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Who: Jacob Kane (Cain) & someone else. Maybe you.
When: October 14th and forward.
Where: All around Keeliai.
What: Hoofing it around town to get a better finger on the pulse of current happenings. If it's a place where people are, Cain could feasibly be there.
Warnings / rating: Nah.

It was really rather astonishing how quickly Cain could adapt to things. He even surprised himself sometimes, what with the fact that he had literally been pulled into another world with a universe-threatening war and only a few hours after the fact he was on the streets looking for more information. Part of it, he acknowledged, was simply that it hadn't sunken in all the way yet. Regardless of that fact, it was always smarter to push forward than stand still when the world was still spinning around him.

Early on, it was easy to see that he was pissing off some kedan just by being around and initiating conversation. Cain started to pick his questions more carefully, but it wasn't going to stop him; kedan population seemed way higher than foreigner population and that was where he was going to need to get gossip or info if from anywhere. He wasn't above pestering some people on the street or trying to get shopping done if it looked like he might get away with starting a conversation.

Hell, Cain was even willing to stoop to the old classic: "Hey, do you have the time?"

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The kedan may not have been especially friendly with the Foreigners anymore, but Skulduggery still knew how to get information from them without saying a word. He could tell when something was rattling them, when a Foreigner was making themselves a little too much of a nuisance, or - most importantly, but not completely unrelatedly - when the cultists were beginning to make a push on gang territory. That meant Skulduggery kept a close eye on the man who was rattling the gang kedan from the moment he entered the Metal Sector, and when it looked like said man might actually try engaging some of the cultists, Skulduggery decided it might be a good idea for him to step in.

Which he did, approaching the no-doubt newly arrived man without making a sound and tapping him on the shoulder. "I wouldn't do that if I were you."

Considering the heightened aggravations of the kedan around him, Cain could hardly be blamed for whirling around at the touch to his shoulder and getting ready to throw down. Thankfully, he was pulled up impossibly short by the sight of a skeleton. A skeleton with a negative clock on its neck, which really made it two for two in things that Cain never expected to see no matter the impossibility of his current situation.

"What?" he said after a moment. It wasn't in reaction to the words, he heard those plenty well, but to the skeleton's mere existence. Who pulled this guy out of the metaphysical blender? His brain caught up with his mouth, thankfully, and he instead said the much more tactful, "Says the crime against all living laws of physics." Because, really, what was a skeleton doing advising him against something dangerous anyway.

"Organics, actually," Skulduggery corrected him, standing patiently through the whirling and the inevitable staring. "I don't break a single law of physics, as far as I'm aware. Biologically speaking, it's a different story." He gestured toward the pair of kedan making absolutely no effort to keep themselves hidden, or to hide the blackened daggers at their belts. "Those are the unfriendly kedan. Others will merely ignore you, verbally abuse you, attack you if you're lucky - those kedan will poison you if they get the chance."

Having lived almost a month with their poison in his dead bone marrow, Skulduggery could very safely make the judgement that no one, no matter who they were, would take too kindly to that.

"You don't have lungs or vocal chords, but you're talking," Cain contradicted. There was plenty about a walking, functioning skeleton that defied... well, every natural law possible as far as Cain was concerned. Semantics didn't have place right now. There was a whole lot wrong with this, but he couldn't deny that the skeleton himself seemed friendly enough. And weirdly Irish.

At the explanation, Cain let his gaze focus on the blades they held, memorizing the color and whatever texture might give away the poison. Anything that attacked your blood and had to be worked out by your organs was a daunting way to go as far as Cain was concerned: poisons lingered, and it took multiple, oftentimes painful, demises and revivals for them to worm their way out of his system. Definitely not something he wanted to deal with. "Thanks for the tip," he said absently, hoping to convey that he meant it for everything (he really just appreciated the warning about the poison). "You the friendly neighborhood vigilante around here?"

"That's just magic," Skulduggery answered offhandedly. "It bends the laws of physics in quite useful ways, but as one can argue that magic is a physical force of its own, I may break only those laws which you know about."

It was a discussion he'd had many times since coming here, interestingly enough - and once with a teenager. Skulduggery didn't think he'd ever need such a scientific explanation on hand for first meetings, but then, he wasn't entirely used to dealing with people who couldn't accept the premise of magic with relative ease. Live and learn, and all that.

"Vigilante." Skulduggery tilted his head. "That's one way of putting it. Skulduggery Pleasant, at your service."

"Not any magic I've ever seen," Cain said skeptically. It was toned well enough that unless Skulduggery was the type to assume, one could easily say Cain was being facetious and had never seen magic at all. It really did help that he only looked like a young adult and had long ago memorized how to look and act like one, too. (It didn't take a whole lot of doing, truth be told.) "So, you're just... using magic to be a living skeleton instead of a dead skeleton?"

Yep, those sure were jazzhands he just used right there.

Cain scoffed in amusement to hide his outright laughter. "Is that your superhero name? Skulduggery Pleasant?"

"Skeletons are, by definition, dead," Skulduggery pointed out. "Using redundant phrases weakens your argument."

He didn't specify which argument that was, probably because there hadn't been one. But neither did he actually answer the question, mostly because he didn't particularly want to. Skulduggery was much more interested in the man himself, the man who presented enough individually minor anomalies to require a little further observation than it seemed at first glance. Or maybe some interrogation. He was either an actor struggling to come to terms with the possibility of alternate dimensions and inter-dimensional travel, or he was an actor who wanted to give off the impression that he was struggling to come to terms with the possibility of alternate dimensions and inter-dimensional travel. More likely, it was a combination of both, mixed with something else Skulduggery hadn't pinpointed yet.

"My taken name," he explained. "Normal, where I come from. Are they unusual for you?"

"Dancing around the answer weakens yours," Cain replied with a shrug. Even if there wasn't an argument to be had in the first place nor was there really an answer to his question, if Skulduggery wanted to nitpick at him, he wasn't going to pass up the chance. Who in their right mind would pass up the chance at anything when it involved an Irish reanimated skeleton?

Whether Cain realized that his facade was not holding up or not, he didn't change his tactic. Consistency was key, because humans were by definition inconsistent. He was Jacob Kane right now and Jacob Kane was not old enough to be completely unphased by the goings-on around him but he did have enough of a head on his shoulders to fake it. Jacob Kane might have been heavily based off of Cain himself, but there was no one around to call him out on that.

"No, it's unusual," he said. Taken name was easy enough to surmise the meaning, and those were pretty much what he defined himself by nowadays, but Cain was not the standard by which the bar was set. "Unless you're hiding from someone. You just pick a name when you turn eighteen or something like that?"

Amusement tinged Skulduggery's words. "Something like that, yes. I chose mine when I was twenty. Are you going to tell me what your name is, or are you going to make me guess?"

As a rule, Skulduggery enjoyed the company of people willing to turn nitpicks into arguments. Conversation never ran dry, and it had a tendency of forcing both parties to consider things they hadn't considered before. There was very little Skulduggery hadn't considered at some point in his life, which was where the idealism of such company generally fell apart, but the principle remained the same. It certainly didn't stop Valkyrie from trying.

"Jacob Kane," he introduced. Because he wanted to see what passed for manners with skeletons and also feel what it felt like to shake a moving hand without any skin or muscle in the way, he held his hand out to shake. Never let it be said he was squeamish even in the face of abominations to nature. Sometimes people didn't get to choose when they fucked shit up royally and, even if the did, karma had a way of getting back to them. Sometimes, if it took too long, Cain would even do it himself.

Either way.

He didn't bother to clarify that Jacob Kane was technically a taken name. Cain had yet to place the significance of it in relation to Skulduggery, so it really only stood to reason that it was something cultural that he didn't personally have to give a damn about. "Were you already a skeleton at twenty, or did you end up laughing at the irony, too? Were you ever not a skeleton?"

The name was still enough to give Skulduggery pause, just for the similarity to Valkyrie's taken last name. If there was deeper meaning there, he chose to contemplate it later, and used the moment for accepting the proffered handshake. To Jacob Kane's disappointment, perhaps, Skulduggery was wearing gloves, though the lack of any skin or muscle would still be obvious to those who were looking for it.

"I was born normal," Skulduggery assured him. "The skeleton part didn't happen until later, and the circumstances didn't exactly allow for irony."

Although it didn't stop some people from finding the whole thing incredibly funny.

"Someone's given you the tour, I hope," Skulduggery added. "I can tell you a little more about the war, if you're feeling up to it. If you're already having nightmares, however, best to leave that for another time."

All of which was a very roundabout and polite way of asking whether or not Kane was used to this sort of thing. Unfortunately, direct questions rarely worked, particularly if someone wanted to keep their home lives to themselves - and Skulduggery had a sneaking suspicion Kane did, if only because of the earlier jazz hands and the reluctance to introduce himself.

That pause was noticeable, but nothing that Cain could pin down in order to comment on. It was a reaction to his name, but he couldn't quite tell where Skulduggery was getting his reaction. Just something to file away for later, along with the feeling of skeletal fingers hiding inside of a regular glove, and the information about the circumstances regarding his odd state. Even if it was the first time he'd encountered it, Cain was pretty sure the negative numbers on Skulduggery's neck made note of how long he had been like that. More than three hundred years. That was definitely some kind of record.

"Just the basic one," Cain said with a tone of nonchalance. "They seemed a bit busy down at the station and all that. Hit me with it. What are a few more on top of what I've already got waiting for me?" It was meant to refer to everything else that had been piled onto him today. Whether Skulduggery would take it that way or assume a deeper meaning was up to him. Cain wasn't going to tell him what to think.

It was a frustratingly vague answer, but it was a fair answer, so Skulduggery let it slide.

"What did they tell you about the nameless entity they want us to fight?" Skulduggery asked first, although he wasn't entirely sure many of the kedan still wanted the Foreigners anywhere near Keeliai, let alone fighting Malicant on their behalf. "Not to say his name? To be careful of the Palace? That he's capable of destroying all the known universes, and then some? He's directly underneath your feet."

Cain tilted his head, considering the information for a moment. He had been given what felt like a fairly standard introductory course with the requisite vague warnings and other facts that might be useful at some point but weren't enough of the whole story to give him a proper idea.

"So..." He paused, one arm crossing over his chest while the other came to stroke his chin. "It's the turtle we're on?"

Skulduggery nodded, seemingly mindless of the answer's intent to poke a bit of fun at him. "Recent development, mind you, but yes. He's capable of possessing people, you see, if they're tainted far enough. Poison is one way of doing that. Blood is another. In the basement of the Palace for the last several months, several kedan were tainted, killed, and their blood poured into Asti's shell. Combine that with the last public taunt, the last turtle-wide famine, and my immensely clever ability to put puzzles together, and there's really only one possibility."

He hadn't been making it public because he hadn't seen a justification for risking mass panic. What Skulduggery had been doing was exactly this - passing the information along slowly to people who could handle it, people who could tell others, people who would be better suited for telling others. He didn't usually make it a practice to tell newcomers, true, but the reason was partly selfish - Skulduggery wanted to see what Jacob Kane's reaction would be.

All right, that one hadn't intended to be serious, but the fact that he had hit upon the truth all the same wasn't going to throw him too far off. It had been a possibility the moment that Skulduggery suggested that Malicant was somewhere down and perhaps Cain had been too quick to assume that possessing the turtle was an impossible task. That made things more complicated.

"Well, there goes the neighborhood," Cain muttered to himself despite the fact that he had just narrowly avoided walking into a cult and/or gang war in the making. He ran a hand through his hair, making it shift so as to make him look even younger. It was a weird but useful trait that his hair, when at the right length, could be framed in a number of different ways to change how old he looked. Hopefully he wouldn't have to make all that much use of it here. As he thought about it more, there was really only one thing he specifically needed more context on. "Why possess a turtle?"

An apt reaction, as far as reactions went. If Skulduggery had to hazard a guess, he'd say Jacob Kane was a little more accustomed to strange things happening than he let on, if not accustomed to magic and giant turtles. A completely normal person would have asked how a continent-turtle could possibly be possessed, not why.

"Asti straddles life, death, and dreaming," Skulduggery answered, parroting the line he'd been fed upon his arrival and since discovered to be at least partly true. "A demigod if I ever saw one, and even possessed, one of the friendliest demigods I've ever met. It guarantees our enemy can't be killed, nor fought in any conventional way. Given the bio-technical nature of the consoles and the numerous kedan who used to worship Asti, it also gives him plenty of ammunition. Several months ago, during one of the festivals they have here, Asti gave several of us 'gifts' in various forms. Those gifts were the only magical abilities not to disappear during the nullification period two weeks ago. Since we now know Asti isn't Asti, it begs the question of what the gifts are for."

Part of that was at least somewhat familiar by now. Cain had been told the same thing upon his arrival, although he suspected it had been more out of habit during the entire thing than an actual feeling of necessity in making sure he was informed. Maybe Cain was just cynical like that, but it seemed all out of the blue to grab another foreigner during all of this unrest. Could have been the officials were just pulling names out of a hat and hoping someone, somewhere out there could help them, or else they didn't know what else to do.

Neither was really a comforting thought.

His head tilted to the side. "You got the gifts during a time when Asti was possessed? Or are you saying there might be some kind of trap in them now after the fact because of the new situation?" Either way, sucked to be the people stuck with those gifts.

"It doesn't really matter which," Skulduggery pointed out, far too casual for someone discussing the potential ramifications of mental brainwashing traps. "It might eventually, but either way, the gifts would backfire. And if they do, they're going to backfire soon. If they're anything like the poison I so brilliantly helped you to avoid being tainted with, they're going to turn against us each other."

Of course, as things stood now, the Foreigners didn't exactly need any help turning against each other. Suspicion and mistrust were rife, and apart from a few rumours of tentative plans Skulduggery had heard about through the few kedan contacts who bothered bringing him information anymore, no one seemed to have any idea how to fight back even if the Foreigners did present a united front.

"Eva must be pinning a lot of hope on you," Skulduggery murmured aloud. Then his skull straightened sharply. "Speaking of, Eva's missing. What happened when you arrived here? Did you see her?"

When on the topic of traps that could brainwash someone, there was really no other way to go about it. There would be no use in panicking because that would only make it easier for your brain to be taken over anyway. That, and Cain was lucky enough to know he wasn't one of those poor bastards who might be in danger of it and that was enough for him.

"It wouldn't be smart to turn us against each other," Cain said with a shrug. "There are better ways to use someone who's on the other side whether they're willing or not. Double-agents, right?" He paused, then tilted his head. "Maybe you should be more specific about that poison you keep talking about."

Cain frowned. That was really what he was afraid of, that someone had pulled him specifically from his home in order to fill some shoes or another. He didn't want to be important, he didn't want to stand up and be an adult or a leader or anything like that for at least another decade, although he'd honestly been hoping for a century. He was just getting ready to get to know his brother again and now in some strange time in between, he was pulled into this war where he might have to pull out the first King of Rome. What shit luck.

Shaking his head, he said, "No, it was Milyn and some police. I got the impression it was the same as always if not more hush-hush; they were definitely following a routine. Who's Eva?"

If Skulduggery agreed or had been willing to answer Kane's implied question regarding the poison, it was lost in the wake of the information Kane provided about Eva being absent during his arrival.

"Evastelei," Skulduggery clarified. "A local magician responsible for the magic which pulls us from our various worlds. She hasn't been seen in a while. It's nice to see that she left a contingency plan in place, but I'd like to know the details of that contingency plan, as well as what happened to her. We would have heard if she was compromised, so it's likely she's injured and in hiding." He shook his head. "The amount of trust they put in us is staggering."

By which Skulduggery meant the lack of trust, of course. He wouldn't have questioned it if the Foreigners didn't seem to be Keeliai's last hope for defeating Malicant once and for all; mistrusting your allies was bad enough, but sabotaging your own last-ditch effort for rescue was something else entirely.

At Skulduggery's ending comment, Cain laughed aloud. He had barely even been in town a day and already he was seeing just how far down the creek of shit he had been tossed along with the rest of all these poor bastards. He was no stranger to lack of trust, but considering their current situation it seemed to have evolved from absurd into outright unbelievable. It was all too easy to see that the natives were desperate for hope and too scared to accept the bumps along the way to true resolution of their fears. It was a dangerous combination when put together with their power over the foreigners as unwilling hosts.

"So they leave it to the new guy to maybe eventually tell someone about Eva. Lack of Eva. Wonder what that means," Cain said, tone less musing and more purposeful. If people were pinning hopes on him yet something beyond the norm was occurring, he definitely wanted to know more about the process by which they were being pulled in. "Her contingency, I mean. What's been the pattern for pulling people in thus far? Anything?"

Skulduggery didn't know if they'd left it to the new guy to tell someone about Eva, exactly, but he wasn't about to split hairs. He didn't have any hairs to split, for one thing.

In response to Kane's question, he shrugged. "You'll have to ask people who have been keeping track of that sort of thing. All I can tell you is the flow of new arrivals slowed to a trickle even before Eva vanished. I haven't been counting on anyone new, and I doubt anyone else has either."

Cain let out a small, wry grin at that. At least it meant he didn't have much to worry about in the way of anyone he knew arriving; both a good thing and a bad thing. There was one person in particular he would have killed to see, and then anyone else might as well have been chopped liver to him. If there wasn't even a pattern, hardly even a schedule, then there wasn't much to watch out for yet.

"Any reason why?" he asked. "Or is it one of those things we aren't getting told?"

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Metal Sector

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