discovery ((Coraline and the Master))

[braveexplorer.livejournal.com]

Coraline was ever so slightly lost.

This didn't worry her as much as it might have. The castle had a tendency to move bits of itself around when she wasn't looking, and she was used to it by now. And she'd learned a spell that made her wand point towards the north, so she could tell she was moving more or less the right way.

She had been walking for a while, though, and no one else seemed to be around. So when she heard sounds coming from one of the classrooms as she passed, she opened the door a little and cautiously peeked inside.

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[theregothedrums.livejournal.com]

He wasn't working on anything terribly important. Just tweaking a few circuts on his electrostatic manipulator. Almost innocuous, but he didn't want to risk getting a Doctorly stink-eye should he deign to put in an appearance.

So he'd found what must have been an auxiliary potions lab (lots of nice flat workbenches!), commanding tiny screwdrivers and probes with the wave of his wand. He heard the door open and tilted his head slightly to better hear any result, but he gave no other outward sign that he'd noticed an intruder.

[braveexplorer.livejournal.com]

She had no idea what the man at the bench was making, but this looked unusual, even for Hogwarts. He didn't seem to have noticed her. Coraline considered things. If he got annoyed that she'd interrupted him, she could truthfully say that she was lost and looking for a way back to Gryffindor.

She cleared her throat. "Um. Hello."

[theregothedrums.livejournal.com]

"Earth children," he said, as if addressing the device he was modifying, "Tend almost exclusively to be noisy, excessively energetic, and quite insistent at making their presence known. Exceptions are certainly of interest, but raise the question what the young menances think they're up to."

[braveexplorer.livejournal.com]

Earth children, Coraline noted. That was interesting.

"I was exploring," she explained, "and I got lost. I think the stairs have moved again." She took a small step closer. "What are you making?"

[theregothedrums.livejournal.com]

Moving stairs weren't especially remarkable here. Of course, neither were humans going on about mundane matters, especially the small ones. "Upgrading, actually," he said with a shrug. "I've got it to work, but it could be more powerful. And precise," he added grudgingly.

[braveexplorer.livejournal.com]

Well, he wasn't telling her to go away. She came a little closer. "What does it do?"

[theregothedrums.livejournal.com]

"What I tell it to, of course." With a bit of tinkering, he'd been able to streamline his electrostatic manipulator; the anti-magic shielding still added bulk, but it didn't look quite as bulky (and, truth be told, ridiculously phallic) as the prototype. Snapping the casing shut, he pointed it at a hammer on his workbench. Just a squeeze of the manipulator's handle to activate it, and with a low hum, he raised and lowered the hammer as if using the most basic of spells.

[braveexplorer.livejournal.com]

This didn't seem particularly impressive to Coraline. Especially since he'd been using magic to do the same thing earlier. But it would probably be rude to point that out.

She frowned a little, remembering something. "I thought electrical things didn't work here."

[theregothedrums.livejournal.com]

It had been a long time since the Master had bothered to pay any real mind to children. Apparently they came in 'somewhat observant'.

"Technology is unreliable here," he said with distracted agreement. "Some people have gone to great lengths to use spells to make individual devices work. I'm trying to perfect a form of anti-magic shielding. Rowan and red thread..." he grinned, trailing off.

[braveexplorer.livejournal.com]

Coraline thought about that. She'd seen the compy lab, so she knew there were ways to get technology to work. Although the computers might run on magic instead of electricity, she wasn't sure.

It did raise another question. "What do you need it for that you can't do by magic?"

[theregothedrums.livejournal.com]

The Master looked at her disdainfully, not tempering his reaction to account for her youth. She was probably human and therefore a puling child whatever her apparent age.

"It's not a matter of immediate need. It's a matter of rejecting limitations."

[braveexplorer.livejournal.com]

Coraline was not terribly deterred by his reaction. She remembered when she'd first met the cat.

"You want to make your things work here because it bothers you that they don't." She nodded. "Sorry. That was sort of a silly question."

[theregothedrums.livejournal.com]

"Oh, I'm perfectly happy with other people's tools not working." The bulk of his attention was on his work, but he spared the kid a mischievous smirk. "But when it comes to my things, I don't give up."

[braveexplorer.livejournal.com]

Apparently she'd been forgiven. She wanted to ask if she could watch what he was doing, but that might be pushing her luck slightly. But he still wasn't telling her to leave.

"You said 'Earth children' earlier. Are you not from Earth? Where do you come from?" He looked human, as far as she could see. But that didn't prove anything.

[theregothedrums.livejournal.com]

"I'm from somewhere that isn't anymore," he said a bit brusquely. Having an audience for his cleverness was fun, prodding unhealed sore spots was another. "I'm from everywhere, I suppose." He couldn't help chuckling wryly at that, because it didn't sound so much like him as it did the Doctor. But the alternative was to call some other planet home.

And no other world would ever be home.

[braveexplorer.livejournal.com]

"...oh." Coraline knew there were countries that didn't exist any more, because of too many people fighting over them. Mr Bobo might have been from one of those places. He never talked about where exactly he came from, or why he'd left. "Um. Sorry."

[theregothedrums.livejournal.com]

He finally bothered turning his head to look at her, and smirked. "You wouldn't be, if you'd met them."

[braveexplorer.livejournal.com]

Coraline wasn't sure what to say to that. "...what's your name?" she asked, instead, because she hadn't asked yet, and it seemed like a safer question. "I'm Coraline. Coraline Jones."

[theregothedrums.livejournal.com]

Ah, it was one of the spunky ones. Younger than he was used to. Younger than Kassia had been.

"I'm the Master, Coraline Jones. I knew another Miss Jones once. You'd probably like her."

[braveexplorer.livejournal.com]

...that couldn't be his actual name, could it? Maybe it could. She asked anyway, just to be sure. "What are you the master of?"

[theregothedrums.livejournal.com]

"Places that never were. Things that aren't yet." He aimed the manipulator at a chair and grinned in satisfaction as it rose steadily and hovered, the air around it seeming to vaguely warp and thicken.

[braveexplorer.livejournal.com]

That raised more questions than it answered, but she was distracted by the chair, and the strange way the air moved around it. The levitation itself still wasn't anything she hadn't seen before, but - it was different, somehow, to know it was done by science and not by magic. Magic could do things that were meant to be impossible, that was why it was magic.

"How does that work?"

[theregothedrums.livejournal.com]

"It's an electrostatic manipulator," he said, as if this were an extremely basic concept understood by anyone old enough to be trusted not to put one in her mouth. "What forces do you think it uses?"

[braveexplorer.livejournal.com]

Coraline narrowed her eyes at him. "You didn't say what it was called before," she pointed out. She could guess that 'electrostatic' probably meant something to do with, well, static electricity, but this seemed like something far beyond sticking balloons to the wall.

[theregothedrums.livejournal.com]

"It's not like you didn't get a chance to peek at the wiring. It's not an especially complex device. Just a focused application of a few basic principles."