tushanshu_logs | [OPEN] Didn't I see this movie?

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[OPEN] Didn't I see this movie?

Characters: Erskine, Bakura, and OPEN
Date: August 10, 2016
Location: Central Sector
Situation: Erskine has been failing to deal with some Bad Things from his past and now it's catching up to him. He's having a bit of a nervous breakdown and, as an Elemental sorcerer, is going to be setting fire to a building in the city as a result. Tag-ins welcome from anyone! Come help put the fire out before someone gets hurt. Come shuffle the kedan away from the burning building. Come yell at this idiot?
Warnings/Rating: Bad headspace. Possible violence. Arson. Vague spoilers for the SP series through the end of book 8; will try to keep specific spoilers to a minimum unless noted otherwise. Please let me know if you're okay with spoilers or not and I can adjust as necessary ♥

He'd asked for help.

That thought echoed small and almost forgotten in the back of Erskine's mind. He'd asked for help. It shouldn't have come to this. Maybe he'd been too late, or maybe he'd been past the point of saving.

The evening was hot--too hot. Everything was hot and dry and the fire spread too quickly, jumping from the awnings of an outdoor cafe to the quaint little building behind it. Fire bloomed a brilliant orange against the skyline, against the deep blue of the sky. Kedan screamed, scrambled to get away, to get their loved ones away. Screamed at him, though from a safe distance.

Who wanted to get too close to the man with fire in his hands and rage in his eyes?

((ooc: Please note that for the sake of continuity/planning/etc, Bakura is going to be the one to take Erskine out of the area, and ~~no one is going to die~~ no kedan are going to die. Otherwise feel free to interact as you see fit, even if it's not with Erskine! Fight fires. Be heroes, do cool stuff. Yell at Erskine. It's all good.))

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It wasn't hard to see a fire and be spurred into action. Most would have second thoughts or consider other options when faced with a rising inferno, flames eating into the world around them with an insatiable hunger that would not easily be stopped. Cain, however, knew that inversely the fire could not easily stop him. His immortality wasn't a secret to let others die over, especially if it wasn't their time.

Barely thinking about it, Cain rushed inside and was rapidly combing the areas for anything he could use to get in further. He'd grabbed a cloth along the way and tied it around his mouth, but his sight was hindered and breaths heavy despite that. It would be slow going no matter how little his accruing burns actually did to harm him.

Every now and then, he retreated. Sometimes with other kedan who had been stuck, or after a large crash or two of him knocking things away and taking himself with them to open a path elsewhere. It was foolhardy and dangerous, but he kept getting back up. His clothes were signed and burned but oddly enough, he was for the most part unphased.

"Hey!" When he stopped once outside to catch his breath, he talked with anyone outside who had either been around since the beginning or perhaps one of the few he'd saved. "Anyone see how this started?"

Duke had noticed this one going in and out of the buildings mostly because it meant more kedan for him to offer healing. Stopping the rescuer wasn't quite a priority when he seemed much better off than those pulled out.

But better off the first couple times doesn't mean much in the long run. Trying to stop him from immediately turning around and going back in.

"At least let me heal some of that."

Cain didn't flinch to being cut off from returning. He'd expected it sooner, to be honest, although he was surprised to see someone who didn't appear to be kedan. Hard to tell with shapeshifters, sure, but he wasn't exactly going to make a deal of it regardless.

"Appreciate the offer," he said, raising his arm and pulling his sleeve away to show off one of the more recent burns still lay scorched and warped along his forearm, "but it won't last very long, anyway. You're a healer?"

"When there aren't better ones about." He tilts his head slightly, focusing his magic into First Aid - a golden scrawl of script in math-like forms spreading itself into a seal under him, then a little burst of golden light from his raised hand to the burned arm.

The spot is a little pink, but a little faded. Like a sunburn that's ready to peel. Sorry dude, you can deal with that part on your own.

"... Won't last due to increased healing speed, or some absorption of elements?" Those were the two things he could think of, so it's said with some absent-minded curiousity.

Healing magic wasn't quite what Cain was expecting. Even here in Keeliai, where he knew it was possible, he hadn't had need for it and so never experienced the effects. It tingled and was definitely different than the way his body usually handled it, like a body mending itself at high speed rather than simply fixing what had been put out of place. He frowned at the spot where the pinkness began to fade away as well, his own power picking up the slack and returning things to their rightful state before their eyes.

"Increased healing speed," he answered belatedly. "That was weird."

Duke doesn't seem to realize that he's confused the man, running through several possiblities with that as an option. He was rather familiar with one, but-

"Is it something with an external power source? Consuming ambient magic in exchange for healing, or something similar? Or is it something powered internally - you grow tired and eventually exhausted after healing yourself a great deal." He could theoretically take the ease off the second, if he could sling first aids at the man when he came out of buildings. It wasn't like mana was particularly finite for him.

At the man attempting to simply understand the mechanics rather than function, Cain tilted his head and allowed a smile for it. Curiosity was good, and he wasn't one to hide the truth when it came up. As long as the curiosity didn't turn into anything more, that was even better.

"Internally, I suppose," he said. "Eventually I'll get tired, but I've got really good endurance. Stuff like this won't bother me. Well, and I guess it depends on what else happens in there."

Don't worry, Duke honestly doesn't really care that much. Well, he would care more if the man wasn't sure how it all worked - that seemed more hazardous that repeatedly making use of the healing ability.

So long as nothing worse, of course. Minor burns didn't seem to bother him, that was clear already.

"'Stuff like this' includes the damage from smoke inhalation?" His repeated phrase is rather stiff - pretty clearly something that Duke would normally never say. "I can continue to use small healing spells on you when you exit buildings, if that doesn't bother you. The effort involved in casting First Aid is negligible, on my end."

Truth be told, Cain didn't know how it worked. He just knew the way he would react to its workings, but far be it from him to try and explain the difference in the middle of such a busy and hectic situation. At the very least, Cain was utterly positive it wouldn't go out on him in the middle of this; he'd been through worse and for longer and come back same as before.

"It does, but the longer I'm exposed to something, it might eventually stop healing until I remove myself," explained Cain. It was a weakness he was exposing, but not one that anyone could properly take advantage of. Even if they could, they'd probably get bored or Cain would outlast them or... well, he just had stopped thinking about it after so long. "Go ahead. Whatever it was you did definitely helped clear it out. Just don't prioritize me over anyone else, get it?"

.. close enough-

So the risk was if the man was in a building longer than what it would take for someone without a healing ability to suffocate on smoke, likely by a couple multiples. Again, he was aware of this, so Duke felt reasonably comfortable assuming he would go and get clean air if he felt he was too close to that cut-off. ... Hopefully the fires wouldn't last that long.

... It's surprisingly hard to think of a response to that last part. He can admit to being able to use multiple spells at once, or... "If I'm particularly worried, I have a spell that effects in an area. I'll apply it to you and any kedan at the same time."

Cain nodded, and moved to head back into the flames. He paused, turned and gave a shrug. "If you need it, my name is Jacob," he introduced. Names were good in situations like this, useful for grabbing attention where it would be difficult to otherwise communicate. He looked back to the building and rushed back inside.

Once the fire was taken care of, Cain determined to find this guy again and see about speeding up any injuries he'd accrued if they were bad enough. Meeting someone who could heal via magic was still rare and interesting to him; he wanted to see more of it, how it interacted with his own body's process.

... If you're going to give your name, please wait so he can give his back. But no, Jacob has run back into the building. Duke stares blankly, because that is usually his thing, to leave before a conversation was quite done. ... Oh well.

Duke is rather easy to spot - a great deal of white hair, a long black and red coat, with the flare of golden lights whenever he casts healing magic. He looks perhaps a little headache-y tired, but more or less the same for having been flicking spells about for... however long that took.

He seems to be done with the people nearby, and is just looking about for the next person. Wait, he recognizes this one. A wave is all the attention grabbing he's going to do, calling isn't really his thing.

There was time to call it, and then there was no time at all. Cain figured he could come up with something he had to, but getting the healer's attention would be easier than getting Cain's all told. Cain was the one moving about and making a theoretically difficult target to flag down, after all.

Thankfully, Cain noticed the wave and made his way over when all was said and done. There was the obvious soot and smudges and smoke hanging about in his clothes and on his skin; he was coughing lightly as his body worked to fix everything that had gone wrong with it in his repeated checks of the building, including more burns, scratches and light bruising. "Everything okay?" he asked, suppressing a cough to keep from interrupting himself.

Ah, well, the problems of Duke just not being particularly loud anyway.

Duke's reply is to start another spell - a larger one, by how much longer it takes for the golden glow to set itself up. The result is a cone of light over Jacob, which heals quite a bit more than the little sphere had. It still leaves him with small sunburns instead of completely burn-free skin, but that just seems to be how his magic reacts to burns.

"On my end, yes." Duke pauses, then adds what he felt like should have been said before the task-split happened. "Duke."

There was a moment where Cain stuttered in his step, head shaking briefly like a cat whose whiskers had been blown on. That wasn't what he had been expecting and it still felt incredibly foreign to have his wounds healed by external measures. Magic like that didn't exist where he was from, and he was more than used to the quickened process of his own body. Were there people who got used to this, or was it just something a mortal body wouldn't know how to process?

He recovered quickly enough, moving closer while inspecting some of the damage that had been brushed away by the magic. "Glad to hear. I think we got out as many as we could, but don't quote me on that. Thanks for that, Duke."

It also could be that Duke hasn't realized that casting now and explaining later might be particularly weird to anyone. So it is likely a thing to do with his world, and how he's not used to dealing with people. You don't usually ask yourself if it's okay to heal something...

Duke shrugs awkwardly at the thanks. "I can't do what you can without ending up one of those in need of healing." And healing when you're coughing up your lungs is as hard as it sounds.

... That was Duke-speak for 'no problem'.

It looked like Duke had a thing or two to learn about interdimensional manners, but Cain wasn't particularly bothered. It was just so far out of his element that he had to go with that flow or end up completely useless. The latter didn't sit well with him, so the former was his only real option. It had worked out well for him so far, to be fair.

"Everyone's got their strengths," he said with a shrug. "People don't even have magic where I'm from. How does that work?"

Ah, well, that could explain the twitchy reactions. He.. should try to remember that, that not everyone is used to healing magic, which honestly feels like the one that most people should be familiar with to him.

"... Study, an application of math to guide the particles that make it work, provided you have enough of it about to pull it off, and a casting aid." Duke's short answer is pretty clearly the explanation of how all his magic works. "Healing magic is a little more and a little less complicated - more variables and ranges involved."

In the same vein, most people from worlds without magic were used to doctors. Cain still didn't have that familiarity thanks to his immortality that made any sort of healing foreign to him except intellectually. His brows raised considerably at the explanation.

"It's just science?" Now that was crazy. Any suitably advanced technology, etc., etc. but the idea that magic itself was suitably advanced progress gave him a moment of pause. "So, in theory, anyone could do it?"

"... something like that. I usually think of it as math, as formula is the more common way to refer to spells." But he is describing a lot of natural things - fire, lightning strikes, the shape of the cyclone, so there's a slow nod.

"Yes." A stiff shrug again - Duke's just not that physically expressive. "There are inexplicable things to it - I am no good at manipulating water or earth, for example. I can memorize the formula, it just doesn't produce the scale of results I want."

That was just weird. Cain wasn't sure why, but it was one of the few things he was having trouble just squaring away as one of those other-universe-things like so many other oddities. Perhaps because it was just close enough to home to be completely wrong that it was bumping up against the edges to what he knew was right rather than just being something he could dump elsewhere in his justification of the differences.

"Like someone's natural affinity for athletics versus intellectual pursuits," Cain said slowly, considering. "Still possible but not likely to have anything come of it. That just doesn't happen." In my world went unspoken.

From Duke's end, it just seems like a 'what if no one ever learned how to use magic' sort of thing. The idea it was unknown completely is just as strange - if particularly hard to imagine. Monsters use magic too, someone would have tried to figure it out, if only on the 'how do I stop it' way.

There's a nod for athletics vs study. It also is why people avoid learning magic at home. Can't focus or something like that. He has to think a little on that, sorry, it didn't quite make sense. Oh. Okay-

"You might be missing the particle involved, then. Which is likely a good thing, aer is harmful in concentrations." ... so people went out and harnessed it. sounds about right-

Cain tilted his head in consideration of that idea. Just another particle, something manipulable by people with nothing but some kind of focus and capable of inexplicable things. This aer sounded dangerous and fascinating all in one, and that left a lot of questions for the fact that it was apparently present in the Dreaming as well.

"Have you met anyone else not from where you are who can do that?" he asked. "Use aer like that."

Duke didn't mention the bloodline who could do it without any focus, did he. Oh well.

"Not... exactly. Aer was turned into mana, recently. Something about binding it to elements to stabilize it, I wasn't directly involved." He might have been part of the reason they did so, so quickly, but... not part of the planning.

He needs someone from Brave Vesperia who actually knows about it to show up. He has questions. "I have met someone who uses mana, and it has similar elements for her. My version was more limited, actually."

It hadn't been mentioned, but it didn't change very much. Magic in the hands of mortals was dangerous. Even just with deathsight, they were running amok and causing problems left and right that fell to their departed kin to correct. It just didn't sit right.

"Aer turned into mana?" Now that was something Cain was interested in and fairly baffled about. How could one change the entire nature of a particle throughout a whole enough to make that statement hold the kind of depth Duke was speaking of? It sounded like some kind of mass terraforming project. "Yeah, I've met her too, I bet. What do you mean by more limited?"

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radiantwingedone - 2015-09-17 05:52 (UTC) - Expand

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