milliways_bar | Sprite-y Sword Practice

Current Mood: restless
Current Location: By the Lake

Entry tags:

mouse,
strahan

Sprite-y Sword Practice

From what she's been hearing since she came in, Mouse apparently missed a real good dust-up the other night. Kind of a pity: ever since Ray Tracer got sent out to do some recon on Daemon's forces, she's been restless. A fight would've helped her shake the jaggies out. Well, it might've gotten her in the cells too, and then gotten Dot on her case. So maybe it's just as well that she didn't throw a few punches after all.

At least she can do sword forms outside. And enjoy the moon and stars, things they don't have back in Mainframe. Mouse glides easily across the grass, cutting down imaginary enemies.

She seems to be pretty good at it too. If you tell her so, she will thank you for the compliment and tell you she's even better at cutting down real enemies.

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She is almost like Keely in her determination with the blade, but more skilled in using it, is the assessment of one maned wolf. But it's a silent assessment, so it's not likely Mouse will hear him unless she's telepathic.

~~Correctable if the Atlantis game drops, and that's an unlikely.~~

But she just might see him and four other shadows too.

When you spend a significant portion of your runtime in the rather unregulated sectors of cyberspace, as Mouse has, you develop a certain capacity for knowing when you're being watched. That, or you get deleted. Mouse has been aware of her watchers for the past few minutes (or, by her count, nanos). But they seem to be keeping their distance, observing her.

And, anyway, if they approach and turn out to be nasty, she's already got her sword in hand. She continues with her forms, keeping an ear on the watchers.

Just how would Ihlini magic work on a sprite? Could he hold her in place or crush her with a thought the way he did others?

If Mouse attacks Strahan will get his opportunity to find out.

Instead he'll wait until she's finished before talking to her.

Even sprites can't go on forever.

Mouse hasn't got any reason to start a fight, but after she does a couple more forms, she decides that enough is enough. Sheathing her sword, she calls out, "I don't mind havin' an audience, but I'd like t'be able t'see 'em. Otherwise it's a mite unsettlin', if ya know what I mean."

A good thing perhaps.

Is it? Perhaps he should remain where he is if only to unnerve her more.

But then he can't do any magic in animal form if she decides to decapitate him.

He steps out and the four lavender wolves follow behind him.

"Now that's interestin'," Mouse mutters to herself, cocking her head to the side as she peers at the wolves. "Kinda random, but what around here isn't?" She shrugs. "'Scuse me if this sounds like a BASIC question, but can y'all talk?"

He tilts his head; the wolves look at each other, puzzled. Then he turns to look back at his pets briefly.

"We all can, but only I can hear them."

He moves closer, and the heterochromic eyes are apparent: one blue, one brown.

"S'pose that works," Mouse says. "M'name's Mouse, kinda from all over th' Net, but currently residin' in Mainframe. An' how 'bout you, big fella?"

[OOC: Sorry, had a brain fart and used the wrong account.]

It works considering the wolves have a whole lot of nothing to say, saying things like "I'm hungry" or "I'm tired" as opposed to talking about social issues.

'Big. Fella?' Net? Internet? What my laptop is connected to?

"I come from Solinde, though I have been to Homana many times. But now I reside here."

Nowhere else to go when you're dead.

Mouse has never heard of Solinde or Homana, but she's gathered that this guy's never heard of Mainframe, either. Well, a lot of people here haven't. "How 'bout yer name, sugar? Can't just say 'you there.' Wouldn't be polite."

Nope. Never heard of Mainframe.

"I am called 'Strahan'," he says, not sure what to say about being called 'big fella' and 'sugar'.

As Strahan may soon realize, Mouse uses such terms almost as forms of punctuation. "Well, Strahan, I gotta say that you're one'a the most interesin' folk I've seen here so far." It's the first time she's encountered a talking wolf. "An' this place bein' what it is, that's sayin' somethin'."

It's also unnerving to someone not used to it.

Because it sounds like he's being hit upon and he's been here long enough to know what 'hit upon' means.

And what people say when they're hitting on you.

"'Interesting'?"

If she thinks he's interesting as an animal wait until she sees him as a human.

I do magic! :D

Mouse's default mode is flirtatious. This is not 'hitting on,' it's just normal conversation for her.

"Yeah. All the folks I've talked to here so far've been sprite-shaped." Muldoon, as she's learned, is a bit of an exception, but he's sprite-shaped most of the time.

All the more unsettling for him.

"What is a sprite?"

The closest Strahan came to sprite he learned it was a clear, citrus-flavoured soda pop.

"Is that what you are?"

Perhaps Mouse is getting back at Strahan for giving her a bit of the jaggies when he was hiding out of sight, watching her. Although if asked, she would not admit to it.

"Yeah, that's right," she says, grinning and showing a pair of sharp canine teeth. "I'm a sprite. Computer sprite. Y'know computers?" It seems like a silly question, since she's asking it of a wolf. He might end up just thinking that she's a spirit from the underworld, the way Hektor does.

Turnabout is fair play?

"Yes. I know computers," he says, grin in his voice if not on his muzzle. "I own a laptop."

It might just get sillier.

Mouse raises an eyebrow. "'Scuse me if this seems kinda rude, but how would ya go about usin' a laptop? Y'kinda need fingers fer that. 'Less ye've got somethin' special."

Can't smile. Can't laugh.

"I have 'something special'," he says, then changes back to human form. "Which makes the use of a laptop easier for me."

"Huh," Mouse says. "Outta curiosity, which'a those shapes is the one y'were initialized with? Or is it somethin' else I ain't seen yet?" If she's got a better idea of what Strahan actually is, it may prevent some confusion later on.

"I was born human, but with magic in my blood," he says, not understanding 'initialising'.

"Only later did I learn the shapechange."

Being initialized is being born, for a sprite, so Strahan's answered Mouse's question even if he didn't totally understand it. "Okay," Mouse says. "Well, back t'what a sprite is - I guess y'know you've got programs in yer laptop, right? Well," she continues spreading her hands in a sort of voila gesture, "that's what I am, more're less."

He stares at her.

Really stares.

"The Photoshop program I installed is ... alive?!"

Mouse shrugs. "Could be." She and her fellow sprites aren't sure whether their kind exist in any universe other than their own, and as far as Mouse can tell, there's no evidence either way.

He's going to be looking at his laptop with a lot of suspicion in the near future.

At least until he's satisfied that it isn't. And never was.

"So. You come from a computer," he says, regaining his composure slightly.

Because that's where programs and installations come from, after all.

"Yep," she says, grinning. "'Course fer the likes'a me, it's you folks who're outside'a somethin', not us who're in it." Mouse winks and her grin widens slightly, showing slightly pointed canine teeth.

He flusters slightly. Not from the teeth, but the wink.

"What is your world inside a computer like?"

He's not asking how someone like Mouse can fit inside a computer and Milliways.

If he can turn teeth into wolves it's not hard to do the reverse and render someone small enough to live in cities on someone's motherboard.

Mouse isn't sure how sprites and Users can occupy the same space, either: outside of Milliways, they can't. This place is just special like that.

"What's it like, huh?" Mouse looks up as she thinks, noticing the moon and stars overhead. "Well, for one, we don't have those, she says, pointing at the sky. "Or a sun, either. We got plants and some animals, but nowhere near as many."

Milliways: bringing the bizarre together since 2004.

What a strange world to have no real night or day!

"A dark world?" he ponders, one of his wolves leaning into his leg. "Or is there light?

And if not plants and animals what then do you have?"

"Oh, we got day an' night, all right. But there ain't this whole dawn and dusk business. It just kinda switches over." Mouse shrugs. "An' other things're different, too. The worlds're a lot smaller, fer one. Even the Supercomputer's not as big as, f'r'instance, Earth."

If it exists inside a computer logically it has to be small. He just can't quite get his mind around how small.

"Are sprites the only people that live in your world?"

"Oh, there's all sorts'a filetypes," Mouse says. "Most're binomes, ones and zeroes. They keep the basic system functions workin'. There's also numerals, which're a bit more advanced. An' viruses an' Codemasters, but they ain't valid formats. There's some other weird folks, too. Cyberspace is a big place."

'Big' in relative terms. To outsiders it's still small.

"My laptop had a virus once. It caused me much trouble."

That was before he learned about firewalls and Norton anti-virus.

"And they are alive too?"

"Alive, kickin' an' causin' trouble, sugar," Mouse says. "They ain't co-processed an' initialized like other dataforms, though. 'Least not usually. Users just make 'em an' set 'em loose, for whatever reason." YT opined that Daemon was probably created by - in her exact words - some reject living in his mother's basement who had too much time on his hands.

Strahan can only guesstimate what sorts of trouble computer viruses cause when they're alive.

The one he had caused his laptop to suddenly restart at random.

It was fixed but it still caused him annoyance.

"They are created? Did someone create you?"

Do cyber-denziens have a creator or legends about creators?

"Well, y'could say my parents did, kinda," Mouse says. "But if y'mean it the way I think y'do, no. There's some sprites who're directly initiated by Users - I happen t'know a few - 'specially when new systems start up. Only a User c'n create a new system." That might sort of answer Strahan's question.

Hmmm... Perhaps this 'User' is a god, who can create living things in a world the User made.

'Users'. Plural.

It's very fascinating and worth some time in research.

If he can create his own world then he really can be a god, just like he desired to be back in his world.

The thought pleases him.

"Thing is," Mouse continues, sighing, "The Users don't even know we exist. We didn't know that 'till we got here. I hardly need t'tell ya that it was a bit of a shock, but it explains a lotta things - the Games, the fooling around with system settin's, even the viruses. Kinda."

Some Users know you guys exist, but saying so is canon puncture.

Very bad.

"It is a very complex world," he agrees. "Is there any magic in it?"

Or highly advanced technology, which is almost the same thing.

This strikes Mouse as kind of a funny question - maybe because of the way Strahan said it, although she's not totally sure.

"Just in some'a the Games," she replies. "But it's code, just like everythin' else. Only it's code we don't know too well. We don't got religion, either," she adds, because it seems to her like a logical next question. "We know the Users made us, an' most've us don't know why, 'cept the ones who've been here. An' we all know it ain't no use askin' 'em for anythin'."

It makes total sense to Strahan. Magic's a part of his very being, so it would.

That was more than he'd asked for, and yet, pretty much a lot of what he would've asked for anyways.

"So you are all children of the users the way my people the Ihlini and our brother race the Cheysuli are the children of the gods."

That makes sense to him too.

Mouse doesn't just shoot off a quick response. She actually gives it some thought, for a few seconds. "No," she says slowly, "I don't think so, sugar. We ain't the Users' children or anythin' like that. They just made us, by accident, an' they don't know we're there."

They seem to have come to a point where certain concepts are getting lost in translation.

Y'think?

"Children can be born of accident or of design," he says with some level of experience. "But they are still the children of their maker, intended or no."

Well. Never expected Strahan to have this level of insight into things.

Mouse shrugs. "I dunno, Sugar. The way we were made don't seem t'have much in common with co-processin' by accident, if y'know what I mean." Sprites also don't attach the shades of meaning to the word 'children' that most other forms of life do.

Strahan actually manages to get what "co-processed" means.

"The gods did not mate with each other to make us," he says as calmly as he can. This is starting to become somewhat unnerving. Which is odd, all things considered. "They created us with whatever they had on hand and put us on the Earth.

So we are their children. In a way."

"I c'n sorta process that," Mouse says, "but sounds like your folks did it on purpose an' they knew where y'were an' all that. Sorry if I seem t'be a little BASIC, here, but as I said, we ain't got gods, I didn't learn about 'em 'till recently, an' they still don't make no sense."

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Sprite-y Sword Practice

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