ablativeholopleather | IC Contact/Inbox/HMD

It's frustrating at the best of times, trying to find anything that would help him in confirming things that he really needs more information on without going and bothering everyone that he knows just to gain a consensus, something that he refuses to do when he's only just met a lot of them and doesn't want to be an imposition. He spends a couple of hours at a time here more often than not, but usually people don't interrupt him when he's here.

It's bewildering, then, when he hears a familiar voice from...up? Overhead?

"Wh-" He turns in place, looking up in a slow circle, until he realizes that the voice was in fact from overhead. And that it was Helena perched up there, with a book and apparently no way but the painful to get down. "Hey. What's shakin'?"

"Mr. Wayne!"

Clearly not a voice she expected, but if she's smiling, then it's good news.

"Sorry to be a bother, but do you perhaps see a ladder anywhere nearby?"

She can't check for obvious reasons, but she's happy to be around him all the same. Still, it might be easier if she was in her proper place and not having to consider how she's going to explain this to Max and Security when her absence gets noticed.

Sorry to be a bother she says, while stranded on top of a bookshelf...

"Uh..." He's staring around, trying to find a ladder, but only coming up with a stepladder to reach the higher shelves if one were to stand on tiptoe on the part of it that it says you're not supposed to climb on. "I think someone stole your ladder actually. How long have you been up there?"

"...I'm not sure. Definitely a while, but I'd have a better count of time if I hadn't started reading. And I didn't have a ladder when I accidentally jumped up here, but I was sincerely hoping..."

Look, some things are priorities, and given that she is not in danger of death by any method, she could keep this as a lower one. But also, her phone is on the arm of a chair down there, so calling someone wasn't an option.

"I thought about just jumping down, but given the spacing of these shelves, I can't be certain I'd have a clean landing."

She can jump, when she's certain of where she's going. But with the small tables and chairs, there's a risk right now that she'd wind up just hitting one of them on the way down. It's really not convenient.

"...accidentally....jumped?" How does one accidentally jump up there? He has to be very purposeful about his jumps in order to do much of anything. He hasn't even figured out how to fly vertically for more than a couple of seconds at a time.

While Wayne fully believes that she's capable of whatever she wants to do, he doesn't really like the idea of her trying to jump from so high up, especially when she doesn't know that she'd be able to land safely. He moves to the base of the bookcase, and nudges the stepladder over to climb up and see if he could maybe help her down from there that way without absolutely wiping out, himself.

"Uhh...what if I tried to catch you? I'm pretty sturdy."

"You think you could do that? It's worth a try, at the least. Oh, but here, first -"

And she picks up her cane, extending it down towards him. This is something she doesn't want damaged in the jump under any circumstances.

"Sure." Why not? He can't see this going bad (a lie, he could very much see it going bad but he's not going to let that stop him).

He's careful as he takes the cane, turning it around in his hand to be able to lay it across the arms of a chair nearby so that it's right where he can hand it back to her when they've figured out getting her down. That done, he comes back to the bottom of the book case, trying to mentally calculate where he might want to be to make sure she didn't hit the floor or any of the surrounding furniture.

"Okay...okay if you come like, straight toward me, knees bent and arms out, it should be fine." Should being the operative word there.

"Okay!"

And follow his instructions she does, judging where his voice is, taking a breath, and taking the little hop of faith it is. Fortunately, she's not a young lady who weighs very much, and while the pushoff isn't perfect, it still means she heads Wayne-ward, and the bookshelf is saved as well as everyone's bone integrity.

Wayne shuffles a little bit in place, correcting even as she's on her way down, arms out to cushion if not catch her outright. Surprisingly, he's able to not only steady her, but minimize the impact of feet on the floor without staggering, still holding on until he's sure that they're both going to remain upright.

There's an obvious smile in his voice when he's able to step back again, hand still on her shoulder while he reaches for her cane again. "Rad. Here you go.

"How'd you jump up there, anyway? Usually I gotta put in a bunch of effort to get up high."

She's smiling when they break apart as well, having trusted him entirely to catch, and now she's safe and sound on the ground again. No harm, no foul, just a new way to solve the problem, and a soft thanks as she gets her cane back.

"You know, I have suspicions, but I really was only trying to reach a book on the higher shelf. I jumped for it, because it was right there, and then suddenly I found myself jumping a second time, and then I was half on top of the shelf and the only thing to do was pull myself up. Strange, but not in a terrible way?"

Wayne sticks his hands back into his pockets, for the moment totally distracted from his original task.

"Weird. I never learned how to jump again but I can like, fly a little bit. Probably not enough to get up there without just climbing though." He sticks nearby, in case she needs to find another book that's a little too high up.

"I'm going to say something a bit odd, but...I think the strangeness might be coming from my shoes."

Which do not, on first glance, look like they are capable of causing jumping strangeness. Simple laced up black shoes, utterly ordinary.

"Though I should probably test this, but not inside."

"I see." He's at least familiar with garb that could bolster someone's abilities, so her theory that it may be about her shoes doesn't seem implausible to him. "If you're gonna test this maybe it'd be better on one of the big open decks. Uh...maybe not anywhere near a railing." He's still bewildered about the sudden loss of miss Friday, alright.

"Oh, of course not. It wouldn't be safe for me to go into open water without a rope."

But they can head to the sports deck - that'll be a much safer place to try.

"Do they have like, elastic stuff? Tether you so you don't fly away." He has a feeling a strong gust might end up knocking her overboard if she ends up jumping too high.

"If you see any, we can use it. I'm not well versed on the equipment we have at hand - sports aren't something I greatly participate in."

Just swimming, self defense and whatever workouts Darcy has invented for her. Those are all rather solitary activities.

"Though...is flying away likely?"

"When you're out at sea, I think so, yeah." He knows he's gotten shoved around a little by winds coming off the ocean. Weather's lawless out here, man. He doesn't actually know if the Captain controls that the same way he does the ship. Would he account for wind existing or not? Should he even be fussing about this? He's probably going to regardless because he likes Helena and doesn't want to see something happen to her just because they didn't think about something as simple as weather. "I never really did sports either. I mean, there was training and stuff, but that wasn't really for fun."

"Training? Do you mind if I ask what for?"

If the answer is no, she'll drop the subject, but Wayne was the one to bring it up. It gives her something to think about beyond what could have caused her to jump up akin to goats.

"Eh..." There's a little bit of hesitation, but...really, what's the harm in explaining a little of his situation? "Old Wayne decided after the Hylemxylem went down the first time that the rest of us should probably stay on the island and make sure we could all defend ourselves and eachother if we needed to. He made sure even if we couldn't fight well we could still survive. I was really just improvising the whole time I was dealing with it so having actual help with it was kinda nice actually.

"Uh, and the Hylemxylem was a thing that broadcast a signal that made basically everyone I encountered go insane about uh...seven or eight cycles back. It was so bad, man." Like, so bad. He still gets freaked out by the idea of losing all higher brain function.

"Oh....that sounds horrific, actually."

What else do you say when someone confesses the madness of their world? It's frightening, somewhat, but she's glad Wayne made it out alive, and she can hold it as a concept, not yet to be touched.

"I'm glad you had him there - even if such a thing needed to be stopped, no doubt, that doesn't change that people have to survive until it's taken out."

"Yeah...yeah. We got lucky. It coulda been way worse." He won't deny that. As much as he would have liked to just be able to go back home when it was all done the first time around, he knows that it was the right thing to do to make sure that they were prepared for what was likely to come next, or even for some new threat following on the tail of the old tragedies. Better to focus on the good that came out of it than the hard parts, right? "They tried to do it again but we kinda got the jump on 'em."

Wayne walks with his hands in his pockets, watching the ocean through the windows as they go. He's comforted by being able to see the water, even if it doesn't quite hold a candle to the ocean that he grew up with.

"Now I just gotta hope the rest of them are gonna be able to keep fending for themselves. I think they got it though. And, they still have my crew, even if I don't. They'll be fine."

"...Did anyone ever tell you one of the theories of this place? About how we're here at all?"

She has a place she's going with this, she promises.

"I heard that some of the people are actually dead or something, back in their worlds, so this is the better option. It doesn't feel like an afterlife though." Especially if what he's heard is true about them dying here as well.

"That's so, the dead do get to walk among us again. But what I'm referring to is that the versions of us that are here...it's as though someone took a photograph of you, and now there are two. One of you is still where you came from, with your friends, making whatever path you would through your life. And there is another of you here, like a branch off a tree, to forge a new way and make new acquaintance and live as best you can in a new place. That's what I've been told, and I choose to embrace that idea."

She smiles, and the elevator she's called to bring them up to the sports deck opens, allowing them to go inside.

"Because that means that I haven't been forced to abandon my friends. They still have me alongside them."

Want is quiet for a little while as he contemplates this, alongside other theories that he's heard. He's still following along beside Helena, his boots audible on the deck below them, but it takes a moment for him to pull his words together again.

"...well, at least that means someone's gonna be there to feed my cat." Not to mention to take care of his garden and look in on Waynehouse still. "I wonder if that Wayne is ever even gonna know about all this, if that's what's happening. Or maybe I'll end up becoming an Old Wayne here and he can be an Old Wayne there."

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