Welcome to Gaia! ::

Rylan had heard the rumors. Michael Mitchell's body had washed up on the beach, and... well. He wanted to investigate.

It wasn't just morbid curiosity. Rylan had seen corpses before, several of them pulled out of a fire and burned to a crisp. He wanted to investigate because he wanted, beyond anything else, to help. The mere thought of Michael Mitchell's parents, grieving when they had found him gone and then again to know he was dead, left a queasy tightness in his stomach that he couldn't shake. And he wondered how the parents of the other two teens must feel.

So he wanted to help, in any way he can, though he wasn't sure what ways they were. Look, maybe, lend a pair of fresh eyes... Whatever.

Rylan found himself treading through the sand at the beach, Vlad the Impaler twittering away on his head. The shrike had developed a fondness for burrowing into his hair and sitting there like a black ball of animated floof, pouting at Rylan whenever he was removed from his throne.

"What do you think, Imp? Will we find anything?" He didn't know.

The unfamiliar voice caught him off guard. Rylan started, jolting the little shrike on his head. Imp let out a squeak of protest and promptly clamped down with his tiny talons to avoid being thrown out of his nest of hair.

"Hi," Rylan managed to say, one hand reaching up to boop the bird reassuringly. "You mean the... Michael?"

His as-yet basic understanding of Other Ashdown, coupled with the gossip he'd heard buzzing around town gave him enough context to understand what Sunny was saying - but only just.

"He was in Other Ashdown, then?" Rylan asked, just to be sure. "Why did they send him back?"

She was saying a lot of things that he didn't quite understand, but Rylan filed it all away for more future investigation. The burning man... the Spinel... Lady. "Are they all in cahoots?" he asked, curious. "What would anyone gain from pushing him out? And... was he dead before that?"

It was a lot of question. He stopped, not wanting to be rude, and then-

"I... How do you know Lucas?" Actually, better question, how did she know of Lucas' boyfriends? "I... mean. Yes. I am. I'm Rylan."

Imp let out a peep, and hopped to his shoulder, peering at Sunny with equal curiosity.

They've never tried it before... "So they're trying to expand the scope of what they can do here?" It was half a statement, half a question. And the thought sent a chill through him.

"I take it you know him pretty well, then," Rylan added, a small smile on his face.

And still, it was hard to let himself get distracted when he had dead teens and oddly named otherbeings to think about.

"I was hoping I could try," he said, plucking Imp off his shoulder and encircling the little bird with his hands. This seemed to please the shrine, who sat still with little more than a chirp in his clutches. "Not sure how much I could help, but I do have this guy. Maybe he can lend an eye."

"Oh," he said, eyes widening. That was worse than he'd imagined. Already, his mind was churning, wondering how to fix it all. "We need to help them. We can't let them die. That wouldn't be..." Fair. They were just kids.

Rylan looked back at Imp sitting in his hands, looking like a real-life Angry Bird, and he nodded. Maybe it would help somehow, though he wasn't sure how, if there was so much unrest in the otherworld and he was... here, in the real world.

Still.

"Thanks, I appreciate it," he said with a smile. He sat in the sand, opened his hands to let Imp flutter out and take flight, and then he leaned back and went with him.

The terror was so real and overpowering that it sent Rylan's mind reeling. He barely even noticed when he returned to himself again, and it wasn't until the sound of his own shaky breaths that he felt himself able to move again. Of all the adventures he and Imp had shared, that one was by far the least understandable.

Rylan slowly shifted his gaze to Sunny - so... normal now, so real - and blinked. The fear and discomfort still clung to him, and the sheer terror of the thing he'd seen that so escaped comprehension. "You, actually," he said finally. "You were... this... Is that what you actually look like? The shapes and... impossible to understand."

It was both fascinating and alarming all at once.

"Oh, and, Imp found something," he added, almost as an afterthought.

Sunny's answer was cryptic, but Rylan had started to understand that that was her general state of being, so he let it go with one more curious glance.

"A wallet," he said, turning to gaze toward the little black bird that was laboring to bring its find back to land. He let out a low whistle that resembled the shrike's chirp as Imp came fluttering back. It was never clear if the bird actually responded, but Rylan liked to think they'd built enough of a relationship by now for the answer to be yes.

A few more flaps, and Imp decided he was close enough. The shrike folded his wings and tumbled to the ground, hitting that sand with a small poof. He shook his head to send specks of sand flying off his head, then sat happily beside the recovered wallet, looking very proud of himself.

Rylan watched as the little bird somewhat froze in fear as the above mentioned monster thing leaned over to pet him. It was all so curious... he watched Sunny with a thoughtful, unnoticed frown, more intrigued than terrified, trying to think of something that could count as a logical explanation for all this.

"Why would I even... have an ID from the sixties..." he managed to say, frown deepening as he reached for the wallet. It was him, indeed, but not quite him. Something he couldn't quite put a finger on was strange about the picture - and not just the fact that it was an old ID from an era in which he adamantly had not been alive.

"Does this mean I should be on the lookout?" He asked, looking up. "For trouble coming my way."