[Open] Transmissions Echoing Away

[purplexing]

Who: Donnie (purplexing) and you..?!
What: Weathering the aftermath of Downburst events while trying to get back into some semblance of whatever accounts for normal around here
When: End of July into Mid-August
Where: Central City
Content Warnings: N/A
Notes: Will match pose pref!


i. Lost Child (Tiny Turtle 1)
It was supposed to be a couple of simple errands, a stop at the hardware store and then an automotive shop for some replacement headlights. Sure, he might've been able to scavenge those but finding purple-tinted ones is considerably more difficult when you can't turn on cars in the junkyard to check.

Donnie tucks his phone away, a corner coffee shop catching his eye. Well, maybe a stop there on the way back. He stuffs his hands into the pockets of his purple hoodie, crosses the street...

...

The first thing that hits him is the noise and the brightness. This isn't the sewers, it's not even an enclosed space. Not to mention there are humans everywhere!

It's the blare of an impatient car horn that sends the suddenly small bundle of purple and green running for the nearest cover in absolute panic. But when you're only about two feet tall, practically everything towers over you and is that much more scary.

The purple-hoodied tiny turtle cowers under a bus bench. Just breathe, just breathe. What did dad tell them to do in a situation like this?

...he has no idea.


ii. Runaway (Tiny Turtle 2)
He has decided that the world above is terrifying. While he's been somewhat surprised that not everyone seems to freak out at first sight of a small, glasses-wearing, green child, not everyone proves to be very nice!

Case in point, a couple of thuggish bullies who have apparently decided it's good sport to chase him down.

For the record, Donnie does not think this is fun! He's in tears as he does his best to get away from them, but he has tiny legs and not the greatest coordination.


iii. What Fun is Force if it Can't be a Little Deadly
For how effectively Donnie had managed to clear out the otherwise abandoned warehouse the last time he and Accelerator had made use of it, the place seems to more or less have become a default space to use for their choice of illicit activities. The tape's probably still stuck in some places from when Leo outlined the layout for their even earlier heist.

Today, it is for the purpose of testing out weapons. Donnie's been working on a few things, one being finalizing Accelerator's laser attachment for his crutch, which Donnie can't really test out in the penthouse.

And then there's his personal project he'd decided to sink some time into ever since those Arcadian guards had popped up and power neutralization was a thing: the resurrection of his beloved tech-bō, Version 2.0. This one's considerably pared down from the original model, sleeker and more subtle. True, it was hard to convince himself that he didn't need a flame thrower, or a saw, or even a third of what his fourteen-year old self had crammed into the original design, but he is pretty happy with what he's come up with.

He's even more eager to put it through the motions.


iv. Frequency - (first come, first serve)
It never fails; you're just walking along, enjoying your fancy cup of coffee when you suddenly get hit by some several hours' worth of memories that you technically hadn't even experienced yet. The sensation's jarring enough that it stops Donnie dead in his tracks.

A foiled heist gone wrong, The Foot Clan again, April dragging some unconscious kid into the Lair, aliens--!

His coffee's all over the ground now but his thoughts are still scattered between places, eyes twitchy like he's dreaming with his eyes open. It takes him a moment before he gasps, feeling like he'd just been submerged underwater.

"Uggh that was really weird and highly disturbing, let's not do that again," he groans, running a hand over his face.

Comments

[purplexing]

Mark's definitely got an attentive student! One could believe Donnie's trying to commit every bit of his explanations to memory, even if he probably doesn't understand it all.

Naturally he has to ask if Mark can show him how to take a picture. And take a picture of him. And let him take a picture of Mark....'s foot or something, look, he'll try his best, okay?

[atypical_echo]

Of course Mark's super patient with all of that, gleeful to find someone invested in this, even if it's a turtle kid.

This would have been a great way to pass time while waiting for someone to come help, but of course Mark never messaged anyone. Like a genius. But hey, he's got a picture of his foot. He smiles.

"You're really picking this up pretty quick."

[purplexing]

Donnie's definitely a fast learner. He smiles brightly at Mark, so happy to hear it. And he's eager to try again, or see what this other thing here does, and ooh, take another picture of him!

There's a flicker of sorts then, an odd sort of distortion, and hopefully it's Mark holding the camera then because in an instant the little purple-clothed turtle disappears, replaced by a very bewildered looking teenage version. No glasses, sorry.

Donnie blinks a few times. "What just happened."

[atypical_echo]

Oh holy shit, what the actual fuck? There's just this... Teen turtle. That looks a lot like that Leo guy.

"Uh..."

Mark flips through the photos on the camera's display and turns it to the guy.

"Any chance this is you? But little?"

[purplexing]

His focus still adjusting, Donnie hadn't even really noticed someone there in front of him until Mark speaks up. He nearly goes running into the bench as he tosses his arms up, stumbling in an awkward, surprised jump.

'Who' would be the next reasonable question, but he's still trying to round his thoughts up as he clings to the end of the bench, staring at Mark as though he were the one that had just suddenly appeared. The camera's display is turned towards him and Donnie slowly pries his eyes from the guy to look down at the image there.

"What the-"

Sorry, he's going to grab that camera for a closer look. That is undoubtedly him, which is weird, and the guy's question is way too on point to be a casual curiosity. Donnie's brow twitches. What is going on here? Where is here anyway, wasn't he supposed to be doing something?

"Okay, how'd you get that picture? And have you been here the whole time? -Or have I been here the whole time..?" His brain's picking up back to usual speed then, the edge coming off of the last question as he distractedly hands back the camera so he can look at his own hands as though they hold all the answers.

[atypical_echo]

Oh man, that's a number of questions.

"I took the picture, yes I've been here the whole time, and yes you have been here the whole time but apparently not now you?"

Sorry man, this was weird.

"I saw a scared kid hiding under a bench and tried to help him. But he, you I guess, were understandably 'stranger danger' about it all. I never got a chance to call this guy I know, Leo, or my friend he lives with to try and help you out."

Though he smiles as he puts the camera away.

"You were really into learning how the camera worked though."

[purplexing]

He's not sure what to think about some random guy taking photos of tiny-him, never mind that it was tiny-him who instigated it. As Mark at least explains things from his end, Donnie pulls his goggles down, looking down at himself.

"Some sort of isolated, temporal shift. A swap-out between one version of me and another, it's happened with Leo not too long ago- Wait." He looks over at Mark. "You know my brother? ...."

For a moment he continues eyeing Mark with his goggles, shoving his sleeve back to bring up his holocomputer screen with a wave of his hand over his forearm. He eventually taps the side of his goggles to bring them up again, frowning thoughtfully before he remembers that he's among People and should probably actually respond accordingly. Besides, there's probably a lot of ways this could have gone worse.

"Um. Thanks...for looking out for me. At that age I'd never been above ground before so it was probably a lot to process, especially alone." He glances at the bag that Mark had stowed the camera in, smiling faintly. "Oh, I loved learning how things worked. Still do. Er. I'm Donnie, by the way."

[atypical_echo]

"Yeah, we're in this call tree in case our friend Huvrye gets hurt, apparently," Mark laughs nervously. If this guy knows Leo, he should know Huvrye too.

Still, he stands up and he doesn't mind at all that the guy is a bit awkward. Mark's the same way sometimes.

"Mark. Nice to meet you Donnie. Glad you haven't lost that thrill of learning."

[purplexing]

"Takes a lot to get that guy down, but...fair," Donnie says, confirming that suspicion of Mark's at least. Donnie suspects this call tree was a fairly recent development. Funny how small a world this place can be.

Slowly he gets to his own feet, pulling his sleeve back down before dusting himself off. "Nice to meet you too, weird situation aside." He huffs a laugh. "I always like learning new things. How else are you going to figure out how things work or why things happen? Speaking of which, have you experienced any other strangeness lately? Since say, the big mess out in Excelsior?"

[atypical_echo]

So he does know Huvrye. Man, that was really a small world going on here.

"I'm full of weird situations," Mark promises as he finishes straightening his clothes. "But I will say a lot of people seem to start to lose their wonder as they grow up. I might have too, if it wasn't for my art."

As for strangeness, he grimaces. Yeah, he's seen it. Sephiroth has been so out of it, and then there was the dream with Jason.

"Nothing I feel comfortable talking about, but yes."

[purplexing]

"My art's more tech and science related. But I don't think there'd ever be a stopping point there. There's always ways to update and improve things, and new discoveries to be made, the potential of figuring out things in ways that others haven't."

Donnie notes the expression then, which clearly says enough. He nods. "Fair. I'm not sure what to make of it. There's...some kind of energy instability that I've been detecting around people that had been directly affected but it's been hard to separate it from other natural readings."

[atypical_echo]

"Art is whatever you're inspired to create," Mark says, brightly. So yeah, he's glad to hear that.

But the other part...

"You're probably right. I know there have been some messed up things. But there was dream sharing."

[purplexing]

"Dream sharing? That's a new one to me," the turtle admits, frowning.

"Of the instances I'm aware of, there's been a person who's experienced a sudden timeline update of sorts, which I've heard can happen during visitations to your world through whatever means the Alliance employs- in which a person syncs with their timeline including memories and whatever physical experiences they might have gone through. Only this happened spontaneously and without someone even going back. Then there's been the age swaps. And then dreams..."

He shakes his head. "There's got to be a tie in with what happened back at that big battle. I just need to nail it down."

[atypical_echo]

"You're trying to nail down distortions caused by a goddess?" Mark asks, frowning. "Sounds super difficult. Good luck on that."

Mark's opinion was to avoid powers like that.

[purplexing]

"I...don't know that it's specifically caused by the goddess," Donnie says, mirroring Mark's frown. "Her readings, or at least the traces of her readings and what I got from those monsters she was- oh wait. Wait."

His brow twitches as some realization or another comes to mind, and then he's pulling up his computer again, holowindows popping up as he starts tapping through commands and opening up files.

"Of course! I've been focused on the wrong part of it all..!" He pulls up something that looks like an overloaded EKG reading, a line of red oscillating wildly between an X and Y axis, overlaying a much steadier blue one. There's three of these instances, one with an extra line in yellow although it more or less follows the same trend as the red line.

"Looking at the traces the goddess left was like looking at some negative space- instead of any active energy signatures, there just weren't any. These fluctuations- the blue line is the closest baseline for normal that I have, and these graphs represent three different individuals. The red line is from readings I took directly after or during one of these strange occurrences. The energy isn't only inconsistent, but it's already at a much lesser level than the baseline, at points barely flickering in existence."

[atypical_echo]

Um, Mark's glad he helped? Because he didn't understand anything in that except the fact that he said some words and then Donnie said a lot of words.

"So, yay science?" he asks. Man, he really doesn't know what to do with all of this. "Uh, should you be sharing this with someone like me?"

[purplexing]

Donnie tends to get completely wrapped up in any breakthroughs and unfortunately Mark's the only one he can talk at. It's fine, Mark's reaction is about what he'd normally expect anyway, even if it is a little disappointing.

"...yes. And I think it's fair to divulge such information with you given you're also being affected by these happenings. Anyway, it doesn't really change anything."

He sweeps his computer away with a hand, digging out his phone. What time is it anyway? How long has he been out here?

"I need to keep monitoring things. Things might just continue to destabilize, which could mean our very existences here might be questionable."

[atypical_echo]

Yeah, that's... horrible to consider.

"How would you know if things are destabilizing?"

Was there even a way to track that?

[purplexing]

The turtle arches a brow at him. "Well, the frequency of all these abnormal things happening to Starfallen will be a big hint, I think. I'm not sure if it's just us though."

He doesn't have a very extensive list of contacts and even less when it comes to locals. "More things for me to look into, I guess," he murmurs under his breath. At least he sort of kind of knows one local Meta and they seem to have their fingers in a lot of things.

[atypical_echo]

"So I should let you know if I see weird things affecting metas again?" he asks. Because if he can help in some manner, he wants to. It's not normally his strength.

[purplexing]

"Yeah, that'd be helpful. You don't have to go into too much detail, but when it happens and what the general nature of the...weirdness is. I mean, I won't say not to more info, of course."

Mark strikes him as someone who'd be more willing to keep the confidentiality of affected parties though. A shame, but Donnie supposes that's understandable.

[atypical_echo]

Alright then. Mark nods and smiles. He will absolutely keep that in mind.

"Anything I can tell you I will. Good luck with the research. Oh, wait, I should get a means to contact you for that."

[purplexing]

"Thanks. -oh right, that... Yes, that would probably help."

Donnie pulls his phone out for Mark's info while he gives his number as well. "Feel free to contact me for any technical needs as well," he offers.

[atypical_echo]

Technical needs? Wait... Mark smiles.

"How good are you with photo editing software?"

[purplexing]

Photo editing software, huh. Donnie thinks.

"Pretty decent. Admittedly I haven't done too much with it since I ended up here, but at least now I have more than just my portable computer to do things on. Anyway, what did you have in mind?"