kollo_rpg | Summer 1 - Greetings and Welcome

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Summer 1 - Greetings and Welcome - Action

[ It's a mild sunny day when the first group of guests make land at Norrhamn. A gentle breeze rustle the birch trees and tangle in the bunting that's hung across the buildings in celebration of this very special occasion. Aina has been busy gathering up guests over the last few hours and now the ferry is approaching the port, waves breaking gently against the bow.

Olivia is waiting on the jetty, clipboard hugged close to her body. She's excited and nervous all at once, anxious to get to meet these people that she's read so much about, the faces behind the pleading letters. This is the first day her new job becomes hands on. Hopefully she'll be good at it.

As the ferry lands and lets the guests off, Olivia raises a hand in a cheerful greeting. ]

Hello! Welcome to Norrhamn!

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[Clearly the guy is giving him a hard time, but no amount of knowing that is making this any less of a hard time. Considering Noel has dealt with time travel, evil gods, and literally turning into a monster, you'd think this wouldn't rattle him so much. But no. That is not the case.] Uh--

[Lucky Jack puts him out of his mercy. Noel raises an eyebrow, reaching out to shake the guy's hand. He even allows a bit of a grin.]

Noel. Noel Kreiss. I just got here today. [He nods at their surroundings.] How's it living up to what you expected so far?

[Not even time travel, evil gods and turning into a monster can prepare you for the full-on Jack Harkness experience! At least Jack's doing his best to behave - more or less!

That's a nice firm handshake, and a nice grin to go with it.] Good to meet you, Noel Kriess!

[He glances about at the beautiful, peaceful garden with a smile.] It's pretty damn perfect, isn't it? I mean, I'd normally go for somewhere a little more tropical, but somehow this kind of works. It's very relaxing.

[Yeah no nothing can compare to that. But it's good to get the full experience early, you know -- make sure he's prepared!]

You too, Captain. [Right? That's how you're supposed to address a captain-y person right?

Following Jack's lead, Noel lets his eyes wander across the landscape. He can't argue with Jack's take on the place -- it's pretty much spot on. Perfect. Peaceful. Relaxing. It's got him feeling a little on edge.] I 'm still waiting for the catch. Still looking to see what's in it for the folks in charge. You know?

Ach, you don't need to stand on ceremony here! Jack's fine.

[He quirks an eyebrow.] Does there have to be a catch?

[Although now Noel mentions it, what do the folks in charge get out of this?]

Perhaps it's all funded by a wonderfully benevolent billionaire?

[It's a good question, and there's a time when Noel would have automatically said that no, there doesn't always have to be a catch. But that was about five hundred years and two different worlds ago, so he's lost a bit of that "shiny jrpg protag" shine.]

I wish I could say no. [He really, really does. This is one case where he'd love to be wrong.] But in my experience? People usually have their own agendas.

[The idea of benevolence is something he hadn't thought about, though, It'd be nice, wouldn't it?... Oddly enough, the thought of it makes him feel a little less uneasy. It's true that not every agenda is corrupt. Not everyone is inherently bad.]

If that's the case, [he grins a bit] I'm gonna owe someone a massive apology for talking about them like this.

[Jack shakes his head, mock-sadly.] Such cynicism in one so young!

[If Noel really is young, of course. He's not exactly a stranger to the idea of someone being a hell of a lot older than they look!

He grins.] Let's hope you're wrong! It'd be really nice to find somewhere that actually is as good as it seems to be, for once!

[Noel gives a brief, wry chuckle. He's had more than his fair share of time to see just how committed people are to making sure they come out on top, after all. If Nova Chrysalia hadn't proven that, then everything after sure would have. But the rest? Cynical? He starts to wonder if maybe, just maybe, he's gone too far down that route.

After all. It's been centuries since then, but there was a time when he was ready to save the world. To save everyone.]

I hope so, too. [This smile is a little less cynical.] It'd be a nice change of pace, to be proven wrong.

[Eh, Jack can be pretty cynical himself. He just chooses to look on the positive side sometimes, as now.]

Given that I guess we all came here because we needed a break, I really hope there's nothing nasty going on in the background.

Cryptic warnings about water lilies aside! [Grinning.]

[Noel nods. That about sums it up.] I came here to check it out, just in case. But it'd be nice if it could turn into an actual vacation, y'know?

[For now, let's just set aside his Thoughts and Feelings about whether he deserves that.]

The water lilies... [He shrugs, shaking his head.] I've got to wonder what that's all about.

Well, I really hope it will, for both of us!

[He chuckles.] Yeah, have to say it's the first time I've been warned away from water lilies. On the other hand, I've also seen far stranger things than dangerous flowers!

Same here. [He grins.]

I wasn't expecting the flowers to be threatening. Guess I should have been. [Especially given his own history. He raises an eyebrow at that last bit.] Yeah? Like what?

[He laughs.] Where do I even start? A space station in 200,100 AD making updated and rather deadly versions of twenty-first century reality TV shows? Breath-stealing circus folk from the 1920s who escaped from an old film when it was shown again in 2008. A Rift in time and space in the middle of Cardiff that steals people and flings through all sorts of aliens and artifacts from other worlds and dimensions. Mystical gauntlets that can bring people back from the dead. Humanoid blowfish driving sports cars... Need I go on?

[...So that's a hell of a lot of info all at once. Noel blinks, processing it, trying to figure out if, uh...if some of those things are supposed to make sense. At least he knows what a film is!!!]

I think I get the picture. [Except for the part where he gets anything. He can at least understand that the numbers are either times or places. Going from his own experiences, he makes sort of a guessing leap.] Sounds like you might have some experience with time travel.

[Chuckling because, no matter how true his stories are, at least half of them tend to sound impossible and/or incomprehensible to the uninitiated.]

Just a little, yeah. [Blue eyes twinkle impishly.] I used to be a Time Agent, once upon a time. Got about a bit - at least until my Vortex Manipulator burned out and stranded me!

[Bingo. However, beyond the confirmation of "ah yes, time travel," most of those words don't make...any sense. Vortexes? Being manipulated? By what?]

Being an agent, I'd assume there's some kind of agency that goes along with it. Am I right? What exactly does a time agency do?

[The vortexes are manipulated by the Vortex Manipulator, of course! Isn't that obvious???]

Got it in one! The Time Agency basically existed to police time, to stop people manipulating it to their own ends or trying to alter significant events that must not be altered. They're more or less gone now, though. Well, except from my current point in time they don't exist yet. I haven't even been born yet. It's all very complicated! [Showing those perfect white teeth again in an easy grin.]

So what about you, Noel Kriess? You sounded for a moment like you might have some experience of time travel too?

[It's only obvious if you also reverse the polarity of the neutron flow!

[...Anyway. Surprisingly, that part, Noel manages to follow. Stranded in the past? He actually knows a little bit about that.]

Interesting. I had no idea it was so common that people had to police it.

[He and Serah probably would've ended up in trouble with these guys, if the tower in Academia was any sign of things. He shrugs at the question, carefully choosing his words.]

I guess I do, yeah. We were traveling through time, fixing distortions in the timeline. Paradoxes, you might say.

[No no no, that's a TARDIS thing; Vortex Manipulators work very differently!

His lips twitch.]

The reason you don't know about it is because we were good at our job. [Yeah, a trifle smug there, though he definitely looks interested at what Noel says next.]

Oh, really? Had a bit of experience with temporal paradoxes myself. [Not exactly pleasant ones.]

[Woah there, he's feeling the smugness.] I guess you'd have to be. Although I suspect that different worlds might have something to do with it, too.

[Yeah Jack, you're not the only one that can get a bit of an ego. Chill out, Noel, you're not that cool.]

It makes things interesting, huh? Moving eclipses through time, making a sentient AI proto-fal'Cie want to kill you... [He shakes his head.] Never a dull moment, when it comes to time travel.

[Unfortunately, smugness is a trait Jack displays rather frequently. Hard not to be smug when you're this handsome and accomplished, and when you've lived so long and done so much!

On the other hand, the smugness is soon replaced by an easy grin.] Yeah, different worlds - or universes - might well be coming into it! Never heard of a fal'Cie before, although I have had some experience with sentient AIs. They didn't actually try to kill us, but they did imprison a lot of people to experiment with for their own fun and games.

[Noel's eyebrows lift at that -- sounds like sentient AIs are almost universal.] Sounds like a similar idea to what ours was trying. Funny how they seem to come up with the same ideas, even in different worlds.

Yeah, I guess some things are universal - or multi-universal!

[He cocks his head, curious.]

So, what time period are you from originally? Was the time travel from your own period or did that come from some other time?

Multi-universal. I like it.

[He grins, but the expression fades a little bit with that question. Dammit, Jack, that's complicated.]

I started in my own time period. Putting it generously, you could call it "the future." It wasn't much of a future, though. I was traveling to the past to try and change that. To fix it.

Right. [And it's a very, very long time since he was a Time Agent but he learned even more about the dangers of mucking around with time from the Doctor too and he can't help asking:] Was the reason there wasn't much of a future for you because someone had already gone back and tampered with it?

[He spreads his hands disarmingly.] Sorry. Can't help worrying you might have messed up more than you fixed if you weren't very careful!

That's exactly it. I guess this isn't the first time you've had to deal with that?

[... Now there's an idea. It's almost funny, in a way. He shakes his head.] All we were doing was correcting paradoxes someone else left behind. We corrected the timeline. Put time right back how it was supposed to be, followed all the little breadcrumbs.

[Right into a different kind of trap. He pauses there for a moment, debating whether to continue. But he has a feeling Jack's going to ask either way, so he shrugs and continues, voice lowering a bit.]

We fixed the timeline, but the person responsible had a different agenda all along. He created a situation where we ended up killing the goddess who controlled time. We were careful. We were so careful. And then it didn't matter anyway.

Summer 1 - Greetings and Welcome - Action

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