Players:
Summary: Chloe has a riddle she just can't figure out.
Date: June 17, 2010
The Riddle
Rating: PG
Xavier Mansion - Library
Like most Libraries, this one has that respected quite hush about it. A desk to check out books sits next to the door, next to the desk sits a statue of an Orangutan with a sign saying Return your books or else. Row upon row of books goes up and down the room. In the middle of all the shelves are two computers for looking up titles and a group of tables for students to sit and study. Along the back wall are windows with padded window seating for students to read in quiet.
Tucked away in a corner of the library a superspeed teenage blonde scowls as she flicks through a big book of quotations. "Well /damn/ you Heather. The only thing which is sure to happen in the future now is I slap you silly for being so bloody cryptic!" Chloe curses at normal speed. "Why not give me a clue which actually makes sense? How can we save the world from… uhm… freaky bondange man if you won't make sense."
Walking into the library, Daisuke has a laptop with him and is getting ready to cruise the Craigslist for apartment opportunties. He can't help and stop though at Chloe's comment. "Freaky bondange man? Should I even ask?" His voice is no longer a whisper but it's not that strong either, kind of like someone getting over a cold. "What's up Chloe?" He asks sliding into a seat next to her as he opens his laptop.
Chloe fixes Daisuke with a suspicious look. "You /really/ wanna know?" she asks cautiously. "And if you dare say I'm not in full control of my senses I reserve the right to slap you with my metal hand!" She sighs, then pulls out an old battered watch. "Heather came back from the future and it turns out she's responsable for the guy who kidnapped Cam being in our timeline. This Ahab guy turns people into bondage nuts who are all… evil. Anyway she kidnapped Cloud and I mistakenly took her watch when she wouldn't let go of my hand…" She pauses to let Daisuke get a grasp on things before adding. "And then I spoke with Heather and now she's trying to beat herself at time manipulation before she becomes this evil person /and/ she left a cryptic hidden message in the watch."
Daisuke nods. "Yeah, you'd be surprised at the amount of crazy I've heard and been through." He says as he listens to Chloe and nods, and he doesn't say she's crazy or anything. "Well…okay. So…we're being attacked, or Cam was taken I should say, by a time travling future Heather and now you have a watch from the future that is supposed to have a hidden cryptic message in it? Did you know what the message is or is figuring out the problem?" He's completely serious as she talks, after all Daisuke did get stuck travling through time at one point.
"Not quite. Ahab took Cam in the thing where James got speared," Chloe corrects, giggling at her own choice of words. "Cloud was taken by Bondage Heather. But anyway… The message makes no sense! It's like a riddle and she /knows/ I hate them. Why leave a clue that you know the person it's meant for is going to find it near impossible to understand." She pouts and hunts around for the scrap of paper with her notes on. "You have to promise Heather doesn't hear a word of this, okay? I can't risk her knowing what she tells me later on."
Daisuke puts out a hand to Chloe and nods. "Sure, I won't tell Heather anything. Believe it or not, I've been stick in a time traveling caper before…it sucked." He says as he forgos his laptop for now and listens. "And is Cloud still missing? And he was taken by Bondage Heather so is he lost in the future now? Or somewhere in time?"
"Honestly? I don't /really/ care," Chloe admits sheepishly. "He's possibly the dumbest guy I've ever met. Connor warned him not to trust her /and/ she gave no proof of what she said, but he went with her anyway because 'he might die'." She rolls her eyes with such extreme slowness it may well be painful for her. "Anyway the riddle goes like this, Keep sight of my many faces, Listen to the bells and chimes, Retrace all my muddled paces, And turn back the tides of time. Signed, Heather Brown, codename: Timeslip."
"Well the obvious thing is that we have to end up reversing time somehow…let's see…retrace all her muddle paces…" Daisuke walks over to get some pencil and a pad before sitting back down again and jotting the riddle down. "Okay, how many different 'Heather's' have you seen? And from what points in time are they? If we can figure that out maybe we can figure out at -what- point in time she becomes Bondage Heather?"
"Three. Heather from my dorm room," Chloe says, counting them off on her fingers. "Future Heather in bondage gear and /other/ Future Heather in bondage gear. She did this trick where she set her watch, then when Connor freaked and attacked her /another/ her appears to save herself. I guess setting her watch is so she knows /when/ she needs to go back and save herself, but anyway she said her parents had been dead hundreds of years. But that was probably fast world years and she didn't /look/ that much older."
"What's the watch say, does it have a time and date on it?" Daisuke asks as he is writting down everything she says, he seems to be really deep in thought on this. He writes down the two future Heather's ('a' and 'b') then writes a note next to 'b' - trick with watch. Then future Heather 'c' - saved herself. Hoping that Chloe corrects what he got wrong. "Okay…so we've got three Heathers from the future and your dorm Heather so…those are some of the muddled faces."
Chloe blinks. "Two from the future and our Heather," she corrects. "This hurts my brain already! The watch is a more battered version of the one our Heather owns. So it's safe to assume she's had it the entire time Doctor McCoy could maybe figure out how old it is? I'm not sure how else we could figure stuff out."
Sitting at the table discussing something are Chloe and Daisuke. Daisuke looks deep in thought as he scribbles out something on the paper and rewrites it. "Okay, so weird idea. I haven't heard good things about the kid but…Theo…he's a technopath right? Do you think he can figure out how old this is?" It's a shot in the dark. "The Bells and Chimes really….shit…bells and chimes. Like an alarm on a watch or clock!"
"How old it is temporally? Doubt it," Chloe says with a scowl, directed firmly at the watch. "It's one Heather already owns. Nothing unusual tech wise except… Maybe the battery? If it's more advanced than ours it could give a vague hint about technology progression. For the record Theo isn't really all that bad he's just… bad at dealing with whatever issues he had before turning up. I've spoken to him and he's going to try be.. well… better I hope." She doesn't add the 'or I'm gonna beat him senseless' part, although she totally thinks it!
To Chloe he certainly doesn't arrive out of no where, but perhaps not so much Dai. Pietro just is there, at the edge of their conversation, with a shoe box under arm. "Excuse the interruption." May as well be somewhat polite about it. Or make a passing gesture at it anyway. "Do you still have a problem with footwear?" Asked of Chloe, even as he offers over a box. "Even if it's just a spare set for you, I had something made your size. Should last you a while." Considering how fast he'd go through shoes without special ones, well, he had something made. They are white, and have no designs, but look like fairly normal sports running shoes. After this he arches an eyebrow at Dai, looking him over.
Daisuke nods and is looking at the various phrases. "I haven't really met Theo, just heard stuff but anyway…bells and whistles…alarm. Does her current watch have an alarm that goes off at a set time?" Just an odd question that Daisuke asks as he might be thinking too far outside the box or not far enough. His voice is still recovering from the Sinster incident a while back but it's no longer a whisper. Pietro gets a curious look then a nod as he does recognize him as an Avenger.
"One moment," Chloe says to Daisuke in normal speed, before shifting to her native fastworld factor six. "Hi and thanks indeed! People keep buying me shoes, I could begin to like this. On a more serious note… You remember my roomie? Well a future version of her has gone evil and is working with someone called Ahab. This Ahab guy has kidnapped one student who has a detection power /and/ Future Heather has kidnapped another. She implied some kind of conflict was going on and that people die, potentially lots. I have her watch from the future and it has a cryptic clue, which could be down to my suggesting /our/ Heather put plans in place to save herself when she gets captured."
Hmm. Pietro crosses his arms over his chest. "I did notice that you like to run barefoot, which isn't a good idea in urban environments." He shrugs, for he had a similar issue when he was young. The materials necessary hadn't been invented yet. The idea of someone being kidnapped and leaving a clue is strange, but let's be honest. He's seen stranger. "This isn't a new story." Said with all seriousness. "New trouble however. What is the clue? And we should proceed at a more moderate pace so that this young man can understand us." Motions to Daisuke. "Excuse us. I am Pietro. Chloe has been filling me in. What do you think?"
"Nice to meet you Pietro, and what do I think…you look better in the blue costume over the green one?" Daisuke says joking a little bit before reciting the riddle that Heather left Chloe. "Keep sight of my many faces, Listen to the bells and chimes, Retrace all my muddled paces, And turn back the tides of time. Signed, Heather Brown, codename: Timeslip." He wrote it down so that he can try to work on it in pieces too. "Sorry Chloe…but yeah, looking this over I think the bells and chimes refer to an alarm of some sort."
"For the record she's also /much/ faster in the future. So if she does come and start a fight then it's going to be tricky, especially with the temporal duplicate trick she has going on," Chloe offers, still glaring at the watch. "Might be worth shifting danger room drills so everyone has practise against that sort of thing? To be honest I think the problem is this Ahab guy who seems to be in charge, kinda like Sinister only with time control and a love of clothing that'd make Hot topic clerks blush."
"What have you thought of so far?" Ignoring the green costume comment. Pietro does have to agree though. Pale blues are better. "So at the least I don't repeat what you've already gone over." Since he can think of at least one thing automatically. "In cases like this it's normally one person, or situation, on which everything hinges. Since this is the first I've heard about it, we may as well focus on Heather. Faces could mean clocks themselves, or she'll be leaving clues. Has anyone tried searching the internet for images of her? Know where she enjoyed going? Perhaps she left further signs of herself."
"What have I thought so far…well, we gotta figure out every 'Heather' that's been scene so far and according to Chloe, that's three. And the bells and Chimes, well, I think that's some sort of alarm. And the muddled faces…face..I didn't thing clock face well we really need to look at this watch more closely. So he took Cam in the present and Heather in the future and…wow…timelines." Taking a deep breath Daisuke looks at his paper again.
"Cam finds stuff. So I guess in the future the bad guys are hunting things?" Chloe muses thoughtfully. "As for what /I've/ done… Well I warned our Heather about the problem and we went to the only resource for battling time travelling villians there is. Bill and Teds Bogus Journey." She pauses as if expecting some snarky comment. "The trouble is without a frame of reference this doesn't really help much does it? The problem could be in fifty years time when we're all old and feeble."
The movie reference has Pietro giving Chloe a dark look. Honestly. Doesn't say anything about that however, and merely thinks. "The problem I have is that I have very little knowledge of Heather. She is a complete stranger to me, so the clue meanings could be anything. Are you positive it's Heather? This could be about this other, Cam, as well."
"Heather…she's got some temporal based power where she's always fast?" Daisuke tries to offer but he doesn't know as well. "And I think Chloe is positive it's Heather. And Cam…he can find things so they have to be searching for -something-. Wow..yeah Chloe, this is a brain buster and a half."
Chloe gives Pietro and impish grin. "The future Heather had the /exact/ same watch, I checked a bunch of the marks and there is no reasonable way to fake that kinda thing. Only naturally it was more battered by time 'coz it came from the future. As for the clues Heather is, and I mean this in the nicest possible way, far too self obsessed to make the clues be about anyone else. Thinking about it… whatever happens must be fairly close to our time. Because they knew about Cam and that means he was alive at the time. Maybe is alive, if the aim is to convert now for use later."
"No, it doesn't have to be recent. We are talking about time travel here." For Pietro is familiar with the concept of Aheb, even if he's had no direct contact with the man. "I think our solution is recent however. That's how things normally work." The man shakes his head though, and motions with a hand. "Contact me if you find anything worth chasing down. Otherwise I will see at our next training session, Chloe." Seems that someone has decided it's time to go.
Daisuke gives a wave to Pietro. "It was good meeting you Quicksilver." He says before looking at Chloe. "That's pretty awesome that you get to train with him. And he gave me a new angle to look at, faces. You know I'm gonna be trying to figure this out for a while now?" He says with a smile before looking down at the paper. "So how close are you and your roommate, Heather?"
"Actually it probably /does/ happen fairly close to now," Chloe challenges. "Because even if you can go back any length of time you'd still probably go to the nearest suitable target. Unless Cam becomes mega famous I doubt he'll be well known in a hundred years let alone a thousand. Which means we're probably talking in the next two generations at most, with one being more likely." She shrugs. "We're best friends but she's not someone that's easy to know. Given all that's happened to her she's kinda eccentric."
"I don't really know her…I wish I did cause maybe this would make more sense. And if it does happen close to now…." Daisuke looks at Chloe and says somethine she might know. "Okay, this has to be a clue as to /when/ and if we get the when maybe we can stop this from happing, cause some crazy time paradox, almost blow ourselves up and save your best friend and Cam?"
There's actually a smile for that. "You are assuming that anything, including the here and now, is set in stone." Pietro offers back, amused over it all. After that, however, the man is gone. Off to do whatever it is he does during the day.
Chloe pouts. "Everything /is/ set in stone," she offers to the thing air where Pietro was sitting. "It's just reality likes to play the shell game with us." She huffs. "Whatever happens /must/ be bad. Because why else would you risk time travel? This Ahab guy is either stupid or desperate, because Future Heather /and/ him knew Connor. Called him Volk and from what I've heard they weren't on good terms. So using a mutant to time travel back to a point where she'd encounter people she knew and could warn her before getting captured…"
"Well the future isn't set in stone…at least I hope not. Cause I saw some of my future and well…me and Jared aren't together anymore but that's a good thing." Daisuke says shaking his head. "So things -can- change the future, we just have to get to this point that -has- to be set in stone then fix it. Connor…I don't really know him." That's what he gets for being one of the older ones around here. "Stupid, desperate or egotistica. So this riddle has to be a point which to stop it. That's the only thing I can think of. Chimes and Bells are alarms, faces could be the many faces of Heather or clock faces or both, retrace muddled paces…that has to be her treks through time. I think many faces might be clocks? Like Pietro said, maybe the clocks will give us clues to a time and date, then turn back the tides of time….that has to be us stopping what happened and turns things back for future her. Why is this so confusing, I hate time travel!"
Chloe thwumps her head into the desk. "You're lucky. Your best friend isn't a time controller! I should have received some kinda warning before we became roomies," she laments. "It could also refer to places she's been. Which might mean check Salem for clues… Is there a big clock tower there? Maybe that's the clue she's talking about… I also hope the teachers can save Cam, because if they don't it means whatever bad things are coming probably turn out worse."
"No, my best friend is now Sinister Jr and can't keep the same face for over a month.a' Daisuke says with a smile as his best friend is Skyler. "Yeah I do too. Have you told any teachers about this riddle?" He looks at Chloe and pats her back as she thumps her head on the table. "I'll help you with this, really, I'm going to try to figure this out and check everything. Every clock around the school, everything in Salem Center…um…where did Cam get caught?"
Chloe frowns. "Somewhere in the park? That's what the rumour is anyway," she says with a shrug. "And nope you're the first person I told. I only really found the message this morning and I've spent all the time since then looking up famous lines to see if she's used someone elses words. Which if she has they're not in the books or internet yet, so uhm it wasn't exactly a great way to spend my day."
"Chloe, I'm gonna go check some things out, I'll let you know what I dig up. Umm…at some point can I come up to your room and check things out? I really wanna see her stuff when she isn't around just cause…I want to see if I can help you." Daisuke stands up and pats her on the shoulder. "Don't kill yourself too much on this Chloe, I know she's your best friend but I'm gonna help you with what I can, I promise." He says giving her a small smile.
"It's… you don't know how important it is that we fix things," Chloe murmurs, closing her notebook. "She said something else which I refuse to repeat and if we make the rest not happen then I'm hoping that'll get fixed too." She sighs. "Think you could do the internet searching? I'm so bad with computers it's not even funny. They're not designed for my speed and it's just miserable for me to use them."
Daisuke can't help it but he gives Chloe a hug. "I'll make sure I know it's important okay? And count me in on the computer search. I'll be googleing the hell out of Heather and this phrase. What ever I find out I'll let you know as soon as possible. If you brain starts to hurt too much from this, take a run, get some fresh air cause after a break and letting your brain relax sometimes the puzzle makes more sense."
Chloe nods half-heartedly. "I think I'll do some Savate training instead of running," she says thoughtfully. "Beating stuff up always helps me relax /and/ it'll probably come in handy to be on top form. Wouldn't wanna lose another hand now would I? Although I guess against a spear that wouldn't be as much of a problem. Although to be honest I'm more worried about how Heather will cope, trying to defeat your own destiny can't be fun."
Daisuke looks at Chloe for a bit and nods. "Just be there for her afterwards if you can, that'll be the best way for her to cope, is to have a friend. And no, I don't want you to lose another hand." Something he still feels bad about since he was a 'bad guy' in that fight. "Go, beat the ever loving shit out of something, for me, it's playing the drums. Same hitting stuff principal. But I'll catch ya later Chloe, I just gotta check a few things." He waves and heads out of the library.
"I think I might just have to. After all we /are/ declaring war on destiny," Chloe says with an impish grin. "And I do so hate to lose. I'll cya around." And with that she resumes her hunt through the library, although this time in search of a copy of Moby-Dick…
