[Issue] The Abyssal Shelf

[Narrator]

...this again. Deeper than I meant to go.

Well, nothing for it. This shouldn't have a spark. Have to send it on.

She sends the flock out, trying to find a good angle to grasp it.

There's a lot to this creature's metaphysical power, but then there are suddenly countless ravens among it, pecking, probing, circling. But this one is built stronger somehow. The stone creature had been comparatively easily severed; this one clings to some kind of purpose, has a drive anchoring it that feels almost like an intentional foil to what she's trying to do. This thing might not be sentient or intelligent, but it's existence was no mere accident. It was forced into existence by someone or something lashing this spark to their world intentionally.

And then she suddenly feels a shudder pass through the school of fish as they begin to get plucked up by her ravens, the rest shying away from the rustle of feathers and clicking of beaks. The intensity of the Spark wanes, the flock corralling it back into the deepest recesses of the void, not gone but resting again. And it leaves Sam floating in the vast emptiness, the path behind her gone...

[Samantha McManus]

Bloody hell, was this intentional? Is this a trap?

"You know," she calls out into the darkness as she musters up some bravado, "there are easier ways to get my attention."

[Narrator]

The response from the void is an oppressive silence that swallows her words like thick satin curtains. ​The spark of silvery fish is distant now, glimmering in the dark and as her senses grow accustomed to it she can see others shine in the distance. Some active, others dormant like the Life Aquatic that receded away. Some seem familiar in the way that a smell or a sound can feel nostalgic without any real recognition. None of them are the familiar shape of The Tree, just abstract things like a warm glow with radiating light akin to a child's drawing of a sun, endlessly replicating right angles folding in on themselves, a perfectly still shape of crystal, energy flickering in a delicate balance between two points, a shape that is defined purely by it's nervous jittery movement and so, so many more.

[Samantha McManus]

Wait, am I... outside? But that's where she is...

She starts to panic a bit, looking in vain for a star to guide her by.

...I've got to get out of here.

[Narrator]

There's no lack of stars in the night-sky but they're all so very strange and who's to say her interpretations of what powers they might be are even right? The first Titan she caught snippets of memories from, fragments of.... what? Mutants that had also drawn from it? Pieces of context that shaped the power maybe? Or just echoes of the dead haunting this empty space? Is there any rhyme or reason to how the stars arranged themselves? She could swear their positions shift when she isn't looking but according to what?

[Samantha McManus]

As much as she suspects who trapped her in here, she knows who doesn't want to get found by that entity any more than she does.

She reaches into herself to try to feel out her connection to Cailleach.

[Cailleach]

It's there, though the direction is... unclear. For a few long minutes (she thinks, time is hard to tell down here) there is nothing. Then out of the darkness a faint light appears much closer than one would expect to be able to see, followed by a maw full of long, pointy mismatched teeth and a face so pale Sam can literally see bones, pale muscles and sinews working underneath the surface.

"Well well well..." Cailleach gurgles, clearly amused.

[Samantha McManus]

"Don't break your arm patting yourself on the back."

"This was one of yours, wasn't it?"

[Cailleach]

"One of my what, pray tell? Is this about Conduit's experiments? I suppose I did help her bring that horrid gun into existence." she says and Cailleach may be many things but 'coy' is not really one of them.

[Samantha McManus]

"I just put down a mindless spark that reeked of the sea. There was so little to it that I wound up here reaching out to it."

[Cailleach]

"Not my doing. I wouldn't even know where to begin creating such a Titan." she says, swimming closer, the rest of her translucent form coming into view.

"Is that all you called on me for? To lay blame at my feet?"

[Samantha McManus]

"No, I've... I've lost my thread back," she admits.

"And we both know what swims in these waters."

[Cailleach]

"Are you asking for my..." Cailleach flips over and tilts her head back so her anglerfish-grin is hanging upside down. "...heeeeelp?"

[Samantha McManus]

"I just need to get out of here and back to my body!"

[Cailleach]

"You are!" she cackles. "Really stepped in it this time, have you? Lost little bird."

[Samantha McManus]

"Look, someone has to clean up this shite, and it seems like that's what we're for."

[Cailleach]

Cailleach cocks her head and looks almost thoughtful. Well, as thoughtful as one can look with a mouth full of interlocking needle-teeth.

"You're learning. Though you don't seem like you've gorged yourself on it's Spark. Which one was it? Wait. Don't tell me..." she says, craning her neck and the bulbous light hanging from her head casts dancing shadows on the two of them. "Reeked of the Sea... can't have been The Fount, too pure. The Reshaper is still with it's host. A new one? New to me perhaps... There!" she points at the shimmering school of distant fish, now a mere silver spark in the distance. "Slipstream. Eil Mor. I see why one might think t'was my hand that brought it forth."

[Samantha McManus]

"The... child of the sea?"

[Cailleach]

"You dive but with your eyes firmly shut. You saw power unrestrained but not the ones that host it's splendor elsewhere. Eil Mor is soft and weak but swift like water. I'd prey on it's host like eels on mackerel. See for yourself it's natural shape, you but need to open your eyes to the echoes within the Sparks." she says and dashes away towards the silver cloud of fish.

[Samantha McManus]

"It shouldn't be here though," she says as she follows.

"I mean I'm sure it's very interesting, but without a body, it shouldn't be making these... titans? And this one seemed to almost have someone else's hand in it."

[Cailleach]

That does stop Cailleach in her tracks and her dangling light dim down to almost nothing.

"That's why you thought it was me. And the only other thing swimming in these waters... Shite!"

[Samantha McManus]

"That's what I was bloody saying. So can we get out of here?"

[Cailleach]

"I can." she says, twitchy and moving in place as her instinct is obviously simply bailing and leaving Sam here. The reason for her hesitation isn't quite as clear though.

"Hrrrgh..." she growls. "Fine! I can show you the way but I want a favour in exchange!"

[Samantha McManus]

"I think you know she could find you through me."

[Cailleach]

"Maybe, maybe not. Maybe she won't need me if she has you." she insists as she withdraws, all but her pale face fading into the darkness.

"Favour for a favour, Morrigan." And then she's gone.

[Samantha McManus]

Frowning, she decides to put the fear of something into Cailleach.

She dredges up the feeling she had when the entity tried to reach into her, and projects it into the link she has to her other self. Just the sheer invasion, the gut terror of an apex predator of these strange vistas trying to get into her.

[Cailleach]

The only response is the distant impression of a harrowed hiss. Then nothing.

[Narrator]

After a few minutes (hours? days?) there's no sign of Cailleach returning. The longer Sam is floating in this non-space the more what is there to perceive stands out simply on account of being the only thing drawing any attention. In the abstract shapes more understandable things begin taking shape.

In the silver cloud of fish she can suddenly see faces that somehow convey flashes of memories and emotions. A juvenile flinching away from something like a darting fish. Embarrassment. Exhilaration in movement like a dolphin cresting the waves. A tearful moment in the rain.

The Spark slips Sam's perception and a complex ever-adjusting cloud emerges nearby. A different spark, as much math equation as it is some kind of homeostatic net. The same rain but more textured. Expressive. Another sad juvenile. A different kind of hurt. Emotion precipitated.

And it's gone, replaced with a swell of feelings reflected in iridescent colors splayed on hair. A whole spectrum from excitement to fear to anger to happiness to love to hate to desperation to relief to encouragement. Push and pull, mimicry and change.

Change. Form and Function. Adaption inside and out. Taking and giving shape, ever flexible from wobbling steps to leaping toys.

And it's gone, flowing into rigidity. Flexible muscle growing angled and ordered weaving between silicone and metal. Electrons dance between them. Cooperation. Integrity. Harmony. The intersection of two opposed things. Translating. Analysis. Artificial tool interlinked with organic machinery. Muscles flex with plastic fibers, machines coat themselves in communicative proteins to transmit essential data. Proteins assemble metals, microscopic robots weave collagen.

Somewhere beyond her reach, somehow the Sparks are connected by ephemeral associations.

[Samantha McManus]

Sam reaches out to the last one she thinks she recognizes, trying to hold on before it slips away.

"...Headmistress?"

[Narrator]

There's a strange mixture of impressions and flashes as she reaches out to the Spark. Hands running over arms in amazement and the feeling. The hum of some sort of engine enveloping her from head to toe, propelled through the sky by bursts of energy from her feet. No, not her feet but armor that almost feels like a second skin. The feeling of worming, crawling and reaching through twisting conduits and cables, enveloping a whole building with strangling nerves. Hands working on delicate electronics. Then a darkness even more absolute than this void and a single mind running in circles inside this tiny box. Pained screams as her limbs are torn from their sockets. Chains shattering and a mind diffracting into pieces that settle on countless little nanites in a calm slumber.

It takes a moment for her to process that these are two, maybe three different people she can feel in there, Ashlie standing out among them as notably different.

[Samantha McManus]

Several of these don't feel right, so she tries to focus in on the one with the nanites.

"Headmistress, can you hear me?"

[Ashlie Minamida]

There's a very strange feeling as Sam casts a directed thought into the spark. Like the thought stretches into infinity, the only thing that exists for a moment. The feeling finally fades when she catches a glimpse of Ashlie, talking to a group of people, some in nicer clothes, others in dirty construction-worker kind of clothes. All of them are wearing hastily pulled-on rainboots. Ashlie is holding a tablet and taking notes, looking back up at the other people and nodding, her thumb still on the tablet's screen simply from how she's holding it. A prickle in her thumb makes her look down where the screen's display is distorting around her finger into erratic symbols. She frowns in slight confusion for a moment, then her brow furrows even deeper when she notices the pattern.

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[Samantha McManus]

Okay. That could be better, but it could be worse.

"It's Samantha. Are you near the water? Can you get to my body?"

[Ashlie Minamida]

With Ashlie's attention focused on her tablet it feels somehow harder to thread her thought through to her. Like there's a resistance or crosswinds that muddle the thought and fray it.

The resulting text on the tablet is even more of a mess but Ashlie seems to at least gather something from it. She looks up at the other people and says something but Sam has trouble properly parsing what she's saying. It's like she's listening to a foreign language except that she's fairly certain they're still speaking in English. Then the connection comes loose and is once again muddled by other flashes of scenes and impressions, less coherent and different people yet again.

[Samantha McManus]

Damn. I need someone closer.

She pulls back and begins feeling her way again, looking for the ever-shifting spark that mimics others.

[Narrator]

Sam's search is rewarded! Although she's fairly certain what she finds is not, in fact, Will. An infinitesimally small spark that burns hotter than any sun blooms in front of her eyes and as it does the flames grow and soon the flames are curling into branches and twigs of fractal spirals, a blazing image of her own Spark and beneath dancing memories of a young man, standing on the back of a Sentinel in mid-flight, flames consuming the purple robot as explosions rock the sky around him.

[Samantha McManus]

Right spark... pointed in the wrong direction.

Staying in this vicinity, she tries to feel her way through the connections, hoping to get pointed back toward her own world.

[Narrator]

Trying to sort through the different impressions and feelings she increasingly gets the impression that this is not, in fact, Will's spark. Too many moments of Acolyte uniforms, glimpses of Genosha. Or 'a' Genosha. And too many flames enveloping all kinds of different powers.

[Samantha McManus]

Grumbling in frustration, Sam retreats to try to get her bearings again.

[Narrator]

The Sparks are as fickle as they are complex in how they respond to Sam's searching, sometimes following common sense connections, sometimes seemingly making nonsensical leaps of logic. Sometimes a telekinetic spark leads her to telepathy only to suddenly jump to one that opens portals from one physical location to another. Shapeshifting brings her to a multitude of Sparks and so does looking for 'tools'. Finally she finds her way back to one that flickered by earlier. Form and function, give and take. Adapting shapes and making shapes adapt to it. Transformative and shaping, Crucible's Cast. It's... young for lack of a better word, not as many differing images and memories as some of the other Sparks. Most of them prominently feature a familiar green-haired mutant. She's found Robin's Spark.

It feels like a color mixed from two different wavelength and Will's Spark must be close. She can almost feel the two strong connections and follows one of them. The Grasping Shaper that had formed the first Titan they'd fought and suddenly the memories she'd seen in it make sense, as does Will's intuitive hesitance to fight it. Robin's Mum's Spark. Which means the last of the strongly associated ones must be...the Keen Tool. Will. Even Cailleach's fanciful names begin to make sense as a way to think about these wildly interpretive things.