bigapplesauce | a thankless job but somebody's got to do it [closed]

"Seth Jones," he answers, grasping the out-stretched hand for just a moment. "I take it you're new in town?" There's this certain out-of-placeness almost everyone has when they first arrive. And it's very rare for someone who've been around a while to inquire about powers.

"That's right," he replies and wow, this is like the third person he's met who apparently hails from the UK. But then, the rift supposedly snatches people from everywhere so he supposes he shouldn't be surprised.

"Very new and, uh." His jaw slides sideways thoughtfully. "And very confused. Specifically about this whole 'powers' thing. Lucy mentioned you might be able to help." He flicks his eyes up to meet Seth's, cautiously hopeful.

"Depends what you need, I suppose," he answers, taking a drink, not exactly making an effort to be encouraging at the moment. He doesn't feel like there's that much to explain, really, and if he's asking for help on how to control his power, well, it's hard to explain something like that, especially since everyone's powers are different.

"Do you know the basics, or would you like a rundown straight from the top?" he asks after a moment.

"Well I know about the rift." Seth doesn't seem to be enthusiastic about the whole deal but Daniel plows on regardless. "And how it gives certain people certain powers and, um. Whatnot. But I'm actually more interested in figuring out how one would, uh. Control them? Like, say you've got this really inconvenient power. Er, actually, I'm not sure it is a power per sé, but it keeps happening around me specifically so that's more or less what I assumed."

Daniel manages to halt himself before he gets caught up on some vaguely related tangent. Right, yes. Original intent. It's in there somewhere.

"Basically I wanted to know if you could. Er. Help me with that."

Seth frowns. Can he help with that? Well, he knows that taking someone's power, playing with it himself for a bit, and then giving it back to them, has made powers much more effective and easy to handle in the past. But he's yet to do any actual power dealing since the clusterfuck that was Johnny's power, and he's not particularly eager to repeat that unless there is something in it for him. And given Daniel just described his power as 'inconvenient', Seth somehow doubts there is.

"I could help you get rid of it, if that's what you want," he answers slowly. "Learning how to control it, I can really only give vague advice, probably. What is the power?"

"Um. Well." He looks down again and shifts a little self-consciously because if one were to think of "powers" it would generally not be along the lines of spontaneous generation of post-it notes. But he can't get help if he doesn't explain, so he shoves aside the uncertainty and goes ahead with it.

"Paperclips," he says, point-blank, then hastens to explain. "A-and post-its. Pencils, sometimes. In weird places. I mean, they just keep showing up. Pockets, surfaces, anywhere I happen to be at the time. And I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with any of them. Are, are they temporary manifests? Are they sentient? Should I be worried when it happens? I mean, what do I do about that?"

Seth can't quite suppress an amused smirk as Daniel explains his power. Inconvenient, yeah. Possibly also useful, but not if you can't control it.

"Whoa, whoa," he answers, smiling a bit as he tries to get Daniel to slow down. "I highly doubt they're sentient." He's not sure how Daniel could even come to that possible conclusion. He leans back in his seat to consider.

"Creating temporary manifestations is definitely more common than creating permanent objects out of nothing. Or there's the possibility you're simply teleporting them from whereever else to your location," he says, playing with his drink as he thinks over the possibilities. "Don't think it's a particular cause for worry, though."

"Teleport - teleporting them from somewhere else? Well, what if they need them there?" Daniel gives himself a little shake. Prioritize, come on. "I mean it's, yeah, it's a little frustrating. You try explaining why you had to dig binder paper out of the shower drain. I just - if there's a way to maybe control it, or keep it from happening all the time, or just, you know, get rid of it? Is that - is that a thing?"

"Mm. Getting rid of it is a possibility," he answers with a nod. Were it a bit more interesting power, and Seth weren't feeling so averse to taking powers in general these days, he'd currently be talking Daniel into giving it up, emphasising not just the inconveniences but the possible risks involved.

"Usually, learning to control it is just a matter of trying to do it intentionally. Bit like using a new muscle, like learning how to wiggle your ears. What's probably happening now is you're just using the power subconsciously or as a reflex."

"Reflex. What, you mean like, emotionally?" He rubs at his chin, brow furrowed. "Hmm. Okay, that makes sense. I thought it just sorta happened but no, that, that explains a bit."

He nods to himself for a second before remembering, right, middle of a conversation here.

"Do you have any idea how I'd go about doing that? I don't know, pointers? This whole thing's kinda new for me. I'm not used to, uh, to powers and things. Well. Sort of. Relatively speaking." Okay, that'd be stretching the truth a bit. More than a bit. Daniel's not sure how open he should be about the whole Ascended thing because as far as ice breakers go, it's not ideal.

You know what, Seth's just not going to ask about clarification about that one right at this moment. It might be a sort of accurate description of himself before the Rift, actually. Definitely used to the existence of powers, but not having a whole host of them himself.

"Mostly seems to work by intent, for most people," he answers with a shrug. "When you do it by accident, try to figure out if it felt like anything, then try to recreate it. Eventually you reach a point where you just.. do it." To illustrate, Seth stops playing with his glass and flattens out his palm, then passes it right through his glass, as if neither were solid.

"Oh. Oh wow. That's fascinating." Daniel leans in close, studying the phenomenon with interest. "You can shift phase? You can localize it? And you're able to keep in sight with our phase? That's incredible. What about objects? How exactly -"

Again, he has to force himself to stop peppering the man with questions. But - fascinating. Really! He can name one or two people off the top of his head who'd love to study this kind of thing in-depth, himself included.

But. Priorities.

"Handier than paperclips and post-its, let me tell you." Daniel chances a smile at that, brief and hopefully less intimidating than a wall of questions.

Seth can't help but grin a bit at the guy's nerdy enthusiasm. Certainly a much more on-point reaction than most people's though. Asking actually intelligent questions. Not that Seth can really explain or elaborate the science between it or anything like that. He just knows what works and what doesn't. But Daniel seems to reconsider drowning him in questions anyway.

"Never know, though, you might be able to make other things too," he points out. "And I dunno, I've seen worse powers than never-ending store of office supplies."

Daniel sits back, pleased he's able to get along with someone without offending them, which seems to be a disturbing recurrence these days.

"You know, I haven't been keeping track," he admits sheepishly. "I was more concerned with an unwarranted buildup of office supplies than categorizing. And, uh." That last statement was a bit eyebrow-raising, and raise eyebrows it does. "What do you mean by worse powers? You mean more inconvenient, or...?"

Seth makes a face. "Well. If you can call 'severely hazardous to your own health' merely inconvenient..." The statement might come off a bit more grim and personal than he intended it to sound. But he's not about to discuss that, so let's change the subject.

"Anyway, I take it you'd like to figure out how to use it, rather than just have it gone?" he asks.

"Wait - have it gone? You mean I can do that?" That's an interesting thought. And a tempting one. But then again, it would really be just Daniel's luck if the fate of the world happens to come down on the right-sized paperclip except, whoops, he can't make those anymore.

As for "severely hazardous" powers, well. Daniel could make a few cautious guesses, but he's not sure he wants to know the particulars. Which is good, seeing as Seth's expressed no desire to talk about them either.

Seth nods in reply, taking another drink and emptying his glass.

"Though for the record, you haven't noticed any... side-effects to it? Any particular problems you didn't have before that you can't ascribe to anything in particular?" he asks. Because he is sure not taking a piddly little power like that if it has negative consequences.

"Nothing I can think of, no." Daniel frowns, trying to remember feeling anything aside from annoyance that yet another heap of pens managed to invade his precious sock supply. "But, like I said, it's all pretty new to me. It might be I just haven't noticed anything yet."

He hesitates, wondering if he should mention pre-existing circumstances. He's never been sure if he should exactly lump them in the realm of "powers" but they're certainly oddities. Oddities he's gotten used to, granted, but it's still a sticky situation. And that means he'd have to bring up some more personal information which he might not be wholly comfortable disclosing.

But then again, Seth's given him no reason to distrust him. So onward he goes.

"Well, there're...extenuating circumstances. Stuff that happened before all, uh, this. I don't think that's affected anything paperclip-related, though, so. Yeah."

Seth frowns. "You mean you had some abilities before you came through the rift too?" he asks, sounding a mix of curious and worried. That's definitely something he needs to know about if he's going to be taking one power. He could accidentally take them all, or take the wrong one.

"In a manner of speaking." Daniel winces a little because, yeah, this conversation is always a brand of awkward bordering on painful. "Little while ago, I kind of...spent some time on a higher plane. Well I - actually I had to die first, and then I Ascended which is - I, uh, I don't actually know if you have that here." He looks upward with absurd curiosity, as if the ceiling might somehow extemporaneously confirm the existence of a higher plane in this universe.

"But, uh, see, after that I came back a little, um. Different. Er, well, the first time not as much. I didn't actually learn how to retain anything until I Ascended the second time, and at that point..." He trails off, very aware that he probably sounds completely out of his mind. He grimaces again, this time apologetically. "It's a bit of a long story."

Seth eyebrows just steadily climb as Daniel explains. By the time he mentions Ascending, whatever that means, a second time, Seth sits back, torn between amusement, confusion, and concern.

"I can tell," he answers, watching Daniel closely. "So you ended up with some stuff that humans generally don't have?" he asks. Then he adds, "Assuming, of course, you are human." Always good to make sure. Considering he's met aliens and archangels and demigods and whatnot, all of whom looked human enough, he wouldn't be too surprised.

Daniel exhales with a slow whoosh of breath before nodding wearily. Seth is taking this well. That's good.

"More or less. I mean, I'm not sure what else you'd call me at this point. 'Human with a side of Ancient,' maybe. The beings that showed me how to Ascend," he explains hastily. "Those're Ancients. Basically now it means I just have...leftover knowledge of the higher plane, latent senses, stuff in my subconscious that sometimes I can access. Meditation helps. Usually. I could do a lot more when I actually was Ascended but, well." He half-shrugs and rubs at the surface of the table with a finger. "There were disagreements, and I couldn't stay."

"Right," he answers slowly. Seth has seen a lot of weird shit, so it takes a lot to really shock him. But he's not going to delve into this whole thing. He's pretty sure he lacks a pretty hefty amount of context here. And it makes it kind of hard to determine what exactly those things are and if they're just memories or instincts rather than powers. He's also surprised by how extremely little pomp or bragging Daniel is explaining all this, but that might just be Seth being used to Gabe, who frequently just casually throws out hints of these sort of things seemingly just to impress and befuddle.

"So... Is that stuff you'd rather were gone too, or...?" he asks. Daniel doesn't seem to have much enthusiasm for it, but that doesn't mean he's looking to get rid of it.

"Not really, no." He can still remember the last time he was Wilmot's End and that...thing that had been sitting with them and he adds a silent definitely no. "It's useful, mostly. You know. Universe, meaning-of-life stuff." The smile that follows is more than a little self-deprecating. "And it's all probably still mnemonically tied to my subconscious so getting rid of that would, well. There'd be memory loss, possible brain damage, I'd be confused, it'd suck."

Seth nods in understanding. "Brain damage is generally best avoided," he concurs. Oh, if only his powers gave him meaning-of-life stuff. That would've come in handy a few times.

"Not exactly sure where the line between superpower and inherently a part of your being is drawn. But that kind of sounds like it's across that line."

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