Scene #7169: Secundus: Mechanics and Demands

Owner	Pose
Arthur Lowell	The decommissioned Prospitan warship remains in orbit above Afterus -- but now, it's no longer kept near the Land of Spires and Frogs. The golden, gleaming, disarmed ship hangs above the surface in geosynchronous orbit somewhere above the city of Home. Arthur has, at last, finally essentially stabilized the rift he made, and contained it in a heavy gold-and-onyx machine that looks sort of like a complex cathedral gate, with a small golden "tower": and an onyx "tower" rising from each side. The Royal Derse Key rests in the lock, and behind the heavy gate, the Rift can be seen -- or rather, seen through, considering that looking into the flickering gray spirograph is sort of like looking through the transparent part of an image. The rest of the deck is open, and mostly lacking amenities. Several designated areas are drawn in soft, gleaming green, as if expecting stalls or stations or weird equipment. What is here is Arthur's PUNCHCARD ALCHEMY station, all weird blocky brushed metal and strange lasers and complex robotics. Arthur himself has invited folks to discuss what needs doing, study the ways they might get an advantage over Lock One, and to figure out how to get a lethal edge on Mister Gray and his resonance-powered shit-kicking. Arthur's waiting for the gang mostly by sitting on the Alchemiter platform and playing his Nintendo DS though.
Sumiko	"A DS? You really need to upgrade that to a switch," Mikoto says as she walks up to the Alchemiter and Arthur. Instead of the normal magical girl garb she fights in, she's in normal street clothing. A long jade skirt and a white blouse, with her hair tied behind her head. Sitting down, she folds her arms over her chest. She remembers their last encounter with the mysterious Gray guy, and how bad he destroyed them. Of course, the connection with the queen's pure hate was enough to remind her to shudder. Ugh, she hates feeling like this and it irritates her.
Arthur Lowell	"The hell is a SWITCH?" Arthur asks Mikoto, cranking eyebrows into incredulously disparate positions. "This is the LATEST RAD NINTENDO STUFF. Is that one'a the PSP things?" Still, though, he tries to assault her hand with coolkid handshake greetings while continuing to play, like, some kind of really janky Tony Hawk-looking thing one-handed.
Sumiko	Mikoto tries to keep up with this coolkid shake, which seems more like a rythim game for her than a greeting. "Yeah, it's their newest hand held system. It's pretty good, and you can plug it into a TV like a normal game system."
Xion	Someone, somewhere, is talking SHIT about the NINTENDO DS, the best piece of dual screenn technology since Nintendo decided we needed dual screen technology. But it is not the magnetic force of TRASH TAKES that draws Xion to this most outer of places above Afterus. No, it's that someone said 'something something lock something something key' and Xion mentally added two 'darknesses', one 'friendship', three 'hearts', and a 'MASTER KEYBLADE'. And that's why, when a darkness portal opens near Arthur's alchemiter during the COOLKID HANDSHAKE, Xion leaps handsfirst through, wigglingly greedy fingers reaching at air and nothing. "Where's the MASTER KEY, guy?! I need it! For... ..." "Cult..." "... MISSION STUFF!"
Staren	In the distance, a glowing shape the size of a house suddenly appears, moving incredibly fast, but rapidly slows down like it just hit ballistic gel as the glow fades, revealing a... castle with thrusters and a mechanical sea serpent wrapped around it? It fires a bolt of red light at the deck, which coalesces into Staren. How long has it been since Arthur's seen him out of armor? Staren's sporting new duds with a longer labcoat, long black pants, and brown work boots. It's not THAT big of a change, but at least makes him look less like a lost grad student and more like someone who should be Doing Science. "Truly good games are timeless." Staren comments as the discussion about games starts and he approaches with hand raised for a high-five, then does his best to manage the coolkid handshake by following an AR overlay telling him what the next move was last time.
Arthur Lowell	>Arthur: Retrieve royal Derse key Arthur leans over and pulls the ROYAL DERSE KEY, then gestures in Xion's direction. He turns her wigglingly greedy motions into a series of complex coolkid handshake gestures that actually juggle the key between them a bit. "Don't STEAL IT, I only got the ONE." He says. "Need it to BUST THROUGH LOCK ONE. What up, homie?"
Arthur Lowell	>==> Staren also gets the high five, plus several other types of diverse and exotic fives in high, low, middle, reversed, and multi-hand configurations. "HELL YEAH, DAWG." He lays down the usual agreements.
Xion	Xion gets HANDSY with the Royal Derse Key, and also Arthur Lowell's normal human hands. It is so in-tents they should go camping. "What? Steal it?" Xion is far too enthralled by a Totally Normal Key. "But this is just a key. Where's the handle?" She tries to swing the key like a sword and... actually, if it's a big hefty GAME KEY, works pretty well, but she kind of fumbles some more complex moves because of aformentioned lack of HANDLE. "Does it transform? I bet it transforms." She starts tugging on bits of the key, down to chewing on the 'face' of it testingly. "I think your master key is broken."
Mauve Gauntlet	Mauve is here! Or rather, Aika is here. After all, (most of) the people here had seen her out of Avatar already, so there wasn't really a reason to hide again. Bit embarrassing, but it was what it was. She attpemts to enter Arthur's fist bump minigame, and is prepared this time, trying her best to keep up. She then sits down on the deck, genlty smoothing out her black skirt over her knees. The discussion about screwing with his link to the Queen brought up a though. She does a few gestures, fiddling through her AR interface to find something. "What is we played this?" She said, linking across whatever interfaces people had to show people the song.
Lezard Valeth	Lezard is present. Of course he is, why wouldn't he be? He has something of an axe to grind after being forced to eat his words in the previous foray. At the moment, he seems to be mostly sitting on some nearby crates and thinking. The nameless tome he carries with him is flipping constantly.
Arthur Lowell	>Arthur: Transform the key You can't retrieve the ROYAL DERSE BRASS KNUCKLES because that is not from the correct medium! >==> "Yeah, naw, I tried." Arthur says, demonstrably shaking it and flicking it slightly. "NO DICE. It UNLOCKS the LOCK though. Not every KEY gotta be a BLADE, dawg."
Xion	Xion hands back the ROYAL DERSE KEY, shrugging. "Well my key works on basically any lock. And it's got a handle! Maybe you need to combine the key, to make other keys? You know, like, with keychains?" Xion produces what absolutely one thousand percent for realsies is a cell phone dangly chain which looks like a star that's empty on the inside. "Like this?" She points at the key. "Or like in that game, where you have to use the key, the cold key, and the hot key? And they're all the same key? So there's only ever one key." Xion places both hands on her hips, laughing assuredly. "I am an expert on Keys and key-related stuff." As for the matter of the guy who never sleeps, she offers an emphatic shrug. "If you can't beat someone because they're really feeling something, make a weapon that hits them with a different feeling? Larxene has a weapon that hits you with how insignificant you are, it's the worst."
Arthur Lowell	>Arthur: Fist bump minigame, medium style Arthur engages Aika pretty directly in a series of complicated bumps, pounds, and daps. But he keeps it medium style, just barely too much to deal with but not so much that he can't get a good flow going. Then it's back to business...
Sumiko	Mikoto is thinking for a bit, after a bit of time she fiddles with a egg looking gem in her hand, various colors of jade and silver. "What if...we found out the source of the Queen's hate? It would help us come up with a counter emotion to it? I mean, love is the obvious choice, but love without a source is meaningless, right? Depending on the hate, Hope could be the counter because the hate could be born of despair."
Arthur Lowell	>Arthur: You have to answer it "Uhhhhhhh..." Arthur grimaces, rubbing his face. "Um. I'm... basically the reason she's feelin' that way. Kinda." There's a bit of awkward feeling about that.
Sumiko	Mikoto stares at Arthur, "Maybe you can...explain what?" she asks sure that there is a story behind this.
Arthur Lowell	>Arthur: Explain "Actually, the lock, we can open." Arthur gestures to the door, explaining to Xion. "The key issue, we got that solved, kkkkkinda? But there's a dude on the other side who's locking us out. Got our shit blocked hard." He grimaces. "It's fucked up. We're trying to figure ways to amp power and beat his ass instead. It's not the never-sleeping problem, it's like... dude's channeling the big bad asshole directly, straight up the start."
Sumiko	"He completely destroyed us. All of us." Mikoto says, with a sigh. "So we're trying to think of way of balancing the fight in our favor cuz he was cheating."
Xion	Xion considers more deeply the topic of resonance. "Well... This seems really like you're getting ahead of everything. Trying to, um..." "Speed-run things? If you're just starting out, you do tutorials!" Clapping her hands, Xion announces: "Let's find some sort of Resonance Struggle!" She has to explain. "Struggle is sort of like, baby adventuring? You play with padded bats and try to score points? Anyway, it helps people get better at fighting. This guy Seifer won the last tournamet. People say he cheated too. But that's just the big finals! Plenty of stuff before that, right?" Xion points at the key. "Maybe the key-" Smug at her own BAD WORDPLAY "-is finding the resonance in the fights, before the big boss!"
Staren	After they discuss for a bit, Staren retrieves from his bag a tiny bottle with a little bit of partially-burned blood in it, retrieved by/from his plasma spike. "...So, what kinds of grist do we need?"
Xion	"What's grist? Is it tasty?" Xion wonders, clearly neon-flashing 'THIS dumbass...' over her head. "Sounds like oatmeal."
Mauve Gauntlet	"I think that's 'grits' Miss...um..." Aika says, clearly not knowing Xion's name. "What's your name? Also What's Grist?"
Sumiko	"Yeah that's grits, from that awful american resturant you hang out in. Grist is sort of a currency that doesn't make sense?"
Arthur Lowell	>Arthur: Duplicate GRAY BLOOD ______________________________________________________________________________ \| Arthur successfulled alchemized GRAY BLOOD \| \| \| \| 10 BUILD 1 INK \| ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ Arthur checks the captcha on a spare VIAL OF GRAY BLOOD, punches it in, and casts it. Then he casts it a few dozen times, mashing the button repeatedly, before handing it off to anyone who will take it and refridgerate it. He indicates, on his personal GAME INTERFACE, his GRIST CACHE< which features a number of different GRIST types displayed in small icons. Most of them have odd little symbols, but Xion will probably most notice the ones that strongly resemble ROCKIN' BLUE RASPBERRY FRUIT GUSHERS(tm).
Xion	"I'm Xion!" Pronounced 'shion'. "I'm, uh..." There's an intangible loading bar as she works through what she's allowed to say, filtered through what other people have interpreted out for her. "I'm a cult assassin for a bunch of wizards who want to stop a terrible old man, or, um, old mens? Plural? There may be other terrible old people? Anyway, we all wear black coats and stop badguys, basically." Nailed it. "Thanks!" She accepts a vial of GRAY BLOOD into her inventory without even really grabbing it. She just disappears hers into monkeyspace. "Hey! That's candy! Corn candy."
Sumiko	"Candy corn? What the heck is candy corn? Is this another american thing?"
Xion	"No, corn candy. It's absolutely American though. They use corn in everything."
Sumiko	"That sounds absolutely disgusting. Do you have some so I can try it out?" Mikoto says, curious.
Xion	"Arthur does. Look at all those corn candies!" Xion points at all that delicious ROCKIN' BLUE RASPBERRY FRUIT GUSHERS(tm) in his Grist Inventory.
Staren	Staren takes a few vials and teleports back to his ship. One is stored for later, one is run through the erchius particle accelerator to examine its physical properties, and one... Staren returns to the deck, deposits a folding table from the matter manipulator, sets the vial on it, puts on a pair of dark goggles that look like a starfield, and looks at the vial intently...
Arthur Lowell	>Arthur: Examine "What?" Arthur looks confused briefly. "Candy... What? No. That looks like Gushers. Candy corn looks like troll horns." He steps back to squint at his own grist cache with Xion.
Sumiko	Mikoto sighs, "Oh ok, I understand. It's limited stash." She says, but then holds up her soul gem to be scanned in. "I said I didn't want to, but it does hold...emotions of a sort?"
Xion	Xion points at the ROCKIN' BLUE RASPBERRY FRUIT GUSHERS(tm) Grist. "It's corn candy. They turn corn into corn syrup, and use the syrup for corn candy. You didn't tell me you were American! If you use it for making things, that makes you the most American person I know!" Xion laughs lightly. "Real Americans use corn to make everything."
Sumiko	"I'm Japanese, not american. Can't you tell? Anyway, we just make everything out of rice so I guess I understand."
Xion	"I'm sorry. That must have been very hard for you. Now it makes sense why your heart is on the outside and also angry all the time." Xion asides to Mikoto. She soulfully pats Mikoto's shoulder supportively.
Sumiko	"I'm not angry all the time..." Mikoto says, with a frown. She is very confused by this!
Arthur Lowell	Staren's deep-level examination into the blood displays something startling. The blood is almost constantly trying to form connections with incoming energies, and take them in. The receptors are almost totally burnt out, with the exception of one connection type that is failing to find anything. Intentionally burning out more may be able to isolate it. If blood samples are exposed to multiple types of HIGH-GRADE MAGIC, ASTROPHYSICAL ENERGIES, RADIATION, or similar EXOTIC POWER, it is likely to completely and absolutely burn out all the remaining receptors except the one that needs isolating. This will mean tracking down potent sources though, because just spamming one accessible one falters on the metaphysical "scar tissue" of sorts, and will just boil the blood instead! But once it's done, a sufficiently skilled practicioner of energy manipulation should be able to use it to study exactly how to acquire and accumulate Secundus Resonance. Those who want to assist can now take on a QUEST: Find EXOTIC ENERGY and expose BLOOD SAMPLES to it to unlock RESONANCE ACCUMULATION!
Mauve Gauntlet	"Nice to meet you Xion!" Aika says, grinning. Her grin then melts into utter confusion, and maybe a bit of horror as Xion calls herself a cultist assasin. What? "Uh...Anyway...Burst Link!" Aika shouts, And in a flash of light, she's in her Duel Avatar form, her pink armor standing out on the ship's deck. She then reaches out for one of the vials and puts it in Mauve's inventory. Hopefully that couts as refrigerating...Or else she's going to have to explain to her parents why there's a vial of gray blood in their fridge. And that's a conversation she doesn't want to have. Mauve tilts her head as Xion shows pity to Mikoto about making rice things. "Huh? Why's that sad? Rice is good!"
Arthur Lowell	>==> "I didn't tell ya I was /American/?" Arthur gestures broadly, tapping his chest with every finger all at once. "My whole flow screams American! There's literally nothin' more American than me. Yeah, Gushers are some kinda Betty Crocker thing, so it's super, super corn syrup stuff. Build Grist ain't that though, it's Build Grist. Trust me, I tried eatin' 'em."
Xion	Xion shakes her head. "Oh, no, rice is fine. Tasty! I love beef bowls. No, Japan is awful. It's a land of terrible darkness and awful things." Unlike her normally light attitude, this is Very Straight and Very Businesslike. "What did the build grist taste like?" Xion asks, starry wonderment in her eyes. She Desires this knowledge.
Sumiko	"Your japan is like that, my japan is..." a pause realizing witches and magical girls. "Fuck."
Mauve Gauntlet	"Your Japans are weird," says the girl currently wearing her MMO character as armor.
Sumiko	"Hey! Are YOU from Japan? Maybe don't judge if you haven't been there." Mikoto says, with a humph.
Mauve Gauntlet	"I am from Japan!" Mauve says. "A Future (I think) Japan. but japan!"
Sumiko	Mikoto looks up and down at Mauve, "The future of my country is weird."
Arthur Lowell	>Arthur: Captchalogue SOUL GEM Arthur does wind up getting to Mikoto's offer. "Iiiiiii don't think it's safe to put this in a CAPTCHALOGUE CARD." Arthur says, grimacing. He puts one finger on the offered gem and his SYLLADEX lights up with bright red Xs over its available, empty cards. "Yeah, this is some shit I can't do ALCHEMY with." He says, uneasily. "Can't CAPTCHALOGUE any LIVING THINGS." He does try to take a CAPTCHAROID of it, but unfortunately, the code he finds on the back of the captchalogue card is... https://www.homestuck.com/images/storyfiles/hs2/01382.gif Yeah, this is considered a Game-Crucial Object and also a Living Being, so both ways of approaching it are no-go. Gonna need more than what's on-hand -- or, in a sense, maybe less.
Sumiko	Mikoto winces as the gem is touched...it feels painful to be touched in the soul like this, but she weathers it because it was for a good reason. Once the scan is over, she returns it to the ring on her finger so it disappears. He looks at the card as Arthur explains everything. "I see...and I guess Xion is right about it, though we are told it's our...soul now."
Xion	"Hey! That means you've got a really unique thing, right? That's cool! It's nice to be unique." Xion asides, having long since come to terms with the simple fact of Japan's awfulness. "So, next time we see a cool light or fight a big boss, use the BLOOD key item on it?" What is it with Xion and keys??? "That's easy! Sort of like an optional quest to every other quest! Nice."
Arthur Lowell	>==> "Or go find shit intentionally if ya wanna." Arthur says, gesturing in that way he does, where hands are sort of drifting around weightlessly in motion for no clear reason or purpose. "Like, if you know some EXOTIC ENERGY around where you come from, bring that shit up in there. Get some PALS to help get it REAL CLOSE or somethin'."
Sumiko	"The only thing strange I can think of is a witch, but I don't know if they release strange magic..? Guess it's worth a stab."
Xion	"Oh, I guess I could throw some in primordial darkness. Do you think that'd do anything? I'd have to put weird glasses on. Maybe use a fishing hook." Xion contemplates this conundrum. "I could shoot magic at it. Did you shoot space at it, Arthur? Maybe try some American at it."
Mauve Gauntlet	Mauve lets out a small whine when Mikoto calls her Japan weird. Guess she can dish it out but not take it. Still, She'd have to find a place to get energy from. She crosses her arms, humming in thought.
Arthur Lowell	>==> "Yeah, you wanna go take this into one'a those BARRIERS, probably not a BAD IDEA." Arthur says to Mikoto, nodding contemplatively. Xion also gets a thumbs-up. "Sounds like VOID STUFF, always a BIG FAN." For some reason that last sentence came out... all weird? It flowed the same as the other things he says, but it's like things were just slightly misaligned. "You call me up on these JOBS, yeah? I wanna GET INTO THAT, do some HELPING."
Sumiko	Mikoto gives Mauve a grin, she is the wiiiiiner. Back towards Arthur she nods, "I could always use help on witches...after all you GUILTED me into accepting help." She looks at Xion and pauses, "Primordial darkness? Like when we went down deep into the world of darkness?"
Arthur Lowell	>Arthur: Accept responsibility, change bullying behaviors No. >Arthur: Accept responsibility, change nothing Arthur winks at Mikoto and fingerguns at her when she talks about his long-ago shenanigans.
Xion	"Uhhhhh... Maybe? The Deeper Darkness is a place where there's no light. Like, at all. You can still see, but you need eyes that understand darkness - or these weird googly glasses Zexion made." She shrugs. "I guess if there was a 'World' of darkness, it'd be it, yeah?"
Sumiko	"Yeah...like that place you let us down that one time? Roxas, edgy samurai strength guy, and myself. There was a crazy old hermit there, something called GENIVA, and then that girl we found."
Xion	"Yep! That's the place!" Xion replies. "I mean, probably. I didn't go down there, I just held the portal open so people didn't get lost." "I bet there'll be some good energy down there though! Good-bad. Bad-bad? I dunno."