tabularasa_rp | I'm gonna figure out what everything means

After Bowser cleans the paint off, he ends up investigating the new changes that have been made to the world. And eventually that leads him to Shibumenosaki, with the Smeargle from before now following him.

He ends up using the machines and the jewelry to acquire a number of Pokéballs, before he decides on keeping only a Luxury Ball. He recognizes the machines from his first encounter with Blue, and wonders if it is connected to the wildlife of the void. “Well, Jet,” he asks, speaking to the Smeargle he has named Jet Black, “You have any idea how this works?” Then he tosses the ball to Jet, intending for it to catch it as he looks at one of the machines.

To his surprise, there is a sound and a flash of light as Jet is pulled into the ball, causing Bowser. The ball rocks 3 times, then makes a clicking sound. Nervously, Bowser asks, “Uh… Jet?” before he picks up the ball. He examines it, wondering what the hell exactly just happened.

While washing the paint off, Bowser had discovered the effect water had on his ability to tell time. Consequently, he has consumed a lot of water. So he sits at his booth in the Heavenly Blanc, with an acute awareness of how much time has passed since he has done so. Across from him sits Jet, eating off of a plate in front of him, though Bowser has a significantly larger meal on his own side of the table.

He seems pleased with something as he eats and drinks. Occasionally he chuckles for no reason. There’s something funny about having lost so many powers, for the second time now, only to receive something new that is so inane. So he takes a sip of water, counting every second with perfect accuracy.

Unlike poor Bowser, Ann's been oblivious to the time. Namely, to the hours that she's been pouring into training. She's been wronged, after all, during a certain race with a certain Seto Kaiba (despite honestly coming out as the winner due to their bets but, details). She's been promised a rematch at some point, and thus, she's been taking that very seriously.

The door to the cafe goes flying open with a loud bang, and Ann walks in, out of breath, using her foot to close it as she makes her way around the bar to grab a glass and fill it with water. It's only as she's scooping ice does she notice Bowser sitting there, and she flashes him a friendly smile as she lifts her free hand up in greeting.

"Hey! Long time no see!"

"Yeah, long... time." Bowser, of course, knows exactly how long it's been since the fight between Kaiba and Iwaizumi, except for what was a approximately an hour between when he saw the fight and when he figured out time now had to do with water. Her choice of words, though it's likely to be a coincidence, makes him wonder if Ann also is aware of this.

"Have you used any of the water, since Mementos?"

Poor Bowser, what a total crapshow that day had been. But her focus isn't really on that -- that's in the past. This is the present, and the present means beating Seto in a race. This has sadly become the most important thing to her at the moment, and even when she goes out to exercise and train with Seto, little does he know what she's really up to. Probably.

She's just finished pouring herself a nice, tall glass of ice water when Bowser speaks, and she pauses, blinking.

"Yeah, of course... why?" Now she turns her attention to the glass, eyeing the water suspiciously...

"The clocks all run on it now. Anything that tells time uses water. And it seems like water makes people better at telling time, too."

Bowser takes another sip. Bowser probably had a very different opinion on the day of the fight than Ann did, but for him, too, it was in the past.

"What-- oh! Yeah, I noticed that. Jeez, I thought you were going to say like, the water was poison or something." Yep. She's glad that's not what he said, because she's thirsty, and she's going to just kinda chug that ice water in her hand now, thanks. When she finishes, she breathes a sigh of relief.

"Pretty neat though, right? A little concerning though, too, I guess. What happens if this place decides that we don't need water anymore?"

"If it was poison I wouldn't still be drinking it. I wouldn't put it past this place though." It hasn't done anything to make life impossible yet, but Bowser's not sure it won't.

"What do you mean by that last part, though?"

"I dunno, I might still drink it. Might be the only way out of this place." It's a joke. Probably. She starts to refill her glass, humming quietly as she fills it and finally makes her way over to where he's sitting, dragging a bar stool up so she can sit and still give the duo their space.

"Well, this place giveth and this place taketh, yeah? What if it decides that it doesn't want to let us know what time it is anymore? Or if it wants to like, dehydrate us? Seto-kun might be right, this place might just be one giant science experiment we've been pulled into."

Bowser seems to spend a moment seriously considering the joke. "Not really the way I'd prefer to leave."

"Me and Seto don't agree on much about this place. If someone put us here, they're not just running some little science experiment. Besides, I don't think I've ever seen this place take anything it's built. It just builds onto it more."

"Same, honestly, but I guess we'll find out at some point, right?" If this place ever decides to get tired of them, at least.

That statement almost makes her smile, because Seto doesn't agree on much with anyone period, she knows this for a fact. "Mm, that's true! It's just weird, like. We have weird things like this at home, too, but we're able to like... leave. This is something totally different, like it's using us to create itself, if that makes sense."

"Maybe." Considering the world had allowed life to exist so far despite all the broken physics, it didn't seem likely that life would suddenly become impossible, but this world had shown that anything could happen.

"You regularly go to weird, half-developed worlds?" Bowser asks, halfway between sarcastic and simply surprised in his tone. Though another possibility occurs to him, "or have you seen a dead universe?" After all, those had been quite similar to the world's initial state, in Bowser's experience.

"Probably best not to think about that, for all we know we might will it into existence." She wiggles her fingers spookily, as if that might ward off any inclination of bringing such events to fruition.

"Something like that, yeah," she begins, pausing to mess with some of the ice in her glass. "...You remember that meat wall dream world from a little while back? That's from my world. Part of it is, at least. I see that place regularly at home."

"You brought it up," Bowser says, now seemingly annoyed but in truth concerned that that very statement will eventually cause the very events it is intended to stop.

"It'd be pretty hard not to remember that." After a few more seconds, Bowser seems to realize something. "You don't... have any kind of raven armor you use to summon some demon with stripes, do you?"

"I did. What a lovely point of conversation, don't you think?" She grins at him, because it's amusing to her how annoyed he's become.

She stares at him, before sighing. "Ran into Crow in Mementos, did you? I'm not surprised. That thing he summoned was Loki, his Persona... no. I don't have armor like that." She</> has a tasteful latex catsuit that any femme fatale would kill for, thank you very much. Bowser doesn't need to know that, though.

"Sure, if you like tempting fate or whatever runs this place. But I don't." Normally he might not care, but the idea of thoughts shaping reality as they do in the Void is not new to him, and right now he's relatively powerless.

"Not armor 'like that,' huh. Well, yeah. I think 'Crow' is what he said to call him. Took out a ton of shadow-zombie-whatever-they-ares like it was nothing."

"Dunno, tempting fate can be kind of fun sometimes..." It's not fun, and no, she doesn't really plan on making such an attempt. But riling Bowser up a little bit? Absolutely.

"Not armor, period. I can't summon strong Persona's like Loki, either." She summons the graceful, firey Carmen. "Crow is insanely strong and has precise control over his Persona, yeah. I'm not surprised he was able to take out all of those Shadows at once. He's pretty amazing. Did you also run into Joker?"

Considering Space is Not Consistent, and new places are being added often, trying to make a map might prove to be a fruitless effort. However, Bowser’s other efforts have not been fruitful anyway, and he now has a Smeargle-Moomba to aid him. So he’s brought a desk and a lot of paper from Takoba Beach all the way to the top of Mount Silver. It is there that that he and Jet work on a map.

Already, several drafts have been lost to sudden gusts of strong wind. “I thought the wind was under control by now,” Bowser says after one particular blast of wind. Unfortunately, the weather only threatens to worsen, as storm clouds form in the distance.

Having been in the process of his now usual routine of conditioning himself, Kaiba only stopped running when he spotted something flipping through the air in his general direction. As it drew nearer, and the wind threatened to lift it out of reach, he snatched it out of the air and examined the object. It was a sheet of paper with some drawing on it. If he didn't know better he would think it was the beginnings of... "A map?"

Eyes darting from the page to further up the path he soon spotted the unusual duo. Curiosity piqued he continued up the mountain at a slower pace to reach them.

"Is this, yours?" He angled the paper out towards Bowser in a motion to return it.

Bowser is, for a moment, startled to see Seto. He walks up to him and grabs the map, before saying "No." He then returns it to Jet, who puts aside the replacement map to resume working on the old, lost one.

"What are you doing up here?"

Kaiba narrowed his eyes at the snappy response, since the paper was retrieved. So if it didn't belong to Bowser- then... it belonged to the creature? really? "Mincing words, just a bit don't you think?"

Whatever. The Koopa King wasn't known for his pleasant personality, at least not with Seto. He was about to turn to leave when he lingered to answer the question. "I thought I wouldn't be bothered up here.."

".. Looks like I was wrong." His training regimen wasn't really Bowser's business. "If you're going for accuracy then you're off the mark. What you need are surveying tools."

"Well, we were here first," Bowser says, in response to Kaiba saying he thought he wouldn't be bothered.

"Accuracy's not really the goal. Space is about as inconsistent as time was. I'm thinking maybe a map'll help with that." Still, he had climbed a mountain to make a map without actually knowing anything about making maps. And so he asks, "But what do you mean?"

To that he doesn't reply, either not wanting to argue the point or deeming the fact invalid in some fashion.

Though he hated to admit it Bowser had a point. Time might have stabilized but space was still dodgy. "What do you mean, what do I mean? Or do they not have surveyors in your kingdom?" Reaching up to brush some of the snow off of his shoulder he added some details.

"Like a sextant, quadrant, or vernier." After a pause. "Ok, with the sky as it is a sextant would be pointless... but you could go for lower tech and still do a decent job." Then he huffed and crossed his arms, "Though the general locations.. might suffice for now." How he hated this place sometimes and it's inaccuracies.

Edited 2020-11-25 21:47 (UTC)

"Yeah, we have surveyors. It's not my job to know how they do theirs."

Bowser then turns to look over the world from the mountain. "Although now that I think about it, trying to measure out the space might make it even more consistent than just a map would, with how time tried shaping up when people pointed out what was wrong with it."

I'm gonna figure out what everything means

Pokémon Catch (Shibumenosaki)

Like Clockwork (Heavenly Blanc)

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Cartography (Peak of Mt Silver)

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