(Untitled)

[clockarmageddon]

[ooc: Faux Jack Bauer voice: The following thread takes place between 3 and 4 on the Armageddeon Clock.]By now, you've probably connected that soft chime to the shaking earth, and both of those to the new furnishing

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[gone_byebye]

Sledgehammer? No. PKE meter? Yeah. Ray's been talking to Asar-Suti.

Actually, the meter's going to wait. He's going to try the other approach first. Namely: approach it slowly, hands where they can be seen, and smile without showing his teeth. "Hey there," he says to the clock. "Welcome to Milliways. Have you got a name?"

What? Sometimes it works.

[clockarmageddon]

Unless it's name is 'tick', there's no reply.

[gone_byebye]

Well, he had to try, didn't he? Just like he has to try alternative methods of communication. He's seen Close Encounters, after all.

Although Spielberg's aliens didn't really use kazoos, which is what Ray's got on him now.

[clockarmageddon]

The clock's a pretty effective metronome, but other than that, the kazoo method falls flat as well.

[gone_byebye]

Then it would probably be a fairly safe guess that an attempt at conveying the numbers one through ten in binary code via turning a flashlight on and off wouldn't get much of a response either, huh? Because that's Ray's next attempt.

[clockarmageddon]

Yeeeeah, this thing's pretty much failing all the sentience tests. Maybe it needed a study buddy.

[gone_byebye]

Well, it was worth a shot. Ray's a geek. There are rules. You have to at least try.

Now he gets out the PKE meter for a quick scan. Spirit energy? Magic? Psi? Anything?

[clockarmageddon]

The meter doesn't explode.

That would be cliché.

It does manage to peg the dial, though.

This thing's veritably thrumming with magic.

[gone_byebye]

Ray whistles sharply at the sight. "Okay," he says. "Well, that answers that question. I wonder who sent you? Deposits of that kind of magic don't just occur naturally except in the wake of a major magical conflict..."

[clockarmageddon]

It's mostly cleaned up now, but a quick glance out the back door will still show evidence of just such a conflict.

[gone_byebye]

This is what happens when you are Ray. You forget to do little things like, ooh, look at locations where other people have already told you things happened. Derh.

Fortunately one of the rats kicks him in the shin, squeaks once, and points. As the rat scurries off, muttering the rodent equivalent of "dumbass" under its breath, Ray hurries outside to start scanning for traces and similarities. There's more than one kind of magic, after all, and there could be more than one point source.

[clockarmageddon]

It's pretty low level emissions now, a few days later, but there's still one section over by the shore that spikes. Something major happened here that's still resonating.

[gone_byebye]

That part is starting to make Ray wish he had gotten a scan on Urza when he came in. Donighal had said something the other day about the planeswalker's arrival being temporally related to a battle by the lake. Unfortunately,he's got nothing to compare to- except the clock. Damn it.