A Place In This World (Collector of Rarities x Nobodysangel)

[Collector of Rarities]

Desmond didn't know when he started hugging Ris, but he had her wrapped in his arms well before she finished explaining everything to him. He simply held her silently, kneeling on the floor in front of her so that he could hold her tight. She didn't deserve what had happened to her: no one did. She had a special ability, yes, but that didn't mean that she should have been thrown out of her house, disowned by her parents in some facility, all because they didn't want to deal with her. He held her for a long time, rocking gently back and forth with her as he did his best not to cry.

"You're not evil, Ris," he said after he finally let her go. He was still kneeling in front of her, holding her hands in his once more. "And you've done nothing wrong. What you are is a very special young woman with a very special ability... an ability that I thought other people just didn't have." He held up his right hand so that she could see it clearly, then took a deep breath and concentrated. His fingers began rotating and the skin of the area where his palm once was changed radically; after just a few seconds, his right hand had completely flipped itself so that it was reversed from its original position, the thumb still in the same place it was to begin with, though facing the other way. With another effort of will, he returned his hand to normal. The process was silent, but Ris could see muscle and bone shifting beneath his skin in a completely unnatural way.

"Seven years ago," explained Desmond, "I was on this plane with my parents. It was all over the news, really: the plane got hit by a meteorite and broke in half. I don't really understand how it happened, but everyone onboard made it to the ground safely; there wasn't a single casualty. About a year later, I started manifesting these... symptoms when I was stressed. It depended on the situation: one time I jumped onto the roof when I was being chased by bullies, another time I grew armored plates on my chest beneath my shirt and broke a kid's hand when he tried to punch me. I was lucky and didn't get found out, but my parents took me out of school for a bit to figure out what was going on. It wasn't just me, either: both of them were on the plane and they both had abilities as well. My dad tried to track down other people who had been on the plane, but no one wanted to talk to us. I had assumed... I thought it was just us. I thought that we were just weird somehow and we'd gained these strange abilities, but if you can do things like this too... then maybe we're not alone."

He hugged Ris again, this time for a much shorter duration. "Don't ever think that your abilities make you a bad person, Ris," he said. "I thought that at first, but it's not a healthy thing to think. It's how you use them that counts."

 

[NobodysAngel80]

She looked surprised by his arms around her, blinking a little as she patted his shoulder awkwardly, seeking to comfort him more than she felt she needed comfort. He seemed so distressed for her, and she felt the urge to make him feel better. Quietly she stroked his hair and forced herself to smile. "I'm alright now though, Desmond. I have a warm place to sleep, food to eat, and people are very nice to me. I'm alright. It was....well, it was scary of course, but I'm okay now. The...the facility they sent me to wasn't that bad either. It was lonely and some of the other people locked up there weren't nice all the time, but...but it wasn't bad." She bit her lip slightly and forced herself to smile. "Everything's alright now, really."

She was surprised when he told her that he had abilities too, and displayed it in such a way. She watched his hand twist and shift, changing visibly, muscle and bone and sinew shifting under his skin. She watched, fascinated and a little unnerved, turning her attention up to him as he explained what happened on the plane, that his parents knew and...and they understood and didn't say he was evil and possessed and unnatural. However, it did make her wonder....had something similar happened to her? So much of her early childhood was a blur, even her own family's faces oddly distorted and detached. She thought she remembered a long hallway, and seats, and clouds, and people screaming and then....but no one ever talked about it at home. All she could do was wonder. "You're...you're lucky. I wish my parents hadn't been angry at me for what I did." He was hugging her again, and Ris wasn't exactly accustomed to so much physical affection from other people. It was strange, a bit unnerving, but nice.

She looked down at her hands, wondering if she should show him what she could do. It was only fair, after all; he showed her what he could do. "I can...make things. Into other things." She said softly, glancing at the little triceratops toy and picking it up, cupping it in her hand. There was a flicker in her eyes, the pupils and sclera swallowed up by a soft, golden glow, a glow mirrored between her fingers, sparkling rays of light escaping the cracks between her fingers. When her fingers parted once more, a bird sat in her hands, a tiny sparrow, one of millions found hopping about the parks, pecking at crumbs dropped by passers-by. But this one...this one hadn't existed before now.

"I can make anything. I touch something....I understand how it works on it's deepest, most fundamental level. I can take it apart, atom by atom, rearrange the electrons, turn lead into gold, turn cheap plastic toys into birds..." She trailed off, smiling down at the tiny bird as her fingertip stroked it's head. "I'll keep her. for a while, I think. I need to come up with a good name for her. She's much better than the dinosaur - I don't need to wind her up to make her move."

 

[Collector of Rarities]

Desmond's eyes went wide as he watched Ris turn a little plastic dinosaur toy into a living, breathing bird. So many things went through his mind as he struggled to comprehend the transformation. "Ris..." he said, awestruck. "That's incredible! You just... you created life from a plastic toy!" He reached out and gently stroked the bird's back. "Umm... I think you aren't supposed to stroke a bird's head," he explained, his mind trying to grasp onto something he knew as he processed the miracle that the girl before him had just performed. "Birds nuzzle each others heads when they pick out mates, so the bird might grow a bit too attached if you stroke its head. I know some birds do that: not sure if it's the same for every species. Stroking its back is okay, though."

Desmond petted the bird silently for a little while as he mulled over the apparently limitless potential of Ris's abilities. Really, if she put them to proper use, she wouldn't have to be homeless. Granted, creating money with her abilities would eventually lead back to her (each dollar bill had a serial number, after all), but if she used it to create art of some kind, she'd probably be set for life. In fact, she could probably be the most talented artist in the world if she set her mind to it: no other artist in the world could translate the images in their head directly into reality within the span of a few minutes at most. If she wanted to go a slightly less legal route, she could also simply produce prescription medication. She didn't even necessarily have to sell it for recreational use, either: she could easily sell it to people who needed it for much cheaper than the pharmacy would sell it for. Granted, that would put her at serious risk if anyone in law enforcement, or even someone criminally-minded, were to discover her, but it would still be a way to make a living. Desmond shook his head, mostly to himself, and stopped petting the bird, settling into a sitting position on the edge of the bed.

"I suppose we'll have to find a place to keep the little guy tonight," he said. "Umm... is it a little guy? I'm not sure which gender you made it. Can you... tell it what to do? Or does it have a mind of its own? I'd like to at least try and make it a little nest out of newspaper or something so that I don't have to explain to the manager why there's bird poop in his hotel room."