karma police, arrest this man, he talks in maths...

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Who: Matt and Ukoku Sanzo
When: January 5; just after morning sirens
Where: fire escape outside the windows of apartments 808 and 810
Summary: a morning smoke after a long night without leads to some random conversation between next door neighbours
Warnings: none, I imagine

Comments

[heretic_monk]

A nonsensical world is the worst place for most to be in, and the best test to see how far the limit was before how they broke. That was the charm of this cast-off island, cut off from the rest of this world by the fickle will of a network of malfunctioning machinery that was rumored to reside in the deep, dark basement of one building. It was as if God resided in Hell and condemned everyone on this earth to nightly terror and eternal strife.

God as a broken central computer receiving and sending broken signals to the rest of the network. That was a rather apt metaphor for probability and the laws of chance - a spasm of electric current governed by the factors of physics.

However, all computers can be hacked, reprogrammed, and remodeled. It was merely a matter of finding the correct codes and hardware.

"The only difference between what has sense and what doesn't is the amount of logic that we have to apply to the situation."

Ukoku flicked the butt of his cigarette to tap off the collecting ash. Would the landlord be irritated to find a pile of cigarette butts on the fire escape when Ukoku left? How far would the man go to make him clean up the mess? There was only one way to find out, once this smoke was finished.

"You should. It's rather illuminating." He pauses here, looking up as if to study the ceiling. "Something called the Core supposedly mutates people if they don't have any special abilities like telekinesis to begin with."

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Matt rubbed at his eyes again, listening to what Ukoku was saying. It seemed he thought about something first, and Matt's interest was piqued, wondering what exactly was going on below the surface. He was used to being around people who laid out their logical thought processes in words so everyone could understand - it was how most of the people at Wammy's House had operated, at least the ones who were into the logical process and deduction.

When Ukoku finally spoke, Matt nodded, and sighed, rubbing at his eyes, "This situation requires a bit more logic than I'm used to having to apply. I'm not even sure which direction to start moving in. I've either been drugged, or this is some kind of hallucination, and apart from that, I'm not sure what it could be." he furrowed his brows, not wanting to suggest the afterlife because he just...didn't want to admit to having been shot before he arrived.

The concept of an alternate universe that he'd been dragged into, or the idea of having been ganked from Japan to somewhere in Canada bothered him. He couldn't apply any sort of logic to it, not in his own mind.

The last line of what Ukoku said, however, struck him sharply, and he glanced over at him, "What? Telekinesis?"

[heretic_monk]

"Both of that could have happened," Ukoku said, "or neither. We could be in an alternate dimension, in a dream, or the figments of someone's imagination." He shifted, and the sunlight gleamed on his eyeglasses, masking his eyes for a moment. This was reminiscent of what he had told Sanzo three days ago, in that twilight spent in the forest. Existence was a transient matter, and all the footprints one has left will be erased by the next tide.

"Does it matter, in the end, when we're already here?"

The theory that this was the afterlife was also one that had crossed Ukoku's mind more than once, when he remembered needing to dodge that bullet in the last second, the sharp scent of gunpowder and bloodshed nearing him at rapid speed. There was a fifty percent chance that it had hit. Was he brain dead now? The thought brought him unholy amusement.

"Yes, telekinesis." He returned Matt's look with a small smile of his own. "Funny, isn't it? There may be other kinds, too, based on what that person said."

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Matt made a non-committal noise, taking another drag from his cigarette, playing a game with himself to see how long he could let the cylinder of ash get, whether he could finish the cigarette before it fell without rushing. He frowned slightly at what Ukoku said, thinking it over, very obviously lost in thought while he went over the relatively limited number of variables he had to deal with in his mind. Drugged. Hallucination. Figment of someone's imagination. Alternate universe.

It wasn't an impressive set of options, not in the logic department. Some were from a crime drama, some from a fantasy film, and the last was purely science fiction. The government had been far too busy dealing with Kira to develop technology like this.

Pushing a hand back through his hair, he made a noise of frustration in his throat, shaking his head, "None of that makes sense, and of course it matters. Logically, the only way to find a way to get back where we belong is to work out how we got here and then reverse it, correct? Unless some other option presents itself in a more obvious manner, that's the most logical answer to this puzzle."

He shook his head a bit, "As for telekinesis, I've never seen a reliable report on it being real, and I certainly didn't have anything like that at home. I don't think the technology exists to alter someone that way."

[heretic_monk]

It seemed that the sleepy boy could still keep up with a complex conversation, yet. Ukoku chuckled around the filter between his lips when he watched Matt continue smoking without tapping the ash away. Such a brat, to need this kind of distraction while he thought.

"Why don't they make any sense to you, when mentioning two other possibilities already indicates you've at least initially thought that there was logic in them? If you think all of the above are incorrect, it follows that you have to assume we're conversing as people whose bodies and minds were pulled from one world to the next until an alternative plausible theory is presented. What you've proposed also follows this same conclusion. Therefore, the nature of our situation - if we are in reality, a dream, or otherwise - is irrelevant at the moment, for as long as we're operating within the context of the game."

He paused to stub his cigarette on the metal railing and let it fall to the floor of the fire escape. Trial one, begin.

"This puzzle box we've been handed has an interesting mechanism. It will be interesting to see how it works."

Matt's last line made him smile. If he only knew what Ukoku already has experimented on, on what else was possible in a world where science and magic both existed. The Port was one such world, too.

"I find that technology, like many other things, is only limited by the imagination. Many things only written about turn out to be real, as strange as they can sound."

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Having a game to play while he talked had always helped Matt concentrate - it was just the manner of things. Whether it was his console, or some kind of word game in his sentence usage, or something as simple as handling his cigarette as if it was made of spiderweb to make sure the ash didn't fall off. It just helped him focus.

He took another slow puff, his brows furrowing even more deeply as he thought. It was a valid point Ukoku had, but he had an answer for it, "When one is thrown into something that makes no sense, one usually tries to make sense of it. At least where I come from..." he trailed off as the ash fell off his cigarette into a grey smudge on his jeans, and he wiped at it absently with his fingertips - game over.

"I guess it would make sense to look at it that way, but I'm not satisfied with just accepting what people tell me, especially in a place like this. I'd rather know for certain, and at the moment, an alternate dimension sounds like something out of a science fiction picture. Maybe possible, but where I'm from, not plausible. As far as I know, they're not even really trying to do anything along that sort of line."

He sighed, and lifted his right hand to rub at his eyelids, trying to settle the headache that was settling in behind them, "A game, hmmm?" he mumbled, after a moment, interest piqued, "I like games."

Giving his head a small shake, he sighed and looked over at the older man, "I certainly don't feel different than I did at home." he said, shaking his head, "You'd think I'd feel different if they implanted some kind of strange ability into me."

[heretic_monk]

"It's not so much as acceptance, but the removal of bias. This is just the tip of the iceberg."

Ukoku took out a wrinkled carton of cigarettes and a box of matches from his sleeve. The former looked like it had been dragged through rough concrete; Ukoku had dodged Gojyo's shakujou by jumping, but the crescent blade had snagged the end of his sleeve. A quiet tap and a strike of a match later, Ukoku made a soft sigh as the fresh dose of nicotine spread through his nerves.

He estimated that he'd be able to complete his investigation of surface matters within two weeks' time. Only then would he be able to decide on his next move, and the ones after that.

When Matt said he liked games, Ukoku turned to rest the small of his back on the metal rail, and placed his elbow on the back of the arm that he had positioned over his stomach. There was one way of livening up this conversation.

"In that case, shall we play one to pass the time for the morning? The two of us will list down what abilities could possibly count as strange. The one with more answers wins."

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Matt's eyes flicked to Ukoku's hand when he brought out the pack of cigarettes - beat up, almost as much as his own, which was crumpled in the corners but thankfully hadn't been hit by any bullets. Either that or the damage done to them had been corrected along with the damage done to his body, his goggles, his clothing.

Instead of taking out another of his own cigarettes, Matt simply stubbed out the one he was smoking to the best of his ability on the grated bottom of the fire escape, then dropped the still-half-lit butt to the ground, watching the embers fall down several stories before petering out. He was thinking about Ukoku's mention of removing bias, and he tilted his head to the side. He didn't comment on it, but the point was taken and accepted in his own mind.

When Ukoku proposed a game, Matt jerked his head to the side to look at him, eyes narrowing slightly under his messy mop of dark hair. He had a sudden feeling of foreboding - perhaps he shouldn't have said that he enjoyed games. He was familiar with dealing with manipulative people, and there was something about Ukoku that was almost familiar...

Brushing the thought off, Matt tilted his head back to look at the sky through the grating of the fire escape above, thoughtful. What harm was there in this game, what information would he give away? Perhaps what kind of abilities were available where Matt came from, or the abilities he could conceive of. It didn't strike him as particularly useful information, so long as he left out any information pertaining to the Kira case. He could even pull all the abilities from the science fiction shows he knew, just to make sure there were no personal insights in there.

After a moment to think this out, he nodded, "Sure. Why not?" He lifted a hand to his mouth to cover a yawn, "You start."

[heretic_monk]

Matt had already noticed something? What a difference nicotine made.

Ukoku took one long draft from his cigarette as he thought of an ability. There was really no point to this exercise, other than to refresh his memory of the what-could-bes in the advancement of genetic evolution and to see more of what Matty-boy could do. If something new came up, so much the better.

"Pyrokinesis."