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

[notachickenhawk]

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?]

Comments

[bloodyashes]

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.]

[notachickenhawk]

<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.]

[bloodyashes]

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?

[notachickenhawk]

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

[Sure whatever broski.]

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

[bloodyashes]

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.]

[notachickenhawk]

<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.>

[bloodyashes]

[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.]

[notachickenhawk]

<... 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'.]

[bloodyashes]

[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.]

[notachickenhawk]

[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.]

[bloodyashes]

[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.]

[notachickenhawk]

[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.]

[bloodyashes]

[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.

[notachickenhawk]

<... 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.]

[bloodyashes]

...What's a movie.

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

[notachickenhawk]

[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.>

[bloodyashes]

[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.]

[notachickenhawk]

<Yeah. That works, too. I don't think people have used records in ages, though.>

[Or at least the previous generation. ... It's about the same to him, shut up.]

[bloodyashes]

It's what we use on Auldrant, for the most part.

[Honestly the fact that both their worlds even developed record players is a weird to not be commented on.]

[notachickenhawk]

<Yeah uh. I kind of get the feeling that the technology in your world is... well most people in my world would consider it old, I guess.>

[bloodyashes]

I've gotten that idea.

[No harm in saying it, Tobias. It's pretty much the truth. Their computers are still text-based, for a start.]

We seem to have a few things other worlds don't, mostly the fonology-related sciences.

[Like, ya know, fomicry.]

[notachickenhawk]

[How do you even have computers when you don't have movies.]

<I still don't get what that is. Fonon... things.>

[bloodyashes]

["Because fonons, that's why" could be the subtitle if this entire thread.]

They're energy particles on a scale with atoms, which respond primarily to sound. It seems like they only occur on Auldrant.

[At the very least, no one else seems to have them.]

[notachickenhawk]

<Weird. Though probably normal for you. I really don't have room to call anything 'weird' anymore.>

[Talking bird and all.]

[bloodyashes]

It's fairly normal, although it does require training to sense fonons in anything more than the most basic sense, much less manipulate them to any degree.

[He pushes himself up into a better sitting position on the beanbag.]

All matter on Auldrant has some ambient level of fonons, and that includes people.