revivalproject | Catibrations

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Catibrations

WHO: Quintet and YOU
WHERE: Quintet's Calibrations Room
WHAT: ~~xenofiction~~ Furry Nonsense™
WHEN: Calibrations Time
WARNINGS: tba

Entering Quintet's room, is like exiting a dark tunnel. At first the scene is too bright to discern more than vague shapes, outlines and shadows, the sun washing out all detail into white. Then you adjust.

Dirt floor— no, it's just dirt. Packed flat and cleared of plants and all debris, it's a wide, open clearing, surrounded by tall grass. Taller than you are, even, grass that towers twice your height or more, and giant trees and all around are a series of enormous cavern entrances. Or perhaps, they're other doors?

Animals filter in and out of them, walking in twos or threes, sometimes riding on one another's back, chatting amicably, with a relaxed air despite the strange combinations. Why are rabbits riding on lions? How can wolves be laughing alongside a hopping pair of robins. What's with the anteater, so obviously lecturing an entire group of rats and mice as he walks along, like a professor conducting a walking tour?

And Quintet is there, sitting at the edge of it all, just near the door, watching people come and go, hunched in on herself, tail coiled tight. Just watching.

Come to think of it, for a cat, she's exceptionally large, wouldn't you say?

Perhaps this is the moment when you realize: whatever you were, you aren't anymore. Like everyone else in this society of animals, you also have paws, or wings, or talons, or claws. You also walk low to the ground, and have a snout of some description. In this Society, there are no humans, and precious few apes or other hominids.

And, that means you, too.

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This...is unusual.

Cal's been through quite a few heads during these Calibrations but this is the first time one has had such a direct influence on its guests. Or intruders, he supposes, depending on how one looked at these visitations.

Here he is, walking on all fours, his feet almost dainty, his ears and nose all ending in points. He has reddish brown fur and a bushy tail, his overall build more on the slinky side.

"Uh..." Given that everyone else here looks to be some type of creature- none of which Cal's really familiar with, if not maybe passingly so- he's beginning to realize this might just be the sort of setting expected by this room's owner. And then he catches sight of her, a focal point in a busy place, set apart somehow in spite of things.

When Link appears in the dream, it's in the form of a white gyrfalcon. A far cry from his usual appearance - although his blue hair tie seems to have managed to remain, now taking the form of a band around one claw.

He doesn't really take notice of Quintet. They haven't really met before, after all. Also Link is a bird and that's kind of taking precedence over absolutely everything else right now.

He has wings! He flaps them. Then flaps them again, marvelling at the sensation. And his eyes! He could see everything. He keeps turning his head constantly, trying to look at everything around him all at once. And he's got claws too! Walking on them is a little awkward. He hops up and down experimentally.

Link is a bird, and it's amazing.

Can he fly? He has to see if he can fly. If he can just...figure out the how. He jumps up again, flapping his wings much more. The end result is more of an extended hop than actual flight.

This room is more the setting of a fable than a room, and that's the first thing Wesker notices upon stepping into the scene. Is this the dwelling place of the hedgehog? Or maybe the turtle? He can't quite tell, but he is there. In a room that isn't a room but much rather a crossroad for a colorful mix of fauna. Does that mean the different animals are what he has to touch to access the owner's memories?

Wesker watches them mingle about for a few moments and would have crossed his arms if he had any. Well, technically they are still there. But they are clearly supporting his weight and he has to look down to recognize his hands for having been replaces by large paws. Paws of telling orange and white with deep black stripes that release a set of vicious claws when flexed.

Great. So he is part of this fable now. And apparently, he's the hunter.

A deep growl grows at the back of his growl, which at least suits his form in this dream.

Well this is... new.

The first thing he realizes is that he's closer to the ground, then realizes that he's on four legs. Four legs that are curly blond and furry. He can't quite see all of him, but Billy Hargrove now has the shape of a giant Schnauzer. The only things that links him to his human form is the necklace now serving as his collar and the bright blue eyes instead of the usual brown of the breed's.

It's a strange world, even compared to what he's seen and experienced back in Hawkins. Lips curling up in a snarl, he barks for attention, seeking out the owner of this particular room. It had to be a room, right? Because of this stupid dreamwalking ordeal.

Quintet notices the fox right away. For one thing, he's staring at her; she's grown up in Society, mixed-enough company not to take offense, but instinct is instinct and while Nature isn't meant to be their master... it still has a voice.

A cat will always notice someone staring, as they say. Well, she's noticing it.

"Hey, guy. Got a problem?" She asks, tilting her head with the half-thoughtless recognition of something off. This whole little episode was like a dream, or a nightmare, "You look a little lost."

The fox actually looks a little sheepish at that, ducking his head briefly before he pads closer.

"Well...I don't think that's completely off. This is the first time I've been in one of these and not...looking like I usually do," he admits. Is that a strange thing to say? But then usually in these spaces, they weren't so crowded, although his senses tell him Quintet is the only actual person here aside from him.

No one would be surprised to know that Reeve appears as a tuxedo cat, truly. In fact some people would absolutely call it and be happy to point out how predictable it is. Reeve didn't care that they might laugh. The dignity of a cat suits him anyway.

He sits there on his haunches easily by Quintet, tail curled around his toes. Adapting quickly to this probably came from the Caits he worked with.

"Is this where you are from?"

Can he fly? Quintet has no way of knowing. For some birds, surely, flying is largely a matter of instinct, but then... it has to be complicated enough to involve some amount of skill, doesn't it? You can walk without learning how to, but moving with any kind of speed and grace is a different thing.

Not that Link is showing any kind of speed and grace, at the moment. He looks like he's sat on an anthill, and they're in a stinging mood.

"Hey, what's your problem? You got ants?"

A tiger's hunting-growl is a peculiar weapon. It alerts everyone in range of the humiliating fact that a tiger has missed its leap, but so too does it mask the location of said tiger. The frequency is low, seeming to come from every direction at once.

In this context, it ought to garner attention, ought to turn every head; tigers, even civilized ones, can easily be dangerous. But this isn't real, and no one else here is either. None of them give the tiger so much as a glance, except Quintet.

"Watch out, big guy," She calls, both impressed and bemused, and unwilling to show either, "You get too frisky around here, they'll call the rationale."

It's easily the weirdest canine she's ever seen. Domesticated dog breeds aren't totally unknown to Society, of course, but they're vanishingly rare and almost universally of the middling mutt-types that are as near as blood to coyotes, or else to wolves themselves. Feral creatures have a dependence on humanity imprinted on every part of their bodies.

"Hey!" She calls, because he stands out, and it's clear he isn't meant to be here. That means he's not part of the dream, he's got to be one of the people. Plus, he's barking; that's a clear call for help. Quintet trots up with a cat's easy hustle, rounds him once to have a good look, and then sits in front of his big hairy snout, "You get lost, guy?"

It's as nice as it is creepy, when someone from this place is actually normal about something. There's nothing unnatural about Reeve's pose; his stance, the way he sits on his haunches, even the comfortable, easy way he hunches next to her, shoulder-to-shoulder... it's all right. It's as a cat would do.

Comforting, normal, all things good, if only it weren't becoming so strange to experience that kind of normalcy. She can never find her balance here.

"Yeah," She says, eventually, "Or— well, no. This is the College, where I studied. I'm from a while south of here. But yeah."

"You're usually a hominid, right? Don't think one of those would fit in here."

Not in general, nor indeed in any of the buildings; what's spacious for a cat is almost cramped for a human. There are a few openings that someone like Cal might have squeezed into, if they stooped, or didn't mind crawling. But mostly... it's all low to the ground, built for a multitude of physiological perspectives— none of them including tall, bipedal apes.

"This isn't exactly normal for me, too," She sighs, "It's like a nightmare. I keep thinking I'm late for class. That's my teacher over there."

She indicates the anteater across the way with her chin. The man is gesturing with wide sweeps of his enormous digging claws, demonstrating some important point for the rodents, several of which are busily taking notes on strips of bark.

"He doesn't look it, but it turns out he's a murderer. Funny how that works out."

Cal comes over beside the cat, turning to have a look from her angle. "Oh? That's...interesting." Not that he doesn't believe her, but he's just not sure what all one is expected to say about that.

"So this is...a school of some kind? What do you learn? This is probably the busiest space I've ever been to."

"Yeah, this is the College. Everyone come here to study, to refine their Art for work in Society, and get a good job. I was studying Martial Law, I wanted to join the Rationale," Quintet says, and then abruptly remembers he has no idea what she's talking about, "—Law enforcement. There's always somebody... doing something wrong."

The classroom doors are little more than holes cut into packed-dirt structures, or burrow-openings, but they still stand out like dark, open mouths, full of invisible teeth. Quintet, for her part, studiously avoids making eye-contact with them. There's nothing good in there.

"Society moves on its own. It's our job to make sure to guide it away from the wrong directions."

"I see," Cal nods as he looks on. "Kind of sounds like the Order back home. The Jedi weren't supposed to act as law enforcement or even generals and commanders as we came to be, but upholding peace in the galaxy was always our main objective."

Unfortunately he couldn't disagree that there was always someone doing something wrong.

He tilts his head as he notes the strange burrow-like structures. "Where do those go?"

If it were possible to hunch any lower, she would. As it is, Quintet takes a good deal longer than she probably ought to, to answer.

"I don't know. The layout is different from what it was in the real thing. The shapes of the doors are off too. I think... I don't know."

Because she doesn't. Sometimes, knowing something is only a way to cause yourself pain. Or maybe, it's that she already knows, and is trying not to. Denial, at its most fundamental form.

Quintet tilts her head at him, "Do you want to look?"

The Jedi fox looks pensively at the strange little doorways.

"...not if you'd rather I don't," he says.

"I'm not sure how much you might have come to understand how these places work, but... they tend to take on a familiar place that's meaningful to you somehow. Ultimately it's intended to reveal memories, past experience that you may or may not be willing to share. Sometimes they trigger by accident. Sometimes the room's owner's well aware of what some things may hold. So..." He looks back at Quintet again. "...I try to respect those memories, this space."

She looks up at him, surprised. It legitimately hadn't occurred to her that he'd have less curiosity than honor— or that he'd not simply barrel ahead.

"Huh."

Shades of old humor, bulling past persistent grief. All dogs were the same: idiots, and all the more beautiful for it. She could almost hear Meander's voice in this.

"I've been too cowardly to actually look into it," she admits. Actually, come to think of it, she really can hear Meander's voice. Abruptly, Quintet bolts upright, fur standing on end. There he is.

Maned wolf, enormously tall compared to the two of them, loping past. It stops, tosses them both a doggy grin over one shoulder, and barks a laugh. Before you kill someone... ask! rings out, and then he bounds off into one of the doorways.

"Oh, this is so messed up. I know you're here because this creepy place is doing it, but what does that, is this my subconscious halo-mind, or what?"

Reading the memories of others, experiencing the fragments of someone else's life through the Force, that is Cal's specialty and a rare ability among Jedi. Perhaps that's why he understands how these dreams work even more acutely, but at least they tend to be more obvious. He can't stop himself from seeing things if there's something to see once he comes into contact with a given object, back in the waking world.

His ears perk, more so at Quintet's reaction before the source of it makes an appearance. The leggy wolf's demeanor keeps him from going on his guard, a confused look crossing his features at the words imparted. Cal looks to Quintet.

"It might be... Maybe that's an embodiment of a memory, one of the trigger points. Usually they're pretty obvious, most of the time they're inanimate objects." He frowns thoughtfully as he looks off to where the maned wolf had gone.

"This is still your space though, no matter who else may venture within it. You have some control over it."

"Trying to fly!" He kinda wanted to ask for some advice on how, exactly, to do that. But Quintet was a cat, not a bird. Probably not someone with a lot of advice for Link in this instance.

Link jumps up once more. This time, he does a little better - he might not have done this before, but he is learning.

Still, the fact that he's trying to take off from the ground...probably isn't helping. Maybe if he had something to jump off of, he'd do a little better.

Markus already feels his heart warming looking at what looks like a bucolic utopia. Different species living together ~~semmingly~~without hurting each other, of course this is going to hit differently for him. When he tries to move a step closer he realizes his appearance is completely shifted: he is now a canary, like the mechanic ones Carl kept in a gilded cage. He used to be tasked with turning them on to make them sing. They created beauty on command, just like him.

He looks up at Quintet with the longing of someone who wants an answer but he doesn't have a real question. He wants her to describe, to paint this picture for him.

Wesker turns his head towards the voice, his scowl not quite translating too well onto the feline face. But he sits back regardless, his tail swishing involuntarily back and forth in an unwilling display of his disapproval with the situation.

"Well. What am I looking at here?" He asks since apparently the cat is the owner of this dreamscape.

"So I could just tell you to get out, and you'd leave?" She asks. Right now, as he is, she has no fear that she couldn't take him— Quintet felt herself equal to a fox's muscle, anyday. But that wasn't what she was asking.

There's something... technological, about all this. Rules, and systems, and outside permissions. The sterile walls of the facility they're all being kept in. And this, the unspeakably personal lushness of the dreamscape, ugly and intimate and mundane all at once.

"Fuck it," she decides, "You're not the first person to get inside my head. Let's go see."

"Why."

She honestly cannot comprehend it. The ground is so nice, and supportive, and...no, he's still flapping like a fermented duck. For a moment automatic embarrassment takes over and— no, no one is looking at them, no one is noticing. The milling people might as well be furniture as much as they notice Link and Quintet— or vice versa.

"...You're one of those hominid people, huh. Guess this must be pretty wild, for you."

"College campus. Everyone here is some kind of martial artist, or an administrative worker or something. Markscraft," she tilts her head in the direction of the rodents, all busily taking notes, scribbling down the Anteater's lecture in an aggressive, looping shorthand, "That kind of thing. I studied here, seasons ago."

Her casual pose is feigned, legs splayed out, tail slowly curling and uncurling. She's watching him; what will he do? Big and dangerous, yes, but if that bird earlier had been any indication, none of these people really knew what to do once they looked like something Society would recognize as a person. Any cove in a storm; Quintet would take the advantage, and bite down gladly.

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Catibrations

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