Issue 1 Downtime

Stan's wanderings led him to the mess hall that the Knights of Wundagore had used. This was in considerably better shape than the other areas, as the refugees had been using it actively, with food that was brought up regularly from the town.

In the kitchen area, a delicious smell wafted over.

Stan, enticed by the smells, found his way inside.

Perhaps a sandwich could be formulated.

An ivory-skinned woman, disturbingly familiar (though obviously aged), was busy at work, cooking with well-practiced ease in pots covering an entire stove. She was in constant motion, but never really seemed to need to hurry for anything, humming a bit as she tasted from one of the pots.

"Hello," she called, not looking up from her cooking. "Hungry, I take it? I've been trying to make sure we have enough ready, we don't often get so many guests here."

"I am, actually."

Smiling, he looked around the room.

"What is on the menu for the new arrivals? I could certainly enjoy a bite to eat right now."

Giving a second look at the familiar chalk pale skin, he took a seat.

"Not much, I'm afriad," she appologized. "Chicken chardonnay, pasta on the side, with a rather lovely mushroom rissoto to start things off and a chocolate silk pie for desert. I'm sorry, I was working without much notice."

The promise of food eventually lead Sara to the mess hall, asking her way around at first, then following the smell of cooking the rest of the way. She was pleasently surprised to see Stan there as well and rather disturbed at seeing... an older Vickie? "Okay this officially stopped making any sense...

"How the heck are you... I mean didn't you... in the ice palace? How many of you are there?"

Becca frowned in confusion, then shrugged as she started serving out food. Apparently, those who'd arrived when she finished got served, latecomers could damn well get their own food off the stove. "Sorry, I don't think we've met," she said, studying Sara carefully.

"Of course not... after all, that'd make sense..." she mumbles as she sits down with an added "Oof."

"So you're, like, Vickie's good twin or something?" she jokes. Mostly.

Becca looked at her quizically, then her face spread into a wide smile. "Oh! So you know Victoria! How is my daughter? I don't get much news up here these days."

"Oh! I guess she's doing fine, what with the big castle of ice and stuff... And aren't you dead?" she bluntly changes gears.

Becca screwed up her face in concentration and made a show of taking her pulse. "Nope, doesn't seem that way," she said, before sliding a plate in front of Sara. "Now eat up. There's plenty where that came from, in case your carry-along wants seconds."

"But..." she tries to object, but is temporarily distracted by the food. "Just thought... I mean it makes no sense..." she mumbles as she starts to eat.

"Of course it makes sense. When you're pregnant, you get hungrier sometimes. Even I know that."

"Not that. Victoria and Onyx always said you were dead..."

"And quite a lot of people tell me that you are," Becca said, her sudden switch of tone leaving very little question where Victoria got it from.

"Oh uhm... yeah, I guess that's true..." she's forced to admit.

"Of course, a lot of us here have been thought dead," Becca admitted. "When you vanish up into the mountains, I suppose it starts rumors," she chuckled.

Stan looked up again, after taking a bite of the very splendid dinner.

"Well, I admit that I am not up on the whole situation, but you supposedly died decades ago. Right before Victoria entered the XU in London. Are you saying you've actually been here for that long?"

"No, I can hardly stay in one place unless there's a very convincing reason to do otherwise," Becca said. "And the world being in ruins is... well, a very convincing reason. I came here when Nailah did, after that last... where Sam..." She swallowed hard, then started on her own food. "The food is better when it's warm, you should get eating."

Stan nodded and took some more bites, too weary to worry about gaining sustenance in a less mysterious locale.

"Can you tell us some more about what happened, back then? When Sam allowed you to escape? I know it's tough to bring up, but I think the circumstances are important."

"Well... when it became obvious that the fight was lost we went into hiding like everyone else."

"We had always talked of trying to move here one day, but mutants were being flushed everywhere still and it had never been safe to travel too far in a group, but when they knocked down our doors the only thing we could do was to run and hope we'd make it here. We wouldn't even have made it out of the building if it hadn't been for Sam..." she sighed and shook her head.

"We had an escape route out of the building, but we knew we'd never make it. After everyone but Sam had gone through she locked the door and told us she'd catch up to us." The look in her eyes conveyed how well that plan had worked.

While Rebecca is talking Nailah walks up behind her and puts a hand on her shoulder. "Really? This question again?" she asks with a pointed look at Stan.

John took a seat near Sara.

"I miss anything good?"

"Just more dead people. At this rate I'm almost expecting to run into myself..."

"Yeah, I can't imagine what that would be like," Will said, coming in, still a little frosty (far longer than it normally should take to defrost him)

"Sorry..." she says with a scrounged-up face, taking Will's hand and giving it a squeeze. "I didn't mean it like that."

"I don't envy you Will, that's for sure."

"Could be worse," he said, though he didn't sound too convinced.

"Oh! Miss Weaver? I have something I think belongs to you."

"Oh, you do?" she asks, curiously quirking an eyebrow at John.

He fished out the data disc.

"It's what told us to come here."

"And you think it belongs to me?"

"Well we found it with this," he said, bringing out the staff part.

"And, well... you're on it."

"That does look familiar but you'd think I'd recall recording myself..." she says as she takes the pieces from John.

After a bit of turning the device around in her hands she finds the only button on it and the device flickers to life and projects a blue-tinted screen into mid-air.

For a moment the two identical women seem to just stare at each other before the one with the glowing eyes in the recording starts to talk. "I'm afraid this is going to be rather confusing for you."

"I... I don't understand..."

"I didn't expect you to. Not right away. But it's important that you remember. For me, for you..."

"I don't remember this. Why don't I remember this?"

"Because you weren't here." she says, sadness starting to creep into her voice.

"That doesn't make any sense. This... this has to be a trick."