VIDEO; two ways of causing a scene

[crowskinovercoat]

1: like your grandmother discovering snapchat for the first time only worse

[For starters: this is not a live broadcast. It's a video file dumped onto Legion World's "public" server from whatever default settings it is that would allow omnicoms to do that and sent, accidentally, to everyone.]

[That it's accidental is instantly clear from the part where it is a video clip that starts aimed at the fascinating sight of the top of someone's head. All that is visible is black hair and the wooden slats of a roof above said hair. The other obvious clue, though -]

Tch. I don't have the first clue how to use this. [She speaks soft, and low, but her voice is rough. It's the sort of voice that sounds exhausted from screaming before you ever hear a word spoken above a murmur.] You! ... what is it called? "Everything window"? Om-nee-kom? [She pronounces the word so hesitantly and carefully even the translator can't disguise that she mangles the precise consonance of the word. The feed shakes, obviously because whoever's holding it is manhandling it to get a closer look - at least, if the sudden closeup of a single wide golden eye is any indication.]

[Now the video clip is pointed, out of focus, at her chin.] You can tell me things? Like a searching spell. [Her mouth downturns in a sharp snarl.] What powers your magic? [The screen gets a shaky look at her face - and then at the rustic, old wood of a table - as she turns it this way and that, getting a good look at it.] Nothing great, I expect. It's always the same with people who think they know what's best for everyone ...

Doesn't matter. I have to use what tools I've got, it's not like it's my problem anyway - and you. You're a tool for searching things. That's what I need.

[She goes silent for a time. Trying to think of a net wide enough, with holes small enough, that she might be able to use a program she doesn't even know how to use in the first place to learn anything about.] I want you to tell me everything you know about dragons. Dragons that can suck the life out of planets.

[There's another shakycam pause.] Eh ... how do I actually make it do that ... "send all"?

[CLICK. The video clip ends.]

/////

2: it's like dirty laundry, except actually the exact opposite

[Not long after that last video missive, however, HEY LOOK IT'S A LIVE FEED THIS TIME IT'S THE MAGIC OF FUTURE SKYPE AT WORK and also the magic of someone who comes from a setting where computers, even magical computers, to say nothing of magical handheld communication devices, are at least a few thousand years in her future, messing around what-does-this-app-do style with her magic mirror tool.]

Still nothing ...? I suppose that's to be expected.

[A deep sigh, and then a loud clunk as she sets the omnicom down on what looks like a shelf, propped up against the siding.] I'll leave it on just in case. [She thinks shutting down the screen will turn it off, isn't that cute?]

[And she finally steps away from an unshaking omnicom long enough to give anyone a good look at her - and she's a sight. If it's not the hair she's let grow so long that if not for the loose tie of old gauze near the base it would be sweeping the ground, it's the tattered assembly of haphazardly belted- and pinned- and poorly-stitched-together rags she's mistaken for "clothing" - the threadbare nature of her kit only exposed further once she swings the oversized but equally ragged greatcoat on her shoulders off them and tosses it across a wooden beam just out of frame. On her right arm rests a dented, silvery gauntlet of some kind, which she slowly unbelts and lets drop on the shelf out of view beneath the omnicom with a rattle and clank that suggests something quite heavier than it looked on her wrist. A bandage wraps the entire length of her left; she does not remove the bandage.]

[She does a slow pivot, taking in the cabin. Her boots tink and clomp against the hardwood floor.]

... just like I remember it. I suppose I should be proud of myself. [But there's something unsettled and wild in her expression; it hadn't sunk in, what she was making for herself, until she was standing inside it, realizing it was really real. She's no longer sure whose capacity for handling what she asked for she's actually putting to the test anymore.]

[She shakes her head.] A good home needs a good cleaning, even if it's a temporary one. I'd better get started.

[And, after grabbing a broom tucked away in the corner - right where she remembers she'd always leave it - unless anyone interrupts her, because of some awkward reason, I don't know, like having turned her omnicom's webcam equivalent on while she does it - she's going to do just that.]

Comments

[crowskinovercoat]

[The "ding!" noises his replies make get her hand removed from the camera feed, at which point she once again brings her face way closer to the omnicom than she probably should have to - presumably in the shiny meatbag future of the United Planets, the pesky problem of electronic devices giving off potential cancer-making waves has been solved, but it's still probably awkward-looking enough to be frowned upon.]

[She pulls an unimpressed face.] "Universal translator", they said. "This will help get you up to speed", they said. Maybe this one's broken. That would explain why half of what I'm getting from it is gibberish.

I asked you to look for something for me. Did you forget in the time it took you to discover you had a voice? [After a moment of simply - sizing the omnicom up, eyes narrowed - a carefully shuttered expression flits across her face, before she sets it down, on a table this time. Enjoy the view of a cabin roof. Also what looks like it might be a spooky ghost - no, that's just her ratty old pirate's greatcoat hanging where she left it, along one of the wooden boards helping hold the frame of the house together.]

A dragon. Or just ... maybe a child god. Something like an eight-headed beast of light, who knows. It sucks the life out of a planet, and then it sleeps. [Suddenly and violently - the omnicom shakes and she pounds her hands against the table on either side of it - Velvet looms over top of the device, eyes hard and searching.] Has anything like that been here ahead of me? I need anything you can tell me about anything that fits any of those descriptions. Anything. Give me everything you know. You're supposed to tell me what I need to know to get familiar with this place, so start there.

[She shuts her eyes tight, then, going just as quickly still and quiet. Her shoulders loosen, she pushes herself away from the table and out of frame, and from off screen comes a long-suffering sigh.]

... it's useless asking a broken tool to do anything useful. Maybe I should throw you in the fire anyway.

[turntex]

sounds like my sister
minus the extra seven heads
but nah shes never been here
there is a dragon but i wouldnt call it a beast of light or a planetary life sucker
its more like an oversized reptilian cat with constant fish breath

[crowskinovercoat]

... your sister. [She sounds .. a little thrown.]

[Give her a minute here. Give her a minute to come to the completely wrong conclusion for lack of knowing better, and also possibly to avoid looking too closely at the whole disorienting mirror-image of her relationship with the thing she's asking the omnicom to find for her that he's just told her about. Don't think about Laphicet don't think about Laphicet don't think about Laphi -]

[Leaning slightly into frame, only half her face in view of the camera lens. The one eye he can see is half-lidded, sleepy with the promise of slow death.] Your ... sister ... is the kind of thing people worshipped as a god. And you've been trapped in a talking mirror so these so-called "peacekeepers" can use you as a helpful teaching device.

[She doesn't sound quite as horrified about that as she probably should, for having put it that way to begin with. She sounds more like she's just ... confirming a theory. As you do.]

Video

[wherenoonegoes]

Dave, I swear to Thor if you don't stop pretending to be an omnicom...

[Hiccup trails off, not really having a threat in mind here, but perfectly willing to let Dave come up with one on his own.]

Hi. I'm Hiccup. You currently have the omnicom's communications, not the search function.

VIDEO

[crowskinovercoat]

[First: There's an obvious eyeflick and startle from Velvet, who has clearly never seen anything like the wizardry that is even the likely much less garishly distracting video-chat interface an omnicom provides compared to today's Skype, and is having to rapidly re-contextualize what just happened, on the fly, while trying to comprehend what she's seeing at the same time.]

[This comes out as a murmured:] Wait, is there more than one of you trapped inside here -?

[But then the second part of what Hiccup says kicks in, and this gets, instead, an indrawn breath of clear irritation.] Has this thing been mocking me this whole time?

[Velvet is definitely starting to warm to this whole "set the omnicom on fire" plan she came up with earlier.]

Re: VIDEO

[wherenoonegoes]

No, Dave, he of the eye-gougingly red text, has been mocking you. The omnicom itself wasn't.

It's hard to explain how, but the omnicom allows communication from a distance. Dave is somewhere else on Legion World, just like I am.

[turntex]

wow rude
im not mocking anyone i never claimed to be shit she just decided that on her own
i have been 100% truthful
your dragon really does have godawful fish breath btw

VIDEO

[crowskinovercoat]

[She carefully pauses to consider how best to respond to the blinky red text person named Dave now that she knows that this person is not her omnicom talking. You can see it in her face. There are many ways to read her firmly composed silence, including the obvious unspoken "If you could tell I was new and didn't know anything, playing along with it for the gag was very rude and I'm unimpressed with it" way. Finally, however, instead of saying that, she says:]

You've gotten close enough to a dragon's mouth to smell its breath and lived? Seems unlikely.

[turntex]

like i said its more like a big cat with scales

[crowskinovercoat]

[Once she's taken enough time to read over and understand what his eyesearing texts actually say, one eyebrow raises. The people's eyebrow. She settles the omnicom into her hand, keeping the screen pointed at her face mostly because that also conveniently is the easiest way to also look at the open windows on the screen in turn, and now that she's had a chance to grasp that's what's happening she's interested in drawing out these conversations.]

Doesn't sound like any dragon I've ever had the pleasure of meeting.

[turntex]

yeah well welcome to the spacefuture
theyve got all kinds here
theres a whole race of robot people
but dont call them that they get real pissy about it

[crowskinovercoat]

You'd better not be trying to play a trick on me again. I don't even know what a "robot" is.

[turntex]

dudes made of metal and wires and computers and shit
like a sentient suit of armor i guess
you seem like youre from the kind of place where armor is common

[wherenoonegoes]

I'm aware he has godawful fish breath. It's not like I can really do anything about that.

[legionnpcs]

We can buy him some mint-flavored dental chews.

[wherenoonegoes]

We tried that. He won't eat them.

[legionnpcs]

You've tried the liquid you squirt into his water bowl? Melts the plaque right off, or so I hear.

[wherenoonegoes]

Hadn't heard about that. I'll try it, but it might not work. Retractable teeth and all that.

Re: VIDEO

[crowskinovercoat]

[She squints at the screen, her eyes slowly narrowing more from concentration instead of the previous aggravation as she considers his words and reads back over "Dave"'s text in turn.]

... I see. [Dave is free to imagine just what ominousness that "I see" portends should she ever determine that he's person shaped and not just an ambulatory text box.]

So you're not - [tapping the screen, bemused] - trapped inside this strange mirror after all?

[She shakes her head, muttering.] Where's its source of power, then ...? - Wait. [Suddenly suspicious.] How long have I been ... "communicating over a distance" like this instead of the "search function" I wanted?

Re: VIDEO

[wherenoonegoes]

I'm guessing the entire time.

Re: VIDEO

[crowskinovercoat]

Dammit.

[She puts her face in her hands.] No one besides this ... "om-nee-kom" was supposed to hear any of that.

[Maybe it is worth asking why it is she clearly didn't want anyone else hearing about a potential cosmic level threat on the scale she described until she knows about it first, but something else just occurred to her.]

Hang on. Am I talking to a "Legionnaire" right now?

Re: VIDEO

[wherenoonegoes]

Yep. Hiccup Horrendous Haddock, codenamed Forge. And this is Toothless [The camera moves to show a positively adorable looking dragon}.

Re: VIDEO

[crowskinovercoat]

[She stares at the dragon for longer than is comfortable.]

[... Much longer.]

This ... "Legion World" is full of surprises. I guess Legionnaires whose parents clearly didn't like them very much with ... dragons for pets will just have to be another one.

[That's her way of saying "I'm sorry about your name, bro".] You're telling me you have that thing under your control, ... uh, "Hiccup"?

Re: VIDEO

[wherenoonegoes]

Not even a little.

[It's said entirely too cheerfully.]

Or to put it a slightly more reassuring way, about as much control as I have over anybody else. He's not a pet, he's my friend and partner.

Re: VIDEO

[crowskinovercoat]

[Looking at Toothless again - or wherever she knows the dragon is now, if he's no longer in the frame on Hiccup's end. It's hard to miss how relaxed Hiccup is around the thing.]

[She's a more than a little dumbfounded.] Definitely not like any dragon I've ever heard of.

[And, more quietly:] Definitely not like the kind of "dragon" I'm looking for.