From the windows (from the windows) to the walls (to the walls)

[arsarcanum]

characters: Sora, Crowley, Matt Murdock, Hana, Midge Maisel, and you!
location: Beacon, with a quick detour to the lake post-freeze.
date/time: January 3rd through the 10th! (And one on the 13th if I can get away with it - Sora wants to go ice skating!)
content: Sora is on his grind! Taking names! Making friends! Paying his dues! Having fun! Trying to work so hard that his existential crisis forgets he's there! (Will match tag format.)
warnings: Warning for low self-esteem and, uh, Catholicism?

[ A: A visit to a new friend. Closed to Hana Song (and maybe the other residents of the cabin?) ]

Day three of the convalescence of Hana Song. Sora's in the cabin again, walking to her door with a paper bag under his arm after giving a brief, polite, completely friendly greeting to her roommates. They're very lucky that they took her in, and even helped find them splints and bandages so her arm and leg would heal straight. (That took a lot of reapplications of the Cure spell! It's sort of strange to think it's been reduced to the same effect as super fancy band-aids and anesthetic.)

He'll knock at the door of her room in the cabin. "Hey, Hana? You awake?"

[ B: Bad Catholic checks out a creepy pagan cathedral. For Matt Murdock, but open otherwise. ]

It's Sunday, so it seems like a perfectly reasonable day to check out the little church he saw on his many, many trips to and from the boat when he first got here. Skyler never really took religion seriously, and only went to Mass when the rest of the family did for Christmas and Easter, and even then he only did it because Arielle wanted to go see the lights and hear the music with everyone, Skyler included. If there's Catholic guilt here, it's only here because Arielle managed to make Skyler feel bad for not pretending to give a fuck.

In a lot of ways, Sora has even less of an attachment to organized religion than Skyler did. After all, he was living proof that the soul did not conclusively go to a heaven or a hell. And even if his existence wasn't conclusive enough, the many times he died in all of his lives and the many ways death and the afterlife has manifested has shifted his perspective of an all powerful God who reigns over heaven by just a bit. A church shouldn't change his perspective on that.

But, again, in a lot of ways, Sora is Skyler, except honest. And if he was being honest with himself, he liked the peace and beauty of a church as much as Ari did. He was just curious to see it, is all.

He shuts the tall door behind him and looks around the atrium, lifting his lantern to see as much of the architecture as he can. No clear dedications on his way in. What a weird place.

"Is this place Anglican," he asks, half to himself and half to the darkness of the pews in front of him. His eyes are now more or less used to the constant, overpowering dark of Beacon, but he still doesn't know if anyone else is in here. No nightvision for him.

[ C: Library. Open. ]

Throughout the week during his stay at the library, Sora will slowly, inevitably, grudgingly take an interest in the books around him. He's really not big on fiction - he's not creative enough to make them interesting - but the non-fiction will capture his interest. Practical books on cooking and first aid grab him first, followed by anything else that seems like it could come in handy in the near future - morse code, music, diy and repairs. (He makes sure to put them back in the reshelving areas, not on the shelves - he's not entirely a caveman, and the Elvira person on the network told him to be careful and clean up after himself and others. Which he does!)

Where do you find him? Wandering around with a book in his hand? Reading at one of the tables? Passed out drooling on one of the tables? Were you interested in something in the fiction section, only to find his cot in the way of your books? Is he in the cot? Who knows! I don't know. It's up to you.

[ D: The Invincible, the Kitchen. For Midge Maisel, but open to anyone who can catch him arriving or leaving. ]

Hey, Midge. Remember that teen who shyly poked his head into the kitchen a few days ago and asked in a very, very slight New Jersey accent if he could use the kitchen just to make some things and leave? The kid who proceeded to come back every day, right after the end of the daily meal, to make something to eat before cleaning up (and he always cleans up - maybe not perfectly, with things in the wrong places, but there are no crumbs or stray utensils left out) and heading out again?

Yup. Same teen. He's toasting a couple of pieces of bread in butter, layering cheese and some slices of turkey he found somewhere on top. It's nothing extraordinarily fancy, and he's just going to pack it up and leave again, but this time, he's making enough for two. He also has a bowl with him, and inside... that's a fruit salad, isn't it? Slices of apple, grapefruit, orange, peach, and a few more fruits rest inside, dotted with blueberries and grapes. Who exactly is he making all of this for? Why is he making it? Why can't he just eat with everyone else??? It is a mystery.

[ E: Armory. Open. ]

On the third day of the blizzard, Sora gathers all of the clothing he can and some snowboots he nabbed from the general store and hikes the miserable 40 minute hike through driving snow to the armory. He makes sure to go there when the regular lessons with Javert aren't going on - as much as he'd love some company, he doesn't want to risk running into anyone else while he tests out his spells, especially if they make him think about who he is and why he's doing any of this. One thing at a time!

He's tacked a piece of paper to wall. On this paper is a list of every spell and ability he can reasonably test without someone else there to help him. Time to do some experimenting.

Why are you out here? What are you doing? It's so cold! There's so much snow! But if you're in the armory for some reason, you'll see a weird kid in the basement at the range, with a giant key in his hands, casting magic spells that send pinpricks of light spinning at the targets at the other end of the range. How curious are you? (And seriously, what are you doing out there right now?)

[ F: Sora has skates and will now sksksksksk across the ice. For Crowley, but open otherwise. ]

Pretty self explanatory. Granted, the skates are VERY beautiful, made of glassy crystal, with a pair of crystal hand-glove-claw things to match, but they seem to be for aesthetics only. Sora will stay near the edge of the water - he doesn't want to risk falling through for several reasons - and he skates with the comfortable motions of someone who doesn't skate professionally but can and does skate for fun.

But indeed, there he go. Sksksksksk across the ice, his lantern bumping at his hip. He could use some company. He will, in fact, wave and skate over if he sees he has an audience. You aren't getting away without a chat, pal. (Unless you're a Riku or Vanitas, in which case he will seriously consider drowning after all.)

Comments

[arsarcanum]

Sora winces. "That sounds nasty." Yeah, he'll definitely make sure to help out if there's another siege.

Sora will go back to the range, mentally measuring his energy. He's got a bit of juice left for another two or three tests, and then he'll have to take a rest for a minute or so. He goes back to the range, closes his eyes, and focuses... to no effect at all. He doesn't seem too surprised at this, and repeats the same set of focusing techniques. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Finally, he'll end that weird little pause with a sudden blast of wind that kicks up around him, open his eyes, and breathe out. "Well, that's something."

He'll go back to his list and grab his pencil. "I've been looking at the logs before I go to sleep. You're the one on it talking to the spirits, right? I remember you talking about that." He'll reach up and strike through Spark, Sparkra, Sparkga, and Salvation, then put a star next to Aero.

[worthallthis]

"One of them. There are several people attempting to do so. Daylight hash ad more luck learning their language, but I have a contact who I can communicate with without knowing it. So I got a lot of intel and put it up on the network." To their great nervousness. Even now, the plates on their metal arm resettle a little at the memory, though the sound is muted under their jacket and long-sleeved shirt.

Peering past Sora at the list, the Soldier asks, "What does Salvation do?"

[arsarcanum]

Huh... that seems really dangerous. How do they communicate without knowing it? "That sounds really handy... I hope they don't find out or get mad." If they do, maybe it'd be best to explain what happened? After all, the soldier said that they're just a little different, not bad.

He puts the pencil back down on the table and leans against it. He needs a minute to rest and build up magic for the next series of tests. "Salvation? Uh..." He's not really sure how to explain this one. "It's a light spell. Big one. I wish I had it, it would come in handy if there's another siege." He thinks about it for a second. "I... blew up half a laundromat with it once," he admits, turning red. It's embarrassing to admit it, but it's the best way he can describe the scale of what it can do.

[worthallthis]

Without knowing the language. Without knowing the language. The Soldier blinks at Sora, confused. First, they nod to the explanation. "A light spell. That would probably be why it doesn't work. Light doesn't work right here unless it's lanterns or the bonfire."

Then, just so Sora doesn't think they're invading any spirits' privacy, they add, "You don't need to worry. I bring a spirit coffee and we talk using Morse Code. They're a friend."

[arsarcanum]

Pronouns hard. "Right, I sort of figured." He shakes his head. "Salvation's one of the best ones I have. Sucks."

"Oooh." Sora pauses, then brightens. In all that confusion, he'd almost forgotten why he'd asked about talking to spirits in the first place. "Hey, can you teach me? Morse code. I know you're already teaching me how to use the knife, but I was reading a book and things got confusing after the alphabet part."

[worthallthis]

Bucky's fault for being unclear tbh. "There's a program on your tablet that can teach you, too," the Soldier points out. "But if you think you'll learn better from me, I can. It's tedious to use, though. You have to find one of them who knows it, and be patient." Can you be patient, Sora?

[arsarcanum]

Please do not overestimate neither Sora's nor my intelligence.... Sora scratches the back of his head, embarrassed. "I learn better if I have someone to practice with so I can ask questions." He also just likes the company, but he really does learn better with someone hovering behind him to catch all of his early stupid mistakes. He's a good study afterward!

"I can be patient!" He looks over at, eyes burning with fervent belief. Do you feel it, Soldier? "I mean, I'm not great at it, but I've done a lot of waiting before. I mean," he corrects himself, catching his hypocrisy, "okay, I'm not so great at waiting for computers? I always think that they're supposed to do things really fast, but now I know they do a lot of thinking just like the rest of us."

[worthallthis]

It's okay, Sora. The Soldier understands liking company and not being able to really explain it. At least Sora doesn't creepily follow people around, or loiter in their general vicinity watching them, or anything. He actually comes up with actual things to talk about and do.

They manage not to roll their eyes at Sora immediately walking back his enthusiastic assurance, but it's a near thing. "We'll see. How many more spells do you have to test?"

[arsarcanum]

Aw, Soldier. Sora doesn't mind a bit of creepy - he's made much more questionable friends before! (And Skyler's made enough incredibly questionable friends that Sora now understands what a bad vibe is - the soldier does not have that vibe.) Sora's happy to chatter away about people! After all, how does he get to know people if he doesn't ask?

Your valiant efforts would be deeply appreciated if Sora knew (really - he'd be grumpy about it, but that's legit). Sora goes back to his list and counts... "Four! Everything else I either need a partner for or I don't want to test it on another person." He has a poison spell and he is not testing that on anyone he'd ask in Beacon, thank you. "Why?"

[worthallthis]

"Curious. There's more than four on that list." They finally turn away, pull out a knife to flip idly and consider throwing targets, but most of their attention is still on Sora. "Do you need to practice? Your spells?" Like most people would have to practice other skills, and such.

[arsarcanum]

"Uh... well." He looks at the keyblade in his hand, then back up at the Soldier. "I mean, I used to, but that was when I had to practice my aim." He taps one of his eyelids. "These... do the aiming for me now."

"Why?" Sora's looking at the knife. Up and down, up and down...

[worthallthis]

"I don't know much about magic. You're the first person I've had to ask questions about it." They pause in the knife-flipping to frown at Sora's face, at what he's pointing at. The Soldier usually avoids eye contact, but to see what Sora means, they have to actually look at his eyes. They frown a little, confused. "Eyes usually do aiming for you. Yes."

They have of course registered the weird pupils, but figured it was a quirk of wherever Sora came from.

[arsarcanum]

Oh. That's. An immediate burst of embarrassment and shame that he immediately has to quash down, but his still ears turn red. He was hoping that the soldier was offering some extra knife lessons this week. This was not something he'd usually tell people about, except for the people who noticed, and the people who noticed back where he was from already knew what he was.

... Does he tell them? On one hand, it doesn't seem particularly relevant to the conversation. They could just keep talking about magic - Sora doesn't know a ton about it, but he remembers Merlin and his magic lessons quite well. Donald alone could take up a whole conversation.

On the other hand, it's not like this would make the soldier leave him. They don't know about how he got them, and probably wouldn't ask.

Huh. Is... this what he's been waiting for this whole time? For someone to leave? Is this why he walked 40 minutes through driving snow? Did he do that just to make sure he'd be alone? Really?

Sora shakes his head. Seems silly. He really is thinking about it too hard. "Remember how I said I was stronger than most people? I have... some machine stuff in me. Kinda like your arm." He taps at his eye, just under it this time. "I have little... target things that line up my shots for me. I had infrared and nightvision back at home, but they don't work here. It's just the targeting system now. Comes in handy."

[worthallthis]

Joke's on you, Sora, they are definitely gonna ask. The Soldier gives a startled twitch, staring back at him for a beat, before the discomfort of eye contact makes them look down, at Sora's feet. There's a surge of fear, reminded of a procedure they only remember snippets of, but also a surge of protective anger. This boy with two minds, like their own, was also augmented? Experimented on? Tortured?

"Who did that to you," they ask, voice oddly flat.

[arsarcanum]

-- Yep, maybe should have thought about that harder. The eye-contact was alarming enough, but the change in their tone was worse. It was a trauma thing, response, Diyos ko this is his fault, isn't it? The soldier knew, they told him about this. Their cybernetics weren't their choice. Bad. Him and his stupid lack of brain-to-mouth filter.

Sora moves closer, hands stretched out, placating. "I - He - He asked. He made a deal. This was his choice, I -" He did it to stop me from getting stronger. He didn't care what it was as long as it wasn't me. "We don't - it wasn't like you. Promise. I swear, he wanted this." Sora is so, so sorry about bringing it up.

[worthallthis]

They take a single step back at the approach, but at least no knives come out, and they stop at one step. That's progress. The kid isn't going to hurt them, they know that perfectly well, but approaching with hands up when they're caught up in actual emotion is not a thing they like the most. They'd rather not hurt him on accident.

"Okay." A pause, a breath: "Okay. It's good that you weren't. He wasn't." Then, with some actual inflection in their voice, they add, "Not like I can kill whoever did it from here." Because he would have wanted to.

[arsarcanum]

Sora knows better than to touch or approach any closer! He's got common sense. He doesn't actually know what's going on with the soldier, but caution is better as long as they're safe. He just wants them to know that he's there with them no matter what - if he gets whacked, so be it! He'll have learned his lesson and he'll do better the next time.

Sora smiles a little, eyebrows raising in a wry sort of expression. "The people who did it aren't here. The way I see it, they were just... kinda doing what he asked. The person who chose this is in here." He pokes himself in the sternum. "And, uh, he's still a jerk, but I still can't let anyone hurt him. Once I'm out of this body, you can yell at him, I guess."

[worthallthis]

"I'm not going to hurt him." They might yell a little, though, sure. They did earlier, after all, and what other-him did was very fucking stupid. "But you're young. And before, he was even younger. No one with good intentions would be doing surgery to install machinery and electronics in a child." Either the other-him was tricked, flattered into it, or there was some kind of ulterior motive. People who do that kind of thing simply aren't to be trusted.

(Possibly we have a bias. No. Really? It's so much fun when you can be sarcastic at yourself. Ain't it just.)

Upside, the internal banter helps them get back to baseline levels of anxiety instead of through-the-roof levels. Breathing's under control, and the anger has been shoved back down where it belongs, and the kid is okay. Sora's fine. It happened a long time ago, and as he says, there's no one here to kill for it anyway.

[arsarcanum]

"Oooh." Sora thinks about this, summoning his keyblade again to tap it on the end of his shoe thoughtfully. He hadn't actually thought about it that way before. Before his cover got blown, the Keys were... tough, but welcomed Skyler as one of their own as long as he kept his head down. Thunder Corp was more of a faceless entity whose motivations he'd never really thought about. Skyler hadn't cared. Sora didn't think about it. But it's true - or at least, Sora doesn't need much convincing. Chalk it up to gullibility.

He flushes, then pushes off the table. "That makes sense. Now that you put it that way... I feel like we should have known better." He looks back over to his list, trying to get back on track. He can't just wallow in his embarrassment. Four left. "Hey, uh, some of the spells I have left explode - like, they pop like balloons. You good?"

[worthallthis]

"As long as I know they're coming, yes." Exemplified by the (very small) twitch of surprise at the sudden resummon of the giant-ass key while Sora thinks. They'll step well back and keep their eyes on him, so they can in fact see the explosions coming. They'll leave the topic of Sora's augmentations alone, now that they've made their point; harping on it seems excessive, especially when they've already sort of "won".

Sometimes the Soldier is happy to say "I told you so" but sometimes they'll be nice about it.

[arsarcanum]

"Okay. I'll do the exploding one first." Sora does see it as him losing that particular point of the conversation, but he's always been the type to learn a bit from each loss. It hurts to be wrong, of course... He just figures that he can't make the same mistake again.

"It's gonna be a lot of them in a row. I'll tell you when they're done." For this one, he points his keyblade forward and a light-colored opaque bubble about the size of a beach ball floats out, gliding placidly toward the target. Sora holds his ears, waiting.

When it hits the target, it does indeed pop extremely loudly, making the target swing around its little hinge. From the target, however, comes another two balloons, which lazily swing circle back around and collides with the same target again. And again. And again.

The process ends with 16 beachball sized balloons crowding the other end of the room, popping against the target and any targets nearby, finally exhausting themslves with a last rush of explosions. Sora gingerly unplugs his ears when they're all gone, then looks back, checking on the soldier. They good? He gives a questioning thumbs up.

[worthallthis]

The Soldier pauses, then mimics Sora, though covering their ears doesn't do a whole lot when one has enhanced senses. The noise is deafening, but only the first one actually startles them, and even then only enough to make the arm plates whirr and the rest of them twitch. It's not enough like explosions in a battle to bring up any particular memories. It's actually kind of ridiculous, in the end.

They hesitantly move their hands from their ears, too, when Sora does. "What is even the purpose of that."

[arsarcanum]

Satisfied that the soldier's fine, Sora will look down at his keyblade and wrinkle his nose a bit. "It's supposed to be bigger. Imagine, like, twice as many of those things, twice as fast, a little stronger." He grins. "I once set that off in a car. I mean, sure, they lived, but they ran off the road pretty quick." It's a pretty good distraction, at least. And it's much funnier than a smokescreen.

That said, he steps forward and tests a few more spells - first, he kicks up more wind in the same way he set off the lightning bolts from earlier (he looks a bit disappointed, but not surprised when nothing really changes), then sets off another wind spell, which meanders around the room in a whirlwind before dissipating.

"Everything's weaker," he mutters, stalking back to his list. "Do you happen to have spare change on you? Like, pennies, dimes?" And he'll cross out Aerora and put stars next to Balloon and and Tornado. After a pause, he'll put a little frowny face in both stars.

[worthallthis]

The Soldier finds one of their many pockets and produces a single gold coin-- actual honest to god gold-- and a couple rubies that, if Sora takes them will be pleasantly warm to the touch, and obviously not just from the warmth of being in a pocket. Especially since the pocket in question was a coat pocket, not an inner one. There's also a round, smooth worry stone. "Just these. What do you need them for?"

[arsarcanum]

... What the? Sora peers at that motley collection of pretty valuable looking things? "Uh... Well, I guess I won't do the one that could break these. What is all this? Where'd they come from?" And yes, he will indeed pick up a ruby - why is it warm - and examine it. Meanwhile, he'll dismiss his keyblade and rummage around in his own pocket, drawing out his wallet and one-handedly flipping it open. He only has a handful of change, but if the soldier insists on handing him real actual treasure, they'll have to do for the other, things-breaking spell.