Power Swap: THEY'RE GONE! (Open)

[Deleted]

Zachary Bishop had slowly, gradually, moved back into his parents house over the course of the summer. He determined it wasn't practical to be wasting money on an apartment close to the school when he only went to his graduate classes a maximum of twice a week. Those were the days he also put in some hours at the newspaper office, but he could do most of his studying and work from the sanctity of his bedroom, where it was nice and peaceful and quiet without a soul in sight. Yup, just him...and the spiders.

However, that was the first thing he noticed when he woke up this morning.

It was QUIET.

Like REALLY REALLY QUIET.

Sure, there were the normal sounds that one heard in a home that housed a family of thirteen with one child(Devlin) visiting frequently. The twins seemed excited(or distressed?) about something. There was some commotion going on in the family room where the television of blaring the morning news. But that wasn't what he was talking about.

The constant buzzing he got from his power telling him where all the various spiders were in the house(they were EVERYWHERE by the way) was gone! Just GONE!

Over the years he'd gotten used to it and barely paid attention to it at all anymore. Hell, he barely noticed it sometimes because it was just so chronic. But now that it was absent...it made a HUGE difference.

Zach got dressed quickly and joined his family downstairs for breakfast with a chipperness he'd not had in years, a change that was plainly obvious to his family. The morning conversation was weird. Apparently he wasn't the only one who'd woken up with changes, though a majority of them seemed to have experienced no change at all. The turning point in the situation was when Zach tried to hug his mother...and she collapsed on the floor, completely passed out. After that, Aura took Zach aside and gave him a good long lecture about what tactile anesthesia was and what he could expect from this kind of power.

It was pretty well handled, all things considered, but what else could one expect from a meta-family. Wondering the 'whys' behind it wasn't going to change anything, so the best they could do was just try to adapt and move on. That was...well, the Bishop way, it seemed.

Armed with an outfit far to warm for the season(gloves included), Zachary headed to the lake, a place he didn't really frequent before because...well, that was one of the places where the buzzing had been the worst. He'd taken a notebook along where he'd every intention of writing...something, maybe something about today's experiences so far. Maybe.

However, upon arriving at the lake, Zach was just so overwhelmed by the sound of QUIET that he overindulged in it to the point of passing out himself, right there in the middle of the grassy field on the bank of the lake.

Ahhhhh! he thought.

[Ricio Miller]

Ricio had also woken up that morning and realized immediately that something was horribly wrong. He was shivering. Even though it was the beginning of September, and technically still summer, Vermont was already starting to cool down. And to someone who couldn't remember what being chilly felt like, the September air felt like being trapped in an iceberg.

Of course, he had freaked out quite a bit.

He had ran all the way to his brother's house from the back alley he had woken up in, freaking out even more when the activity switched him from shivering to sweating. It had taken Chuck awhile to calm him down enough so that he could explain the problem. Though his brother had suggested a trip to the ER, Ricio had calmed down enough that he refused that flat out. They had a long breakfast on the porch instead. And which promises to check in later, Ricio left to smoke and think.

He worried about how his lifestyle would change completely. It was still nice enough now for him to sleep outside, but that would change soon enough when winter hit. What the heck would he do then? Though it would be nice to feel some things, like the warm from his brother's hug, he was still jumping when the wind blew his hair.

He wandered around for a bit, ending up back a the lake. After throwing on a few more layers he sat down and tried to relax a bit. Whether because of the layers of clothing or the effects of the stress of the morning, he was suddenly feeling very sleepy.

---

Probably because he was craving shrimp as he had fallen asleep, something a bit out of the ordinary for him since shrimp was something hard for him to get a hold of, when he feel asleep he started dreaming that he was underwater. For a moment he panicked, but then realized that he had fins and could breath just fine.

So he swam around, enjoying the freedom of the movement in the water.

[Deleted]

Um…..why was he underwater?

Zach remembered having laid down to rest at the lake so the first thought that came to mind was that he accidentally rolled himself right into the water. And of course, his first instinct was to start swimming up to the surface, fearful that he was going to choke any second. What would his family think! If he were to die like this? He couldn’t leave them behind! Not Savvy, and JJ, and Kailin, and Gaige, and Katy, and Lany, and Gordon, and Claudia, and Aurora, and Devlin!! And then what about Kai? What would he do if he found out that Zach had drowned in the lake in the middle of a nap!

Fear struck his heart as he tried to gain some understanding of why he wasn’t dead yet and why it seemed like he wasn’t drowning quite as fast as he thought he was.

Or at all.

Actually, when he looked to see, Zach realized that he could actually breath quite well…or something like that, it was strange to describe. He was definitely underwater. He was…breathing? Either that, or he didn’t need to breath, because he couldn’t even remember taking a breath that proved he could do it, just that he wasn’t dying from not being able to.

A figure passed…swam by him. A man…with fins…okaaaaaaay.

“Heeey!” he called out with a wave. Huh….apparently he could talk underwater too.

This was weird.

[Ricio Miller]

Ricio was pretty sure this was one of the weirdest things to ever happen to him. He had never been the greatest of swimmers, though he did enjoy the water. And there were times when he had used a body of water for bathing or cooking just as often as he used it for recreation.

But this was different. The water seemed endless. And he was swimming so gracefully. It was like instinct. And looking down at himself he saw that he was some sort of man/fish hybrid.

And yet it all felt so right too. After the initial panic vanished all Ricio felt was peace. There were no walls here in the ocean. He could see forever in every direction it seemed.

He turned a bit to look in the direction of a sudden voice. "Hey yourself," he replied, attempting a grin. "Isn't this great?" It didn't feel weird that he could talk underwater, though his voice did sound odd. Way deeper with the vowels all stretched out.

[Deleted]

Zach was slowly getting used to this new environment, despite it’s weirdness. The whole thing defied all logic, Zach was starting to wonder if maybe he was hallucinating. Like, maybe he breathed in some weird mushroom spores or something. The other option was that he was dreaming, but he’d never had a dream quite so vivid before. Especially not one where he knew he was dreaming. Because…well, usually in his dreams the weirdness seemed normal. Which wasn’t happening here.

The other guy - that was a guy, right? - seemed to be right at home here, though.

“Great…? Uh…” Maybe? How was he supposed to answer that. “Where are we?” he asked the fish man. Zach did take note that the fish-man spoke very strangely. In fact, he realized, his voice was drawn out in a way that any words he made would actually be incredibly difficult to understand. And yet, Zach could without any problem.

Deeefinitley weird.

[Ricio Miller]

Ricio hadn't gotten around to wondering if this was a dream or not. Perhaps because he was an artist, he usually did have very vivid dreams. Though they weren't usually this weird. But at the moment he was still enjoying himself to start questioning.

He shrugged his shoulders at the question. He had no clue where they were. But it had to be some sort of ocean, right? The water was so deep and wide and dark that they couldn't have been anywhere else it seemed. "The Pacific?" he offered.

"How did we...?" Ricio said. The man's question was making him paused to consider the logistics of all of this. "Wait, can you breathe?" After all if the man needed to get to the surface, he was pretty sure he could help with his new found swimming skills.

Speaking of that, he looked down at his hands...er flippers again. Though he still had arms and legs they both ended in flippers rather than his usual appendages. He started to wonder if his head looked different as well. He could feel gills on his neck. And even though they were helpful and nice they seemed wrong in a way the flippers didn't.

"Why are you so...normal?"

[Deleted]

The Pacific? Why would they be there? Pilot Ridge was over on the east coast, and the lake was still the closest body of water to there…and it wasn’t nearly as big as this placed seemed.

“I, uh…..guess so?” Zach stumbled out. He hadn’t had any trouble with breathing thus far, but he was pretty certain he didn’t have any gills or scuba equipment or anything like that. Though at the moment, Zach wasn’t even sure how he was supposed to move from here to over there should he need to. Should he just swim? Zach had never been the best of swimmers, but if breathing wasn’t a problem, then he supposed it wasn’t a problem anyway.

“Uh…..because…I am…normal…?” What kind of question was that? “Should…I not…be?” At least the other guy recognized that he himself wasn’t all that normal, but somehow being normal was abnormal to him…which was weird.