Unedited portion of the 2015 (2014+) Carramba Road Rally, with Ambrose. :) Not guaranteed to make any sense, out of contetx, but the other prior year's stuff is up on my deviant art account, and the portions leading up to this (which is where I hit 50k for Nano this year) will eventually be posted too.

Team Pepper

Movement to Black Mesa

It was nearly ten thirty when the shake-box crew had finished their meal and picked up the scraps in order to pull themselves out for the day's adventure. It was agreed: they left certain items in place around their campsite, so they'd be able to return to the same spot and take up where they left off. Though it was still a bit foreign to some of them, Hollis and Grace in particular, it seemed they all appreciated the silence of the desert surroundings, and the darkness that the skies offered.

That, and Quincy assured them all, echoed by Seka and Alorel, that to properly appreciate the desert sky, they would have to see it again when there wasn't a low, dripping cover of clouds. Kyo apparently agreed – because she could navigate by the stars, as Leticia might while she was on a ship at sea, as many dragonriders were taught to orient themselves in the sky before teleporting.

Quietly, Sanger asked Quincy if they had any motion sickness medicine on board. Because even though their trip would technically be just a teleportation sideways, that and the movements that the shake-box made before hand were already giving him anxiety. “I spent more than thirty years in my dark and quiet suite at Alabaster,” he told the Professor. “Just getting into the elevator there sometimes would make my balance go off.” He sighed, “it hasn't really gotten tremendously better even with Umpteenth insisting I ride him sometimes. I'm just not good with motion.”

As Quincy was looking for the first aid boxes, Grace tilted her head, her beaded hair making little click-clack sounds. “But I've seen you in motion,” she told him. “You're faster in a fight than my super-team boss, and his thing is speed movement.”

“Yes, but… Ask him if he likes going that fast while riding with you on your bike.” Sanger said, an honest but tired smile appearing on his lips. “It's not under his control – my control. Being at…” he kind of quieted down, “being at someone else's whim for anything is disorienting at best.” It was clear that only he really considered what he said to be an over-arching issue, rather than just one of being driven around town. Grace was still curious but Quincy arrived with a foil covered paper bearing several pills, and a chilled plastic bottle of water.

“Have at, it says just take one, so just take one. We need you up and about when we get to Black Mesa and these things turn dizziness into drowsiness.” Quincy shook the foil sheet, the little pills knocking around inside their tiny capsule of air.

“Got it,” Sanger said, “and I appreciate it.” As the raven-haired man pushed just one through the foil backing, swigged down a gulp of water, and hoped it worked by the time they were actually in motion, the rest of the team were making their seating arrangements comfortable again. They all chose basically the same seating as before, though they had options that other vehicles didn't, what with having rows designed for a full shake-box show audience.

“Does it have to do that thing?” Groove asked, while raising his hand and shaking it around emulating the box itself.

“Not really,” Quincy admitted while the engines were coming on line. “But it makes for a much more convincing entrance at the beacon site.” He shut himself into the forward cabin again, and Grace did a final check around the main room before she sat herself down and belted in.

Chastity was again in the back section, looking somewhat more comfortable than she had the first time. Now that she knew what to expect, she knelt down, arranged her skirts in a pleasant cushion and tucked her hooves under, leaning just a little to her side so she could watch the room more easily.

Leticia wondered whether her burning shoes would… no, of course they wouldn't burn her dress. She was a creature of pure magic, after all. The Felii gently chuckled at her earlier thoughts about any fabric tears on that dress – it was much more likely that if it snagged on something? Whatever it was that got caught would wind up breaking or being destroyed in the process.

Kyo once more ascended to the roof of the vehicle, this time at least a couple of the team saw her simply blip out of their view and heard the slight sound of impact as she arrived on the top layer of the roof. Grace focused her efforts on the satellite view covering the Black Mesa beacon's immediate area. She tapped her headset and said, “there is enough room twenty meters to the west of the Beacon, if you put us down oriented north-south.”

There was a moment of silence and then Kyo apparently tapped directly into the monitor's speaker to reply, “got it, everyone hold on to your butts. It's gonna be a slightly less than bumpy ride but I just like saying hold on to your butts.”

It seemed nearly impossible to almost everyone in the craft that Kyo had made a joke, and also nearly impossible to bring themselves to ease up and laugh loudly enough for her to hear. Hollis did, though, and while he was laughing he felt Sanger's slightly nervous elbow-twitch, and nudged his companion. The machinery was doing whatever it did, they no longer had the benefit of the overhead or ground based camera systems that Carramba's parking lot did, to watch themselves on TV.

“It'll be over in a second,” Hollis said. “and if I punch you in the shoulder a couple times, you'll never even notice.”

“If you punch me in the shoulder and I'm feeling anxious,” Sanger replied only half-joking, “I might throttle the life out of you.”

But Hollis seemed to understand implicitly that his friend needed to be distracted. He didn't let up with the poking and prodding, shoulder nudges and swaying into the wall of muscle that was Van Sanger. And though the blue-eyed instructor rolled those eyes in frustration at all of it, suddenly they weren't moving any more and the sound of the motors on the transport ramp had stopped.

“See, that was easy.” Hollis clipped, grinning. They had noticed a little bit of motion, but it was nowhere near as weird a twist as the first time. The auxiliary sensation of being ‘lowered' was not even apparent, since the box was going downwards at a slow, steady, and incredibly precise pace.

Groove waited for Grace to give the thumbs up and turned on the ‘okay to release' sign, before unbuckling his harness. “Well that was pretty smooth,” he commented. “Because it was a shorter distance?”

Kyo appeared behind him, but didn't startle him in doing. (Her teleport did however surprise Leticia a little, and Seka to boot.) “It was, and I didn't need to reorient the vehicle's facing. If it had only been a west-facing parking spot, it would have felt like wringing out a wash cloth.”

“Well thank goodness for north facing parking spots,” Sanger muttered. He blinked away a little of the woozy sensation – the pill he'd taken was certainly having some effect, but he'd taken far, far worse drugs in his life and could handle a touch of sleepy yawning on their excursion.

Grace turned on the external cameras and discovered that there had been a couple people manning the Beacon's booth, who were now excitedly chatting to each other and kept looking back to the craft with expectant smiles. She turned the loudspeaker on, “everything clear for us to disembark?”

They both stood, nodding and giving eager waves. There were a couple other people in the area, but they seemed to be either local security or other assorted employees of the facility nearby, perhaps on their lunch breaks. So, Grace performed all her security procedures, and then typed in her password to open the shake-box's hatch.

The weather conditions in either their central roosting point or this slightly more north-eastern locale were not what people had been expecting. It was humid, moist really, and absolutely hot. Even at this time in the morning, it was hot. While the furred members of the group didn't respond much, the blast of wet, hot air that filled the cabin was almost unbearable to the Humans.

“Oh my freaking god , what is wrong with the weather?” Hollis sighed. He looked out, and up, and saw more grey clouds than before, the air dotted with a steady pattern of tiny raindrops that caught the light from their craft's safety flashers.

“It's raining, what?” Leticia said. She was clearly used to rain ‘whenever, wherever', having been aboard any number of boats or caravans in radically different world settings. “It is a little warm, but isn't that better than cold rain?”

“You're fully insulated,” Groove asserted. “That fur coat might not let any water get to your skin, but… yeah it's pretty miserable. I've been on planets that were like this all the time.” He already had to pull out a cloth and wipe off his forehead, “and I … didn't like it there either.”

“Well, when we get through the Beacon clearance we can take a tour in Black Mesa,” Quincy announced, he didn't seem all that fazed by the weather, but then he also had that hat which probably (at least according to Groove or Sanger) had some form of cooling system built into it. “They have a temperature controlled system in there, so I've heard anyway.”

“They won't let you near the place normally,” Grace chuckled. “They've heard what you do with machinery.”

“My son is responsible for most of that nonsense,” Quincy chuckled. It made several of the team even more curious – if they hadn't watched any of his Science Power Hour broadcasts they didn't know just how mad a scientist his kid was. Or his older sister.

Sanger at least knew: that ran in the family, most times. It had been his ancestor (or self, or doppelganger, or whoever carried the burden of being ‘him') on any given world, which broke reality and allowed the dragons to fly in skies which would never have had them before. His own kids were… special. Maybe they should get together. Sanger blinked a couple times, shook that thought out of his mind, because Quincy's daughter was an amazingly intelligent blond scientist and he did have a weakness for blonds. Maybe that was the medication talking. More than likely, not.

As they all stepped out of the craft and down the little ramp stairs, surprisingly they didn't get pelted by the sudden if brief spat of rain. Seka glanced at Alorel and sure enough – it was his magic keeping them dry, at least from above. There were plenty of puddles in the much-abused asphalt of the parking lot that filled with whatever rain came down – the entire place was riddled with spots where weeds poked out of the broken potholes.

“This way! Over here! You're our first!” The one rather excitable attendant exclaimed. “We don't have a TV crew, but we do have a couple webcams.” He turned one of the little cameras on their sheltered desk to face outward and made sure it caught the team as they came toward the beacon.

“Next time, I should probably call ahead,” Kyo muttered, “I mean, Feng got fanfare. We get puddles.” She was perhaps faintly more disappointed than annoyed, it was hard to tell.

“Actually that might be a good idea,” Quincy said. “Give places a little heads up, if they don't already have a crew assembled.”

Obviously the attendants heard this discussion. The one who worked the webcam was a young Asian man with brightly yellow-green eyes and a mop of thick black hair, wearing a hoodie with the Black Mesa logo on it. His partner was barely older, and barely darker in skin but looked a touch more professional in a sport jacket and slender tie. They were both a bit wet around the edges, the rain would clearly kick up a bit now and then but their desk did have pretty good protection. Not magical, still good enough to keep the electronics dry and safe.

“Part of it is the rain,” the darker skinned man said. “We've had a few people wander through, but it's also just a Sunday so hardly anyone's around. Black Mesa does work all week, but only a skeleton crew.” He presented Quincy with the main beacon device, and Grace indicated from the door of the vehicle that their ‘dashboard' unit had gotten the a-okay. Once that was done, she scurried over to the group, suddenly aware that even she wasn't being rained on though Alorel was at the desk already.

“There will still be tours,” the younger one said, “and we can call now, if you want. They'll send a shuttle because it's still a couple miles away. Otherwise,” he straightened up and held a damp clipboard to read from, “there are two in-zone hotels, the ‘Area Fifty-Two Hideout',” he pointed with his pen to a nearby establishment that had a UFO saucer in neon lights over its name. “And the ‘Plateau Partnership',” he indicated the other side of the parking lot and nodded to show ‘above', where just beyond the first row of shops was a three-story building bearing a distinctive Western theme to the balconies and façade. “You can feel free to stay in your vehicle if you really want to, but either of those spots is well within the beacon boundaries.”

They all signed in, made happy faces and thumbs-up for the webcam, and were stopped by the younger attendant when he cleared his throat. “We've got some live Bellows coming in from the internet,” he said. “Someone wants to ask some questions.”

“Oh that's coming through the Carramba feed now,” Grace said, looking at her phone. “Well, I can't see why not, we've got all day.” She read the feed and it was going by pretty quickly. Mostly the comments were ‘first yay!' and ‘team pepper rules!' but some snuck through that had disparaging things to say about their ‘wheel-less crap that shouldn't be in a rally' or ‘dirty cheating teleporters'.

She and Quincy were ready for that kind of thing, the others not so much. But the attendant read a couple questions off, and both of them answered with professional ease. Sensibly, the questions were filtered – the man worked for Black Mesa and knew the advantages of reading ahead. One of them kept coming up though, and he finally fielded it.

“Since you're teleporting,” he quoted, “why didn't you get there yesterday?” He tilted his head, “I'd ask that too, honestly.”

“Well we know that there have been other teleporting vehicles in the Rally before,” Quincy addressed the web camera with the same confidence he would show a full size one, and with the same level of seriousness. “As I said in our pre-Rally interviews though, our teleportation is not unlimited, and we would never arbitrarily decide to break the rules by skipping ahead to another destination.” He gave a smile that melted hundreds of thousands of hearts on a regular basis on his show, and added, “we play fair. This is a competition, but there's no reason to think we'll have an advantage over any other team just because we can move instantly. We still have to find a location and remain there, just like everyone else. And,” he turned to indicate the craft behind them, “as you can see, the car itself can be wheeled around if it needs to be moved a few feet or even a few miles.” Quincy paused, and then smirked. “Where's the fun in showing up early to a party, anyway?”

By that time, some of the nearby businesses had realized that the first of the Rally teams had arrived to this spot, and were acting accordingly. Though it was Sunday, this particular township did have its own sort of work flow – since it primarily supplied the Research Group in the nearby mesa, most of its weekday activities were also available through the weekend, so the employees there could participate. It didn't seem that there were many actual inhabitants out in the storm, though – they knew better. When the lightning started, the attendants both looked at the team and fell over themselves explaining how they'd want to get out of the rain and shut their vehicle down just in case.

The other attendant pushed a large button on the console at the desk, which caused a pop sound, and an array of three lightning rods became visible nearby.

“This is just mad science central,” Sanger said, a grin growing on his own lips. “Umpteenth should be here, he loves storms.”

“He looked like one!” Grace said. The wind was picking up, and it would be wise to follow the attendants instructions, so she made sure that the craft was securely resting with six additional metal feet planted on the ground for support.

While she was getting that done, it seemed as though the Research Group's tram had arrived. It was a modular electric cart with room for several hitched seating trucks. At the moment, there was the driver's compartment and one trailer fit for about a dozen passengers and gear. Obviously the morph behind the wheel was used to helping people get their stuff in and out of the compartments fit behind every seat, and hardly said a word while unhooking them. She was a goat or perhaps antelope morph, something with short horns and long ears, wearing the blue and black uniform typical of Black Mesa staff. Her ears poked out from under the yellow-plastic visor she wore, making her look slightly more surly than she actually was.

“Are you wanting to head straight up to the Mesa, or should we hit a hotel first?” Her gravelly voice was complete with a twang saying she'd been from the South.

“Will the tours be available today? At the facility, I mean?” Quincy asked.

“And is he cleared for them?” Kyo butted in, leaning over his shoulder and narrowly avoiding slicing herself in the face with the brim of his hat.

“I assure you, my security clearance is still better than yours,” Pepper muttered with a grin.

“Tours go on whenever anyone gets there, though honestly we weren't expecting anyone this early in the race. I'd have to radio ahead for the guide, but I can do that while we're on the way. Either way, rain's wet and the day's warm.” She shrugged.

Quincy turned to the others, glancing at each, and noting that Chastity had remained outside the tram, it was definitely not designed for taurs. “Stow our stuff, then take a walk?”

“I'm for that,” Groove said. “I'd prefer to have my things in a secure room. No offense,” he aimed at the goat woman who hardly responded.

“Probably wisest to settle first, after all we don't know whether anyone else will arrive and take up hotel space,” Sanger said, “plus I would love to not be in a moving vehicle any more.”

The tram operator blinked a couple times. “We're not moving, son, is something wrong with him?” She aimed that last part at Quincy.

“Hotel it is,” Quincy asserted, as no one else really piped in with suggestions to the otherwise. “The Plateau Partnership,” he said, “we've got reservations tentatively arranged at each location, so…”

“You chose it because of that hat ,” Grace chuckled.

“I chose it because it's less cliché than the other one,” Quincy admitted, as the tram jerked into motion. “I mean… UFOs are so yesteryear.”

“And the old west isn't ?” Kyo rolled her eyes. She did seem to be thawing a little, peering over his shoulder still as he texted the hotel to alert them to their arrival.

As the tram moved smoothly along the slick road, Chastity trotted beside it, and said without being out of breath, “Alorel, your spell is quite well made.”

They all expected the broad, self-important smile he gave the taur; but he also nodded and muttered a thanks. “It'll last a bit longer, but after we get to the hotel I'll drop it.”

“Professor,” Seka asked, “is… this hotel prepared for Chastity?”

“Hun,” the tram driver laughed with a bit of a bleat, “they've seen everything here. This is Black Mesa after all. They got some weird things in the Xenobiology labs, let me tell ya…”

She said nothing further, though, as they pulled into the central road and turned left at their earliest opportunity. The shops were doing a pretty brisk business, with laughing patrons watching a street performer doing a juggling act and getting soaking wet, some sipping their mid-morning coffee and reading under the more dry awnings, and the requisite number of harried parents with kids dragging them around to the movie theater nearby. It seemed that much of the population here was Human, but there were a good smattering of morphs and even, as they looked closer, a number of quads or … whatever quantity of feet that one insect-like creature had.

They wound their way around the mall and beyond. Most of the nearby architecture was solidly built with brick, mortar, and stucco exteriors, but some buildings were creaky older wooden ones with brick foundations. There were only a few strictly-speaking ‘modern' looking structures, and those were in appearance only. Given that the ‘we have UFOs here' theme was pervasive and not just limited to the hotel or tourist trap shops in the area, some façades of the buildings were done up in aluminum and chrome piping with neon trim or brushed steel siding. Their interiors, while they mostly remained a mystery, usually looked to be just as brick-and-mortar as their neighbors.

The tram driver brought the cart up to the carport of the Partnership hotel, where suddenly there were a good number of people clumped just under the awning and out of the rain. Most of them weren't employees attempting to help get the team's luggage to their rooms, it seemed their earlier web-cast had awakened the Rally fans. Of course, in a town supporting one of the biggest science research facilities in the nation, there would be a disproportionate number of fans of Quincy's show.

She gave a strong bleating suggestion that if people weren't going to be helping with offering towels, they might want to keep the autograph papers away from the team, and half the attendant throng unsurprisingly wandered off.

Leticia glanced at her companions, and gave a whisper to Seka, “do you think it will be like that everywhere?”

Seka looked around to the group that had remained, huddling semi-casually in the middle of a section of the lobby. They continually glanced over at the team, waiting for the right moment. Seka had seen that kind of thing before. “When I was a palace guard for some royals, the commoners would do that.” She tilted her head a bit, “well, the merchantry I suppose, because they had much more to gain from a royal audience.”

“I'm hardly royal,” Quincy said, with a wry smirk. “We have three rooms,” he raised his voice slightly to attract her attention, “and Chastity, there's a place if you want to actually rest and relax.” She probably didn't, but politely took the offered pamphlet that the attendants were now distributing to the team. The hotel layout seemed much bigger than a little three-story resting on half a city block.

“Well, they did say they get some strange happenings here,” Groove muttered as he too noticed the expansive hallways and multiple suites on floors that simply couldn't be in the building visible from the street.

“Oh, it's a bit like the Admin building,” Sanger said as he turned the pamphlet on its side. “Just … follow the right path. Got it.” He wobbled on looking back up to the hallway nearby.

“Did you want to go sleep that off?” Hollis asked, “I mean, we didn't exactly get much sleep.” He looked like he was about to add something to distract from that obvious statement, but then decided against it. “Come on, we can watch the rain and some TV.”

“Don't you want to take the tour?” Sanger commented, “I've heard it's a pretty interesting place.” It was decided for him, when Hollis pressed a button on the key card they'd been given, and saw a string of pale blue lights that matched their card's shade come on in the hall. Their collected backpacks and satchels had been moved ahead into another area, apparently, so they would stow their gear before officially moving on with that tour.

“I've heard,” Quincy said as they rounded a corner into a split T intersection that couldn't possibly have existed in a single section building, “that there are dangerous bottomless pits and railings that fall off.”

“I don't much care for heights,” Sanger muttered.

“You live on the fifth floor of the-“ Hollis started to say.

“That doesn't mean I want to,” the dark-haired man replied. “It means that Gabe's got a nice apartment and was willing to let me move in, and it kind of stuck.”

Grace lifted an eyebrow, “Gabe?”

“My…” Sanger started to say, rolled his eyes, gave up, “my room mate? Friend? Partner? Guardian angel?”

“Hold up,” Hollis grunted as they turned yet another corner following the pale blue path indicator, “partner partner or partner partner?”

“Both?” Sanger said with a faintly wistful and distantly dreamy look. “Don't worry. He's way past following the Host's orders on behaviors. And he doesn't mind when I go out and do this,” he clearly almost said you , “because it's not really in him.”

“Ahh, bromance,” Grace giggled.

“That's one word for it,” Sanger agreed.

They finally located their trio of rooms, equally appointed with one large bed and two twin sized ones, a couch, several chairs, a television sitting atop the single, wide dresser, and a little kitchenette complete with a coffee brewer, microwave, toaster oven, and fridge. Hollis appraised the room with a growing expression of surprise.

“This is… this is almost nicer than my house .” He glanced into the second room where the pair of twin beds were, connected on both sides to the bathroom which was a bit small but still had all the right amenities plus a stack of yellow-trimmed white towels embroidered with the hotel's logo on them.

From the hallway and into the next suite he heard Kyo's distinctly scratchy voice, “damn, Quincy, if I'd known we were going to be set up this nice I wouldn't have roughed it last night!” Her laughter was joined by Grace's in the third suite.

“You pay for your own wet bar,” Quincy warned, when Hollis came out of the room gleefully holding up two handfuls of tiny booze bottles. Then Pepper glanced at his wrist – a largish watch (which might or might have been there before had anyone been looking) lit up with information. He looked up at the hallway and said in general, “the tour of the Research Group facility can start whenever we get there, with whoever we bring.”

Hollis grunted, “do they have free booze?”

Quincy just narrowed his eyes and then laughed. “Is anyone coming? Or is it just me wanting to see the place up close?”

“I'll go,” Grace said, “girls?”

Chastity was outside, still; they'd get her if she wanted to see it. Leticia eagerly nodded, and it occurred to Kyo a moment later that the dark woman was also including her in the request.

“Certainly, I suppose,” Kyo commented. “Someone's got to keep an eye on you both,” she pointedly looked at Grace and Pepper.

Within a few minutes, the men as well had put their gear away and looked ready to go. For a few minutes it almost seemed like Sanger was going to beg out and fall asleep, but apparently he got over the drowsy drug enough to stop swaying. It might come in handy during the tour, because apparently there was an extensive tram ride.

They got out of the hotel via the single ‘exit' marked door at the end of their hallway. The door led directly back to the lobby somehow – and was the only one of its kind. Kyo looked it over carefully but decided it wasn't worth investigating in any other way. Down under the carport, Chastity waited for the others, apparently pleased with her own smallish ‘stall' with the other four-footers.

Though they all appeared ready to go, Seka kept looking over to the mall nearby, where they'd passed a number of shops and coffee houses on their way to the hotel. “Seka, are you all right?” Leticia carefully asked.

“I am, but… I think I'm gonna sit it out – there's… Something, over there. Someone maybe, I don't know.” She sounded a touch dazed. “I'll check it out and be at the room, if it's okay.”

“Why would it not be okay,” Grace said. “Go shopping or whatever, we've got plenty of time.”

“We will be leaving in the morning,” Kyo asserted. “After a nice night in a fantastic hotel.”

“You're welcome,” Quincy grinned.

The Siamese-point unicorn concentrated on some magic, the same type of spell that Alorel had used earlier, and kept herself from getting too wet when she stepped into the parking lot to make her way across to the mall nearby. The group waved a bit, and then headed toward their own little tram cart which the goat woman was still driving.

***

Seka sniffed at the air and found the mixture of coffee fumes and food to be delightful. She had frequently been a thief on her own world, and would have appreciated the market from other angles there. But today, even in the slightly gloomy and occasionally lightning-danced rain, she looked with a pleased, wide-eyed joy. Though the place was modern to an extreme, it still had most of the same features that any market place that she or Leticia might have encountered before. A bakery, in this case serving pastries and deli sandwiches, was quite popular with families coming out of the theaters. The small stores in their neat little rows along an avenue included clothing and camping equipment, and were interspersed with collectors items – baseball cards, a cigar shop with porcelain figurines, a gift card shop that had several decades worth of tiny stuffed toys available.

But it wasn't to any of those she was drawn. The coffee shop she wanted was on the other side of the theaters – there were two cafes which had radically different items such as teas and spiced drinks in the one, and standard coffees and chocolates in the other; she was headed toward the chocolatier. Though she was faintly aware that people would look at her as an exotic morph – unicorns weren't exactly common anywhere – Seka grinned to herself when children or folks in the collectable store recognized her as ‘from that one Rally team'.

But why had she started off this direction? She didn't really even know. Something was nagging at her, magically. The scent of chocolates mingled with coffee and pastries, as well as the distinct smell of books. The shop she wanted was right next to a book store of reasonable size and bearing both new and used products. Old books were always so wonderful, Seka thought. She half wondered whether it was something in that shop that was attracting her, but she'd first sensed it outside, not quite oriented within the store's volume.

Her senses rose and fell as she wandered around the area, but if there was one thing Seka knew well, was not to just jump into something without first checking it out carefully. Though she was certainly intrigued, she did kind of have all day to play around. So she walked into the book store and absolutely relished the atmosphere. (And the temperature: though it was still raining, it was simply hot outside to boot, so inside the store it was both dry and temperature controlled to something other than miserably hot .) She discovered that they had a scroll section, though most of them were cheap reproductions of ‘ancient local prophesies' – arguably selling the whole ‘UFO' thing to a broader audience than the little plastic toys and zap guns could.

Seka noticed, absently, the look on the bookstore employee's face as she sat behind the checkout counter. It was a younger human woman, probably a student by the looks of her stack of homework still undone beside her laptop. But she didn't interrupt as Seka looked over a few other books; the unicorn woman figured she'd find some actual magical tomes when they got to Wonder, it being a wizarding town and all. She was still a bit surprised to see the volume of totally non-scientific books around the place. Self-help in the form of ‘buy this book to do X improbable thing', something about chakras, political and entertainment tabloids. There were plenty of other tomes of knowledge that were more like she expected of a research facility-based township: physics, astrophysics, Xenobiology, and the like.

Seka didn't notice the half grin on the girl's face as she left the store; the employee texted her friend who worked at the theater, and another who was currently off shift but would be right over . There was a unicorn in the mall.

That selfsame unicorn pulled her tourist pamphlet out and looked at it, but was very distracted now. There was something bothering her brain. Try as she might, though, she just couldn't figure it out. Why were her ears perked, searching unconsciously for noises? It wasn't a threat by any means. If it had been threatening she would have never come alone. She'd been alive more than long enough – and been in bad situations plenty of those years – that she knew avoiding things was the first step in surviving them. So if it wasn't a threat, and it wasn't an obvious magical taint or spell giving off power…? It did occur to her that some curses were alluring.

Finally she gave in and just looked around her carefully. The bookstore employee did a little waving dance when she saw Seka actively taking her calm gaze around. Her friends saw and ‘casually quickly' strode into her store to help gawk. Seka still blew that weird behavior off as ‘because she's in the Rally'. Standing just outside the book shop, Seka decided to head into the café with the delicious chocolate treats displayed by the dozen on cooled trays behind glass.

There were at least a dozen patrons, most having a large mug in one hand or in front of them at a table or along the outward-facing bar, and a book or chocolate treat in the other. This shop seemed to cater to a slightly older or more sedate customer base; mostly Humans but a few morphs distinguished themselves with their tall ears or swishing tail. Even being as on-track for discovering what was gnawing at her mind, Seka couldn't resist getting in line and grabbing a ‘triple bean' drink – something with coffee, vanilla, and chocolate in almost equal amounts. (Four, if you count the soy milk!)

Seka's hoofed fingers could easily grasp the tiered mug (apparently they had a good number of hoof-handed folks, and maybe those without hands at all, to accommodate here), and sniffed at it with her dark, plush nose. It was positively entrancing, the smell! The taste was exactly as delicious. She sighed, and tried to find a place to sit and collect her thoughts. While she was doing so, she happened to glance around – not trying to look at anyone directly, just looking for an empty seat – and saw… someone.

Though he was obviously deeply interested in his book (the name of which Seka could neither see nor would she have bothered trying to figure out once she noticed the rest of him) he had a faintly distracted mannerism. Maybe it was that his coffee cup was almost empty. The chair opposite him was unoccupied, and Seka ostensibly wobbled toward it to ask if she could use it.

Nothing at all came out of her mouth when she tried to speak, though; her mouth fell open and just stayed that way. She stared at this man, he was human and attractive. In fact he could even be Quincy's brother for the wavy blond locks and goatee; only he wore no hat, and had a much more casual approach to clothing in a white button-down shirt and tan shorts. She didn't mean to stare, but did so, at his head. Though he was fair skinned to go with the blond and had obviously blue eyes, there was a clearly visible pale marking on the middle of his forehead. It wasn't a scar, was not unattractive, far from it.

It was: that it absolutely was the source of the magical interference that Seka was detecting.

The man looked up after a moment, realizing that the person who was standing there wasn't going away and that perhaps she had something to say to him. He had been deeply immersed in his book and greatly enjoying his drink, and would normally have just grunted a ‘go ahead' or ‘I'm not using it' to indicate the seat was free.

Instead he looked up and saw a grey and black furred morph with a snow white mane and tail fur, white feathering at her wrists and ankles…and a shortish, single horn in the middle of her equine forehead. She was looking at him exactly the same way – in a bit of shock. For a brief moment, they both just remained motionless, with a strange expression shared between them.

“Where are my manners,” the man said, carefully putting his book down with a marker already in place between the pages. He wasn't looking at it, he hadn't taken his eyes off Seka. “Please sit, enjoy your drink…”

Seka blinked first and glanced away, and if she'd been a Skin she would have had a brilliant blush on her rounded cheeks. She slowly placed her mug on the table, careful not to spill it on his book (her hands weren't exactly shaking, but they certainly weren't stable). The seating here was more geared toward Human butts, but she was used to that and tucked her tail around her leg under her long tunic. She didn't have the courage just then, to look back up at him, but said in a quiet hesitant manner, “thanks.”

The man leaned back a little, tilted his head, and watched her. It was magical, the way he saw her would be anyway, but the way he looked at her, too. His voice was warm, a bit on the gruff side, “you don't strike me as the shy sort.”

“I'm not… usually,” Seka tried to brighten her tone and applied a smile to her muzzle that may have terrified other people. It faded into a more real smile when she saw the nearby otter in a hipster's plaid shirt go puffy with fear. “I'm so sorry, I… I just…”

“You're a unicorn,” the man said, “don't see many of those around here.”

“I don't see many people with as much magical energy as you,” she blurted out and instantly slapped her hand over her muzzle. But he wasn't offended and didn't do anything more than lean back a little with a growing smile on his lips.

“No, you… probably don't. Likewise, actually,” his smile spread. “I'm Ambrose, Ambrose Steele,” he extended his hand in a friendly gesture and Seka looked at it as though she'd never seen fingers before. She did reach out and shake his hand as she tried not to continue staring. “Not to be rude but… You do know we've attracted a fan club?” He nodded very slightly over Seka's shoulder.

Her ears sought out the source before she turned her eyes that way, and sure enough there was now a gaggle (did Humans come in gaggles? Or were those just morphs?) of teenaged locals trying desperately to act casual as they hid behind the awning posts and whispered to each other behind their hands and notebooks. When it was clear that this Ambrose was looking directly at them, and Seka's head was turning to face them as well, they suddenly looked away or started chatting – loudly – about the weather and the latest football game.

“What are they doing?” Seka muttered.

“They're watching to see what happens when a unicorn shows up and… meets another?” He still had a grin, but his face was suddenly not quite so human. In fact it was downright lengthy. If his name was Steele, it was right on the money – his furry face had a darker muzzle but the rest was a shiny, steely grey. He still had the blond colored goatee – now a little beard, and his mane was a wavy mop of gold.

Seka wasn't sure exactly what it was that she felt or thought, but she liked it. It occurred to her that those kids outside already knew that Ambrose was a morph … or what was he? She didn't shapeshift, that wasn't inherent to her kind. But he certainly was exactly the unicorn she'd ever wanted to meet just at that moment. The pale spot on his human forehead had blossomed into the nearly-white horn and continued to be the source of all that magical energy.

What she wound up thinking, though, was a little more conventional. “Your coloration is almost like mine…” she muttered. It was true, where she was a Siamese-point type, his colors were more mottled and varied, but it was obvious that he was silver, grey, graphite, and black just like her own shades. Their only significant difference was that he had three fingers and a thumb, where her own hoof fingers were one fewer. His horn was considerably longer than hers – but then she had an excuse: her horn had on occasion been broken off. Perhaps his was what hers might aspire to. His legs were darker than his arms and hands, dappled with a number of smudged spots that mingled with a deepening black toward his hooves. Like her legs, he had the ‘double bent' knee that many morph species did.

“It's usually a little harder to figure out motives or evidence,” Ambrose said, tilting his head and glancing at the kids outside, “but in their case it's pretty simple, eh?” He paused, “yours, not so much.”

“Motives?” Seka asked, what an odd thing to say. He smirked, easily done with that velvet muzzle.

“Oh – sorry, sorry. I'm a private investigator,” he glanced up at his horn, eyes slightly crossed, and waved one hand at it, “kind of lends itself to the job.”

That gave Seka the pause for thought that she'd desperately needed for the last few minutes. Her brain was so muddled with magical energy that she was hardly able to clear her head. He wasn't trying to lure her, it was just that their energy, inherent to their breed, seemed to attract like to like.

“Yeah – I think it does, I remember…” Seka finally leaned back a little into the round cushioned back of the seat. “I remember this one time I had to track down a gang of thieves. No one had ever seen even one of them.” She neglected to mention that she was doing so because she was in a rival guild. “Sometimes it's easier to track using good old senses, but when you've got nothing but a single hair to go on…”

“And you're tracking morphs,” Ambrose chuckled. “Boy do I know that feeling.” He rolled his eyes a bit, “well what I wouldn't give to have a challenging case, these days.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” Seka warned. She finally got around to sipping her drink, and it was marvelous . “I'm afraid I didn't bring any mystery and intrigue with me, just the Rally team.”

There was a distinct gleam in those blue eyes of his, when Ambrose glanced over her shoulder to indicate the groupies, “ they don't know that .”

Suddenly Seka was remarkably disappointed that they would be leaving in the morning.

***

The Black Mesa facility literally loomed overhead as the little tram maneuvered through its security gates and paused at the biometric scanners to make sure nothing untoward was being brought in. While the ground was hardly ‘black', striated as it was with shades of tan, red, yellow, and brown, the goat woman assured them all that the top-side of the mesa had been covered with the same sorts of dark foliage that dotted much of this area of the countryside, and was richly dark in color.

“Once we're through this gate, I'll hand you off to the internal guides,” she announced. “I'll probably be off-shift by the time you're done, so… maybe tomorrow I'll take you back to your car.”

The security scanners deemed the team clear, with a couple swipes of a hand-held metal detector going over Groove, Quincy, and Chastity to make sure that those blips were just clothing parts. Groove's eye piece attracted little attention beyond how functional it was. It seemed highly unlikely that they would have challenged either of the other two – Chastity for the obvious reasons, but Quincy because it was clear that the older black gentleman running the security detail was a big fan of the Pepper's show.

“I don't want to bother you,” he said, reverently, “but…”

Quincy's first instinct was to reach out and sign whatever was presented to him, so when he was given a Black Mesa letterhead paper and a pen he hardly hesitated. It was worth his while, “it's never a problem,” Quincy said.

“My grand-daughter will just love this!” They were waved through with grins and congratulations on having been the first to arrive at the Rally's beacon. “For the tour, you'll need to just walk through that hallway, reception will be there.”

While the security systems and machinery were certainly all high-tech, most of the location itself seemed to be carved straight out of the solid rock of the mesa. It didn't have the look of a mine, though, in fact a lot of bright sunlight was filtering in through a number of windows and fissures above. Though a good number of doorways had normal seven-foot high frames, most of the ceilings were nearly twice that height, some with catwalks to upper level offices.

Their feet echoed, there was a distant hum pervasive in the place as well as more localized buzzing from light fixtures and machinery. The reception desk was situated in an oval room with an angled, glass-fronted official entry. Presumably, people who worked there or those who were actual guests, used the ‘front' door.

Groove was busy scanning everything, it wasn't even conscious on his part. There was electronic interference from numerous sources – some quite deeply underground, but others outside. He spotted an overhead photograph and realized what that second one was: they had a hydroelectric dam set up and a smallish reservoir supplying water to the facility. More than likely the deeper source was a nuclear reactor, safely tucked deep underground.

Everyone was looking around, it wasn't just Groove. The place was far from spotless, but when a place was carved out of stone, no one fully expected it. A janitor dragged a mop bucket and cleaning supplies behind him, barely glanced up at the group before continuing on his way.

Eventually the receptionist appeared – she was quite pretty, human, fair-skinned with a well-managed appearance and a practiced smile. “Welcome,” she said, “welcome to the Black Mesa Research Group!” Her voice was warm, Quincy actually wondered whether she'd been trained in radio or acting. “I'll be your tour guide today, you can call me Silver.” It was an apt name, her hair was nearly that shade – perhaps it had been blond and dyed further white; she didn't look old enough to have a full head of grey hair. She wore a modest long-sleeved white shirt, a black vest, and a pleated black skirt, and was quite shapely.

Quincy had to stop himself comparing her to any given ‘hot librarian' he'd met – and he'd met a few.

She walked over to one corner of her long lozenge-shaped desk, took up an electronic tablet, and keyed it a few times to select a particular menu. “Ah, here we are. This tour,” she began, “will consist of a tram ride and several walking excursions. Does anyone have any issues with walking?” It was pretty clear no one did – she had to ask, Sanger knew it was because of liability issues, Chastity gave a bit of a snort but it didn't faze the woman. “Well good, off we go, then!”

Alorel muttered something to Chastity, slightly overheard by Kyo and overtly heard by Sanger, what with his hearing being as good as it was. “She's too chipper to be human, is she a construct?”

Kyo chuckled and grinned to herself, hanging back a little to check up in her own way, which directions they were to go. If Groove had done so because he was used to finding escape routes, Kyo was ready to explore on her own terms. But she'd humor the team, she saw Quincy's faint beckoning nod and followed on after them before the reception room doors closed.

The halls they walked through in this area were mostly administrative. Silver commented about this one or that – where they hosted business meetings and who had recently approved funding for biological research. It was clearly a tour designed more for the science-oriented, rather than any typical tourist spot, that was certain. They reached a tram station – and sure enough, there was a dark, probably-not-really bottomless fissure below the tracks.

Hollis saw Sanger's faintly queasy look and grabbed his elbow to drag him into the blue-seated tram car. “Just keep looking around and up, you won't even notice.”

“Do you have any idea how good my peripheral vision is?” Sanger muttered but he followed anyway.

There were several sets of tram tracks, mostly supporting the cars but some areas had clamps for the roof to be held. It wasn't just Sanger who hoped that they were all strong enough to support Chastity 's weight. But then the tram car had room for at least a score of normal Human-sized beings; it wasn't hard to imagine that some of their scientific or bureaucratic personnel were overweight, these trams had to go through as rigorous testing as anything else in the place.

Right?

Silver didn't bat an eye about it, so they had to imagine it was fine. Chastity stood in the nook created where a wheelchair spot opened up a couple seat spaces and knelt down, she was still slightly taller at her shoulder than most of the others while they sat in the tram's seats.

“Don't worry about being on one side or another,” Silver stated, there are many viewing opportunities on both sides. “Right now, we'll be headed around the exterior parts of the facility. Internally, the facility is kept at a pleasant seventy-two degrees, though some locations are at a considerably cooler temperature.” She gave a rundown of the safety measures in place, and reminded them at least twice not to leave anything behind on the tram once they got on or off.

The tram was silent save for a faint ker-click every time it went over a track joint. It actually was a very relaxing ride, though truth be told, nearly all of them – at least those from a technologically advanced world – expected it to suddenly branch into a thrill ride. They passed the ‘internal windows' of offices and the classrooms which held employees' children while their parents were working, each of those had an admirable view of the well-lit but still quite deep ‘first layer' of the facility. They swept above platforms which had a few scientists taking their lunch break, the remnant scents of pizza and Chinese food wafting up from the lunch court area.

Above, in one of the offices, more than one of the group caught sight of a silhouetted form in a window, but whenever they glanced away and back, it wasn't there any more.

As they descended into the ‘second ring' of the place, they would be taking a walking tour of the biology labs, which included their famous Xenobiology section. Silver glanced at the team, went off-script, and said, “I'm going to guess you lot have seen plenty of weird wildlife before now.” She fluffed her hair, “still though, right this way.”

The tram came to a halt and the doors opened, but it was a difficult trip for Sanger across a catwalk that joined the tram to the main platform. He pulled in a couple deep breaths, looked up at the wall ahead, and nudged his feet forward as best he could. He would not resort to allowing Chastity to carry him, though she quietly offered. They made it into a curved walkway, one side of which was glass paneled and the other led into a number of offices.

Below, a grassy simulated environment held a few reasonably normal looking creatures. A tree or two provided lookout posts for bat-winged vulture-headed animals, and below in the artificially crafted shade were a number of slinky weasel-like beasts. Across the way there was another faint shadow of a man's outline in the opposite observation hall; there and gone but definitely there at all .

The deeper they went into this area, the weirder the wildlife got. Strange but endearing ham-hock shaped ‘dogs' with bright yellow and blue markings yipped from below in one enclosure, while in another, a huge tentacle rose from a pit, bearing a spear-head shaped… head? That stabbed loudly at the ground. There were a lot of warning signs over that exhibit.

They didn't circle back to their original tram, which was why the repeated warnings about abandoned items. “We do have nearly eighty individual tram cars in the facility,” she commented, while another of them moved slowly overhead – containing that same mysterious shadowy figure. “About a dozen of them are cycled out of use for maintenance, but we always make sure to have every one of them cleaned and secured on a daily basis.”

The tour passed the robotics lab, which Leticia was intrigued by. She'd hardly seen all that many robots, and wasn't sure she'd be able to recognize some of the more humanoid ones as such. Silver assured her that though they had the potential to create ‘fully articulated replacements' that the Black Mesa robotics research was almost entirely in the field of emergency, hazard, and construction use.

As it was Sunday and the staff for this section were all out for the weekend, the whole large room was mostly silent. It was clear that the conveyer belts and robotic armatures would make a stunning amount of noise, and there were not only signs that displayed images showing how the ear protection should be used, but banks of headsets and ear plugs in a variety of sizes and configurations draped on pegs below them.

The walls were quite high, probably twenty feet at the center of the room, and a number of observation chambers were set along catwalks in order to make sure that the large and small parts were assembled properly. The room wasn't brightly lit, had a feel of industrial gloom to it in a way that only Groove, Grace, and Quincy could relate to. The murky air grew oily, the whole place would never be clean from the shadowy murk along the walls. When that one shadow reached up and straightened its tie, faintly visible through a thick glass window in one of the observation rooms that were locked away from visitor use, Kyo gritted her teeth and said, “I'll be back, I have something I need to check out. I'll find you.” She teleported away before Silver could get a single word of warning or query.

“Don't worry about her,” Quincy said. “She'll be fine.”

Silver stood with her mouth slightly open for just a moment longer, but recovered. “Well, we do have a teleportation lab, I suppose…”

She continued the tour with the remaining team members all being reasonably attentive.

Upstairs, however, Kyo moved through the facility in a strange one-sided searching game, and finally popped into a room which had a musty scent. Even though it overlooked one of the tram rail sections, it was pretty clearly an unused or perhaps forgotten-about office that had never quite been cleaned of its prior inhabitant's old stuff. An ashtray sat with the nub of a generic cigarette still balanced on its lip, and there was a small pile of ashes which appeared to have only just been disturbed drifting around it. Most of the ashes remained in a little pyramid, just the very top layer had been tossed into the air.

“I know you're here,” Kyo muttered. When there was no answer she took a careful look around her. The office wasn't what she was investigating, however. Something else, an aftertaste that could only be sensed magically? It was faintly familiar, though different enough that she questioned her own memory of it. She teleported on instinct, which was quite common for her to do, and wound up in another, similar office space overlooking a slightly different part of the tram line below.

But here, she felt she was on the right track. The traces were brighter, stronger, though still slightly off from her existing memories. They were invisible to people without magical sight, and seemed to dim rapidly. What was that game being played? Covering his tracks, maybe? Why?

When the tour group was taking a short food break and resting at a transit hub that would bring them to the longer, final leg of their journey through the facility, Kyo sensed the magical disturbance happening and immediately latched on to it, like a runner grasping at a relay baton. Just like that, then, she found herself standing next to a tallish, slender, older man in a black suit who didn't appear entirely as surprised as she wanted him to look.

“They'll let anyone in here these days,” Kyo said, almost out of breath.

“I could say the same about you, my dear,” his voice was deep, had the faintest of burr to it – and for some reason that gave Kyo a moment's pause. “ Nach-toi'chackt ga'net ha'dee, ” he said, words that sounded both familiar and magical. She only barely realized he wasn't speaking English, but she still couldn't understand what he'd said. His eyes narrowed, he glanced away into the middle distance and wound up looking at her with the same oddly turquoise color that the traces of his presence had been. It seemed that he was a touch annoyed that she didn't understand him.

“Wait a minute,” Kyo said. “Who are you?” She paused and almost started prodding him with an extended finger. “You're not... You don't actually belong here.” Her magic was working overtime, but even she didn't seem to understand what her senses were telling her.

“That is correct,” he tilted his head in an admission of… something. “I'm not this world's Keenan Lane,” he told her with half a grin. “But don't tell them that,” he tossed his head toward a trio of lab-coated workers as they took a smoke break. “They've been asking me why I'm on site on my day off.”

“I would think you'd be trying to avoid talking to anyone,” Kyo said with a bit of snark.

“Trust me, I usually do that,” the half-smirk wasn't quite visible on the side of his face Kyo could see. “But I've hardly bothered hiding, here.”

“And why are you here, then? I mean, you're not up to something sinister?” She absolutely expected that brief glow behind his eyes.

But in answer to that, he drew in a long, slightly hesitant sigh. “That it's expected of me,” he said, “is still remarkably sad, and I do a lot of apologizing to people for the actions of my… others.” This not-the-one-she-thought-she-knew Lane shrugged. “I'm actually here to speak to… a number of my family members. Perhaps others.”

Kyo squinted, hard. “ You have family ?” Her tone would have put anyone else off. Apparently not him though.

“I personally have quite a lot of family, yes, and,” he chuckled a little, eyebrow raised, “that too is not the typical purview of my alternates.” The lines on his face were deep, he could look like an old man if he let himself go, but as it was, he seemed more like barely past middle age, and held himself well. Short, steely, salted pepper hair in an almost military style complimented his studious suited appearance, but he didn't seem all that harsh .

Kyo could almost say that was also one of those weird things she didn't quite understand. But she had to attribute all of this to one version or another of this person. She was drawn to such abilities, she had to have encountered ‘him' somewhere out there on her journeys. But apparently it wasn't this ‘him'. Typically Kyo would be able to remember specifics, her memory was long. But it just seemed like he was blurry in those memories, blurry at best. She knew the color and ‘flavor' of that power he had, that trail he'd left. But not his individual frequency, not his specific taste.

He simply bled power, but… not really. To her eyes, the only remnants of his teleportation were faintly turquoise bits, like smoke quickly being filtered away into the aether. His own eyes, though… Those were where he didn't bother to hide his remarkably strong aura. To anyone else, he might have an intense stare. But to those with magical sight? She almost couldn't look. Or look away.

“What was it you said, a moment ago?” Kyo finally asked. If it wasn't going to get any more apparent, it was clear he wasn't going to explain. She did get a glimmer, a sudden realization: if this one was that good at covering his magical tracks, and she'd encountered others, they would be as well.

“Normally I'd expect people to understand me,” he replied. “I speak in all languages as needed. I suppose though, that the words I meant to say needed to be said as they were heard. It's Vortigese,” she seemed to acknowledge that, but he knew she was hardly an expert in the language. “It means, that it is a rare yet expected pleasure to see you, movement mage.” He grinned, mostly just in the crinkling around his eyes, “ nach-toi'chackt , I suppose that if you were to be given a title, that might be it. I would hardly dare presume to assign you a name in their language.” He knew she was still muddy on the words, and added, “the fastest path,” to which she nodded.

Then Kyo pursed her lips, “well as long as it's not an insult I suppose…”

“Oh believe me,” he said dismissively, “if I wanted to insult you I wouldn't need to do it in Vort.”

There was, perhaps, enough ego clashing between them to power a city.

Kyo lowered her head a bit, eyes still fixed on his own. “Wanna race?” She asked, “I mean, you're a teleporter, I'm a teleporter.”

It appeared he was seriously contemplating the idea, but then gave her a softer look and very nearly patted her on the head. He refrained, because he knew perfectly well she'd bite his hand off if he did. “My dear, though you are indeed a magnificent specimen of talent and magical speed, there is simply no instance I can imagine where you would be able to catch me.” He smirked again, was faintly blurry for some reason. “I am made of energy, nach-toi'chackt , my natural state is to be in all places at once.”

Though Kyo was about to become extremely angry at the insulting insinuation, she then realized that he'd … been teleporting around the room while speaking. The entire room was filled with his turquoise flavored energy, which once more faded very rapidly. She was strong, good with distances, could ‘lift' large objects (considerably bigger than the shake-box), and she was known to be very fast in doing. But this other-dimensional man wasn't lying, and actually wasn't bragging either. He was merely explaining. And honestly he seemed a bit sad about not taking her up on the challenge.

“I … have places to be,” Kyo said, brushing it off. If it was a challenge, she'd be the one trying to keep up.

Lane smirked, “indeed you do, your tour group is almost ready to depart again.”

She stood facing him for a good long while, then said, “ which family are you waiting for?”

He didn't hide expressions of pondering or confusion, before assembling a response. “Several teams on this Rally you're participating in, have one of my… kin aboard. You're a smart girl,” he once more managed to not pat her on the head – he knew she was hardly a ‘girl' as well as the type to leave a bloody stump behind, “you'll figure it out. It's not that hard.”

When he vanished, this time, there was a distinct neon-green colored whiff of energy, a bit different than the signature frequency that he'd been leaving before. Kyo could tell that this movement was not on-site, he'd left the dimension . Distantly in the facility, someone's calculations were thrown off by that energy, but it only resulted in a slice of slightly burnt toast.

***

“Ahh, the courtship rituals of the urban unicorn,” Hollis said, dreamily. He rested his chin on his fists, elbows on the wooden table, and sipped at his soda through a long, striped straw.

“It's more like a mating rut ,” Alorel said with a degree of amused snark as well as a slightly lifted upper lip.

Leticia was going to get very angry at them for saying such things about their team mate, but… Then she kind of looked at the pair of unicorns and decided to keep silent.

“He is quite attractive, in all his forms,” Chastity added from the shade of an awning. She licked her large teeth and Leticia had to suppress her laughter. She stopped laughing when it occurred to her that Chastity said all his forms, did that mean he… She glanced back and forth but her inquisitive expression wasn't seen because everyone else was still staring at the grey pair of horny… horned horses.

Hollis continued to watch Ambrose and Seka as they chatted, from the other side of the café. The team was mostly outside, looking in at the pair who almost literally hadn't moved since Seka discovered the man. The rain had let up over the course of the afternoon and the sunset was starting to make everything get tinted with brilliant orange and pink.

The team's tour had taken them through the large Black Mesa facility and left them all a touch weary. It was quite a long walk; they all wondered verbally at various times during the tour and after, how anyone could possibly find their way through the place to work there. Kyo was notably quiet, but not in a glum or dangerous seeming way. More that she seemed to be thinking on whatever had happened while she was away from the tour. She'd caught up with them before they began the ascent through the theoretical physics labs, and was silent then too.

“I got them to make it,” Sanger said with an edge of delight to his voice, startling the movement mage out of a reverie, and placing a tall glass in front of her, holding one of the same in his other hand. “You'll love it.”

Kyo grunted, sniffed at the drink, and had to admit that it brought her senses into focus. There was clearly cocoa in it, strong coffee, and something… else.

“What'd you get?” Hollis asked. He was quite content with his flavored soda that they bought at the other café, apparently preferring cold drinks on a still-warm afternoon. The others had variations on the theme: Quincy had also picked up a chilled flavored soda; Hollis's was orange and almond, Pepper preferred lime and coconut. Leticia had a big glass of iced Chai tea, Grace stirred more sugar into her own unflavored green tea. Chastity and Alorel appeared to be more interested in the pastry treats and had nothing more than water with their scones.

Sanger sat down beside Kyo and Hollis with his heavy glass held closely to his chin. If it had been a kitten he would have nuzzled it. He did nuzzle it. It was like his favorite thing in the world just at that moment. Very shortly after taking her first sip of her own, Kyo realized why.

“It's not on their menu, but they all tried it,” he bragged. “So I think they'll probably add it.” He took a deep sniff, and then a tentative is-it-too-hot sip, eyes closing. “It's a banana mocha with extra espresso,” he murmured, “and it is lifeblood itself.”

Kyo had taken a few sips of her own, decided it was good, but still said, “it's not that amazing,” probably just to see what reaction he'd have.

“Heresy,” Sanger said, “plus, if you don't want yours I'll take it.” He began to reach out across the table.

She held it back from his eager hands, “oh I'll drink it, you have your own.”

“Please make sure not to give him too much caffeine before evening,” Hollis sighed, with a grin, “I'm not sure the walls can take it.”

Grace over at the other table bit her thick lips and blushed, visibly, at that. She finally took a drink of her tea, after adding enough sugar to cause a small layer of granular sludge to form at the bottom. Deciding it was perfect, and ignoring Hollis's assertion that if she was going to add that much sugar to it, why not just get a soft drink. She went back to watching the pair of unicorns, who were chatting animatedly and Seka's laughter would occasionally come through the shop. It was clear that the blond maned unicorn man was a fixture in the shop, not one of the employees before or during their shift change did anything more than ask him if he needed a refill. They did all give each other significant looks when they saw Seka there.

The group of high-schoolers had finally dispersed, some of them back to their weekend jobs and others to go gossip online about it at dinner. Grace sighed and quietly said, “I wonder what they're even talking about, I mean… how much in common can they even have ?”

“Apparently enough,” Sanger said, grinning and his drink half-gone already, “she's talking about her experiences in the royal guard, and he's telling her she probably did a terrific job at it. God, sappy.”

Grace paused, eyes narrowing. “Wait,” she glanced at the dark-haired man, “you can hear them, can't you.” She didn't ask it as a question.

“Of course I can hear them. I've got really good hearing.” He showed off his large, perfect teeth in a shark-like smile.

Chastity and Leticia exchanged a glance and both their ears were shifting around – perhaps Grace didn't expect a human to be able to catch specifics from this far away in a reasonably crowded café. They certainly could. Though between the two of them, only Leticia thought it was adorable . Chastity would probably have agreed with Sanger and called it smarmy.

Grace looked around, mostly with her eyes, and leaned over to their table. “ Well, dish it .”

“Oh I am positive that is too intrusive,” Sanger said, waving his fingers in a little tut-tut motion. “They've kept it strictly safe for work… so far.”

“Eh, they're immortal,” Alorel shrugged, “they have time to get to the good stuff at their leisure.”

“But I want them to get to it now !” Hollis mock-whined, grinning ear to ear.

“And you complain about banging the walls,” Sanger muttered with an equally wide grin. Apparently at some point during the day, the effects of the motion sickness pills had worn off, and he was behaving much more like his normal self. He'd been thankful for it at least once earlier on, though; those bottomless pits in Black Mesa were nothing to sneeze at.

Kyo said quietly, “gods, if they're going to be this long about getting a room, I can just teleport her back and forth to the vehicle if we have to leave her behind a while.”

“You could do that?” Grace asked. She was more surprised that Kyo would even offer, than that it was something the mage could pull off.

“Of course I could. Dragging a vehicle around is tiresome but do-able. Taking one person along for a short trip like these? Pfff .” She waved it off, took more than sips at her drink, and noticed that the blended chocolate and banana really was an incredible flavor. Hers didn't have ‘double' espresso, though, which was fine – she didn't need to be wired overnight either. But she did want to make note of the composition of it… For whenever they were in another place with a good coffee shop…

The group noticed a lot of people were glancing at their cell phones, and it wasn't because they'd all gotten photos of the pair of unicorns (which most had). It was Chastity that nodded upwards to a nearby television in an electronics shop.

“Something is going on,” she said, slightly wary. They all broke away from their overly-involved gazes and instead fixated on the screen.

Shortly they didn't have to – Leticia's ears flattened to her head, unconsciously, and she lowered her shoulders in a bit of a protective huddle. She glanced over her shoulder and tried to find the source of that screaming sound. Suddenly the Felii straightened back up and proclaimed, “it's a space ship! It's from the Rally!” She excitedly clapped her padded hands, “ they made it ! I thought I'd recognized their ship, only it wasn't upside down! And didn't have any landing foam on it!”

“Erm, … what?” Quincy asked, scanning the air where she was looking. There was a barely-visible dot growing larger by the second, in the air.

“It's the Starship Cherry Cream!” Leticia said, “they're one of the Rally teams!”

“You seem really… familiar with them,” Grace said, suddenly less interested in the sugar sludge tea in her cup.

“Oh I am!” Leticia was practically bubbling. By that time, even Seka and her newfound friend Ambrose had gotten up to see what the matter was. Everyone could hear it now, not just the morphs with longer ears or keener hearing. A kind of messy sounding whoosh , not entirely like a missile or rocket's noise, got louder and louder. “I met them at my daughter Kaytcha's birthday several years ago, everyone was there. They have very nice looking uniforms.”

Those uniforms were visible on the television, as a quick ‘breaking news' flash from Carramba's station was played on localized Black Mesa airwaves. A handsome long-haired man and a gorgeous blond with fluffy… hair were in front, while a pair of darker skinned male and female siblings framed them, and behind those, two Kthari with their distinctive multiple arms and tall colorful wings were holding up a few other people. Sanger recognized several of them from Carramba, so they had their requisite student body in the team, and apparently they'd been provided their own Cherry Cream uniforms.

They were silvery white, with brilliant – cherry – red piping along the plunging neck lines and wrists. A patch was boldly showing on every one of them, red cherries. The ship… the ship behind them in their team roster image was indeed a ‘UFO' shaped craft. Pie-shaped, in fact. A reddish, heavily dented dome rose over a slightly fluted silver body and rim, and a trio of wheeled legs jutted out under the body proving the vehicle passed the race inspection.

But it was very clear that those wheels weren't landing gear.

As the ship flew overhead in a rapidly descending arc, those with sharp vision, or telephoto lenses, saw their true landing equipment as it got rolling. The dome side was approaching, it was not really coming in for a ‘landing' so much as ‘flinging downward for a good splat'. The red of the dome was growing harder to see, and that was because of the spray of…

“Is that whipped cream ?” Sanger asked.

“It is ,” Leticia giggled. “I wondered how it all worked with the ‘landing foam' they kept talking about. Their ship was already on top of Kitty's house when I got there.”

“Was it top down?!” Quincy said, slightly panicked.

“Yes, of course it was,” Leticia commented, still just watching the craft with a faint smile on her muzzle. It was likely she was grinning because of the warm memories of meeting up with her beloved long-lost daughter after nearly twenty years apart, more than the memories of meeting the extremely inebriated members of the Cherry Cream.

The ‘landing foam' was indeed whipped cream, ostensibly there to produce padding, but the craft was coming down really fast and… There was just no way that it would survive… A trail of the white fluffy stuff sprayed in the air behind the ship, and to no one's surprise, it left a sticky, sickly sweet line of splatter on the ground as it all drifted downward in the still-wet air. It was not yet down into the 80s, the weather report suggested it might remain in the 90s for the foreseeable week, day and night.

That didn't at all bode well for the cleanup efforts, as people looked at their cars or lawns, slightly smoking faintly burnt whipped cream wasn't going to clean itself. Everyone nearby heard a hefty THWUMP , all but felt a shake in the ground, as the noise from the craft's descent suddenly stopped, replaced by the ever-so-faint trickling and splats from the landing foam.

“And they've landed!” Came the word from all sides, where people were standing with their phones open to emergency broadcasts. “The second to arrive to Black Mesa's checkpoint!” The excited reporter bounced a little, “where have they actually come down? They'll possibly have to move the vehicle to the beacon.”

“It's on the…” The other reporter, an antelope man, said, “it's on the roof of the most perfect place they could ever have landed, folks.”

On the TV as well as everyone's phones, then, a live feed from someone else's camera phone showed up. The pie from the sky was balanced precariously but in one piece, atop the Area Fifty-Two Hideout hotel's UFO sign. From the bottom, the wheeled struts sprang loose and stood at an angle, as a stairwell emerged from the side of the ship. It went with the direction of the fluting – in other words, even sideways, their ship still landed ‘right side up'. The crew stepped out, the two Kthari and one red-headed human woman bearing long-handled mops and spray bottles.