Seaside 6: Six at the Beach

[Purple Eagle]

[First Date Night]

"I wish they could see it that way." Olvisin passes it off as a joke, but she does wish her mother and her family's matron didn't fight their ambitions quite so much. "We do stay at MERC, for now at least. There's rooms for members. Not everyone uses them. I'd love to visit Raptor Island, though. Everything you've said makes it sound cyber-arms aren't very unusual there."

[First Date Night]

Something about the way Olvisin tries to play it off strikes Chidi, which leads him to drop a seemingly-random comment. "When I first joined the military, my mum was wary of losing her only son. When I lost my legs, she worried less than I'd expected, and even tried to ensure that I was sure about leaving active service, see? Parents worry, it's what they do... but at this point, they probably deep down realize you have to be good at what you do to make it this far."

After that little speech, he eats out of his food as he listens to Olvisin talk about herself. "I know about them, I have one I've made my own, see?" He pauses his eating and slowly turns back to her, smiling all dramatically. "And how! No, it's not unusual at all. Most people only resort to them after being injured, but those who augment themselves to better perform at their jobs aren't unheard of either. 'sides, I'll be taking you to meet a woman whose whole body is cybernetic! I won't be surprised if you end up wanting to live there or something!"

[Morty]

[First Date Night]

"I guess it is the parents' job to worry," Olvisin concedes. "Our matron is just a busybody. Though that is also her job description." Her ears perk up. "Live there? I don't know about that, but your description does sound promising. Is the fully-cybernetic woman going to be installing my new arms?"

[Nova_Eclipse]

[Shoot to Thrill]

Quin sighs, listening to Magtok's argument. He does kind of have a point, but Quin does have his duty. He does note that Magtok seems more interested in having a battle than what he's interested in conquering. He flies back slowly a few dozen yards, mostly to give Rachel a bit more time to get clear, before dropping his arms to his sides as twin blue beams of destructive energy lance out from the twin cannons on his chest, aimed at the Janus Engine's head. He doesn't say more for the moment. It might not be his best attack, but it's generally satisfactory as an opener....

[Gnrlshrimp]

[Follow your Nose]

Atreyu's been wandering. With a big ol' place like the Nexus, there's a lot to see, and plenty of interest to sniff out. Literally, in this case. As the descendant of the father of all lycanthropes back home, he has an interest in seeing what other werewolves there are round these parts, and what they're up to. And a faint scent has led him out to the seaside for a while. He's getting close now, he can tell.

He pauses and waves the cloud of pink smoke coming out of his cigarette aside, and takes a sniff.

Hmm.

Yes, there's still something. Something sort of wolf-like, but it's a little off, something he can't quite place about it yet, and-

Oh. Something smells good.

He takes a moment to adjust his trenchcoat and continues on down the road, thick black boots crunching a stick underfoot. His eyes roam back and forth along the row of beachside restaurants and fast food stores, looking for the place where the smells of wolf and tasty food entwine.

[Deathkeeper]

Follow Your Nose

Atreyu's nose will likely lead him to a small grocer on the end of the market street. In the front a thin reptilian woman is cooking eggs for made-to-order omelets.
Atreyu is in time to catch the source of the other smell, a portly lupine fellow with impeccably-kept dark coat wearing a very loud button-up hawaiian shirt and pink shorts. His watch and single silver earring are very shiny indeed. He appears to be checking out with a very full cart.
"So, you back in town for any particular reason, Codebreaker? We missed your big orders." says the clerk wryly. Codebreaker looks sheepish. "Oh ah, no. Just coming home from a business trip is all. One-thirty-seven point sixty-four?" he slaps exact change onto the counter with surprising alacrity. "Uh, yeah." replies the clerk who hadn't given him a total yet. "You have a wonderful day, Nancy." That seems to be the most surprising thing of the day to the clerk judging from the look shot at Codebreaker's back...

[Purple Eagle]

[First Date Night]

"I guess it is the parents' job to worry," Olvisin concedes. "Our matron is just a busybody. Though that is also her job description." Her ears perk up. "Live there? I don't know about that, but your description does sound promising. Is the fully-cybernetic woman going to be installing my new arms?"

[First Date Night]

"Yeah... parents want the best for us, but it gets to a stage where what they think is best for us is different from what's actually best, see?" Chidi smiles, and takes a drink as he notices those perked-up ears.

"Yep, that's Dr Tanaka. I can vouch for her skills: she's very good at what she does." He pauses to rub his chin. "Well, I was gonna say 'in this case', see? But she's also an excellent bounty hunter, so you know you're being treated like someone who knows what's necessary in a firefight. Here's a pic of her..." He fiddles with his wrist-beads and the holographic screen above it, until it shows a picture of a beautiful Polish-Japanese woman with electronic eyes that stare back at Olvisin.

[Gnrlshrimp]

[Follow Your Nose]

Well. Not exactly what he was expecting-

Boy those omelettes smell good. Not now though!

"Looks like on hell of a shopping list. Need a hand carrying it all, fella?" Atreyu remarks as he approaches. His dull beige-and-brown ensemble contrasts sharply with Codebreaker's loud outfit, and also looks waaay too warm for this weather, not that it seems to have dulled his cheerful demeanour.

Atreyu exhales, letting out a fresh pink cloud of smoke, which has a faint, pleasant herbal aroma to it, and might instil a little more positivity in Codebreaker.

[Deathkeeper]

Follow Your Nose

Codebreaker blinks, both at the man's wintery getup and the intense herbal smell of the smoke.
Of course, it's not really intense for anyone else. But between his new muzzle and his enhanced senses every smell has been hitting him like a bag of bricks. It's been almost unbearable, standing here next to the cooked eggs without having eaten a thing today.
"Well I got this cart for now. I guess you can help me load 'em up if you're really hankering to help someone with that." muses the wolfen, pushing his cart towards a sporty red electric car.
"Isn't that outfit a little hot there, buddy? I know I'm working with more but it's toasty already." He scrabbles a bit under the back of the car but eventually finds the latch for the trunk.

[Gnrlshrimp]

[Follow Your Nose]

"Hah, don't you go worrying about that. Hot or cold ain't all that much of a bother for me." He answers, obligingly following along to give a hand with loading up. "Name's Atreyu. I've been wandering round these parts, lookin' out for any other wolf-like folks, such as yerself. Though I'm thinkin' from yer scent, you ain't quite the same as me."

[Deathkeeper]

Follow Your Nose

"Other?" questions the pink-clad wolfman as he shuts the trunk. He looks at Atreyu.
"Ah, call me Codebreaker. Don't ask. So I assume you're a werewolf or somethin'?" Well he would have to either be a shapeshifter or delusional because Codebreaker doesn't see any wolf under that hat. Not even when he looks down from his sunglasses to use his regular old eyes! Though that might be one of the various things assaulting his nose at the moment. He might be able to pick up a sound or a smell from a mile away but that doesn't mean he can identify them.

[Gnrlshrimp]

[Follow Your Nose]

"Yeah, I'm a werewolf." Atreyu smiles, and just for a moment, his fangs start to lengthen, his already bright brown eyes grow brighter-

And then he takes a moment to adjust his hat, and it's gone.

"And if yer not a werewolf, what sorta wolf are you? Back home, there ain't anything beyond werewolves...and assorted other weres, but no other kinda wolf, anyways."

[Morty]

[First Date Night]

Olvisin takes a closer look at Dr. Tanaka. She certainly looks impressive and from what Chidi is saying, is otherwise impressive too.

"Good to know I'll be in good hands, then. And her eyes... both of them seem to be cybernetic," she points out.

[Deathkeeper]

Follow Your Nose

"No clue! I don't remember my childhood and Nexus got too many kinds'a fuzzy folks to narrow it down. So why are you going around lookin' for esteemed lupine gentlemen anyway?" He's clearly trying to look cool, leaning back against his car like that and failing rather spectacularly due to his getup.

[Gnrlshrimp]

[Follow Your Nose]

"Relax, kid. No need to try and impress me." Atreyu remarks with a chuckle. Trying to look cool doesn't seem to be generating the required response from him. "Back home, my old man is somethin' of, I dunno, a magnet fer werewolves and the like. Draws 'em in and keeps 'em sane. Just left me feelin' a little curious I guess. Back home, there's folks like me on every street. Out here, well, yer the first other wolf of any sort I've met. And I had to sniff you out! Been trackin' yer scent for a while." He coughs, and rubs his nose. "Not that yer scent stands out more'n it ought to, mind. Old man's gifts might be payin' off, letting me track anyone similar enough to me down from a ways away."

[Deathkeeper]

Follow Your Nose

"Kid? I can't be more than five years younger than you. And I only came back into town last morning! You're fast."
He looks around, letting his sunglasses slip.
"I'm sorry you came all the way out here and I'm not even one of your kind. If you look in Inside you might have better luck. Lotsa folks are shifters are the blood moon a couple years back. Um. Do you...want to stay a little bit? I've been gone from this place for ages so I'm kind of getting settled in myself but I feel bad you came all the way out here for me."
And the giant house just seems like it's not nearly as much fun to have if there's no one else to enjoy it with. But maybe that's because he was actually raised in an apartment.

[Gnrlshrimp]

[Follow Your Nose]

"Ain't just an age thing, Kid. 'sides, appearances can be deceiving." Atreyu tips his hat to one side to reveal his silvery grey hair. "If anythin', I reckon the difference is probably less than five years." He chuckles. "Nothin' to be sorry about either. Truth be told, I've been avoidin' looking in Inside 'til I've exhausted other places. Too many scents of, uh, shifters there - as y'call them. Makes it hard to focus, at least fer an amateur like me. If yer happy to have a stranger round, I'd like to stay around a while, see what I can learn about yer kind, from whatever you can recall."

[Deathkeeper]

Follow Your Nose

"Well there ain't much I can tell ya but you're happy to come." he gestures at the passenger door.
"I got memory problems. Everyone in this town's a stranger to me, even if a couple seem to remember me."
Atreyu will observe that despite the flashy car, Codebreaker is a very slow, careful driver. But they only have about a five minute trip ahead of them so it won't make much of a difference.

[Gnrlshrimp]

[Follow Your Nose]

"Memory problems, huh? Well it ain't 'xactly mah speciality, but I might have a trick or two to help with yer memory." Atreyu suggests, settling back in his seat. Driving is still a rather strange experience to him, so if anything he's grateful that Codebreaker is taking it easy. "But if'n ya don't mind me askin', if you don't remember much of the place or the people, what brought you back here?"

[Deathkeeper]

Follow your Nose

”Oh, because all my stuff is here. I was out doing important cleric business. Secret spirit stuff, but not anything I’d willingly move somewhere else for.” Codebreaker answers casually even though that barely answers anything at all.
He pulls into the driveway of a huge white home with a gate. For whatever reason he doesn’t bother putting the car into the garage.
”Oh. I hadn’t really thought about getting them from here to there. I don’t ah, suppose a strong guy like you could help me with them?”
He’s probably playing Atreyu into doing the heavy lifting but he did offer to do so earlier…

[Vahnavoi]

[Ice floe - Somewhere on the open seas]

Imagine a regular octahedron made of white marble, with each tip plated with gold.

Imagine it as big as two Kheops pyramids stacked on top of each other.

Now imagine a mass of ice large enough to keep that entire thing afloat - just enough for one of the tips to remain on the surface, sticking out of the ice like a small pyramid, ten meters in height.

From where did such quantity of ice arrive? How did this construct end up inside of it? There are no obvious answers. Certainly no mundane process could have achieved it - no stone hewn by human hands could've stood the test of time and erosion required for a glacier to surround, then uproot such a structure. It would've taken millenia at least, perhaps millions of years. Yet, the octahedron looks pristine, as if it'd been built yesterday.

Yet, now, nature seems to be reasserting itself. A warm current has caught this enormous iceberg and is carrying it towards inhabited island. It is slowly melting, the broken-off pieces forming a great ice floe around and behind it. In the coming weeks, the ability of the ice to keep the structure above the surface will fail and the whole thing will sink until it finds a new resting place at the bottom of the ocean. Meanwhile, vast quantities of arctic life have hitched a ride: seals, polar bears and various birds can be seen on the sheets of ice, uncaring of the unnatural construct amidst them.

[Deathkeeper]

Ice Floe

The following is a series of events that could have been easily avoided.
You see, after assuming the identity of Codebreaker, Allen Winchester has more money than he knows what to do with. He might struggle a bit with his new identity as a nearly six-foot tall, portly wolf-man living in posh places and driving fancy cars but he doesn't have to worry much since he's set for life.
Yet it seems that you can take the treasure-hunting capabilities out of the treasure hunter, but you can't break habits nearly as easily. Because properly speaking, 'Codebreaker' should have turned around the moment he saw the strange tower on the shore of the island as he cruised around in his predecessor's little speedboat. But he got curious, which is significantly more dangerous to him now than it already was last week.
So he anchors the boat on the shore and pulls out a little set of tools from inside (and it's a good thing he brought his better ones from home. The real Codebreaker wouldn't have known a good blade if he was stabbed with one. Which he might have been).
Setting off for the floe, he obviously keeps well away from the larger predators that would give him any hungry looks. He's reckless, not dumb.

[Vahnavoi]

Fortunately for Mr. Winchester, his speedboat is more than quick enough to go around bemused ursine onlookers. Many pairs of beady black eyes turn to look, but none of their owners choose to follow him towards the apparent gold-topped pyramid. The animals seem to be giving it a wide berth.

Gold-topped. That must tickle some treasure hunting instinct. Oh how it shines in sunlight. Reaching it is not completely without peril, however. Mr. Winchester would have to jump on the ice and climb up a slope to get to, leaving his boat behind. But with sheets of ice floating around and new chunks occasionally falling off the ice berg, there are no permanent harbors. There's a small but existing risk that his boat, if anchored, could get trapped in ice, or even crushed.

[bc56]

Ice Floe

While Codebreaker might be the most noticeable visitor to the ice floe right now, he's not the only one. An ordinary human girl, maybe 17, pulls herself out of the water and rests on the ice for a bit. Selekhael has what some might call a sixth sense for mysterious places and trouble appearing, and she always seems to arrive just in time. Well, not always. She has to work for a living too. She's slender, with black hair, fair skin, and yellow eyes, and she wears a soaking wet, long, blue dress decorated with spiraling patterns that seems very impractical for swimming in. She looks up at the pyramid and out at the speedboat circling the island. "Uh, I guess I'm here. Wherever here, uh, is." She raises her flaming khopesh (did she even have that a second ago?) above her head and waves it to signal whoever is speeding around the island. "Hello out there!"

[Deathkeeper]

Ice Floe

Well, it's hard to miss someone waving fire around like that, even if Codebreaker isn't really looking for someone in the water. After having the good sense to anchor the boat away from the ice and more near the island itself (thankfully also absent of any killer wildlife) he does spot the lady. He goes out to the edge of the ice and holds out a paw.
Hopefully she's light because if not he's going to have quite a bit of trouble hauling her up.

[bc56]

Ice Floe

Selekhael is light and easy to pull up. She puts her weapon away... Somewhere (she doesn't have any kind of storage on her that would fit a large, two-handed blade like that, but it disappears anyway). "Uh, hi." She meets a lot of unusual people in her day job, so Codebreaker's appearance doesn't faze her in the least. "I'm Selekhael. I'm here to explore the, uh, pyramid on that iceberg."

[Deathkeeper]

Ice Floe

Codebreaker manages to pull up the lady without himself falling in by some miracle. How did he manage to do this kind of thing so easily before? Everything feels so hard lately. He waves off the lady as he catches his breath.
"Call me Codebreaker." He really has to make sure he gets used to his name.
"Yeah I was gonna take a look myself. You always swim everywhere you go?" he asks incredulously. Something about this lady seems...distasteful.

[bc56]

Ice Floe

On close inspection, Selekhael looks very wrong to Codebreaker's sense of mathematical underpinnings. There's too much of her in the amount of space she takes up, and she seems to extend off in directions there aren't even names for. She looks, almost, like a very complex piece of origami, a hypershape folded into a near-perfect approximation of a human being. She might even be difficult to look at, but he can probably force the image down and just focus on her visual appearance if he tries. And she smells like cat, of all things, even after coming out of the water. "Sometimes, uh, when I need to go through water. It's easier than flying."

[Deathkeeper]

Ice Floe

"Well, you've got the flaming sword so go right ahead, Miss." The cold is starting to seep through his paws and into his bones. Well probably not literally but it feels like that. He's realizing the downsides of Codebreaker's fashion sense outside of beach towns. He's just glad he didn't sit down to help the girl up or his backside would be sopping wet as well as his feet.
He does seem to be carrying a firearm but he'll be more than happy to let the magic math-weirdo take the lead instead of himself. Maybe he can hide behind her if she's so much bigger in every sense but physically.

[bc56]

Ice Floe

"Okay, uh, sure." Selekhael leads the way, clambering nimbly over cracks in the ice and loose debris as she heads for the black pyramid. She'll help Codebreaker over difficult parts, but she's no physically stronger than the human she appears to be, so her aid is a little limited in that respect.

[Vahnavoi]

The walk towards the pyramid isn't long, but it gets harder for the both of them as they get closer - for different reasons.

Codebreaker can feel a subtle disturbance in his inner ear - as if the ice was turning under his feet, making the slope they're climbing steeper. Meanwhile, the pyramid appears to stand more and more upright. And while the ice is indeed afloat and moving, when he looks around it becomes distressingly clear that the rest of the world seems to be turning as well. When they're 10 meters away from the apparent pyramid, the entire sea behind them seems to be flowing downhill - as if the upright axis of the pyramid is an absolute to which everything else is adjusted.

It isn't just trickery of perception: subtle movements of air and loose snow nearby reveal that it's an actual shift in gravity. Codebreaker can tell that just one step ahead, there is some sort of an invisible boundary where strong tidal forces reign - not strong enough to tear him apart, but possibly strong enough to throw him around and make him lose his footing. If he thinks to throw a snowball or something else at the pyramid, instead of travelling in a normal arc, the thrown thing will instead fall towards the pyramid when it crosses the boundary and come to rest on its surface, instead of sliding or rolling off like it should.

Selekhael, meanwhile... has more dimensions and thus more axes subject to the warping effect. If she's an origami, the force warping the gravity is like an invisible hand, squeezing her folds, forcing her into a smaller and more limited shape - not in the three physical dimensions, but rather in those additional ones Codebreaker ordinarily wouldn't even perceive.

In a way, it feels like the structure is a being similar to her, or perhaps made of beings similar to her, and this close, her hyperdimensional form is in danger of being engulfed or overshadowed by the larger entity or collection of entities. There's no feeling of hostily, at least not yet, but she can be sure that just by virtue of being here, she has been, and is being, observed. Both of them are.