And now, ( genuinely impressed, ) you can just about break someone’s spine with an anchor gauntlet punch. Someday you’ll have to show me how you do that.
( this is the sort of insanity he’s gotten accustomed to; tends to take in stride. it’s interesting and he knows it’s interesting, but it’s not the same kind of salacious as imperial scandal. )
I, hm, ( this part is really rather unflattering, which is why he opts to just be straightforward about his mistakes, ) fucked up a spell, and it sundered the barriers between worlds. Created the equivalent of multiple rifts, pulling in people from other worlds who had a grudge against this spider-themed vigilante hero. One was a man made out of electricity, another made out of sand, another with metallic octopus tentacles he’d grafted to his body. And one was a doctor who’d decided he wanted to turn the entire city in his homeworld into lizard-people because it was… I don’t know, the peak physical specimen in his opinion, or something? The motivations were unclear.
He had a lot of scales and teeth. Big hulking lizardman. There was a lot of property damage when the group fought him, but it was technically just another day at the office, all things considered.
( said sheepishly, the way one might use for ‘oops i broke the milk bottle’ and not ‘oops i broke the multiverse’. )
It’s also why I wasn’t particularly surprised by rifts when I came here, because we’d already experienced something similar. And I’d strived to put those visitors back where they came from.
( strange has a continual tendency to drop extremely concerning information into casual conversation, but even he has the presence of mind to hesitate here before adding, )
Where I come from, if our equivalent of a rifter stays in a universe which isn’t their own — if you keep wearing those barriers between worlds thin, with too much travel — it can trigger a thing called an incursion. Two worlds colliding, and one of them usually winds up destroyed. An entire universe gone, everyone dead. So I am, needless to say, extremely relieved to hear that that isn’t the case here and that rifters have been here for years without the world ending.
Yeah, there’s a reason I haven’t until now. I’m not exactly keen on having rifters rounded up with torches and pitchforks by an angry mob. It already seems close enough, some days.
If that had been on the table seven years ago, you might have been killed on sight, ( does not seem an unreasonable assessment. ) I was honestly surprised no one was in the first place. I'd have argued for it, if someone had told me that was a risk.
( and from a significantly more potentially influential position, too. )
( a normal reaction to this piece of information, maybe, would be some kind of shock or horror or even personal affront. most people might blanch a little at someone saying they’d advocate for him being killed on sight. stephen strange, though, takes a moment to consider and then concludes: )
And you’d have been right to argue for it.
It’s practically what I advocated for our own visitors back home.
Rifters didn't exactly go out of their way to seem trustworthy, at the time. Galadriel threatened to try to open rifts, it was a whole— ( she makes a sound, breath between her teeth. ) Thing.
And then there was the woman trying to yeet herself through a rift, which can’t have been good for reputation, surely. Unless that was the same person?
( there’s his own slight pause. considering, then, )
I can’t purposefully open rifts, even back home. If that’s a concern. It was an accident, an existential mangling of how the spell was supposed to work. There’s a girl back home who can punch her way into other universes and consciously bring people with her, but she’s the only one who can do it. It’s not within my capabilities ordinarily.
( he probably hears her mutter different bitch, but she's more interested in the rest of what he has to say than the finer details of who fucked up what and how in the past already—
especially. especially given, reluctantly, )
I think that it could be within mine.
( hypothetically, but— )
I have the strongest anchor-shard. It has been done. Galadriel believed it could be reproduced, even if we've never— obviously no one pursued that. I'm not going to pursue that.
The closest to what Trevelyan was wielding, before she died — there might be others as powerful, but none moreso to the best of my knowledge. And with Stark's gauntlet, I mean,
( he can probably fill in the shrug that must happen on the other end of the call. )
If anyone could do it, I think it'd be me. Or Stark.
Anyway, no one back then could do the sort of things we've become capable of. Which is for the best, because everyone was falling over their own dicks every other day.
Unless the Chantry mother’s secretly an assassin, sent to worm her way into the heart of Riftwatch and cut off its head from the inside. I’ve been putting some thought into it and it seems possible.
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portalling) wrote2022-04-02 01:17 pm
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( a thing that she clearly does and did not take for granted across the board, )
so hers was the only division that I was willing to consider being in, at the time.
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I can definitely break their spine.
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( this is the sort of insanity he’s gotten accustomed to; tends to take in stride. it’s interesting and he knows it’s interesting, but it’s not the same kind of salacious as imperial scandal. )
I, hm, ( this part is really rather unflattering, which is why he opts to just be straightforward about his mistakes, ) fucked up a spell, and it sundered the barriers between worlds. Created the equivalent of multiple rifts, pulling in people from other worlds who had a grudge against this spider-themed vigilante hero. One was a man made out of electricity, another made out of sand, another with metallic octopus tentacles he’d grafted to his body. And one was a doctor who’d decided he wanted to turn the entire city in his homeworld into lizard-people because it was… I don’t know, the peak physical specimen in his opinion, or something? The motivations were unclear.
He had a lot of scales and teeth. Big hulking lizardman. There was a lot of property damage when the group fought him, but it was technically just another day at the office, all things considered.
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You sundered the barriers between worlds?
( yeah, she heard him, and it's not like that could possibly mean some other, secret thing, surely, but
bro what the fuck. )
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( said sheepishly, the way one might use for ‘oops i broke the milk bottle’ and not ‘oops i broke the multiverse’. )
It’s also why I wasn’t particularly surprised by rifts when I came here, because we’d already experienced something similar. And I’d strived to put those visitors back where they came from.
( strange has a continual tendency to drop extremely concerning information into casual conversation, but even he has the presence of mind to hesitate here before adding, )
Where I come from, if our equivalent of a rifter stays in a universe which isn’t their own — if you keep wearing those barriers between worlds thin, with too much travel — it can trigger a thing called an incursion. Two worlds colliding, and one of them usually winds up destroyed. An entire universe gone, everyone dead. So I am, needless to say, extremely relieved to hear that that isn’t the case here and that rifters have been here for years without the world ending.
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that having been said (or not): )
I don't think you should say that, ( more carefully, ) to anyone else.
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( and from a significantly more potentially influential position, too. )
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And you’d have been right to argue for it.
It’s practically what I advocated for our own visitors back home.
( +10 approval points for you, gwen )
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interesting. good. but— not what she expected. )
Rifters didn't exactly go out of their way to seem trustworthy, at the time. Galadriel threatened to try to open rifts, it was a whole— ( she makes a sound, breath between her teeth. ) Thing.
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( there’s his own slight pause. considering, then, )
I can’t purposefully open rifts, even back home. If that’s a concern. It was an accident, an existential mangling of how the spell was supposed to work. There’s a girl back home who can punch her way into other universes and consciously bring people with her, but she’s the only one who can do it. It’s not within my capabilities ordinarily.
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especially. especially given, reluctantly, )
I think that it could be within mine.
( hypothetically, but— )
I have the strongest anchor-shard. It has been done. Galadriel believed it could be reproduced, even if we've never— obviously no one pursued that. I'm not going to pursue that.
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It was, admittedly, very impressive.
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( he can probably fill in the shrug that must happen on the other end of the call. )
If anyone could do it, I think it'd be me. Or Stark.
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Oh, fuck you.
( (affectionate) )
Anyway, no one back then could do the sort of things we've become capable of. Which is for the best, because everyone was falling over their own dicks every other day.
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Maker. At this rate, we might live.
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Unless the Chantry mother’s secretly an assassin, sent to worm her way into the heart of Riftwatch and cut off its head from the inside. I’ve been putting some thought into it and it seems possible.
( absolute bullshit, of course he’s joking )
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