Log:SGG - No. 7

2012/04/15 	 Jolt Kay Mindstar Paul van Sterran Total Babe 1

It's time for a Starguard staff meeting between Paul and the SGG team members. Paul appears on a video chat screen from his apartment in Bayside.

Mindstar arrives just a few minutes before the scheduled start of the meeting. "Hi, everyone."

Total Babe hurries in, only just on time and running, but not out of breath. "MAde it!"

Kay is waiting in her office, standing by the window looking out. There is a standing order for the day that all operatives are to head on in and find themselves a place to sit for the meeting. She looks outside with a semi-thoughtful expression but when people start arriving she turns to greet them with nods and smiles before moving to find her own seat and wait for Paul.

Mindstar says, "So, Force, what's this about?"

Paul appears on screen in a blue shirt with the collar unbuttoned. "Hey everyone. Let's make this short and sweet... updates." He pauses a moment and glances down to check his pda. "Our friends Zereg and Dreadnaught are now guests of the holding facility at Tranquility."

Total Babe takes her seat hurriedly, glancing about to see who's here.

"Our benefactor wishes to speak with us." Kay answers Mindstar, "The head cheeze has arrived." She says with a smirk as Paul arrives and then settles in. "I have a few questions of my own once you're done with the updates."

Mindstar finds a chair and sits.

Paul continues: "The science guys are still looking into the hyperspace event that dislodged the Phylxian stasis pods and caused then to crash to Earth. No real progress there."

"And finally, Veidra is still out there," Paul says. "Seems like she's gone to ground. We haven't heard anything from other law enforcement organizations."

Mindstar speaks up...

Total Babe thinks. o O (I wonder if that's good or bad.....)

Mindstar says, "The other aliens were in mental contact with Veidra at some point. If a court order can be obtained allowing my to enter the minds of the other aliens, I should be able to determine what Veidra's mental pattern is, and then make a mental search of at least this city."

Paul nods. "If you think it's worth a shot, I'll have the legal guys work on it. The sooner Veidra's in custody, the better. We still haven't fixed up from her last visit to SGHQ."

Paul looks to Kay: "What did you want to add?"

Kay drums her fingertips across the top of her desk, "I need access to the network that tracks dimensional entries and exits so as to know when I need to call the team up. I also need a definite rules and standards as to where we stand. Does the team need police training in order to mirandize people, do I need to get search warrants, how much are we civilian, and how much are we a legal government agency, what police powers do we have?"

Paul says, "I'll talk to our friends at Transmat and make sure our connection to the network is up to date. From what I've been told, Transmat has set up monitors at certain... what did Master's call it...? Thin spots. Physical places where travel between dimension has been easy."

Paul says, "It's a good point about the rules and standards, Kay. I'll try to set up a meeting so can brief the teams on the dos and don'ts and..." Paul's eyes narrow as he turns towards something off camera. "How did you get in here...?" There's a tense moment, before Paul turns back to the camera. "Guys, I -- !"

The signal cuts off.

Total Babe jumps up. "WHere is he exactly, and what's the fastest way there?"

"Alright." Kay says, "I still think we need a primer, something that can be handed out to team members so that they know and I know that they know what is legal to do and not do." .oO(And so I know too.) She thinks to herself and then the camera is cut off. "Well. Looks like we get to go rescue Paul. Taking bets on wether it's Veidra taking him to try and use to release the other two." She smiles faintly before queing up the secretary, "I need Pauls location." Then to TB: "Fastest way? Teleportation."

Mindstar says, "Only if the location is known to the teleporter though, Force."

Mindstar is checking on her PDA, "That's... three kilometers 400 meters at 126 degrees to magnetic north, my GPS program makes it. Anyone care to check my figures?"

"Well, it would be fastest." Kay says with a shrug and then opens the window, holding out her hands to the other two, "C'mon, without teleportation, fastest is me flying us there." And she focuses her will to try and activate her flight, crimson glow and all. "Wait..." She looks at Mindstar with a frown, "Are you able to teleport us or not?"

Mindstar says, "Not into the apartment but to nearby. I'll aim for high so we're above any obstruction. You can then fly us down?"

Mindstar opens a portal for the distance and direction, angled to appear a 1oom above the ground.

Total Babe says, "I don't imagine it'll hurt much if I fall anyway...."

Total Babe heads over to by the portal.

"Yeah, I can do that." Kay says reaching to take hold of TB and Mindstar so that when they come through they don't plunge to almost certain doom! Or uncertain doom. Or bruises and a sprained ankle. Whichever.

Kay flies Total Babe and Mindstar through the air above Bayside. Down below there's the sound of screeching tires as two cars collide in the middle of an intersection.

Mindstar comments off context, "Is that typically American. All three of us are females and Paul said 'guys.'"

Total Babe says, "Bets the car crash is no coincidence!"

Total Babe peers down to see what happened.

"It's pretty much unisex anymore meaning a collection of individuals or a group." Kay answers Mindstar as she tries to take in the surroundings as she approaches Paul's place. "Not a good day to telecommute for work." She mutters, the crashing cars of course drawing her attention as well.

Total Babe says, "Traffic lights are ouut for several blocks. Likely all power too...."

"Huh, doesn't sound like Veidra, but who knows." Kay murmurs and she activates her forcefield as well before flying down to the balcony making sure that she and/or TB are providing cover for Mindstar on the approach and landing.

Total Babe sniffs. "That's ozone... maybe a transformer blew?"

It's a lovely day, and apparently Paul had the glass door to hit balcony left open. Inside, Paul has a spacious, modern apartment that looks barely lived-in. In the middle of the living room is where Paul has his video chat equipment. The large vid screen reads 'Signal Lost'. One thing that draws attention is the large, circular hole that looks to have been cut in the floor of the foyer.

Mindstar sends her mind out searching for any other presences in the apartment.

Kay frowns as she looks around and she spots the cube, "Well, I think we can rule out Veidra... that doesn't seem like something she'd use. So it's time to go through past enemies." She pulls pda up and connects SG base, "I need a cross reference of anyone who might leave a rubik's cube as a calling card." Cuz when all else fails, call the techies.

Total Babe says, "Let's have a closer look at that hole, anyway...."

Mindstar opens her eyes. "There's something out of place in the apartment below this.

Kay walks over towards the rubik's cube and she frowns, "Reminds me of something, Why would Next Generation be after Paul? Either of you familiar with a villain named Kubik?" She asks curiously before looking to see what's going on down below since Mindstar mentions it.

Mindstar shakes her head, "Sorry, never heard of the name before."

Total Babe says, "Fraid not."

Mindstar teleports down to the apartment under Paul's to look more closely at the strange hi-tech device.

The apartment downstairs is empty too, but someone has set up some kind of high tech device in the living room there. It's been hooked into the power supply in the apartment. On the ceiling, around the hole in the ceiling (the floor of Paul's apt) it looks like someone has set up some kind of laser device to cut the hole.

Mindstar unplugs the unknown device, just in case power is restored to the apartments, "Come have a look at this. Any idea what it might be?"

Pleiades enters from Reception Area.

Total Babe goes to have a look/

"Mindstar can you scan for Paul? If he's in the city we need to know where. If he's not... we're kinda screwed." Kay says before she decides to fly down, "I'm guessing that what you just unplugged is a teleportation device, and that the reason the grid is down is because using it fried the area."

Mindstar says, "Yes I can scan for him. But I have to tell you I haven't contacted him mind before this, so my chance of locating him is fairly low."

Mindstar starts a series of mind scans, each covering a district of the city, beginning with Baywater.

Total Babe sighs. "Investigative skills aren't my forte."

Kay looks around, trying to figure out what she can out of the evidence at hand both above and below. "This, is my fault." She mutters to herself with a frown.

Total Babe says, "Huh? Your fault? How?""

Mindstar spends time doing several mind scans, finally shaking her head regretfully, "I can't find his mind. He's either out of the city or in a shielded location. Or dead, but I doubt the latter. No point is taking him away just to kill him immediately."

"I have bad blood with Next Generation." Kay answers, "They probably saw me on the news as linked to SGG, and decided to do this." She flies up and snags the rubik's cube, "This, is the calling card of Kubik, a Next Generation terrorist Cell operative." And she flies back down to the machine, "Which might well activate this... which means they want us to come, or me to come, it's a trap and the only way to spring it is to activate this device."

Total Babe says, "Do you know what it is?"

"The device? No, but I'm guessing it's how they got away so quick with Paul so far Mindstar can't find him, and I'm guessing it's what fried the electrical grid here." Kay answers with a shrug.

Total Babe says, "Which means if we wantt to activate it we need another source of power."

Mindstar nods, "Quite a lot of power if that is what burnt out the area's electrical grid."

"Not necessarily." Kay says with a frown, "Could be it just overloaded the transformer outside and there was cascade failure." She shrugs, "Either way, we need to get both of these back to base and get them set up in a secure location. There's every possibility when we activate this thing it could signal an attack or who knows what."

Mindstar nods.

Kay calls up for some techies to come pick all of this up and move them to those secure facilities, with questonite walls etc. Since they'd likely just damage something if they tried to do it.

The SG lab techs have set up the device in a Questonite cell and connected it to power. They've identified it as a Hypersite portal generator that can open a teleportation gateway to another such generator.

The guidance system however, requires an encryption key, which is provided by the rubiks cube, apparently.

Total Babe looks at the portal generator being put together. "You can see why these things aren't legal here. Imagine if any of the parts became detached when someone was halfway through.... Give me Transmat solid rings of diamond any day!

"Well." Kay says as she looks down at the rubik's cube, careful to not shift any of it's colors or the like since that could very well change the location of the portal and they don't want to end up at the center of the earth or something. "Chances are when we turn this on, we're either going to get flooded with agents and worse, or, if when we go to the other side we'll get flooded with agents and worse."

Jolt was out having a nice relaxing day and got a call to come in to Headquarters. Naturally it took some of the techs 4 or 5 times to get her to pick up the phone and get the info to her. So here she not so much wandering the Starguard HQ halls as getting directed where she is supposed to be "So what's everyone up to today?" yep she's a bit late but who knows where she was.

Total Babe says, "Hi Jolt - I'm sure Kay will brief you."

"Next Generation kidnapped Paul." Kay explains to Jolt, "And unfortunately, most of the 'team' isn't answering their phone. If you know of anyone who might be able to help then give them a call. They wouldn't have left the machinery functional if they didn't want us to use it, which means they know we're coming, we're going to need to have firepower the likes of which the Gods have never seen in order to take them by surprise."

Total Babe grins. "It'd be amusing to send someone they're not expecting, like a bunch of supervillains, through...."

Kay smirks, "For some reason I don't think giving the bad guys more allies is a good idea. Dreadnought probably thinks it's a fluke we caught him in the first place." She shrugs a bit, "But, lets get this thing hooked up and see if we can get it to work."

A lab tech gives Kay a thumbs up. "All set, ma'am. Just plug in the cube and it should open up the gate."

Total Babe nods. "Tell me when we're ready to go - I guess I'll be playing human shield again!"

Jolt smirks some and nods "Well I got firepower and plenty of it" she admits "That and I have an urge to blast something or someone since I was hoping to have a nice relaxing day off so a little target practice cant hurt"

Kay nods to the tech and moves to plug in the cube and hope it works. "Lets just hope that this is the way the cube needs to be and they want us to get there easy like. Otherwise... this thing has like a billion different combinations."

...And nothing happens. The gateway generator beeps and displays an error message: 'Invalid destination key'.

Total Babe says, "At least it didn't just send us to somewhere random."

Kay says, "Anyone good at these things?"

Total Babe says, "Not really."

"Note to self: Find someone who can do retrocognition for the team at some point" Jolt smirks a bit as how certain abilities would help things along "So... any idea what the combination could be? It's got to have like some sort of coordinate system right to know where to send things?"

"Well I'm guessing it might just need to be solved." Kay says with a frown and pulls the cube out and decides to start flipping things around, trying to puzzle it out, "Maybe once it's solved it'll open up to 6 different destinations..."

Total Babe says, "I hope someone took a picture of it first. In case the clue was in how it was set....."

The lab tech offers his open hand to Kay. "May I?"

"I'm sure it's on tape." Kay says to TB and then hands the cube over to the tech.

The tech snaps photos of the sides of the cube and then pulls up his PDA. "Apparently Dr. Wyrd ran into this Kubik person before. She uploaded a program for solving these cubes to the net a few months back..." Eventually, he uses his PDA to solve it.

He offers the solved cube back to Kay.

Jolt says, "Please dont tell me the answer is the equivalent of 12345 as a password or key..."

"See I knew it was a good idea to send in the request to look up anything on the cubes." Kay says to the others but then looks at the cube, "Ummm what color to try... lets go with red." And she puts the red color face into the machine.

Once the puzzle is solved, the cube begins to project a holographic image. The image is of a foot-tall recording of Kubik, a figure in a pale gray, hooded wrap-around cloak. He speaks in a computer modulated voice: "Hello Force. I have Paul van Sterran. If you want to see him again, you'll have to come and get him."

Total Babe says, "Gosh, you mean it's a trap?"

Kay smirks and gives pretty much the same response as TB, "Gosh really? Tell me something I didn't know already." She studies the image though, since she's not really familiar with the person in the image. Then quieter she says, "Sorry Paul..." mostly to herself.

Jolt looks at the others "I'm all up for walking into a trap if you all are?" she smiles some "To be honest, they might not be expecting us so soon... They'll probably expect us to sit around and discuss it and get approval then come with a large number of people and support"

Total Babe says, "Or they figured we'd solve the puzzle in a minute and expected us hours ago."

"Well, either way it goes down we can't just wait and leave Paul there." Kay says to the others, "So, lets get this show on the road." She goes to take the cube unless it's actually a two way communication thing and Kubik's going to talk some more. "Is it just me, or does this guy have a real big Star Wars thing?"

Total Babe shrugs. "It's all, what, '80s or something?"

Total Babe says, "So, everyone get behind me and walk into the trap? Someone have a change of clothes standing by for me...."