A new dimension and a new friend. (Private)

Lyra screamed in pain has electricity coursed through her body, Next thing she knew there was an loud bang and Lyra was gasping for her breath. She lied on her hands and knees gasping for air, but it was hard to breath. The air, the air was all wrong, it tasted polluted and it made it hard to breath. Lyra's eyes burned red and teared up, what had happened? Lyra forced herself to look up. Where was she? This wasn't her lab. She was outside, in the middle of a large patch of grass with a bunch of people looking at her talking and taking pictures of the strange person lying in the grass. Then it hit her, she did it, she had traveled to a new dimension. This would be a great moment if she could breath. It was so hard to breath, she didn't calculate this dimension to be so polluted. She could hear the people murmuring. From what she could ear they where surprised to see someone just appear out of no where. Some pointed out her ears, saying that she looks likes she is from a fantasy movie. Haven't these people seen an elf before? But now that she thought about it she noticed everyone here was human, no other elves or centaurs or anything. This dimension didn't have any? This was way to weird. But then again it was hard to see with her eyes watering. Then people started to move a bit closer to get a better look, noticing the exploration backpack near by, Lyra scrambled to pick it up and huddled over it, protecting it. It must of been close enough to get dragged along with her.

And then it hit her, as she looked around she saw no portal. No way home. Her heart almost stopped. That would mean she was trapped here. She freaked out more as people walked towards her, she was unsure if they where friendly or not. At least her body was adjusting to the pollution, although slowly.

Everything in DC wanted to peddle something. Sometimes it looked classy and catered to the Hill staffers and other times it looked like the rest of DC. Bliss kept to the former. With a drink in her right hand and a phone in her left, Bliss sorted through the local commotion of the diner. Renovations to the diner either spelled out some urban renewal plan put in action or simply catered to people who liked the retro feel, but didn't want all the lost commodities the past few decades showered upon the service industry. The sound of a few chairs pushing against the linoleum floor took Bliss' attention from her phone over to the approaching suit.

"How about a drink?"

"This thing in my hand isn't a sandwich." Even in the warming of Spring, Bliss still kept a scarf around her neck draped over the pink half sleeve shirt stretching over the waist of her jeans.

"Ha, yeah, I like that. I haven't seen you around, but if you've ever been to the Hill, I'm an aide for..."

"Let me go ahead and stop you there. One, I make more money than you."

Moving his back to the bar, but keeping his eyes on Bliss' form, the man pushing thirty took a chuckle. "Well, maybe right now..."

"No, shut up, I'll by my own drink. Two, at best you become an understaffer for a representative, because campaign staffers for Senators aren't crawling diners around noon looking for Georgetown students. So, you can keep that money. I hear residential zones are going up and you wouldn't want to live where the real people of this city go home to."

The only instance of a smile Bliss gave the man formed as he tugged at the collar of his suit to pull away and head to his next unsuspecting call. "What is that freak? Is it Halloween already?"

While the attention of the common room turned to the park on the otherside of the road, Bliss continued looking down at her phone.

"There's a big wide world out there, miss." Two tattoo covered arms dropped next to Bliss with a bearded face positioned directly above the held palms.

"Don't call me miss, dick. And I'm looking at the tiny device that made that big world much smaller."

"I still think it might be good for you to get some fresh air."

"You aren't picking me up because you haven't offered me anything thing yet, so I'm assuming you're either threatening me or priming a threat."

"Abduction."

"You're straightforward. I would say that's refreshing, but you were just leaving."

"I was." Pushing back from the counter, the dark haired man moved towards the door, taking Bliss' eye contact towards the window which paraded the elf woman.

Bliss finished her drink with a sour face and pushed her phone into her back pocket. This event parading through the grassy park looked too interesting to go without an investigation, even if it needed to come on the other side of a failed suitor. "Looks like we got a..."

"Fuck you dude."

While most people kept their distance, Bliss decided to make a straight shot to the newcomer to the world. "How's it going." Bliss' tone felt a little off as she wrapped her arm under Lyra's arm to pull her towards a clearing. "I don't normally come across odd looking people in the park and immediately ask them if they know where they are, but I think you're just special enough to warrant it."

People kept trying to walk up and help her, Lyra kept swatting them off. Her body still wasn't use this new atmosphere, the change was so sudden that her body was going into over time to catch up. Usually by now her body would of adapted but sadly the change was to sudden. She held the small bag that traveled with her close to her chest, she needed this stuff more then anything right now. Trying to move away from the approaching crowd was hard when her eyes where red, watery and scratchy and she felt like she was coughing up a lung. And then she felt an air wrap around her which caused her to freeze, she could make out that it was a woman by her voice. The woman dragged her away from the crowd and thankful none seemed to follow. Lyra was able to get out a thank you but it was still hard to breath. Although by the time the pair reach their destination Lyra felt a lot better and felt like she could actually breath.

"Once again thank you." said Lyra, her eyes still red and puffy. Lyra looked back at the area they came from.

"There really is no door back... my calculation were wrong." said Lyra. She opened her pack and looked around quickly. Everything still seemed to be there and nothing looked broken. Lyra turned her attention back to the woman that separated her from the group. Lyra stood a bit taller then her, but then again the average human was shorter then the average elf in her dimension. She seem to speak what would be considered common in her dimension. Not because that their were more humans then any other race, just because they where the most spread out and would raise a fit if their language wasn't the common language.

"To answer your earlier question, no If I am correct I am in dimension ER-TH02. I'm just trying to remember how I got here. The test failed and I went to check the machine after everyone left, got electrocuted and next thing I know I am choking on pollution. The test didn't show their was pollution on this planet, that must of been an oversight... but where are the elves and other races. I only see humans." said Lyra getting to the point where she was more or less talking to herself trying to figure out what was going on.

"I'm stuck here, there is no bridge back. I-I'm never going to see any of my friends or family again am I? My best friend is having her wedding in a week and I won't be there." said Lyra falling to her knees. She murmured something in elven before starting to cry. She was stuck here.

"No... I don't know where I am."

Once in her life, things like this really would have come off as odd. Now, instead of reconciling a run in with an extraterrestrial life form, Bliss just asked questions like, "So, they have humans where you come from? If you think the pollution is bad just talk to a Republican and they'll let you know your current medical condition is just- on my shirt really?! Fuck you homegirl." Bliss wiped off a portion of what Lyra logged on to her. If she wanted a conversation, she needed to solve a quick medical problem. Walking over to a small river out cove, Bliss dipped her scarf into the water and submerged it, ringing it out to dampen it to a more useful state for breathing. "Here." Bliss tied the scarf over Lyra's mouth and nose to create a breathing mask to clean the pollution Lyra could not stand to breath in. "Better? Better."

As Bliss continued to go over the run down with Lyra, a specific scientist looked through a specific set of binoculars at a specific meeting. "Precisely." The tight faced older woman in a black lab coat pulled her binoculars down with droplets of slime oozing from her sleeves. "I thought something different in the energy waves surrounding this place felt weird. I didn't think beach bum would be apart of it. I could always even the score."

"Missing a wedding isn't so bad. We have bars here and that's the only reason people go to weddings." And then she started to cry. "Hey..." Bliss awkwardly held her hand out and distantly patted Lyra on the shoulder. "It's okay about missing that wedding. You already said you weren't going to see them ever again. Maybe you move on with your life, because this is Earth. And this place kind of sucks."

"Sorry." said Lyra accepting the scarf. Although she didn't need it for long. Once her body completely adapted she handed the scarf back.

"My body was taking longer then usual to adapt to this environment. The change was so sudden and I wasn't expecting so much pollution in the atmosphere, it didn't show up on the readings. The readings said this place was habitable, the only reason I am able to breath fine now is because my body can adapt to different environments like all elves. I can't imagine the other races surviving here. Also what's a republican?" asked Lyra in confusion. Lyra lowered herself on the ground, it was strange. She ran her fingers through the grass, it felt just like home yet it wasn't.

"I am from Earth, the prime earth." said Lyra, taking a small pause. Well at least they figured they where the prime earth there was no real information backing this claim.

"There are humans, elves, centaurs, merfolk and more. Heck my best friend is a Minotaur. She was the main reason I had any sort of social life. She was one of the few that could drag me from my work. I was going to be her maid of honor..." said Lyra through her tears. And then she remembered something. She opened the bag she brought with her and pulled out a pad of paper, a pen and a strange looking camera. The camera looked like it was almost organic, a magical vibe could be felt coming from the machine. She wrote "I am alive, send help" twice. Once in elven and once in the human language which looked like english. She snapped a couple of pictures of the paper.

"I hope this thing works." said Lyra. She had invented it herself to send pictures from other dimensions to her home dimension. Although it was made to work with a bridge open between the two dimensions, there was a small chance it would still work.

"So, do all the elves cry this much, or are you- I don't know, special feels more enabling than I want to come off as, weird?" Bliss didn't wait for the rest of her companion's story to materialize before moving on to the next part. "Wait, she was marrying something other than a minotaur or are you from like other Earth Alabama and just- oh by the way, this is Prime Earth, you're from shit Earth, let's get that straight right now, but yeah, being friends with a minotaur is cool I guess. What are you doing now?" Fingers often enlisted more judgment than the words, but Bliss sometimes liked a good double down against someone clearly not threatening her. "You're getting a pen and paper. And taking a picture of it. You can't get a door open, but you're pretty sure you can get a message back to your minotaur friend?"

Bliss thought of one more thing before moving back to respond. "Opening a door to your dimension wouldn't have any negative side effects like unleashing dangerous wild life or accidentally letting loose a prison block would it? Because, if so, you might want to stop right about now." Not threatening any force, but not taking off the table of her mind, Bliss continued to monitor Lyra, all the while being monitored from afar.

"I'm sorry, I am trapped in another dimension, who I am pretty sure isn't the prime dimension cause it sucks! And I have no way back, I think I can cry for a bit. And what the hell is an Alabama!" said Lyra a bit annoyed.

"And since you are asking she is marrying a centaur. And I wasn't messaging my best friend. I was messaging my team." said Lyra, packing the pad of paper, pencil and camera  back up.

"That camera was designed to send images across dimensions via a bridge. There is still a small chance the message will make it through even without the bridge. This wasn't a small effort, me and my team spent a long time studying this. If anything the bridge would of been bad for my side. All your pollution would leak out into our world. It would probably be really bad for anyone who wasn't an elf. However it would be nothing but good for your side since we would just get rid of your pollution, or at least take it down my half. Considering my lab isn't air tight it would be horrible for my dimension." said Lyra standing up.

"Not sure how time works where your from, but it's been a little longer than a minute." A little relief came over Bliss as Lyra pulled out her plan, but then the explanation left Bliss with a scour. "Okay, so your plan is to get yourself back to Narnia Earth to save yourself at the expense of destroying your world's atmosphere and possibly unleashing a catastrophe that would kill all but one race. Are you genocidal or are smart people on your planet dumb? Maybe you should go back to crying."

In the distance of the brush, the woman who kept watch vanished. Only a few branches waving told the tale of where she fled.

"How long are you waiting to a get a message back? And have any other people from beta Earth ever come here, or are you making a guess on getting a signal across, kinda like you made a guess you could get back?" Bliss tucked her hands under her arms. "Because that plan has had some ups and downs."

"That is actually a good point..." said Lyra pulling out the pad of paper and camera again. Again in elven and in common she wrote 'caution dangerous levels of pollution in this dimension. Stll alive, adaptation took longer then normal.' She took a couple more pictures before putting the stuff away again.

"Sorry I am just a bit frazzled right now, thank you for catching that for me." said Lyra. Sighing she laid on the grass and stared up the sky. Lyra listen to this woman tear apart her plan piece by piece and it honestly made Lyra a little bit annoy.

"In order. No idea, it could take days. Yes this is all just an educated guess. And back to the first thing, honestly the item they could use to contact me was left in the order dimension since I wasn't planning on being zapped here. Making a new one wouldn't be a problem. The frequency of the device would be. If I don't sync it to the right one nothing will cone through. And there are a lot of them. So the only way I know if they got the message is if they show up... if they can figure out how to get the machine to work, since it is probably broken now. So unless you have any other ideas I am tapped out. I could try to recreate the device here but I don't think I could get enough power. This dimension seems so low tech so far." said Lyra, sounding a bit down trodden. It was strange... this place was so heavily polluted, her body had adapted to it now and surprisingly the planet didn't look bad for being so polluted. Even she could still feel it in the air and taste it whenever she breathed. This place didn't look to bad. Maybe there was still hope for this place then.

"When I get back I am going to reek of pollution for weeks..."

"Alright, so we'll get somewhere maybe a little less 'polluted' so you can talk about other things." Even though Lyra looked like she brought a few things with her, she looked grossly out of place in terms of getting around in the city on her own. "Don't worry about the smell." Bliss gave a small look of support before giving Lyra a pat on the arm. "You already said you'd never see them again, so they'll never smell you."

Getting this girl a hotel room would work for the first step in a long list of things she would need. "After you get cleaned up and grab something to eat, I'll try to find a way to get you to the west coast. I've got a lab there you can use to try and do whatever it is you need." Grabbing a cap would probably be the easiest thing to do, but traffic throughout the grid looked bad with a few lane closes. Better just to walk off a light lunch and keep the energy up. Plus, it would keep Lyra from complaining about the car emissions.

Bliss checked in last night and planned on staying a few days, but it looks like she might need to cut out a day or so early. Leaving Lyra alone in a room could be off putting for the stranded elf, but Bliss felt her own comfort came just slightly higher than Lyra's. "This is your keycard. It opens the door. You're pretty smart. Figure everything else out for yourself." Bliss stepped off the elevator a floor before Lyra. "I'll see you in the morning and we can get started on sorting this out."

"I hope she can read." Bliss walked to her door and heard the clicking of the lock as she entered her card. A pair of footsteps walked down the hallway towards Bliss' door, stopping in front and listening in.

"You really suck at making people feel better ya know?" said Lyra burying her face in her hands for a moment before standing up. She followed Bliss to the hotel, making mental notes on how this world ran. It seems they had a basic version of a car, but it let off fumes just by being turned on. The more Lyra examined the world the more she noticed something. Technologically they didn't seem to bad on, but Lyra couldn't see or sense anything with magic in it. Part of her wanted to ask Bliss about this but she thought she might of annoyed Bliss enough with her questions and general weirdness. Not to mention Bliss was nice enough to rent her a room at a hotel. Once they arrived at the hotel, Bliss gave her the keycard to her room. Lyra knew what it was and began to wonder how dumb Bliss thought she was. After walking into her room she turned the extra locks that where in place and threw her backpack on the bed. She opened the backpack up and pulled out a small snack bar and opened it up. Like most of the food in the pack, it was meant to provide a sample of her world's culture and cuisine. But since Lyra's current situation was making her nervous and something familiar would help.

Chewing on the dried fruit and granola bar she debated on what would come next. If this lab was a good once she should be able to return back to her world, although who would know where she would even show up. After just staring at a blank wall and thinking on what needed to be done next Lyra decided she needed a shower. She removed her clothe and carefully placed them on the bed since she didn't exactly have any other clothes other then the emergency clothes and since they where in an air tight bag she preferred to keep the pollution off of them. Lyra walked into the shower and cleaned herself off, just kinda standing under the shower for the most part in hopes the running water would help her think.

After standing in the shower for about an hour, she felt a bit cleaner but the water didn't feel to terribly clean so she didn't feel much cleaner herself. She tightly wrapped a towel around herself and walked out of the hotel. There was a cool breeze and overall it felt really nice even if the cool air caused her to shiver slightly after taking a warm shower. Wait... when did she open a window.

"When they told me I needed to take some woman from a hotel I didn't think that she would be such a looker, oh well. Either way you are coming with me." said a masculine. By the time Lyra was able to turn around and see who spoke something her in hard in the hard and she passed out. The mystery man picked up Lyra and exited out through the window, leaving her stuff behind.

Bliss pulled a sweatshirt over her head before she looked for the remote control she left stranded under one of the pillows thrown about her bed. A rude awakening bashed into the side of her ear with a rag. Before any corrections could go into work, Bliss threw her elbow into the throat of a man standing at a newly disadvantageous position. Wrapping her leg around the brace foot of her assailant, Bliss pulled her leg up, sending the larger man head first into the night stand.

Are you there? A voice spoke from his waist. You having trouble? She's a five foot tall Chinese chick. Can't be that tough.

Instead of responding with a curt comment, Bliss merely placed the walkie talkie on the table and shattered it beneath a wave of energy. This dude was pretty heavy.

By the time Bliss made her way up the stairs to stare out an open window, Bliss put together a series of mistakes she made. "Shouldn't of duct taped that guy to the outside of the window and spent more time trying to save that elf lady." Pretty much. Bliss looked down to see her attacker hanging perilously from the fifth floor wall. "I can always find her. That felt pretty good."

Tardiness only kept her from preemptively saving Lyra. She saw the vehicle currently holding the girl waiting for something. Bliss looked down and realized she only had a few moments to get down to the ground floor before the van took off.

She took one moment too long. Getting a good look at the van as it sped off, leaving Bliss with a quick decision to make based off of logic she saw second hand.

Lyra woke once the car went over a bump and she hit her head against the wall of the van. She groaned in pain and tried to move to realized she was tied up... great. She felt a scratchy piece of cloth run against her body. Looking down Lyra saw she was wearing what looked like a cloth bag with holes cut in it. At least they where decent enough to put her in something, although her clothes would of been nice. Actually now she thought out it she had no idea how long she had been naked... in front of strangers, prefect. She honestly had no idea how long she was out. Even though she had woken up the person sitting the back with her didn't knowledge her which was kinda rude.

"Hey can I at least sit in a seat so I am not jumping all over the floor?" said Lyra, trying to do her best to sound helpless.

"No." Ok so much for that idea. She recognized that this was the same man who knocked her out.

"So where are you taking me? If you wanted to see me naked you could of just bought dinner first." said Lyra And then a strange thought popped in her head.

"This is not how people court in this dimension is it? Cause that's just weird..." said Lyra, mostly taking to herself at this point.

"Shut up." said the man.

"Or what? I can't ask ques-" asked Lyra but was interupted by a gun in the face.

"No." said the man bluntly. Lyra just nodded and remained quite for the remainder of the drive. After who knows how long the Van arrived at a warehouse and Lyra was dragged into it.

Calling for a cab to 'follow that van' seemed cliche- also, expensive and Bliss wasn't paying to just sit in traffic on a turnpike for an hour. Instead, Bliss opted for a new plan to make traffic work for her at the expense of the efficiency of the everyday traveler. Bliss spent a few minutes in a fleet of foot, dodging through stalled traffic while trying to catch up with the van. All the while she worked away with her phone, accessing the city grid and locking the van in an ocean of exhaust and horns.

Before Bliss found her way to the van, a bumper shot to cut off her path. A heavy dent stayed behind on the hood as Bliss jumped down to the ground. Two doors slammed behind as the van took towards a green light. All of her plans went flying from her hand to the ground as an arm chopped at her forearms. A quick jab dislocated a mandible and a blast of energy shot him back into the windshield of the car. Bliss scrambled to get her phone back, but the red light came too late. It stifled the flow of traffic to give her more freedom of movement, but the tide of metal flowing in front of her stood daunting. Before Bliss hit the intersection, she managed to eschew a path for herself through an intersection surrounded by red lights.

"Where do you want her?" Two men dragged Lyra into the warehouse with her hands still tied.

"Chair. I can handle the rest."

"Where's our..."

"Suitcase." Ooze dripped from under the woman's sleeves as she tore off a few strips of tape to wrap Lyra to a chair. "Leave."

"Alright. Alright, no need to..."

"Leave. Now." A stern line held a crease in the woman's brow and she examined Lyra's ears. "Human. Human like at least. Taller than others. Not sure for vitals. Highly unlikely it will matter." The woman would continue to rattle off observations until Lyra tried to speak. Any conversation would merely be met with. "Your contribution is not yet needed." Or. "When I want your thoughts, I will examine the remains of your brain." Or "The most useful information comes from places other than your head."

Alleyways and a little luck of decisions kept Bliss in the running through the business district, out to a smaller, even less inviting part of town. The same van rested with its doors open as a few men walked back with a briefcase. Seeing a priority open up, Bliss snapped a picture of the license plate. If need be, she could check into the kidnappers later, but for now, she needed to look into the kidnapped.

Bliss pried through the open doors, trying to keep as quiet and low as possible until she picked up on the sound coming from one of the major store room.

Lyra just kinda sat there with an annoyed look on her face as the strange ooze woman looked her over. She smelt horrible as well. She also had this strange smell covering the other smell. It was gross, yeah people in her dimension used flowers to help cover bodily stench but Lyra mostly smelt chemicals and more pollution made to smell like flowers. She couldn't even get a word in, usually getting interrupted before she could even talk. Although some things said made her question what exactly this woman had planned.

"You know if wanted to learn about me you could ask. Everyone is the dimension is so rude." said Lyra fighting against her bindings/