Comic 1168 - Mess with time more
Posted on 20th Jan 2019, 11:56 PM
in Like a Bullet from Behind
Average Rating: 4.75 (4 votes) /
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Author Notes:
It's... faint? It feels like there's still not a whole lot her there in total--likely a product of her still... sort of being in the process of achieving an independent form. That she does have an (erratic, slightly) aura at all is definitely a sign of progress, though.
Out of curiosity, you try to get a feel for your own aura. You have a great deal of difficulty, though--it seems to blend in seamlessly with the
...electromagnetic field.
You realize that a significant amount of the energy in the room is yours. Your aura is... sizeable, spread out wide throughout the room. Caius and Dr. Finch's auras are fairly restrained, but yours feels... kind of the exact opposite. It's just... out there.
You grab one of the stopwatches before it gets piled in with the trade-ins. You set it to keep track of seconds and milliseconds, then toss it into the red.
Aside from generally practicing your time control, you try a few small experiments. First, you accelerate time around the watch--just a little, though you still overshoot it by a hair--and then you take your focus off of it.
...Which turns out to be difficult, because trying not to think about it makes you think about it?
You decide to run a quick mental check on your animals to distract yourself.
Edgar, the raven you sent to look for the Site One door (which turned out to not be there) is on his way back, and should be back in the city in... well, a couple of hours or so, you suspect. He seems to have taken a few detours to do whatever it is ravens do.
Allan, your second raven, is still hanging out near Rockwell Arcade. You don't notice anything too unusual from his perspective.
Poe is near Cam's hospital, having previously kept watch over the hummer. Nothing suspicious there, either, just the usual coming and going of people.
Caesar, your pigeon, has joined a number of other pigeons in the area around Carpenter's base. Aside from your pigeon being by far the largest, you don't think he should stand out too much.
Your numerous rats (Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Pac-Rat) are still scattered throughout the city, roaming the tunnels and sewers. A couple of them have joined up with other, unblooded rats, while the others are off on their own, having little rat adventures.
Your cats are currently in Ilworth, enjoying the overgrown grass and variety of smaller critters to hunt.
Which leaves... Willard.
You're not really sure how he got up there in the first place.
Without taking full control, you start gently nudging Willard to retrace his tiny rat steps, and show you how he arrived in the ceiling. Steadily, he makes his way toward the bathroom area, where he then carefully climbs through... a small hole in the little intersecting wall that obscures the shower.
Willard then proceeds to rat parkour his way to the floor, sort of suspending himself between the wall and the shower door on his way down. He has to take it somewhat carefully, but it's overall a very impressive display for a rat.
Well, that answers that question.
You check back in on that stopwatch.
It appears as though time has started to revert back--not entirely, not all at once, but slowly the seconds tick at a less and less frantic rate, as though it's gradually decelerating. You're not sure if time is returning to a baseline, or if the time zone is... just kind of... bleeding out into the rest of the red. You remember hearing that time is kind of "tracked in" to the red, and isn't native to it--it's possible that time has a sort of... tangibility in there, and when forced to be, may then start to dissipate the way smoke does in the air.
Maybe. You're just spitballing.
You make an effort to move the ... er, time pocket, independent of the watch. This turns out to be rather difficult. Without being able to visualize or sense time itself, you can't really... peel it off of the watch. You try pushing the watch away from where it was, but time follows. You try... carefully, meticulously separating the watch from its surrounding area, generating new space wholesale around it, but time seems to cling to the item.
It does decelerate a bit harder, which makes you think you might've... pulled... some of the time off of it. Or something. Time is weird.
You pull your attention back to the bunker just in time to see the smoke clear. Dr. Finch leans down... and picks up a CD case from the floor. In his other hand is a similar one from the trade in casting prior.
The first case he was holding is incredibly decorative, with ornate golden symbols all along the backing, and across the top of the disc. You've seen designs like it, but not just like it--there's something unique and otherworldly about its appearance.
The second disc--the one they just acquired--is much plainer. The case is generic, as is the disc itself. It's the kind you can buy in bulk from a number of department stores. Scrawled crudely in red marker is the phrase "COMBAT #11."
"So... one's from Finch's music..." Michelle begins, "the other is from Caius's. You can uh, kinda guess which is which."
if it's determined to be ok, we can go ahead and give everyone else a chance to listen to this
for the red stuff, I think we could sense time, at least inside it, we're basically omnipotent when it comes to the red, we're just not that good at harnessing our omnipotence from there yet, but I think it's definitely possible to sense absolutely anything that's within the red including time and space, and possibly even abstract concepts when we get good at it
Possibly listen to it while doing body/brain-monitoring as The Blood, to be extra-careful, or at least be prepared to jump *into* the blood if it seems warranted?
First let's tell everyone about Willard's adventures.
I'm sure they can't wait to hear that there is a rat in the shower and most likely was there the last time they used it.
Afterwards it's time to listen to a bit of music.
Finch's music is likely good when we want to meditate, Caius' should be perfect for combattraining.
In addition to that, let's test the idea that the time acceleration is focused on an object. We'll need to use those watches for a bit for this. Put several stopwatches in the red in a loose cloud and watch them for a while as a baseline. Then create a thin membrane around the center ones and start accelerating time for that. How far does the time warping extend from the bubble we formed based on the other watches? Are all objects inside accelerated equally? After that, we can give all but one of the watches to be traded up, blooding the watches that don't show the current time before doing so.
While we're doing that, the others can start on the tin foil hats trade.
Tradesman ritual lets us take what is almost-literally *junk* and turn it into miscellaneous alien valuables. So what if we let Illsworth run a... high-tech secretive recycling facility?
We'd get empty well-designed alien softdrink cans, Illsworth would get an income stream, everyone's happy?
Our aura is an extension of ourself - a part of us. If our aura is us... we should be able to pull from the red using it, just like any other part of us. It might take a little mental gymnastics to handle the perception correctly... but we should be able to pull from the red using our aura.
+1 to this. Thanks for posting it skullrama!
i feel like this is a callback to caius being a tubecop. if it is, ouch.
Finch was probably focused on finding something useful/helpful for magical purpose, whereas Caius was probably looking for something Metal to go into combat to (cuz it'd be awesome, and way better than listening to Carpenter's lame tunes). Not to say that the second won't have magical properties, just that it may also be influenced by Caius's desires.
If the aura does appear to be involved, perhaps we can figure out how to condense our aura around objects/people to provide some level of protection from both spiritual and mutant attacks.
We definitely want to find a way to use our aura more effectively so we can avoid another worm in the red (nomming on Red) situation.
Just in case we ever need to track down somebody else like the Many, or that one perception altering baddie.
Just in case we ever need to track down somebody else like the Many, or that one perception altering baddie.