Welcome to Gaia! ::

Carda sighed and relaxed. Okay, at least his head would stay in its proper place atop his shoulders for the time being.

Granted, his nerves were just a tiny bit... SHOT, for lack of a better word. Two suspensions and a near-death experience all within five minutes could do that to a person.

"Okay, um... This?" Carda stammered, holding up the necklace. "Well, uh, you gave it to me. I mean, not you you, but a-another you, someone I grew up with, and you and I, I mean, she and I were good friends and all, and you-- I mean, she gave me this when I left my homeworld for training, and... I'm not making any sense am I?" he finished lamely.

Smooth delivery. I bet she's REAL interested in anything else you've got to say.

Shut up, I'm trying to save my skin here.

Carda broke himself from his mental argument and continued. "As for why I've been popping all around your house, well it's because I've got this mental condition where my brain doesn't accept weird stuff too well and it has to reset itself when I see something I'm not used to and when that happens my ability to manipulate space gets out of whack and does weird things and the last time this happened I hurt you. I mean the other you."

Hmmm. Seraphim was starting to rub off on Carda. Even when he was nervous he didn't usually run his sentences together that fast.

"Huh? Yeah, I am. Strider in training. Although I haven't had much training lately..." Carda added darkly.

Carda regarded this Sosi curiously. She seemed a bit... tense at the thought of what he was. Threatened, maybe?

Maybe she knew more about what was going on than he did, after all.

Carda blinked. Then the proverbial lightbulb reached down and slapped him across the back of the head.

Of course. She was afraid that he was like most of the other Striders: hateful of anyone who bore the title of kairomancer.

Carda was curious about something, though. Was she bluffing or not?

One way to find out.

Carda closed his eyes, collapsed on the floor for the third time that day, and waited.

((No vanishing this time... Heh heh.))

Well THAT hadn't gone as planned.

Carda spluttered and sat bolt upright. "What the heck was THAT for? Honestly, you're just as bad as... your other self!"

Carda sat there dripping for a moment, then said, half-grinning, "Okay, any chance I can get a towel now?"

"My name is Carda. My sister Michelle and I discovered about halfway through high school that we were able to manipulate space. Well, for me, it was more of an accident.

"See, I've got this thing that experts call a suspension of belief. My brain can't process stuff that's out of the ordinary the way most poeple can. It either subconsciously explains it away as something else, or if it can't do that, it basically shuts down and reboots itself, if you'll pardon the computer reference. Once it gets going again, I'm fine and whatever triggered the suspension won't affect me again.

"The problem is that since I've got these spatial manipulation powers, I can be dangerous with no control over them. And when I'm in the middle of a suspension, I can't control anything, least of all my powers. Hence the reason I wound up in your bathroom and in your closet.

"Well, the first time it happened, you-- I mean, the other you was there. I didn't have any control over my powers at the time because I hadn't been trained how to use them yet. My powers went wild. I hurt you-- her in the process. I swore that I would never let that happen again.

"That's when my teacher, Xironielle, showed up. She said she could teach Michelle and me how to control our abilities so stuff like that wouldn't happen again. We agreed, and she recruited us into the Delta Striders." Carda pointed to the four-pointed star on his headband, the signet of the Striders. "We left right after graduating high school, but before we left, your other self gave us each one of those necklaces to remember her by. I don't know if she even knew what they were.

"Anyway, a couple of months ago, Michelle came up missing. I set out to find her. While I was travelling from World to World, I inadvertently ran across you. I mean, YOU you. I didn't approach you right away because I wasn't entirely sure what was going on, and besides, I had other things on my mind at the time. But I figured I'd want to get in touch with you at some point. That's why I slipped one of my locus pens into your things.

"Well, I needed to do some research, and the stuff I needed to learn isn't exactly available at the local library. So Xironielle and I decided to sneak into the Strider Archives. The stuff that not even higher-level Striders normally look at. It seems that Xironielle's grandfather was a proponent for peace between Striders and Kairomancers, and he was labeled as a heretic for it. We got caught on our way back out.

"Xironielle took the fall and convinced me to testify against her so that I could keep looking for my sister. It still hurts to think of how I betrayed her."

Seraphim hadn't heard this story from Carda's perspective before, and sat there next to him, listening with rapt attention. Quite a feat for one as hyperactive as she.

"Anyway, I came to see you because I got tired of trying to get through all this alone. I figured that if the Sosiqui I knew was a part of you, then she must be pretty well representative of the original." Carda smiled genuinely. "I'm sorry for the headache and hassle I've put you through."

Carda turned about five shades of red at that question.

"Well, we... I mean, she and I... GAH. How do I explain this...?"

Seraphim, on the other hand, had no problem finding the right words. "Well spit it out stupid don't just leave her in the dark!"

Carda returned the comment with a LOOK.

"Thanks for the pep talk," he muttered through clenched teeth.

Clearing his throat, he tried to start over, but had lost any semblance of seriousness thanks to the little angel's pep talk.

"I don't want to say that... we were an ITEM, per se, but... we were kinda, no, really close. Like, REALLY close."

((No, not THAT close. :-p ))

Carda's eyes dropped to the floor.

"She... died. Mysterious circumstances, the doctors said, like her body just shut down for no real reason. A few weeks after I left. I didn't even find out until about a month ago."

Carda clenched a fist. "She was perfectly fine when I left. I just don't understand why she died so suddenly... She wasn't able to keep her promise, either, just like I broke my promise that I wouldn't have another suspension again..." He slammed his fist down on his knee and squinted his eyes shut to fight the tears that were coming. "It isn't fair..." he muttered.

Carda smiled half-heartedly. "Thanks," he whispered. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have come. It was kinda stupid of me to even think I could just pick up where I left off..."

Carda started to gather his things. "I should be going..."