| The Space Between the Panels | ||
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| Summary: So here we are, dear reader. The moment you've all been waiting for. The proper, dramatic reveal of yours truly. Your handsome narrator. Here we see me act on my brilliant plan's next step. Luckily it goes perfectly according to plan without any hitches what so ever. What plan, you ask? That's for me to know, and you to find out when it's too late to stop it. There's some other people in the scene too. I guess. Who: Liyara, Mr. Nobody, Yoiko Hax, Kylie Griffin, "@̏͐[ͦͣ͒=̈́̈́̍̑͐͆ḡ͛̂3͑̉͗̽,ͦͫ̽͛ͭ8d̅ͤ]͌\̂&̆ͣ̈ͩf̔͛̔bḃ̒̀͌̆̿ͮ=ͯ͑ͦ͒̆̏̈-͂qͯ̈̔̚]/̔hk̾ͬ͂͐ͣ%̃f̈́͂͒̃g̈́̅̍ͨ", Crux When: July 21st, 2026. Where: The White Space, Ray's Occult Books, The streets of Mabase, Integra's Arms Apartments, Yoiko's Apartment.      |
White. Blinding white light. The light that shines from every star. The blistering brightness from which the existence was created. The big bang? Sure. That light. A soft trumpet begins to play. The soft whistling of a happy tune. A deep voice begins to sing, "Maaaaagic moooooooments, when two hearts are carrrrrin'! Maaaaagic Moooooooments, memories we've been sharrrrring." As your eyes begin to adjust to the infinite, blinding, nothingness it fixates on a singular point. An old radio playing a cheerful song on top of a small table. Beside it slowly fades in a comfortable chair, and sitting upon it the most dashing and attractive man you've ever seen in your life. Looking smart in his well pressed suit. A wool vest beneath it and a smart blouse beneath it. The fancy type, not some woman's vestments, you ingrate. Yes, the most handsome man in existence. Me. I stand, I clap my hands, and I step towards you. "WELCOME!! Welcome. I've been waiting so long to meet you." I flash you that million dollar smile and you find yourself strangely smitten by how staggeringly perfect I am. "I trust you found your trip here comfortably, my dear?" I offer my hand to be kissed. A sweet embrace shared between your dashing narrator and the beautiful dragon woman I've brought before me. Dressed in a beautiful gown, swirling with every shade of blue and sparkling as if illuminated from an unseen light from every angle. Your gloved hand reaches for mine, and we twirl. Listening as the beautiful music changes to another track. I can't help myself as I sing along, "It's impooooossible… Tell the sun to leave the sky….. It's just impooooossible…" I bend you at the waist, looking into those dazzling green eyes. "Ask a baby not to crrrry…. It's just impooooooossible….." Liyara feels her breath taken away as she finds herself just smitten with me. I bow, I gesture towards the recliner. "I imagine you have questions for me. Rest my dear. We have all the time in the world to answer them."
"Hhhhhhhhhow?" Liyara finds herself strangely, suddenly, and most inexplicably in a white space. Is it blinding light or is it just white? She can't tell, but when the music starts playing, and the vocal track starts crooning, her slit pupils dilate then contract rapidly. Too rapidly. Several times faster than sound, her pupils swallow her irises, then contract down paper thin, then widen again. She can't. Quite. Seem to... There! Wait. What is this she sees? An end table and a sitting chair, an attractive man, and... Wait. His clothing, his manner of dress and bearing and the radio on the table. She knows this. This is an artifice of the many human worlds that are surrounded by wildspace and not phlogiston. The wrong ones. The ones that brute forced faster than light travel by simply... Exploding things really, really hard. She thinks back, briefly to Yoiko's world, and the sort of God that answered her spell. Trelane? For some reason she feels like there is a sort of... Tangential connection here, not that thing, that stupid, stupid God, but ... Adjacent. How the hell does she know that? It's easy. Simple. She's been wanting to slap one her entire life, and they all act like this. Past the imagery she recognizes only from her studies since arriving in Mabase, past the ... Surprisingly charming voice, it is really quite nice... And that stupidly perfect face ... That's a God. Or, well, one of the things that act like them, anyway. Liyara is an atheist; it's not that she believes Gods don't exist, more that she believes they're just strong beings that claim authority by virtue of power, same as anything else. "..." She looks down at the man's hand, attempting to decipher what he is waiting for. She is not exactly up to date on her period pieces from alternative history human culture. "...I..." She's in a gown? When did she get a gown? Oh, it's a nice one though. Well, she doesn't love being treated as a doll but bonus points for being treated as a pretty one. "My journey was acceptably serene, given what preceded it." She feels her hand reach for his, feels herself twirl in a dance. Feels herself appreciate music she's never heard before. Something is... Off. She does know to bow after the impromptu dance, but she imitates the man's bow rather than getting the woman's role properly. No context. She takes a seat as suggested, carefully shifting her gown for maximum elegance and presentation. She's only just begun wearing it, but it's hardly her first. "...Which one are you then?" Beg pardon? Liyara, you're going to have to be much more specific than-- "Which human God are you?" Oh fine, just cut me off then, sure, go ahead. "The god of detonated bookstores perhaps? I assure that was not my fault, anything that explodes when someone casts a simple first circle ritual is quite inherently unstable to begin with..." So she's chosen to go with defensive. That makes sense.
I clasp my hands upon my heart and simply gaze lovingly at the question. How quaint. Surely no malice to be had behind those words. "Dearest Liyara. Daughter of Lux, Grand…" Hmmph. I reach into my pocket, taking out a pair of spectacles and a small notepad. "GrandSCION of Hoondarrh: The Red Rage of Mintarn who lives Eternal." I throw the card and put the glasses away. "I am but a humble narrator. Sitting in outside the panels of the world you'd found yourself in, and weaving a tale as old as time. Two love sick children, smitten with one another, and about to embark on a dangerous quest to see what lurks through thine iron makes." I smile a wicket smile, showing far too many teeth for a normal man. Oh, but they are the normal amount of teeth for a man of my stature. I'm just that good of an ACTOR. "Oh, but alas. It is the way of the star-crossed lovers that some driving force comes between them and it ends in sadness or death." I lower my head in a show of sad resignation. "Oh, but I am remiss if I didn't point out that there was a way out of course. A simple favor to myself which you'll so willingly agree to, won't you? Yes. Of course you will." "Do this task for me and I'll reset this entire chain of events and put you back with your little blonde tart as though nothing had ever happened." I shrug, "Or we can let events play out as they do now. Either way the alarm has already been sounded and events will continue." I shrug, "But one reality allows you to have it all, and the other…." I shrug. "The other ends up with her pretty blonde head in pieces across the back wall of the book store alongside the little gothling and her cat." Holding up a finger, I call for a pause, "Oh, but do not think this is a threat, my dear. I'm not one of those little rabble-rousers like those so-called Gods you've had to deal with. That is just how these events play out." I smile… "As for who I am? I'm simply a Nobody."
There's a long, momentary silence, as Liyara gives a languid blink. Then two. Then she opens her mouth slowly. She isn't taking a long time to think, she's taking a long time to perform thinking. She is accustomed to people underestimating her speed and playing into it, utterly. "...But I blocked." Liyara, the headmaster of an academy of arcane arts, which surely requires a potent intelligence and remarkable education, says this simple thing as if it could rectify any and all situations. "...Mr. uh... ..." Liyara pauses, reaching about her gown and only really now noticing that she is wearing quite elegant gloves. Oh, that is nice. She reaches into the slight excuse for a pocket in the gown, a seam that really is only there for visibility, not to hold anything for that would ruin the silhouette. Despite that, she pulls out... oh. It's a card made of flame, not a real card. Well. That makes sense. She is rather one note. She scrupulously examines the card she just created, furrowing her brows to highlight the performance. "...Mr. Nobody." She casually hits on the proper name, but also completely whiffs as she assumes it to be an incredibly minor slight, taking him at his word. She tosses the flaming "card" in the same manner, leaning forward with a smile that, by contrast, has the perfect amount of teeth. Radiant. Dripping with charm. "...You are obviously a man of impeccable taste. Some sort of otherworldly power that will doubtless take me centuries to achieve." The nerve! "And you were watching us despite very much not being in the room OR setting off my scrying wards." She has scrying wards? Of course she does. "So I will assume you know many things I do not, while I am dreadfully limited by my own mind and lackluster imagination." She bats her eyes once, twice, and then sighs. "And the only thing I know is that I am far too important to be bothered by that silly explosion, and it won't get to Yoiko through me." A single, tiny beat. "So do tell me then, good sir. Remarkable sir. Sir who looks quite sharp in that vest. Why will Yoiko be dying and what will you be asking of me to stop her from doing so?"
I pick at the dirt under my nails and shrug, "I'm only speaking the facts. There are two ways this scene ends for you. In the first version the localized break in reality takes out the building and everyone inside it, save for you of course because you're the magical Mary Sue of your own story and everything revolves around you." I give a polite nod to her exquisitely chosen attire. "Thus the gown you currently wear." I pause with a smile as I peak behind the veil, "Of course I'm well aware that the original Mary Sue happened to be an original Star Trek character who everyone on the USS Enterprise fell absolutely in love with. The irony is not lost on me." But I digress and must continue. "The other way this scene ends involves you taking advantage of the weave in the moment it's presence will be felt in the explosion and you heroically save the day, possibly showing off that impressive dragon form you have. One requires only a few more seconds on the clock than the other." At this point I expected a few more mind games. Of course, dear readers, I expected a fight. Not obedience. I expected a struggle against the narrative as I presented it, but I'm sure the dear muse thinks it's funny to have her play along. To have her go with the flow in that trademarked passive way that she's doing. It doesn't amuse me. It doesn't amuse you. It doesn't amuse that annoying bard in the fork who…. I glance around looking for some trace of him. He was here. I swear he was. Or I am confusing things because it's been two years since last time…? No matter. "I don't care what happens. It's not important to me. What is important to me is a bird. A single black bird that may or may not be locked inside that ugly appliance spewing steam into the air when you triggered the incident that brought you here. Sure, I may have nudged things along slightly, but you would have either ended up here or died in the process - so I consider it a win." With that settled, I make my request clear again. "Should you find the bird, and believe me - you'll know it when you see it. You find a way to get it into a box. A little Schrodinger situation. That way I can claim it. Do that and you go back, and I'll go back to staying out of your way. Aside from a little amusing dream sequence here and there, of course." I smile that wicked smile of mine, "It's not like that little mirror incursion affected anything more than a little sand in your eyes…."
"Mary... Sue?" The meta-title is this time completely lost on Liyara, with no red mage to unhelpfully point out exactly what's happening. "...I don't know what that is, but you're right. Everything does revolve around me. I'm glad you understand." She tosses her hair once, very clearly for effect as she basically never does that, and then crosses her arms. "And if I do this, you'll... what? Give me that extra time?" Liyara watches the man for a moment, her eyes shining. "...Or rather, give it back to me since you're stealing it now?" She attempts to imitate his studied disinterest, but her gloves are not nearly as interesting as her nails would have been, and she furrows her brows sincerely this time. "...My death will simply be my cue to take over hell," She says simply and earnestly, still looking distraught, "but I'd prefer to spare Yoiko and, I suppose that cat..." What about the person, Liyara? What about the one running the book shop?! Mirror incursion... mirror incursion... Liyara's eyes narrow, like she's trying to piece together a puzzle but she can't get at the piece. It's just out of sight, out of mind, or was it out of mind out of sight? Her eyes glass over, and she does that "reading something in her memory" thing that she is known to do when collating immense amounts of data, but for once, she comes back with nothing. "...You don't affect my dreams." She finally states after a moment, looking back at the Nobody. "...My Oneiromantic precautions remain intact." Is that even a real word?! "...I don't think I'm privy to your jokes, and I rather don't enjoy that."
The omniscient narrator's smile widens. "Ah-hah. There's a kindling of that flame I was waiting for. It's not so hard to push back when you have something worth the attention, is it?" I smile and gesture around at the White Space. "You are outside of your reality. Outside of," a chuckle, "well… everything. This is the white that peers beyond the darkness. This is the blank space at the margins of the book of your life." I lean forward, a subtle darkness showing itself behind my brilliant blue eyes. "Time means nothing here." After a moment I dismiss the notion itself, choosing instead to continue with my villain monologue, "But let's cut the bullshit. I don't care about you, or that piece of ass you're running around with. I don't care about that cat, or the woman who feeds it." My voice darkens to reflect the look in my eyes, "I don't even care about that stupid bird." And just like that the darkness is gone again and I'm back to my cheerful, charming self. "But right now it's all a means to an end. My life gets easier if you go from point A to B to C without mucking about in the middle crying over something you cannot change alone - and even if it results in your sudden but inevitable betrayal of my bargain, I've already gotten what I need from you." I shrug, "So take it or don't. It doesn't matter to me."
"Oh?" Liyara's voice perks up several octaves when the man explains where... when... what... this is. She doesn't believe it, of course, but since when has the path to the truth been about belief? "Vahrimiss." The word doesn't sound in the way a normal word sounds. Which is to say, it is shaped by a tongue, given weight by air, and passes from lips, but that's where the similarities to other words end. The word is a placeholder, a word left in the oldest of languages, that reverberates like every unanswered prayer, every incomplete goal, and every abandoned promise all at once, a sort of sonar ping that only those who speak the languages above Celestial and below Abyssal can utter. How it reflects back to her will determine the shape of this place in a way no eyes can see or ears can hear. It is not sound. It is what came before sound. And what word did she use? Vahrimiss. Loosely translated, it means "You're lying." But is he? She'll determine that herself. Cut the bullshit? "Yes, let's." She agrees, and sits forward. The gown was, of course, immaculate, so even though it hugs her curves nicely, it is tasteful. This too, she appreciates. "If Time means nothing here, then you are my new favorite antagonist, Mr. Nobody." She still thinks she's being catty calling him that. She has no idea. And I'm not telling her. "...If you've done anything to warrant my enmity, I don't remember it. And I remember everything." Do you, though? Do you? "So in the interest of making friends, I'm inclined to make your life easier contingent on two things. If you're lying to me..." And she'll know momentarily, unless she has, once again, dramatically overestimated herself. It would not be the first time today, and yet it is still something of a rarity otherwise. A paradox. Like this place. Like this conversation. "...and if I can come back." Oh?
For what it's worth, I'm not lying. Not even by omission. "I'm not your antagonist. Not yet. Not specifically yours either. I'm just a man displaced from reality with a beautiful voice and a penchant for narrating, existing in a space that lets me bend an ear or two and manipulate events by simply doing so." "I admitted to having some fun with a dream or two, but that's child's play. Nothing more." I shrug as I begin to briskly walk around the table and chair, "My influence is more subtle than that, but my anger can be much more… direct." I pause, a simple demonstration would perhaps be efficient? "Allow me to give you an example. If I'd wanted to I could have killed you before I ever brought you here…" My voice grows more serious as I begin to hone my craft at her expense, "Liyara sits, disbelieving the words she's currently hearing. Of course every strange want-to-be God tries to act like they're more important than anyone else. That they're omniscient and they can bend reality at their will. What makes this one any different? Is it his voice? His devilishly good looks?" I turn to face her directly, hovering a few inches from her gaze, "…or is it his words, which even now seem to be turning her fiery blood to ice. The chill starts in her fingertips and traces along her arms, ice crystals forming on her skin even as she looks down in disbelief." "She leaps to her feet, knocking the chair backwards and glaring at the handsome man ready to call upon her magic to destroy him, but the words don't come to her suddenly missing mouth - yet she feels the need to scream!" I stand straight again, holding my hands to the heavens. "BUT THEN…. Then it's all over. Liyara feels her body return to normal, albeit with a temporary stutter as even now her teeth continue to chatter from the cold." I clap my hands and laugh, "Oh, but that's not enough is it? A simple trick of hypnosis? A creative suggestion? Some indigestion caused by those awful cheese flavored puffs Yoiko insisted on purchasing earlier? Which is when the narrator snaps his fingers. Realizing the next best thing, something definitive that couldn't be easily done with a mind game or two. Suddenly she feels herself shift, turning her into the young Engineer. The sensation of her insides twisting and turning not entirely uncomfortable, but certainly foreign. It's not until the Hax symbiont is suddenly nestled inside her, latching itself into her nervous system, and the memories of three previous lifetimes including Yoiko's herself, come flooding into her thoughts." "Daemon, the proud Dilithium miner who couldn't have children and died alone. His only talent being the ability to drink anyone and everyone under the table. Linda the paraplegic musician who wasted her resources on her children instead of making sure she could have the ability to walk. …and of course Yoiko Enoch. The young engineer who offset her years of training with the knowledge of the other two to get a fast pass into the Star Fleet, despite having to abandon most contact with her home world, and helped design one of the prototype nacelles that would eventually rip her precious ship apart and take the life their dear doctor." I smile wickedly, "…and even now as the thoughts try to merge themselves into Liyara's mind she seethes in anger that this weak little human before her could rewrite her existence with only a few words." "Look, Liyara. I'm not here to fight you or grandstand about how great I am. I meant when I said I've already gotten what I needed from you. Oh, and I do hope you hate me for this. Enough to warrant finding a way back here to kill me, perhaps? I'd like that very much." I must admit I'm almost giddy at this point. "I just needed you to know I EXIST. Why specifically you? Because you where the easiest one to lure here and the one most likely to realize that I can be killed and find a way to do so. After all, now you'll spend the rest of eternity wondering if your actions are your own, or if I'm just being a bastard."
"Wh---" The chill stops Liyara, and as her mouth disappears and she finds herself on her feet, staring at first herself, then back up into the man's eyes, those brilliant green eyes of hers frost over, as if to flash-freeze, but then the pupils dilate again, and bafflingly, her pupils, JUST her pupils dilating, are enough to shake off the sheet of ice forming. When her mouth returns, she takes a breath, her eyes racing back and forth, mapping out everything. Whatever else is about to happen, she needs to be aware, she needs to be focused, she needs to be cataloguing, she needs to be... Yoiko. She needs to be Yoiko, apparently. The brief moment of dysphoria, of feeling genuinely vulnerable for the first time in a while, of everything she is being stripped away, is still not enough to break her concentration, not completely. She... was cataloguing. What was she cataloguing? As Liyara's blazing fast mind, crystal clear focus, and iron will are completely sublimated, Yoiko's takes over. Task-based, scientific, rigorous, razor-sharp. She was cataloguing. She can't remember what, she is not Liyara anymore. But the thought, the thought echoes. Focus. Remember. Pay attention. So Yoiko does. The method. Observe all, discard nothing, observe again. Her memories. Sharp. The feeling of the symbiont attached to her nervous system. Accurate. True. Anchoring. The memories pulled through it, not so sharp. Soft, engulfing, supportive. They are warm and comforting like ambrosia drawn through a sieve. This is who she is, who they were, who we are. All good. All there. Linda's songs, her children. Check. Daemon's favorite booze and how it changes three shots in. Check. The sensations of her ears, eyes, smell, ambient internal temperature in so much as she can consciously assess them all. White space. A human man. Handsome. Great voice. Lies with the truth, instantly clocked. Currently on a power trip. Talking ... not to her. To... Liyara? Liyara. Her memories of Liyara surface, and she catalogues them, too. There is a different kind of warmth there, but dwelling is not the task at hand. Observe. Analyze. Some incredibly small part of her, distant as the stars, assesses whether she would be comfortable wearing a nice pair of pumps. That's a weird thought to come unbidden. She is passing this information on. To... someone. Herself? To Liyara? Not the weirdest thing that's happened to her this week, probably. Wait. Did she just explode? No, focus. "...The cheese puffs were awful." Liyara Yoiko finally admits, looking... lost? No. Never lost. Concerned? Maybe. Thoughtful? Certainly. That's when she hears it. The reverberation. The man isn't lying. And she remembers. Some part of her, of Liyara witnessing herself breaking down, remembers. And Liyara Yoiko goes completely still. It's only a second, maybe two. For her, and people like her, it's a small eternity, as she waits, cataloguing every single part of her mind and her brain, for they are two separate things. A normal person, or perhaps a sane person, would be worrying about whether or not they are in control. And ... in a way, she is. But her first act, when faced with a complete loss of control of her body, the fabric of her reality, her very identity and memory... is to commit every memory of Yoiko's, Daemon's, and Linda's that she experienced into her own memory, and run the mental equivalent of a CRC check on them, herself, and everything else second to that. "You hope I hate you?" She eventually looks back up to the Nobody, those eyes watering with... well, actual saline flows from her tear ducts... She's crying? Is this what crying feels like for humanoids, and not giant molten lizards cosplaying at being human? "You've just given me three of the most beautiful gifts you could have given me." Oh, here we go. We've all read these stories, time and again. How lovely and heart-warming, to know that she so cherishes the memories of Yoiko and her past lives. "You showed me you exist." She says quietly, and those eyes, brightest cobalt now, dilate in a "normal" fashion. "You let me experience... this." She puts a hand on her Yoiko's sternum, taking a deep breath and just... feeling. Yes, even this decrepit old lizard heart does have room for sentimentality after all. Were you starting to doubt her for a moment? "And you told me you can die." Those eyes brighten, and somehow, just for an instant, an impossible instant briefer than the window between the stepped electrons reaching down from the sky and summoning a Forked Leader back up into the sky, they blaze green again. Or maybe it's a hallucination, a trick of the light. After all, she can't manipulate reality. Yes, perhaps our unreliable narrator's senses are just being unreliable. It's probably just that. "You're my third favorite person now. Because you've solved all of my problems all at once. You want me to put a crow in a box? Of course, darling," she drawls, somehow lapsing into Liyara's more imperious, Faerunian accent, "for you, I'll slap a label on the box and ship it, too." She sounds... ... happy. Well. That's... probably fine.
Well, that won't do. That won't do at all. I narrow my eyes and reality comes flooding back in. "Cute. See? That's the fire I was expecting this whole time. Defiant. Stubborn. Liyara shifts back into control as her body returns to normal. The extra minds fading away slowly but surely." The very nerve of her. Beautiful gifts!? Are you fucking kidding me? I don't even care that she just agreed to everything. The very thought of her suddenly sickens me. Gone is the illusion of the man I once was and replaced is the form I am now cursed to hold. Broken pieces of a man floating in a rough approximation of my form. Half of my face gone. Glowing light shimmering from the cracks between my pieces. Pale human skin and what looks like a sliming black body suit are stretched over the chunks. Look, I didn't get any consultation regarding how I look. What's your excuse? "…whatever." The word tastes foul on my lips. "Go save your other half, cherish your little lives, and enjoy watching it all crumble when it inevitably falls apart." The very nerve of her. "Just make sure you ask Satoshi about ATOMSK before you eventually waste your time chasing steam. Otherwise you won't understand the third act at all." I shrug to dismiss her. She only has to walk away. Why I don't just SEND her away is a question I don't feel like answering right now. I don't even feel like listening to music anymore.
Liyara watches him as her body is hers again. Her mind is hers again. She snatches what she can, like every microsecond more of Yoiko's memories is water and she has wandered, parched, for centuries. And then they are gone, and she is whole again. "...Amazing." She says as her eyes behold the creature that was once human. He still looks human, after a fashion, like someone unspooled a human, unwrapped his human suit and found nothing inside. "You are this ethereal thing, beyond whatever human form you once wore, perhaps beyond any human." Her voice intones softly, getting quieter, like she is speaking to a frightened animal instead of an incredibly powerful creature that could unmake her, and in fact already has. "But you don't realize what you've done." She takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, concentrates for a moment, and then she weaves an image in the air with fire, drawing before this Nobody what she sees in her mind. And what she sees in her mind is... complex. Neural pathways that would give a positronic brain an inferiority complex retrieve the architecture, the anatomy of her universe at dizzying speeds, delivering them to her hand as she traces the lines, the esoteric math, shape, constants, and structure that underpin it all. A line from hers to other adjacent ones, planes of fire, ether, and dozens more, all traced in nearly an instant. And then... another line... from this cluster to what she clearly draws as a smaller cluster inside a singularity. And from that, to another cluster. Even before she gets far, it's obviously Yoiko's universe. The math is different. The shape is different. Even the constants are different. Only the vaguest of similarities remain. "I could spend eternity mapping these out. Do you know how long it takes? Of course you do." She says, as if her operations to covertly map the infrastructure of the universes and pocket universes she finds herself in were completely public knowledge. Well, he said she's the main character. That means he was reading. Watching? Yes. "...Or..." She traces a wide circle around everything, and alights this one with pure white flame that expands and fills all the spaces in between everything she's drawn out. "...I can get it all from here without wasting an instant of time." She stares Mr. Nobody in the eyes, which requires a tilting of her head with the way his... ness... moves. "Are you going to stop me? Or are we going to be friends?" She's smiling, but... there's a manic excitement behind her eyes now. Something obsessive. Something inhuman. She wants this. She wants it badly. She will kill him die trying to get it, if she has to.
I turn and stare, my one eye twitching. "This place doesn't give you power. You can't just take it for yourself. Even if you could I could just narrate it away from you. The trouble with being omniscient is how painfully mundane each interaction can truly be. I let a little bit spill over here. I nudge a few things over there. Then the little peons like yourself decide, 'Oh, I have this brilliant idea.' Then you dance for me until I grow tired of the song." I let out a deep breath, and resolve myself back to my old form again. "I'm tired of this song." I walk back, glaring into her amber eyes. My voice much more matter-of-fact. "I can rewrite you into nothingness and there's little you can do about it." Let's set that in stone, shall we? "Liyara knows she cannot kill Mr. Nobody. Not just yet. She has to return here before that door will open up for her." There. Is that solid enough? "And she will return here. By the Nine Hells of Baator, she will return here." With that I offer an apologetic smile, "But for now you need to leave, because if you stay here you won't ever be able to do so and your little gal-pal meets her end alone, and the only pussy she'll ever see again is Kylie's little Pagan, splattering along with the rest of her across the street outside Ray's little bookstore. Capiche?"
"I have power, darling." She uses that term again, she's never used it on Yoiko which means it's not a term of affection, but a knife. "What I don't have is time. Dragons age. Events come and go. Universes collapse." She says all of this like she's witnessed it, but our narrator can read her profiles and her secret histories, he knows she's not even cracked two hundred years yet. She's merely an adult red dragon, and barely one at that, just out of young adulthood. In dragon terms she's "barely legal." If Dragons cared about consent. "...I don't want YOUR power. How droll." She waves a hand at him, almost dismissively. "To take someone else's power is the absolute height of insecurity and shows a weak pride. No. This place represents infinite time, and therefore infinite knowledge." She looks away for a moment, then feels this narration wrapping around her and snaps her head back, green eyes blazing as they meet his. "Don't you go visiting my understanding, my knowledge. Not ever!" There's the rage. Not before. Not when she and her entire reality was putty in his hands for his demonstration, but when they were talking like two people and he had the audacity to press "skip cutscene." She turns away again and marches off. "It was strange meeting you. But you looked better in your true form. In case you wanted MY consultation in how you look." Oh how sweet, she likes the glowing unspooling tapeworm loo-- ... wait. Run that back?
I watch her go with a shake of my head. "You know, when you were regaling me with her tales, you didn't tell me she'd be so FEISTY." The comment, of course, being directed at our absent little mage who SHOULD HAVE PROBABLY SPOKEN UP BY NOW. "And don't try to tell me that you've suddenly gone mute because the little Trill hooked your fork up to a communicator. Probably voided the warranty too." Oh, but I suppose I should hold up to my end of the bargain. I did promise to help get rid of that nasty little scene lock I suppose. Liyara will find herself stepping out of the White Space like walking out of a fog. Lain finds herself curled up in a ball, floating beside her new friend. She pulls off her bear cap and slowly pulls herself back to her feet. "I'm fine. Thank you." He's given a side-glance about that 'only person I can talk to' comment, but then she pulls out her mobile device, flicking screens showing Twisted into the air around them. It takes a moment of searching before she points towards a screen showing Ray's Occult. Kylie Griffin stands over a smoking PKE meter while Yoiko Hax tries to get a closer look. Liyara stands on the opposite side of where she had been before the explosion. "Did something just get edited?" She looks up at Crux with a face full of concern. "Is that possible?" For Lain to be unsure of something is a bad thing. Potentially a very bad thing. Let's hope it never happens again.
𝕊𝕠. 𝕎𝕖'𝕣𝕖 𝕓𝕒𝕔𝕜 𝕚𝕟 𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕣𝕠𝕠𝕞 𝕟𝕠𝕨. ℕ𝕠, 𝕟𝕠𝕥 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕝𝕠𝕓𝕓𝕪 𝕠𝕗 ℝ𝕒𝕪'𝕤 𝕆𝕔𝕔𝕦𝕝𝕥, 𝕚𝕗 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕡𝕝𝕒𝕔𝕖 𝕔𝕒𝕟 𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕟 𝕓𝕖 𝕤𝕒𝕚𝕕 𝕥𝕠 𝕙𝕒𝕧𝕖 𝕒 𝕝𝕠𝕓𝕓𝕪. 𝕋𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕧𝕒𝕤𝕥, 𝕦𝕟𝕥𝕖𝕟𝕒𝕓𝕝𝕖 𝕔𝕝𝕦𝕤𝕥𝕖𝕣 𝕠𝕗 𝕔𝕠𝕟𝕧𝕖𝕣𝕘𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕝𝕖𝕪𝕝𝕚𝕟𝕖𝕤, 𝕡𝕝𝕠𝕥𝕝𝕚𝕟𝕖𝕤, 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕓𝕪𝕝𝕚𝕟𝕖𝕤 𝕥𝕙𝕒𝕥 𝕙𝕒𝕧𝕖 𝕒𝕝𝕝 𝕘𝕠𝕥𝕥𝕖𝕟 𝕛𝕒𝕞𝕞𝕖𝕕 𝕥𝕠𝕘𝕖𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕣 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕟𝕖𝕒𝕣𝕝𝕪 𝕕𝕖𝕥𝕠𝕟𝕒𝕥𝕖𝕕 𝕒 𝕞𝕦𝕝𝕥𝕚𝕧𝕖𝕣𝕤𝕖'𝕤 𝕨𝕠𝕣𝕥𝕙 𝕠𝕗 𝕓𝕠𝕠𝕜𝕤𝕥𝕠𝕣𝕖𝕤. 𝔸𝕟𝕕 𝕗𝕠𝕣 𝕨𝕙𝕒𝕥? 𝕊𝕠 𝕃𝕚𝕪𝕒𝕣𝕒 𝕔𝕠𝕦𝕝𝕕 𝕙𝕒𝕧𝕖 𝕒 𝕥𝕚𝕟𝕪 𝕓𝕚𝕥 𝕞𝕠𝕣𝕖 𝕜𝕟𝕠𝕨𝕝𝕖𝕕𝕘𝕖? 𝕊𝕙𝕖 𝕤𝕦𝕣𝕖 𝕤𝕖𝕖𝕞𝕤 𝕥𝕠 𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕟𝕜 𝕥𝕙𝕒𝕥 𝕠𝕧𝕖𝕣𝕣𝕚𝕕𝕖𝕤 𝕞𝕠𝕣𝕖 𝕤𝕖𝕟𝕤𝕚𝕓𝕝𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕟𝕘𝕤 𝕝𝕚𝕜𝕖 𝕡𝕣𝕖𝕔𝕒𝕦𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟𝕤, 𝕠𝕣 𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕟 𝕛𝕦𝕤𝕥 𝕣𝕖𝕘𝕦𝕝𝕒𝕣 𝕔𝕒𝕦𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟𝕤. ℂ𝕠𝕞𝕖 𝕥𝕠 𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕟𝕜 𝕠𝕗 𝕚𝕥, 𝕨𝕙𝕖𝕟 𝕐𝕠𝕚𝕜𝕠 𝕥𝕠𝕤𝕤𝕖𝕕 𝕙𝕖𝕣 𝕥𝕙𝕒𝕥 𝕓𝕠𝕠𝕜, 𝕤𝕙𝕖 𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕕 𝕚𝕥 𝕚𝕞𝕞𝕖𝕕𝕚𝕒𝕥𝕖𝕝𝕪 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕣𝕒𝕡𝕚𝕕𝕝𝕪. 𝕊𝕙𝕖 𝕨𝕒𝕤𝕥𝕖𝕕 𝕟𝕠 𝕥𝕚𝕞𝕖. 𝕀𝕤 𝕥𝕙𝕒𝕥... 𝕕𝕠𝕖𝕤 𝕤𝕙𝕖 𝕙𝕒𝕧𝕖 𝕤𝕠𝕞𝕖 𝕤𝕠𝕣𝕥 𝕠𝕗 𝕔𝕠𝕟𝕕𝕚𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟? 𝕎𝕒𝕚𝕥, 𝕟𝕠, 𝕓𝕖𝕗𝕠𝕣𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕒𝕥. -҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉-҉ "Edited?" Crux's still basically blind for a moment; his normally golden irises are basically all black now, with little gold flecks swirling in them instead of the normal gold-with-black-flecks look they usually sport. "What do you mean edited?" The pupils slooooowly contract, here where time has no flow, and he winces. "...Oh. She's not standing in the same spot. The hell did she do?" And that's when the Advent does a double take. He was looking with his temporal-spatial vision. Because, OBVIOUSLY trying to look at someone in a different universe entirely with your basic human eyesight is an endeavor in futility. So. Then. Why does he find himself staring directly at Liyara? In the normal "she's right over there and she can see me" way? He slowly lowers the arm he'd instinctively held up to shield his vision from the "light", even though that could never have helped. His eyes narrow, and he sees Liyara directly in front of him - a hole in the fabric of space-time ripped in between himself and the dragoness. It's a jagged, pixelated tear, as if someone tore through a video game screen to get to him. "Well. You don't see that every day." -҉ "...Bahamut's blood, what an odd creature." Liyara murmurs, before realizing that where there should be a gaping hole in the building, there is instead a gaping hole in time space. And she is face to face with a man with silver hair and narrowed, golden eyes. He looks irritated, which... in fairness, so is she. "...Yoiko?" She affords herself a slight glance behind her before returning her attention to the man. If it's not one weirdo it's another. Who just casually sits in a hole between realities? Nobody. Heh. Alright, so, none of that was my fault, and for the record I absolutely told you she was feisty. You just "couldn't hear me" because I "wasn't in the scene" or something. As if that's my fault. Skill issue, clearly.
Yoiko glances over at Liyara as she calls out. It's clear from her eyes still lingering on the device in the shopkeeper's hands that she's hesitating a moment, "What's up?" Her eyes finally catch up to her face and she looks directly at Liyara, not seeing anything amiss. She does pause a moment though and looks to her other side and back, realizing that something was off but not registering it as important enough to focus on. "Don't tell me you already found something that'd help us." So far she doesn't see the gaping hole in time and space, probably because it wasn't meant for her. A shame, because she'd be far more interested in that than the toy on the counter. Lain raises an eyebrow at Crux's portal, shaking her head and the needlessly flashy method of looking across the vast expanse. It only lasts a moment before she's peering at Liyara too. Unfortunately for all her time watching individuals, she never quite figured out that necessary 'how to read them' part. She narrows her eyes as if trying to see something that isn't there, but quickly gives up and goes back to trying to understand how something edits a moment in time. Elsewhere, the monitor continues to display it's warning about ATOMSK. Seems like Liyara wasn't the only thing not properly put back exactly as it should have been…
There's a long moment where Crux and Liyara just seem to stare at each other. Crux's eyes narrow further, like he's squinting, trying to see something, while Liyara becomes unnaturally still, and the ambient temperature in the room increases by three or four degrees. It only lasts for a few brief moments, and then Crux's eyes slide off of the dragoness and down to the dagger at her hip. He furrows his brows for a moment, then smiles to himself and looks back to Liyara with a bit of a smug smirk. And then the portal closes, leaving the two scenes separate once more. "Well. That was about as successful as was suggested." Crux offers to Lain, turning to the girl now that they're "alone" again, but doesn't bother elaborating what was successful or who suggested it. "She didn't do it. Someone else did." He holds a hand out to Lain, offering to show her what he saw. "Wanna see?" Oh hey, this position is reversed from what it was a while back. Now he's offering and she almost certainly isn't thrilled. -҉ "Found... a few somethings..." The dragoness watches the portal close, and for the first time in Yoiko's memory, Liyara is sweating. "...Today is not at all going like I expected." She turns back to Yoiko and Kylie, looking over the meter. "...Bird, what bird?" She asks herself, but really she's asking a certain Michelin Man Cosplayer where the hell this weird creature she's supposed to box up is. She said she'd do it. She'll do it. She just... doesn't understand. Even if he'd dropped the name Atomsk, she's only heard it once before interconnected with gibberish. Though the recollection of WHEN she'd heard it might set her nerves atingle again. Why did she come back here again? Right. Promises. She should stop making those.
At this point Liyara has Yoiko's full attention. Although a smile does cross her lips when she realizes that Liyara is looking at a Stay Puff figurine. "Did you say something about a bird?" She reaches over, pickup up the figure and marching it across the counter. "Mister Puff isn't a bird. He's the form of the destructor! Many schlubs and zools where burned that day." Kylie just rolls her eyes at the conversation, deciding to use her photographic memory to recite Vinz's quote. "During the third reconciliation of the last of the Meketrex supplicants, they chose a new form for him, that of a giant Sloar. Many Shubs and Zulls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of a Sloar that day, I tell you." It was weird having people quote things from your world, but at least this one seems to respect it. Yoiko laughs and gestures back with her thumb. "That! Exactly!" She giggles a little, putting the Stay Puff back where she found it. "You wanna talk about it?" Lain raises an eyebrow, very aware of the sudden shift in their dynamic. As if to answer his question, she pulls the bear hat back over her head. "After you…"
Crux just offers Lain a brilliant, devastatingly radiant smile. "Alright, but this is gonna be weird and wild, I don't have any psychic memory transfer or whatever the newfangled kids use these days, so I'm gonna just have to brute force it, alright?" ...Alright. ...What does that m-- "Don't say I didn't warn you." And then Crux is literally re-shaping the light that's hitting Lain's eyes, just straight up playing a projector onto her retina, but not in the painful way, just in the sudden and probably unexpected way, as Lain will suddenly see exactly what he saw as he was staring at Liyara, but cued up as if it was all being seen through a normal visual cortex and not whatever strange organ Crux uses to see fifth dimensionally. It begins with the portal, massless space-time ejecta parting around it to reveal Liyara's form, and then the woman turning to look directly at Crux Lain. Weirdly, Lain will also hear what Crux heard - some sort of inner-ear stimulation, perhaps? "Bahamut's blood, what an odd creature." She said microseconds before her expression registered that she saw Crux through the portal. The feed is played back in slow motion, but there's no audio warping, like time dilation still thoughtfully plays all the right notes at the right speed. There is an... emptiness behind Liyara, a wrongness. Like a wake she leaves in the timestream - Lain can see it follows Yoiko, too. The absence is confusing, but it is Kylie's presence that gives it context; effortlessly, as a tiny side thing in the corner of her "vision", Crux Lain can see a blurred, steady line of after-images behind Kylie of everything the girl did before Yoiko and Liyara walked in for the day. It's... quiet, subtle, like the notes of a perfume in the air or the slight sound of someone's breathing, but it's there and visible and becomes more and less clear depending on how much of Crux'sLain's attention drifts to Kylie. "Yoiko?" The recording of Liyara doesn't break his her gaze, but allows some glance back towards her blonde companion. There is the sense of Crux's Lain's eyes narrowing, not the physical sensation but the visuals being played back to her. The emptiness in her wake grows, distorts very slightly, but still does not resolve into anything, like eyes trying to focus on an image that just won't be focused upon. The recording of Liyara becomes stone-still now, and the insane detail with which this "recording" was captured allows Lain to perhaps see what she did not the first time. Blood vessels constricting. Pupils thinning. Face flushing. Muscles tensing. Liyara was afraid. Lain can "hear" the recording of Yoiko's response, and that's when stuff gets... weird. Crux's Lain's gaze drifts down to Liyara's dagger, and the slightly blurred trail behind it just explodes into visual focus, the result of so much effort being attempted to focus on Liyara suddenly succeeding on the dagger that the last week of the dagger's existence just sort of leaps into view. A disintegration, a space station, a pleasant grove, a skip in the recording, a pleasant grove, a space station again, another disintegration, Twisted, a bookstore. Wait. Go back. A skip in the recording? The dagger's history rewinds as Crux Lain goes back over the visuals. The dagger's owner and her blonde companion in the grove. A skip. The dagger's owner waking up. Rewind. Skip. Rewind. Skip. Rewind. Slowly forward. Frame by fr--skip. Fast forward to the bookstore. The dagger's owner casting some basic magic ritual, a hand motion that has temporal weight - it has been performed hundreds of thousands of times before, but none of those times blew anything up. A flash of light, the universe staggering under the weight of Ray's folly... and then... skip. The dagger's owner has changed locations in the store. ... Rewind. Skip. Rewind. Skip. ... The same pattern. Like a bit of the film was simply... edited out. The visuals rush away from Lain's eyes finally, Crux releasing her from this picture show. "...See?" That's Crux this time. Wow. Someone needs to slap that guy. -҉ "Some of those words made sense to me, and almost as many sound like you made them up." Liyara replies to Kylie and Yoiko's little quote off, her eyes searching around them for some sign of this black bird. Crow? Raven? Shapeshifty familiar? She won't miss it. She's a very good multitasker. "Talk about what? About the Destructor, Schlubs, and Zools?" Liyara blinks once, and tilts her head. Then looks back at Kylie, who is giving very "disaffected youth" energy. "...Are these things you speak of real? Not some elaborate fiction humans conjured for entertainment?"
Lain's expression from the outside is probably far too amusing. The young woman tilts her head, blinks, winces, blinks, stares. Her head tilts from one side to the other. Each time things seem to rewind she opens her mouth to speak but completely fails to do so making her repeat the entire process. Once things go back to normal, Lain simply lowers her head rubbing the bridge of her nose with one hand. "That can't be right. It doesn't work like that." She finally looks up again, crossing her arms. "Who would even have the power to do something like that? Twisted doesn't have a normal flow of time. You can't rewind a fixed quantity of time energy. When it's gone, it's gone. There's not enough to 'time travel.'" One can almost hear the air quotes in her voice. "Even when Twisted was 'young' time didn't actually move backwards. It just aged at an accelerated rate as it burned off the energy is stole from Chronos and the chaos from Trinune." Look, we're not going to talk about how she knows these things. She's proved she can read our wiki in her spare time. Don't question it. After a moment's hesitation, she addresses the elephant in the room with a look of worry. "Is there a third watcher somewhere?" Kylie shrugs her shoulders at Liyara's question, stating rather matter-of-factly, "It is where I come from. You guys are the weirdos who think the Manhattan Cross Rip of '85 is a movie." She ponders that a moment before sliding still-smoking PKE meter into a drawer. "The movie you guys know is almost identical to the one they made in Dimension 68-R, but they didn't look anything like the Ghostbusters in that world." "Speaking of, my favorite alternate dimension the guys have charted is 68-E. I'm a badass in that one, but the time frame is all screwed up and Dr Spengler is older than he should be." Yoiko tilts her head as she listens to Kylie speak, "No chance you wouldn't mind filling out some paperwork to document all that, would you? The Federation would love to add that to our database." Kylie just laughs, "You think they didn't document everything the moment they had a chance? Come by here later and I'll get you a printout. I'd do it now but we'd run out of ink before I got to volume 4." It should probably be a worry that the Commander is suddenly far too excited about that offer...
"I see." Liyara muses quietly, taking Kylie at her word. "So any idea anyone had for a story may have a matching or at least rhyming reality somewhere." Her eyes glass over for a moment. She really should have asked Mr. Nobody for his name. She can't well search up "Mr. Nobody" and expect any useful results. A complete failure on her part. She rifles through her perfect memories, narrowing her eyes for a moment. Wait. She's back here, she can corroborate that man's story. See if she was being taken for a loop, for a mind-game, or if she really did become Yoiko for that brief moment. "...Yoiko, what was Daemon's favorite alcoholic refreshment? And what about three shots in?" If she remembers that correctly, that's a detail she likely couldn't have made up - for instance, she didn't even know those beverages until moments ago. -҉ "Probably." Crux says casually to Lain's question, sounding relatively unconcerned about the idea of another watcher. "In my experience there's always someone skulking about. Usually it's me, but still." The young girl can see the Advent looking lost in thought for a moment. "...I don't... actually understand time the way you just described it, like it has some sort of finite quantity. I'm a bit more instinctive. But..." He taps his chin for a moment, looking pensive. "Probably..." He starts and trails off again, and starts tapping his foot on the empty space. It's an obvious habit that marks him as having grown up human immediately. "... Probably whoever they are isn't manipulating time. It's probably something else, entirely, and this is just a side effect." Well look at him, he got there in the end. Sort of. Anyway it's pretty good for an idiot. But what would that mean, Crux? "Probably means some sort of reality warping, some anti-scrying measures, or extremely high speed teleportation, faster than even my eyes." There's a pause for a moment, then a chuckle. "That last one's pretty unlikely."
The blonde engineer is still a little too engrossed into the idea of a Stanz/Spengler multiverse guide to really click to the question being presented. Amusingly, or almost because of this, she doesn't quite realize what she's about to say until it's too late. "Depends on what I'm feeling, really. If I can get it, a Saurian Brandy. If I can't..." Slowly realization starts to dawn on her, "...an Aldebaran Whiskey." She turns her head slowly, looking at Liyara with narrowing eyes. "...and the third shot don't matter. Surprise me...?" There's a couple of things that go through her mind; none of them particularly pleasant. "When did I ever tell you about Daemon?" Yoiko actually looks offended, and that takes a lot these days. "At first I thought you were asking me some confused question about Ghostbusters, and then..." She folds her arms across her chest, trying to calm herself. "I actually feel a little violated." She hugs herself, trying to get the goosebumps to go away where her skin feels like it's crawling, "You'd better have a dammed good reason for asking me that."
"When you told me he's why you chew your nails." Liyara answers Yoiko's question with zero hesitation, somehow remembering the exact moment and context, because of course she does. "But you didn't tell me his favorite drinks. Nor about Linda's children, only her music. So." There's a long pause from Liyara, and then she tucks her chin in. She looks... worried? Concerned. But also excited. "It was real. ...Something big is happening, I suspect. I just met one of Twisted's 'Gods'. Or, well, he was honest enough to say he wasn't a God, which means I don't have to kill him to prove he can die, and frankly that saves me a lot of time." ... What is she going on about now? "..." After a moment, she looks to Kylie. "...Right, yes. I almost forgot. You should tell your employer that his magical setup with the store's inventory is very dangerous, I almost killed all of us simply by inspecting it. No, I don't know why, I couldn't finish inspecting it. I suspect he's performed some shenanigans with dimensional space." ...Ok. You could possibly have paced this better, Dragon. -҉ "Well there you go, see?" Crux gestures off screen in the vague direction of Yoiko and Liyara's scene. "She just answered it for us. What a helpful monster." He seems entertained. Also, while he's here... He looks back at her dagger, taking his time to get all of that lovely temporal vision in before she can find time to ward it against him like she clearly has done with herself and Yoiko. What's a little bit of metadata sniffing between frenemies? The future Liyara practically told him to. "...What? Are you used to being able to see all the others? I'm not. Must be nice."
Yoiko seems to accept the answer, but her skin continues to crawl anyways as Liyara expands her scope of Hax's lives. It's hard for her to be open about... well, anything really. She is a Trill after all. Being secretive about themselves is kinda their defining trait - not that anyone should know that! Her face seems to become almost green as her body tries to blush and go pale at the same time. Someone on Twisted has told Liyara a lot more than she was willing to divulge, and that's a problem. "We're going to have a very long talk about this later, but can you please stop talking about me?" That probably came out wrong, but Kylie is RIGHT THERE. Kylie, meanwhile, is completely unphased. "Yeah. That sounds about right. Not to mention the amount of cursed objects they've been stockpiling. I swear, every time I walk into the back room expect I'm going to see some Cenobite chattering it's teeth at me." She lets out a long sigh, "Welp. I'm going to be thinking of that all day now, thanks." Lain raises an eyebrow as Crux largely speaks to himself. Having her suspicions confirmed isn't exactly helpful. She's also not entirely sure how much of what he's saying is directed at her or just out loud to himself. She's used to watching quietly, so she does. At least until the silence just starts to become uncomfortable. "I'm not a 'God,' just an observer. I'm not part of any specific reality anymore." She tilts her head to the side and sighs, "Everyone here likes to have a label or a title. It's not very becoming." So says the entity who's name redacts itself whenever it's typed on the wiki.
"...Right, well, neither am I but people make that mistake a lot." Crux's not really looking at Lain right now. He puts a hand to his chin and starts musing. "...It's awfully convenient that the dagger was there to keep a record that the dragon would otherwise have blocked me from seeing." Yes. Actually, yes, that is rather convenient. -҉ "...Right." Liyara just sort of shuts her mouth and looks at Yoiko for a moment. There's analysis, recognition, understanding in those eyes, but they arrive in that specific order. "I am sorry. I was just unmade, turned into something else entirely, and then reshaped back into myself. I am still processing." That's a lie, and we'll call it that on its face. She finished processing that before she walked out. What she is still processing is Yoiko's feelings because somehow, in all of that, she didn't take any of THOSE into consideration at all. And now she is realizing that is... ... not the way to treat a loved one. "...I will show you what happened, but you will not like it, so perhaps later is better, yes." The dragoness takes a deep breath, and then looks to Kylie. "... Do you have anything on the uh... white space?" She hopes that's the right term. It's probably not.
Kylie tilts her head as she ponders what that might mean. "White Space?" She taps her finger on the countertop. "I assume that's not a bad joke about a Starbucks?" Ba-dum-tiiiiish. "White Space….. White Space… In comic books that tends to be a reference to the blank margins outside the panels. Marvel tends to call it the Gutter Space, but I think DC is the White Space. Either way it's the infinite potential, the pristine nothingness outside of reality. It's usually a white void or a universe of infinite energy." Look out, she's gone full librarian mode. "There's not really any books about it *specifically* but you'll find referenced in specific comic books. Gwenpool delves into it a lot as she jumps from page to page within her stories. Deadpool will acknowledge it, usually to make some kind of meta joke. Grant Morison, I believe, used it in a few different stories but he was never entirely clear if it was a space or an entity of itself." Crossing her arms, she ponders a bit more. "The closest thing you're going to find is maybe Purgatory? A place of cleansing, from the verb purgo, 'to clean, cleanse.' Some see it as a state or location between the Earthly Plane and Heaven. Traditionally that's more of a process than a physical location, however. It's also often a type of limbo." She offers up her hands, gesturing in two directions. The first towards the store windows, "You're either going to want to grab a stack of comic books and hope for the best." She then uses her other hand to vaguely motion towards the religious section. "Or you're going to have to get Biblical."
"Comic books?" Liyara looks rather dismayed for a moment. It's possible she's never heard of them, or has and thinks little of them. Probably the latter. "...Gwenpool. Deadpool. These aren't words I'm familiar with. Are these pools like the Zools?" ...She has no idea what any of these words are. At all. When Kylie says Biblical, Liyara just crosses her own arms. "There are many bibles, I believe you will have to be dramatically more specific." Hoo boy. -҉ "Welp." Crux says and stretches his arms over his head. "She's getting sucked into the wide world of comic books, I think I'm done with her." He creates another portal, this time more of a gentle ripple. "You wanted me back here, I'm back here. Are you uh... you gonna come with? Seems kinda lonely out here. When was the last time you had a choco taco?"
Kylie simply shrugs at the question. "Most Bibles have their own views of Heaven and Hell. Even Buddhism has it's Naraka. You're kinda asking me what life forms breathe oxygen. It wouldn't be all of them, but it's going to be a lot." She sighs, shaking her head, "I also have nothing to go by but a vague inkling. You need to dish up a lot more detail before I'm going to know what you're looking for." Almost as an afterthought she adds, "Unless you want to go the coffee shop route? I hear Coffee of Doom used to be pretty popular." She's kidding of course. Maybe. Probably. Lain lets out a sigh at the question about going back. "I'll be there, but I can't go with you. Going would be getting involved and that's not something I can directly do." However, there's an anxiousness there that wasn't apparent before. She wants to go. She wants friends, but that is not her nature or her destiny. "I'll keep looking where I can and see if I can find something else to help answer questions. They do tend to come from the strangest of places after all. I wouldn't be surprised if Dexter somehow knew more about this than we do." That seems strangely prophetic. "When you need me, just call my name. I'll probably be near." With a rather depressing wave she paints on a smile, "Good luck, Mister Caedon. It's been a pleasure to meet you face to face." Her words echoing a greeting that no longer happened.
Crux just tilts his head to one side at that, frowning. "Well. I can come back here, unlike the temporally moored." He jerks a thumb at the portal. "So... uhm. Maybe just tell me what you want for takeout, and I'll bring some back after I deal with the absolute certainty of a cluster that's going to converge on me the second I step foot in there. Come on, a girl's gotta eat, even if she don't gotta eat." Well. It was suggested he should be nice to her. -҉ "I don't.... none of this is helpful. It was a white liminal space where concepts like time and space were relatively meaningless." Liyara tries again, looking frustrated. "It occupied the space between things. Around things?" She's beginning to think there isn't going to be a book on this, which is... frustrating. Most of her study comes from ancient tomes that time forgot
Yoiko just watches the exchange quietly. Her arms are still crossed and that sick look hasn't left her face. She's struggling to rationalize whatever's just transpired. They left the 24*7 in good spirits. The walk seemed to be brisk, but fun. But once they arrived at the bookstore, instead of geeking out of old tomes and magic - Liyara started aggressively dismissing everything. Then the bombshell about Yoiko's past, blurting it out loud where anyone could listen. Now... Now whatever this was. Liyara felt manic to her, like someone obsessed. What did she say? Something about being unmade and put back together again? Was she still holding some grudge about the teleporter? Maybe Yoiko should have been more respectful. It was easy to dismiss the way a normal part of her life would affect those who weren't familiar with it. Clearly Yoiko had done something horrible in Liyara's eyes, but what did this have to do with white space and bible studies? Did Liyara believe that she'd lost her soul in the transport? Shaking a little, Yoiko reaches out a hand to touch Liyara's shoulder. "Hey. It's going to be okay. I'm sorry if the transporter frightened you. It was wrong of me not to tell you about it first, but that doesn't mean you need to go to such an extreme. Let's go somewhere quiet and talk about all of this." Kylie's blind to people being weird with everything she's seen. Between the paranormal, the doorways to other dimensions, and the weird talking turtles, nothing was really 'weird' anymore. Annoying maybe, but not weird. The chick with the wings was just becoming another bossy customer. She'd delt with her kind before. "Eh, maybe you passed through a dimensional gateway. Maybe you're not looking for some other plane of existence but another universe entirely. Happens on Twisted all the time. One minute you're fine, the next minute you're standing in Gotham City." She gives a slight shrug of dismissal and checks on the PKE Meter she'd tossed in a drawer. Yep. Still smoking. "Without more to go on, I can't help you. I'm sorry." Lain gives a warm smile at the offer of him coming back, "I'd like that." But she glances around and sighs, "But not here. The ethereal prison is nice and all, but lacking a little atmosphere, isn't it?" Wait, is she making a joke about space? "Either way, good luck. We'll see each other again soon."
Crux gives a small smirk. "I'm used to not being able to breathe." A pause. "Real used to it now." And then he shrugs. "Anyway, you know how to find me, I bet. So think about what you want to eat so you can let me know. Otherwise I'll have to track you down. You don't want that. I only ever show up at the worst time. You've been warned!" With that, he gives Lain a wave and steps through the portal back to Twisted Street. To Mabase. To Truce Fountain. ... "Oh what the f--" The portal closes. -҉ Liyara just sort of stares at Kylie for a moment, then shrugs and sighs. A place with all the books and none on this very specific thing. Except comic books? ... That sounds like a worthless endeavor. She turns back to Yoiko at the touch, and sees the sick look on her face. "It's..." She blinks at Yoiko's misunderstanding, and then gives a tiny, pained laugh. "...The transporter? Oh, no. This all just happened the moment after that strange device started smoking." She winces a little, furrowing her brows as she goes back over the conversation with the man-that-was-no-longer-a-man. "It is possible that somehow it also never occurred. My understanding of time here is rudimentary." A moment drags on, before she looks down at Yoiko's shaking hand. She looks back up to Yoiko, and actually connects with her gaze for a moment. "...You don't tell people." There it is. That took forever. Liyara pales, which is not something she generally does. "Oh. You don't tell people." Her tail thumps against the floor and then twitches and swishes back and forth. "...𝖐𝖆𝖗𝖘𝖍𝖔𝖏." Translator didn't catch that one, but it was definitely an expletive.
There's an urge in the Commander to yell. To scream exlipdatives! But also to cry. There's nothing rational about these thoughts, but the weight of whatever is going on unspoken is suffocating her. She withdraws her hand, choosing to fold her arms around to hug herself again. Now that Liyara is paying a bit more attention Yoiko tries it again, "So can we go somewhere and talk about things? Somewhere that's not in a book store with a-" an audiance? "I need some air either way. I'm going to step outside. I hope you join me." Kylie watches the exchange with a raised brow. Did she just watch a break-up? It felt like a break-up. If so, good going Blondie! The chick with the wings and the tail feels a bit too self absorbed for her liking. She makes herself look like she's distracted by deciding to come over and bug Pagan for a bit of overdue scratching. "Hey, um. Just in case, you two have some bags over by the door. You don't want to forget them if you need to dash in a hurry." She means the bags from the 24*7 of course. You didn't think they just vanished into nothingness, did you?
Liyara blinks when Yoiko withdraws her hand, and then nods when Yoiko asks if they can do this elsewhere. She looks back to Kylie with surprise, as if she'd forgotten the girl existed once she was no longer of use, and then looks down to the bags. "...Yes. Apologies." For forgetting her, or the bags? Best not to ask. Liyara grabs the bags and heads outside on Yoiko's heels, tossing Kylie a good coin that's probably worth several of the less expensive tomes... Even though she didn't buy anything. It's just custom, apparently. She fights back the urge to snatch it out of the air. It's always present, but today she wins. Once outside, Liyara sighs. She slips out of emergency triage mode, and something like actual emotion slides back into her green eyes. Her slit pupils dilate a bit, and she quirks her lips into a painfully pretty frown. How do you frown prettily? "I'm sorry." That's all she says for now. She doesn't know what else to say in public. So she just... Doesn't.
Yoiko is leaning against the wall beside the door when Liyara comes out, her gaze locked on the sidewalk. When she appologizes, Yoiko lifts her head up too offering a forced smile. "It's... fine. I'm sorry too." She can feel the weight pressing down on her of guilt, embarssment, and something more. Something she isn't able to define yet. She tries to rationalize things, but she also realizes it might be time - whether she wants to or not - to come clean. This wouldn't have happened if she'd have been more open about things. Plus she still wasn't sure that this whole situation wasn't her fault to begin with. "Okay, let's... go ...uh, somewhere." They where headed somewhere when all this started right? Was it her apartment? That's probably fine. "You okay with walking to my apartment, or would you rather go somewhere else?" She glances around herself, suddenly feeling like every eye and ear in range is studying her every movement. Yoiko rubs her arms to fade away the goosebumps that feeling brings with it. There's a lot of feelings bubbling up inside her to unpack, and she wasn't prepared for any of them. This is going to be a day…
Liyara blinks at Yoiko's apology, still looking a bit flummoxed now that her viridian eyes finally have feeling behind them again. "You've sincerely done nothing wrong, Yoiko." Liyara says simply, and then nods, moving the bags to the crook of her arm so that she can offer a hand to the engineer. "I am... Not an easy person to be close to." The dragoness' voice lowers, and she sighs.
With a shake of her head and a soft laugh, Yoiko locks her arm around Liyara's, taking her hand in the process. Already she's walking in the direction of Integra's Arms, dragging Liyara along for the ride. Even after the laugh her voice sounds sad. "No, you're fine. I'm fine. We're fine. I think we both need to talk. ACTUALLY talk about some of this stuff. We can do it now, or you can walk me back and take a breather. It's less of a walk than the one we took from the 24*7, so at least there's that." The sadness creeps into her face again and she squeezes the arm a little tighter. Sadness may not be the right description, but it's certainly the closest emotion it appears as from the outside. Her mind is racing through all the things that she's been avoiding talking about and the contemplative dread is not doing wonders for her mood.
"Yes, well," Liyara begins, happy for the proximity but still looking a bit stiff, "Communication is supposedly key to healthy relationships." And like that she is already smiling again. Or ... Is she trying to be funny? "...Let's go back to your place." She keeps walking, but then drops it whole while they amble along. "...I tried to use a 'detect magic' ritual to find the most interesting tomes in the book store, but the bookstore exploded, which is atypical of 'detect magic'." One would hope? "I was able to block the damage but there was a nonzero chance that you and the others inside the bookstore would have died, and that's when some strange, god-like entity who claims to be narrating our lives pulled me into a liminal space between realities, turned my blood to literal ice, removed my mouth, and then turned me into you. In an actual, very real sense. I asked those questions because I was verifying my memory of, well, your memory, was not fabricated." She doesn't even miss a step if Yoiko doesn't. "It's been a strange day." ...No shit.
The pace of Yoiko's steps slow as she listens to Liyara speak. When she gets to the bit about a god-like entity, Yoiko stops and stares quietly. There's a pause long enough for a few breaths, and then she finally replies back, "Yeah. We're going to talk about *that*." By now they're not too far from the apartment building, and the blonde woman stares up trying to guestimate where her apartment was specifically. Briefly she tries to calculate how big of an opening it might rip if she just tore through the micro dimension behind her door and tried to fly her tiny shuttle out of the side of the building. She frowns at the distracting thoughts and makes herself focus on the current conversation. "I probably should have told you about... all of me. My whole past. Not just Yoiko. My people try to disassociate with our previous hosts. Even talking to their families are frowned upon." She lets out a deep sigh, "It's not because we're ignoring them, but because even though their memories live on inside us, we're all part of the new host now. The new 'us'. Yoiko offers a weak smile and a shrug, "I got grilled about this the last time I shared any of that. Apparently some people think it's wrong not to live in the past and try to continue the past relationships we once had." There's a tone to her words that sounds like she might agree with that assessment herself, but she'll never admit it. "It's the only way we can move forward in life after being joined. So many thoughts and memories just flooding in at once. It's a lot." She reaches the door and holds it open, letting Liyara enter the building so she doesn't have to release her arm. "It's not like we pretend they don't exist. We have a whole ritual, Zhian'tara, that we use to communicate with our previous hosts. It's actually mandatory for those of us who are joined." Stepping through the lobby towards the elevator, Yoiko bites her lip softly before pressing the button to call it. "I'm going to do what I should have done a long time ago. You ask the questions, and I'll answer it. All of them." Her hand begins to shake ever so slightly as the doors open with a ding. "This is your free pass, but when we're done I want to know everything you've seen of me, even the small unimportant stuff. Then we'll figure out what to do about this new God."
Liyara hefts the bags slightly, more for comfort than because they have any real weight to her, and then she enters the door that Yoiko kindly holds open for her. "...I think I know some of this. It's half-remembered now. I was trying to observe and notice everything when he... changed me... and so logically 'you' picked up on that and caught everything, including running a basic check to make sure your memories were all as they should be before becoming 'me' again." Huh. If that ain't a brand new sentence. As the elevator doors open, Liyara gives Yoiko's shoulder a squeeze, gently. "Well, to give him credit where it's due, he's the first one of them that admitted they weren't a God, and that they can die. So, the good news is I don't have to kill him to prove that. Saves me a lot of time. His existence and confession both validate my long-running hypothesis about our own 'gods' back on Faerun. That and the structure of his strange white... place." As Liyara chooses the floor by memory, she smiles. "...I will let you ask questions of me, too, and I will answer them. I don't mean to brag, but that is a very rare opportunity." She means to brag. She definitely means to brag.
Once the elevator begins to move, Yoiko simply shakes her head with a smirk. On the bright side that little self-indulgent denial actually made her feel a little more at ease. She spends the elevator ride trying to ponder questions, but the gravity of the situation and the mystery of this Not-A-God God has her perplexed. As the elevator finally comes to a stop, she asks, "What do you suppose his game was?" It's common sense, of course, "There's always an end-game. Like, what was the point of showing you... me?" Being used as an example certainly didn't make her feel better, let alone the invasion of privacy that entailed. Arriving at her door, she fumbles with the lock a moment before they step in. She steps to the edge of where she'd pulled up the floor tiles, glancing nostalgically at the bits of floating furniture drifting around the void she'd exposed. Following the cables and wires running from the exposed wiring into her shuttle, she carefully leads the way into her ship choosing to go into the rear section where a bed and a small couch offer more comfortable seating. To no one in particularly she mutters, "I'm not looking forward to the act of getting this out of here, but I think I know how to make it happen. Gonna take a few hours when I get started though..." Sitting on the couch, and gesturing for Liyara to join her, Yoiko takes a moment to glance around the small cabin. There's a door separating it from the mid-section. A bed that extends across the rear wall. The couch is on the starboard side between the door and the bed and opposite is a small desk with a computer set up. It's not the most luxurious quarters, but compared to her room on the station, it's about the same size in total. "And now that you've got context, I suppose you see why I prefer to this to that awkward little apartment."
"Well, he wanted me to do something for him and he promised he'd reset the clock back to before I killed--" The dragoness trails off, then grimaces and restarts. "Before the bookstore owner killed everyone in the bookstore." She looks to Yoiko as they walk, and watches her unlock her room. "Maybe he wished to convince me he had the power to do so. Or maybe he wished to anger me. Or maybe he just doesn't like me very much. He said he hoped I would hate him; he didn't realize he was handing me the completion of my thesis, a rather intimate moment with a loved one, and the knowledge of his plane of existence. He seemed to think something like a few moment's torture would overrule all that. Strange man." The redhead puts a hand to her chin thoughtfully. "...Sharp dresser, though. Very insightful." What, because he knows everything revolves around her? Oi. "It's as though we just left." She says, somewhat wistfully. She joins Yoiko in the runabout, and then casually reclines on the couch like she owns the place. Her tail curls around and underneath. "...Can one be nostalgic for a time like a little while ago?"
Yoiko is still pondering what this thing's plan is when Liyara waxes nostalgic. "I guess a lot has happened since we were here last." She sighs wistfully. "Already feels like it's been years." "...why would some random being you've never met care if you hated him or not?" This is going to bother her. "For that matter, why remove you from here to do it?" She hmms softly. "Kinda sounds like he was baiting you for some reason." That much should probably be obvious. "Anyways." There's another sigh. "Let's start this from the beginning and see how much I've neglected to tell you." Yoiko places her hand on her chest, "Yoiko Enoch. Joined with the Hax Symbiont. Thus Yoiko Hax. I'm a Trill, but we refer to it as a Joined Trill because of being, well. Joined." She lets out a sigh, "My planet is Trillius Prime. M-Class planet. One moon. Our Science Council is probably the most advanced in the Federation, even rivaling the one on Vulcan - not that anyone knows that." She frowns at that, "...okay, maybe we are a little too secretive." She gives a weak smile before continuing, "Hax has had two previous hosts. Dameon and Linda. Daemon wanted to be an architect, but ended up as a Dilithium Miner to make ends meet after the love of his life dumped us to go be with that rotten little moisture farmer who came strolling in to sell his trash wares." Mid-sentence her voice had deepened a bit and her posture changed, her shoulders rose a little higher, and she leaned both arms on her knees almost like a crouch. It wasn't hard to picture her as a grizzled miner for a moment before she caught herself and settled back, crossing her legs. "...sorry." Letting her mind reset a moment she continued, "Linda was a musician." Her voice softens a little more, almost like she was singing, "She was married, had three beautiful children and a husband that was willing to move mountains for her to make up for the fact she couldn't walk." Yoiko finds herself wanting to chew on her fingernail, but dismisses it by pressing her hands together in her lap. "If we'd saved some of our concert money I could have gotten an operation done, but the children had to come first." With a clear sense of pride she adds, "They became little artists themselves. The oldest was able to join the Echevarria Orchestra. I was so proud!"
"I actually got your last name from the... thing..." Liyara gestures vaguely in the air, but doesn't otherwise interrupt beyond that. She listens, patiently, actually paying attention. It is surprising how much of this she remembers from the two seconds she actually was Yoiko, but hey, teamwork? After Yoiko admits all of that, Liyara gives a low chuckle. "...Doesn't the federation think of you as if you were some sort of tourist destination? Like the Rice planet?" Rice planet? Rysa? Oi. After another moment, she sits up and nods. "I knew that about Linda, but not from memories, the narrator man-god-thing just intimated that she put her children before fixing herself, and I figured out the rest." She watches Yoiko for a moment, and then takes a deep, slow breath, and brings a hand to her chest. "I appreciate you sharing this with me, and I am sorry I pre-empted it by accidentally stealing a few seconds of your life." ...New sentences all over the place today.
The young woman settles into her normal body language again as Liyara confesses everything, choosing to let out a sigh. "I'm not a big fan of that, y'know." She crosses her arms and sulks back into the couch, "But I believe you that it wasn't a choice." She regards the 'rice planet' comment with a shake of her head, "It's between a ton of Federation trade routes. If they had their way it'd just be a hub for supplies coming and going. We do get a lot of off-world traffic though." Briefly she flicks a strand of loose hair out of her eyes, "I could break them down more if that'd somehow help, or tell you about *me*." She places her hand on her chest again before she crosses her arms back. "Trying to get into Starfleet, trying to get stationed on a ship. Meeting Jon. Getting obsessed with trying to redesign the warp nacelles that..." She trails off remembering the disaster, "Or about Fiona ("Flea") or Kenzie, or any of the other random dates I've been on that weren't nearly as memorable."
Liyara looks thoughtful at that, and then smiles. "I think I'd like to hear about all of that." She stretches out on the couch, languidly, sort of like a cat in how almost liquid-like her grace is, and of course she lays in that exact right way that looks appealing, as if she was perfectly angling things for Yoiko's vantage point. Oh hell, she probably is. "...And afterward, I'll tell you all about me. I can also show you ... not my memories, but a visual of them... from what happened. If you still like me after all that... then I'll consider myself very fortunate." She somehow rolls over onto her stomach after a moment, her tail now looping over the back of the couch, and she keeps staring at Yoiko. "...The only people I've ever met who wouldn't run screaming aren't people I like very much. So." Her tail thumps once, a nervous indicator. "...Take your time with yours first, if you don't mind..." Yeah, they're gonna be here a while. | |
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