Seasons Inbox

[sonic_wachowski]

"Hello, hello! This is Sonic, the Blue Blur, Blue Justice, Cobalt Lightning! Super fast hedgehog here to help! Or hang out. If there's danger, say a location and then what you can of the problem, but if you're looking to have fun, just tell me the time, place, general idea, I'm pretty open to trying out most things, especially fun thin-"

*Times out the recording with his rambles*

Comments

[lightremains]

I prefer books. [watching that little television hurt his eyes if he sat in front of it for too long. The new ones were so high definition, he's not sure if they're worse, or better.

Shadow hums thoughtfully, brows furrowed. Well... he'd slept in a few places. Mostly suspended in the liquid-filled test chamber. So maybe something like a big bathtub? But he doesn't think this place could get the special fluid that he could breathe, so probably not. He napped sometimes in a nest of blankets in the fort, and sometimes snuggled up with Maria in her bed. It wasn't much more than a large cot, albeit more comfortable than those for the soldiers.]

Is there some kind of bed that is close to the ground? Maybe just a mattress on the floor. [a Japanese-style futon bed would probably be the closest approximation of what he's asking for]

[sonic_wachowski]

I can show you were the library is. Its huge! Its also got a great graphic novel and manga section.

[Books are a handy tool when figuring out survival even if he definitely prefers ones with pictures.]

...we are not getting you a mattress on the floor. [Oh god, Shadow is running on college freshman logic.]

Buuuut I think there's futons and stuff that would be close. We could look at those! I also want to see how a water bed treats ya. [Listen. He's not thinking about the spikes. He forgets about the spikes, he's not near poppables enough.]

[lightremains]

[a big library with lots of different books... That might be a good place to spend a lot of time.

He rolls his eyes. What's wrong with a mattress on a floor??? It's FINE]

I just like to be close to the ground is all. [facepalm] Sonic. A waterbed is a terrible idea. [he flares his quills for emphasis] One bad enough nightmare and it becomes a giant mess!

[sonic_wachowski]

[ABSOLUTELY NOT. We believe in standards in this house when we don't have to live in a cave in the woods!]

It is nice to not have to hop in and out, I do miss that about my bed. [Provided bed is so high.] We can check out the stores in Sunwaning. They've got the Asian vibe and like so many of those tv shows have low beds. If their buildings have the vibe, maybe their beds do.

[Oh.]

[Right.]

... [Opens mouth.]

[Closes mouth.]

Okay, with the amount of holes in my sheet, I can't discount that. Oh, maybe I can figure out something later though. I apparently have water powers, so who knows what kind of water magic they got!

[Which is]

[A fucking nightmare, but we're trying to not let it be one!]

[lightremains]

Mmm. Like that first city I was in. It was... Tokyo, right?

[it had been so bright and full of lights and people... probably not a good place to end up after being asleep for 50 years.

He folds his arms and rolls his eyes. Did this guy ever think more than 30 seconds into the future?]

Water, huh. I got earth-based ones. There's apparently a list of what kinds of abilities we can have at the guilds.

[sonic_wachowski]

Yeah. That was Japan, little island place, definitely where a lot of low beds are according to anime. [Truthfulness unclear, but television is the best he's got.] How did you end up in Tokyo anyway?

[He nods.] There are! But that is also like the KNOWN stuff. Who knows what we're actually capable of. Because if they're relying on us to save them with just the stuff they had before, odds don't look great, right? So probably need to push this stuff in new and exciting ways!

[lightremains]

[he shrugs] It was the closest piece of civilization to wherever they had me on ice. [a tiny little island out in the middle of Tokyo Bay, as it turned out.]

[he quirks a brow] I'm pretty sure those lists were honed over decades. I don't know that there's anything left to discover.

[sonic_wachowski]

That seems like a diplomatic incident waiting to happen. [Did GUN have global authority???]

[He hums, rocking on his feet a few seconds. Then he tugs off his glove and he holds out his hand to Shadow.] Lemme see your hand.

[lightremains]

[Guardian Units of Nations, Sonic. They're global.]

Why. [he tilts his head to one side, but then copies Sonic -- though he has to pull the glove off from under the inhibitor ring]

[sonic_wachowski]

[Listen, these aren't details he's paying attention too, just how much they keep sending drones to his town.]

[Sonic takes his head.] You feel it, right? If you focus, you can feel an energy moving from where we're touching?

That's touch energy. Part of how this place works. By the way, you do need to touch someone at least every three days for a few minutes, and if you start turning to stone, I will be a pest about it.

Anyway, touch energy. Its a way to give each other energy.

But there is something I've felt that's close to this.

Did you know you can pull back your chaos energy when its sent away? Its not easy, Knuckles and I can't do it on the fly, but his energy got stolen and he took it back and when Robotnik was using my quill, I was able to pull the energy from it.

[A pause.] That might be why you survived the cannon blowing. It was your energy.

[Wait.] Were you thinking of Maria?

[lightremains]

[he looks down at their hands. It's true. He can feel energy -- different than his chaos energy -- flowing in and out between Sonic and himself. Unlike his own power, which was jagged and sharp, but familiar, this new power was warm and comforting, like being wrapped up in a blanket fresh out of the dryer. But also foreign, alien. His body doesn't really know what to do with it.

He rolls his eyes at Sonic insisting he'd be a pest] Somehow I don't think that's going to be a problem. [you're very touchy feely, hedgehog.

Wait. He can control his chaos energy even after he's imbued it into other objects? So...]

... I was. [at the risk of being clichéd, he saw his short life flash before his eyes. He was ready to go be with her.] But why...? Why would I have taken it back? I was ready. Ready to see her again.

[sonic_wachowski]

That's three for three.

Like I said, it's not something Knuckles and I can do on the fly. Trust me, I've been trying to get a handle on it. I can track down my quills now, but it's still a lot easier to destroy them than to depower them.

But for Knuckles, he wanted to protect the new home he had gained.

And for me, I wanted to protect the first friends I had made.

So you....wanted to protect the world where you met Maria, right? The whole Eclipse Cannon was probably too much to just absorb, but it might have taken the sting out of it. Less energy it had, less energy that could fuel the explosion, less chance it could reach Earth. As a guess, anyway.

[lightremains]

[he takes his hand back and puts his glove back on as he listens.

So it was something that happened subconsciously. So that meant... he probably wouldn't have been able to save Maria from the explosion that took her life, even if he had known about this. Still... that guilt burned inside him. She'd be alive if not for him.

A subconscious need to protect the planet that had been her home long before it was ever his. A desire even stronger than his will to die.]

[sonic_wachowski]

[The amount of time would have probably made it impossible. It wasn't a FAST process.]

[Sonic lets go and he pulls on his glove.]

But you didn't know that. Even with all the studying I'm sure the scientists were doing.

And I didn't know I could pull my energy back until I felt that connection with Tom, and with Maddie, and I wanted to pull out Robotnik's teeth for them and only then could I feel the quill.

I had something new and I understood a new thing about my power.

They studied their powers for who knows how long.

But we're new.

Thinking their limits are hard ones just means we won't find them when they're there.

[lightremains]

[he rubs his inhibitors thoughtfully as Sonic continues to speak. Again, wise for someone so stupid]

Then I guess we get to think outside their boxes.

[sonic_wachowski]

[You don't live your entire life hiding from people who want to potentially use your for your own and not have some deep thoughts about power itself.]

Exactly. Push it in new exciting ways.

Stuff we can get their powers to do.

And what we can do with our powers with theirs.

[A pause.]

If you want to.

I'm gonna do the hero thing, but you should only do what you want.

Well, don't go do evil things, I guess, because then I'd have to fight you, but I assume that's off the table. But you don't have to do the hero things or even power things if you don't want to!

[lightremains]

[he smiles a wry grin and huffs out a laugh at his proclamation of his intent to do the Hero Thing] Why am I not surprised.

[the grins fades back to his usual neutral resting bitch face with a bit of a furrowed brow, and he looks away]

I haven't decided if I want to help these people yet. But I'm certainly not helping whatever it is out there that's hurting them.

[sonic_wachowski]

That's all I ask. [Please don't put him in between a rock and a hard place.]

It's a lot to help people you don't really know, and the kidnapping thing isn't doing them any favors, but the leaving us to our own devices gives them at least one point.

And hey, there is also just do quests that sound like fun and don't go above and beyond for them, just what seems like a good time.

Plus that helps pay living expenses. We should do that. I assume the guy who owns the supermarket didn't make the decision to kidnap us so should try to keep theft down if we can.

[lightremains]

[he folds his arms and rolls his eyes]

That's bullshit. [there it is. His first cuss.] They kidnap us, expect us to do their dirty work, and then want us to get jobs and pay bills? This is indentured servitude.

[sonic_wachowski]

[Ooooh, the EDGINESS. He swore.]

[How is Shadow always cool???]

[Sonic pls]

I mean, we COULD steal, but it's honestly about the same amount of hassle and get way less nice stuff.

But that is why we should focus anger on the guys who did the kidnapping. Also the stuff they're not telling us? Because their story is super weird.

[lightremains]

Stealing is easy when you can teleport.

[The story IS super weird, so he nods]

I don't trust them. There's something they aren't telling us, I can feel it.

[or maybe you're both just Hyper Paranoid, did you ever think of that???]

[sonic_wachowski]

Stealing is also easy when you have superspeed and people can't see you. The problem is you steal too much and they make it harder to get to the things. Unless you can steal something out of a box that's smaller than you. Or need to search around the back of a store because they make customers bring up pieces of paper with picture of the stuff.

Yeah, that's what I think! Like they got messed up by Darkness, but Darkness is resistant to OUR stuff, but vulnerable to THEIR stuff.

There's something in there that they're leaving out.

[lightremains]

Then you just take the whole box. It's not like we're going to steal big, expensive things. Or any more than we need. [you're too paranoid, bro] And if they make it harder, then we just get creative, right?

[it didn't make any sense. If the monsters here were only susceptible to damage from local magic, why bother bringing in outsiders? What happened to all the other magic users from this world? Were they just bringing in strangers to toss into the meat grinder?] But I'm sure if we just ask we won't get straight answers.

[sonic_wachowski]

And that's when businesses get shut down and people lose their livelihood and then someone who has no say over us ends up on the street.

And. Living with only the bare essentials is maddening. You gotta have entertainment and nice things sometimes.

Ooooh, definitely not. I'll try asking them if I get an opportunity, but I don't have much hope.

[The trust issues. The trust issues abound.]

[lightremains]

[he folds his ears] Why do you do that? Catastrophize. How much damage do you think two small aliens can do to the local economy, exactly?

[he taps his chin, thoughtful] They must keep records, somewhere.