"Ah, hello, there. You've found the telephone of-- ahhh! Oh no! Magic technology! Is it going to eat me?! Why is there a tiny man in this box?! Aah-- did I get you? I got you, didn't I. You've found Owen, leave me a message after the--"

Beep.

Shadowmark.

Well, clearly the island wanted him to see more of Bastion. You couldn't get much further from - or much bigger than - Ponteix if you tried.

In some ways Owen liked the anonymity of the relative crowds of this city. Sure, it felt like all of those bloody statues kept following you with their big stone eyes, and yes, he'd had to sleep huddled up in a pile of blankets in a crowded shelter last night, but at least there were shelters! And blankets!

Better than Ponteix, at any rate. Not better than his cosy single room with his nice bed back home, but beggars couldn't be choosers, and Owen certainly felt like a beggar right now.

Since Fandom seemed in no rush to bring him back, he left the shelter early in the morning and roamed the city. There were-- well, there weren't always odd jobs for roaming Cyphers, or he wouldn't have had to do as much stealing as he'd done, back in Ponteix. But in a city like this? Surely there had to be a message that had to be sent, or, or a Freelancer who needed a hand-- oh, who was he kidding. What Freelancer wanted a runaway Cypher on their team?

"Owen? Is that you?"

He swung around abruptly. That voice!

... and those big brown eyes!

"Well," he said weakly, attempting to find his bravado again as quickly as possible. "Fancy seeing you here!"

The Freelancer-in-training-- Becca. Her name had been Becca. Becca looked at him, pole-axed. "What are you doing here?" she asked.

Distances weren't the same on Bastion as they were on Earth. When your only mode of transportation - bar a Freelancer's armor - were big, hulking metal vehicles, you didn't generally travel this far out. He knew that. He coughed.

"You caught me," he said, "I'm... stalking you."

"Stalking me," Becca echoed, dubious.

He laughed. It had an edge to it, but so did much of everything about him since Nina had dumped him via text. "Hitched a few rides on a few Striders, figured I'd see where I wound up," he said. "What are you doing here?"

"Had a training mission," Becca said, gesturing. "Then Haluk-- my mentor-- he just... sent me off to explore the city. So here I am. Exploring the city."

"Fancy that. So was I," Owen said, perkily, and not at all desperately thinking please stay for a while longer please stay. "Want to explore a bit together?"

It took them fifteen minutes to find the Freelancer job board. It took them seventeen minutes to come up with a really terrible idea.

He'd missed Becca. A lot.

[[ establishy ]]

Owen still hadn't quite gotten into the habit of checking his phone all the time. He could have easily missed the message Nina had left him before he listened to radio, and most days, he probably would have.

But this morning he'd knocked it off his nightstand as he was getting up. He groped groggily for the device and squinted at the screen.

Hey, Owen! Um, like, I know I should probably tell you this in person, it read, before the message devolved into a bunch of periods he knew meant 'more message beyond this point', but even that phrase, well-- had there ever been a time in history anyone had used that phrase and it'd been a good thing?

He unlocked his phone.

He read the whole thing.

He sank down next to his bed slowly, until his butt hit the floor and drew a quick "umph" from him.

(Had he been too emotional around her? Maybe he should've been cheerier. This wouldn't have happened if he'd been cheerier. If he'd been better. If he'd been--)

I just don't think we're suited

(What did that even mean? She said it wasn't about the date, but that couldn't be true. He'd screwed up. He always screwed up. He was always--

less important screwing up)

He sat there for a while, until his head was empty of spiraling thoughts and the only thing rattling in there was the flight pattern of a sparrow, roaming around just outside his window.

At least he was already alone in his room anyway.

[[ door closed, post open ]]

Owen had woken up sometime early this morning to a flurry of new inputs worse than preceding weeks, by far. It had taken him a while to settle into it, to process them, even if they made no sense at all. Then he'd fallen asleep. Again.

He woke up again at 7 AM sharp and his senses were blaring again. Whatever he was picking up on, it just wasn't making any sense, besides being bad and wrong and all the other lovely extras of these past weeks.

"Why does it feel like there's a Cataclysm rattling around my head?" he muttered, sitting up, rubbing at the short stubble of his hair.

Bloody hell, some weeks, he thought he should probably be putting in a bit more effort to leave this place.

[[ open ]]

Owen hadn't moved from the floor of his room since Thursday. Not that Thursday mattered. Not that Owen mattered.

Scales ran down his body, his eyes a matted black-and-silver. His knees were knobbly and gnarled and tipped with sharp edges but he didn't notice - they were folded under him, keeping him seated. Did the claws on his feet bite into his legs, the sharp tips of his nails dig into the flesh of his arm? Maybe.

It didn't matter. It was all just input.

It was 17 degrees celsius. 17.5. A breeze across the east. A flower, dying. The poison, beautiful and sharp, crept through a hundred flows, ground water, lakes, the ocean, the onsen... A bird flew across the principal's tower while the poison burned, bearing N90W, no, 93W. A patch of grass straining against the wind. People, moving, shuffling, flying, maiming-- was that a person? Was it a deer? He was sixteen. A frog rotted in the park. 17.6 degrees celsius. North-by-northwest. A flower, dying. The poison flowed. 17.4 degrees celsius. A bird--

[[ open ]]