[End] Things She Do [Thalia x Jak]

[Bee]

Thalia cut through alleys and over gates and under crates, sure that if she took the most circuitous route possible, she would be quite impossible to track. She was pretty confident that she had lost him, other than the vague predictable paranoia that he was waiting around the next corner to bean her in the head with a rock and use her tastiest bits in a soup.

She had roamed through the bazaars often enough to have a decent idea as to where she was going--she thought about maybe looping through the bandersnatch match fields and eventually heading back the the apartment, with or without a suitable orphan. There were always Mama's bandersnatches...

Bleh. She was quite unhappy with herself for letting that Corvie spook her. She wasn't even sure why she reacted that way, except that he felt horribly icky. Maybe, she thought, it was a magical effect. Maybe she could figure out what it was. Maybe he was a demon escaped from a Corvistownian prison--the goddesses knew that most Corvies had no problem holding subjects against their will--and bent on havoc and only she could stop it.

But she was getting carried away. Home first, crackpot theories later. She crept towards the empty fields.

[The Jenn]

The narrow strips of alleys that the colorful entertainment traversed made it easy for Jak to follow without drawing suspicion. These wings were really quiet compared to some of the others he'd worn. Stealth flight? Very much so. He'd have to show Amhal later that he could turn into a bug. It would make his brother laugh. Or stare. Or both.

When the alleys ended, so did his stealth advantage. All it had to do was look up and it would see him, much more obviously than before. Sigh. He pumped the weird, delicate wings harder and then glided down, letting the slight breeze push him along until he could land in a big, open space. On his face. Ow. Flying was a lot easier than landing.

Since the hair-tentacle-thing was only about a dozen feet away at that point, he pushed himself to his feet and stared at it. Was it a he or a she? Did it really matter? What cool wavy-bits. "You're pretty weird," he said finally, brushing away some grass with his weird little fingers. Was he a biped? He thought so. But why were there four arms? He waved them all around experimentally, fascinated despite himself. The goggles fit oddly on this head, but at least they'd stayed on. Dell's cloak also remained on his back, the pale fur gleaming brightly against his dark Corvie body.

He sat down for a second, and then sprang back up to wiggle his arms again. "Fooooour," he said with a giggle. The wings of the cloak on his back also began to wave and wriggle in time with the four arms, seemingly on its own.


Winged Cloak: The cloak of his sister's skin has been endowed with an odd curse that took all of Dell's willpower with it as she died. The feeling of absolute wrong emanating from it is enough to make all Cards feel as though their skin is crawling away without them, and enough to make Cards ranked Eight and lower either run, or freeze as though their worst nightmare were coming for them. They will be incapable of simply speaking to him like a normal person, even if he is disguised as one.

Once placed on, the cloak sent a sudden spurt of electricity through his mind, allowing it to separate into two highly intelligent bits, capable of acting on their own. Sadly, his Bog-madness got in the way of the full potential of such an excellent gift, instead the other mind manifested itself as Jak's closest approximation of the real Dell. It is now as though she is living inside of his body with him, even though she herself has long departed this world. The cloak will move on its own, complying with the side of Jak's brain now representing Dell, so that it can even comfort him by itself should he need it to...or strike. Worst come to worst, he could even make an exceedingly gruesome and horrible glide for up to twenty feet with them.

[Bee]

She remembered quite belatedly that the rule for chase was to stay below the cover of something and never wander into an open area like a huge idiot, because that was when monsters sprung up from the grass to kill you or mad beasts swooped down from the sky to...also kill you. It was a huge mess of carnage, that was what mattered. Chomp chomp, squish squish, splaaaat.

The creeper had followed her. For a moment she just looked at him blankly because she was not quite ready to process his existence. He hadn't always been a butterfly. Maybe he hadn't been a ferret at all. Maybe he had been some kind of caterpillar, and now he had emerged as a beautiful butterfly. No. That was just stupid.

Her skin crawled. She blew a little hair out of her face. Keep it cool. Just a creeper. What would Tosiek do in this situation? Lie.

"I don't think it makes you look fat at all," she said, and then remembered that she had nothing to lie about so that tactic was pretty much a bust. She continued: "Ummm! You don't look half-normal yourself. I love your little cloak."

She meant this mostly as a compliment. There was something compelling about freakishness even when she was pretty sure that the thing in front of her was a dark creature from another realm.

[The Jenn]

Jak didn't notice her funny look or strange breathing for a second, still fascinated by the fact that he had four arms along with his two legs, and all four of them had opposable thumbs. With his normal body, he wasn't one to overlook the value of thumbs!

When she complimented his... new body...? he looked up and blinked. "Huh? Yeaaaah, I guess it doesn't. Really thin and buggy." He poked the stomach of his current body and giggled a little at the sensation. The weird stuff on his hands, chitin (though he wouldn't know the term), made the poke especially... pokey.

Then she complimented him even more! His bemused expression turned into a beaming smile, truly bizarre on an insect face. "Oh, heeeeey, thanks! I'm a freak. And Dell, she likes you!"

In response to his comment, the wings of the cloak did a little half-flap and Jak's face changed into a different expression in a split-second, something like a calm frown but odd on a bug face. His voice also changed to a husky female timbre. "That's nice, I suppose. I don't know who she is, though. What's with her hair?"

Expression changing back to the beaming smile in an instant, Jak shook his head and laughed. "Her hair's different. And everywhere. Like those things on her back. I dunno."

[Bee]

Yeah, she was pretty sure she was dealing with a demonic sprite from the netherworld. And a psychopath. She was pretty sure it was a psychopath. It was talking to itself. Dell? Something was a Dell. He was talking to her. Her to him. Conversations. With itself.

Thalia was wading into the dark waters of a lake of crazy. She was pretty sure she knew how to dog-paddle in crazy, at least. She lived with crazy. Her brothers ate people. Can't be worse than eating people.

"I inherited them from my moms," she said, in good humor. She remembered her mask. Current game plan: slip it on and run away. Or slip it on, knock the butterfly unconscious, and then run away with it slung over shoulder. She didn't like plans to be set in stone. "They're very...hair-swishy and full of tentacles. Where did you find a cloak that flaps like that?"

[The Jenn]

Jak liked to think that he came from a crazy apartment in a crazy city with a crazy-depressed Dad and a crazy-normal-ish Mom in a huge, crazy mess before he got left on crazy mountain to die. Crazily. It helped give him a perspective on life that didn't involve abnormality so much as it did insanity.

"Momsssss? As in, more than one?" He tilted his head and looked at her, red eyes appraising. "Well, I guess you do have a lot of the pink-purple-yellow type. Yarrow. And they tend to be a lot of really weird girls. Right?"

He reached up one hand to absently feel around his muzzle. Normal butterflies didn't have a muzzle, did they? Strange that his mind would have put one in. He just didn't want to be without a talking mouth, he supposed. His hand wandered around outside and inside of his mouth, feeling the texture and the shape. It was like someone absently scratching their chin, only a lot longer and vaguely more disgusting.

"Oy, hey. I didn't just find it. I maaaaade it. It's my sister. It wasn't for a few minutes, but then it was again, after I put her own. Now she's aaaalways with me." He pulled his hand away from his mouth to reach around and hug the wings with a ridiculously happy expression on his face. Even more creepily, the wings moved around of their own accord to hug him back.

[Bee]

If she was hearing this correctly, the thing in front of her had just implied that he had made his cloak out of his sister. More than implied, really. For a moment she hoped that this was the crazy talking and that he was just projecting or something--because wearing your sister's flesh around was really so much weirder than wearing a dead bunny as a scarf--but that hope quickly fell by the wayside. The cloak...hugged him. She found the whole situation entirely believable.

And more than a little repulsive. Because she was pretty certain that he didn't just happen across her rapidly cooling corpse and decide to turn her into the latest fashion.

Yeah. She was pretty sure that swimming hours in Crazy Lake were drawing to a close. "That's very sweet! I wish I had someone with me all the time. But, um. I'm not sure if anyone has ever mentioned this, but...we don't generally...wear people. You know? We just sort of don't do that." Unless maybe the clothes were made of Aces. People did do that. Was the creeper's sister an Ace? That was...horrible. She tried to imagine her Mama skinning Aiolos and stitching him into a poncho.

She threw up in her mouth a little bit. She slipped on the mask, a little more comfortable and a little less ill as she felt it conform to her face, ready to bolt.

Blank Mask: This strange mask appears to be carved from white marble and is very cold to the touch, though it is very light. It will only bequeath its powers to one person in its time of existence, though it does not form to the face and can be taken off and placed on at will, though its powers will only activate when worn.
The mask, though delicately carved with designs of butterflies and swirls on the side, has no color and an absolute blank slate for a face. Only the owner is capable of seeing through it, regardless of it lacking in eye holes. Once placed on, the owner will find themselves tingling with new-found power from the mask.
While wearing it, twice a day, they will be capable of vanishing completely from sight for up to two minutes. While invisible they make noise only when they breathe or speak, they are invisible to all except those with magical abilities pointed toward seeing the unseen.
They will also be able to, once a day, create duplicates of themselves. These duplicates look more like them than they do to all but her immediate family. She can create up to three of them, and they all mimic exactly what she says as she says it. If they run farther than ten feet from her though, they begin to fade away. When struck, they vanish at once and cannot be summoned again for a full 24 hours. The duplicates are capable of using her basic abilities (2-10) for themselves.
This mask has more to it than meets the eye, even for the owner. Every night at three am. the mask glows with a dull sheen and gives the wearer the ability to turn whatever she walks over (the only exception being sentient people) into beautiful, solid marble. While she does this, all sound around her ceases and she moves in a slow, dream-like state.

[The Jenn]

Finishing his little snoogling session with his sister, Jak let her go and the wings dropped back into place, sitting comfortably and comfortingly against his skin.

The way this oddly tentacled stranger spoke just then, though, it made his brows knit and his hackles raise. If butterflies even had hackles. He grew a few hackles, just so that he could raise them. They lifted the back of his cloak all funny-like.

"Heeeeey now. I don't go insulting your floaty hair-things. Don't you go insulting my sister. She wasn't happy until she died. Now she's always happy, like I am. You should be happy, too, since we're getting on pretty well. Are you not happy?" The thought made him twitch a little, visibly.

Then she pulled out some sort of smooth thing and put it on her face. He looked confused and took a few steps closer. "Hey. I can't see you anymore. Take that off.' He wouldn't be able to see anything about her expression. How would he know if she was enjoying herself with something on her face!

[Bee]

"No thanks!" she said, shaking her head a bit. She felt quite a bit more comfortable with it on. She rather liked that her face was hidden. She got little prickly gooseflesh all over whenever the thing looked at her, so it was quite a confidence boost to know that he could no longer see her face. Sneaky Sneaky Action. She was also comforted by the fact that she was seeing doors. The witching hour was her favorite time of night.

"I have an idea, though," she said, deciding to give the experimentation gamble one last go before she high-tailed it the hell out of here. He would be less creepy unconscious and tied up in Mama's lab, she suspected, when she got all pokey on him with needles. Most things were less threatening when they were no longer moving. "I think we'd have an even better time if you came over to my house and we played for a little while over there."

[The Jenn]

Jak frowned slightly. She hadn't answered the happy question. That must have meant that she was unhappy. Dammit. That wouldn't do. "No, that doesn't sound like a good idea. I don't go over peoples' houses unless I'm looking for something." To steal. "And I don't think I want anything from yours, especially if your Moms are the weird and mean kinds. Yarrows usually are. Unless I'm a pretty little girl."

He paused as the idea struck him. Hmm. He could be a pretty little girl. Would she be happier talking to a girl? But he could just talk as his sister, and she'd insulted his sister. It was all a bit of a dilemma.

"Hey, I know what'll make you happy," he said suddenly, eyes widening with delight as he came up with a plan. He'd only used it twice before, so he still hadn't figured out all the quirks or how to make it do exactly what he wanted, but it excited him. He grinned and closed his red eyes, then snapped them back open again to stare at her. "Hold still!"

Lunging at her, he reached out all four of his arms to grab hold of her, giggling and then cackling as he did so.


Joker's Ability: Once per week, he is able to touch another person and send them into a fit of near total insanity for up to one hour, at his discretion. The ‘flavor’ of insanity will depend on his mood at the time. If he is angry, they will be angry, etc. He cannot control this except by his mood.