C'est La Vie (Worm/MtG) #02.5

A/N: Carries out the first course on an overloaded tray. Is of lookings forwards to thoughts on dishes prepared.

—

Pressing my forehead against a cool metal railing that ran the perimeter of the visitor centers roof, my feet dangled over the side of the building as I watched as the last of the sun's glow receded below the horizon of the treetops and the sky grow dark.

It was about that time then.

Heaving myself up, I brushed bits of moss and leaves off the back of my poncho before twisting sharply to crack my back. Turning on my heel I shuffled back to the roof access hatch where I'd set up my cot and fell onto a gurney pad I'd pulled from what had been a kitted out medical room beside the jeep garage. Much of the stuff had gone bad, but the pad— some reddish vinyl material around foam —crinkled only a little as I sat down and grabbed for my satchel to dig out the thermos.

I frowned at the weight and shook the dented metal bottle, listening to the water slosh around before it settled.

There was a good third left, maybe. It was enough if I really stretched it, but not nearly enough and I didn't really trust the solar disinfection kit I'd cobbled together with a bottle of stale white wine and some silk to filter the water through. Although, that probably had more to do with the pond in front of the visitors center was there, although… well, having to clean off the filter more than once wasn't a good sign of the quality.

At best, the water was stagnant and would need a lot more than a little UV exposure to make it safe to drink.

So not much water left, and the less said about the food situation the better. Canned peaches of questionable quality or no.

With an almost conscious effort I set the bottle aside, far enough that it was just out of reach I'd have to consciously grab it.

Overall, I was wholly unprepared. I should have planned to be here longer than a day just to be safe and my lack of forethought was coming back to bite me… I snorted. Then again, what else was new.

Though how could I have known what had been little more than a glorified food run would turn into a multi-day outing? Well, ok, I probably should have packed more just in case, and been a bit more careful with my consumption, or just returned to pack better, but still.

I hadn't been expecting to find much, and if anything whatever I did find would be something along the same lines as the radio bunker— a building reduced to a shell, rotted away and being reclaimed by the jungle. And I did find that, in a way, but the kitchen… well, that, then finding a hand truck while looking through the rear garage and deciding (without thinking) that it would be a good idea to load the thing up with as much crap as I could and leave the next day. If that had been it, then that would have been fine, no problem.

Then I pushed going back another day.

I was being overly careless. For as much as there were things on this island that could kill a normal person, with my swarm those things were rendered a non-issue. Even the giant chicken wouldn't've been a problem had I had a proper swarm. Running out of things like food, or water, though?

No… no that was on me and I had no one to blame but myself.

Still, my over-enthusiastic plundering of the visitors center aside, and ignoring the headache I was going to get trying to haul it all up the mountain, there was something off about this place that would have prompted me to stay regardless of my food or water situation.

Grabbing and dropping the satchel into my lap I rummaged about inside for some berries. Tasteless as they were, they would still tide me over… at least until I fully ran out, then I'd have to go out looking for more or get creative. In the garage beneath the building, I noticed the fleas beginning to move about as their carriers woke up for the night's hunt. With an absent thought, a portion of my swarm took to the air; the dregs and less useful of my fliers.

I may not be eating well, but the bats certainly would.

But yes, even if I hadn't found the hand truck I would've stayed had I noticed there was something up about this place. Or more specifically, there was something about the Green and the Impression. It wasn't anything overt, at least on its own, just… different. Insignificant really, and just slight enough that the difference hadn't been apparent. At least until I was wrapping up my practice the night after I got here and realized I'd just about enlarged the whiptail to the size of a tea plate I'd been putting my berries on at the time.

The fact I'd turned it into something so large without bursting too many beetles probably should've been an indicator that something was up while I was practicing.

The problem was that even while playing around with the green there hadn't been anything that stood out enough to make me stop and think. It had been easier to make my test subjects grow larger, yes, however, I'd written it off as simply getting better at not making bugs explode… but when the beginnings of a headache set in as I'd been finishing up the Whiptail and in that moment the Green had in those last moments had felt… thinner, to put a word to it. The Green felt less raw in a sense and combined with my success with the whiptail it had stuck in my brain like a pebble in a shoe throughout the night. Nagging at me.

I'd just need to stay the day instead of leaving, however, this was something new and I had nowhere to be so why not? What would be the harm? Nothing, except running out of supplies.

So I'd turned back to power testing basics and formed a Hypothesis: There was something about the building that was somehow affecting the Green. A leap, though it didn't seem out of the question as I hadn't noticed anything like this at the radio bunker. With that in mind I devised a simple experiment: Replicate the conditions and pay extra attention then leave the visitors center to observe potential changes and confirm the effect.

Sure it wasn't exactly precise, but good enough for a simple confirmation and could tell me a bit more about what I was dealing with. Maybe even help me figure out whatever the Green was— if that was even possible or this stuff wasn't just a side effect of being shot in the head —and what it could... do…

I blinked and a warm flush ran up my neck. Actually… I dug into the satchel and pulling out my pocket notebook and thumbed through to the pages for my notes on the Green and the Impression. The blanks pages… because I hadn't really experimented with it, now had I? I'd had plans and ideas, concepts to test, yet in spite of that, I'd fixated on simply enlarging insects while getting stuck on the idea of Atlas 2.0.

And what had that gotten me? What did I really know about it? I knew there was an upper limit to how much I could use, but that was about the sum of it.

Shaking my head, I flipped to the page I'd started the notes on and stared at the page conspicuously empty of anything aside from my initial observations about using the Green on insects… to the exclusion of everything else.

Pg.63

—Connection of missing arm to smoke? Green?

—Connection/Relation phantom limb syndrome? Brain still thinks limb is present and smoke causing nervous response? (Connection to: Sight(other senses)? —Corona Pollentia? (shot in the head and that somehow fixed out of control connection to QAS. Side effect not out of the question.)

—Brain still hardwired connection for limb, but limb gone? Try other/without hand.

—Psychosomatic? —Continues: Pg. 66

—Experiment by adding the smoke to: Water, Dirt, Rock, Metal, Plants, Wood (Green and Dead), Insects, Fish, Crustacean, Invertebrate Animals, Reptiles, Myself (Last Resort)

—Water:

—No tangible result from Exposure

—Dirt:

—Rock:

—No tangible result from Exposure

—Metal:

—Wood (Dead and Green):

—Insect:

—Exposure to smoke results in growth. Uneven growth results in subject bursting (can be violent). Gradual injection seems to work better. Uneven, gradual injection causes bursting. Full body infusion of Green on subject more stable but requires focus. —See: Pg.89 for further notes.

—Fish:

—Continues on Pg. 64

Because of course, I'd largely ignored everything else except insects. Then again, insects were what I was familiar with and what I could feel through my power helped… However, that was nothing but an excuse. I had some new power available to me and all I'd done was go back to what I knew.

Rubbing behind my ear I sighed and called up a batch of test subjects for the night as well as the whiptail. Shrunken now since the previous night's enlargement, though that had only happened in the last few hours. It seemed the more they were enlarged the longer they stayed enlarged before slowly shrinking as it had throughout the day.

Absently flipping to Pg.89 I added that bit of information and looked up to the stars to check the time. A guesstimate at best, but it wouldn't do to compromise the experiment by not simulating the conditions as best I could.

Looking at them though, watching as the stars appeared… unbidden another starscape overlapped it, different sounds of wildlife in my ears. Looking up at them it was too difficult to not think back to the clearing, my thoughts in those final moments of clarity.

"We really are so very small."

Perspective. It was something I'd been lacking in retrospect, only coming after everything had good had turned to ashes. I doubt it would've done me much good anyway.

But thinking about it, about the whole system and Bet and Brockton… It was something that everyone had been lacking. Always would.

In the city— or perhaps the in current era rather —everything was moving so fast you couldn't see beyond your nose. Everything happening around you acted like blinders to keep you from seeing how insignificant some things were.

Here though, on this island, wherever it is that Contessa had dumped me, there wasn't a light around for tens or hundreds of miles.

No light. No one to distract me. No one but me, myself, and I.

Roughly combing my fingers back through my increasingly knotted hair I tore my eyes away from the sky and sighed.

And that was the point of dumping me on this island, wasn't it?

I'd burned out Doormakers power, but Clairvoyant had made it through just fine— I could remember that well enough. Perhaps it was a little arrogant of me to think she would go through the effort, but for her… it wouldn't surprise me if she was keeping an eye on me through him.

Was there a point though? Even if I wasn't in my right mind I'd known full well what I was doing and how—

I stilled for a moment before snorting. Now that was a bit too introspective.

We'd won, and even if it hadn't been clean we'd beaten the odds. Though the means... the means justified the ends...

I sighed again, though more out of resignation to the weight of a problem with no good answer wearing on me. Checking the stars one more time, I figured now was as good a time as any to begin the experiment.

Looking inward, to the impression of the jungle I drew forth a stream of Green that writhed around my missing fingers.

A beetle skittered forward but I held back, instead actually looking at the Green. Watching how the smokey green light flowed and twisted back on itself. Thinking back to my previous experiments it didn't seem any different and the thinness from last night was nowhere to be seen. It was there, though; I knew it was there even if the Green didn't look it.

The way it moved perhaps? Tilting my head back I held the streamer close and squinted, watching it flow the Green did almost seem a little… refined? Not thinner as I'd thought, but... diluted? Maybe… Reaching out with my missing hand I touched an absent index finger to the beetle and the Green flowed.

-I-

Ducking down, I threaded myself between a cluster of palm fronds obstructing the path the crawlers of my swarm had mapped out for me. Not an easy path by any means, but a quick and relatively safe one that took me deeper and deeper into the increasingly dense and increasingly dark depths of the jungle.

Something— a dinosaur —appeared at the edge of my swarm as I high stepped over a thick, pale barked tree root and wove through a stand of woody vines running from the branches overhead to a number of smaller roots. At a glance, it had the same general shape and build of as Many, Moe, and Mack, but I didn't look too closely as my swarm coalesced and drove it off before it could get any closer.

That was the second time now that something had come following along my path. Though third, if I counted the one that I'd walked up on sleeping in a bush.

I checked the small clearing I'd designated my turnaround point and grimaced at the distance left. Not too far, but… I stopped in place as a quiet, back and forth hooting called filled the air and snapped around to peer into the jungle to the left of my impromptu trail.

Again, my swarm coalesced but the source was nothing but a pair of owls. I turned on my heel and started down the trail again. I couldn't be too careful, not after the surprise sleeper.

If Lisa were here, she'd be calling me a stubborn idiot for being out here like this; walking through the jungle in the mid of night, so deep in the bush I couldn't see the stars save the jigsaw outline where the treetops didn't touch. It was like I was just begging to be something's late night snack.

I'd have agreed with her. I was being an idiot, but that wouldn't have changed anything and at this point though there was no point in turning back.

Realistically I didn't even need to be out here, not really. The experiment was over, I'd gotten my answer and confirmed that somehow the Visitors center was affecting the Impression and the Green, somehow.

But in answering it more questions were raised: If the building was affecting the Green as all evidence point to being the case, then how? Or more importantly, why? Why did the Visitors center affect the Green and the Impression? It was part of it, I could just tell and it seemed like the most obvious reason. But again, why? Why was easier there than elsewhere?

And that was the age old question though, wasn't it: Why?

Nearing a small but fast running stream my crawlers had found, I picked up speed and jumped the coursing water as my loaded satchel thumped lightly at my side. I'd refill on my way back.

The immediate differences between the two were the first thing that came to me. It was a man-made structure; steel and concrete and wire. That was too simple though, and neither the Green or Impression had changed when my impromptu walkabout took my past near a squat concrete building surrounded by overgrown chain link fencing.

But where there had been nothing with that, looping back around to the visitors center had had an effect, if only a marginal one in making the shadows recede a bit and the impression seem marginally less deadly.

Then, in contrast, going deeper into the jungle had the opposite effect.

In trekking through the dense underbrush I'd done little more than let my feet carry me along while observing, watching the Green and the Impression grow increasingly wild with every step I took: Shadows grew deeper, trees taller, the mossy floor increasingly hazardous with larger and larger undergrowth while becoming tangled in massive roots hiding things that would bite and tear with tooth and claw. And that wasn't even considering the Green itself. Just keeping an eye on the wisp I'd watched it's shade and consistency change, growing visibly darker and thicker to the point of becoming sluggish and jerky while the center of the smokey energy brightened into a near off-white.

It was growing stronger.

If any of that was right though, then would that imply that the Jungle impression is the literally the jungle itself? If so, then what was the Visitors Center?

What did it mean? And furthermore, was it the only one? What about the Water Treatment facility? What about the Workers Complex or Airfield Control or whatever else there might be on the island?

What makes a location special?

One question answered with a dozen more and counting ready to take its place.

The small clearing was just ahead and approaching a curtain of vines barring my path I had the now dinner plate sized whiptail clinging to my back reach out its pedipalps out over my push them aside.

What did it mean that I was able to make leaps and bounds in my progress with enlarging insects that I was able to grow the whiptail to the size of a dinner plate? Why did the difference in the Green have such an effect on my progress after two nights of half-hearted practice compared to my initial efforts?

What was unique about the Visitors center that set it apart?

Stepping into the clearing the whiptail pulled its pedipalps back and the curtain closed behind me and the noises of the jungle seemed to become muted, as if the vines were cutting me off from the world. I glanced around, eyeing the rim of the clearing where a rim of mud ran the perimeter, almost as if it was a bowl. It was broken, but it was still there.

So many questions, but so few answers. Well with any luck I'd answer another while I was out here tonight.

The whiptail dropped from my back as I stepped away from the center of the clearing for the arachnid to take my place while I drew upon the Impression. The green wisp threaded around my fingers and I simply watched it for a moment before glancing up at the starlit sky, to the stars and the moon and all it gave me.

Perspective.

I gathered the wisp into the palm of my missing hand, compressing and condensing and shaping it into a bead of brilliant green light. Then I kept drawing on the Impression and the Green flowed.

I had questions, but I had little way of answering them save for experimenting and there was one question I wanted to be answered: What would happen if I dumped the capacity of the Impression into something?

Looking down I stared at the glowing sphere in my hand, its light casting shadows across the bowl that mingled with the moonlight. More. I compressed more and more of the Green into the increasingly dense sphere and it grew brighter and brighter in conjunction.

It was almost like a miniature sun cast in green. A roiling sphere of energy. Something pinched at the back of my head and I knew I was getting close to the limit but I kept at it, closing my missing fingers around the sphere as if to stabilize it and keep it together while it grew brighter and brighter and bright—

A sharp stab in the back of my brain made my vision darken at the edges and throw off my center of balance that nearly fell over, but something... my knees had buckled… I blinked spots out of my eyes and gripped the roiling sun for dear life because that was one question I didn't want to know the answer to quite yet: What would happen if the capacity of the Impression was released in an uncontrolled manner.

Blinking away the spots I looked to see what had caught me and… the vines? Lifting my head I looked around the clearing to see the curtain of vines reaching toward the center of the clearing, toward the sphere.

"...Oh." More questions to add to the list then.

My missing fingers spasmed and the sphere… wobbled. A jet of Green shot from the upper hemisphere before fixing my grip. The effect of the emission almost made me lose it again, though as dark purple leave shot with green steamers bloomed into life along the vines.

A weak giggle leaked from my lips as the back of my head throbbed. "I suppose I should have experimented on plants then." And more questions on top of that.

But I still wanted an answer to the question I'd come out here for. Looking to the Whiptail I reached out...

-I-

The warm, early morning sun beat down on my neck as I sat atop the Visitors Building; my legs loosely followed beneath me and my head bowed as stared at my notebook spread across my ankles. My fingers danced as I absently twirled a dinosaur headed pen— one of a number I'd pulled from a gift shop closet beside the restaurant.

The pen stopped mid turn and I flipped back a page, skimmed my slightly less chicken-scratch notes there, then flipped back and pen to paper.

—Application of Injecting entire capacity of Green from Impression

—Despite debilitating issues with utilizing the Impressions entire capacity via a single, highly dense source of Green, results (see: Pg. 91 for full measurements and further notation) are promising in bypassing the recurring issues regarding early experiments requiring gradual growth and even exposure through complete and instantaneous saturation of subject with the Green. Note: Strict control required to prevent any inadvertent shaker effect or as yet unforeseen complications concerning plant life in the immediate vicinity.

Tapping the pen against my calf I glanced it over the page over and nodded. "That should about do it." Dropping the pen in and closing the notebook I dropped it into my satchel and stood, rising up on my toes as I reached for the sky. "Ueh!"

My back popped and snapped as I twisted in place before looking out the back of the building and across the width of the island to the rising sun. "Yeah, time to get going."

—

Many thanks for being of beta halpings go to Darkarma