The Loch Ness Monster

Posted on Tue Jul 18th, 2023 @ 9:20 by Claire Cavendish & Valjean Beaumont & Donald Johnson
Edited on on Tue Jul 18th, 2023 @ 9:21

Chapter: All Hallow's Eve
Location: Nessie's Hangar, Quantum Knights Facilities, Avalon Institute
Timeline: 00:01 November 1st, 1992 (immediately following The Witching Hour)
1265 words - 2.5 OF Standard Post Measure

A sizzle in the air, as if Valjean had just started baking the breakfast bacon all at once. The clear indicator that Claire was about to reappear, but so much louder than anything before. The cold hangar walls with Nessie seated nicely in the centre reflected the sound as Claire, Valjean, Reagan and DJ reappeared and landed on the ground. The purple headmistress was only there for a second though, another pop and audible sizzle as she was gone once more, leaving the three others disoriented and confused.

She-Ra indeed. What was that thing Cameron had done with his toy sword? Raised it in the air and said some magic words that gave He-Man his powers? From average to beefcake like that. That was a bit how Reagan felt now. But she'd not said any magic words or raised her little sword to the sky. Instead, she felt the electricity in the air, the static charge humming dangerously around her. Little bolts arced in the air, zapping little unseen motes of charged dust around her. "Oh... crap."

Instinctively, she tried to backup in her attempt to orient herself as eyes looked around and saw... so much more than she should have. Some of her friends were there, but she saw the electric fields dancing off their skin, the pulses of chemically-charged neurons firing through their bodies. And in her attempt to backup, she didn't so much phase out at one spot as... bend space and skip over a solid 10 feet of ground in a blink, leaving a crackling ring of ionization in her wake for a few brief moments. "Donnie? Valjean? What's... --ing on?" Her words were clear and then crackled and faded briefly like a badly tuned radio hitting static.

DJ stood up and straightened his hat, "What the hell was that, and where are we?" He asked as he looked around. He pulled the guitar from his back, whatever that blast was had broken the neck of his favorite guitar. Great now he couldn't generate sounds to protect himself or his teammates, but oddly enough he felt stronger than normal. Carefully he lifted his hand and collected the ambient sound into his palm before releasing it. He had never been able to do that with out generating sound. "Wow," he said aloud as he calculated the strength of his empowered abilities.

Valjean seemed to be struggling against something, straining himself to stop that familliar sensation of stretching out to the point where he would pull apart. It wasn't an unpleasant feeling at all, but the force behind it now made him worry about the consequences if he were to let go fully. As he bent over another one of him kept standing upright. When the second Valjean stepped back a third remained in his place. Within a couple of seconds there were at least two dozen Valjeans in the hangar. "Que se passe t-il ici." the choir of Valjeans suddenly said in unison. Then they all looked at each other before the focus landed on the one in the middle, the prime Valjean. He now made his way through the group of himself to get close to Reagan and DJ again. "Keep calm." He overtly demonstrated breathing in through his nose, the entire group of Valjeans behind him following suit. Then he slowly let the breath go through his mouth.

Reagan exhaled slowly, even her breathing cutting in and out like static on an FM radio. She might normally have been impressed with the multiple Valjeans, all in creepy unison, or DJ simply pulling sound out of the air and letting it back out again, easy as breathing. But she was worried in her current state. Normally, she had to be careful not to phase herself through a floor or into a solid object. This teleporting business? Skipping gaps entirely? Not only was it disorienting, but it was way riskier than stepping through something, covering that gap in a careful walk. "Right... K-- --lm."

She tried to take that advice to heart, stood ready to move forward, but controlling her pace and her... etherealness. Like a spark arcing between two contacts, she leapt forward in physical space a few feet again, overcorrected, stopped, and did it again a few times, until a full stop required putting both of her hands out in her mind. The resulting discharge was brief but probably singed a few eyebrows, the smell of ozone drifting on the air as Reagan winced. The only other evidence of her accidental deed, a burnt streak in the paint on the side of Nessie. Hopefully she hadn't fried anything sensitive? "Oops... No one tell Dash."

DJ watched Reagan testing her powers and looked over the group of Valjeans that were crowded together. "Not to be Captain Obvious, but it seems like we all got some sort of a power boost. Do either of you have any idea what that was or why we teleported here?"

"Non." Valjean was echoed by most of his duplicates, some of whom were starting to slowly disperse into the different corners of the hangar, taking in all the advanced technology present there. "Did either of you know this was 'ere?", the question was followed by a cacophony of 'not me' from the Valjean choir. He had seen the plane emerge from the waters when the giant robot attacked but nobody bothered to explain it all to the kitchen help.

"Not me, I'm just the music guy, I show up to parties bring the entertainment, teach kids how to rock, but explore underground caverns or hangers or lairs, or whatever this is? That's not me or my cup of tea, but since we're here we need to figure out how to get out," DJ said as he began to walk around the hanger area looking for the exit.

Were Reagan not still trying to anchor herself in this reality, she might have had the wherewithal to deny Valjean's questions, like DJ did. It took her a moment, mouth opening, staticy words ringing out, "Over here, Deej, going th-- er..." She coughed and that little reflex caused her to flare with light briefly, a ripple of electric energy surging through her semi-translucent form. Forcing herself to ignore the scorch mark on the very expensive aircraft, she cautiously moved forward and pointed toward the emergency exit that led outside the castle proper. "I can... see it. Through it? Lots of fancy electronic locks, looks like it leads out though." Sure, Rea, nice save.

Some of the Valjeans started to merge back together until there were only a dozen or so left. Still a lot more than he'd managed to juggle but it was clear that after the surge he was draining whatever extra boost he'd gotten. He rolled his shoulders a bit and saw some of his duplicates stretch and yawn. "We should get out of 'ere and try to find out what 'appened."

"Let's get moving then," DJ said as he moved toward the exit that Reagan pointed out. "The sound echoes in this hangar something fierce."

"Perhaps you can convince Claire to hang up a tapestry to 'elp with the accoustics." Valjean slowly made his way in the indicated direction. The chattering of laughs echoing and following him as he did so. The number of his duplicates were slowly dwindling already though. It wasn't draining his energy as much as they used to when returning, it was like something had super-charged him. But that was slowly ebbing away.