trans_9 | Is Your Love Strong Enough? Part 2 - Personal Interwoven Soulcatchers

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Is Your Love Strong Enough? Part 2 - Personal Interwoven Soulcatchers

Following you awakening and talking with a few of the members through the communication systems by way of the three kind people who had awakened her, Nezaitben realized how the crew was stuck in a terrible mess.

So many of them felt sad and depressed. Considering the entire ship, it wasn't too hard to see why. The next day, there had been an unusual amount of magical flowers spreading all over the ship. Nothing that damaged the controls (she might be naive in the way humanoids were, but Nezaitben was no fool either) but they were found in the most unexpected of places. Her own awakening area was now blooming in a flower paradise, the wooden palace standing proudly on top, the smell and pink cherry blossom strong enough to carry through most of the central city area where most people resided.

Yet the ship was still sad.

This would not do.

That night, or what passed as a night for in the ship, Nezaitben took to the 'sky', letting pieces of her own essence fall on top of the sleeping populace, or those that were not sleeping finding themselves feeling the need too. Enveloping the ship into a peaceful slumber, she searched their dreams. The powers granted to her by the pantheon of gods in her homeworld allowed Nezaitben to weave a series of dreamcatchers giving her the ability to see those whose hearts connected true.

These noble souls would do. Lead by example had always been her philosophy. She would give them a great gift - communication with each other in a single body, allowing them to share everything together. Their two soulcatchers were woven together that night into a single, grand ones, hanging in the garden's trees.

A few minutes later, the empty husks of the bodies that weren't being used showed up at her palace. With a smile, she welcomed them like her own children and began to dress them for their task.

That morning, some of the crewmen would wake up to a strange surprise...and that would just be the beginning of a long, strange misunderstanding and young gods trying too much to please everyone.

[OOC - Just a few rules. Keep in mind the listed rules. You can all start your own threads of waking up in the bodies of others. If you feel like leaving a 2nd post for other people to intact with them, start a reply to your own first post with OPEN header. That way everyone else will know where to post and if you don't feel like having an open interaction post right away, you won't have to!

There will also be another post for all the soulless characters to go around spreading joy and love, so look forward to that too!]

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Although it had been a few weeks since Elisa's last evening in Manhattan, she kept to her old sleep patterns in order to spend as much time as possible with Goliath.

(Besides, even this city needed someone to take the night shift.)

Or she had kept to her old sleep patterns, anyway. Despite her best efforts to stay awake, she'd been unable to fight against Nezaitben's soporific spell for long. She managed to make it to her room in the castle - stumbling through the carpet of flowers that covered the grounds - and collapsed on to the bed, falling into a deep sleep until the first rays of the false sunlight began to creep through her window.

With a low groan, Elisa raised a hand to shade her eyes before sitting up and stretching.

"What happened?"

She asked the rhetorical question aloud as she brushed her hair out of her face, unaware that there was someone nearby to answer.

The flood of thoughts that poured in through hers were distinctly not her own, and a sudden feeling of resistance came over her body, as if someone else were moving - or trying not to move it.

That is not my voice, this is not where I went to sleep, this is not the time I awaken. This is not my body. Can she hear me? Something is not right. What sorcery is this?

Outside her control, someone was making her very agitated.

She tried to stay calm, but her own understandable confusion – Where had that sudden wave of exhaustion come? Who had left the flowers throughout the city? – was exacerbated by agitation from another source that she couldn’t name.

“Goliath …”

Elisa thought, for a moment, that she’d heard his voice, but she was definitely alone in the room. She tried to get to her feet, hoping that the strange stone sleep cycle that he had on the ship meant that he was still awake. She felt as if she had no control over her own limbs. Had she been drugged?

“Goliath!”

Can she not hear me?

Goliath tried his best not to move. This is not mine to move in. I must not make this situation worse. Whatever it is.

However, the effect his trying not to move had on Elisa was to make it harder for her to move at all. Goliath was not very experienced in passively allowing things to happen at others' will in his own body.

She had heard his voice, then. As stiff and unusually uncoordinated as she was, Elisa continued her efforts to get to the door and find help.

“I can hear you,” she managed. It was as difficult to speak as it was to move, but she forced out the words. “Where are you? What’s going on?”

Although Elisa knew that it was theoretically possible to share bodies – she’d seen it with Coldsteel, Coldstone and Coldfire – it hadn’t occurred to her that that was what happening here.

- Like Coldstone. Goliath thought of his siblings, three souls sharing control over one body. No. This is not the same. We are at once in control and not in control, there is no partitioning of time but a constant sharing of faculties.

It occurred to him that he felt short. He did not like it.

Elisa. I think someone has put us in the same body. Your body. Don't look down.

That last thought had been directed at himself. He inhaled deeply, relying on his usual attempt to calm himself, but only grew more agitated as even that familiar action felt alien in his beloved's body, which, much as he appreciated it, he did not want to be inhabiting.

"Then we both need to try and calm down," she said, though, given that she could hear his thoughts as clearly as her own in her head, there was no need for her to speak aloud. It was a force of habit. Hopefully, they'd find a way to fix this before she got out of it.

Elisa sat back down on the bed - not that she'd got very far from it in the first place - and took a deep breath. Or was Goliath the one that had taken it?

"We need to find out who did this. And why."

Agreed.

Without meaning to, he closed Elisa's eyes tight and exhaled. This is overwhelming. I must monitor my every thought. Elisa, your body is lovely, but I never wanted to be inside it.

Except - Oh that was not a good choice of words to continue to follow on.

Let's go now before I think something I'll regret.

"I wasn't exactly planning this either, big guy," she replied, trying to reopen her eyes. Momentarily, she wondered what he was worried about thinking, but it wasn't difficult to work it out. (For her part, she'd spend so long worrying about her feelings that she'd never had time to dwell on the practicalities of ... anything else.)

She managed to keep her thoughts in check, but, given that they were sharing emotions as well as thoughts, her embarrassment was probably palpable.

With marked effort, she tried to change the subject.

"Any idea where to start?" With the people on the ship who practiced magic, maybe?

The magical department. SOMEONE must have experience in this. I wonder if my body is still in the castle. Would it be worth our time to check?

He concentrated on envisioning the way to the magical department. They needed to get there as quickly as they could.

Their combined determination was enough to help Elisa get to her feet and out of the door without any further complications.

"We don't know what caused this, but, whatever happened, we need to make sure your body stays safe."

Whatever happened and whether this was the result of an accident or something else entirely.

His body wasn't there when they made it to the turret where Goliath usually slept.

"What sorcery is this?" he demanded, his inflection strange on Elisa's voice.

I apologize. I'm trying not to impose on your autonomy, but it's not easy.

She wasn't surprised when they had their way to the turret and found no sign of Goliath's slumbering form, though she was frustrated and, underneath that, understandably concerned.

"None of this is your fault," she soothed, "We need to try and work together. Where can we find the magic department?"

Focusing on a common aim would help them to work together while they got used to sharing a body. In theory.

He pictured the way, frustrated at the thought that they had no choice but to take the stairs down. At least the last time he'd been human, he'd also been enchanted with the underlying assumption that he always had been - it had made not having wings less frustrating (except when he was falling on account of not having them).

We can make it quickly if we go now. I'll try not to slow you down.

Elisa went some way towards combating the frustration that Goliath felt by responding with brief but genuine amusement. If the situation hadn't been so serious, it would have been ridiculous. If he thought that taking the stairs was irritating, he was going to find some of the other things that humans considered normal very strange indeed. For a start, she was physically weaker and considerably more fragile.

"I think we'll be ok as long as we've got a common purpose," she ventured, following the path that was in her mind despite the fact that she'd never taken it.

A distinct, uncontrolled Don't remind me cropped up in response to Elisa's consideration of her own relative fragility. How was he supposed to protect her when he was no more than a voice in her head? She was capable and he loved and admired her capability, but if someone needed to be between her and an Ohm grunt or a grenadier or a werewolf and he could do nothing about it -

A common purpose. I agree.

To distract himself from anxious thoughts, or uncomfortable thoughts, or both, he began to address the possible sources of this awkward situation. Was the Puck on board? He had not shown sign of himself, and neither had Goliath seen evidence of any Fair Folk as he knew them from the version of Earth he and Elisa shared. Were there other trickster spirits to suspect? Perhaps, but if there were, he did not know them. This wasn't a tactic he expected from the Ohm, and anyone outright antagonistic wouldn't have gone through the trouble of saving his soul or hiding his body - unless they were using it elsewhere for nefarious purposes, and needed his soul intact for reasons yet unknown.

His inner monologue rattled on, as he tried not to hear thoughts of Elisa's that were not directed as conversation towards him.

"Take it easy, big guy," she soothed, though it was easier said than done when they were sharing emotions. She worried about him as well, when he threw himself into fights that she couldn't be a part of or when she had to leave him unprotected during the day. Of course she did!

It was difficult to know which parts of Goliath's monologue were directed at her and which parts weren't, but she was aware that he was trying his best not to intrude. (It was impossible, given that he was in her head, but he tried. That meant a lot.)

"If Puck woke up during the last pod pop, he wouldn't have waited this long to make his move," she pointed out. The fact the people they encountered would think she was talking to herself was the least of her worries. "But it might be a trick to try and knock us off balance."

That Elisa worried as much about him as he worried about her was something he knew that he should know logically, but certainly hadn't felt until now. It was . . . touching. Not because he knew how helpless he was during the day, but because she cared about that as much as she did.

For a moment, he felt appreciation for her concern. With that appreciation communicated as quickly as he felt it, there was no need to linger on the point. It was, in the middle of the discomfort of this over-forced intimacy, only comfortably intimate.

We have not known Puck to enjoy keeping his identity long, but he could have grown bored with us and found new mortals to share his secret with. He could be anyone. But then, if that is our suspicion, anyone could be anything else.

They were drawing nearer to the magical department, but not fast enough for Goliath. He kept fighting the urge to push Elisa's body harder than she already was.

"I'm going as fast as I can," she reminded him, sensing his exasperation and trying her best not to return it. She didn't want to spoil the moment - the simple and comfortable moment of understanding - that had come when Goliath had realised that she worried about him just as much as he worried about her,

"Maybe. But I have a feeling that Puck sticks to what he knows he liked."

And he knew that he liked toying with them. If nothing else, they were from the same world.

I do not mean to rush you.

But they had long since passed the time where Goliath would have scooped her up so they could move at his pace. Of course, this was an impossibility.

This does not feel like his work, but we can't rule out the work of Fair Folk. If -

Goliath didn't finish the thought, as up ahead of them, his body strolled into view, walking around in broad day light.

Not to mention covered in flowers and gold lame, as well.

"What?"

Elisa's body skidded to a halt as Goliath stopped her to stare in disbelief.

Even if her emotions and motor functions had been independent of Goliath's, Elisa would have stopped in her tracks to gaze in sheer disbelief at the sight in front of her. In front of them.

"What the ..?"

She trailed off, stunned. It wasn't just the fact that it was the middle of the day. It was the combination of flowers, gold clothing and messages of peace and love that really confused her.

"Jalapeno!"

I guess we've found you.

Nothing about this made sense. Not seeing himself walking around without the consciousness that made him himself, whether day or night or under any circumstances, ridiculous or not.

Whatever consciousness was piloting Goliath's body, their exclamations had gotten its notice, and the gold-clad gargoyle bounded over with an expression of excessive joviality.

"Receive with joy the message of hope, little friend! Turn that frown upside-down! Love and peace are ever all around you!"

With a beaming smile, the gargoyle laid a wreath of flowers on Elisa's hair. Goliath's silence in the back of Elisa's mind was the silence of shock beyond words.

Elisa, we have to keep going.

CLEARLY it was urgent beyond emphasis.

She hadn't been frowning, as such. She'd been too busy staring at him for that, her mouth all but hanging open. Her own shock - or was it a combination of their feelings? - was just as palpable.

Carefully, she reached up and plucked the wreath of flowers out of her hair, crushing flower petals between her fingers. She was angry. Not just shocked. Angry. That was Goliath's body and, no matter what it was being used for, it wasn't under the control of the person who should have been using it.

"Good idea."

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Is Your Love Strong Enough? Part 2 - Personal Interwoven Soulcatchers

[Elisa and Goliath]

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