Defying the Future: Side Scenes

[Zelphas]

"Well, a few, but only one type, a big weird bat thing that just seemed to be afraid of me and hate everything else around--no, well, two, maybe; the zombie creatures start gathering around me if their summoners don't pay enough attention, but I don't think they want to hurt me, and I've never really summoned them..." Sarah tries to take a deep breath, only to choke on the smell again. "The zombies talk... I think... but all of this," a waving hand indicates the whole of the massive, confusing creature, "is new. I--"

"NO OFFERING," the creature roars, seeming to ignore you altogether. "DANGER?" The tentacle vines snake forward with incredible swiftness, arcing around Sarah in a loose cage--not touching her, but cutting off any movement that she could make. The creature rumbles again, and you see several eyes open up and stare wildly around the forest.

The air grows chillier in the moments after your summons, and you feel a cold pressure around your shoulders and the back of your neck--not quite weight, not quite force, not quite anything you can compare it to exactly. the dry, frostbitten voice of Iala Sith in their Winter form sounds in your left ear. "You have all of your limbs, Master; I am momentarily impressed."

The tree-like creature roars, a mouth opening directly in front of you and spraying vile spittle in your direction. In your right ear, Iala Sith sighs. "Untethering it from this plane would be the simplest solution, but that child smells like kin of yours, and you are unfortunately possessed of a moral code at the moment. My current power would be most adept at destabilizing its corporeal form, properly handled--and perhaps I can have some acquaintances of mine hunt it down properly afterwards, if you would wish to make a deal." The last few words are said with a sort of anticipatory relish that you usually only hear in the villains of children's cartoons.

Spoiler: OOC

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Iala Sith and this entity seem to be naturally at odds. It will most likely attack you in my next post, if things are not resolved beforehand.

[Dorni]

"No. I don't want it killed. I want to avoid a fight." Easier said than done right now though. Iala Sith hadn't manifested in his most sunny aspect. Kinda his worst, really. At least if it came to it his sway over Death seemed like it would be really effective against the summon. And the fey seemed neither surprised nor threatened. That was good. And finding the being behind the summon wasn't beyond Iala's ability if it came to it. That was also good to know.

Flint squared up with the summon. The being that was inhabiting the tree-monster seemed to struggle with language. Possibly it struggled with language, or perhaps it was a limitation of the vessel containing it. For the moment the answer didn't matter. He just had to keep it simple.

"No danger," he declared.

Spoiler: OOC

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Persuasion (1d20+20)[37] to try and talk it down.

[Zelphas]

You force the creature in front of you to pay attention to you; all of the eyes snap towards you, and the branch-like coils shiver in anticipation. Several of the eyes flick towards your shoulders, and Iala Sith gives out a soft hiss in response. "NO DANGER?" The creature repeats, the coils slackening slightly around Sarah. "NO OFFERING? ... WHY? WHY HERE?" While the creature does not move, Sarah focuses on something near the middle of its body; perhaps another eye, or one of its mouths.

"I-I'm sorry," Sarah says after a moment, pulling herself together. "I don't have anything for you to do. I just wanted to... say 'hi'? Um, you can go, if you want." The coils slump down, and several eyes slowly blink closed, vanishing into the trunk-like body of the thing one after another without even a seam to mark them. After a long moment, the creature raises up one singular tentacle, the digit reaching forward to touch Sarah, lightly, on the tip of her nose.

"HI." With that, the creature begins lumbering away, walking past you as though you aren't there. A few tentacles reach towards your shoulders, but Iala Sith bats them away with another hiss. Grumbling, the creature moves on; between one step and the next, it fades from reality, simply vanishing from this world as simply as it appeared. "Why did it touch my nose? Oh, I'm going to be smelling it for days now," Sarah groans softly, holding one hand to her mouth.

"Well, your morality wins the day, master; it survived whole, to make more of itself," Iala Sith mutters unhappily, the chill air growing colder from its displeasure. "Then again, something seemed to be wrong with that one's instincts, so it'll probably get eaten by another one before it can split. I can hardly contain my sympathy."

[Zelphas]

Museum Black Box

In the past two months and change, you've faced the horror of your own new powers, Doctor Proxy's machines, the Chain Gang, the Suneater Cultists and their mad leader, breakdancing zombies, mutated monsters with human hearts, at least two human people with monstrous souls, and your father's horrible fashion choices (among other problems). One door to what should be a mundane office in a perfectly normal museum should be child's play.

And yet it took you several weeks of intense concentration to remember that your sister even had an office door, let alone where it was. You didn't even remember which museum she worked at at first. And the thick carpet of dust extending from the office door out into the hallway for at least two feet suggests that you aren't the only one having trouble remembering.

But you're here. You've made it past the guards. You're on the edge of the dust. The door--just an ordinary, plain, impossible-to-describe-except-in-neutral-unexciting-terms door--stand closed in front of you. On the other side is the last place Nora was. Or at least, the last place she should have been. All that's left to do is to...

open the door.

[Ridai]

Museum Black Box

Nope is looking at the door. He has been in this hallway many times. He has been in that office. But now he sees it again. Always saw it, but didn't realize it, but does now. Outside perspective on how he is forgotten by other people. The door is in plain sight, yet Nope feels like he is backstage, but isn't.

Above all, Nope is nervous and tired. Months of searching, alongside fights to the death, trying to keep things together, and fighting his parents as well. He just wants to find something, anything at this point, but at the same time dreads what he might find.

He steps into the semi-circle and opens the door.

---------------------

[REDACTED]

What better place to discuss forbidden brain poison than Food Fast?

Meeting up with the others elsewhere, Nope gets everyone into the place in the blink of an eye to them. Some cleaning was done ahead of time. Some actual chairs have been put here, and Nope sits down on one of them. There is also a snack plate. Remy did some baking beforehand.

"Hey Watcher, if you are already listening, just have a bird fly in here. It's alright." Nope figures Watcher has some sort of surveillance in here, given this was picked as a meeting place once.

"So uh... yeah. Here we are. I tried to think about how to best approach this, but it will probably be messy in some shape or form. Figured I should probably start with how I got these powers, for... context or something like that. So..."

Nope turns back to Remy. Well, "turns". It's always just been Remy, but now recognizable. The transition just puts a point on how weird the masking effect of his identity Removal is.

"At the time the Dome went up, I was living with my mom Donna and my older sister Nora. Parents divorced, my dad Ty also living here. When the League came out of the woodwork with their minions, I got a message from my dad that he finally found something worthwhile to do, along with a selfie. You know him as Greed. Walked home that day, only to see cultists crowding at the apartment building, and my mom being one of them. You know her as Mouthpiece, of the yellow cult. Nora and I stayed at my uncle Bruno's place. Some days later, she didn't come home. Got a weird message from her. I started looking for her, letting myself into the museum she worked at, formerly under my mom as a researcher. Didn't find her... I think. Noticed a backroom door being somewhat open..."

Remy takes a shuddering breath. "Next thing I knew was being inside a Proxy Suit. Unblinking eyes staring at me, tried forcing me to submit with more and more force. I just tried to keep it together somehow, confused and scared out of my mind. Guess something went wrong in the whole process. The last push the suit gave me, it..." Remy's folded hands fidget, wring, one of them goes through his hair, just kind of scratches at his neck. "I don't think I can accurately describe what happened. It feels like it's at most my interpretation. Or my brain trying to make sense of it and failing, or... or something." A short pause. "I felt like I was pushed further and further 'down', until I cracked through some... boundary. There was nothing, but it was vast, things there I could not- cannot know, all connected, falling, falling, all directions, everywhere, the egg shell of the mind broke and the truth spilled into the ocean-" Remy stops his increasingly feverish, panicking, nonsensical yet true yet wrong words. Face buried in shaking hands attached to a trembling body, curving downward. Muffled, ragged breaths. It takes a whle until he can continue.

"Fell onto a truck, in this world, real world. Putting my mind back together, somehow. Felt like it was... is surrounded by nothingness, infinite. Weird things started happening. Skipped distance. Parts of fencing in my way just disappearing. Proxy drones dismantling. Holes in the floor. Since then, tried to keep my new powers in check, under control. My uncle knows about them, since I told him. I'm a terrible liar. People had trouble remembering me since then, unless I met them often enough. Nora still missing. Have been searching the city and the museums since then, but didn't even notice that I couldn't remember where she worked, or where her office was. Couldn't even Met a... a strange, extremely shy or nervous woman some weeks ago. She was... hard to notice, also just disappeared. Tipped me off that there might be more to Nora disappearing. Have been working through a... a mental block of some sort in the weeks since. I'm remembering the door to Nora's office. I think. It's been months since I last saw her and still haven't found her." Remy's voice cracks, eyes stinging. He shakes his head. "Sorry, getting off-topic. Sorry."

"My current guess is that I... was pushed into something like a collective unconscious. Something, some things are there, but it's all vague now. The nothingness around my mind is still there, like if being alone in the cosmos was a sensation, but you don't just conceptualize it, but are made to feel it. That's my Removal powers. I Remove things. Not destroyed or disintegrated or something. I know they are just gone. It feels like I was given a fundamental function of existence. A delete button. And it only ever deletes. Never anything else. And it is tied to my mind. Not necessarily my conscious will." He stops. The really scary and confusing parts are about to come up. He reaches down to a bag, retrieving a small juice bottle from it, also putting it next to the snack plate for everyone to access. Remy honestly is not sure in hindsight why he thought to bring cookies and drinks. Perhaps the absurdity given he is about to discuss fundamental horror powers might take the edge off. So he just... grabs a cookie and some juice, visibly more to calm himself down than anything else.

"A-any questions so far?" Remy is feeling profoundly silly asking this, for some reason.

[Abracadangit]

A convergence of thread plucks one of the cookies off the table, and neatly deposits it in Kal's hand.

The source of Nope's power had always intrigued Kal -- everyone except for Nope fell into relatively clean boxes, origin-wise. Floral was every inch a superscientist, Helios was a sort of classical "book wizard," as Ariadne was so fond of calling him, and while Ariadne's magic was certainly much more eclectic and mystical than Helios', it was still definitely magic, there was no disputing it. Nope's power seemed to stem from something altogether alien to the magic/science spectrum. From the way he was talking, sometimes it sounded psychic, sometimes it sounded vaguely cosmic, and sometimes it sounded like something completely extradimensional.

Kal pinged Ariadne for insight, and received the telepathic equivalent of a shrug. "There are many forces in the world outside mortal understanding. Be grateful this one is on your side, hnn, hnn, hnn."

"Have you yet found something that you cannot remove?" Kal asks, through nibbles of her cookie. "Enemies' stamina, physical distance, evidence of our injuries -- it seems as though there is no thing, idea, or leap of dream that your power cannot undo or unmake. Forgive me if this is something you would rather not discuss; as someone experimenting with their own newfound abilities, I find such matters interesting."

[Quellian-dyrae]

[REDACTED]

Lily took a cookie from the snack plate and sat down when they arrived, munching it while Remy explained the situation. He had mentioned what had happened with his family, although Lily hadn't known his mother had been Mouthpiece. Hearing it again she recalled that he had mentioned his father was Greed, but that had been fairly early in their adventures and Lily hadn't had as good an understanding of who the various bad guys were, so it had slipped her mind. That wouldn't happen again.

When Remy's explanation of what he had experienced cut off, and he buried his face in his hands, she moved over to sit beside him and, if he let her, slipped an arm around his shoulders and gave him a gentle squeeze. She didn't say anything, didn't tell him it was okay. Her experience with Manchineel had not been the same - but where it counted it had been close enough for her to strongly suspect that "it's okay" would not have been true. She just sat beside him, offering what support she could while he collected himself.

The mental block seemed strange. Whatever skills she may have possessed as a healer and scientist, though, she was neither a psychiatrist nor a neurologist. Dr. Proxy's powers were supposed to have some manner of mental component though, as she understood them. If Remy had been looking for Nora when Proxy had abducted him...it would make some measure of sense that Proxy might have done something to interfere with his memory of the time around the event, to maintain secrecy. Highly speculative, but plausible enough. She didn't mention it yet; better to let Remy finish before diving in on wild theorizing.

His own hypothesis that his mind had somehow been pushed into a sort of collective unconsciousness and that's where his powers came from was...honestly preferable to some of the alternatives she'd been considering, in the aftermath of their encounter with Pest. As per usual, most of Lily's priors on various superpowered weirdness came from various forms of fiction. Some of what Pest had been saying had sounded kinda Lovecraftian, which...probably would not have been good. Still, couldn't really rule anything out, yet.

Lily didn't ask any questions immediately; better to let Remy explain things in whatever order he felt best and then ask about anything that was still unclear. She did say, gently, "You're not alone, okay? We're here, no matter what your powers might feel like."

[Ridai]

[REDACTED]

It is a bit difficult to see, since Remy favors plain hoodies and pants, disguising much of his physique, but compared to when they first came to this place and Remy revealed himself to be Nope, he lost a lot of weight in the past months, trajectory pointing to the lower boundary of what could be considered ideal or okay.

He wordlessly nods to Floral's words. The juice bottle in his hands transitions from drink container to something to keep his hands occupied.

To Ariadne's question: "I'm not... I'm not sure. There is no concrete sense what I can or can't do, just past experience and hoping I can do something similar. Nothing like a 'muscle' or guesstimate. Point my mind at it and try. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes partially, sometimes something I didn't expect happens instead." Now that he has started the proper explanation, Remy is struggling with how to best convey something that refuses to work in neatly defined ways.

"Everything I do with my powers is put it in my mind, and Remove it. This might sound easy. It can be. But it's often not. Usually isn't. The Removal has no safeguards. It isn't aimed nicely like spells from games or guns or something. Best I can tell is that whatever I am picturing or conceptualizing or thinking about at the vague moment the Removal happens, that will get targeted. If you're calm, have lots of time, sure, chance of success is pretty high. If you're in the middle of a fight with things trying to kill you, friends and bystanders in mortal danger, and you're already in pain, this becomes way more difficult. Keeping usable intent or pictures or whatever so it actually works. I think things can also try to resist it, somehow, maybe? But if in the moment my focus shifts, some invasive thoughts get in there, or I don't focus in enough... I have Removed things I didn't intend to. Every time I use my power, something or someone else could get Removed. And I have not found a way to get anything Removed back. Ever. And I will not risk Removing anyone, even if it's the League. I don't want the memory of how it feels like to do that in my brain." Remy stops for a moment, and gets himself a second juice bottle.

"And... it can go off on accident. It's not something that can only ever happen by consciously pushing a button. Instinct reactions can make it happen. Frustration and fear and anger are really dangerous. When I have bad dreams again, I... quietly go see if my uncle Bruno is still around. Or anyone else who appeared in the nightmares, if I can remember. There... there haven't been cases of something like that happening, but... When the bee creatures attacked, I panicked. I think in the moment, I just wanted the insects gone. And I removed all insects from Forester's Bay. I didn't mean to do that. Or that I could do that. I don't think I can consciously do that. Or want to. But that happened. Because there was no restraint, and fear for your lives and my own. One slip up. Three days of the city going hungry, and Watcher needing to replace a part of an entire ecosystem. With what happened at FEN-W, and people I met, I don't think I'm the only one with those 'fundamental' powers. But when I Removed the insects, something noticed me. Something that exists in the shared unconscious, I think." Remy is shaking again, but he fights it down.

"S-so, um... I-I guess I'll try to go over what I often do as... examples. I learned I can Remove more conceptual things when I tried to find workarounds for Removing physical things. Some things stay gone, but some things are... perpetually generated by reality. They are just a product of something else. When I become Nope," Remy switches to Nope, instantly becoming hard to really grasp, and if the others didn't interact with him so often, he would already start to slip from their minds. "I Remove my identity. But I still exist. If I don't perpetually remove it, it instantly," Nope becomes Remy again. "reinstates itself. Through that, I learned I can become invisible to senses by Removing my presence. It, too, is perpetually generated. When I hover, I Remove the acceleration gravity applies to me, but it perpetually tries to pull me down. Some of this, I have practiced a lot. Like mental patterns. Rote Removals I can do do with pretty high chances of success while doing other things by now. But I can never just not care. Slippery slope. Don't know what could happen." Another drink.

"Attacking living beings is... hard. I... try to conceptualize their endurance, stamina and such as hit points, as dumb as that sounds. Something abstract, something where you can't just point at something in their bodies or minds that might get Removed instead. Where if it fails, it ideally just does nothing instead. Other than the... brief glitches of reality reasserting itself. I try to Remove aggression, momentary, not general, when trying to calm people down in crisis situations. Aainst machines, I try to Remove crucial parts of them, to keep things managable and not just... erase them. With healing wounds..." Remy shakes his head. "I tried conceptualizing wounds and such as things added to or changed from the base state. It works. I don't know what this says about reality, or if this is just some weird quirk of the Removal. Stuff like this is... very hard. I practiced these few things so I can use them, but it just never becomes easy or without worry. Theoretically I can attempt whatever, but without experience, time, practice, anything that might somehow help, risk of something going wrong just becomes so much higher. Like when I tried to make the windows at the cult meeting permeable to smell. And it also cracked because much of the window was Removed." More finger fidgeting.

"And, well... I learned about healing wounds because I once experienced a teleport going wrong. I Remove the relative distance between me and a point in space to do that. If something is in the way when I get moved there, matter is... rejected. Part of my hand and a few fingers were gone. I now only do that if I absolutely have to get through solid matter. I send a tiny part of myself ahead, like a hair, see if I can feel that being rejected, before I send all of myself. Getting the point and distance right, keeping them right..." He could once again say it is hard, but he figures they get the point. "Far too dangerous to do in a hurry. Doesn't get me all that far, either. That is also not how I teleport any of you. It's actually... it's actually not a teleport. Instead, do something I call Remove Travel Time. I can go a lot further with that, take people with me. If you know D&D, it's a bit like a Time Stop. Removing personal time. Going into zero time or something. Everything stands still. Can't do anything in there except move around, maybe attempt to move other things whose personal time I Remove around. Need too much focus to do anything else. I do something similar when I'm hurt. Removing recovery time, but time doesn't slow down for me with that. But, uh... yeah. Time has stopped, more or less, but I don't go any faster. There's just a certain amount of time I can manage staying in zero time. There is nothing hindering momentum in there, so I have to be careful how I move. So when I teleport you, I very carefully push you towards the destination. Make sure you do not bump into anything. Make sure you are standing firmly before I stop Removing travel time. Just... trying to treat all of you with as much respect and dignity as possible. Not taking any risks. I'm... I'm sorry if this... I'm sorry." Remy has had much time to think about this, never knowing how to go about this particular bit, or how people might react. "That's the things I have practiced with my powers. And why I don't experiment with them much."

[Zelphas]

[REDACTED]

Watcher's pigeon arrives in the middle of Nope's longer explanation, the bird flashing into the room with a flutter of feathers. "Sorry, meant to be quiet, but the Main Drag is... not good for birds. Please go on; I didn't mean to interrupt." The bird settles on one of the empty shelves in the room, its head bobbing lightly as it looks between each of you.

Museum Black Box

The door feels like... ordinary wood, the handle ordinary metal--perhaps a bit cold for the hallway, but nothing out of the ordinary. As you grab the handle and turn, you feel some resistance, as if the door was much heavier than it looks, and there is a subtle hiss and shifting in the air, like you had just opened an airlock in a sci-fi show. But it was still just a door, as it turned on its hinges and opened.

Oh, right, that is what Nora's office looked like.

You'd visited her here before; you know the absurdly large desk, a hand-me-down from a retiring curator, and how it takes up more than three-quarters of the tiny room. The comfortable chair behind it, and the other comfortable chair in front of it in case she had a visitor, both of them looking like they've been squeezed into their respective locations, possibly with the help of a crowbar. The corkboard on the walls--Nora's "filing cabinet", as she calls it--taking up all of the wall space it can manage. The laptop, ludicrously small on such a large desk, with a couple of stickers on it that you recognize as niche sci-fi properties, many of them having nothing to them beyond a short TV series or paperback book. Your sister, Nora, bending over the laptop, typing away furiously as if the idea in her head has to be forced out as quickly as possible. Yes, it all seems familiar.

You don't remember quite this much paper, though.

The corkboard is practically sagging with the amount of paper on it, with printed and written and scrawled words and diagrams all over them. The desk is a landscape of paper, mountains and valleys rising and falling across its surface, spilling over the edge in a cascade of white and black. Both of the chairs are mounded with papers, stapled and bound together and in looseleaf pages. Your entrance kicks up a wind, and paper floats into the air, simulating a snowstorm before your eyes--wait.

Your sister.

Nora looks up at you in the entrance, blinking for a moment, her brow furrowed still in thought. Then she smiles. "Oh, Remy! You got my message... I sent a message, right? Whatever. Come in, quick, and close the door; I'm starting to feel hungry." She gestures somewhat hopelessly at the second chair, blinking again in seeming surprise. "Take a... hm. Um... I didn't think I put anything there... Squeeze in anyway, if you can! We can move things, but there's an order--we'll figure it out!"

[Ridai]

Museum Black Box

Just the entire situation is catching Remy off-guard, and he already has a hard time keeping it together given he finally found Nora. It doesn't... seem like she is aware of how much time passed? But their surroundings, all those mental blocks, just-

"What... what is happening, Nora? I-is something holding you here?" He drops the Nope guise, since she can easily see through it, apparently? He has already closed the door. "You've been gone for over two months." Voice shaky, eyes stinging. He can barely think straight, wound up with worry and confusion and everything feeling off.

[Zelphas]

Museum Black Box

Spoiler: Resistance DC 20 (remember the +2 against Mental Effects for Nope)

Show

Closing the museum office door is almost as strange as opening it. All sound from outside of the room abruptly ceases, and the air becomes utterly still. You feel slightly more pressure against your body than normal from the air, like the molecules are trying to stay in place and need slightly more effort to push aside.

And on top of all of this, you can feel... it's difficult to explain. It's like the mental pressure that you felt that made it difficult to remember this door, this room, has suddenly inverted. You haven't forgot about the outside world, your friends and family, the urgent business you're working on; it's just become suddenly harder to bring to mind, harder to make important.

"Two..." Nora freezes, her mouth forming a small 'o' of surprise at your statement. "Well, that's one theory shot; I had been certain that the anomalous effects meant that time was both accelerated and stopped within this liminal space, but if time has been passing normally on both sides, then..." She dives into the papers and begins rifling through them, muttering to herself, but looks back up at you and smiles after a moment.

"Well, too late to change that, though I am sorry to disappear all of the sudden. The museum must be going crazy. And mom... well, she may not talk to me for weeks, but that's fairly normal, isn't it?" She shrugs, moving back to the chair and lifting all of the papers off of it. "Here, sit down, sit down. Two months! I've been busy, as you can see, but you're the guest! Is everything all right? How are things going with video editing?" Nora sets down the papers and makes an effort to focus on you, waiting expectantly.

[Ridai]

The moment Remy feels the effects of closing the door, he immediately opens it again. "Things are... things are not well. Okay, listen, we need to get out of here right now. This place, it... somehow made everyone forget it exists. I tried to go here to look for you, after you sent your message. I stepped in here, and the next thing I remember is that I was stuck in a Proxy Suit. Then it took me over two months to even remember where the door is, hell there is a ring of dust around it outside, so I don't think anyone else remembers either. The moment I closed to door, it instead tried to make me forget everything on the outside. I don't know why this is happening. But we need to go before it makes us forget again."

Remy walks around the desk, taking Nora's hand.

[Abracadangit]

[REDACTED]

"So it is possible to remove space, and even time," Kal says, after listening to Nope's explanation. "In a way, I envy that you have such power -- but in another way, I don't know if I could truly enjoy it. The thread has Ariadne's will, her ideas, her notions of the world, spun into every strand. It can accomplish much, but certainly not everything. Your gift..." She pauses. "You are something like a demigod, if there is no limit to what you can remove. I know that does not bring you any comfort, but you should take some measure of solace, in knowing that the world is a better place for this power living in your hands, then one of our many enemies."

Suddenly, a great quantity of red spins itself over Kal, effectively coating her in a second, shifting skin of crimson thread. Her eyes turn into dots of scarlet light, as she (though it appears to be Ariadne, now) looks Nope straight in the eye.

"Your problem is not one of control, nor is it of one of training," Ariadne says, her voice reverberating eerily through the thread, like the echo of a thousand violin strings in unison. "It is one of fear. You fear your power, so it will shrink from your hand, including when you need it most. You must learn to banish this fear. Perhaps you might try 'removing' it with your magic, hnn, hnn, hnn."

A moment later, the red thread dissipates, and Kal stands there once more, in her usual Ariadne garb.

"Ariadne has a flair for perceiving very difficult emotional matters as quite simple, you'll have to forgive her," Kal says, aplogetically. "If there's ever anything we can do to help, please let us know."

[Zelphas]

Museum Black Box

Nora blinks at you, seeming to be struck by something. Then, oddly she smiles. "Forgetfulness!" she says triumphantly. "That's what this is! I was trying to figure out how something of the size and dimensions of an entire room, no matter how small, could have been excised from reality while still maintaining a tangible link to the rest of the world via the doorway, but it wasn't excised! It was forgotten! Amazing! And horrifying," she says, sobering suddenly. "I mean, that seems to suggest that the metaphysical concepts of time and space have the ability to 'remember' and 'forget' things, which implies consciousness, and possibly will--but this is all theoretical--"

Nora shakes herself, glancing ruefully at the open door. "...Okay, I have been here too long. But!" She takes her hand from you, and looks you in the eye. "Remy, you say I've been gone for two months. I've been here the whole time. I haven't eaten anything. I haven't slept at all. I should get out--now that you've pointed out the forgetting, I think that the forgetfulness of this room may have an inverse effect when you're inside of it, making you mostly forget the outside world and, due to the enclosed space and obvious irregularity, hyperfocus on the inside of the room and unraveling its character, which is a fascinating wrinkle and sheds light on several--case in point." Nora breathes in and out carefully, looking again at the open door. "Remy, when I leave... how fast will reality 'remember' me? Will it 'remember' that I haven't had anything to eat or drink and haven't slept in far too long?"

[Ridai]

[REDACTED]

Being called a demigod really just further deflates Remy.

Remy gives Ariadne-Ariadne a long, tired look and and even longer sigh. "If you, being a thousands of years old goddess or something, actually know how my powers work, please tell me everything you know. Please don't just talk **** and tell me how I already know I feel. If there's other gods around you can ask, please do go and ask."

As for Kal-Ariadne, Remy just... just ignores commenting on Ariadne-Ariadne and says "Will do, but don't really know what to ask for. Part of me hopes to stumble on some magical safe space to actually work on stuff without deleting or lobotomizing myself or someone else. Or maybe stumble on some sort of made-up fantasy manual that just so happens to line up with how all this crap works because of collective unconsciousness, if that's actually what it is. Just anything, really. Short of getting put into a Proxy Suit again."

------------------------

Museum Black Box

Remy looks to the door as well, then just at the wall to look at neither the wall or Nora. "I don't know. I don't know how any of this **** works. Or what Proxy has to do with this or why I can delete things or what the Proxy Suit pushed me down into or what this room is or why you are being held here or anything." There is just so much frustration inside and pouring out. Universe just slapping whatever progress he hoped to make back out of his hands.

"I could try to remove your need to eat, drink, and sleep. But I don't know if it would work permanently or temporarily, or if it would remove your internal organs, or if the universe has failsafes or gotchas or something and I have no way to test all this ****." Just more black boxes within black boxes. Every test amounting to open heart surgery.

[Quellian-dyrae]

Lily listened quietly as Remy explained what he had figured out about his powers. Her lips twitched when he said he mainly attacked by removing his enemy's "hit points" directly, although she was too busy considering the ramifications of it to show much more amusement than that. In principle, that suggested he should be able to conceptualize other things in RPG terminology and remove them. Remove "levels" to generally weaken an enemy, or "ability scores" to diminish them in some particular physical or mental capacity. Maybe.

Before she could follow that train of thought too far, he dropped the bombshell about how he was teleporting them. She kinda blinked at him a couple times. She had been wondering what he had actually been "removing" to accomplish that; removing time and then physically dragging them wherever they were going hadn't made her list. Remy had used his teleportation often enough that she had just assumed it was more convenient than that, given the three of them all had access to pretty fast flight.

Ariadne got another blink when she spoke up. Lily was aware of the spiritual being's existence, but she hadn't realized she could just talk through Kal like that. Huh. As far as her theory, that it was just that Remy was afraid of using his powers...

"I'm speculating here, but going off his description, it doesn't sound like the difficulty is emotional. It sounds like it's more a matter of...interface, if that makes sense. Like..." she looked to Nope, addressing him more directly. "I'm guessing there's some concrete mechanical thing your powers are doing, on some base level of reality. But your only interface for directing them is conscious intention. If your intention is being kinda translated as best your powers - or maybe just your brain - can into whatever actual process your powers use, that might explain why their results are so...finnicky. And why it works better for things you've practiced, kinda like muscle memory. Sort of. Maybe."

[Zelphas]

Museum Black Box

Nora looked at you for a long moment, then her jaw firmed. You recognize this look; Nora has made a Decision, and you aren't going to talk her out of it.

"Let's hold off on... removing... my needs. I won't be able to taste my horrible tea. Speaking of," With a firm smile, Nora takes your arm and guides you over to the comfortable guest chair, grabbing the stack of papers on it and tossing them to the side with a complete disregard for their order or readability. "Sit down." This isn't a question.

Once you are seated, Nora goes over to the back of her desk again and pulls open the bottom drawer. She sticks her hand... then her arm... then her elbow... into the drawer, until she is bent over it with her arm up to the shoulder hidden inside. "I haven't tried this, but... perfect!" Straightening, Nora pulls out... a novelty electric kettle in the shape of an unfortunately weird looking fish, the contents sloshing about as she lifts it. "Discontinued three years ago, no buyers... and inside, water from a well in a sealed cave somewhere in the Alps. This makes so much more sense when in the context of forgetfulness." Opening the top of the fish's head, Nora sniffs experimentally, then nods. "Yup, smells like water. Okay." Turning away for a moment, Nora aggressively clears paper out of her way until she finds an outlet. She plugs in the electric kettle, and a little light turns on in front of the fish, followed soon after by bubbling water and the hiss of steam. Nora blinks. "From cold to boiling... maybe you forget the in-between most often? Not important. Good, no waiting!"

Humming tunelessly, Nora turns a deaf ear to any comments, pulling out two old mugs and a battered box containing three dreaded letters: TEA, printed in block format on a brown surface that always looked dusty. Underneath the TEA is an incongruously green, cartoon leaf with a smiley face. Nora found this tea in a tiny little market somewhere in Forester's Bay two years ago. She bought it, drank it, declared it the worst tea ever, and stocked up on it; it is exclusively what she offers to guests in her office.

Nora quickly makes two cups of TEA and hands one to you, taking the other one herself. Perching on the edge of her desk in front of you, Nora takes a sip, shuddering at the taste, and then fixes you with a level stare. "Now. The door is open, and even if I forget, it looks like you won't. You are going to drink my horrible tea, and you are going to tell me about what has been happening in the past two months. At some point, you are probably going to cry, which is good; you look like you need it. Only after all of that is done, and you have choked down every drop of tea in your mug, will we talk about what we are going to do next. Because, little brother, you look like you are trying to hold the world together with two pieces of string and your arm strength, and I'm not going to leave here until I can help you."

[Ridai]

Museum Black Box

When Remy started this whole vigilante thing a few months ago, he was constantly nervous, barely knew what he was doing, and frequently scared. Now, he has reached dangerous approximate knowledge of some parts of what he can do, still does not know much about what is going on, and the constant fear of death is partially buried under just how tired he feels. Nora sees he has lost a lot of weight and at this trajectory is approaching the unhealthy side of things, and he looks physically, mentally, and emotionally worn-out. He does his best to take solace in having that familiar cup of awful "TEA" and seeing his sister again, despite the frustrating, positively maddening circumstances of it all. It wasn't what he'd hoped for.

"Dome's still up. League's still ruling the city. Was put into a Proxy Suit. Didn't quite work like it was supposed to. Something happened to me. Can remove things now with my brain, but it's... hard to do, often dangerous... terrifying. Living with Uncle Bruno. He's doing well. Met other people with powers. Been trying to stop the League. Making some progress. Been in a lot of fights. League minions, ghosts and such trying to kill us. Came very close at times." he takes another sip. A surprisingly big one, despite how awful and sense-flaying the beverage is. Maybe because of that. Burn some sort of big sensory impression into the subconscious part of his brain, better at remembering smells and tastes than sights and sounds anyway. His brain remembers the paralyzing smell of the Wastes well. Undead flesh of zombies and rotting insects. Biological war crimes of Manchineel's lot.

"People are afraid of me by now. Removed the city's insect population on accident when a teammate was close to dying. Watcher had to replace it. No food for the people for three days. Ghosts are real around Babblebrook. Spent I think by now weeks in subjective time to travel and transport people. People-possessing parasite came out of the place the Proxy Suit pushed me into. Defeating Bronze Links tortures Silver Links. Nightmares every night. No stray thoughts when I attack or someone might not exist anymore. Having to keep from a little girl that her uncle tried to kill her dad, who's now one of Manchineel's menagerie." He knows he is rambling nigh incoherently. Eyes staring into his cup, thumbs going back and forth on the rim, ceaselessly.

"Dad's now a Silver Link. Greed. Had to fight him some weeks ago. Mom is leading one of Apophis' sub-cults. Yellow cult. Mouthpiece. Had to fight her too. Saw and heard her scream from acid and thorns." Remy would like to smash the mug against his own head. Decides against the intrusive thought, since it wouldn't accomplish anything. Hands tighten painfully around the cup. "Searched every room of every museum every week." Wouldn't accomplish anything. Remy's torso bending forward and over, tiredness mixing with angry energy going nowhere, clutching the cup. Intrusive thought to scream. Wouldn't accomplish anything. Drink. "More people like me. Weird SCP ****. No answers-" Words fail, replaced with restrained grunts pressing through clenched teeth, tears pressing out of the corners of the eyes. Anger and despair are the enemy, they are too ready to do something, no matter what, how, why, and for what. The big freeing outpour is the danger. The powers never sleep. Ready to wrench open the connection to the ocean of minds. The emotions are starting to physically hurt as Remy has to vent them agonizingly slowly, unsatisfyingly, and only partially.

It takes time for Remy to get through his recollection. He downs a second cup of TEA. He is feeling raw and hurting all over. But there were no words about stopping, running. That, too would not accomplish anything. Some part of Remy wonders how pathetic he might look right now. There is also the sense of just keeping on going forward. No thinking where it might lead in the end. That part will matter only if he reaches that point.

"What do we do now? Do you know anything about how you ended up in this place, about who did this?" Just keep going. Found Nora. Need to free Nora.

[Zelphas]

Museum Black Box

Nora listens to your entire rambling explanation, sipping her tea without a change in expression for the taste. After the first sip, she gets used to it, it seems. Once, she starts forward slightly, but you master the urge before she has to intervene, and she settles back. Once you ask your question, Nora sips her tea in silence, letting it stretch for a long moment. "First things first," she says finally, "let's get your priorities in order. I'm not what you need to focus on right now."

She looks at you, one side of her mouth quirked up in a grin. "Let's be clear, bro, I'm glad you found me. It's good that door's open right now. I'm going to need to leave from here. However! No matter how crazy your powers are, you've gone full-on superhero, and what happens to older sisters of superheroes who learn about their little brother's powers?" She shakes her head, taking another long sip. "I'm not interested in adding more to your plate, and two months is already long enough in here that more time isn't going to change much. Plus, there's more I can learn here--though if that was all that was keeping me here, I'd agree that you should get me out despite that. I'm not Mom." She shakes her head again. "Lord, Mom, what are you doing...

"Anyway." Nora gives you another Look over the rim of her mug. "To answer your second question first, I don't think anyone did this to me. Well, I don't think anyone did anything to me at all, but I don't think any of the League did anything to this room. There was an artifact, something that had been acting iffy since the Dome came up. I was the only one who noticed in the mess, so I brought it here to take a look... and I misplaced it." She looks away sheepishly. "I was trying to find it, annoyed that I had somehow forgotten where it was in this little room, when I opened up my bottom drawer and it had gone full Mary Poppins on me. Or Doctor Who? Not important. I sent you a message to take a look, then started noticing other weirdness, and documenting it, and..." She waves a hand at the mess of her office, the papers scattered everywhere. Outside the door, a museum curator walks down the hall, never even pausing to look through into the office.

"As for what we're going to do... first of all, you're going to find out if you can sleep in this room. Then, after about eight hours have passed--yes, with the nightmares, we'll work through it--you're going to go to the nearest food place and buy real food--you can still find real food, right? Then you're going to come back, and we're going to eat all of it. After that, we'll take our next steps." She smiles at you, the set of her jaw telling you that she's not interested in arguing (not that that's necessarily stopped you before). "Oh, don't forget to let Uncle Bruno know you're all right. I don't think your powers work well here--everything in this place is already removed from reality one way or another--and the League won't bother it."

[Ridai]

Remy is just entirely too tired to argue. To bring up if being the sister of a "superhero" is going to kill her, he will never be able to get her out of this room. That he does very much wants to focus on getting her out of this place. His life is tiny incremental little steps towards goals he can't even really see. So having found Nora will have to be enough.

He just wordlessly, slowly nods. Gets up. Walks around the table. Hugs Nora. Walks back around. Lies on the floor. Lets whatever time pass until he falls asleep or the eight hours pass. Could be minutes, could be hours. Same as outside the room, really.

[Zelphas]

Museum Black Box

Whether sleep in the strange timelessness inside Nora's office is restful or not, only Remy can say for sure. One thing is true, however: any dreams are forgotten upon awakening, with neither memory nor effect making their way into the waking world.

When you wake up and grab something appropriately unhealthy and filling from a nearby food place (the prices are higher than they should be, hooray for the Dome), Nora gives you another hug and moves back to her desk, which is remarkably more organized (though still piled with more paper than seems possible). "Again, not adding to your plate, but I have a theory based on the idea that this place is 'forgotten' rather than separated. It seems to be connected to other 'forgotten' things, which explains the drawer, and why all the food is bad when I try to get some. But, if it's connected... there might be more places like this. Either in the Dome... or beyond it." She holds up her hands. "Escaping the Dome's still a pipe dream at the moment--if two months out there with it haven't changed much, then there's not much I'll do in here--but finding other places like this one in the city or around it might let me move from place to place and get me on my way. There's an element of... I don't know what to call it. Thematic overlap? Something like that, in the connections here. It doesn't take much to go from a forgotten product to a forgotten idea for a product, and then to just an idea, for example."

Nora shuffles the paper on her desk, threatening a pressed-wood avalanche. "If I'm on the right track, I might be able to grab something from the drawer that can help locate places like this. The things I grab seem to be disconnected from regular time, which is why I was going down that route for... good grief, months, before you came by. What do you think? Should I give it a try?"

[Ridai]

"Might as well. Just... just look out for anything Proxy or... whatever else might be in these places. Proxy studies stuff, but I still have no idea to what end." Better than doing nothing at this point. "Maybe you can find some forgotten thing to defend yourself with." Spoken like the guy who has been living in mortal danger for months. He wants to say "please be careful", but that feels like insulting Nora's intelligence, and he would be repeating himself.

"Probably should get going. We might fight Manchineel soon. I'll come by as often as I can." Remy doesn't sound all that enthused, what with the danger of forgetting this place and Nora again, and throwing himself back into the maw of playing hero. And possibly facing off with Manchineel in a few weeks. Perhaps it's a personal failing that he doesn't seem to get used to all this. But someone's gotta do it. He gives Nora another hug. "Love you, sis."

[Dorni]

Chance or Fate

"_{I have faith you'll be able to contain it. But for now you can return as well. The danger is past, and I have things to discuss with the creature's summoner.}" Not his cousin. He trusted Iala Sithe. But in the short time he'd contracted the familiar, he'd learned the fey saw the world through a much different lens. For the moment it was safer for to err on the side of Iala being unable to misvalue information he didn't have. He hoped. He could have banished Iala, but instead he gave the sidhe a moment to return on his own.

Which left him facing Sara. "So..." He reached a hand off to one side towards the ground and made a slight lifting motion. He was self-aware enough about it to find it odd - manipulating aether was a mental exercise, not a physical one, so the gesture wasn't actually necessary. But something about it felt right, and that made it easier. And besides, what he was doing wasn't really a weaving a spell. He drew moisture up from the ground in an area around them, forming a floating ball of water.

Then he floated the ball to Sara in a quiet offer for her to try and wash the smell away. "I see you've made some interesting friends. Could you tell me more about them?"

Spoiler: OOC

Show

Using Cantrips for the water ball here.

[Zelphas]

Museum Black Box

"Wait, Remy--I'm not going to be going out and looking! One second." Nora opens up the bottom drawer and reaches into it for quite some time, grasping and grabbing. She even sticks her head in a moment to "look", immediately pulling back her head. "Can't see a thing. Obviously." After several more seconds, Nora pulls back her hand, bringing out some sort of handheld device. It looks something like a game controller with a TV screen mounted on the front, though it lacks any buttons of any sort. The TV screen is currently lit up with a bright, cool blue gleam.

"A lost thing for finding lost things... was this just an idea? Fascinating! Okay." Nora jumps up from her seat, rushing over to you and slapping the device into your hands. "The range isn't huge, but it'll glow up with blue pinpricks when something lost is nearby. It's all blue right now because, well, everything here is 'lost', I guess? So if you look for big clumps of 'lost' things, then... you'll find another door! Probably! And..." her hands shake just a bit as she makes sure your grip is steady on the device. "...If you have any difficulty with remembering, you'll have this thing, you know? And you'll have to wonder what it is, and how you got at, and... that should help you remember. You know, if needed!"

Spoiler: OOC

Show

The Downtime Nora, Where'd You Go? has expanded!

Chance or Fate?

"I think you may know as much as me," Sarah says thickly, accepting the water ball and trying to practically blow her nose in it. On your shoulder, Iala Sith disappears in a frosty gale, leaving your ear numb. "That--whatever--was new, I've never even seen it before. I've gotten the zombies once or twice, but they aren't very happy about being woken up; mostly, they just complain like old grandparents, and then turn to dust. I was mostly expecting to run into one of the bat-things." She sketches out a shape with her hands--taller than you, with big wings and some kind of long, rubbery neck. "They just sort of--fly around, trying to impress me, I think. I don't think they're much smarter than dogs; I was hoping to get one, have it do a trick or two, then send it away, just to show you, but I think the forest changed what came."

Sarah takes a deep breath and immediately grimaces; the smell seems to be lingering, even after washing her nose as much as she could. "A-Anyways, I can call these things to me. And they act like I'm... they seem to like me. But I don't know what to do with or about them. So... yeah."

Spoiler: OOC

Show

The Downtime Relationship Building (Sarah Garrett) has expanded!

[Ridai]

Museum Black Box

Remy raises his eyebrows as he takes the device. His inner gamer is well-versed in this sort of thing. "Definitely gonna use this, thanks. Although," he raises a finger as an idea arrives. Might as well go about this in a more pragmatic way. He grabs a permanent marker from the table and on front surface he doesn't grip with his hands or where the screen is, he writes "Important!" then an arrow pointing to the backside, where he makes a small note: "Finds close Nora doors"

"If the note isn't forgotten, that should help too. If it is, well, more... indirect data?" Maybe it might provide some insights? Maybe? "I'll look wherever I can. Just might take a while to find more doors since, well, there's a lot of city. But I will be back soon." If... he survives the fights against the League. "Even when I could not remember this door, I never stopped looking for you. And I will not stop looking now."