Crafty [Gidget/Sage]

[Sage Sudeki]

Sage would raise an eye brow at her when she asked.

"That's what we called them... White hair, red eyes... Unnatural powers, vicious unfeeling drive to complete a mission, drooling and howling aggression. The man who caused the world to become what it was had tortured and injected people with all sorts of devices and chemicals until he found the right stuff. Making people capable of hurling fire with their finger tips, or turning into hulking masses of indestructible tanks. The most powerful of them retained their sense of self, or really portions of their self. Still with programming to do as told and complete the mission no matter what. After the war some were able to settle down, second generation experiments are what we called the kids of people who have been genetically manipulated by Barker's organization and scientists. They sometimes have streaks of different colors in their hair or natural eye colors. Then generation three experiments were the offspring of a gen two, which sometimes had mostly colored hair with white parts or streaks, with mostly non-red colored eyes."

He'd scratch his cheek a bit.

"Had Barker won the war every person on the planet would of been a gen 2 or 3 experiment. I've been interacting with, fighting against, and being attacked by experiments since I was a child. They killed many of my friends, and I slaughtered them by the droves in combat, while they were sleeping, or in the middle of them being made... Just in case."

[Gidget]

Gidget winced slightly at his last statement. No matter how much time she spent around Metas, the thought of mass genocide still managed to make her a wee bit uncomfortable.

Giving a shake of her head, she snickered, covering up her discomfort with attitude. As per usual.

"Well. No reason to kill me. I've definitely got all of ME still rolling around up here... and no mission that I'm hellbent on completing."

[Sage Sudeki]

Spike would grin with a hint of sadness mixed in.

"No, I don't suspect you are one, since you are from this world, besides there were discrepancies in what you should of known ahead of time as well. So I don't believe you are one anymore."

He'd shrug after and place his hands on his desk.

"So I don't suspect you came all this way for small talk, what's up?"

[Gidget]

"Actually," Gidget said with a little smirk. "I... kind of did. Not small talk, necessarily. But conversation. I want to learn more about weapons, and Drake said you crafted his sword. I thought you might be a good person to go to. I've been working with Drake and a couple of others on different types of training, but..."

She gave a shrug of her shoulders, pulling her feet up to rest on the chair. She was tiny, and way too thin for her own good. It was easy for her to fit the entirety of her frame on the chair itself.

"Its always good to learn things from different people."

[Sage Sudeki]

Spike would nod at her explanation, made sense. She was trying to grow, and advance, to grow on her own by learning from others.

"Well, I did make his weapon. I made my own weapons and the clothes I'm wearing, which is hiding internal armors and inlay to resist Qi attacks. Once again it all comes down to war. I was raised in it, and I'm used to being prepared for it at any moment."

He'd shake his head knowing how ridiculous that might sound.

"What would you like to know? Or better yet, what do you know about Qi?"

[Gidget]

"Uh. I know basically nothing about it. I know it's, like, some kind of energy transfer bullshit, and that it is individual to each person. I've been around a couple of Qi users recently, but I haven't, like... sat down and had them give me the rundown."

Gidget shrugged. She understood her enhancements, her abilities. Those made sense. They were science, and she UNDERSTOOD science.

[Sage Sudeki]

Spike heard her explanation and nodded.

"Thats basically it. However it's not broad enough. Every living thing has Qi, it just depends on your level of awareness of a muscle you've never been aware of. My father believed that Qi could be awakened in people with a need. Moments of high stress and high emotion driving your energy to awaken to save you was his preferred method."

Spike would hold out his left hand and a black flame like aura would erupt into being.

"As you said, it's unique to each person, but that's only because each person is... Set in a way of how they do things, so the Qi shapes its self to that subconscious will. There was a Qi research institute in our world where they figured out how to shape it and control it's manifestation through knowledge and practice. There are also people whose ancestors were some of the first to unlock and use this power which was so powerful it imbedded itself into the very genetic make up of their blood. Giving all of the descendants the chance to also have that ability."

He would turn off the aura as he sat back a bit and adjusted his crystal shades.

"Not to say we knew everything, we were still scratching at the surface of this power, but it's not like it can't exist in this world, from my understanding your people have simply never needed it. Not in the way our world has."

He'd reach over and grab his Crystal sword on leaning against the wall and place it on his desk so she could grab it.

"Understanding that... That crystal is Qi energy. Our world was so saturated in Qi crystal formations began to grow, crystals are already natural conduits, but these crystals make it stronger as we channel the energy through it. So I learned how to shape and cut the crystal without destroying it's properties."

[Gidget]

Gidget stared at the crystal blade for a moment as he described everything, trying to absorb the information. Qi as a concept made sense to her, but it was so... foreign. Technology, science, all of that, she could grasp without even really trying. Biting her lip slightly, she realized that people from the other world probably felt the same way about tech as she did about Qi. That really put things into perspective for her.

Reaching out, she took hold of the sword. She felt, for a moment, as if wind were stirring her hair, despite there being no breeze. Her skin felt cold, almost clammy, and the surge of... something that passed through her was strong enough to take her breath away. She nearly dropped the weapon, pulling her lips back from her teeth and hissing at it quietly, before she realized what, exactly, she was doing.

Very carefully, she set the sword back down on the desk and backed a step away from it, her violet eyes trained entirely on the weapon before her. She let her lips fall back over her teeth and her expression return to... well, normal.

"This... world. We fight wars differently, I guess. Or, at least, we have... So I don't... know. I mean, if Qi is just a thing that exists, then it probably exists in some form, somehow, but I..." She gave a shrug of her slender shoulders. "I dunno."

[Sage Sudeki]

"Hmmm... Okay how about this one."

Spike would hold a hand out to the side making a claw shape with his fingers as the black flame aura appeared around his hand once more.

"You know about the four states of matter, yes? Gas, Solid, Liquid, and Plasma?"

He'd ask waiting for a confirmation before continueing.

"By heating a gas enough you can change it's state of matter, like cooling a liquid enough it becomes a solid. So if you heat a gas it then becomes a plasma. The gas that is always present is air, so if I heat the air flowing in my hand, envision it encapsulated by my aura..."

There were a few moments of concentration before black plasma sparked between his fingers a few times until it finally turned into a ball of plasma floating in his hand.

"In a way, Qi is a product of science, and science makes Qi more versatile if you understand it. See, Science in our world, caused the boom of people unlocking the potential and knowledge of control for Qi. The man who made the Experiments was trying to create super beings and discovered the latent possibility of Qi as a rarity in people, until he was actually able to chemically give people specific outcomes for artificial Qi."

[Gidget]

Gidget nodded when asked about the states of matter. Finally, somebody explaining things in a way she could understand. She could follow most of what he said once it was backed with science, and looking down at her hand, she tilted her head slowly to one side.

"Experiments, huh? That's ironic. People do shit like that, here, but they don't have Qi to rely on for it."

Her violet eyes flashed and she glanced back up at Sage. She crossed her arms over her chest, almost defensively, but didn't elaborate on her specific relationship with that idealogy. Instead, she turned her focus back to Qi, and what he was trying to teach her. "So, if Qi is latent in everybody in your world, how did he go about making super beings? You're talking about artificial Qi... but wouldn't it just end up directed by the person's individual understanding of themselves, as they developed? How did he make the artificial Qi permanent? Did he just, like... trick them into understanding it as a part of themselves?"

[Sage Sudeki]

Spike would nod with a smile.

"He found a set of... tests that always had the same result. Chemicals that altered the genetics, tortures that caused the correct responses of pain and terror. The ones that survived all ended up with the same power. Though to my understanding it all started with a drug to make soldiers on the battle field faster, stronger, and tougher for a short period of time."

[Gidget]

"Well, we've got those too... but they've got some nasty side effects, especially if used for long periods of time." She reached up to lightly tap her chin with one hand. "What ability did they all develop?"

[Sage Sudeki]

"Well remembering that far back is tough, but I do remember a very large group of the first gen's could control and create fire. There were a lot of random abilities developed through the little experiments he ran on them, but that wasn't so much controlled... He got better over time and was even able to make multiple different things. Most elemental manipulations were fair game, self healing, self destruction... Near the end they varied quite a bit."

[Gidget]

Gidget seemed to perk up slightly at the mention of fire control. It reminded her of WR, of their ability.

"Elemental manipulation... is it common?" she asked with an open kind of curiosity. She knew that Drake could control blood, but that didn't exactly count as an element. Other than those two, and DJ - whose ability she still didn't understand, really at all - she had very little experience with Metas and their abilities.

[Sage Sudeki]

Spike would nod in response to the question of elemental abilities being common.

"Hmm, the usual you can think of, earth, air, water, etc. But we started seeing other common things as well we categorized as elements. Bones, blood, shadows and light, even just raw energy like mine."