firstofitskind | MHA #6 to the Beach Near Chimera Court, Wednesday Morning

MHA #6 to the Beach Near Chimera Court, Wednesday Morning

Liam's day had started when he got out of bed and tripped over a valise labelled 'Destiny' and nearly faceplanted into a steamer trunk labelled 'Survivor's Guilt'.

It really didn't take him long to figure out what was going on. Once again, Fandom had taken a metaphor and gone the distressingly literal route, it seemed. And sure, most people would've taken this as a hint to stay hidden inside their apartments, but most people didn't live with a colony of pathologically religious mice who remembered everything. His trauma was already manifesting in literal form here, he didn't need the creation of a religious ritual to mark the occasion as well.

So, out for a run it was, and then stopping to sit for a while at his favorite spot near his old place and ~~sulk~~ ~~brood~~ just be alone with his thoughts for a while. Well, alone with his thoughts and his damned emotional baggage.

[ooc: expecting one but could also be open if you want to catch him beforehand!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"You literally know everything your parents knew?" Annie asked, eyes going wide. "Like... everything?"

Because that sounded pretty handy, but it wasn't like she wanted to know everything her parents knew.

"As a baby?" she had to add.

“Everything,” Liam nodded. “And- yes and no? I sort of... skipped over most of the childhood thing.”

Annie interpreted that to mean that his childhood had been like Diego's, or like how Rey's had sounded hard, and he'd had to grow up fast. "There's a lot of that going on around here," she said lightly.

She -- obviously -- had no idea.

Liam’s smile was wry.

“It’s pretty literal, in my case. I was conceived and born in nine hours.” Which, hey, Diego could still relate to that part, at least. “My ‘childhood’ was even shorter.”

Annie was staring at him in obvious curiosity, though she was trying not to be rude about it. "Can I ask how old you are now?" she wondered. "'Cause like, I figured...thirtyish?"

And now she was thinking it was probably a much smaller number than that.

“Not quite,” another brief flicker of a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Try... eight.”

And if he looked like he was bracing himself for a bad reaction, well. Even though no one in Fandom had freaked out on him yet regarding that particular tidbit, it was still the more common response.

And since Annie could tell that this was clearly something of...not exactly a sore spot, but a sensitive issue, she tried to keep her surprise off her face as much as she could. (Annie had almost no ability to actually school her face, like, ever, but she tried!)

"You're very tall for eight," she commented lightly after a moment, offering a tiny smile.

There was absolutely a piece of luggage relating to that very issue hanging around here somewhere.

So, yeah, he noticed her reaction. And appreciated that she tried, at least, to rein it in.

“I’d be surprised if you found any taller,” he said, tension in the way he held himself loosening just a bit. “Well. Anyone human, anyway.”

"I was going to say," Annie said lightly. "I think you might have a slight advantage or three over the average human third-grader. But -- wow, Liam. I'm so sorry you missed out on a childhood."

Because that was the first thing that occurred to her, honestly -- her own childhood had had its issues (her mother had told her sugar would make her ugly, after all!) but she couldn't even fathom what it would have been like to just skip it. Even Diego and his siblings had been children, even if Sir Reginald had done everything he could to keep them from acting like it.

Edited 2021-02-11 23:35 (UTC)

Liam just stared at her for a second. Because... other than Verity, who’d made a point of making sure Liam got to experience the kind of things he missed out on having never been a kid, no one had ever actually acknowledged it like that?

“I- thanks? I mean-” Which meant he didn’t quite know what to do with that, yeah. “It’s. It is what it is, right?”

Annie shrugged a shoulder, because she could tell that that had sort of thrown him for a loop, yeah. "Maybe the island'll give you a redo." Because she did remember that he had been an adult when she'd been four, yeah, and that didn't seem super fair. "So are you still like...rapidly aging? Or did it kind of stop after a point?"

Because it made her sad to think that Liam might be, like, eighty by the time she hit her twenty-fifth birthday, or something.

"Oh, it has," Liam assured her. "Not this last time around, but I've been little for a couple weekends. And a teenager, which was," he made a face, "interesting."

"And no, I'm not still aging. It stopped once I hit this point." He gestured at himself. And if the glimpse of 'twenty years from now' Fandom had provided that one time was anything to go by, he'd look like this for, well. A while.

Which -- that was its own set of worries, because immortality had always seemed so daunting and tragic to Annie, but she wasn't going to broach that.

"I mean, I was a teenager normally, and then I was a teenager due to this place, and neither time has been especially pleasant so you've got my sympathies there," Annie offered. And under normal circumstances, she might also have offered the example of Five, but right now any and all Hargreeves talk made her just lie-down-in-the-sand sad. "So -- okay, so you're like, forever this age, and you're eight, and you've got this memory thing -- which, honestly, seems like a lot to deal with -- did you actually get any perks with the whole deal?"

Because right now, Annie was thinking that this was kind of a lousy power set. Like, not that she'd say as much to Liam, but immortality plus unwanted memories plus skipping the joy of being a kid didn't exactly sound like a great gig.

He could still die! Had, in fact, though he’d gotten better. But all signs pointed to him being long-lived enough (in corporeal form anyway) that, yeah, compared to your average human? Functionally immortal.

“Well,” he said slowly. “I suppose that depends how you define ‘perks’. The Kimera were energy-based, so I’m not always- entirely corporeal? And I have this,” he held out one hand, palm up so Annie could see the reddish, triangular mark there. After a moment, a pinkish-purple swirl of light and energy appeared.

Annie let out a little gasp of surprise, though it transformed into pleased surprise pretty quickly. "We're glowing buddies," she said with a smile, slanting a look over at him. "And you've been holding out!"

She was teasing, yes, but seriously -- how many people on this island secretly glowed? "What's it do?"

It didn't look like what she could do, so she figured it was probably a little different.

Liam couldn’t help a pleased little smile of his own in response, because that sort of reaction was... still pretty novel to him.

“It’s called shaqarava, in the Kimera language,” he told her. “It, uh. Can be used as a weapon. Or to heal.”

"Those are fairly opposite things," Annie noted a little wryly. "So -- can you blast things with it, like what I do? Kinda jealous on the healing."

Annie's powers were pure offense; she'd always kind of wished she had something more useful for healing than the ability to cauterize a gaping wound.

Liam nodded. “It’s all energy, just focused in different ways. But yes, I can blast things, or use it as a sort of... shield to deflect things being blasted at me.” He could also use it to share his emotions and energy with others, but that was a little personal. And then there was that whole ‘ability to reshape flesh’ thing, which he would not be getting in to ~~unless it was ever convenient to work it into a plot.~~

"So like you can deflect things, or use it offensively," Annie followed, "but how's the...healing work? Or is that just, like, what you mean when you say it's all energy?"

Because it didn't make sense to her that the same energy could hurt someone and then turn right around and make them feel better, but she also was working from the reference point of her own powers.

Liam nodded. "The shaqarava is the focus," he said. He closed his palm into a fist, letting the light dissipate. "It's hard to explain, beyond the fact that it's just a matter of intent determining how I use my core energy." A lot of what he'd figured out how to do had been instinctive reactions rather than any sort of deliberate experimentation.

"No, I actually kind of get that," Annie said slowly. "I know a few people whose powers have a lot to do with their intention when they use them -- like, me, I just can dial it up or down, basically, but I have friends who have to, um, focus more. That makes sense. But man, Liam, that is very handy."

Like, good perk. Annie approved.

Which was nice, honestly. That approval. Hence the shy grin that broke across his face as she spoke.

"You think so?"

Three and a half years in Fandom and he still wasn't quite used to the non-freakout reaction.

"Of course I think so!" How could that even be a question? "Liam, that is so cool. And versatile! Like, I wish I could heal people -- the most I can do is cauterize a wound if I have to -- but, like, that's amazing. And honestly, it's nice to know there's another glowy person on the island."

She kind of wondered if he also knew about Stark. It hadn't exactly seemed like a secret -- the man walked around with a big metal mask covering half his face, like, obviously something was up -- but it still wasn't her thing to tell, if he didn't.

"'Another glowy person', huh?" he echoed. "You make it sound like we should start a club or something." He did, in fact, know about Stark, for the record!

"I have one friend back home who can sort of glow a little like me, but it's still pretty different," Annie offered, "and there's a really famous hero whose eyes light up -- though his are lasers, mine just glow and that's it -- but yeah, I don't actually know too many other glowing people. Are there enough of us to start a club? I know one other."

See, that was discreet. Your secret was safe, Stark!

MHA #6 to the Beach Near Chimera Court, Wednesday Morning

Re: NFB, please!

Re: NFB, please!

Re: NFB, please!

Re: NFB, please!

Re: NFB, please!

Re: NFB, please!

Re: NFB, please!

Re: NFB, please!

Re: NFB, please!

Re: NFB, please!

Re: NFB, please!

Re: NFB, please!

Re: NFB, please!

Re: NFB, please!

Re: NFB, please!

Re: NFB, please!

Re: NFB, please!

Re: NFB, please!

Re: NFB, please!

Re: NFB, please!

Re: NFB, please!

Re: NFB, please!

Re: NFB, please!

Re: NFB, please!

Re: NFB, please!

Re: NFB, please!

Re: NFB, please!

Re: NFB, please!

Re: NFB, please!

Re: NFB, please!