Log:Lost Time, Scene 3

Lost Time 2017/01/13 	 Spirit|Dorian Grimm Ellbeth Wolf Ten Pulsar

3

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.

Dorian has put out a call on HeroNet for some extra meta expertise, inviting local heroes to a meeting at Starguard. He waits in the conference room as the heroes arrive...

Grimm is already in HQ, dressed in her BDUs, helping Special Agent Gibbs in the motorpool. Her phone beeps to remind her of the meeting. "Sorry, Hhaa...agent Gibbs," she grins. "You're out one assistant. I'll catch up with you later." With a wink and a smile, she heads towards the main building. A few minutes later, she enters the conference room and looks around for a seat, offering Dorian a salute when she spies him.

Ellbeth looks around as she enters the Starguard building. It's a been a long time for her. She had a good relationship with Random Factor. So so much with Paul and Dorian. Still, she's not here to reminisce. Going to the reception desk she informs the duty person she's arriving in response to Dorian's HeroNet message.

Ten comes in, cup of coffee in hand, and leans up against the wall as is her wont. "Hey," she says.

Wolf trots on over the short distance from Starguard Medical to this conference room, happy that Charles has made and maintained steady progress this past week and is nearing the end of his stay at SG. Wolf settles in to hear the update on the escape of Dorian's 'double' from Tranquility Prison and potential further developments, his ears pointed toward and focussed on Dorian as he awaits the news.

After Pulsar's last visit to StarGuard, he's started the habit of making regular check-ins at home to check the HeroNet announcements. He'd happily admit that this simple reroute has actually improved his ability to be a world-wide hero.

He's showing up to events where he can really make a difference instead of wandering the Earth haphazardly at (barely) sub-luminal speeds.

When he sees the post by Dorian Perrault- Commander of StarGuard Pulsar doesn't delay. He immediately teleports 50 miles into the sky and then arcs from the American Mid-West to Gamma Base in Colonial Bay, VA.

He stops at the receptionist who direct him to the conference room.

As he walks the corridors he dims a bit, not wanting to interrupt or distract anyone.

When he gets to the conference room he knocks as he opens the door and peeks in. "Good afternoon- is this the right..." He sees Dorian, and the others assembled. "Ah- definitely the right place."

He closes the door behind him as he thinks to himself, .o0(I'm one of the fastest people on Earth and still the last one to show... good grief.)

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.

Dorian greets each person as he or she arrives. "Thank you all for coming. I wanted to do a little outsourcing on this case, since I'm dealing with something...I'm not quite so familiar with.

Ten tilts her head, wondering what could be new to so experienced a hero.

Dorian taps his PDA, and a picture appears on the wall, of Syphon in his prison cell on Tranquility. The prisoner is dressed in the standard orange prison outfit. Dorian turns and addressed the group again, "This is Syphon. My...other half. Imprisoned on the moon. Or at least he was. Some of you might know already...but he disappeared from the prison."

On screen, Syphon's appearance matches that from any news footage. Snow-white skin. No facial features other than solid white eyes. No hair of any sort...even eyebrows.

Grimm grabs a seat and leans back, letting out a low whistle. "-That- guy? And he escaped Tranquility?" she asks as her jaw drops. "That's...all levels of bad."

Dorian nods. "He's not the only one. One of hte other prisoners disappeared as well. We'll get to him in a bit."

Pulsar nods as he takes a seat and pays attention to the presentation. He's gotten a small briefing on this- and honestly even that put a knot in his stomach. The look on Pulsar's face is serious and worried.

Dorian looks back to the screen, "I'm showing you Syphon's cell specifically because we got a slightly better look at the means of escape here than in the other cell. I have a theory about how it happened, but I want to see if other people have thoughts on it."

Ten thinks. o O (At least it's only two - not a mass breakout!)

Dorian points to the screen, "Watch closely while I run the video."

Everyone but Pulsar notices a brief flash of a humanoid figure in the room with Syphon. Then both are gone. Pulsar just sees Syphon disappear.

Ellbeth thinks, .oO(Max. Are you paying attention? I'd like your thoughts on this.)

Ten says, "A teleporter?"

Ellbeth purses her lips, "I assume you have slowed and enhanced the video. Have to identified the other person, Dorian?"

Dorian smiles, "See that? Here it is...slowed down." He slows the video down to a fraction of the speed that it was running...and the new person appears in just about 2 frames. First, a man with glasses and some kind of electrical harness appears. Then in the second frame, his body changes to cybernetic, with what looks like an Egyptian headdress.

Dorian freezes the video in that second frame. "This guy appeared in both cells, it looked like. And both prisoners disappeared. And here's the interesting part. It happened at exactly the same time."

"That's a pretty distinct look," Grimm murmurs, trying to recall if she's ever had dealings or heard of a villain with such a stand out look. "But how could he manages to just teleport in and out like that? Even I'd have trouble getting in there. I can barely teleport around HQ."

"And how could he be in two places at once?" Pulsar asks as a look of confusion passes over his luminous face.

Ten says, "Some people can do that. Or, I don't know, time travel?"

Grimm rubs her chin at the thought. "Magic?" she laughs. "Out of phase tech? Dimensional buddies? Like that time me and another Gabrielle surprised Ma--uhh, anyway. There's a few methods..."

Ellbeth waits to see if anyone else will have something to say. She's a scholar by inclination. Drawing conclusions from unverified sources goes against her nature.

Ten says, "Time Pharaoh. I'm guessing, from the get-up and the simultaneity."

Grimm taps her chin, lost in thought for a while. "Anachronist Anubis? Time Tut? Something like that." When Ten says Time Pharaoh, she snaps her fingers. "That's the guy!"

Dorian scrunches his face at little at the name. "That's...a horrible name. That was the best he could come up with?" He taps a couple of times on his PDA, trying to access whatever is in the database.

As an aside to Max .oO(Let's do a quick but thorough literature search om Takutan VII, please."

Ten says, "No idea if there's a genuine Egyptian connection or if that's really the best he could come up with."

"That is a bad name... terrible really." Pulsar says as he watches the more senior heroes brainstorm. He's a bit amazed, and most certainly impressed with how professional and knowledgeable they all are.

Ellbeth nods, "I concur. The records are sketchy and unconfirmed but that was my thought as well."

Ellbeth adds, "Dorian, check under the name Taktutan VII as well."

"Well, I think he had a few other names. Guess he ran through a few before he settled on Time Pharaoh," Grimm comments to Dorian. She flashes a playful smile. "Imagine how bad the others were that 'Time Pharaoh' is what he stuck with."

Pulsar chuckles at Grimm's analysis.

Ten says, "Tempus - and Tempest. Tempus was better, surely?"

Dorian shrugs, "If he's a time traveler, it might be one of his earlier names." He brings up the information he has on screen. There's a single picture of a man in a tweed jacket and glasses. "Dr. Davis Temple. Formerly a physicist at Ohio State. He studied...temporal physics. In the 1970s."

Ten says, "Last century? Weren't they still using clockwork for timekeeping?!"

Dorian continues, "He ended up trapped in the past. In the 1930s. And in the ensuing attempt to save his live, the heroes used his time machine again, which had a flaw. It exploded, killing Temple's wife. The heroes managed to get to the 1930s and recover him, though. But...that's where things went awry, according to the notes. He swore vengeance on the heroes that caused his wife to die."

Grimm rolls her wrist in an idle gesture as she replies to Ten, "But there's like several people who already took that name." She pauses and glances up, trying to remember something. "...maybe that was on Earth 517..." she mutters to herself.

Dorian furrows his brow, "There's something in here about the dimensional barriers weakening as a result and a demon trying to invade Earth, too."

Ten frowns. "Demons. Great."

Grimm frowns at the story, her expression akin to sympathy for a brief moment. "That's...that's rough," she murmurs as she sits up more seriously in her seat.

Ellbeth nods, "Yes, it is. But you note he vowed revenge. A more balanced person would drive his efforts to altering events to save his wife. Although meddling in time rarely ends well. As I can attest from personal experience."

Grimm shakes her head slowly. "Well, cause and effect and time travel are...strange. If she never died, he could never time travel back to save her."

Ten says, "I thought by current theory you couldn't change the past, just create a divergent timeline?"

"So she'd have to die to even be there to save," Gabrielle surmises, thinking of the time a hero claimed he tried to kill Hitler, and failed repeatedly.

Grimm nods in agreement with Ten. "Something like that. It wouldn't really be -his- wife. She'd still be dead. But that gets pretty murky. A callous person might not care if it was an alternate wife."

Ellbeth nods again. "That is the current theory. But it's just that, a theory. And from a pragmatic viewpoint, if you create a divergent timeline in which events are changed and you shift to that timeline, from your perspective the past /has/ changed."

Dorian nods, "Since then, there have been infrequent sightings of the guy. Often looking quite different. Such as the additional cybernetics. But it's clearly the same guy. The problem is...it's not linear." He nods again to Ellbeth, "The notes on the case seem to indicate that he tried to stop the heroes from using the machine in the first place, since he knew his wife was in peril. He sent creatures from time to attack the heroes. They then thought the barriers of time were messed up, and went ahead anyway."

Grimm cringes at the turn of events. "Causality is a messy, wibbly wobbly, timey whimey thing in those cases."

Ellbeth says, "Anyway, returning to the event of interest, now we have a who, we still need a why. Why go for Syphon?""

Ten says, "So what did we just see? Did we see him in the cells *twice*? Or is he so out of time, as it were, his appearance isn't even stable?"

Ten says, "And if he was there twice, was he trying to stop himself the second time, or something? And did he succeed in whatever he was trying?"

Dorian nods. "Both are good questions. It's probably worth mentioning who the other prisoner who escaped is." He taps a couple more times on his PDA, and a picture of a woman appears. "This is Ingrid Heller, also known as 'Inferno'. She was caught in Los Angeles a couple of years ago after she attempted to burn down the city."

Grimm leans over to look at Inferno. Los Angeles isn't that hard to burn. It's mostly tender. It tries to burn itself down well enough without any help. "So...any connection between Syphon and Inferno? Or you and Inferno?" she asks are her eyes lift to Dorian curiously.

Ten says, "Someone with a better sense of names, anyway!"

Ingrid looks like a goth in prison garb. Her bright red hair is shaved on one side, and flopped over the other way, over one eye.

Dorian shakes his head, "I don't have a connection to her. And I doubt Syphon does, either. But I'm guessing in that regard."

Grimm rolls her shoulder and tilts her neck to stretch it. Something pops into place, making her more comfortable. "And these guys didn't piss off Time Pharaoh? It seems like he's recruiting. Maybe he -is- still trying to save his wife with a team to fight the past heroes? What has this guy been up to lately, in our chronology?"

Dorian checks again, "Last sighting of the time traveler was in Zu, just before it fell a couple years ago."

Dorian says, "For those who don't know...Zu had a coup not so long ago."

Grimm rubs the back of her head sheepishly. "I did not know that," she murmurs, having not concentrated on her history classes all that much. She needed to find sometime to sleep in between college, Starguard Gamma, and two internships. "What happened there? Might give us ideas of why he was there, or how involved he was in that whole thing."

Dorian shrugs, "There's no indication as to why he was there, other than that he was meeting with some officials from Zu. This was while they were still controlled by VENOM. Dr. Destroyer took the country over three months later."

Ten says, "If he has - at any point in his timeline - some agenda other than avenging his wife's death it would be useful to know...."

Ten says, "Hm. Maybe his names provide some sort of clue... they might help put his appearances in order from his perspective."

Dorian says, "Well, he started as 'Dr. Davis Temple'. It would take sense to keep the 'Temp' part of that, right? So, either Tempest or Tempus would be next."

Grimm nods at Ten's idea. "Yeah! Great idea! And Time Pharaoh is when he went bat shick crazy and thought of himself as a ruler of time and went all cybernetic."

Ten says, "And likely any two appearances where he's using the same name are close together, of course. With that and his appearance changes...."

Dorian says, "I think it's safe to say the cybernetics are later."

Ellbeth says, "That would put quite a significant period in his time frame between his first and second visits to Syphon's cell. Can anyone suggest a reason for that?"

Dorian rubs his chin, "What if...one of those appearances wasn't real? Like...an image?"

Dorian says, "He appears out of time, and this facade pops up."

Ten says, "That was my first thought. Just a hologram or something,"

Grimm blinks at the theory and looks intrigued. "Ghost image? Time echo?"

Ten says, "But then once we started thinking about time travel other possibilities emerged."

Gabrielle rubs her temples like her brain hurts. "Yeah, like what if his future powerful self is taking his past self along for the ride to show him the ropes?"

Dorian scratches his chin as he thinks. "I think it's a good line of investigation. But at the same time, I think we need to get back to considering why he released those two. I'm going to also check to see if I can come up with other places and times where he release other people in a similar way. He might be putting a team together for...some reason."

Ellbeth says, "Dorian, if I recall correctly Syphon is by no means a team player. And I'm sure you've done this, but you have Zeal under protection, right?"

"There's nothing of Syphon and Inferno doing something in the past, right? So it's gotta be something that hasn't happened yet, or never was documented," Gabrielle guesses. She looks to Ten and ponders something before commenting to the group. "And if the string theory applies...these past versions of him could just be alternate dimension versions, crossing into ours as they try to travel through time. If I could see them in person, I might be able to tell if they're really part of our dimension and timeline."

Dorian nods to Ellbeth, "I've made sure to have a guard detail set up. Thank you for asking. And you're right, he hasn't been a team player in the past. But...he's smart. He tried to take on multiple heroes on his own last time. He can take most heroes one on one. Against a group, he had trouble."

Dorian smiles slightly, "In his shoes...I'd want to try to get some backup. So, he might manage to work with someone for a bit. It'll be a rocky partnership, to be sure."

"Well, what else should we know about Syphon?" Gabrielle asks Dorian, since he would know the guy best.

Dorian nods. "A good question. I shouldn't assume others know as much as I do." He pauses to think about it. "Syphon has energy based powers, sort of like mine. He's basically a large power battery. He can absorb hits and turn that into strength or use it to fuel energy blasts."

Dorian says, "He also doesn't eat like a normal person. He absorbs energy. Either from the sun, or from other sources, like car batteries. Or people. That tires people out quickly. When I was Syphon, I would use my wrestling skills from college and grab enemies and start to tire them out with my energy drain."

Dorian says, "But...to be fair, he's more than that. He really has powers like myself. He's pure energy. He just seems to THINK he's like his old self. Over time, he'll likely 'think outside of the box', and generate powers more like what I can do."

Dorian says, "Part of the reason that he's stuck in that mindset is...he's the encapsulation of all of my worst personality traits from when I was younger. Angst. Anger. Self-loathing. I hated how I looked, and wanted very desperately to be human again. I'm not now...but I can become human. He could too...if he could get past his emotional state. Instead, he's stuck as his old self, stuck brooding about it."

Dorian says, "He has the ability to be human again. He just doesn't know how to do it."

Ellbeth looks up, "I wish I'd known that."

Dorian shrugs and smiles. "It isn't proven. It's just a theory I have. I noticed he started to evidence powers that I can't pull off. Teleportation, for example. Desolidification. And then...I managed to pull off one of those, and I started to notice the comparison.

Dorian says, "Our minds are...the same. Kind of. But we're clearly processing the physical change differently. Harnessing abilities in a different order. Gaining mastery of different aspects of our powers."

Ellbeth says, "I can try, Dorian... Try to teach him. If he remains limited to the darker emotions as he was at the start it won't work. But if he has the ability to learn I may be able to heal him."

Dorian says, "For example...I can't explode, sending energy in all directions. He can. To devastating effect."

Dorian nods. "It might work, Ellbeth. Initially, I was basically all of the 'light' personality traits, and he was the 'dark'. But...I've noticed my own personality becoming more...centrist, I guess? I have to assume that's happening to him too.

During the lull in the briefing, Wolf pops out to the Umbra and pings Horus to set up a meeting with Aaliyah to check up on Takutan VII et al. He also pings Luna to talk to later. Dr. Temple was capable of Time travel, quite certainly, but there is also the question of _Space_ travel. (At -some- point, future -or- past, the Doctor would have had to make an actual trip to the Moon . . . is that why the cybernetics were needed, or is someone else involved?)

Wolf pops back in.

"Maybe the guy just needs to be human and get a hug," Gabrielle grins playfully. "It sounds like he got the short end of the stick in the split," she murmurs as she glances at Dorian from his light comment.

Dorian nods to Grimm, "I considered at one point trying to undo the split, you know. I was talked out of it." He then chuckles. "I think a hug might be a mistake. He can likely drain your energy that way. But...if he could turn human...and get past that emotional block, that'll go a long way to untwisting his emotions."

Grimm shifts a little in her seat. "I'm afraid I'm still learning criminal psychology, but if Tranquility or you have an emotional profile on him, i could study up until we can get him professional help."

Dorian nods, "I'm sure I can provide something for you to work with."