(no subject)

[metachrosis]

Who: Espio the Chameleon and anyone!
What: The Void thinks he’s a dragon and that he should have wings. He disagrees.
Where: Leylines / Mortis Lake Shore / Shibumenosaki Underground Academy
When: After the tremors have stopped
Content Warnings: None in particular

Questions
Ley Lines

Okay, testing mysterious glowy telepathy thing. Anyone hear me? For all I know I could be talking into the void.

[You have to be near it to hear, right? Though given this is a new thing the world has decided to give them, how it really works is probably a mystery to all of them... everything here has something of a mystery to it. There are so many unanswered questions, so much to be made sense of! And right now, Espio’s main question is regarding unexpected transformations...

Not for any particular reason. Nope. He definitely hasn’t suddenly acquired new appendages out of nowhere for no apparent reason, absolutely not. Not that he’s going to be able to hide them...]

Quick question. I’ll keep it brief. Since coming here, has anyone had something change about them? Like new powers, or old powers coming back... or suddenly sprouting horns or a tail out of nowhere... is that normal here? Should we be expecting that to happen?



Clumsy
Mortis Lake Shore

It’s not a good day. The problem? Unwilling transformations. Again.

He didn’t mind when he suddenly gained a golden-coloured horn upon his forehead. A horn is completely fine, because he’s supposed to have a horn, and it makes logical sense to him that an illogical place like this would pick up on that and let him have it back. He’d like it if it would turn him back into a chameleon, instead of keeping him in this human shape, but getting his horn back was a still a nice surprise.

Wings, on the other hand... chameleons don’t have wings. Waking up with a pair of pink and gold dragon wings painfully and tightly bound by his clothing was very much not such a nice surprise, even when he did tear them free. These things had better be temporary!

...okay, maybe some people would be excited to suddenly have wings. Espio does like flying, so surely it would be nice to fly unaided. Right? Too bad he doesn’t know how to actually use them.

Espio has taken himself to a relatively open area by the lake, and is attempting to occupy himself with figuring out how wings work. Most of it is simply exercise - furling and unfurling them, stretching and flapping, adjusting their position, attempting to at least get the damn things under control enough that he doesn’t accidentally smack someone in the face or knock everything over like he’s been doing all day. It’s a pain in the ass.

He can’t quite resist trying to at least get off the ground, however... and he does succeed! It’s just that he only gets a few feet up before swiftly crashing back down into an undignified heap with a loud shout and a lot of swearing. This is not going to work.



Curious
Shibumenosaki Underground Academy
Nurse’s Office -> Gym

The plan was to visit the gym. Sudden wings were no excuse for Espio to skip out on his usual daily fitness regime! He makes a brief stop on the way, however, should anyone be curious enough to follow him. In the vague hope that he might find something to treat the minor scrapes and cuts from his earlier experiments, he slips into the nurse’s office, and while he doesn’t find what he’s looking for he does take notice of the anatomical model and the two empty stands beside it.

“Person... machine... dragon,” he reads out loud. He never took particular notice of these before, but given that he is currently sporting a pair of distinctly draconic wings, he can’t help but be curious. Is ‘dragon’ something this place considers similar to people? “Weird.”

And with that - after hearing anyone else’s input on the matter, should they have followed him - he heads off to take his stress out on a punching bag, where he’s more than happy to talk or even offer a little tuition to someone. He’s not a gym trainer, no, but he is a martial arts instructor, so it might be worth asking!

Comments

[bridge_princess]

[If a mind could grunt, this one grunted.]

You are definitely talking into the void, but I can hear you. I think we have to be near these mists to use it.

Yes. My powers haven't come back, but I seem to have some other ones the more that people pray at my shrine.

[metachrosis]

Seems like it. Good thing too, I don’t want to accidentally shoot off random thoughts to people.

[Since he doesn’t really know Parsee, he’s wondering what shrine she’s referring to. There’s the one with the statues, so maybe that thing? Is it her’s? This place does yoink random things from here and there, after all, so it very well could be.]

...so, new powers. Care to elaborate?

[bridge_princess]

Yeah, that's actually a good thing. It means I can have the sense to guard my thoughts when I come here, and not worry elsewhere...

[Because with her mind, that felt very important.]

Uh, when people've prayed to me, I've been able to give them a blessing. It's nothing huge, but it seems to give them a dose of luck for a little while. The more they pray, the more I can do it.

I'm not sure if it's unique or not. Probably not.

[metachrosis]

So like some sort of... goddess, or something?

[The fuck? Espio doesn't know enough about Parsee yet to have the slightest clue why people would pray to her in the first place, but, uh... okay then.]

...that's not too bad by the sounds of it! No physical changes?

[bridge_princess]

I'm not actually a goddess, but humans used to come and worship at my shrine. It's better to call me a vengeful spirit or a guardian spirit. I think some worlds really had a lot fewer gods. We had lots of spirits that got worshiped all the time where I came from.

[Shinto was definitely different from a lot of world religions.]

No physical changes though.

[metachrosis]

[‘Vengeful spirit’, huh? Espio isn’t sure he likes the sound of that, as his mind immediately pictures the vengeful ghosts of Sandopolis, but she doesn’t seem like an evil ghost.]

Gotcha. I’ve met people of all sorts, but not that many spirits.

At least your new abilities make sense for what you are. I woke up with wings.

[bridge_princess]

[Not evil, just insanely jealous sometimes. But the guy she had vengeance on was dead two millenia now, so that part of the job was long done.]

In most worlds, it seems we don't mingle much. We haven't mingled with humanity for centuries where I come from. Probably for the best, really.

You woke up with... wings?!?

[forethinking]

People had access to their powers once, in a dream.

[metachrosis]

Just in a dream? What good is that?

[There’s a sigh.]

I can’t even climb properly like this. Things I took for granted apparently don’t work here. I never even thought of them as powers, you know?

[forethinking]

It was useful.

Perhaps they'll return.

[metachrosis]

What, in the dream?

I sure hope so. I really don't know how I feel about the trade-off here.

Curious

[hightouch]

Though the courts are decorated with Seijoh's school colors, the gym's become a sort of haven for Shouyou since the day he arrived. It's a little slice of his home in a world that's so foreign to him, and it helps that he can lose himself in the familiar sounds of the volleyball court there, too.

So, naturally, Shouyou pays attention when someone else enters the space, especially one he hasn't had a chance to talk to yet. He rolls the volleyball between his hands, keeping an eye on Espio for a while.

"Are you okay?" He pipes up, once Espio finally takes a break from the punching bag. "You look kinda... " He trails off, gesturing at at the various scrapes and bruises the other's picked up during his flight experiments.

[metachrosis]

“Hm?”

Espio had not been completely oblivious to the lad’s presence, but he hadn’t expected him to come and talk. At the gesture, he glances down at the various marks, the sting having largely faded by now, and offers him a shrug.

“Oh, this? It’s nothing. At least nothing that’ll get in the way - dealt with worse things than a few scrapes. Just look at this!” He shifts a little, and gestures to a rather large scar up his side, several years old at this point. “Dangerous job, see? These are just from, uh... falling.”

[hightouch]

Though scars can be pretty cool, Shouyou still winces in sympathy when Espio points out the old scar. "Ugh... it looks really painful!" he says, still leaning in for a better look at it. He might even be a little admiring, if only because Espio seems so casual about it, when Shouyou had nearly cried after getting stuck with a few cactus needles last time.

Then, his face scrunches slightly as something occurs to him. "Wait, falling? But... you have wings!"

[metachrosis]

Many of the scars he earned had carried over when he was forced into human form, and of them this is the biggest and ugliest - his side, pierced by an enormous sword that had plunged through the roof of the building, pinning him to the floor and leaving him barely able to move for weeks. Not an experience he would care to repeat, for sure.

With the boy pointing out the wings, Espio's not sure whether he should be embarrassed or not - honestly, he's not sure how he's supposed to respond to anything related to the wings. "Yeah..." he groans, drawing the sound out a little. "Problem is, I'm not supposed to. Tail, yes, wings, no."

He gives them a single flap, already learning that keeping them furled up too long makes them ache.

[hightouch]

Shouyou's mouth opens in surprise, his gaze jerking from the wings back to Espio's face. "You mean, you just woke up one day and had wings?"

The idea gives him mixed feelings. He might've found it cool when he first got here, but now that he knows someone who's struggling through changes like this one, Shouyou finds them less appealing.

"Does it...bother you?" he asks, brows drawing together with concern.

[metachrosis]

Yes. It does, quite a lot actually. It’s as though he’s no longer allowed to just be himself anymore, and not for a long time now. Eventually he became used to his human form, enough so that he now thinks of it as little more than another scar and evidence of his experience, and it has become just how he is. To suddenly change that as well, after he only just got used to it, is...

Well, it is what it is, and rather than bother the stranger with all his worries and concerns, his answer is kept fairly light. “You got it. And yeah, it does bother me. It might’ve been cool if they’d come with the knowledge of how to use them...”

[hightouch]

The answer's a lighter one than Shouyou would've expected, but he supposes that just means Espio's good at rolling with what he's been dealt.

"Mmm, I guess it'd be pretty hard if you had to learn from scratch like this so suddenly," he muses, eyeing the wings. They look cool, there's no doubt about it, even if the reality of flying seems much more complicated than he'd first thought. "If it were me, I'd totally crash into everything at the beginning."

Once the words are out of his mouth, it takes Shouyou a second to connect the dots, comprehension lighting up his eyes. "Oh! That's where you got the bruises from, isn't it? You were testing them out."

ley line;

[rotomphone]

Coming in loud and clear on this end! Take care not to say anything too nasty - from what I gather, people might be listening whether you want them to or not.

[ whether he means gossip or profanity is up to Espio's interpretation, but it's probably both. it's taking a bit of practice to have to mind his own thoughts, but he thinks he has a decent grasp on it so far. ]

Nothing like that for me, besides the whole "talking into each other's heads" thing. That's new. [ but clearly not just affecting him, which is reassuring. ] Asking from experience?

[ sprouting horns and a tail sounds pretty specific... ]

[metachrosis]

Right. No one wants to hear about Between just because my mind’s wandered...

[There’s a pause for a long moment, before Espio decides it’s best to just come out with it rather than try and pretend it’s not happening. Sure, he has no idea who this is, but maybe the first step of dealing with the problem is to talk about it. Right?]

My body changed overnight. Twice, recently. It can’t just be me, can it?

[rotomphone]

Well now you've got me curious about it, just because I don't know what it is!

[ he'd assume it's something from his world - or maybe what his world is called? it could be a whole myriad of things, and now he wants answers! ]

Dunno... I met a bloke a while back that said he was a dragon, but he looked mostly human - aside from the horns and tail he was sporting, anyway. He didn't seem too concerned about it.

[metachrosis]

Well that sounds familiar... I'm a chameleon, but you can't tell just by looking at me.

[There's a small pause, and then a deep, put upon sigh of frustration.]

Now you really can't tell. Getting my horn back was cool, but... ugh. In what reality do chameleons have wings?

[rotomphone]

You tell me, mate. We don't have chameleons where I'm from.

[ Kecleon, sure, but aside from their reptilian qualities, they sure don't have anything to do with dragons. he can't make that association just from the name, anyhow - as far as he's able to assume, a chameleon is probably just another non-Pokemon creature he's never heard of. ]

So you had a horn before this? [ there's the sound of a chuckle. now things are getting interesting. ] Now I'm trying to figure out what's "normal" for you to begin with... bring me up to speed, here!

[metachrosis]

...normal for me...

[He always feels weird describing himself, in any form. He's not sure why... maybe because he's pretty sure however he describes himself, the image will be completely off. What are the defining parts of chameleon-ness...?]

I'm a three foot seven lizard. Tail, horn, spines down the back... and I have a long and sticky tongue. My scales are normally some shade of pink, but chameleons can change colour.

...like this, I look human, but I got my tail and my horn back somehow! Tongue's sticky too, but not as long as it's supposed to be.

[rotomphone]

[ probably, but isn't half the fun of forming images from descriptions the part where you find out how wrong you were? Raihan had assumed the person he's talking was human up until now, so he's at least starting with a clean slate. ]

Woah. [ lizards are pretty close to dragons, so he's already a little biased. but then he actually throws being human into the mix, and now he's not really sure what he's imagining. ] So, hold on. You got all that other stuff back, but also wings? Personally, I'd call that an upgrade...

[ he wants wings and a tail, too! and maybe scales, as long as they're cool-looking and don't get on his face... ]