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Description
The velociraptor – or maybe the deinonychus… let us just call it a raptor, shall we? – ran through the wild American landscape, feeling as majestic as a bald eagle that had soared over her head a while back. It was feeling free, wild, unfettered, uncontrolled, directionless, lost, confused, somewhat lonely – but it was used to being lonely – when something squished underfoot.

The dinosaur looked down, and saw that the ground has changed – from a dryer woodland to a wetter, swampier one, and it was standing…not just in a puddle, but in a track of another dinosaur – a theropod dinosaur. Not a raptor, for all three toes were similar to each other…plus the tracks showed it to be much bigger and heavier than a raptor…or even a T-Rex.

Slowly, the raptor moved forwards, much more cautiously and wary now. It half-hid, half-crouched behind a bush, and looked at what lay ahead. It was swampy lake – a large one, over-grown with vegetation, including the great redwoods that were growing everywhere lately. The water, however, did not appear to be too stagnant, and the raptor was thirsty, so it reckoned that maybe it was time for a drink before making a timely retreat.

Something suddenly caught the raptor’s eye in the large dark mass that lay at the opposite short of the lake. It took the smallish dinosaur few moments to figure out it, and then it did. It was an eye. An eye that belonged to the track-making dinosaur, which was alive and well and was looking directly at the raptor – the only question was, had the raptor been noticed yet?

That was one question that the raptor did not want to answer, so it backed its way away from there, and then fled. It heard some noises coming from behind it, but never stopped or slowed down to turn or to look back.

Bigger predators were to be avoided, after all.

Slim and streamlined, the ceratosaurus that was also hanging around this territory followed the raptor, the horn on its nose, shaking from anticipation…

/ / /

“…You know, the name – Lockwood – it does sound familiar,” Kara told the other two, as all of them, including Buddy and the dinosaur, looked over the newspaper. “I think that there was a scandal of some sort, a while back, back in the 1990s with his name-“

“And we can guess what it was about,” Tripp muttered sarcastically, as they all were lounging around and just enjoying nature. Tripp himself, admittedly, was not much of an outdoorsman, but the weather was nice, the scenery was nice, he could see some traces of Kara Palamas’ skimpy red bra beneath her clothes – wait, what?

…As Tripp struggled and tried to get his thoughts back on track – he got into trouble because of this in the old S.H.I.E.L.D. once, he did not need to do so again, (or wanted to, not exactly) – the discussion continued.

“So, this is our world…sort of,” Grant muttered, drumming his fingers on the ground. “Judging by the reaction of Tripp’s key, this is still a part of our universe…it still hasn’t split away from us…it still can, though…”

“Are you always this business-like?” Kara rolled her eyes.

“Yes,” Grant actually turned red. “I am. Tripp?”

“He totally is!” Tripp said brightly, causing Grant to facepalm himself.

Buddy licked his ear in sympathy.

“Anyways,” Tripp continued with a strange sort of a resolutely stubborn brightness, “we’re in L.A. suburbs, so there. There is something weird around them-“

“The local genius loci is possessive and doesn’t like strangers invading their domain,” Grant muttered. “Your key, Tripp, on its own, isn’t strong enough or right enough, apparently. We’ll need to come back, eventually, to our HQ and see if my and-or Kara’s keys have finished recharging, and then we’ll be strong enough to actually get a foot in the door, though everything else is up to grabs.”

“Okay, everything just went above my head,” Tripp muttered, as he looked over his token slash key. “Kara?”

“Now you’re trying to be hands-on?” the woman gave Grant a look. “After negligence-?”

“Yes,” Grant muttered. “I just don’t know how to do middle ground, whatever that means-“

“Oh. Okay, let me try,” Kara thought over this herself. “Right. Tripp, you know that S.H.I.E.L.D. used to be something like a mini-universe, yeah?”

“Yes,” Tripp nodded. “With Fury on top-“ he winced. “Phrasing?”

“Yes, but also true,” Kara paused as she thought over what she was going to say next. “Okay, so, now, the genius loci means a local lord, the local lord of a local mini-universe, such as L.A.”

“There’s nothing mini about L.A.; I’ve used to be stationed there-“ Tripp began and paused, as the memories in his head jostled around for order. “Right. Okay. So how did this genius-“

“Maybe he is a genius – a Stark-level one, or even more so,” Grant shrugged. “Or an alien, or something else. In any way, he was able to sever L.A. from the greater narrative, and now we have to try to fix it – otherwise the library wouldn’t open this door for us.”

Tripp opened his mouth. “You have any better ideas of what to do with your life?” Ward asked. “I tried. So far, this is as good as anything I am liable to get. You?”

Tripp closed his mouth. “No, we’re not sure if Fury is behind this; if he’s God, as people in the old S.H.I.E.L.D. suggested, then not even this is beyond him,” Kara confessed. “But yeah, Grant’s question?”

Tripp looked away…and saw someone else. “Um, yes?” he told brightly the tall woman, once powerfully built, but now going slightly overweight. “Can we help you? Please disregard our previous dialogue, and as for the dinosaur-“

“Uh, no problem. Does it bite?” the woman asked, as she approached them…from the side that was the furthest away from the dinosaur, not that it mattered – it was still big enough and fast enough to close the distance and overpower her if it chose to. “Anyhow, um, I’m with you?” she pulled out her own token/key/chip out of the pocket. “I know that I probably wasn’t supposed to, but I am-“
She was met with several sceptical looks, (including Buddy’s, and even the dinosaur’s – and that was one trusting dinosaur, actually).

“Let’s start again,” Kara got onto her feet. “What is your name?”

“Anka.”

“Any relation to Paul Anka?”

“That’s my first name.”

“Oh.” Kara blinked. “Anka-“

“Anka Deane.”

There was a pause as the two women stared at each other. “You’re certainly going to change the group dynamics,” Kara admitted, as she shook Anka’s hand. “Welcome aboard.”

“Thank you!” the other woman squeaked, even though she was bigger and more massive than Kara was, so a squeak was certainly unexpected. “This is, this is-“

And she had a nervous breakdown. The plot to venture into L.A. had to be put on hold for the moment.

/ / /

Across the country, a young man named Tyrone, (or Ty), slept. And dreamt.

The setting was a city. An ancient, forgotten, overgrown city…that was not actually abandoned, far from it. It was actually full of people, dressed in strange clothing and hairpieces that Ty saw only in history textbooks about such people as the Aztecs and Maya and Inca.

“Interesting,” his semi-friend, Tandy, (or Dy), muttered, as the two of them walked down the paved streets (lit by torches and moonlight). “This is something new; usually we just get night-mares or some sort of joint-together superhero dream-quests. This feels almost nice…”

“It certainly is different,” Ty agreed, as the two of them made their way down the streets into the circular clearing between the city – and it was a big city, even by modern standards – and the jungle beyond – and it was an even bigger jungle, certainly not a modern one.

“I don’t think that we’re in New Orleans anymore,” Ty muttered to Dy.

“No, we’re not,” a different person commented; she sounded familiar to Ty, as did her companion, but neither he nor Dy could realize just as to why. “This is different, this is the celebration of-“

Drums and other music cut her off, as two figures stepped into the middle of the circle and be-gan to dance.

The dancer on the right was male, of indeterminate origin, but somehow looking Caucasian, dressed in dark skins. His moves…were male, yet also subtle, tightly controlled and restrained and executed…somehow in the manner that Ty could relate. It involved women – well, women of his age, and, uh…Ty was certainly very happy that he was already sitting and that he didn’t need to stand – or to talk to Dy; they were friends, but he seriously doubted that if he started to talk about ‘lady parts’ and the suchlike, in the high school lingo, they would remain such for long.

The writer on the left was darker than her counterpart on the right – and yes, this was a ‘her’, (both Ty and Dy were sure on this one). Her dancing moves were more sinuous and graceful; her costume was much more colorful and also somehow slightly more revealing than her partner’s was…or was it? Somehow, the two of them made a…good couple, professional dancers, very formidable and impressive, and it touched something within the souls of Ty and Dy-

“Duh! They are you – in other, different incarnations,” someone else spoke, and again, they sounded familiar, but why? Neither Ty nor Dy could realize. “We, conversely, are just echoes, shadows, and as such, we’ll fade before you, especially since those two, those four, got their act together.”

“Four?” The two teens nodded, and indeed, there were almost two pairs of people dancing, all of them – interchangeable: sometimes they danced as four, or as two, or as a single person, however briefly.

“Yes, them. Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca, eternal siblings, eternal rivals, eternal dance partners, darkness and light,” Ty and Dy’s first interlocutor looked upon them. “You two are lucky that you got your act together so quickly – with Roxxon’s brand of brainless, heartless evil approaching so quickly, you will need all the advantage that you can get!”

Ty and Dy looked down. Regardless of what the other people thought, their partnership still needed a lot of work, and- and they actually were feeling better somehow, on the inside, in a very basic and obvious manner.

“Naturally. Your other selves have stabilized darkness and light at last; no longer the two leak good and evil with impunity, so things should get better for you two even on the physical level,” their interlocutor continued to speak. Both of the teens did their best not to look at each other, and then-

The dream ended. Ty awoke in his own bed, Dy – in her semi-secret hideout in the abandoned church, and both were very confused.

They were not the only ones, though.

TBC

Description
The velociraptor – or maybe the deinonychus… let us just call it a raptor, shall we? – ran through the wild American landscape, feeling as majestic as a bald eagle that had soared over her head a while back. It was feeling free, wild, unfettered, uncontrolled, directionless, lost, confused, somewhat lonely – but it was used to being lonely – when something squished underfoot.

The dinosaur looked down, and saw that the ground has changed – from a dryer woodland to a wetter, swampier one, and it was standing…not just in a puddle, but in a track of another dinosaur – a theropod dinosaur. Not a raptor, for all three toes were similar to each other…plus the tracks showed it to be much bigger and heavier than a raptor…or even a T-Rex.

Slowly, the raptor moved forwards, much more cautiously and wary now. It half-hid, half-crouched behind a bush, and looked at what lay ahead. It was swampy lake – a large one, over-grown with vegetation, including the great redwoods that were growing everywhere lately. The water, however, did not appear to be too stagnant, and the raptor was thirsty, so it reckoned that maybe it was time for a drink before making a timely retreat.

Something suddenly caught the raptor’s eye in the large dark mass that lay at the opposite short of the lake. It took the smallish dinosaur few moments to figure out it, and then it did. It was an eye. An eye that belonged to the track-making dinosaur, which was alive and well and was looking directly at the raptor – the only question was, had the raptor been noticed yet?

That was one question that the raptor did not want to answer, so it backed its way away from there, and then fled. It heard some noises coming from behind it, but never stopped or slowed down to turn or to look back.

Bigger predators were to be avoided, after all.

Slim and streamlined, the ceratosaurus that was also hanging around this territory followed the raptor, the horn on its nose, shaking from anticipation…

/ / /

“…You know, the name – Lockwood – it does sound familiar,” Kara told the other two, as all of them, including Buddy and the dinosaur, looked over the newspaper. “I think that there was a scandal of some sort, a while back, back in the 1990s with his name-“

“And we can guess what it was about,” Tripp muttered sarcastically, as they all were lounging around and just enjoying nature. Tripp himself, admittedly, was not much of an outdoorsman, but the weather was nice, the scenery was nice, he could see some traces of Kara Palamas’ skimpy red bra beneath her clothes – wait, what?

…As Tripp struggled and tried to get his thoughts back on track – he got into trouble because of this in the old S.H.I.E.L.D. once, he did not need to do so again, (or wanted to, not exactly) – the discussion continued.

“So, this is our world…sort of,” Grant muttered, drumming his fingers on the ground. “Judging by the reaction of Tripp’s key, this is still a part of our universe…it still hasn’t split away from us…it still can, though…”

“Are you always this business-like?” Kara rolled her eyes.

“Yes,” Grant actually turned red. “I am. Tripp?”

“He totally is!” Tripp said brightly, causing Grant to facepalm himself.

Buddy licked his ear in sympathy.

“Anyways,” Tripp continued with a strange sort of a resolutely stubborn brightness, “we’re in L.A. suburbs, so there. There is something weird around them-“

“The local genius loci is possessive and doesn’t like strangers invading their domain,” Grant muttered. “Your key, Tripp, on its own, isn’t strong enough or right enough, apparently. We’ll need to come back, eventually, to our HQ and see if my and-or Kara’s keys have finished recharging, and then we’ll be strong enough to actually get a foot in the door, though everything else is up to grabs.”

“Okay, everything just went above my head,” Tripp muttered, as he looked over his token slash key. “Kara?”

“Now you’re trying to be hands-on?” the woman gave Grant a look. “After negligence-?”

“Yes,” Grant muttered. “I just don’t know how to do middle ground, whatever that means-“

“Oh. Okay, let me try,” Kara thought over this herself. “Right. Tripp, you know that S.H.I.E.L.D. used to be something like a mini-universe, yeah?”

“Yes,” Tripp nodded. “With Fury on top-“ he winced. “Phrasing?”

“Yes, but also true,” Kara paused as she thought over what she was going to say next. “Okay, so, now, the genius loci means a local lord, the local lord of a local mini-universe, such as L.A.”

“There’s nothing mini about L.A.; I’ve used to be stationed there-“ Tripp began and paused, as the memories in his head jostled around for order. “Right. Okay. So how did this genius-“

“Maybe he is a genius – a Stark-level one, or even more so,” Grant shrugged. “Or an alien, or something else. In any way, he was able to sever L.A. from the greater narrative, and now we have to try to fix it – otherwise the library wouldn’t open this door for us.”

Tripp opened his mouth. “You have any better ideas of what to do with your life?” Ward asked. “I tried. So far, this is as good as anything I am liable to get. You?”

Tripp closed his mouth. “No, we’re not sure if Fury is behind this; if he’s God, as people in the old S.H.I.E.L.D. suggested, then not even this is beyond him,” Kara confessed. “But yeah, Grant’s question?”

Tripp looked away…and saw someone else. “Um, yes?” he told brightly the tall woman, once powerfully built, but now going slightly overweight. “Can we help you? Please disregard our previous dialogue, and as for the dinosaur-“

“Uh, no problem. Does it bite?” the woman asked, as she approached them…from the side that was the furthest away from the dinosaur, not that it mattered – it was still big enough and fast enough to close the distance and overpower her if it chose to. “Anyhow, um, I’m with you?” she pulled out her own token/key/chip out of the pocket. “I know that I probably wasn’t supposed to, but I am-“
She was met with several sceptical looks, (including Buddy’s, and even the dinosaur’s – and that was one trusting dinosaur, actually).

“Let’s start again,” Kara got onto her feet. “What is your name?”

“Anka.”

“Any relation to Paul Anka?”

“That’s my first name.”

“Oh.” Kara blinked. “Anka-“

“Anka Deane.”

There was a pause as the two women stared at each other. “You’re certainly going to change the group dynamics,” Kara admitted, as she shook Anka’s hand. “Welcome aboard.”

“Thank you!” the other woman squeaked, even though she was bigger and more massive than Kara was, so a squeak was certainly unexpected. “This is, this is-“

And she had a nervous breakdown. The plot to venture into L.A. had to be put on hold for the moment.

/ / /

Across the country, a young man named Tyrone, (or Ty), slept. And dreamt.

The setting was a city. An ancient, forgotten, overgrown city…that was not actually abandoned, far from it. It was actually full of people, dressed in strange clothing and hairpieces that Ty saw only in history textbooks about such people as the Aztecs and Maya and Inca.

“Interesting,” his semi-friend, Tandy, (or Dy), muttered, as the two of them walked down the paved streets (lit by torches and moonlight). “This is something new; usually we just get night-mares or some sort of joint-together superhero dream-quests. This feels almost nice…”

“It certainly is different,” Ty agreed, as the two of them made their way down the streets into the circular clearing between the city – and it was a big city, even by modern standards – and the jungle beyond – and it was an even bigger jungle, certainly not a modern one.

“I don’t think that we’re in New Orleans anymore,” Ty muttered to Dy.

“No, we’re not,” a different person commented; she sounded familiar to Ty, as did her companion, but neither he nor Dy could realize just as to why. “This is different, this is the celebration of-“

Drums and other music cut her off, as two figures stepped into the middle of the circle and be-gan to dance.

The dancer on the right was male, of indeterminate origin, but somehow looking Caucasian, dressed in dark skins. His moves…were male, yet also subtle, tightly controlled and restrained and executed…somehow in the manner that Ty could relate. It involved women – well, women of his age, and, uh…Ty was certainly very happy that he was already sitting and that he didn’t need to stand – or to talk to Dy; they were friends, but he seriously doubted that if he started to talk about ‘lady parts’ and the suchlike, in the high school lingo, they would remain such for long.

The writer on the left was darker than her counterpart on the right – and yes, this was a ‘her’, (both Ty and Dy were sure on this one). Her dancing moves were more sinuous and graceful; her costume was much more colorful and also somehow slightly more revealing than her partner’s was…or was it? Somehow, the two of them made a…good couple, professional dancers, very formidable and impressive, and it touched something within the souls of Ty and Dy-

“Duh! They are you – in other, different incarnations,” someone else spoke, and again, they sounded familiar, but why? Neither Ty nor Dy could realize. “We, conversely, are just echoes, shadows, and as such, we’ll fade before you, especially since those two, those four, got their act together.”

“Four?” The two teens nodded, and indeed, there were almost two pairs of people dancing, all of them – interchangeable: sometimes they danced as four, or as two, or as a single person, however briefly.

“Yes, them. Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca, eternal siblings, eternal rivals, eternal dance partners, darkness and light,” Ty and Dy’s first interlocutor looked upon them. “You two are lucky that you got your act together so quickly – with Roxxon’s brand of brainless, heartless evil approaching so quickly, you will need all the advantage that you can get!”

Ty and Dy looked down. Regardless of what the other people thought, their partnership still needed a lot of work, and- and they actually were feeling better somehow, on the inside, in a very basic and obvious manner.

“Naturally. Your other selves have stabilized darkness and light at last; no longer the two leak good and evil with impunity, so things should get better for you two even on the physical level,” their interlocutor continued to speak. Both of the teens did their best not to look at each other, and then-

The dream ended. Ty awoke in his own bed, Dy – in her semi-secret hideout in the abandoned church, and both were very confused.

They were not the only ones, though.

TBC