text | 06. new abilities (un: mystique)

[anybodies]

This is Mystique. These days you probably know me from the inconsistently gluey consistency of my campfire cooking. [Or from the fact she's still missing a foot, but she spares the network her self-pity. Suffice to say, though, she's a far cry from the reptilian ninja she once advertised herself as.]

I know we have pressing concerns. The animal attacks, disappearances, the stockade, corpses in day-glo crypts and other weird discoveries. Passing out after the Jumps. This isn't trying to take away attention from that, but I'm gonna assume it's connected somehow.

Our new powers. Some of you know what I'm talking about.

And by new, I mean since the crash. If you're an elf, this isn't elf magic. If you're a wizard, this isn't what you're used to doing with your wand. If you're a mutant, this isn't your mutation. Me, I've been able to make stuff out of thin air. It never lasts, but for a little, while it's real. Anything from bread to bullets. [Or an accidental tractor tire! Sorry, Bucky.] I've been getting better at it with every passing month.

Before we arrived here, while we were still aboard the tranquility, a lot of us started to display similar new abilities^{[OOC link]}. These turned out to be connected to the murderous and eventually pro-van rijn entity that was 'haunting' the ship, but learning control seemed to relate to the way that we ultimately overpowered it too.

Do you have new powers? New theories?

Comments

[muscovy]

But if you eat the bread, it doesn't make you full, yes? So you should better make things that you cannot eat.

Have you tried out if the powers are stronger closer to the ship?

[anybodies]

Yes that's true. i mean I haven't been trying to make anything edible lately, but for example, my bullets vanish if i try to shoot too far
and they don't stay where they hit.

I haven't. have you?

[muscovy]

[Bullets.

That thought hadn't occurred to him yet.] How far can you shoot them before they vanish? And do you need a gun for it? [He never managed to acquire one and they seemed useful, but if he wouldn't even need one to shoot monsters...]

No, but if they come from the ship, they should be, yes?

[anybodies]

I have a gun for it. I havent tried trying to create a gun with just my own mind. i'm not sure i could do more than one thing at a time, even if one of them is really small

It's worth checking out. It seems like sometimes the way the ship works though, it's not like effects fade over distance. the tether seems to hold really solid, you know?

[muscovy]

[He will have to try that out. ...Later. After he look at an actual gun so he has a remote idea of what he'll be trying to create.] Can I see you gun?

[What is a tether... he nods, though. She sounds like she knows what she's saying.]

[anybodies]

Oh sure.

[It takes a moment, but then there's an image attachment. It's an unconventional firearm, certainly, white and plastic, semi-automatic.]

Why do you ask?

[muscovy]

I need to know what something that I want to create looks like, also the parts that aren't easily visible, yes?

[So he'll try to get her to take it apart from him or show him his way around the firearm's innards in some other way.]

[anybodies]

[A beat.]

you want to create a firearm?
Im sorry, how old did you say you were?

[aaaa someone save her]

[muscovy]

[Well, if she asks like that.]

I am not sure, but over 400. [Or so he has been told. Time is a bit elusive to a child when it comes on that scale, even when said child is a nation.]

[anybodies]

Right, sure

[Why does he sound like a baby? She thinks about him, matches a face she's seen around camp to the voice.]

your voice sounds like a child's and that concerns me
Kids and guns.
does that make sense?

[muscovy]

I am a child, but guns are only like future kinds of bows, yes? And my lord father taught me how to shoot a bow, too, so I am old enough.

[You can't beat "my father would be okay with it" in adult logic. Or at least he hopes that it will work that way.]

[anybodies]

[There's some logic to that.]

What did your father intend for you to shoot?
back then. or when you got older

[muscovy]

Game and anything that tried to hurt me.

[Or him, for that matter, though Muscovy is A. sure that Maglor would have objected to Muscovy trying to protect him because it would endanger him (which is just silly; Maglor's presence provided enough protection and other good things like plentiful food to make his absence even more dangerous) and B. knows that Maglor would have hardly needed it. But then Galadriel didn't either, and he still saved her back on the ship just by being there and refusing to leave, prompting her to run instead of fighting, so... And he wouldn't have stayed like that if he'd had no means to fight, even if his fighting then was less conventional than bow or daggers.]

If I cannot make a gun to protect myself I might get killed before I get older, yes?

[anybodies]

[Mystique contemplates this situation with a certain degree of incredulity. He's not wrong about the numerous and variable dangers that pervade the jungle, though. And she herself was breaking, entering, and thieving when she was the mutant equivalent of his age-- or so she imagines.]

how would you feel about learning how to shoot a rifle? do you know what that is?

[The better to learn the basics. And to learn it hunting game, sooner than something small, concealable, prospectively problematic.]

[muscovy]

What is a rifle?

[If it is a type of gun, colour him very interested, though. He still stands by what he once told Newt - that daggers are better than firearms in small spaces and when you need to keep it as quiet as possible - but that doesn't mean that firearms don't have their perks, and quite a lot of them.

And Firo is already helping him with the daggers, which just reinforced that having a teacher (again) is quite helpful.]

[anybodies]

A rifle is a type of firearm. larger than the one in the picture you saw. there are a lot of different kinds, some of them as much for hurting people as animals.

But hunting is how a lot of people learn. And they're less dangerous for reasons, not the least because they are more difficult to conceal.

[She's never met a child who learned how to hunt from their father at age four hundred, mind you. But. There has to be a legitimate comparison in here, somewhere.]

[muscovy]

I'm not very tall. How long are they?

[He'd rather not wield something that will catapult him through the next wall when he uses it, or the next tree or whatever applies here.]

[anybodies]

they can be a little big. But there are smaller ones. .22s

more table too. if you're a little guy, the kick can really throw you around.

[IS THIS REALLY HAPPENING.

Maybe.

The failure of the general public to object or interject is increasingly astounding ☉‿☉✿]

[muscovy]

[The adults that he lives with help him train with daggers or condone this training. So at least from that side there're probably no complains forthcoming.]

I am strong for my size, but not very heavy. [He thinks on it for a moment.] But I know how to not get hurt when falling. [One of the first things Maglor made him learn when they started training, way back.]

[anybodies]

That's important. whoever trained you was very sensible.

[She'd had to learn all about falling, herself.]

we can give it a shot. If you like. literally a shot.

[muscovy]

[He nods.] My lord father is very sensible when he isn't mad. [Mad as in crazy.] And he didn't want me to get hurt. [It sometimes made things harder that they had different ideas of what would get Muscovy hurt.

His smile grows at her words, turning from cautious to excited.]

When?

[anybodies]

hmm. Well i cook for the camp, [...not that they'd mind seeing her go. ;( But she doesn't want to shirk her responsibilities.] but that's it.

Anytime around meals. morning, after breakfast?

[muscovy]

[He thinks on it briefly - time is a factor here, since he doesn't want to travel the jungle without daylight and his little family lives a bit of a distance away from the camp - but then he nods. Yes, that should be no problem.]

Where can I find you?

[anybodies]

How about the north edge of camp?

Theres the tree that looks like a horse's head, do you know the one?

[muscovy]

Yes.

I will be there.

how do u feel about picking up on session 2-3 in feb? =)

[anybodies]

if somebody's like your mom or dad around here now, I'd like if you would bring them along too

That sounds great!

[muscovy]

I will try to bring one of my adults.

[Now he only needs to decide if he wants to bring Rey or Firo...]