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[burntvideocassette]

Who: Jay Merrick and You
What: Jay fell unconscious in Rosswood Park and woke up on a magic island. He's not yet sure if this is a good thing.
When: January 29th, morning
Where: The Storyteller's Temple
Warnings: Language, Jay being an anxious wreck; will update as things come up!

This is wrong. Deeply, deeply wrong. He's either still dreaming, or he's still hallucinating, or he's dead, because the only remaining option doesn't just happen.

Sure, maybe the supernatural exists, but it doesn't talk to you in your dreams, and it doesn't spare you from getting your memories scraped out of your head by that thing, and it doesn't drop you off in...okay, maybe it does drop you off in an overgrown, abandoned building, but not one that looks like this.

He leans up against something that definitely isn't a mana pool, because mana pools don't exist. His phone is gone. His camera--shit, his camera's dripping, and the viewfinder screen won't light up, and it won't even turn on, it just keeps making this thin, whining noise before fizzling out again, and come on come on COME ON this can't happen

Comments

[postictal]

God, he wants to smoke.

He's pretty sure, at this point, that those cravings never go away. He doesn't even have the luxury of caffeine to cut away the worst of the sting. He still gets the headaches and he still weathers them, but what else can he do about it? He didn't die from the Overgrowth. He didn't die from the ghost sharks that inexplicably got into Denny's water barrels. He's still alive and somehow that's so much worse because now he has to deal with things for a few more days instead of getting a break from it all for a little bit.

Vaguely, he wonders who might've been so unlucky as to die. They'll probably turn up at the Temple, right? Eventually.

He wanders over out of mild curiosity and also because he happens to be in the area, and...huh.

He figured it'd be a little bit longer before he started hallucinating. He was a little during the Overgrowth, probably, but that's passed. Except that's not the only thing that might be going on here. Hell, there's a reason he keeps heading back to Monsun.

Tim crams his hands in his pockets and looks at Jay tiredly, like he's expected this to start happening any day now. Maybe he was.

"Took you long enough."

[burntvideocassette]

The sound of a voice--a familiar voice--is enough to jolt Jay out of his panic. Still, he clutches the camera as he looks up at...Tim, but there's something off about him. His hair's longer. There's more of a beard than Jay remembers.

Still, he's not panicking. He's fine. Doesn't look like this is bothering him at all.

Jay forces a deep breath and tries to match his tone.

"How...how long's that?"

If none of this is real, if the cops pick him up on the side of the road lying up against a tree and talking to nothing, at least this way he'll retain some shred of his dignity. He'll be talking to nothing, at least, not screaming.

[postictal]

"Uh, I dunno, I was kinda expecting to start seeing you back when I was dying. Again." A shrug. Can't have everything. All told, he's fine with it, because he's stopped trying to assign logic to any of his lapses in reality.

Which is what this is. Probably. Jay even looks exactly like he did. Cut and paste. Though the bloodstain on his jacket is conspicuously absent, which is new. Tim's psyche generally doesn't turn down the opportunity to twist the knife into his guilt whenever possible.

Well, maybe it's shaking things up. Fine. He can live with that.

[burntvideocassette]

"Wait--wait, when you were dying?"

It doesn't line up. It doesn't make sense, not that anything else he's seen here does.

It could be that none of this is real.

That's not the only option, though.

Jay stumbles to his feet, gripping the edge of the pool with his free hand. This is better. He doesn't have to look up. The shift in perspective helps enough that Jay's able to manage a familiar question: "...Did something happen?"

Did he forget again?

[errantdetective]

Like so much of this place, the mana pools are still a mystery to Toby. And, well, she is a detective. She's come to explore, still trying to get as much an idea of how everything works as she can. She'd like to say she's been in weirder situations, but she's beginning to doubt that.

She's not expecting someone to be there desperately futzing with a camera.

"You could try putting it in rice."

detective party

[burntvideocassette]

Who is this? Why is she talking to him? Why is she giving him...actually decent advice, huh.

Jay looks up at her, still sitting on the floor in front of the mana pool, still cradling the camera.

"You got any rice?" He winces at the way his voice cracks. He's fine. He's got it together. He's handling this. He's fine.

FUN TIMES

[errantdetective]

She shakes her head and saunters over. "Sorry, I forgot to bring my lucky rice bag with me when I got up this morning." Shes squats next to him. "You okay?"

[burntvideocassette]

He's a grown man, curled up on the floor hugging his broken camera like it's a living thing, and the only thing that might fix it isn't here.

"Yeah, 'm fine."

He can't resist the urge to shoot her a sideways look, inject a little sarcasm to match hers. He's been through worse than this and been fine, and he's fine now, but he knows how it looks.

It'll blow over. He'll fix the camera, make sure the gap in the tapes is as brief as possible.

And if that thing shows up, what then? He can't afford to have a gap in the record.

Might as well check, even if he suspects he knows the answer. "You wouldn't have a pen and paper on you, right?"

[eudaimonikos]

Michael's striding along, hands in his pockets. It's been quite a while since he saw any new people show up - but then, he's pretty confident he could at least recognize all the current residents by sight. A brand new guy, then.

The old camera's a novelty, and he peers down at it for a moment before registering the issue. "Oh, yeah...I've heard of that happening to other peoples' phones and things. What do you do, stick it in rice?"

[burntvideocassette]

Jay jolts at the sight, scrambling to his feet...and then gets a better look.

Goddammit. Just a guy in a suit. He's got a face and everything.

He takes a second to try to reign in his adrenaline, to try to parse what the guy said. Rice. Water. Electronics. Right.

"Y-yeah, maybe. If it's not--" He shakes the dripping camera, eyes rolling. "I dunno, magic water that's immune to rice."

It's been a long morning. Magic exists, apparently. He's not taking it very well.

[eudaimonikos]

"Was it that water?" Michael inclines his head towards the mana pool. Sure, he noticed the guy startling, but that seems like a pretty common reaction to getting dumped in a different dimension. He suspects it's kinder to let it pass. "Because that is magic water. No idea how it works, but it's a multipurpose portal. Technically, it might not actually be water..."

He could give that whole explanation, but it's not strictly vital. Instead, he steps a little closer to peer at the camera again, and then snaps his fingers towards an empty spot on the ground. There's a one-pound bag of rice there now. "That's enough, right?"

[burntvideocassette]

Jay...stares.

Give him a minute.

Maybe a little longer than a minute.

Then he lunges forward to rip the bag open, spilling rice from the edges of a misshapen hole, and shoves the camera inside.

He pulls back, almost sheepishly, still using both hands to keep the bag from splitting down the side.

"Uh." He coughs. Play it cool. "How'd you do that?"

[catpiper]

The arrivals come at unexpected times and it's difficult to figure out when and where they'll pop up, but they're always easy to spot. Frantic, confused, wary-she gets it. They all began that way.

She watches the guy from across the room, not saying a word while he's fully engrossed in his treasure, until-

It makes a noise-a weird one. It lasts only a second before silence covers the room again and she finally breaks it with her own voice.

"Is that a treasure?"

[burntvideocassette]

What.

What.

"It's a camera," he manages.

Besides Tim, it's been a long time since Jay's seen anybody who wasn't handing him change at a gas station or walking fifteen yards away down a trail.

[catpiper]

The answer doesn't shock her-it's the fact he did. He's so rightfully nervous and jittery that she almost thought he would run at her question.

She repeats camera to herself. It's not a totally foreign word-it means something and she tries to pull at all her memories to figure out why and-

"It takes pictures? It's that thing?" And she holds up her hands, aligning them parallel to one another to make a rectangle with her fingers. "It puts your face on weird paper?"

[burntvideocassette]

That is...one way to put it. She talks strangely, not like anybody Jay's ever met, and it's almost enough for his curiosity to completely override his panic.

Almost.

"No--well, yeah, sort of, but it's...it's a video camera." Is he going to have to explain what a video is? "Records video on tape--on, on film."

He grimaces. "Or it would, if it worked."

[lesbeau]

After being here over a year, the pathways and routes of Enso are familiar to Beau, and she familiar in turn to the majority of residents. It's not a trouble for her to stroll around without getting stopped or scaring someone- which is what she's expecting and not what she gets as she steps out of the mana pool Jay is next to. She was just heading in from the Islets to go pick resources from the forest, and now when she steps out, someone's there about to lose it with a device she's never seen. Beau looks menacing on a good day, so the raised eyebrow and judgmental look she's got affixed to her face probably doesn't look inviting.

"What're you doing?" Her eyes pay attention to the device in his hands, still unable to determine what it was. "If you're recharging stuff, you're not supposed to put it in the water."

[burntvideocassette]

Oh god what. There's a girl here. A girl just came out of the water. And she's ripped.

His mouth starts working before his brain catches up.

"Could, uh. Could say the same about you."

And, wait, recharging? There's power here? Thank christ.

It might be too much to hope for a working ethernet port, but now at least it's on the table.

[lesbeau]

She gives him a look that says he just said something fairly incomprehensible in whatever context she knows, still watching him carefully. "I'm not recharging shit, what does it look like?"

Beau extends her arms a bit out from herself, as if it'll let him get a decent look at her. Mostly it shows off her abs on her bare stomach. "Do you not know how this shit works? Rabbit should've explained it to you."

[deathfindsaway]

"Are you alright?"

While Jay's fussing over his camera, a calm voice will interrupt him, a man stepping out of the Storyteller's temple. He looks at least decently put together, maybe deceptively so for an island with a button up and slacks. He tilts his head to the side, trying to discern what exactly Jay is holding. "Did that, uhm... break? A lot of things tend to when you arrive here."

[burntvideocassette]

"I'm fine."

It's automatic. No thought required. He's fine. He's been fine. He's always fine.

First he's having a complete nervous breakdown in the middle of woods, then he's calling Tim who won't pick up for some goddamn reason, then he's having a seizure, and then there's a giant rabbit, and now there's a sharp-dressed goth stranger who sounds like America's Baby Brother Griffin McElroy who looks a hell of a lot more like he's got his life together than Jay does right now.

At least Jay's not having a seizure anymore. That's a plus.

Camera's still broken, though. That negates the plus.

"Yeah, but...wait, what kind of things're you talking about?"

[deathfindsaway]

He just hums at the automatic response, completely used to hearing that without much thought to it and knowing its immediately fake. At least that informs his decisions anyway in terms of how to speak to this man, keeping his eyes fixed towards Jay.

While he isn't in his full Raven Queen regalia after nearly 2 years on the island, he is still in slacks and decent shoes, as well as a nice button up short sleeved shirt with little skulls on it. He has a brand to maintain, okay. "Things that are more technologically advanced. I'm afraid I'm not familiar with the cutoff point, but it seems anything more complex than a book is often rendered useless or malfunctioning. Not that a book is also not ruined when exposed to a lot of water."

[demonpuppy]

"It's not gonna work."

Chip stands several feet away, a brightly-plumed phoenix perched on their backpack and looking at Jay intently. Chip's gaze is a little more wary, though. They feel like they know this man, but they know they don't. Never seen him in their life. Which means--

"Do you know Tim?"

[burntvideocassette]

Jay jolts at the voice, clutching the useless camera to his chest.

Who the hell-?

And then the kid's words start to sink in. He doesn't know them (or, at least, doesn't remember them, but Jay knows better than most people that those things aren't necessarily equivalent). They know Tim. They recognize him well enough to draw a line between him and Tim.

Is it the camera? Something else? If they actually do know Tim, how much has he told them?

Should he tell the truth?

He decides to take a gamble.

"Yeah. Yeah, I...I know Tim." He squints, tilting his head. "How do you...?"

[demonpuppy]

Chip falters for a moment, unsure exactly how to reply before finding their voice again. For such a simple statement, it carries an odd weight to it. "He's--he's my friend."

The pit of unease in their stomach doesn't fade, and Chip can't tell if it's theirs or a shadow of Tim's own--but really, the source doesn't matter. All that does matter is that this man is making them nervous, and he knows Tim, and Tim has been miserable and doesn't deserve any more trouble at his doorstep. So Chip squares their shoulders and glares at Jay with what they're sure is a very scary and intimidating glower.

Really it looks more like an angry kitten. But, you know, they tried.

"Is he yours?"