occlus visits amestris
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Not all tombs are bleak and unremittingly dark. Some, especially the very oldest, have vents to the surface, allowing air to flow freely so that the workers would not suffocate before completing the monument to their lord's glory. One such vent must be overhead now, for a beam of sunlight puddles upon the corridor ahead, motes of dust gently twinkling within.

Occlus strides through with hardly a thought-

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-and comes up short, as this place is not a tomb.

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It's not literally a tomb, anyway.

The sun beats heavily down on her as she stares at a vast, open desert. There are mountains in the distance, just barely visible on the horizon.

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How strange. She runs through a quick series of dispels to no effect. If this is an illusion it is beyond her, which makes that exceedingly unlikely. Next she checks her datapad. No Holonet, no GPS, no obvious signs of jamming. Teleportation is not strictly impossible, so that seems to be the going explanation despite the distance and lack of obvious mechanism or trigger.

So. Desert, mountains. Any Force signatures or signs of life in her immediate area?

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There seem to be rather a lot of people in the direction of the mountain range. Half a million, or thereabouts.

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Isn't that odd.

It's a more promising lead than sitting here, at least. She wraps herself in the Force as a ward against temperature and fatigue and dehydration, and sets off at a quick run in that direction.

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As she gets closer, she might be able to tell, through her force sensitivity, that the half-a-million people are packed extremely tightly. So tightly that they're occupying the space of one person.

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She slows her approach. That is... intriguing. No Sith is he, nor Jedi, nor in fact any sort of Force sensitive being. With five ghosts bound to her, she struggled; he should not be able to survive so many. What sort of place is this?

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The wind blowing over the desert sands doesn't give a very satisfying answer to that question.

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Then she'll just have to ask him, won't she. With any luck, he's sane enough to give an answer.

She walks up.

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He's been walking for a long, long time. You can see it in his clothing and his face, which are both wrinkled and lined and weathered by the sand.

He doesn't look surprised when he sees her. He says something softly in an unfamiliar language.

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"Do you speak Basic?"

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He stops and looks at her quizzically.

 

Then he gestures at himself. "Hohenheim."

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Mm. Fine, then. She pulls out her datapad and sets it to building a corpus.

"Occlus."

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"Hello, Occlus," he says, in his language. He waves at her. 

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"Hello Hohenheim." She gestures at the desert. "Where are we?"

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"Desert," he says in response. "Hello or hello?" The second 'hello' is in her language.

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"I assume they mean the same thing, which is greetings. It would be helpful if you spoke more than single words, so that I can get a translator going more quickly."

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"I have absolutely no idea what you're saying."

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"I realize that you probably don't understand me, but it's important that you talk nonetheless." She motions for him to continue.

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Sigh. "Do you speak English? Xingese, maybe?" He says, switching languages. "Or Southern Xingese? Maybe a dialect? Roman? Russian? Drachman?" He switches languages each time, saying the name of the language in that language.

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"No, I speak none of those languages." She cycles through her own. "You think you are helping but you are not." She reverts to Basic. "Stick to one."

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"Those are probably languages. At least now she's mirroring ..." he mutters, then frowns. "One word. One. Then, hello, hello."

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She fiddles with her datapad for a second, then holds it up. "Hello," she says in Basic. It echoes her in his language, then repeats his last sentences and gives a best-guess in Basic.

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"That is a very impressive device. How does it work? ... right, you can't tell me. Hm."

He holds up his hands. "One two three four five six seven eight nine ten," he says, with as many fingers. "Ten one is eleven. Ten two is twelve ..."

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And after some more in that vein she has a reasonable translation program. She pulls the earpiece from its holder and inserts it.

"I think that will suffice for now."

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