[open] You always wanted a visit, right?

[highly_gifted]

Who: Feivel and/or Nat and YOU
What: Just opening doors from the ghost zone into places and then?????
When: First half of April, pick your date!
Where: Anywhere!

Exploring the ghost zone is great. It's a weird and new place and a certain set of siblings is having a field trip. Most of the time, they're together, but sometimes they split up or one of them goes alone.

They peek out through almost all doors that they find, unless Nat's Force senses tell her that something bad is behind the door (and then sometimes Fe opens it anyway). Maybe they look out at a street where your character is just standing, but maybe they open a door right into their bedroom too, or something else entirely...

((Please make a note in your subject line regarding if you want to encounter Feivel or Nat or both of them))

Comments

[alderaanda]

The sword's path had changed after cutting Nat's twin, and with how gravity works here it had spun out and is now floating between Feivel's staircase and the one Nat is on, revolving unevenly around a big chunk of rock dislodged by the shield. It keeps looking like it will fall up or down at any moment.

Nat's propped herself in a sitting position and is wiping the blood out of her eyes. Some of the scars on her scalp have opened. They bleed freely, like head wounds always do. She feels better, if still rather shy of prime.

[highly_gifted]

He throws a quick glance at it, figures that he couldn't reach it anyway and will just have to stay attentive, and kneels down next to the real Nat.

"Nat?" He really hopes that she'll answer because he has no idea what he should do here. How do you deal with bleeding sisters? ...In stories, people tear their shirt in stripes, but he doubts that he can make ones long enough to wrap them around her head, or that it would stop the bleeding.

[alderaanda]

"Present," she says, not as strongly as she'd like to. She's still dazed. A scar runs in a perfect line from just above her forehead along to the back of her neck. Other, perpendicular lines cross it, showing just barely at her temples. It's very surgical.

"Man, my head hurts... Nice work there."

[highly_gifted]

"She'll likely burn soon." Literally. And he is still furious at this other to the point where he doesn't care nearly as much as he should. She tried to kill his sister (even though she kind of is that too).

"Can you get up?" He can see that the scars are well, scars that just opened up a bit, but they are still bleeding and she still did get a massive blow to the head for all he knows, and getting her to a doctor seems like a necessary thing to do. For what there is and for what there might be unseen.

It's just that, while he can support her, he cannot carry her.

[alderaanda]

The memory of that long day with the clones feels, when she's headachy and poorly focused, like something that had happened to her. And it hadn't bothered her when a clone, crying and terrified and completely non-hostile, had been descended on by a mob of clones of her and her brother. "There's more where she came from. Dozens... they have fifteen vats set up for me."

You too, she almost says, but... no, that wasn't Fe. Nat reaches a hand up in a clear request to be helped up. Then, as her danger sense spikes, she shoves at him and pushes or pulls herself, helped by the vast and patient new feeling. It's enough that the bloodied sword that hits point-first only hits the ground.

Up where Nat's doppleganger had fallen the fire is consuming a pool of gasoline violently enough that it's hard to tell if anyone is there - but the hammered-gold softball bat is gone. Nat can't feel danger or that dread-feeling anymore. She closes her eyes, suddenly wanting nothing more than to go to sleep. "Damn it, we're going to have to keep an eye out for her, aren't we..."

[highly_gifted]

"But for now she's gone?" He figures that Nat will be able to tell, and the danger level right at this moment is more important than what might be in the future. They'll have to be careful.

He'll shove his shoulder under Nat's arm and pull her arm over his back, wrapping an arm around her waist in hopes that that will be enough to support her to wherever they're going now. And hoping that she won't fall asleep on him. "What is behind that door?" The one that Nat was painting on before being attacked. If it is Locke, there will be a doctor who can help them...

[alderaanda]

"Yeah. I can't heal yet, so she can't, so... she'll go lick her wounds. She's stronger than me. I gotta be more careful." A lot of other things came in with the memory, or fit in with the massive brick of information she got some time ago.

Nat lets herself be helped. She's taller than he is and probably a little broader too. Something about that seems off, but there are so many other things to try and focus on she can't.

"That's a thing with the Dark Side. That's a thing with her, that's the difference," she says, blinking hard and trying not to smile. The feeling is still around, in the background, and she knows what the red crystal means now. "Ummmm. That's in Locke, near one of the snake pieces."

[highly_gifted]

"Good." He pushes the door open with the hand that isn't supporting Nat and steps through, closing it again once they are both on the other side. "...So she's on the Dark side, and you're on the Light side, and the Dark side can use them same abilities in a way that is more powerful than the Light side's way of using them?" Going by what she said. It sounds... very cliché and very ridiculous, but then if being attacked by an evil twin sister with a golden baseball bat isn't both of those, then he doesn't know what would be, so it's not actually that far off.

He'll also flip open his phone and search through the network until he finds Aaron's number, and then punch out a quick text message.

[alderaanda]

"You'd prefer I said Bogan and Ashla, wouldn't you." Once they've stopped moving Nat can stand on her own, more or less. She leans heavily against the big chunk of stone that used to be part of a monster, closing her eyes against the spinning. "It's a power connected to, to discipline, and emotion. Start feeding it fear and anger, that happens. You get stronger and paranoid and turn on everyone and start looking weird. It's like a fuel that burns hotter and it's easy to get but it sets fire to everything inside."

She feels like that's an image someone else gave her. Can't pursue that now. Nat tips her face up to the light. "But that was a gift, too. I know so much now."

[highly_gifted]

"Translating concepts usually alters the meaning of what is said." Said with a nod, because that is exactly it. Bogan and Ashla? Not a language that he knows, likely not even one that he can know...

He didn't expect another echo, but it comes anyway and he blinks in surprise but then simply nods. "It seems like turning Evil or Dark or whatever you call it tends to make you ugly in all universes." There is a tinge of schadenfreude in his words, but when he continues it is gone. "If it sets fire to everything inside, will she die form that?"

[alderaanda]

"Those were the names of Tython's moons. Literally the darker moon and the lighter one. There's not a lot of meaning to miss with a literal translation. What I don't know is how the Breath got to be called the Way and then the Force." She puts her hand in her pocket and feels the bittersweet sense the red crystal makes. "It doesn't really matter what it's called, though. It is."

"I think it's more complicated than that." Nat cracks an eye open. "Nope. It's just altered her personality."

[highly_gifted]

Keep her talking enters his mind, a memory of some book or movie or another. People that are injured, especially with head injuries, keep them awake so they don't lose consciousness and stay that way.

"How does it alter the personality?"

He's not normally one to keep people talking past the exchange of the information that he wanted from them, so this is a bit of a task, but he will do his best even if he's awkward.

[alderaanda]

She can tell it's a question he's asking for the sake of asking it, not something he's in search of, and Nat closes the eye again, and stretches out with her senses in a way she hadn't before.

"I think I can feel the Force. It's like... I can hear everything's voice, its heartbeat." She gestures. "I can't, but... metaphors."

[highly_gifted]

"Even stones and plants?" That just sounds really weird.

And then Aaron answers and Feivel breathes a bit more easily. The doctor is coming.

[alderaanda]

"They're alive, or they... they exist, anyway. That's close enough." Reaching into her pocket Nat pulls out the necklace with the red crystal pendant. In this light its glow is hard to see. "I know what this is now. And what I've got to do with it."

[highly_gifted]

"And what is that?"

He absentmindedly wonders if it is something that he can do with his own glowy rocks.

[alderaanda]

"My parents gave it to me - not our parents, and not bio-mom, the other parents. It's an orphan's plot trinket." She strokes it with her thumb. "I tuned it to me, or the other me did. That's why it glows and feels so bittersweet."

"I'm going to make a sword." Even through that godawful headache she can't stop smiling thinking about it.

[highly_gifted]

"What will you make that sword with, aside from that stone?"

Can he make one too... or can he recreate one? That would surely be a very interesting project. As long as it isn't based on magic but on some kind of mechanical or electrical or other science kind of principle, he should figure it out eventually.

[alderaanda]

"I have the pieces. I just need some more crystals... I guess I can go take apart some jewelry." Nat makes a face, then winces and stops; that had pulled the cut on her scalp. "Gems will work. Stones... even pearls can be okay. The focusing crystal's the big one, though. That's special."

two hours later

[highly_gifted]

They are still sitting in the same location, and Feivel is poking at Nat every once in a while to make sure that she stays awake, but they're mostly waiting in silence now.

Feivel looks up when he sees Aaron approach and waves at him.

[elfstoned]

And approach he does, with long, quick strides, a decent-sized bag slung over his shoulder. He drops to his knees next to Nat and looks her over, assessing the damage.

"What happened?" he asks, pulling out a penlight and looking into her eyes with it. The amount of detail that gets put in it is up to Nat and Feivel; he doesn't need to know the full situation, but a rundown of her injuries will make this easier.

[alderaanda]

Getting no hint of threat, Nat cooperates. There are signs that some form of a scalpel was used to bare much of her skull once. It's most of it long healed, but some opened back up when she was hit. Like any head wound it bleeds freely.

"My doppleganger stole my softball bat and weighted it. You need to look at my brother, too. Let's skip over the part where he says he's fine."

[highly_gifted]

"I can breathe!" Huffing a bit at this (also that's really reassuring and convincing, Feivel, especially with how raspy your voice has grown. Yes.) "And I didn't get hit in the head."

[elfstoned]

Her eyes are responding normally, and it doesn't look like she's got memory problems. That's a good sign. He pulls gloves on and checks the back of her head, getting an idea of whether or not the cuts will need to be stitched. The fact that it was cut open at all is, of course, terrible -- but Aaron Strider has seen worse hurts, and he won't ask. "You," he says to Feivel, as he holds two fingers to the side of Nat's neck, checking her pulse, "take this and hold it tight to the back of her head. Keep pressure on it until the bleeding stops." He hands Feivel clean gauze. "The good news is that you're not concussed, not badly, but you should take it easy for a few days. Ice for the swelling, Tylenol for the pain, and if you see any change in your sleeping habits, let me know."

Then, he looks Feivel over. "And you -- what was done to you? Was it only choking, or was there anything else?" The comments about breathing and the raspy voice give it away.

[alderaanda]

Nat winces at the contact and mouths the words to a pop song trying to keep from dwelling on it. "I passed out for a while. It hurt more when I got a liner that one time." Softball, she judges, has been mean to her, in balance.

It probably would be good to stitch at least one. There's a suggestion that part of her scalp could peel back.

"She knows Force Choke." In a world where Star Wars is a high fantasy epic, the meaning of that phrase is less obvious. "Um, telekinetic strangling. Then he threw a sword at her."