[PRP] The Key to Understanding (Otto/Mimsy)

[Nothing Yet]

Unless dictated by necessity, there were few reasons that Mimsy voluntarily opted to spend her time anywhere but her home or her lab. Any standard duties or missions fell more into the category of unfortunate necessity, but her visits to the infirmary during Robert's shifts were a habit that she had willingly fallen into. The task had the duality of benefiting both her desire to maintain the status as the best wife ever and the requirement of frequent observation, which had grown increasingly important with the knowledge of the existence of hunters who potentially had some sort of desire to receive treatment for the sake of flirtation.

The verity of the possibility (which had since been argued) was insignificant; if it wasn't the case at the present, it might occur tomorrow, or the next day, or the next, and she would just have to ensure that she was there to prohibit or punish it.

Because today was a day, she'd stayed in the infirmary as long as she was capable of staying, and had just begun to cross the grounds on her return trip home. Despite the bag on her shoulder, she carried an armful of notebooks and loose papers - which would have been much safer in the bag, as evidenced by how easily the wind picked several up to carry them away from her.

Bittiface

 

[Bittiface]

Otto, walking through the field while deep in thought, was rewarded for his distracted moseying with a paper in his face. "Grk." Came a comical grunt from the sudden onslaught, pulling the paper away. Looking around, it seemed a few had scattered in the breeze. The source coming from a woman he knew little about. However, he knew enough to feel unsettled by her presence. Mimsy had always struck him as a bit off, even if she did seem incredibly intelligent.

While he didn't much care to be in her good graces or not, he wasn't enough of an a*****e to ignore her plight completely. At least, he wasn't in enough of a mood to do it blatantly.

Otto picked up what he could as he made his way to her, but hardly with any notion of hurrying. He'd help out, but at a pace worthy of his natural apathy.

Nothing Yet

 

[Nothing Yet]

An immediate panic began to set in as the papers fluttered away, namely because there was another figure not far from her. These notes were not especially sensitive for anyone but her, but she didn't just share her notes with abandon. She rarely shared her notes at all, and to see them wandering right into the hands of someone else, when they might do any number of inconceivable things with them, might compromise everything for--

--oh. It was just Otto.

She slowed her own pace, gradually collecting each of the strewn pages to place inside the bag, until the last that remained were in the younger hunter's hands. With a deep breath and a long sigh, she put on a small smile and approached him, expending great effort to appear friendly. It didn't really work.

"Salutations," she greeted him, nodding once in lieu of a wave. "I apologize for inconveniencing you. I regret to admit that I was somewhat distracted, and failed to account for the weather."

Though she was close enough to snatch them up, she didn't move to take the pages he'd gathered, but did take a moment to study them thoughtfully. After some consideration, she reached into her coat pocket and produced a single, individually wrapped candy.

"Will this suffice in exchange?" She extended it towards him with an expectant look, but spoke again before he had any time to answer. "I am in possession of a small variety of confections at my home, if it will not."

Bittiface

 

[Bittiface]

"Uh, s'cool. Didn't even get a paper cut or nuthin'." Her greeting was odd, if not stiff. Either she had a stick up her a** or talking to anything outside of a test tube was outside her field of expertise. His own expression was nothing short of ornery.

His gaze fell upon the candy held in the taller woman's hand. Thankfully, he did actually love candy. The gesture itself was comical, however. If Otto were a sillier man he might have laughed. Instead, his brows rose unevenly; giving Mimsy a look that said, are you for real.

"S...sure." He handed her the pile of papers he'd taken, palm up. His other hand reaching uncertainly for the candy. He hoped it wasn't the cheap kind, though honestly as long as it was sweet or sour it would do. He once mistook a nasty flavoured cough drop for actual candy, and the resulting gagging had been unpleasant. Some people also seemed to consider black liquorice a valid excuse for a snack. Also deplorable and unforgivable.

"You always carry candy around, or what?" Not that Otto could judge. He himself often had a small pack of skittles in his pocket if the pants were baggy enough to accommodate.

Nothing Yet

 

[Nothing Yet]

Although she had in fact been accused of having 'a stick up her a**' on many occasions, and conversation with most entities was still far from one of her strengths, Mimsy's rigid posture softened just slightly as soon as the papers were in her hand again. She looked almost human by the time she returned them to the bag, the illusion fueled in part by the faint indicators of anxiety that followed her concerns over how easy that had been - a nervous shuffle of her weight from one foot to the other, a thumb that couldn't stop fidgeting with the strap over her shoulder.

This was nothing like she was used to in scenarios like this one. He didn't even look like he was going to take her things to dump into a sink full of water, or tie her braids to a railing on the third floor somewhere.

"Yes, I do." The reply was slow, tentative with the concern that she was about to appear unnervingly strange enough to make him reconsider not doing anything unfavorable. For the sake of further bribery, she pulled out an entire handful of a variety of red and yellow candies and offered them to him.

"Do you enjoy the taste of these? I carry only what Robert considers to be his favorites," she explained, comfortable with her second peace offering. "Their primary purpose is as a reward. They are not the only reward he ever receives, of course: additionally, I employ the use of other foods, activities, and physical--"

She stopped herself, eyes wide, and suddenly wished she had a lot more candy for this bribe.

Bittiface

 

[Bittiface]

His shoulders rose in slight defensive measures, Mimsy's sudden addition to her previous offer jutted out in her hand. His eyes widened before he forced himself to subdue the urge to cringe. "I uh.. I get the picture." He did not care to hear of the more intimate rewards a husband received from his wife.

He shifted, looking down at his handful of candies. Oh Good Lord, they were Starburst. "I actually really like these things." He assured her. He gladly took them, but he'd run out of pocket space if she forced any more on him.

"Say uh... you're pretty smart...." She knew a bunch of science s**t. Like space or whatever. "Peyton said I could talk to you about somethin' kind of... sensitive and important."

Nothing Yet

 

[Nothing Yet]

Assuming that Otto was being entirely truthful in his assessment of the candy selection, Mimsy realized that she may have uncovered some sort of bizarre correlation that she had a questionable desire to investigate. Whatever the reality of this happened to be, any interest in it was temporarily contained in favor of unleashing her curiosity on a morsel of information that was much more obviously delectable.

Obscuring the hunger for that knowledge was difficult, especially when her eyes were alight with intrigue and not a dull horror, but she managed in part by removing her glasses, clearing her throat, and pretending to clean them.

"Yes. I attended Princeton." The boast was made even more insufferable as she replaced the glasses and nudged them back up the bridge of her nose. "If my knowledge might assist you, I am glad to offer what is within my capability and renowned expertise."

The cosmos were important, but 'sensitive' made little sense in that context - whatever he and Peyton knew, she wanted to know it too. Urgently.

"Are you comfortable discussing this subject here, or is there a location that you would prefer we should journey towards?" she asked, masking her insistence with all that she knew about being generously accommodating.

Bittiface

 

[Bittiface]

"Woah. That's pretty fancy." Princeton, as far as he knew, was a fancy pants school for super nerds. Right? He had no clue. Only what movies and TV told him. He could only assume Mimsy was top tier in the ways of ultimate bookworm knowledge. More so now than ever she seemed the best person to talk to about theories and inquiries.

"Uh... probably less likely to have people overhearin' out in the open than inside any of the buildings." Cameras and the like were rampant in any area of Deus as it was. Otto wasn't a loud man by an means; his murmur more likely to be unheard than eavesdropped on. So unless Mimsy herself had a better idea of security, Otto was fine enough with their present location. "Unless you're achin' to get them papers off of your hands, I guess."

His candy was pocketed, as were his hands in time. The mark on his palm felt as if it were burning just thinking about the topic at hand.

Nothing Yet

 

[Nothing Yet]

The singular reason that Mimsy did not respond with an 'I know' drenched and dripping in conceit was her lack of understanding for his use of the word 'fancy' in this context. The monetary value of her education was a significant one, sure, but...fancy? Perhaps it had another definition. Unwilling to look uninformed so soon after bragging about her education, she reigned in her ego and allowed curiosity to lead her.

"Goodness, no," she laughed, patting the bag of notes and books fondly. "If there is any physical skill that I possess, it is the capability to carry reports. I have trained in this task for more than two decades."

Which didn't account for how easily she'd let them run away from her, but that had already become negligible data aside whatever it was that he had to offer.

"I agree with your observations on eavesdropping - as long as you find this well-suited, so do I." Her hand slipped into the crook of her other arm as she loosely folded them across her chest, hoping that it might dampen any outward signs of urgency. "So, what is this topic of sensitive importance?"

Bittiface

 

[Bittiface]

Otto nodded, taking his hands back out from his pockets. "Right... so um..." He averted his gaze, his brows furrowed in effort attempting to refrain from stammering so much. "Do you know much about keys?"

With some hesitation, he lifted up his right palm for Mimsy to see. On it was the impression of a key, a white marking practically tattoo'd on his hand.

"Not like... normal keys, obviously. When I woke up from that Wonderland dream, I was holding a box with a key inside."

Nothing Yet

 

[Nothing Yet]

Of all the possible subjects in existence, keys were not high on the list of Mimsy's prioritized categories of knowledge, though they had made a recent appearance in correlation with both Clarice and ALICE. In the case of the latter, she quite clearly recalled the keys she had seen the faceless girl use - and the one on Otto's palm rapidly pulled that particular memory to the forefront of her thoughts.

"Wonderland?" Her hands surged towards him, but stopped just short of snatching at his wrist, for fear of scaring him off in the middle of something so critically important. "You--you said that you woke up with a key from Wonderland."

Just to ensure she'd heard him properly, she paused to await his answer, brows raised, body otherwise frozen in patient anticipation.

Bittiface

 

[Bittiface]

"Well... I dunno. I don't remember ever comin' across a key when I was in the dream. But when I woke up from it, I had it." He kept his hand out, only because Mimsy seemed so interested in the Wonderland subject.

"Do'you think ones got anythin' to do with the other?"

Nothing Yet

 

[Nothing Yet]

The answer was all Mimsy's mind needed to race off into crafting multiple theories at once, and her tightly-wound appearance only seemed to grow more tense as she began to fidget and mutter under her breath, gaze downcast on her own hands as she ticked through some sort of list on her fingers.

When she turned her attention toward him again, her eyes were wide again, now almost frantic with an ignited spark of boundless energy.

"I did. I remember." She drew in a deep, trembling breath, and attempted to steady her thoughts. "ALICE--ah, she...it was her key. The white key. The white key to the door, to the room that contained our vessels. She used it to save you. She--"

This was impertinent. Irrelevant. She had to know. Had to. Now.

"Otto," she began, voice low and marred with desperation. "Have you seen ALICE? Where...where is ALICE?"

Bittiface

 

[Bittiface]

Otto's brows knit high on his brow. Mimsy was scary when she was excited. Scary, but it meant she had some kind of idea or theory of what was going on. It was better than Otto not knowing anything.

"Uh... not lately." He murmured, his hands falling to fidget with the hem of his shirt. "Last I heard of her, was when I had a dream that looked like Wonderland. There was someone taking me to see Alice, but then Alice wasn't Alice she was.... a corpse that looked like Nevada, who morphed into a nurse, into Sam who was actually Charon."

"I dunno. Dreams are nuts."

Nothing Yet

 

[Nothing Yet]

A fair amount of energy began to wane as she attempted to process what 'not lately' might mean, bracing herself for a disappointment she had not expected in this instance. This was the danger of hope, perhaps, but she refused to accept that there was absolutely no remaining chance.

"Do you recall a more specific approximation? A month ago? Two?" As her eyes followed his hands, she waved one of hers in an unsubtly dismissive gesture, still swept up in her attempts to form meaningful connections between each data point.

"Ah. Yes, that's...that is ALICE. She is quite resourceful with her use of imagery." An abrupt scoff of a laugh emerged as she recalled her final encounters with her - followed directly by a frown, just before she turned to look away entirely.

"Dreams serve a purpose. One previously unknown to the scientific community at large, which we have experienced recurrently in multiple capacities." She squinted into the distance, grateful for the sunlight in a moment where she didn't want to think about the stars (or the space station, or the telecom, or the little girl who called her 'mommy'). "You have tangible proof of this concept. You have tangible proof of the potential to transfer matter from one universe to the next. In your hand, you quite literally hold the key to understanding. You hold a solution. Have you not been provided with the context of your problem?"

Bittiface