Log:You Are Not My Sister

Recommissioned 2020/07/24 Allison Magda Paragon Slinger Olympia Imaginarium 5

Having made arrangements for Kyssie to be safe someplace else, Allison returns to the gym. She has Julius already simulating Kyssie's presence in the place. Making it... not super obvious, but not concealed that she is here. He has plenty of footage of her from the few minutes Ally was gone, and he's making use of that in the workout room with Kyssie sitting astride a Unicorn with Butterfly wings, giggling and holding on while Allison observes. She has the room configured in a way that would be most likely to be useful in restraining or at least defending from a monster brick.

She herself is prepared for the whole... contact telepathy and such. But for now this is what's up. The Gym is basically closed to the public for now because she doesn't want to put anyone else at risk should Paragon show up.

Sailing across the sky from Bayside, a heavy, metal masculine form dive bombs towards Bayside, falling like a rock from the arc of a super leap. Paragon lands with a heavy, jarring thud of boots and clank of metal armor plates in a crouch. Not even a three-point landing. Paragon just absorbs the impact entirely with her knees.

She rises up to her full considerably height and quickly walks into the gym. She's even considerate enough not to just walk through the concrete wall or glass door, making a straight line for the workout room. Her full-helm plans left and right. Within the dark slots of the featureless helm, eyes glow red as they scan the area.

The gym being what it is, has a handful of barriers erecting, showing Kysmette behind four of them even as Allison engages her cloaking device and steps over next to the entrance door to the gym. It's not that she'd turn away help if someone else showed up. But she's not reaching out for it.

Certain things ping on Magda Gutzu's senses -- high-density electron flares, powerful gamma-ray bursts, the centers of massive quantities of communications signals, extraordinary non-biological neural networks. She's intended -- for quite some time, truth be told -- to make contact with the nano-synthetic Allison Temple, but in the midst of other activities, she hasn't had time -- yet.

However, when a massive nanite-and-metal assembly goes flying overhead, it's just the sort of thing she notices. When it's heading towards where her subconscious tracking last placed Temple, her operational paranoia kicks from medium to high gear, and she rises on magnetic curves to follow the entity, dropping to almost ground level and drifting in behind the heavy, metal form.

Paragon practically bursts into the Workout Room, the doors opening just in time. In her haste, Paragon ploughs right through the first barrier. She halts a few steps, realizing it was there in a delayed reaction. She half turns, her head also turning so she can look back at the Paragon-sized hole she just put into the barrier.

Yep. Just the right moment. Allison creeps forward and reaches out to place a hand on Paragon's back armor. . . just long enough to probe the CPU and find out which Paragon this might be. Doesn't need a deep scan. Just the basic surface thoughts...

Through the hole, the Paragon entity will undoubtedly see the black-clad floating form of Korkoro, following her at a respectable distance, her silver-shot black cloak rippling in invisible magnetic winds.

Paragon's surface thoughts are all revolving around Kysmette's safety, and relief to see she's safe and protected by barriers. She also thinks the barriers need to be upgraded.

The model numbers are...old. Really old. Vintage. Allison's repairs and replacement components aren't in place. The BIOS version is a higher one than before, though.

Same with the OS. That's been upgraded as well, even though the hardware seems downgraded.

The telepathy is quite obvious... to Paragon. Allison narrows her eyes. "You are not -my- sister." she says as she steps back a half pace.

The Command Override Module control chip is completely Portered, though. That is to say, fried and melted.

Paragon tilts her head at the scan she detects, then slowly turns her lower half in Allison's direction. The upper half follows after in a slow directional adjustment to track Allison. The eyes flick from red to white, blinking off and on a few times. The gender-neutral voice echoes within the metal armor, sounding tinny. "It's me, Allison. Thank you for keeping Kyssie safe. I'm...glad she didn't have to see that."

"Melted override chip, outdated armor. None of my modifications. I think you are still in the wrong reality." A pause and Allison shakes her head, "Alternate universes are a thing. Universes? Universii?" she asks as she tilts her head, curiously considering this conundrum. "So, the real question is... was that -our- Porter or.." She pauses and transmits psionically, <> She now wonders if the Kyssie she 'rescued' was also from an alternate universe.

From her position, Korkoro thoughtfully regards the blend of technologically-animated flesh and animandroid parts. So far it's merely stomped through a few things; little real harm done. But the fact that it could do so with such careless ease makes for potential harm. "Multiverse," she states, distractedly answering Allison's pseudo-question, "and universes. What is the situation with ... this?"

"I am reasonable positive that I'm still in my reality," Paragon answers with certainty. "And I am 100 percent certain that was our Porter." Her head pans to Korkoro. "Greetings, Citizen. This?" Her head pans about mechanically in search of what is being referenced, not realizing its her.

<> instructs Allison. And when she does that through her psi-compu-link, Julius brings up a holographic representation of the requested Para image next to Allison.

"As you can see. This is the Paragon from this world. Now, the Porter that you -murdered-... please tell me you did not just murder the father of Kyssie. The man who -loves- the Paragon from this world. Because if you did, then we are going to find out if I Can take you apart faster than you can take -me- apart." she adds as her arms basically liquify and extrude half a dozen energy weapon nozzles around each arm... attached to basically a bracelet and arm-band that are built into the arms, but which are also beginning to spin around the arms so that the barrels begin moving like they are spinning up miniguns.

To the newcomer, she intones, "I'd suggest staying back. This could be dangerous."

"Yes, that is me. Before someone at the mall did something to revert me," Paragon explains. Her eyes dim at the reminder of killing Porter. In a quieter voice, she answers, "Yes. That was me, also. But please, don't talk about that in front of Kyssie. Or fire in front of her."

She glances in what she thinks is Kysmette's direction, then back to Allison. "We still love each other. I...took him somewhere," she tries to recall. "He revived due to his nanites and helped free me from my control chip. He tried teleporting us home, but something interfered. Only I appeared back in our home."

JULIUS can find that is true. This current Paragon FLASHTHWUMPed into the Porter household moments before leaving and arriving here.

Paragon reaches an open hand to Allison. "Sister, please..."

Korkoro makes a brushing-aside gesture, though her expression is one of 'oh not that warning again'. "This is a city, therefore there are people around; they are made safer by my presence than not." She flexes the other hand, then says calmly to the Paragon unit, "You, basically. Are you sapient? Are you in control of yourself and your actions -- which means, are you responsible for them? If you aren't, advise us on how to keep you sapient while making you safe. If you /are/ responsible ... well. Let us know when your sapience is in danger as we disassemble the dangerous parts of you."

Eyes narrowing... Allison is angry but.. there is something in her synthetic eyes. Hope? It's really strange how her synthetic body responds autonomically to her emotions and such. But she stops the weapons from spinning with a mental command and inclines her head. "Let me in then." She says, "Fully in. Show me the memories of this." She suggests as she reaches her own hand to touch Paragon's. "Open up to me."

There are three barriers up, energy barriers between Paragon and what appears to be a four year old sitting on the back of a butterfly winged Unicorn. Paragon and Allison stand facing one another before those barriers... Ally reaching a hand for one of Paragon's, but looking at the same time terrified, resigned, and hopeful.

Paragon's gauntleted han closes around Allison's. Her head pans to Korkoro. "I am currently sapient. I was not in control when I...murdered...James Porter," she says the last with difficulty.

Dressed in what totally appears to be her usual yellow and black outfit, Olympia walks into the workout room... and stops cold a few paces in from the doorway. She looks about to see who all else is in the place, but is very, very clearly tense and on edge, all of a sudden.

Paragon doesn't resist Allison's accessing of her memories. There's Para, taking Kyssie shopping and holding hands. A cloaked figured with a dark bodysuit beneath appears, touches, Para, and says "Your little act may fool some, but -I- know what you really are. Nothing more than bits of metal, and scraps of meat. Leftovers scraped up and cobbled together. Do you think they've forgotten? Let's remind them." Kyssie is worried and tells Para she looks sick again. She manages to warn Kyssie to run inside a shop, and send a message to Porter to pick up Kyssie right away. And that point in the record, a download started for a patch update. There's a time stamp of the OS being upgraded.

Imaginarium walks into the room with an enormous smile of wonder on his face. He appears oblivious that there are other people in the room. It looks like he is trying to look at all of the ammenities all at once.

Paragon is standing stock-still, her metal-gloved hand gripping Allison's. The glowing white eyes recessed within the full helm are also focused on her for a moment, but they drift over to regard Korkoro taking aim on her.

The room is... a standoff. Almost Mexican, but without tortillas damnit. Either way, Allison is holding Paragon's hugely armored hand with her own smaller one... and concentrating. Korkoro aiming a hand at Paragon, and Olympia having just arrived in the room.

Allison nods her head slowly then and says, "So, you got... overridden again. How did you get downgraded to your current level?" she asks. "And don't worry, I wasn't risking Kyssie when I thought you were on the warpath. Julius, dismiss the Kyssie-gram." she says.. and indeed, the hologram of Kysmette (the little girl who was sitting on the holo-unicorn with Butterfly wings) fades out. "She's downstairs in the lab. Not here in the gym, so she didn't hear -anything- we discussed." she adds.

Paragon's eyes blink off and on and her head suddenly jerks towards the hologram of her daughter. It looked and detected as so real to her. She starts to panic. "And she is safe?"

Korkoro's hands possess a flickering silvery(?) aura, one that more or less floats around the juncture of Allison and Paragon, but is clearly more focused on the latter. "Settle yourself," she suggests/orders in a deceptively mild voice. "Please." She regards the mechanical with cool appraisal, not unlike a butcher examining a side of beef to decide where to make the first cut. But, you know -- polite.

Directly transmitted to Allison, Julius' voice says to her, "Allison, the young woman at the door has activated her powers. Based on previous telemetry I've gotten of her, I estimate an 89.34 percent probability that she will attack Paragon if not prevented from doing so."

As Julius is transmitting to Allison, Olympia steps into the room, the fall of her first step sounding... very heavy.

Paragon shakes her head at Korkoro's demand, more so because it's no time to settle. "If Kysmette is safe, then, there isn't time to lose."

Imaginarium will look up as if noticing the ladies present for the first time and ask "I'm sorry, I'm not interrupting something am I?" Which he'll follow with: "I can leave if I am."

"Wait." says Allison. "She -is- safe. But I need you to explain the details here. I need to know everything that's going on or I can't help. And..." she pauses to step closer to the bruiser... looking a bit like David squaring off against Goliath. "Me not helping is -not- an option. Got that?" She asks before her eyes slide to Korkoro. "Stand down." She says simply before looking to Paragon. "So... need me to make a new backup? Or do you want me to overwrite your current memories with your most recent backup?"

And then as newcomers enter, she says, "If you are heroes, hang on a sec. It may be good that you are here. But nobody attacks anyone in here yet."

"There /is/ time to explain," states Korkoro, as if talking about gravity, or water being wet. At Allison's request, she tilts her head in thought, then asks, "Are you give-your-life certain? Because if you are, then I will; I am prepared only to act in your defense."

Olympia takes two more steps, each one sounding like someone a LOT bigger and heavier than her is walking. Simply put, you shouldn't be able to hear her footsteps, probably, but you can... and if you're close enough you might even FEEL them with whatever part of your body is touching the ground. She -does- stop, though.

Julius, directly to Allison once again, reports, "Olympia appears to be standing down... but her stance shows that she is ready to act, if need be."

"No time," Paragon says to Allison on the backup. She is pointedly ignoring the metas around her who have powers trained on her. It's like she doesn't consider them a threat. She looks back to Allison. "Sis, I need you to track where I've been in the past hour or more. Porter is alive, and he is in the hands of the Mechaneer. I can't seem to access my GPS coordinates to the forward arming and repair point. I can't sense him on my network."

"For having no time to explain, that didn't take long to actually tell me what was going on. You -could- give me a full data dump if you wanted." says Allison as she points a finger to her forehead. "May I connect?" she asks. "Julius... if you'd go ahead and ido as she asks using Starguard's surveillance network, tracking back... that'd rock buddy."

And then Allison turns to look at Korkoro, "She is -my- family. If she proves a threat, I will end it, but if you want to kill her, you go through me. Got it?" she asks, seeming relatively sure of herself. Then she inclines her head, "So, humanitarian, be humane eh?" she asks before looking to the others, "Mechaneer is something of a Frankenstein Supervillain techno-magic bullshit whackjob who made Paragon here... and keeps trying to control her. Now he has her husband, so we're getting him back."

That said, she looks back to Paragon and adds, "I still say you should have let me upload Julius into your network so he could infiltrate Mechaneer's next time the idiot comes around."

Slinger has taken a few more injuries than he expected- especially considering he designed this body himself, he was confident he understood the constraints of the body. Unfortunately in simulation all the numbers are spot on but in the real world the gulf has been massive to say the least.

He has a few theories as to why but what he needs is raw data. Without his suit there's only one place he can get it with any confidentiality.

Cut to Slinger walking into the Workout Room focused on his own woes- that is until he walks in and sees what he can only describe as some kind of stand-off... around... PARAGON! He double takes to make sure he's really looking at the hero who almost killed his bestie!

He cocks his head and leaps into the room to figure out if this is a simulation or a something else entirely.

The conversation being had makes it pretty clear its not a simulation.

Slinger's eyes narrow.

Paragon's eyes blink off and on as if that fact suddenly become a realization. "Kill me?" her voice echoes within her full helm, head panning to the others to regard them all. "That seems unlikely, Allison. Heroes do not kill," Paragon informs matter-of-factly like a helpful automated virtual assistant would. Even her inflection is a bit...unnatural. Not quite human at times when it comes to fact-checking.

"I... guess that might explain what I saw on TV", Olympia says, taking another couple of steps closer -- her footfalls still 'too heavy'. "If someone's in trouble, though, yeah... I'll help", she adds.

Korkoro can't entirely suppress a slight roll of her eyes at Allison's histrionics. "I haven't killed anyone in twenty years," she says, "and I /did/ tell her to warn me if and when I was impinging upon her sapience." Korkoro eyes the mechanoid, her lips twisting in thoughtful estimate, and then the hundred-plus-years-superheroing female flexes her hands again, and the 'impending doom' halo hovering about Allison and Paragon's joined hands fades.

"Hm. Mechaneer. I ... daresay I would be of some assistance in dealing with him." Korkoro eyes Paragon, then adds, "And in doing some more permanent work on you."

"Bit late for that last part." mutters Allison as she shakes her head.

"Oh, I wouldn't say so," disagrees Korkoro. "Honestly, from what I understand of your capabilities, Ms. Temple, you could have done so already -- /should/ have, if you'd thought things through. But," she sighs, shaking her head slightly, "experience is what you get /after/ the disaster happens, not before."

Imanuel will lean over to Olympia and whisper "Do you have any godly idea whats going on here?"

"Uhm... sounds like a bad guy kidnapped her husband and made it look like she killed him on TV", Olympia says to Immanuel... then seems to suddenly realize how close he is to her, and leans away... then steps away, too. "Dude..!", she says. "Personal space!"

With a gesture, Allison causes a part of the floor to open up, and a bit down below begins lifting to this level. "Sure of yourself are you." Allison states. But up comes Kyssie .. dancing to music with a holo-representation of Julius.

"Tell you what. Show me what you can do." she adds, "And then I'll improve on it." she adds as she basically has her whole tech lab opened there for anyone to look at and use. "But what say we deal with Mechaneer first and get your unlikely assumption that you are better at this than I am dealt with later, eh?"

Paragon's head pans t Korkoro. "Permanent work?" she asks, not sounding enthused.

Slinger crosses his arms, grumpy that everyone is signing on for some nonsense when she just tried to kill Gabrielle Grimm out above the ocean! He's about to protest when Olympia saying someone was in danger spurns the more noble aspects of Daemon's gestalt personality.

He frowns, silently resolving not to let Paragon out of his sight until all this is sorted out and wait for an opportunity to dismantle the robotic hero(ine) as things progress.

"This person 'impersonating' Paragon wouldn't have happened to... leap out of town towards Green Acres afterward?" He inquires to see how the story lines up. He points away from the ocean which puts Allison's rapidly assembling lab into the technophile's view.

His eyes get big and his mouth hangs askew.

Paragon then pans her head to Olympia. "No, that was me on TV. I did kill my husband," she says pointedly. She's truthful like that.

Olympia frowns again. "So... if you killed him, how's he kidnapped, too?", she asks of Paragon.

Korkoro shakes her head slightly. "I didn't say I was capable -- I only said that /you/ are. My lack is of knowledge, however, which is not where your own lies." She makes a gesture, then nods at Paragon. "Barriers to access by any but your own self," she tells the cybernetic individual. But I agree with your kin -- let's deal with the problem at hand before borrowing any." She gestures from Allison to Paragon, as if inviting her to do as Paragon requested in performing the trace.

Korkoro adds, speaking to Olympia, "He's Porter. I'm starting to suspect the universe has a perverse fascination for him, and doesn't like him not existing."

"Ok. I'm in. But I want to help... in the lab." Slinger says firmly.

"I don't know how him being him makes a difference like that", Olympia says to Korkoro. "... if he's kidnapped, though, let's go get him back", she adds, directing those word to Allison and Paragon. She says it as if it's just that straightforward and simple.

Paragon turns to face Olympia. "I took his body to an automated base...somewhere. His nanites repaired and revived him."

Imaginarium will say "Rescue mission. Cool! I'm down."

Paragon's helm pans mechanically towards Imaginarium and scans his regular clothes. "Greetings, Citizen," her gender-neutral tinny voice echoes.

"Hello....hero?" Imaginarium will reply, then teleport 2m to his left. "How may I be of assistance?"

Slinger simply tries to take his eyes off Allison's lab. He fails miserably.

"We just need to know where to go", Olympia says, crossing her arms in front of herself. She looks at Allison. "You told the computer to track stuff for you, sounded like... got anything yet?"

Up comes a holo-projection of a map of the east coast, with a trajectory shown of where Paragon had.. been. Somewhere out in the Atlantic Ocean (no, not near Horizon). But the trajectory ends at the water with no indication where -under- the water it might have been. Could have been a submarine, underwater base... or Jonah's Fish.

Korkoro regards the map. "Away from inhabited areas. All right, that's good -- easier to simply take things apart that way." She makes no comment about it being underwater; it may not /be/ an issue for her.

Paragon's eyes blink of and on from the recesses of the helm's eyes as Imaginarium teleports. "Oh. You are a metahuman. Your assistance would be most appreciated," the full-plate armored cybernetic hero intones hopefully. She looks to Allison. "I can only hope the coordinates weren't wiped along with my recordings of the journey there."

"I hope so." Imaginarium will reply, "I have defenses as well but most people can't see them."

"Well, I can get underwater and head down to do recon if that'll help." offers Allison before she steps over and scoops up Kysmette in her arms and turns towards Paragon, "But first, do you want to kiss your daughter sis?"

"I'd... need some way to breathe, 'cause I don't think I can hold my breath long enough to be any good for an underwater place", Olympia says, hands falling to her hips. "Y'all sure it's underwater, and not, like, a boat or something?"

An airy wave of Korkoro's hand dismisses the 'water' portion. "Underwater, on Mars, whatever -- I can get us there. The question is whether or not 'there' is still at that spot."

As Kyssie comes up from the revealed panel, Paragon turns towards her and smiles in relief behind the helm. She wants to nod, but...she's not sure if Kyssie would want to kiss her right now. Paragon's helm splits apart and retracts into her armored collar. Beneath is...a very sickly looking woman. Pale white skin, sunken eyes, and ashen lips. The skin around her eyes has a lavender hue. Her hair is auburn and falls to about shoulder-length. "Hey, Sweetie. Mommy's back. And she's going to get Daddy back, too," she promises to the little girl. There's no family resemblance. Kysmette is blonde and very much alive and normal looking.

Slinger tries to be unmoved by the undead woman's love for her living daughter, but fails at that too.