[ he'll be attaching his universe/porter/all things everywhere notes page here, so people can look it over, either to get themselves up to speed on what this place is and what's going on, or for people who've been here longer to review what he has and let him know if something's off. ]

that's all I got so far. i'm mostly looking for stuff on the porter and how the universes and travel between them works. anyone see something i'm missing or something i got wrong? or just got rude commentary you wanna make? minho's not invited. [ he smells. also, this is thomas's mild way of saying 'i want all the information on lachesis and the porter i can possibly acquire tyvm'. if you read between the lines. ] anyway, loki's story about the sudiczki sisters was pretty obviously lacking. i'm gonna be heading out to check if there's anything i can dig up about lana, or the other two. so if anyone needs me, i'll be out of heropa the next few days.

anyone at Xavier's willing to let me borrow notes when i get back? [ he's not very good about caring if he's skipping school tbh. sry, professors. ]


{ VIDEO || PRIVATE - to Loki, Kitty, Stiles, the Gladers, Annie Leonhart, Heropa residence 001, Grey, Lydia and Kate Bishop; }

[ this part is done as a video, and Thomas has his Getting Things Done voice on, with his phone propped up against some books while his hand busies a pencil over a spiral folded open in front of him, various travel brochures for Nonah and De Chima spread around his desk. ]

I know everyone hit deadends when they looked into this earlier, but unless it was Emma out there with them, I don't think they worked the telepath angle on it. [ aka Thomas is going to go pry into some peoples' heads and he'd like you to come with him. ] I'm heading to Nonah for a few days, then De Chima after.

It'd be cool to have some of you guys with, if you're not busy. You know. In case I piss some shank off and need to get sprung from the Slammer.

[ doesn't actually sound like a joke. Look, he spent enough time in the Glade's Slammer to know he doesn't have the best luck with this stuff. ]

Comments

[dragony]

You're mixing metaphors.

[ only she is allowed to do that ]

We're chess pieces to her; she's said as much, many times. What sort of game it is we're playing, or what the stakes are, I can't tell you that. But, she did not always possess that power to reshape the world—she could not always simply send us from one dimension to another, at her whim. That strength came later. She changes.

If her opponent now is the sister who destroyed her City, I can't say I would be much surprised.

[shuckit]

sorry. i'm not great with metaphors. or talking about things i'm not actually talking about [ literary tools are dumb ]

right, the part where she made countries later in the game, and started sending people on inter-dimensional vacations. if her sister's her opponent now, it seems like we're kind of shucked, being stuck in that crossfire.

so it's not the worlds themselves she wants, and that's a lot of work to go through just to stave off boredom. what's that leave, if there hasn't been any kind of clear goal she's pushed the imPorts to? personal grudge?

[dragony]

She considered it her city. Generally speaking, we're her hands and feet. If she needs something done, she'll have us do it. Sometimes it means asking, sometimes it means... well, throwing us wherever it is that she needed something done, and assuming we'd do it. She wasn't usually wrong, of course; whether an imPort likes her or not, everyone had an investment in keeping the Porter itself protected.

We're hers, too. I'm not sure I would call it something like caring, or like love, but she did what she could for us, too. Hell, she used to send us cards for her "birthday," and I know one year she sent my friend Jaime a birthday cake on that day.

In any case, imPorts are always in some "crossfire." Before Atropos, and before Vulcanus, she had enemies, and they were enemies of us, too.

What she does to stave off boredom is entirely different.

[shuckit]

and if someone didn't want to be her hands and feet - too bad, so sad? the fact she's not treating us like a complete tyrant, and that any of this isn't as bad as it could be, doesn't mean it was ever okay.

[ he probably shouldn't be being argumentative about it, and expressing bitterness towards lachesis wasn't something he wanted to do on this post, but thomas is pretty terrible about holding in disapproval when he feels it. as well as being used for things against his will. it's sort of a massive issue.

but anyway, he needs to move on, impulsive text already sent, too late to take it back. ]

what's it you think she built that power from, seeing as it took her time to get to the point of making countries and whatever?

IT HAPPENS TO THE BEST OF US

[dragony]

Well, she doesn't take requests, but she can't truly force anyone to act in her interests. Refusing to help her doesn't get a person "home" any faster, but refusing to help her doesn't carry any real penalty, either. Honestly, it doesn't matter much, how you feel about being here.

As for her power... I can only speculate. I don't know for certain. But, people born to that world didn't have the powers we do at all. Nobody there could naturally do what some of us could do in our own worlds. The matter not everyone notices, though, is that when a powered person is brought to a world by Lachesis, their powers don't always match what they were previously capable of. You might have greater power; you might have less. For me, some of the power I'd been granted remained with me, but my other "powers" were completely new to me when I arrived in that City. It's a fact that she could, at her whim, change a person's powers. Make them stronger, make them weaker — sometimes she would take a group of us, and trade our abilities amongst one another. So, you could be given my powers, but I would have someone else's, and the powers you arrived with would be possessed by someone else.

I think she may have just taken that power from some world, that she'd imPorted someone from. Or, she could have simply taken it from an imPort, or a multitude of us. There are those with the power to alter reality who have come and gone, many times. I don't think it would be difficult for her to acquire that sort of power for herself, if she came upon it.

cries, so late, i'm sorry ;;

[shuckit]

[ he reads over the first part of the message several times, fingers itching to nag at details of things and go off topic, but he's having to remind himself - not here to get into a fight over perspective, or morality of any of this. it is what it is. he needs information.

move on, thomas. ]

borrow power here, apply it there, or store it up for later use. makes sense. how much of it do you look at as 'magic', or something vague like that? do you know about anyone studying the powers to see if there's a common energy or force between them?

i mean, every dimension's gonna have different rules and physics and whatever, but there has to be something in common between them in order to be connected, right? or maybe she has an ability to, i dunno, transmute different kinds of power into something she can use? or, at least, control?

nah it cool!!

[dragony]

I'm familiar with magic, but something like that is hard to say. What she can do and what I've seen magic do are worlds apart.

You are right, though. Things do work differently between our various "original realities." At least as far as the super-human goes. If there's anyone still around studying that sort of thing, I haven't heard about it.

[shuckit]

right, magic's different in most of the worlds people talk about here, and given physics gets weird too, i guess it's easier to just pin it all under 'laws of nature'.

i haven't heard about anyone outside of the government scientists looking into it. honestly, i don't even know where any imports or people otherwise would start trying look into it.

[dragony]

Probably not on a monitored public Network, I would assume.

[shuckit]

[ there's a short snort on his end when he reads the text. right. duh. ]

good point. so, you seem pretty comfortable here. have you just taken it as home or looking to get out still? [ not really judging the taking it as home part. hell, even if it's not home ad never will be to thomas, it's still better than where he was, and the whole goal of looking into all of this is still to get the rest of his frineds here. and see that they stay here. ]

[dragony]

Well, the reason I'm here is because I was evacuated from a destroyed and dying universe. The world I was from originally, I haven't been there since I was a kid.

There's not much going "home" for me.

[shuckit]

you've been here that long? how old were you, when you showed up?

[dragony]

I haven't seen my hometown since I was eleven years old. In February, it will be six years.

[shuckit]

damn. is there anything you miss there, or just all too far behind?

[dragony]

The view, I guess. Some of the people. Knowing where I fit, in the world, maybe.

I suppose that's not a whole lot.

[shuckit]

where you fit? how do you go about figuring that out? [ he's never really considered it. granted, thomas's world was a lot smaller than a typical society would be. still, he supposes they all had a way they fit together. ]

doesn't have to be a lot. just wondering. there's not much i miss about my world that isn't already here.

[dragony]

Ah... for me, something like that was a role I accepted when I was very young.

[shuckit]

figuring out where you fit, or not missing it?