2025-01-04 - MAYDAY!

[TXT to Fin Trace] Gabriel: mayday mayday

[TXT to Fin Trace] Gabriel: requesting help

[TXT to Fin Trace] Gabriel: if anyone is around

[TXT to Fin Trace] Gabriel: I'm at the diner, back room and uhhhhhhhh floating?!

[TXT to Fin Trace] Gabriel: Stuck to the ceiling actually...like an old balloon. I am an old balloon. This is my life now...old balloon

[TXT to Fin Gabriel] Trace: Oh man. Okay, I'm on my way over. It's going to take me a minute. Are you hurt at all?

[TXT to Fin Trace] Gabriel: I banged my elbow real hard on the wall on my way up

[TXT to Fin Trace] Gabriel: otherwise in one piece

[TXT to Fin Gabriel] Trace: Okay. Almost there.

Trace does eventually arrive at Nora's and heads straight into the back which confuses a couple of the workers who are like, "Hey, where are you going?" but he just replies, "Looking for Gabe. Be right back."

And so it is that he finds himself poking around until he finds the back room in question. He's dressed in a pair of jeans and his usual round-toed suede shoes and button-down that he wears for work, a leather jacket thrown over his shoulders for warmth. Maybe he'd just gotten back from a shift, or maybe he was on his way out to a shift, but either way he still has his badge on as he immediately looks up toward the ceiling.

Does Gabe usually get visitors who go straight to the back room? No. But then again they've barely been here for a month and their coworkers are chill enough to roll with it.

When Trace looks up, he'll find a very grumpy looking blonde splayed up in a ceiling corner like an affronted spider who just go their web dusted.

"Well...this is the single most humiliating experience of my life," they deadpan. Their hair is all mussed up (in the bad way), having had a toss up with cleaning equipment directly below them. As a result, mops and brooms are strewn across the floor. They're wearing their standard Nora's apron over jeans and a red sweater. It also might be hard to tell from the distance and the overhead halogens but their skin is glowing faintly. Literally, not figuratively.

Trace doesn't look any different than usual really unless one happens to notice the bit of ink that shows just at the collar of his jacket that descends along his neck below his hairline. It'd be more obvious if he didn't have a jacket on, though. He pauses to see Gabe plastered to the ceiling and then looks around, considering. First, he grabs the mops and things off the floor to push them out of the way, "Okay, let's get these out of the way so no one falls on them. Primarily us. I don't want to fall on them." Then he reaches up and offers Gabe a hand. He's 6'3. The ceiling isn't that tall. If Gabe reaches down he should be able to just grab hold of him. "I won't tell if you don't," he says with a crooked smile.

"Under penalty of death, Trace." Gabe scrapes a booted foot off the wall and reaches down to snag Trace's hand. But that's the thing. They truly are an old balloon. The floating hasn't stopped even though Trace has a hold on them.

"See what I'm saying? I'm going to die up here." A beat. "In this apron. I don't think my heart can take it."

Trace chuckles and crosses his heart with one hand. Then he reaches up and takes hold of Gabe's. "You're not going to die up there," he says with confidence. "Even if I have to bring you snacks and hand them up there for you to eat." He gives Gabe's hand a pull and tries to pull them downward from the ceiling, toward him as he steps back, putting a bit of his weight into it. "What were you doing before you ended up there?"

Trace will easily be able to pull Gabe around, they're just floating as if filled up with helium that favors up. As soon as they leave the corner, their legs drift upwards until their boots meet the ceiling. It's some real Willy Wonka Fizzy Lifting shit. "You don't know that. I'm sure at least one person has met their end via ceiling fan like this." Luckily the storage room does not have one. "I was grabbing a box of napkins to refill the containers. Minding my own fucking business. And then boom, no gravity." They flail around a little to show Trace how no amount of motion seems to propel their feet to the ground.

[TXT to Gabriel Trace] Fin: Sorry, was finishing up work. Be there as soon as I can be! One piece is good!

Gabe had said they were stuck to the ceiling like an old ballon. They said it plain as day in the text. However, when Fin arrives dressed in her uniform, complete with photo gear bag and camera strapped around her neck, she seems absolutely shocked. "What the...."

She too had brushed aside Gabriel's co-workers and said they were expecting her. Are they curious as to what is going on, or is it just another day on Spellbound for them?

"How did... What is even happening?" There's been a lot of new things happening after NYE, but this was a new one for her. Trace seems to have hold of Gabriel, so like the very good roommate she is, she lifts her camera and snaps a picture, or a few in quick sequence. It really only takes a few seconds. "For prosperity, or science," she guiltily explains before rushing to Trace's side. She is decidely not 6'3", nearly a foot shorter, so asks, "How can I help?"

Trace's own post-NYE change is subtle, a new tattoo at the back of his neck that isn't particularly large, but does disappear into the collar of his jacket. He blinks as Fin comes in and snaps evidence. "Hey.. I swore no one would hear of this on pain of death. I mean, they texted you so that one's on them, not me. But.. maybe no photographic evidence," he laughs.

When she comes over she says "Here, take their hands. I'll grab their legs. We'll at least get them off the ceiling. Then we may need to like, tie a string to them and take them home like a balloon."

"Okay so.. you were just working along and all of a sudden, on the ceiling. What were you thinking about?" he asks.

It's fine, really. Other than turning into an old balloon and...oh, Fin's taking pictures. "FIN!" Gabriel yelps from on high. They're still holding onto Trace's hand but there's another flail that verges on a tantrum. "This is not the type of thing you document unless you plan on blackmailing me!" At least Trace is backing them up.

But then Trace is literally saying to tie them up like a balloon. "You will not!" they snap with a little kick of their legs. At the same instant, mops and brooms and small boxes rattle dramatically around the room, as if somehow affected by the Old Balloon's flare-up. It's enough to get their eyes widening. "Or maybe you will. What the fuck was that?"

They reach out to Fin with one hand. "I wasn't thinking about anything other than napkins, I swear. Is that how magical puberty usually happens? You have to think about it and then suddenly your body does it?"

"For them!" Fin defends when Trace chastises her. She then looks at Gabriel, who shouted at her as well. "At some point in the future, you'll want to look at this and reminisce, maybe even laugh." She's talking while moving into position to assist, rising up on her toes and reaching for Gabriel's hands. "No blackmail, I swear!"

Fin's own changes are a bit subtle, and some come and go depending on as yet unknown factors, but she does seem to be slightly... brighter? Like the sun, which isn't visible in this backroom, is lighting her in that sought after 'Golden Hour Glow'.

"You're worried about me taking a photo to give to them and them only and you want to walk them home like a souvenir balloon?" Fin can't help but laugh. She might not sound super convincing about the them and only them part, but she would never hurt a roomie. But at the same moment, Gabe snaps at Trace and brooms and mops and other things nearby rattle around the room. "Uh... should I duck?" Her arms are still outstretched for Gabriel to take, but her eyes are now watching things warily.

"I don't know," Trace admits. "My dream thing happened when I was asleep and just sort of happened. And the telepathy I thought I was thinking out loud but I wasn't, I was just thinking AT someone pretty hard." He gives a little shrug of his shoulders. "I mean clearly you can float, or fly, or affect gravity or something. Maybe think about having concrete shoes on or something?" He has no idea how this works.

Fin gets a laugh, "Okay look.. if they can't stop floating the string is for their safety! We can just carry them out and say they fainted." He glances at Gabriel, "You can look passed out, right? Then no one has to know it's a floating thing."

"Laugh. Highly doubt that." Ignore Gabriel's crabby mood, it's not every day that magical puberty hits in your late twenties. They grab onto her hands, legs still floating up behind them like someone turned off the gravity. Once they're a little closer, they squint down at their roommate. "Oh my god are you glowing too?!" Gabe's skin has a certain pale radiance as well. Starlight, someone called it. Maybe a slightly different color temperature than Fin's.

But once items rattle and Fin asks if she should duck, Gabe looks a little bashful. "Sorry. I don't know if that was me but...I'll just assume it was. Floating and shaking things. Cool. Cool cool cool cool." Narrator: It was not cool. "Passed out. Sure. I can probably do that." Between Fin and Trace discussing how best to carry and/or tie Gabe to take them home, something else happens.

Gabe had been holding onto Fin's hands tightly when they suddenly flicker. Like full body flicker. Like suddenly they appear translucent and start floating upwards again as if Fin just let go. "Hey hey heyheyheyhey WHAT?!" Up they go! Except this time the ceiling does not stop them. They straight float up through it.

Gabriel has left the building.

"I have a pair of boots that are really heavy," Fin offers not-so-helpfully. "Maybe not as weighty as you need..." Her lips quirk to the side and down slightly. When Trace suggests to Gabe that they try looking passed out, Fin says, "just pretend it's Saturday night and you had a reallllllly good time."

But when Gabriel scoffs at her vow to not blackmail, she gives them a puckered-lip, furrowed-brow look for a moment. "I swore. I never speak a lie. I most certainly wouldn't swear to one! But that's for another time. Let's get you down." They grab her hands and she looks up at them. "Oh uh, yeah. Apparently it's a thing now. I've been playing with light a bit..."

She turns to look toward Trace, to see how he is coming along with the legs and suddenly cannot feel Gabe's hands in hers. "Wait! Don't let go!" But Gabe didn't let go, per se...

With a slightly high-pitched panicked voice, she asks to Trace, "what do we do now?!?!?"

Trace is about to reach up for Gabe's legs when his hands go straight through them and he blinks. "What the fuck?" And then Gabriel is going up, and up, and up straight through the ceiling and he just stares in shock for a moment. "Uhhh..." And then he's grabbing Fin's hand and running for the front of the place. "Let's get outside!" And do what? It's not like either of them can fly.

"What happens if he doesn't stop floating? Maybe we should call security. But what are they going to do? My hands went right through them." Trace is very rapidly running options through his head. How do you catch someone who is floating away and who you can't grab onto?

Outside, Gabe can very clearly be heard yelling. Their voice really carries when they want it to.

In the light of day, it's pretty apparent that they are fully see-through. Like a ghost. An old ghost balloon. Floating at a manageable speed but still unnerved by the uncontrollableness of it all. Trace said something about concrete shoes, so they're doing their best Peter Pan and thinking a happy thought of concrete shoes. Suddenly, they flicker back to full opaque mode. Either it helped or it's a fantastic coincidence.

They're still floating straight for a tree.

"TRACE. TREE. FIN. TREE. TREEEEEE!"

Fin is still staring at the ceiling Gabriel had just seemed to disappear into and beyond when Trace grabs her hand, pulling her, and her focus, to running outside. She goes along, other hand holding her camera still so it doesn't bang against her chest or anything else.

Trace is running through ideas, one after another, and Fin just stands there, looking up, her now free hand pressing her fingertips to her lips. "I was holding their hand and then I just... wasn't!"

She is having trouble seeing Gabe, but then she blinks and rubs her eyes as they seem to come into view more. Then they are yelling and aiming for a tree. "Shit. Uhh..." She says quietly before, shouting, "try floating toward us! See if you can direct where you go! Focus! Watch out for that tree or I will call you George!" George. George of the Jungle.

"Or you know, do hit the tree! At least it will stop you," Trace calls out, helpfully, or you know, in the spirit of helping. Once they're outside and can see Gabe again he releases Fin's hand and then starts to head over toward the tree. "If it's your magic, it's gotta obey you, Gabe. You gotta try to control it in some way. Think more happy thoughts. Think about uh.. heavy things. Or at least yeah about changing direction." He agrees with Fin on that one. "But not away from the tree. If you float too far out over the water you'll fall in." And that will be a problem.

Direct where you go.

Focus.

George.

"If that was a George of the Jungle dig, it was VERY funny but completely inappropriate for THIS LEVEL OF PANIC!" Gabriel gets a little shrill at the end there. Trace's mention of floating over the water and subsequently falling IN seems to be the cherry on the anxiety cake that this work shift has turned into. Gabe's eyes go wide with real fear and all at once their tree-ward motion halts.

"It's my magic...it's gotta obey me..." they warble nervously, then take a deeeep breath and--

"THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU!"

Knowing Gabriel, that is 100% NOT a religiously coded panic attack, merely a straight up quote from The Exorcist. And you know what? It works.

Down they float. Purposefully. Like a bleach-blonde Jean Grey.

Fin looks at Trace when he suggests maybe hitting the tree, a silent 'why???' in her eyes. But what he says after makes her nod. "okay. That's smart... I meant, you know, in this direction, not the water direction. Water would be scary bad." These words are not said loud enough to carry to Gabriel unless they have super hearing as a new party trick as well.

"Sorry!!" Fin yells as loud as she can, this meant to carry to them. She puts a hand to her cheek, her brow wrinkled with worry, and watches, biting her lip the whole time until they yell out about Christ. With a blink of surprise, she looks at Trace, but then remembers the movie. "Was that an Exorcist thing? Are they trying to excise the magic?" But when she sees Gabriel start to float downward, she encourages them on. "That's it! Keep doing what you are doing!"

Trace is a little more concerned with Gabe ending up somewhere they can't get to them fast enough more than anything else at this point, or potentially falling from a great height. Whatever the scenario, the tree seems the least detrimental to him at the moment and he's sticking with it! "Look!" he says to Fin when Gabe suddenly stops, and then they begin to float downward and he lets out a whoop that is half celebration and half relieving the growing dread and tension.

"Yes, that was totally an Exorcist thing and it worked, so let's just go with that.." Trace says to Fin and gives her a quick hug in relief before he starts to jog over to where Gabe is descending "You got this. Compel that magic!"

Bless the compassion of great roommates.

Gabriel surely would have left a dent in that tree just like George. Instead, they are continuing downwards to the sound of Fin and Trace's encouragement.

"The power of Christ compels you. The power of Christ compels you. The power of Christ compels you," they chant the unnerving mantra to themself. It's most likely the last thing people want to hear out on the street? Just an exorcism in broad daylight. No big deal. Their boots hit the ground, then they immediately plop down to splay out like a snow angel. "Oh my fuck, terra firma I love you."

Fin hugs Trace in that quick show of relief then jogs after him on the way toward Gabriel. "Whatever works, works, right?" She laughs and when Gabe's boots are on the ground, she moves to hug them too. "Let's not have that experience again. Come up with a plan of... air evacuation? Fill your pockets with rocks? Get a nice leash for someone to hold?" She presses her lips together and tries not to laugh at her own words.

Trace chuckles at Fin's list of potential solutions for Gabe's situation until she gets to the leash and he coughs, "Kinky." Then he just plops down on the ground, sitting cross-legged next to Gabe. "Guess you found your magic." He settles there and seems content to just let everyone breathe for a moment. "The good news is? After the first accident or so, it seems like these things don't happen unless you actually will them to. So.. you probably won't get stuck to the ceiling again unless you try to float?" He's not one hundred percent certain on that, but fairly so.

Gabriel peels themself upright, after having essentially ruined today's outfit, and gives Fin a hearty hug from where they're seated. "Air evac plan sounds good." They lean back in time to hear the bit about the leash, though Trace fills in what Gabe had been about to say by the looks of a sudden smarmy smirk. Trace isn't exempt from physical affection after all that, so he gets a strong clap to his shoulder.

"While I am thrilled to finally be part of the cool kids..." said as flatly as ever though there's a great deal of relief etched into their features, "I will not be attempting any more floating or flying...unless there's a..." Okay so now they laugh, "leash. But...I dunno? It felt like I went right through Fin's hands?" They look over to her. "Right? I didn't let go and neither did you? How can you tether a...what would you even call that?"

Fin glances aside to Trace when he says, 'kinky' and just shrugs with a small grin.

She isn't going to be the only one standing, so also lowers herself to the ground to sit cross-legged, leaning in when Gabriel goes to give her a hug. Fin is a hugger. All the hugs! She listens and when they claim they will not try to float or fly again unless there is a leash, she giggles a little. See, it's a good idea. "I mean, yeah. It was a weird feeling, because I was holding your hands. And I didn't feel you slip out of them like we lost grasp... there just suddenly wasn't anything there."

"Incorporeal? Isn't that what something is called when they are there but not? Ethereal is similar... but, I think incorporeal."

Trace laughs and returns the clap to the shoulder. "Good to have you back on solid ground." There's a nod and a chuckle at the mention of flying with a leash. "Like they use for the kids at the park who suddenly learn how to fly and their parents need to keep ahold of them." Then there's that bit of concern for the whole intangible part. "Yeah.. something like that. A being without a physical body. It was like you just.. turned into a ghost. An alive ghost."

"But I have a corp...corpse...no that's not right." Gabe trips over the word for a second, frowning at Fin. "I have a body. That I guess...now just wants to be..." They can't seem to wrap their head around it. Other magic seems so much more straightforward in comparison? They look like they might full on tantrum again when Trace mentions the leashes for the kids at the park.

"The monkey backpacks," Gabriel snorts out into a laugh. "Where the tail is the leash? Oh god. This is what my life is turning into, isn't it? A monkey backpack in case of emergency...ghost emergency. Cool. I'm an alive-ghost who can also maybe move things around when I'm freaking out. So. A poltergeist." They look up at the sky for a second, expression thoughtful. "Well that checks out. My mother's been calling me a poltergeist since I was a kid. I was quiet and I'd leave Skittles wrappers everywhere."

"See... here I am thinking of a nice stylish leash. Maybe a collar with a bowtie on it, or sparkly rhinestones with a leash to match. And here you two are talking about monkey backpack leashes." Fin shakes her head and chuckles.

"An alive ghost..." Fin lets that thought simmer for a moment before snapping her gaze to Gabriel. "You have a body. You are not allowed to be a corpse yet." By the power vested in Fin, she commands thee to stay alive. "It was kind of ghost-like, but, I saw a ghost... I think. Unless it was a fancy parlor trick. I- Hmm." She has no answers for this quandry. However, being called a POltergeist because quiet and skittles? "That's... kinda cute. If I am ever haunted by a poltergeist, I hope they leave skittles for me." Pause. "Let me be more precise. The actual candy, not just the wrappers."

"Skittlegeist," Trace decides. "You are the Skittlegeist."

Then he grins over at Fin and says, "I think Gabe gets to decide what kind of leash they want. Maybe a couple of different kinds. Monkey backpacks for everyday emergencies and a stylish one for dress up occasions like masquerade balls and the like."

"So," he says, after a few more moments of sitting on the cold-ass ground outside the diner. "Who votes for Gabe's shift being over and we go home and put on something terrible on TV and not float through any more ceilings for one day?"

Gabriel's brows lift all the way into their hairline when Fin not only doubles down on leashes, but then offers stylish collars. "Look, if you wanna buy me a sparkly collar, I'm not gonna say no but I'm also gonna get some real mixed signals." It's definitely a tease, given the playful twinkle in their eyes, just in their usual dry delivery. They gesture at Trace when he adds that Gabe can decide what kind of leashes and backpacks they want. "Keeping it flexible, also smart."

They smirk at Fin's mention of getting candy, not just wrappers. Then Trace makes them laugh good and proper with Skittlegeist. "I second that vote. Wholeheartedly. And also..." Gabriel's expression softens as they look between both Fin and Trace, "thank you. Seriously. I don't know what I did to deserve the best roommates on this island but I'm grateful for you. And for not floating directly into the surface of the sun today."