John: *while on the one hand, the past hour or so was kind of suspenseful, it was also pretty exciting on the other hand! maybe it's time to take a chance to take it a little slower. maybe it's time for john to do a little bit of investigating for himself, too.*
John: *first of all, got to get out of this weird slipstream that he's entered. after taking off, john kind of lost track of his surroundings, and he finds himself flying through... well, maybe flying isn't the right word! maybe through isn't the right word either! this place is actually kind of hard to describe. almost like it's more of a non-place? more like... a transition, than a place? kind of like how the space right on a door's threshold isn't a room, or like stairs aren't one floor or another.*
John: *argh! it's kind of hard to stop actually! he's tumbling right down all these nowhere stairs!*
John: *alright, focus john. he doesn't know how this works exactly, but maybe if he just visualizes the right... landing...*
John: *john tumbles out of nowhere, and into his own house, flopping forcefully down onto his bedroll.* oof.
John: *john gets up, and dusts himself off. he takes a look around the room. unfortunately, his sudden arrival seems to have stirred up some kind of gust, causing the tarot cards to fly all over the place. it is an impromptu game of 78 card pick up.*
John: *john sighs, and gets to work tidying the place up. soon, the cards are back away where they ought to be, and then pauses to look at the.*
John: huh. feels kind of silly to be practicing all this hokey stage magic when magic was apparently real all along! and gods and sorcerers too.
John: *john sits against the wall, and slowly slides down onto his butt, legs out in front of him. actually, a lot of other things are real besides gods and sorcerers and magic. things he never would have really even thought about could be real before! a ton of things don't work the way they seem to, too. the city's kind of complicated. as the wind rattles his shack around, he takes a deep breath.*
John: okay. enough zoning out there's work to do, and rose is counting on me.
John: actually, a lot of people might be counting on me.
John: *john doesn't have a weapon! there's always his trusty hammer, but that's not really much of a weapon. it's not actually even that trusty, come to think of it. he has barely had this hammer for more than a couple weeks, and he has no idea how long a fancy multitool like this will hold up during field use, much less if he were to try and fight someone with it.*
John: *never mind that apparently, the enemies he's most likely to end up fighting right now are probably gods? yikes. as far as john has known for most of his life, gods are inscrutable, faraway beings that you hope will be nice to you instead of breathing down your neck and watching you sin. not that john is much of a sinner! he hopes.*
John: *here though, they just walk around on the streets in broad daylight. he wonders what a god looks like, come to think of it? how would he even know if he ran into one?*
John: *jade actually spends quite a lot of time up in her grandfather's tower, learning about gods and magic, but now it seems like all that might have been bogus?*
John: *spent, he guesses. jade spent time in the tower. maybe later, he'll find jade and ask her more about gods and magic, and see if she can fill him in on the details. she might not know anything! but if anybody is likely to know about important stuff like that, it's her or rose, and he's already seen rose today!
John: *but first, time to experiment with these ghost powers some more, and see if he can't get them to do something weird!*
John: *john does exactly that! floating ceilingways just a bit, he swims out the wall, wobbling a little as he pulls his way through it. his passing is less like floating through air, and more like going through water.*
The substance he has left behind is neither green, nor slime, as John might have expected, however. Instead, the substance he has left behind is a viscous dark liquid, that shimmers faintly with iridescent colors, quite like oil or ink. upon investigation, an identical stain is on the other side of the wall, inside the house.*
John: hehehe, gross. hm... and maybe a little alarming!
John: *he pulls his head back through the wall, having poked it back inside to check out the inner wall, and stands up, looking around. john knows what he must do. the trickster's gambit practically demands that he slime someone.*
John:*oh, john is going to "study its effects" alright. its effects on hilarity! he floats off over the rooftops of the shanties looking down on the workyard below, and spots an especially fat manager on a snack break, who he did some work for last week. while john hardly dislikes the guy, he seems like a ripe target for a prank, especially as he lifts a handful of chips to his mustached lips. going into a dive, john yells like a falling man, and flails as he approaches.*
John: waaaaaaugh!
With a ripe splat, John passes through the man, making full body contact, before floating down into the ground. It sounds kind of like this:
Then he floats down through the ground before coming to a halt, floating above the expanse of cloudless cerulean negative sky below.
John: woah!
John: *john flails his limbs around, equilibrium thrown off, before he realizes that he isn't falling.*
John: whew.
John: *he floats back up through the ground, and pokes his head out to examine his handiwork from a short distance away.*
The portly fellow has set down his ruined snack, covered from head to toe in muck, and is now flapping himself off in a disgruntled fashion, looking around in confusion for the source of his stickiness. His Trickster's Gambit plummets to an all time low.
John: hehehehehe. *he slowly sinks back down, enjoying his spoils, but not wanting to be spotted.*
Next to him, a droplet of the ink "drips" from the blot, floating slowly upward.
John: *he turns, watches it float upward next to his face, quizzically.*
John: huh. note to self: ghost slime defies gravity. hmm... other note to self. come up with a better name for this stuff. ghost slime seems like it means something else already. and who knows! this stuff might already have a name!
Believe me, he'd like nothing more, but he's already got his plate full with other obligations to keep right this second and is doing his best to stay on task. Instead, let's turn our focus to another one of our heroes. She's already looking for the best bro in question.
John can't be the girl. He can only be John. Only the girl can be the girl. Only Roxy can be the girl. As it turns out, Roxy has had a more interesting week than John. Actually, Roxy's week has been so interesting that right now, she cannot properly be called the girl at all.
Roxy is now the boy. And has been all day, actually. Yesterday, she was a girl. The day before that, a boy. Today she (he?) is a boy again. What's her(his?) deal? Let's find out.
Roxy had a morning pretty similar to John's. He even had a pretty similar conversation with Rose, in which he learned a bunch of stuff that I already told you.
It started kind of like this:
and ended kind of like this:
Rose: They know we're here, they don't know exactly what could happen if we stay here for too long, and they don't like it.
But in other places, it wasn't quite the same. For starters, part of it went a little bit more like this:
Roxy: *roxy adjusts himself, tryin n mostly failin 2 get comfortable as he sits across the room from rose. he's still getting used to the body shape he's dealin with every other day.* spkn of ghost wizards... i have..... questions 4 u about a curse.
Rose: Ahem. Yes, right.
Rose: I had been trying not to let my curiosity get the better of me but if you're the one addressing the elephant in the room...
Roxy: aw, cmon rose :3 - s'not that big!
Rose: *Rose puts up a hand to stop her, scrunching her eyes and her face, and shakes her head.* Roxy, gross.
Rose: *She still can't help but grimace, giving a way a little bit of humor.* But also, I had that coming.
Rose: Unfortunately, as much as I like to give the impression that I'm all-knowing
Roxy: whats up with that goofy new title, by the way?
Rose: I'm still learning like everyone else. Also, what, "The Seer?"
Roxy: yeh! that is kiiiiiiinda supercilious =u=
Rose: I didn't pick it out myself. It's a "motif." Like a palm-reading. The Sorcerer did.
Roxy: u mean lord whatshisname
Rose: Caledonius.
Roxy: so he got the whole situation locked down tight af, is that whats goin on? we all got mythy titles an shit?
Rose: We do. Although he says he's not entirely sure who's who until he meets us, he has a... prophecy, I suppose you could say.
Roxy: cough cough creepy uncle
Rose: ...
Roxy: just sayin. neway, whats mine? *roxy blows on his tea, and stirrs it, sipping and watching it.
Rose: You're the Rogue.
Roxy: =m=... kewl.
Roxy:so you got no ideas about who coulda cursed me? okay i keep callin her a ghost wizard, but im pretty sure she was actually a goddess??? i dont really know why i know that, but i guess i do.
He proceeded to describe the goddess who cursed him to Rose. A woman, 10 feet tall, with long and curly black hair, skin like bronze, eyes the same cerulean color as the sky, and a horned crown limned with stars. They had a brushup two days ago, and after a bit of brief banter, the goddess put what was definitely a curse on him.
Roxy: and since then, ive pretty much been wakin up a different gender every time i go to sleep. and lemme tell you somn rosey. It's actually... kinda fun?
Rose: It is?
Rose: Oh what am I saying, of course you think the curse is fun.
Roxy: it has its downsides! like for example, when im a boy, i grow like prickly stubble and have to shave the next morning. and learnin to shave was not fun.
Rose: You should keep it. You can run off to the circus and make some money as a bearded lady in the freak show.
Roxy: yesssss. joining the circus is def a goal, even though i didnt know what a circus was until like less than half a month ago.
Roxy: oh yeah. theres the other thing which is that im horny pretty much all the time and kind of dazed and confused, and while being extra horny is definitely a pro... it is also kinda exhausting.
Rose: *Rose smirks.* And you being extra horny is different from normal... how?
Roxy: >:P
Rose: Heh. Sorry, that was mean.
Roxy: so liek... do u think she was hitting on me or somn?
Rose: And cursed you...
Roxy: to get me thinkin about her to try and break the curse, and also wantin to chase her cause of the aforementioned horny.
Rose: That's certainly a thing you just speculated. But I wouldn't put it past her.
Rose: She sounds like an Asura - a Wish God from the Dreaming Realm. More than that, I can't help you track her down right now. As I'm quickly finding out, there are a lot of gods in the universe. And just in this city.
Rose: But I'll do some research, and we'll see if we can't track her down together. At the very least, she'll probably have terms for you to break this curse.
Roxy: kewl. and maybe... maybe we don't even have to break the curse! but at least make it more managable. neways... im thinkin that i need to probably vamoose b4 too long, or else the other kind of god u mentioned is gonna start sniffing us out.
Rose: Devae, yes.
Roxy: then... im gon 2 go see if i cant find more of our peeps.
Rose: One more thing.
Roxy: :?
Rose: I know your instinct is not to trust Caledonius, but I've got... an inexplicably good feeling about this relationship. He's mysterious, but I don't think malignant. I guess I don't trust him either but... maybe you should meet him. *She pulls a note card out of her wizard robe.* He gave me these. If you want to meet him, and get acquainted... I wouldn't advise you against it. I get the impression he'll want an audience with you eventually.
Roxy: whys that?
Rose: Just an impression.
Roxy: ok v well. *he takes it, gives it a quick look, and pockets it, then leans back, giving rose his best skeptical look.* but consider me hella suspish.
Rose: Deliriously chary.
Roxy: MAD iffy.
Rose: ...
Roxy: ... =u=
Rose: In that case, good luck.
Roxy: see ya l8rs, sis :)
Rose: See you around... bro? *Rose shoots him a quizzical eyebrow.*
Roxy: yeh! :D bro is good. at least when i look like this. im tryin out what makes me feel comfy :3 *Roxy pats down his more angular body in an exploratory fashion.* well see what hapenz. in the meantime... peace.
Which brings us a little closer to the part where Roxy is looking for Dave specifically. What will he do next?