tushanshu_logs | in your head, in your head

Entry tags:

in your head, in your head

Who: Penny, Watson, Sherlock, Conan // OPEN
Date: Early March
Location: Not!221B // Outskirts of town
Situation: Penny admits to being a psychic so you'll shut the hell up with your thoughts // Penny's trying more magic
Warnings: Language, war/PTSD mentions, possible other trauma stuff

A. THERE IS FIGHTING (CLOSED TO JOHN WATSON)
Penny awoke to darkness, sweaty and breathing quickly. His body told him to be afraid while his mind replayed what he had seen in his dream, a memory or idea that didn't belong to him. It was one he'd been seeing on and off since they moved into the new building, though not the only one which didn't belong to him. But with Conan's addressed and the increasing stress that the night terrors were providing, Penny was fairly sure he knew whose dreams they were and that it might finally be time to address them. He sat up, crossed his legs, closed his eyes, and concentrated. Depending on how willing John's mind was to allow him versus to fight him, he might have a chance of entering the dream to help confront his roommate's terror. If cut out, he could at least send a message to attempt to wake the man.

B. WHAT'S IN YOUR HEAD (CLOSED TO SHERLOCK & CONAN (and John if you want))
Penny sighed, pacing the living room, waiting to see who would actually show up. After talking to John, he'd left notes on Sherlock and Conan's doors saying they needed to talk and that he'd be in the living room for a few hours. Between the weird memory glitch, his picking up on both John and Conan's dreams, and Sherlock's annoying as hell constant mental over processing, Penny knew it was beyond time to confess to his lesser known talents and try to teach them some basic magic to build their own mental defenses. It was selfish to teach them, but it was also careless not to. Especially with others here who could do similar kinds of magic.

C. IT'S THE SAME OLD THEME (OPEN)
It was already evening out by the time Penny thought to pay attention to his surroundings again. He was practicing every few days in this little clearing on the outskirts of town, trying to reclaim his magic. On Earth, he'd been damn good. In the Neitherlands, his magic less reliable, but he still knew what he was doing. Here, he was having to account for more variables, not all of which he knew as well as on Earth, and make do using only similar facsimiles of ingredients on the more complicated spells. So he came to this clearing to practice. First basic spells, then the more advanced. He was definitely making progress, though he wasn't exactly expecting company. The sound of a snapping branch nearby drew his attention before he realized the time of day, that he'd been at it for hours and hadn't even eaten lately.

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Well, that was interesting. Conan had had the impression up till now that Penny wasn't particularly fond of him. So finding a request to talk made him more than curious enough to show up.

He steps into the living room and stares up at Penny.

"What is it?"

"Take a seat." It was half a request and half a demand. Penny stopped pacing as he looked at Conan, crossing his arms with his hands shoved awkwardly inside his elbows. It was the most anxious and genuine Penny had probably ever been while in the apartment, old or new.

"I don't want to make a thing of this, but it's about time you should know." A pause, then his tone hardened to something defensive again, worried about being judged for what he was. "I'm a psychic."

Psychic. ESP.

Prior to coming to Tushanshu, he would have been outraged and offended at the very suggestion. Someone introducing the idea of psychics into the kinds of cases he ran into did nothing more than complicate the issue. They were all nothing more than fakes, anyway. Half the time the tricks they used weren't even interesting.

But... last month people had been inside his head, seeing his memories. And he had seen some of theirs. The idea of psychics didn't seem so impossible anymore. And skeptic though he was, Conan would not deny evidence just because he couldn't explain it.

But he was still a skeptic.

He crosses his arms and gives Penny a challenging look.

"Prove it."

Penny looks confused for a moment, having expected a lot of different reactions and yet somehow not anticipating this one. It's foolish, in retrospect, given how Conan takes after Sherlock and given how Sherlock is. The skepticism is refreshing, a way to show off instead of having to defend the specialization that's haunted him throughout his years.

"Seriously?" He smiles. "O-kay. Think of what you want. A number, a color, a story, I don't give a damn. Just watch it with the insults."

"Okay, I have one in mind."

He pauses for a moment, then dons a vaguely sour expression. Conan might be worse than Q. "Four.. eight.. six.. nine? Some Japanese shit."

Penny doesn't bother reading much beyond that, the specifics aren't entirely clear and he doesn't feel the need to exhaust any energies. A four digit number should be enough to get the kid to believe him. And if it doesn't, he's happy to go a few more rounds.

Conan looks annoyed.

"Since there was no way you could have guessed that, I guess I'll believe you for now."

Fai's been out exploring the city here and there as he gets the opportunity, between his job at the Midnight Hotel and spending time with his little travelling family (and relearning his love of the piano). If they're going to be stuck here indefinitely, however, it might not be such a bad idea to start exploring the rest of the turtle as well. He doesn't intend to go too far outside of the city on this particular trip, not without Kurogane with him, but he can feel magic use as he draws nearer to Penny's location.

Fai is roughly Penny's height but incredibly thin, looks about Penny's age, and would be pretty if it weren't for the eyepatch over his left eye (or still is in spite of it; eye of the beholder and all that). He's also very quiet; when the branch snaps nearby it's because Fai deliberately sets a foot down to crack it, to warn the unfamiliar magic-user of his presence. No sense in getting a blast of magic hurled at him because he startled someone.

"Practicing?"

((ooc: I hope Fai sensing Penny's magic use is ok! He can sense magic, and he can tell when people have special abilities--I have a permissions thing here if you're interested! Otherwise I'll just stick with him sensing the magic that's being used and not go farther))

Penny straightened in his posture and dropped his arms, the stump not far from him showing signs of being burned. He dropped his gaze from the sky back to the intruder and gave a shrug. While he wasn't particularly secretive about his magic, but it seemed weird for someone to stumble on him here -- especially someone as weird looking as the guy standing not far away -- unless they were a magic user too, maybe.

"What's it to you?" He asked shortly.

He could hear that shortness in Penny's reply, but Fai had a very skewed perception of grumpiness, thanks to a certain very grumpy ninja he loved to torment with his own unflagging cheeriness. Fai just smiled warmly.

"Just curious! I could feel unfamiliar magic being used, and there was so much of it I couldn't resist stopping by and seeing what was going on. I can feel magic in little bursts here and there in the city from time to time--more around the Healer's Guild, of course--but nothing quite like this."

He looked down at the burnt stump thoughtfully for a moment, then smiled broadly again. "Practicing offensive spells, judging by the poor stump there?"

"A fire to stay warm. I have a bad habit of ending up soaking wet in this damn place."

It was partially true. Penny had practiced a warmth spell and he did end up in the water a lot. It seemed like a bad idea to tell a stranger that he was practicing battle magic. Too many people assumed offensive magic was used to take the offense and start trouble, instead of using it as a response to being attacked.

"I need to get better at healing magic." A pause. "You a Magician?"

The explanation earned a bright laugh. "Well, I suppose being on a turtle in the center of a great ocean would lend itself to getting wet quite a lot. Although I would imagine you're probably not talking about jumping right off the turtle's back!" (That would seem... counter-productive.)

Fai nodded. "I am, among other things. I can't help you with the healing magic, though. That's one thing I never have had much of a knack for. Offensive magic, however...."

He pressed his lips together, still smiling but suddenly less obnoxiously cheery about it. He lifted his hand and two long fingers, his index and middle held up together, traced a bright blue rune in mid-air. The rune glowed intensely for a moment and then an arrow of pure energy shrieked toward the stump, blowing a chunk of it apart in a small hail of pulp and splinters.

"My forte, for better or worse."

"More like getting pushed," he replied lightly. Penny's fate of ending up in the water was primarily a result of miscalculated teleportation in this damn confusing place. His internal compass had never fully recalibrated to this ever shifting world. For that, he blamed the turtle. It happened too many times to be pure coincidence. Or maybe he was being paranoid.

Penny watched the man's magic, finding the hand actions and light in the air not unlike his own method. Although the glowing rune was definitely new. He put select fingers of his hands together and then flicked one up in front of him in less than an instant, forming a shield to protect himself from the shards. He dropped the shield and looked over the stranger.

"Not bad. You want to teach me?"

Fai laughed again, smiling that same friendly smile. (There's a theme, here. It's almost impossible to catch him not smiling.) "It sounds like you need better friends! Or swimming trunks, possibly~"

His one visible eyebrow, the one not covered by the eyepatch, shot up in appreciation at the magical shield that formed. "Good reaction time. Do you work primarily with gestural magic, then?"

Once the little shower of splinters had mostly settled, Fai picked his way over to seat himself right on top of the stump they'd both been using for target practice. Elbows in his lap and chin in his hands, he smiled up at the stranger. "Well, I can't agree to that just yet. We haven't even been introduced! So unless I just call you Mister Tall, Dark, and Handsome...." The ubiquitous smile turned into a grin--not a leer, just a sunny grin.

"Yeah. Both." As much a sincere response as a joke. The man's never ending smile wasn't all that unfamiliar, though Penny knew it would get annoying if it stayed for too long. He hoped it was a response to the situation rather than a perpetual state of being. The last thing he needed was more losers swarming around him.

"Combination," he admitted, a little grateful to have someone who seemed to understand magic better than most to talk to. "Depends how hard the spell is."

Penny watched the guy, still not entirely sold on his presence but bored and curious enough not to do anything about it for now. He smirked at the nickname, having been called that more than once, and crossed his arms where he was standing. There wasn't much he would trade for training from someone he had yet to see do more than a fancy Magic Missile. "Penny."

Fai nodded thoughtfully, his smile slipping a little but never really disappearing. "Gestural magic isn't so different from the runic magic I prefer, really. You probably wouldn't have much trouble with it. It takes time to learn the different runes, of course, and how they interact with each other. I don't have any of the books I studied from here with me, unfortunately.... How about magical theory? It sounds like you're a student--have you spent much time on theory?"

Smirk noted. "Please to meet you, Penny! I'm Fai. And I suppose my next question is: why offensive magic? Are you trying to protect someone? Trying to take over the world, or all worlds? Because I have to say, I'm less inclined to help the next Big Bad Overlord, no matter how handsome he is."

"You could say that." Penny had spent an obscene amount of time on the various magical theories of Traveling alone, let alone all the additional classes spent on understanding where magic came from and how different elements interacted to create the final spell. He could do some spells silently, others with gestures or words, and still others required ingredients or time or other people. All required a complex knowledge of existing conditions of the weather, time of day, position of the moon(s), and so on. Learning runes sounded easier.

"I don't like sitting around when shit gets bad." Between the gangs, the turtle's head cult, relations being strained, something about zombies, Malicant, and a dozen other things that could go wrong, Penny knew it wasn't a matter of if but when. And he wasn't one to sit around. The only reason he'd learned Battle Magic in the first place was to fight The Beast, because they were vastly outgunned and they knew it.

"Oh good! That makes everything so much easier. Learning runes or gestures or words of power is all well and good, but if you know enough about the theory behind them, you can start mixing them together. Or pulling them apart. Or making up entirely new kinds of magic~!" Fai paused, pursing his lips and tapping at his chin. "But then again you might know that already, since we've just met and I don't know what you know...."

Well. Theoretically Penny's reasoning sounded good, but of course they'd only just met--and Fai was fully aware of how convincing a lie could be. He'd been doing it practically nonstop for what, a year now?

"Why don't you show me what you know, and then we can decide what to do from there?" Fai kept his tone light, his smile friendly. "We don't have to do it here, if you'd be more comfortable somewhere else. It is getting rather late. Have you eaten?"

"I don't know runes." It seemed like an important piece of information for Penny to note if he was going to try to learn. They learned all the appropriate gestures and how they could be used in different orders and arrangements, like letters into words, and how some of the gestures could be translated into silent commands. The runes sounded similar enough. "I know how to piece together constructs for new spells."

It was the request for more information that set Penny on edge. It seemed like a reasonable question if he was supposed to be learning, but the guy was a stranger who'd stumbled on him in the woods. It practically screamed set up. Not to mention that the magician still had his hang ups about being a psychic.

Which was why he reached out to listen to a few thoughts from Fai's mind, undetectable without mental wards or telepathic ability of ones own. The man's intentions seemed pure enough. Honest, sincere. It was the something else that worried him, the presence of a hunger that was unfamiliar. When he dug a little deeper, Penny's brows pulled together and he stopped listening.

"Yeah," he lied. It would be clear that something changed as his attitude shifted from apprehensive to almost aggressive, though not directly angry. It might be less clear what happened. "Have you?"

"Mm, good to know! But maybe you could show me a spell or two, so I can get a feel for what we're working with?" Fai laughed again, almost--but not quite--a giggle. "Although preferably not aiming at our friendly stump here while I'm sitting on it, of course~!"

Oh. It would have been impossible for Fai to miss the shift in Penny's demeanor, though he couldn't tell what had caused the man to react that way. Had he said something? Maybe it was the--yes, it had to have been the question about dinner. Maybe he'd taken Fai's innocent flirting the wrong way earlier? It wasn't outright anger, but it was enough to send a little sliver of worry through Fai's gut.

The smile wavered for a moment before blazing back full force. This man didn't know him well enough to know it was almost entirely fake. "If you're worried I'm trying to take you home, you needn't be. Not that you aren't nice to look at, mind! But my--" Oh hell, he was really going to have to figure out what to call Kurogane one of these days. "--my very large, very intimidating boyfriend would probably not appreciate me bringing home strays. And he'll probably be worried if I'm not back before dark."

Eh, Kurogane didn't have to know Fai had exaggerated a little. The blond raised himself up from his seat on the stump and picked his way back across the clearing in the direction of the city. "Coming?"

Penny noticed the wavering smile and recognized it as a response to his own transition. He had no intention of telling the man he was listening to his thoughts, not when it wasn't strictly necessary. Instead, he focused on what the man's hunger had been for and how to react to that. It was like something out of some B movie nightmare and he didn't have much interest in being the man's dinner.

On the other hand, he also didn't want to turn down the chance to learn a new form of magic just because the guy might want to eat him later. This left the magician defaulting to his usual brash nonchalance. He didn't feel compelled to address the man's flirting, not actually worried about it but happy to have Fai believe that he was.

"You wanted to see what I can do, right? Lesson One." Penny paused for dramatic effect, his arrogance replacing his suspicion. "I'll meet you at the Gilded Wagon."

He vanished without pomp or circumstance, without noise or light. He simply was there and then he wasn't, appearing instantly in a safe area he was familiar with in the Fire Sector. The pub-type restaurant he'd suggested was only a block away from where he'd appeared, though a good twenty minute to half hour walk from the clearing where Fai had found him. It felt good to regain the upper hand.

Penny would walk to the establishment, grab a drink, and wait for his new acquaintance to arrive.

Fai turned back to face Penny from partway across the clearing as the man spoke, in time to see the other magician disappear into thin air. One blue eye went very, very wide. Teleportation magic wasn't out of the realm of possibility, even though Fai didn't often employ it these days. But teleportation magic with no visible or audible triggers?

"Hyuu~ I wonder if he can teach me that?" the blond mused, shaking his head ruefully. It wasn't as if he could use it anyway. Not without killing himself.

Somewhere along the way on the walk back, Fai shot a brief message to his roommate to let him know that he was not, in fact, dead in a gutter somewhere and had not gotten himself mixed up with anything dangerous. Probably. His long legs ate up the distance quickly, though he wasn't yet so familiar with this world that he could find a hastily called-out destination without a lot of asking and some extra travel time. By the time he reached the Gilded Wagon he was tired (thanks to a long day of work before all this walking) and hungry (both kinds). He might even have to give in and ask Kurogane for blood when he got back to the Hotel. It had been quite a while.

He slipped inside the pub and stepped to the side, scanning the crowd and wondering why in the world he was even bothering. Maybe he should have just given up and gone back to the Hotel already.

Penny spotted Fai as the man entered, flashing him a grin. The Magician stood from his spot at the bar, beer in hand, and gestured to a booth, leading the way for the both of them. It would give them a quieter place to speak, somewhat obscured from the white noise of the other patrons' conversations.

He dropped into the far side, taking another sip of his drink and then setting it aside. A waiter approached not a moment after they were both seated, offering to get Fai a drink and handing them menus.

"I wasn't sure you'd actually show," Penny admitted after the waiter had left them. "Most people think I'm a dick."

...and now, after all that, Penny was grinning. Color Fai confused.

Still, he'd come this far, so he followed dutifully to the booth and oozed down into the other side across from Penny, grateful to no longer be on his feet. When the waiter appeared he ordered a beer for himself ("One of those," pointing to Penny's) and some kind of cake he'd never heard of. Cake, in whatever form the natives here could dream up, still had to be delicious right?

"Well," Fai began, allowing some of his weariness to show through in the smile he gave Penny, "Mm. Maybe leaving someone outside of town without any warning might not be the best way to counter that image, if you're worried about it?" There was very little in the way of actual accusation in his words, and he chuckled afterward. "Just a thought~"

"I'm not worried about it," he countered easily, smiling at the thought. If anything, Penny enjoyed and appreciated the reputation of being an asshole. It meant less people wasted his time with bullshit and worked to scare off the people who might casually try to mess with him. It also meant that he was under no obligation to do things he didn't feel like doing or to try to avoid hurt feelings. He was what he was.

"But if you do think I'm a dick, why'd you come?" He matched Fai's lighthearted speech, genuinely curious.

Anzu was still trying to figure out her way around the city, but this area had looked reasonably friendly in the daylight. But now the sun was going down, and she hadn't had much luck in figuring out how to get back where she was supposed to be.

She'd spied Penny and thought she could at least get directions, but it looked like she'd interrupted him doing something.

"Sorry for disturbing you," she said. "I'm a little lost. Which way is the middle of the city again?"

[Continued here]

To be quite honest, John doesn't even notice Penny in his dream and it should be very clear why the minute the young magician entered it. There's chaos everywhere as Penny has just essentially stepped into the middle of a battlefield. Guns and explosions are going off all around, people are shouting and individuals in uniforms are scurrying about trying to avoid getting shot. John's there too, in tan camoflague and a large pack on his back with a red cross signifying that he's a medic. Even so there is a gun strapped to his waist just in case, along with a larger one hanging from his shoulders as he leaned over a fallen comrade.

There's blood everywhere, turning brown cloth red as John pressed into it with one hand and tearing open a package of medical supplies in order to treat the wound on the spot. If he stopped then this man would die right in front of him, though it doesn't look good at all. Still, John doesn't look frightened or shaken by any of it - not the gunfire or explosions or how this soldier was bleeding out on him. In fact, he looked steadier than another young medic who was crouched on the other side of the soldier.

"Stay with me, Edwards! You're not dying on my time!" John barked down at the fading, injured soldier. "Powell, get me a pair of forceps and a clamp!"

This time his order was for the younger medic across from him. The man didn't respond, merely stared blankly at the dying soldier. "Powell! Get it together, soldier!" John snapped his fingers in front of the other medic's face - forcing the other man back into reality.

Penny flinches with the sound of an explosion not too far from them. He straightens to look around, confident that he can't be shot in a dream he knows is a dream. It only lasts a couple seconds before he caves to his body's instinctive fear, ducking down behind some semblance of cover. Then he focuses on why he's here, finding John without much difficulty.

He moves over to the medic and the man dying beneath him, holding up a hand to try to hide the sight of the blood. No wonder John's having nightmares.

"Hey!" He calls out loudly, voice carrying over the surrounding gunfire, as he crouches down between Watson and Powell. His clothes haven't changed from his usual ensemble, helping him to stand out in the otherwise normal scene. Not that anyone of the dream seems to notice. "Hey, John Watson. I need you to get your shit together. This is a dream. A fucking terrible one."

He drops his hand, accepting the sight of the man John called Edwards, trying to get John's attention.

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in your head, in your head

B

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C - hope this is ok! :)

for sure! he can sense whatever <3

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C.

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do I really need a label up here for this?

rofl