bigapplesauce | Don't Panic [open]

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Don't Panic [open]

Iman practically drags her new friend to the East Village, wandering with intense focus until she finally comes across the bar Jodie had recommended to her, which looks just like it sounds, a proper English pub. It's been ages since she went to an English pub. She's looking forward to it. A little hysterically, actually. No wait. Scratch that. She does not get hysterical. She's a scientist.

"Here we are!" she says brightly, drawing Daniel in. Oh wow would you get a load of this place. The lady behind the bar is in costume. Adorable.

"Wow you can kinda tell it's for people from an alternate universe, can't you?" She snorts and takes stock of the people, looking for someone to talk to, or someone whose brain she (they) can pick. It's pretty early for anyone to be drinking, so there's not too many people there, except one guy who is drunk, slumped over the bar. Looking exactly like she feels, or rather how she wants to feel in an hour's time.

"That one," she says decisively, not bothering to check if Daniel's with her on the idea of approaching a drunk stranger and asking him questions about their mutual cosmic misfortune. He's probably not. She doesn't actually care.

She goes straight to the bar, assuming Daniel will follow, sits herself on the stool next to the guy, and nods to the tender. "I'll have what he's having."

[[ooc: Daniel's just gonna be here for the initial thread, but Iman will be here all day! Say hi if you wanna.]]

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And the Devil is going to completely ignore Daniel while he sits over there and tries to set him on fire with his mind. Take a picture, it'll last longer.

He looks sidelong at Iman while debating the merits of following up whiskey with more whiskey or trying the tequila.

"Parlor tricks," he says dismissively, then reaches out and and does it again with just as much ease as before. "Nothing to get worked up about."

Telekinesis was really the least interesting of his powers; mundane in comparison to some. Trivial when compared to the things he could do if he was at full strength rather than this watered-down, diet cola version of his Grace.

Daniel would disagree; the fact Nick considers telekinesis to be a parlor trick very much is something to get worked up about. He keeps the disturbing thoughts to himself. Instead he privately tries to work out what, exactly, it is sitting beside his new and possibly-in-danger friend, because he wasn't lying before - he's never seen anything like this. And, all right, so maybe this isn't the first time he's chatted with an ancient, unspeakable evil in a dining establishment, except this time it's calling itself "Nick" instead of "Jim" and it's over whiskey instead of coffee and it happens to be taking place on a very mortal plane of existence.

"Do this sort of thing often, then?" Daniel asks mildly.

"Fuck off," says Iman loudly. That whiskey is hitting hard and fast, like good whiskey ought. "Parlor tricks. I can't do that shit in or out of a parlor."

Bartender's already there with a follow-up drink. Good bartender. Iman is going to need to pay creatively, she can already tell she's going to go beyond the funds Jodie gave her. But she's not worried about that right now.

"Parlor tricks," she says again. "You think you're soooo cool."

When Daniel asks his question, she initially thinks he's talking to her, and turns to regard him in moderate confusion. Do what. Drink? Harass elder gods or whatever the hell Nick is? Oh. Oh he's asking Nick. Fair enough. She turns back to Nick, awaiting his answer with challengingly raised eyebrows.

"The laws of physics only apply to me when I feel like it," he says, because apparently he's been roped into this conversation whether he wants it or not. "So, yes, I do this often. I can do much more, just as easily."

He reaches out and presses one finger against the side of Iman's glass; frost creeps across its surface from that single point of contact, spreading until the whole thing is hazy white. The liquor inside is frozen solid after a few mere seconds. He removes his hand then, to avoid possibly shattering the glass from thermal shock.

"Parlor tricks."

Daniel recoils a little at that. Yeah, that's definitely a tingle in the air and it's not one that he'd categorize as "good."

His eyes flick up to stare at him again, a whole mess of mistrust and fear and moral outrage and all sorts of things he shouldn't be projecting all over the place. And then he asks, because he apparently hasn't pushed his limits enough this evening:

"So why don't you? Do more, I mean?"

"Hey, I was drinking that," says Iman, sitting up straight and snapping her hand back from the suddenly frosted glass. Her irritation is pretty well diluted with fascination, and she leans down to examine it. "That was amazing. Holy shit, you'd be useful in a lab."

And there's Daniel's talking again. Holy shit, Daniel.

"Dude," she turns to level an incredulous stare at his dumb, adorable, morally overconscious face. "Are you trying to get him to fuck you up? You think he can't do that to your innards?" She reaches out and puts a hand clumsily on his face, somewhere between trying to soothe and trying to subdue. "Man, if you can sense this shit offhand you'd think you'd be better at not being a dumbass about it."

She looks back at Nick and drops her chin into her palm, giving him a wide-eyed stare that says Some people, huh. "You wanna room temp this back down or do I have to pay for another one?" she says drolly.

The moral outrage just leaking off of the good doctor over there was almost hilarious in its intensity. And Lucifer hasn't done anything worse in his presence than move a few objects around and freeze a glass of liquor; he hasn't even been destructive. The Devil has been practically pleasant, and Daniel keeps on insisting on giving the gift horse a dental exam.

Someone has the bad habit of poking sleeping dragons.

He taps the glass and the liquor goes from frozen solid to liquid again, back to room temperature like it had never been cold to begin with. Instant thermodynamic equilibrium, because the laws of physics are for saps.

"She isn't wrong, you realize," he says, and puts a finger on the rim of his empty glass, rocking it back and forth. "There isn't much difference between your insides and that glass of liquor. And just because I haven't done anything greater than a few minor tricks around you doesn't mean that I can't. It just means that I haven't."

Though, at the moment, he's capable of considerably less than he normally would be; someone around here-- the 'Rift', he'd bet-- must not be particularly happy about his grand entrance in Central Park. Probably had to do with the body count.

"And just because I'm sitting here now doesn't mean I've lived through worse." Okay, if one wants to get technical about it, "lived through" is a very liberal interpretation of those events but - well, there's not really a but.

~~Shut up Daniel.~~

Edited 2014-09-28 21:11 (UTC)

Ho-lee shit.

"Daniel, I swear to god, if you don't shut up, I'm gonna punch you out," says Iman, and boy, she means it. She loves this guy. He clearly needs to be looked after. Like a baby. He will just crawl right off the raised surface without any hesitation if someone doesn't stop him. "I can do it, too. And know that if I do, it'll be for your own good."

She wants to grab him by the shirt and shake him and shout you're offering yourself up on a fucking platter, you idiot, but he should be able to FIGURE THAT OUT ON HIS OWN, and she's starting to get the sense Nick doesn't need any added incentive. Who knew drinking could be such a strenuous activity in this universe?

Lucifer looks over at the doctor like he's a very unusual specimen of moth that's wandering dangerously close to a bug zapper. He tilts his head, a curious and almost bird-like gesture.

"I might just be misunderstanding you, but it really sounds like you're asking me to do something terrible to your organs. Usually when I take requests, that's... not what I get."

People who ask Satan to go to town on their insides are usually a very special brand of crazy cultist that he doesn't get involved with.

"Do you think you might want to reconsider your lack of self-preservation?"

Daniel seems to finally have caught onto how what he's doing is, in fact, an awful idea of tremendous proportions. To his credit, he at least has the sense to shift backwards.

"I didn't say that," he says slowly. Thin ice, Daniel, thin ice. "And if it's all the same to you, I'd really rather you didn't. I'd just like to know more about what, er, who you are. That's all."

Self-preservation might not exactly be among Daniel's skill set but he's had quite enough of dying in recent years to last him a while.

Iman pulls back slowly, still eyeing Daniel through narrowed eyes. Thin ice indeed. Watch it, buster.

She goes back to sipping her drink, glancing between the two men like someone might watch a particularly deadly sporting event.

"Is that all? You've the strangest way of asking."

Because it had really sounded like Daniel had basically said 'come at me bro' to the Devil.

Backpedal, backpedal, backpedal.

"Yep. That's it." He keeps his tone light. Nonchalant. No big deal. He's in no great rush to get his insides refrigerated. He's already had the oh-so-pleasant experience of getting them fried with high-energy radiation and he has no desire to round out the experience.

"Well," says Iman, slamming her palms down on the counter. "This has been a super great meet cute, well done everyone." She picks up her glass and clinks it against Nick's bottle. "Kanpai." She knocks it back, oh dear god that was a lot of whiskey in one go, slow down girl.

"So Nick, what do you do when you're not performing parlor tricks," she says. "Daniel and I are scientists."

Lucifer watches in mild bemusement as she clacks her glass against his bottle and drains it; for someone who doesn't have a supernaturally enhanced liver, she's sure going after that liquor like a champ.

"I was in the middle of a very prolonged family dispute before I got here," he says, and that is not a lie but is probably the top candidate for the understatement of the year award. "Resolving it took up most of my time."

Because resolving it involved an Apocalypse.

"What was your area of study?"

It's an indulgent question; human science is... quaint.

"Archaeologist, actually," Daniel mutters as Iman brings up the scientist thing, but he falls quiet after that. Yeah, he pretty much got way too close to screwing himself over just then. Ordinarily he wouldn't mind - Daniel practically has made a living out of throwing himself in front of the bullet, proverbial and otherwise, but this time there's no cause for it. There's no immediate danger, no call for needless self-sacrifice, and no need to go hurtling headfirst into a situation he doesn't really understand. Not that that's ever stopped him before, but Daniel likes to think he's learning. Oh-so-slowly, but still. Learning.

"Sort of science," says Iman with a shrug. Archaeology is legit. Plus, dude's been in space. "I'm a... uh, dimensional physicist. I don't know if that's a thing here." She squints thoughtfully into the middle distance, then shrugs and sips at her new drink (this bartender is earning the shit out of that tip). "I was working on a way to move between dimensions," she says, "I came here successfully, and then, whoops! Rift thing. Doesn't let you go back. How fucking terrible is that." She sighs heavily, drooping a little. "Guyyyys, I'm so piiiissed."

She means it in the American sense of the word. But the British sense also applies here.

Archaeology may have been 'legit', but it is also incredibly dull. What does Lucifer care about past human cultures? Short answer: he doesn't. At all.

But someone who studies interdimensional travel, while he is stuck in another dimension that he certainly doesn't want to be in? That's interesting. That's useful. Much more useful than knowing about the burial habits of some long-dead mud-monkeys.

"You successfully and intentionally moved between universes?" And now Satan is interested in you, Iman. congratulations. "How did you manage that?"

Daniel raises his eyebrows. For once, he agrees with Nick - he's actually really interested in dimensional travel. The few times he's managed it have been deeply traumatic, nigh irreversible, utterly horrifying, or all of the above. And if there's any chance he could find a way home...

Ever the optimist.

"Mm. I did," Iman says, coming off another sip. "Once. Coming here. It's complicated. Technical. There's things we can do in my universe that I don't think you can do here. I mean I've only been here some a few hours, but everyone flipping out about me crossing over is sort of an indicator."

She shrugs, thinks about showing them her hand, and decides no fuckin way. Not if Daniel's right about whatever Nick is. "It's sort of a mental interface. That sounds like bullshit magic but there's technology in place to create the pathway, the electric signals from your brain to the electromagnetic force in the, you know, the universe, and if you really, really know what you're doing, you can kinda... bend the rules. A little bit." She giggles drunkenly. "So you could say the rules of physics don't apply to ME, either. Sort of. Except they do. I just... know how to rewrite the rules. Briefly. And locally."

She takes another big drink, then slumps over and smiles up at Nick. "If that, you know, clears that up for you."

"The manipulation of physical constants in localized areas to stabilize traversable wormholes between parallel universes caused by curving spacetime during quantum tunneling."

For a human to have gotten so far in their understanding of the physical universe is surprising, to say the least. Where he came from, they hadn't even managed a complete unified theory yet, nevertheless the ability to traverse between universes at will. They hadn't even managed the technology to get out of their own galaxy.

"I'm familiar with the concept."

Daniel sits up a little straighter. Traversable wormholes. That sounds like stable wormholes. As in gates. This thing can't know about those. It can't. Can it? Shit. Shit.

"Are you, now?" Daniel says sharply, suddenly desperate to know how much this thing knows about stable wormholes. If it could travel to any universe - his universe -

Shit.

"Uhhh, yeah." Iman lifts her head, squinting at Nick with mild suspicion. "Pretty much exactly, yeah."

She snaps her fingers and points toward Daniel without looking at him. "Yeah, I'm with him on that question," she says. "How are you familiar? And how familiar?"

Good job, Iman, NOW your guard is up. It took a while but you got there.

"I witnessed the formation of the universe," he says. "I have seen the interiors of black holes and stood in the shock waves of supernovae. I know how to move within, throughout, and between."

He pours himself another few fingers of whiskey and downs it, like this is a totally normal conversation to be having in a bar.

"So don't get short with me. Your advanced quantum physics is my common knowledge."

no worries :)

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blah blah quantum blah blah

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