Carth's magical adventure, ROUND TWO, MOTHERFUCKERS!

[Carthrat]

Carthrat pauses the message, and leans back in his chair with a low whistle.

So Diane was somewhere else. The multiverse.. the multiverse wasn't really the multiverse as people believed it was. But the distance between galaxies was so huge that it may as well have been. If Carthrat had it right, Diane would be in Andromeda.. he himself didn't know of any other galaxies where civillsation had advanced beyond apelike creatures.

Not to mention that wherever they were, they evidently spoke English.

Carthrat sighed. Opening a portal would take time. It wasn't the typical technological gizmo's he created.. those were childs play. That stuff was real technology, stuff that required specific factories, tools, resources which he didn't have access to. Nope, not a chance.

Well, he had plenty of time to think of it. Standing up, he went to look for Rachel..

[Anastasia]

You find Rachel in the kitchen, preparing a stew. She looks up as you enter, curious. "How has it gone, Cathrat?"

[Carthrat]

Carthrat shifts, uncomfortably. "There's a message for you, too. From Diane."

[Anastasia]

She looks up, dropping the ladle which she was stirring the stew with. "Diane? That was from Diane?" she asks breathlessly.

[Carthrat]

"Yes. She wanted to say something you in private," replies Carthrat.

[Anastasia]

"Alright," she says, nodding. "Where can I see her message?"

[Carthrat]

"On my laptop," replies Carthrat, jerking his thumb at the workshop. "Just hit play."

[Anastasia]

"Thank you, Carthrat," she murmurs, walking away. "Help yourself to dinner if you like."

---

Several minutes and a large bowl of stew later, she comes back. Her face is pale and there are tear marks on her face. She doesn't say anything, but instead gets herself a serving of stew and begins to eat.

[Carthrat]

Carthrat fingers his stew, not particularly hungry, and looks somewhat concerned about Rachel, but dosn't say anything..

He needed a way to get to Andromeda. It was the only place he could think of where Diane might be. If she wasn't there, he could sure as hell trace the transport signiature of the messagecorder, and work out where she actually was, then head on there, and pick her up.

His job would be easy to dispense with. He'd send them the complete theoretical physics thesis he'd written, and demand that his job be waiting for him when he came back.

If it wasn't, well, not much to do about it.

Right now, though.. how to get to Andromeda..

Carthrat recalls the memory of getting to Earth.. painfully. He hadn't wanted to come in the first place, but circumstances forced it, and he'd made an emergency N-Space jump..

Then he had been stranded on Earth. Yuki's birthplace.. somewhere she dearly missed.

He had looked into finding a way off-planet when he arrived, but he realised that almost no ships came to the cradle of human civilsation. Fair enough, considering that the only reason anyone ever left Andromeda was to find new planets to mine.

To get off Earth, he'd have to hitch a ride on a mining ship, or acquire his own N-Space drive, which he doubted was even possible.

He only stayed originally stayed on Earth after Yuki's death because of obligations he felt towards her memory, but now..

Shizue.

She had been made aware of intergalactic travel. She would have been looking into it. New things ever interested Ms. Kinomoto. Carthrat had no doubt that with her considerable network of agents, she'd worked something out.

Well. Looks like a trip to Japan may be in order.

"Are you allright, Rachel?" he asks, finally.[/i]

[Anastasia]

"... ... ...yeah, I think I am," she mutters, looking down into her bowl. "I just got some news that...that didn't sit well."

[Carthrat]

Carthrat looks on with symptahy. "I can't know what that might be, but I hope it's.. well."

He fidgets uncomfortably.

[Anastasia]

"It's alright," she says, looking up and smiling wanly. "I'll be fine, Carthrat."

After another pause, she asks, "So...Diane's lost in another world..."

[Carthrat]

"That's a dramatic way of putting it," replies Carthrat.

[Anastasia]

"Dramatic suits this, don't you think? It isn't everyday that you find out that someone you've known for so long is stuck in another DAMN WORLD!" her voice rises as she speaks, and ends with a shout and a banged fist on the table.

Immediately after, she takes a deep breath and calms down. "I'm sorry, Carthrat. You didn't need to see that, I'm just..." she trails off, looking down again.

[Carthrat]

Carthrat blinks.

"Let it out, Rachel. Don't worry about me.

I'll bring her back, don't worry. I owe her too much to let her stay lost."