Forums » General Roleplay » The Three Travelers (Closed RP)

Gods, they were thick.

"No-o, it's not!" I snapped, loosing a bit of my already threadbare composture. I ignored his friendly pat. I disliked friendly pats. "What, you think we could just go around hopping through time and space without somebody noticing us? You'd think they'd send a handful or time travellers to kill you and that's that? Why haven't we been hit with a nuclear bomb already?" I asked. The question was purely retorical.

"There is no settlement to the North Northeast. There are only three fully sentient beings in our world." I commented absently, in the sort of horrified manner of someone seeing a giant blazing meteor coming straight at him. "Actually, there's probably just one." I remarked irritably.*

The flock of red birds, up above, was flying upwards, and westwards, and upwards, and westwards...until, a few meters after, it crashed into something in the air. Something invisible, something elastic, something that caught those birds like a fly in a net and something that absorved them to the other side.

Well, it wasn't exactly original, the temporal dome. Actually, it was a cliché. But the thing about clichés was that, well, they usually worked.

I took a step backward. "Safety. Yep, you're right on there, genius. And for the record, the contraction is we'd. In another dimension, we would be in Japan. Right now, we're not in Japan. "
You are stupid, grasshopper. You must learn grammar.
"It's a pocket universe. How the hell did they make a pocket universe?"

*I didn't know what exactly I was expecting. But I was expecting something bad. Drake had caught living beings in his radar, or whatever gimmick he used. Now, I didn't get anything. So either he was wrong, or I was wrong - which, despite my humbleness and extreme wisdom, I doubted- or he was detecting settlements in various dimensions. Except there wasn't one.

((I'll, er, obviously edit this post in an hour or so. Gotta go afk now.))

Eli rolled his eyes once more and took a step to the left, what Lucas would see would be the equivalent of Eli stepping behind an invisible wall. What Eli had actually done was step out of the pocket dimension, a crude and not very well made one at that, and had stepped into what was the reality that the agents had fabricated an ersatz one from. "They might be able to trap you, Lucas, but we know all the tricks and can leave whenever we want. You may have things to worry about but we do not." Eli said as he poked his head back from behind the invisible wall the separated the realities.

Drake offered his hand to Lucas, "I have to agree with my cousin. You can follow us and be safer for a while longer - possibly even lean a few things, or you can stay here with your friends. The choice is yours." Drake said as he beckoned for Lucas to take his hand and "step" away from it all.

If Lucas accepted Drake and Eli would "step" twice; once into the original dimension and the next into an alternate reality of the where they had just been - only this one did indeed have people living within the world. Lucas would not have to worry about being followed, Drake and Eli would've secretly taken him through a hidden corridor that no one but them knew of or would ever be able to detect. A slip space called the "In-between", though he wouldn't be able to see this place it would not be inconceivable for him to feel it. The sensation that can only be described as being able to see anything and everything but be someplace that was no place at all.

If he rejected Drake and Eli would go on without him and hope he could find a safe way to join them.

((Time for someone to swallow his pride...~ ))

Well, fine, I might have exaggerated a bit with the whole pocket universe thing. Well, maybe. Well... even if they were trying to help me, I wasn't particularly appreciative of the somewhat omnipotent capabilities of this duo. The immortality - if they were on pair with the agents, they probably were immortal- didn't help, either.* I hated knowing that I couldn't kill someone.

But I didn't decline. I never refused a favour.

"Very well", I said, taking his hand and grasping it with perhaps a little too much strength for a ten year old. "I suppose you don't have a laptop, do you?" I asked, my voice fading as I followed them into whatever world they had gone.

In the particles of seconds I was alone, out of the corner of my eye, where the "pocket universe" had last been, I saw something extremely disturbing.

*Eli and Drake reminded me of an old acquaintance. Ezaquiel Varda had more power in his little finger than any the two dimensional travelers would ever dream to have, but their methods were similar. And didn't that reassure me...

((Yeah Probably. He has quite a lot of it. This is all leading up to something, though ))

Drake took Lucas's hand and pulled him through to the next locality. While Lucas's grip might have been strong for his age's appearance Drake was a lot stronger that he looked - an that was saying something, he looked like he could lift the back end of a car.

Eli could be seen standing a few paces away from them looking up at the sky, where they were now was almost exactly the same as before. In fact it looked exactly the same - same season, weather, time of day and location... But this land was indeed inhabited, there was the sound of a busy village not too far away over a hill off in the distance.

"Told you there were people. Its all about perspective, you say no - I say yes. You see no sentient life - I see scads of lives. Two side on one coin." Eli said as he tossed a small slightly tarnished sliver coin the size of a wedding ring. It would be enough for one meal in the village. "Variables and constants." Eli said in an exasperated tone as he set of in the direction of the town.

Drake smiled, let go of Lucas's hand and followed after Eli while beckoning for Lucas to follow them.

"I did mention a laptop, you know." I muttered dryly, and raised a hand to my cheek, where the splattered blood had already dried.

"I'm not sure how they do it here, but villagers generally react badly to someone with their cloak in tatters and their face covered in blood entering their village. And please, please don't start with the coin thing. Of course it's just a matter of perspective: with the sentient topic, at least." I continued, my eyes straying to where the thing was, in another world, in another dimension. " I see morons, you see reasonably intelligent entities. O clever one, is there a river nearby?"

Drake made it to the base of the hill first while clearing a path through the thick bamboo, there was a clean mountain stream gurgling nearby. Eli was next to exit the thicket of bamboo, "There. A stream. Clean yourself and leave the matter of your clothes to Drake and I." Eli said pulled off his backpack and began to rummage through it.

Drake meanwhile looked down to his clothing and spoke some very specific commands. "Japan, 1600's." Drake said as his clothing began to change, his tactical clothing reshaping and resizing into a more traditional yet still militaristic attire. ((Ignore keyblade plz, always loved this design though))

Eli looked over Drake's new clothing as his own went from comfortable looking street clothing to a monk's garb. "Not bad. We'll come up with a story for ourselves later."

Oh, why, why did it always have to be Japan?

Not that I had anything against it. It was just that since Oda Nobunaga tried to strangle me with a bamboo, I was wary of Japan agressiveness in the Renaissance eras in general.

I headed towards the stream, crossing over to a separate side of it with a jump. When I was sure I was out of their point of view, I quickly splashed some water into my form's current face, while trying to clear my essence from the confrontation with the agent. I wasn't weak, exactly. I was just feeling like I was having a really bad hangover from drinking a litre of absinthe .*

I walked back towards them, eyeing their new clothes and trying not to laugh, while adjusting a new "watch" in my left wrist. "Gods, you look smashing. What's the cover story, then, genius? Monk and bodyguard travelling Japan in hopes of find the inner theological workings of the wind? Group of warrior poets trying to find their muse in the forces of nature?"

*Unfortunately, I can't have hangovers because alcohol doesn't affect me. It's a complicated side effect of being a shapeshifter whose mind is always in the edge. But the analogy stands.

"Gods, you look smashing. What's the cover story, then, genius? Monk and bodyguard travelling Japan in hopes of find the inner theological workings of the wind? Group of warrior poets trying to find their muse in the forces of nature?" Lucas mocked as he returned.

"Ooh! I like that first one! Can we use that one Eli?" Drake asked suddenly excited. His backpack shaping itself into a leather woven satchel that was slung over his shoulder and resting on his hip opposite to his sheathed katana.

Eli shrugged, "Better than what I would've come up with... I should know, I can remember the outcome that would've happened..." he admitted. Eli's backpack reformed itself into a traveling sack and spat out his bow and quiver pouch of arrows. "You can be a troubled orphan that we are escorting to a noble." Eli added with a smug smile.

"Everyone ready? I'll pull up the rear, Eli you can take the front and Lucas, if you wouldn't mind too much, could you take the middle?" Drake asked politely.

"We'll need names..." Eli suggested as he began to walk on ahead through the ankle deep water. It was cool to the touch and soothed his aching feet from all the traveling they had done.

"Call me Sato Benkei, the first name coming from a famous warrior and monk back in the 10th century!" Drake said eagerly, he loved this part of traveling. Drake would wait for Lucas to cross before going through the water himself.

"I'll go by Fukui Eisai, the first name coming from a wise man who made schools and introduced green tea to Japan from his travels in China." Eli said in a matter-of-fact voice.

"Why would a orfan be of any interest to a noble?" I asked, eyeing their katanas and arrows and resisting the urge to roll my eyes. "And why would a priest and his bodyguard be scorting that said troubled child? I'll be another monk." I jumped across the stream, avoiding the water as I reached the other side.

"Nakano. Call me that for now." I rotated the new watch* on my wrist, giving a slightly overdramatic cough as I changed shape. One second, the scrawny child was eyeing them unpleaseantly. In the other, the asiatic man dressed in the engraved robes eyed his face in the stream's reflexion. I looked pleased.

"Well well, this might prove more interesting than I thought. So, Benkei-San, where and when exactly in Japan are we? "

"That would be the noble's business. But we will not divulge any names or reasons as to keep things simpler-" Eli began to explain until Lucas changed his form again. "Damnit nevermind..." Eli retorted with a huff.

"Uh... We're in the late 12th century, and so far there are no expected historical events that we have to worry about avoiding. We are on Hokkaido, where exactly I am not certain - northern tip most likely." Drake said as if unsure what he had just seen. "So... What is our story now?" Drake asked, he wasn't sure what the plan was now.

"Don't look at me, try asking him. Obviously no one likes my ideas..." Eli grumbled to himself as he continued to cross the river.

"So we're at the time of the Hojo Family and the Samurai's domain, yeeees?" I mimicked, temporarily throwing a bit of racial steriotypes into my speech while I tried to form a suitable accent for my new form. "Well, as long as we don't run across any barbarians or marauders..." I continued, quickly swapping voices, tenor to baritone to bass.

There. That one should do.

"I say we should stick with out original plan. Monks, mercenary. Debaters on the essense of Devas or something. Maybe even the name of the wind, oh, I'd love to go there." I drawled, trying a little smug smile on my new face, briefly remembering a particular scene in a particular mountaintop. It was quickly gone as I took a critical look at my clothing.

"I suppose you don't have spare robes, do you? This once belonged to a priest of Minerva. Romans and Japanese don't mix, you know the old paradox. Plus, it's loose. That priest was a portly one." I gave a long nonchalant step forward, placing both my feet on the other side of the river.

"Everyone loves your ideas, Eli. Really. We don't want to see you mope."

Halfway up the hill something in Eli snapped when Lucas spoke, in one fluid motion Eli had drawn his bow, nocked an arrow and had it aimed directly for his skull. "One. More. Word..." Eli said, his eyes squinting as he drew all his focus into the prospect of putting his arrow through Lucas's head. "Just one. And I will put this arrow through your thick skull." Eli said, this was not a threat. It was a promise.

"Easy Eli, I know he isn't the easiest to get along wi-" Drake began to say nervously but was cut off.

"Shut up, you have no reason to defend him. He tried to have us killed to save his own worthless skin." Eli snapped at Drake. Drake fell silent and looked away, he knew Eli was telling the truth. They both had seen the same thing when they had traveled through the In-between, Lucas sending the Agents after them so he could get away.

"I know this won't kill you, you'd regenerate after a while. And I know what you are, the whole bit with using technology to alter your appearance and voice... Its bullshit, that 'watch' doesn't even work." Eli said, he was making allusions to what Lucas really was. "I know what you are and what you are capable of, but you haven't invested any time in figuring us out or what we can do, have you?" Eli said as he adjusted his stance so that no matter what would happen next his arrow would hit his desired target without fail.

Ah.
Well, I was wondering how long it would take for someone to try to shoot me again.

I raised my hands defensively. "Moi? You accuse me of trying to kill you? Of messing around with an imagianry watch and not telling you that I'm a, as you so elequently put it, shapeshifter? Of not investing any time in finding out about you are? "
I put on a hurt expression, but my eyes were grinning.
"Well fair enough. But the last one is offensive."

"Voilá, mate. I'm not sure how it goes now. Should I congratulate you for finding about my eeevil plan? Maybe tell you all and everything about it? If it makes you feel any better, I wasn't actively trying to kill you. And you're omniscient omnipotent timetravelers, aren't you? You can look after yourselves." I stared at the arrow, unmoving. My form's veins were turning grey, and the texture of one of my cheeks was already mineral.

"Let me give you a tip, Eli and Clo. If you're so smart, you'd know...you'd remember that pointing a ridiculous bronze arrow at a "shapeshifter" is not wise. And polite, come to that.
Calculating the wind, your bow's range and the distance from my face, I would say that the arrow would probably take a quarter of a second to hit it. Do you really believe I wouldn't be able to do anything by then?" I asked, inspecting my nails*.

"Let me tell you what I know about you. You're anomalies. You're husks in the fabric of time. You're reckless idiots whose mere existance makes me want an aspirin.** I mean, seriously, how hard would it be to clean up after you time travel? I'm detecting all kinds of neospiritual quasi-dimensional trash coming from you in all planes."
I grumbled, my teeth sharper and my jugulars wider. "Anyways, you seem fine. You could evade a pocket universe! Sorry, I was having a bad day." I said.
"Please put the bow down, mate. I mean, I'd think that trying to save the universe and a couple of hundred universal wanderers from an organization of megalomaniac dimensional warpers would give me a break, but it seems not. Please don't threaten me. I don't take it well." The last part was detached and in monotone, contrasting sharply with my previous stance.

I was lying, of course, but they had no way of knowing what I was lying about. It was hard enough for them to believe if I was telling the truth about anything, really, and that was fascinating.
__
*Which were now black-ish, and so hard you could make a hole through a blackboard with them. Well, they were more claws than fingers, really.

**This is creative licence. An aspirin wouldn't make a dent to the headache what I was having right then.

Eli wasn't swayed by Lucas's words he held his steely gaze at the face of the shapeshifter, the time words were over in his opinion. Lucas would undoubtedly find out that these were not ordinary arrows anymore, they hadn't been for a while. Anything that they carried with them into the In-between became charged with an unknown potential energy, once charged a weapon of theirs could destroy mountains with a single touch. Nothing would survive within a half mile radius, they had tested it before with much larger and more dangerous creatures than what Lucas was becoming.

From behind Lucas the sound of blades being drawn could be heard, Drake had pulled his own weapons out. He held twin swords in either hand and had taken a stance as well to both defend himself and attack Lucas if necessary. "Lucas, which I've doubted is your real name for a while now, I need you to calm down. Eli was just asking for some respect. I believe this feeling is mutual between all of us. Please do not do anything that you or we will regret." Drake said, he was attempting to offer the shapeshifter a way out that would be a win-win for everyone.

Oh, for goodness' sake. The japanese man's eyes creaked slightly. They didn't roll. They just creaked, what with the mandibles and jaws and different pupil and all that.

"I'm sorry, you're the ones pointing an arrow at my head." I said absently, wondering if those swords had any silver in them. "And I was the one asking you to put the bow down, but fine." I took a languid step backwards as I backtraced my forward transformation, to the other side. Where my muscles had started to thicken, and my blood had started to solidify, the reverse happened.

The flesh, the muscles, the bones and the cloth dissolved into the air, where a smell of sulphur lingered. Sorry, a disembodied voice said sarcastically, please do go on. You were on the part where you were warning me about doing something any of us would regret. And if you're not as confortable with Lucas, you can also call me Typh.

Eli and Drake looked around, "Running away... Typical of shapeshifter..." Eli said, he still had his bow primed and ready to fire off his arrow. Drake however relaxed somewhat but still held a firm grip on his swords, he knew that just because the couldn't see Typh didn't mean that he wasn't still around and watching them.

"There is no use in us being here..." Drake said looking around here and there.

Eli nodded in agreement, "...Not any longer anyway." Eli said moving this way and that so his peripheral could pick up on any spatial/temporal anomalies. Drake and Eli were now back to back, through they didn't need to be it was still a force of habit for them when faced with an entity that could disappear like Typh could.

"This is pointless, Typh. If your going to act all menacing like this do something or admit that you were wrong and we can move past this. No one has to get hurt." Drake offered again, this was Typh's last chance before both Eli and Drake would give up on this foolish endeavor and move on to completing their maps.

If a moving mass of air could snort, I'd have snorted.
Oh, yes, you've understood my actions completely. I've changed into a talking mass of oxygen and other assorted gases because I obviously want to murder you and take all your stuff. How do you know I don't prefer this form to a earthly one? If I wanted to threaten you, I'd threaten you. This could be my true look, for all you know. Anyways, if I wanted to attack you, why give you my name?

The voice was clearer now, but still indefinite, as if spoken through the faulty line of a phone.

Very well, gentlemen, I was indeed wrong. There ya have it, the quintessential truth. Now do stop with the stance, what do you think I'll do? Cut off your air supplies in every single universe?