Kahli was considering what action to take in order to attempt to disable her [Seismic Sense] skill temporarily.
It had forced her in many ways to overthink very simple courses of events, such as kicking her rock in the middle of a fight. It managed to complicate things unnecessarily, she thought, as she always ended up picking the third option she was presented while using [Seismic Sense] to look at different timelines.
Along with that, she didn't really like the new sensations it brought to her big left foot. If anything it just made her more self-conscious and second guess every action she took. It was, as a [skill], unhealthy for Kahli to keep using in her system, she felt.
Kahli had seen all three scenarios, and she was not surprised with the results of each at all, in fact it was very much in step with what she expected to experience.
In the first scenario, right before she opened her character sheet, a light fixture above her head detached from the ceiling and socked her in the head, dealing a critical hit that was so costly that she died. Needless to say, Kahli was not interested in this timeline.
In the second scenario, she opened her system to deactivate, but then somehow she managed to 'double-activate' it, so that every time Kahli wanted to make a decision about making another decision, she went to a separate void with a large anteater that constantly monologued about the impunity of the concept of free will. Right before the anteater had been ready to diagnose and dole out its own final opinion on the true definition of the words free and will, separately as well as together, the scenario ended.
In the third scenario, Kahli had navigated to the system in her mind, opened her character sheet, managed the details and properly deactivated the [skill] with ease.
Kahli noticed something, though, as soon as she was preparing to choose this third scenario.
I've got a quick question before I go, Kalhi thought to the jellyfish.
Go ahead, though I must warn you that time isn't real at all and a quick question is in many ways the same as a long question, and even the same as a middle-length question.
..Okay. So, can I just activate this [skill] every time I don't know what to do and have it potentially allow me to always do the right thing?
That's... not a terrible idea, but I must warn you, Kahli, of something that you really already know. You see, since there's no way to really control when you enter the void here, at least no way that you know of, then it's not really a viable strategy. However, if there is some way that you can think of that you can discern how exactly to implement, then certainly, I think there ought to be a way that you can accomplish that.
Kahli was so sick of this obnoxious jellyfish.
[Scenario selected]
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Kahli sighed in relief as she stood in the now-deserted nail salon, holding Froufrou in her fancy new bag. She was finally free of that stupid, stupid [skill]. One day, maybe she'd figure out how exactly to control how it decided she was in a time [checkpoint]. But for now, she wouldn't bother with such an obnoxious waste of her energy.
Kahli walked out of the salon and down the street, and that's when she noticed it.
It was the blood in the sky.
Kahli did a double take. Blood? In the sky? That couldn't be true. And yet, every time she looked up, that's what she saw.
"Doom, doom, doom, DOOOOOOOM!" blurted a voice obnoxiously.
Kahli looked over to see what looked like a personified puff of gray dust. This was obviously a fashion statement more than anything, in fact Kahli had seen some versions of this outfit in posters by the mall, but she found it more gaudy than she did alluring. Either way, here someone was wearing this ridiculous, overpriced outfit that essentially made them look like a cartoon character with a concealed identity.
"So, do you know what's happening in the sky?" asked Kahli.
"Does anybody?" they responded.
Kahli sighed and tapped her big left foot on the ground in frustration. "Look, can you please just give me a straight answer? Clearly you're some strange street person that likes to focus on doomsday, okay, I get that. But that doesn't mean you have to accost me in the street and force me and my pet-" she gestured to Froufrou, who was looking especially disgusting, "-to engage with your bizarre taurine-esque excrement. Please just let me walk on by, by you, and to somewhere far, far away from you and whatever is rattling around in your head."
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The person responded with a sad groan, and then they walked off down the street and towards a sad-looking seafood store sticking out of a cliffside. Kahli shrugged and kept on walking down the street.
She figured that the person in the strange garb was either a light elemental or a blank, though she kept it to herself.
Light elementals were the strangest kind of people in Nomachiatto, hands down. There were all kinds of people in Nomachiato with elemental [skills] and disciplines, some had systems, some did not, but either way they were all extremely lucky compared to the elementalless. Elementalless, people without elemental specifications, were also sometimes called blanks or empties. They were considered fairly disappointing as tauman beings. Some people even characterized them as scary.
What was so scary about a person without elemental specifications in Nomachiato? To understand, one had to conceptualize how elementalism, as it was called, was quantified and utilized in regular Nomachiattan thought. Elements were commonly defined in a circular spectrum matrix: a wheel containing all kinds of elements - water, fire, light, poison, plants, air, stomachs (yes, the entire organ - this was a rare one), and of course stone, Kahli's own element.
Being a stone elemental in Gifflenberg was no big surprise. In a lot of way's it was almost expected that people in Gifflenberg be by default stone elementals, and were often assumed as much unless proved otherwise. This was a bit of a funny quirk of elementalism wherever in Nomachiato someone went - elementals generally matched the region that they resided in, and could even somewhat fluctuate with the seasons and indeed the tides.
How did that truly function? It was not anything to do with lineage, that much was absolutely certain. In fact, the only thing lineage-wise that might have somewhat been linked to a person's elementality was how long specific traits of elementality could linger and affect them as a person. Because elementality was, as understood my many scientists, doctors, academics, and spiritualists in Nomachiato, to be a function of the Tauman mind. Every Tauman, of course, was structured with a mind that they used to think, but sometimes taumans had different thinking propensities that were predisposed to different locations based on their experiences. The practical effects of this principle on taumans like Kahli was that, in general, they were elemental based on what they knew.
Knowing this is what was so strange and somewhat disturbing about blanks to other taumans. It meant that you had, in the entirety of your tauman experience, never been deeply affected by any of the many powerful elements of the world of Nomachiato. It meant that you were numbed in a way. You weren't absolutely empty, but you definitely weren't full, you were in a weird lull where you knew of either all elements or nothing and had no real affectations tied to one or another aspect of elementality. It was described by some people as alien and others still as antisocial.
And then, of course, there were light elementals. Kahli was still undecided on what was wrong with light elementals because they seemed to just love absolutely everything. They somehow saw connection to all elements and none, and as such, they got the benefits of the weirdest non-element, the biggest mystery of all, the energy of light itself at their disposal to a degree that was at once disorienting and befuddling. They were often revered and they were often snobs because they were revered. Being a light elemental was, in Kahli's opinion, a cheat code for life. Sometimes Kahli even wondered if it functioned like a literal cheat code for light elementals with systems.
Kahli froze in thought for a moment. Did her system have any cheat codes? Was that truly a thing? Her concept of cheat codes was only in legend, a hush-hush secret not to be discussed by anyone for fear of havoc and taboo. Still, Kahli had never had a system, whereas there were plenty of people that had grown up with them. Was there not a chance that Kahli indeed could use a cheat code in her own system?
She'd had to make a mental note of that and circle back on it, as she was painfully intrigued.
So light elementals were heroes in a lot of ways. And blanks were creeps. And it was just as well.
But which had that stranger on the street been, again? Kahli just couldn't pinpoint it. And she couldn't think too much of it, because someone had just come out of the restaurant. Someone familiar!
It was one of the claw-handed hand-havers that was in a little canoe by the Pit of Despair right when she had been! It was one of the two strange fellows that had fished Froufrou out of the Pit and thrown her out like she was a fish caught for fun!
Would he recognize her?
Kahli didn't want to take the chance. If he really was a poacher, he probably didn't care that it was broad daylight. He was comfortable committing crimes. He's probably attack her or something for witnessing what he'd done!
Plus, he was wearing an apron. A clear sign that he was either prepared to butcher Kahli into a million pieces.
Or perhaps it meant that he worked at the dingy little restaurant he'd just burst out of, but either way Kahli knew that he was bad news.
Kahli ran, ran, ran away. And to a nearby bush, and she forced her way through its spiky leaves and then behind it, using her big left foot to part it like deep waters.
"What the hell?" said a man crouched in the dark as Kahli collided with him.