[video]

[smarterthandad]

[There is a blue-eyed child looking at you. She can't be more than three. She is, however, wearing a very grown-up expression of dissatisfaction. And some kind of superhero outfit with a big "6" on the chest.

Ordinarily, Val would be cagier about immediately going public in a strange place, but, well, she has A Problem. When she speaks, it's with fully adult syntax and no hint of a lisp or any other childish speech impediment.]

Hi. I'm Valeria Richards. Assuming no alternate timeline stuff--not a safe assumption, I know, but sometimes you gotta live dangerously--it looks like there are a few people out there who're friends of my parents. You've got a couple of hours to come get me before they [she turns the phone to show a pair of what are presumably social workers, looking simultaneously put-upon and patient] try to stick me in foster care and things get sketchy.

[Anyone who knows Val will know that's more for the prospective foster parents' protection than hers. No one wants her turning some unfortunate family's appliances into her robot escape army.]

...'Bye.

Comments

[xuffasch]

_{( He considers this a moment. He doesn't really set much store in the afterlife, and conceptualizes Hell as just another place. He shrugs. )}

This isn't Hell. Or anything like it.

Places like that don't matter, when you can't really die.

[smarterthandad]

[Given how the F4 approach things, it more or less is.]

Yeah, okay. You plan on clarifying that, or should I just roll my eyes at you and get someone else to explain?

[xuffasch]

I meant exactly what I said, and if you were as smart as you act like you are you could figure that out.

If you die--no matter how, no matter what--that machine can bring you back as if nothing's happened. You just reappear, there, completely fine.

[smarterthandad]

[Insults directed at her intelligence have absolutely no effect on her, because she knows Val Is Smartest One There Is, so she entirely ignores Damian's first sentence.]

"Can" and "will" are different.

[Besides, she's used to the afterlife having a revolving door.]

[xuffasch]

How about "does?"

It's only in the rarest instances that the dead don't come back, and that might be because they aren't in this world at all, anymore.

[smarterthandad]

[Val can come up with about five ways to do that without even bothering to think about it, meaning she doesn't miss a beat when she asks:]

VR?

[xuffasch]

At this level? Barely possible.

[smarterthandad]

Hmm. Any memory loss on resurrection?

[Sorry, Damian, all problems are intellectual ones to Val.]

[xuffasch]

No. But power loss is common.

[smarterthandad]

Temporary or permanent?

[She'll more or less interrogate him as long as he'll put up with it. Your data, give them to her.]

[xuffasch]

Temporary. The amount of time varies.

_{( He doesn't mind he likes being a bestower of knowledge. )}

[smarterthandad]

[Oh lord, this thread will never end.

I'm okay with that.]

Do you have any idea if there's a correlation between type or magnitude of powers and the length of the dormant period?

[xuffasch]

It seems entirely random. There are trends, but enough outliers to ruin them.

[smarterthandad]

[Val mutters:] Throw them on a log-log plot. That'll make anything look like a straight line.

[Then, in her normal voice:] I assume there's no central database of information relating to this? [She'll just get it from Tony.]