recolle | Something's ... Not Right (Open)

Something's ... Not Right (Open)

WHO: Chloe and You!
WHERE: In and around Recolle
WHEN: 4/6-4/12
WHAT: Awkwardness as Chloe notices some things are not right with her body
WARNINGS: Nup

Option 1) It was a Thursday, like any other Thursday since she'd gotten this silly app on her phone. She was trying to keep her life normal and together, and doing a good job of it. In fact, following through with Yu and Naoto's request had helped a little, taking some of the worry away from her life. Having just finished her shift, she was walking back towards the bus station to get a ride home when it happened. There at the cross-walk, maybe she was a bit tired, but she started to cross before it was her light. There was a honk of distress from a car and Chloe acted.

Really, she wasn't in any danger. The driver was over-reacting and swerving successfully to miss her. But, the honk caused an immediate reaction. Her body launched back without her thinking, leaping up and into the air, sommersaulting back and landing lightly on her feet. The motion was far too limber for what she should have been able to do. It wasn't like she was in poor shape, but leaping like that in the air felt beyond her. As she landed, her eyes widened and she took two or three shaky steps back before falling unceremoniously on her butt.

"What... just happened?" she said, looking around in shock.

Option 2) When she wasn't helping out with the play, Chloe had a couple of days off on the weekend. She tried to visit the local gym to get a bit of the stress out. There was a horse set up there for those who wished to practice gymnastics, and she found herself staring at it with a nervous look in her eyes. Biting her lips, she walked over and patted it, reaching up to scratch at the back of her head.

"Should I?" she asked, wondering for a moment before going to put chalk on her hands. There was only one way to find out if the strange itching sensation in her arms and legs was real. She was feeling restless, restless like her body wasn't moving the way that it should, that it needed to move.

Option 3) There was bad news on Friday, news she did not want to hear. It had her in Starbucks, fumbling for a drink of mint tea. She wanted to calm her jangled nerves. There had to be a logical explanation for any of this. She was tempted to ask on the network, but at this point she wasn't even carrying her phone with her. She'd warned her boss that if he needed her to call the land-line, that she was trying to test out what happened if she didn't use the network. She wasn't going to break that promise.

She had to know if this was affected by the app, or if it was simply happening. But, as it stood, she was getting nervous and worried... and the tea was only helping a little.

Wildcard (Anything that you want can be managed. Chloe is off network for this week, helping out at the play and frequenting work. She has just experienced the return of her natural athleticism and agility, along with the realization that her hair color actually changed last month and wasn't dyed while drunk like she thought. It's causing her to start to freak out again. Either way, if your character wants to meet up with her, we can handwave that they left a message on her answering machine at home.)

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"The reason for the app's launch might very well hold the key to what we are going through, so if we could determine this it would be very helpful," she agreed readily. The headache for her was by now a persistent sort of issue. But it wasn't something she could truly address.

She considered for a moment and shrugged. "But I think what ties all of this together is the app itself. I am not sure that the giant birds and fruit that dances really seem to fit with each other, unless we are actually supposed to be living in a silly little mad house."

She is right. It's not because of the app's launch that began a strange phenomenon of visions and weird changes, but it's because its existence that continues to persist every strange event he can think of. It's not only that, though...

"Speaking of our silly little mad house, have you noticed something strange regarding any contacts outside Recolle lately?"

"Strange? No, my mother has been fine and my girlfriend has not been out of sorts, though we have been growing more distant the more that I have trouble speaking to her of my life here. But France is very far removed, so that may be it. Why do you ask?"

"You've gone to France? So you know French then?"

So she has no problems with her contacts at France so far. However, he is still worried since he still getting low call quality and dropped calls for the past month now.

"It's because that I've been having calls with low quality whenever I contact my friends in Paris and some of them were dropped calls. I checked with my subscriber and they said their outside calls were okay and didn't receive any problems with them."

"Ah, I shall take this as a complement," she said, smiling at him. "I try not to let my accent get in the way too much, and I've lived here for a few years in fact, but I was born in France and raised in the lee of the pyrenees." As she spoke, she let more of that accent come out, the h's fading and the r's rolling more obviously.

"I wonder then, whether it is related. I should look into it. I know that I have had only minimal problems, but when I asked about a visit perhaps this summer from my mother, she demured. There is a lot going on there. I do not think she will be coming over here anytime soon."

That makes sense as he's Japanese-French living in Recolle until he temporarily left to go to college in Paris. "I can see why. I'm actually a Japanese and French descent, but since I lived in Recolle during my whole life. I only left the city since I have to go to college in Paris."

As for the outside calls problem, he starts to wonder about more than the calls once Chloe mentioned her mother has no plans to coming to Recolle very soon. "Really? Now that you've mentioned it, did you see anyone from outside the city? Like any tourists and foreigners from other cities?"

"No. I certainly have met people who were from outside town, but I do not think I have met anyone that recently traveled to the city," she said, shaking her head, though there was no worry there because of what was said next. "But it is a metropolitan area, yes? We would expect to hear if there was a sudden drop in tourism, given that Recolle does thrive on a bit of this, no? It is just hard to keep track of them all, surely."

"You've made your point." She's right. Figuring out about the state of tourism is like finding a needle in a big haystack. It might take days for him to even search more about how many tourists come and go around the city.

"Still, there is something bothering me. Like do you even meet a Retrospec user from outside Recolle? So far, the people I met including you so far are all users of that app. Also, there is a fact that non-users can't even see the app when we even show it to them."

"No, I do think that I see yours as well. I have yet to hear of a user outside of this city, and nobody ever seems to leave. It is as if the problem was solely here. And, though my mother has always known of Chocobo, it is as if the insanity of this city is unknown to them." She shook her head. "There are parts of this situation that do not feel like it is really a phone app, more like magic, yes?"

Well, that's one farfetched theory she made. Yet, every events and changes they've encountered were out of any rational explanation and impossibility, so he might give it a chance for now.

"Magic, eh? So you're trying to say that this app is somehow protecting us from the strange changes happening around the city like an amulet or a magic spell?"

He didn't want to believe this, but what choice does he have now? He has a real-life dragon living in his capsule ball and his friend able to create sparkles whenever she's happy. There is no way to ignore them.

Less a real theory, more an observation that 'computer programs don't uninstall themselves like that.' "Well... perhaps not magic. But something that defies normal explanation at least. It's why I used the word. I wouldn't quite go so far as to attempt to explain it more than that."

She shook her head. "There are simply things about what is happening that do not fit any sort of logic I was raised to know. What is happening should be impossible, but clearly is not."

She may have a point. Even if they call it magic or not, he feels that these strange phenomenon isn't going to end yet. "That's true. And maybe this may apply to our visions. I still don't know how we gain or trigger them, but the connections of them and Retrospec made it very clear they are not just plain coincidences."

"Oh, I think that this is easier to understand. They seem to trigger, most of the time, based upon some small similarity with our lives. I had one when looking at a flower from Switzerland that I had looked at in the vision," she explained, shaking her head. "Of course, this does not exactly make it easier to identify how to remember such things, does it?"

Now that she mentioned this, he remembered from when he saw the hammerhead shark at the Recolle Zoo and Aquarium back in Valentine's Day, which a vision of Modeste popped into his head at that time as well with how he remembers that he uses the word "marvelous" a lot when Ainsley accidentally typed it in last month.

Regardless, he begins to agree with her explanation once he remembered these events as well leaning the idea of having these repressive memories.

"I agree. Even if we know how we got these visions, we still don't know what and where we can find some small similarities around us without any directions. Not to mention that there is a possibility that these are our repressive memories or not."

"And, by the time that I think we begin to understand them, I suspect that it will already be several of the visions that we are undergoing. It would be futile by then to try and force it. There would be enough to build off of." Of course, that brought with it another problem that came immediately to mind. "Though naturally the worry is that we might begin to reflect all of these added memories, almost as if another life were being added to our own."

A sip of her drink and she closed her eyes. "It is important to keep a sense of who we really are, no?"

As he also sips his cup of latte, he then starts to wonder what will happen if he reflects these many visions as his own memories as well his own identity.

"Yes. Even if we can investigate the reasons behind these visions, we can't chase them. The more he reflect these visions, the more we will start to question who we really are.

For now, I don't want to stress about our visions being our repressive memories."

"Exactly, and I for one do not wish to question the person that I am and have grown to be. It would be unseemly, and I am not entirely sure I would wish to be this person I am seeing." She shook her head. "So, I think that we agree here. As difficult as it can be at times, neither of us wishes to be someone we are not, and so we do not want to stress too much."

She sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. "I admit, though, that it is easier said than done."

"Why? Because of the strange phenomenon changing your appearance and how you suddenly learn any abilities overnight?"

He might add about these strange Retrospec packages as well, but she might be aware of that as well.

"These are physical changes, not merely toys and hallucinations I am being given. It is my body that is being altered, which makes me feel more and more like her. It... makes it harder to avoid thinking that way." When you felt so much more limber and healthy, it could be difficult at times, after all, not to think that that was what you were.

"In other words, it might be hard for you to avoid thinking about these visions if your physical appearance continues to change."

If that's true, he wonders what is the point behind this strange phenomenon of world changes, physical appearance changes, and more that is related to Retrospec. Yet, he wonders why it isn't happening to him just yet. Maybe he is immune to this physical change phenomenon?

But now that he remembered about his previous visions, he realized that except with the clothes from them, he was exactly the same when it comes to appearance. So he might try to guess that this is the reason behind his immunity.

"It is difficult as is, but there should not be additional changes. I look, right now, like the girl in the visions that I recall." It was that simple. She looked mostly like herself, with just different hair color and a more confident stride, in her visions. "But yes. In principle that applies."

In the end, though, the only real motivation she could see for all of this was to try and make them feel like those people, which was an uncomfortable thought. Why? She had no idea.

"I see. But even if you don't have additional physicals changes now, you may still have a chance that you may learn something you didn't know overnight as well with your visions. I suggest you should try to keep your guard up about them just in case."

In addition to the packages and these world changes, he feels that there might be much more happening right now to them and he feels that this will never end so easily.

"I intend to, though who can be certain what to expect at times?" Though, at this point, she was beginning to have certain assumptions. The girl she kept seeing seemed to behave a bit like a spy aat times, so perhaps she was the cloak and dagger sort? It was a little frightening even if the thought of it slightly tantalizing.

"But it is best to be ready for everything at this point. Even those strange animals you showed us on the network."

"I agree. Considering what I got from my last package, we can't let our guard down." Especially that the dragon from his vision somehow came to life from his last Retrospec package.

When he sees the clock on the wall near the counter, he realizes that time has passed ever since he started a conversation with Chloe. "Oh, my. Look at the time. I'm sorry about cutting our chat short, but I should be going now."

"Well, those pictures... I will say again that I almost expect those creatures to start appearing, because of what happened with Chocobo. I wonder whose visions those came from," she said, shaking her head. When he looked up at the clock, she nodded back to him and gave a small wave. "But, please, don't let me keep you more. We have time to speak again in the future."

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megabond - 2017-04-16 19:31 (UTC) - Expand

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