Log:Harbinger's Arrival, Scene 3

Harbinger's Arrival 2017/09/29 	 Harbinger Eve Starlight Spirit Griffin Rocky Copycat Inforcer Diviak Jet

3

Dorian(#2348POeACF?)

This man stands about five and a half feet tall, and is moderately good looking. He has blue eyes...brown hair cut into a crew cut, and a goatee.

He's currently wearing a standard regulation navy blue Starguard Gamma uniform with a grey inset stripe down the left side of the torso and a Starguard logo on the upper right side. The rank on the shoulder identifies him as a Commander. It's a far cry from his normal relatively casual mode of dress.

The reception area has muted black tiled floor, with the walls and roof painted off-white. The secretarial desk enclosure is barely twenty feet from the double set of glass doors. To its left is a large double-hinged door ominously labeled 'Security'. A seating area full of soft couches is to the right. Down the hallway that leads deeper into the building is the office of the Director of Operations and the exit to the landing field outside.

The Harbinger has been stopped...and the alien is being kept by Starguard out at the Tranquility prison on the moon. He's kept unconcious, though he's being questioned mentally by some of Starguard Gamma's agents. After finding out a little intel, Dorian "Spirit" Perrault calls a meeting of the local Starguard Gamma agents, and opens the invitation up to local heroes in general. The group is meeting in a conference room in Colonial Bay's SGG base.

Eve is arguing at the reception desk, security has even been called. "I'm telling you - I really am Ten! I just don't have the costume any more.... No, or the ID, or the communicator - look, it's a curse, ok?!?" she's getting rather flustered.

Starlight arrives somewhat early, dropping a heat seared steel container in Starguard's reception lobby before heading on into the conference room. Getting a coffee she sits in a chair to wait for the others expected to turn up.

The receptionist looks at Eve flatly. "You'll have to speak to Commander Perrault, then. He's in the conference room, meeting with local heroes. Since that's effectively 'open to the public', you can go there. But if you want to access any place more secure, we'll need to update your credentials."

Rocky trundles into the as-yet-unfamiliar grounds of SG, curious about what it was they actually fought and what happens next. He pauses at the donut table, adding an assortment of home-made flatbreads, chutneys, and some pastries that he himself has made and brought along. He pauses, regarding the snacks for a long time before carefully selecting a solitary jelly donut to sample. Grabbing his thermos of iced coffee out of his satchel, he trundles over into the meeting room, taking up a seat in the back, out of everyone's way. ..

Starlight returns to the lobby on hearing a commotion. She nods to the security and tells the person claiming to be Ten, "I can check that claim. But if you aren't Ten I suggest you leave now."

The SuperSoldier Griffin Freeman clears the security checkpoint and makes his way quietly and at a much slower pace than he would normally outside of Gamma Base. He heads for the conference room with a quiet air of confidence.

When he arrives he takes a plain glazed donut and a cup of coffee and then finds a seat in the center of the conference room's seating so that he can be sure to have a good POV no matter who is speaking. Then he quietly waits and observes all the comings and goings of everything with his ability to sense energy of all sorts through physical mediums.

He nods to Rocky cordially.

Eve says, "I am Ten! It's easy enough to test - shoot me!"

Eve says, "But apparently I'm allowed to go to the conference room anyway...."

The receptionist smiles, "I would ask that no shooting take place here in the lobby. It's been a few years since we had to repair the building, and we would prefer to keep it that way."

Jet was told there was a meeting at SSG. He hovers into the building to check it out. It's probably a good idea to meet the other local heroes, which doubtlessly have more experience than him. He heads into the conference room, carefully looking at the building and the other heroes. Donuts and coffee, huh? Well, that's wasted on me.

Starlight nods, looks at the security to see if they seem to accept that statement, and on seeing a nod returns to the conference room and her waiting coffee.

Dorian walks across the hall from his office to the conference room, and he stands up by the main view screen. He places a tablet on the table in front of him before he greets those already in the room, "Thanks for coming. We'll start in a few minutes."

Eve goes to the conference room too, getting a coffee, and, pointedly, standing up against the wall in the pose Ten generally adopted. Or more or less - it doesn't look *quite* the same, somehow. . o O ( What a week.... )

Eve

This young woman is like something out of an adolescent fantasy, from her curvaceous figure to her lips that seem designed to kissing, to her amazing blue, inviting eyes, to her cascade of blonde hair, all put together into a seemingly impossibly perfect package. And she carries herself to show to show it all off to best effect, too, standing with her hips cocked and her chest out, or slinking as she walks - yet this all seems natural, guileless. The alluring tone of her voice seems to say so much more than her words, which seem to lose all meaning if she strings more than a few together. In short, shes the very quintessence of the brainless beauty, and its hard to imagine there's anything more to her.

Shes wearing nothing but an overlong while t-shirt, which drapes and clings to her curves nicely.

Dorian nods to the newcomers. "Good to see you." He tilts his head, "Ten, you look a little different. Lost the uniform?" He smiles.

Eve sighs. "And the staff. And other things. Looks like the demons have found a way to make life harder for me..... I've even been kicked out of college!" She shakes her head.

Dorian grimaces, "Hmm. Talk to me about it later, Ten, and I'll see what I can do for you." He turns back to the group, "Again, thank you all for showing up. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Dorian Perrault. I also go by Spirit, and I'm the local commander for Starguard Gamma."

Eve nods to Dorian, gulps down some coffee, and listens.

Dorian touches the tablet on the table in front of him, and a still picture of Harbinger mid-fight appears on the view screen behind him. "Some of you were involved in the fight against the being we know as 'The Harbinger'. He's currently being held at a secure facility off-planet, for precaution. Starguard's primary responsibility is in dealing with interstellar and interdimensional threats. And this Harbinger is clearly one of those.

Dorian smiles and looks around the room, "The reason I've brought you here is to give you some intel that we have on the situation...and to answer any questions you might have, which I will answer to the best of my ability."

Starlight asks, "Question as they arise or wait until the end of your briefing, Dorian?"

Dorian nods. "Feel free to speak up whenever."

Starlight nods, "Do you know as yet whether it's interstellar or interdimensional?"

Dorian nods. "Interstellar." He touches his tablet again and the screen shifts to a galaxy map. "Based on my contacts with the Guild and the projected path of the entry of the Harbinger's arrival, we think he arrived from a neighboring galaxy: Messier 81, also known as 'Bode's Galaxy'."

Starlight nods. And shuts up. .oO(That's... impressive. don't know how long I'd need to cross between galaxies but a long time I suspect.)

Dorian starts to pace a little bit...perhaps a nervous habit of his. "I contacted the Guild Inforcers, and Diviak let me know that this Harbinger and his master are the stuff of legend in the Guild. Whole planets have disappeared, turned into fields of asteroids where planets once were."

Eve says, "Um - why? It seems like a long way to come to blow up a planet...."

Rocky squints and concentrates, using all of his neurons to keep up with the flow of information. He's just a bit slower at absorbing new data than many of the more clever heroes, is all. This also has the unintended and un-noticed side effect that Rocky slows and then stops his intake of calories as he concentrates on the intake of information, the now-half-eaten donut held inert and forgotten in his left hand as he watches Dorian pace.

Copycat slips in at the back quietly after getting an alert. She just hangs back and listens.

Dorian nods, "Good question. No one is quite sure. The master, known only as Overlord, apparently 'consumes' the planet. It's unclear what that means, but Harbinger keeps using that term: Consume.

Amplitude says, "The good news is...I think we have some time to prepare. This Harbinger was just that. He has effectively announced the arrival of this Overlord. It's possible that his message didn't get back to his master, but I don't want to rely on chance."

Starlight puts her coffee down between her feet and pulls out a PDA. .oO(Let's see. Distance to Bode's Galaxy?) She checks that. oO(11.7 million lightyears. That's a - long - way. I travel at... so divide by 8, then 3600 and then by 24.. and, hey, that's not so bad. Seventeen and a bit days.)

Eve says, "Well, obviously he's not eating just any old planet. Lots of closer ones. And the Harbinger didn't seem to think much of my idea of eating Neptune instead."

Dorian nods. "There must be some reason why this particular planet is important. Again, a good point. I can see if the Inforcers have some kind of profile for his prior targets, since they know of a few planets that have been consumed."

Rocky piles on, weighing in on the planetary choice question: "Yah, why -dis- rock? I mean, I kinda likes it here, you knows, . . . if da Overlord wantsa break it I'm like to take it personal." Rocky wonders: "Can youse ask Har-bin-ger why? He seemed to like to talk!"

Dorian nods. "We'll see what we can get from him. I have a couple of telepaths questioning him already."

Jet listens to every word, but remains silent. There are a few things he is wondering about as well, but it is not in Jet's nature to ask yet with so many heroes around.

The SuperSoldier is just that, a soldier. He is here for a debrieif, but when it comes to dealing with mission level parameters for something like this- well he's a bit out of his element. So he listens and absorbs all he can in hopes that it will come in handy later.

His stoic expression is only moved by the surprise on his face at how good that plain glazed donut was and when Copycat walks in the door. Then he's all smiles as he 'watches' her distinct energy pattern grow nearer.

He nods and grins at her before returning to the debrief.

"Doesn't matter why he wants Earth- we need a way to divert him. Permanently. Can we draw a line in the sand a bit further afield so we control first contact and how it goes down and where?" He inquires a bit later into the meeting.

Starlight comments, "I did a check. I can get to Bode's Galaxy in just over seventeen days. And carry a Starguard shuttle with me."

Dorian continues, "We know less about the 'why' and more about the 'how'. There are large machines which are place in the planet's surface which drill downward toward the core. So, when they arrive, there will likely be several around the planet. If they drill too long...well, that would be bad." He nods to Griffin. "We could try to intercept in space. We're of course a little more limited in combat readiness in space, but we can try. I think the issue is going to be detection. Harbinger arrived without our early warning systems registering him as anything other than a meteorite. I'm hoping that something as large as these machines will be more detectable."

Eve says, "How fast did the Harbinger's transmission travel? Could we intercept *that*?"

Copycat catches the nod and smiles, sipping her way towards him and falling in inext to him. Aside from her jacket, she's wearing a grey scarf wrapped around her neck for the fall weather. She leans over and whispers, "What'd I miss?"

Dorian raises a brow, "We're not sure, honestly. It...could be possible, I guess? I'll see what we can find out on that front. And Starlight and I could likely get a shuttle out in front of it to try to block it, assuming we can move faster.

Rocky rumbles and squirms a bit, his mental gears and cogs complaining slightly as they grind through and process words like "divert" and "Bode's Galaxy" and ideas like intercepting the Harbinger's beacon and turn that grist into material he can work with. The danger of drilling down to the magma layer, however, is immediately, profoundly, and personally crystal-clear to him. Out of reflexive habit more than anything else, he *scans* the ground underneath the Starguard campus with his Earth-Sense, glad to find there are no major structural instabilities in place to make any meeting of those seeking to stop the Harbinger a short and fiery one.

Unless this "Bode's Galaxy" is 17 light-days away, Jet figures it should be impossible for anything to get there in 17 days. At least, by his current understanding of physics. But these powers he and everyone else has is "impossible" as well, yet there they are. Life definitely got a lot more complicated for Jet than 2 months ago, but he isn't sure that is a bad thing.

Griffin leans and whispers quietly to Copycat, giving her an even briefer version of events via their own unique nerd-code.

"Remember when The Kaku crashed and the captain got roped into diverting that guy who wanted to absorb their planet into their ringworld?" He waits for her nod, they of course have seen Circworld 2x. "It wa slike that but the Stellarunner's Big Bad to .. .I dunno. Harbing. Called himself the Harbinger. Trying to figure out how to stop his master."

Griffin's attention snapped right back to the debrief as they continue and others consult how long it would take to cross what distance. He's defnitely not that fast.

Copycat looks up at Griffin, her eyes growing wide and her jaw dropping as he perfectly conveys the enormity of the situation. "Seriously?" she whispers for effect, but he can tell she got the message just by the look on her face. She falls quiet and looks back to Dorian, listening intensely with her super-serious game face.

Dorian adds, "No one has effectively seen this 'Overlord' directly, other than the Harbinger. Well, and lived to talk about it. So I'm not sure if it's something that can be fought directly, or if we need to just...divert it, as suggested. For all I know, it could be some kind of gaseous cloud. Or perhaps a giant being that's hundreds of stories tall. We're currently working on finding out more details, but things are still sketchy."

"I'm sorry if I missed this, but how did the Harbinger get here...? Was -he- able to get here on his own with powers? Or did he have a ship?" Copycat speaks up after pre-clearing her throat. She's not used to talking in front of groups this big.

Starlight says, "If we end up going out to meet this Overlord, Dorian, we ought to take some rocks with us. A high fractional C rock might make a fine disincentive."

Dorian nods to Copycat. "Arrived in a meteorite, effectively. I'm not sure if that means he was 'thrown', or if he got here under his own power. He crash landed outside of Hero Lane, and then cut his way out of the meteorite."

Eve says, "Can't be easy to steer.... Hm - and if it didn't go faster than light then it must have been fired from close by..."

Rocky snaps back to the here-and-now at the mention of "rocks" and "high fractional C rocks" -- whatever -those- are. . . returning from his idle and largely unintended remote exploration of the subterranean complex of Starguard's underground installations. "Youse has better pay better attention! Gotsta focus hear'," he mentally chastises himself. He sits up straighter and accidentally drops the all-but-forgotten jelly donut in the process of doing so. A moment of uncertainty passes. Rocky looks about, and then slowly streeeeettttttches his hand down to retrieve the donut. After carefully making sure that no one is watching he resumes his donut-munching where he left off several minutes ago. . . because, well: donut.

Dorian nods. "We could do that...but I'll need to get authorization to do something like accelerate a rock to near light to use as a weapon."

Starlight nods, "Ironman IV did it in Avengers Centurion." she says, talking about the latest tri-dee in the Avengers franchise.

"Couldn't hurt." Griffin says, liking this plan. Perhaps its just the insane distructive capability being discussed here, but wooohoo. He's getting fired up.

Dorian chuckles. "I'll...take your word for it. I'm not a movie guy."

Amplitude says, "I know some of you were there at the fight with Harbinger. Do any of you have any insights based on what you experienced?"

"Well...we're still working on the why, right? Once we know that from Harbinger...maybe we can go to the Overlord with a 'why not'? Hope it just skips over our planet?" Copycat asks with some uncertainty, as though she doesn't like the full idea that's going through her head.

Dorian nods to Copycat. "I have some qualms about that myself. Because it just pushes the fate onto someone else. But that might be the only possibility."

Copycat murmurs quietly aside to Griffin, just under her breath, "...what if they're building a galactic bypass?" More nerd-speak.

Jet finally speaks. "I was there at the fight, and I had a view from above. If you remember when Harbinger attacked with that massive energy column, I saw some kind of rune or something on top of it. I could draw it if there is paper or something here."

Dorian nods, "Sure." He slides his tablet over to Jet, with a drawing app up. It's connected to the view screen.

Rocky tries to imagine how fast light is, and can't quite grasp it. He tries to imagine throwing a rock anywhere near that fast, and fails again. Falling back to the earlier bits of the conversation that he -did- understand, Rocky muses on why the Overlord needs to turn planet-sized rocks into asteroid-sized rocks. Having spent the better part of 10 years turning large rocks into small rocks while laboring for Matthew's Clay and Gravel Works, Ltd., Rocky is familiar with the process on a personal level. He didn't much like it. Not that anyone -would- like being a slave.

Maybe this Overlord doesn't really want to do it either? Could someone (or something) be forcing him to do it? What would -that- be. . . Rocky wonders. His brain once again fully occupied, the remaining bits of donut persist in their uneaten-ness for quite some time.

Jet nods slightly and draws the rune on the tablet. (Is there anything special about the rune that would affect how Jet would draw it?)

"Well we need to find out what basement clerk's office the paperwork is in and get ther to file a greivance." Griffin replies quietly with a chuckle. He is surprisingly light-hearted despite the news on the table, but then again it's tough ot keep the SuperSoldier down.

"We'll figure it out. There's an Ambassador from the Andromeda Galaxy, I've got an in with her. I'll see if her people know naything." He offers casually. "No one is 'Consuming Earth' today or any day on my watch." Confident as ever.

Perhaps drawing on the tablet is the issue, but the figure is relatively clear. It has some similarities with Norse runes but some of the lines have circles in the middle of them. And the rune looks more rounded than angular. It looks a little like a stylized 'H'.

Dorian tilts his head, looking at the icon. "Perhaps it's just...like...Harbinger's symbol? Like a signet ring?"

Griffin shrugs, not being particularly good at languages or crypto. That's why he works with a brainiac in missions. Everyone has their jobs.

Dorian takes the tablet back from Jet, "I'll see if our linguists can make anything of it. Or the Guild, for that matter."

Dorian chuckles. "Rather...if the Guild can make something of it."

Rocky re-emerges from deep underneath the rubble of the pile of his own recent weighty thoughts: "Wos if he don' wantsto break the Earth and killall everyone, like, not-really?" ((Certainly Rocky did not much enjoy his own make-large-rocks-into-smal-rocks sentence!))

"His butler did tell all us to 'scape and gived us tha' chance. . . . Wha' if . . . ?" Rocky relives his traversal of the thermal gradient he'd just explored, not five minutes ago, a sensation very much like getting closer and closer to a wood-fired pizza oven, and tries to articulate and demonstrate. ..

Rocky sallies forth: "Wos if . . . he juss wantsta get at the stuffs in the middle of it?" Rocky holds up his partly eaten floor-donut, pointing a massive finger at its (!!delicious!!) jelly core. "Mebbe he juss needs that? He sure aighn't eatin' the rest of th' rocks, no-how . . . "

Eve says, "Could be - but doesn't explain why Earth, still. Must be lots of closer planets."

Copycat shrugs at Eve's comments. "Well, or it could just be business. That's what Griffin and I were commenting about. Clearing the way for a galactic bypass, or mining some mineral that for them is rare, and giving out a notice is just business procedures. But with a name like Overlord...doesn't sound like a guy just trying to deal with food. I'm confused."

Dorian nods. "Overlord is the name that the Guild uses for him...it. But it's also the term that was pulled from Harbinger's mind. So, make of that what you will."

Eve shrugs. "For all we knows he looks like a hamster, and the whole big name thing and only communicating through the Harbinger is to hide this."

Griffin laughs at that. "That would ... just... ne perfect" He says between various bouts of laughter. That thought really tickles him. "Man I hope that's what it is."

Dorian chuckles, "I'm going to guess that's...really unlikely."

Jet tries to hide his thoughts on that theory. (At this point, I have no idea WHAT even is "really unlikely".)

Eve shrugs. "So's most of my life!"

"Not unless this is the Starbumbler's Universe." Griffin replies with a smirk. "Ok- back to business. What's next Commander?" The SuperSoldier asks.

Dorian checks his list. "Okay, so I have the following: 1) Find out about the transmission. See if we can intercept it. 2) Find out the 'why' from Harbinger. 3) See if we can get more details on Overlord. 4) Look for a commonality in targets, based on profiles the Guild provides. 5) Check with the linguists about this rune. 6) Get a strike team together in the case of needing to actually run the intercept." He looks up, "Did I miss anything?"

Rocky tries, for a moment, to imagine what it would be like to have to cook for a gigantic space hamster. He fails. Unwilling to even contemplate those logistics, Rocky's brain reminds him of his own unfinished donut close-at-hand . ..

Griffin Freeman shakes his head. "Sounds about right to me. Consider me in for that last one. And I'll give you an update when I hear back from that Ambassador. Could be, the Andromeda Galaxy has never encountered it. I dunno." He says uncertainly. "But its worth a try. Two galaxies are better than one."

Copycat eyes Griffin in expectation of protest as she adds, "Count me in for the last one, too." She won't let him bench her this time! "And if I can help with the Harbinger and its motives, maybe I can find some stuff out. Or get it to tell the Overlord to hold off. But I think the telepaths probably have that handled."