Danny Returns

Danny
*He had returned, he'd set down gifts for people and then just simply stood there with his eyes closed and soaked in the relaxation.  Slowly he made his way to the kitchen, checking things as he went. One hand opened the fridge to see the contents and he pursed his lips slightly in thought. "Hmmm...."

He was dressed properly. The weather wasn't good enough to go out and do anything with really and it was chilly.  So he'd turned up in his leather jacket, jeans and boots, a hoody under the jacket and gloves, when he'd gotten inside he removed the gloves and jacket, hanging them up. So now he was walking around in socks and a hoodie, Examining the contents of the fridge.

Grace
Somebody said there were presents. Grace wondered if Danny had brought her another puzzle box or some Pocky maybe, but this? There's a box with her name on it, full of other people's names.

Names of robot manufacturers and tool makers and contacts in the computing industry. Which, hey -- it's much better than Pocky.

Danny would find the place different than the last time he stepped foot here. There were wards which spoke of new people keeping the place. And the permanent presence of a trio of witches has begun to make itself known, if not by resonance then by their habits.

Grace, also, is different, though that's not something she broadcasts by look alone. No, Danny will find her dressed same as ever, in jeans and grey turtleneck -- if he finds her at all.

"Hey! Are you really here!?" comes a voice from the living room. Well, okay, that should make her a lot easier to find.

Danny
He nearly jumped out of his skin hearing a voice, distracted by the new presences and newer sensations. With a chuckle he closed the fridge door, then made his way through to Grace. As he passed her he bent his head to kiss hers on top gently. Then went and found a place to sit down near her.

"I am really back, yes. This leg of the tour has been done, there's talk of maybe doing a bit of Europe over a few months maybe later in the year but we'll see. How are things?"

He sits casually, leaning back on the couch and smiling as ever. His hair unbound and free to hang down his back and shoulders again. On his wrist is the latest of the new gadget watches.

Grace
She lets him kiss her. The Grace he knew before wouldn't have let him do that, but she accepts it without so much as a missed beat. She's holding her box of names, and lofts it up.

"Thanks. I'll see what I can get out of this."

Damn. An iWatchThingy. She really really wants to go into her rant about Apple products right now, but hell. There is a time and place for everything right? Later.

Danny
"Well I'm hoping you have fun finding things out and making new contacts. You never know, you could perhaps one day do something life changing for billions of people. Its all about the first contact though." He smiled, then took a long deep sigh and relaxed further into the couch.

"So what's new?"

Grace
There's a lot of things Grace Evans could do with a list of names and numbers. She could, for example, 'arrange' things such that these people stumble upon the breakthroughs of their lives, it's true. She could also arrange things such that they form the strangest impromptu flash mob ever, and then make their phones moo. However funny the last bit might be... Probably not worth it.

It still makes her smile.

"New? Apparently, it's vampires and dog monsters in Washington Park. We dealt with the vampires though."

Danny
"Kalen told me about the Vampire, he's going to meet someone who's going to assess the threat level or something. He told me." Danny leaned forwards again though and smiled at Grace.

"Things are different here.  What's going on?"

Grace
"We have some new people. Or, rather, old people. Not old, like, they're 80 or something, just... The old owner of the place came back from Texas."

She takes up a spot on the couch -- the other end of it.

"And oh really? Kalen told you about the vampire? I'm not too pleased about the vampire myself. But Kalen does what he wants. I just hope he keeps his mind shields up."

Danny
"Well, I've never really had anything to do with them myself either. Or at least I hope not!" He chuckled a bit, then smiled once more as he leaned back.

"So what's this dog thing?"

Grace
"It attacked some of ours -- Jo and Lavinia? I don't know if you've met them yet? But it did a lot of damage. And then Lavinia killed it," Grace says, like she's talking about the weather.

"I don't really know specifics, just 'twisted dog thing'."

Danny
His eyebrows shot up in surprise. "That is fucked up!" He shook his head slightly in disbelief.

"This world never ceases to amaze me, so was it like one of those movie were wolves?"

Grace
"I do not even know. You should talk to Jo, she could probably give you about 50 movie references. They're okay now, luckily Ian was there to patch them up."

This is their world, yes? Where werewolves are a thing that might just attack them in a park and need to be put down?

"It was okay. Definitely not something too terrible."

And that, too, is telling.

Danny
His eyebrows relaxed slowly as he folds his arms across his chest and studies Grace for a while, then slowly he leans forwards. "So, what change did you go through? I've spoken to Kalen, remember? Something has changed in you. What is it? What new revelations have you yet to reveal to us?"

None of his tone was mocking, Grace could do things he hadn't even dreamed possible, but hearing things in Tokyo when some of the techs didn't think he could hear them spoke about some of their studies with various things in the 'mirror'. His eyes remained on her and he relaxed his arms as well.

"So, go on, spill."

Grace
"I learned some things that might only apply to myself, really. Nothing more earth-shattering than the idea that my enemies are afraid of me, and to battle them, I cannot be afraid in return.

"Also, I learned what it feels like to fly around on falcon wings -- not bad! Totally cool, that!"

And she kept those wings, Danny. She feels... different, like that.

Danny
The smile grew, hitting his eyes and lifting them from that deep mahogany to a joyful earthy colour. He nodded and chuckled again.

"I dunno, I go away and everything changes on me!  Oh and some of those cards are from New York as well, so hell, you can have a field day looking at their stuff and figuring out new ideas.  Is it a good present?"

Grace
"Yeah. Yeah it is. Jo and I were going to build battle robots together, to see who would win in a fight -- Gamera or Godzilla? I have my leg up now," Grace says, and grins.

"Everything changes, always. It is the way of things. Also! Speaking of, you should totally come play laser tag sometime. The room's all set up."

Danny
"I would love to. Set me up with the armour and rifle and I'll find a snipe point," He grinned, "too many hours of Call of Duty on tour.  You should have seen it Grace." His hands move to start air sketching high story scrapes, towers of glass and the lights, then he began to tell her about a moonlight night flight over the city in a helicopter and how incredible it all was.

Grace
"Ohh, you might be the sniper, but I'm the sneaky spy. You'll never see me coming," Grace says, and her tone is joking -- but isn't that the way of Grace? Her enemies should be afraid of her.

"Tell me all about it! How was Japan?"

Danny
"It was crazy!" He laughs. "But I love the Japanese now, I got to hang out with Harajuku girls, I got to go shopping with them, I got to hang out... " He shrugs and laughs.

"The crowds there were incredible too, they knew every damned song! I've made a dent on the Japanese circuit, which is cool. But, I am damned glad I'm home now and able to chill out. I slept for the best part of a day when we turned our trucks for home." He leans back into the couch again and spreads his arms out lazily.

"I just slept for nearly the entire flight and then the rides across country from time to time. I've officially been to Hawaaii, but I have no idea what goes on there, I was awake for bout half an hour mebe, then I crashed in the lounge, then it was off to another plane."

Grace
"Damn. I like that though -- the always moving, always something different. It would be nice to get out of here for a while, see something else. Maybe meet that priest Kalen has in Chile."

Because Kalen has a priest in Chile, of course...

"I suppose it wouldn't be too different, though. Every place has its share of dog monsters."

Danny
"Yeah, remind me not to go sitting out there with my six string for a while..." He held one index finger up in the air lazily and smiled again.

"I met Ari, did you know she's gone blind?"

Grace
Grace's eyes widen a touch at the new info about Arionna, or 'Ari' as Danny calls her. "No. I didn't. Then again, I try to stay as far away from her as possible, lest we annihilate each other."

Danny
He nods. "Yeah, she uh, said she made some sort of a pact or something?" His eyes narrow a bit in thinking about it and he frowns with a grimace, then sighs heavily.

"She of course then proceeded to berate me for a long assed time about my just up and vanishing and doing my job."

Grace
"A pact with what? The Devil?"

Wouldn't put it past her...

Grace sighs, looks at a wall. It's easier to deal with.

"Also -- so you up and vanish. Is it her business?"

Danny
"Not that I'm aware of." He kept on smiling, Grace always helped put things into perspective.  The smile soon crept back into place by simply being in her company and he waved off the ghost of Arionna as he rose to get up out of the couch.

"I've got some supplies in my car, wanna help me get them in? I can make this great Japanese dish that I had. I harrassed the guy at the stall into writing it down then got our liaison to translate it for me. It's going to be good."

Grace
"Yes! Japanese food is awesome!" Grace leaps off the couch to go help haul the food -- pretty much the only thing she should be allowed to help with, really.

"I suck at cooking, but I can maybe chop things?"

Yes. Someone who feels like the very essence of sliding blades might be able to chop things...

Danny
He was caught out by her enthusiasm but he nodded at it and grinned. "Sure, why not?" He tossed the keys into the air reaching instinctively for the sense of where she was likely to be when the down arc began, then began to head to the kitchen to go start hunting down spices and herbs, filtering through things that weren't necessary. Grabbing pots and pans and other utensils and setting them out in groups, by the time Grace was back and done, there were tools, and Danny had tied his hair up out the way at the nape of his neck in a loose knot of itself.  He was washing his hands.

Turning he nodded to the sideboard. "Okay, well, most of this is flash fried in a hot pan, so we're good on most of it.  It's the prep work that can be an ass though.  First, lets get the rice on so it goes nice and sticky."

Grace
Never let it be said that Grace isn't industrious. She hauls rice bags and veggie bags like a champion, or at least somebody who knows her own strength. There may be multiple trips, but they are all fueled by the excitement of good food, so it gets done pretty fast. And then, she's waiting in the kitchen, somewhat third-wheel-like (Danny and the food being the other two wheels) waiting for something else to do.

"Do you know how to make the rice sticky? Because I don't. Are you supposed to do something to it?"

Grace buys her rice pre-stickied. It's a good thing, really. She could burn water if she tried.

Danny
He grins and sets up the pans and scales. Then sets the rice into a bowl of water, leaving it to soak while he unpacks some more items. "This is the vegetable stuff, we need slices, not too thin, about .5 millimetres?" He shows her with a couple of slices, then steps back after setting the knife down.

"Your turn."

Grace
[Dex + Crafts = Slicing perfection?]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Grace
"Right, right..."

She steps up to the cutting board and veggies, lofts the knife up into the air. This might look a little scary -- if so, just smile and nod, Danny.

"Choppy choppy choppy...."

Those slices may not be up to Japanese perfection standards of exactly a half-millimeter, but Grace is giving it a solid effort. And quickly, too.

Danny
Nodding his approval, Danny begins to figure out what else he's got and starts dicing up chicken, begins to simmer up a light soup to start and from time to time he kept an eye on Grace while she got her hands on cooking. Supervision but not quite supervision. After all, if the girl could dance rings about her robotic things, then reason led him to believe she could probably cook too. As he worked he hummed lightly to himself. Then pipped up a little bit later.

"Do you want something to drink by the way Grace? I can put some tea on?"

Grace
"Yes, tea. Good," she says, still chopping. And maybe it's that that makes her words so clipped? She's focusing on that half-millimeter thing.

Danny
He nodded and kept an eye, not intervening nor interfering as she went about her work. He was busy putting the things she'd started on in one by one with a light hand and a hotly oiled pan.  Pretty soon the heady smells of good home cooked food was filling the air.

He turned a short while later and set the up and a tea pot beside her for her to help herself to while he himself held his mug on handed and with the other was stirring the vegetables.

Grace
"You are so good at this," Grace says, and goes for a mug. Surely the pile of veggies she's made will be enough, yes? Time to enjoy the fruits of labor?

And tea?

She fills her mug, content to let somebody else handle the intricacies of food-making, and goes to sit at the kitchen table, to blow on her tea.

Danny
He continues to cook, tasting things. Turning things down and checking things.  Eventually things are turned off and there's the frantic serving up that goes on.  But he comes out finally with the food, bowls for the soup and more bowls for the main course, a platter with sticky rice wrapped in seaweed, a japanese version of perhaps another land, but it was worth it.

He sat and wiped his hands on the cloth he'd casually tucked into the back of his jeans pocket and grinned.

"Enjoy." There was the easy gesture, chopsticks had been set out and a spoon for those who might prefer it.  Danny himself just picked up the chop sticks with practised ease.

Grace
Grace also goes for chopsticks first. With as much Asian food as she eats, it would be hard not to learn.

"It's so much work. I mean, thanks."

There's a smile, and then she starts shuttling various things over to her bowl with the chopsticks. She might not eat it exactly Japanese style, but she doesn't much care for the traditions or manners of any culture, including her own.

Danny
He grins watching her eat, then starts on his own food. "I've got footage and a few videos in the pipeline, it'll be good. Things are heating up."

He comments. "So, next time give me a shopping list of things you really really want from where ever I am in the world, I will try to give you what you need."

Grace
"Are you always going to be on the move like this? It might make it hard to keep in touch with people," Grace says, offhand, like she's not saying anything of any importance.

She might, also, be able to do something about that...

Correspondence can be a wonderful thing, can't it?

Danny
He shrugs slightly, then sighs heavily. "It's going to be hard, honestly from time to time I got real homesick, like I'd lost my tribe or something. I mean I love being on tour, I love playing on the game consoles, I love the creative process that comes with it.... " He shrugs again. Then lifts his eyes to look at Grace. '

"Why? I've got email, I've got skype, I've got an insane schedule to blight the both of them. That's one big issue with it, no privacy nearly. Fame can be great, it can be amazing, but there's the other side to it as well."

Grace
"Ahh. So it's just the time involved? I can do nothing to give you more time. Closer space? Sure..."

She picks up a seaweed-wrapped sticky rice ball, and shoves it in her mouth with her chopsticks. Mmm.

"I guess you'll just have to try that much harder to connect to your 'tribe' when you can, huh?"

Danny
He nods. "Yes, and that means you all got to call me or something from time to time. It gets maddening, it's like this merry go round life that just, constantly keeps going. Does that make sense?  A complete whirlwind.

I mean I can..." Then he frowns hearing her words. "What do you mean by closer space?"

Grace
"I mean lots of things. I could hook you up with some VR, make it almost real. I could give you, I don't know... an enchanted lock of hair perhaps? So I Could follow you wherever you go. I can do that literally, now. There's things I could do."

And then, she's eating again, slurping down hot soup.

Danny
"Ahhh, the art of bending reality in a subtle format." he nods with same smile, eating between talking.

"So how does that work for you anyhow?"

Grace
"I know I see the world in a very different way from most. But I see us as living in a simulation of a universe. A computer program, right? So, we appear to be 'living' in three 'dimensions' but that's not really the case. It's all data that's being read and understood as such by our individual processing unit brains, but it's data, right? Numbers. Bits. There's nothing physically real about space."

Grace talks a lot, but she also does so while eating. Might not be the most pretty thing to look at.

"I can explain how that data is laid out, how its organized, but that's not really the point. The point is that all 'things' are one thing -- data -- and every 'thing' is connected through this. It's holistic -- a holographic display. There is nothing discrete, but rather all events, all matter, all 'things' are enmeshed everywhere at once.

"When you realize this, you can see the connections, and even travel along them, by modifying the underlying data."

Danny
He blinked listening to her, staring with the chopsticks paused halfway between the bowl and his semi open mouth. "The extra dimension? Worm tunnel?

Grace
"No. The 'no' dimension. They don't really exist," Grace says, chews, goes for more tea.

Danny
"Hmm..." He thought about it and then got up from his seat, then got a piece of paper and sat back down as he thought about it. Then he took another bite of the sea weed wrapped ball, munched it and spoke again.

"Okay, space. Or at least how I see it is that fibres of the paper are the different layers." He bends the paper and then drives a chopstick through it. "This is how I see it working. It creates a warp in the weave allowing for two sides to bend and morph close to each other, each of these random spikes or warps can be bridged.  Therefore, making correspondence a workable principal. Or at least that's how I see it." He grins.

Grace
Grace smiles at his depiction of space as a bent piece of paper with a chopstick through it. "That's not bad. It's something kind of similar, I guess, with me. Only I see the paper and the chopstick as ideas, not really existing in a physical sense."

Chew chew chew.

"If that makes sense."

Danny
"It kinda does?" He hedges slightly. "I mean who hasn't seen Matrix? With your idea, there is no way out."

Grace
She giggles at him. He has no idea. "No way out? Why wouldn't there be?"

Danny
Both hands come up gently and he chuckles.

"Its okay, right, explain it to me, but do it slowly and remember that I'm not tech savvy."

Grace
Grace sits up in her chair, says, very slowly: "I have been to another universe."

Danny
His jaw literally drops as he stares at her.  Attention fixed as he stares at her, here, a stunning musician was captivated by talk of other worlds.

He whispered as if afraid of sudden noises for a moment, enrapt with the conversation twist as he was. "Tell me.."

Grace
"I've told you this before, haven't I? Bastion? The thing that Kalen was sucked into, and I tried to rescue him from?"

Kalen would be horrified to hear it referenced as such. A 'rescue' operation. For him. But that's almost what it was.

"It's a specialty of the Virtual Adepts -- creating new universes. Or at least, attempting to. Bastion succeeded, but it drew the ire of the Technocracy, and the makers got killed off one by one, leaving the new, untested Bastion damaged and without any tech support. Fantastic idea, there, Technofucks."

Danny
He nods. "Yeah, you've both told me snippets, but the problem is, I need it in laymans terms."

Grace
"Think of it like this. It was a baby universe, created within our own. Like our universe gave birth, right? And it kept trying to feed off of its mother, until we told it 'no'. We fixed its boo boos and weaned it, and let it go free."

Layman's terms. Weird-ass layman's terms. That's as good as she can get.

Danny
Now that he could get his head around and grinned. "Originally, while it was feeding it would be getting it's own heat and energy? Then some sort of catechism event happened, would this be where you and Kalen got involved?"

Grace
"People's minds were the milk. That was the problem. It needed... I don't know... mental energy? Something like that?"

Danny
He nods. "Absolutely, it's what binary stars do off each other. One feeds the other, usually it ends up with the "mother" or the elder twin star from binary star system leeches power and heat and this makes it flash, the younger ones flash slower than the older ones. As the star gets more energy from it's unfortunate sibling, it spins faster and faster and faster, finally when it's got all the energy it can from the dead star..." He shrugs.

Grace
"If we hadn't fixed it, it might have drawn more attention, and then... either it would have died or we would have. Awful to consider, either way."

Grace picks up her bowl of soup and upends it, trying to get the very last bits. Homecooked meals are so awesome, aren't they?

Danny
"But in the meantime, there's this mirror world to us then?" He leaned on the table with his elbow resting on it and his hand held up to cup his chin as they talked to each other. "I still think something like Correspondence would be nice though, cheaper than phone calls."

Grace
"It can be... tricky. Sometimes, I find the best thing is to make the phone call. It's better than leaving your foot behind."

Danny
"Mmm.." He nods in agreement, "The oldies are still the best, what about wifi though? What I get fascinated from time to time by is how to bond something to something else, you know? So you can get a read of the person you've got the bonded item to.. I'm not too sure about the idea behind it all though. Not sure I like the ethics too much either."

Grace
"Mmm. Binding an item to a person so that they can be tracked? Kalen just ups and leaves sometimes. But he gave me a little stuffed lion once, just so that I could track him if need be. He's like that.

"And ethics? Well. I've tracked vampires before. If they attack you, I consider that to be fair game. I'm just saying."

Danny
"I'll talk to Kalen about it then." He smiled and then shrugged. "I think Vampires should be avoided at all costs thank you. I'm not your Van Helsing type thing. I'm the one that runs round screaming. Utterly useless in conflict. But I'm learning."