(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

[metachrosis]

[Aside from the fact he's pretty sure Espio almost wants to snap at the guy for barging in on the conversation, but given the nature of the ley lines of course anyone can listen and butt in.

Now, why does he suddenly feel like he's been put on the spot...?]

...you wouldn't know him. It was years ago, anyway.

[halloflamer]

Yeah, probably,

[Blue sounds almost amused at the fluster he can hear in the guy's voice.] But hey, I know a lot of trainers. And unlike dragon-boy there, I actually get outta my region! So, yanno, it's possible I could know the name.

If he was any good, anyway.

[rotomphone]

[ ...it can't be Red, then. that's a relief, if only because he knows the fallout that would ensue from Blue if it was. he's still curious about Espio, but for different reasons. ]

Not all of us have the luxury of pissing off whenever we want to, you know. [ bitch. ] But you're not from our world, right? How'd you get to know a Pokémon trainer in the first plce?

[metachrosis]

Hm...

[From what Espio understands, Toby had been a promising trainer up until something happened. However, that something is absolutely not up for discussion, so he slips past the subject of Tobias and onto a more comfortable subject - being tossed between worlds like a ragdoll.]

This isn't the only world that drags in people against their will.

[halloflamer]

Sure you do, [Blue grumbles, but whatever! That's a discussion to be had another time; Blue's too busy being nosy about the new guy and his boyfriend!!]

[Honestly, though- trainer connections aside, he's also a little more interested in the reply Espio does give.]

Huh? There's more places like this? You're kidding!

screams at the typo in my last tag

[rotomphone]

[ quickly deciding that a mini-argument for everyone to hear isn't worth the trouble, his and Blue's sounds of surprise are more or less synced up when Espio reveals that little tidbit. now that's an interesting thought. ]

So you're speaking from experience again. [ with the way he's saying it, there's no way he's being hypothetical. ] Where else have you been?

[metachrosis]

Believe me, I am not kidding, and I’m sick of it. Been over five years of this -

[He quite deliberately cuts himself off there with a groan. He’s not going to let himself get into that - he refuses. His problems are his, he will not dump them on other people! Not even if they ask!]

Anyway. First place wasn’t like this at all - it was another world, but it was an actual functioning world. It had issues with time and space distortions, sure, but nothing like this. There’s actually someone here that’s native to that world, just from before all that distortion happened.

The second, you don’t want to know about. It was dead and broken, and I’m saying no more than that.

[halloflamer]

Someone else, too? [--He was about to argue that no one else had ever mentioned being brought to another world before, but if they're native then there wouldn't be any difference, would there?]

[Dead and broken sounds... bad. Blue agrees- let's not.]

Hummmm. Our world definitely hasn't had people dropping in from other worlds like that. [None whatsoever] But that sort of makes it sound like it's common in other places? I don't think I've talked to anyone who sounded like what's happened to us is familiar.

[Has he? Hmmmm....]

[rotomphone]

For real? Who?

[ no one he's spoken to has brought it up... then again, it's not as if he knows that much about other people's worlds in the first place. meditating on it is probably just bound to bring up homesickness of some sort. ]

You should have told us all sooner! It sure would have saved us some confusion. [ he's not mad, but he's definitely interested in what sorts of stories Espio has now. ] Did you ever figure out why you were brought there?

[metachrosis]

Don’t go trying to bother her - like I said she’s native, and from before all that stuff happened! All she knows of it is what I told her.

[Well, Rinoa definitely seemed aware of Time Compression being a thing that existed, but he doesn’t want these kids to go bothering her about it. He’s just going to not mention her name, just in case.]

...it’s more common than you might think. My homeworld pulled people in too, except in our case it was always specifically people from Mobius. Our worlds are linked, but the trip was usually one-way, so I wouldn’t be surprised if most people in the Special Zone had Mobian ancestry.

[Literally everyone, probably.]

[halloflamer]

'Her', huh?

[Blue seems only more intrigued! He'll just go filing through all the girls he knows here to bring it up to later, thank you.]

Your world sounds kinda crazy, but I guess that means that you weren't as shocked when it happened to you, right? Gee, I kinda almost wish I already knew about some of this stuff when we showed up here.

--Got any tips?

[rotomphone]

[ Raihan, surprisingly, keeps his mouth shut as he tries to think about who it could be. of all the girls he's talked to, none of them have brought anything about this subject up... it might be worth prying a little further into, or at least sharing the information that being spirited away from your home world isn't a circumstance that's completely unheard of. ]

Yeah... is there anything you think we should be doing? Like, as a collective. [ or not doing, for that matter. ]

[metachrosis]

...trust me, you don't want me to answer that. For your sanity.

[There's a slight, awkward, embarrassed laugh that sounds a little odd from Espio's gruff, growly voice.]

I don't know what you should be doing, except not what people in Between were doing! But I will warn you that you need to roll with the punches.

Shit happens. A lot of it makes no sense. People disappear, then if they reappear they don't remember a thing. You might meet your mother as a teenager, or yourself from the future. You might run into an alternate self, or become them for a bit. You'll get turned into animals, share each others dreams, get tied to each other until you tell the truth, get nearly drowned in a flood of jam...

Can't do anything but deal with it.

[halloflamer]

[Yikes. That's all Blue can think, to a warning like that. Just what could be more awful than the mess that this place had them in, with screaming meat walls and sudden hunger pains?]

I guess from the sounds of what you say, you really have done this before, [He nervously laughs. Just from the guy's ability to describe the sorts of things that could happen, it sounded like some kind of silly cartoon. Except the dream sharing part- that's basically already happened, he recalls with a grimace to himself.]

Turning into an animal, huh? That wouldn't be so bad, I think. Being a Pokémon sounds pretty cool!

[rotomphone]

[ Raihan will be seconding that yikes. it's at least reassuring that things don't make sense across the board, but that's where it stops. from the sounds of it, they have plenty of things that they need to be prepared for. ]

Rolling with the punches is my specialty! I'll be fine. [ he's not sure if he actually believes that, but he wants to think so... a good attitude is the best first step to take, right? ] But it sure sounds like things won't be dull around here.

[ there is one thing that's bothering him, though. ] So when people disappear, where exactly are they going?

[metachrosis]

Honest answer? I don’t know.

The last place I was, existing wasn’t guaranteed even if we stuck to the rules. So, if someone vanished, we assumed they just didn’t exist anymore.

[Which he’s sure is very reassuring, but hey, he’s being honest!]

In Garden, sometimes people who vanished came back, but they didn’t always remember being in Garden.