I KAN HAZ HUMANITY? [IC]

[Dr Archeville]

Archeville had tracked Jubatus through ArcheTech via its web of internal sensors, and had just gotten tot he dead-end corridor the near-mindless patient had run to, when he saw the cheetah-man go through the wall!

Wow! I always love seeing speedsters do that! But, wait, he is a time manipulator, he should not be able to pull that trick. Unless...

Archeville's mind raced through ideas of how the cheetah-man's powers worked, how they were working, particularly in light of his radically different mental state. Of course, to an outside observer it seemed like the Doktor had simply glanced at the wall for a few seconds, then turned back to the tablet device in his hand.

"Security, Archeville here. I am tracking a confused patient," he said as he scanned through the building's external sensors, "but he has run through a wall and out into the city. No, 'through' as in 'went incorporeal.' Yes, it is the speedster the system has been tracking. Contact STAR Squad; here is the file to send them with his pertinent information. No, no, he does not seem to be a danger per se, though his appearance and actions may disturb others. Do keep the building on alert until I know he is contained, though, in case he doubles back and returns here. Archeville out."

Stuffing the tablet into a pocket of his labcoat, he drew his Electromagnetic Screwdriver and began to run analyses on the section of Wall Jubatus had gone through. He also ran over the floorplans for the building, and where the nearest exit (or window) would be.

Cannot phase through or teleport past the wall after him, my Belt may disrupt his signature and leave me with nothing to track!

[Quinn]

Crow had just looked up when the very large cheetah appeared in front of him, and before he could double-take the furball had shoved it's head and paws into his bag and started rifling through it faster than he could blink. By the time his mind had cogitated the fact that a) there was a cheetah in front of him, and the bottles and jar were falling to the ground, the kitty treats were gone and there was a smashing sound on the ground; accompanied by a wet sensation trickling into his shoes. He looked at the big cat, then at his empty bag, then back at the cat.

"...Ok, I'm going to make a carpet out of you, furball."

The teen lunged at the cat, trying to get his arms around the neck and pin it down...

[Cubist]

The cheetah didn't spend so very long waiting; the dark-topped tallthing was faster than a lot of other tallthings. A little faster, anyway. The dark-topped tallthing held its forelegs out in front of it as it moved towards the cheetah...

The cheetah wasn't sure what the dark-topped tallthing was trying to do. It pondered as the tallthing drew near, but it just couldn't figure out what the tallthing was up to. When the tallthing was close enough that the cheetah could touch it with a forepaw, the cheetah decided to move out of the tallthing's way. The tallthing might be slow, but it was also big enough to do some damage, so getting out of its way seemed like a good idea. So the cheetah got up on all fours and moved around in back of the dark-topped tallthing. It walked behind the tallthing, following it as...

Hmm. The dark-topped tallthing just fell down. And it didn't look like the tallthing had meant to do that! Poor, clumsy, slow tallthing. The cheetah padded around to in front of the tallthing, and watched as it raised its head. Ouch -- the scent of blood! That looked like it hurt!

Poor, clumsy, slow tallthing. The cheetah craned its head forward and started to clean the tallthing's face with its tongue...

[Dr Archeville]

Archeville zipped down the streets of Freedom, following two leads. One was the obvious reactions from the people -- as much as a center of metahuman activity Freedom City was, it citizens still reacted when a metahuman passed by them, just as folks in Los Angeles will still react if they see a Hollywood star in person, so he kept an ear out for people who were reacting to being passed by a speedster. Second, he was tapping into the city's traffic cameras and using them to search for the confused cat-man.

Soon enough, Archeville found Jubatus, standing over the bloodied body of the Claremonter.

Oh! Blood! Jubatus is attacking that poor defenseless teenager! I have got to snap him out of this feral state!

"Hey!," Archeville shouted, trying to distract the seemingly-bloodthirsty cheetah-man, "you stop that, Mister Xavier! You stop that right now!" He advanced slowly, but steadily, one hand (with the Screwdriver) held forward, the other slowly sliding into a pocket of his labcoat to retrieve some capturefoam capsules.

[Quinn]

As Morgan slowly lifted his head from the pavement, it became apparent that his expression could only be described as 'furious'. As a matter of fact, if Red Hand took a look at his only son, he'd probably have been distinctly reminded of a certain divine figure who had a reputation for an absolutely foul temper. The fact that the oversized cat was licking his face clean really didn't help much, either. The good news was, the blood from faceplanting into the pavement vaguely obscured his features. The bad news was, it also had the slight side effect of hampering his vision, and as such, didn't see the professional hero approaching to deal with the situation. Which caused Crow to do something exceptionally stupid.

"...Like I said. You. Carpet."

With speed that surprised the Doktor, Crow's hands shot down to the ground and propelled him off of the pavement, his entire body twisting in midair as he sought to get a clear grip on the large furball...

[Cubist]

The cheetah had gotten most of the blood off of the darktopped tallthing's face, when its nose detected a familiar scent: The wierd-smelling tallthing! But where was that worrisome odor coming from? The cheetah raised its head to look around... which is why it did not notice when the darktopped tallthing moved itself into position to grab the cheetah. Sure enough, the weird-smelling tallthing did show up -- just in time for the darktopped tallthing to grab hold of the cheetah.

Either the weird-smelling tallthing, or the grab, alone, would have convinced the cheetah it was time to be somewhere else. With both occurring at once, the cheetah took off like the proverbial bat out of hell, upshifting for ever-greater speed. The cheetah didn't know where it was going, but it certainly knew that here was not a good place to stay!

And the darktopped tallthing clung desperately to the cheetah's back as it broke the sound barrier...

[Dr Archeville]

"Hunh." Archeville had not expected the kid (who he did not know) would attempt a move like that.

Kid has good moves. I will have to make a point to chat with him. Ooh, maybe at that new pizza place!

But first, I need to catch them!

Archeville gave chase, his Belt's contragravitic flight easily able to keep up with the cheetah-man and his 'rider'. "Hey, kid!" he called out to the young man clinging to Jubatus' back, reconfiguring assorted components of his Belt's defensive systems as he flew, "everything is going to be alright! Just hang tight a few seconds more!"

Invert and expand that gravity field that I use to protect me by making projectiles so heavy their trajectories go off to instead levitate Mr. Xavier and his 'rider' into the air should stop the former and save the latter!

[Quinn]

Crow, for his part, remained quite mute as he hung on (a good thing, as most of his thoughts on the subsequent occurrence after he'd gotten a decent grip weren't very fit for public hearing); his arms latched to the cheetah's shoulders as it bolted, and his feet swinging in midair as he felt the laws of physics exercise their authority on him. Fortunately for him, his arms were stronger than the average teens, and after a few seconds, it became readily apparent that the kid wasn't just trying to hang on, he was actually trying to get to a stronger position for a lock!

Máthair na trócaire, definitley not one of my brighter ideas!

[Cubist]

The cheetah smelled anger. It wasn't angry itself, but the darktopped tallthing which clung to it surely was. The anger had been strongest when the darktopped tallthing grabbed for the cheetah; most of the anger disappeared when the cheetah started running, but it was coming back now. The cheetah could feel the tallthing's grip on its shoulders. It didn't seem like the tallthing was likely to let go any time soon -- and since the tallthing was angry, the cheetah thought it might be a good idea to make the tallthing let go, before it got angry enough to do anything bad.

Running through the biggestest empty space, the cheetah had passed by a lot of big, flat walls. Some of them were so big and tall that they might actually scrape up against the roof! That gave the cheetah an idea: What if it ran up one of these big, flat walls, and took a sharp turn that broke the tallthing's grip on it so that the tallthing was still moving up even though the cheetah wasn't any more? The only problem the cheetah could see was that the tallthing might end up smacking into the roof. This was a problem because smacking into the ground had already hurt the tallthing, and the cheetah didn't think smacking into the roof would feel any better. Well, the cheetah wasn't sure how high the roof was, but it could run alongside the tallthing and make sure the tallthing didn't hit the roof. Good good good!

So it was that a vest-wearing cheetah, with the hero Crow hanging on for dear life, ran up the outside of 1 Pyramid Plaza -- and executed a perfect 90-degree turn at the 50th floor...

[Quinn]

Crow's reaction as he went flying upwards into the sky was rather humorous, and he let rip with a lengthy litany of feline-related insults directed at the cause of his sudden introduction to the laws of physics. Fortunately, he didn't let that distract him as he wheeled upwards, yanking his duffel bag open and hauling a long black coat out.

Arms in, over the shoulders, focusfocusfocusfocusfocusTHERE!

A brief moment of clarity struck his mind, as the seconds went by and he went higher, and higher, propelled by Jubatus's momentum. He felt the wind rush by him, his stomach going straight to his heels; one rune on his shoulder smoked and burned as Morgan felt himself reached the apex of his flight, his arms outstretched like a bird in flight...

And then he vanished.

Crow appeared a few inches above the concrete roof, and landed heavily with a roll. Getting his feet under him, he leapt up and broke into a fast sprint towards the edge, an arm cocked back in a clothesline to catch the furry speedster the second he crested the roof.

[Dr Archeville]

Hawking help me! Xavier just tossed that kid off- wait, he is reaching into his bag... pulling out -- he disappeared! Teleported! Ha!

Archeville checked the ground, but did not see the unknown teen there. Then he looked up, and saw him overlooking the roof, preparing to clothesline Xavier.

Clever! I shall have to have words with this lad later! But first...

Archeville finished the last adjustment to his Belt, and dozens of small bubbles of blue-gray light -- pockets of contragravity -- streamed forth from it, converging on Jubatus. They carried him up past the roof, and held him about ten feet in the air.

"Are you alright?," Archeville asked the teen as he approached the roof. "Nice trick you pulled there!"

He looked back to Jubatus, and shook his head ruefully, "I do not know if you can understand me, Mr. Xavier, but I am sorry. Good news, though -- I am reasonably certain I can undo the damage to your brain!"

[Cubist]

Immediately after executing that perfect right-angle turn, the cheetah did it again. It was still running straight up -- well, as close to 'straight' as you could get when you were moving on the outside of one of the elegantly twirled towers of Pyramid Plaza -- but now it was two body-lengths to the right of the darktopped tallthing, exactly matching the tallthing's pace. The cheetah was pretty sure the tallthing wouldn't hit the roof until after it got higher than this wall, assuming it did get higher than --

Huh? Where had the darktopped tallthing gone? And if the tallthing could vanish like that, why hadn't it vanished instead of hitting the ground earlier? Tallthings were weird!

The cheetah continued up the wall, its trajectory a rough spiral, so that it could look for the darktopped tallthing in all directions. It wasn't more than three spiral-loops later that the cheetah saw the tallthing, on top of the wall -- goodgoodgood! The tallthing hadn't smacked into the roof! Now the cheetah could play with the tallthing some more! However, as the cheetah ran up the last dozen or so stories of wall, it got distracted: The cheetah saw a bunch of big dots.

The dots were kind of light, and there was something about them which just felt odd to the cheetah. It could see through the bigdots, as if the bigdots were made of light somehow! And they moved? By themselves? What could the bigdots possibly be? Intrigued, the cheetah let the bigdots get close to it -- reached out with a forepaw to see what a bigdot felt like -- and then, of course, it was far too late for the cheetah to escape.

The cheetah did not know that the 'bigdots' were localized antigravity fields, any more than it knew that these fields had been created by Doktor Archeville. The cheetah rather liked the sensation of floating in midair, so it didn't bother to resist being carried along; it did twist its body around in curious acrobatic maneuvers, but that was just to change its orientation so it could look in different directions. Unfortunately, when the 'bigdots' brought the cheetah to Doktor Archeville himself, the cheetah did not recognize him as one of the greatest scientific minds of all Time. Instead, it recognized him only as the weird-smelling tallthing that (it believed) had tried to kill and eat the cheetah!

As it had before, the cheetah unwittingly pulled at the space/time continuum as it tried to flee in its panic. But this time, nothing happened! The cheetah did not know that it was already in a bubble of distorted space/time, nor that its current attempt to further distort space/time was being opposed by the machinery which had created and maintained that bubble. The cheetah's ignorance did not prevent it from overstraining itself in its frantic attempt to escape from the doom which it believed the weird-smelling tallthing would deliver it to...

...and before the bigdot stopped carrying it around, the cheetah was lying inertly on the bottom of the bigdot, with small trickles of blood oozing from one ear and one nostril...

[Dr Archeville]

Some time later...

Jay Nelson Xavier slowly awoke, finding himself once more with an odd helmet strapped to his head and surrounded by the antiseptic smells of a doctor's laboratory. Drs. Archeville and Rao stood before him, Rao looking off tot he side checking a readout and Archeville tweaking something on the helmet. Behind them was another person, a young man in a long coat who seemed somehow familiar.

Eyes focusing... facial tone shifting... I think it is working!

Yaaay!

"Mister Xavier, can you hear me? Can you speak?" Dr. Rao looked over, worry giving way to relief, but turned quickly back to the monitors. "You gave us all quite the scare there for a bit. Do you recall what happened, Mr. Xavier?"

[Cubist]

And Jubatus rose up out of a dreamlike sea...

Heh. Make that 'Jay' -- ain't no feline superhero needed here and now. He yawned, and his gaping maw could have been positively frightening if he were active rather than lying on a padded bench. Mmmm... haven't slept this well in I don't know how long. Wonder if the scanner wa -- oh, give me a break. This is Doktor Archeville we're talking about. Of course it was supposed to do that! Should probably thank the man.

As always when he was just getting up, Jay was at his default tempo of 6 times faster than normal. He scanned his surroundings; apparently, the Dok had transferred him to a different room while he was unconscious. But who was... Right, dude's name is Crow. High-end boxing savvy, operates out of Boston, Jay thought; he made a point of spending a few upshifted hours every day grepping the mainstream news media for coverage of heroic activity, a habit which paid off on many occasions, including right now. Must have some sort of metahuman biology backing him up. Why else would he be here at Archetech? No idea why I'd dream about him; something for Hallstonne to unriddle.

Okay, the Dok's talking at me, Jay thought, noting the shape of Archeville's open lips and the fact that he was facing Jay. The feline downshifted in time to hear --

"-ster Xavier, can you hear me? Can you speak?"

"No," Jay replied with a nominally sarcastic look. "I can't hear a bloody thing, and I couldn't speak if I wanted to."

"You gave us all quite the scare there for a bit."

Huh? What's he talking about?

"Do you recall what happened, Mr. Xavier?"

Okay, now I get it. He's already tested the scanner's sleep-induction on normal human brains, and he wants to know how well it worked on a non-human brain -- mine. Must not have thought there was any serious possibility of danger, or he'd have done the Informed Consent thing. "Yeah, I do. Your brain scanner knocked me out, and I just woke up now. In between, I had the most restful sleep I've ever had since I took delivery on the permanent fur coat. Weird kind of dream; I was... it was like the whole world was bright and shiny and new and interesting. Just waiting for me to explore it all and play with it all. I, hrrm, ate a few pigeons," he said, and for a moment his ears and tail fell in embarrassment before he hurriedly went on, "but, y' know, I get that kind of dream a lot, so it's nothing new. You were part of it, Dok; your scent weirded me out for some reason, so I got the hell outta Dodge.

"Crow, here, was part of it, too. Don't ask me how come I dreamed about a Boston-based hero, because I got no clues whatsoever. He was pissed at me, but I couldn't figure out why, 'cause I was just playing games with him. And that pretty much covers it, I think."

Dr. Rao and Doktor Archeville both wore pensive expressions, not at all what Jay would have expected of people who were simply listening to a beta-tester's report. Huh? What the heck -- and a seed of terror blossomed in his mind -- no. No frigging way. It can't be...

"It, hrm, it was a dream. Right?" Jay's ears and tail sank, even as his eyes grew wide with paralyzing fear. "I mean -- right!?"

[Dr Archeville]

"Not... as such, no," Archeville finally said, breaking the nervous silence.

Fascinating -- I wonder if his memories of his excursion will fade as any other dream?

"There was a... miscalculation, on my part, when I failed to anticipate the disruption your innate time-shift field would cause to the scanners. The scanning beam was redirected and, somehow, amplified in such a way that rather than passively scanning your brain, it, well, 'scrambled' parts of your brain. Temporarily!," he quickly added, "and these basic scanners are all showing a return to your regular brinwave levels, with no aftereffects detected. Of course we will continue monitoring, for as long as you desire, to make sure there are no after-effects, and as for the damages you caused in your fugue state, well, since it was my negligence that lead to this, I will make any restitutions..."

[Cubist]

The world slowed down as Doktor Archeville spoke... No, wait. That's me, Jay realized. So friggin' shocked-slash-distracted, I'm losing control over my Timeshift. He squeezed his eyes shut and re-established the concentration that allowed him to interact with normal-speed people at their tempo. And... better watch myself when I'm talking, too.

"H'oooh-khhay," the feline said, his vocal quality distinctly lower than usual for him. "Whaat, ddid, I, ddho, d'rr-ing, my, fuugue, state? Hhwho, did, I, kkhh -- hurrt?"

[Quinn]

Crow leaned at the back of the lab, a proper bandanna around his face and his hood up. He watched the proceedings with some interest, albeit less than he'd give an arcane ritual at Parkhurst; then again, the two didn't seem that much different...assembling of materials, proper procedure to be followed, careful instructions, risk of explosions...

He rubbed the back of his head, inwardly amused. Not that different at all, actually. The teen had followed the Doktor and the cheetah shortly after that strange light-show had locked down the big kitty, partly at the Doktor's behest, and partly at his own curiosity. When he heard Mr. Xavier talk, the teen kept his cool adroitly (although he was quite surprised to hear it). He simply raised an eyebrow over the black bandanna, then held up a somewhat soggy grocery bag, along with a broken half of a salsa bottle. He shook the two slightly before putting them back down, and crossed his arms.

"Nobody got hurt, but you did lead the Doktor on a merry chase around downtown, went through my groceries and wolfed...err...cheetah'd? Down a jar of chicken kitty treats, and took me on a rather speedy trip up the side of a building that nearly ended in me doing a pancake impression. Heckuva way to introduce yourself, mate."

[Cubist]

Jay Xavier stopped feeling mortified when Crow spoke... mostly because he stopped feeling anything. Somewhere inside Jay's brain, an internal voice noted, Emotional shutdown due to shock. Possible later risk of PTSD. Looking at Crow with dead eyes, Jay said in a near-robotic voice, "Since the dream... seems to have been real. You may want to know that I'd intended to catch you... and your teleport surprised me. I... couldn't figure out why you'd let your face hit the ground earlier, if you could teleport. Now, I think I know why you got mad at me."

[Dr Archeville]

Archeville was about to answer Jubatus when Crow cut him off.

Ah, no, it seems he is going to retain those memories. Still, this has all been most fascinating!

"Well, look at the bright side, Mr. Xavier!," the Doktor exclaimed, big smile on his face. "You had been concerned about reverting into some sort of feral man-eater, but we have discovered that you are more likely to regress to a playful, infantile state! That... well, that is not as bad! Plus, you discovered some new aspects of your speedster abilities, which, with practice, I am sure you can consciously tap into again!"

[Cubist]

"Well, look at the bright side, Mr. Xavier!," the Doktor exclaimed, big smile on his face. "You had been concerned about reverting into some sort of feral man-eater, but we have discovered that you are more likely to regress to a playful, infantile state! That... well, that is not as bad!"

Yes, and a shattered thigh bone is preferable to an amputated leg, Jay thought.

"Plus, you discovered some new aspects of your speedster abilities, which, with practice, I am sure you can consciously tap into again!"

Jay stared blankly at the Teutonic polymath -- Interesting. He thinks I might actually want a wider range of methods by which I can inadvertently maim or kill other people. -- but did not respond in any intelligible manner...

For her part, Dr. Rao had not been idle during the time Jay had been racing through the streets of Freedom City; she'd spent most of that period in IRC chat with Jay's therapist, Ed Hallstonne, who outlined a few different scenarios for how Jay might respond to his bizarre experiences, and gave her good advice on how she ought to behave for each scenario.

"Mr. Xavier..." No response; the feline continued to stare at Archeville with dull eyes. "Jay." The cheetah's head pivoted, smooth and inhuman, to look at Rao. He did not speak. She went on: "Mr. Xavier, I won't insult your intelligence by pretending I have any idea what you've just lived through. But whatever happened, it's clear that you're hurting very badly from it. And it's also clear that you're trying to run away from your pain. I can't blame you for that; I don't think anybody could, really. I just want to point out that running away from pain is what animals do. Human beings do what they can to confront their pain, to deal with it. And whereas cheetahs tend to operate in isolation, human beings work together to achieve their goals." Still no overt reaction from the feline. "I'm sure you knew all this already; I just wanted to remind you, before you did anything you might regret later. You have allies, Mr. Xavier. I suggest that you make use of them."

That was as far as Hallstonne's advice had gone. From this point on, it was entirely up to Jay Xavier what he wanted to do, or not do, about his predicament...