tushanshu_logs | [OPEN] KEEP THE EARTH BELOW MY FEET

Characters: Skulduggery Pleasant and YOU.
Date: Throughout March.
Location: All over. Skulduggery's splitting his time between the Palace demolition, the Hotel, and... everywhere else, really. But if you're looking for him, those first two places are the best places to look.
Situation: Now that Skul has his Bentley back, he's in a much more approachable state of mind. Approach! He's also taking active steps towards solving the symbol puzzle, so if you see him flying over the Sectors, that's probably what he's up to.
Warnings/Rating: None yet. Apart from maybe a love affair with a car.

A)
Skulduggery spends at least a section of each day up on the Palace grounds, occasionally helping with the physical work of the demolition, but more often than not somewhere near the library, keeping an eye on what the kedan workers are doing with it. As long as the sealed-over entrance to the basement area doesn't get touched, however, Skulduggery doesn't interfere - and he even goes so far as to help the university kedan catalogue the collection of books.

In a marked observable difference from the previous months, Skulduggery's now almost perpetually cheerful. You might hear him whistling 'Tiptoe through the Tulips' as he works.

That changes when the Dust contamination becomes apparent. Although Skulduggery himself isn't affected for obvious reasons, he's visibly relieved to discover the poisonings don't have permanent consequences, and he starts investigating where the contamination might have come from. That investigation takes him into all of the areas deemed too unsafe for the demolition work, but most noticeably the Throne Room.

B)
While the Hotel garage is still being constructed, the Bentley itself is parked outside the Central Sector entrance. Contrary to popular belief, Skulduggery isn't there all the time, a fact which certain gang kedan try to take early advantage of. From about March 6th onwards, the Bentley gets given a wide berth, due to the stories of Skulduggery chasing up and giving those gang kedan what he called a very firm talking-to.

When Skulduggery is with his car, he's usually polishing it, or fixing the small dents and scratches it acquired while it was with Yunxu - once again whistling 'Tiptoe through the Tulips' as he works. He generally has his magical face on for the first half-an-hour, wears it out until it starts misbehaving, and then abandons it.

C)
Every so often, Skulduggery tries to follow a mental map of the console symbols through Keeliai, flying above the rooftops and landing in the centre of each Sector, following a pattern he changes slightly each time. If you catch him when he's landed, he's usually muttering, but he'll be happy enough to stop and explain what he's doing. Any help, after all, is always appreciated.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Look! A car! It likely belongs to someone, but that's beyond Akito's current mental capacity at the moment because it's a car. He hasn't seen one in forever, and while they certainly aren't Air Trecks, Akito has to admit that he's missed seeing cars around.

Upon closer inspection it's a bit dinged up and damaged, which is definitely... Not cool. He doesn't have anything on him to pull dents out or fix scratches in the clear coating and so just checks how deep the damage is on all of them, curious.

Eventually he gives up and caves to the desire to peek first under the hood (there are some pretty neat alterations), and then under the body of the vehicle itself. His coat already needs a washing from an earlier delivery so he doesn't mind a little extra dirt if it means he can nose around in mechanics for a bit, even if he isn't actually doing anything apart from admiring. Being small has always been useful for fixing up the RV - no need for a carjack in most cases - and it doesn't fail him this time, either.

When Skulduggery returns to the Bentley late in the day, he's treated to an image of someone's feet poking out from underneath the bodywork. A quick visual inspection of his car doesn't reveal any new dents or damage, so he's not inclined towards violence, but it really is about time these local kedan start recognising that touching his car is a criminal offence.

"Hello," he says deceptively calmly, standing over the pair of feet. "Can I ask what you're doing under there?"

What he's doing, Skulduggery, is letting out a muffled noise of fright, immediately followed by a thud as he bashes his head on the underside of the Bentley. Hard enough to knock him out for a handful of seconds, then leave him stunned for a good handful longer.

Oh, for the love of - thud is not a very good noise to hear around a car in any circumstance, but particularly when that car is Skulduggery's Bentley and the muffled noise of fright which came right before the thud was, if Skulduggery isn't very much mistaken, someone he knows is prone to clumsy accidents.

"Akito?"

No answer. Skulduggery bends down and pulls the teenage boy out from underneath his car, makes sure he isn't dead, and then tries again. "Akito? Are you okay?"

He's still stunned when he's extracted from underneath the Bentley, but another couple of seconds and he blinks once, twice-

"It's gonna rust!" Akito blurts it out, clearly not entirely back to himself - dazed, at the very least - but at least responsive again. "The belly is gonna rust if you don't treat it."

A vague gesture with an arm, presumably meant to indicate the car behind him. "I- Um, I didn't do anything to it I just haven't seen a car in forever and had to see why there's a car here, so..."

Yeah.

"I forgot how creepy you look! A... A biological impossibility!"

The concept of the belly rusting is new to Skulduggery. He knows a great deal about car maintenance by necessity, but he'd still left most of the actual treatment up to his mechanic. Gaps in his knowledge shouldn't be so surprising given that context. And yet.

"There's a car here," Skulduggery replies, an edge of soft amusement replacing the earlier coolness in his tone, "because it's mine, and I parked it here. I'm going to try very hard not to be offended, seeing as I am a biological necessity, and just ask you not to touch my car in the future."

"There's a car here," he repeats, with emphasis. Followed by a wince as a headache starts to make itself known. Ugh.

"Skeletons are a biological necessity but skeletal movement without muscles and tendons to move the bones it's comprised of and nerves to send the electrical impulses to in order to move the muscles and tendons to move the bones... And speaking without lungs for air or vocal cords and seeing with out eyes and hearing without the proper nerve endings and membranes..."

In summary: super discomfiting for an anatomy nerd.

"There is," Skulduggery agrees, but without providing a clarifying explanation. To be honest, he was just as surprised himself when he first encountered the Bentley out in the jungle during a landfall. He can't explain how that happened, and isn't going to try.

"An entrepreneurial friend of mine once told me that magic is simply science which hasn't been discovered yet," Skulduggery noted. "In fact, I believe that was several entrepreneurial friends of mine, and all at different times. A science-magic professor in my world was able to translate my existence into numbers at one point, although I'm not quite convinced he wasn't just having me on."

"Weird meta-science stuff," he agrees easily. "It doesn't make it any less... Weird."

It's like trying to really comprehend the infinite size of the universe. He can't really wrap his mind around anything that breaks all the laws of biology that he knows. Well, plus he bashed his head pretty good which doesn't help much.

"Numbers make sense. Everything can be translated into an equation so numbers would totally make sense."

"Everything?" Skulduggery's head tilted to the side. "Can you boil good and evil down to numbers? Love? Hate? No one in my world has managed that, although many people like to claim it's possible."

[OPEN] KEEP THE EARTH BELOW MY FEET

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i just wanted to use this icon i never get to /cries

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