pullmeoutalive | log > for lack of a better place to do so

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log > for lack of a better place to do so

He had to wonder how it was that, if no one save a very, very select few could leave Whitechapel, he kept ending up elsewhere. Indeed, this wasn't the steam-driven, smog-choked section of city he called home. This was somewhere else entirely - and startlingly modern in comparison to the Victorian England he was so used to.

It was unseemly of him, but he found himself staring - tall buildings all steel and glass towered over him, and over that lay the clearest sky he'd seen in his entire life. The sun was bright, brighter that it had ever been in Whitechapel, with its constant overhang of smoke. All the better, he supposed, that he was wearing his usual attire, complete with dark glasses.

Alabaster stood alone on the street, a tall figure in smoke black stark against the clean, polished world he now found himself in. There seemed to be no one around. This city, if it was indeed a city and not some ludicrous dream, appeared to be deserted.

He reached into the pocket of his coat, fishing out a pocket watch. In this alien place, was Grandfather Clock - his God, and God over Whitechapel - still watching him through the clockface? Or had the connection been severed with his sudden disappearance?

Such things would be answered in due time, he told himself. For now, there was only the question of getting back. It wouldn't do to have Grandfather Clock's elite agent up and vanish in the middle of a rebellion, now would it?

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"More than I can say indeed," came the reply. Alabaster watched her as they walked - she seemed to be thinking of something. He couldn't fault her for that. If she was intent on getting him home, then he was more than content to allow her the time and space to suss things out. All this messing with time and place stuff seemed to be complicated - at least enough so that he didn't dare try to figure it out. No doubt undoing whatever had been done would be complicated as well, perhaps even more so.

When she inquired about his drink preferences, he quirked an eyebrow, glancing at her sidelong. "Tea. What else would you expect of an English gentleman?"

"... Tea," Saga admitted with a rueful laugh, "but I thought I'd ask first, just to make sure. It's never a good idea to assume anything." Truer words had never been spoken-- she was living proof of that, and that wasn't even taking the rest of her family into consideration. And now she was going to reveal more than she was usually comfortable with to a man who was almost a total stranger. But what choice did she have? It wasn't like anyone in Whitechapel was going to care about who this Saga Laskaris really was, if Alabaster even spoke of his experience.

She finally stopped in front of a faded brick building, digging her key out of her jacket pocket and unlocking the freshly painted white door (the only new part of the outside) with a loud click.

"It's a little messy," she warned Alabaster, stepping inside. "But I wasn't expecting company-- Duff, I'm back! Behave yourself, all right?"

As if in response, there was an audible clink and a spoon skidded across the cluttered table visible from the entryway. To most normal people, they wouldn't have seen who was responsible, but to those with enough spiritual ability, the fluffy black tom now pawing at the spoon was hard to miss.

The rest of the apartment was kept reasonably tidy, with stacks of books propped against one wall and a few more adorning the white couch and keeping the spoon company on the table. Three maps hung on the remaining walls, along with some paintings of bright, swirling colors and a picture or two, and no less than eight clocks inhabited every other room of the place.

A shame, then, that Alabaster himself didn't possess so much as a scrap of spiritual ability. He stared at the spoon, moving of its own accord - at least to his eyes, with an expression somewhere between slightly confused, and slightly amused. The words slipped out before he could stop them, "...You have a pet spoon?" An odd notion, yes, but it was the first one that came to his mind.

Regardless of her choice in pets, or how she acquired them, for that matter, he couldn't fault someone with so many clocks. (Though, the digital ones elicited something of a double-take from him.) He was at home with the sound of ticking. Grandfather Clock's own church, the Church of Measured Time, was wall-to-wall clocks, all ticking in perfect, glorious unison.

The curious inquiry earned Alabaster yet another laugh, although this one was more amused than embarrassed. "Not exactly, but if we're going to start somewhere, I suppose Duff is as good a place to begin as any."

Saga approached the table, beckoning the other closer. "Here..." She held out her hand, seemingly over an empty space, but in actuality, her palm was hovering just over the cat's head. "Put your hand under mine; he'll make himself solid for a bit."

With a low grumble, Duff twitched his tail, but obligingly held still. If Alabaster was willing enough to follow Saga's request, his hand would be greeted by soft fur and a small, cold and questing nose.

He obliged, slipping his own dirty, calloused hand under hers - and certainly got something other than he'd been expecting. Both of his eyebrows rose, and he looked from the table to the girl and back again. "A cat," he said after a moment. "An invisible cat." Most flesh-and-blood animals didn't last long in Whitechapel, though he'd seen a fair few in the city's early days. Clickrats, Clicker Hounds, mechanical spiders, and the like were animals he was used to. This, however, was something entirely new.

He supposed he might as well become accustomed to being surprised like this. This was only the beginning, after all.

"To be entirely truthful, he's only invisible because he wore out his nine lives-- he's more like ninety now." Saga tilted her head, unable to resist adding, "I'm surprised Mr. Donohue. I'm sure most people would have taken this a lot harder than you are." This was spoken from experience yet again, as her first home had been sold to her parents because the former owners had been afraid of poltergeists. Those wicked fiends had turned out to be the old couple that had first owned the place, and the cat who'd belonged to them. Why he had followed her to Massachusetts was something she had yet to figure out, but had already decided not to question.

"So then, let's begin." Turning to a sheaf of papers placed on a nearby chair, Saga gathered them up, set them on the table, and began rummaging about in tea canisters. "Are you familiar at all with Greek or Norse mythology?"

Okay, so it was a ghost cat. Stranger things have happened - most of them in the last half hour or so.

"Denial will get me nowhere," he remarked, shrugging. "Nor will panicking. I've made it a practice of mine to take whatever comes my way in stride, and it's served me well thus far." And perhaps when they began to go into detail, she would come to understand that nothing was all that normal where he came from - himself included. He'd decided as they had walked down the street, bound for her home, that whatever this girl required of him, he would give. If she was his ticket home, all the better to be cooperative and helpful to the best of his abilities. If she had other motivations - which he somehow doubted - then she likely knew enough about him that telling her would make little difference. It's not as though she could just kill him, after all.

"Only but the barest of details." A pause as he watched her rummage about the kitchen, then, "Do you need a hand?"

"There are a few mugs in the cupboard above the microwave," came the distracted reply, followed by the clanking of a pot and running water. "... Which is the black box with the green numbers on it. Go ahead and pick one out for yourself."

She was silent for a little while longer, and then sighed. "I can't say for certain yet, but your arrival here may have something to do with the runes I've been gathering; they were scattered, and it's more or less my duty to collect them before they can cause any trouble for the general populace. The runes themselves are a Nordic alphabet, only each one carries not only a different meaning, but a different power. I can control them, but only after I overcome the obstacles they create. In this case, there might be a rune that can either manipulate time or space, or possibly both. The question is... how you, of all people, got involved with this, which is what I need to understand. We need to figure out how you're linked to this."

Following her directions, he located the cupboard in question and began rummaging for mugs (briefly wondering what a microwave did as he did so). He selected a pair of mugs, not much caring for color or design, and set them on the countertop.

He frowned, thinking. "I can safely say no connections come to mind straight away." Unless, of course, one of Bailey's - or even Oliver Sumner's, if he was still alive after the initial revolt had failed - cohorts possessed such a thing in the past, and sent him away to the future. The notion seemed absurd, nothing of that power would be able to escape the notice of the Gods. Still, he wanted to leave no stone unturned, so he voiced his concerns, "If there is such a rune, is it possible that someone in my time has it, and used it to send me here?"

The oven was old, but functioned well enough to boil water in less than an hour, and Saga busied herself with the brewing of the tea while she thought over Alabaster's suggestion. Still, she remained quiet until she'd filled both mugs with tea (and it'd said "English" on the bag, which was as close as she could get).

"It's possible," she murmured, pulling out a chair and seating herself while pushing one mug in her guest's direction. "Not very likely, but if the rune itself had enough power to transport itself to the past... well, that'd make it hard for me to obtain it, wouldn't it? I doubt anyone from your home would know how to properly use it, but if someone had a strong desire to send you far away, then the rune would have reacted to that."

The brunette stared pensively into her steaming mug, her former cheeriness having dissolved into a more solemn expression. "I can't rule it out entirely, and that means our options are very limited."

Well, thinking of someone who - at that moment - wanted him very far away wasn't all that hard. That boy was certainly on the top of the list, providing he was still conscious. Bailey, and that brat Sumner were also on the list. And then there was their rabble- ah, perhaps the list was longer than he thought. Not a lot of people liked him.

Alabaster mulled over that, pulling out a chair for himself. He sat and removed his hat, hanging it on the back of his chair before moving to carefully sit his tea. "And what, pray tell, are our options?"

"We've got to figure out which rune it is, first of all." She pulled her notes towards her, flipping through several pages. "If someone from your time has it, then I need to find a way to get it to appear in this time. You're-- to put it simply-- an anomaly. If the gods haven't taken notice of you yet, someone will."

Saga took another sip of her tea, finishing with, "The other option is that I send you back, but chances are you'll just get sent somewhere else again before too long."

Alabaster continued to sip his tea, frown deepening as he thought. He'd been referred to as many things, but "anomaly" was completely different territory. Though, he visibly perked when she said the magical g-word: Gods. Maybe Grandfather Clock and Mama Engine still held sway over their kingdom, even in this day and age. They were Gods, after all, and he'd been too quick to assume that the rebellion had succeeded in his absence. "I don't mean to backtrack, but which 'gods' would you be referring to?"

And here we go. Saga had been expecting the topic to come up sooner or later, and it seemed that even a passing mention hadn't escaped Alabaster's attention. She was stuck for it now.

"The ones currently on Mount Olympus... what you'd call the Greek gods. They've got their own affairs to handle back in Greece, I'm sure, but every now and then..." She spared the ceiling a glance, fighting back the urge to roll her eyes, and then returned to her papers, one finger tracing lines and pictures. "'Grandpa' likes to check up on me."

Not the gods he'd been hoping for, but that didn't mean that they were gone entirely. He had to have faith that the Gods of Whitechapel weren't about to be undone by some foolish peasants.

Wait a second. He found himself staring again, looking at this girl in a far different light than he had been a minute prior. "Did you say... 'grandpa'?"

Another sigh; she'd never liked this part of explaining who she was, because it always served a reminder of what she wasn't. "Yes, Grandpa, even if he doesn't look a day over twenty, he never shows up for family reunions, and my grandmother went on to marry someone a little less divine. Most people know him as Hermes."

This was certainly an interesting turn of events. As though being dumped through time and space wasn't enough, he was now having tea with the granddaughter of a god. Hermes was at least at the forefront of Greek mythology enough that he recognized the name, and he made a mental note to do a little research when he got home - he'd never had much use for gods apart from his own, but he was intrigued by the concept.

"Well," Alabaster remarked, an edge of good humor in his otherwise no-nonsense tone. "This day is full of surprises."

"Oh, I'm sure we're just getting started." Saga raised an eyebrow, fighting back the urge to smile. "But you're not the only one surprised. I would have expected to point, stare, throw something, threaten to burn me at the stake or, at the very least, call me a liar."

She was relieved, though. It was nice to have a reaction like his, when she'd already braced herself for the worst.

"Things such as gods aren't outside of the realm of my comprehension."

He leaned back in his chair slightly, surveying the ceiling for a moment before adding, "I myself am an agent of one of the Gods of Whitechapel."

"Really now? That's a noble line of work... and probably exhausting, too." She'd perked up now, more than a hint of interest entering her voice. For as normal as she tried to appear to the outside world, at heart, Saga was just as much of a mythology buff as her parents-- especially when the subject matter was something she'd yet to learn of.

"Do you mind telling me about your Gods?" Saga leaned forward, looking considerably more intrigued than she'd first appeared. "I don't suppose they followed you here, did they?"

"Ah no. They didn't follow me... at least not that I'm aware of," he couldn't help but look slightly disappointed at that, nor could he help fishing his pocket watch out of its resting place for another quick glance. Nothing had changed, apart from the time now displayed on the clock's face. He replaced the watch and leaned forward as well, "But tell you about them I will.

The God to whom I give my services is known as Grandfather Clock, and his counterpart is Mama Engine. I know very little about Her, seeing as I'm not in her service, but she is, above all, a mother to her followers. Grandfather Clock, on the other hand, is the embodiment of order and precision - He usually keeps a close eye on his followers by watching them through the face of a clock. The Gods themselves have no physical bodies - at least, none I've ever seen - but are evident in other ways." He went on to explain how the Gods first revealed themselves to Baron Hume, promising to make his architectural dream for Whitechapel a reality. With their help, he constructed impossible towers, and factories, and feats of steam-driven and clockwork technology that, by rights, should not have been possible. The Gods were rooted in their city, and took care that their followers didn't die or suffer disease as a normal man would.

Well, not suffer disease save one. The doctors called it morbus imperceptus incrementum, though most people called it the 'clacks'. "Though I don't see it as much of a disease, myself. It's a phenomenon that defies the laws of medicine, even the laws of human anatomy, but disease makes it sound like such a dirty thing."

Throughout the explanation, Alabaster held a captive audience; indeed, save for the occasional blink and nod to indicate that she was listening, Saga didn't budge or even shift or fidget. Duff had long since bored of the conversation and his toy of choice and had fallen asleep on the table, but his housemate couldn't have been more fascinated.

The world of Whitechapel seemed like a fantasy come to life-- and probably was, knowing what gods were capable of-- and she was only disappointed that she hadn't been able to experience the place herself. The disease he'd mentioned, however... that had her concerned. And the city Alabaster spoke of sounded so controlled. People were bound to dislike being under that much control.

"People will always have differing opinions on the nature of something," she remarked, finally leaning back in her chair. "There's no point in arguing for either one, since both sides will always believe their own views. That aside, that's quite a city you live in. Your Gods are interesting, too. And one watches through a clock--"

Realization smacked straight into the back of her head with such force that she literally jumped. Precision. Order. Clocks. Time. Of course. Why hadn't she realized it sooner?!

To each their own, indeed. Still, people who defied the Gods were in for a world of hurt - Winfred Bailey and Oliver Sumner chief among them. They were all about Queen and Country, and would sooner risk their lives for a lady in a shiny hat than for a God. Queen and Country had never done Alabaster himself any favors. They could call him a traitor all they liked, but he knew where his loyalties lie.

Alabaster jumped a little himself, startled by Saga's sudden movement. "What? What is it?"

"I know which rune it is!" Unable to sit still and excited from this new discovery, Saga rose and began to pace, talking as she did. "I thought it might have had to do something with time, but it turned out to be even more subtle than that. Time itself is a journey, and there's only one rune that would contribute to that. A journey, both physical and spiritual-- to gain a wider perspective, as it were. It's rhythm itself."

She finally stopped, nodding to herself. "The rune is Raidho, and it's possible that it's the rune that sent you here and not an actual person. It must have wanted to uproot you for some reason... but to send you here, of all places..."

His eyes tracked her as she paced through the kitchen. Her excitement was almost catching but, to his credit, Alabaster remained sitting.

He considered what she was saying for a moment before speaking, "So, I was sent here because, for whatever reason, I needed to go on a journey?" If that was so, the timing could not have been worse.

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