"Fadir what the everliving FUCK my guy?" Reggie was pis- He was mad. He'd called Fadir for help with the like- Eight plus guys, most of which were children. There was maybe a murder involved there? Maybe. But like his house alarms were showing most of them **in his house**, asleep, tired even, and sure he'd be fine with it if he'd been asked but he had not, in fact, been asked.
"It's fine, le! Just had to bring the kids and adults to a safe place. Tired, just had a transorigin, somehow? But hurt, and you had me-di-cal supplies, le!" "Fadir you need to just ASK about that I know Xynodi lets you just do this but MY FUCKING GUY-" "Shush le! The chi-ld-ren!" Oh. Yeah if the construct and tengu had understood anything from that sentence, it was the swear words. That was not good, he was not used to having to watch his mouth.
"Okay I know we trust mr birdheart but who is- This?" The Tengu said, the strange, snake bird creature on his shoulder staring at Reggie. "Th' name's Reggie Rolander, why are you in my house?" And he froze. The Tengu, the Construct, and the two Humans. "... Can- Can he understand us?" The construct finally asked, the giant... Engine beast, by her staring at Reggie. "Yeah."
She stared. The adults stared. They looked like scientists to Reggie? "So, Fadir, where's the rest at?" "Oh! Yes, Taoed-of-tie is in the room by the freezer, revenant girl is at the basement crypt, Brain and Glare are both in the garden, the not-Claire nekomata, other enderwalker, and Yurei are all in their own guest rooms, and the Selkie is still asleep in the BIG guest room where the other adults were staying in."
"... Other enderwalker?" Fadir just lifted the blanket to reveal an... Unconscious? Hopefully just unconscious, enderwalker, with... Skin like a peeled orange, frankly. "He was agg-ress-ive, le. Had to, restrain." Reggie just nodded. "Alrighty, you laddies, any clue how you got here?" Now that the business with fadir was cleared up, he could adress the... Guests.
But they didn't respond. They just sorta stared... "... My accen't isn't that bad, and I know it. Better than Fadirs at least- Can you understand written script?" Fadir just shook its head no. "... Right, okay. How have you been communicating?" Fadir smiles. "Comics le." "Right of course." "Obviously le." "Right, just- Give me a minute, I'll think of something."
Maugras was... Frustrated. Before, with the Arma units, that had made sense, but this was a bit beyond his suspension of disbelief. "Mr... Rolander? You can clearly understand us, but we can't understand you. I think the first order of business here should be establishing some way to communicate, even if it's inconvenient."
The child, Bina? Spoke next. "We used pictures to communicate with Fadir. It doesn't know how we got here, it just found us all in a field and brought us here." ... Right, that's concerning. If that's true, then... Well, given the situation, it's not exactly a waste to ponder ridiculous ideas. Possibility A, they were teleported to... Somewhere, somehow. Unlikely, given that this place apparently does have humans, at least, sorta, and also given that... At least some of the people taken for this ride were transformed by it- Looking at the comics, if he's interpreting it correctly then there's just three humans- Himself, Wana, and Ned. You don't really get that from just teleporting.
Possibility B... "Interdimensional travel?" that got a reaction from Mr Rolander, at least. "Naeh, Naeh, doen't work l' tha'." What even was that accent? It sounded almost kinda Irish... Or British... Or like some New York accent? Wrong line of thinking- Different dimension, whatever regional accents exist here wouldn't be the same as on earth. Wait. "What do you mean it 'doesn't work like that'? Because as it stands the only explanations I can think of for how we got here are that we were teleported to another planet, jumped into another dimension, or we're in some sort of overly convoluted triple-blind experiment." Which would maybe explain 'Bina' being a robot, it could just not BE Bina... But also that boy was turned into a bird, somehow.
Rolander opened his mouth to speak, then closed it, then... Started writing. It was some language he didn't get, but it was 26 letters... Long... "Is this your alphabet?" Rolander nodded, "A, B, C, D.." He just went down the list, pointing to the letters. "Stan'rd scrip' alpherbe'." ... "This is just the English alphabet with different symbols." Bina perked up. "Wait- what? So the language he's speaking is just, English with an alien accent, and the written language is just, English but rotated to the left a bit or something- Can you write down a key so we can just, write to each other?" Smart. The kid had a surprisingly good handle on the weirdness of the situation. Then again we don't know when she got up, maybe she just had her own private panic over it, and recovered since then.
"Good idea. I can get on that, at least. I can... Somewhat, understand Reginald here-" "Reggie. Nam's Reggie, not shor' fer reginald, writ'n as reggie on my birth certificate." "Ah. Reggie, then- Regardless, I can understand him, even if it's a bit hard." He turned to the... Bird creature- Fadir, he thinks it was called? Who was still somewhat restraining Michael, even as his struggling slowed a bit. And who was also still talking with Reggie- they were actually having a conversation, but it seems that what Reggie had said earlier was him actively trying to be understood, since now Maugras couldn't understand a word.
Eventually, Maugras was going to just go out the front door. He'd even stood up to do it when- "Director Maugras please let me up." Rjinder, or, his skin, had finally stopped struggling. His head slowly poked out of the blanket, to see... The kids, transformed into creatures, but also the bird-person who was actually holding him down. "... What- Where are we? What is that?" Maugras stepepd forwards. "First things first Rjinder. Are you in control of yourself?" He looked at Maugras. "What?" "In the lab, once Ned... Punched you, your skin took over and tried to kill Bina, Nancy, it DID kill one of the monsters- Are you in control of yourself or are you going to go, wild again?" Rjinder at least had the sense to not force his face to be still. "... No. I don't plan to, hurt anybody. I was out cold for most of what you said- The last thing I remember was being hit by Ned, and then I blacked out and woke up here."
Bina stared. And stepped back. Ayo stepped forward, placing herself between Bina and Rjinder. "You were... You were not out cold when you tied me, and Abel, and Julie and- All of us up. You weren't out cold when you tried to force us to have our monsters put back, you were wide awake for all of that!" Rjinder backed away a bit. "That was... For scientific advancement. The good it could have done- And the ghost releases were by accident-" "You literally got like four more kids with monsters to throw at us!" Maugras did a double take.
"Rjinder you did WHAT?" It was Wanda who spoke next. "Look- Shell was shutting down due to a lack of results! We needed more results to keep doing this- Either they would be able to get back the original subjects, or we'd have a NEW monster fighting force-" "Made from children, Wanda! It was- It was already too late! When we made the announcement that Shell was shutting down, you couldn't- Undo that! It was decided already. It got my son killed, did damage to so many children on accident- And by your own word, some of that damage was on PURPOSE. Why did you think that would have even gotten Shell funded again?!"
"Enough!" Everyone turned at the shout. Reggie was back, with a platter of... Various foods. Not all of it, looked like food actually. "Go' food fo' ya. **Mind the scribbles**, when yer' orign's shifted yer diet's did too." Indeed, the plates all had crude drawings of everyones new faces on them. "Also y'r yellin' could wake th' ded." Maugras sighed. "Right, sorry about that. I don't- I don't know what an 'Origin' is, but to be entirely honest, I think that can wait until we sort out- This." He said, vaguely gesturing towards Wanda and Michael.
"Agreed." Just about all of the humans and former humans said, in unison. Wanda spoke next. "I... There was... You don't- Don't really care about the why, do you?" Maugras just shook his head no. "There was potential. Maybe you could have gotten funding from elsewhere, maybe you could have even found a way to privately fund it, if you were that genuinely desperate to see your research through. But shell was not yours. If I had known what you were doing in that lab- Hell, I'd have shut it down sooner. The only thing of any actual value in there that you made since the shutdown was the Chakra machine, and even then the one person that would NEED it clearly doesn't WANT it." He said, with a pointed glare to Rjinder.
"I- My skin- She is-" His skin started to, writhe- And everyone backed away, except for Fadir and Reggie. "'Ey'ey'ey'ey'ey doc doc doc!'" Rjinder was at least gotten out of that loop by that. "Who even are you...? What are you? You look human, but not quite. And, the bird... Creature, clearly isn't human... I somewhat recognize the hosts of the eye and heart... And- *What has happened to me-*" "Y' got th' pibo to th' soulie bits', turned end'rwalk'r." "What does that even mean?!"
Bina groaned. "Okay we need- Some way to actually communicate! Me and Abel can't understand a word of what Reggie is saying, and he's the only one that has any idea what's going on! We've all been turned into- Monstery things, we have NO idea where we are, and- I can't even find Julie or Kera!" Reggie sighed. "Wha' was the idea Bina 'ad about translatin' our alphabet t' yours?"
Maugras just, nodded, and got to work. Punctuation was evidently the same, so it was just writing down a key for the letters. Once that was done, Bina, Abel, everyone in the room poured over it to try and memorize it.
"Right." Maugras said. "For now, we ask questions, Reggie can just write it down so we can all read it." Everyone nodded at that, sensible enough. Bina went first. "Where are we?" Reggie nodded, and wrote. 'My house. Near ravenslove tower, a few miles south of the local forest of Pando. Where are you from?' Abel answered that. "Antler pine, in America." 'America?' "... One of the countries on earth." 'Where is earth?' "... Another planet." Reggie sighed. 'Not sure if that is actually possible. You are on the planet Halfstack, in inter-country space. Closest town is Billigan Village, it is in walking distance. It has food for all of your origins.'
Rjinder narrowed his eyes. "What do you mean by 'Origin'?" Reggie sighed, again. And then he left, and got another platter of food, and set it down. 'This will take a minute.' He seemed to pause in thought for a minute, and then just started writing. 'Origin is, most basic term for different sentient species. Humans, Constructs, Tengu, Enderwalkers. Those are your origins. These origins are the most basic term. Regional variants exist. Draconis are drakes are dragons are draconis. Zombies, skeletons, vampires, all variations on revenant. Ghosts, specters, poltergeists, will-o-wisps, all variants of Yurei. BIG IMPORTANT THING' This was circled about, three times. 'Different origins have different diets. Something that a Tengu could eat may leave an enderwalker horrifically sick, and MOST THINGS' again, circled 'that humans can eat are horrifically unsafe for other origins. Chocolate and coffee especially are basically hard drugs if you are not human. Different origins also have different abilities. Enderwalkers can teleport, Kelpies can shapeshift, Constructs don't need to breathe, Tengu can fly and can tap into their semi-holy nature with bells, ETC, ETC.'
Abel raised his hand. "What do you mean semi-holy nature?" Reggie raised his eyebrow. 'Tengu are on same magic wavelength as gods. Can act as living beacons, hold a gemstone, ring a bell, magic thing happens.' Maugras leaned forwards. "Gods...?" He was going to say something about that not being, realistic, but... Different world, maybe different rules. "What is known about gods? In our world we're not even certain they exist." 'Physical beings, typically. Brought into being via belief to fulfill a given niche. High powered nexuses of magic, able to manipulate it with great strength and precision, in service to a given aspect of reality. typically either are extensions of said aspect or view said aspect as extension of self. Fire god will feel personally threatened if you put out fires, worker god will feel personally wronged if you harm workers."
Rjinder was just staring, wide-eyed. "So... They are, definitely existent. By the sound of it they're the focus of some fields of science?" 'Theology/theopsychology is somewhat risky but very worthwhile field. Xynodi ravenslove prominent one, know her personally. Done several papers on theosmosis, albeit mostly on her own experiences of having god for father.'
"..." So this xynodi ravenslove has a god for a father. And Fadir ravenslove, across from them... "We've been following a god around this whole time?!" 'Yes Fadir ravenslove is god. Usually most can realize this if god is not trying to hide it? Fadir is god of fatherhood and divination.'
And at this point Fadir returned with some tea. Bina looked at it. "Can Fadir also write in English?" 'I'm writing in script but yes. It's speaking the same language as me it just has a category 5 accent and also cannot understand YOUR category 6 accent.' "I- that's- Fair. Do either of you know where Julie is? She- I dunno what 'origin' she'd be now, but her monster is her hair." 'I don't know who you speak of, I saw no "hair monster" in Pando. What are these monsters?'
Bina took a deep breath. "They're monsters, made from ghosts, or, spirits? That Dr. Rjinder and the rest of Shell made. They go into your body, and take over a body part, and come out. Usually this isn't... Expressly harmful? West, the one with the stomach monster- He can't eat, because Guuzy is his stomach. Guuzy has to eat instead, but they can spit out all sorts of stuff, like sticky goo, or acid, or healing stuff. Ayo is my heart, which doesn't have any weird side effects, but she can beat really hard to give me an adrenaline rush, and she's, really strong. Rixis is Abels eye, so he sees out of him. Er, Abel sees out of Rixis." Dr Rjinder spoke next. "My monster is, as you can plainly see, my skin. It is... Very painful for it to move outside of being the covering for my body."
'I thought they were some sort of weird Freonds/Feonds but also that explains the soul damage.' Bina stared at that. Soul damage? Is that what... Kills you in ten years if you get a monster? Are these genuinely hooked up to their souls? That's. Terrifying. That's terrifying, Bina decides. "Soul damage?" She asks, just... to make sure. 'Yes. Something is causing higher than normal stress upon your souls. It's like a small amount of overuse of magic, but over a long period of time. Rjinder has the same pattern of damage, but far more intensive. Longer time having a monster?' "Yes, I have had... My skin, for quite some time..." "Is that why you're so willing to strap a kid to a mad science machine?" Abel said. "That- We were desperate!" Wanda retaliated. Finally... "Everyone, stop! Reggie, thank you very much for answering our questions, but I think this is time for us to just cool down and digest what we've learned- Maybe even go outside for a bit to cool off."
Reggie nodded. "'ll be in th' kitchen, an' Fadir'll be here too if y' need anythin'. As' first bef're eatin' anything, again, you'v all basic'ly all got'n random food al'rgies."
And at that, Reggie left, grabbing a soda. And then some giant, fuzzy guy ran into the room. "Where is Guuzy, what am I- WHY AM I SO HUNGRY!" "West!" "Desmond?" "Taoed-of-tie!" Yep. The gang was slowly getting back together.
