∞ 106: Echoes in their absence

[chikaidestroyer]

September 16

[While he had heard of the people -- echoes of people -- appearing around the village, Albert did not happen to see one right away. It's as he's taking a break outside of Celsius Tear that he takes notice of a teenage girl standing in front of the mural by the Welcome Center. He descends the stairs to watch her.

That had been ... almost three years ago now, he recalled as he watched the girl cheerfully set down a bucket of yellow paint. Without paying him any attention or seeing the completed mural in front of her, the girl dipped a paintbrush into the bucket and began making sweeping motions across the mural. Pao-Lin, he finally recalls as she bends over to dip her paintbrush again.

He watches for a while, eventually looking over his shoulder at the other mural that surrounded the fountain. That had been another of her projects with volunteers, done a year later.

He can't help but think about that saying as he watches her paint -- that art only found its value after its artist was gone.]

-----

September 17

[The fountain plaza proves to be a good spot to see the 'echoes,' and Albert decides to take his breaks outside to observe despite the weather looking increasingly storm-like. Sometimes the person he sees is only a flicker of movement, walking around the fountain or sitting on its edge, eating lunch. Once or twice he even sees a person seated or running across a rooftop, leaving him pondering what could have been happening at that time to lead to that behavior.

It's foolish to hope that he'll see a familiar face, he knows. But he still watches.]

-----

September 18, early afternoon

[It seems oddly fitting that he sees echoes of Nami and Yuber on the day of the thunderstorm. Nami, back before she had begun to grow weary of having such awful luck with picking fights with the wrong people. Back before she had been a threat.

...This must have been when Nami declared she would arrest Yuber, going by her uncharacteristic uniform, untouched by the falling rain. He certainly remembered that.]

[Albert can be found in Celsius Tear in the mornings or around the fountain plaza and its stores in the afternoons.]

-----

September 19, evening
Content warning: limb loss

[It happens when he is returning to the hot springs teleporter from visiting his giant owl. The headache comes out of nowhere, like a wave crashing over him, and he drops his journal from where he had been loosely holding it against his side. Shaking his head to clear the disorientation, Albert concentrates enough on Tsinku enough to summon a sphere of contained electricity to light the ground. Upon spotting his journal, he crouches to pick it up.

That's when he notices that there is nothing at the end of his shirt sleeve -- at both of his shirt sleeves.

Dazed, he lifts his hands up to the light to get a better look. But there are no hands. Just dark red masses of muscle and arteries that seem to be in a bizarre state of suspension. The muscles visible twitch as his forearms tense up, and he stares at them blankly for what seems like ages.

The ball of electricity fizzles and disappears as he passes out.

It's over an hour later when he finally wakes up again, his headache worse and his senses slow to reorient themselves. His ragged breathing is answered by a deep hooting noise, and he looks up to see Bilruben's large, glassy eyes reflecting what little light was coming from the artificially displayed moon. The giant owl doesn't move as he sits there in the darkness, a silent sentry while he tries to stop hyperventilating.

He can barely think. The confused, despairing noises he makes are largely incoherent, earning him a tilted stare from the owl as it watches. He doesn't know how long he sits there before he fumbles in the dark, half turned over in the wet grass, to try opening his journal.]

I need help.

[It's breathless and strained. Short and vague.]

Comments

Sept 17

[endgames]

[Shikamaru will join you, Albert. Not by choice, but because the apparition of the grocery store being on fire with a ten meter... something... towering over it while laughing manically gives one a need to pause.

He clucks his tongue, coming to a stop by the fountain and shoving his hands into his pockets, a folded-up umbrella tucked under one armpit.]

Well that's something you don't see every day.

[chikaidestroyer]

[Albert is already staring up at Aku with a rather unimpressed expression. He's reminded of that rather harrowing time when dangers such at that demon, Kefka, and Yuber were fairly active threats to the village. Something he certainly didn't miss from the past.]

I can see how grocery shopping would be put on hold in the face of ... that.

[Assuming Shikamaru was there for grocery shopping. He gives the younger tactician a quick glance before bringing his attention back to the apparition of Aku, which is now shooting eye lasers at someone who isn't there.]

[endgames]

Tch. What a pain. [He sighs dramatically and folds his hands behind his head. He was kinda shopping yeah, even if it wasn't for himself per se.] These usually last long?

[Given how often he's noticed Albert sitting in this spot between a day and yesterday, Shikamaru has no doubt the other man has been observing these things more closely than he has.]

[chikaidestroyer]

Not very long, no. A few minutes at most, from what I have seen.

[As he speaks, Albert pulls out his pocket watch and flips it open. Might as well see how long this past terror would be around.]

Have you been seeing them around as well?

[endgames]

Sometimes. [Shikamaru watches the demon turn into a strange, centipede-like thing with a raised brow. You know this Aku stuff was before his time and what little he knows of him is from the journals, but it's interesting to see this with his own two eyes now.]

Sometimes I recognize them, sometimes I don't. They're all over the place, timewise.

[chikaidestroyer]

[He nods along with what Shikamaru says, glancing up from his watch to look on as Aku jeers and makes an unimpressed face.]

It's a rather significant effect, if we are seeing them with such frequency.

[endgames]

[Man having your eyebrows on fire all the time would be annoying. Wouldn't your face get hot?]

Can't be pretty, outside the place. Like if this is a global thing, and only one percent of its effects are leaking through our barrier.

[chikaidestroyer]

I have to wonder about that.

[He frowns at the idea that brings to mind. It was true that they weren't hearing very much from the Organization or their previous contacts, but could it be because of this?]

If natural shifts can now leak into the barrier, it makes it more difficult to distinguish them from Organization experiments.

[The fire seems to be fading out, though Aku himself is taking a little longer to disappear.]

[endgames]

[The way the fire is going out, Shikamaru presumes something in the past had been influencing it. Another fire user? Or maybe water? Oh and now Aku is splitting up into multiple forms. A lot of people must've shown up to fight this guy off, if he had to divide his attention so.]

Those have been growing less and less frequent over the years as it is, when you think about it. I mean how many have come for sure directly from them in the last year... Four or five? And there were about as few in the year before that.

[chikaidestroyer]

[He glances back down at his watch. It seemed like Aku was pretty resilient, even as an apparition.]

Indeed. There's still an experiment or two that we expect every year, but they have tapered off with the increased focus on the war effort.

[A brief pause.]

But the sheer frequency of these people showing up seems more like an experiment than a simple natural shift.

[It would explain Shikamaru's earlier comment about how bad the natural shifts must be affecting people outside, but surely the researchers would say something about what they had to be seeing.

Unless the only researcher who was even observing them anymore was that one intern he'd dryly called Jingleheimer.]

[endgames]

That's true. [He folds his arms over his chest, thinking back.] But maybe it's not an experiment meant solely for us.

There was that intern back in March that had the date wrong. [He and Masaomi mentioned it the other day, when they were cataloguing things for the locked network.] And the weather in Zompania during the draft was weird too, when I think back on it. When I talked around on the moon, I found it's one of the enclosures closer to the South Pole, but at the time it felt pretty mild.

[chikaidestroyer]

An interesting thought.

[He definitely recalls the intern's slip-up and how he had contemplated the error at the time. But the information on Zompania was new.]

Zompania's weather is normally colder then?

[When they had last been there to raze what was left to the ground, he hadn't made any observations of the weather.]

[endgames]

They were in the same region as those Yggdrasil guys. Region 13, I think they said. Unless that area is a lot more vast than I'm giving it credit for, it probably should be. I guess Yggdrasil gets bad enough they have a fake sun hooked up to keep things livable.

[Shikamaru briefly switches his attention back to the store as a bunch of apelike Akus suddenly reel back, as if in pain.]

[chikaidestroyer]

I would hazard a theory that such experiments are spread out so they won't attract too much attention as anything other than natural shifts, but that would not explain the current frequency of effects in here.

[They had been affected by a number of shifts as far back as before the last draft.

...]

But we know that Zompania was also affected by John's interference. Who is to say he did not manage to run personal experiments in that enclosure prior to the draft?

[The fact that his technology allowed him to reach the Lucetians and cause a shift of that magnitude was significant, even if they didn't know the specifics of how that shift had worked.]

[endgames]

[Shikamaru nods, lifting his foot to tap the toe of his sandal against the ground as he thinks that over.]

It'd fit with the theme...

[chikaidestroyer]

[Albert nods in agreement as he watches the Akus howl in anger and dissolve.]

Having some insight into his plans would be nice. And novel.

[Even after so long, the man could get away with playing with his cards close to his chest against anyone. Except for possibly the Observer, wherever she was now.]

[endgames]

Tch. [So is it over? Shikamaru watches a bat-like thing fly into the sky while the rest seemingly dissipate. If I were in his boots, I'd hide myself with the fakes.]

Well if there's anyone in this village who could put together what he's up to, it'd be you. Provided we get enough clues in the first place.

[chikaidestroyer]

Indeed. We have no idea what his movements were like prior to moving into the tunnels, or if there are any specific movements that can be attached to his name other than the creation of barriers and Shifting technology.

[In some ways, they knew Zompano better than John.

He gives his watch another glance once the apparition was completely gone. Almost six minutes. It seemed the demon could be stubborn in many ways.]

[endgames]

The barrier was on him?

[He didn't know that one.]

[chikaidestroyer]

He certainly seems to be credited with their creation, along with Shifting technology. Given he is also apparently not a native to this world, one has to wonder what happened to the people who arrived before him, exposed to the shifts.

[endgames]

If it didn't mess them up worse, I'd bet they all look like him and Bil.

[chikaidestroyer]

[That comment actually gives him pause, as he's reminded of a side effect he'd suffered from during one of the drafts.]

Have you ever experienced an effect like that? A change to skin coloration?

[endgames]

[Shikamaru shakes his head.]

Not me. But I did see a guy turn orange once.

[chikaidestroyer]

I experienced it for some time during the draft to the jungle. Rather strong light sensitivity came with the effect.

[He'd never seen John in direct sunlight to experience such issues with sensitivity, but it was food for thought.]

I suppose we are just fortunate such effects have not been permanent for us.

[For some reason. He doesn't recall ever hearing an explanation why they were particularly resilient.]

[endgames]

Probably has less to do with luck and more to do with that 1% rate at short-term exposure.

[It does make him think of something else, though, and he raises a hand to his chin.]

I wonder how people on the outside deal with it. I mean, they call enclosures like ours "bubbles", but they have to have some protection for themselves.