sixthiterationlogs | No one in the world ever gets what they want

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No one in the world ever gets what they want

WHO: Taako
WHERE: A fountainy arrival followed by some pacing around town and barging into the inn
WHEN: 8/22-23
OPEN TO: All!
WARNINGS: None, will add

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Taako's surprised to find himself mysteriously submerged in cold, dim water, but it's not even in the top ten weird things that have happened to him lately, and he's initially not bothered. He'll figure it out. Then he reaches for the Cloak of the Manta Ray to activate its various magical protections. It isn't there. Alright, weird, he'll just take his casting glaive and... Nope. Fine, he'll deal with this once he can breathe. Calmly, he activates a levitation spell he's known since he was a scrappy caravan follower.

It's only when that doesn't work that he panics. Fortunately he's a good enough swimmer to actually move himself, however clumsily, to the surface despite the sudden wave of... alright, it's fear. He hates that.

He crawls on shore gasping and looking silly. Taako's huge quantity of hair looks pretty ridiculous when it's soaked and plastered over his face and shoulders, and between that and the way the wet clothes cling to his skinny frame, "drowned rat" would be complimentary. He doesn't linger long, there, though. He's mad as spit.

Hauling himself to his feet, he takes in the unremarkable surroundings, the extremely missing status of all his vast collection of magical helpers, the fact that some powerful arcane nullification field has his powers locked down. The fact that he's alone, that his sister and Kravitz and Angus and the doofus squad aren't here, that he earned that happy ending and the right to have people who belong to him again.

He takes in all that, but what bursts out, shrill and shrieky, is, "Who the fuck thought this outfit was worth making this a naked extraplanar kidnapping?" Not that he hates the color. He looks better in mauve, but magenta's alright. But, well, ew.

ii

Taako has determined a few things. This plane, whatever system it belongs to, sucks. He can't do any magic. He can't even use magic, since his magpie's assembly of enchanted artifacts is gone, along with his clothes (still super weird). He's also realized he's not in his own body, and being a human is stupider than he ever really appreciated.

But there's a tavern. He doesn't really this is the answer to all his problems, but it's impossible not to be soothed. Taverns are where you find information, succor, adventurers ready and willing to aid you in your tasks. Booze. Snacks.

He opens the door almost politely even though he'd really like to kick it open. Just for the sake of panache (and because he misses Mags already, not that you'd get it out of him with thumbscrews), but he's not any larger or more physically effective as a human than he was as an elf. And maybe he should try and avoid pissing people off right away?

"Okay, chucklefucks, this entire reality blows. Who wants to apologize for it?"

Or not.

iii

He's still upset and everything, but Taako's pique is just too high energy to hold onto. It's more with an air of sulking that he begins exploring, trying to keep busy enough to ignore all the horrifyingly pressing questions about getting him and seeing the others again and having his skullfucking goddamn magic back. He wanders, looking much smaller and more pathetic than he'd be comfortable with with an outside perspective. His hair's still wet from the fountain--it takes ages to dry without magic--and it just makes him look more miserable. His face is young and forlorn when he's not snapping at and/or mocking people. While his ostensible purpose is exploring, he isn't doing much actively beyond poking at roots with his feet and disapproving of trees that fall into his line of sight. He should be looking into the houses, because like hell is he going to stay with a bunch of strangers while he figures out a way out of here, but the problem with that is he'd be alone then.

Soon he'll start thinking of ways to get what he wants, and probably bust out of here before someone has to come looking for him. (That'd just be embarrassing, of course. He's not entertaining for a moment the possibility that they can't.) For now, he's drifting a little, carefully tucking feelings away where they never have to be dealt with properly.

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He'd meant it, telling Credence that there was no one, no one he wanted around when he was upset. He hadn't even meant to go to Tim's, and he'd only used it as a way to forget the ugly piece of home someone had left on the back porch--but he can't stay. Finding Ty's coat was worse than an earthquake, a hideous slap in the face. He'd doubted the vials in the cave, wondered at the relevance to his existence in this place--well, they'd found some real blood to show him.

Even a day out from it, even with Tim not pushing for more details, he needs space. It's just a walk, early enough to hope there will only be the equally avoidant hunters and gatherers about. Home to check the animals, maybe bring one or both back, see how obstinately he can shove himself into Tim's life before push comes to shove.

When it rains though, it pours and hails: someone claws up out of the fountain as he approaches it. If ever there's a day he doesn't want his latest project realized, if ever he could decide fuck it and skirt away through the trees--

He's not that guy. He couldn't even run Credence off properly, Ty's blood still matted to his cheek. At least this guy has the threat level of a scarecrow with a Style Me Barbie bust for a head, and his outburst is more along the lines of Kira's usual priorities than an outright existential crisis.

"It doesn't get much better than that," he says upon approach, his black scrubs inexpertly hemmed into high shorts, the worn out waistline held up with Ren's old suspenders over his off-white tank. "It does get dryer," he offers, lifting his chin at the pack over the man's shoulders.

Calm indulgence of his whining is such a familiar bit of background noise he almost doesn't question it. He's halfway through formulating a reply when he remembers he doesn't know the owner of the voice or the circumstances. He refuses to be ruffled, though, and doesn't modify his approach one bit. "I mean, I can appreciate the... hobo chic? Trash couture? Whatever you want to call this." He tries to apply his usual hooded-eyed sneer but it's hard to execute while he's also trying to wring out his hair like a drenched beach towel (and shedding about as much water) and bent awkwardly to his right. The pack is a later thing. Hair now.

The extent to which this guy is taking everything in stride is about as much as Kira can ask for. Well: he'd asked for no one to require anything of him at all for maybe seventy-two full hours, but this is what he got. Fine.

"Listen, I'm probably about as in the mood to do the whole welcome-wagon introduction shit as you are to be here at all, so, I'm going to tell you a few things, start walking toward the place you can find a towel and a room to call your own, and if you don't follow I'm going to let the metaphorical wolves have you." Maybe actual wolves, the way things have been escalating.

"One: the place you'd usually go for a towel and a room is almost always full of people willing to help you out, but there's some kind of nasty illness going around, so I'll be heading for your second choice. Two: answers to your questions will be limited, but go ahead and ask them anyway. Three: Hi, I'm Kira."

With that out of the way, he turns and starts up the path, toward the house behind the inn he's been converting, now surprisingly necessary.

He wants to retort that wolves are amateur shit, metaphor or no, but then remembers that he doesn't have a spark of magic in him and there's no way to know how long that'll take to fix. That and no bulky dude with a big axe to hide behind means... Maybe it's best to avoid wolves a little bit. "Yeah, sure, hail and well met." He promptly forgets the name. Busy right now. "Okay, main points, what's up with the magic and what plane is this?" Feels like the material plane, though from what little he understands from Joaquin the Plane of Thought isn't that different beyond the visuals and how many food trucks there are. Not one of the elementals, obviously, not all stately monochrome spooky like the ethereal plane, not hardcore spooky but full of awesome people like the Astral plane would be, sure as heck not celestial...

Those being the planes where he had allies and egress, of course. It's entirely possible he's somewhere on Faerun with weird as hell conditions on the ground, but he's been bounced to a lot of realities and his suspicions are primed. "Fuck, what planar system, I guess. Do those even have names?" Far as he knows, he and the rest of IPRE and their mad pursuers are the only ones to ever pass from one to another.

Those are certainly new questions, ones Kira hasn't even thought to ponder in the time he's been here. Probably because planar systems sound like something Bodhi would have a better grasp on, if they exist at all. Honestly, even with the number of space-farers he's met, it's never occurred to him that they might not be on some version of Earth. Everything he's seen, aside from Bodhi's tea set and clothing, matches what he's experienced on his own planet.

And it's hard enough to assimilate the idea of his own planet, much less things beyond that. "The short answers are: I don't know, I don't know, and I definitely don't know."

Funny, how the answers never change despite the questions, or what kind of mood he's in on the given day. "The long answers are just a bunch of theories: we're guinea pigs, it's all a simulation, we're collectively crazy, someone wants us to fight for sport but is really bad at getting us to do it. No one's really come to a consensus on any of them."

Getting any sense of his current place in the vastness of infinite realities (or even the comparatively manageable vastness of a system of intertwined and mutually inclusive realms) was a long shot, and he can take that in stride. Knowing nothing about the magical situation just flat out confuses him, though. Lots of people have next to no arcane awareness, sure, but even little towns have their hedge wizards and wise women. How could anyone simply not know?

"Sure, yeah, all sound good, seen it done, but. Gonna need you to circle back, there, friend. Motivations ain't my foremost concern just at the moment. Could you at least point me to somebody who does have some idea what's going on with every detectable arcane power right here?" He takes a deep breath and makes a great concession. "I'll take a druid. Fuck me, I'll take a cleric." There are any number of reasons some horrible power might be up to this shit. He doesn't really care. If you hit something hard enough, the sympathetic backstory and complex drive become moot points. This is a logistical problem.

Moana looked up when someone suddenly burst into the inn. She was sitting at the table closest to the door with Itiiti at her feet. She had some mushrooms in her hand and her fingers were covered in a fine layer of dirt. There was also a basket of mushrooms and roots sitting next to her on the table.

"What?" She asked as if he'd been talking to her.

Moana's eyes narrowed as she rose to her feet. She was dressed like the island princess that she was and she didn't have patience for people being rude, even if they were new. "You shouldn't talk like that. No one here knows how we got here and there isn't any reason to be rude." Itiiti snorted in confirmation, backing Moana up.

Taako's not often flat called out like that. It doesn't exactly work, as such, but it's novel enough that he does give her his attention. What he sees cheers him up a bit. "Okay, first, that is a look." A sign that, whatever else can be said of this shitgoblin of a prison, he may not be permanently trapped in shapeless magenta trash. The chill wrap thing works for him, too. Reminds him of the beach year. He'd cool off the tones if he were to reproduce the thing, but still. Neat.

The bump to his mood even puts him in (relative) charity. "Now, that didn't sound a thing like an apology, but I'm gonna let you try again, darling." He oozes pure condescension, but for Taako, this is pretty polite.

Moana felt her aggravation at his condescension rising. "Of all the-" She was NOT going to apologize for something that she didn't do. Itiiti seemed to sense his persons frustration and snorted at Taako with derision.

"I am not going to apologize. No one here has done anything and you're the one being rude about it!" It has been a very frustrating few week for Moana and she wasn't going to be pushed around by some new person who thought that he had it all figured out.

Animals don't usually like him all that much anyway, unless they're small, nasty carnivores. He's not exactly perturbed. "Tell you what, cupcake, I'll improve my attitude as soon as somebody clears up where I am, what's up with the magic, and what direction I head in to blast the everloving fuck out of whatever decided to bring me here." It's a lie. His attitude has never been good. But sometimes he's more tolerable in a good mood.

"We don't know how to leave. We're all stuck here." Her voice was tense as she continued. "And my name isn't Cupcake, it's Moana." She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. He was really proving to be annoying and she didn't care for him one bit.

"I also don't know what happened to your magic." Moana has always been human.

Some of Kira's frustration isn't Kira's, and it's the only thing reigning in his own immediate reactions. He's back on his bullshit, which means he doesn't get to knee jerk to a goddamn thing. Last time he did, well: Credence.

That puts an ache in his chest that's all his, and something to center around. Taking a breath to swallow some of his pride with the comment, he stops listening to the words, and listens to--the rest. Annoyance, confusion--contempt.

It's fine. He's not making the best show of a job he isn't even the best person for, but he's the person who decided to do it and see it through. "Do you want the plant guy or the priest," he asks, because they do actually have one of each, in a manner of speaking. "If you want ideas of how this place works, you want the plant guy. I have a map drawn up at the house you can use to dry off, it'll help you find his place."

Having not turned on the guy and told him in no uncertain terms that he knows as much as the next person about this place, Kira lets himself consider the rest of what he's said. "And if you just want to know about some kind of power--don't expect too much. They come and go, and they're never as strong as they used to be. Sometimes they're not even the ones you came in with."

For a moment, plant guy raises his hopes. Merle may be kind of a disaster, but he's familiar and comforting and his creepy plant stuff is just part of the background noise of life. Merle is also, technically speaking, a priest, but the plant thing sticks more in his mind.

Sounds like that'll come in time, though. The magic thing remains the most important bit. "I don't have powers, I'm a wizard, not a sorcerer." It's a fine distinction, but he doesn't really have any power of his own, just the knowledge and capacity to manipulate the magic that there is. "But if I grok you right, whatever's keeping the arcane tamped down comes and goes?" That has some potential. If he can collect intel in the meantime and take advantage of and eventual resurgence of his ability to access magic...

He makes no effort whatsoever to remember her name. "That's quitter talk," he says absently. He is entirely too used to being able to batter himself against insurmountable odds until they collapse under the sheer weight of stubborn foolishness. "It's not my magic, anyway. I'm a wizard. I just use the magic that's there, and there's a hell of an arcane dampening field making that inaccessible. Honestly, not sure why everything isn't dead if the bonds are being blocked off to this degree. Not super duper healthy..."

"Then maybe there isn't any magic here." She suggested in a tense voice. It was the only logical reason as to why his magic wasn't working.

Moana knew that a few people had lost their abilities. They weren't just things that were taken from the plants around them but from themselves. "Sometimes people are given abilities like being able to tell if someone is lying." Peggy had gotten that one day. "But everyone's powers are taken away when they arrive."

She was sure that someone might have mentioned this to him.

Maybe not the kind of wizard Queenie and Graves are, then, if he's so willing to blurt it to the first person he meets. But the distinction means something to the man, and Kira wonders--not powers, what the fuck is a sorcerer then?

"No, I don't think it works that way," he answers, otherwise--wouldn't more people be experiencing their return? The only person he's confirmed is Margaery, and she has his powers, the half he's missing, and didn't have any before.

"I arrived almost a year ago--everyone who came in with something still had it, but it was never the whole thing. Never all of it. Then it disappeared, and it's not--it's not back for everyone, and it's still weak. It doesn't come and go, it's more--pointed, than that."

Taako frowns, always bugged when he runs into an arcane puzzle he doesn't know how to solve. He is sort of a specialist, after all. Having no fucking idea means that whatever's going on is not just bad but some complicated, secret shit. "I'm not much for abjuration or enchantment, but that's some incredibly finicky bullshit. Turning off the magic is one thing, but manipulating individual access on that fine a scale?" If there is anything as simple as a school of magic at play. There are entirely different powers that always seem to come into play when it's least convenient. "Might have to revisit my arcane dampening field assumptions, here..." The tone is entirely different than it was while he complained about fashion, though he's still a bit squeaky.

"We all get Zone of Truthed once in a while. That's just life, kid." Taako doesn't look more than a few years older than Moana, and he's actually a bit shorter than she is.

He doesn't have a lot of hopes for this conversation. All these people are tragically under-informed. He'd think he was in the Plane of Thought, except as Joaquin demonstrated, magic can make inroads even there. And magic should really be a yes or no proposition. He thinks. He'd really like Lup and Barry here to do some of the thinking for him. He'd just... really like Lup and Barry here. In general. Or anyone.

Being alone makes him extra cranky. "Circling back to 'this entire reality blows,' then."

Sometimes the puzzle of it all is the easiest way to cope, but this guy seems to be awfully quick to settle in with the problem. A lot less yelling at the sky than Kira remember from his own arrival, though he'd also apparently been freezing to death. Summer arrivals seem a lot less urgent, at least.

He's going to have to start camping out by the thing, if he means to do this over the winter. Maybe He can stick Bodhi on some kind of night shift and they can keep a fire going; maybe he'll nominate Mark, on the grounds that he himself is still alive.

"I don't know what the fuck abjuration is," he says, "but yeah, there's an impressive level of finely-tuned and massively micro-managed bullshit going on here. Wait until you get a box with your full name on it, whether or not you ever give it to anyone."

"One of the less interesting schools of magic." Neither Taako nor Lup specializes in it, so pfft, boring. He could get into detail, but it seems like a waste under the current circumstances. Hopefully there's someone interesting to talk to here. Where "interesting" is defined as "willing to listen to Taako blather."

He considers a moment, too used to being fucked with magically to be too disturbed, but he has to admit there is a precise creepiness about mystery gifts. "I mean, can I head this off by just introducing myself a lot? It's just the one name, so..."

"Knock your socks off," Kira says with a shrug, tromping up the steps of the brick house behind the inn. He'll need to add the name to Veronica's list, and at some point sit down and really look at it, try to remember who left, who had what power, look for any kind of pattern in arrivals. Right now, both tasks seem beyond him.

He doesn't know how he's supposed to do this, now. His gifts returning--they can only help, in the long run, even if they make it exhausting. But how he's supposed to settle anyone in, give them anything but nightmarish explanations--

That coat came from home. That coat came to fuck with him, specifically, spectacularly. He doesn't want to turn down a bed for a possible guest, he wants to go throw up.

"Listen," he says, pausing with the door held open to let the man in. "There's all this--advice and shit, I'm supposed to be giving to you. I'm still working out what exactly that is, and you seem like maybe waking up in weird places is okay for you, so. This place gets worse, the longer you're here." His gaze starts somewhere at knobby, magenta knees, and lifts to the pointed face: "Don't make friends, don't stop looking for a way out, and don't pretend not to care. They will find a way to make you care."

Alright, this is relatively refreshing. He feels a bit better despite the weird, stubborn ignorance about the most basic fundamentals of how reality works. He never has cared for sugarcoating. "I mean, that was my plan, my dude, but cool." He hates friends. Never has them. Nope. He fully intends to burn down all he can reach of this world that stands between him and whatever's responsible. Sometimes he finds stoicism and apathy appealing, but it's just as much fun to spectacularly overreact, and it's not hard to pivot in that direction more often than pure contrariness might suggest. He's probably got that.

Kira nods once, a short and somewhat abortive gesture. Every sense tells him his guest isn't freaking out, and that's--good. It wouldn't help him any to be around that. It wouldn't make him feel better, even if some part of him likes to think so.

This is why he just goes away, when the empathy is too much. There comes a point where he stops trying to help, and just starts trying to get the emotions he wants.

They're positive less often than anyone might think. Luckily, it doesn't seem worth the effort it would clearly take, in this instance. "Cool," he echoes, looking out at the main room. "I'll give you the tour: food, maps, beds. What you do with it after that, I don't know, try not to burn it down. I check in and drop off supplies every other day or so."

Those are important things and he's glad to hear they're priorities, but it sparks a new and pretty significant question. "What kind of... you know, economy and infrastructure are we looking at in Nomagic Prisonberg?" Are there shiny things he can hoard and things he can mooch, and what's the food situation going to be, mainly, but it seems pretty important. Taako likes his creature comforts almost as much as he likes a system he can play in comfortably. And maybe his long sojourn on the not-moon has spoiled him a little. When did he last actually fend for himself, actually? Like, without Magnus and Merle to bring him enough worthwhile forage to cook with while they had to camp.

"None," Kira answers honestly, a question in it as he tries to imagine what counts and what is just--the way things are. Infrastructure is the kind of thing people gather to talk about, and don't really put together. It's the kind of thing Veronica had a head for, and he's trying to fulfill the things they discussed before her disappearance, but--he only cares so much. He only cares so much today.

"I mean, no one's going to let you starve, but we don't really trade, or anything. Everyone contributes what they can, or they at least fend for themself, and we get by. The inn usually does meals, but people have been coming down with some kind of pox or something, so you're safer here than visiting, for now. Stuff like that clears up, sometimes in time for the next disaster, sometimes not." Kira shrugs: sometimes rolling with the punches rolls you into them. "Nobody ever shows up with anything but their scrubs, so there's not a lot to base an economy on."

"Yes but that doesn't mean you can blame anyone you see because you're unhappy with it." Moana knew a lot of people who liked being in the village and she honestly didn't blame them. Their homes were torn and in some cases, this village pulled people that might otherwise be dead. It was cruel to them to wish for this village to send them back to that fate.

She huffed a short breath of air. "And like I said before. I'm not a kid. My name is Moana." She preferred others to use her name instead of the plethora of nicknames that she had developed over the months.

"If you want to leave so badly then find your own way out but you're going to get hurt and no one will want to help you." Except that Moana will probably end up helping Taako anyway.

Huh. Huh, no, no, that won't do, no fun. There has to be something people value. More than two people in a room and they figure out a system. It just better not be fucking friendship or mutual support or some bullshit like that, because that's not where Taako shines, dammit.

Group meals could be promising, though, enough that he completely ignores warnings about illness. Taako's too used to having a cleric around and, well, being an elf to be too concerned about stupid plebian germs. If there's a kitchen to be had, though, he will fight all comers to get his hooks in it. This sucks and all, but it'll suck less if he can keep occupied with one of the few things he actually likes to do. "Meals like what?"

"Yeah, super don't care." Now he's not remembering her name on purpose. "I'm getting a real nothing to contribute vibe, so I'mma peace out, you have fun with this whole, like, tedious moralizing strain." It's like being around a real cleric. He's never appreciated Merle's various disreputabilities so much. "Sorry your town sucks whole entire donkey balls."

Moana stopped her foot on the hardwood floor. "This is not my town! I am the daughter of the chief of Motunui! This village doesn't even have a name!" She was exasperated and had no idea how to talk to this guy.

He was infuriating!

"Meals like whatever you can make, with whatever you can find." The outpouring of gifts seems to have been a fluke--he isn't sure if he should hope for it this winter. Maybe their overlords really don't want them to starve or resort to cannibalism, considering the number of boxes that were just--flour, food, basic supplies. It's all run out by now, and the fields they planted only yield so much in a season, especially after the unnaturally harsh summer.

"We've got some hunters, people fish, people gather. There's a field behind the town hall where we try to grow crops, but the weather can get unpredictable. There's also a criminal lack of seasonings available, but considering most of the population, that doesn't surprise me."

"Shit lying around the forest. My favorite cuisine." Seldom has a deadpan ever dripped with so much disdain, and rarely has Taako ever sincerely, suddenly needed coq au vin with light appetizers and a minimalist salad course, maybe a tart for dessert and a careful wine pairing. He's eaten on the road more than anything else, is no stranger to whatever-stew, but when he's told he can't is when he wants, no matter what the specific temptation.

"That sounds more like a personal problem." Taako looks more serene the madder she gets. This is doing wonders for his own frustration and fear. Other people's problems are just delicious, lapped up as a spectator this way.

Moana was annoyed. She turned away from him, waving at Itiiti to follow her as she stomped back up to her room. The last thing she wanted to do today was fight with some self-righteous, egotistical, son of a …

He could have fun blaming other people instead of her.

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No one in the world ever gets what they want

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