Jane looked around in wonder, fear, and scientific curiosity, trying to work out where she was. The dark stone under her feet and surrounding her on all sides was unfamiliar to her, and certainly not the concrete and steel of the building she'd just been in. Not to mention the way that only feet from her the ground dropped away into unfathomable depths.
As far as she could see, she was in some ancient appearing stone building, unfamiliar and half-obliterated symbols etched into the rock around the place she'd found herself. Turning around, having stepped back from nearly toppling into the dark, she took a few deep breaths. Calling out for her friends did nothing but produce echoes which died away into the moaning wind and creaking sounds of old stonework changing temperature.
Her scanner was still beeping and weebling to itself, monitoring the energy of whatever spacial disruption had brought her here. Wherever here actually was, of course. Playing with it for a moment, she tried to work out that question, to no avail.
After a few seconds she lifted her gaze to the odd stone monolith which was the only real sign of civilization, other than the ruins of the building itself. Again, she didn't recognize the symbols on it, or on the ground surrounding it, but a deep scarlet light pulsing from a gap that ran all around the thing about four feet up attracted her attention. Cautiously walking over to it, mindful of the uncertain footing, she bent a little and peered into the gap, gasping in shock at the weird sight inside the stone.
She was just raising a hand when a voice from behind her said, "I really wouldn't recommend that," in a fairly casual way, the slightly strange accent one she couldn't place. With a yip of shock and fear, she jumped several inches in the air, then spun around.
Standing about ten feet behind her, a tall figure was inspecting her and the monolith with interest. She gaped at the reptilian woman, who smiled at her, waving a little. "Hi. I'm Saurial. You are…?"
"Jane..." she managed after a moment. "Jane Foster."
"Nice to meet you, Jane," the lizard-like creature said pleasantly. "From Earth?"
"...yes," she replied faintly. There was a pause. "This isn't… Earth?"
Saurial rocked a hand from side to side. "Not precisely. Sort of a parallel world, would be the least wrong way to put it."
"Like Asgard?"
"Aha! You know about that!" Saurial looked pleased. "Exactly. Those guys call it the nine realms, which isn't exactly right either, but close enough for most purposes."
"OK." Jane ran out of words at that point. The reptilian alien, which was about as close as she could figure the other person out, walked over to stand next to her, also bending down to peer into the crack in the monolith.
"There it is. Huh. I was wondering where that went."
Straightening up, she adjusted the fedora she was, for some reason, wearing on the fine feathers that covered her head. Much of the rest of her was enclosed in a somewhat oddly-cut trench-coat of all things, although her three-toed clawed feet were bare and a long tail stuck out the back. Jane merely watched, too stunned to work out what else to do. At least the creature didn't seem hostile.
"What is it?" she finally asked, watching her new companion rub her chin, which was more of a short muzzle, thoughtfully.
"This?" Saurial glanced at her. "Oh, it's an energy construct that's been floating around the multiverse for a hell of a long time. Nasty little bastard, although to be fair it wasn't meant to be, it sort of went wrong. A programming bug, that's all. The people who made it weren't quite as careful as they should have been. Still, it needs to be dealt with. I was on my way to Asgard to have a chat with that Odin guy and detected the thing. Lucky for you, actually, if you'd touched it..." She shrugged. "Bad things would have happened."
Jane felt herself pale a little.
"Bad things?" she echoed quietly.
"Oh, yes, horrible things," Saurial said cheerfully. "Death, destruction, alien invasion, tax rises, all the good TV shows being canceled, cats and dogs living together… Nothing anyone really wants." Jane stared at her as she shook her head. "But we can deal with that before it happens. Now, where did I put that..." She felt in her pockets, pulling out and putting back all manner of weird things. "I could make a new one, but it's time consuming, and I definitely have one here somewhere..." Reaching into a pocket, she pulled out a long staff and handed it to Jane. "Here, hold this a moment."
The brunette woman did so, a little numbly. The search continued, the scientist nearly buried under odd things she'd been asked to 'hold for a moment,' until the lizard creature pulled out a small box, smiling widely. "Aha! I knew I had one."
She turned to Jane, then looked her up and down. "Ah. OK, sorry about that." Putting the box in her mouth and holding it in place with teeth which were very definitely those of a carnivore, she quickly retrieved all the weird items and stuffed them back into her pockets, which were obviously much too small for the load. It didn't seem to stop her.
"OK, there we are. Here, can you hold this for a moment?"
Jane took the box, which Saurial opened, then removed something from inside it. With the best will in the world, the astrophysicist was totally unable to describe, even to herself, what the hell it was. The shape was… wrong.
She blinked furiously, then shook her head, but her eyes refused to focus on the little thing. Saurial seemed unconcerned, putting her entire hand into it somehow and feeling around, while glancing at the deep red light coming out of the stone next to them. "That should do it," she announced. Pulling her hand out she bent down and studied the light again.
"Better disconnect the alarm, though," she added.
"Alarm?"
"Yep. Someone's keyed this to an alert so if anyone was foolish enough to come into contact with it, it sends a signal somewhere. I doubt that the people on the other end are ones we want coming looking." She shrugged. "Call it a hunch."
Fiddling with the stonework, she ran a finger over some of the markings, which glowed faintly for a second in different colors. "There we go. No alarms going out now. Let's get this thing safely locked away." She put the eye-warping little device into the slot and let go.
There was a very weird sound, which seemed to echo around the entire cavern they were in, but didn't come in through the ears. It went on for about ten seconds then stopped. Removing the widget she held it up, smiling. It was now glowing the same deep scarlet and the light from the slot had vanished.
"Great. All I have to do is safely get rid of it, which isn't a problem. We'll just drain the energy and use it for something helpful." Poking the device, she watched as it collapsed into a smaller form, the glow disappearing, then put it into the box Jane was still holding, which she then plucked out of her hand and dropped into her pocket.
"All done. Disaster averted. Thanks for the help. Do you need a ride anywhere?"
Still trying to work out what was going on, Jane nodded weakly. "Back home would be good," she said after a second or two.
"No problem. We can go back through that gravitic anomaly, actually. Same way you got here."
Walking back to the end of the stone platform they were standing on, the reptilian woman did something, which had the effect of making a shimmering web of energy appear next to her. Jane's scanner went nuts, causing her to look at it, then raise it. The readings were fascinating. Making sure to record everything, she moved around the distortion, then put the scanner away when she was satisfied she'd got everything she could.
"There we go, that'll take you right back to the place you came from," Saurial announced in a pleased tone. "I'll come back with you to make sure you get there safely, then I need to go and yell at Odin for a while." She snapped her fingers. "And get some video of it for someone. Must remember to turn the camera on."
Stepping aside, she waved at the distortion in the air. "After you, Jane Foster," she said with a smile.
Bemused, Jane stared at her, then the faint tracery in the air, sighed a little, and walked into it.
Ever since New Mexico, life seemed to be becoming a little strange.
"Where did Jane go?" Darcy asked, getting worried. Her friend, and boss, had disappeared up the stairs over fifteen minutes before, with no sign of her coming back. They'd been so invested in amusing themselves tossing things into the gravitational warp that the little group had lost track of the time.
"Still upstairs, I think," Ian said absently, leaning forwards and peering up through the stairwell. A can hit him in the face, causing the kids who had shown them the anomaly to burst out laughing.
"Ouch," he added, rubbing his cheek.
"No sign of the car keys yet," Darcy sighed. "Why did you throw them in?"
"I got carried away," he muttered with a shamed look. She shook her head sadly.
About to chastise him yet again, she stopped when she head voices from below them. Leaning over the scaffolding poles forming a rudimentary railing, she yelled, "Jane?"
"Yes, it's me, Darcy," the other woman called back.
"How did you get down there?" Darcy shouted.
"You wouldn't believe me," Jane replied, sounding very odd. "Come down, we're done here."
"OK," she called, then turned to Ian. "Now we have to tell her about the keys, you idiot."
Waving his arms widely, he said, "It was a mistake! An honest mistake."
The missing keys dropped out of nowhere to neatly land in his outstretched hand, which he reflexively closed, then inspected with shock in his eyes. It turned to pleased triumph moments later. "Which we will never need to mention."
"You lucky bastard," one of the children commented with a grin. Ian looked at her, then shrugged, grinning back.
"I'll take it," he replied.
The entire group went down the stairs in a crowd, bursting into the lower room, which was barren dry concrete except for Jane talking to… a fucking huge lizard in a trench-coat?
Darcy skidded to a halt, as did everyone else.
"Fuckin' hell," one of the kids said under his breath.
"Uh… Jane?" Darcy began in a worried voice. The other woman looked over at her.
"Yes?" she asked, seeming like she was hiding a grin.
Darcy pointed at the blue-scaled reptilian creature as discreetly as she could, the thing currently looking around with interest. "You… seem to have met someone new."
"I'm Saurial," the lizard-thing said without turning her head. "Found your friend here in a place I can't advise visiting and brought her back with me. Little mistake with that anomaly in there." She looked over at them having finished inspecting the far end of the building, her eyes obscured by the oddest-looking sunglasses Darcy had ever seen. Smiling just enough to show a couple of teeth, she added, "It was probably a good thing I turned up when I did. Nice to meet you all, by the way."
"Are… you... an alien?" a different child asked breathlessly. Saurial cocked her head to the side, then grinned.
"Sort of. And sort of not. It's complicated, but I'm not from around here."
"Coool," the boy said, drawing out the word. He didn't seem at all fussed, Darcy noticed with mild amazement.
"It's sealed," another, much deeper voice suddenly said from the side, making everyone look that way. Darcy yelped and without thinking about it hid behind Ian, which was a little awkward as he'd moved to hide behind her at the same time. The children froze, while Jane stared in shock.
"Good," Saurial replied to the much larger and extremely black lizard that had stepped out of the shadows, then turned to look in the other direction. Another one, this one a sort of blue-violet color, had entered the room in the company of a slim brown-haired woman who was dressed in casual clothes and studying something in her hand. Darcy blinked when she noticed that even the normal-appearing one of the quartet had a lithe reptilian tail moving behind her, the scales dark red on top and almost gold down the underside.
"No trace of it left now," this newcomer said in a voice with a definite British accent, sounding pleased. "I went over it twice."
"Thanks, guys," Saurial said with a smile. "It would be a little irresponsible leaving it open and prone to flinging people all over the universe."
"Definitely," the woman laughed. She looked at the others, then back to Saurial. "New friends?"
"Locals, I just met them myself," the blue lizard said. "Guys, these are my cousins Metis and Ianthe," she went on, indicating the black and violet creatures respectively, "and this is my friend Hermione. Employee of the year, applied magic division, as well."
"Applied..." Jane began incredulously.
"...Magic?" Darcy finished for her.
"Quite," the woman smiled. "I'm fairly good at it."
"She's a genuine genius at it, don't let the modesty hide that," Saurial laughed. "Most knowledgeable witch I know."
"Witch?" Ian asked faintly. The woman, who looked about mid-twenties, nodded.
"Witch. I'm not from around here either. Different universe, actually. This is a summer job." She seemed amused. "Do you need us any more, or can I get back to my experiment?" she added, turning back to Saurial.
"Actually, while you're here..." Saurial smiled. "Want to come with me and have a word with Odin about my artifacts?"
"You're not still going on about that, are you?" the woman sighed. "It was only a hammer, for heaven's sake. One you threw away. Or forgot, or whatever the hell it was."
"It's the principle of the thing," the lizard said, spreading her hands. "I don't go around claiming his stuff as my work, after all. And it's also a spear, and I'm still not sure about that music box."
"Why would Odin of the Asgard steal your music box?" Hermione asked in a reasonable tone. Ianthe and Metis were looking like they were trying not to laugh, and the actual humans were wondering what was going on.
Saurial shrugged. "I'm not accusing him of anything at the moment, not for that, but he's a bit light-fingered. You never know. I'm just going to ask."
"And yell about the tools, right?"
"Probably."
"Oh, for..." The witch shook her head a little. "All right, I suppose someone has to keep you three out of trouble. Honestly, you're like children sometimes."
"That's the spirit," Saurial snickered, not appearing at all insulted. All four of them moved to a spot in the middle of the floor, away from the others.
"Hey, wait!" Jane called, making the quartet look at her again, as did everyone else. "You're going to Asgard?"
"That's the idea," Saurial replied.
"Can you pass on a message for me?"
The lizard-girl cocked her head again, then nodded. Jane ran over and whispered something, which produced a grin. "No problem. I'll let him know," she smiled.
"Thanks."
"Nice to meet you all," Saurial said more loudly as Jane came back to stand beside Darcy, who glanced at her, wondering what she'd asked for. It was obviously in regard to Thor, her blond boy-toy, who had been conspicuous by his absence even though he'd said he'd be back.
Pulling out a small device from a pocket, Saurial raised it to her mouth and said something into it in quiet tones, then put it away. Moments later an orange-bordered hole in the universe opened a few feet in front of them, a gray metallic structure sliding out of it and opening up to reveal a perfectly ordinary-looking door. Everyone stared as Hermione turned the handle, then stepped through as if she was going into the next room. Metis and Ianthe followed, waving to the observers, leaving Saurial for last. She leaned back out and grinned. "Cool, right?"
"Fuckin' excellent!" the boy who'd commented earlier shouted, giving her a thumb's up. She nodded to them, then disappeared from view. The door retracted, the orange-limned hole vanished as silently as it had appeared, and they were left staring at an empty room with only a number of odd footprints in the dust to show anything strange had happened.
"You meet some very weird people these days," Darcy finally commented, a little faintly. There didn't seem to be much else to say. All the others nodded as one.
After a little longer, Jane nudged her compatriots. "Come on, I need to get back and try to make sense of these readings. I've got some amazing data. Who has the keys?"
Ian pulled them out of his pocket and handed them over with an innocent expression, causing a couple of the kids to snicker, which in turn made Jane look a little puzzled. Saying goodbye to their new acquaintances, the three headed for the car while thinking about the oddities of the recent past.