folkooc | July TFLN Time

Where are you right now? I'm in Leshy.

Lapine. Meet half-way?

Talaria. It borders Willow, Cruel Summer, & Exile. The first one there wins.

Fine. Prepare to weep before me. [ Oh, she's full of shit. She is a decent sprinter but long-distance runs are where she fails.

It only occurs to her as she's already running there that she should've put down a 'no shifting' rule. ]

Naw. I never prepare for defeat.

[ When Sharon reaches Talaria, Jedao's relaxing on the roof of the community center, popping seeds into his mouth. He needs them given he cheated in the worst way possible to get here. He's getting better, though. ]

Sharon's breathing comes out in heavy puffs, lungs and limbs screaming, as she arrives. Her face is a light raspberry, more blue than red, but it darkens when she spots Jedao up on his perch, chilling.

"How?" She rasps out. Already, she wants to accuse him of cheating.

Jedao appreciates the full commitment Sharon gives, so much her face shows how hard she's breathing. He doesn't laugh, but his casual smile is calm and confident. Possibly worse.

"Simple. My game, my rules, my win." The very topic they're meeting up about.

It is worse. She stands up a little straighter and places her hands on top of her head to help open her chest up. Breathe in, "What the fuck," breathe out, "do you mean?" And then it hits her like a pile of fucking bricks.

Her arms drop to her sides, her face screws up like she's about to bitch at him, and then she just lets out a somewhat breathless, squeaking exhale. Oh, she's too tired to be really, truly angry. In fact, she's kind of impressed.

That was impressive. That was good. Still. "Fuck you," there's a startling lack of bite to the words, "I didn't like that." Liar.

Oh Jedao would have enjoyed getting reamed for what he pulled, but he settles for watching her visual journey through various emotions and tame swearing. Nothing illustrates the point so well as being the one it's pulled on. Sharon won't forget so quick in the future.

"Everything has rules, spoken or unspoken," Jedao says, "You can get people to agree to them without even thinking about it. It's wonderfully fun." Plus, it lets you tilt the odds in your favor. Sharon could have been lying and already been in Talaria. He'd have been screwed then.

Wonderfully fun, she mouths at him, gaze still narrowed. Her breathing is slowly returning to normal but the color on her cheeks isn't as quick to fade.

"That only works if they continue to agree on the results afterward." There are plenty of people who would fight him on this win even if they were the ones who made the assumptions that got them here in the first place. "So. How'd you get here so quickly? Already here? Shift?"

Jedao waves off Sharon's statement. "That's because this case was an example. Winning didn't come with anything," he says, "When it matters, I'd already have the reward in hand. Then they can't take it away."

No one argues whether he won his battles.

He focuses on Sharon, on the fabric of spacetime between them, and less drags than slides himself across it. In the blink of an eye he stands before her. "Simple," Jedao says, "I'm not human."

Ba thump thump. Not something he's shared, and she's not a Legend or Myth. It's not about finding the one. He likes her.

It's so sudden and unexpected. Sharon stumbles back and instinctively moves into a fighting stance, arms close, ready to throw down before her brain catches up and her arms drop, "Fuck you. Again." Her laugh is a release of adrenaline. Woo. Her heart has had a workout today.

"You're a showoff is what you are." And she is suitably impressed. He either teleported (totally possible) or he's capable of moving so fast she can't see it (also very fucking possible—being a human sucks sometimes). That didn't clue her in on what he was, though.

"So," she shrugs her shoulders, tone insistent as she looks him over. If she didn't know any better, she'd say he might be a little anxious, "You gonna tell me or do I have to guess?"

Is this also a game and is she already losing?

Jedao stands there casually as Sharon calms herself from popping him in the face. That'd have been fine. He's suffered far worse for dumber reasons. This lesson only goes to those he likes. Sharon has more leeway than the random person.

"Yeah yeah, got told that all through the academy with my marksmanship," Jedao shrugs it off. Say what they like, it's proven useful to shoot weapons out of people's hands. A far faster method of disarming people than any other, and he doesn't have to injure them unless he wants to.

"Neither," Jedao answers, "I'm not going to tell you, and you wouldn't guess it." His lips quirk up, and he raises a hand. See? He rejected the terms she laid out. He rejected the 'game' and thus doesn't lose it. Another lesson so to speak.

"I was born human, but my universe has some unique science I haven't heard of anywhere else. I've been a few various things since the first time I died," Jedao shares. Not what she asked but something else.

That answer of his gets her to shoot him another dirty look that's accompanied by a shove and a roll of her eyes. She understands the point he's making here: he refused the options she put forth and took control of the conversation. Sharon's not certain she'll ever be able to use lessons like these, though. She's too impulsive. Something to work on.

Maybe.

"I could totally guess it," she mumbles unseriously but lets the conversation continue to flow. She knows she totally could not.

"I remember. You were a revenant for a time," The Black Cradle. The anchors. To be used and returned to his box for the next time he's needed. It still makes her sick, "What else have you been?"

Jedao lets himself stumble back a have step with the shove, exaggerated, and straightens back up. Everything is a game. People hate the Shuos for treating it that way, but it only recognizes what's true: there's rules behind every interaction and guidance toward certain choices. Cheating, naturally, is also a part of games. Another reason people hate the Shuos. The Shuos make themselves indispensable, at least when they aren't devouring themselves with infighting. Shuos-zho keeps the faction together well in recent decades.

"Glass shards, a memory vampire, a teenager," Jedao lists with shrugs. Not the formal terms, and more accurately Cheris was the memory vampire stealing his memories, but it made her him... sort of. She had more of him than he did, for years. "I only just became who I am now moments before I came here."

Yes and no. It's a simplification. Truth, however, is that his voice was sore from the hours of screaming involved with the ritual, so being required to talk as soon as he arrived in order to stay warm, well, wasn't his favorite.

Sharon can't help but grin at his exaggerated stumble. She is but a simple girl who appreciates simple things.

"Oh, wow, a whole teenager?" She draws upon the well of sarcasm within her, still grinning, "I'm suitably impressed." If he's brought it up in this context, chances are good he doesn't mean it in the normal sense.

"I will admit that you're the first person I've met that's been glass shards, though, and I've met a few vampires but I don't think any of them fed on memories." She's assuming here.

"I'm not like those other adults," Jedao teases, "I remember what it was like to be a teenager like it really was yesterday." All too true and all the more impressive more than four hundred years after the fact. It's strange to be able to remember it a second time. Not that he truly got to act like a teenager, at best a step removed from a prisoner at any given time.

He shrugs and takes in the peaceful environment around them. "I don't recommend feeding on memories," Jedao says, "You relive them like they happened to you, trauma and all. That's what any of us really need isn't it? More trauma."

"That's why we have games." He winks.

"You're the 'cool' four-hundred-year-old adult," she affirms with a nod and a chuckle. It's... not untrue in her eyes either. Jedao is unusual but she likes it. He's interesting.

She stuffs her hands into her pockets and shifts her weight to her heels, rocking back, "What is it with you and games?"

"Oh yes, I was the cool uncle too," Jedao says. His tone is light, but his eyes grow sadder with the memory of how that ended. The best news for his family is his sister's disappearance. The only way out of his shadow—out of history.

He blinks it back and smirks at her question. "I'm a Shuos," he says, "My faction has always believed in teaching via games. It's more effective than lecturing, and damn is it a lot more fun. Sure plenty of people hate things being treated like a game, but they can be sore losers."

Sharon catches a flicker of emotion behind his eyes and her expression softens, though she doesn't try to press in on it despite the bubble of curiosity in her. Family is a sore spot for many people. And he's been around a long while. He's no doubt suffered more loss than your average person.

"Your faction definitely isn't wrong. Games are a lot more fun than lectures but not everything can be turned into a game." She's got a feeling he'd be capable of proving her wrong, though. "And I can't blame anyone for getting sour when they lose a game they didn't even realize they were playing."

HINT HINT. Granted, Sharon doesn't feel too sour about it. Jedao handles his wins well and he never grinds it in. There are few people she doesn't mind losing to and he might be one of them.

"Once we got locked in a room and assigned to locate and disarm a flashbomb," Jedao shares, "If we lost, everyone would know for the week or so we were affected by it. Of course, the teacher also lied and said one of us knew the location of the bomb." He grins. That's part of games too—cheating and figuring out the cheating. The unspoken rules. The unfair ones.

He shrugs at her point, still amused. "One valuable lesson where pride's all that's on the line is a small price to pay to open your eyes to how the world really works around you," Jedao says. "If they want to get mad at me for it, that's a price I'm willing to pay."

He's made people mad at him for far less.

"That sounds awful," she tells him with a laugh, unable to even imagine her own reaction in that situation. She would have been so frustrated. It's one thing to omit information, it's another to lie to her. Lies rile her even if they're done to teach her something.

At his response, she gives a thoughtful hum before she speaks again, this time curious, "Do you really think lessons like that teach people how the world really works, though? Or just how some people work?"

Jedao chuckles. It could have been awful, but it was the level of thinking and skills required to succeed as a Shuos. It was far from the worst training they went through, either physically or psychologically, but it's a neat encapsulation of both.

"Some people?" Jedao questions, "Everyone has expectations, minimally, and those expectations are rules they expect people to follow. Some people have more or less power to enforce those expectations or desired means of interaction—for anything—but whether they know the rules they're trying to enforce or follow or not, we're all following some kinds of rules. It's in everything we do."

Sharon falls silent briefly, nose wrinkled in thought. Truthfully, she's never looked at the world—or people, for that matter—like that before. It makes her brain buzz lightly at the front of her skull.

"Is it harder to figure out what people's expectations are here? We're all from different worlds and while I expect some overlap, I imagine we all operate under different rule sets."

Jedao shrugs. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It varies. In the end, people are people, but most people don't go about thinking about these things the way Jedao does. That can make it easier for him.

"It depends how cognizant you are of it and how openly people telegraph their emotional responses. Some are easy, some are hard. In some ways the similarities make it easier to bump into the differences. The more in common the more shocking the differences. Everyone has to deal with it to some degree."

July TFLN Time

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