thoughtformed | The Mother of All Logs

[She smiles at him, though there's still a touch of grim to it. She at least appreciates how straightforward he is. People who beat around the bush don't do much for her.]

I'm not busy, but we'll have to keep a look out for any errant mistletoe. Just to be safe.

[He gives a small chuckle, nodding.]

Yes, that we will. Who ever thought so innocent a plant could be so ominous? If we ever get off this island, we will appear to have so many strange reactions and associations to people from the outside world. I imagine there are members of the island who will attempt to destroy any mistletoe on sight now.

[]His lips curl upward, clearly amused.] An impulse I understand.

Shall we, then? [His voice is light, almost laughing, trying to add just a little humor to their situation.] May I buy you lunch? It would be the least I could do to make up for my ungentlemanly introduction. While normally I would buy a lady a meal or two before kissing her, I suppose that late is better than never.

[She snorts, lightly.]

And yet they insist that we're all here to learn how to function properly in the real world. That's the explanation I heard, anyway. I'm pretty sure this isn't normal for mistletoe anywhere.

[She has to smile at his offer. So polite. She likes to see that, even if she often fails with manners herself.]

It's nice to know there are a few guys out there who still have nice manners. How can I say no when you've asked so nicely?

[He tilts his head consideringly.] Perhaps. But if this is how things on the island behave, perhaps this is what the real world is like. Maybe this is normal for real mistletoe. If we cannot escape the island, who are we to say what the rest of this world may be like? It could be anything, especially in a world where fiction may become reality.

[He smiles at her compliment.] While I imagine it wouldn't actually be too difficult to say no, I am glad you are declining to take that route.

I know a good Italian place right up the hill. Will that suffice? [He gives a small chuckle.] Normally I would offer a lady my arm at this juncture, but being in such close proximity may not be the best idea, all things considered.

[ooc: Idea! Though I don't know Anita well, so you'll have to tell me if it's at all realistic. I think it would be adorable if, after lunch, she gives him a friendly kiss, of her own volition, as thanks for being such a gentleman. He would be completely unprepared for it, and I love throwing Koizumi off his balance (especially because so few things do).]

Edited 2012-12-20 09:48 (UTC)

You have a point. I keep assuming the rest of the world is going to be like my own. Kind of by default, you know? Hard to get my head around anything else, even while being open-minded. Home is all I really have as a basis for comparison.

[She makes a vague gesture.]

I just find it hard to believe that things like widespread memory loss are the norm out there. I've been pretty skeptical of the information they've been feeding us here, anyway, though it's getting harder and harder to remain unconvinced.

[She smirks at him, though it's appreciative.]

That sounds fine. And don't worry about it. I would have to refuse the arm, anyway. I get my own doors, too, and my own chairs. I appreciate nice manners, but I've never been a fan of being treated like an invalid.

[OOC: That can be arranged! She's normally not touchy-feely with people she's not close to, but I think in this case (one of her nicer encounters since coming to the island, honestly) she could spare him a kiss on the cheek or forehead on her way out. It would be super cute!]

Perfectly understandable. Growing up, the world behaved in a certain way. Everything we did and everything we are has been shaped by it. To think of a world - nay, a universe - completely alien to our own, one whose laws of physics operate on completely different principles than our own, violates our common sense, because our common sense is not the common sense of this world. Yet we find ourselves in this alien universe, and it behaves in ways we can neither predict nor intuitively comprehend, caring not for out understanding of the way things work.

Myself, I try to make no assumptions about what might be out there - there is no reason it should be closer to my home universe than it is to, say, the universe that shadows and the Dark Hour come from, if you know anything about those.

[He gives a small shrug at her statement, his eyes still amused, he smile a little thoughtful.]

I suppose, under normal circumstances, my offer with the arm would have been more for the closeness and affection than for any sort of physical support - then again, if this were that sort of date, we likely wouldn't mind the mistletoe half so much.

[She listens as they walk in the direction of the restaurant, nodding here and there.]

It's hard not to make assumptions. It's human to do so, at least, but you're right that there's no reason the world beyond New Moore should be anything like what I'm used to.

[She shifts slightly as she walks. Actually, it's been bothering her that she can't decide if she'd rather go home to her city full of monsters and her complicated relationship with them, or stay here and sacrifice free will. She didn't like being caged, and as nice as it was, the island was a cage -- but it was nice, she had to admit, to be able to take a break from vampire and werewolf politics.

She smiles at him again, amused.]

I guess that would make you an optimistic sort of date, wouldn't it? If we were in that situation, I could probably allow the linked arms. Doors are still my territory, though.

What can I say? I'm an optomistic sort of guy. [He inclines his head a little in mock surrender.] And I have no trouble conceding the realm of doors.

[He gives a small laugh.] Again, that would probably have been a bad idea anyway - holding a door open for anyone would just be inviting the mistletoe to strike.

[He allows a moment to pass before he shifts topics.] If you don't mind talking about it, I am interested to hear more about your powers as an animator, and how they work.

[She nods without showing any hesitation.]

Sure. I prefer to keep people informed rather than leave them in the dark. It helps to keep me from ending up on the wrong end of a witch-hunt. People are always afraid of what they don't understand. I'll admit, I'm nervous about how people will react when they realize I'm responsible for that handful of zombies that got raised, but...

[She shrugs.]

Normally I won't be so disrespectful of the dead. It only happened because my mental blocks were down, and it's been awhile since I've used my power regularly. That's important -- you have to use it regularly, or it spills over. I had another incident with it a couple of weeks ago.

I think people will understand. Some have done worse, before - and at least from a legal perspective, you are not responsible for actions taken while under the influence of an unintentional mind-altered state, where it be amnesia or just that you've turned into a pirate. You didn't know you had that power, so you could hardly be expected to control it.

[He pauses the conversation as he lets her open the door and go in first when they reach the restaurant, passing through behind her at a safe but slightly awkward distance. They find a table quickly, and he resumes, though in a slightly more hushed tone of voice, not wanted to be casually overheard, lest they inspire misunderstandings.]

I wonder, however, are you able to tell me how you raise the dead? The universe I come from has many strange things, but undead are not one of them, at least as far as I am aware. Somehow, in this regard, the laws of your universe are different from the laws of mine.

[She appreciates his understanding of the situation -- as well as his willingness to let her get her own doors. No matter how much time she spent with him, Jean-Claude never remembered her 'penchant for doors,' as he called it. Richard always did. She liked that kind of attention to detail.

Once they're settled at a table, she leans forward slightly, both to hear him more easily and to be able to keep her voice low. She's not shy or embarrassed about her power anymore, but every detail of it doesn't need to be common knowledge, or interrupt other people's meals.

Face it, sometimes necromancy got gross.]

Well, first of all, it's not something that you can learn if you don't have the innate ability for it. You're either born with it, or you're not. It usually manifests around puberty, and then you need training or else it's just going to be out of control. Your power will use you, instead of you using it.

The actual raising of the dead is simple enough, though the extent to which it can be done varies from person to person.

[Being a true necromancer rather than just an animator means that her own powers over zombies are extended, too. It's actually unnerving, to think about how old a zombie she might be able to raise if she really tried. They might not be very useful -- so many of the parts would have become dust over time -- but still.]

The ritual isn't as complicated as people want to think it is -- which is lucky for me, or else I might not have stumbled on the right way to put a zombie to rest while I didn't have my memories. You have to create a circle of power around the gravesite, usually by walking it. You need ceremonial ointment, which is different for every animator. The primary ingredients are the same, a lot of it is graveyard mold, but everyone has their own particular blend. The last ingredient for instant zombie is a blood sacrifice. I prefer to use chickens.

[Koizumi listens attentively, his head cocked just slightly to one side in interest. He nods slowly as she finishes, but then takes another moment, considering.]

An innate ability that will be used, whether the user wills it or not, and a ritual involving a circle of power and blood sacrifice. [His smile broadens.] Sounds like something straight out of a movie. Funny that the fiction in my world would so closely imitate the reality in yours.

[The conversation pauses once again when the waitress comes to take their orders.]

[Anita orders quickly, asking for a cup of coffee as her beverage rather than something that might mesh better with the food. Once the waitress has taken both their orders, she offers Koizumi a wry smile.]

Fiction where I'm from is a little more neat-and-tidy than the real thing, you could say. Kind of romanticizes the monsters. Even with vampires and werewolves and all kinds of other things being very much real, there are still some people who think of them as fantasy, too -- people who think that the monsters out there in the dark can't get them if they pretend they don't exist. It's not been easy for everyone to swallow, but the vampire and lycanthrope populations got so big, they just couldn't be ignored anymore. Vamps are legal citizens in the good old US of A.

Perhaps the fiction in my world is more akin to your reality than I even realized. [Koizumi laughs softly.] It appears people like to romanticize what they shouldn't everywhere.

Citizens, you say? How do they interact with normal humans, then? Is there some program where they can live without feeding on or turning others? I hardly see them being granted rights if they feed on the rest of the population.

Yeah, I'll agree with you on that one. It's pretty much a constant with people everywhere.

[She shakes her head.]

They still feed on humans, but it's illegal for them to kill by feeding. Most of them have human servants and lycanthropes to call on that are willing donors, and you wouldn't believe the number of tourists that pour into vamp establishments just to get nibbled on.

[She looks sorely disappointed at that.]

People are in denial over it, but once you're bitten, a vampire has hold over you. Forever. If you sign yourself up for the deal, fine. I still don't like it. If a vampire forces you, it's illegal. If they put out a warrant for someone with fangs, then they call me. Jailing vampires doesn't work. They're too powerful. We just have to kill them. Death penalty or nothing.

Ah, I see. I knew tourists aren't always the brightest, but that's a little extreme.

I don't know if that arrangement is worse or better than everyone calling for an extinction. Which, to be honest, would be what I might expect from my world should this happen. If they're all volunteers, though - I don't know how I'd feel about it, but perhaps that is the best arrangement.

I suppose it's nice to know we're able to live in something approximating peace with a creature higher up the food chain. On my world, such a thing doesn't really exist.

I can certainly see how your abilities might give you an edge in that business, though.

You mentioned lycanthropes?

[She nods, confirming.]

Lycanthropes are different. Most of them are people who just got real unlucky and got infected, but the pack politics they put into play are pretty crazy. Get a lot of people hurt.

So your world really doesn't have anything like that? No vampires, no werewolves, nothing?

My world is... complicated. We don't have anything like that - in the majority of people's everyday lives.

[He smiles a little mysteriously. He uses his hands to gesture animatedly during his explanation.]

Do you believe in God, Anita? Perhaps this world is but a dream a certain being is having. Because it is a dream, creating and altering the world we call 'reality' is child's play for this being. Humans have defined such a being as 'God'.

[There is another pause as he smiles enigmatically at her.]

On my world, this being was unaware of the position it held as God. It thought it was a normal person, but it wanted the world to be more interesting, and actively sought out such things. Because the being desired it, aliens, time-travelers, and espers came into existence, though they stayed mostly in the shadows, simply observing. [He laughs, realizing something.] I suppose I must add dimensional sliders to that list too.

Common sense told the being that these creatures could not exist, and so even when the people this being gathered were an alien, a time-traveler, an esper, and a dimensional slider - their identities were all unknown to the being. They still are.

If at some point that being wished that vampires or werewolves were real - then they truly would be.

This being, well...

[He takes a slow drink of water.]

I went to high school with her.

Edited 2012-12-22 10:33 (UTC)

[She does, in fact, believe in God -- this place has been challenging her stance as a strict monotheist, but that's neither here nor there at the moment. She listens with interest, though her left eyebrow hitches up just a bit higher with each statement. Still, it's not as hard to swallow as it might be otherwise. She's seen more than her fair share of weird. This is just a different flavor.]

So you went to high school with 'God.'

[She gives him a flat look, but it's not disbelieving -- more like she's trying to take a moment or two to absorb. A few inappropriate questions race through her mind. Probably best not to ask what God's extracurricular activities were.

... bet she was a cheerleader, though.]

So anything this person wanted, as long as they wished for it, it became reality. That's some pretty heavy stuff. How did people manage to keep their identities under wraps?

Yes, I went to high school with 'God'. Actually, I still do.

[He gives her the time she needs to absorb this information. Even with all the evidence, he knew that Kyon still didn't see her that way.]

Not any passing thought. Basically if it got to the point where she believed it to be true, it was. If she ever got too dissatisfied with the world at large, she would simply leave it and create a new one. [Which is still what he believes happened when they came to New Moore.]

And it wasn't difficult to keep things secret. We simply pretended to be normal high-schoolers around her, and kept our real activities hidden. As far as the rest of her powers go, when she changed things, she'd already desired or believed them enough that she didn't notice when, say, all the cherry trees started to bloom in early December.

[ooc: Haha, she wasn't a cheerleader, actually, any more than she was a member of the popular music or calligraphy clubs. She tried out every club or activity in the school for one day (she was really good at all of them), before deciding they were all boring and quitting and eventually starting her own club. Where she immediately recruited an alien, a time-traveler, and an esper, not really giving them much choice in the matter. Later she said the group was dedicated to finding these people, though most of the time they had rather normal activities (at least when she was with them).]

[She gives him a questioning look.]

You keep saying 'we.' So which of the above categories did you fall into, then?

Ah, of course. I am an esper. You may think of me as such.

When 'God' gets annoyed or frustrated, it can have adverse effects. Like I said previously, if she grows too dissatisfied, she'd simply create a new reality closer to the one she desires.

Before we get to that point, however, there are acceptable levels of frustration. When she gets frustrated enough, what we call closed space appears. It is a pocket dimension, a mirror of this world, but devoid of life. There, blue giants - Celestials - appear and begin to destroy the surroundings, presumably to let out her frustrations. Thus all the destruction is contained, and nobody is harmed.

[He takes another drink of water.]

However, as the Celestials wreak their destruction, the closed space grows. If that space ever cover the entire world, it would replace it, and our world would vanish. That is where we espers come in. We have been granted the power to enter closed space, and there have been granted the power to defeat the Celestials, halting the expansion and destroying that pocket of closed space.

[She nods as he explains, sipping at her own water here and there.]

So espers are the only ones who can do anything about Celestials? The aliens and dimension-hoppers and all the rest are just there for decoration, or do they have certain responsibilities, too?

[He looks thoughtful for a moment.]

You know, I'm honestly not sure if Nagato-san - our resident alien - would be able to enter closed space, or do something about the Celestials. [He shrugs.] We've been here to take care of it, so it's never come up.

The aliens and time-travelers are less directly connected to the being I call 'God'. The aliens are interested in her ability to create data - they can manipulate it, but creation of new data appears to be beyond them. And as near as I can understand it, they view all matter and energy as 'data'. They are data-lifeforms themselves.

The time-travelers discovered that they could not travel back in time beyond a certain point, and ascertained that she was at the center of the time-quake. They wish to understand how this came to pass, and presumably wish to heal the fault between the time planes so they can traverse them once more.

Mostly, though, the others are just observing her. They do not view her as 'God' like I do, nor do they have, as you phrased it, 'responsibilities' in the same sense as I. They answer to none but themselves, and have their own rules and protocols.

'Observing' her.

[It's not a criticism, but she finds the term itself interesting. Like the girl is some strange specimen to be kept under glass.]

It sounds your world is just as messed-up as mine, even if it's in a different way. Is the general public at all aware of the existence of aliens or espers, or are you all incognito?

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Do you want to continue this or leave it as implied after a thread or two? I'm happy with either :)

I'm also good with either! ^_^ Whatever you think is best! He's adorable.

All right. Let's just continue for now, and we can stop when we run out of things to say.

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feel free to have her ask him questions about his world (cuz I'm running out of questions) :)

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that icon made this super ominous. XD

:D That's the smile he had when he was telling this to the protagonist.

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Someday I will watch all of this anime.

YES IT IS AMAZING! Also, don't be put off by the first couple episodes.

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