middaeg | [OPEN] an animal, bipedal and featherless

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[OPEN] an animal, bipedal and featherless

Who: Toby and You!
When: Between the end of the Dorchacht dream and whenever the diplomat teams leave Aefenglom
Where: Around Aef; primarily around the Coven, but also elsewhere.
What: Toby trying to use transmutation magic to fake being human enough to fool the Dorchacht witches. She could use some help.
Warnings: none, will add if that changes.

Toby, a very tall lizardlike alien, doesn't want to be human. That is, she doesn't want to be human and not Hork-Bajir, she doesn't want to renounce her species, she finds self-transfiguration and being without her blades and tail and everything else disorienting and not pleasant. She does, however, admit to curiosity and an awareness that it may be practical, especially in the near future. It had been a casual interest before trying it in the dream; now, she has to learn a lot and in not much time.

While she does forgo her other classes for Transmutation and looks into anatomy, she knows hands-on experience and actually trying it herself will be essential.

[a] a plucked fowl in the lecture room

It may be in the Coven between classes or out in the city. On a couple of different days a class goes out to an elaborate fountain in the Entertainment District, a broad basin featuring an assortment of carved Merrow and aquatic Dragons cavorting with dolphins and hippocampi admist a variety of flourishes and spouts. Each transfiguration student picks a statue and tries to magic a block of wood into its likeness, which some manage better than others.

Toby finishes early and looks around, holding her miniature. If you don't look busy she may turn to you with a question. Her voice is very deep and on the guttral side.

"Pardon. Would you let me examine your hands?" Or the way your jaw works. Or, if you're not digigrade, how you walk. It really doesn't matter if you're a Monster or nonhuman or not, just as long as you look more human than she does. "I'm making a study of anatomy and physiology. My body doesn't work the way yours does and I need to mark the differences."

[b] a featherless biped with flat nails

One big issue with transforming herself is the exact shape and appearance to take. It's easier for her if she keeps a similar mass. Wiry though her build is, her tail, her blades, her height, and the density of her muscle and bone guarantee that the shapes she takes are large. Always over six feet, with degrees of muscle, general stockiness, or fat differing each time. Her features and coloration change, the weird redness of her dream attempt becoming less pronounced. Her hair definitely changes, and her proportions become more average.

She's told friends and acquaintances that she's trying this and asked for help. Maybe you watched her do it, saw the unpleasant shiver and the impression of something being turned inside out and settling, or maybe you see her afterwards and have feedback. Maybe it's time to go out in town and see if she can pull off acting human, too?

[c] I am looking for a human Wildcard! If you think of something else, go for it!

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She shakes her head. "I know. But you could have used a human there, in that place, or someone who looks and thinks like a human. If I had gone with you they would have seen me as another Monster and taken both of us." And maybe she should have done that, and that should have happened; maybe it would have been better. "If someone else had gone with you, she could have said, he is mine, he is helping me."

Maybe a human would know what to say in times like this, have stories to tell and situations to relate that don't always come to victimhood and being batted around like a dried cone by advanced aliens.

Hearing her talk like this makes it harder for him to hold onto his own guilt. There are just so many things that anyone could or should have done... how can she discredit herself like this?

"I don't care about that," Steven insists, pulling away from Lion and onto his knees, moving closer. "You saved me! I didn't... I didn't Bond with you because I wanted you to be like everyone else." He starts to get up.

"Why should people like that be able to decide what we need to be? If they didn't like how you look, then that's their problem!"

Toby doesn't want to wish she was something else, and she doesn't, really. Not Andalite, certainly not Yeerk, not human. Even though they all have histories of self-determination, of action rather than reaction, of being active agents instead of created to be tools and then caught in the middle.

"I know," she says heavily, looking at the claws on her toes. "I know. I suppose it's more that I regret that things happened this way. It's very easy to imagine better ways the night could have gone."

She feels like she is or should be responsible for him and has not been acting like it, but she doesn't even know what it would look like, to change that.

Steven moves towards the fountain, sitting down beside her without leaving much space. Lion watches them from the ground, one eye cautiously open, while the rest of him continues to lounge in the grass.

"I do, too," Steven says, leaning into her side. "We've had dreams like that before, and they ended up being true, so... I wanted to figure out how I could help. I... I knew I'd probably get caught, but I didn't think it would matter. Because it wasn't real."

Unfortunately, the consequences had ended up feeling very real.

She moves her arm to make space and gingerly closes it again, careful of her blades. With more confidence Toby moves her heavy tail, the tip bent to keep clear, so it lies over Steven's lap as well.

Lion gets an uneasy glance, even now. When they're in the same place Toby always likes to know exactly where he is.

"It was a good impulse. Even the dream of the forest fire - that upset me." Uncontrolled fire in the trees is coded into her psyche as a disturbing event. "But it ended in a few hours, it could be endured. You were working with knowledge collected before. I admire how quick you are to care."

Steven smiles, Toby's physical reciprocation boosting his confidence about the whole thing. He still feels pretty sheepish about his exploits in Dorchacht, but if he keeps trying to blame himself, Toby will probably keep blaming herself, too.

He wraps an arm around her so that he's resting against her chest. It seems like the best place to hug. His antenna will instinctively feel at and tickle her neck and chin, beyond his conscious attention, taking in subtle information.

"If we have to be here anyway... might as well try to help, right?" He closes his eyes. "I think that city might be somewhere out there, right now. Do the people in Aefenglom even know?"

Her skin is like bark, rough and with not much yield to it. It'll take her a moment to register the antennae, and she keeps herself from brushing at the sensation with her free hand.

"I'm afraid that if I risk myself, I'll leave my people without leadership. They were starting to look to me when I came here. We don't have a council of Elders, and even if we did, Elders mostly worked from tradition. We have my parents and one other raid leader, and in the long term that won't be enough." That yearning, that mingled love and fearful apprehension, that secret guilty relief at how here she doesn't have that plunging depth of responsibility on her, she can let that show here. Steven might understand some of it. "But it's also good to care about the people present right now. I don't know if Aefenglom knows. It trades with other cities, but the Cwyld seems to restrict contact."

"That's how I feel about my family," Steven says softly, his eyes opening again. Hugging her isn't really the most comfortable thing in the world, but there are worse things than nestling against a tree. The emotional connection, and the Bond, make it pleasant regardless.

"I'm not really the leader, but... the Diamonds seem willing to change, mostly because of what I represent to them. I'm scared that... without me there to talk to them, they'll go back to doing the things like they did before."

Maybe not all at once, but if he isn't there, who would mediate between them and the Crystal Gems on earth? They are only just starting to understand that lesser gems and organics are people. I knows that his own Diamond privilege gave him an advantage that nobody else could have hoped for.

"Maybe if I'm gone they'll get mad again and try to take it out on someone else. I don't know." Have they really been left without him for months, back on Earth?

Toby rumbles acknowledgment and carefully lays a big hand over the puff of his hair.

"It's very hard to be of two peoples. I wish it were otherwise. In some better world it would be a happy thing, to be a bridge between such different places." It's hard to imagine Aldrea's Andalite family accepting her. An Andalite born at the same time as her great-grandfather would be considered an adult, but a young one, and they're so arrogant. In an odd way it's easier to imagine being accepted by the humans, even with their ugly cities and infighting. Haven't the past few months been almost a vision of that?

"You've done some great things already. I hope they will at least hesitate."

"Well..." Steven says, and through the Bond, Toby will be able to feel his heart flutter with the praise she gives him. His cheeks are as pink as the looming dawn light. "They are thousands and thousands of years old. If they do hesitate, it will probably take them a while to stop."

He's known them for such a short time in comparison. His smile fades a little, the longer he thinks about this stuff.

"I understand if you need to think about your people, first," he says, softly. "I wish I knew why this had to be our fight, too."

That's aliens for you. Toby inclines her head.

"I always need to keep them in mind and I don't want to take unreasonable risks. But that doesn't mean doing nothing, either." There's the very dark thought that she might not go back; how empty her life would be, if when she dies she spent it diffident. "It could be some part of why we are here. Maybe someone is intended to disturb the status quo, and in some ways it's easier for an outsider to do that."

Not that she's happy about the thought, but really, Toby exists as a free person because a higher power desired her parents to escape, there's no reason for her to not attribute such things to aloof and powerful beings with their own motives.

Steven doesn't like that idea, either. He wants to help this place while he's here, but being forced to solve this world's problems is more than a little intrusive. He could die here, perhaps more easily than he could at home.

They could at least tell him when he'd be able to leave.

"...I'm gunna tell Nessie about what we saw. Maybe... Maybe if we work with the Coven, we can help them help themselves. This must be important to them, too."

Which is probably overly optimistic, but hey, it's Steven.

"Remind me to tell you about the Ellimists at some point," she murmurs, though those are a long story and she's got to figure out how to break it up or render things into a good short form. Her father is a better storyteller, able to spin a tale for hours without it seeming long, Toby thinks with a twinge.

She nods. It's a good idea and a good hope. Typically it's better to help people work things out themselves than to impose from outside, if it's possible. Assuming they aren't here indefinitely, solutions will stick better that way.

Now, though... Toby hesitates to broach it, and tells herself it will come out in another way if she doesn't. "You were upset about the fighting in the dream."

It catches him by surprise a little, and his body tenses. It isn't because of revulsion, but the thought of it is still fresh in his head, and thinking about it is hard to take. A shiver goes through him, though he stays curled against her chest.

"I didn't want anybody to die," he says, quietly. His antenna curl back against his head. "Not because of something I did."

She nods.

"I wish I could say they all deserved it, and that they were all the same people who hurt you, or looked on and did nothing." It was a dream, but parts of it felt real enough. "I don't know that that's true. Some may have been completely uninvolved but came running after the noise. I wish we could have escaped without encountering anyone."

Hindsight, again, makes it easier to imagine ways they could have gotten out quietly, three Witches and a Dragon - she doesn't think Steven would have been able to contribute a great deal. "But I was upset, and... it's not difficult for me, to fight. The way I'm made, I can't fight without shedding blood."

The anxiety lingers in him, causing him to continue shivering despite the warmth of the approaching sun. His hands would be shaking if they weren't wrapped around Toby.

"Maybe... maybe it really was just a dream," he says, wavering. "I'm used to Gems. When they... when you beat them, they just go back into their gem. They come back later."

"But those were humans. I've never hurt a human before."

I have. She rolls those words around for a moment. I have, and they are harder to kill than Taxxons, but easier than my own people. Toby discards those words for now; they're about her, and this shouldn't be, or not entirely.

"Gems don't quite die like the rest of us, do they?" Not like delicately balanced organic systems. "You have options when you fight one. You can fight - I have to think, 'cleanly', but I'm sure it's wretched in its way too."

There is in Toby a little bit of envy, and both compassion and a kind of sad bafflement. She doesn't have this innocence, to be upset in this way about causing pain that can't be undone or recovered from. She's never had it. She can't completely understand, though she knows her ancestors felt an anguish like this, when the Yeerks came and they learned other uses for their blades.

Edited 2019-09-13 19:02 (UTC)

Steven nods, consumed by thought. It is wretched, but not nearly as bad as that blood had been. Not nearly as bad as when he's practically heard Lars's neck snap from a blow against the rocks.

"I don't want to hurt anyone," he says, closing his eyes. He knows it makes him a baby compared to what she's been through. He knows that, in this world, he is privileged to be able to draw any lines at all. He just can't stand it.

"I don't want to keep getting hurt." Which is an even more distant dream, when it come down to it.

She shifts a bit, half stands up keeping Steven against her side so she can move her tail to lie along the fountain ledge and perch him on the base. It had been starting to complain about the sharp curve.

These aren't things Toby can fully understand, Seer or no, empathic connection or no. But she can try. She would push back, if the dismay turned to outrage. It would be with some sorrow, though.

"It's all right to feel like that. Killing is... in certain circumstances it's the right thing to do. I don't always regret when I do it, and it's easier to do every time. But that's a new way of thinking for us. Maybe thirty years old." Which is much longer to her than it is to him, obviously. Thirty years to her is a hard century to a human, a century where no one's lived long enough to grow old.

"The Seer before me, my great-grandfather, lived in a world where it was all but unheard of to deliberately wound another person. He thought, the first time he was attacked by a Controller, that the man was dancing and accidentally cut him, but it happened again and again. He called it a terrible thing, to have the knowledge that someone could kill him, that he could kill in turn. He always believed that that knowledge would destroy us as surely as the Yeerks - it frustrated my great-grandmother, who was from a warrior race. And here we are, still, but I can't say we are the same as we were."

She lets out a breath. "It's a good thing to be able to consider other ways. As a person and as a situation."

That's genuinely one of the saddest things he's ever heard. He knows that in that situation, he would be the confused Hork Bajir. He can relate to a similar loss of innocence.

"I feel like Garnet would tell me something like that, too," Steven says, smiling a little, and his mood seems to imply that's a compliment. "Some part of you... remind me a lot of her. Which makes sense, because she is one of my favourite people."

"She's a seer, too, but in... a kinda more literal way? She sees the future, but... I think it could be hard on her. Everyone expects her to know what to do, and if she doesn't, then she feels like she's letting everyone down."

Edited 2019-09-21 01:14 (UTC)

Toby doesn't really want to tell Steven much of the story, because it's really just an account of things getting worse and worse by minor slopes and long, steep drops. The only hope in it is survival - is that Toby would be born someday, and maybe she could understand what was to be done, and be able to do it.

She hums in her throat, touched.

"I suppose there are many possible futures, then, and not a set and predetermined course. At any rate- yes. It's like that sometimes. You get to thinking that you should understand everything, forsee everything and have countermeasures in place for all of it, because no one else can."

"Yeah... something like that," Steven says gently, feeling more at ease with this connection. "But... you have to think of yourself too, okay?"

It can be hard to do that. He knows that all too well.

Toby huffs softly, which is her equivalent of an affiliative laugh. "When I can. It's less of a consideration here." She's not different or special here, at least not so markedly in the way of a Seer among her people. She isn't needed in such a profound way.

She doesn't understand Dak and his grief, but she thinks, looking at Steven, she can grasp it a bit more. To be thrust into a situation where it was kill or be infested and forced to kill and enslave others would shatter him. Maybe he would pull through, find joy again, be able to look for other ways; maybe he could manage to not think of certain people as people, really, and deny the sickness of it. But he would never be the same.

"I don't want you to change who you are," she says, full of a grave affection. "Even if it's more realistic, or anything like that, to meet violence with violence in this world. You don't need to."

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[OPEN] an animal, bipedal and featherless

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