Players: Kimen, Coloumb (Bequerl), Forte
Title: Suicidal Science


Kimen collected the groceries by the door listened to Coloumb’s lute music while she busied herself in the kitchen, feeling a little bad that she had opted for less expensive and easily made food over something more homemade. But she honestly had not expected to have any company, and she was keeping the fact that she wasn't supposed to be up and moving about as much in mind. It wasn't long before Kimen had a small, meal made for the two of them consisting of spaghetti, and a few slices of garlic bread. She brought the plates into the living room (Which was the most comfortable room in the house compared to the others) and sat down, ready to eat.

Coloumb finished playing the song and set the lute down beside him. "My, this looks pretty good." He grabbed a piece of garlic bread and started chewing on it. "Issh pre'ey gud." He swallowed. "Excuse me. Anyway, how long have you been living here?"

"Its really nothing special. Especially since the sauce came from a jar." Kimen let out a small laugh, "As for how long I have been living here, I have been in this world for a few years now unless you mean this house. I've only been in this house for a few weeks but it’s the best place I can think of to stay when I need a place. I'm actually living in Shrike but there are not a lot of great places to practice magic and work on spells there." The child frowned, looking down at his spaghetti filled plate. His reason for staying here had changed, and he wasn't sure how comfortable he felt with the idea of using magic anymore. "Are you from a different world too?"

"Yup, sure am." Coloumb paused to eat some of the spaghetti. "I tried to go to the shadow world and wound up here, so something musta' gone wrong in the process of getting there." He took another bite of his garlic bread. "So you're a mage, huh? I had a couple of friends back home like that. And I guess I'm kinda one too... Hmm."

Kimen spun her fork, collecting noodles, "So you can travel between worlds?" This was something she didn't often hear. Most people who ended up here in the cleft were not even aware other worlds existed. "Why were you going to the Shadow World, Mr. Coloumb?" She asked, taking a bite of the pasta she had.

"Doing some freelance work for the Tara guard. They wanted me to deal with some unruly fomors in there." Coloumb shrugged and finished off the bread. "Just another regular day, really. I have no idea why they've become so dependent on Milletians for that kinda stuff. Maybe it's because death works differently for us?" The alchemist shrugged again and slurped up some of his noodles.

Kimen swallowed his bite of food and tilted his head to the side, "Formers?" he asked not sure if he understood what the boy meant by that. His would seemed like an unusual place. "How does death work in your world?"

"No, fomors. Like evil spirit things." Coloumb ate some more spaghetti. "Well, for the regular people it works like how you'd think. For us Milletians, we're connected to this thing called the soul stream. It means that we age much faster than other people, yet we can be reborn as a younger -potentially completely different- person. As for us dying, we can be revived with the help of the goddess Nao using one of these things, here..." Coloumb pulled out a grey rock and set it on the table.

"Hm..." Kimen set her fork down as she let this information sink in. "Mr. Coloumb, I don’t mean to cause you any concern and this is just something I am wondering but, the Cleft is known for taking bits and pieces from other worlds. Do you think the goddess from your world was brought here as well? Are you still connected to the soul stream even being here?"

Coloumb looked at the grey crystal. "I dunno. I'm still aging as fast as I usually do, and that is an effect of it being connected..." He spun the crystal. "I haven't been dead to test this, of course."

"Hehe Maaaaybe its better not to try it and find out." Kimen smiled at the boy nervously. "A lot of times when people come here they bring the magic of their world too and some of it can even be learned by other people! But I have never heard of anyone having different life and death cycles. Then again, I haven't looked into it much. I doubt something like that can be adopted by other people like magical styles can."

"Heh, probably not. I'm sure I'll figure it out one day, doing freelance work tends to land me in sticky situations." Coloumb ate some more of his spaghetti.

"You should be more careful than usual Mr. Coloumb, just in case it’s not something you should rely on here." Kimen said, turning back to her food, "You said that fomers were evil spirits, do you mean like ghosts?"

"I dunno, this is kinda important. I should test it after dinner." Coloumb finishes off his spaghetti calmly, as if he hadn't just casually suggested suicide. "Anyway, Some of them are. Others are more like demons hell-bent on conquering Erinn and burning it. That's where I some from, by the way. Erinn."


Kimen dropped his fork, eyes widening at the boy's suggestion "W-What? No. No you shouldn't test it! What if it doesn't work? You'd kill yourself and then you would be dead and that would be a bad thing!"

Coloumb shrugs. "Eh, been dead before. Kinda boring. I'm sure Nao would come through for me."

"But things may not work the same here. You might not be able to come back to life like you did in your old world!" Kimen pointed out quickly, hoping she could convince Coloumb to change his mind.

Coloumb rubs his chin. "Hmm... This is true. But I'd never be able to know without testing it!"

"Besides, even if it worked you might not be able to get any more stones like that here! You wouldn’t be able to get any other chances" Kimen's mind raced as he tried to think of some other reasons why the boy shouldn't kill himself, "And what about your goddess? I-I'm pretty sure that would not make her happy at all! You should think about her too! Killing yourself carelessly and having her revive you is really not nice to her Mr. Coloumb!"

"I've got three of the things, hehe." Coloumb pulled them out to prove it. "Besides, she's dealt with dumber deaths than stepping on an ice mine, I'm sure."

Kimen stared at the three crystals in Coloumb's hands feeling increasingly terrified. It wouldn't be so bad if the goddess from his world revived him, but there was no guarantee that she would be capable of doing the same here in this world. He didn’t seem to understand if things went wrong the boy would not only be dead, but he would stay that way. And nothing Kimen seemed to say was convincing him otherwise. The child pressed her lips together tightly, brought herself to her feet, then tried to snatch the crystals away from him.

"Hey, what are you trying to do!?" Coloumb grunted as he was tackled by a child and knocked over. He realized that two of the soul stones had been knocked out of his grasp and scrambled to grab them again. "Those are important!"

Kimen scooped up the stones. One, two.... where was the third? He looked around frantically trying to see if it had fallen somewhere on the ground all the while trying to get out of Coloumb’s reach, "Y-you shouldn't be messing with something like death as if it was nothing! I'm not giving these back to you until you realize how serious dying is!" But still, the third one was not in Kimen's hands. The boy could still try.

"Ha! Got it!" Coloumb grabbed the stone still sitting on the table where he had left it. "Now gimme those others!" Coloumb lunged at you.

Kimen dove off to the side, tucking and rolling to the floor to get away, "Aaaargh!" Kimen cringed, eyes watering from the pain in his chest reminding him that such actions were not a wise idea. For a moment it was almost too much to even manage drawing in his breath. It was hard to ignore, even as Kimen forced himself into a run towards the door.

"Get back here kid!" Coloumb scrambled after you and followed him out the door.

***

Forte stepped out of one of the many buildings of Truce, clutching a small bag of apples in one hand, and a novella in the other. Normally he didn’t let people know how much he liked these little cheapie romance novels, but it was a silver and he like the title. "Moonlight Beatings".

Kimen frantically ran down the street as fast as her legs could carry her wincing with each step. Maybe if she was able to keep this up long enough the older boy would be too tired to kill himself!? She really didn't see many more options. She was smaller and probably couldn't keep the distance for long. And usually her agility would be her advantage in this type of situation but with her ribs still mending it would be difficult to utilize it. Her only hope was in the adult she spotted walking out one of the buildings, and not just any adult! "Mr. Forte! Take these!." The child yelled, suddenly changing her path to thrust the stones into the man's hands.

Forte blinked suddenly, as a familiar child rand by him, and shoved a couple of stones into his hands, making him drop his apples. "Wait- what?" He looked up in a confused fashion.

"Give those back!" Coloumb yelled as he rounded the corner and spotted Kimen. "I need them, you jerk!"

"Mr. Forte, he just fell here not to long ago and is trying to kill himself to test if these stones will still bring him back to life!" Kimen tried to explain in a hurry, "Its not safe!"

Forte blinked slowly, looking at the stones. "Uhhhhh, okay. Both of you stop. Shh. Explain what is going on here."

"It's perfectly safe! You're being absurd!" Coloumb panted for a moment. "See, I can revive perfectly fine with that crystal where I'm from, but I need to test it here. Kimen is interfering in the scientific method for testing it!"

Forte held up a hand. "Fullstop. Look, Kid. This place is different from where you were. I don't know where you were, but the kind of magics that fueled these things might be completely different in this world. You have to recognize that. You can't just expect everything to work the same still."

Kimen rested his palms onto his knees and tried to catch his breath. He felt relieved that Mr. Forte was here and with any luck he would be able to explain to Coloumb that his experiment was not a good idea.

"Well, if it doesn't work then I can just use one of these things to have someone else revive me." Coloumb pulled out an orange feather. "Phoenix feathers are self-contained revival sources, but they need another person to use it for them to work. I would have explained that if SOMEone hadn't freaked out at the first mention of death."

Forte looked flatly at Coloumb. "No. Look, You don't get me, kid. Maybe you haven't actually read the books here, maybe you never listened to the sages. This place has a god of death. And he really, really hates it when people cheat. Do yourself a favor, assume none of your 'revival methods' will work. If they do, that's great, But do NOT try to rely on them. The only thing you can rely on here is this:" He poked at Coloumb's forehead, "And this." He poked Coloumb's heart.

Kimen panted, looking at the phoenix feathers in the other kid's hands and clenching her fists (now sticky with sweat from running). "No matter the reason, you shouldn't be playing with death anyway!"

"But I have to know! It's important! What if I end up getting taken out in the middle of a fight and people are relying on me?" Coloumb folded his arms.

Forte says ' First off you shouldn't be in the middle of any fights. Second I don't know who would be silly enough to rely on a kid in the middle of a fight, or why they would be negligent enough to bring you to a fight where you could die.'

Forte says ' Regardless, Listen to me kid. This one over here just had enough problems with someone dying around him. Do you really think that you up and killing yourself near them is going to make them feel a lot better?'

Kimen looked down at his shoes, thinking about what happened to Kait. "You shouldn't try it when I am not around either." Kimen added, just in case Coloumb took that to mean that he should take his experimenting with death to somewhere Kimen wasn't

"I know a few people." Coloumb mutters. "Bah, fine. I won't test it. You've convinced me. For now." He rubs his nose. "Nevermind that I did freelance work for the Tara guard on a regular basis. I've done a lot more dangerous things than that too, but that's beside the point."

Forte patted the kid on his head, and holds out the stones. "Word is your bond, kid. Now you two go off and play something safe for once. Oh…" He picks up the apples, and hands them to Kimen. "Take these, you kids need them more than I do probably anyways. Just cut the bruised parts off."

Kimen let out a sigh of relief now that it seemed like Coloumb had changed his mind. And hopefully he wouldn’t change his mind again down the road at some point. All of the child’s worry was lifted from her shoulders and the relief of hearing Coloumb say this was evident in Kimen's expression. Kimen gratefully acceptted the apples from Forte with a smile. Looks like they would have dessert tonight. "Thank you, Mr. Forte."

Forte smiled, and ruffles Kimen's hair. "G'wan you, have some fun with your friend."

Coloumb huffed and puts the stones away. "Yeah yeah, I'll do other science eventually."

Forte chuckled, and startted heading away, paging through his book. "Just make sure that it's safe and legal kiddo. Try making some rock-candy, that's cool."

Coloumb decided not to mention that most of his science involves making ammo for his cylinder.

Kimen grinned happily and waves forte off, "You are a real hero Mr. Forte!" He said, then turned to Coloumb, "Let’s head back and see what kind of dessert we can make with these apples. Baking is kind of a science, you know."