(no subject)

[donkeyballs]

WHO: Alex Kamal and OPEN
WHERE: AROUND
WHEN: Catch-All for July ish stuff
WHAT: Alex testing out his powers
WARNINGS: Nada, will update if necessary


SEMI-OPEN
( Please message me if you want to play this one. )

Gunny was gone.

He didn't know how - he'd gone to work one day and come back and she didn't reply to his messages. She wasn't in her house in De Chima. It was like she had disappeared off the face of the Earth.

He filmed a very panicked video message for the network, but deleted it before he sent it. No. He didn't know what happened to her. For all he knew, she was laying low somewhere, staying out of trouble. Why she wouldn't tell him what was up was a wound in itself, but he trusted her.

Why'd she have to go and disconnect her network number, though?

So instead of making a network announcement about it, he started asking around, making quiet inquiries. People he knew were imports, to see if they'd seen a tall Martian woman by the name of Bobbie Draper.



Maurtia Falls, outside Number Two - OPEN

It's been a little over a month, and Alex finally thinks he might be getting the hang of this. He no longer wants to throw up every time he steps outside - though he's still wearing some pretty big fuck-off sunglasses all the time to minimize the light levels. He no longer feels like Earth is crushing him, because he has figured out how to use his gravity powers and thus walks around like he's only under about a third of a gee. He knows that in the long run he's going to have to let Earth's gravity help solidify his bones, but it's too easy to escape that crushing weight. Especially without Bobbie here to reprimand him. Which is one of the things he's trying not to think about, right now, which is why he is currently outside of his home, 'sitting' in the air, completely weightless, and drinking beer.

The beer is also weightless.

He spins the bottle in front of him and little droplets of beer bead off and start floating off, but he grips the makeshift tether he's made of a dog leash and pushes off the ground to fly up a little and catch the beads of beer before they can continue on their merry way.

Honestly? It looks like he's staring in his own science fiction movie. But if you approach him, it's not like you start to float, even if it looks like you should.

Guy looks like he has plenty of beer to spare, though.


Outside Jeopardy - OPEN

He likes Jeopardy.

The desert around it reminds him of Mars, in a lot of strange ways, even if the sky is too big. Even if he doesn't have a suit between him and the thin Martian atmosphere.

At least he can pretend.

Which is why he's out there, just after sunset, wearing a makeshift EVA suit canibalised from Army Surplus stores and a costume astronaut helmet. He looks like a ramshackle spaceman, and each step he takes is too light as he bounds slowly across the desert.

But he's here for a reason.

That reason becomes more obvious once he starts setting up his practice range. Changing the gravity on rocks and then gently pushing them into position and letting Earth's full gravity take its force again, slamming them back down into the earth. Soon he looks like he's bounding around in a ancient neolithic stone circle.

He carefully lands at one end of it, and picks up a rock.

"Alrigh'," He murmurs to himself in his helmet. "Let's get this rodeo started."

He takes a deep breath and hurls the pebble at the nearest large stone. But instead of hitting it, he aims it just to one side, and the pebble's trajectory bends around the rock like a comet being redirected by the gravity of the sun, curls around it, and then goes hurtling of in a different direction.

He pauses, blinking. "Well. I'll be damned."

Seems like there might be something to this 'gravity slingshot' power after all.

Now it's just time to keep trying it 800 times.

Comments

[knaval]

Alex is a good lad, trying to hard to make something useful of his power. A good, creative lad. Earth has been strange times for this guy, has it not? Even with the knowledge of the planet the culture he lived in offered. There's nothing quite like being an imPort, pulled to another universe, entire life interrupted. Suddenly having gravity powers and a slingshot offshoot of it. Being in the vicinity of a giant Cybertronian who isn't really careful about anything.

Now, Riptide does not go out and look for meta-humans, but some of them really don't like imPorts. Especially the ones that are very obviously imPorts and don't have the decency to pretend otherwise.

Poor Alex. He just wanted to do his own thing in some damn peace. He's also probably unfamiliar with the sound of an Earth train that runs on tracks, meaning that the noise Riptide makes - which is very similar to one - when he's punched in the chest by a super strong meta human is likely a very unpleasant one on top of being unfamiliar.

"Frag!" He shouts, stumbling backwards, tripping over his own ankle. Because of course he does. Why wouldn't he? It twists and like an ungainly, gangly... thing, Riptide ends up hitting the sand hard. He's not right next to Alex when this happens (or the Martian would've probably spotted him and rightly left, unwilling to put up with This Kind Of Shit Today), but the whole process of stumbling backwards then falling and rolling brings him quite a bit closer, because Riptide is ridiculously huge. The ground shakes from the force and weight of him,likely not helping the stability of those rocks Alex has so meticulously placed.

The cause of this dramatic event has to run a little to catch up. Figures he got the guy down, he can finish the job, right? He has friends on the way. Perhaps unaware that it was more of a fluke, than his titanic strength. Riptide's scanners ping with the strange fluctuations in gravity - small as they are - and also with the presence of another organic. He crawls forward on his arms (a ridiculous image, seeing as even laying down on his front he's the size of a house and four times as long thanks to those legs) and calls out to Alex.

Because why would Alex get to have a nice evening to himself?

"Hey! You! Human! Can you-- can I borrow one of those rocks?" A beat. "I promise it's not for murder!"

[donkeyballs]

He hears the sound of something huge hitting the ground, the sand around him practically jumping with the shockwave from it, rattling through his bones. The first thing Alex thinks of is the dull vibration of an explosion on one side of a ship - felt, but not heard from the other side. It sets him on high alert even as he can't help but look in the directly of the sound. He can feel the hair on the back of his neck raise even as he cautiously starts to move foward, but he freezes as he sees something suddenly rise over the crest of the hill.

A hand.

It's a giant hand.

He gives an ungaily yelp and stumbles backwards, the .3 gravity he has on himself making him look like he's falling in slow motion and then bouncing too high when he hits the ground. By the time he comes to a stop, there is a giant robot clambering towards him over the hill.

Oh, God.

Oh, god, he's going to die.

He looks white as a sheet when Riptide starts talking to him, and Alex barely processes it. Instead he just picks up a pebble and... chucks it at him, uselessly.

Cool.

Good job.

[knaval]

Riptide blinks very slowly as that pebble pings off his shoulder. That big blue hull kibble. Blinks almost as slowly as Alex falls backwards on his ass.

"N...no, one of the bigger ones, mate," he says, patiently. Almost surprising himself with with how patient he is, given he was just wanged in the chest pretty hard. It hurts a little.

There's another pause as he looks behind him briefly. "Look, if you're gonna scream, can you get it out your system? I need to deal with this guy and I'm gonna get in trouble if I kill him..."

Outside Jeopardy

[jadus]

The desert could not deaden all the sounds of the city, its roads, and the traffic in the sky above, but the rocky hills reflected much of the sound away from him. The structures he had built did much of the rest. Many of the thin tubes of lightning glass had survived the evening winds, which transformed into an eerie rustling by the time it reached the central structure: he had fed metal to desert cacti, coaxed them to grow into an arching dome, then permitted each to succumb and reveal their polished skeletons. Each one was lanced through with thousands of holes. Any sound that reached him had to pass through a labyrinth.

But when something struck any of these structures, the sound was sharp and instantly drew his attention. Something small hit the outer field of glass, clattering between several tubes before finally coming to a stop.

An interruption, an annoyance, but he sensed no danger from it. There was no one near him. He ignored it and returned to his work.

Some minutes later, he heard the sound again. From the same direction, another sharp rattling against glass.

He would not leave to investigate. One of his newest experiments would do the work for him.

The construct was all leathery skin and light, synthetic bones, with a blunt, camera-packed head on a short neck, and a tail woven with antennate to report what it saw, or forward an intercepted signal. It could barely move on land, but it did not need to. A telekinetic push gave it the lift to catch a rising column of air, and set off in the direction the noise had come from.

Eventually, it saw a man. One wearing a helmet, face hidden by shine off the faceplate. It circled and dipped to get a better look.

[donkeyballs]

Alex was on attempt number eighty three, when he saw something strange and alien flicker in the gathering dark of the desert dusk. He blinked, picking up his flashlight and turning it on, even though it didn't really offer all that much beyond the ambient light still filling the sky.

His stomach dropped as he saw the - the creature heading towards him.

"No, no no no," he started muttering to himself, and scrambling for some hand-size rocks.

"No you don't!" He said as he hurtled one around the nearest rock, the simulated gravity well causing it to pick up speed as it zipped around it and then hurtled off into the sky towards whatever the hell that creepy thing was.

[jadus]

The stone flew faster than either he or the construct expected, tearing a hole through one of its wings. It spiraled into an uncontrolled dive and landed limply on the hard-packed ground, unable to rise again. The brief crunch it transmitted to him was deafening.

But he head heard the voice, and sifting back through the images it had sent him, he found a clear enough image of a face. Alex Kamal. Pilot, minimal network presence, likely a new arrival.

Alex Kamal's communicator will be receiving an anonymous voice message, distorted through some sort of filter.

"Why did you attack?"

Maurita Falls

[lootsnshoots]

He's been walking a lot of patrol beats since Ash was confirmed to be exPorted. Well. He calls them "patrols" but they're really just a whole lot of meandering, taking in Earth as it was, what with plentiful living cities. He's been here nigh on half a year and that still hasn't stopped being novel.

Which is why it's something that's well almost familiar that turns his head. A man sippin' booze in low-G? Those are the kinda hijinks that go on in some corners of the Reef.

Not so much on Earth. Warlocks defy gravity, of course, but they've got a different way about it.

Cayde stops in his tracks, cocks a browplate, and sets his arms akimbo.

"Got some to spare, my fine floating friend?"

[donkeyballs]

It is helpful - for both Cayde and Alex - that Alex has been on Earth long enough to meet some of its denizens. There's nothing quite like meeting Danger to give an introduction to robots, AIs and constructs at large. A crash course, to put it mildly. So where Cayde would normally get a much more nervous glance from Alex, he's actually relaxed enough (and tipsy enough) to give nothing more than a few mild, confused blinks before he reached down and picked up one of the beer cans. It clearly had it's normal weight when it was on the ground, but when he gently tosses it in Cayde's direction, it spins slowly towards him like they were on the ISS.

"Have at 'er, Pardner," He says in that low Texan drawl, thicker for the amount of alcohol he's consumed.

[lootsnshoots]

"Much obliged," Cayde replies in his, a vaguely folksy twang that comes and goes, but grows thicker the more he's looking to charm someone. He cracks the beer open, tilts his head back, and pours it down his throat.

The stuff's practically water as far as he's concerned, but then a lot of things are when you're an Exo with a particularly strong constitution.

"So. I don't usually play the safe bet but I'm guessin' ... Gravity powers?"

He gestures at Alex with a wave.

House 2

[psychophilia]

She doesn't so much park the car as come to a screeching halt in the first foot or so of the lawn, clamoring out with grocery bags in hand and slamming the door behind her. Tulip hadn't been home in a few odd days, off on a 'work trip,' and figured she could at least take a stab at being a responsible roommate and making dinner now she's back. She either hasn't noticed there's still a blood smear on her boot and a large tear along one leg of her jeans or just decided it wasn't worth it to care. Given her eyes are hidden behind sunglasses, it could go either way.

But those glasses don't hide the fact her eyebrows go up high enough to be seen over the rims of her shades when she walks up to the lawn and spots the pop up party happening outside her front door.

"Getting high?"

[donkeyballs]

"More like ridin' low, darlin," Alex replies in his easy Texan drawl. He would be more startled than he is with the parking if he didn't have a nice little buzz keeping him more mellow. He sees what's she's about and he gently tugs at his tether, pulling himself back down to the ground, and readjusts his personal gravity field back to something at a comfortable third of a gee. Still settled on the ground, but not breaking his own spine.

"Lemme help ya with all that," he says, the empty beer can dropping out of the sky as he forgets to keep it in zero gee gravity.

He steps over and sees - well - whatever the hell she's been through, and his eyebrows crawl up his forehead.

"You, uh, you alrigh' there, sweetheart? You look like you've been through a fight."

[psychophilia]

"I was."

Simple and straight forward in her own matching drawl. Tulip's not going to turn free labor down, offering over the bags with a whole chicken and all the mixings for stuffing and collard greens over. Then points, summoning the empty beer can into her hand. She grew up with an alcoholic uncle, keeping booze bottles out of the yard was second nature.

But she's not totally unhelpful, going over to open the door for him to carry the bags in.

"Don't worry. I won."

MF

[h2no]

It's quite the convenience, where Alex is. Archie's wandering out of the house next door, having seen Magnus and company just now, and is rooting around in his backpack as he saunters along casually, his Mightyena trotting along next to him. The dog Pokémon doesn't seem too concerned about Alex; it doesn't even spare him a glance when Archie stops briefly.

Right. That's the guy he scared with Crobat then ran away from, like an adult. Shit. He can't tell where the guy is looking because of those sunglasses. Double shit. What if he's recognised? Triple shit.

Might as well bite the bullet, right?

"Yo!" He calls out, hand still in his backpack. He has something. He pulls out a tupperware box. It has... cookies in it. He was gifted them. "I--I, uh..." Okay. Already going bad. "Remember the bat? The big purple bat? I guess you don't want to..."

He bites his lower lip. He's bad at this.

"Do you want a cookie? For almost getting scared into a heart attack?"

Archie expects a beer bottle to be pitched at his head. What a fucking mess.

[donkeyballs]

Alex was barely even paying attention, eyes closed as he floated there, basking in the warm sun now that he didn't actually have to look at it. He wasn't really expecting a voice, let alone one that he kind of recognized.

He twisted, turning his head to the sound, eyebrows raising as he peered down over thick sunglasses.

Oh.

Oh, he recognized this man.

He grimaced a little sheepishly, and tugged on his makeshift tether to pull him back down to Earth, before letting gravity (mostly) reassert itself on him.

"Yeah, I remember the bat. Didn't think I'd see you again." He glances at the cookies, hesitating, but doesn't take one. Not yet, anyway.

[h2no]

"That makes two of us!" he says, voice slightly high pitched in that oh god what the fuck am I doing this is a mistake tone. Maybe he should've gone the other way. Maybe he'll just start going left from now on. No offense to Alex, of course, but...

Well, there's no way to frame that that isn't offensive to him, is it? Guess that's that. Too bad for Alex!

"Crobat really is friendly..." he continues, digging away at that hole. Wiggles the Tupperware a little. This probably looks almost comical to an outside observer. Archie's not thinking of that. He's thinking about how it feels like Alex's eyes are piercing, judgementally, right into his soul. He's terrifying. With his... height and that beard and glare.

Outside Jeopardy

[purestwave]

[Naminé's never been in this part of the world. The desert never really called for her, but since she's feeling that some places feel cursed when she's around (Maybe if she stops going to Maurtia Falls, friends won't leave her?), exploring other areas seems like a better option.

So here she is...she has no idea what to do now. She lays a blanket down and sits on it, looking around the vast expanse.

She suddenly sees a masked person and they piques her interest. Why it looks like they're trying out some powers. They made themselves a nice arena and is now shooting something small out of their hands. She has no idea what it is, from this distance. Maybe getting closer will have her get a better view?

Which she is now doing. It may be crazy going up to a complete stranger in an odd costume, but their arena looks fascinating and she wants to see more. She hope she's not too close to them to mess them up!]

[donkeyballs]

[ He doesn't notice her at first. He's so focused on his task (and half blinded by the helmet) that for several minutes he just keeps flinging rocks, watching them zip around and speed up or slow down as they go.

But then one goes flying wild and nearly hits a - ]

Watch out! [ He says, throwing his hand out, and sudden the rock is under the same gravity it might be on Jupiter and drops right to the ground in front of her, leaving a small crater in the earth.

Christ, he almost belted a kid in the face.

He starts jogging over, his bounds too high and his steps too light. ]

You alrigh'??

[purestwave]

EEEEEK!

[Naminé cowers and holds her head with her hands. Hearing that it might be okay now, she slowly straightens herself to see a crater near her!

Seeing the person in the mask coming to her she nods, still a bit shaken.]

Y-yes, I'm fine. I'm sorry I got too close.

MF

[hatejakku]

Over the months, Finn had gotten pretty used to seeing imPorts use their stranger, unique powers wherever he walked. Sometimes fireballs whizzed by your head or people turned into birds right in front of you. Things just happen.

But when he sees a guy floating, trying to catch droplets of floating beer, Finn stops and stares. He's in zero gravity, first of all. Either this guy can manipulate gravity or just the pull on his body, which seems to be the latter since Finn is (thankfully) not floating away yet.

Of all his time in space, Finn very rarely experienced zero gravity but had always been a little fascinated about the freedom it gave. And the fear aspect, of course. So, uh, excuse him as he stares up from the ground like a tourist.

[donkeyballs]

It takes Alex a little while to realise he's being watched, as pushes the beer bottle away from him and then pushes off from the ground to do a mid air flip and swallow some droplets before tugging himself back with the lead. Only when he tugs back does he notice someone watching from below.

He raises a hand in greeting, his eyes still hidden behind large sunglasses.

"Howdy, pardner! Everythin' alright down there?"

[hatejakku]

Oh. Oh, he's waving at him. Finn hurriedly raises his hand back in greeting.

"Can't complain," he answers, still watching this whole display. "Having fun up there?" Is this your power? Can it extend to other people? What's it feel like? Me next! Me next! -are all things Finn doesn't voice.

It's probably not that fun. Probably just makes people dizzy and nauseous. He'd probably hate it.

[numberthree]

Allison's new job takes her all over. She doesn't pick the spots where new contracts are, just shows up where she's supposed to, and does her job, so she can get paid. Still. She was in Maurtia Falls first when she came here, and there's a strange, not quite fond, but for all that, still present, tether to this place. She walks down the sidewalks of the housing area, still considering whether to say hello to anyone just because she's there, and it's polite.

Which is how she ends up pausing after spotting the guy who is floating in the air. Spinning a bottle of beer in the air.
Every time she thinks somehow she won't be surprised by everything today, this place goes and shows her up again.

[donkeyballs]

Alex doesn't seem to notice the audience at first, spinning the bottle to make a few more droplets fly off in all directions, and then expertly pushing himself off to catch them all. About to catch the last one, he suddenly realises he's being watched, and he misses it - the droplet splashing onto his cheek and into his beard instead.

"What the--"

He quickly scrubs it away.

"Uh- Sorry, darlin'. Everything alright?"

[justlittle]

Bean still drives his RV around the desert from time to time, getting away from Jeopardy proper and exploring what the barren wilderness has to offer. He's parked on an outcropping one day, sitting on top of the roof with a pair of binoculars, just watching the horizon, when he sees some large rocks moving unnaturally, directed by... a spaceman of some kind.

Well, this he has to see. He gets back in the driver's seat and starts driving closer, trailing a cloud of dust behind his van as he goes.

gunny -- some handwaving, i can edit if it doesn't work!

[obediences]

Alex has been pounding the metaphorical pavement, asking around one-on-one, trying to find anyone who knew or met his old friend. This particular avenue is a tenuous one, but Alex knows enough that he and Luther share a connection to space, to piloting. So maybe there's something.

They've met for a beer in a small bar in Maurtia Falls, near Alex's house, when the question comes up quickly enough, the Martian's whole face looking grave. And for once, the other imPort's own expression flickers in recognition.

"Bobbie Draper? The marine?" Ding. "Yeah, I met her a while back." The cogs turn, and Luther puts two-and-two together with a beat of surprise. "Wait, she was from your Mars?"

(Shoulda seen that one coming, Luth. They both kept saying 'Earther', for one.)