Welcome to Gaia! ::

The old man walked the shore, as he usually did on days when it was clear enough to afford him a break from lighting the way for the safe passage of ships. Some days he thought about buying a light for that damn tower, but what was the point? Nearly everything he loved was in that tower, and the rest of it was down here, on the sand. He no longer loved the sea. He'd say that the ocean can go to hell, but he had been out there, and he knew the truth. No, the ocean couldn't go to hell. The ocean, in all its terrible power masked by majestic beauty already was hell. Hell just waiting to swallow the unwary sinner. Calling in its siren's voice. "Come" its whispers infiltrated everything this close to its depths, seeping through the cracks under doors, through windows not shut well enough. "Come here. Stay here. I'll sooth you, son, and keep you safe on my gentle waves." On and on its sickly poetry continues, like a poison berry, juicy sweet and ripe in the sun.
Nathaniel Vincent Pease had always heard its cry, hell, he'd been born on that hell. He was destined to sail it forever, always chasing its bounty, only to die in the realization that the sea only ever takes. Except Nathaniel did not die on that day. He was saved. The heavens stepped in and then there was the light. That great brightness. A power more awesome than the sea. Since that day Nathaniel Vincent Pease has kept the light shining, always warning others of the perils of that watery demon. The sea can't go to hell, and Nathaniel had already been.
He glanced at his watch, a great old thing from the golden era of watches, when the Swiss were truly kings of the trade. He decided to head into town while it was still sunny, get his shopping done. He had no idea how much his life was about to change.

Nathaniel Vincent Pease was watching the reflections of the afternoon light off water bounce and play on the ceiling of his tower's roof. He was really fascinated with reflection and refraction, for seemingly obvious reasons, and he was just figuring out the pattern of this afternoon's light show, when he noticed that the pattern was being interrupted. Something else was playing light on his ceiling, something much stiller and brighter than the sea. He went out on the balcony to see what.
And he couldn't believe what he saw. It was the boy from the parking lot. The one to whom light did not stick. "Jehoshaphat!" He cursed out of surprise, and began to hobble down the spiral staircase to the tower's exit. "You there! Boy!" He called, gruffly, in that way that only men of the aged persuasion can call out, "Hey you!"

The boy tried to run, as all boys will do when being shouted at by an imposing, elderly person, and that's when it happened before. Like when Pease had given chase to the boy earlier in the Alley, there was a blinding white flash of light and the boy ran at speeds unachievable by man-Kenyan or otherwise. Fortunately running on sand is the worst possible thing ever (especially the loose, shell-littered sand of north shore Delmor) and the boy fell flat on his still-slightly-glowing face. Pease was upon the boy before he recovered, saying without cold indifference (his first such sentence today) "That's quite a talent you've got there boy. Care to talk about it?"

"I want to show you something" Nathaniel Vincent Pease said, not once considering the creepy man factor. "I think you might find it interesting." He was going to show the boy the lack of bulb in the North Break Lighthouse. The boy would be the first other person to enter North Break since Pease bought it. Which would strike anyone as odd, were they aware of the matter or watching. "Come, follow me."

"You may find, boy, that your little flashy thing isn't the weirdest thing in town." This comment timed perfectly for the bow to have ascended the tower's spiraling stairs and see the source of the Lighthouse's light. Nothing at all, just a bright light conjured as if from nowhere. "You see I myself have my own weirdness with light." To demonstrate this he played with the colors of the Lightsource. "It was years ago. Halloween, 1991. The Perfect Storm landed in the western Atlantic, and I was First Mate aboard The Albatross. She was a fine vessel, a small, cozy swordfishing boat, and I was never as happy as I was aboard 'er..." Pease told his tale, of how he became who he was today. "Now then, what I propose is this. My power is the creation and manipulation of Light, yours appears to be light activated, We can help each other, methinks. We can help discover the true extant of our powers."

"Captain Cripple?" The Old Man, not even knowing what the internet was [Tubes, a whole series of them, it turns out], entirely misunderstood "You mean like Ahab? But you don't look like a cripple, boy, an' you shoah don't run like one. But this League business sounds interesting. Tell me more." Pease loved a good story. But he hated bad stories, and didn't have enough of a sense of humor to appreciate MST3K. Sensing his guest was uncomfortable, he toned down the light and directed the boy to a comfortable chair. Pease also hated politicians, which might have been what piqued his interest.

"Ah," Pease said once the tale was through, pretending he understood at all the overall narrative of the boy's disjointed and cursory tale. It was like a movie that, while staying relatively true to the 800-page book it is based upon, is too short to convey all the ins and outs of that nuanced novel, and ends up being a thing which one can only understand or appreciate if one already knew what the damn story was. Which wasn't at all why Pease saw movies. Pease went to the movies to observe light patterns and maybe mess around with them a little, if he was feeling brave enough. But then again Pease is weird like that, so really, that has nothing to do with anything. "It's always tough to lose yer mates." He paused, as his mind shuffled through the information that had been presented to him, "Did they leave because you were no longer the Captain of Cripples? Having healed your handicap? If that's so, Boy, it looks to me like you've got yerself a new power. Perhaps you can learn to use this and win back your friends..."