things happen, that's all they ever do.

[vidal]

WHO: Reyes Vidal
WHERE: The bunker; the inn; the village generally
WHEN: Dec 2-5
OPEN TO: OTA, multiples for inn/village allowed
WARNINGS: Nothing really

---

Arrival in the Bunker (now locked to Kat)
The last he knew, he’d been trying to hitch a ride off Port Meridian, the crashed ark turned human city. He’d been standing in the elevator while it rose sluggishly towards the shuttle bays. Boring enough, yes, because the elevators always seemed to run far too agonisingly slowly despite their complexity, but it hadn’t been nothing out of the ordinary—

Until, the next he knows, the elevator has filled with water. The thought Is the ark malfunctioning manages to run through his head, but then he’s far too busy trying to find the door, failing, running his fingers along the crevices and edges of the container, realising it isn’t actually the lift anymore, and then, his worst nightmare: panicking.

Reyes’ nerves are steely even at the worst of times, but water is simply inexorable, unstoppable, unbargainable. Thankfully, the wait isn’t long before the seal hisses open and the water starts draining and someone (his liberator, he supposes) is helping him out, shaky and wobbly-legged and swearing in Spanish.


South Village Inn, a couple days later (OTA)
Predictably, Reyes gravitates towards the inn. It’s the closest thing to Tartarus, the bar he used to haunt — communal spaces where he can people-watch, get a sense for the group as a whole, possibly even eavesdrop.

But unfortunately, this place is nothing like the neon-soaked dive bar on his slum planet.

The room starts off empty when Reyes begins his inspection, but after a while he hears the creak of footsteps on ancient floorboards, and his head pops up from behind the bar, looking a little sheepish — and empty-handed, dusty. Poking around every single cabinet and shelf has led to absolutely nothing. “Is it true?” he asks with a gesture towards the empty bar, with the sound of a man who’s recently received a horrifying diagnosis from the doctor.


Around the village (OTA)
Reyes will be doing the usual for his first few days: roaming, information-gathering, people-watching, committing the layout of the area to memory. He’s also trying to suss out who lives where and if the fuss of a house is worth it, so can probably be found lingering and staring thoughtfully at the empty buildings, where a neighbour can catch him. He would also appreciate anyone willing to show him where to get/find food etc!

Comments

[skyward_eyes]

Well the way the man lightened up made Nida smile too. Because tension wasn't really his sort of thing. It was useful at times, but there needed to be something more positive about coming to this place. If he had to be it, he would be.

"Nothing much. Magical compression of the time stream into a single point that in the long term would only be survivable by a Time Sorceress. Granted you can live in it for a short time if you have enough other people confirming your existence and vice versa. But even that doesn't last."

[vidal]

Reyes blinked.

He’d crossed galaxies. He’d woken up from six hundred years of cryosleep, he’d landed on new planets and felt the stirring awe at seeing things that no other human being ever had, he’d found friends among aliens, but—

“I don’t say this often, but… none of that made any sense to me,” Reyes said slowly, his usual coy tone melting into true surprise. Then, echoing Nida’s words while almost laughing again, this time in sheer delighted incredulity, “Nothing much, just time compression. Dios, it’s humbling, really! More things on heaven and Earth, and so on.”

[skyward_eyes]

"I think techinically the compression wiped out most of the planet before it was broken and everything was restored, but yeah," Nida shrugged. More things on heaven and earth.

Of course that didn't get into the haunted look in his eyes at remembering what it'd been like. That brief moment that you felt, deep in your core, that something was wrong. The body later coming to terms with the fact that it just hadn't existed for a while, later on. Most people were lucky, they didn't know what had happened so they hadn't noticed. Nida had been braced for it.

Nothing like non-existence itself to make mortality that much more pressing.

"I mean, it's a lot bigger of a scale, but you get used to time based magic. Or you do when you're fighting monsters who can sling stop and slow spells."

[vidal]

Reyes had been slowly getting accustomed to the idea of entire universes that ticked differently from his own: not just another galaxy with different biomes, species, creatures, but different rules entirely, physics suspended, demons existing. (But then again, if it looked like a duck and quacked like a duck— what was a thresher maw but a kind of demon?)

“And I thought we had it special, with people who could levitate objects, or put up protective barriers, or tear others apart at the cellular level, or disrupt their mind.” People were understandably horrified by biotics, in his world. He continued, musing, “Perhaps someday, with enough practice, they’d have learnt to change time itself with those abilities. But — does this mean that you do magic?”

[skyward_eyes]

Levitate objects and put up protective barriers? Yeah, he could explain those well enough. The tearing people apart on a cellular level makes him feel pretty bad. It's pretty insane to think of that, intimidating.

"Float spell for the first, shell, protect or reflect for the second depending on what you want to protect from, and that's terrifying but the closest I could think of would be a meltdown. As for now..."

He waves his fingers. Nope, nothing here. No magic. But he wasn't the best of it before, and he didn't even have it now.

"No GFs, no magic. This world stripped me of it. And the enhancements that came with it."

[vidal]

Reyes clicked his tongue slightly, considering. The acronym was lost on him, but he’d already admitted enough ignorance for one day. The fact that everyone had, apparently, lost their abilities was far more interesting — and made him grateful all over again that he only relied on his own reflexes, nerves, and skill. He’d had nothing else to lose.

“You should let me know if those enhancements ever come back. I’d like to see that.”

[skyward_eyes]

"Yeah," Nida chuckled, shaking his head. "It wouldn't really be something too impressive. Being a bit more agile, a bit stronger, a bit more durable. Mostly just moves you just beyond the normal ability of a human. It's not that impressive."

Of course he really didn't think about how fast people really moved in a fight. His scale might be a bit off the normal perceptions because everyone he had grown up with had used the junctions so much. The conversation itself made him anxious for that power. But there wasn't much he could do about that.

[vidal]

“I’ll be the judge of what I find impressive,” Reyes said dryly, amused. “What you’d described before, that certainly sounded impressive.”

He stood up from his nonchalant sprawl, finally, and stretched until his spine popped. He could feel that restless itch to get moving again. It had been difficult, going from having an entire planet and galaxy at the top of his fingertips, to being trapped in this small slice of a safe zone. Step outside the explored zones and you risked death, without even an environmental suit or blaster or shuttle to help you out.

“Well, I suppose I should get on that whole practical survival thing, as you’ve pointed out. It was good meeting you, Nida Nomura. Probably keep seeing you around. Not like we’ve got that many places to go, eh?” A wry smile.

[skyward_eyes]

Well now that was a dismissal if Nida had ever seen one. He nodded briefly to the man, sparing him a slightly warmer smile than Reyes had given him.

"It was a pleasure, Reyes. I wish you luck in finding someone with alcohol to spare. I should probably finish my reading before I go out to explore the forest. Because really, is it living without a little risk?"

And there his smile is wider, more genuine. There was excitement out there, and he intended to make use of it, even if it probably wasn't the smartest thing. Good to actually feel useful for a few minutes between the practical living. Besides, they needed more food in the house and he didn't mind foraging. It was familiar.

[vidal]

Is it living without a little risk. Reyes’ own grin widened at those particular words. The smuggler/spy was a curious mix of both meticulous and devil-may-care, and that was a chord that he thought he recognised in this teenager, too. “Truer words never spoken, my friend,” he said, and then with a faux salute-turned-wave, left the inn and grudgingly went back out into the cold.

He was lost, adrift, not settled in yet, but still gathering as much information as he could, testing the waters with as many people as he could. They were parting ways amicably and knowing a little more now than they did before, and that, both parties could consider a win.