Re: MORITURI TE SALUTANT!! [S!4]
07-22-2012, 10:59 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.
It did not take long for the treasure hunting pair to return to what they were doing beforehand. There had been an awkward moment between the two when it had become apparent that neither of them wanted to do the thing that they felt was obligated of them; to attempt to save the fleeing woman from the thugs that had chased her. Jamie was just being practical; as much as she wished the best for the girl who had gotten herself tangled up with Bo Blackwell’s men somehow (and felt kind of bad on the off chance that this was somehow partially her fault), she knew for a fact that blindly charging after them was not going to do anyone any good. Nameless, while equally powerless to help, just didn’t care. Carlie was not her problem, and she did have her own problems, not the least of which was finding this treasure before it fell into the hands of one of her competitors, or perhaps one of these thugs.
They slipped back into the mansion through a door that had been left open at some point long ago; the hinges upon it were long since rusted and the vines that grew up the wall of the house had started to poke their way into the corridor beyond. The first door here led them to a long and ill-kept dining room. An expensive dark wood dining table ran down the centre of the room, the chairs around it knocked over or left in a state of disarray, the entire thing was thick with dust. At the far end of the room a serving hatch hung open, and the drab faded wallpaper upon the walls had began to peel away. There was someone sat at the table, perched upon the lip of one of the few chairs that was in proximity to it. His head was in his hands and he was oddly translucent with a strange occasional flicker of milky white.
There was a moment where Jamie hesitated in the doorway craning her neck this way and that to get a better look at the ghostly figure. After a moment she seemed to shrug off whatever trepidation she had felt and went to casually stride into the dining room, only to be pulled back by Nameless’ grip upon her jacket.
“What-” Jamie was cut short by Nameless shushing her into silence as she hurriedly scribbled onto her notebook.
‘GOST’ the word was writ large and in urgently scrawled letters.
“There’s no such thing as ghosts.” Jamie replied dismissively. “You don’t seriously believe in ghosts do you? What are you four years old?” Nameless regarded the teenage sleuth critically; she had to fight back against the instinct to write a rebuttal with an emphasis on just how dangerous an angry ghost could be, after all this was clearly not her world, Jamie would know best what was and was not true within it.
‘u sure?’ Nameless wrote.
“Yeah.” Jamie replied. “I’ve took more than a couple of cases where it seemed like a place was haunted and usually it’s just some guy with really exceptional makeup or wearing a sheet. Sometimes it’s like some kind of high tech hologram or something, but there’s always an explanation that is founded in reasonable fact.” Nameless looked doubtful. “Trust me, rational explanation every single time.” And with the matter settled to her satisfaction Jamie confidently strode into the dining room and Nameless followed her.
There was something off about the ‘ghost’ and not just the translucency and the intermittent flickering which Nameless was having a hard time believing was simple ‘really exceptional makeup’. He looked out of place, as though he didn’t belong in this mansion; neither the long-abandoned now-dilapidated structure that it had become, nor the richly furnished house that it had once been. His hair was short and scruffy, his eyes obscured by an odd visor with a loupe (a type of magnifying glass) attached on a plastic spring. He wore a buttoned down white lab coat and a pair of sleek black boots. At the sound of footsteps upon the old wooden floor the ‘spectre’ glanced up at the pair. He met Jamie’s intense glare and seemed taken aback.
“Explain yourself mister!” Jamie demanded, holding her notebook and pen with the same intensity that one might hold a weapon.
“Not gonna run screaming from me?” The ‘ghost’ climbed to his feet. “Ha, you’re braver than most.”
Nameless frowned. Though things such as ghosts and dragons and other miscellaneous supernatural beasties were considered things of the past, there were still ghost towns that even the bravest of men would not set foot in for fear of what would happen to them in there and the monsters that Raxucorp could not protect them from. This guy did not seem to be the kind of thing that even trained soldiers would balk at confronting. However on the other hand he had not seemed to notice that he and the table were occupying the same space. It intersected his waist and was disconcerting, if not downright worrying. Nameless tensed up and shot Jamie a disapproving glance, not that the sleuth could see it from her position in front of her.
“That’s a neat trick,” Jamie said, “but ghosts aren’t real, so how are you doing that?” The ghost grinned; it was not a wicked grimace of a spectre about to commit mischief but the smile of someone who has just been pleasantly surprised.
“Of course not.” The ghost replied. “Ghosts are nothing more than silly superstition for idiots. My name’s Endal Shrewdish, it’s good to finally meet someone with a shred of wits about them after so long.”
‘but ur a gost’ Nameless scribbled down before she’d really contemplated walking over there to show it to him. She found she didn’t want to and the note went unread.
“I can’t see where you’d hide the projector so I’m guessing you’re not a hologram?” Jamie spoke slowly her eyes darting around looking for answers. “My guess would be smoke and mirrors, but to what end? I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to be scary or sad or lamentful or something, being calm and rational seems like a waste of the special effect.”
“Would that it was a special effect…” Endal sounded sort of lamentful, but more bitter than anything else. Jamie, who had been getting more impatient each time he evaded her question, strode up to the supposed not-ghost, kicking aside fallen chairs where necessary, and attempted to accost him. Her hands went straight through him in a manner that nobody present was surprised back. Endal grimaced and stumbled backwards.
“If you don’t explain yourself…” Jamie’s hesitation was only momentary, “…then I’m moving on. We have treasure to find and you are not particularly helpful.” Endal sighed.
“Once this mansion was all mine.” Endal began. “I converted the basement into a state of the art laboratory. It was perfect, all gleaming metal and polished white surfaces, though of course that is gone now.” A momentary pause wherein he caught Jamie’s eye and quickly continued. “Other scientists of the time called me a hack and derided my studies and I can’t really say that I blame them. I was doing experiments upon the Shrewdish Diamond, a valuable heirloom that has been in my family for generations. But Epstein and Syrus and all the others who mocked me had not grown up with the diamond; it had always had this strange energy to it that I could never quite explain. Though I suppose I cannot explain how or why any more than I could back then but now at least I can tell you the what. It’s time travel.”
“Excuse me?” Jamie asked.
“The diamond stores temporal energy and I figured out how to unlock it.” Endal replied. “The time when I used to own this mansion, that was some hundred or so years from now. I am, or I was, the last remaining descendant of the Shrewdish line. I came back here before I knew what I was doing.”
“That really doesn’t explain anything.” Jamie said. “That is even supposing that I did believe you.”
“When I arrived back here I met my grandfather.” Endal said. “He was a stern man who didn’t stand for any nonsense, especially not complete strangers showing up in his house and most especially not when they were carrying what was pretty clearly his diamond.” He hesitated. “He tried to take it from me, but I wasn’t going to let go of my only way home. We fought, but it’s not like we came to trading blows or anything, we just both wanted that diamond and then he fell, he struck his head pretty hard against the dining table. He, he was dead before I was able to do anything about it. It was awful, so much blood I couldn’t think straight…” He trailed off for a minute, but managed to quickly compose himself. “The point is that I didn’t know it at the time but he hadn’t fathered my father yet. My father was subsequently never born and neither was I. Logic dictated that I couldn’t exist any more and yet if I didn’t exist there was no problem, there was nobody here to kill my grandfather.”
“So this is what happened to me. I became trapped, incorporeal, an echo of a timeline that could no longer exist. I didn’t know it at the time. I thought I must have been shot or something. I thought I must have been dead or mad or dreaming. But the worst thing was watching things get worse. I’d unlocked the capabilities of the diamond, that someone else would use it was not just probable it was inevitable. I watched as one permutation played out after another as the timelines shifted and more and more versions of members of my family became part of dead timelines, cursed to haunt this place just as I have except without the true knowledge of what it is that is happening to them.” He paused. “I’ve tried to tell them but nobody listens to me, I’m just some mad spirit with a more crazed tale than the rest of them.”
There was a long pause; it was a lot of information to take in. “That’s quite some story.” Jamie said.
“If you’re half as smart as I think you are you’ll just get out of here while you can.” Endal said. “If you insist upon looking for the diamond, I’d ask that you destroy it somehow. I can’t say for certain but I think, I feel, that it is what is keeping us echoes alive and I don’t want that any more.”
Jamie bit her lip as she contemplated what she had been told. “What do you think?” she asked, but when she turned back to look Nameless had gone.
--------
Nameless didn’t hold with consorting with spirits no matter how good mannered and insistent that they were not spirits they might have been. She’d stuck around long enough to hear Endal mention that there was a basement to this house before deciding that that was pretty clearly the direction she should be headed in. She moved quietly as she could through the run down old mansion, checking one door after another. Though she was sure that she could buy or sell her way out of any unwanted attention she might come across, she would prefer to go about this uninterrupted. There was still of course the problem about how to convince her collar that the diamond belonged to her, but that was a bridge that could be crossed when she came to it.
It wasn’t long before she stumbled across a staircase leading down. The staircase was old and rickety and looked like it was liable to collapse if she wasn’t careful, and down at the bottom of the stairs it was almost pitch black, with just a hint of light in the distance. She hesitated and wished that back when she lived in the market someone had saw fit to purchase her fear. Eventually she compelled herself to move. She slowly, carefully, descended the stairs and thought about the things she did for cash.
It did not take long for the treasure hunting pair to return to what they were doing beforehand. There had been an awkward moment between the two when it had become apparent that neither of them wanted to do the thing that they felt was obligated of them; to attempt to save the fleeing woman from the thugs that had chased her. Jamie was just being practical; as much as she wished the best for the girl who had gotten herself tangled up with Bo Blackwell’s men somehow (and felt kind of bad on the off chance that this was somehow partially her fault), she knew for a fact that blindly charging after them was not going to do anyone any good. Nameless, while equally powerless to help, just didn’t care. Carlie was not her problem, and she did have her own problems, not the least of which was finding this treasure before it fell into the hands of one of her competitors, or perhaps one of these thugs.
They slipped back into the mansion through a door that had been left open at some point long ago; the hinges upon it were long since rusted and the vines that grew up the wall of the house had started to poke their way into the corridor beyond. The first door here led them to a long and ill-kept dining room. An expensive dark wood dining table ran down the centre of the room, the chairs around it knocked over or left in a state of disarray, the entire thing was thick with dust. At the far end of the room a serving hatch hung open, and the drab faded wallpaper upon the walls had began to peel away. There was someone sat at the table, perched upon the lip of one of the few chairs that was in proximity to it. His head was in his hands and he was oddly translucent with a strange occasional flicker of milky white.
There was a moment where Jamie hesitated in the doorway craning her neck this way and that to get a better look at the ghostly figure. After a moment she seemed to shrug off whatever trepidation she had felt and went to casually stride into the dining room, only to be pulled back by Nameless’ grip upon her jacket.
“What-” Jamie was cut short by Nameless shushing her into silence as she hurriedly scribbled onto her notebook.
‘GOST’ the word was writ large and in urgently scrawled letters.
“There’s no such thing as ghosts.” Jamie replied dismissively. “You don’t seriously believe in ghosts do you? What are you four years old?” Nameless regarded the teenage sleuth critically; she had to fight back against the instinct to write a rebuttal with an emphasis on just how dangerous an angry ghost could be, after all this was clearly not her world, Jamie would know best what was and was not true within it.
‘u sure?’ Nameless wrote.
“Yeah.” Jamie replied. “I’ve took more than a couple of cases where it seemed like a place was haunted and usually it’s just some guy with really exceptional makeup or wearing a sheet. Sometimes it’s like some kind of high tech hologram or something, but there’s always an explanation that is founded in reasonable fact.” Nameless looked doubtful. “Trust me, rational explanation every single time.” And with the matter settled to her satisfaction Jamie confidently strode into the dining room and Nameless followed her.
There was something off about the ‘ghost’ and not just the translucency and the intermittent flickering which Nameless was having a hard time believing was simple ‘really exceptional makeup’. He looked out of place, as though he didn’t belong in this mansion; neither the long-abandoned now-dilapidated structure that it had become, nor the richly furnished house that it had once been. His hair was short and scruffy, his eyes obscured by an odd visor with a loupe (a type of magnifying glass) attached on a plastic spring. He wore a buttoned down white lab coat and a pair of sleek black boots. At the sound of footsteps upon the old wooden floor the ‘spectre’ glanced up at the pair. He met Jamie’s intense glare and seemed taken aback.
“Explain yourself mister!” Jamie demanded, holding her notebook and pen with the same intensity that one might hold a weapon.
“Not gonna run screaming from me?” The ‘ghost’ climbed to his feet. “Ha, you’re braver than most.”
Nameless frowned. Though things such as ghosts and dragons and other miscellaneous supernatural beasties were considered things of the past, there were still ghost towns that even the bravest of men would not set foot in for fear of what would happen to them in there and the monsters that Raxucorp could not protect them from. This guy did not seem to be the kind of thing that even trained soldiers would balk at confronting. However on the other hand he had not seemed to notice that he and the table were occupying the same space. It intersected his waist and was disconcerting, if not downright worrying. Nameless tensed up and shot Jamie a disapproving glance, not that the sleuth could see it from her position in front of her.
“That’s a neat trick,” Jamie said, “but ghosts aren’t real, so how are you doing that?” The ghost grinned; it was not a wicked grimace of a spectre about to commit mischief but the smile of someone who has just been pleasantly surprised.
“Of course not.” The ghost replied. “Ghosts are nothing more than silly superstition for idiots. My name’s Endal Shrewdish, it’s good to finally meet someone with a shred of wits about them after so long.”
‘but ur a gost’ Nameless scribbled down before she’d really contemplated walking over there to show it to him. She found she didn’t want to and the note went unread.
“I can’t see where you’d hide the projector so I’m guessing you’re not a hologram?” Jamie spoke slowly her eyes darting around looking for answers. “My guess would be smoke and mirrors, but to what end? I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to be scary or sad or lamentful or something, being calm and rational seems like a waste of the special effect.”
“Would that it was a special effect…” Endal sounded sort of lamentful, but more bitter than anything else. Jamie, who had been getting more impatient each time he evaded her question, strode up to the supposed not-ghost, kicking aside fallen chairs where necessary, and attempted to accost him. Her hands went straight through him in a manner that nobody present was surprised back. Endal grimaced and stumbled backwards.
“If you don’t explain yourself…” Jamie’s hesitation was only momentary, “…then I’m moving on. We have treasure to find and you are not particularly helpful.” Endal sighed.
“Once this mansion was all mine.” Endal began. “I converted the basement into a state of the art laboratory. It was perfect, all gleaming metal and polished white surfaces, though of course that is gone now.” A momentary pause wherein he caught Jamie’s eye and quickly continued. “Other scientists of the time called me a hack and derided my studies and I can’t really say that I blame them. I was doing experiments upon the Shrewdish Diamond, a valuable heirloom that has been in my family for generations. But Epstein and Syrus and all the others who mocked me had not grown up with the diamond; it had always had this strange energy to it that I could never quite explain. Though I suppose I cannot explain how or why any more than I could back then but now at least I can tell you the what. It’s time travel.”
“Excuse me?” Jamie asked.
“The diamond stores temporal energy and I figured out how to unlock it.” Endal replied. “The time when I used to own this mansion, that was some hundred or so years from now. I am, or I was, the last remaining descendant of the Shrewdish line. I came back here before I knew what I was doing.”
“That really doesn’t explain anything.” Jamie said. “That is even supposing that I did believe you.”
“When I arrived back here I met my grandfather.” Endal said. “He was a stern man who didn’t stand for any nonsense, especially not complete strangers showing up in his house and most especially not when they were carrying what was pretty clearly his diamond.” He hesitated. “He tried to take it from me, but I wasn’t going to let go of my only way home. We fought, but it’s not like we came to trading blows or anything, we just both wanted that diamond and then he fell, he struck his head pretty hard against the dining table. He, he was dead before I was able to do anything about it. It was awful, so much blood I couldn’t think straight…” He trailed off for a minute, but managed to quickly compose himself. “The point is that I didn’t know it at the time but he hadn’t fathered my father yet. My father was subsequently never born and neither was I. Logic dictated that I couldn’t exist any more and yet if I didn’t exist there was no problem, there was nobody here to kill my grandfather.”
“So this is what happened to me. I became trapped, incorporeal, an echo of a timeline that could no longer exist. I didn’t know it at the time. I thought I must have been shot or something. I thought I must have been dead or mad or dreaming. But the worst thing was watching things get worse. I’d unlocked the capabilities of the diamond, that someone else would use it was not just probable it was inevitable. I watched as one permutation played out after another as the timelines shifted and more and more versions of members of my family became part of dead timelines, cursed to haunt this place just as I have except without the true knowledge of what it is that is happening to them.” He paused. “I’ve tried to tell them but nobody listens to me, I’m just some mad spirit with a more crazed tale than the rest of them.”
There was a long pause; it was a lot of information to take in. “That’s quite some story.” Jamie said.
“If you’re half as smart as I think you are you’ll just get out of here while you can.” Endal said. “If you insist upon looking for the diamond, I’d ask that you destroy it somehow. I can’t say for certain but I think, I feel, that it is what is keeping us echoes alive and I don’t want that any more.”
Jamie bit her lip as she contemplated what she had been told. “What do you think?” she asked, but when she turned back to look Nameless had gone.
--------
Nameless didn’t hold with consorting with spirits no matter how good mannered and insistent that they were not spirits they might have been. She’d stuck around long enough to hear Endal mention that there was a basement to this house before deciding that that was pretty clearly the direction she should be headed in. She moved quietly as she could through the run down old mansion, checking one door after another. Though she was sure that she could buy or sell her way out of any unwanted attention she might come across, she would prefer to go about this uninterrupted. There was still of course the problem about how to convince her collar that the diamond belonged to her, but that was a bridge that could be crossed when she came to it.
It wasn’t long before she stumbled across a staircase leading down. The staircase was old and rickety and looked like it was liable to collapse if she wasn’t careful, and down at the bottom of the stairs it was almost pitch black, with just a hint of light in the distance. She hesitated and wished that back when she lived in the market someone had saw fit to purchase her fear. Eventually she compelled herself to move. She slowly, carefully, descended the stairs and thought about the things she did for cash.
Heaven Help Us | Make Room!!!! | I'm Not Okay (I Promise)
Hang 'Em High | The Only Hope For Me Is You | Zero Percent | Early Sunsets Over Monroeville | DESTROYA | Demolition Lovers | To The End
Surrender The Night | Disenchanted | The Ghost Of You | Party Poison | Vampires Will Never Hurt You | The Jetset Life Is Gonna Kill You
Hang 'Em High | The Only Hope For Me Is You | Zero Percent | Early Sunsets Over Monroeville | DESTROYA | Demolition Lovers | To The End
Surrender The Night | Disenchanted | The Ghost Of You | Party Poison | Vampires Will Never Hurt You | The Jetset Life Is Gonna Kill You