CLOSED | a disaster in motion

[mekhanikos]

Who: leo valdez and some peeps
When: early march-ish
Where: around town and in the countryside
What: influence jobs, baby
Warnings: bad jokes and misuse of magic, probably



( specific starters below! if you want one, holla at me by pm or on plurk @ celen and we can plot something out! )

Comments

[mekhanikos]

Seriously?

[ there's only a mild degree of surprise in leo's tone, and it's less for lalli and more that he's never really heard of anyone with an accurate predicting talent for approaching predators. ]

Man, that's useful. I wish I could tell when monsters are approaching, it'd have made my life so much easier.

[ilves]

You just listen for them. And watch.

[Sure, there's magery involved? Seeing spirits and whatnot, but hey! Keeping an eye out for man-eating monsters is his job, which is why he shrugs. It's easy peasy to him...]

Don't you have scouts in... America? To warn you when things get too close?

[His tone suggests that America-as-a-place is still a WILD thing to wrap his mind around.]

[mekhanikos]

... right.

[ he narrows his eyes slightly, mostly because that sounds way too easy, and thus is probably way harder. especially to a group of people who all collectively suffer from adhd. ]

Uh, I guess? Not in the same way, though, I mean, we have monsters but they only hunt those with the right kind of blood, so most people never even see them. And we can't really see the monsters, they're not like predators who run out of the woods, they can pretend to be people and then... not be people. Uh. It's weird.

[ilves]

[That is... a pretty wild summary, to be honest, but Lalli does the only thing he knows how: he compares what he's heard to what he's lived. Give him a second here, before—ah, yep, he's nodding.]

Aha. They hunt mages. [He feels it, he feels it.] And the monsters are... spirits? Not trolls.

[This makes perfect sense in his mind! He's even proud of the connections he's made here, which is why he decides to go for broke.]

Are you a mage?

[mekhanikos]

Well, giants and chimeras and empousa and stuff, but —

[ his interjection is quick, and not all that relevant, since it doesn't really matter that he meant "they use a mist so that normal people see them as normal people and not monsters" instead of "they're incorporeal", and then lalli is asking him a question and leo stops.

and thinks. ]

... sort of? We have a different word for it, but I guess the idea is the same.

[ in that he can use what could be called "magic". ]

[ilves]

[Weird words? He can deal with those. Being a sort of mage, though, makes absolutely zero (0) sense; he gives the animals he's supposed to be watching one last look, making sure that they seem fine, before turning to shoot Leo a dubious look.]

You are, or you're not.

[BOY! Anyway, he's just going to stand there and watch Leo until he explains... because this is just how Lalli operates...]

[mekhanikos]

Okay, [ he sighs, ] Okay.

I'm a demigod. And no, I'm not lying. All demigods have, like, specific things they can do based on who their godly parent is. Kind of... uh, like your scouting thing? But then someone else would be able to, I don't know, make trees grow by thinking about it. And another would be able to change their voice at will.

[ he glances at lalli, appraising. ] Does that make sense?

[ilves]

[That doesn't make any sense at all, based on Lalli's understanding of his own gods, but—well. He's (reluctantly) spent time around a foreign mage who didn't follow any of the rules he's accustomed to following; then there's, you know, this new world, full of strange new abilities and strange new customs...

Like, it's the not the easiest thing in the world for him to grasp? Just because he's spent so long thinking the world was one way and one way only, but while his brow furrows, he takes a few seconds to seriously... try... to consider these things.]

...No. [That's just him being honest.] Your gods sound... weird.

[Weird enough to give him a headache, actually, but he's still tryin'.]

What can you do? If that's... what you are.

[mekhanikos]

Trust me, weird doesn't even begin to cover it.

[ he gets a headache if he tries to think of it all too much, too. mostly because the gods don't really care about anyone but themselves, which sucks. and makes him mad.

at least lalli's question distracts him from that. ]

My dad's Hephaestus, so all his kids have a special pull towards anything mechanical. So I can build and fix stuff. And I also happened to inherit... this. [ he opens his hand, and a flame appears on it. ]

[ilves]

[Oh! Well, fire is tangible, which is why he blinks down at that nifty flame and decides to just... roll with this weirdness for the time being. Foreign gods having normal-looking kids? An ability that Emil would probably kill a man to have??]

...Ah.

[Normal people would probably ask more questions, or tell Leo how rad that display is; Lalli, however, just adds this to his list of strange things he's learned in Draega and then, like, shoves it to the back of his mind, where he can—and soon will!—forget about most of it. For now...]

That's why you wanted to do this.

[This being... the electric fence they're supposed to be building? His eyes flick over to whatever progress Leo has or has not made here.]

[mekhanikos]

[ to be fair — it's an ability leo's hidden for most of his life, not least because he believed it to have killed his mother, but regardless... it's not exactly something he's used to, people commenting on it in general, or thinking it's cool.

so lalli's silence serves both of them well, in that sense. and then, focusing on what lalli does say, he nods. ]

Yeah, exactly. I figured I'd be most useful here, even if I can't fix it with, you know, like I normally would. But it's good practice, right?

[ for the craft. and indeed, he's already managed to fix a good amount of the fence — it helps when all he needs to do to know what's wrong with it, which specific spot needs to be reconnected, is to touch it. ]