Giving Everyone The Bird

[fusionjack]

Who: Jackson Isaka + OPEN
When: The late afternoon and evening of April 12th
Where: Downtown Locke City
What: It is really, really inconvenient to echo back your weird monster form when you're out in public. Between getting pelted with peppermint by a keychain monster and turning into something big and strange, Jack is having a really, really inconvenient day.


[Downtown Locke City, Afternoon]

Not having a car any longer was really starting to grate on Jack's nerves. But he was still waiting for his insurance claim to be processed, and he was still on a damned waiting list for a rental, so here he was, waiting for the bus. Waiting for the bus like a great big loser. Was this what his life had come to? He was turning into a bug monster, he was behind on everything at work, the FBI knew where he lived and had an eye on him, and now he had to take the bus. Things could not be any worse, he was sure.

Except that someone suddenly elbowed him from behind. "What the f...!?" His first impulse was to turn around with the intent of punching whoever was responsible for it, and so turn around he did. But before he could get to the violent portion of the action, he was breathing in a cloud of stinging peppermint powder. He choked, recoiled, and felt all of those violent impulses of his spike even further. Only he had no idea what he could possibly direct them at, because he couldn't see a damned thing.

The little Altoids-flinging keychain toy that had assaulted them was nearby, though. Perhaps some helpful person nearby had spotted it, and would be kind enough to point it out? Perhaps they'd be lucky enough to stay out of the range of its noxious attacks, too.

[Downtown Locke City, Late Afternoon and into the Evening]

Things had only gotten worse, and did not seem likely to get better anytime soon. But if there was one small comfort that Jack could take in the midst of the day's chaos, it was that he had definite, absolute, conclusive proof that he was not turning into a giant bug.

That's because he had gone and changed into a giant bird, instead. A 7-foot tall, black and blue bipedal humanoid peacock-thing. One that still had itchy eyes from the peppermint bomb earlier, one that was wide out in the open and sticking out like a sore thumb... but at least he wasn't some kind of insect. He wasn't the same thing as Hajime was, not the exact same thing, at least, and that was... good. He was pretty sure that it was good. Though not very useful, in the overall scheme of things. For he needed to get home, and needed to somehow do it without causing an enormous commotion. His first thought was to call the Network and ask for help, but he especially didn't want any of them to know about this. His second thought was to call his cousin specifically, but that didn't make the cut, either. If he was going to reveal the exact sort of monster that he had become, he'd do it in a setting with some dignity, not pleading to get him safely home.

The end result of all this pride and bad luck is that there's a birdman trying very, very hard to keep to alleyways and out of sight as he slowly makes his way home. He cannot possibly fully succeed in this. Surely someone is going to spot him.

Comments

second option also i'm so sorry

[clawkind]

And surely someone did, although perhaps to Jack's advantage she didn't look like the sort of person most people would immediately believe. Nyah had noticed the movement of something very large in the alleyway out of the side of her eyes, and her insatiable curiosity had practically guaranteed that it wasn't going to be left uninvestigated. Whatever task she'd been out looking to accomplish was temporarily forgotten for the moment as she padded into the alley, bare feet giving her some measure of silence.

The sight of what had caught her attention in all its monstrous glory didn't really seem to frighten Nyah - if anything her expression now carried an air of excitement as she began to dig through her messenger bag in search of something. She'd hoped that she'd be a bit more prepared for the first time something like this happened, but adaptability was an important trait for this sort of work and she intended to display it in spades.

With no fanfare at all she rushed up to Jack and hurled the items in her hand at him, gaze ridiculously solemn; it was an odd expression, considering that she had just thrown a handful of sage leaves at a monster several feet taller than herself. Nyah remained in place after letting loose her barrage, apparently waiting expectantly for whatever she assumed was supposed to come of this action.

No no, this is wonderful

[fusionjack]

Jack had stopped in this particular alleyway for a few moments longer than he had intended to because he was attempting to consult his smartphone on the best possible route to use to get home. Google maps had never failed him before! But it was failing him now, because touch screens were never meant to be used by big weird monsters with talons. He was getting nowhere, and muttering angrily under his breath in some sort of alien-sounding language.

Those sudden footsteps and then the feeling of something being tossed his way was what finally got his attention. He spun about defensively, arms going wide and feathers bristling, expecting... well, okay. He didn't know what exactly to expect, but he had a lot of very violent instincts driving him right now, so he was leaning towards expecting a fight. He had not expected to see a girl. A girl standing there, not looking at all terrified. He looked down at the leaves, looked back up at her, looked down at the leaves again...

"...what in the hell are you doing?!"

[clawkind]

The air of expectation immediately disappeared as soon as it became painfully clear that the sage hadn't done a damn thing. Nyah's expression quickly morphed into disappointment, her gaze lingering on the fallen leaves before moving back up to Jack and an answer.

"I was really hoping that you were a malevolent spirit."

It would have been her first chance to conduct an exorcism, albeit a more improvised ritual than tradition usually demanded; it had been an exciting five minutes of hoping that she was sad to see go, even if it hadn't been her ideal imagining of the situation. She chewed on her lip unconsciously, thoughts continuing to whirl as she really regarded the thing in front of her.

Finally she spoke again, words more of a mildly chagrined admission than anything else. "I don't actually know what I'm supposed to do now that you're not."

[fusionjack]

"A malevolent spirit."

He gives a very sharp breath inwards, and certainly feels malevolent all of a sudden. He does not want to be having this conversation, he is miserable and stressed out, and he just wants to punch things. But as monstrous as he feels, he's not monstrous enough to take it out on some leaf-throwing girl. He flexes his talons, lets that breath out, and seems to relax somewhat.

"That's probably a fair mistake." And then he's looking away and trying to tuck his phone back somewhere into his... jacket? Cape? Wingspan? (The hell was he wearing, anyway? How did this even work?) "I'd try and forget that you even saw this. These changes are nothing but trouble."

[clawkind]

"That's exactly what people say in situations where nothing's going to let me forget I saw this," she countered, head tilting to the side as she watched him fumble around with the phone. Nyah supposed that if anything else hadn't done the trick, the presence of a cell phone was the final nail in her hopes of fighting a spirit today - there was nothing more unbelievable than a supernatural being using modern technology.

Speaking of that fumbling...Nyah couldn't let that pass without commentary, albeit of the curious rather than mean-spirited nature. Subtlety had never been a forte of hers, after all. "You kind of look like you're having trouble anyway. I don't think I'm going to make much of a difference."

[fusionjack]

Jack side-eyed her as best he could, with limited distinguishable eye movement. (The eyeball in his chest, however, swiveled in her direction. And then blinked.) "I turned into this while I was out in broad daylight. Of course I'm having trouble."

He could be curious, too, though. Because he's starting to realize that she's not terrified of him, as he suspects that most reasonable people might be. "So who are you, that you're the expert in malevolent spirits?" Was she Networked, or just... strange?

[clawkind]

Should she be talking to the chest eye? It seemed moderately more expressive than other, more traditional, parts of his body, and it wouldn't be the first time in fiction that someone had had fun with unexpected physical mix-ups. Nyah decided to explore her options a little and direct her next answer at his chest. Just to see what happens and roll with it.

"Nyah. And I'm not an expert, because if I was I'd have been ready to open up with something a lot stronger than sage leaves right away." Her face scrunched up a little as she thought a but, then added some more to her reply. "...and I'd probably have known you weren't a spirit. Either way, I'm going to be a shaman one day."

There was everything strange about her words, but Nyah delivered them with the conversational matter-of-factness found in nearly all casual talks. It was almost impressive, considering that her eye contact with locked with a giant chest eyeball.

[fusionjack]

"A shaman in training. Alright. I see..." He was starting to lean more towards 'strange' than 'networked' being the reason for all of this. Even most networked folk tended to get bent out of shape about these kinds of things. He certainly did. He flexed his talons again, shifting anxiously and looking out the other end of the alleyway. No one was coming? No one was listening in? The chest eyeball darted this way and that.

"Don't go around assuming every weird thing in this city is a spirit. You'll get yourself in trouble that way. I'm not even sure what half of the things I see on the..." And he trails off, because he suddenly realizes that she's not making eye contact. She's staring at his chest? Is there something on his chest? He actually properly looks down at himself, sees the eyeball there, and lets out a shout and goes flailing backwards. "Holy shit!"

The eyeball seems pretty surprised, too.

[clawkind]

Make that three. The unexpectedly loud reaction finally elicited a startled response from Nyah as she jumped a little herself, shoulders hiked up in surprise. Although it doesn't take very long for her to (more or less) relax again, her eyebrows remained pretty far up on her face. Guess that wasn't the right eye to be making contact with after all.

"Is that on the unsure half of things, then?" she asked, tone not particularly joking. Nyah really wanted to inquire if she should stop looking at that eyeball lest she be petrified, but could only assume that since this is as new to him as it is to her that's another unknown better left to trial and error. Hopefully with less error whenever she attempted it.

afternoon

[seishindairingun]

She'd stepped away in alarm when the person next to her had suddenly whirled around, but turned herself when she felt a small, momentary pressure at her shoulder. And then the guy was coughing and she was looking at a keychain, standing on the rim of the garbage can and striking a pose like it was a monster-of-the-week in a children's program. "Um...."

She hadn't been paying much attention to the network lately, but she had a vague knowledge of the little pests plaguing the city. Unfortunately, this knowledge did not include how to get rid of them. But first things first. She reached out to pat the guy on the arm (to get his attention) even as she kept her eyes on the keychain. "Are you okay?"

[fusionjack]

Keyed up and on the defensive as he is, Jack jerks away that pat on the arm. And he quite nearly raises a hand to strike at her, but she asks if he's alright just in time. He coughs harder and lowers both his head and his arm. "...No! I can't see anyth-" And a pause to continue to cough, "-anything!"

One last wipe at his eyes, and he can sort of make her out. Vaguely. He squints at her, still grimacing. "The hell's going on, here?" No more yelling. Because yelling just made him feel angrier, and no one needed that from him right now.

[seishindairingun]

She's startled into glancing at him when he jerks away, but looks back again at the little object when his sudden movement turns out to be just that. The keychain in question doesn't look like it'll go away by itself, but doesn't look like it'll attack again at the moment, either. "Maybe we should take a step back," she says. She almost reaches for his arm again, but thinks better of it. "You don't happen to know anything about attacking keychain mints, do you?"

[fusionjack]

"What?" He does start taking a step back, because it doesn't seem like an entirely bad idea... although he's not sure why. "Attacking what?" The mints part, that made sense. Everything smelled like peppermint. He gave another rub at his eyes, looked in the direction that she was looking... and then saw that keychain critter still standing there, menacingly brandishing another Altoid.

"This is the first I've heard of this."

[seishindairingun]

Considering he was coughing, is the Altoid the weapon? She doesn't want to stick around to find out, but if they leave, the hostile keychain might go after somebody else. Not that it was her job to take care of it, but somehow she doesn't think the police are equipped to deal with it. On the other hand, after the gigantic snake incident, maybe they'd developed some methods. But if they had, Inga doesn't know about them.

"Do you think they might be weak to mace?" A hand inches for her purse—slow and steady, no sudden movements.... "Or, if you have some water or something...."

[fusionjack]

"Mace? I feel like I've been maced." He grimaces and rubs at his eyes again, but doesn't lower his hand. That keychain is an awfully small target, and they're in a crowd, but... but if that thing attacked him, he cannot possibly just let it get away with that.

Abruptly, Jack snaps his hand forward, fingers splayed. And then he clenches it into a loose fist, as though trying to grab something invisible. What does get grabbed is the keychain critter, which he is then yanking on over to them, tightly bound up in his psychic grasp. He's been practicing.

[seishindairingun]

That is not the weirdest thing she's seen in the last few months, but what she has seen have mostly been of the physical kind—transformations, snakes, dinosaurs, hair color. It takes her a full second to realize that the keychain writhing in the air does so as a result of the action of Coughing-guy.

She lowers the arms she'd reflexively thrown over her face. "Nice... trick," she says unsteadily. A deep breath, and she forces herself to focus on the problem. "It can't attack us at a distance, can it?"

[fusionjack]

Jack can't keep himself from grinning. "It is, isn't it?" For as cautious as he's been trying to be, it feels right to be using these powers. He closes his fist tighter, but there's really only so much that crushing force can do against a plastic keychain.

"Nff... it can't attack us if it's boxed up, either." He sniffles, grimaces, and works to keep that hold on the pesky thing. "Got something to put it in?"

Sometime that evening

[radiantchicken]

Moving was hard work, and it was a bit easier when Torin wasn't riding a dinosaur. If he wanted to retrieve his things quietly, slipping onto the bus and doing a bit of flying were his best bets. So when he was flying to the nearest bus stop, he couldn't help but notice the big bird skulking in an alley.

Another bird! Had this one started out like him? Torin swooped down and perched on a nearby dumpster in that alley. "Hello there! I don't mean to be rude, but are you new in town?"

[fusionjack]

The beating of wings hadn't given Jack pause. It was probably some pigeons that he disrupted after having jumped those storage crates, he was sure. But then he heard that voice calling out to him, and he cringed. He hadn't wanted to run into anyone he knew! (Perhaps it said much about how he had started to regard Torin as a person rather than a bird that he was worried about running into him.)

"No. No I'm not." And he groans and brings a large taloned hand to his face. It keeps getting worse. Why does it keep getting worse?

[radiantchicken]

Wait a minute! Torin recognizes that voice. "Jack?" He leans forward a bit and cocks his head to one side as he contemplates what he's seeing. "Jack? Is that you?" How odd--he'd seen the human earlier that day, and the human had still been a human!

[fusionjack]

Jack groans again and cringes away even more. Torin recognized him by voice? Maybe parrots had a better sense for that kind of thing. There was no use trying to get away, then. He turned himself about to face the other bird. "It's me. I remembered something. And then this happened." He does not sound happy. He is also not making eye contact.

(Well, his head isn't pointing in Torin's direction. The eyeball in the middle of his chest is staring right at the bird.)

[radiantchicken]

Parrots were very vocal birds. Torin had a good ear for such things, especially because he didn't yet talk to that many people. "That is most unusual." Though whether or not Torin's talking about the chest eyeball or the overall change is anyone's guess. "Do you need assistance in getting home?"

[fusionjack]

"Yes. Yes it is." Whatever he was referencing, it sure as hell was unusual. Torin's question makes him sigh, and he forces himself to turn about and properly face the bird. "I need assistance getting home without being seen. I don't think it's actually possible at this point. Maybe I should just call a cab, tell them I'm going to a costume party, and dare them to say anything."

He's feeling kind of dumb now, is what he means. He pulls his smartphone out from somewhere within that coat-thing he seems to be wearing, and offers it to Torin. "...how good are you with touch screens?" Because his talons are terrible for them.

[radiantchicken]

"I am much better with them now that I have thumbs!" Torin carefully takes the phone from Jack. "They were impossible to use with only parrot feet. "He poked at the phone a bit. "Who do you want me to call?"

[fusionjack]

"These hands are an awful lot like parrot feet, I think." He lets out a profoundly exasperated sigh, handing the phone on over. "...slide up two dots, then over one dot, then up, then back two dots to unlock it. And then hit the little phone icon. And then flip down to 'Yellow Cab'."

Hey, Torin was playing video games. Surely he could manage a smartphone interface.