We are our Avatars

[JetSet]

"Yeah, I can do that Emma. There are books over by the fire place , and I made sure there is a lot of fire wood if you want to light it. Everything is open to you, so take what you need." Jack said, taking Sab's skull by the back of the head and holding it up, like it was a goblet. "Come on Sab, let's get you mobile." He said and walked out, casting one more glance back at Emma before taking the skull out of the room.

"You alright Sab? You were really getting heated there." Jack said as he took the skull up the stairs, into the endless hall. His free hand kept messing with the threads till he reached for the door, when he noticed them and forced them to vanish before moving into the hall with the skull.

[Sabwones]

Mildly grateful that he hadn't been hooked by his empty socket like a bowling ball, Sab only let out a mild yelp when Jack picked him up and carried him away, further into this seemingly infinite building. When Jack mentioned his outburst, he flinched slightly.

"I'll live. Figuratively speaking." He sighed, then continued, "I'm sorry about that back there. Something just...touched a nerve, or something. Bloody hell, these metaphors do fall apart when you're dead, don't they?"

He barked a short, lifeless laugh.

"Yeah. I dunno. Something about that girl, mate. Not her, like, personally, but I got this gut feeling -fucking hell can I leave these body metaphors alone- feeling that something happened to her, but I couldn't figure out what, and with no body...I just feel fucking hopeless, to be honest. You never appreciate some things until they're gone, but it's one thing if it's something you can get back. Innocence? Once that's gone, it's gone for good."

He watched as Jack's fingers wove the ethereal threads, hungry for another subject.

"So. Magic, eh? Are ye a wizard, 'arry?"

[JetSet]

Jack had trouble keeping himself from snickering from the skull bad use of metaphor. "You're fine, I still understand what you mean." He said and waved his hand, before grabbing a railing, going up the first of many sets of stairs. When he talked about losing innocence, Jack winced a little. He knew enough about that to keep from commenting on it.

"Not exactly. I never had the magical aptitude for being a real mage. I was more the hack and slash guy." He chuckled, miming a sword in his hand. "Though I found out I was pretty adept at magic of the soul. Those threads were bits of mine." He said and sighed. "I have a bad of habit to mess with it when I get nervous or deep into thought."

[Sabwones]

"I'm pretty sure you'll go blind if you keep playing with yourself like that," Sab chuckled, "but that's interesting. I'm still not full whack on where I came from, but I don't remember any sort of magic being...well...something you talked about. Never heard of magic of the soul, neither. Not outside the peeled skulls and heart-in-a-jar shop, anyway."

They continued on for a few paces in quiet contemplation. Sab occasionally remembering to hive his distant body a shake, but as of yet, no audible response was forthcoming. The possibility that his body hadn't made it here was starting to worry him quite a bit. He'd hate to be relegated to someone's hood ornament or wise-cracking perch for a crow.

"So. I. Um. Do remember something. I remember dying." He paused, gave the rattle another go. Nada. Bugger. "Um. Yes, so I'm starting to get the impression that I might've been some sort of...law man or something. There's a shallow grave and a badge and...well...I'm fairly sure I was alive when they stuck me in there. Couldn't move though, so perhaps they thought I was. Who knows. I wasn't really in any state to start asking questions. But anyway, I got buried. Then, I can only assume, some weird mumbo-jumbo brought me back. How, when, why, I'm still figuring that out, but I'm pretty sure of one thing. I didn't have this eye when I went in the dirt."

Another disembodied rattle.

click-clack

"Hold on."

clickedy-clack

"Did'ya hear that?"

[JetSet]

"Least I have something to play with still." Jack smirked, snarking right back to him. "It's a pretty specific subset that I'm good at really. I can work with my own soul to do nearly anything from make clothing, to weapons to...well anything I can think of." He explained.

"Ugh...Death is no fun. I remember doing that a few times...but I think the reaper had a crush on me or something because they always let me go with the promise of a few favors." He chuckled, then went silent when Sab spoke up. "Yeah I did. Sounds like it came from down the hall..." He mumbled, walking farther down the hall, towards the noise.

[Sabwones]

"A crush?" Sab sounded genuinely tickled by the notion. "I do hope she wasn't in any condition similar to mine, otherwise that would've ended in tragedy. Forget throwing a hotdog down a hallway, it'd be like lobbing a chipolata into a mausoleum."

He thought for a moment, then added, "Sorry, mate. I'm sure she's lovely. For a physical embodiment of death, anyway."

Less chat, more finding yer body. Come on, you idiot.

It was a peculiar feeling, a sudden sense of space around a body he couldn't see, but his last attempt at motion had at the very least moved his body to somewhere less confined. His hands grasped at empty air, feet, hard and lifeless yet somehow capable of feeling...carpet? Either that or moss,  underfoot.

"Wherever I am, it's got a floor..." He fell silent, focusing all his mind onto his blind groupings in the dark. "Walls. Painted...not paper. Bed, I think. Pillows..." a distant crash of ceramic caused him to jerk for a second, "...table lamp. Sorry." He tuned out again. He could hear the motion now, but the strange acoustics of the hallway were making it hard to figure out precisely where from.

Come on. It's a bedroom. That means there's a door. With luck, it'll open out into the hallway.

"Right. I'll see if I can find the door. Hmm. Bed again. Wall. There's a corner. Following it along th- AGH! Sodding coffee table. Okay, almost...there you are you little..."

A click came a few doors down from them. The door swung inwards, a little light spilling from within, then a tall figure stumbled out.

The undead have always been considered to be a formal sort. Even in death, there's a little dignity.

The faded denim shorts and black tank-top bearing the crudely stencilled legend "The Bone Zone" with an arrow pointing downwards didn't get anywhere close. The lime green-framed sunglasses hanging from the scooped neckline and the badge clasped in one hand were interesting additions, but hardly championed the 'child of the night' vibe he'd been expecting.

"...was I on holiday?"

[JetSet]

Spoiler: show

Yaaaaaaay midterms.

"Considering my life as of before I came here, I'm pretty sure that tragedy is one way to put it." He chuckled then blinked when Sab took a verbal back step. "All I'm going to say is before they became the embodiment of death, they were a pretty good looking girl, and tends to keep that look."

Of course, the skeleton walking out of the room, wearing something he would expect from a prank didn't seem to help the flow of conversation. "Wow...I don't think I have the sarcasm needed to make this any funnier. Emma is going to die laughing from this when she sees."

[Sabwones]

Spoiler: show

Oh dude. That sucks. Y'all right now?

"I hope not," Sab muttered, "last thing we need are two corpses knocking around the place." He clicked his incorporeal tongue. "Oi! Stumpy! Over here! You dropped something."

At least with his body in sight, he found it easier to manouvre his headless body down the hall towards them. With deliberate care, but still managing to stick a thumb in his own eye socket, he raised his skull to the top of the exposed vertebrae peeking out from his shoulder blades, settled it on top, then with a sharp twist and an audible 'crack', snapped it into place.

Sensations, previously only relayed by a bad fax machine, swam back into focus. Giving his limbs an experimental flex, making sure he hadn't put his head on backwards, he flexed his shoulders, rolled his jaw and gave a little chuckle. "One careless owner. I need to go to the gym more often."

He paused, feeling something shift down the back of his shorts. Reaching around, his hand closed around something heavy and metallic. Pulling it out, he revealed an old-fashioned revolver, blackened steel and dark wood grip. "And maybe the firing range." He added.

[JetSet]

Spoiler: show

Bit frazzled and panicky, but alright aside from that. One more presentation. Seems I went a little...well, Gm'y, not to mention lengthy, here. Sorry about that! Sab, feel free to say the clothing is whatever our skinny friend would be most comfortable in.

Watching the skeleton move to the body and try and re-attach his head was something to chuckle about, a sight that Jack could never take seriously. When he was back in control, Jack nodded and gave him a smile. "Hm....Looks like a good fit, but that outfit makes me want to throw you into a trash can. Let's see if I can whip you up something better..." He mumbled and closed his eyes, trying to concentrate for a moment. A breath shuttered out of his mouth, and something about the man changed. His aura, presence, or whatever you would call it, shifted as he let the breath go. When he opened his eyes, it was a physical change as well. "Let's hope I'm not as rusty as I think I am."

The sclera of his eyes glowed with an unnatural, almost ghostly azure like someone had taken a gem, rounded it, and fit it with a single ring of chocolate brown and point of obsidian. The blue showed him more than the eye could see normally, looking into the soul of the land. He made a point of looking up, never letting his eyes stray below looking straight ahead of him. One clawed hand reached out, snagging something as if he was grabbing a length of string from Sab's shirt. A pulling Sab would feel with his whole being, something attached to the core of his existence being pulled.

Then it would become visible, strands of thread, connected back to Sab from where Jack hooked his finger. The light from it was beautiful, giving an illusion of color where there was none, much like a polar bear's fur.

Jack moved his hands, relearning a tool he had once used for a living, the metal claw like thimbles on his fingers allowing him to pull threads from the whole like they had always been different parts.  Pulling them around each other, making patches, lengths, weaves, and stitches, Jack worked. After a time, he looked from his work to the thread and held his arm far from his body, fingers of his fist towards Sab, as a blade formed from the back of his gauntlet.

Glowing with dull brown energy, a pattern formed, a spike down the gauntlet connected to the first blade, like the silhouette of helmet connecting to spiral, which spread to a broken crescent moon, hollowed in the center of the blade. From the moment the blade formed, it felt...wrong. Like disease given form, the blade resonated a desire, to infect, to spread, to cause suffering, pain, and agony.

And then it was gone, replaced by another blade. This one glowing with dull gray energy, a T-shaped cross, formed with the center over Jack's fist, the wings spread out like cross guards, and the tail down to a point past his fist, the blades growing into curved diamond shapes at the end, flanked by a smaller cross, similar to a boar spear. Two smaller prongs came from the cross guard, looking almost as if they were there to catch, and break weapons caught in them. Unlike the death radiated by the last blade, this one felt almost like it was a grounding force. Something based in reality, in science, to stand against myths and monsters.

Jack raised the blade, swinging it down against the length of thread, one side retreating to Sab's body, the other snapping to his weave, causing the entire thing to shutter and spasm as his blade vanished, and eyes returned to normal. While jack stood and blinked a few times, a new outfit fell from midair, into his hands, before he slumped against the wall of the hall, looking like he had just run a marathon. "Holy," He started, taking a moment to fill his lungs with air, "hell. That was... a lot harder than it normally is." He almost wheezed, holding the clothing he had made for Sab.

[Sabwones]

Sab stood very still. If his mouth had been capable of producing saliva, it would've been a dry and coarse as sandpaper. He felt like his guts had been uncoiled and run through a mangle, wound around his neck and used as a cord to whip his suddenly brittle, china-like body around and around in an endless black void.

It wasn't nice.

Slowly, reluctantly, he fell into himself again, his sense of being returning like a cat who knew you'd been worrying and was curious if you'd bought better food since last time. As the oddly cold sense of animation returned to his worn old bones, Sab took in the scene. Jack was resting against a wall, beads of sweat running over his flushed face, spent from the exertion of whatever in the blue hell had just happened.

In Jack's arms, he now noticed, hung a pair of pale grey suit trousers, a jacket of the same hue and, somewhat frustratingly, an identical pair of green-framed sunglasses.

Taking them with pronounced care, he looked Jack in the eye and said in a level tone, "I'm sure you did that because you thought you were doing me a favour" he leant closer and his voice took on a glacial edge, "but if you ever do that to me again, I'm parking a bullet in your brain stem."

He stood, clothes slung over one arm, resting a pair of sunglasses impossibly on his face without the aid of ears or nose. "Now come on, the lass is probably wondering where we went."

Sab took off down the hallway at a brisk pace, descended to the bar and upon sighting Emma, tossed the spare pair of sunglasses her way.

"Here, got you a souveneir."

[Nayt]

To Emma's credit, she hadn't wandered away anywhere while the two were gone. She could've. Was tempted to, even. But she hadn't. She told herself it was because she drank too much and that she didn't want to painfully crash into something. If it had been fear of getting lost or of unfriendly things creeping around these halls, she wouldn't have admitted it. Not to herself, and especially not to anyone else.

Introspection held her, though. Once she'd stumbled her way into the lounge and sunk into a way-too-big chair by a warm fireplace, she let her mind wander to all those places she wished to avoid. These scars were new, but not fresh. The stitches in her gums had yet to dissolve, so the teeth must've been removed recently. But the scars were starting to heal nicely. They were scabbed over and itched terribly (something numbed by the liquor, fortunately) both on the inside and outside of her cheek. She was going to have to rebandage that side of her face, though. It was going to become infected if she didn't.

Five tallies. Cleanly cut. Small near the corner of her lips, and growing larger with each tally mark up her cheek. Cut through the face, pierced into her gums, clawed through flesh and teeth and bone and left that whole side of her in ruins.

Who did this to me? Her heart ached at the question. She wanted to curl in on herself, desperate to warm that choking, desolate nothing deep in the pit of her soul. Her breath skipped and she sucked in a sob. Emma's eyes burned in that moment, a swell of despair wringing her heart like a filthy, mildewed rag. But she choked it back. Held her breath. Counted to ten. Twenty. Thirty. Thought about other things.

This place. The two people here. A skeleton and a strange man from another world. This other world. No, he--Jack--wasn't from this world. But she was here, now. And Jack had been to other worlds. Her own, maybe? Did he like it there? Had he met her before? Was her world too big for him to have had the chance? What about Sabwones? Who was he in life? What'd he do, how did he die? And why was he animated? It was all so . . . unreal. All so fantastic. Easier than a grim reality.

Emma quietly laughed at herself. How pathetic do you have to be, huh?

She had just finished wiping the tears away when she heard the others approaching. Thank God this way-too-big of a chair was facing the fireplace. This way, she didn't have to show her face to them. They didn't have to see her red, puffy eyes. Proof that she'd been crying--or almost cried, anyway. Little did she know, after a few clacking noises of a walking skeleton, there was a set of sunglasses in her lap. Before saying a word, she put them on. They were big on her. But that was for the best, maybe.

"Uh . . . Thanks?" Emma said, then leaned over the arm of the chair to get a visual on Jack and the now-walking Sabwones, still too distracted by all her erstwhile thoughts to notice Sab's shirt, "You found your body, huh? Nice."

[JetSet]

Jack instantly felt the regret of his actions, not even having to see the eyes of the skull as it calmly threatened him. He cursed his impulsiveness and added this to the list of 'dumb things he did that got him into a world of trouble. Of course, his magic would work differently here. What the hell was he thinking?  "I...I wasn't thinking...I'm sorry." He said before pulling himself to his feet and following behind the skeleton, taking it slow and breathing deeply.

Jack simply took a seat in one of the other chairs by the fire, the farthest one from them, closest to the door. He looked back to a mirror he had set atop a bookshelf, letting him see the arch that led to the main room, where the stairs were. He took a breath, happy to see it still in place and still pointed in the right direction. No need to leave his back open when in a place like this.

Seeing Emma and Sab start talking, He took a pipe from the table next to him, took a pinch of smoking herbs from a pouch next to where the pipe had sat and tapped it down. A small snap and one gauntlet vanished, leaving his hand free to strike a match. This was his way of clearing his head, smoking the mint scented herb from his home.

[Sabwones]

Tugging on the jacket over his tanktop, Sab dropped backwards into another of the large armchairs facing the fire, hooked a pouffe with one of his heels and put his feet up. He did his best to act louche and shot Emma some finger guns.

"All present and correct, lass." His hands opened into the 'not bad' hand waggle gesture as he gauged her new look. "Not bad. They make you look like a dork, but...well," he tapped his own pair "...as long as you're in the majority, looking dumb is just fashion."

He felt the warmth from the fire, while soothing, there was a constant sense that no matter how warm the room could ever be, he'd always feel a slight chill, a natural absence of vital heat that he could only assume was a common factor of being undead. It worried him like a hangnail, not just the chill, but the fact that he still couldn't piece together what was going on. He was dead, and for some reason it hadn't taken fully, but beyond the frankly disturbing recollection of his own death, he couldn't figure what had happened since then. The 'bone zone' logo was handmade. That seemed too on the nose to be a flat-out coincidence. How active had his un-life been?

Sab reached into his pocket and felt for the badge. It was thin and light, with a safety pin badly soldered to the back for affixing to clothing. In the light, he saw it for what it was - a cheap toy badge. Stamped tin, with 'Deputy of Radial Springs' printed into the center in a basic 'old western' font. It looked like something you'd get thrown in with your Radial Springs 'Lil Cowpoke Kit.

"Now c'mon little fellahs! We got some cattle to roun' up!"

Sab jerked in his seat, the words slapping across the face like a wet flannel.

That was him. Putting on a fucking terrible American accent, but that was him.

"Jesus."

[Nayt]

Emma stuck her tongue out when Sab called her a dork. At least I've got a nose, is what she would've said, if the thought hadn't hit her way too late. Awh man. All this despair was sapping away at her wit and charm. That wouldn't do. Maybe after some light conversation and banter, she'd be out of this rut again. Bury that despair for another time. For some other day, some better day, when that hole in her could be approached with some measure of grace. Or not. Maybe she'd approach it sometime when she was alone in a room with a loaded gun.

Whichever came first, she supposed.

Those morbid thoughts were interrupted when the most absurd noise came from Sab's chair. She looked over immediately, mouth initially agape. Then the t-shirt registered. The Bone Zone, lovingly embroidered. Every ridiculous thing sunk in all at once, draping a loose cloth over the void inside her, occupying the whole of her attention.

And then . . . she laughed. Shoved both her hands over her mouth to stifle it at first, but gave up soon after. She laugh 'til she kicked her feet. 'Til she cried. 'Til her marked up cheek stung and ribs protested.

"Oh, God," she gasped between giggles, taking the sunglasses off and wiping away tears, "I can't-- that's-- okay-- okay, I'm good." The Bone Zone. That was actually on his freakin' shirt! "Ohhh, wow."

[Sabwones]

Emma's outburst snapped Sab from his reverie. Seeing the girl laugh, genuinely and without restraint, placed a determined weight on the scale against the frustration and fear he'd felt since waking up in this pit. Finding what you'd lose. An earnest smile. A misplaced act of kindness. Little victories. Bit by bit, we chip away at the impossible.

"Oh, this?" Sab plucked at the material of his homemade tanktop. "Yuk it up, you little git. We'll see who's laughing when every hipster from here to New Jersey's buying these for $50 a pop." He stared into the middle distance for a minute, then added, "actually, fuck 'em. This is too good to share."

He found a little more give in the plush upholstery of the chair and issued a low sigh. You've got a grounding now, man. Just take a minute. Try not threatening someone for a change. Try not being an acerbic jackhole. Y'know. Be a little less...you.

"So," he began, reaching into his jacket and removing the revolver, "any revelations? A sign? Guidebook? Gigantic map of the universe with a tiny 'You Are Here' sign?" Letting muscle (for wont of a better word) memory take over, he opened the revolver at the breach-

Webley Mark 6, or VI if you're feeling cultured. Saw service in the first world war, this one. Lovely piece. Chambered in .455, a bit uncommon, but it had far superior recoil...if you were considering having this 'restored'. Not that I'm suggesting anything.

...and if I was?

I have the number of a man who could lend you a hand with that.

Excellent.

Fully loaded. Hm.

Sab realised that waving a gun around without proper explanation wasn't exactly good manners and explained thusly, "I wasn't expecting to be toting around artillery, by the way." He held up the tin badge by way of clarification. "Real gun. Fake badge. Whoever I am, a strong forward planner isn't it."