Preliminary Exercises
Who: Dairine and the Doctor (she needs him to save her from the big bad.)
What: Arrival and WHAT HAVE WE MET?
When: Forward dated to TUESDAY
Where: Airfield starting
Rating: Low
A>
The line next to the command prompt blinked patiently.
Dairine stared blankly at the screen. She had about a minute and a half before the thing with too many tentacles to be comforting realized she’d left it a false trail. Any minute now, it would see its mistake and swing back around, pull Dairine from behind red-stained rocks and - Dairine shook her head. Not happening. Mars was becoming a less and less friendly place, more-so by the minute with agents of the Lone Power spreading their influence.
She’d tried to talk to the alien, using the wizardly Speech. The language was universal, understood by all living creatures and supposed to instill a sense of mutual understanding. Instead...I just got it really, really pissed off! The icing on the cake was that Spot, her laptop and intelligent wizard’s manual, seemed to be malfunctioning. Idiot! She cursed, typing string after string of code into the command prompt in attempt to get it working. That’s the last time I install new programming just before errantry.
Dairine Callahan had been a wizard for five years now, and for all her smarts, it didn’t mean that she was anything less than an idiot at times. Her overconfidence was her own burden.
She hit the Return key and the code disappeared, replaced by a little loading bar.
“Processing!” The little device chirped as it mulled over Dairine’s new data.
The redhead grumbled and her hands became fists, nails biting into her palms. “Process faster.”
“Gotcha!” Sometimes, there were moments when it bothered Dairine with just how well her computer had picked up human speech patterns, but it was to be expected. Wizards had a tendency to influence the development of the things around them - Kit’s dog started talking, after all.
Two agonizing seconds passed. Then three. Finally, a little window popped up in the center of the screen. Upload Complete. Dairine let out a breath she’d been holding. “You okay now? Think you can get us out of here, Spot?”
“Yes! Input transit coordinates!” Dairine opened her mouth to speak when she heard the telltale slither of webbed feet and tentacles over the harsh Martian landscape. Shoot. It found her. I’m toast. The spell to get her on Mars had sapped most of her energy - she didn’t want to use what little had had fighting the thing - especially without knowing why it was angry or what exactly it was. While it could reasonably be an agent of the Lone Power, it could be a lost creature with bad indigestion. Dairine didn’t want to risk it. “Uh. Default coordinates!”
“Understood!” She felt the familiar tug of wizardry in the pit of her stomach, and then the universe was shooting by in a blur of light and nothingness. The sensation of being squeezed though something very, very small, very, very, fast. Dairine almost didn’t hear her manual’s note of alarm in the back of her head, piping up a quiet, but troubled - unknown interference. System error! But before anything could be done -
Dairine was tumbling ungracefully over the ground, the small laptop clutched tightly to her chest. She came to a stop, landing face-first in the turf, raised herself up a bit, and promptly threw up. That was…odd. She hadn’t felt that kind of sickness since her Ordeal, when she used the transit spell for the first time. That was the first sign that something was wrong. The second was that these were not by any means her default coordinates. It was an air field of some sort, once she got back to her feet and the world stopped spinning. Opening her mouth to ask Spot where the hell they were, Dairine was immediately interrupted by the loud clap of displaced air behind her and the unhappy roar of Mr. Tentacles.
...I’m SO dead.
Without so much as looking back, Dairine stumbled to her feet and began to run.
What: Arrival and WHAT HAVE WE MET?
When: Forward dated to TUESDAY
Where: Airfield starting
Rating: Low
A>
The line next to the command prompt blinked patiently.
Dairine stared blankly at the screen. She had about a minute and a half before the thing with too many tentacles to be comforting realized she’d left it a false trail. Any minute now, it would see its mistake and swing back around, pull Dairine from behind red-stained rocks and - Dairine shook her head. Not happening. Mars was becoming a less and less friendly place, more-so by the minute with agents of the Lone Power spreading their influence.
She’d tried to talk to the alien, using the wizardly Speech. The language was universal, understood by all living creatures and supposed to instill a sense of mutual understanding. Instead...I just got it really, really pissed off! The icing on the cake was that Spot, her laptop and intelligent wizard’s manual, seemed to be malfunctioning. Idiot! She cursed, typing string after string of code into the command prompt in attempt to get it working. That’s the last time I install new programming just before errantry.
Dairine Callahan had been a wizard for five years now, and for all her smarts, it didn’t mean that she was anything less than an idiot at times. Her overconfidence was her own burden.
She hit the Return key and the code disappeared, replaced by a little loading bar.
“Processing!” The little device chirped as it mulled over Dairine’s new data.
The redhead grumbled and her hands became fists, nails biting into her palms. “Process faster.”
“Gotcha!” Sometimes, there were moments when it bothered Dairine with just how well her computer had picked up human speech patterns, but it was to be expected. Wizards had a tendency to influence the development of the things around them - Kit’s dog started talking, after all.
Two agonizing seconds passed. Then three. Finally, a little window popped up in the center of the screen. Upload Complete. Dairine let out a breath she’d been holding. “You okay now? Think you can get us out of here, Spot?”
“Yes! Input transit coordinates!” Dairine opened her mouth to speak when she heard the telltale slither of webbed feet and tentacles over the harsh Martian landscape. Shoot. It found her. I’m toast. The spell to get her on Mars had sapped most of her energy - she didn’t want to use what little had had fighting the thing - especially without knowing why it was angry or what exactly it was. While it could reasonably be an agent of the Lone Power, it could be a lost creature with bad indigestion. Dairine didn’t want to risk it. “Uh. Default coordinates!”
“Understood!” She felt the familiar tug of wizardry in the pit of her stomach, and then the universe was shooting by in a blur of light and nothingness. The sensation of being squeezed though something very, very small, very, very, fast. Dairine almost didn’t hear her manual’s note of alarm in the back of her head, piping up a quiet, but troubled - unknown interference. System error! But before anything could be done -
Dairine was tumbling ungracefully over the ground, the small laptop clutched tightly to her chest. She came to a stop, landing face-first in the turf, raised herself up a bit, and promptly threw up. That was…odd. She hadn’t felt that kind of sickness since her Ordeal, when she used the transit spell for the first time. That was the first sign that something was wrong. The second was that these were not by any means her default coordinates. It was an air field of some sort, once she got back to her feet and the world stopped spinning. Opening her mouth to ask Spot where the hell they were, Dairine was immediately interrupted by the loud clap of displaced air behind her and the unhappy roar of Mr. Tentacles.
...I’m SO dead.
Without so much as looking back, Dairine stumbled to her feet and began to run.