Participants:
| Scene Title | Weighty Matters |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Two gravitokinetics meet each other after a long time. On this occasion, Magnes gets to keep his powers. |
| Date | October 2nd 2009 |
Brooklyn is located on the westernmost point of Long Island and shares its only land boundary with Queens. The East river borders and defines the borough's northern coast, Coney Island, Brighton Beach, and Manhattan beach are to the south, and the Narrows separate it from Staten Island to the southwest.
Downtown Brooklyn is one of the NYC's largest business districts. Between the Bridge and Prospect Park, brownstones, townhouses, and high-end restaurants are dominant. The culturally diverse communities of Williamsburg and Greenpoint are snugged against the East River to the far north. Close by are far more criminally active neighborhoods such as Brownsville, Crown Heights, and Bushwick. Regardless of the social situation, the so-called Borough of Neighborhoods is packed to the gills in post-bomb NYC.
The day is bracing and overcast, but at least the wind is barely noticable. As a result, the figure sauntering along the roofs of a terrace of brownstones in a residential portion of Brooklyn feels comparatively secure. Out of sight of the people in the street below, she's enjoying the view out over the city, picking her way through and around the tangle of television aerials, cables, chimneys, and skylights.
Magnes has been out all night, not answering calls or really moving at all. He's still wearing all black, black denim jeans, a black long sleeved shirt, black sneakers, and black gloves. He has no mask or collar, his guns are gone too, he's just laying there on the roof, staring at the sky, appearing quite mentally defeated.
Ygraine's pace slows as she spots a boot around the corner of a chimney. Edging to one side, she cocks her head and peers cautiously at the immobile body, gradually bringing more of it into view. "Ahh, hi?"
Magnes is a bit startled by someone being on the roof, looking down. Her face is vaguely familiar as he sits up to take a more careful look, having bags under his eyes from the all-nighter. "Do I know you from somewhere?"
Ygraine dubiously eyes Magnes, running her gaze over him. "It'll probably come to you at some point. Perhaps when your powers fail again", she says, the dry tone of her voice emphasised by her accent, which is unmistakably educated and British.
"You're that woman." Magnes says without much of the wide-eyedness he had the last time they met, then he averts his gaze to the ground. "I'd completely forgotten there's another person with my ability. Have you learned to fly yet?" he asks, staying mostly casual, his mood clearly crap.
Ygraine snorts softly, though it turns into a chuckle. "As I think I attempted to indicate at the time, flying is rather beyond me", she says with a wry smile. "My talents lie elsewhere. Though I don't think I've ever passed out on a rooftop…. Have you been here for long?"
"I've been here all night, thinking about my life and the mistakes I keep making. I think today is the day I change everything." Magnes decides as he stands up, holding a hand out for her's. "I, uh, this is kind've stupid but…" His cheeks are flushing, because he's not even sure what he's asking. "Can I feel your gravity?"
Ygraine blinks, also clearly rather unsure of quite what's being requested. "I… mmmm." After a moment's hesitation, she reaches out to let her gloved fingers carefully brush against his hand, rather intently watching his face.
Both their gloved hands touch, and she might start to feel various weights flowing through her, sometimes heavier, sometimes lighter, but never anything unpleasant, he's just kind of feeling the other gravity manipulator out. "Use yours too, I wanna know what it feels like, mixing with mine."
Ygraine frowns slightly, thinking for a few moments - before flipping the gravity for Magnes's jacket. Rather than hanging down towards the ground, it'll now be inclined to "fall" towards him, from front, back and below: wherever a portion of it can get closer to his body (especially to his centre of mass), it will.
Magnes feels his pants going up, and being kind've shy about skin exposure (Except apparently in front of the President/his girlfriend's father), he starts trying to push the pants down with his own gravity. "This is kind've cool, I mean, I don't know anyone else who really understands it, if that makes any sense. Hey, if I made you weightless, do you think you could make yourself fly?"
Ygraine shakes her head, rather quickly. "No. My range is only about six inches, though I think my fine control is somewhat more developed than yours. I link two objects, rather than flipping one object out of synch. And I've not experimented with some of the more extreme versions of that - in theory, I could probably create a mass-driver, using the full velocity of the Earth as the impelling force. Funnily enough, I've not tried finding out."
"I don't think I'm completely a part of Earth's gravity. I mean, I think I subconsciously let Earth pull me, but when I fall asleep and I'm not thinking at all, people tell me I float." Magnes starts to float upside down, still gently holding her hand before he basically flips her perception of up and down. Her gravity itself doesn't change, but the roof itself feels like standing on a ceiling. "I can control the um, vertical horizon, your perception of direction. That was really hard to learn. Wanna come up here with me?"
Ygraine instinctively counters the odd feeling by setting the roof to be her "down" again - just as she would do to stand on the underside of a genuine ceiling. "That… felt weird. And you clearly have some relation to Earth's gravity if all you do is float. I tried to explain to the guy who proposed the mass driver quite how big the differential is if you sever something's ties to gravity. Very crudely speaking, the Earth moves from one side of the sun to the other in 182 days, right? So every 91 days, it moves - ignoring the side-to-side motion - from here to the sun. If we cut an object off from _all_ gravity, it wouldn't move towards the sun at all. It'd carry on going in the direction the Earth's travelling, while the Earth would move away - in the direction of the line of the sun - at huge speed. _That's_ the basic difference there'd be if you - or anything else - got cut off from all pull from external gravity. You'd rocket off towards space fast enough that you'd burn up in the atmosphere. And… I think I'll pass on flipping over, at the moment, thanks."
"You didn't tell me your name when we first met." Magnes points out, remembering at least that much as he shifts her perception back to normal and releases her to cross his arms. He's still upside down, but from his point of view, well… "That makes sense, I just never got why I float. I mean it makes absolutely no sense that I don't fly from Earth, but it doesn't make sense that I float like in a space station while I'm sleeping either. You do anything weird like that?"
Ygraine quirks another wry smile. "Not that my wife's told me, no. I tend to need to focus upon two objects, to form a link between them. I _did_ have… "wild" occurrences when I first began manifesting it, but it's hard to say quite what triggered those. I… was less than entirely well, for some time, so can't give the best of assessments of quite what was going on while my ability was making itself known."
"I just focus on myself, I had to learn to affect other objects and people. It's two different things to me. So while I'm making you heavier, I could be making myself lighter. Or I can make some parts of a person lighter and some parts heavier." Magnes explains as he finally lands down on his feet again. "Wife?" Well, that was unexpected, but he doesn't question it. "Could I get your number, or give you mine? Knowing someone with a similar ability is, well, useful I guess."
Ygraine cracks a rather impish little grin. "Well, civil partner, strictly speaking. But "wife" is an easier shorthand - even if it's not recognised in most of the States. And… sure. I can take a number, and give you some way to get hold of me in return. Email any good for you? As for the ability - I form a link, rather than directly affecting a single object. You seem to do something _to_ an object; I set up something _between_ objects."
"Oh, weird. I don't think I can make two things stick together or something. Well, I think I could make two different things fall into eachother, but then they might slip past eachother…" Magnes reaches into his pocket for a piece of paper and a pen, writing his number and email down, then offering it to her. "An email's fine. My name's Magnes J. Varlane by the way."
Ygraine accepts the pen and paper, jotting down an anonymous email account on a global server. There's a momentary hesitation, then when she hands the paper back it's clear that it is "stuck" to the pen, falling around it and needing to be pulled away to be separated. It's very easy to do - being only held in place by the normal pull of gravity - but the paper is clearly behaving very oddly. "Gives me some useful little help every now and then. Lifting, carrying, and so on are a lot easier. I don't make things any lighter, but it's no struggle to pick them up. So long as I can carry the mass, I can just have it settle directly into my arms…"
"That's so strange…" Magnes stares at the pen and paper in his hand, shaking his head before stuffing them into his pockets again. "And here I was thinking I was the gravity master or something, but I can't do anything like that. That's really awesome."
Ygraine laughs softly. "And if I _could_ create the mass-driver, it'd be the only way I could fly. Direct the pen's gravity to me, and mine to it - and hurtle off to be incinerated in the atmosphere. As I said - I have fine control, but you have rather more range - in both senses of the word."
"Flying is complicated. Controlling my vertical horizon has become kind've second nature, but I still have to think about it so I don't get dizzy and disoriented. I fly a lot like people walk, a series of controlled falls." Magnes explains, walking to the edge of the roof to take a seat. "It was nice to talk about all this, and kind've forget my problems for a while."
Ygraine chuckles, moving to prop herself against a chimney. "I've been out of the city for quite some time, so I might be able to offer a fresh perspective on those, if you like. Not necessarily a helpful one, of course, but it might at least be _different_."
"I don't think you wanna hear about my major problems, but a minor problem I'm having are reporters. I helped stop a Humanis First chopper that was shooting people, then I landed it on my back when it was about to crash, in front of a whole group of people. So now they're asking for interviews and stuff." Magnes lays back on the roof again, pulling his legs up from the edge. "I've been thinking of giving an interview to make them be quiet."
Ygraine lifts her brows, then chuckles again. "Give one - but pick it carefully. You want it to be sufficiently comprehensive that people will accept it as "the full story", but you also want to be able to trust the interviewer not to delve into areas you don't want him to. I'd recommend text, rather than live transmission - and get the absolute right to approve or deny the interview before it goes to print."
"I think I'll get someone to set this up for me, that'll probably be best." Magnes floats up from the roof, then starts heading high into the air. "Thanks for talking to me, I'm gonna try and get some sleep and maybe feel less like crap."
Ygraine watches him rise, head tilting back even as her brows rise again. "You're welcome. And good luck. Make sure you trust whoever sets it up!"