Catalyst

[Lakot]

Benji

There's Haddock in the fridge for you to warm up in the oven and I made a new batch of cookies. I'm working the late shift again, try to keep quiet in the morning so I can get some sleep before class.

"I don't know how she does it" Ben wondered as he opened the fridge and pulled out the fish. "I don't think i've given you Haddock yet, they got fish where you come from?" he called after her before she went off to her cabin. Ben punched in a few minutes on the timer and slid the fish in, grabbing a few cookies while the oven heated up. He munched on them while he dug out a bag of frozen peas and plates while he waited for her to come back

He tossed a cookie to Mori when she made her way back to the kitchen. "So we're up to five. How long do you think it'll be before more show up?" he asked through a mouthful a fresh chocolate chip cookie. "Are they on some kind of timer or is it totally random?" he mused, chowing down on another one.

[Peeker]

Wearing the simple blue robe (Ben had said it looked like 'a cross between overalls and a smoking jacket', whatever that meant) felt alot more comfortable than the strange uniform of foreign clothes Ben had advised her to walk around in public in. Relishing the feeling of comfortable cloting, when Mori skipped back in she was all smiles once again.

"Noh, they're all theirh-" Mori swallowed the incredibly tasty sweet. It was one of her main reasons for being so fond of Ben's sister - that and the fact that she rarely seemed to live there.

"Its just that their locations... they interfere with each other. Until pages are removed from a place, their sounds are jumbled, and other pages can't be heard. They're all there, but unless you're in the right spot, they're kind of... layered?" she nodded. "The more we get the more we'll find."

She sat down on the squishy kitchen chair. "Would you like help with anything?" she asked, fiddling with her sleeves now that she was in no condition to get up and help anymore.

[Lakot]

Ben opened the oven door to peek at the warming fish. "Layered eh?" he said as he shut the door. "So the more that are found, the louder the unfound ones get? Makes sense I guess" he said as he took a set of silverware out of the drawer. "But it means the competition will get tougher for them as more get claimed. You want anything to drink?" he asked, rifling through the cabinets for a clean set of glasses.

"No, I don't need any help, Sis did all the heavy lifting already" he said as the oven beeped and he gently took the fish out with oven mitts. "All that's left is to dish it out" he said as he cut the fish in half and served it onto each plate, handing Mori hers before sitting down on a stool. "Enjoy" he said, tipping his glass and chowing down.

[Peeker]

Mori sipped a drop of water from the proffered glass, and held it in her mouth for a moment while considering the meal in front of her. She bobbed her head deeply in gratitude, swallowed, and began to eat.

The fish really was rather nice! She chewed happily as she took the first bite. "Mh. I am! Your sister is a much better cook than I am..! ...and I still do not understand your machines: you have them for everything!" she shrugged again. "The competition won't really get tougher, though - it'll just be that the periods of waiting will shorten. It is... like fishing! Instead of waiting for the bite, after a while we will simply be unable to do that. We will all grow more nervous, especially once rumors trail around that the first hundred are gone." she waved vaguely in the air with her fork. "Some of the schools strongly believe in cooperating with each other - they travel, seeking the other challengers as energetically as we do the pages. Its just that, well... we are never going to stop looking - as long as we remained focused, I mean. Then the later, 'harder' parts of the contest will not seem so hard - instead they will be a welcome change from all the fruitless searching!"

[Lakot]

"Well we don't have magic, so we had to get creative" he said, digging into the fish himself. "If you think these machines are impressive, i'll have to bring you down to Beachside sometime. They've got some ridiculous ones down there" he grinned, wondering what she'd think of all the massive rides in the plethora of amusement parks that clustered around the tourist town.

Ben took a moment to swallow, taking in her latest info dump. "So when more and more are found, the uh, 'signals' will come faster AND louder?" he said with a small frown as he chewed. Ben liked Moris optimism and focus, but she could border on the naive. Less pages and stronger signals meant more people showing up in the same spot going after the same thing. Which was a recipe for trouble. Hopefully not giant-lead-sheet trouble.

But at least one bit of information was welcome. "So some schools like to cooperate with others instead of going it alone? Should I be ready for more guests, are there any that work with your school?" he asked, leaning back in the chair and thinking. "For that matter, what kinds of other schools are there? Are all of them like your magic or is there crazy variety?

[Peeker]

"Hmmh?" Mori wasn't sure how to take that part. It was possible they'd be getting visitors, but only if people knew where she lived. Right? So that shouldn't be much of a problem if they were careful. "No, the schools are pretty isolated. We live long distances from each other - territorial things, you know? The boundaries are well-established." She licked her lips - these little vegetables were so tasty!

"Not faster and louder. Just as loud, or soft, but from places we might have passed before, and simply not heard them. To find three at once is pretty incredible: that wind may very well have gathered pages we'd otherwise not have heard for a month, and completely realigned their resonance structure, besides. When one thing is found, another is hidden. As for the schools... Hm. Well you know about the four elements, right?"

There was a long pause while she had another spoonful of peas, and probably long enough for him to try and answer, before she picked up her thread again. "Size and Time, the axis of Substance." she said, waving her fork in a vaguely vertical line. "And then Tangibility and Volatility, the axis of Accident." - and a complimentary, bisecting horizontal line cut through the air with her utensil.

"Magic is a circle." the fork rotated around the imaginary perimeter of the four points. "And adherence to the one draws you away from another. There is balance. There is a borrowing of techniques and theory from other schools. But the Twenty are the spokes of a wheel, not opposing one another, but merely obstructed from each other: a round room with a great pillar in the center of it, which means one cannot see what is on the opposite side from their given place."

He was so cute, not knowing the most elementary things about the world. How did these people survive?!

[Lakot]

"The Four Elements? You mean the Greek ones? Fire, Water Wind and Earth?" he puzzled as she kept talking. "Oh, so uh, where on the wheel is your school? he asked, quite content to listen to her talk as he ate. It wasn't often one hosted a Transdimensional traveler in your home. It was even less often that the traveler was cute too.

[Peeker]

"Well the Minimae looks for the essential. The small change that has great effect. Something Uneffected by the ravages of Time. Changing the scope of your oar from small to great. Or the weight of your boots from heavy to light." she gestures upward, and to her left. "Minimae is twice-degreed upon Size, and once-aligned beside the Tangible. It is, uhm...." she squints up at the clock on the kitchen wall. "There. Near the symbol to the left of the top-most one?" while she knew language, her marking for '11' was very different from their series of lines.

"Time magics are often very... harsh. Time is relentless. And essentially uncontrolable. Volatiles suffer from the same, but they can still control their amounts, their substances, their works to a degree. Tangibles and Sizes are... safer, I guess. Some look down on them for that. They take a great deal more effort to put into great practice, but they can have just as much of an effect. And the easier things for me - like your boots - are a great deal easier for us than for them."

[Lakot]

Ben gazed up at the clock as she pointed, watching the hands tick slowly around the face as he thought about what she had said, "Well" he said, pondering his empty plate. "I like your elements more than the ones we have, even though you can do just as much with them, more even" he said with a teasing grin. He'd have to read up on the Periodic table, maybe try to teach her a thing or two about the elements of his world. Her explanation seemed quite philosophical to him, but he knew it had grounding in reality (at least her reality) as well as he knew he had run across the marsh earlier today.

Speaking of that run, Ben lifted his arm and smell his armpit, grimacing. "I haven't run that much in forever" he said, standing and offering to take her plate. "I need a shower, maybe two" he said as he rinsed off their dishes and put them in the dishwasher. "Did you have a place to wash up in your cabin? You're welcome to use our facilities first if you don't. Unless you've got an anti-sweat spell on you didn't tell me about" he laughed, leaning on the counter.

[Peeker]

"Hm?" she handed him her now-cleaned plate with a grateful smile. "Oh, I have a bowl I can fill with water for that. I don't even have to go to a stream, right! I forgot you have that water, there, from that pressure-pump." she gestured to the sink. "I guess I'll come out and get it then, while you're, uhm." she hesitated. "A... shower?" she wasn't entirely sure how to use the word in Ben's context. It appeared that there were some things technology could offer to the girl that even she hadn't dreamt of, yet!

Mori rose from her seat and rubbed her freckled cheeks with her napkin one last time, before carefully depositing it in the room's wastebin. This whole odd place was so neat! She really didn't mind being out of her world (or at least her cabin) too much - it was all so interesting, really, and still quite welcoming.