((Contacted the four active DC-muns about this to get permission. Jaime is being pulled from right after Blue Beetle #14. NOTE: Jaime's armor has a mind of its own. Anyone with special abilities, PLEASE check out
this tl;dr post on the scarab and how it might react to you - and let me know what you want it to detect - before posting! SYLAR I'M
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Read more... )
Jaime misses the last chunk of their discussion because he's a little too busy trying to talk sense into his partner and blend into the wall. "...for the last time, we DON'T RANDOMLY ATTACK PEOPLE!" Then the aura of power shuts off. "Wait, what? ...Oh."
Suddenly deprived of anything to really spaz at anymore, the scarab retreats, the armor melting away and folding back in a display that's probably pretty gross and very painful-looking even though it doesn't really hurt anymore. At least it knows to replicate his clothes now. Jaime doesn't think he could really deal with that anymore on top of everything else.
He slumps against the wall, relieved. But only slightly. "Thank you. Please tell me you're not friends with the guys who made this thing." He doesn't particularly like it either, for obvious reasons. At least he's able to get it to follow his rules: no killing and no letting innocent people get hurt. Of course, he doesn't run into omnipresent beings that often. More like never. Until now.
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"Why this? Why now? I... I can't stay like this"
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None the less, she wasn't going to turn down.
"Do you know what the Scarab almost did? It's from Reach"
She turned back towards Jamie and tried to manage a smile.
"There is a familiarity about it but no, I don't personally know them"
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Most of what Lain had learned she passed onto her but it was obvious she was omitting some key details.
Her grin returned as she looked towards Jamie.
"My, just like us then?"
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Feel free to have the Scarab notice the telepathic convo if you like, they haven't powered back up though))
She glanced quickly at the duplicate.
'Don't'
'Please, you could just reset it all if you don't like this'
'No one has to know'
'Why well? Did Alice ever need to know? You can change this whenever you like'
'I won't reset things again, it isn't necessary anymore'
'Then just suspend me again, not like you sealed yourself off'
Lain paused.
Would it really matter in the end who knew? It wasn't as if they could affect things anyway.
She severed the connection between them amidst the duplicate’s mental laughter.
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It was - okay, Jaime has no idea what they were doing, but it's like watching some sort of invisible tennis match. On another plane of existence. There's some kind of communication going on, but he isn't going to pry. He frowned at the creepy one's question. "I don't know what you -" and then the scarab starts spouting something about alien constructs. "No. No, I'm not. Please tell me you're broken."
The sane one's answer - yes, he's quietly dubbed them the creepy one and the sane one for lack of actual names - is kind of a relief, and kind of disappointing at the same time. "Oh. ...So I guess asking how to stop them is right out."
Between the scarab freaking out and the readings the two are giving it, Jaime's more than slightly shaken. "Who - what are you?"
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"We are a duality nature of an abstract. In essence, gods."
Yeah, as if that explained anything.
She gave a twisted smile and motioned towards her sister; she had rocked to boat now to see how her other would continue.
This was fun.
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She didn't want to deal with this.
She wondered briefly if she should still just banish her but then, it wouldn't really accomplish anything now would it?
"I... That is her and I... Well, we are, were created to assess and aid humanity in its evolution. Our original self was recrafted and expanded upon by a person who thought himself God as so he could have me finalise my program and force evolution at a far earlier stage then acceptable."
She stopped. It felt strange telling someone all the details like this.
She had tried to explain to Alice so many times what was happening, what she was but it wasn't enough in the end.
Next time she saw Alice she would have to tell her everything.
"As for the Reach, Jamie. It would be best to wait it out and see if you can organise a resistance of sorts. However, if need be, I could lend a hand."
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"Strange moral compass of yours, Lain. But then again, I should've expected as much from myself."
The look of hatred Lain Iwakura gave her in return got her giggling again.
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Both Lain? Okay. Creepy Lain and Sane Lain. No, wait, make that not-creepy Lain. "Sane Lain" rhymes and he might call her that out loud. They're both disturbing, and he doesn't understand half of the explanation, but... he can almost relate to the not-creepy one's discomfort at having to unload all that.
Doesn't make the explanation any better. "Force evolution? Early?" You don't need to have decent grades in Biology to realize that's not a good idea. "Organize a resistance. Yeah. Don't even know where to start there. But what do you mean by 'lend a hand?'"
He pointedly ignores Creepy Lain's antics. Now she reminds him of the Scarab. In terms of being disturbingly annoying.
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"What my Darling other failed to say is that we are, as two in one different, constructs ourselves of extraterrestrial origin. As for her somewhat estrange offer of help-" She started to giggle manically at this point, breaking her sentence.
Lain shot her a dangerous look, opening her mouth to say something but she held it back for the moment.
After a second or two, Wired Lain had calmed down enough to continue.
"She feels responsible for much of what had happened in the events concerning our conception, namely what happened to a lady called Alice Mi-"
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Tears stung at her eyes as she glared at her.
Lain of the Wired herself had frozen mid sentence and gone slightly hazy as if being seen from an old television.
"You know what happened, what you did to her. Don't you dare talk like that again... Just don't..." Tears started to fall now as she held back the sobs.
"Please, don't talk about."
The other became clearer again and she could move again but she didn't finish the sentence. She reached up and rubbed her throat slightly, the memory of when she had tried to physically kill her came to mind.
It was a moment till Lain spoke again, rubbing the tears away from her eyes.
"I... I won't get involved in any conflict myself. But, if worse came to worse, I can minimize causalities on both sides. It must be solved by those involved; I won't alter the events myself."
((From Lain yelling till she started crying her power shot right up, far past what it would’ve been when she first came into the room.
Also, Sane Lain tried to kill Wired Lain in an episode by strangling her just in case the paragraph got a bit confusing about who was doing what.))
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"Okay, the giggling isn't helping your case," Jaime begins, but then Lain's outburst cuts him off. "Agh!" And there goes the panic attack again.
This time, however, he's prepared. Well, no, not prepared, there's no way to ever be prepared for this sort of thing, but he's braced for it. Literally. Against the wall.
He grits his teeth, fighting against the scarab's urge to run away right now. Which, if the scarab had its way, would involve armoring up and trying to tear a hole through the wall. Or shifting between dimensions, but it already tried and failed to do that when it first came out.
Jaime flattens himself against the wall, jaw set against the pain of holding back the damn thing. If his back wasn't against the wall, one might be able to see that his spine is lit up with blue light, from the scarab trying to come out. Hell, if it could, it'd probably try to crawl out of his spine itself just to get away.
He digs his fingers into the wall, unconsciously managing to do so literally as the armor forms over his hands and forearms. But that's as far as it's getting. It takes a second before he manages a stalemate with it and focuses on the duo in front of him, still pressed against the wall.
...she's crying. Oh, man. Freaky power levels aside, he's starting to twig onto the fact that her story may be even more traumatic than his.
"I -" This would be a lot easier if he didn't have to latch himself to the wall and bite back the pain to keep the scarab from trying to get away. It's practically screaming in panic. "You don't need to explain it. Really, you don't. I get - I don't wanna hurt anyone I care about either.
"Minimize casualties? I'm hoping it doesn't get that far, I really am... You can't get out that way either? Big surprise. Come on, how many electric shocks do you need before you realize you're not getting a peanut?"
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