It isn't late at night, but it is late in the year, and the sun went about its business quickly ere it departed.
Jacqueline Somer walks beside a busy road, with her back to oncoming traffic, which she's read you aren't supposed to do but it makes the stupid LED headlights somewhat less unbearable.
She flinches every time a car passes her.
Cars are loud, and she has enhanced hearing.
She'd be much happier, she thinks, in a world without automobiles.
"I did, but then I realized that if the goddess gave me a new body, then why would she send it with extraplanetary disease?"
If she made Owl a whole new body, would it have killed her to make one with a full freaking battery?
Well maybe if the silly mortal had talked to me I might have been more helpful.
WELL MAYBE YOU COULD HAVE GIVEN HER MORE THAN LIKE THREE SECONDS TO DO THAT.
"Thanks. Time travel, how's it work here? Does it work here?"
"Umm.. Time... Travel? I'm not exactly sure? I haven't seen anything that can travel through time. I mean... if they could wouldn't they have already done it?"
What happens when Jacqueline asks Ms. I Am From A More Advanced Planet And Traveled Here So Clearly That Is Possible For People From More Advanced Planets To Do to follow her time travel logic through to its natural conclusion?
"Control over the travel is clearly not possible otherwise this reality would not be what we see."
"When I asked her she said she could control where souls go from her realm, but not from where or when they enter."
"When I asked if I could go back to my home of origin she said I'd already been "used up" there and she was going to send me somewhere else"
"Seems like something you might have thought to put in your notes."
"Oh um, my notes weren't actually meant for other people. They were just stuff I wrote down so I wouldn't forget them. I have a very clear memory of my time in her realm and I didn't think I'd forget it."
They didn't read that way to her.
On a gut level, Owl is more and more certain that this world isn't real.
(Whatever that cashes out as in practice.)
Still.
"Are there any things which you regret not doing within ten minutes of your arrival here?"
"Umm I regret not marking where I first appeared in case it had some useful properties or in case we could predict where other otherworlders would appear."
Oh, that's a good idea. She'll go out there tomorrow and find it.
"Thanks!"
You'd immediately think that this world is downstream of her own world and its powers, and she's seen no evidence against that.
The questions she most wants answered are -
Is it all in her mind?
Are the other people real thinking beings?
(Or even one real thinking being?)
Was she teleported to a different part of the universe that's been remodeled by powers from her corner of it?
The people she's met seem... odd.
Quite odd.
For starters, they speak and write in English.
They're weirdly... compliant. Nothing she does seems to bother them.
They take things in stride. They immediately make asks of her. Owl hasn't played very many video games in her life, but... this feels not entirely unlike the first little bit of Skyrim.
She doesn't think that they evolved. Obviously. And she doesn't think that she's imagining these people, as she wouldn't be able to come up with them.
Someone else created them, and is either directly puppeting them or else made them to think that they had a history...
There are more exotic possibilities - well, an endless number of them, really - they could be people who've been abducted and brainwashed, for instance.
She'll treat the people she meets like real people.
It has been a very long time since Jacqueline Somer surprised herself, or anyone else that knows her.
She responds to all things by taking the path of least resistance.
There's a clear path of least resistance, here. Just button-mash through the dialogue trees and see what whoever created this place wants out of her.
She strongly suspects that the goddess will grease the path for her.
She'd like to get out a little bit ahead of the plot, though, before she decides to play along.
She's not equally happy in all stories, and she'd rather not figure out how it ends after it's too late for her to just wander off into the desert instead.
It seems like the people she landed on expect her to help them with something.
If she overcomes her flinch-level incredulity, what could she actually help them with?
Her assets:
- 14 years of experience on a different world. But she isn't an engineer or a computer person, she's just a nerd.
- A prickly personality.
- Superpowers.
Nothing that immediately seems useful? Well, the superpowers, maybe...
Superpowers can be broken down into:
- Enhanced speed, reflexes, strength, and durability - but not to any outrageous degree, she's sure. Well, it depends on what powers the people here have, in absolute terms there aren't that many of them... but why would everyone be carrying melee weapons if they didn't have better superstrength than her?
- Enhanced sight, hearing, smell, processing speed.
- Can see through solid objects (drains her battery life).
- Shoot laserbeams from her eyes (takes battery, not useful here unless she finds a reliable way to refuel).
- Increase the effective mass of inanimate objects (takes battery, not so useful here).
And... that's it, really.
She's not licensed to practice medicine, but maybe she'd be useful as an x-ray machine?
Other people in her family have better versions of the power, but you roll the dice and.
Do they want otherworlders just to increase the number of unique powers they have in their tribe, since the next generation might get better versions of them? Is that why they were excited without knowing if her powers were any good?
Well, if that's the story you can count Owl out.
Returning to a previous thread.
People want her help with something, they have a problem, she should ask the otherworlder what the biggest problem is.
Returning to a previous thread:
She found herself in this world right after being hit by bus, and she's never heard of people being sent to other worlds after they're hit by a bus. Well, unless you count the various afterlives as other worlds.
And wasn't there that one Narnia book where their train crashed?
But anyway it's not a common thing, at all, and the obvious reason that she's here instead of under a bus is that someone used a power on her, and that person did her a favor.
It'd be weird if they trapped her in some kind of hell dimension, so probably they expect that she'll like this world? Or they considered it better than the alternative?
Maybe that's some evidence that the person who made it doesn't have complete control over how it manifests?
"You said that the goddess said you couldn't return home. Was that caveated with anything, or were you led to believe it applied to all otherworlders?"
"led to believe, the way she explained it made me think it applied to everyone"
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