Triage (Charlie!)

[sephiroth]

"Alright thanks allot Eliza i'd very much like help on that, and i'm sure we can devise a way for you to interface with the blue box." She gave the girl a smile and was distracted for just long enough. There was a fizzling sound from the projector she had been working with it started smoking and crackling. "OHH SHOOT...."

Charlie threw herself out of the chair to the side and ran so fast she was out the door in the space of about 5 seconds. The device suddenly exploded in a shower of electricity sparks, and smoldering paper.

She looked inside at the room after the small explosion. She was relived it didn't do anything major that was the last thing she needed. Slade had already gotten pretty upset when she had sliced through one of his walls with a vibroblade.

She gave an exasperated sigh that said all to clearly there goes another week or two of work. Then she gave eliza a smile and motioned that she was ready to take her up on the offer she had just given. "so you were going to show me how those powers of yours work?" she asked as if nothing remarkable had happened.

[echidna]

Eliza had the sense to know when something was going wrong - at least, she had enough sense to jump behind a table with her bag and sketchbook, flip it, and continue with the sketch of the equation, running tests like mad on the equations - it had to be perfect. The equation had to be perfect... this had to be correct.

The blast did little to throw her concentration - she simple paused a moment, eraser in her mouth, considerations buzzing through her mind like angry swarms of insects when the blast went off. Quickly after, she was standing, wandering around in the smoky gloom, chewing on her eraser - Slade's training had no effect on her? Yeah, and pigs think about astral physics while sunning themselves in their own shit.

"I am certain... this is viable." she said as Charlie came back in - Eliza was untouched, just maybe a bit windblasted. "Follow me please" she said plainly, and walked from the room, stuffing her bookbag with pencil and notepad, neatly tucking them away in the darkness of the folio. Certain that charlie was following her, she led her down the darkened hallways - there were devourers on the skirts of vision, keeping... just out of sight. The general sense was that the pair were being watched... intently.

As she passed a doorway, opal beetles started coming from the opening - crawling out of the archway and across the ceiling, led by a blue-horned one with a beautiful blue carapace and one missing leg, the steady drone filling the halls. Eliza passed another doorway, and Charlie got a clear look - her eyes were red - glowing red. Something was already happening, even as they went wherever Eliza was leading them. A hulking figure came from the darkness, with a derby hat adjusting on his head. Bitingston stood to full height in the hallway, and walked at a leisurely pace beside Charlie, a big grin on his alien face. A couple other Raveners came out after he did, following - the air was... hopeful, if solemn. They hissed and chattered softly to each other. Larger shapes moved in the gloom, but they did not draw into the lights.

Eliza didn't say anything until the procession broke into the room where this was to happen - it must have been a lobby of some kind, once upon a time - it was a big room, still underground, and the beetles occupied many positions around it, occupying the room completely. The Raveners spaced out, and set something down on the floor in the middle of the room - a chair. It wasn't anything fancy... just a stool.

The Ravener in the derby hat leaned down close to Charlie in a friendly manner, and pat her on one shoulder. "Weee likin' ter be seen' dissn... Iss like..." he thought a moment to consider this. "Like... d'birthin' anew... see? Iss... spe-shul, missuss Charlie." he said, in low, pleasant tones. It was difficult to tell WHAT this meant to the Raveners and creatures that gathered. But... it seemed important. VERY important indeed that they be there to see it. The atmosphere almost felt... spiritual.

Eliza walked slowly forward, and sat in the chair, flashing Charlie a brief look to make sure she'd come - she wanted the woman to see... to know what it was her powers did, for some reason. She still didn't fully feel comfortable with anyone seeing this... it was... oddly intimate - deeply personal for her. It was like baring a part of her soul for the woman to see, for some reason - at least... that's how it felt. And this wasn't just any birth - this was... important. This was momentous - the birth of something greater than she'd ever made before. But, she had Charlie to thank. The blue beetle flitted from the ceiling and landed upon her head, his brilliantly blue, glowing spine casting her and the area around her in a glow that should have felt cool for how blue it was.

Yes. It was time to take the next step forward.

[sephiroth]

Charlie let eliza pass and gave the girl a nervous smile. She had no idea what was going on or even how to respond. The again she had no idea on how to deal with people in general. She let eliza lead her to the archways. She watched with some facination the opal beetles on the wall. She caught glimpse of the blueish colored one and was intriqed by it, she would have to ask eliza about that later, if the thought remained in her already jumbled up head.
She entered the arch way being careful to not harm any of elizas facinating monsters. She then noticed a familar ravener. She gave him a warm smile recognizing her rescuer at first glance. "hello mr. bittingston." she said in a friendly and warm manner.

"I'm sure you would like to be here." she replied to the ravener her focus divereted to him for now. She did out of the corner of her eye or was it the prickling of her neck hairs feel rather than see the things in the shadows.

"I suppsoe for everybody it is special." She got the strange sensation that she was being privalaged just by being allowed to witness this. It was strange it felt ritualistic but it wasn't a ritual it was something spiritual. She gave a nervous gulp as she stood with the ravener her throat suddenly very dry as she watched eliza take her seat she wondered what was going to happen nex and so she watched.

[echidna]

The beetle flitted its wings on Eliza's head, his blue horn shining out as the light spread to fill the whole massive room, washing the number over in that brilliant light. The insects congregated near him on the ceilings and heads of the larger dark creatures that called Eliza their mother. One even flitted to Charlie, and gently flitted to her shoulder. For being a giant bug, there was something... calculating, catlike about its glassy eyes as it rubbed against her, antennae swiveling as it kept its pincers well out of the way of biting range.

A mind reached out to Charlie - a mind that was gentle, that offered her a tendril of thought, a warm embrace of something... massive - it was blue, like the blue of the beetle resting on the Broodmother. Devourers, Raveners, Mr. Bitingston, and other, larger shapes in the darkness, had their eyes shroud in that blue, the cores of their irises still visible inside.

Eliza's hands rubbed at something between her thumb and forefinger, her eyes shutting to let the red glow subside beneath her eyelids, giving a faint glow even in the darkness of her body. Reality seemed to superimpose itself in her aura - the colors nearest her seemed... brighter, more intense, and the air in the room began to heat a little.

The little something in her hands grew steadily - it took serpentine patience to notice the change at first - it was a little ball of flesh, like an impure pearl, shining with inner light that she poured into it. There was a collective drawing in of interest as the orb became visible. Mr. Bitingston himself sat down, and the other Raveners soon followed his example, crossing their legs as they watched patiently.

For all its strange beauty, it was slow going - something was flowing into the ball - It felt... like love, like affection, that Eliza was giving into this nascent life - some, other minds knew, and thus Charlie knew from the tendril of thought that wrapped itself around her, had been born of desperation (the hulking things in the shadows), hunger and rage (the Devourers), helplessness (Raveners), and loneliness (The beetles)... but this... this was different.

A sigh rose from them - Mr. Bitingston was crying, actually crying, very softly beside Charlie. It would be lost on her what it all meant... but ghosts of the feelings they had for their mother washed back down that collective connection with a sigh that rose from them. Mr. Bitingston wasn't the only one among the Raveners overcome by this, and Devourers curled up on the ground, noses pressed underneath their paws... but still they all watched.

Something took shape steadily - it took... a long time, but it didn't feel like it did. Eliza was sweating, but her face was creased in a soft little smile as she kneaded the little bud of life into shape, poured intentions into it, fed it with a life fire that burned inside her - something vast, a field of white flame like the heart of a star - and it grew.

After an indeterminate amount of time, she was holding a something that was about the size of a basketball - it looked like a flower, bright red and with petals that spread, but that wasn't what it looked like in that... blue mind - in the collective that Eliza and Charlie were connected to together. What it looked like couldn't be described in words without folding the page at the corners and drawing over the words... but it looked like life.

Some time later, as Eliza patiently worked with a look of concentration spreading over her features, the creature had doubled in size, and little tendrils had spread from the flower. By now, the life knew the shape it wanted - All Eliza had to do was guide it and give it the strength to do so. It was taking its toll on her, any among them could not only see that, but feel it, and many gave bits of their strength into the heart of the group to help her do it. It was like pissing in the rain or feeding a star with firewood.

Time passed - it was impossible to tell how much, but the life was massive now, Eliza was standing before the glowing petal, a head visible now, and teeth in the indistinct shape of the glowing life, shaking hands grasping tendrils, her body shaking like a leaf as it coiled around her body. White light suddenly washed over the room in radiant shards. Where it touched Charlie, aches she didn't know she had subsided, pains of her body that came from running out of the lab earlier faded to nothing. Eliza slid her grip down on one tendril, and the source - a crystalline tipped tendril, living crystal, shone and shimmered in white. Eliza smiled, pleased - several more soon were shaped, among others that did not glow like that.

Some time later, her work was done. The release came as a rush to the others, and Mr. Bitingston stood and strode into the center to catch Eliza in massive claws, scooping her up like a child. The new life was big - really big, about the size of a small bus in the room - it looked arachnidine, alien and strange, and as the last of the tendrils of thought snaked away from Charlie's Mind, the blue light fading in the eyes of the others. The creature slept, its red carapaced budlike bottom, tendrils snaking from the opening where spinnerettes would have been on a spider to curl just outside. If a spider and a flower could have had a child, it would have looked like this.