sixthiterationlogs | [OTA] Trick of the light

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[OTA] Trick of the light

WHO: Liv Moore
WHERE: 6I Fountain Park
WHEN: 3 July, eveningish
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: Nothing yet

So, about a week after I emerged ever-so-gracefully from the village fountain, there was a seminar-thing on native plants. I did not go to this seminar. I probably should have gone to this seminar, because hey, knowing what will and won't kill you is always a bonus. But I didn't, and I think saying it was only about a week after I arrived is really all the excuse I need.

Now, Ravi is friends with the plant guy, so I know more than I really honestly want to about a lot of these local plants by osmosis. You hang around Ravi, and the information just comes whether you like it or not. I think maybe he mentioned the flower that generated electricity, but who really knows. I just know that through a series of honestly pretty boring events, I picked some lilies to help perk up my sad, dinner-for-one bungalow, and now I'm basically Thor.

Things did not go great right away, I will admit. My house doesn't have electricity. Ravi's house has electricity, but apparently I was on the naughty list this year or something, which... Okay, fair. I think it's a natural inclination in that context, that when one discovers they can conduct electricity, they try to get the lights on.

I now would not have my lights on even if I did have magic electricity like Ravi, because I blew out every old-school bulb in the house. Gold star, self; you tried.

Leaving the place I sleep at night in one piece seemed like a good idea after that, and that's why I'm outside right now, sitting on one of the benches that surround the new arrival vomit fountain, playing with the little fizzles of light between my fingers. I'm here on purpose: If I catch myself on fire, I can at least cannonball back whist I came and put myself out.

Trying something a little bigger, I aim toward a branch nearby — The weather's been on-and-off crappy, so there's plenty of flotsam tossed around that I'm sure some good citizen who probably isn't me will tidy up. Focusing, I gesture the way I want to electricity to go, and—

A massive bolt leaps from my hands and across the courtyard, where it effectively saws a tree in half. Eyes wide, I stare as the tree wobbles, crashes back into the forest and then lays there, smoldering.

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His second brown paper box had been a little more foreboding than the first, especially coupled with his assignment to retrieve the mossy cure. The filter mask is by no means comfortable, and the momentary comfort of its return had been undercut by its very real necessity. Mark's supply of puff-pod antidote is nice in theory, but he'd rather not come down with a case of drowning in snot while rooting out new patches.

So he's strapped the familiar mask over half his head, broken down the package for kindling, and wandered out into the damp woods to make sure there aren't any new logs incubating slow death for the unawares.

The sun is more or less up, the clouds are far enough south. When the air prickles like lightning, he has no reason to expect it--and the blast that knocks him back puts him far enough for the falling tree to only catch him with its upper branches. There's a very black, very empty moment, and then a series of hideously familiar discomforts. At least this time, there isn't a roof to break through.

His ears ring, there's a burnt smell even through the filter, and the shifted straps dig badly into one ear. His chest hurts, and it takes a minute to realize it isn't from the weight of a branch over him--that's just the icing on the cake. After the minute it takes to get his bearings, it's another to get his fingers close enough to pull the mask from his mouth.

"Please tell me someone is there this time," he calls. "And that you aren't a fucking badger."

There had not been anyone over there. I am so sure of that. I mean, I didn't go tromping through the forest to check because I didn't exactly expect to blast an entire tree apart with my fancy new mutant powers, but I legitimately don't know where that guy came from.

"Oh my god," I moan, and instantly dash to the edge of the wreckage, waving away the smoke until I can finally see a figure cast back into the underbrush.

"Where did you even come from?" I yell, pushing aside limbs and sputtering through spiderwebs so I can kneel beside him, two fingers instantly pressed to the inside of his closest wrist.

"Can you tell me your name?"

Funnily enough, he doesn't really feel like describing his path through the woods right now. Branches rustle and part, he feels a touch that presumes to check his pulse. Wheezing another breath through the odd pressure in his chest, which may or may not be from the hammering of his heart, he curls his remaining fingers in to make sure he has control of the hand, beyond where a branch has it pinned.

"Don't worry about it," he says, feeling entirely lucid enough to push the question down another moment. "This just kind of happens these days."

Cows push him out of fountains, badgers knock him out of trees; weird buffalo drag him several miles in a sleeping bag. He almost misses the infected, for how mundane they seem. "I'm--" okay, not entirely lucid--that's a bit of a blank. Puffing out and sighing a breath, he reaches again. His fingers move, his body is his own, his head does not hurt that much. "I'm Owen. I think I'm okay."

"Just don't move," I say, and push up onto my knees to heft away the bigger branches that are still on top of the guy. He knows his own name, so that's a good sign, but did he get hit by the lightning? Was it just the tree?

"Do you have any pain in your neck or back, Owen?" His fingers are working and he's not screaming in pain, but that's not always a good sign. "Can you move your foot for me?"

"No acrobatics, noted." He speaks from under the branch she's slowly pressing into his face, as she tries to peel or roll the larger set away. Eventually he bites down on the thin branch to spare his lips and cheek, dutifully wiggling his toes in his boots. It catches on the mask and levers against that instead, ungagging him.

Her efforts free his arm first, and he pulls it in to shield his face and push at the joint of branch and trunk. The way the last two fingers end at the knuckle, he still has most of the hand's strength; his other reaches into the foliage to pull on a point on the other side.

When they shift some of the weight from his chest, he breathes deep. "Chest hurts; blacked out for a second." He fixes one eye up through a hole in the damp leaves. "Did you see what happened?"

"Yeah, it was... lightning." Not a lie, I would like to point out. It just doesn't seem like an optimal time to explain that the lightning came from me.

"Listen, I want you to try to slowly sit up. I'll help you. If anything starts to hurt, don't push it, okay? I'm a doctor, I know what I'm talking about, here." I just don't know how to control my sudden magic flower powers, is all. So much for first do no harm.

Interesting pause; has him squinting through the leaves and trying to remember her first question. Not that there's a lot of success, trying to make sense of this place or the people in it. A tree just fell on him, he can poke holes in the motives of others while he's failing to sleep at night, not when the resident doctor is trying to untangle him.

As he complies, the mask starts to slip back over his face, loosened along one side. With both hands pushing him up, he just leaves it, concentrating on how well his back straightens after being smacked down onto his pack.

It doesn't feel great, but he can grit his teeth and keep going. "You're not the chiropractor kind of doctor, are you?" Able to sit up and wiggle his toes, he takes the moment to peel his mask back from his head, a red indent left on one side of his face.

"Sadly no, although I do know a thing or two about spinal health," I answer, watching carefully as he sits back up. It looks like there's a little bruising, some minor abrasions, but the fall wouldn't have been far and he avoided a direct impact from the tree. The main concern is concussion, but the ground is decently soft here.

"You think you can walk with me over to the hospital so I can check you over properly?" I ask, head tilting to better check pupilary response. It's too damned dark in here.

Last time he agreed to go to the clinic, he'd been shoved over the lip of the fountain by a cow, and had wanted to know what supplies might be easily stolen on his way out of the village. When nothing makes sense, it's easier to fall back on habits than ask for answers.

And when someone says you've been struck by lightning, and your chest hurts--you consent to a little medical attention.

"Sure," he says, sucking the next breath slow through his teeth to see if it makes any of him feel better. Not really, but nothing seems worse for scooting himself out from under a tree. There's a series of branches very helpfully fallen back into place, to pull on as he gives standing a go. "Kind of dizzy," seems like a thing to tell his new doctor. "Keep an eye, on the way. Came out looking for those fungal pods, better if we know we need that lichen while we're still breathing."

"Last time I checked, there weren't many of those growing in the road, but sure," I reply with a worried pinch of my brow. I can't tell if this guy is a little out of it, or just weirdly obsessed with his botanic containment mission.

"Come on, alley-oop," I add, up on my feet and helping him to get back onto his own. "Hopefully we'll get a few tests done and you can get back to what you were doing sooner rather than later."

Edited 2018-07-17 03:45 (UTC)

At the very least, he might be a little unaware of where he landed, considering the blast that knocked him back before the tree pinned him down. "I meant--"

Table that; there's no argument for how much his chest does not like standing up as quickly as he has. He sighs out something of a groan, hand automatic in how it finds her sleeve, his remaining fingers curling a grip. Deep breath, but slow; easy exhale. He pinches his eyes shut just to narrow the input, and wheezes through his teeth until the feeling passes.

As he opens them, he claws the straps free of his face, leaving his mask around his neck. The red indents aren't alone; light burns fractal out from the lines, darkening under the skin. "I think," he says, his first step drawing him out from her before he simply stops trying, "the lightning did more than the tree."

It's been nice having a new part of his daily routine to keep up. Sure, he's not really offering any help or contributions when he goes to see Liv apart from his charming company, but he also doesn't think he needs to undersell the charming, because it is pretty impressive. When he's on his way to visit today, though, Ravi nearly gets zapped to death by...

"Liv!?" Ravi yelps, when a tree nearly collapses on top of him. He's used to zombies roaming the earth, he has seen the horrors of the Seattle PD morgue, and yet, his life has flashed before his eyes, earning him a gaping goldfish look. "I know I'm not exactly swimming in brains for you to eat, but that's no reason to try and kill me just because I can't make miracles happen!"

Honestly, Ravi's just pleased he didn't actually piss himself from the fear of a giant tree collapsing nearly on top of him.

"Ravi, what the hell!" I yell back, because hand to god, he came out of nowhere. "Did you just beam down from the fricken Enterprise?"

Of course, I realize the moment the words are out of my mouth that I should have used a different, probably less-nerdy reference, given that most of what I know about Star Trek that isn't related to Chris Pine's butt I learned, against my will, from Ravi.

"Are you okay?" I ask, already up off the bench with the futile hope he'll miss the reference.

"If I beamed down from anywhere, it was clearly an epic mistake," he says, still a little too panicked and struck in one place to move. He actually feels physically frozen, gaping at Liv. "Do I look like a Jeffries tube for you to shove things at with energy and physical items?"

Because no, he's not.

"Why have you suddenly gone all Thor on me?" he asks, stepping forward very slowly, because the last thing he wants to do is set her off again into a new sparky fury.

"I picked the wrong flower, okay? And you were not there a minute ago," I insist with an emphatic point of my finger toward the still-smoldering tree.

"As it turns out, conducting electricity with your own two hands is not as easy as superhero movies make it seem," I add, and lift my hands in a shrug, still a little crackle leaping from finger to finger. "The reason I was even out here was because I figured it was a safer place to practice than my own house. Apparently not."

No, he wasn't, and Ravi is honestly wondering what would have happened if he'd been a few steps ahead. Goodbye Ravi Chakrabarti, hello new corpse for the village. That does bring up the thought that if he dies, would Liv eat his brain? What would she see? And god, what would the personality be like?

"Let's not do it again," Ravi hurriedly insists, both hands in the air like he intends to defend his face in case Liv gets going again, like his hands will actually prevent death. "Why don't we practice on something smaller? Maybe into the ground?"

"That is literally what I was trying to do," I'm quick to answer. "Well, not into the ground, but at the ground. In the ground vicinity. I was going for that branch over there." And looking at it now, I have even less of a clue how I zapped the other side of the courtyard instead.

"This stuff is no joke, and it is not easy to get a handle on, okay? I blew all of my worthless light bulbs out, so if the village gods ever decide to bestow me real electricity, I won't even know."

"Well, we can always go pilfer and loot everything else, as is the grand tradition of the village," Ravi assures her, seeing as he doesn't want her to feel like she's going to be out of lightbulbs forever. "How do you think we got the curtains in our house? Good old fashioned thievery." You can call him Oliver Twist all you like, but is works for them.

"I mean, if you are willing to head out a bit, I wouldn't mind doing some experimentation," he coaxes, giving Liv a hopeful look. "It's better than rats and brains?"

"You realize that the phrase that just came out of your mouth really doesn't make me trust you more, right? And that's as a person who actually understands the reference." I really can't imagine what interacting with Ravi is like for the opeople who know even less about what he's talking about. Confusing, obviously, but probably a little scary, too.

"But fine, whatever. Lead the way," I add with a sweep gesture. I'll just consider this my payment for almost killing him.

"And here I thought me accepting you into my life, zombie and all, meant that we had a perma-bond of trust," Ravi says, hand over his heart like somehow he's been wounded. True, he does more science into brains than he'd ever thought before, but it's also way more exciting than just cutting up bodies.

Take that, CDC, Ravi's got a purpose. "Let's see if we can find an empty house," he coaxes. "We can test out whether you can actually conduct electricity into the wires. Of course, the whole thing is a bit strange. After all, is the energy coming from the flower? Could we plug it in or does it need a human to conduct for it?"

"This is going to result in a fire, I can just feel it," I reply with sigh. "You did hear me when I said I blew up all my light bulbs, right? As in all of them. The whole house. I just cut a tree in half on accident."

"I did, and I was present for the near decapitation via tree," he assures her, seeing as he doesn't want to die, obviously, but he's just too tempted. "I mean, we could always find non-conductive metals." Or, they can find more of the plant and have a very Star Wars like battle.

Though, that probably would end up getting someone killed. "I mean, we could always just put it in a glass jar like Belle and wait for it to start doing something?"

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[OTA] Trick of the light

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