icecoldfrost | New York Preplay

OK. So if we have time, we can do an establishy post the night before, with Emma telling Karla to wear running shoes and clothes she doesn't mind ruining. If we don't have time, we'll assume all that got said handwavily, so feel free to remark on it anway.

Thread One: The portal will dump them in Chinatown, where they make their way to the nearest subway station, hitch a ride up to Central Park. Emma and Hank make their home in lost sections of the abandoned lower level under the 42nd Street station. Hence the need for pants Karla might not mind throwing out. It's dry and clean, but there's lots of climbing and such.

Thread Two: MEET HANK! If Karla wants to poke at Hank's head, I think she could. Since he's not really a 'landen,' I don't think she'd burn out his brain.

Thread Three: (optional slumber-party thread) The girls can either stay the night with Hank (Emma's got a room! With a bed!) or then head out to crash at a hotel if they want.

Final Thread: Then some late breakfast at a diner the next day before heading back.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

icecoldfrost

"Hello," Hank rumbled tilting his head as he regarded Karla. "You aren't scared. Most people are scared of me, except for Emma."

"Because I know you're a huge pushover for cute blonde girls," Emma replied, dumping her bag on the couch. "Especially those of us with powers."

From:

glacial_queen

"I'm from a different world," Karla said quietly, but with a smile. "I'm used to people who are not human. Or fully human. Depending on your definition, I'm probably not, either. But I do count as cute, blonde, a female, and powered. So I'm hoping we'll get along."

From:

icecoldfrost

Hank looked at her ~~omgmodded!~~ still out-stretched hands. "Do I shake them?" he asked, curious rather than bewildered. "Emma taught me how to shake hands, but this doesn't look right. How do I do it?"

From:

glacial_queen

"This is the greeting of my people," Karla said. "Bring your hands up under mine, so we can touch, palm to palm. We can shake, too, if you like."

From:

icecoldfrost

"Okay." Hank carefully brought his giant hands under Karla's, easily dwarfing them in size, and gave her a hopeful smile. "Like this?"

Emma, for her part, was just lounging on the couch, torn between giggling and breathing a huge sigh of relief that Karla hadn't screamed. "Just like that, Big Blue. You're doing good. Right, Karla?"

From:

glacial_queen

Karla had gotten all her screaming at nonhumans out during her first trip to the Keep and meeting Draca. Hank? Reminded her more of a stuffed animal that anything else. She was having a harder time not cuddling than she was not freaking out.

"Perfect," she beamed at him. "Now you can give a proper greeting to any Kaeleeran you meet."

From:

icecoldfrost

Hank perked up even more. "Kaeleer has lots of people with powers, right?"

"You are NOT going to Kaeleer to do Science, Hank!"

Hank ignored Emma, leaning in towards Karla. "Emma likes saying 'no' to me a lot," he said, tone serious but an impish grin on his face. "I blame her upbringing. She must have been a very spoiled little girl."

From:

glacial_queen

"She must have been," Karla agreed in a conspiratorial whisper. "She likes saying no to me, too. All the time, really. She wouldn't let me use my powers on the trip outside, here, either."

She glanced over to Emma, dimples out in full force. "Now, Emma, let's be reasonable. There are several Kaeleerans I'd have no problem letting Hank experiment on."

From:

icecoldfrost

"Oh, sure, you'll let him meet the Uncles, but not me. I see how it goes," she retorted, rolling her eyes. "Queens. You've got no room to call me bossy."

From:

glacial_queen

"Please, Emma, you're a Warlord Prince in skirts. And they damn near invented the term 'bossy,'" Karla said, laughing. "And besides, it's only nice to let Hank have them. It's like a house-warming gift."

From:

icecoldfrost

"Are you saying I'm 'fussy.' since that's what you call your males?" Emma boggled, about to start in on a tirade when Hank interrupted.

"-- House! You need to see our house!" he exclaimed, ignoring or not understanding the banter between the girls. "Well, our humble abode, at least."

[OK for him to pick her up & put her on his shoulder like a parrot on his next ping?]

From:

glacial_queen

[That would be the awesomest awesome of awesome]

"Oh, yes!" Karla exclaimed, winking at Emma. "I'd love to see your house. A nice long tour, I think. Every nook and cranny. I find myself suddenly fascinated."

From:

icecoldfrost

Suddenly, Hank bent down to scoop up Karla and plop her on his shoulder, much like a parrot. "You've been adoooooooooooopted," Emma sang, leaning back on the couch. "Have fun, he's worse than than your cousin."

"Oh no, you're coming too," Hank rumbled, moving to loom over her. "Upsy-daisy, Emma, or I'll put you on the other shoulder. I did some remodeling while you were gone."

From:

glacial_queen

Karla squealed as he lifted her and perched her on his shoulder. Hopefully he wouldn't mind her curling her fingers into his fur and holding on tightly. "Emma, please don't make him bend down to pick you up!" Karla begged, giggling all the while. "I might fall over if you do!"

From:

icecoldfrost

Emma lifted her hands in surrender, standing on her own. "He won't let you fall," she informed Karla. "And if he does, just grab the ponytail."

From:

icecoldfrost

"You are a mean little girl," Hank sighed, turning to head farther into the tunnels. "You're lucky I like you."

Emma, for her part, made a face at him, but trailed afterwards with no comment.

A moment later they emerged in a large cavern, fully-tiled with high ceilings and rows of sinks. It had clearly been a restroom at one point, but Hank had refitted it to serve as his lab. A trio of dissection tables, cadaver trays, various beakers and lab stations, power tools, and jars filled with selected body-parts lining hand-built shelves.

"See! I made the lab professional!"

From:

glacial_queen

"I think the mean is part of why we like her," Karla confided, more than loud enough for Emma to hear. "But, shh! Don't tell. It'll just go to her head."

The body parts in jars was a bit on the surprising--and slightly unsettling--side, but the lab itself was pretty amazing, especially considering what it had been. "You did all this yourself, right?" Karla asked, looking around from her vantage on Hank's shoulder. "Where did you get everything?"

From:

icecoldfrost

Hank started waxing eloquent on the joys of checking abandoned warehouses and repurposing equipment thrown out behind hospitals.

<<Don't worry, he steals them from the unclaimed-remains vaults of the morgue. We're pretty sure he was some kind of doctor or something once; he remembers facts, equations, procedures, but no context,>> Emma explained silently. She'd held back to gauge Karla's reaction, since the lab wasn't really something you could warn people about. There were days Hank wouldn't even let Emma near it, so you never knew it if it was okay to go wandering in that direction.

From:

glacial_queen

Karla relaxed a bit, tension easing from her shoulders and around her eyes. *I didn't know there were such things,* Karla sent, half-apology for questioning, half-conversation. *The Priestessed handle the unclaimed dead, once we Healers have determined the cause of death.*

"Did Emma tell you I'm a Healer?" Karla asked Hank, when it seemed his happy monologue was wrapping up. "Some of my powers extend to Healing the physical body. I've gotten a lot of training, though our knowledge of medicine isn't as extensive as this world's."

*While I'm here, do you want me to see if there's something I can do for him?* Karla sent tentatively. *Either as a Black Widow or a Healer.*

From:

icecoldfrost

<<If you can and he's willing? Yes. I've been doing what I can, but it's not enough.>> Frustration colored Emma's mental-tone at slow pace of Hank's rehabilitation. <<I'm doing more and more, but whatever jumbled his head was really traumatic.>>

There was a sudden shift of Hank's demeanor at Karla's question, and he tilted his head to look at her. "She did," he agreed. "Although I'm curious, as she insists your abilities are 'magic' rather than a mutation, and I'm inclined to disagree."

From:

glacial_queen

*I'll take a look if he'll let me,* Karla replied. *And if he won't let me, you and I can work together later to try to work something out. I may be able to teach you a few things to try.*

It wouldn't be as useful as getting in to see herself, but there were some boundaries not worth transgressing.

Karla looked back at Hank, seeing her reflection in his large, yellow eyes. "If I understand Emma's explanations, the mutation is a deviation from the norm, right? It's a mutation because she is no longer exactly human? On a genetic level?"

She waited for his nod of confirmation before continuing. "We could argue all day whether I'm fully human or not, but I'm not a deviation from my world's norm. My race, the Blood, all that the same abilities, to varying degrees. Some are stronger, some are weaker, some are gifted with additional abilities because of the castes we are born to, but they're all the same Craft."

From:

icecoldfrost

"A species sub-set with specific established mutations within the population," he muttered, forgetting he had a Karla on his shoulder as he moved to jot something down that looked like gibberish on a wipe board. "Fascinating."

"You are going to put her to sleep," Emma lied. "Do we get to finish the tour first, or is this all that you've changed?"

"And you promised. No Science on my friends!"

Hank just kept talking to himself and making notations. "Give me a moment, Emma. Karla, what percentage of the human population qualifies as Blood? Do you know?"

From:

glacial_queen

"Upwards of thirty-odd percent," Karla answered, ~~the mun pulling that number out of the ether~~. "The ratio of Blood to landens is much higher in the cities, lower out in the more rural sections of the Territories. But from a purely numerical standpoint, it's a little over thirty percent."

The number was lower for kindred, but he hadn't asked about that and Karla didn't exactly know what it was. "That's not counting half-Blood, of course, since they usually stay with their landen parent."

From:

icecoldfrost

"'Half-Blood?' I assume that comes from mating with a baseline human, but what sort of markers set them apart? Do they have the same powers but weaker, or is it just a designation for someone denoting their lineage?" Hank asked, scribbling away. "Do they tend to be sterile, or if they procreate with someone of the Blood, does that child then tend to take after the pureblooded parent, or throw back to the landen grandparent?"

He was on a roll, and Emma, while listening intently, busied herself with sorting out clean and dirty test tubes to give herself something to do. It was useless trying to stop Hank when he got on a roll like this, and she wouldn't want to, anyway. Not only were genetics fascinating for her, but sometimes he had memory breakthroughs while working.

"Do Blood ever have 'landen' children? Or landens spontaneously produce Blood, without any known half-Blood in the family history?"

From:

glacial_queen

Karla was more than happy to keep chatting about her people, especially if it meant she'd have more concrete answers to take back to some of the other people at Fandom. "Half-Bloods often very weak psychic strength. Nowhere near even as powerful as non-Jeweled Blood, but still some. They can usually create personal shields for a limited time and other small instances of Craft. Almost all half-Bloods end up procreating with landens, thus diluting the power, but if they did have children with Blood, those children would also have Craft. Still weak, but stronger than their half-Blood parent. It will probably take a few generations, but if that line continues to breed only with Blood, then their children will eventually be indistinguishable from any other Blood families."

Not that their impure heritage would ever be forgotten, at least by the aristo families in the area, but that wasn't the point.

"While it's possible for lighter-Jeweled families to have children too weak to wear a Jewel, they're still Blood. Blood never produce landens and no landens will ever have a Blood child without a Blood ancestor in their history somewhere."

She paused. "Would it help if you heard how the Blood were created?"