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Kyle [ Kyle XY ] ([info]not_an_alien) wrote in [info]indarkness_logs,
@ 2010-09-04 20:36:00

Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Entry tags:!complete, 2032 09, kyle trager, lizzy miles

RP: Rooftops
Characters: Kyle, Lizzy
Time/Date: Late afternoon, September 4
Location: the roof of one of the shacks
Warnings/Rating: none
Summary: Kyle explores outside; it's too tense inside
Status: Complete



It was tense inside. No one was happy, but there was a mix of emotions underneath that, too. Everyone hoped. Hoped to go home, even as they all knew better. Emotions and logic were warring everywhere, and he didn't like how it felt. How people had tense smiles, how their eyes were too bright, how they were edgy. He couldn't read them like River could, but he didn't need to see into their minds to know that their emotions were all over the place.

It was cruel of their captors, to dangle hope like that. Kyle knew he wasn't going home. He strongly suspected that no one was. They wouldn't let their rats go free. It didn't make sense for them to make a mistake like they said they had, to take so long to notice it, and longer still to mend it. If they were concerned about the safety of the supposed mistaken people, why not relocate them to a safer place, and continue the experiments?

No, Kyle didn't believe. He didn't think anyone here really did. No one here was that stupid, but the all wanted to believe they'd go home. Go home to their loved ones. Kyle didn't know the Tragers very well, but he guessed he'd like to go back home to them. But he'd want to take River, and she couldn't leave her brother.

Maybe he would be allowed to go with her when she went home? He wondered if that was possible, and he thought he might address one of their captors in the network at some point, just to find out. If any of them were even going home, which he doubted.

Making his way outside, Kyle looked around. It was weird without the line, though he wondered how many people had crossed where it had been already, and how many stayed inside where it used to be. Rote muscle memory and patterns the body absorbed probably kept a lot of them inside of it. He had little interest in exploration, though he'd follow River if she wanted to explore. In the course of their observation, his eyes lit on the repaired shack that he knew Mal and Kaylee and some of the others had been working on. It didn't look any worse for wear from the attack, and so he started toward it.

Once he reached the building, he looked around before he grinned a little. It was better outside, and it would be better on the roof. Drawing back a few paces, he took a running start toward the shack. He jumped up and gripped the roof, using the momentum to pull himself up onto the top of it. He spread out his weight over the roof before he rolled up onto his back, grinning triumphantly.

There. This was much nicer. He trusted that River would find him eventually, but if someone else came along before that ... that was all right too.


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[info]prittyprincess
2010-09-06 11:03 am UTC (link)
Lizzy was following the path of where the line used to be. Having seen a few people actually cross it, and bad things happen to them when they did, she wasn't altogether trusting of nothing bad happening if you did cross it, so she just didn't. She remembered where it had been. She thought she could still see indentations or vague discolorations where it had been. And she was going to walk along just beside those. Everyone else could cross it if they wanted to - SHE was not going to.

She wasn't aware that her magic wasn't working - she hadn't tried to use it since her conversation with Tyler, because thinking about when it was and wasn't appropriate to will someone to do her bidding just... made her head hurt, so she didn't bother. And she thought that everyone else seemed really concerned about something but it wasn't like anyone really took the time to let her know when something really weird happened, and she didn't always feel like asking Ches to help her translate the posts on the network. Besides, Ches had run off somewhere and left her to her own devices, so... whatever.

She glanced up when she heard something, and didn't see anyone around her. Her first thought was that she'd accidentally stepped over the invisible line, and she stumbled away from that immediately, still looking around her. Another small noise caused her to look up, and suddenly she became aware of a presence on the roof. She blinked once or twice, taking a few steps back and shielding her eyes against potential sunglare trying to get a look at who it was.

"Hey!" she called out, pretty loudly. "What are you doing up there?"

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[info]not_an_alien
2010-09-06 11:41 am UTC (link)
Kyle shifted closer to the edge of the roof, peering down at the girl. "Hello," he replied cheerfully. It really was much nicer out here. Much better than being trapped inside with all the tension.

"I'm watching the ceiling," he informed her. Whether it was the top of some room or the sky, ceiling simply seemed like the best word to fit it. A sky was a ceiling, and a ceiling was ceiling, and the top of a dome (which is what he reasoned was the actual case) was also a ceiling.

So either way she ran with it, his words made sense.

"What are you doing down there?" he called back, grinning as he peered over the edge toward her.

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[info]prittyprincess
2010-09-07 04:35 am UTC (link)
Lizzy blinked at him. "You're watching the... ceiling," she clarified. "You mean of the thing you're sitting on? That sounds boring." She was already looking for a window ledge or a hole in the wall or the ladder that he used to climb up there so that she could join him. She wanted to be up high too. She didn't really understand that he was talking about the sky. It wasn't a ceiling to her.

"I'm being normal," she said irritably when he asked her what she was doing down there. "Most people don't climb up to just sit around on top of buildings and look at them. How did you get up there anyway?"

She'd tried a few different things, but she didn't see any way that she could use to get up there, and certainly not something useful like a ladder or anything, so she was a bit stumped.

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[info]not_an_alien
2010-09-07 04:45 am UTC (link)
"No, I mean what everyone thinks is the sky," he said with a gesture up toward the pale blue expanse. Granted, it was still 'boring' because it wasn't doing anything. The clouds were artificial when they were there at all, and there weren't any right now.

"I jumped," he replied to her question, his shoulders moving in a shrug. It was simple enough for him, and he knew River would be able to do it, too. Sometimes he forgot that they weren't exactly the norm among the population. They were both enhanced, stronger, more flexible, better able to pick up new things than most people were.

"Do you want to come up here too?" he inquired politely as he peered down toward her.

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[info]prittyprincess
2010-09-09 04:29 am UTC (link)
"You think it's a ceiling?" she frowned, and her mouth opened to say, 'that's silly!' before she changed her mind. What did she know? Maybe it was a ceiling.

"You jumped?" she asked incredulously, stepping away from the building and shielding her eyes to look at Kyle in disbelief. "I don't... from where?" she asked, because she didn't see any ladders or boxes or anything that he could have jumped from and the shack was too high for him to have just... just jumped onto it. The only person she would REALLY believe could do that was Tyler, and Kyle was not Tyler.

"I... maybe," she scoffed when he asked her if she wanted to get up. "I'm not going to jump though," she warned him. "And I can't find anything to climb up."

She was hopeful he would break down and tell her there was a staircase inside or something that she could use to join him.

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[info]not_an_alien
2010-09-09 04:58 am UTC (link)
"I jumped," he assured her. "From the ground." He smiled. "There isn't anything to climb up on ... so I just jumped. I can lift you up if you wanted," he said. Granted, he'd have to get down to do it, but it wasn't as though he couldn't jump right back up once he'd gotten her settled on the roof.

He thought about replying to her question regarding him thinking there was a ceiling ... he thought they'd covered that already and the question was rhetorical.

He also thought about pointing out that River could have jumped up as well -- and more gracefully than he'd managed it -- but decided it wasn't relevant to the conversation.

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[info]prittyprincess
2010-09-11 02:03 am UTC (link)
She crossed her arms over her chest when Kyle confirmed that he'd jumped and scowled faintly. "I don't believe you," she said stubbornly, sticking her chin up defiantly at him. "I think you're lying and you really climbed up," she added. Sometimes adults would do that - tell her stories just because they thought that she would believe them. Like Sam, telling her that the balloons had been for Doctors to tie your hands together when you needed to get shots. She wasn't dumb. She didn't really believe everything the older people told her.

"You can lift me up?" she asked curiously, her arms dropping to her sides as she considered that. She had no real reason that she needed to be up on the roof, but she wanted to be, and if this boy was offering to get her there then... that was all right then. She nodded her head in agreement, lifting up her arms. She assumed that Kyle would reach over the side of the building and grab her arms and lift her up that way, rather than admit that he couldn't actually jump to get back up onto the building.

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[info]not_an_alien
2010-09-11 02:30 am UTC (link)
Kyle grinned before he shrugged when she said she didn't believe him. So, he hopped down off the roof, bent knees absorbing the impact.

He could have pulled her up from the roof, but he thought this way would be more comfortable for both of them.

Crouching down, he held out his hands. "Ready?" He asked as he reached out to catch her around her waist, lifting her up high enough that she could reach the roof of the short shack.

Once she was safely up, he moved back to get a running start before jumping, catching the edge of the roof, and pulling himself up onto it.

"See?" He said with a grin.

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[info]prittyprincess
2010-09-13 01:35 am UTC (link)
She was startled when he jumped off the roof, and took a couple of steps back from him in fear. She really hadn't been expecting that, and honestly was surprised that he hadn't seemed to have injured himself. Maybe she was wrong about him not being able to jump up to get on top of the roof. When he asked her if she was ready, she was a bit wary to say anything, but nodded her head, closing her eyes. She half expected Kyle to jump while holding on to her, and was pleasantly surprised when he didn't, giggling a bit as she peered down before gripping the edge of the roof and using it to pull herself up onto it. She was a bit nervous now, cause it was a bit high and a bit slanted and she was worried it was going to cave in or something, but... it would be okay.

She watched curiously as Kyle took a running start and jumped up onto the roof, trying to find something to hold onto in case it caved in. Or slanted more. Or fell off. When nothing like that happened, she grinned.

"Okay, I was wrong," she allowed, looking around to see what looked different from high up. "It's weird up here..." she remarked quietly before she looked back over at him. "Is that what your power is, then? You're a good jumper?"

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[info]not_an_alien
2010-09-13 03:20 am UTC (link)
"I don't know," Kyle admitted. "I'm smart, too," he said. "And I look after River when she needs support or someone to be there for her." though he didn't think that exactly counted as a power. Maybe it did. What did he know?

"It's not weird," he said with a little grin as he settled down on the roof next to her, positioning himself so he was between the edge of the roof and her. He didn't want her to fall, after all.

"Do you have a power?" he inquired as he regarded her. "Usually, I mean," he clarified since no one had powers right now.

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[info]prittyprincess
2010-09-13 05:32 am UTC (link)
"Is River the girl who talks funny?" Lizzy asked, kind of distracted from looking around before she turned her head back and... realized she didn't actually know the name of this boy. She didn't think she really cared, though. "I'm Lizzy, by the way," she told him before she glanced down at her feet, wiggling them around a bit.

She sort of ignored him when he told her that it wasn't weird. It was weird, and if he couldn't see that, he was weird, and that was that.

When he asked her if she usually had a power, her head turned abruptly, and she flushed a dark shade of red, knocking her shoes together uncomfortably for something to do. She was a bit embarrassed about it now - it wasn't the thing to brag about that it had been when she'd first arrived her.

"I can... sort of... makepeopledothings," she said the last part all in a rush. "Like I... I tell them to do something, and they just sort of do it, but I don't do it anymore," she assured Kyle quickly. "Unless it's important." And then she frowned suddenly. "What do you mean 'usually'?" she asked.

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[info]not_an_alien
2010-09-13 03:40 pm UTC (link)
Kyle's brow furrowed at her question. Talked funny? He knew River had a unique way of speaking and otherwise conveying her thoughts, but it wasn't funny. "She speaks in a different manner than most people, but it isn't funny," he said. That answer seemed to sum things up well enough, and he was content with that.

"I'm Kyle," he introduced himself with a smile.

His head tilted curiously when she rushed her words together. He could understand the words, but not the context. His lips parted to ask, but then she was already explaining.

"Usually," he repeated. "No one has any powers right now while the kidnappers sort out their mistakes. So you probably don't have any power right now either," he elaborated.

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[info]prittyprincess
2010-09-15 04:45 am UTC (link)
Lizzy rolled her eyes. "Different manner, whatever," it was weird. But she supposed there were a lot of things that were weird, and if Kyle was friends with River, he'd defend the fact that her talking was just as weird as being up here was or something. She should probably find more 'accurate' words, and she giggled a bit at that thought.

She nodded when he introduced himself, laying back on the roof and staring up at the 'ceiling'.

"...Huh," she remarked when he said that no one had any powers right now. She licked at her lips briefly and wondered if she still had hers. The possibility that she didn't was a bit frightening to her, and she shivered a bit, her lower lip quivering slightly. She didn't even really want to test, even if she tested on no one, partially because Tyler had said that she shouldn't be using her powers unless she needed to, and partly because... she didn't really want to know if they were missing.

"The ceiling needs more clouds," she decided. That would take her mind off the power problem. Maybe.

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[info]not_an_alien
2010-09-15 05:00 am UTC (link)
"Sometimes there are more clouds," he said. "There never seems to be a pattern to it. Like with the moon," he continued. The fact that the moon had no proper cycle seemed to disconcert people here ... and if he'd been in the outside world long enough to have lived through a cycle of the moon, he might have been distressed as well.

As it was, everything here was the standard against which he'd compare the rest of his life. A moon with a cycle would be weird. Freedom would be weird. Not having odd things happen at random would be weird.

Not having River would be distressing. They came from different places, different times, so there'd be no way to meet her once they were released. Sometimes he wondered if she made captivity worth the loss of freedom, the experiments.

Turning his attention to Lizzy, he smiled. "Aside from the missing clouds, do you like it here?"

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[info]prittyprincess
2010-09-18 03:59 am UTC (link)
"Is that weird?" Lizzy asked, tilting her head from side to side and wiggling her feet because it felt weird just lying still up on the roof of a shack like that. "To have no pattern to it, are they supposed to have a pattern? I've never noticed before."

But then, maybe things didn't have a pattern back where she came from. It wasn't like she really had anything to compare it to, other than here, and if here wasn't normal... she frowned a bit. That was too confusing to dwell on.

She turned her head over to look at Kyle when he asked his question, and she continued to frown a bit. "I don't know," she confessed. "Saul isn't here, but there's Ches and Ari, and lots of other people," like Tyler, but she wasn't going to say that outloud right now. "And lots of food to eat and stuff." She shrugged as well as she could from her lying down position. "But it's scary when there are attacks, and boring when there's nothing. And the other adults never want me around and are always telling me to go find someone else to play with so I don't know." Her expression cleared slightly and she asked, "Do you like it here?"

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[info]not_an_alien
2010-09-18 04:11 am UTC (link)
"I think it is, but I'm not sure. I wasn't awake very long before I arrived here," Kyle admitted quietly. "I think the clouds had patterns and shapes, but I don't know."

Kyle glanced over to her, listening as she spoke. "It is scary," he agreed. "Though I don't find it boring," he continued. Not really. Life with River was never boring.

"I don't mind it here," he said quietly. "I have River, and she is interesting. There are books and things to look at on the computer. Games to play, and invent." His brow furrowed. "Maybe you have not found the right people to spend time with."

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[info]prittyprincess
2010-09-18 05:45 am UTC (link)
"You weren't... awake very long?" Lizzy asked, sitting up a bit and blinking at him. "What does... that mean?" had he been sleeping his whole life. That was really strange to her. But maybe he'd meant something else. She couldn't think of what he had meant right now, but... well, surely he'd explain. She lay back down.

"Maybe," she agreed quietly. "But I don't want to bother people," she stressed. Maybe it would be less boring if she could spend all day following Tyler around, but she figured that he would get annoyed with her if she did that and that would be probably the worst thing to happen to her ever. "And there aren't a lot of things for me and Ari to do. We can't read very well," she explained.

She wiggled her toes again, thinking intently. Playing on the computer was maybe something they could do, though, if they could figure out how. "What kind of games do you invent?" she asked, interested.

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[info]not_an_alien
2010-09-18 06:06 am UTC (link)
He wasn't sure how to answer her question. Not exactly. He just knew ... he wasn't exactly normal. "I don't have any memories of a time before I ... woke up in the woods. I didn't know much about my own world before I was brought to this one," he continued. "So I don't really know what is really normal and what is not."

Kyle smiled softly to Lizzy, but he could understand how she might think she was bothering people. Some people here were ... short tempered. "I can help you learn to read better," he offered. "Ari as well," he added.

He thought for a moment. "We change the existing rules of games to make them more difficult," he said. "Which isn't exactly inventing the game, but River and I like to make more difficult rules for the challenge it poses."

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[info]prittyprincess
2010-09-18 11:10 pm UTC (link)
"Oh," Lizzy said. That simultanously made complete sense and made no sense at all, but she knew that sometimes things happened and then you didn't remember them for a really long time, or really ever again, so maybe that was what happened with Kyle. It wasn't that his life had started when he woke up in the woods, it was just that he didn't remember what had happened before that. "So this is the only world that you know? That's sad. I'm sorry," she said, because she thought that was the sort of thing you said when someone told you something sad about themselves.

And... she was kind of sorry too, which was weird for her. It wasn't like it was her fault that that had happened to Kyle. But Kyle was nice, and was spending time with her, and she was sorry that he couldn't remember anything about his life.

"That would be neat," she decided, a smile breaking over her face when he mentioned that he could teach them to read. "I'll tell Ari, and see if she wants to," but Lizzy wanted to, and right now that was all that counted.

"Some games are really hard though," she said with a sort of frown. "Why do you need to make them harder?" but maybe that was an adult thing. Maybe the games were only hard for her because she wasn't 'old enough' to understand them.

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[info]not_an_alien
2010-09-18 11:30 pm UTC (link)
Kyle thought about it, and nodded. He hadn't spent more than forty-eight hours in the Trager's home, barely long enough to really comprehend the ideas presented there before he'd been whisked here. "I don't have anything to really compare this to. Just what I read in books and what I hear from the others, and what River tells me."

While he did smile to her apology, he brushed it off. It wasn't her fault and she had nothing to be sorry for.

"All right," he agreed. Maybe he could talk to River about how to teach them. He somehow had a feeling they couldn't learn the same way he did, nor at the same speed. So he'd have to figure it out. Maybe starting at the basics ... sounds and silent letters and things like that.

"We like the challenge," Kyle said. "We're a little smarter than most people, so the standard rules are too easy for us." There was no sense of superiority or bragging in his voice; it was a statement of fact. He and River were very intelligent, and their minds moved faster, expanded over a larger scope than most people's minds. That was just how it was.

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[info]prittyprincess
2010-09-19 05:25 am UTC (link)
Lizzy thought she wanted to know more about that. About where Kyle was from and why he didn't remember anything about it. But she also thought that there wasn't much more he could tell her than that. "Why do you think you don't remember anything?" she asked, shifting her position so that she was lying on her side looking at him instead of at the... sky, ceiling, whatever. She lifted a hand to her mouth and started biting on her thumb nail absently.

"Smarter than everyone?" she asked, frowning. "Why? Do you read more and know more than they do?" she just sort of accepted it as fact. Under other circumstances, she may have been upset that Kyle thought that he was smarter than she was, but she had sort of forgotten that she was supposed to be upset about that because Kyle had been able to answer all of her questions so far. "Are you stronger than them too?"

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[info]not_an_alien
2010-09-19 05:33 am UTC (link)
"I don't know," he admitted. It wasn't something he spent too much time dwelling on. It was the fact of his life that he didn't remember, that he hadn't known everything he should have at his assumed age. "It isn't normal. I wasn't normal. But no one could tell me why that was," Kyle explained. "So it's just something that is," he said quietly.

"Yes," he agreed. "River and I have read almost every book here," he said. "Sometimes we have contests to see who can read a book faster," he added thoughtfully. "I think she lets me win sometimes," he confessed with a little smile. Really though, he thought he and River were fairly equally matched as far as their intellect went, and they usually tied, or close enough, on most books.

"I'm stronger than some people. I don't know about everyone though."

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[info]prittyprincess
2010-09-19 10:22 am UTC (link)
She could understand that, and nodded her head, pulling her thumb out of her mouth to tell him, "I'm not normal either," before she shifted her body again because she really wasn't able to sit still for long. "I think it's okay not to be normal," she decided. "It makes us special."

She grinned, and flushed a little at that.

Her eyes widened significantly when Kyle continued. "Every book? But there's like, six million of them," she said, and then she giggled a bit as she realized that Kyle would probably tell her more accurately how many books there were in the library, and she half held up a hand to keep him from it. "Okay, a lot less than six million, but that's a lot. How long did it take you? The whole..." she paused, counting briefly on her fingers. "Three months?" was that how long they'd been here? She was losing track of days now.

"Did you and River fight against the reavers?" she asked. "Me and Ches sort of did, but only because we weren't in the safe room and they burst through the door."

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[info]not_an_alien
2010-09-19 11:17 am UTC (link)
"Everyone is special," Kyle said gently. "Some are special in more obvious ways though." He didn't think he was special; he was just Kyle. River was special though. She was the obvious sort of special, though not everyone could see the special. They just saw the strange. The different.

"There aren't that many," Kyle amended. "We read much faster than the average person." He also thought they both slept less than average, but he hadn't actually recorded anyone's sleep habits to know this for sure.

"We didn't," he said. "We remained in the safe areas while the fight was going on."

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[info]prittyprincess
2010-09-21 02:50 am UTC (link)
"Well, yeah, but we can be more special than others cause we're not normal," she was deadset on this. She liked being set apart from everyone else. So long as she was different, she had an excuse for why people disliked her, and a reason to make them like her. Make them spend time with her.

It was wrong, but it was comforting to her that she had that safety net. That when things got really bad, at least she would be able to get herself out of the situation. She couldn't fight, but she could get someone else to fight for her.

It was then that the true meaning of 'you are without your powers for the week' started to really sink in, and she swallowed thickly, feeling a shiver running through her, and blinking back nervous tears. She needed to think about something else now.

"Will you fight in the next one?" she asked. "If there is a next one. I mean, everyone thinks there's going to be a next one, and if there is, will you fight in it?"

It made sense, didn't it? If he was stronger than other people were.

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[info]not_an_alien
2010-09-21 04:04 am UTC (link)
Kyle wasn't exactly sure how to refute her logic, because he wasn't exactly sure there was logic to that. Everyone was different, and everyone was special in their own way. But he supposed normal was relative, so he thought it best not to try to argue with her.

"I don't know," he said quietly. "If I am capable and if my skills would be useful, I would like to help out, but if I would be a hindrance and not an asset, then I would not want to get in anyone's way. I don't want to be responsible for a tragedy if I can avoid it."

He was also aware that he might not be useful because he lacked experience. He was strong, but without knowledge of how to apply it, he was simply another body.

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[info]prittyprincess
2010-09-21 05:35 am UTC (link)
She was pleased he didn't argue with her, and settled a bit. Not completely, she still wasn't much with the keeping still.

She thought about what he said, and from context she could figure out what he meant by 'hinderance' and 'asset', though she wasn't certain that she had heard those words before. She applied it to herself, and wasn't sure what she could come up with. Her abilities were strong enough to make reavers go away - could she be useful against other bad guys?

"How can you tell if you are a hinder... hinderstance?" she asked, frowning when she was pretty sure that she didn't get the word right.

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[info]not_an_alien
2010-09-21 05:56 am UTC (link)
"Hindrance," he repeated. "If people are using skills you don't know how to use, and if they are trying to keep you safe and you are making that complicated or making that their focus and possibly leaving them more open to attacks, that's a hindrance."

He shifted a little as well, bracing his hands behind his hips and leaning back on them slightly. "But if you're being asked to help, or have told them what you can do to be helpful, and they say all right, then you are an asset. But you have to listen to whoever is leading." He didn't imagine the same people would be leading each time, especially if the threats were varied. He thought people would have to play to everyone's strengths, and he wondered if he could learn new skills.

Maybe he would talk to River and see if she wanted to learn things alongside him. Even if she would learn it better, and faster.

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[info]prittyprincess
2010-09-21 11:09 am UTC (link)
She thought about that. That made sense to her. "How can you tell if you're making something complicated?" she asked. It was a genuine question. She knew that sometimes people found her annoying and a nuisance. A 'hinderance' maybe even. But she didn't know how to tell.

She listened as he went on, and nodded her head. So she should tell people what... she should ask this outloud. "So you tell people what you can do, and then they decide if that'll be helpful or not, and then they ask you to help maybe, and then you listen to them and then you're not a hin-der-ance?" she asked, and then she frowned a bit. "What makes... those people the ones who know? Why do they get to decide whether I'll be helpful or not?"

And that was the childish rebellion instinct kicking in.

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[info]not_an_alien
2010-09-21 02:24 pm UTC (link)
"Some people have had more experience in certain situations, and it makes them better choices to give advice," Kyle explained. "When we were attacked, people who knew about reavers were consulted for advice before any plans were put into place." Not that he'd been part of that, of course, but he'd heard about it, and had of course been among those hiding in the safe room.

He did nod to her explanation of the situation though; it was close enough. "No one's obligated to listen to anyone else," he continued. "This isn't a dictatorship, and we don't have any laws. But it's best if people listen to the people who know what they're talking about."

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[info]prittyprincess
2010-09-21 04:59 pm UTC (link)
It made sense to her, she supposed, and it suddenly struck her that in the past few months that she'd been here, she'd recieved more parenting than she had in her entire life. She got the difference between right and wrong now, understood how to behave in social situations. She might not quite understand that that was wjat she was doing, but she at least understood how to. How to behave in a group setting. She grinned, and nearly laughed at that, suddenly wondering if there was more to this experiement than just torturing people at random. Maybe they were all here to learn something.

Maybe the people who would be going home would be the people who hadn't learned anything, couldn't learn anything, or weren't going to learn anything here. Or not be able to teach anyone anything. She thought, though, that there were probably nicer ways of learning these lessons, and she scoffed a bit.

"Maybe we should have laws," she remarked thoughtfully. "Encourage more... order, or something. I mean, Tyler and Lily and Jaime are already pretty much in charge, but what if someone comes along and tries to take that away but they don't know what they're doing? We should be able to punish them, right?"

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[info]not_an_alien
2010-09-21 05:16 pm UTC (link)
Kyle's brow furrowed slightly. He'd read any number of books on various law systems from monarchies to democracies, and each was flawed in various ways. He and River could likely come up with some ideal, Utopian set of laws, but he wasn't sure they had a right or place to do so.

"I don't know," he finally admitted. "I guess that's up to them, and how they'd want to handle a coup if it happened." He smiled a little, but he didn't really think it was quite like that.

They were 'in charge', yes, but they weren't enforcing any rules, exactly. They were just sort of organizing things. Like a committee more than anything else.

"Maybe they already have some plans in place in case something like that happens," he suggested. Or maybe they weren't worried about it happening, which he supposed was equally likely, given their personalities.

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[info]prittyprincess
2010-09-21 05:39 pm UTC (link)
"A coup?" she asked before she stopped to think about the word in terms of context. "You mean like..." her brow furrowed - there was a word for this. Saul had used it sometimes. "A... mute-any? Is that what that means?"

She listened as Kyle mentioned that maybe they had some system in place to protect against a situation like that, and she thought about it. That made... sense. Tyler wouldn't let anyone get the drop on him, she didn't think. He was too smart for that. So they had to have a secret... thing in place, in case anyone bad tried to seize power, and... they'd... what? Step aside if it was someone good? She frowned a bit at that, not liking the idea of someone that wasn't Tyler being in charge, but... it hadn't happened, so she didn't need to worry, right?

Nodding to that, she said confidently, "Maybe," which meant 'definitely' in this context, before she sat up and started looking around widely again. "How do we get down?" she asked Kyle, less fearful now of the idea of getting down as she would have been when they started to get up. She trusted him to get her down safely, even if it didn't feel safe at the time.

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[info]not_an_alien
2010-09-21 06:47 pm UTC (link)
"A mutiny," he agreed with a nod. It was close enough, at any rate, and he smiled softly to Lizzy. "Something like that. A coup is more when one person or group takes over power, usually by force. A mutiny is when people rebel against their leaders, usually related to ships." He smiled. "Or spaceships."

He grinned to her. "When you're ready to get down, I'll jump down first and catch you," he said to her. "Sort of the same way we got up." He thought, too, he could set her down from the roof, but that would still be a little bit of a drop for her ... so the option where he caught her was the better, safer one.

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[info]prittyprincess
2010-09-22 02:06 am UTC (link)
She didn't understand the difference, but she nodded her head because clearly there was one, and Kyle understood it. Was it just called a coup on land and a mutiny when you were on a ship? Was that all? She didn't understand why there had to be like, 400 terms for everything. Why couldn't everyone just call it one thing and be done with it? That would make things so much easier. And if they could call it something that was a short word, that'd be even better.

She was a bit more nervous now that she knew she was going to have to jump down and trust him to catch her, but she thought that was okay, and she nodded her head. "I think I'm ready to get down," she decided. She kind of half moved to stand up, before she wobbled a bit and changed her mind, deciding to stay sitting for now until she received more instructions.

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[info]not_an_alien
2010-09-22 02:21 am UTC (link)
Kyle nodded and shifted to slide down off the roof, landing in a crouch before he stood up. Turning to face the building, he held up his hands for Lizzy. "I'll catch you," he promised her.

"If you scoot closer to the edge and swing your legs over, then lean forward, it'll be easier," he instructed. Easier than her jumping from a stand on top of the roof at any rate.

He watched her carefully, adjusting himself to catch her when she decided to jump.

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[info]prittyprincess
2010-09-22 06:00 am UTC (link)
She watched as Kyle jumped off the roof, and frowned deeper. It looked like quite a fall. She didn't think that she'd like it any better if he held her off the edge of it and dropped her though, so... she really wasn't sure what to do. She was a bit uneasy though.

Still, she responded to instruction. Scooting her way over to the edge carefully, she slipped her legs off so that they were dangling from the roof, and then kind of leaned forward. Not enough to fall off, but still enough to have said that she listened to the instructions.

She understood what the next step was, but she was a bit too scared to do it. Still, she swallowed thickly, closed her eyes briefly to work up the courage and then opened them, pushing off from the roof with her hands as she slipped forward off of it.

She did try to make it so that if Kyle didn't catch her, she'd at least land on her feet, but she wasn't certain how successful she was with that.

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[info]not_an_alien
2010-09-22 06:11 am UTC (link)
Kyle moved to catch her easily, lowering his arms with her momentum so the descent was more natural and less jarring. Once she had her feet on the ground, he released her and smiled softly to her. "That wasn't so bad, was it?" he asked gently, genuinely curious. He'd never jumped and been caught, but he liked to think if someone had caught him like that, he would have been okay and not startled.

Straightening up, he glanced around. "Were you going to go back inside, or did you want to stay out here?" He was probably going to head in; he wanted to see how River was, and if she needed him. If not, maybe he'd play around on the computer until she did need him.

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[info]prittyprincess
2010-09-22 10:23 am UTC (link)
She made a soft shrieking noise when she fell further than she'd been expecting, but then she felt Kyle's arms around her and felt herself settling onto the ground. She swallowed thickly, still a little bit nervous, but nodded her head. "It was okay," she said. "You didn't drop me!" she added brightly, before she shifted her weight and checked the bottom of her shoes for no real reason.

"I haven't decided," she admitted to Kyle. "Probably going back inside, but... I don't know yet. Maybe not right now. I might explore a bit more first." She glanced up at the shack, and back up at Kyle and said, "Thanks for... helping me get up there. You can jump really high."

Because apparently restating the obvious was key when you were bidding farewell to someone.

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[info]not_an_alien
2010-09-22 02:18 pm UTC (link)
Kyle chuckled softly. "Be careful if you explore," he said quietly, though he would have said the same thing to anyone he was parting ways with in dangerous territory.

He studied her for a moment, but he wasn't her father, and he assumed she'd been maneuvering this world on her own for the time she'd been here, so he shouldn't worry about leaving her to her own devices.

So he raised a hand in a wave to her before he turned away to begin his trek back to the hotel to see if he could find his River.

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