Silly Plots 2: Electric Boogaloo

[Recaiden]

"Oh, are you in for something. I am rather interesting." After all, none of the other lynxpeople got to be PCs so far.

"Would you believe neither of these are my own real eyes?"

"Once there was a girl named Omiko, uh, Dot, what was the rest of the name? Right. Omiko Derabat Shaw, and she was an archaeologist." A little light below her robotic eye clicks on, and projects a little 3D picture of a human woman with a recognizably similar face to Omiko. She looks a little younger, but not much. And as said, both her eyes are flesh-and-blood, with a green color rather than silver. She has a light robotic arm full of tools arcing over one shoulder, rather smaller and less featured than the multi-tool/claw Omiko has today. "The Ancients and Precursors left lots of neat things around that needed studying and cajoling. She was pretty good at figuring them out. Of course, she wasn't perfect. One day, thye had just discovered an Ancient cache, mostly intact, cleverly disguised. She hurried in to look at things and while looking at what might still be active she mixed up a ward-stone with a key-store, and boom! Melted an eye right off, to say nothing of the eyebrows."

[Deathkeeper]

Sailing- storytime

"Wait so, you got turned into a cat and then made immune to other changes? How did you end up a pirate?" she asks.

[Recaiden]

"What? No, don't jump ahead."
Omiko says.
"I just blew myself up a bit. Got my face patched up, but eyes are pretty tricky. Mechanical replacements are what you can get outside of a Well, and luckily they're pretty good." Here she takes a second to show off her eye-lasers. "But while I was recovering, I thought there might be a better way to spend my efforts than digging up old dangerous machines to learn. I was young and stupid, you know? So I became a privateer.
A new picture is projected, of that human girl (now with a robot eye), standing patriotically in front of a fluttering flag.
"There was a war going on, over robots. It had been going on my whole life and then some, and it is probably still going on now. And other than research into superweapons, it was mostly fought on ships. I was on the Architect Sparrow a sort of raider-cruiser. Steal anything the bad guys had that might be useful."
All this is just setting up, but there are a lot of questions one might ask, so Omiko pauses for a moment.

[Deathkeeper]

Sailing- Storytime

"You were fighting robots? Sounds scary." Clara comments, not wanting to get Omiko off course on her story.

[Recaiden]

"Fighting alongside robots, mostly."
Omiko corrects.
"We had a lot of good times - probably the best was dueling another raider ship around and through this watery moon. There were also times it went badly. Because we were trying to capture ships and installations intact, or at least with their contents in one piece, there was a lot of fighting in person. That's why I got the cannon attachment and some other stuff. One time the ship was almost completely overrun by a target playing dead. It took months to recover everything."
"So I was doing more applied archaeology there. Precursor weapon systems and maintaining numenerous technology. The last mission - we took down a ship that had a way to weaponize Wells. Sent it crashing but had to withdraw without salvaging anything. We were on the way back from that when things went wrong."

[Deathkeeper]

Sailing- Storytime

"Wrong? Did you get ambushed by another ship? Part malfunctions?" Clara asks.
She knows that the answer will happen anyway but when someone's telling a story it's the audience's duty to interact a little. Very important.

[Recaiden]

"Wrong."
"First, the stars started going out. Inconsistently, and without any of the other signs of entering a weird region. We expected it to be a technical problem with the sensors. When we didn't find one, I was called up to look for any archaeotech explanation. Then we finally sent someone outside to take a look - no stars. It was right about then, just after we heard that something hit us and ripped the main engines off. And then that was it. We were still -theoretically - on course, able to coast home and stop on maneuvering thrusters."
Omiko lifts up a hand.
"Now, I gotta say no one knows exactly what it was. Some think it was aliens, or extradimensional beings, interfering. Some think the bad guys got one of their super-projects near to working and tested it out, or that the higher-ups did and used us as guinea pigs. Others suggest that the devil himself, seeing that we weren't prone to dying, sent his demons up to claim us. Maybe there were just some really bad drugs in the water, and most of what we remember is a delusion."

"Anyway. Whatever it was hadn't shown up on radar, gravs, visually, or any other way. So we cautiously go to try to fix up the damage. People start to disappear. Anytime a repairman or guard is on his own - well, that's the last we hear of 'em. So we stop going anywhere alone. The stars are still out. As far as we can see there's no one else in the universe. So we're sweeping the halls in big teams, not leaving a single stone unturned, so to speak, when an army of monsters attacks, doing impossible things, Well things. During the fighting we lose control of the ship's computers and robots. It just completely loses it and tries to kill us and the invaders alike."
"A real bad time, all in all."

[Deathkeeper]

Sailing- Storytime

"Yeah, sure sounds like it. Wait, was this in the Nexus, or did you come here after all of this?" she asks, suddenly making that realization.

[Recaiden]

Omiko grins.
"So as we figured out soon after, we weren't even in our own reality anymore. Not the Nexus either, but something nearby. Somewhere the rules were different and we didn't know them. To pick a narrative, we were literally in hell. A little while later we're all, if we're not dead, captives, being tortured or experimented on. Pretty much every horrible thing you can imagine. But we were also made really resilient, and most of us were additionally made cats. But one day, someone came by. An archdemon, some sort of leader, and we broke out and killed him - tore it to bits. After that the others weren't too interested in fighting us anymore. Kinda fell apart without leadership, and so we took over that little corner of hell."

[Deathkeeper]

Sailing- Storytime

Clara grimaces.
"That's...pretty horrible. But...why would being in hell make you cats? You..you don't have to go on if you don't want to. Sounds like a bad time." she says quietly.

[Recaiden]

Omiko shrugs.
"Many things there did not make sense. And I'm not completely immune to changes. It's just that certain things are immutable. Watch, and see if you find any explanation."
One by one, she opens the rest of her eyes, dozens, each a different size and shape, scattered across her skin in places there definitely weren't eyes before. Additional mouths follow, and then Omiko explodes into a riot of geometric crystal shapes, hedrons upon hedrons spilling out of pyramids of pyramids, whirling and stretching hundreds of feet inside each other and outside everything else in a most physically impossible way.
Her voice, distorted and yet very clear, rings out from each facet.
"I'll spare you the distressing details and skip over a lot for now, but one day we ended up in the Nexus."
Even more rapidly, all the changes rewind into the same original lynx-person, softly smiling.

[Deathkeeper]

Sailing- Storytime

Clara's eyes go wide as Omiko's appearance shifts, but her wisdom outweighs her curiosity and her eyes are snapped shut before the mouths even get fully exposed. She only peeks when Omiko's voice returns to normal.
"Right, and then you resumed being a pirate and got a crew. Maybe we should talk about something else."

[Recaiden]

"How did you become an actress?"
Omiko decides to start with a simple corresponding question.

[Deathkeeper]

Sailing

Clara shrugs.
"Mom said Daddy was one, and I ended up liking it. That's really about it. It's not nearly so exciting." she admits.

[Recaiden]

"What is exciting about you?"
Omiko asks, her head almost visibly filling with schemes.

[Deathkeeper]

Sailing

Clara shrugs to the cat-pirate.
"Well, I dunno. My theater magic is kind of interesting. I've done some cool stuff, even if I'm still a bit out of my league here.
Hey, actually, can I ask you for something?" she says, thinking of something.

[Recaiden]

"Sure. But first, tell me why you closed your eyes a minute ago."
Omiko keeps her eyes on the water and ropes, but her gun-arm is pointed in Clara's direction.

[Deathkeeper]

Sailing

Clara jumps in surprise at the sudden gun, but still stops and answers the question truthfully. Maybe it's just a precaution. Who knows what weird habits the demons she's fought have had?
"Because you were opening up more eyes and mouths than any living creature should have, and I've been warned in the past about glimpsing things mortals were not meant to see. That's why."

[Recaiden]

Gun is lowered.
"Aww, come on. Would I expose you to things mankind wasn't meant to know?"
Yes, unequivocally, Omiko absolutely would.
"Alright, what is it?"

[Deathkeeper]

Sailing

Clara looks down at herself. "Well, like I said earlier...my shoes and socks are waterlogged to the point of ruin, my pants are full of salt, and my shirt's half red from blood at this point." she pulls at it for effect. "And these wintery clothes weren't even meant for these summery isles anyway. I know you don't have anything in my size just lying around...is there any way you could help me get a new look? Preferably something other than 'shipwreck survivor.' I don't know if your magic could do something like that." Sometime magic can be oddly specific. You can set a building on fire but not create a T-shirt from nothing.

[Recaiden]

T-shirts are complicated, heat is easy.

"Hmm. You probably don't want clothes with a mind of its own, huh?"
Omiko gets an evil grin.
"Even so, I can do that. Now, even with clothes created by magic, I'll have to take your measurements by hand."

[Deathkeeper]

Sailing

Clara rolls her eyes but holds out her arms.
"Yeah, fine. Make it fast." she grumbles.

[Recaiden]

There's no measuring tape, of course. It's all lasers and hands.
And it being rather annoying to making intelligent clothes, Clara instead ends up with a skimpy beach outfit, including water shoes and a wide-brimmed hat. Much of it is made of or adorned with that same dark crystal she closed her eyes before seeing.
"There."

[Deathkeeper]

Sailing

Clara looks down and then back up at Omiko. She raises an eyebrow.
"I didn't realize you'd want eye candy of me. I'll make a note of it for later. But while this is fine for a day at the beach, it isn't exactly good for running around and adventuring. And you realize that once night comes I'm going to be really cold. I'm not furry like you are." she says sternly.

[Recaiden]

The boat swerves and tilts in what seems like a dangerous way if you're not expecting it. All so as to splash Clara with water.
"Look how not waterlogged it is, though."
And true, it's very resilient against moisture.

[Deathkeeper]

Sailing

Clara groans as she's splashed.
"Omiko, there's no support here. The second I start running this is going to get stupid. And like I said, I'm gonna get cold without anything warmer once it's dark. Could we try a different look?" she asks, exasperated.

[Recaiden]

"Alright, you asked for it. You might wanna shut your eyes."
Based on previous averting of eyes from horrors actor-kind was not meant to look upon.

Eyes! Tendrils! Crystals! The stolen eye of an eldritch horror!
For this second request, Clara receives the clothes with the mind of their own, a remarkably breathable diving suit sort of thing. Completely waterproof and very warm when it needs to be, cool other times, and always watching you.

[Deathkeeper]

Sailing

Clara smiles at the suit.
"Better. Okay. Oh, is that where we're going?" she asks, pointing to a small island that has appeared on the horizon.

[Recaiden]

This is of course the aforementioned 'outfit with a mind of its own'. Keep an eye on it when you're not wearing it. Probably don't listen to its advice. And be kind, it's a new-sewn garment, not used to the ways of the Nexus.

"Oh, I guess it is. Take us in; let's see if you learned anything."

[Deathkeeper]

Sailing

Clara nods, not wanting to argue with the pirate and manages to do a passable job of guiding the boat to shore. Soon enough they'll be on the shore (the boat will be anchored if there is one, otherwise Omiko can dismiss it). The island is densely covered in trees and swamp. A small paddle-boat sits on the shore nearby with a fishing rod. There's a small opening in the greenery that might be a path.
"Looks like somebody lives here. Where do you want to look around? " Clara asks.