sixthiterationlogs | A little too late, a little too much, a little bit left

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A little too late, a little too much, a little bit left

WHO: Jake Jensen
WHERE: Around the South villge
WHEN: Just before everyone takes ill
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: None noted yet.

There was something about the mining trip that had made Jake feel a lot better about himself and this place and how life is. He needed to feel useful again, something he hadn't thought he might find here without the technology he is used to. Now things were so much better.

Or so he thought.

He got home, started cleaning things up, and in the process knocked some black dust loose from his pack. Coughing and choking, he got things to clean it up, throw it all out and thinking nothing of it with all they had done in the mine and it was no big deal.

Right until he couldn't turn a doorknob in trying to leave the Inn. It took him three tries, the last with his sleeve pulled down over his hand and it finally opens. Then he goes down to the forge to see if there's anything he can help with. Trying to open the door, his hand passing through the door.

Jake shrieks, backing up. "Oh. My. God. Did I die? Am I ghost?"

He freaks out a tiny bit as it goes on, heading back for the Inn and his house, and finding himself walking through a wall with little resistance. Oh man, this is so bad and so not good, and he's kind of freaking out as it goes on before it wears off.

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The moment Jake realizes he's gone through a wall, he realizes he's scared someone else. Jerking back, he half phases through the wall. Startling away from that, he glances around, hands up.

"Whoa whoa. Hang on. Didn't mean to scare you," he manages, though his voice is willowy and airy, like he's talking through a fan almost. "Don't know? I was cleaning my gear and..." He gestures at himself, frowning. "Then this."

And he isn't sure what this is, but it's kind of terrifying realizing he's walking through walls, and what else that can mean. "I... It's... I swear I was alive," he says, revealing he's had the same thoughts she has.

Oh, he's sweet worrying about scaring her when he's phasing though walls. Rinoa's heart immediately goes out to him, and she comes closer and tries to touch him, but her hand goes through. Oh that's definitely worrisome. "You are alive! We all got back from the mines safely, so ...." She refuses to think someone just died out of no where, okay? That's too scary a thought. Although if ghosts were real there, that's also something to note.

She frowns. "Maybe this is magic? Magic can do a lot of things." But no one there has magic. So it can't be that. Unless the people running this place did it to him. Rinoa frowns and looks over at the book and info in the inn. "Maybe there's answers here? You might not be the only person this happened to!" She goes over there immediately to try and read through. What does she look under? Becoming a ghost?

His face screws up as her hand passes through him, not sure what to think of that but, like the walls, he can't feel it. That doesn't make it any less creepy to know someone is putting a hand through him. Jake stumbles back a bit, but stops before he goes back through the wall. "I was fine when I started on cleaning. I couldn't have... I'm not that bad that I someone killed myself cleaning my clothes," he says, face screwing up though considering that. Had he done something to kill himself cleaning?

"I didn't mess with any of the powers either," he says, because that is the closest he knows to magic. "And my power they gave me isn't this. I've done it and it's nothing like this."

Moving a step closer then, he wonders how much of this is normal here, but they haven't experienced it enough to know. "Is magic... is that something you know a lot about?" Maybe he should start looking into it, living in a place where that seems more common than anything technological that he's used to. "You've been fine since the mines? I've heard there are moths that make you forget. Maybe..." He shifts, moving back again, nervous.

In doing show he steps into the shadows, not that Jake notices that he's a bit more solid then, less easy to see through.

"No way, you are definitely alive, no one has talked about any ghosts being here. That is definitely something they would know!" She sounds confident about that, and she only kind of is. It makes sense though. Rinoa starts going through the inn records, looking for ghost or intangible. Cave will have to be next, since he got it from there. "Maybe it's something that was in your clothes." Like the dust moths, only ghostly.

Rinoa's spine straightens for a moment at the question, but she tells herself to relax because it's not like he could know. It's no one's fault but her own. "Yes, I ... I know about magic. We have magic in our world." She had the most powerful magic in her world once, and that is something she does not want to relive. "There was a sorceress who was able to walk through walls, so there is definitely a spell for it, I'm just not sure it's anything helpful here because we don't have magic." And it's not like she could ask her how she did it.

"You haven't encountered the moths? Be glad! That's such a confusing experience. Is there anything ---" She cuts herself off because she looks at him and blinks. "Wait are ... I think I can see you better." Rinoa carefully reaches out a hand toward him. "That's so weird. Maybe it's a light problem?"

Jake wishes he felt as confident as she is, biting at the inside of his lip even as he nods as if agreeing. If nothing else he's going to agree because she's willing to help him and if nothing else, that helps to calm the racing of his heart. At least he thinks it's racing, it's not as if he can feel it at all.

"Huh. I guess you see weird things like this all the time then huh?" Interesting as it is, Jake's kind of glad his doesn't. They make things like Snukes and the wars he's been through, and add magic to science and he's not sure it's something he'd want to face. Except that he kind of is now.

"What's the difference between magic and however it is they give us powers, or the machines do it?" And asking as a legit question, not trying to be a dick. To him it's magic that he can channel his pain and anger into blasting the hell out of things, after all.

"Uhmm, no. No moths. Saw some odd things on the mining trip, but not mot... What? You can?"

He moves forward, excited as he looks at his hand... which has faded back to basically nothingness. His expression falls then, sighing. "Or not?"

Though even as he say it, he backs up once more. "Uhmmmm...."

"Oh, ah, yes, actually. All the time! We have monsters and magical ones at that, and we can use their magic against them. There are different kinds." Rinoa often feels like she knows not much at all compared to others, so to have answers to actual questions makes her feel good. Not that it's important, when he's stuck like this. She may have to go find a scientist or an expert for this one.

Rinoa pauses and then shakes her head. "I don't know. I honestly think it is magic, of a kind. It makes as much sense as the idea that a machine can simply give you unusual abilities. That could be stored magic simply absorbed by you for short periods of time." She thinks that science may be similar. "We have science and scientists too, so their work back home is separate from what magic is to us."

She watches him change before her, become more tangible and then not again. "This means you're definitely not a ghost!" She brightens. "Because you wouldn't turn more solid in any situation." Okay, phew, that was officially off the table. Rinoa could focus on it without quite as much panic. She looks through the book of possible flora, and then claps her hands. "Oh, I think it's this! Maybe? It's some kind of thing you breathe in and then you turn intangible!" She points at it in the book, where he can read over her shoulder if he wants. "It says temporary?"

Jake has fought as a soldier in wars. He is literally in an elite unit. The people he's meeting in this place makes him feel like his life is really a children's book compared to some. Especially when they start talking about magic and world's like this he's hearing about.

"I mean, that makes more sense than a lot of things I've heard of. I can't even imagine some of these and what all it means. It's like storybooks in my world." And he's loving learning about it, when even at the same time he's having a damn time wrapping his head around it all. "Okay that's cool though. Most times it just seems like it's one or the other," he admits. "So cool."

And it is, though it's cool if it wasn't mixed like that either. It's magic, after all!

Cooler than suddenly being a damn ghost. Well, a ghost that isn't a ghost, apparently.

"I'm not! I'm just... A shadow?" His nose wrinkles, trying to imagine what that even means. And how to make it stop.

He peers over her shoulder, reading. "Uhmmm, I went mining recently, and I was just cleaning up my gear. I wonder if it was on there and I breathed it in." He's trying not to sound hopeful at the idea of it not being permanent.

It's been interesting, learning about other people and where they come here. There were so many things she just took for granted as obvious ordinary thing. There were always monsters. There was always magic. And now she's meeting people who never knew those things! It's so fascinating. She thinks she'd like to live in a world without monsters and magic though. It feels simpler.

"A lot of our scientists study magic as a way to explain how it works, but really, some things just work and there aren't the most obvious explanations for it. I'm sure they'll come up with answers some day, but from my point of view, it's kind of easier to accept what's in front of you and react to that rather than try to focus on the whys." Rinoa shrugs with a small smile. "I'd be a really bad scientist!" She's tactile. She sees something happening in front of her eyes so she believes it and reacts to that. She doesn't know what's physically in her that makes her a sorceress, only that it is.

"I knew I saw you in the mining expedition. I was there too, but I got distracted helping the doctor with the peakittens." Rinoa wasn't much good on the actual mining part outside of helping move small things from place to place. She thinks this explanation might make the most sense for what happened to hm. "It makes sense though, it probably was really easy to carry some of that dust back. We wouldn't have known it was possible!"

And now they did. Something to warn people about next time for sure. "Okay so I guess stay in the light and we should just wait it out? If this is real and you just breathed in a little, maybe the effect won't be so long!"

"Maybe though if you know the why, you can replicate it when most needed," he suggests, something that at least makes sense to him. It's why he and Ty had tried the zoom seeds, wanting to test how they worked, what they did, and how much it hurt after. If only for the sake of knowing in the future if it will ever help them. It's why he's kept a few, just in case.

"But scientists need those type of people too. It's how they work out things and see how they work so they can study it."

He snorts at that, but he's smiling about her and the peakittens. I was using my ability to bust through the rock, which is kind of weird maybe but..."

He pauses, making a face. "But that's how all that black stuff got all over my clothes. I just never thought of it," he admits, not until now. "What kind of place is this? I mean... magic we can destroy things, seeds that make us run fast, and now this?"

"Maybe. Maybe that's how they are able to give us powers. They understand the whys and hows and replicated them with us as the test subjects." It wasn't the craziest option she could think of. She sighs and crosses arms against her chest. "I've dealt with powerful magical overlords, well overlady, and no amount of understanding hows from the scientist did anything against her. We had to fight power with power. And it took ... other powerful people to do it." Specifically her and Ellone, but the others too.

"Science is great and so are scientists, but there were several wars fought without any answers on how to stop her. So we just did it. And it's possible that's how we're going to have to handle it here too." Rinoa isn't sure if that makes sense to him, since it was a little circular. "Obviously we have to THINK this place through though instead of doing anything, because ... we don't really have any other choice do we?" She thinks about how the people in charge could possess them too. It would be easy.

She doesn't want to go down that scary road. She focuses on hm instead. "I wish I knew. You'd think with all this power they'd be using it for better reasons, or in better ways, than messing with a small group of strangers."

Despite the fact that he's suddenly without form, or mostly so depending on where he stands, something finally hits Jake and he's not sure why he didn't see it sooner.

"What if... What if they do need us. What if this place is a newly terraformed area, and so things like the seeds and whatever caused this to happen," he says, waving a hand at his body. "What if it all is the result of of a newly shaped land and they started building here, but then weird things like ghost bodies happened so they bring us in to test it. That way if we croak, it's not their people, you know?"

Which is odd and weird, but kind of makes sense to him.

"I mean, maybe. And it would explain why they brought in mostly competent people to handle whatever comes their way." Rinoa really doesn't know. She's never been the brainiest one in the group, although she usually is grounded and focused enough to get things done. But she shrugs. "Except I'm not sure why they wouldn't leave people with their powers. Those of us without them, sure, but superheroes could do more good if they had their abilities."

Rinoa thinks for a moment. "OR. They purposely don't want that because then they'd be too powerful or likely to fight back. But they still gave us powers of some kind, apparently. Maybe those are powers they actually have so they figure if we use them right it'll give them an idea?" These were some very reaching ideas, but he was intangible so she was going to keep trying to distract him from that if possible.

"You can say I sound crazy," he teases, trying to manage a bit of a smile though he knows it's not easy. Not for him, not for anyone to even think about things being like that. "But there's a lot of it that makes sense with the half finished houses and all."

And makes it more frightening in a lot of ways to him.

"I wonder more how they take those abilities from people. How do they give them back to them with the machine? I mean, none of this makes sense. And then there's that. You don't want your test rats fighting back. Doesn't do much for your experiment, right?"

He shakes his head. "It makes sense, and it doesn't. I don't know but I can't stop wondering."

Edited 2018-12-26 05:47 (UTC)

Rinoa smiles a little at him. "You're not crazy. If you sound crazy, we all sound crazy. And maybe we do all sound crazy, who knows." They are living in a crazy situation! "Those are all really good questions that I wish we had answers to. I hope it doesn't take years for that to happen." Apparently years were what people experienced here.

She takes a seat, because she has no intention of leaving him as long as he's intangible. She'll keep talking until he's whole again and less scared.

[ooc: maybe wrap here assume they had a nice chat? wrapping nov things :D]

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A little too late, a little too much, a little bit left

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