trans_9 | The Return of Time

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The Return of Time

As the Clock was destroyed, all of the stolen time rushed back to it's original owners, causing them to rapidly age back to normal. But as the crew would soon notice, it seemed that the stolen time didn't always go back to exactly the right place...

[[ooc: Time to get back to normal guys! This is basically a case of very rapid ageing - they'll basically speed through the years through about a couple of minutes or so. Of course, everyone won't get back to exactly the right time - most will only be out by a pretty insignificant amount of time (such as a few minutes, or hours, or days, etc - depends how close significant events are to the point they're from.) For those who are using this to change canon point, they're going to end up at a different point, obviously]]

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A kid!Zetta scampered merrily down a corridor, some mischief or another in mind --

Midbounce, the change hit.

Mana power roared outwards in a surge of purple energy, building from "significant" to "strongest in the cosmos" in one massive rush that seemed like it would threaten existence itself...

Then abruptly, with a sharp snap, the demonic form condensed into a book. The mana power cut off as the book spun down to the floor, landing face-down.

It did not move again.

One of the many, many kids who's popped up throughout this whole affair, has been hanging out in the medbay for most of it. A young girl with black hair is hunched over slightly, pointedly scratching out shaky letters onto a stylus - and then there's a brief moment where her back arches and her mouth opens in a silent scream, fingers convulsing as she grows larger, body aging rapidly. She becomes a teenager, a young woman on the cusp of adulthood and then for a very brief horrible moment, her body goes limp and pale, eyes sightless, expressionless - and then she decomposes. Not as rapidly as you'd expect. Bits of her are missing, parts of her are gone, but she's still very much identifiable. Her hair turns a strange blackish-purple and her eyes rot away, replaced with gleaming yellow lights, her fingers with bony claws.

Then Karis slumps back into the bed, eyes wide and staring up at the ceiling of the medical bay. Her mouth works and no sound comes out for a very long time.

A tiny little toddler was busy running in the streets of the city. She knew that after the play, clearly there wouldn't by much time left for her to enjoy this body. The day was won! Everything would be alright! And now she still had all this energy to go around everywhere, and my what a wonderful building this was and this place did seem pretty nice and...

Edited 2011-06-11 01:14 (UTC)

Return to normality certainly hurt.

Lash definitely had not been expecting the change to be so sudden, as the memories came flooding back with each new heartbeat. The freecaring child felt herself turning back into a much more rational adult and in horror she realized how little she had been planning this. This was normal, a child would not have known. But a growing teenager knew that the pain was terrible, and she was now in the middle of the city, right in the open air where anything could have attacked her.

Her hands instinctively had gone to the sides of her head as a massive headache from so much imagery forced her to fall on the ground to avoid harming herself any more. At first like a burning pain in her chest, she felt the tiny little toddler clothing being torn to pieces and only the plantsuit remained as she grew into her adult body once again. When everything is done, Lash breathed in and out in gasps, the pain finally leaving her body.

Edited 2011-06-11 01:15 (UTC)

The body in question now feeling like pins and needles had been stuck in all over. Trying to get up and walk again, she found herself slipping down to the ground as fast as she had risen up.

"D-dammit!"

Edited 2011-06-11 01:18 (UTC)

Sakura was breathing a sigh of relief that so far nothing else catastrophic had happened on the minute ago heels of the total power-down that had happened for those throat-catching minutes. Working on finding Cassie clothing appropriate to her regained state had kept her busy as Howard had left Medical, while the rest of those down here while the dragons had taken to destroying the damnable clock that had gotten them into this situation were around.

Her shadow clone catches some of the tail end of Karis going through a process she recognizes, if not as well in someone who continued to live in the aftermath. Then again, that was part of un-death. More personal and literal for Karis than it had been on Sakura's world, where returning from death was by means that tied a soul to another's body.

She approached, tone even and collected as she asked her question. "Welcome back, Ms. Needleteeth. Is there anything I can get for you?" Sorry about the dead again thing. That had to have been incredibly disorienting to live through -- die through -- and decompose through on fast forward.

A clawed hand snapped out at Sakura and then Karis caught herself, the hand withdrawn, curled into a fist as she looked away. She didn't want to look at the young woman, so full of life, so reminiscent of herself years ago - weeks ago - that it almost made her sick. Well, she imagined she felt sick more than anything. Zombies usually didn't throw up or get nauseous.

"No. Just leave me alone."

She was a bit surprised to find herself in a hospital gown, but she remembered coming her - of her own free will. She dangled her legs over the edge of the bed and flexed her fingers open and shut.

"...just get me my damn armor back."

She felt naked, out of armor. The protective shell that kept blades, bullets and spells away from her fragile flesh, hid her body from everyone, was gone.

Billy hadn't intended to follow Lash on her way out to wherever young girls liked to wander, but it so happened that en route to his destination. He'd meant to check somewhere else entirely for re-aging crew members, but it so happened that he crossed paths with the familiar body on the ground.

To be more precise, he recognized it by the familiar afro on the ground.

"Lash," Billy breathed, instantly falling to his knees and bringing a supportive arm around her. "It's okay. Take your time."

She was healthy, she was safe. His Yellow Ranger was all right. It was a lot to process at once.

Lash's afro was, admittedly, very foretelling of who she was.

Billy's voice was not something she had been expecting, but it was certainly welcome. She coughed twice, feeling that each one somehow expelled the subsiding pain inside her.

"It's like I'm numb in the legs right now," she explained to him, trying to turn around one of her foot to drive the feeling out. "I guess the blood, the veins and then...everything need a few minutes to adjust to the fact I just got much bigger."

"No, I understand," Billy answered softly, sitting down with her and gently nudging her legs. "Bodies aren't meant to age that quickly. Combined with the stress of the memories, I'm more than happy to take a few minutes."

He shifted on the ground, gently touching her arm. "We have all the time we need now. I never thought I'd be able to say that again."

Ren had been walking down the stairs when the Clock was destroyed. Immediately, he grew out of his clothes, left in a few tattered shreds of cloth over the plantsuit he'd put on when he learned the Time Dragons had come. At some point between his teenage years and adulthood, he managed to grab the banister to keep from falling.

But there was a lot of extra time to return to him, and the constant loops of the Rider War left him on his knees, barely clinging to the banister as his lifeline. He blacked out a couple of times from injuries and deaths before finally it stopped. He was twenty-five again--a year on the ship after his last year in the Time Vent, having just gone into battle with Kido in the Mirror World against a swarm of Raydragoons that had begun invading.

But the other Time Vents were still there in his mind: the arrival of Femme and the battle against Ryuga; the coalition of Riders under Verde trying to kill him and Kido, and his death avenging Tezuka; a vague battle where he'd faked his own death against Ouja and then fought Kido to the death, though he couldn't seem to remember which of them won and wished the other back to life; and the loss of Eri and his time as Odin. More and more time loops, each less coherent than the last, the differences increasingly more subtle.

He finally let go of the railing and sat on the stairs, keeping his head down as he tried to breathe.

"Weeell, if you want to get technical, we're just humanoids with set timelines doomed to die at around the average lifespan of forty." At least Lash's sense of humor remained pretty much the same as always. And wow, Black Hole members tended to die young if that was any indication.

"I'll be okay," she protested, not used to having people fret over her or much in the ways of physical contact. "...this entire aging thing was a trip and a half."

Understatement of the century.

Edited 2011-06-11 03:46 (UTC)

"Forty?" Billy's eyes widened, his jaw dropping. Forty. That was definitely not the lifespan he was used to hearing. "It really is different out there. You weren't joking when you said what I went through is routine."

Lash, you now have a buddy who is very worried about you.

"Maybe you just need a rest? I know a guest room in a nearby house that's still clean."

"No, I need to find a few other people," she answered. "Once this feeling gets out of my legs there won't be any problems." As proof, she was now wiggling her toes. "See? And what's wrong with forty? You guys die younger?" Not getting it at all.

"Um by the way...that was one hell of a play." Maybe even the tiny hint of a grin was creeping up on her face. "It really was fun."

Billy agreed with that. "Yeah. I need to make sure everyone's all right. It makes me want to run in a hundred directions at once."

He flicked some hair back behind his ear, left wondering at that statement. "No, the normal lifespan on my planet is seventy. And...yeah, I have to admit that it was. We did it. After everything, we succeeded. No matter what anyone else thought."

The grin on his face could then be categorized as 'silly'.

Sakura didn't respond to Karis's first statement, since it was honestly one she'd heard before. And to different extents and degrees, she wouldn't blame her for it. "I'll have it for you in a moment," she said, nodding her head. She'd caught site of herself retrieving clothing for Cassie, earlier, and headed in the same general direction.

Keeping things stored in one place was convenient, if armor wasn't quite as foldable as clothing. In fact, armor has a tendency to not be foldable of all, when made of plates.

Thankfully with everything else going on, most things kept in temporary storage had stayed there, so locating what Karis had turned in when she'd reported to Quarantine wasn't difficult. In a reasonable amount of time Sakura was heading back to Karis, holding all she could recall of hers that had come in with her initially. "Let me know if there's anything missing," she said, once she was back in decent hearing range. "Things mostly escaped shuffling around, but it's still possible things got moved and misplaced at one point or another."

Edited 2011-06-11 04:31 (UTC)

"Give me those," Karis snapped again and stood from the bed to virtually tank the pile of armor away from Sakura. She shot a glare at her - although really, she'd be helpful when she'd come in, but Karis didn't want to think about that. She'd been alive and whole and herself again, even if only for a few days-

She dropped the armor onto the bed and turned away from Sakura as she stripped the medical gown off. Let her stare, dammit. Karis' body was a bit dessicated - you could count her ribs through the dead flesh. Bits and pieces are still missing and there's a long, sealed wound that looks like it's never really healed up her left side. It's been stitched and stapled together to prevent the flesh from parting. She pulls on the clothing and underarmor first. A padded gambeson, some chain, and then the plate. Chest piece, pauldrons, bracers, arm plating. Then the legs and boots.

She stretched out one wrist as she slipped on her last gauntlet. Good. She felt whole again. Under the steel, cloth, chain and spells that kept her from harm and hid her from the rest of the world. She felt safe again. She finally, slowly turned to look at Sakura, eyes narrowed in a little glare.

"...thanks," she said, grudgingly.

"Seventy is way too long," Lash said trying to imagine herself with white hair and an aging body. Like a female Von Bolt? Ewwww. Hey she remembered Von Bolt now. "Maybe if you live in Orange Star I guess, but Black Hole's not the type of country to take care of an aging population, if you know what I mean."

With that disturbing information out of the way, she grinned.

"So are all earth plays like that? I think we should do them more often."

Lash, that is incredibly sad. You're not helping Billy worry any less, not at all. But he was determined to focus on the present. The wonderful present.

"That's just Shakespeare," Billy explained. "He's one of the greatly known playwrights, but there are others. There are humorous works, political satires, and...there's a particularly popular genre we didn't cover. The musical. In a musical, certain plot events are done in song and dance instead of dialogue."

The first person to propose he direct a musical was getting hit. No way, that was a dangerous road to go down.

When it happens, Jamie is playing at fighting, running around with a wooden sword turned up in the depths of the TARDIS and yelling 'Creag An Tuire' quite happily. One moment he is fine - and the next his eyes go quite wide and he drops to his knees. The sword falls from nerveless fingers and hits the ground next to him.

Like with so many other of the crew members, he begins to age, shifting from boy to teenager to young man in a very short time. The block on his memories of the ship and all his friends lifts as well - but it's not a pleasant process, and he cries out as they flood in. Soon enough, his mind overwhelmed by the combination of aging and his memories returning, he slumps to the floor, quite unconscious.

A short time later, however, there's a groan from where he's fallen, and Jamie reawakens. Groggily, he pushes himself up from the floor and brings a hand to his head, trying to focus on the room around him without much luck.

"Ooh, my head..."

Edited 2011-06-11 05:05 (UTC)

"Needs a lot more science and explosions, but the solid base isn't too bad. All the killing and cursing each other's families is really neat!" Trust Lash to focus on the parts she found really interesting. "I...dunno if I'd like that song and dance stuff. I'm not that great of a singing." Unless she's in the shower, surprisingly.

You're musical directorial debut was safe from Lash, Billy, at least there was that.

But there were much more important matters to attend. "I think we both have people we need to talk too that aren't here huh." That was as nice as Lash could be to him. "I'm good now." She stood up, wobbled a little, but managed to stay upright before dusting herself off. "Now I need to find my coat and my bag. Being around the ship with just Stacy's outfit isn't my style."

Thank goodness for that, at least. He still hovered close by in case she needed him, but he could see that Lash would be all right. And they both had people to check up on, it was true.

"Yeah, I'll meet up with you again soon."

Before she left, though, he had one more devious trick to try. A hug. She'd earned one. Please don't hit him.

"Are you hugging me?"

Billy's long search for familiar faces brings him to the Obs Deck next, where he hears a longed-for and pained voice. Jamie's. He's safe, but...is this normal? What if the memory alteration is permanent? It's a very, very small probability, but one that can't be entirely ignored.

"...Hey," calls a tentative voice from nearby. No matter who it is, it's not right to leave someone suffering. "I can't imagine how rough that has to be."

"Not anymore!" Time to disengage. He was going to die if he didn't attempt some sort of apology. "I'm sorry. I just couldn't stop thinking about what would've happened if our production failed."

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The Return of Time

Location: The Halls

Location: The Medbay

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/if this is okay?

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Location: Atori Teahouse

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and we're back

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Location: Obs Deck

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