[OPEN] If there's a place you got to go, I'm the one you need to know

[peaceinchaos]

Date & Time: Over the course of a few days during some vague point of November.....
Location: The Catacombs
Characters: Everybooody (yeaaa-aaah)
Summary: Time to explore some caves. Grab your backpack! Let's go! Ivaminos!
Warnings: who even knows, really bad jokes.

The caverns were massive and expansive. They certainly weren't going to run out of places to look, which, considering this was a jaunt fueled largely by boredom, was encouraging. Down below, there were the remains of the emergency camps and makeshift dwellings the natives and transports had made during the bombing a few months earlier. Beyond that were relics of ages past, in various degrees of decomposition, including a somewhat distressing amount of CDs that seemed to be largely made up of boybands from the 1990's stacked neatly at the end of one cavern.

Clearly this called for further exploration.

(ooc: Treat this like a regular Transport/mission log.  Make a thread, hit up others, gain new cr and profit.  Backtag forever, everyone is welcome, don't forget to tag yourself.)
 

Comments

[whatsupcroc]

Collette was glad of her bat morph, one she hadn't put through too much heavy use since acquiring, for the tight maneuvering she was allowed in low light to near total darkness. She wasn't sure how she got down into the cavern she found herself clutching to the ceiling of right now, but she vaguely believed she was on track toward the areas in the catacombs that had been so promising last month.

Echolocation was a wonderful read on the room, feeding her more information than she ever thought one single mind could interpret until the first time she'd gone bat -- and later, dolphin. She lets out a serious of rapid clicks, listening for the feedback after believing she heard someone enter the area.

Down there. The image her mind fed back of was of something moving, reading back in her mind's eye as something human formed. One of her fellow adventurers? Collette sure hoped so as she tentatively called out in Thought Speak, pitching her mental tone as friendly as she could.

< Hello? Is someone out there? >

[iorhael]

The voice seemed to come from his head, so similar to that night a short time ago in Lothlorien that for a moment, the hobbit wondered if it was the Lady Galadriel once again.

Frodo had frozen in place, though he had luckily managed to find a decent foot hold before he slipped in sheer surprise. Climbing is a tough business as it was, and doubly so when one is a hobbit. Heights were not something many cared for, and although Frodo had climbed the odd tree back home (strange enough, already), there was no small difference between a small tree and this cave. Frodo leaned forward into the rock face for balance.

"...yes, someone is out here," Frodo had hesitated, voice muffled by the wall. "Who are you?"

[whatsupcroc]

She had to concentrate to hear what he said, clinging as she did to the rock. < I'm Collette, > sounds like a good introduction. < I'm a transport. I'm also a bat right now, so I wouldn't suggest trying to look around and find me. I'm pretty small. >

Releasing a few more clicks to get an update on her read of the room, Collette shifted and readjusted her grip. < I didn't mean to startle you! Did you come down here with Wanda, too? Or are you from Exsilium itself? >

[iorhael]

He would never get used to it, he decided, people speaking to him in his head. It certainly wasn't the time now to try. Frodo looked down at the ground, wondering whether he ought to try climbing down further, get his feet properly planted, or remain where he was. Both looked uncertain, and this was in no small part to that most would find doing so difficult as it was on such a wall, and certainly while trying to hold a conversation.

"It is nice to meet you, Colette," Frodo said. The hobbit had only begun to adjust to speaking this way with another, and wasn't at all sure what to do with the fact that if Colette was telling the truth, he was speaking with a bat. He caught himself as he started to look around for it a moment too late for her warning.

"It's quite all right," he continued. He adjusted his own grip on the rock. The edges dug into his palms. Yes, she had startled him, but he hadn't fallen off, so he would have to be content with that. "I'm afraid I don't know anyone named Wanda. I am not from Exsilium, I am from the Shire."

[whatsupcroc]

What a coincidence, in her mind, to have had him come down into these caverns on the day Wanda was leading her own expedition. Fortunate timing for them to cross pathways, even while she realizes she may in fact be making his life harder right now.

< From the Shire? I'd love to hear about a place like that. I'm not from Exsilium either. >

She cocked her head to the side, clicking to get a feel for the room again. It was like updating a map of the area in her mind. He hadn't shifted too much in it yet. < I'm sorry, I should let you finish climbing and stop startling you like this! >

[iorhael]

And he would not mind speaking of it at some length, if only to remind himself what lay behind him. The journey had seemed - at least when he had started out - more bearable knowing it was there, safe and sound.

"Yes," said Frodo quickly. His fingers, cramped as they were, had started to slip. Frodo grabbed the rock face once more. He would not mind hearing where the bat had come from, if only to hear why the Initiative thought it utterly important to bring a bat. Though they had brought him instead of someone like Boromir or Aragorn; who knew how they chose them, if not by chance and accident? "You are no bother but I would not mind feeling solid ground under my feet, thank you."

Now that he had the space to do so, in a manner of speaking, Frodo made his way as quickly down as he could. It was no easy matter. Frodo focused more on taking it inch by inch, wanting both to close his eyes at the same time or to look down, to see how far left he had to go. Better he did neither! He took a breath, and inched down the wall.

At long last, and to his immense relief, Frodo's feet touched solid ground.

[whatsupcroc]

Patience she's learned from a lifetime of necessity keeps her waiting and using the bat's senses to track her friend's progress. When he's on solid ground, she lets go of the wall, wings beating frantically as she circles down at a respectable distance. It wouldn't do to invite harm on either of them unnecessarily.

< Would you prefer me to talk out loud? If you want to talk at all. Exploring is pretty fun, so I understand wanting to get right back to it now that you've conquered the wall. >

Her mental tone is colored by curiosity and an underlying desire for companionship, as always. Her desire to know what she could of others often colored her perceptions of them and their wants. She'd learned to be a better questioner from the start, though she had perhaps not learned enough to prevent herself from startling new companions when they were in precarious positions.

[iorhael]

He did feel like he conquered the wall. It was too bad he would have to reconquer it to get back out. The wall, it seemed, would have the last laugh.

"Oh, please do," Frodo grasped onto that, though he rather wished she had both asked whether he needed time or space to get down the wall, then this question, at a better moment. Things must not seem nearly so trying when you had wings and space to use them. He added after a moment, not to see nearly so rude. "I wouldn't mind talking to you at all, but I can't say I'm all that used to holding conversations silently."

This might be much to ask, but he did want to know. "Is there any way you could come closer into the light?"

[whatsupcroc]

< Ah, sure! Try not to step on me. Bonzai! >

Collette circled down lower still, coming to an awkward landing close to Frodo. Bats aren't meant to walk at the best of times. This bat, smaller than an adult human's hand in length, walked forward and sat primply on the dirt floor of the cavern.

< Hello! Um, okay, try not to totally freak out or anything, but to talk to you normally I'm going to have to change back to a girl. You're seriously not going to want to watch that, but if you do, this is my warning that I warned you not to look! >

She had yet to grasp a way to actively dissuade others from observing her through a morph, though a handful had been wise enough to heed her words. Mystique, primarily, and Vanadi after the first time. Picturing herself in her mind, Collette felt herself starting to grow, the first change this time being size. The bat's face starts subtly shifting back to human, then grossly exaggerates -- the nose moving down her face and trning from brown to her usual skin tone even as the ears rounded and gained more human definition.

The thin membranes of her wings pulled in along her still too long arms, leaving them bare, frighteningly long fingers. Fur recedes, leaving her with pink skin that darkens to her own shade as her patched-together leotard emerges. Hair pushes out from the top and back of her skull as her eyes shift position, more forward facing and turning into her natural shade of brown.

Her legs jut out with claws slowly resolving into toes, splitting a fifth out at the corner as Collette ends up falling on her side. A beat later her arms are proportionate, fingers pulling back as she loses the last vestiges of a bat and is left as an entirely human girl.

Collette pushed herself up off the ground, taking care to arrange herself and make it seem she was sitting out of voluntary choice. It's one way to show she's paying attention. "All done," she announces softly, her lips curling up at the corners into an uncertain smile.

[iorhael]

She might as well have told him that he should watch it. Even the most dull, decidedly un-curious hobbit would find it hard to turn away. And so Frodo watched.

What happened was utterly terrible. It was as if a bat and a lass had merged, or one trying to shrink into the other while the other kept trying to disgorge itself. Features moved and shifted, sliding this way and that, and limbs came jutting out at queer angles that looked as if they were broken.

At last the bat vanished and in its place sat one of the Big Folk. By the end of it, Frodo looked rather green. He swallowed. When Bilbo spoke of Beorn, changing skins as if it were as easy as changing waistcoats, he said nothing of it looking so terrible... or terribly painful.

"...I. Well. That is... Yes. Well," Frodo found he didn't know what to say. She looked perfectly normal, but it was quite hard to look at her normal, clean face and not see those features shifting. "Are you a skin-changer? I had thought they might only turn into bears or wolves or some such."

[whatsupcroc]

"Skin-changer?" Collette brushed her palms against each other, trying to shed the dirt that clung to them. "That's like a shape-shifter, isn't it? I kind of am, and I'm kind of not. I can morph -- change, that is -- into all sorts of animals once I've come into contact with them as myself."

Aware on some level she's not being as helpful as another could wish, Collette smiled and tried not to look sheepish. "I don't have a bear, but I do have a coyote. It's smaller than a wolf." It's not the only thing she has, either, in addition to the bat Frodo has witnessed by proximity and the horrible process of demorphing from the one to herself, the girl.

"Told you it was gross," she added, laughing in a short, abbreviated way.

[iorhael]

"I suppose they must be similar things, if not the same."

Though this hardly sounded the same to him the more she spoke of it. Frodo looked at her in wonder. All sorts of animals and, "And all you have to do is touch them? Could you turn into another person?"

The hobbit had the good graces to look sheepish. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to be rude about it, but it's somewhat distressing to watch. When the stories spoke of a skin-changer, it made it seem as easy as changing one's coat."

[whatsupcroc]

"I swear this would be so much nicer if it was!" Collette guessed that skin-changers might exist as he spoke of them in his own home. Now or in the past.

She settles her hands on the ground, feeling the cool dirt and the chill of the cavern as a whole settling around her shoulders. "I could," she said, nonchalant. "If I ever acquired someone, then yeah, I could turn into another person."

It was an unwritten rule to avoid doing so, though there were times that might necessitate the duplication. She had yet to walk the world as someone else, human or human-like. Collette was almost afraid she'd find it too familiar to want to change back in the time she needed in order to not change forever.

"Want to try it out?" she teased, holding one hand out to Frodo. She winked, figuring the motion was lost in the shadows.

[iorhael]

"Does it hurt? When you change, I mean," Frodo had to wonder. It had looked very painful, but she acted as if she hadn't felt as awful as it had looked. He hoped she hadn't.

He hadn't thought a skin-changer could change into more than one skin, though as he was finding out, he knew very little at all about the world outside, and of skin-changers, the least of all.

Frodo considered the out-stretched hand. "I am curious, but I have friends who I expect would not like the idea of two of me running around."

[whatsupcroc]

She laughed at his estimate of what his friends would appreciate, letting her hand fall back down. She used it as support as she leaned back again. nodding her head. "Makes sense. I don't think most our friends could wrap their heads around the idea of there being doubles of any of us, all of a sudden!"

"Changing doesn't hurt. I keep thinking maybe it will, but it never does. You feel the changes and all this pressure, but it's not painful. Really weird, but not painful."

She wondered if she'd be so gung ho to use morphs to handle Exsilium if the process were as excruciating as some stories portrayed shape-shifting to be. Probably, she admitted to herself. It's not like pain's a new thing to handle.