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Rabbi Aaron Cohen never stopped being Rabbi Aaron Cohen, even after he awakened and also became Yisrael. The thing about that is that the Rabbi became super jacked. Just ridiculously fit. He didn't skip leg day. He has that 'v' thing the kids talk about. He is the Hebrew version of a Chad. A Mordecai, perhaps. He didn't used to sport a beard and forelocks. But once he topped out his weight set, he started doing so. So in one sense, he looks like a very orthodox sort of rabbi. But then there's the rainbow yarmulke to contend with, and the physique to consider. Rabbi Kronk? He's just a mixed bag, is the point. Trying to be a lot of things at once in a way that doesn't bother him any.
He's got a mug of coffee and a plate of Maddy's signature waffles. Don't mess with a good thing. Some eggs on the side provide some protein. He is already digging into his meal, because his caloric requirements are considerable. (edited)
Jane Murphy, on the other hand, was just Plain Jane. She looked fit, to be sure, but not impressively so— at least while wearing loose-fit jeans and a leather jacket. She breezed into Maddy's and gave a wave or nod to any staff around the place. When she spotted Aaron, though, she smiled broadly and walked over. Once close enough to his table, she gave a friendly wave.
"Rabbi Aaron Cohen, I presume?"
"Just Aaron is fine. May I call you Jane?" Aaron sets down his fork and extricates himself from his seat. He's a tall fellow, but not overly so. His hand is likewise to scale when he offers it for shaking. "It's a pleasure to meet you. I was famished, so I went ahead and got myself something. They're fast today, though. So whatever you order should be up real quick. My treat."
"Ah, good, I'm expected," she chuckled, "Yeah, Jane's good. Nice to meet you, too. I'm a fan of the Trick or Treat waffles, always a sucker for Pumpkin stuff." She shakes his hand and takes a seat. "So, uhh.. what do you know about me?"
He's not quite sure what to make of that question, obviously. On the back foot, he settles back down into his chair and reaches for the coffee curaffe to refill his mug. Which means more cream, more sugar. And, of course, more time. "I know that you're in a similar position to where I found myself before I punched that cop in the face," Aaron finally decides upon. "Which felt like a really lonely place at the time. More broadly, it was suggested you might need help and that I might be the kind of guy that could be able to help you. And that you have good taste in waffles."
"Ahhh. Fox was able to give me some help with some of my medical needs, and I've gotten to meet some people at the Lodge.. I'm just not sure where I 'fit' in things right now, you know?" She sighed and leaned back, "I can work a normal job and all, but if that's all I'm doing, it almost seems a waste. I have to hold back in what I can do, to not freak people out." (edited)
"I'm with you so far," Aaron agrees, sampling the coffee he's just doctored up. He approves and sets it back down. "Which presents us the question: what is it that you can do? And probably most importantly, what do you want to do? Not in any operational sense. I'm not looking for tactical or strategic applications for your person, here. I'm asking what you want to do. On a deep down, you see it when you close your eyes and sleep kind of way."
Ask big questions, then go for the waffle. Classic rabbinical luncheon trick.
Jane gets herself a coffee as well, taking it black. "What I can do is a pretty long list; I'm stronger, faster, and tougher than is possible within normal human limits. I can hack just about anything, I can leap really high and fall from very high and not get hurt. I have a taser built into me that can really bite hard, I heal fast.. I shapeshift.." The last one seems to be something she both hesitated on mentioning and instantly regretted putting out there. "..uhh, as for what I want to do, I just want to help people. Save lives."
"I want that, too," Aaron agrees easily. "To help people. To save lives. I lost my brother to gun violence when we were much younger. It sort of put me on my life's path. Asking big question, taking big risks. Not settling for good enough. I was living for both of us." Aaron wipes his mouth with his napkin, then starts sawing up his waffle some more.
Unfortunately, of course he's going to ask about that one. "When you say shapeshift, how do you mean? Change into other life forms? Change your body mass and size and such to appear different to biometrics? Grow adamantine claws and say bub a lot? Is it more geared towards subterfuge or violence or something else?"
She listened to Aaron while her waffles came to the table, nodding along with understanding about his motivations. At the bit about Adamantine claw, she chuckled and lost a bit of tension, "Mostly subterfuge. I'm very skilled at making myself appear to be other people; copy looks, mannerisms, all that. I can also make my skin more chameleon like. As for claws, I can do something like that, but, uhh.. definitely far more Mystique than Wolverine."
"Half my job— before I got out— was getting into places I wasn't supposed to be; the other half was to get out of those places with someone else, keeping them alive through the process."
"Fantastic. Then I think we'll get on well. Before I Awoke as the wizarding set calls it? I walked among the Plain. I was a die hard pacifist. Obviously that... changed somewhat when I awoke, but genuinely only somewhat. I interpret the world around me as the emergent result of conflicting forces. Right? Order and chaos, light and dark, life and death, justice and injustice, liberty and tyranny. Whatever. And I see and have always seen the value of pursuing conflict along these axes. But conflict and violence are two different words, and they frankly need not even be considered synonyms. So if the sort of work you were looking to do was contract murder, for example? I am not your guy. Granted, I'm also not really the espionage person, either. We have another guy for that. But I can at least help you out. Point you in the right direction. Answer your questions and all. Which I should probably do some of, rather that continuing to pepper you with my own. Though I'll definitely be asking about what you 'got out' of, and what that involved."
Did someone say shapeshifting?
The door to the wafflehouse bangs open as if shoved by an extremely strong wind, and a little red fox with bright gold-green eyes comes skittering through the portal at top speed, extremely low to the ground. It is the world's highest-speed slink ever to be executed by a 4-legged being, almost supernaturally fast. The door swings closed at its own normal speed, its hydraulic damper hissing softly, as the auburn vulpine streak bolts underneath the table that the rabbi and the Lost Boy share. A moment later, something soft bumps against each of their shins, and a familiar, feminine voice mutters:
"Goddamn unleashed dogs."
"Fair enough, I have no problem dishing about the people who did this. I don't mind what I am now, but.."
The entry of the Fox was unusual— but then again, what about a place in the woods you get to via a passage in Philadelphia wasn't unusual?— and when she ran under the table, she lifted her legs so as to get out of the way. "Huh?"
And then she hears the voice and she chuckles, "Really? That's what the name is from?" (edited)
"Hi, Master Revontulet," Aaron offers in a familiar and amused tone of voice with a little roll of the eyes and shake of the head. "Yeah, that's where it's from. Not everything is a Mystery, thank goodness." Aaron reaches down under the table to hoist his former mentor out from under their tabe and gets her situated properly in a chair. Right side up and everything.
"Sorry, Jane. You were saying?" Pick up the conversation by context clues for the moment, Fox!
Mumble mumble mutter yoink. Fox is picked up -- rather easily -- by the ridiculously buff Obrimos and settled on the bench next to Aaron, and as he does that, one hand shoots out and snatches one of his waffles, shoving a bite into her mouth. "Hi," she mumbles around her purloined breakfast food. "Yesh. That's why that name." Chomp.
She smirked and nodded, "Alright, then. Well, uhh.. yeah, my situation has challenges, but to be honest, I feel fine about myself. But I regret a lot of stuff I did." She gestures to Fox, "We talked about it before; the people I was working for tricked me, made me think I was doing good. I wasn't. I should've wised up sooner."
Carving up a piece of waffle, she goes on, "Fox said something about their actions getting me involved in some war for reality, and 'war' kicks up the soldier parts of me into, 'Where do I go and what do I do' mode, so that's what I'm mostly interested in. If it takes a while to sort out, well.. I'm used to 'hurry up and wait', too." She takes the bite of waffle and follows it up with some coffee.
"Well, like you imply. There's war and there's war. I am ostensibly in the most martial of the orders of mages in the city, and I don't actually fight all that much. There is a war. And there are objectives. And honestly, you being around gives us a lot of opportunities we didn't have before. Because you're not. a magical creation so far as I can tell. You don't-- you're not going to set off the alarms walking in the way I might. And there's just-- we have tons of spots around the city we'd love to infiltrate and slash or take out, but we've not wanted to risk exposure or fatalities among the normal folks just manning the desks. The enemy has been really devious about embedding a lot of their infrastructure into just... normal people. Minding their own business. Probably eighty percent of the people working for these guys think they're just collecting a paycheck. You know what I mean?"
Aaron feels he's probably got Fox up to speed via context at this point and glances his old mentor's way to make sure that's the case and that she's following along. Or at least enjoying herself. "I think before we do a live operation, though, we should maybe train together. Get a feel of each other's capabilities so we can call on them in a crisis, rather than learn about them."
She gives Aaron a little glance aside and chomps down on the waffle again -- three bites and it's totally gone into her toothy little maw. "And some of us have to actually try to just look normal," she agrees -- what with the fox teeth which never seem to go away even when she's in her default humanoid shape -- licking her fingers and nodding a little bit toward the Obrimos. She's caught up well enough, it seems. "But yeah."
A little sniff. "Gotta figure out what's up with that poison they gave you, though. Fucking Dominion War bullshit." She reaches for a paper napkin and makes a go of wiping the waffle topping from her hands before making an irritated noise and shaking her hands once. The syrup and butter and all the rest just sort of disintegrate, and she grunts. "Plus, we don't know if they put any sort of... uh... not-fun settings in there." Don't say 'kill switch,' Fox.
"Yeah, I know what you mean. I thought I was working for the Army just, y'know, doing ultra-classified supersoldier stuff. Thought I was a hero." She looked to Fox, "I could try to get some insights from the guys who made the bootleg stuff you helped me with, but they're kinda.. they like keeping a respectable distance from me and important information." She frowns, "I can't blame them, given my previous role."
She takes a sip of her coffee, "But as for 'not-fun settings', I don't think I've ever heard of anyone with this stuff ever having anything done to them by remote. Some kinda recall command or shutdown code would've made my job substantially easier back then." She seems to think for a moment.. "Hey, y'know, I kinda remember something from one of the times I was in for recovery and maintenance, maybe it's got something to do with the serum.."
Aaron is clearly not getting even half of this, which may just be a little reassuring. He's a golden retriever, and he's jacked as hell, but he's really not entirely the fastest chicken in the coop. He even opens and closes his mouth a bit a few times along the way.
"Okay. Wait. So. W-w-wait. Who were you working for? And how did you get away? I'm sorry, I know there's probably a bunch of conversations I've missed, but I don't want to make a ton of assumptions. What was done to you, precisely? Or do you not really know?"
She pauses, and then asks Jane, "Do you mind if I show him what I saw of your systems? I -- can see all of the upgrades." Fox gently lays a hand on Aaron's forearm, a maternal sort of gesture, for all that she actually looks younger than him by a decade or more. "I'm not a hundred percent sure who's actually behind Delta Project, but something called 'Delta Project' which hides behind the US Army and which controls its initiates via an addictive and necessary substance which is actually toxic?" She sucks her sharp teeth and ticks her tongue against the roof of her mouth. (edited)
She looks to Aaron, "The short and simple answer is that I'm kind of a mutant cyborg. The community of similarly modified people go by 'Lost Boys', though obviously the gendered name doesn't quite work for me." She takes a bite of waffle again, then adds a little more syrup to set up for the next bite. "Must've been guys who got out first."
To Fox's question, she answers: "Go ahead and share, I'm.. well, I'm not an open book, but it's all in the purpose of understanding, right? Though that's 'Delta Protocol', and that's as much a nickname as anything; we don't know what they're really called, it's just what some guys saw on some paperwork before they cut ties. While you're doing that, I'll draw something I saw.." (edited)
"Okay. I mean. If we're all thinking what we're all thinking, why don't we go ahead and ask the Ones if they'd like to meet Jane? If anyone is going to recognize their designs in the field, it's probably going to be him, right?" Aaron, without missing a beat, asks of Jane, "You mean Hermes Protocol, right?" He looks aside to Fox, "Right?" Back to Jane, "No?" Back to Fox, sad. "No?"
"That's a good idea, of course," Fox answers Aaron, leaving her hand on his forearm, and then her mouth wibbles a little bit there. "I was trying not to jump to conclusions," she adds when he asks 'Hermes Protocol.' "Here," she says simply, letting Jane draw. "It's me," she offers her former apprentice as a telepathic link extends toward him. Offered, not enforced, making it easier for the Obrimos to see Jane's various and sundry interlinking overlays, to see them the way a Life Master/Matter Adept does.
The thing is, the work is beautiful. That's the horror and tragedy of it.
"Don't know about Hermes Protocol, but I am pretty fast. Was fast before, but... this is a different level now." Jane reached into her jacket for a pen and grabbed a paper napkin to draw on. She starts to scribble an image; she doesn't draw it like a creative endeavor, rather, she draws it as if she's tracing it.
"One time, I had to use my Archangel System to make it through a tough spot; great thing to have, but I was in the ICU for two and a half weeks. Which is impressive healing time for as much damage as I took... but I saw this guy in a trenchcoat talking to this weird looking.. person?" The uncertainty in her voice as to exactly what she saw was clear. "Really tall, very thin, absolute symmetry, very unsettling in a 'your humanity is sus' kind of way."
"That looks like it might be something alchemical or astrological. Looks a bit like the E33 logo? Super suspect, I agree." Aaron scratches his chin, not being on the forefront of this particular bit of investigation. "That sounds like the one we have in the hoosgow. Not the mouthy one, the other one." He mimes his hand going over his head, indicating his hair. Or a lack thereof on the person being discussed. "You know." As though this person is fucking Voldemort or something. His head ticks to the side again, his hands opening towards Fox, "Did you tell her about the Ones at all?"
Once he's taken in the symbol, he accepts the mental link. Which has the consequence of making him slightly more a golden retriever.
A rather weary look comes across Fox's face when she looks down at the symbol on the table. "That," she says with a deeply exhausted tone, "is the alchemical symbol for cinnabar, the raw material from which alchemists derive mercury. Or at least, one of the ways to draw it. Hubris makes you fucking smug." Her hand tightens gently around Aaron's arm when he starts looking a lot more like a golden retriever, although it may have something to do with the description that Jane gives of the people she heard talking. "Yeah, it does sound like the Creator," she agrees. "That's not a euphemism, except that it's what that individual goes by."
"I'm sorry that we're sort of talking around things, Jane, but... " A pause. "Yeah. We should introduce you to the Ones. Mark One and Mary One." Her free hand rubs at her face.
"Mercury?" She raises a brow, "Hermes." She nods, seeming to draw a connection there. "Now I'm getting the feeling I've missed some conversations, but I bought the ticket, I'll take the ride."
Another bite of waffle and another gulp of coffee and she's looking between them, "No problem meeting those folks, but.. who are they? What's the connection with them?"
"Mary is a Martian refugee from Pennsylvania and a WWII veteran. Mark is her android husband from Allentown. They met in a secret space program of the mind run by a twisted psychopathic genius that calls themself The Creator. Experiments on the nature of being and consciousness and the self. Deep dives into the innermost reaches of the mind. And to the extremes of the body." Aaron decides for the more succinct summation, "Cenobite. Creator is a Cenobite. And the Ones are two of their victims."
"Yeah," Fox affirms miserably when Jane makes the connection between Hermes and Mercury. "Which is part of why I was worried about a ... kill switch or some other form of control more direct than the fact that they, you know. Do some Jem-Hadar shit with the medication that you require." A beat. "That sentence doesn't make sense unless you watch Star Trek, I guess."
She leans against Aaron companionably, thumping her head against his arm. "Yeah, so. If you've seen the autonomous policing units on the news," smooth, white, humanoid and genderless robots, "uh... the people behind those are -- it seems like -- the people who are connected behind whatever happened to you. And ... while you were augmented in your own body, the Ones -- Mark and Mary, and there's Amos, too -- they... died? A long time ago? And somehow their souls got taken by the same fuckers, and were put into constructed bodies, in Mark's case, or in Mary and Amos' case, into like... planes. Intelligent drones, basically. But now they're in bodies again and -- "
"Ah, fuck." Fox stares off into the near distance. "They died a long time ago. I don't know why I didn't -- of course they're not just messing with the timeline here, fucking... fuck."
She listens to both of them give their explanations, and the amount of intellectual digestion taking place was evident on her face, with a great deal of it requiring her to remind herself that she was a shapeshifting mutant cyborg. Soul-stealing creeps who place souls into constructed bodies is something she must just roll with. "Sounds like I definitely ought to meet them. But I'm going to leave time travel stuff as something you know more about than I do. All I know is from watching the Terminator movies."
She cleared her throat, "As for the 'kill switch', I'm pretty sure they rely on the serum to do the job; I'm exceptionally tough among those who've been modified and able to heal faster, and if I were cut off entirely, I'd be dead in about a week and suffering badly the whole time. So, I'm grateful for the bootleg stuff, and the stuff you made me. I have more breathing room now." (edited)
She lets out a breath. "There has to be a way to make something that satisfies that without literally being poisonous and gross," Fox mutters. "Yeah. You should meet them, and I should work on better serum, and... unfortunately, the basic concepts of time travel may become a thing you have to, at some point, understand. But for right now, let us worry about that, yeah."
"Honestly, introducing you to them and letting you compare notes is probably better than me trying to explain it all to you." Aaron is many things, but an expert in advanced metaphysics he is not. "Every single part of the story sounds like too much. It's just all too much. You know? There's no easy way to explain what they do with their will." Aaron is already fishing out his wallet, apparently intending to settle up so they can be off. "Do we want to try to do that another day? Or shall we give them a call?"
"You're telling me," she says to Aaron about it all being too much. She rubs her eyes, "Go figure, watch enough movies and you end up in a Terminator versus Hellraiser crossover.. but yeah, I'm fine today or later, whichever." She looks to Fox. "You'd be doing a lot of good if you could come up with something like that."
Back to Aaron, "Oh, and.. I forgot to mention how I got out. I ghosted my handler— real piece of blandness named Joan Kelly, absolutely forgettable if she wasn't the one handing me serum every week— and a network of others who've escaped, they helped me make sure they couldn't find me again. At least, not easily." (edited)
"But you can change your face," Fox points out quietly. "Is it a number of fixed faces, that they might know, or can you change your appearance? Do you know how they might be able to track you?" She pauses, adding, "that was a problem with Mark. May still be. We're working on that." A vague smile. "It might be better to regroup tomorrow or whatever -- and also, like, I know that Mark and Mary are so incredibly polite that if we showed up at their front door with Jane," here she addresses Aaron, "they'd invite us in for dinner, but I think it would be kinder to give them a heads-up, especially since this comes with the knowledge that there's a whole other category of people that The Creator fucked with."
"Gender-bending requires a lot more effort, but as long as I can observe a person long enough, I can make myself look just like them. And as long as I hear someone talk long enough..." Suddenly, her voice shifts to perfectly match Fox's, "...I can sound just like them, too." Another change and it's now copying Aaron's voice, "The voice changing is the cybernetics, the appearance changes are biological." She slips back to her own, "I've never tried a partial change or changing without an intent to copy, though."
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