caughtinanetwork | I // [video]

[The screen flickers slightly before revealing a smiling young face, red eyes wide in wonder as she stares at the camera. The girl looks very excited, or at least eager to see what this device does. There's almost a sense of pride emanating from her - after all, being in a family of magi meant that they avoided contact with modern technology as much as possible. So getting this thing to work is quite the accomplishment, and she looks around for a few moments around the edge of the screen - checking things, probably - before looking back at the camera.

Unfortunately, she doesn't notice that it's upside down.]

Hello everyone! I'm Ilyasviel von Einzbern, but Ilya is fine. I'm new here, so I'm looking for someone to be my older brother!

[She smiles again. It's not in her intention to further explain what an older brother entails, since the best older brothers would already know what to do without her telling them. Ideally, the older brother would be someone who's actually older than her, but if they act and look older than her, that's fine too. All things considered, that really shouldn't be too hard...]

I guess a big sister would be okay too... but a big brother would be better. So, someone come play with me, okay?

[Her eyes wander off to the sides of the screen again. A few moments pass by as this continues, and the girl mutters a barely audible 'how do you turn this off?']

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[She nods, although she doesn't really know what Tech is talking about. Years of living in isolation away from the modern world can do that to someone. Well, she's not completely isolated, but trying to imagine what Tech just described is proving to be pretty hard.]

So... it's either a really really small planet, or a really really big city?

Well. It is a small planet, relatively speaking, but that's hardly a necessary quality for this distinction.

Is it nice there?

[Ilya wonders how it's like to live in a large city. Fuyuki isn't really all that big, all things considered... and Acmetropolis sounds pretty big.]

Yes, generally speaking.

[Not that he has any sort of a basis for comparison. There's Vatheon, but that's decidedly low-tech. Not exactly his dream city.]

[She nods slowly. Matters of personal preference are usually hard to compare...]

And do you like it here? In Vatheon?

[Maybe Tech could tell her a little more about this place. It's certainly strange.]

It's certainly a fascinating place--and would be on the basis of physics alone. Aside from that it straddles the fine line between peaceful and dull, dipping into a little of both from time to time.

[There are the curses of course, but those are so infrequent that it doesn't really compare to his old lifestyle.]

[She definitely hasn't experienced anything like that in her life before. Well, not simultaneously. There wasn't anything she can call peace throughout the last ten years of her life...]

What sorts of things happen here? I heard something about curses...

Ah, yes. Curses are a term of convenience that we use to describe strange, seemingly supernatural occurrences that happen on a semi-regular basis. They affect foreigners like ourselves, presumably in relation to our tattoos, but not usually all of us. The best term to broadly define their effects would simply be "bizarre"--earlier this week I found myself attached to another person by the hand, for instance.

[Thankfully this was one of those that doesn't endure for the full duration of the week...]

Supposedly the locals understand "curses" to be a sort of communication from the coral in the plaza, but there's evidence to suggest that they have a more synthetic origin.

Foreigners... meaning everyone using these weird starfish things, right?

[She shakes the SFC. The image jitters around a little.]

And the curses - what kinds of things have happened so far?

That's one way to identify them, but it would be more accurate to say that foreigners are people brought here by--supposedly--the coral, from their own realities.

At the moment this curse seems to involve multiple individuals becoming temporarily attached at the site of contact if they in any way touch each other, but whether or not the curse actually takes effect for any given instance of contact seems to be random, or at least inconsistent. A recent curse involved visible manifestations of someone's fears. Another turned some of the foreigners into animals, and they've done such things as altered a victim's personality or projected their thoughts visually. All recorded cases of curses so far have been inherently harmless, just inconvenient. To say the least.

[So... like someone's playing with them. That's a rather unpleasant thought. Ilya doesn't like being the one who's being controlled if she can help it. She's supposed to be the strongest.]

Those all sound really strange. The coral really seems to do a lot...

[Well, she's seen stranger things, but that's probably not the case for most ordinary people.]

It does seem that way. I've speculated that it has help, in some form at least, but even then it's more of a directional kind of help. Much of what constitutes our situation seems to be based on the coral's power alone.

[She hasn't the slightest what kind of magecraft could be at work. Was it possibly a magic, even?]

Are you worried about not getting home? You don't sound really concerned.

[Considering how much he seems to know, Ilya thinks he's probably tried once...]

When you work through it, there's really nothing to be concerned about. The coral returns to people on a regular basis, and according to what we know from those who have been to the city more than once, it does so at the exact point in time it took them from initially. Therefore, so long as you're here, there's nothing in your own reality that you would miss. Which means there's no reason to be anxious about it--not that this stops some of us.

[Well, in that case... she's not really that worried, but there's some other anxiety pulling at her. Maybe it's the idea that she'll have her stay here, but still get returned to her own home.

She's not really sure whether she wants that or not. Hasn't she just escaped her very certain death?]

Okay then! I won't be worried about it.

[She smiles, hiding away her thoughts. If her time here is limited, she should just make the best of it... right?]

[None of which the coyote will actually pick up on. He nods in approval.]

Very good. Is that everything?

I think so! Thank you, Mr. Tech.

[She gives a small bob of her head to the video screen. Strangely enough, conversing with a sentient animal wasn't as weird as she thought it would be.]