towerofanimus | it all keeps adding up, i think i'm cracking up;

Entry tags:

it all keeps adding up, i think i'm cracking up;

Characters: Tobias and open.
Setting: Floor 14, Floor 63, and Floor 87
Format: Either.
Summary: A day in the life of a birdboy?
Warnings: Probably nothing aside from usual body horror if he morphs. Maybe mild language?

[Floor 14]

[Even with everything that happened, Tobias is still a teenager. A nerdy teenager, at that. So it's not really that surprising for someone like him to be on the media floor, playing a video game - an FPS, specifically.]

[What is probably surprising, at least for other people, is that he's still in his hawk morph, perched on the controller. One talon is on the stick controlling movement, and the other is resting on the face buttons.]

[… These graphics are awesome.]

[Floor 63]

[Birds are not made for water, generally - at least not hawks. That's just not something they do. But Tobias is fighting that instinct today as he rolls himself out into the water.]

[Today, he's decided to use his dolphin morph, despite having almost been drowned acquiring it. There's just something about being a dolphin that's sheer fun, even though he's eyeing some of the fish uneasily. Still, the dolphin instinct takes over, so anyone heading through this level will see a dolphin speeding around, chittering and trying to play with the fish.]

[Every so often he pokes his head into the column of air around the stairs, spraying out a wet breath from his blowhole and sucking in another fresh breath before zooming away again.]

[Floor 87]

[It's not totally unlike Tobias to sit and admire wildlife. He's part of the wildlife, after all. He'd smell the flowers, but his sense of smell is way inferior to most of his other senses now. Even still, it's not that hard to spot the flash of reddish-brown from the stairs.]

[It's starting to get harder to spot him, though. Tobias closes his eyes, hunkering down a bit. A nap shouldn't hurt, right?]

[Hasn't he seen this in a movie somewhere?]

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[Luckily, there's someone who makes regular, but short, stops on the poppyfield floor, and Asch happens to see the collared hawk diving into the flowers. He's on-guard against the effects of the floor, which means that he's at least capable of going far enough into it to stand over Tobias, his arms folded and a couple of poppies in one hand.]

You shouldn't sleep here, you know. You'll die in your sleep if you do.

[The voice rouses him from his quickly deepening sleep. He opens his eyes, feathers ruffling a bit.]

<... Huh?>

[Most intelligent responses, here.]

[Man having people who don't share his voice actor in his head is still weird.]

I said, don't sleep here.

[And because clearly talking isn't going to work... Asch shoves his couple of poppies into his belt and reaches down to pick up the bundle of feathers. How do you successfully carry bird. Stomach-down, presumably...]

[He doesn't really respond, just kind of hangs there. He's so tired. The world has stopped making much sense. His head drops to rest on Asch's arm, eyes closing again.]

<Tired... I don't wanna wake up for school...>

You go to school?

[Yeah, color him surprised. Also if he keeps talking, then birdboy probably won't fall asleep and die on him.

Literally. That would be awkward as hell. Asch beelines for the stairs.]

<Uh? ... Oh. I used to... when I wasn't a bird. A few years ago.>

[Ngh. He struggles to stay awake. It's hard - all his instincts keep telling him to go to sleep.]

<It's where I met Jake... he saved me from getting my head flushed.>

[Luckily, once Asch steps onto the stairs, that should stop. He walks intentionally loudly, too.

And he's just going to let that one go because saying embarrassing things half-asleep is a thing that happens.]

How did you wind up a bird, then?

[When they reach the landing, Asch turns to head down - he needs to sit somewhere to fix his flowers, and if Tobias still wants to nap when they reach the lounge, a beanbag is a much better place for it.]

<Stayed in morph too long. You can only stay in it for two hours, and then you're trapped. I got the power to morph back, but that was because the Ellimist stepped in. Time... space... thing... he's basically a god.>

[Also shenanigans happened with his father but we're not talking about that right now la la la.]

Really.

[That's absolutely how you keep engaged in a conversation, Asch. He does at least try not to bounce his armful of bird too much as he goes down the stairs.]

Sounds like a pain in the ass. Dealing with anything close to a god always means problems.

[We can do the not talking about your dad thing if we also do the not talking about Lorelei thing.]

<Yeah. And he's got this 'game' going on with Crayak. He's betting on us. I don't know why or what their history is, really. He's helpful sometimes? But other times he's just annoyingly vague. ... Most times, actually.>

[He shifts a bit, shaking off the sleep some.]

<I mean I won't deny that stuff like giving me back my morphing powers or saving the free Hork-Bajir were bad things. I just wish he'd be straightforward instead of twisting words around or sticking maps of places I don't know in my head.>

[STILL A LITTLE SORE ABOUT THAT YEAH.]

Better than sticking a sword through your fon slots and going "please free me from inside your evil teacher's body before he uses me to end the world."

[Okay so he did wind up talking about Lorelei shit, whoops. Time to change the subject.]

Feeling more awake yet?

<Through your phone slots? What, did someone call your brain?>

[Sure whatever broski.]

<Yeah. Kind of. What was that stuff?>

That's one way of putting it.

[Luckily thoughtspeech gets across the idea of "phone," so rather than amusing confusion, Asch actually kind of knows what he means.]

Fon slots are where the body naturally gathers fonons, and Lorelei can communicate through mine because we're perfect isofons.

[Fon on fon off.]

The poppies induce a sleep-death of some sort - I've heard about it from people who've experienced it and figured you probably didn't want to. They're poisonous if eaten, with a similar effect.

[Please don't question why he's picked a bunch of them.]

<Weird.>

[Sometimes you just have to be poisonous okay.]

<... Wait. Poppies. Like... weird drug-trip poppies? Like 'I'll get you my pretties and your little dog too' poppies? ... They look a lot different in person rather than in a really old and really smeary movie.>

[Falling asleep is a mercy over a lot of ways to die in the Tower.]

What are you talking about?

[He's not from Earth and what is this.]

<... There's an old movie where the main characters almost fall asleep and die in a poppy field. It's on TV a lot.>

[... And possibly just to be annoying, he starts mentally humming 'We're Off to See the Wizard'.]

[Okay he has no idea what any of that means, so he's just going to leave it. Even without having seen the movie, though - ]

You're off key.

[How can a mind-hum be off key? How can Asch tell?

Fonons.]

[Aliens. Anyway he stops and looks up at Asch.]

<I haven't seen it in like two and a half years, give me a break. It'll probably play sometime when Ax is watching TV though and then he'll start asking me all kinds of questions. Like what the purpose of having an entirely green city is.>

[Ax please.]

[He's not technically an alien, his planet is just weird by human-planet standards.]

...To be fair, I think anyone would ask that.

[Oh look we're approaching the lounge. Putting you down on the back of a couch now, Tobias, then Asch drops into a beanbag chair next to it.

What? He likes beanbags.]

[Not him, everyone else in his world.]

[Oh. Neat. He digs his talons into the couch, and looks over at Asch.]

<I'm pretty sure it was a book first or something. And I think it was also written in that era where basically every fantasy author was on some kind of drugs.>

[See also: the sixties.]

[Actually the book is older than that, not that Asch would know. But anyway. He's glad you're satisfied with the perch, at least, and settles back comfortably into his best imitation of a pile of clothes on the beanbag.]

I still have no idea what you're talking about.

<... Basically there was a scene in a movie with poppies. The movie was based on a book. The movie is also really popular where I come from.>

[That's about it, really.]

...What's a movie.

[Look, all he's getting from the translation is some kind of moving picture this isn't helpful.]

[That's basically what it is though...]

<It's a series of moving pictures. Like... uh.>

[How to explain this as simply as possible.]

<It's like someone painting a series of pictures really really fast and storing them. But sound is also captured with it. Then you can play back the pictures with different devices and watch it later. Sort of like uh... if you could take a play, but watch it whenever you wanted.>

[See, now that makes sense to him!]

Like a record with visual data.

[He's totally smart and he now totally understands Earth technology. Not.]

[POPPIES, POPPIES EVERYWHERE]

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