Game On! (IC)

[Fox]

Mara looked about as off-guard as Jessica did; she was used to manipulators and the openly-hostile (and, with depressing regularity, openly-hostile manipulators). "That's...true," she admitted, so reluctantly she might as well have had a team of horses dragging the words out of her. "Was for me, at least. Helped some people. Stopped some problems. Still not completely sure it was real, though. And not right to...steal people away for dangerous games, regardless. Ends don't always justify means, games shouldn't be life-threatening."

[Raveled]

"It was real," Quirk said somewhat petulantly. "You both saved worlds. Isn't that a good thing?"

"It's a good thing to help people," Jessica allowed, "but you didn't really give us a choice. I'm sure we would have chosen to help if you had just asked."

"Oh yeah. I always forget to ask people before I help." The childlike figure put his chin in his hand for a long moment before shrugging dramatically. "Still! You saved two worlds. And since you got done first, Ironclad, you get a prize!" He tossed something to the taller woman and then did a backflip -- which spiralled inward at a far-too-acute angle, Quirk contracting in on himself until he disappeared.

Jessica caught the object almost on reflex, only to hold it at arm's length to inspect it. It appeared to be... a USB drive, utterly unremarkable. She touched it with her mind (tentatively, keeping the whole events of the night in mind) and poked around the information there. There really wasn't much, not even a full gigabyte, but what was there was revelatory. Pages and pages of what looked like scanned military documents, with large portions blacked out and almost every single one stamped TOP SECRET. There were files from both the US Army and the young USAF on Malcolm Dawes, as well as his Ironclad suit in all its iterations; and many more people, almost thirty all told. They apparently all belonged to something called "Section 8." What that was wasn't exactly clear, but...

Jessica sat down suddenly, eyes distant as she combed through the data again and again. It wasn't everything that she needed, it wasn't close to everything -- but it was a start.

[Fox]

Mara raised an eyebrow, scowling as Quirk disappeared and then turning her focus over to Jessica. As annoying as this whole ordeal had been - being kidnapped out of her home, the fighting, the useless, loud princess...somewhere deep down there was a piece of her that was disappointed she hadn't won.

She was curious about the prize, of course, but given Jessica' rapt attention it was either private or very important...or both. She was trying to be better about the personal space of other people'ss electronics, anyway. She gave her friend what she figured was a decent time to look things over, and then spoke up. "Good prize?"

[Raveled]

Jessica didn't seem to hear the question at first; she just stared at the wall as her mind digested all the new data. Finally she came out of her information dive, taking a long breath and sitting up straighter in the chair. She saw Mara looking at her expectantly and reviewed the last few seconds of conversation in her head. "You remember when I came to talk to you? About my grandfather, when I learned... learned what he did during his enlistment? This is all the information I was -- well, no. It's not all the information. But it's, it's a damn good lead." She looked at the oblong piece of black plastic in her hand for a moment, then slipped it into a compartment in her armor.

She stood and stretched, walking out of the room to find herself in a musty, dilapidated hallway. It wasn't long before she found the front door and stepped out onto a similarly decrepit porch. Judging from the size and style, it was evidently a grand old house that had fallen into disrepair sometime in the last few decades; Jessica put that together with the sun rising on her right hand and deduced that they were, in fact, somewhere in Port Regal. The heroine walked a little ways down the overgrown lawn and looked back at the house. She sighed and rubbed at her forehead with one hand, waiting until Mara emerged. "Bet you a couch this place isn't here tomorrow," she called over to her friend.