Winter's Dark Heart 2021

You'll want to read Ula'noh-vahh "Darth Vahh" first, after this head over to Local Lane! If there's confusion...

*** On another slightly different dimension's Earth, in an office much too similar to one which Ula'noh-vahh would have inhabited had he been working a desk job...***

"You are aware that this would be... extraordinarily foolish, yes?" Keenan asked, flickering his gaze from the printed page he held carefully in one hand, and the trio of people across the desk. He'd seen this group before, he'd been part of two of their shenanigans, one even very recently. He just wasn't too sure about what they wanted to do next.

They wanted to bring another one of 'him', to a place called Akelara, to an event the likes of which made his skin crawl. "Winter's Dark Heart" it was called, and that certainly would bode appropriately dark for this man that they wanted him to fetch for them.

"Why can't you get him to do it?" Keenan glared at them, and they knew exactly who he meant: he meant the 'local to the Rookery dimension' Lane, who happened to be standing outside the office door grinning madly to himself about all of it already.

He took that moment to enter, in fact. But not doing it by teleporting - they would have all expected that. Rather, he shoved the door open so it clattered loudly, surprising Rita, Karen, and Arrisa in equal amounts, but for their different reactions. The fact that the Lane sitting behind the desk appreciated the amusement value of each of those reactions as much as the one doing the surprise entrance was not lost on either of those two men.

It took a little longer for the others to realize that he'd been listening in, when he spoke. "I might, but... I'm a touch on the busy side wrestling with the bitchy behemoth I'm bonded to," he quipped. "Getting him to do anything I want is like pulling teeth." He sounded absolutely casual, not at all like he hadn't just kicked in a door to startle everyone...

"Doc Sanger can arrange that," Rita muttered with a relieved chuckle, after settling back into her spot beside the desk. She'd instinctively teleported a foot or two to the right to avoid the door, something which would have normally helped her survive an encounter had it been an attack. Arrisa on the other hand had all but exploded psychically, though honestly most of the people in the room were immune to her attacks anyway. Karen merely rolled her eyes, shook her head, and waited for more of an explanation from the second Lane in the room. Her hand had not even budged toward her lightsaber.

"We all have our weights to bear," the man behind the desk smirked as the others stopped bristling with surprise, "what's Pharoah doing now?"

"Not cooperating," his doppelganger grumbled. "And before you say 'well, learn to control him', I will remind you that your delicate little dragon is possibly the same weight as Pharoah's foot, and could pose as a midnight-colored snack to him." He straightened his tie, looking as huffy as ever, slightly worried now, even if he'd been amused moments before. They all then realized: it was because that 'bitchy behemoth' had heard him.

"I'd like to avoid being that snack, myself." He sighed quietly and slumped a little, clean pressed red-tied black suit drooping a little, "if he had been a hatchling when I came across him it might be different, but he was a teenager, for all that's worth." The others - all professors in their own right, instructing teenagers at this school - gave the same knowing roll of eyes and slight nod. "While I suppose I could do it alone, the beast won't leave me alone."

Always quick on the draw, "why not go with them?" Rita stated. Behind-the-desk Keenan gave her a very worried look, which she took note of but held her hand up in defense. "No, really. At least that way we'd know where you all are."

"Are -" that Keenan said but was unable to say more before being interrupted.

"That... is true," his standing cohort nodded, "it might work, but we would still have to get-"

"Are you trying to say take Pharoah to the Dark Heart Frenzy TOO?" Keenan sputtered, for the first time perhaps in decades that he had been flustered at his own game of interruption.

"That is what she appears to be saying, yes," the other Lane said, assessing this now more reasonably. It was a mad idea, after all. And he was quite a bit more enamored of the chaotic part of chaotic neutral in his job description than even this present double was.

First things first though, the standing Lane said, "I suppose that if I can get him to go for it, a deal might be made to bring along this... what is he, a dark Jedi, or...?"

Karen gave a small shrug, "he's no Jedi, and though I know he registered with the name of 'Darth' Vahh," she saw the narrowing of seated-Keenan's eyes at that, "he's hardly a Sith either. They just don't behave like him. I think he's probably torn through several Sith apprentices back... well, 'home'," it was her own dimension, her own galaxy, so distant as to have no name here on Twoarth. She was from a disparate time, however, more 'recent' than this errant super-villain they had discovered on Paragon's dimension, and she found him oddly familiar - having looked up some historical documents she'd been impressed and shocked at what she found... As well as where she found him. "So he can't have been part of their training except maybe to learn how to handle a lightsaber. And even then," she gently touched her own at her side, "what I've seen of that thing is... not the same as this at all."

Though the office was nestled deeply within the Administrative Torus, and was shared by several of Keenan (himself, Nachos California, and Knot-Leaf Kale-Bahh) it still had a 'window' which became visible with a wave of his hand. The wall behind the desk seemingly lit up with an image: an outdoor angle atop dangerously peaked black-shingled roofs, high up over a very complicated mess of wires and cables. Deeply below, a more sedate cityscape could be seen. Clumps of soot-strewn snow gathered on most of those rooftops and lingered underneath the webbing of metal and wiring that decorated every part of the nearby building's balconies. A pigeon was dead and visible in the corner, a dusting of freshly dropped slush and a heavy half-melted icicle the only evidence that it might have escaped had it known to move... And the raven that fed upon its frozen meat was clearly the source of this vision's vantage point. Thankfully it was a stable view, the 'window' didn't focus on the bird's meal.

None of them in the room was surprised at this half-magical 'window': Arrisa worked with portal technology, Karen had access to Force-based view screens and distant technology, and even Rita had her own magical port-holes in her home at Paragon.

They all knew it was a view of an actual place, not merely a projection or show. However, and thankfully, this was hardly the view from the outside this office, which was technically some 30 feet above sea level if it weren't for the fact that it was in a mathematical construct. Winter break was in full swing, the holidays had barely passed, and the students among those chosen for a specific field trip were due back in about a week, just before the new semester started. There was no snow here in Crescent City, Carramba High's footpaths and grassy landscaping were as clean and clear as ever. At best, it might rain real hard, or perhaps hail on this coast. What they looked at through this window was most certainly not nearby. They all examined the view, familiar enough with it since they all had lived, worked in, or had current alternates in the area. Rita walked behind the desk, as Keenan there swiveled the chair to face the wall as well.

"What are we seeing," Arrisa asked, her voice as unnerving the hundredth time as it was the first, even for the Lanes. Robotic but sufficiently emulating a human woman, not-quite-well enough to pass. "Is that him? I've only spotted him once in Paragon." Though her face was plastic and effectively painted-on, she squinted digitally.

"Yeah... there," Rita said, pointing at a smudge that rested for a moment on one roof's corner, then moved when it appeared on another, then another; a humanoid form silhouetted against the almost-white sky and vanishing with a faintly teal-tinted haze. Bits of snow that had freshly fallen were kicked up behind his path, but there was nothing else to show for it: not even footprints lasted long in the windy area atop this massive building. "He's patrolling, though for what who even knows." She added a moment later in a mutter, "gods I hate Grandville. So high up, what bullshit for people who can't fly."

"Rita," Arrisa said, still a bit confused at all the fuss, "you can teleport, like he can." She didn't have a horse in this race: she could fly.

"Yeah but if you miss..." she fluttered her fingers and made a splatting smack on the desk with her hand. It was a well known fact that Rita could easily shrug off a fall from fifty floors up, less well known was her abject terror of heights. As a dragon rider. Who lived as a hero in a place with buildings that regularly reached 50 to 60 floors... Perhaps that was why she'd come back to the west coast to relax and teach: there were way fewer skyscrapers from which to fall...

"At any rate..." Keenan sighed, "if he can be... cornered?"

"That would be a mistake," Rita muttered, "but go on."

"... Indeed, yes, it would be a mistake to physically corner him?" He corrected himself, while his duplicate on the other side of the desk openly smirked. "If you could convince him to go with you..." But he paused again and pressed his fingers onto his forehead. "Why, though?"

"Because dragons need partnerships?" Karen suggested. "Because if he's taking care of a dragon in some way he'll be less likely to be rampaging on Paragon City or any other place for that matter." The former-Jedi shrugged and let Keenan or whoever else could pick up on it, have a mind-full of the images of her own dragon group at her central homestead. Though hers would mostly behave themselves if left to their own devices. Neither of the Lanes were all that certain it would go so smoothly with that version of them. "And if they're under our supevision at least we can mitigate things if they get out of hand."

Lane behind the desk looked at her. Karen was in her more sedate brown and black robes. Sometimes she could be seen walking the high school's halls in an incredibly tacky rainbow-flames outfit. She seemed to be content with the idea that this incredibly evil man having any kind of access to dragons, but she was apt to have thought it out carefully before hand. He was less certain about how Arrisa felt about anything, she was a robot and spawned from the Rookery's Aperture facilities long before they began reinhabiting them for their own purposes. Having sprung out of the abuse that GLaDOS cooked up, she had a good idea of the negative aspects, perhaps. And Rita, well, she had never shied away from being a villain, hero, or anything in between. His own double, well, that Lane was apt to go with whatever created the most chaos.

This certainly would qualify. Even more so if Pharoah and Local Lane were involved, which by this time he appeared to be thinking hard to his dragon, who must have found the idea absolutely fascinating.

So they set about preparing routes: they would first have to make sure that he would be taken off Prime and directly to Twoarth, where it was honestly safest for anyone with as much power as they had. Paragon's world was great for super-powers, but that was bad for dragons. Too many with itchy trigger fingers, or over-eager companies willing to capture and clone them. Sequestering him in a separate constructed realm would be wise, and as far as any of them could tell, this other Vahh lacked the ability to create those. He might worm his way out eventually, but if he didn't know where he was, he'd be less likely to find any Vortal paths. Then ... taking him to this nest of dangerous dark dragons. They did suppose that once that was said and done he ought to be on his own again, but they would all need to keep tabs. If he returned to Paragon, Arrisa would be there with Rita in tow. If he bled out into the wilderness near Crescent City there was always the pocket of highly powerful wizards nearby to keep them from doing too much harm.

Why though, just... why? Because dragons, that was apparently 'why'.

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