LUCAS ROSATI
No sooner had Smokey mentioned inevitable memory loss than a voice rang out in Lucas's mind. Not his voice. That was the perturbing part. This overlapped with the terrifying visage of Flowers dashing briefly after the two of them on a wave of vines and, well, flowers before encroaching shadows forced him to turn his attention elsewhere.
'Honestly, has no one ever taught you manners?' the unknown speaker (thinker?) grouched as Lucas looked left and right from inside his bubble, hunting for the direction of the voice even as he immediately realized there was no physical interpretation of the sound.
'Hate the man, not the suit. You never dirty a gentleman's suit.'He hadn't even grasped what was going on before Smokey decided it wasn't worth the hassle of stopping. Lucas's makeshift pack mule proceeded forward with him in tow before stopping abruptly again, this time looking behind in exasperated acknowledgement of another arrival who quickly diced apart several nearby shadows with cards expertly wielded like knives.
Only when the giant cards raised into a barrier around them did Lucas finally put two and two together to realize this was probably the same guy who had been flitting through the sky earlier on the giant card.
"--quite new to this so please forgive the inconvenience."He caught the last bit of Smokey's comment to Cardshark and turned back to focus on the two of them. "New"? So there was some kind of rolling recruitment process for something like this? As Cardshark sealed up the barrier and tapped a glowing pink dot on Smokey's forehead, the two of them looked completely at ease in the warped environment, behaving and setting up as if there was nothing more natural than what they were currently doing. Lucas opened his mouth to ask something despite his earlier reservations, but for the second time that day someone turned their weapons on him, this time in the form of magically sharp cards. He reflexively leaned away from the location Cardshark started slicing at, but there was no denying his simmering desire to actually get closer once the attacks had abated.
Cardshark caught Lucas just as the bubble and its levitating effect dissipated, and Lucas suddenly found himself pinned to the newly erected card wall as the source of the thoughts turned out to be Cardshark himself. Despite the slight pain in his shoulder blades from the sudden impact, he couldn't help his fascination at hearing a voice while the other boy's lips didn't move a millimeter.
Surreal.
And that did it. Lucas snorted with a quick laugh that he tried to cover up. Picasso painting monsters, an alternate reality or something just as bad, and it was the magical ventriloquist that finally made him think the word.
His laugh matched the timing of Cardshark's chuckle, and Lucas let the misunderstanding remain, preferring to zero in on yet another "second" of the day--losing his memories, something Cardshark was also bringing up.
But it made sense. If this happened frequently and Lucas had simply forgotten about every other incident, it stood to reason that there was no point in wasting time asking or answering questions. He let Cardshark lead him up the ramp and stood by silently while some kind of meeting took place.
From this viewpoint, he had a solid angle on everything that was happening on the battlefield, from Roses and Water Guns fending off shadows not far from them to another of these magically gifted teenagers (at least, they looked like teenagers) shaping water with precise movements of a conductor's baton and blasting through more shadows.
Cardshark was apparently talking to Smokey, though Lucas wasn't privy to that particular channel. He sighed a bit in frustration as the battle raged around him--useless, but wanting to be useful. Or something like "useful" but with a bit less sensibility attached.
A fluid motion from Cardshark caught Lucas's eyes and he almost stepped off the platform in surprise as Maestro popped up right in front of their group, seemingly conjured from the inside of Cardshark's top hat. The magician/card dealer took on a lecturing stance as he faced the boy with the conductor's baton and Lucas almost wished he could listen in on what they were saying, as unrelated as he was to the situation.
Instead, he shuffled away from the edge of the raised platform and tried to remain as unobtrusive as possible, eyeing the twitching, sliding, jerking, twisting, shadows below them. They were safe at their height, for now, but he could see a few masses of shadows starting to clump together into a suspiciously tower-like structure. Something in him itched to reach out and...strike them? But with what? A vestige of a memory that was his and simultaneously not his flickered dimly at the back of his mind, but a guttural rasping noise from one of the shadows directly below the platform shook Lucas from his thoughts.
"Guys?" he pointed at the shadows trying to coordinate themselves upwards.
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