bigapplesauce | Entries tagged with character: the balladeer

Lately, the Balladeer feels as though he's lost more time. December came faster than he thought it would. Perhaps that's natural with the way November ended. Life goes on, and the world has not waited for him to catch his footing again. It almost seems strange that they're still going deeper into winter; that blizzard felt so climactic that the narrator in him had half-expected a warm spring to follow on its heels. It would have made a lovely picture. But no - time here flows without regard to narrative convention. And with the winter season comes the holiday season.

It caught him off guard at first. He'd done nothing at all for Halloween, but that didn't matter given the lack of trick-or-treaters in his building. Thanksgiving...he'd meant to observe Thanksgiving. Things happened. But goddamn it, he is going to do Christmas. It's normal, it's traditional, and it's something that people seem to really love. It's supposed to make you happy.

He hasn't got any of the family traditions that're so important to others, but isn't that for the best? If he had a family, he only would have lost them coming here. There's still a few obvious steps he can take without one.

First off: gifts.

He isn't nervous, exactly. Even if all the advertisements seem to imply that he's doing this very late in the season, he's not too worried about it. If he got nervous over every new experience, he'd be a quivering wreck; this is exciting! He just wants to make sure he gets good things! It doesn't seem as though it should take very long. Doesn't he know what his friends like? This is going to be easy!

The Balladeer spends much of the day flitting about between shops in the less-expensive districts, bundled up in his winter coat and with most of his face buried in his new American flag scarf (which is cool, thank you very much). He hasn't accumulated a whole lot of shopping bags. Frankly, he's beginning to wish he'd brought Steven along after all. It might have been easier to bounce ideas off of someone. But then when would he buy gifts for Steven...?

He may be here for a while.

Current Date: December 17, 2013

singthesong

Winter is cold.

It seems obvious in retrospect, but the Balladeer had never given it a great deal of thought. Why worry about weather you won't experience? Presidents have a tendency to get shot in the capitol, during warmer seasons. Even as months passed in Manhattan, it took the sudden Rift blizzard for the full implications to sink in. Busking in the park isn't a good way to make money year-round, is it?

It's not the disaster it could be. There's other places. He sees people playing down in the subway stations all the time! So one day, when Steven is with Greta, he wanders alone down to the nearest one to set up shop. The environment is close, full of people and noise and heat, all reasons he never bothered to try this during the summer or fall. But it's not so terrible; he's played through worse, and he even sees a few people he knows passing through! Mostly locals, but Sunshine's bakery is nearby too. He gives her a quick smile and wave as she goes by.

For a few hours, it all goes perfectly well. The tips aren't as good here, but that's fine. They can get better. His focus on encouraging that response is strong enough that he doesn't detect any notes of displeasure approaching - not until he can already see the look on the policeman's face.

Apparently you're not actually allowed to busk in subway stations.

"This seems petty," he observes, torn between indignation and misplaced guilt as he's escorted out into the street. The police station? He has to go to the police station for something like this? "Haven't you got anything better to do? Like...like real criminals...?"

This should have happened to him in Dallas.

Rather than protest anymore, he just fires off a quick text before getting shuffled off. Self-pity and a fake ID won't get him out of this one.

Current Date: December 7, 2013

spiritofwinter

The snowball fight with Greta and Iman has revitalized Jack. It's December, and by all rights this is his season. He just needs to get his head back in the game; he knows for a fact that Manhattan can be tons of fun in a snowstorm. Now's the time to start, too -- with a little luck and a little nudge to the clouds here and there he could stretch a Tuesday night flurry into a Wednesday snow day.

The few people who can see Jack might catch glimpses of him hurtling through the sky late in the afternoon of December 3, whooping up a storm. Literally whooping up a storm, it turns out; aside from all the joyous yelling there's a definite chill in the air as clouds form and snow starts to fall, slowly blanketing the city in fluffy white.

Or…not so slowly. Jack's standing atop a low-rise building, surveying his work, when he realizes that something isn't right. The gentle but steady snowfall is picking up now, and a harsh gust of wind makes him clutch at his cane as it nearly knocks him off the rooftop. It only gets worse from there: as the afternoon wears on the clouds continue to gather and darken, the wind goes from a few gusts to a constant howling force battering against the city, and the snowfall comes so thick and fast that one can't even see across the street. By morning the city will be at a standstill, buried under the snow.

[And thus starts the Snow Day event! Due to the severity of the weather, characters will be unable to completely ignore this event, but anyone with a decent stock of supplies can simply wait it out at home. Otherwise, feel free to have the power go out at your character's residence, strand them on the wrong side of the city, etc. The weather will warm up throughout December 4 (April 18-21 in real time), leaving tons of slush for the next several IC days.

Please feel free to use this post for threads or to make your own. All threads that take place during the event should be tagged "event: snow day".]

Current Date: December 3-4

singthesong

Steven is finally gone, and the Balladeer is alone with himself.

He needed this. He hates to be alone, but he needed this. For days the knowledge (and lack thereof) of what he's done has been crawling under his skin like a physical itch - the one assassin he should be most familiar with, and all he knows is what Greta relayed to him second-hand, from a search somebody did on their cell phone. It's funny. It's really very funny.

One way or another, he ought to know everything about this lost assassination. Either it's his job, or it's his. So once he's alone, he takes himself to a library and gets out every reasonable book he can find, plus a few documentaries on DVD. There seems to be a lot of ridiculous conspiracy theories surrounding the whole thing; sadly, he can't quite convince himself any of them could be true. If Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy, the Balladeer would never have any connection with him at all.

(The stop at the liquor store is an afterthought, a whim built on memories of a thousand morose drinking sessions he never joined. He wonders bitterly if Sam would laugh, and buys whiskey the man could never afford.)

He goes home and spends the day reading. At some point, he opens a bottle. He meant to eat something with it - that helps, right? - but instead he ends up putting one of the documentaries on to watch. He just needs to know.

He loses track of time.

Current Date: November 26, 2013

singthesong

Morning dawns in a strange fog.

The Balladeer can't even remember getting out of bed, but he finds himself standing in the hall. He's already dressed, too...it takes a few seconds for him to register that as odd. He stares down at his sleeve. When did that happen? How did that happen? You might stumble tired out of bed, but it seems strange to have lost the entire process of getting ready. That can't be right. It can't be; something's not right with him. Thinking feels like swimming through molasses, like forcing his way through darkness into a time where he's not meant to be. It reminds him of his attempted escape, before he fell right into the Rift instead.

Is he getting sick again?

He sways a little on his feet, and squints hard at the wall with the effort of focusing. Should he just go back to bed? Sleep suddenly sounds very nice; he could sleep for a year. But after a second, he remembers - Steven lives here now. The kid will worry if he just doesn't see him all morning. It's not like him to sleep so much. At the least, he needs to find him and tell him that busking's off for today. Then he'll go back to bed.

The Balladeer nods in agreement with his own plan, and promptly regrets the movement as his vision blurs. The floor lurches beneath him. He catches the wall and takes a few deep breaths to steady himself. In and out, in and out. Okay. That's fine, no big deal. He's still standing. He's okay.

He shuffles into the apartment's little kitchen area. From the outside, it's obvious that he's not all there right now. His eyes are glassy, and he blinks at Steven in apparent confusion for a few seconds before speaking. "Hey, um..."

He can't remember what he meant to say. So instead he furrows his brow at Steven, as if expecting the answer to appear any second now.

Current Date: November 22, 2013

cheeseburger_backpack

New York City is a pretty cool place to be stuck. It's a little disconcerting that the other Crystal Gems haven't managed to reach him, yet, but Steven isn't worried. There are lots of good reasons it could be taking so long, and why should he be in a hurry? This place is awesome!

The Balladeer is being really nice to him, letting him stay in his apartment and borrow his ukulele. He's introduced Steven to some of the other Rifties in the building ('Rifties' isn't a very inspiring team name; Steven's gonna have to come up with a better one). He has this cool phone that was sent to him by a real angel, and the angel even texted him! And the biggest relief of all: no one's making him go to school or expecting him to be like other kids. That makes things a lot easier.

He's out busking with the Balladeer today, snug in a new coat and hat. He could have stayed in the apartment - he would have been fine without the Balladeer keeping an eye on him - but this is more fun. Other people seem to like it, too; they're getting a lot of smiles, and there are plenty of crumpled bills in the Balladeer's guitar case. Steven's not sure what a normal day's take is, so it doesn't occur to him that they might be making more than the Balladeer would on his own. But he's not at all surprised that no one can resist their sweet jams. They're good at this.

They're moving around the Park a bit already, but the itch to explore is still there. So, after they've been playing a while and are starting to get hungry, Steven volunteers to go find some food. There are still plenty of street vendors around, and if he wanders a bit farther than necessary to scope out his options, that's okay. He has his phone in case he gets lost.

[ooc: so, we have two potential scenarios here. Scenario 1: you could run into the Balladeer and Steven jamming somewhere in the Park. Scenario 2: you could bump into Steven while he's looking for snacks. He probably makes more than one foray, so multiple people could do either scenario without issue. Just specify which one you want to go with in the subject line.]

Current Location: Central Park
Current Date: November 13, 2013

cheeseburger_backpack

"Whoooah," Steven says as he stares at the New York City skyline. He's splayed on his back - on his backpack, if you want to get technical - and his palms are being tickled by... grass. Which is not the warp pad he should be feeling.

This is weird. He's good at warping, now. He's the Warp Master! He knows better than to mess around while they're all on the move. What went wrong?

Steven wiggles for a moment like an upended beetle, then rolls over onto his stomach. "Pearl?" he calls out experimentally. Maybe the warp pad they were aiming for got broken. Maybe it scattered them. "Garnet? Amethyst?" He pushes himself upright, then shivers. Wherever he is, it's colder than Beach City. Good thing he came prepared! He unzips his backpack, and a few moments' rummaging produces a hoodie. He pulls it on, puts up the hood, and gives the strings a good jerk to tighten it.

Much better. Now, he can find his friends.

That turns out to be much easier said than done. There are loads of people here. It's like six or seven Beach Cities combined, at least. Usually, warp pads take them to out-of-the-way places where people don't live, not huge, bustling spots like this.

Steven makes his way to the edge of the park, then stops, frowning at the heavy foot traffic. None of the Gems would be able to spot him in that crowd, or hear him over the rest of the noise. There are fewer people back the way he came. Maybe he should retrace his steps to where he arrived, in case his friends land in the same spot. Maybe it was the timing that got messed up, not the location. Maybe the warp pad was buried under the grass! Can that happen?

He'll ask the others when he finds them.

It's good to have a mission, even if it's not the one they originally set out on. Steven starts off at a purposeful march, backpack bouncing, eyes and ears peeled for any sign of Garnet, Pearl, or Amethyst. Or Lion. Hey, maybe Lion will show up!

He's been wandering long enough to start feeling a little apprehensive when he hears the familiar sound of someone playing a guitar. He knows it's not his dad - or at least he's pretty sure (could he have used the warp whistle again?) - but he wanders toward the sound, anyway. He likes music, and the Gems know he likes music. Maybe, if they can hear it, they'll head towards it, too.

Sure enough, the guy playing the guitar is a stranger. But he's playing really well! And he seems approachable, so Steven goes right on ahead and approaches. He doesn't intend to interrupt the performance, but the song is catchy, and the chorus is easy to pick up on, and before he can stop himself, he's singing along in harmony. If only he had his ukulele; then they could really jam.

Current Date: November 11, 2013

singthesong

Iman is gone.

The Balladeer found out yesterday, and spent most of the rest of the day with Greta. The poor woman - she's taking it hard. He and Gabriel had done what they could, but he suspects it wasn't enough. The two of them were close, in ways he's not entirely sure he grasps. He never really got to know Iman very well, did he? He regrets that.

As the night wore on, eventually they had both left. That stung; he was worried about her. But he'd promised to return in the morning at least.

And so he has, rising early as usual and going to knock on her door. Lily's staying somewhere else for now, and he's not too worried about waking Greta. Did she even sleep last night?

Current Date: November 1

andhiswife

It's not like Iman to ignore her. She's given Greta space before, left her be, but never ignored her outright. Not on purpose, anyway. But too much time has passed since her texts for Greta to convince herself that Iman is just napping or doing chores or absorbed in some project or other. There must be some other reason she's gone quiet, and none of the potential causes that Greta can think of bring her any comfort.

She's ill. She's injured herself, somehow. The Devil has lost patience with her. Something terrible must have happened, because only something terrible would keep Iman from acknowledging her.

Greta makes her way to Iman's building. There are costumed people on the streets - some sort of festival, she's been given to understand. The sight of them does nothing for her growing conviction that everything has gone wrong, that something has been broken beyond repair.

What if she is just ignoring her? What if she knows, and is trying to find some way to let her down gently? That fear, more than any of the others, is what has her stomach in knots. It's hard enough for her to even acknowledge what she wants, let alone dream of asking for it. She certainly doesn't expect anything more than what she already has.

Well, if they have to--to talk about... that... then they will. The thought makes her flush with utter humiliation, but she thinks she could bear that conversation better than she can bear all this uncertainty.

She knocks on Iman's door, but doesn't announce herself, lips pressed together as she strains to hear any sound from inside. There is nothing, even after she knocks again. Even after she quietly says, "Iman?"

The door opens beneath her hand before she makes any conscious decision to try it.

Greta knows the apartment is empty the moment she steps inside, the door swinging shut behind her. Despite that, despite the feeling that she is trespassing in this place she's visited so many times, she steps forward to check each room. The bathroom light is on, an ostensible sign of life that fails to reassure her. She can't stand the faint hum of the florescent bulb; she turns it off with an unsteady, impulsive swat, then flinches back as if the light switch might retaliate.

She finds Iman's phone on the bedside table. For a few moments, she just stares at it; then, she reaches forward to press the home button. She expects the screen to light up with half a dozen text alerts, but it doesn't light up at all. The battery is dead, and the glossy black screen is flecked with dust.

No. No, no.

By the time she stumbles back out into the living room, she's trembling too much to do anything with her own phone except fumble it onto the carpet. It's too far away, now; if she bends to retrieve it she might not be able to get back up again. Out of options, out of desperation, she prays.

Current Date: October 31, 2013

singthesong

The Balladeer goes to Wilmot's half an hour early.

The theory is that the noise of other people will make it easier to tune out the echoes of Gabriel. The bar isn't busy at this time of day, but it's not empty. It'll do. He takes a seat at the end of the bar and gets some water. After last night he's not really up to drinking much else.

It does help a bit to have other songs to focus on. It's a bit of a balancing act; he doesn't care to get the bartender's life story in addition to everything else, so even while trying to drown out the rest he has to try not to tune in too much. It's still better than sitting alone in his apartment. The song isn't insidious in that Johnny way but it's not a lot of fun to listen to for hours on end either.

God, he's lucky that was only a dream. He's not sure what would have happened if he'd done that while he was awake.

He can tell when Gabriel enters. Hell, he could tell when Gabriel was approaching from outside. Turning, he locates the source of the sound easily - wow, he'd have never known what he was just from looking at him - and lifts a hand in greeting.

literatimariano

Jess needs to get out of this damn city.

Historically speaking, Manhattan has been his playground. (Literally, if you go enough years back.) He's always known the ropes, where to go, where not to go, where you could find something exciting happening. Now it's already starting to get stale. It's been almost three years since he moved away, and a lot has changed in that time. He's changed. His friends have changed - moved on, or simply moved away. Meanwhile, Jess feels stuck, and he hasn't even been back all that long.

It's probably those self-help books Luke got him to read. How can he move on if he's just going back to what's familiar? Furthermore, how can he pursue the things he wants if he's barely making ends meet? Self-actualisation is practically impossible when survival and safety isn't guaranteed. He works too much and he's living in a dump, but New York's gotten expensive, so there's not much choice. He tried LA, but it's just not his scene. Chicago, maybe? Or perhaps Philly...

The subway train comes to a screeching stop, pulling him out of his reverie with a jolt.

He sighs and heads out, up the stairs, taking two steps at a time as he shrugs back on his leather jacket. Too stuffy and humid underground to wear it. It's starting to get that way outside too, but it hasn't quite reached it, the air dusty and crisp.

Chilly for May actually, which seems fitting. Supposedly April is the cruellest month, but Jess wouldn't mind contesting TS Eliot on that. All this evolution and momentum around him, and for all his travelling, Jess is standing still. What he needs is a change.

( This is probably one of those 'careful what you wish for' moments. )

Current Location: Wherever? We'll figure it out
Current Date: October 29th

singthesong

Well, that got out of hand.

The Balladeer doesn't return to bed that night. He putters around the apartment instead, trying to while away the time until morning. It's rare that he spends so much time here - most days he wanders around the city until dark. Unfortunately, that means he hasn't really left himself much to do. Not much that won't wake the neighbors, at least. So he just bundles up on the couch and tries not to kick himself too much as he watches the light break outside.

These things do happen, after all. How was he to know it would all head south like that?

The dreams where he loses himself are the worst. He can still faintly remember the mindset he'd slipped into: cold and alien, caring for nothing. Yeeeeah, he definitely owes some apologies around here.

He knows Greta's an early riser, so once he figures she's probably up he gets dressed and walks down the hall to rap on her door. He can text Gabriel, but he'd rather speak with her.

Current Date: October 23, 2013

postictal

This is still a bad idea. That hasn't changed. But just because they have no idea what the hell happened a few nights prior doesn't mean he should be putting his whole life on hold, right? Once it would have. If he'd never come to Manhattan, never ended up in this place with Jay - he doesn't doubt that he'd be doing exactly that. It's still his first instinct.

No matter what he does with his waking moments, the problem in his head isn't going anywhere. The most he can do is pursue something he thinks he'll enjoy pursuing. Which is, at the moment - hopefully learning to actually read music, and learn to play something that wasn't self-taught by ear. The ukulele is an unfamiliar weight at his side as he carries it into the apartment building.

It's only a few minutes before Tim finds the indicated apartment and knocks on the door.

Current Location: Eastern apartments (the Balladeer's apartment)
Current Date: October 20th, 2013

andhiswife

Greta wakes when she strikes the floor. She lies there for a few moments, winded and disoriented, hardly able to recognize her own apartment from this angle.

(She doesn't want this to be her apartment. She doesn't want this to be all she has.)

It was all lies. It had to be. She fell, but she didn't--she's alive, and if she hadn't landed in Manhattan she'd--she'd remember. Wouldn't she? Maybe it wasn't even really the Witch, but a figment of her own imagination, some Witch-shaped conglomeration of all her worst fears about what might be happening in her absence. The real Witch would have been able to give her real answers, not a few awful details and a shrug.

(Could those details have really come from her own mind, though? Would she ever have imagined Jack...?)

Greta lurches to her feet and pauses, waiting for her head to stop spinning. She needs answers, real ones, not the words of a Witch in a nightmare. It's not yet dawn, but the ambient light of the city is enough for her to find a shawl by. She wraps it around her shoulders, grabs her keys.

Her phone sits on the bedside table. Iman--she'll probably text her as soon as she wakes. But even the thought of sympathy is almost enough to break her. She needs to know if it's true before she can bear to accept anyone's apologies or concern. Even Iman's. Greta presses her lips together, turns her back on the device, and steps barefoot out into the hallway, squinting against the artificial glow.

A minute later, she's outside the Balladeer's door. She lifts a hand, then hesitates for a moment. It's so early. Can she really ask this of him?

She doesn't care. She has to.

Greta knocks.

Current Date: October 7th, 2013

peacefulexplorer

He sheathes himself in intent and blinding resolve, gathering himself at the peak of all he is. He knows the form and shape of himself intimately, and that of the Rift nearly as much. He has no physical structure here, nothing but the transcendental construction of his being, spun from energy and enlightened matter.

He forms the configuration of his atoms into a point and launches himself toward the great barrier mantled over the city, driving himself into the obstruction with every high-vibrating strand of himself in an ineluctable quantum-entangled internecine of torquing chiral matter and shrieking electromagnetism, resolving into bright streak of light, and then nothing.

Electrostatic discharge bisects the sky in an erratic jolt, feathering into diverging points before realigning into a single incandescent bolt that slams into the ground with the low, juddering impact of two unrelenting forces colliding on a colossal, rising, universal scale.

Bones grind into the approximation of a human skeleton, molecules stitched together to form organs with the churning of heart and veins and brain and lungs, skin wrapped over the assemblage of physiological necessity, all done with the vibrant immediacy of interconversion of energy to matter between seconds.

The transduction of one phase of matter to another.

Energy becomes flesh.

Light becomes bone.

Daniel Jackson returns to earth.
---
He opens his eyes.

It is very dark.

There is a tightness in his chest, and belatedly he realizes it is because he needs to breathe.

He breathes.

He blinks, eyelashes scratching the air that is too crisp and frigid and sharp, prickling the sarcoline membrane of his skin. He opens his hands, pale, spidery blurs printed against the dark matte of cold sky.

He sits up. His sense howl against the sensation, the exertion of muscle, the grating pull and shift of bone, the sensation of grass tickling bare skin nothing short of a unique somatosensory hell.

Hell. That’s a concept that strikes him as vaguely familiar.

Unfortunately, nothing else about this does.

With nothing else to do and with the whole of him aching, as if only now realizing just how incredibly inconvenient and painful the burden of physical existence is, he makes a list of things that he knows.

He is in a field, broad and open and grassy. The trees are distant pinpricks in silhouette. There is the distant rush of objects hurtling laterally through space by way of paved roads. The sky is a canopy of bright-dotted lights, comprised of stars and a glittering, multicolored swathe of metropolitan luminescence. The field is wet, with dew or rain or both. The air is cool. He is breathless, nameless, clothesless.

Nameless?

That’s a bit worrying.

Or maybe he just knows it’s meant to be worrying. Right now, the only emotions he seems to be able to muster are those of budding distress and confusion.

Also, discomfort. He’s shivering, and he has to remind himself to blink and also to breathe, and something about that doesn’t seem quite right because it’s not spectacularly efficient to have to keep reminding himself of those faculties that really should be involuntary, he’s pretty sure, is he sure though, because he’s not entirely certain where all these preconceived notions about his physiology seem to be coming from, and also he would like some clothes.

The thought crystallizes into relief. That’s something he knows. Desire. He wants something. Namely, to be clothed. Kind of right now. Or just soon-ish. That would also work.

Standing is a trial, walking even more so. His body feels fragile, new, possibly newborn if that didn’t make no biological sense whatsoever. He stumbles forward like a poorly-coordinated child, his legs shuddering in protest with each creaking motion.

First, he needs to get out of here.

[ooc: After a month of glow-jellyfish shenanigans and an ill-advised attempt to bullrush the Rift into letting him go, Daniel has descended and is now human again. Rest assured, anyone who finds him WILL find him clothed, as he’ll have recovered some from a dumpster or something by the time he’s wandering the streets of Manhattan. ALSO word of warning - seeing as his brain’s been freshly scrambled, Daniel’s a wee bit amnesiac. Also slightly aphasiatic? He has no idea who he is and he’s not going to be capable of understanding or speaking English until his memories start trickling back.]

Current Location: Central Park, initially; later, down E 90th St
Current Date: October 4th, 2013 (slightly forward-dated)

singthesong

Yesterday, the Balladeer was feeling a little under the weather. But he figured it was probably nothing and went out on his usual rounds anyway.

This was a mistake.

Today he feels like death. He's fairly certain he doesn't actually have cancer, but his throat hurts and his nose is running and he's retreated to the couch to huddle under a blanket. Is this what being sick is like all the time? It's awful! He's got a vague idea that maybe he ought to take some medicine, but there isn't any in the apartment; it hadn't occurred to him to buy any.

He dozes for a while before it occurs to him to ask the network for assistance. They ought to know, right? It wasn't his goal to get anyone to come over and help out, but...well, he hasn't really felt up to making any food today either.

Current Date: October 1, 2013

deadeyedchild

He can feel Tim leaving him, waking up, and he tries to follow. He doesn't know how. This is all new territory, following someone from one plane of existence to another. He tries to visualize himself holding onto Tim's hand. It's embarrassing but it works.

He thinks it works.

He feels different.

The world feels familiar - not the empty void he'd been inhabiting, but the world, solid and real, tangible. He's here. He's back.

He still feels like he's looking at it through glass, though. He looks down at his hands, which are - sort of there, at least, he knows they're there. He can almost see them. Except not quite.

"Oh come on," he mutters, and no sound comes out. He knows he's spoken but he can't quite hear it. He tries to lay a hand on his own arm and he feels a buzz of static as his fingers pass through himself. Oh, god.

He's a fucking ghost.

This is not quite what he had in mind. He knows it's not what Tim had in mind.

It's better than nothing.

He takes a moment to try and figure out where he is. He finds that he can move, not exactly by walking, but sort of drifting along the ground. He accidentally passes through someone, who shivers violently and looks thoroughly spooked for a few seconds. He is unable to get anyone's attention, or interact with anything.

He has to get to Tim somehow, but he can't really take a train, can he? He's not even sure what part of the city he's in.

So he rambles. After a while he finds it's easier to just move through walls than to try to go about things the normal way. Shortly after that revelation he starts picking up the very bizarre skill of moving up through a building, in and out of offices and apartments.

Travel is easy, but communication is nearly impossible.

He searches, having nothing else he can do, for someone he knows.

[[Jay is wandering all over kingdom come today so if you want your character to have a weird ghost encounter, pick a location and we'll see what happens. It's going to be super hard to notice him if you don't have any kind of telepathic/other helpful powers, but that's okay, we can do short shenanigan threads if you're into that. A quick little ghost encounter! Hey, maybe Jay can overhear some awkward dialogue or embarrassing secrets. Maybe he'll accidentally figure out how to knock something off a counter and then go nuts trying to do it again. The sky is the limit. Have fun!]]

UPDATE: as often happens with this kind of thing we have Jay on a pretty tight schedule now. The Balladeer meets him around lunchtime, and then the line of Rush/Iman - Daniel - Greta gets set into motion sometime after. Greta will be taking Jay back to his building in the late afternoon. If you want to meet him when he's out and about it'll now have to be prior to lunch or snuck in between lunch and his adventure through the former ROMAC apartments. There is still plenty of room in there for nonsense, it just won't be able to lead to Jay actually getting home. SHENANIGANS!

Current Location: anywhere!
Current Date: September 29th

i_jones

Welcome, welcome. Not through that door. I mean, you can try it, but all doors lead to breakfast. Even that one underneath the console. You thought you were being clever. Maybe once you've behaved yourself and the TARDIS judges you to be worthy, you can explore a little more. For now, breakfast. For one night only, the TARDIS has become - or rather, has been inhabited by - King Ianto's Coffee Stop. Would you like to join the club? He has pamphlets. And buttons! But more importantly, he has breakfast. Lots of breakfast. The countertops of the cozy diner are lined with plates of breakfast foods galore - bacon, eggs, sausage, mushrooms, tomatoes, black pudding, cockles, laverbread... and okay, there are American staples too. There's your pancakes and your french toast and hash browns and cupcakes or whatever strange sweet things Americans eat for breakfast. Oh, and tea. Lots of tea. And if you ask very nicely, King Ianto himself might brew up some of his very own coffee. It's so good, it has a cult following.*

The walls are decorated with a strange collection of primarily alien souvenirs. There's one whole section of postcards from other planets and galaxies. GREETINGS FROM MARS! says one particularly upbeat postcard, featuring swathes of blue sand and a setting blue sun. Many others are unreadable. There are flags, leis of unfamiliar flora, letters of commendation (right next to WANTED signs), photographs both old and new of various people and various Doctors posing next to various monuments and landmarks, and strangely enough, what looks to be a stolen sign commemorating Ianto's death, from the management of Mermaid Quay. Have a look around! You never know what you might find. Probably none of it is dangerous. The food definitely isn't.

Oh and also the ceiling is space and outside the windows is space and spaaaaaace.**

*((Ianto has an undiscovered power: his coffee improves you. Your health, your powers (temporarily), your mood, whatever needs fixing. Please drink responsibly.))

**not actually space

Current Location: the tardis
Current Date: september 28

singthesong

Today is September 14th.

The knowledge fills the Balladeer with an anxious energy, though now he's got nowhere to go and nothing to do. It's just a normal day. Nothing special, nothing happening anywhere that he knows of, no cues to meet or new songs on the wind. It's not that he wants to be home - he's half-afraid he'll get sucked back there today, it's the last thing he wants. He just can't shake the feeling that he's supposed to be far away right now, doing something entirely different.

Also, he keeps jumping out of his skin at loud noises. Not a good problem to have in the heart of Manhattan.

He only recently returned to regular busking in the park, but even the vague lingering threat of ROMAC couldn't have kept him away today. His nerves are probably obvious to anyone passing by just from the sharp glances he keeps throwing at his surroundings, but he's still playing as normal, guitar case open for tips at his feet. It's a comforting setting: familiar, but not overly so. There's a little florist's shop on his usual route, which is the only reason for the bouquets of red carnations resting on the bench behind him. It's a tiny detail, but the sight of them in the window struck him like a bul - like a brick to the head. He'd bought one for his lapel, and then on impulse taken the rest as well. He's been handing them out to passerby between songs, and so far no one's bothered to ask him why.

Anyone who walks by multiple times may also notice that he keeps repeating a particular song throughout the day. It's catchy, right?

Current Date: September 14th

peacefulexplorer

Existence without form or breath or shape is disorienting, the spread of atoms over a plane he doesn't recognize, with the repeated dissolutions and reshapings of an indistinct self. At one point there was pain, and the unspooling of himself into light and purpose, and for a long while there is only amorphous drifting. He hits barriers, dissonant and frequent, where once he should have crossed from one plane to another, one reality to the next, in an effortless slide of energy across the universal boundaries. It is difficult to define emotional state outside of the human context - he only knows that he is not human - but it is a state of affairs that generates confused distress.

Temporal sequencing becomes a problem.

Awareness, too, is difficult to achieve. Gradually he is able to pull together the various components that comprise himself and reshape them into something capable of perception, but doing so strikes him with a revelation disconsolate, and that is that there are no Others here - no Ancients, nothing, simply an empty plane of shifting light and bottomless dark. And he is alone.

He knows he did this, and it was for a reason. But he finds he cannot remember anything, not immediately, and when the memories trickle back with his concentrated effort they are unfiltered and unstructured and unordered until finally he can impose the alien concept of linear time upon the thing, and fully interpret what he is in comparison to what he was.

Daniel Jackson.

The name is the linchpin that generates the outward ripples, spreading from that singular point of origin. It triggers the flood of remembrance, the 'gate, Manhattan, the locked-away knowledge that was once sealed in his head but now coalesces seamlessly into the whole of him now. He cannot delineate his form by shape or size or mass, not any longer, but now he remembers, he remembers what it is he can do and how it is he can do it.

He starts small because he must, drifting as a pair of hydrogen atoms while he glimpses the city on a reduced scale. Then he builds to it, the recollection of his shape. Spectrally manifesting was never truly allowed before, but if there are no Others then he is not bound by their laws. He assembles a body that resembles the one that was human and familiar, and projects it. It takes two tries to succeed, three to sustain it for longer than a meaningless collection of seconds, and no matter what he tries he cannot force his shape to manifest with glasses. Apparently his inner self, or however he chooses to define it, does not need them.

He loses track of how many attempts he makes before he can maintain his form visibly for any significant length of time. But finally, in a ragged burst of energy, the bewildered shape of Daniel Jackson reappears in Manhattan, and there he stays.

[ooc: Daniel Ascended back during the Rift Shitfit of September 4th, and he's only just figured out how to Do Things in his new state of being. Right now he's completely intangible and frequently phasing in and out of visible existence. I've added to his handy-dandy reference post as to what he can and can't do in this state. He can also show up LITERALLY ANYWHERE so if you want in on Ascended funtimes just pick a date and a location, or Daniel can pick one, or whatever.]

Current Location: literally anywhere
Current Date: September 11th - 13th

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The Big Applesauce

Page Summary

singthesong - silver bells [open]
singthesong - Send Up a Flare [closed]
spiritofwinter - A Real Good Storm (Event: Snow Day) (open)
singthesong - History Obliterates [closed]
singthesong - The Edges of the World [closed]
cheeseburger_backpack - Look on the Bright Side! [Open to Multiple]
cheeseburger_backpack - Enter the Warp Master [closed]
singthesong - And You Need Time
andhiswife - Push Away the Unimaginable [Closed]
singthesong - Hark, the Herald Angels
literatimariano - (no subject)
singthesong - Who Spiked the Punch?
postictal - regurgitating useless wishes [closed]
andhiswife - Witches Can Be Right [Closed]
peacefulexplorer - a little resurrection every time I fall [open]
singthesong - I Got a Fever [Greta and then Bee later]
deadeyedchild - and on this casket's back sits a little lonely ghost [open to multiple]
i_jones - we haven't had that spirit here since 1969; open to all
singthesong - CZOLGOSZ, WORKIN MAN
peacefulexplorer - don't get lost in heaven, they got locks on the gate [open to multiple]

Page generated May. 29th, 2025 05:57 pm

The Big Applesauce

Entries tagged with character: the balladeer

silver bells [open]

Send Up a Flare [closed]

A Real Good Storm (Event: Snow Day) (open)

History Obliterates [closed]

The Edges of the World [closed]

Look on the Bright Side! [Open to Multiple]

Enter the Warp Master [closed]

And You Need Time

Push Away the Unimaginable [Closed]

Hark, the Herald Angels

(no subject)

Who Spiked the Punch?

regurgitating useless wishes [closed]

Witches Can Be Right [Closed]

a little resurrection every time I fall [open]

I Got a Fever [Greta and then Bee later]

and on this casket's back sits a little lonely ghost [open to multiple]

we haven't had that spirit here since 1969; open to all

CZOLGOSZ, WORKIN MAN

don't get lost in heaven, they got locks on the gate [open to multiple]

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